The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe (18 page)

“AIDS?”

“In Africa, she got depressed seeing the children die. She was in Uganda and she wanted to get back into research.” A slight heave of the shoulders. “The professor’ll get the Nobel Prize in time. Everybody says that about Professor Schondöffer’s research on immunization. She’s excited—but then that’s Geneviève. Our daughter has to be doing things.”

“Very intelligent.” Monsieur Lecurieux’s walking stick tapped on the sidewalk. They crossed the road, past the hot dog van, the sickly smell of burning grease and the crowd of young people waiting to be served. “We miss Geneviève a lot, don’t we, Gerty?”

Anne Marie touched the back of his hand then turned back to his wife. “When did you last speak to your daughter?”

“Before Evelyne came out she telephoned to say she’d like us to put her up, that she worked in the same hospital, that they were best friends.”

“You haven’t heard from her since?”

Madame Lecurieux shook her head. “My daughter’s in Réunion—in the Indian Ocean—for a conference. When I heard about the car being found, I phoned. Just to tell Geneviève what had happened.”

“You spoke to your daughter?”

“There’s a time lag. I still haven’t been able to get through to her.”

“Your daughter hasn’t phoned you?”

“Geneviève tries to keep in touch, but I would so much like her to give up all this moving around to come back to Guadeloupe, once and for all. She could get a good job here at the hospital or in Basse-Terre. Get married and settle down in Guadeloupe. She’s a pretty girl; the boys all doted on her when she was at the Gerville Réache high school. But she must hurry up if she wants to give us the grandchildren Clamy and I want. Time she had children of her own.”

(Anne Marie’s own mother had died long before Fabrice was born. Before Papa and the two girls left Algeria.)

They walked in silence on a carpet of flame tree petals. “It was the ylang ylang or it was a flame tree that we pulled down, Gerty?”

The two women laughed softly.

“So to answer your question …”

“I ask so many.”

“I did notice something about Evelyne Vaton,
madame le juge
. About
the girl calling herself Evelyne Vaton.” A brief hesitation. “I’m not a person to pry—why should I? If Evelyne’s my daughter’s friend, I know I’ve nothing to worry about.”

“What did you notice?”

“In the evening, she went to her room. She was always in a hurry. My husband was already in bed. She was always in a hurry to smoke.”

“You don’t approve?”

“Over the phone Geneviève’d reassured me that Evelyne didn’t smoke.”

Anne Marie shrugged. “She was away from home.”

“I don’t like to judge people and I know all the young people smoke marijuana now. You hear about it on the television—and it becomes fashionable.”

“I’m terrified of my son taking to drugs.”

“That’s what surprised me.”

“What?”

“Children can be difficult at adolescence—it’s a time when they’re discovering themselves. Girls in particular. You expect teenagers to experiment. To smoke, to drink, to try drugs. You don’t expect that behavior from a grown woman who has the responsibility of children.” Anne Marie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Evelyne Vaton had left her five-year-old daughter in Paris. Smoking marijuana—it’s not what you expect from a mother, is it?”

The phone was ringing as Anne Marie ran up the stairs, past Desterres sitting next to a police officer and into the office. She slung her bag onto the table and grabbed the receiver. “Judge Laveaud,” she gasped, out of breath.

“Anne Marie?”

“Yes?”

“I phoned your house and Fabrice told me you were still working.”

“Just got back from the morgue, Lucette. Third time in two days. Hold the line. I’ll turn on the light.”

“You can’t speak to me in the dark?”

Anne Marie set the phone down to switch on the ceiling lamp and closed the door. The police officer gave a resigned shrug and glanced pointedly at the watch on his wrist. “The dark makes me irritable—my children laugh at me about it,” Anne Marie said as she lowered herself onto the chair. She kicked off her shoes.

“You work too hard, Anne Marie. Your job can always wait.”

“The
préfet
can’t. Nor can Arnaud.”

“Fabrice and Létitia need you.”

“I know, I know.” Anne Marie sighed. “I’m going into the
lycée
tomorrow. Fabrice seems to be acting up and I want to know why.”

“A way of compensating.”

