Cemetery of Swallows (2 page)

The third bullet digs into the dust six inches from Darbier's head. His yellowish skull is covered with gray earth. He utters a cry of anger that is cut short by the fourth bullet. Entering above his mouth, it shatters his teeth and the right side of his palate.

Manuel stops firing to look at his enemy writhing and drowning in his own blood. It is grotesque, like his ridiculous groans and gurgling as he desperately tries to breathe and reposition his broken teeth. His legs begin to jerk. His bladder empties, making a large, dark-green stain between his legs. At the corner of his mouth, a mixture of saliva and blood forms a mass of pink bubbles that slowly slips down his chin to join the dusty aridity of the soil.

Manuel fires his last bullet.

The old man's hair explodes and his brain begins to spill out, white and shining in the sun.

Manuel doesn't have time to allow satisfaction to fill his heart; he feels a sudden blow to his back. A projectile fired by the wounded bodyguard has just hit him. As he collapses, Manuel looks at the man who is approaching to finish him off. He says to himself that all things considered, this is the perfect end to an imperfect story. The sun has gone cold. He shivers and looks down at the ground, where everything is going to come to an end.

A second explosion, a second pain.

One doesn't write his own life, neither its contours nor its limits, one doesn't choose what bites him. Manuel and his last thoughts sink into the earth. The coolness of eternity. He has just enough time to think that now he has to die; his life depends on it!

Mallock is alone, stretched out under a row of coconut trees with manicured leaves. Their curved trunks rise up, as survivors, from a disturbing, almost excessively white sand. They reach for the sky to find the wind. Beyond the beach is the tropical ocean, and his son who is swimming in it. Since he died, he hasn't grown anymore. He's still five years old and has his father's absinthe-colored eyes, his pupils match the waves of the sea. Here is Thomas, his little Tom, his little fellow, in the lukewarm waters of the Atlantic sheltered by the reef, that amniotic mother. Here is Thomas Mallock among the blue crabs that run sideways, the sea horses and microscopic, silvery jellyfish. Look at him! In that sea, that's Thomas you see. He's flying, my little angel, on the glassy, limpid waves of the ocean.

His father, a police superintendent, smiles, astonished to feel so well, here in the full sun, in his heavy suit striped by the shade of the palm trees . . .

“Monsieur, your tray, please?”

Mallock wakes up in a sweat. He says, “Excuse me,” and pulls down the gray plastic tray.

“I'm really sorry to wake you, but we're going to bring you something to eat soon.”

The flight attendant has a little scar on her forehead and a nice smile.

“It's okay, you did the right thing,” Mallock replies, smiling back at her.

In any case, as long as he lives, his son will remain dead.

 

Superintendent Mallock is flying to the Dominican Republic. He has been assigned by Dublin, the head honcho at 36, Quai des Orfèvres, the criminal investigation department in Paris, to bring back Manuel Gemoni, a French citizen who has murdered an inhabitant of the island.

Any normal person would have jumped for joy at the idea of leaving Paris and its gloomy, cold November weather. To escape from the gates of winter, cross the Atlantic, and return to summer, with beaches and palm trees.

But not Mallock.

Amédée Mallock, the king of homebodies, hates to travel. In his view, neither fauna nor flora nor historical stuff can justify the displeasure of going away, being deprived of all the little possessions with which civilized people surround their bodies and their minds to protect them from the inevitable collisions with the rest of the world.

When he is forced to leave home, Amédée sulks like a frustrated schoolboy, resenting those who have forced him to perform an unnatural act: moving! He has been a hundred yards from Niagara Falls without deigning to look at them; in Egypt, he didn't even glance at the pyramids; in India, he ignored the big white thing, and in Copenhagen, the little mermaid. Even in Paris, where he has lived for a long time, he has only recently gone up the Eiffel Tower, and not to see the view, or to admire the metallic monument, but to investigate a mass murder.

