After the Crash

by Michel Bussi

  Fiddling nervously with her ring, Malvina stared at the lorry at the far end of the car park.

  ‘What now?’ she shouted, loud enough for the truck driver to hear her. ‘Shall we open up your shitty van and start making waffles for all these lard-arse lorry drivers?

  The truck driver heard this. He looked at Malvina as if she were some curious beast, then shrugged and turned around, no more annoyed than he would have been by a poodle barking at his heels. Marc stared at Malvina. Once again, the girl’s anger seemed false. This was clearly just a pathetic attempt at a diversionary tactic.

  ‘I’ll spell it out for you, Malvina. The point is that the dates clash. In his notebook, Crédule Grand-Duc says that he was with all the bigwigs in Turkish national security, partying at the seaside with their wives and children, on 7 November, 1982. But that was the day of the national referendum. A vote on Turkey’s return to democracy. The end of military rule. Don’t you think the politicians would have had better things to do that day?’

  Malvina shrugged. ‘So Grand-Duc got his dates wrong . . . What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Marc shouted.

  The truck driver with the flask of coffee was leaning against his vehicle, watching the scene as if Marc and Malvina were actors in a sitcom.

  ‘Do you want a hearing aid?’ Malvina yelled at the driver, who didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

  Marc continued. ‘The truth is, Malvina, that Grand-Duc wasn’t in Turkey on 7 November, 1982. Certainly not in a villa in Antalya. So why did he lie about it? Why use such a crappy alibi? Because he was somewhere else, of course. But, where? Where could he have been that weekend? Somewhere he shouldn’t have been . . . Why go to such lengths to make clear that he was in Turkey and Nazim was in France? Because he wanted to throw suspicion on his partner!’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Malvina said. ‘You make me look completely sane.’

  Marc grabbed her by the sweater. She did not fight back. She no longer had a gun in her pocket. Not even a pebble.

  ‘So let’s just consider the possibility that our honest, kind friend, Crédule-la-Bascule, who was so in love with my grandmother . . . loyal, pure-hearted Crédule Grand-Duc . . . was actually just a mercenary bastard. A piece of shit who was asked by your grandfather to get rid of my grandparents . . . and who agreed!’

  Marc’s fingers tightened around Malvina’s sweater. In the car park, the truck driver got back into his truck. They could hear the static from his radio.

  On the verge of tears, Marc went on: ‘He lied about this. Was everything else a lie too? His love for our family, for my grandmother? Maybe not. Maybe those things were true. It’s a classic scenario, after all: the murderer overcome by guilt, trying to atone for his sins . . . And to think we invited this bastard into our home! My grandfather’s killer. To think that my grandmother even . . . ugh!’

  Marc suddenly let go of Malvina and stalked off into the car park to pick up the packet of biscuits and the carton of orange juice that Malvina had dropped. He took them to the closest bin.

  ‘I don’t care what you say,’ he said, returning. ‘I know what happened that day. I know who killed my grandfather. It was Grand-Duc! As soon as you understand that, all the stuff in his notebook is exposed for what it is – hypocritical bullshit. He was a mercenary, he even said so . . .’

  ‘It was my grandfather,’ said Malvina.

  Marc had never heard her speak so gently.

  ‘It was my grandfather,’ she repeated. ‘Him, no one else. After his first heart attack. He was too impatient to wait for the outcome of the investigation that my grandmother was paying for, so he got hold of Grand-Duc shortly afterwards. He paid him a lot of money: enough to buy a house on Butte-aux-Cailles, let’s say. It had to look like an accident. His lawyers had told him that if the Vitrals died, there was a good chance that Judge Weber would give the baby to us. Grand-Duc was no choirboy; my grandfather had checked out his past. That weekend, in November 1982, he made a quick trip from Turkey to France. No one ever knew. The rest was pretty easy for him.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I was eight years old. I didn’t understand everything at the time, but I was already spying on people. Like a naughty little mouse, I found holes to hide in. My grandmother didn’t realise until later either, not until Pierre Vitral was dead. You can’t even imagine what that must have done to her conscience. Such a crime! How could she confess that when she prayed to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? My grandfather suffered his second heart attack soon afterwards. His plan had failed. My grandmother considered the attack to be divine justice, and she never breathed a word about what she knew.’

