Alex

by Pierre Lemaitre

  “Any investigation?”

  “Of sorts. The father’s worried, but given the circumstances, the police kicked it into touch. The son ran off with some girl, took his clothes, his personal effects and the contents of his father’s bank account – €623 – you get the picture. Anyway, the father is sent off to the préfecture, Missing Persons Unit. They put the word out locally: nothing. In March, the search was widened to include the whole country. Still nothing. Trarieux’s screaming blue murder, he wants this thing sorted, so early August, a year after the son disappeared, he gets the standard form letter – ‘all attempts to locate the person have been unsuccessful’. According to the latest information, the son is still missing. I’m guessing that when he gets wind of his father’s death, he’ll show up.”

  “What about the mother?”

  “Trarieux divorced in 1984. Well, actually, his wife divorced him: spousal abuse, brutality, alcoholism. The son stayed with the father. Peas in a pod, those two. At least until Pascal decided to fuck off. The mother remarried, lives in Orléans. Madame …” Camille checks his notes, can’t find the name. “Doesn’t matter, I’ve sent someone to pick her up and bring her back here.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, Trarieux’s mobile was a company phone; his employer wanted to be able to get in touch with him wherever he was on the site. The call log shows he barely used it; most of the calls are to his boss or fall under the category ‘work-related’, as they say. Then, suddenly, he starts using it. Not much, but it’s something he hasn’t done before. A dozen different numbers suddenly show up in the logs, people he calls one, twice, three times …”

  “So?”

  “So, this sudden urge to get chatty starts two weeks after he receives the letter saying the search for his son has been ‘unsuccessful’, and they stop three weeks before the girl’s abduction.”

  Le Guen frowns. Camille offers his conclusions:

  “Trarieux thinks the police are doing fuck all so he starts up his own little investigation.”

  “You think the girl in the cage is the one the son ran off with?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “I thought you said the girl in the photograph was fat? The one in the cage isn’t fat.”

  “Depends what you mean by fat … maybe she lost weight; how do I know? All I’m saying is I think it’s the same girl. But as for where this Pascal guy is, search me …”

  17

  Since the beginning Alex has been suffering from the cold, despite the fact that it’s been particularly mild for September. She can’t move and she’s malnourished. Now things have deteriorated, because suddenly, in a few short hours, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Previously the cold she felt was a symptom of her exhaustion, but now the temperature has actually dropped several degrees. The weather is overcast, so the level of light from the skylights has also gone down. Then Alex hears the first gusts of wind whipping through the warehouse; it whistles and howls painfully, sounding like the moans of someone in despair.

  The rats, too, have pricked up their ears, whiskers quivering. A sudden downpour lashes the building, which rumbles and creaks like a ship about to founder. Before Alex has realised what is going on, all the rats are scurrying along the walls in search of the rainwater now streaming across the floor. She counts nine of them this time. She can’t be sure that they’re the same rats. The large piebald rat that arrived recently, which the other rats are afraid of – she watched it wallowing in a puddle, it had a puddle to itself – this rat is the first to come back. The first to scramble up the rope. It is a single-minded creature.

  A wet rat is even more terrifying than a dry one: the fur looks dirtier, the eyes beadier, seemingly more vicious. When wet, the long tail looks slimy, as though it is a different animal, a snake.

  After the rain comes the storm, after the humidity the cold. Alex is scared stiff – she can’t move, she can feel herself shiver all over; but these are not shivers, they are convulsions. Her teeth start to chatter. The wind blasts through the rooms so fiercely that the cage begins to spin.

  The piebald rat on the rope scuttles up and down the lid of the cage, rears up on its hind paws. It’s obviously given a rallying signal because seconds later all the rats are scampering up the rope – there are rats everywhere, on the top, in the wicker basket swinging next to her.

  A lightning flash illuminates the room and the rats rear up as one, snouts pointed towards the heavens as though electrified, then scamper off in different directions. Not that they’re afraid of the storm; it’s like a sort of dance. They’re galvanized.

  Only the black and ginger piebald is left, on the plank nearest to Alex. He pokes his head towards her, his eyes widen, then he sits up on his hind paws, his ginger belly swollen, enormous. He starts to squeal, waving his forepaws about wildly. His paws are pink, but Alex can see only the claws.

  These rats are clever. They’ve realised that to her hunger, the thirst, the exhaustion, they need only add fear. In chorus they begin to shriek and screech, trying to scare her. Alex feels the icy rain carried by the gusts of wind. She’s not crying, she’s shivering. She had thought death would be a deliverance, but the prospect of being gnawed by rats, the idea of being eaten alive …

  How many days’ food does a human body represent to a dozen rats?

  Petrified, Alex lets out a wail.

  But for the first time, no sound comes from her throat.

  She passes out from exhaustion.

  18

  Le Guen sits up, gets to his feet and paces around his office as Camille continues with his progress report, then he comes back and resumes his position, a brooding pot-bellied sphinx. As he takes his seat, Camille notices the divisionnaire trying to conceal what looks like a satisfied smile. He is probably satisfied that he’s got his daily exercise routine out of the way. Twice or three times a day he does this, gets up, paces as far as the door and back. Sometimes four times. A training regime that depends upon an iron discipline.

