The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (28 page)

     —Like she always did, said Madame Masserot, smiling.

     It was good to see her smile at last. I had only sensed that she was a person overloaded by the weight of her own anger, but now I felt a sudden warmth towards her. I congratulated both parents on their decision to put the past behind them, and outlined the ways in which Isabelle’s treatment could now be stepped up, then left them by the bedside. Just then Stephanie Charvillefort walked in. She looked exhausted and drained, having spent the last few hours at Marcel Perez’s bedside, arguing with the doctors about how soon he was free to leave.

     —What?
Leave
? asked Jacqueline, her eyes widening. —But surely he’s too ill to–

     – I’ve brought him with me, because I think we need him here, said Detective Charvillefort. —In case Louis wakes up. He wanted to come.

     She sounded triumphant, but I detected a quiver in her voice. I wondered how long it had been since she had slept, or eaten anything. By silent agreement, we all headed out of the ward.

     —Where is he? I asked.

     —In the lobby. I was hoping you could find him a bed.

     —I’ll see to it, said Jacqueline, and left swiftly.

     —About all this, I said to Charvillefort as we walked along the white corridor. —The lack of evidence. I have an idea. Jacqueline thinks it’s a good one, and I think Vaudin could be persuaded. And now Marcel Perez is here, he can help too. He’ll be useful.

     But when I told her what I was thinking of, she looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

     —No, she said, stopping to look me full in the face. —Absolutely not.

     I was immediately angry. —Why the hell not?

     She continued to look at me with those very piercing eyes.

     —Because it’s insane, Dr Dannachet.

     —Surely by now you’re willing to try anything? I was feeling desperate. —You don’t have many options at this point. We have a boy in a coma, one man dead, and no concrete proof of the slightest wrongdoing on anyone’s part. Nothing.

     —I can’t stop you doing what you want to do, Dr Dannachet, she said finally. —But I can’t be part of it. If you go ahead, then I wish you luck.

     —Do you have a better idea? I snapped.

     —As a matter of fact yes. I’m going to question Natalie Drax again, for as long as it takes. We have new information now. Philippe Meunier’s new version of events in the hospital in Vichy, and your account of what Natalie Drax told you about Louis’ fall. Two inconsistencies. I think if I confront her with them, she might crack.

     I went to find Jacqueline; I found her sitting in the lobby with Lucille Drax and Marcel Perez. The three of them were deep in conversation, I knew that Jacqueline had been telling them what I was planning. Perez looked terrible. He was still attached to a portable drip; he clearly hadn’t shaved in days, and his skin exhaled a rancid alcoholic reek. I guessed it would be a long time leaving his system.

     —Glad to see you, said Perez.

     —Will you help us? I asked.

     —We both will, said Lucille Drax.

     —Detective Charvillefort says it’s insane.

     —Maybe she’s right, said Marcel Perez. —But what is there to lose?

     We all exchanged a nervous smile, and then went in to see Vaudin. He was on the point of leaving for home, and we caught him off guard.

     —You’re not even supposed to be here, Pascal, he grumbled, ushering us in. —Didn’t I tell you to take some leave?

     —I will, I said. —But there’s something I have to do first.

     Jacqueline, Marcel Perez and I each addressed him, but it was Lucille Drax who did the real persuading.

     —I’ve lost my son, she finished. —My grandson’s in a coma. If there’s a way of getting him to communicate again, I want to try it. I don’t think you can refuse me, Dr Vaudin.

     Guy was embarrassed, but gave in to letting us go ahead with what he called ‘your experiment’. He would turn a blind eye if it were done while he was off the premises. But there were conditions. It was to be properly supervised. Jacqueline and Lucille Drax were both to be present at Louis’ bedside. It must all be recorded on camera, and come to a swift halt in the event of a fire threat. We must do it that night. Leave things any later, and the circumstances would become too chaotic. The forest fires were sweeping closer by the hour, and we might all be forced to evacuate the building whether we wanted to or not. There was no denying the increasingly pervasive smell of smoke that wafted towards us from the forest.

