Never Forget

by Michel Bussi

  “Think about it, Jamal. If there was no corpse, no Magali Verron, that means there was no rape. No accusation of murder. The police have nothing on you! You’re just a bit paranoid, perhaps you embellished things a little to get me into bed . . .”

  “Damn it, Mona, what would I have been doing at the police station the day we met by the drinks machine?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps they’d brought you in as a witness for something else . . .”

  She paused.

  Suddenly I understood.

  I saw the other side of the piece of the puzzle put in place by Mona.

  I hadn’t imagined Magali Verron. Her face, her rape, the red scarf around her neck, the cliffs of Yport.

  I was seeing again a scene that I had witnessed before!

  That was probably what Mona thought. The police in Fécamp had called me in as a witness to a ten-year-old case: the murder of Morgane Avril. I had somehow mixed up the past with an imagined present.

  I was insane . . .

  Still clinging to the precipice, desperate to save myself from falling over the edge, I pointed to the documents on the table.

  “What about the envelopes?” I asked Mona, “Did I send them to myself?”

  She came over and rested her hand on my shoulder.

  “No, Jamal. No. But might be someone who’s trying to make you remember about the Avril–Camus case? That would explain . . .”

  I pushed her hand away.

  “Make me remember what? I’d never heard of that case before this week!”

  Mona put her hand under her jumper. I immediately regretted my reaction. I no longer knew where I was. Guilty or innocent? My eyes stung and I wanted to cry. To burst into tears like a child.

  “I . . . I have nothing to do with this case, Mona. They’re trying to pin it on me. They’re trying to drive me mad. If you leave me on my own, they’ll do it.”

  Mona took her eyes off mine and stared at the clock one last time: 10:10 P.M.

  “One night, Jamal! I’ve giving you one night to convince me. As soon as the sun appears over the cliffs, you’re going to the station.”

  “And between now and then, do I get to decide the battle plan?”

  “Go on.”

  “Apart from Piroz and the police, only two people can confirm that I didn’t make up the suicide of Magali Verron: Christian Le Medef and Denise Joubain.”

  “You’ve already questioned them.”

  Yes, Le Medef confirmed everything before he disappeared. Or before they made him disappear. Denise Joubain was terrified. If we go back to both their houses you can make your own mind up.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the police? You might bump into them in Yport.”

  “Cops on my heels? Don’t you think you’re being a bit paranoid?”

  Mona burst out laughing. Her lips brushed against mine.

  “Weren’t you going to make me some tea?”

  I saw her going towards the kitchen. I exclaimed:

  “In my defence, will you allow me to call a friend?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There is another trail that I haven’t followed, that sequence of numbers that I found in Piroz’s office and at Le Medef’s. Impossible to find anything on the internet that has anything to do with them. I have a friend with a brain like an encyclopaedia at the Saint Antoine Institute. Ibou. You never know . . .”

  “You’re right, call a clever friend, what do research chemists know about anything?”

  *

  Ibou replied almost immediately. I cut short his questions about my training for the North Face, about the local weather and the latest gossip from the Institut.

  “Can you spare me a minute, Ibou? You have nothing to gain, but you might help me out of a hole . . .”

  I set the scene, I listed the figures, convinced that it was an impossible code to penetrate.

  Ibou’s loud laughter echoed down the line.

  “Easy peasy, my little bunny rabbit. Everyone knows that one! It’s the square of the prisoner’s dilemma.”

  “The what?”

  “The prisoner’s dilemma! It’s game theory.”

  I turned on the speaker so that Mona could hear.

  “The principle is simple. Imagine that two suspects, of a robbery, for example, are arrested by the police and interrogated separately. Each prisoner, if he doesn’t want to confess to the crime, has two options: to say nothing or to accuse his accomplice. If he accuses him, he will get a reduction in his sentence and his friend will get the maximum. But the problem is that neither prisoner knows what the other one is going to do . . .”

