Alex (9 page)

“I don’t get it …” he says.

Dinner is over; they’ve crossed the street and they’re walking along the canal, looking at the barges.

“Nobody’s missed her at work? No husband, no fiancé, no
boyfriend, girlfriend, no-one? No family? Though I suppose in a city this size, the way things are these days, the fact that no-one’s looking for her …”

The conversation tonight is just like all the conversations they’ve ever had, punctuated by long silences. They each have their own: pensive, introspective or focused.

“I suppose you used to check in on your father every day?” Armand says.

No, obviously, not even twice a week – his father could have dropped dead at home and lain there for a week before … He had a girlfriend he saw a lot of – she was the one who found him, who let him know. Camille met her for the first time two days before the funeral. His father had mentioned her in passing as though she were a mere acquaintance. It had taken three car trips to ferry everything she had at his place back to hers. A small woman, fresh-faced and rosy-cheeked as an apple with wrinkles that looked new-minted. She smelled of lavender. For Camille, the idea that this woman had taken his mother’s place in his father’s bed was, in the literal sense, unimaginable. Two women who were like chalk and cheese. It was a different world, maybe a different planet; he sometimes wondered what his parents had had in common – nothing, on the face of it. Maud, an artist, had married a chemist – go figure. He’d asked himself the question a thousand times. The little apple seemed to him a more natural fit. Whichever way you think about it, what goes on between our parents can often remain a mystery, he thought. That said, some weeks later, Camille discovered that over a few short months the little wrinkled apple had siphoned off a large chunk of the chemist’s assets. Camille had a good laugh about it. He never saw her afterwards, which was a pity; she was obviously a character.

“It was different for me,” Armand went on. “My father was in a home. But when someone’s living on their own, what can you do? They die, and for the body to be found straight away it would be sheer chance.”

This thought puzzles Camille. He starts telling a story he read somewhere. Some guy called Georges. A combination of circumstances meant that no-one was surprised not to hear from him for more than five years. Officially, he disappeared without anyone asking questions; his water and his electricity were cut off. His concierge believed he’d been in hospital since 1996, but he had come home without her realising. His corpse was finally found in his apartment in 2001.

“I read that in …”

He can’t think of the title.

“It was by Edgar Morin, a title like
Thoughts on
 … something.”

“
Towards a Politics of Civilisation
,” Louis supplies gravely. He pushes his hair back with his left hand. Translation: sorry …

Camille smiles.

“Good, isn’t it, having the old team back together?” says Camille.

“This case makes me think of Alice,” Armand says.

This is hardly surprising. Alice Hedges, a girl from Arkansas, found dead in a skip on the banks of the Canal de l’Ourcq, whose body had not been identified for three years. When all’s said and done, disappearing without a trace is not as rare as people think. But still you can’t help wondering. You sit here staring at the greenish waters of the Saint-Martin, you know that a couple of days from now the case will be closed; you tell yourself the disappearance of this unknown woman will have touched no-one. Her life will have been barely a ripple on the water.

No-one mentions the fact that Camille is still working on a case that he wanted nothing whatever to do with. The day before yesterday, Le Guen called to tell him Morel was back from leave.

“Don’t fucking talk to me about Morel,” Camille said.

As he said it, Camille realised something he had known from the start: that provisionally taking on a case like this meant seeing it through to the end. He’s not sure whether he should be grateful to Le Guen for dropping him in it. As far as his superiors are concerned, the case isn’t even a priority any more. An unidentified kidnapper has abducted an unknown woman and, apart from a single witness who’s been interviewed over and over again, there’s no proof that the kidnapping even took place. There’s the pool of vomit in the gutter, the squeal of tyres heard by several people, the neighbour parking his car who remembers seeing a white van pull up onto the pavement. But it doesn’t exactly amount to much; it’s not like having an actual body, a
bona fide
corpse. As a result Camille has had to sweat blood to keep Louis and Armand on the case with him. But deep down Le Guen, like everyone else, is happy to see Verhœven’s old squad back together. It can’t last long – a couple of days at the most – but for the moment he’s prepared to turn a blind eye. As far as Le Guen’s concerned, even if the case is never solved, it’s an investment.