“Compensating for what, Lucette?” The evening air was cooling
fast but Anne Marie was sweating. Her cold was returning; she was going to sneeze.

“Children need to know they’re loved. Love is time, Anne Marie.”

“It wasn’t me who walked out on them,” Anne Marie retorted.

“They need you more than the
préfet
or Guadeloupe needs you. Or Arnaud. There are other
juges d’instruction
.”

“Is that what you’re phoning me about, Lucette?”

“We must talk.”

“Let me bring up my children as I think fit. I have a family to feed.”

“You need your children just as much as they need you.

“Let me bring up my children as I see fit.”

“You need your children for your own wellbeing.”

“You should have had children of your own.”

There was an awkward silence, then Anne Marie said, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Nearly eight o’clock on a Friday evening and you ought to be at home.”

Anne Marie sneezed noisily. She put her head back and looked up, her eyes watering, at the ceiling with its yellow bulb and its familiar zigzags of damp. “I know, I know, I know.”

“I need to see you, Anne Marie.”

“What for?”

“You’ve already seen the woman?” A hesitation. “That name I gave you.”

“I saw Madame Théodore yesterday.”

Lucette Salondy hesitated again. “I haven’t been totally honest with you. I’m phoning you from my office. Can you come over now? It’s important.”

Anne Marie laughed. “You’re still at school at this hour?”

“I don’t have a family to go home to.”

Anne Marie lifted her head and looked at her watch. Nearly five minutes to eight. “There’s somebody I’ve got to see. The
préfet
is breathing down my neck. Can you give me an hour, Lucette?”

Satisfaction in Lucette Salondy’s voice. “Not too late, mind, and then we’ll take the children for a pizza.”

He walked slowly into the room.

Anne Marie frowned, sneezed and took a Kleenex from her drawer. To the police officer, she said. “You can remove the cuffs.”

He was dressed in green. He was wearing clothes identical to those of the previous day, except they were cleaner and better pressed. Green trousers, a safari shirt with epaulettes and short sleeves, a green
foulard
tied at the neck. Green canvas shoes.

“I’ll probably have to arrest you.”

“Don’t feel it’s an obligation.” Desterres rubbed nervously where the handcuff had left a red mark on his wrist. “I’d rather go home.”

The enlargement of Polaroid photograph lay on the top of the desk; it had been slipped into a transparent plastic folder for protection.

“We’d all like to go home.” Again she sneezed. “It’s late, I’m tired and my children are waiting for me. Please sit down, Monsieur Desterres.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest, Monsieur Desterres.”

“Then why the cuffs?”

“What cuffs?”

“This has gone beyond a joke.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Anne Marie concurred. “First I must ask you several questions.” She pushed the folder toward him. “Questions that need to be answered.”

Desterres smiled. “I wish to speak to my lawyer.”

“What made you come and see me?”

“What am I supposed to do when two policemen appear at my front door?” He glanced sideways at the officer who stood behind him. “I’ve been five hours with cuffs on my wrists. You treat me like a common criminal.”

“Yesterday—Thursday morning you turned up here of your own accord. Unsolicited and unaccompanied, you waited for over an hour to speak with me.”

“I’d rather see you than the police.” He rubbed again at his wrist. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

“How did you know the girl had been murdered?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It was on the evening news on RFO.”

“There was never any mention of the girl being white.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve just been looking at a video of the evening news,” Anne Marie lied. “There’s no mention of the girl’s race or color, yet you came here, telling me you’d seen the Vaton girl on Sunday morning.”

“That is correct.”

“The dead girl’s not Vaton—and although she has pale skin, she’s probably a local girl, probably mixed blood.”

Desterres sat back, his body upright, and folded his arms. The handcuffs had left a slight weal.

“Well?”

“The television said a nurse from Paris had been found on the beach. I assumed it was the same nurse from Paris I’d spoken to on Sunday morning—only a few kilometers from the place where the body was found. I never said the woman was white. I thought she was a
Négropolitaine
.” He added, “I could see she had West Indian blood.”

“Evelyne Vaton doesn’t have black blood.”