     —And remember, he finished. —This isn’t officially happening. You’re not here, Pascal; you’re on sick leave.

     So it was agreed: I was to spend the night on the ward with Louis, in the company of Jacqueline Duval, Marcel Perez – who was soon installed, shuffling around in pyjamas – and Lucille Drax.

     Georges Navarra called by and told me Detective Charville fort was still interrogating Natalie Drax.

     —Stephanie’s very tough, he said. —But so far Natalie Drax is sticking to the version of the story she originally gave the police. She completely denies telling you she saw Louis’ face as he fell. She says you invented it.

     I felt myself flush with rage. She had said it. I remembered it so clearly. Remembered her misery, the tears she’d shed, the brave face she’d tried to put on, the way I’d melted with pity.

     —She’s lying.

     Then I remembered the firm gentleness of her voice on the phone when I had called her from Vichy.
I never tried to hurt Louis.
She loved him. That was enough for me. Wasn’t it? I felt sick at the thought that a part of me had ever doubted her. But sicker still to realise that the doubt lingered, and was deepening, despite everything.

     —Good luck with it, said Georges. —For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea. Perhaps if Stephanie Charvillefort doesn’t get any further with Madame Drax, she’ll change her mind.

     But he didn’t sound convinced.

We began at six o’clock, as soon as Vaudin had left. I was anxious, even though my role was to be a passive one. I took a 20mg tablet of temazepam, which hit me in a queasy rush, then soaked me up. I lay on the bed that had been installed next to Louis, letting the euphoria wash over me. There was no noise except for the hum of the two respirators that serviced Kevin and Henri; the noise soothed me, and for a beautiful, crystalline moment before sleep overcame me, everything seemed simple and clear and perfect.

     The temazepam did its work efficiently; I was fully unconscious, according to Jacqueline, by half past six, when she set the CCTV camera and the tape recorder in motion, and summoned Lucille Drax and Marcel Perez to join her at my bedside. Together the three of them sat in chairs next to the beds where Louis and I lay, and waited. I’d been supplied with paper, a pen and a clipboard. But nothing happened.

     Nothing and more nothing. An hour passed, and then two, and the plan that had seemed so inspired began to look like a hopeless act of folly. But they stayed anyway. What choice did they have? More hours limped by, and they fell asleep in turns. By midnight they had sunk into a state of despondency that weighed on them like a cold, unhappy blanket. I had barely stirred, and Louis had remained still, his breathing so shallow it was scarcely detectable, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, his hand curled around the toy moose.

     Then at one o’clock, Detective Charvillefort and Georges Navarra returned to the clinic – bringing an exhausted but defiant Natalie Drax with them. She had revealed nothing, and they were quietly desperate. Georges Navarra had persuaded Charvillefort that if Louis was to yield up any information through me, then they should be present, and observe the reaction of his mother. Faced with her own failure to make Natalie confess, Stephanie Charvillefort had finally agreed. Natalie would watch the CCTV link from a separate room, supervised by Georges Navarra, who would stay with her throughout and monitor her reactions – with a CCTV camera for back-up. God only knows what Natalie was going through at that point. Maybe just surviving. I can picture how she might simply shut something off inside her, suffocating any urge towards introspection. When I imagine her eyes – as I do, in those times when a tidal wave of memory washes through me, stripping my thoughts to the bone – I feel myself crumbling. Because her eyes, as I remember them, show nothing: nothing.

     I slept on. Perez, Lucille, Jacqueline and Charvillefort sat on chairs next to the bed. Natalie Drax, as agreed, was in a side-room with Georges Navarra.

