After the Crash (26 page)

I only slept a few hours that night, partly because of my excitement,
but mainly because of the bottle of Arbois wine that I drank to celebrate this news, washed down with a few glasses of my landlady’s
excellent Vin Jaune.

I left at dawn the following morning, fully equipped with a
spade, a rake, a sieve and other useful tools. I had decided to turn
grave-robber for the day, just to check if it really was Georges’s small
brown mongrel buried under the pile of stones. I also took test
tubes and waterproof bags so that I could send cigarette butts and
beer cans to a friend who worked in the police forensics department. As I was passing the Nature Reserve headquarters, Grégory
Morez waved me over. He had a good laugh at me. ‘Jesus, Crédule!
Not exactly travelling light, are you?’

Grégory . . . Apart from the rare visit from groups of schoolchildren, he probably spent most of his time seducing the students who
worked on reception. That was the impression he gave, anyway. The
bastard seemed to grow more handsome with each passing year,
his hair turning a distinguished salt-and-pepper while the students
remained exactly the same age each year. He left the side of a pretty
young blonde who was making eyes at him and came towards me.

‘Listen, I’m going to take pity on you. I’ll give you a lift in the
Jeep. You’ll have to walk the last mile or so, but it’ll save you a
couple of hours. Julie, I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Stay here if
you want to hear what happened next that night in Spitzberg . . .’

Morez dropped me off at the end of the path and, with a wink,
turned the Jeep back towards his headquarters and the pretty
blonde. On the way up the mountain, I had questioned him about
Georges Pelletier. He hadn’t heard of the man, but then again,
that wasn’t too surprising. It had been seven years ago, after all.
While I walked, I tried to sift through my memories from the previous year: the cold rain, the torch-light, the stones piled on the
grave.

I found the hut easily enough. The weather was much warmer
than it had been the year before, and I was sweating. Winter sunlight gilded the treetops and bathed the mountaintop in almost
springlike warmth, although the primroses, daffodils and gentians
were as yet barely visible.

I felt the same excitement I had on my first stake-out. It was a
long time since this investigation had yielded any new clues. I began
with the hut. Nothing seemed to have been moved since the previous year. Of course it was perfectly possible that no one had visited
in the interim. Wearing gloves, I picked up samples of the detritus
that lay scattered over the ground. Sometimes I had to scratch at
the mud to unearth half-buried objects: cigarette butts, beer cans,
scraps of paper. All of this could help my search for Georges Pelletier, even if it had been seven years since he last stayed here.

I went outside. Now it was time for the most difficult part of
my task: the grave. I stood in front of the pile of stones. The little
wooden cross was still there but, beneath it, the winter jasmine had
withered and died. So, nobody had left flowers here since the previous year. But why? Why would they have brought flowers every
other year, but not this one? It was very hot. I took off my jumper,
but even in just a shirt, I was still sweating.

I leaned closer to the stones, and suddenly I sensed that something
was wrong. It was strange, but I could not shake the conviction that
these stones were not piled up in the same order as I had left them.
They had been moved.

I tried to reason with myself. How could I be so sure? It had been
night when I last saw this place, and pouring with rain. And I had
replaced them haphazardly . . .

And yet . . . This was more than a feeling. I was
sure
someone
had been here. I had a very precise image in my mind of the shape
of that pile of stones, and my memory was almost photographic.
Those stones had definitely been moved.

But I knew I was not going to find the answers to my questions
without getting my hands dirty, so I began to remove the stones,
very carefully, one by one. That took over half an hour. Thankfully my graverobbing did not seem so macabre in the daylight. I
stopped several times to have a drink of water.

When the last stone had been laid to the side, I picked up my
spade and began to dig, taking great care all the while. I did begin
to wonder what was the point of it all. Why was I going to such
great lengths just to dig up a dead dog? What else was I expecting?
The skeleton of a human infant?

I dug for nearly an hour. The sun sank towards the west and the
cooling shadows of the pines fell over the grave. The hole I had dug
was more than three feet deep now. I had removed the cross and
dug under that too. Stubbornly, I kept going for another half an
hour.