  ‘And what about you, Malvina? What did you think?’

  After a second’s hesitation, she replied: ‘I thought my grandfather was right, of course! It could have worked: if your grandparents had both died, then Lyse-Rose – the baby sister you had stolen from me – would have come home to her beautiful bedroom at last. And you would have been sent to an orphanage. It would have been perfect! That’s what I thought.’

  ‘And now? What do you think about it now?’

  This time there was no hesitation. ‘Same thing!’

  They set off again. Malvina changed the cassette in the tape player. She had chosen this one randomly, because she liked the sky-blue colour of its packaging: Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler’s voice alternated with the ecstasies of his guitar. Malvina was the first to speak:

  ‘That doesn’t alter the fact that Grand-Duc is a piece of shit. He always hated me; I don’t know why. Maybe because he guessed that I knew the truth.’

  Marc was hardly even listening. He felt betrayed. How much of the detective’s notebook was true, and how much of it lies?

  ‘Three days ago, he tried blackmailing my grandmother,’ Malvina went on. ‘With that bullshit story about a last-minute discovery. One hundred and fifty thousand francs, he wanted. Three times that if he provided her with proof! I don’t know who killed him, but they did the world a favour.’

  Marc’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. He thought about what Malvina had just told him, and his discovery of Grand-Duc’s corpse. A bullet in the chest, head in the fireplace, she had said, as if he were the victim of some macabre ritual. His face covered in blisters and ashes.

  ‘And as for that DNA test . . .’ Malvina continued. ‘We both know that Lyse-Rose is the one who survived. So all those tests prove is that Grand-Duc was a lying bastard.’

  An awful doubt was growing in Marc’s troubled mind.

  ‘And anyway, he was crap at his job,’ Malvina concluded. ‘My grandfather paid him a million francs and he couldn’t even manage to bump off two old farts in their sleep . . .’

  Marc’s fingers tensed around the worn leather steering wheel. Mark Knopfler’s guitar screamed out one last riff.

  It was just her sense of humour, he told himself. Remember . . .

  54

  3 October, 1998, 11.33 a.m. After five hours on the road, the Citroën was still going strong. Well, strong is maybe an exaggeration – it struggled on certain sections of motorway, unable to move any faster than 70mph – but at least it was still going.

  They had already played all the cassettes in the glove compartment: a compendium of 1980s hits, including Supertramp’s Famous Last Words and Jean-Jacques Goldman’s Positif.

  They stopped at Vitry-le-François, a town surrounded by cornfields in the Champagne region, and ate at a restaurant by the side of the road. They were the only customers. Marc ate an omelette and sat thinking in silence. Malvina opted for the three-course menu – charcuterie, steak and a crème brulée.

  ‘She’s got quite an appetite, your wife,’ said the owner, winking at Marc. ‘I wonder where she puts it all!’

  Back on the road, they went through Saint-Dizier and Chaumont. The flat cereal-growing plains were marked out by lines of cuestas – sudden steep slopes like the steps of a staircase, at the base of wh
ich lay wooded depressions. The Citroën van sped up each time they descended a cuesta slope, as if braking were impossible and it was just hoping for another upward slope in order to slow it down. Renaud sang ‘En Cloque’ for the third time. Malvina and Marc had not said a word for almost two hours.

  ‘Do you think Lyse-Rose would want a sister like me?’ Malvina said suddenly.

  Marc, driving through a village called Fayl-Billot, did not reply.

  ‘You know her,’ Malvina said. ‘Do you think she’d be able to understand me . . .to accept a big sister as ugly and nasty as me?’

  Still Marc did not speak. On the whole, he preferred it when Malvina stuck to her dark humour.

  ‘I can change,’ she insisted. ‘Will you tell her that I can change?’