  “Seven or eight people in Trarieux’s contact list proved interesting,” Camille picks up again. “He called each of them, some of them several times. The questions were always the same. He was trying to find out about his son’s disappearance. When he went to see them, he’d show them the photograph of his son at the funfair with the girl.”

  Camille interviewed only two witnesses personally; Louis and Armand talked to the others. He’s come to Le Guen’s office to keep him up to date, but the divisionnaire isn’t the reason he’s back in the headquarters of the brigade criminelle. He’s here to see the former Mme Trarieux, who has just arrived from Orléans. The local police arranged the transport.

  “Trarieux probably got their contact details from his son’s e-mails. They’re a pretty mixed bunch.”

  Camille checks his notes.

  “Valérie Touquet, thirty-five, a former schoolmate Pascal Trarieux spent fifteen years desperately trying to get into bed.”

  “At least he’s consistent.”

  “The father called her a number of times to ask if she knew where his kid was. According to her, the guy’s a complete oddball. ‘A weirdo.’ And if you say nothing for a minute, she says, ‘He was a total loser. Always trying to impress girls with his stupid stories.’ All in all, a bit of a halfwit. But nice with it. Anyway, she has no idea what happened to him.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Patrick Jupien, a delivery driver for a laundry company, a mate of Pascal’s from the racetrack. Hasn’t heard a peep out of Trarieux either. Doesn’t recognise the girl in the picture. There’s another schoolfriend, Thomas Vasseur, a sales rep., and an old workmate, Didier Cottard, a warehouseman Pascal worked with at a mail-order company – but it’s the same shit with all of them: the father telephones, calls round, pisses everyone off. And obviously none of them have heard from Pascal in ages. The ones who know anything know there’s a girl mixed up in the whole business. This was big news, apparently, Pascal Trarieux having
a girlfriend. His pal Vasseur cracked up when he mentioned the girlfriend as if to say ‘for once in his life’. His mate the laundry driver confirmed that he spent weeks banging on about some Nathalie, but as for Nathalie’s surname, no-one knows. And none of them ever got to meet her.”

  “That’s interesting …”

  “No, it’s not really surprising. He met this girl sometime in mid-June and ran off with her about a month later. He didn’t exactly have much time to introduce her to his friends.”

  The two men sit, thinking. Camille, frowning, flicks through his notes, glances towards the window from time to time as though looking for the answer to some question, then buries his face in his notebook again. Le Guen knows him all too well. He gives it a moment, then says:

  “Go on, spit it out …”

  Camille is embarrassed, which is rare for him.

  “Well, if you want the truth … This girl, there’s something not right about her.”

  He quickly brings his hands up as though to protect his face.

  “I know, I know, Jean! She’s the victim. Victims are sacrosanct. But you asked what I thought and I’m telling you.”

  Le Guen sits up in his chair, both elbows planted on the desk.

  “That’s pathetic, Camille.”

  “I know.”

  “For the past week this woman’s been locked up like a bird in a cage hanging two metres off the ground …”

  “I know, Jean …”

  “… you only have to look at the photographs to know she’s dying …”

  “Yeah.”

  “… the guy who abducted her is a violent, illiterate, alcoholic scumbag …”

  Camille just sighs.

  “… who’s clapped her in a cage and left her to the rats …”

  Camille opts for a pained nod of the head.

  “… and threw himself off the Périphérique flyover rather than tell us where she is …”

  Camille closes his eyes like someone who doesn’t want to witness the extent of the damage he’s caused.

  “… but you think there’s ‘something not right about her’? Have you told anyone else about your hunch or did you save the scoop for me?”

  But when Camille does not protest, when he remains silent, worse still, when he does not defend himself, Le Guen knows there’s something else. Some anomaly. Silence, then: “I just don’t get it,” Camille says slowly. “Why has no-one reported this woman missing?”

  “For Christ’s sake, thousands of women …”

  “… go missing. I know, Jean, thousands of people no-one ever comes looking for. But … this guy, Trarieux, he’s a moron, agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Not exactly sophisticated.”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “Then tell me this: what was it about this girl that made him so enraged? And why go about it the way he did?”

  Le Guen rolls his eyes; he doesn’t understand.

  “Because, let’s look at the facts: here’s this guy plodding along investigating his son’s disappearance, then he goes and buys timber, builds a cage, finds a place where he’ll be able to keep the girl for days on end, then he kidnaps her, locks her up and leaves her to die slowly and painfully, and comes back and takes pictures to make sure she’s on her way … And you’re telling me this was just some spur-of-the-moment stunt?”

  “I never said that, Camille.”

  “Of course you said it, or you might as well have. He just came up with the idea. This sheet metal worker suddenly thinks to himself, Hey, why don’t I track down the girl my son ran off with and shut her in a wooden crate? And by pure coincidence, this girl turns out to be someone we can’t identify. But this guy, who’s as thick as two short planks, has no trouble tracking her down, which is more than we’ve been able to do.”