  “I don’t understand, Ibou. Where do those numbers fit into this story of yours?”

  “I’m getting to that. The numbers represent the outcome: years in prison, for example. If the two prisoners say nothing, they’ll be given the benefit of the doubt and get one year in prison each. If they accuse each other, they both go down and get two years in prison.”

  “So why talk to the cops in the first place?”

  “Because if the theorem is to work at all, individual interest must outweigh cooperative interest. If one of the prisoners accuses the other without himself being betrayed, he is cleared and the other receives the full weight of the law, three years in jail for his friend and zero for himself. He’s free!”

  “Holy shit, Ibou. Do they really pay researchers to come up with this stuff?”

  “Yes! An American called Robert Axelrod ran a competition to find the equation that would allow players to win maximum points in the game of the prisoner’s dilemma.”

  “You can play it?”

  “Yes. Two players. Ten. A hundred. The rule is the simplest in the world: you betray, or you cooperate. You make your choice in secret and then you compare it with what the other players have done and you count up the points.”

  “And after that? What’s the magic formula?”

  According to Axelrod, it’s summed up in three words. Cooperation–reciprocity–pardon. In short, first you suggest cooperation to another player. If he fucks you over and betrays you, next thing you do is betray him right back. Then you propose cooperation again. According to Axelrod, it’s the golden rule that should influence all behavioural interactions between human beings.”

  “And that’s it?”

  I couldn’t see a connection between this idiotic theory, the Avril–Camus case and the suicide of Magali Verron. Why had Piroz and Le Medef written the numbers of that theorem down on a piece of paper?

  I thought for a few seconds.

  “Tell me if I’m wrong, Ibou, but this guy Axelrod’s solution only works if the players play against one another several times. The principle is not to allow yourself to be fucked over twice in a row. But if you only play once, once and for all, the right answer is to win the confidence of the guy you’re playing with and then betray him, is that it?”

  “You’ve got it!”

  I hung up without feeling that I’d made any progress. Clearly, the prisoner’s dilemma didn’t inspire Mona much either. Perhaps I’d made up those sequences of scribbled figures too . . .

  Mona stuffed a packet of biscuits in a plastic bag, took out a thermos and turned on the coffee machine.

  “You can’t have slept for more than two hours since yesterday. Keep an eye on the coffee, I’m going to change.”

  I immediately wondered where she was going to find dry women’s clothes in this house, but she didn’t give me time to think. She tugged nervously on her sweater.

  “I need to know, Jamal. It’s important . . .” She was still holding the wool, twisting its stitches out of shape. “Ten years ago, did you . . .” The grey pullover was now nothing but a grille casting zebra shapes on her naked skin. �
�Did you still have the use of both legs?”

  The same question that Piroz asked me at the station.

  I looked her up and down. Cynically. Icily.

  “The use of both legs? Is that the question, Mona? Go on, then, pursue this thought to its conclusion. Was I able to dance ten years ago? To climb cliffs? Run after a girl? Chat her up, rape her, strangle her, is that the question you’re asking, Mona?”

  “It’s not what I think, Jamal.”

  “They’d have spotted a cripple around the place.”

  “I need you to tell me,” Mona said again.

  I gently lifted my trouser leg to reveal the metal stem that connected my knee to my carbon foot.

  “I crashed through the shop window at the Beaugrenelle shopping centre, in the fifteenth arrondissement. I was doing parkour with a group of about ten friends from La Courneuve. My fibular nerve was completely severed.”

  Mona opened her mouth like a fish out of water. I was ahead of her.

  “It happened in May 2002, twelve years ago.”

  Mona didn’t turn a hair. She let go of the jumper, which returned to its normal mohair shape.

  “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “Maybe, I love making up stories.”

  Mona opted to drive. She had put on a pair of jeans, very fashionable but too big for her, probably borrowed from the wardrobe of Martin Denain’s son, and a green pullover under her jacket, still damp from the rain.