Now, going off to be a stupid tourist on a remote island in the Antilles didn't appeal to him at all. Normally, he would have taken sick leave. If he didn't protest, it's because he knows Manuel Gemoni personally. Especially his sister, who has worked for him ever since Fort Mallock—Mallock's office within the criminal investigation department, known as “36”—was set up.

*

Six days before, Julie Gemoni, a captain in the police, came to see her boss. Outside, the caramel-colored Seine was awaiting winter. The capital was enjoying a classic Indian summer.

Julie had come into his office with her lips tight and her chin jutting out aggressively. She asked for a special leave. Like most of the Fort's staff, she had been on duty all through the case of the “massacre of the innocents.” She had a lot of overtime hours, loads of vacation time, and credit for all the weekly days off she hadn't taken during the crisis. Some time ago, she had submitted the request for a combined leave, explaining that she wanted to go away for a month. She needed her superintendent's permission.

“Really? That long? You're hard on me. But then you must have your reasons,” Mallock said to her. “And then it'll spare me having to look at your ugly mug. I mean, the one you've been wearing for the last two weeks. You look like you're going to a funeral and that affects everybody's morale.”

Julie hesitated for only a few seconds. She'd probably just been waiting for an opportunity to talk about it.

“It's my brother,” she finally managed to say.

“Manu? What's up with him?”

The mention of this name revived all the feelings and concerns the young woman had been bottling up inside her for several days. Her tears were welling up behind her eyelids, ready to overflow them.

She tried to speak: “He's been . . . They've . . . ”

But she began to sob, furious with herself, and ashamed to let herself be seen crying, especially in front of her superintendent.

“Excuse me, I'm sorry. Usually I can . . . ”

Mallock went up to her. He felt like a dolt for having talked about her “ugly mug.” She fell into his arms. Embarrassed and worried, he awkwardly stroked her back. Then he continued with a series of little taps, more masculine and less compromising. But also more ridiculous.

“Only macho jerks and hard-ass bitches don't cry.”

Then she opened up and told him about her sadness and her little girl's fear of losing her big brother.

Under Superintendent Mallock's hard and intransigent shell there were herds of tenderness galloping free. Julie had always suspected as much. Today, as he held her in his arms, she had proof of it. She could clearly hear the hoofbeats of those herds.

Once she'd calmed down, Amédée helped her to a seat and went back behind his desk to make a cup of tea for her. That was one of the rare things he knew about women. Those marvelous hominids had very few sorrows that couldn't be assuaged by a cup of tea, a nice bouquet of flowers, or the purchase of a red jacket. He had only Lipton's on hand.

He performed the tea ceremony, like a kind of geisha. Like a man who respected traditions, at least when they were culinary. He manipulated the delicate Chinese porcelain with his big, meaty hands, lifting his pinky and bowing fussily. He scalded the teapot, poured boiling water on the tea leaves, emptied it out immediately, and repeated the procedure. When he finally decided to serve Julie her tea, his associate's reaction seemed to prove him right as soon as she had taken a second sip. At the third sip, she began to contemplate the bottom of her cup, running the pretty tip of her tongue over her upper lip. At the fourth, she straightened up. At the fifth, she began her story.

It was the first time Mallock had heard about the case. It was no longer a matter of a missing person; now it was a murder investigation. And what a murder! Her brother had just been wounded after having, it seemed, killed an old man in cold blood on the other side of the world.

She knew nothing about the crime itself except the memorable sentence he'd uttered when he was arrested. Whether it was a motive that was still incomprehensible or a simple expression of madness, to the policemen who came to arrest him Manu had said: “I killed him because he had killed me.”

 

The plane's air-conditioning system is setting records.

Amédée reaches up to adjust the ventilation control with his big fingers. A refined bear of a man, he has slender wrists onto which a butcher's hands seemed to have been grafted. Glowing eyes like precious stones light up a face that is half Nick Nolte and half Depardieu, with the same hank of blond hair, a shapeless nose, and a delicate mouth. His body, six feet tall and weighing 220 pounds, makes him look more like the American, and it will not be too big for solving this unlikely case. Mallock, who likes to be in control of his environment and the development of his investigations, is preparing himself for some trying days. It will take two or three superintendents to cope with the strange enigma with which Manuel Gemoni is about to present him.

