Arab Jazz (30 page)

He stops, drinks a mouthful of tea. Mourad takes the story from there.

“That day, it was just us at Moktar’s. The TV was on: music videos on M6, I think. When Ruben fessed up about what had happened between him and Anna, Moktar went ballistic. He started reciting verses from the Koran that he’d learned in the
bled
, got up and walked straight to Ruben, who pulled back to the front door. Me and Alpha held him off and shouted at Ruben to get the hell out of there, fast. We managed to get Moktar back in his seat, but he was still reciting, chanting. We stayed there until his father got back. The following day, he was admitted to Maison Blanche. We cut ties with Ruben because we were shocked he’d slept with Anna. And we thought it was his fault that Moktar had gone back to hospital. We went to Maison Blanche twice. That was where we really fell under his spell. He was like a holy man, and most of the other patients listened to him. He spoke of the
bled
, of the
marabouts
. He explained how over there people lived in purity, in the truth of Islam. I don’t know . . . It was like since his journey he’d found the thing we’d been missing. The magic thing. When he got out, we followed him to Haqiqi’s prayer room, where we became completely immersed in their world. They spoke about the time of the Prophet, about the holy ancestors. About the path to follow.”

Ruben cuts him off.

“It didn’t last with Anna. And I was left abandoned by all. I started thinking about me, myself. What was most important to me: hip-hop or Judaism? Then when my father left and my mother started going along to the Moroccan Hasidic meetings nearby, I threw myself into it too. I became someone else, and I was fine with that. It was the first time I’d felt like my own person. That’s what I thought, at least. Today, all I see when I look back is Laura’s corpse. I can’t look myself in the mirror anymore.”

Aïcha and Bintou are extremely shaken by the stories they’ve heard. Unable to say a single word, the light-eyed girl tears off a piece of napkin and notes down Rachel’s address. Before handing it to Ruben, she writes in the bottom-right corner:

3:30 a.m. All three of you.

39

The cleanup—the worst part. Or the best. Benamer usually likes it. But generally he is not recovering from being knocked out by the very person he was supposed to kill. He hadn’t been at all wary of Raymond Meyer. He messed up. He did bad. So many negative thoughts pile up that he forgets the task at hand. Enkell watches him as he continues to sponge down possible traces of the once large splotch of blood on the back window of the Scenic. He gives him a moment to get his act together.

“Aïssa, are you coming? That window of yours is spic and span. We’ve got to finish off Le Gros’s body.”

Aïssa Benamer shakes his head, stuffs the sponge into the Leader Price plastic bag along with the other things to dissolve, pulls out a folding hand truck from the trunk, extends it and wheels it the fifteen yards from the car to the corpse, the head of which is now encircled by a deep-red halo. Twelve minutes earlier, Raymond Meyer’s smile had barely disappeared when Frédéric Enkell fired a bullet into the back of Francis’s skull. Then he had woken Benamer with two resounding slaps, delegating to him the task of cleaning the blood-stained window. The two of them are now loading their overweight ex-colleague’s body onto the hand truck, before fastening it by the neck, chest, and waist, leaving the legs dangling. Nothing more awkward than shifting a corpse. That’s why, as a rule of thumb, they try to liquidate them as close as possible to their final destination. The biggest pain is lugging their wheeled cargo up the three outdoor steps. The door opens without any trouble onto a vast, bare room. In the middle, a large dark cylinder topped with a second smaller cylinder, like some sort of arty totem pole. The vat is two yards tall. Ladders run down either side. Between them is a bag from which Enkell pulls two neon-green protective overalls, while Benamer unties Francis Meyer’s body.

DISSOLUTION

Getting the body up to the top cylinder is not easy: each of them on one of the ladders, one holding the legs, the other the armpits. Fuck’s sake! Then they’ve got to balance the wobbling body on the rim, one of them holding it while the other hoists himself up to the highest part to unscrew the vat’s enormous lid. Ah, fucking overalls!

WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO

NOW?

The hole is too narrow to roll in the corpse in one go. Decision time: head first or feet first? The boss opts for the head, which naturally is the part he’s holding—he wants to watch. Then everything moves very quickly. Like when you’re diving. The vat is remarkably well designed: no splash at all. Almost could have managed it without these damn overalls, thinks the other man. Then there’s the sound. The sound that renders the situation extremely real. The sound of disappearance itself.

FSSSHHHHHHHHH

There we go—all done. But there’s plenty more work to be getting on with tonight.