  ‘Are you really sure that Lylie is your sister?’

  ‘Of course. We’re both sure of that, aren’t we?’

  Marc envied Malvina’s absence of doubt, her determination. It was as if she lived inside a bubble that nothing could burst. Just after passing Vesoul, Marc received a text from Lylie. He picked it up one-handed while continuing to drive.

  Marc, the operation will take place tomorrow at 10 a.m. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. I’ll call you afterwards.

  Tomorrow at 10 a.m. So, he had less than twenty-four hours.

  Goldman yelled ‘Envole-moi!’ Instinctively, Marc pressed down on the accelerator, but the van didn’t go any faster. As the miles accumulated, the crazy theory that had taken root in Marc’s brain began to gain weight and substance, seeming ever more plausible. Obvious, even.

  Three hours later, they passed through Montbéliard. The town’s roads seemed too wide for the sparse amount of traffic; huge boulevards, avenues, bypasses – perhaps as a reflection of the Peugeot factory nearby, which had, at its peak, employed more than 40,000 people. The largest factory in Europe . . . Less than a third of it remained operational today.

  Marc handed Malvina a map, telling her she had to find a tiny hamlet called Clairbief, where Monique Genevez ran what Crédule Grand-Duc had described in his notebook as the best gîte in the region.

  ‘What are we going to do there?’ Malvina moaned. ‘You think you can get back the cash that my grandma sent to Grand-Duc?’

  Marc shrugged, then checked that the Mauser was still in his pocket. Would he have to use it? Was it possible he was right, and that they had all been manipulated from the very beginning?

  Malvina stopped complaining and concentrated on the map. She proved a remarkably competent navigator. Seven miles after leaving Montbéliard, they passed through Pont-de-Roide and the valiant orange-and-red van began to climb the foothills of the Jura mountains: first a narrow, winding road alongside the Doubs until they reached Saint-Hippolyte, then the steep slope of a B-road.

  The Citroën groaned and creaked in protest, but it kept going. When they reached the top of the first hill, they were given a glorious view of the valley below. The van then happily descended back down towards the river, through a forest of pines and gold-leafed deciduous trees.

  Monique Genevez’s gîte was impossible to miss. Only one road ran alongside the Doubs. The chalet’s pale wood was reflected in the river’s calm waters. Marc held his breath and touched the Mauser inside his pocket once again. He stopped the van in a car park opposite the chalet. There were no other vehicles there. In this tiny village at the end of the world, time itself seemed to have stopped. Marc was struggling to breathe, his mind filled with the possibility that his quest might be about to end here.

  ‘So, are we going?’ Malvina said.

  ‘Hang on . . .’

  Marc took out the Mauser and made sure it was loaded. ‘What are you planning to do with my gun? Bump off Mrs

  Genevez?’

  Marc looked at Malvina. ‘Do you remember Grand-Duc’s

  corpse?’

  ‘Er, yeah.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘You remember a corpse in Grand-Duc’s house, wearing GrandDuc’s clothes and shoes and watch . . .’

  Malvina suddenly went pale.

  ‘A corpse, with its head in the fireplace,’ Marc continued. ‘The face so badly burned and covered in blisters that it was unrecognis

  able. Right?’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Follow me!’

  They got out of the van. Monique Genevez was already standing

  outside the chalet, flanked by window boxes full of geraniums. ‘Hello!’ Marc called out to her. ‘We’re friends of Crédule GrandDuc. You know him, I believe?’

  The woman’s face lit up.

  ‘Mr Grand-Duc! Of course I know him. He has stayed here every

  December for more than ten years now.’

  ‘I think he came back early this year, though, didn’t he?’ ‘He certainly did,’ said Mrs Genevez. ‘But I’m afraid you’re out

  of luck. He left just this morning.’