The three men walked for a while after dinner, then found this bench where they’re sitting watching people stroll along the canal: lovers mostly, people walking their dogs. You’d think you were in the provinces.

It’s a hell of an odd team though, Camille thinks. On the one hand you’ve got a kid who’s rich as Croesus, on the other a miser worthy of Scrooge McDuck. Maybe I’ve got issues with money? He smiles as he thinks this. A few days ago, he received an
information pack from the auctioneers about the sale of his mother’s paintings, but he cannot bring himself to open the envelope.

“O.K.,” Armand says. “That just means you don’t want to sell them. I think it’s better that way.”

“Oh sure, if it were down to you, he’d hang on to everything.”

Particularly Maud’s paintings – it’s something that sticks in Armand’s craw.

“No. Not everything. But I mean, his mother’s paintings …”

“You’re talking like it’s the crown jewels!”

“Well, we’re talking about the family jewels, aren’t we?”

Louis doesn’t say anything. The minute things get personal he clams up.

Camille goes back to the abduction.

“Where are you at on tracking down the van owners?” he asks Armand.

“Barely scratched the surface …”

The only lead they’ve got for the moment is the image of the vehicle. From the C.C.T.V. footage taken outside Bertignac’s pharmacy, they’ve identified the make and model. There are tens of thousands of them on the road. Forensics have analysed the lettering that was painted over and sent through a list of names that could correspond. From “Abadjian” to “Zerdoun”. Three hundred and thirty-four names. Armand and Louis are working their way through the list. When they come across the name of someone who has ever owned or rented the same make of van, they check, find out who it was sold on to, whether it matches the one they’re looking for, then send an officer out to look at the vehicle.

“It’s a pain in the arse, especially if it’s out in the sticks somewhere.”

To make things worse, vans like this are constantly bought and sold – it’s an endless cycle, tracking down every person and questioning them … The more people there are and the more difficult the search, the happier Armand is. Though “happy” is perhaps not the best word to describe him. This morning Camille watched him work, in his ancient threadbare jumper, a sheaf of recycled paper in front of him and a free biro emblazoned with a logo for
Saint-André Dry Cleaners
.

“It’s going to take weeks at this rate,” Camille commented.

Not really.

His mobile vibrates.

It’s the intern, spluttering and stammering, so excited he’s forgotten Camille’s instructions.

“Boss? The kidnapper’s name is Trarieux – we’ve just tracked him down. The divisionnaire says you’re to come in right now.”

Alex hardly eats at all. She is terribly weak, but most importantly, her mind is in bad shape. The cage constrains the body and catapults the brain into the stratosphere. An hour in this position is enough to have you in tears. A day, and you think you’ll die. Two days and you start to lose it. Three days, you go mad. Now she doesn’t even know how long she’s been caged and hanging here. Days. Days.

She is no longer aware of the constant groans of pain coming from the pit of her stomach. She whimpers. She no longer has the strength to cry. She bangs her head against the slats again and again and again and the moan becomes a wail – her forehead is streaming blood, her head is a howling madness; she wants to die as quickly as possible because it is living that has become intolerable.

Only when the man is here does she not moan. When he is here, Alex talks and talks, she asks questions not so that he will answer (he never speaks) but because when he leaves she feels terrifyingly alone. She understands now how hostages feel. She could beg him to stay, so great is her fear of being alone, of dying alone. He is her executioner, but it is as though while he is present she cannot die.

Of course, the reverse is true.

She is hurting herself.

Deliberately.

She is trying to kill herself because no help will come. She no longer has control of this broken, paralysed body; she pisses herself, she is shaken by spasms, stiff from head to foot. In despair, she scrapes her legs against the rough edge of the plank; it burns at first, but Alex keeps on scraping, keeps on because she hates this body which is making her suffer – she wants to kill it. She rubs her leg with all her strength and the burn becomes an open sore. She stares at a fixed point. A splinter pierces her calf. Alex rubs again and again waiting for the wound to bleed. She is hoping, longing to let herself bleed to death.