  19

  She rarely sleeps now. She’s too scared. Inside her cage, Alex squirms and writhes more than ever, suffers more than ever. From the moment of her abduction, she hasn’t eaten properly, hasn’t slept properly, she hasn’t been able to stretch her legs or her arms, to rest even for a moment and now, the rats … Her mind is failing her, for hours at a time everything she sees is misty, blurred; every sound she hears is muffled, like the echo of distant noises. She hears herself whimper and moan, hears low-pitched howls that come from deep in her belly. She is steadily growing weaker.

  She keeps nodding off and jolting awake. Some time ago she blacked out from sheer exhaustion, half-mad with tiredness, with pain, her mind wandering, seeing rats everywhere.

  Then all of a sudden – she doesn’t know how – she knows that Trarieux is never coming back, that he’s abandoned her here. If he comes back, she’ll tell him everything – she says this to herself over and over as though it is a spell: Just let him come back and I’ll tell him everything, anything he wants, anything he wants, I just want this to be over. Let him kill her quickly, she can accept that – anything but the rats.

  In the early hours, they scramble down the rope in single file, squeaking and screeching. They know she is theirs now.

  They won’t wait for her to die. They’re too excited. Since this morning they’ve been fighting amongst themselves more than ever. They come closer and closer to sniff her. They’re waiting until she’s totally exhausted, but they are agitated, feverish. How will they know the sign? When will they decide to attack?

  She shakes herself out of her stupor and has a moment of blinding clarity.

  When he said “I’m going to watch you die”, what he meant was “I’m going to see you dead”. He won’t come back now; he won’t come back until she’s dead.

  Above her, the largest of the rats, the black and ginger piebald, is sitting on its hind paws making high-pitched squeaks. It bares its teeth.

  There’s only one thing to do. Her feverish hand feels about for the splintered edge of the slat beneath her, the one she’s been trying to avoid for hours because it’s so jagged she cuts herself every time she touches it. Millimetre by millimetre, she digs her fingernails into the crevice; the wood parts slightly, she gains ground, she concentrates, applies as much force as she can. It takes some time and several attempts, but finally it snaps. Alex finds herself clutching a sliver of wood about fifteen centimetres long. Razor sharp. She peers up between the slats of the lid, near the ring, near the rope holding the cage. Then, swiftly, she slips her hand between the planks and, with the pointed end, pushes the rat into the void. It tries to cling on, scrabbling desperately at the edge of the crate, gives a fierce shriek and drops the two metres to the floor. Without waiting an instant, Alex stabs the splinter of wood into her hand and twists it like a knife, howling in pain.

  Immediately blood starts to flow.

  20

  Roseline Bruneau has no desire to talk about her ex-husband; what she wants is news of her son. He has been missing for over a year.

  “July 14th,” she says anxiously, as though disappearing on Bastille Day might have some sort of symbolic weight.

  Camille has come from behind his desk and is sitting next to her.

  He used to have two chairs in his office, one with the seat deliberately raised, the other deliberately lowered. The psychological effect was very different. Depending on the circumstances he would sit in one or the other. Irène had never approved of these psychological games so Camille stopped doing it. The chairs hung around the brigade offices for a while and people used them to play pranks on rookies. But it wasn’t as funny as they expected. Then one day the chairs just disappeared. Camille is convinced that Armand took them. He can picture Armand having dinner with his wife, one perched on the high chair, the other sitting on the low chair …

  When he sees Mme Bruneau, he’s reminded of the chairs because he used to use them to elicit sympathy, something he wishes he could do now. And quickly. Camille focuses on the interview because if he allows himself to think about the girl in the cage, it conjures a confusion of images, images that muddle his thoughts, stir u
p memories, and he can feel himself go to pieces.

  Unfortunately, he and Roseline Bruneau are not on the same wavelength. She is a small, slim woman who, under normal circumstances, is probably full of life, but right now she’s nervous and reticent. She jerks her head this way and that, alert. She is convinced at any moment she’ll be told her son is dead. A feeling that’s been nagging at her ever since the policeman came to collect her at the driving school where she works.

  “Your ex-husband took his own life yesterday afternoon, Madame Bruneau.”

  Though they’ve been divorced for more than twenty years, the news seems to give her quite a turn. She looks Camille in the eye, the expression on her face flickering between bitterness (I hope he suffered) and sarcasm (it’s no great loss), but most of all anxiety. At first, she says nothing. To Camille she looks like a little bird. A small, beak-like nose, sharp eyes, angular shoulders, pointed breasts. He knows exactly how he would draw her.

  “How did he die?” she says at length.

  From what he’s seen of the divorce papers, thinks Camille, she’s not exactly going to grieve for her ex-husband and under normal circumstances he’d have expected her to ask about her son. If she hasn’t there must be some reason.

  “An accident,” Camille says. “He was involved in a police chase.”