40

2:30 a.m. at Rachel’s. Aïcha and Bintou are sitting patiently across the table from one another. Malongo coffee and Monoprix cookies at the ready. The laptop is on and they are logged in to Aïcha’s Skype account. Silence reigns, and it’s starting to get oppressive. Who’s going to get the ball rolling?

“We’ve got something to tell you,” Bintou says.

“Go on.”

“Our brothers are coming around in a little bit after our chat with Rébecca. Ruben too.”

Rachel waits for the follow-up. Bintou breaks off half a cookie and looks up at a colorful print depicting an Indian deity with two goddesses at his side. She takes it in for a moment—its serenity, its gentleness—before returning to the current situation, the horror. She takes a deep breath.

“They didn’t do anything. And that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. That night, they saw the murderer. Sam was there with Moktar and another big, creepy guy. Moktar and the barber asked them to kidnap Laura, our brothers refused, then the creepy guy threatened them and they left . . . There you have it; that’s how it went. They left, and she was killed. My brother did nothing to prevent the murder. Nor did Aïcha’s, nor did Rébecca’s. They did nothing . . . Our brothers! . . . Our very own brothers . . .”

Bintou starts sobbing and looks at Lieutenant Kupferstein, searching through her tears for the answer to the question she dares not ask. Rachel provides it with a resigned smile.

“Three years: that’s what they’re looking at. Failure to report a suspected criminal offense. Three years and a forty-five-thousand dollar fine. Article 434-1 of the
Code pénal
. Of course, if they present themselves at the commissariat on their own accord, and if they help stop the killer, the judge will take that into consideration. I’m going to call Jean to make sure he’s there when they arrive. Later on we’ll all go to the Bunker together.”

2:45 a.m. Just enough time to telephone her colleague before their Skype date with Rébecca. No answer. She doesn’t leave a message, hangs up, and calls back. He picks up on the third ring.

“Uhhhhh.”

“Jean. Can you be here in half an hour? It’s important.”

She can hear him murmuring to someone.

“Look, I’m sorry if this is a bad time, but I really need you now. Let’s just say things are accelerating. I’ll explain. Give my best to Léna.”

“I’ll be there.”

Aïcha stands up and comes around the table to hand Bintou a tissue and stroke her hair; her eyes work their way along the wall and settle on the brightly colored picture that had intrigued her friend a few minutes earlier. The polygamous Indian god. Rachel lets her soak up the image before deciphering it for her.

“It’s Murugan, the brother of Ganesh. I bought it in a shop in La Chapelle run by a family from Kerala. I’ve always dreamed of going to Kerala. Maybe I’ll never go; maybe it’ll remain one of those unfulfilled desires that you accumulate through life, like when you keep loving a man who doesn’t have any idea and never will, but who you can keep, intact, in a sacred part of your heart. A man you can’t even imagine making love to. Anyway, for those fantasies you’ve always got the actors: Irrfan Khan, Tony Leung, Charles Berling . . .”

“Or Javier Bardem . . .”

The words slipped out of Bintou’s full lips with a very soft breath.

“Or Javier Bardem, yes . . . Each to their own. They’re precious. But it’s different with gods or religious icons. In them, desire is abolished. In them, we find peace.”

Bintou listens to her intently, and continues to do so despite Rachel’s silence. Where did it come from, this astonishing closeness forged with these girls she hadn’t even met the day before, and whose brothers have been implicated in this ghastly murder? Like with Ahmed: the trance, the miracle of the encounter. The miracle of this investigation. Beneath the timeless smile of Murugan, surrounded by his beautiful, eternally satisfied wives, radiating a sense of fulfillment that is at once carnal and not carnal, a moment of magical harmony unfolds. Divine fulfillment, thinks Rachel. So simple, so clear that humankind strives not to attain it.

About twelve minutes to go until the call to Rébecca. Something in the air demands that a true word be said. And it springs delicately from Bintou’s lips.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me. You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

She stops, closes her eyes for a second.

“When Rébecca started dressing up like an Orthodox Jew, it was to keep her mother and brother happy, but it was also to see what it was all about. She read the Bible. I was curious, so I learned a few passages with her. That psalm moved us. It’s sad and beautiful. Unsettling, but at the same time reassuring. What’s even stranger is that I’ve never read the Koran. I think it’s a menacing, dangerous book, while the Bible has never scared me. It wasn’t the book of my religion, so I didn’t risk anything by reading it.”

Rachel interrupts, surprised.

“Menacing? Why?”