She is alone in the world. No-one will come to rescue her.

How long will it take her to die? And how much longer before her body is found? Will he make her disappear, bury her? Where?
She has nightmares, sees her body wrapped in a tarp, a shapeless lump, darkness, a forest, hands tossing the bundle into a pit – it makes a disturbing, desolate sound – she sees herself lying dead. She might as well be dead already.

An eternity ago, when she still knew what day it was, Alex thought of her brother. For all the good it will do her, thinking of her brother. He despises her, she knows that. All her life he’s been seven years older, known more about everything, able to get away with anything. From the beginning he was always the strong one. The one to teach her a lesson. Last time she saw him and he noticed her taking out a bottle of pills to help her sleep, he snatched it from her and shouted, “What the hell is this shit?”

Behaving as though he’s her father, her conscience, her boss, as though he controls her life. That’s how he’s always been.

“Well, what the fuck is this shit?”

His eyes were bulging. He’s always had a vicious temper. On this occasion, Alex reached out and ran her fingers slowly through his hair to calm him, but her ring snagged on a lock of hair as she pulled her hand away too quickly. He cried out and slapped her – just like that, in front of everyone. It doesn’t take much to make him angry.

If Alex disappeared he … He’d be happy to have a bit of peace. It would be two or three weeks before he even started to wonder.

She thought about her mother, too. They don’t talk much; they can go for months without telephoning. And her mother is never the one to call.

And her father … At times like this it must be good to have a father. To think he might come and save you, to believe, to hope, it must be soothing, but it would also drive you to despair.
Alex doesn’t know what it must be like to have a father. Mostly, she doesn’t think about it.

But these were things she thought at the beginning of her incarceration. Now she would scarcely be able to string two rational ideas together; her mind simply cannot do it, it can only register the pain her body is inflicting on her. In the beginning, Alex even thought about her work. She works as a temp and when the man abducted her, she’d just finished a contract. She was planning to sort out the various things she had going on, sort out her life. She has a little money put aside, enough to survive for two or three months at least – her needs are few – so she hadn’t asked for a new assignment. No-one is going to turn up asking for her. Sometimes, when she’s working, a colleague will call, but right now, she’s between contracts.

She has no boyfriend, no husband, no lover. This is what she has: nobody.

Maybe people will begin to worry about her months after she dies here, exhausted and insane.

Even if her mind still worked, Alex would not know which question to ask: how many days before I die? What will the pain of death be like? How does a corpse rot suspended between earth and heaven?

For now, he’s waiting for me to die; those were his words: “watch you die”. And she is dying.

Suddenly the “why” that has been nagging at her all this time bursts like a bubble and Alex’s eyes grow wide. The germ of an idea she has been brooding on unconsciously has inadvertently sprouted like a tenacious weed. It has triggered something in her mind – who knows how? – a revelation like a jolt of electricity.

She knows.

He’s Pascal Trarieux’s father.

Not that the two men look much alike, not at all in fact – they’re so dissimilar it’s hard to imagine that they would know each other. There’s something about the nose, maybe; it should have dawned on her before. But there’s no doubt it’s him, and this is bad news for Alex because now she knows he was telling the truth: he brought her here to watch her die.

He wants her dead.

Until now, she has refused to really believe that. Now the knowledge rushes through her mind – suddenly lucid as in those first moments – locking every door, extinguishing every last flicker of hope.

“So that’s it …”

To her horror she realises she did not hear him arrive. She cranes her neck trying to catch a glimpse of him, but before she has time, the crate begins to sway slightly, then to turn. And suddenly he appears in her line of sight. He is standing next to the wall winching the cage down. When she is at the right height, he ties off the rope and comes over. Alex frowns because there is something different about him this time. He is not looking at her; it’s as if he’s looking
through
her and he’s moving slowly as though afraid of stepping on a landmine. Now that she can see him close up, she can make out a slight resemblance to his son, that same wilful face.