  Marc felt the ground shift beneath his feet. Beside him, Malvina

  stopped breathing. Unaware of her visitors’ reactions, Monique

  Genevez continued in the same untroubled tone: ‘He was here yesterday and the day before, staying in Room 12 as usual. The day

  before yesterday, he stayed here most of the morning because he

  was waiting for the post to arrive before he went out. And when the

  postman arrived, he had a large envelope for him. But he left very

  early this morning, around six.’

  ‘Do you know if he’s coming back?’ Marc managed to ask. ‘Oh, I’d be surprised. He usually only stays for a night or two

  when he’s here. He calls it his pilgrimage, you know. He’s a very

  intriguing man, your friend. Perfectly kind and polite – and he has

  a very good appetite! – but I don’t understand his obsession with

  that plane crash. After eighteen years, I’d have thought it was time

  to forget about it, wouldn’t you?’

  Marc was silent for a few seconds. Finally he said: ‘Do you know

  where he was going?’

  Monique tore a few dead stems from a geranium. ‘No, I’m afraid

  not. Mr Grand-Duc is not the type of man to reveal his secrets, not

  even after a bottle and a half of Vin Jaune. Anyway, I would never

  ask. But I imagine he’s gone back to Paris, don’t you? That’s what

  he normally does.’

  Though he asked Mrs Genevez a few more questions, Marc did

  not discover anything else. He and Malvina went back to the van. Inside, Malvina spat angrily: ‘I told you that bastard had been

  fucking with us from the beginning!’

  Marc said nothing. He felt powerless. So, Grand-Duc was alive

  . . . but they had missed him. The last lead in this investigation had

  slipped through his fingers.

  ‘But hang on,’ said Malvina. ‘If you guessed that Grand-Duc had

  faked his own death and killed someone else in his place, what the

  hell are we doing here?’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  Malvina clapped sarcastically. ‘You’re a genius, Vitral. We’ve just

  done a ten-hour drive for nothing. Couldn’t you have phoned first?’ ‘I said shut it.’

  ‘You could at least get me a room in Mrs Genevez’s gîte. It looks

  nice.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot you right now and throw your

  body into the river.’

  Malvina looked at Marc curiously. ‘What is your problem? I

  mean, it’s hardly a great surprise that Grand-Duc is a piece of shit.

  Why are you in such a terrible mood suddenly? And why are you in

  such a rush? Are you marrying my sister tomorrow, or something?’ ‘Forget it. You wouldn’t understand.’

  Marc turned the key in the ignition.

  ‘Where are we go
ing?’ Malvina asked. ‘Don’t you want to stay

  here for a while?’

  ‘No, I don’t! I promised you a pilgrimage, and that’s exactly what

  you’ll get. We’re going to Mont Terri.’

  55

  3 October, 1998, 12.01 p.m. Through binoculars, Crédule Grand-Duc followed the postman’s bright yellow van as it wound along the curving track through the pine forest. It was advancing slowly, taking its time, stopping at every chalet along the route. It wouldn’t get there for another ten minutes.

  The Xantia was parked a mile or so higher up the hill, just before the road entered Saint-Hippolyte. Sitting in his car, the detective watched the postman’s van for a few moments longer.

  Ten minutes . . .

  Would this be the right one, at last? He had already followed seven other postmen, fruitlessly. But all he had to do was keep going, and eventually he would have his reward. He had been searching for this Mélanie Belvoir for three days now. Apparently she was completely out of touch with her family, and her name did not appear in any phone book, electronic or otherwise. He had found no trace of her existence in any government listings. She might have married, but no Mélanie Belvoir appeared in any of the local wedding registries. So he had finally thought to question the local postmen. Even if Mélanie Belvoir had changed her name, she might still continue to receive correspondence under her maiden name. A postman would know that, especially in a rural backwater like this. A postman would probably know every single address on his route.

  And yet none, so far, had ever heard of Mélanie Belvoir.

  But there was nothing to do but keep hammering away. Persistence was his middle name. And he did not lack motivation. This was the closest he had come to finding the Holy Grail, the solution to his investigation.

  He thought about the precariousness of life. Four days ago, he had been sixty seconds away from shooting himself in the head.