But finally . . . nothing!
Not even a single bone from a dog, goat or rabbit.
Nothing at all.
So that mound of stones, that cross and that withered plant had

been placed over virgin earth? I collapsed, exhausted and disappointed. All that effort, for no reward. I drank some water and did
some thinking. Now, in the shade, drenched with sweat, I began to
feel slightly cold, so I walked around for a bit, conversing with the
pine trees. Suddenly, I laughed at my own stupidity.

No, of course I had not dug this hole for no reason! It would have
been far more disappointing, for me and the investigation, if I
had
found an animal’s bones under the grave. That really would have
been a dead end. How would it have helped me if I had dug up the
bones of Georges’ dead dog?

An empty grave, on the other hand . . . that offered all kinds of
possibilities. I wiped my forehead, then took out the cheese sandwich that Monique had prepared for me. In fact, as I thought about
it, I realised there were only two possible explanations.

First, it could be a symbolic tomb, like the shrines you find at
the side of a road where people have died in a car crash. That was
plausible . . . The family of one of the victims of the Airbus 5403
might have decided to perform a similar gesture. To construct a
place of pilgrimage, an empty tomb, because they had no body
to bury inside it. But in that case, why build it here, over a mile
from the actual crash site? Why dig this rectangular grave, the exact
size of a three-month-old baby? There had been only two babies
on the Airbus. Who had planted this cross, piled up these stones,
watered the jasmine all those years? A member of the Vitral family?
A member of the de Carville family? But who? And when? And
why?

Then there was my second theory. There had been a skeleton
under the stones. Someone had come here every year to pay tribute
to their loved one, to leave flowers by their grave, quietly, in secret.
But this year, when they came, the mysterious person discovered
that the grave had been searched. Their secret was out, or soon
would be. So, this person could see only one solution: they must
exhume the body. Remove the stones, empty the grave, fill in the
hole, and replace the stones.

Because the stones had been moved, I was certain of that.
This second theory begged as many questions as the first one.
Why go to so much trouble? Why be so careful? Certainly not if
it were a dog’s grave – only a madman would act in such a way.
Georges Pelletier? No, that made no sense at all . . .

I felt serene, calm. This latest development, with all the questions it
raised, was exactly what I had been waiting for. I would have plenty
of time to explore my theories. I rummaged in my bag and pulled
out the sieve. It was made of wood and nylon, the kind of sieve used
by gold prospectors. I wanted to go through this earth with a finetooth comb. If even the smallest piece of bone remained – whether
it was from a dog, a baby or a dinosaur – I would find it.

I spent five hours sieving the mud. I am not kidding. Even an
archaeologist could not have been more patient.
The reward for my stubbornness came that afternoon. As you
can see, I was really putting the work in to earn my one hundred
thousand francs. In the sieve, after all the earth had passed through
the holes and the smallest stones had been moved to the side, I was
left looking at a tiny piece of gold, shining in the sunlight. Ovalshaped, and no more than two millimetres long, it was a link from
a delicate golden chain.

Marc looked up from the page, suddenly brought back down to
earth. The din of the station contrasted markedly with the silence
of the pine forest he had been reading about.

Like most of the people around him, he turned to stare at the
source of the demented cry, but it was just some hysterical girl
insulting her neighbour. The other passengers shrugged and went
back to their own lives. Marc, however, kept staring, his eyes riveted
to the young woman.

He had recognised her voice, and his heart had plummeted.
About thirty yards away, standing in front of an automatic ticket
machine, Malvina de Carville was yelling at the man behind her.

The motorcycle stopped on Chemin des Chauds-Soleils, just in front
of the Roseraie. The rider jumped nimbly to the ground, removed
his helmet, tousled his long black hair, and pressed the intercom.