  Still no star pinned to her heart . . .

  The rain had eased off, but the thermometer had fallen below zero. Before Mona started the car, I rested my fingers on her hand.

  “If things go wrong . . .”

  I opened the glove compartment. My hand touched the cold trigger of the King Cobra. I thought Mona was going to scream.

  Quite the opposite!

  She stared at me as if I was a complete idiot.

  “Is that Martin Denain’s revolver? It’s a defensive weapon, Jamal? It only fires rubber bullets or blanks. Martin would never have kept a deadly weapon at his house.”

  Was I reassured or terrified by Mona’s revelation?

  I didn’t have time to think, since a moment later my fingers brushed against the sulphurised surface of some paper as I was putting the gun back. The texture of an envelope.

  A brown envelope.

  With my name on it.

  It hadn’t been in the glove compartment two hours before, when I had parked the Fiat at the end of the drive and put the King Cobra in there. Was it possible that some stranger, without making any noise, should have entered the garden, taking advantage of the darkness and the rain?

  A stranger . . . or Mona?

  Having decided to ask her for an explanation, I looked over at her . . . and understood that she was thinking the same thing.

  For her, I was the only person who could have slipped the envelope into the car.

  The only person who knew that I was going to open the glove compartment to take out the revolver.

  Mona was still staring at me. I thought again of Ibou’s words. The prisoner’s dilemma.

  That damned game . . .

  Two accomplices. One secret choice.

  Betray or trust.

  Then I tore open the envelope.

  30

  COOPERATION-RECIPROCITY-PARDON?

  Diary of Alina Masson—December 2004

  For as long as I can remember, Myrtille has always been there.

  I lived on Rue Puchot, a sixth-floor apartment with a view of the Seine, the Pont Guynemer and the towpath where we never went to play.

  Myrtille lived on the Passage Tabouelle, in a little town house with a small garden. Right on the street.

  I always called her Mimy.

  I was Lina.

  Mimy–Lina.

  The inseparable duo.

  We worked out that we had first encountered one another at the Feugrains Hospital in 1983. I had left the maternity ward on December seventeenth, and Mimy was born there on the fifteenth. But her mother, Louise, liked to tell us that we had really become friends at the age of thirteen months, at the playground in Puchot, coming down the slide together in single file. I have often looked at the old photographs of the two of us, with our muffs, scarves and hats, since Mimy is no longer with us.

  We met up again in the same class at nursery school. I often went to play at Mimy’s house, with her and her mischievous little dog Buffo. I only found out much later that Charles had named it after a famous clown. We tormented the poor creature, we put him in the pram, we put bibs on him and gave him little pots of baby food to eat.

  Mimy never came to mine. I was a little ashamed. And I didn’t have a dog.

  We were like a pair of twins, that was what they said about us at Alphonse Daudet primary school. Even if we didn’t look like one another.

  Louise and Charles worked very hard. Particularly on Wednesday, Saturday and during the holidays. Louise had her dance school, Charles did group tours of the museum. Sometimes we hung out in the street in Elbeuf, and most often we went to see Mimy’s grandmother, Jeanine.

  She lived on Route des Roches in Orival, in a house dug into the cliff of the Seine with grottoes in the garden that we weren’t allowed to go to because of rockfalls. Jeanine made us laugh and wasn’t very strict with us. We gave her the nickname Grandma Ninja.

  Sometimes we took Buffo to her house. We kept him on a lead along the Boulevard de la Plage. The boulevard has always been called that, I think. But there hasn’t been a beach on the banks of the Seine for as long as anyone can remember.

  At the age of eight we went to our first summer camp together, in Bois-Plage-en-Ré, in the pines. Frédéric was already an activity leader, and Mimy thought he was incredibly handsome with his long hair, his guitar and muscular arms.

  Louise and Charles ran the centre. The other kids gave Mimy hell because of it. She was the little princess, the bosses’ daughter, maybe the only one whose parents both had jobs.