He appeared surprised. “Then it wasn’t Evelyne Vaton.” Desterres held his hands with the palms outwards. “I’m merely repeating what the girl told me.”

“There are things which you’ve not told me.”

No movement of the eyes. “I’ve not lied to you.”

The wind danced at the billowing curtain and outside there was the dull buzzing of a pneumatic drill. After years of neglect, Place de
la Victoire was being renovated. (Soon there would be the municipal elections. Despite Berlin and
perestroika
, the Communists were sure to win, as they had won for the last thirty-five years.) The laborers were working overtime; night had fallen and after the rush hour, the cooling evening air carried the tang of the Atlantic.

He nodded toward the plastic folder. “I gave you the photo,
madame le juge
, and the bikini top. I was doing my duty.”

There was more shouting from the ground floor and the clatter of heavy feet down the stairs.

“This isn’t Evelyne Vaton.”

“She never told me her surname.”

“You didn’t ask, Monsieur Desterres?”

“She was accompanied by the Indian.” A movement of the epaulettes. “He called her Véli. That’s how she introduced herself.”

“We’ve found Richard, the Indian.”

“He’ll corroborate everything I’ve said.”

“At the moment he’s in the hospital.”

“You’ve arrested him, too?” Desterres smiled, without taking his unblinking eyes from Anne Marie. “
Madame le juge
, Richard knows the woman was alive when she left my restaurant.”

“You omitted to tell me you have a criminal record.”

An impatient gesture. “There’s no reason to keep me here.”

“And your criminal record, Monsieur Desterres.”

“Merely allegations.”

“That is not what I read.”

“There can be no criminal record,
madame le juge
, following the presidential amnesty of 1988.”

“I don’t give a damn about your past.”

“I do.” The eyes blinked three times in fast succession while he stared at her.

“I care about the murdered girl.”

“Precisely because I have been maligned in the past that I immediately came to see you. I repeat: immediately.” His lips were pressed together.

“You knew Rodolphe Dugain?”

Another flicker of his eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Answer my question.”

“I am interested in protecting this island’s heritage. Dugain chose
to think of himself as an ecologist but like all politicians he was more interested in power than ecology, more interested in himself than in nature.” A shrug. “Now he is dead.”

“You knew each other well?”

“When I stood for election, he gave me his support. Dugain wanted power—and, of course, money. Ecology was a means for him—not an end. My approach worried him. Couldn’t understand what made me tick.”

“What makes you tick if you’re not interested in money, Monsieur Desterres?”

“I’ve never been poor—and I have no desire to be rich. I don’t need to buy up apartment blocks and let them out at exorbitant rates. I can live well enough on what I have. Dugain belonged to the old generation—the generation that believes progress is a fast car, more tarmac and ugly condominiums on pristine beaches.”

“Dugain didn’t take the environment seriously?”

“The only thing Dugain took seriously was his power base. He was black and like all blacks, he felt he had to show that he was just as good, if not better, than anybody else.”

“You don’t consider yourself black?”

“The time will come when we mongrels will inherit the earth.”

“Mongrels?”

“
Madame le juge
, look at all the people suffering from sickle cell disease. All they had to do was marry an outsider, and the danger of a genetic disease like anemia would have disappeared. I’m proud of being a mongrel—black blood, African blood. I also have English blood—and Corsican blood. I am not ashamed of what I am.”

“Dugain was ashamed of what he was?”

“Show me someone from Martinique who isn’t.”

“Harsh words.”

“Martinique likes to look down on Guadeloupe.”

“
The gentlemen of Martinique, the honest folk of Guadeloupe
?”

“They consider us peasants.”

“Why did Dugain get involved in the environment?”

“I never said Dugain was a fool,
madame le juge
.” Desterres took a deep breath. “There was a time—before he began to smell power—when he was honest. Ten, fifteen years ago when no one had ever heard the word ecology, when politicians were vying with each other
to fill the mangrove with concrete. Dugain was the first to speak out and he did useful work saving the mangrove around Pointe-à-Pitre.” A pause. “Later he sold out, but by then he was spending money at the casino in Gosier.”