‘Yes?’
‘Parcel for Mrs de Carville. Special delivery. It’s urgent, apparently.’
‘She’s not available right now. Just leave it in the postbox.’
‘I have to hand-deliver it to her.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to wait then. She can’t be disturbed for the

next ten minutes.’
The motorcyclist sighed. ‘I can’t wait. Who is this?’
‘I’m Linda. The nurse.’
‘Well, that’ll do, I guess,’ the delivery man said after a moment’s

Carville?’
‘I think I can manage that . . .’
The motorcyclist laughed, then said: ‘Listen, Linda, what is going

on here? I’ve seen ambulances, fire engines, police cars. It was hell
getting across the Marne. Did they find a serial killer in the village
or something?’

‘You’re not far off, actually! They found a woman’s body in
Coupvray Forest, close to our house. She’d been shot, apparently.
They still don’t know if it was an accident or a murder. Can you
imagine? A murder in Coupvray!’

‘Well, at least it’ll liven things up round here . . .’
*
Linda went and collected the large, padded envelope. She was not

sure if she should call Mathilde de Carville. Her boss was in the
greenhouse, and Mrs de Carville hated being disturbed when she
was gardening. That greenhouse was like a temple to her, and gardening a sacred act that Linda had no desire to profane. Yes, she
decided, the envelope could wait. Linda put it next to the telephone
on the desk in the entrance hall.

She did not want to leave Léonce de Carville on his own for
too long. Above all, she did not want to get behind schedule. She
still had to wash him, put his pyjamas on, give him his dinner and
change his drip. If she worked quickly, she could be done by 6 p.m.
Then Linda could pick up her baby early, and enjoy his company
for a little while longer than usual . . .

She pushed the old man’s wheelchair into the bathroom. This
was her least favourite part of the day. She laid him down flat
on the bench. When she had done that, she exhaled and pressed
a button. The body was raised up to the level of her waist. The
whole bathroom was automated, equipped with the latest and most
expensive devices. It was as good as any hospital. Better, even. She
had nothing to complain about in that regard: Mathilde de Carville had provided her with everything she needed to do her job
properly.

Linda began to undress the old man.
When she turned him over to unbutton his shirt and slide his
inert arms through the sleeves, Linda almost had the impression
that he was reacting, trying to help her. Three days ago, she had
even felt certain that he had smiled at her. Voluntarily. She knew
this was impossible. At least according to the doctors. The patient
was incapable of recognising a voice or a face or a sound, of telling
one day from another. So, the idea that he might try to help her
slide his arm through a sleeve . . .
Linda removed his trousers, and then his soiled underwear. A few
maple leaves fell to the bathroom floor.
The doctors are wrong, thought Linda.
She had been looking after Léonce for almost six years now – two
hours in the morning and three in the afternoon – and she had
become convinced that he was more than just a digestive tract on
wheels.
Linda ran warm water from the tap, then rubbed soap onto the
glove. She always began his daily wash with the genital region, then
the lower part of his body. Linda’s baby, Hugo, was seven months
old now. She could tell the difference between a real smile and the
mere twitch of a muscle.
She rubbed the glove along his left leg. In fact, Linda actually
liked Léonce, even if everyone else in this sinister mansion hated
him. His wife. His granddaughter, that horrible girl Malvina. She
had heard so many bad things about Léonce de Carville: that he
had been a tyrannical boss, capable of firing hundreds of workers –
in Venezuela, Nigeria, Turkey – with just a snap of his fingers. An
unscrupulous man. A hard man. But she didn’t care. To her, Léonce
was nothing worse than a life-sized rubber doll, a defenceless old
man. A poor, fragile creature whose only source of protection,
care, and tenderness in this world was herself. He was just like
her baby.
The two of them understood each other. The old man and the
nurse. They were together for five hours a day. No doctor in the
world could perceive the connection between them, even less so
Mathilde and Malvina de Carville. But Léonce could still communicate, in his own way.

Linda’s gloved hand froze on the old man’s flabby stomach. It
was the front door. And yet Linda was sure she had closed it. She
removed the glove and went out into the entrance hall.