“I’m going to tell you a secret; something that happened back when I was eight. We were in the suburbs of Paris at my cousin’s house, Fanta, who was nine at the time. At one point we locked ourselves in the bathroom. I can’t remember how or why, but suddenly she asked me if I’d been cut. I had no idea what she was talking about, so she showed me. And I saw what she was missing; what I still had. I started crying. I’m not sure if I was sad for her or for me, but I wasn’t able to stop. It wasn’t until we got home that I ended up telling my mother what had happened in the bathroom. Mom consoled me, reassuring me by saying that no one would ever do something like that to me, even though she had herself suffered the same fate, back in the village, when she was a child. Shaking her head sadly, she kept repeating: “We’re not in Mauritania now, but still, poor Fanta . . .” When I was older, she told me how the village imam back in Sélibaby, on the north bank of the river, had publicly declared that girls had to remain pure, even in the land of the infidel—especially in the land of the infidel. He was an old, toothless imam with a face harder than a zebu’s skull. Unfortunately for Fanta, her mother had obeyed the man of God. I think that all I am comes from that bit of luck—from not being my aunt’s daughter. From preserving my body intact. I don’t feel superior to Fanta, nor to any girl who’s been cut. That’s not at all what I mean. I just think that the most profound part of my identity is rooted in the fact that I wasn’t. It comes from my mother’s desire for me to be different from her. It’s strange—this is the first time I’ve told this to anyone other than Rébecca or Aïcha. The first time I have truly understood how much it has made me who I am.”

She looks up at the Indian deity and laughs.

At 3:01 a.m., the Skype ringtone shakes them from their reverie. Aïcha looks inquiringly at Rachel, who nods at her to answer. A blurred face gradually appears on the computer screen. A beautiful young brunette with a fair complexion. She looks worried. There’s a window behind her shoulder: night is starting to fall. A seven- or eight-hour time difference, maybe central United States or Canada, Rachel calculates, snapping back into police mode.

“Hey, Aïcha, Bintou, you there? I can’t see you . . .”

“Yeah Rébecca, we’re here—we don’t have a webcam on this laptop but we can see you! How’ve you been since yesterday?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“We’re with Lieutenant Kupferstein . . . Rachel, who we mentioned. She’s cool, you can tell her everything.”

“Hello, Rébecca.”

“Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you for agreeing to speak to me. It’s really important for the investigation, to catch the killer as quickly as possible.”

“I’ll do all I can to help you . . . Laura’s death . . . it broke my heart—literally shattered me. It’s thanks to her that I’m here, that I managed to escape the life that had been mapped out for me.”

“Tell me everything from the start.”

Rébecca recounts her near-miss arranged marriage, how she ran away with her friends’ help, Laura’s especially. The two strange encounters in New York: first Laura’s father, then Dov, her would-be fiancé. About her new life at college, where she’s funding her studies by giving French lessons. The life she’d dreamed of were it not for the death of her friend and the fact she had left her family behind. Rachel listens to her story until the end, then asks her to return to Laura’s reaction when she saw her father kissing the young female stranger at Grand Central.

“She went into a state of shock, then got really angry. She told me about the violence, the hatred her parents inspired in her, talking in a way I’d never heard before. She said how she had left home the day of her eighteenth birthday. Her father was on a trip to the Jehovah’s Witness headquarters in Brooklyn. Birthdays were never celebrated in the organization; they think such practices are the Devil’s work. Laura had waited patiently for that day to reject the absurd restrictions she’d grown up with. She baked herself a nice round chocolate cake with shiny icing, and the words ‘Happy Birthday Laura’ written in italics. When her mother came back from the Kingdom Hall, she found the table laid for two and the cake topped with eighteen lit candles, and champagne with two flutes. Laura smiled at her from her seat and blew out the candles. Before she’d even taken her next breath, Mathilde Vignola came hurtling and screaming toward the table, grabbed the knife, lifted her arm, and brought it down with all her strength. Laura managed to dodge the attack and got away with a graze to the arm. Completely drained, her mother collapsed onto the sofa, still gripping the kitchen knife. Laura called an ambulance, went with her mother to the psychiatric hospital, filed a report with the police but didn’t press charges, happy instead just to leave for Paris without giving an address. When she saw her father kissing that woman, everything came flooding back to the surface, and she decided to get it all out the next time she went to Niort. She wanted to tell her mother everything so that they’d split up. To make them suffer, basically. But obviously not everything panned out as she intended. The last time we spoke on the telephone, two days before she died, she just said: ‘The crazy old bitch didn’t want to hear any of it. I’m never going back!’”