     Then at four o’clock, Marcel Perez, who had dozed off by the bedside, woke up. He had been dreaming about Louis, he told me later. Louis had come to see him in Gratte-Ciel, and they’d talked. He couldn’t remember what about, but they had been glad to see one another. Piecing the dream back together from the fragments it left around him when he woke, he had an idea – an idea so simple that when he voiced it, it struck him as bizarre that he’d not thought of it before. There was no need for pen and paper. Marcel Perez would simply address Louis the way he always did. He cleared his throat.

     —Tell me, Louis, he said softly. —What happened on the mountain?

     And I opened my eyes and began to talk.

Mohammed came, in Alcatraz, but we kept him in the boot while we ate the picnic.

     —What did you eat? asks Fat Perez, because he’s into eating, which is how he got so fat and called Fat Perez instead of Monsieur.

     —Food, duh! Has your brain shrunk to the size of a pea or something?

     —What kind of food? he asks. (See what I mean?) —Can you remember?

     —You want a list? OK, here’s what was in the picnic basket, Monsieur Perez. I bet it makes you hungry. There was bread and pâté and cheese and
saucisson sec
secretly called donkey dick, and wine for them and Coke for me. And lots of
non-harmful bacteria
, cos food’s always swarming with non-harmful bacteria and sometimes the harmful kind too, that’s how I got salmonella once. And Maman said I should slow down or I’d get tummy ache, that’s what she’s always on about, scared I might puke up, or swallow a screw by accident, that can happen. I once ate a three-centimetre screw by accident, you ask her. She’ll tell you I’m not a liar.

     —I know you’re not a liar, Louis. Tell me more.

     —About food? You want more food?

     —About anything.

     —There was birthday cake. Chocolate. And you had to make a wish. Maman’s wish was that I’d be hers for ever and that nothing bad would happen to me.

     —And your wish?

     —That Papa was my real dad, so he’d stay with us.

     —Aha. And did you tell them your wish, Louis, or did you keep it to yourself?

     —Blah blah blah.

     —What does that mean?

     —It means blah blah blah.

     —Does that mean–

     —It means I wasn’t going to say it. But I did cos Papa told me off about the sweets.

     —The sweets?

     —They weren’t sweets. He thought they were. I had them in my pocket. I only ate one.

     —What were they, Louis, if they weren’t sweets?

     —Blah blah blah.

     —Something that made Papa cross?

     —Lady-pills don’t even look like sweets. They don’t taste like sweets either, you just swallow them. He wanted to know why I had them in my pocket and why I ate one. So I told him I ate one every day.

     —You ate a lady-pill every day, Louis?

     —Of course.

     —But why?

     —So I’d turn into a girl.

     —And why did you want that?

     —So I wouldn’t be a rapist. And when I told Papa that he started shouting at Maman about being a
pathological liar
and look what it’s led to and blah blah blah, so I tried to stop them by saying the wish aloud. The one I didn’t say before, about him being my real dad. If he was my real dad I wouldn’t have needed the lady-pills, would I? So it was Papa’s fault, not Maman’s.

     —And then what?

     —And so I said I know who my real dad is, he’s a rapist called Jean-Luc and he let Maman down very badly. And she doesn’t want me to grow up and be like him. And nor do I cos rapists should have their dicks cut off, and I should too, to stop me growing into one. Maybe I’ll cut it off myself one day. I’ve got a penknife. But before that I’ll just eat lady-pills.

     —And then?

     —Maman started screaming at Papa, so I ran away and she ran after me, and he ran after her and he was yelling at me and saying Jean-Luc wasn’t a rapist, and you’re not the son of a rapist, and I can prove it to you, Louis, it’s something she made up. Just come with me to Paris.

     —And did you want to do that, Louis? Did you want to go to Paris with Papa?

     —No. I couldn’t anyway, cos she grabbed me and we were right next to the edge where it’s dangerous, and she was yelling and screaming at Papa. And Papa stopped running. He said, Let Louis go, Natalie. Because we were right near the edge. Let him go.