  Mimy and I stood shoulder to shoulder.

  Mimy–Lina, for ever.

  At the Bois camp, as we called it, Mimy cried a lot and didn’t want to tell her parents. We all slept together in a big dormitory. At night, Mimy sometimes wet the bed. She said as a joke that that was why the camp was called the Cloth of Gold, because of her pee-drenched sheets. I helped her. We arranged to be alone in the dormitory together and swapped mattresses. I lent her mine, and when one of our mattresses smelled too strongly of urine, we swapped it with the one belonging to the activity leader keeping watch in the corridor.

  No one ever knew anything.

  Our secret.

  She would have killed me if I’d told anybody. I never said a word. She’s the one who died.

  After middle school, we met up again at the workshops in the community centre. Fred was there too. Mimy did dance and theatre. I just did circus skills. I was quite good at the tightrope, the balance ball, the barrel, the rolla bolla, but Mimy was something else—perfect grace and harmony. Every now and then Louise would open the circus-theatre just for us and we’d walk about the round stage, dreaming. Once we found an old poster in the dressing room, a trapeze artist in a leotard, passing through a flaming hoop. His name was Rustam Trifon, and he was from a Moldavian circus. He was as beautiful as a god, fair-haired with eyes of steel. We put it up on our walls on alternate weeks. It drove us wild to have Rustam Trifon as an idol. He wasn’t a bit like Filip Nikolic in 2B. We sang “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes as we dreamed of travelling the byways of Transnistria . . . That was where Rustam lived.

  Our first camp as activity leaders in Bois-Plage-en-Ré was in 2001. Fredéric was the director, and Mimy still found him as handsome as ever, even with his hair cut very short and playing a ukulele. It was still the same kids from Elbeuf, or their cousins, their little brothers, p
erhaps even their children. Mimy and I thought it was hilarious when we got them up at night to go to the toilet, checking that their mattresses or pyjamas were dry.

  We spent our wages on a trip to the Vieilles Charrues Festival the following year, and we saw the Blues Brothers. So close we could almost have touched them. We chatted up the Breton volunteers. They were gorgeous! One evening, Mimy went out with the one she said was the nicest of the lot, the one who cleaned the toilets.

  Mimy was like that.

  When we came back, after a fortnight in Finistère, Buffo was dead. On St. Anne’s day. He had just fallen asleep among the rose bushes, one afternoon when it was very hot. Charles buried him there, he dug a hole underneath him without even moving his body. Since then, every time I’ve called in on Charles and Louise at Impasse Tabouelle, I’ve never been able to look at the flowers without thinking of Buffo.

  I think he’d have liked to be reincarnated as a rose.

  In 2003, the camp left the Île de Ré for Normandy, because of funding cuts. We were also recruiting more teenagers. One evening in September, Mimy found a little lost puppy behind McDonald’s in Caudebec-lès-Elbeuf. She called him Ronald, which was a bit of a stupid name, but it was the first clown’s name she could think of. She carried him in her arms to Charles and Louise. That was a way of telling her parents that she wouldn’t be there so much from now on. She had gone out with Fredéric during the camp. It was sort of obvious, even if he was nineteen years older than she was.

  We all expected it, to tell you the truth. We even thought they’d been pretty lucky to find one another. The next spring Mimy asked me if I wanted to be maid of honour at her wedding. She wanted it all to happen very quickly. The wedding was scheduled for October 4th in Orival, in the church on the banks of the Seine that was dug out of the cliff, as solid as her love, she said. Mimy was more romantic than me, and more Catholic too, more white-dress, more poems, more Prince Charming.

  I said yes. I also said I’d give her a hard time beforehand. That I was going to imagine the most mega-crazy events to celebrate the funeral of her time as a girl. In fact, I had planned for us both to go travelling after the camp in Isigny, for a month, to the other end of Europe, backpack and hitch-hiking, perhaps all the way to Transnistria . . .