That's fine, Mallock is several.

His thoughts return to Julie and what she told him in Paris.

 

“Tell me everything, right from the beginning. What happened to Manu?”

Mallock was fond of Julie's brother.

“It's a very common thing, but when it happens to you, it's not the same, it's tragic,” the young captain began.

“The facts, please. What happened?”

“Manu disappeared exactly two weeks ago, without the slightest explanation. Jules and I looked for him everywhere. No gambling debts, no enemies, no depression or likelihood of suicide. As you know, he's married to a Japanese woman, Kiko, and they have just had a marvelous little daughter.”

She took a deep breath; she was still on the verge of tears.

“Manu is two years younger than I, but I've always considered him my big brother. I don't know if you remember, but he has a degree in archaeology and is a teacher-researcher at the College de France, where he works on everything that concerns ancient Egypt. He is sought after the world over.”

Julie was proud of Manu. No doubt he must be proud of her, too. The young woman had had a brilliant career in the police. She was now entering what Amédée called his blood brotherhood, his right arm, a virtual hand whose five fingers corresponded to his five main associates.

At five feet tall, with her wasp-waisted, feather-light body, Julie was its little finger. She stuck her nose into everything and used her pretty ears exactly where they were needed. She had no peer for uncovering the most . . . secret information. Mallock suspected she was making unhesitating use of her Corsican family's various networks. When he said that it was his little finger that had told him, most of the time he was referring to Julie. Her acute intelligence and her ability to synthesize information were a kind of recourse for Mallock, a lifebuoy for use in the event that his own system of reflection failed.

“Frankly, how could anyone have had anything against him? He is . . . was happy, and made everyone around him happy, too.”

“That's true, he's a good guy,” Mallock agreed.

“Plus,” she went on, piling up her arguments as if she were trying to finish convincing him, “they'd just moved into a spectacular apartment with a view of the Madeleine. I've never seen him so radiant. To the point of being annoying,” she added, trying to add a touch of humor.

“And all that,” Mallock concluded, “didn't prevent him from packing a bag and going out the door to kill an old man on the other side of the world?”

“I know, it's completely absurd!”

“After all, Julie, people don't kill somebody for no reason at all! This guy over there may be responsible for the death of one of his friends, or . . . ”

To shut him up, she sniffed, with a charming wrinkling of her nose.

“No, among the people around him, no one died, except for one of our aunts whom he adored, but it was a natural death, apparently.”

“You know, Julie, there's always a reason for things, even if it escapes us at the time.”

“That's just what Jules has been telling me from the start. But after all, you know Manu, he's a model of balance and moderation. When he was a child, he was already wisdom itself. In a baby, that was pretty astonishing. People said he was the reincarnation of an old soul. Mama called him her ‘Little Gandhi.' He didn't even have the usual childhood illnesses, or go through an annoying phase, even when he was an adolescent. He had no weaknesses, none. Except, maybe . . . ”

Mallock encouraged her to continue by simply nodding his head.

“His only weak point was his fear of forests and the dark. Ever since we were children, it had been my job to protect him and reassure him when night fell. But even that peculiar panic has never prevented him from being one of the most courageous men I know. Once, when he was seven, I got lost in a little wood east of Ajaccio. In the middle of the night, he came to look for me. He was terrified and dripping with sweat, but he found me and took me home.”

Julie repressed a huge sob before saying something that touched Mallock's heart.

“Today, I'm the one who has to take him home.”

 

The Airbus's engines are humming with a reassuring regularity. At the end of the aisle, the food cart has just appeared. The sound of glasses clinking and liquids being poured. Amédée will soon be able to get some sustenance. And he likes to eat, and drink, too. A double whiskey, that will relax everything, the body and the mind, in a single, saving wave.