Dog Will Have His Day (23 page)

‘The week before, yes. He’d probably had enough. So, suicide was ruled out, murder was improbable and unprovable. The railing on the balcony was very low, he’d had a lot to drink. Conclusion, accidental death, permission given for burial, case closed.’

‘Name of the inspector in charge?’

‘Sellier. He’s not there now, promoted captain.’

‘Yes, to the 12th. I know him. Thanks a lot, Nathan.’

‘Have you got some more on this story?’

‘Two weddings, a disappearance and a death. What do you think of that?’

‘Not exactly normal. Good fishing, Ludwig, but look out, you don’t have any backup these days. Proceed with caution and follow to the letter the calm and moderate advice of your toad. That’s my best advice.’

‘I’ll give him a kiss from you, and my love to your daughters.’

Louis smiled as he rang off. His friend Nathan had seven beautiful daughters, like in a fairy tale, which had always enchanted him.

Sellier had left the office. Louis found him at home.

‘So, the bit of bone led to a murder,’ said Sellier after listening carefully to Louis’s summary. ‘And all those involved in the Marcel Thomas affair are down there in Brittany.’

Sellier’s voice was deliberate, a man who took care to recall things methodically.

‘The investigation here is being handled by Guerrec. You know him?’

‘A bit. He’s rather annoying, doesn’t say much, you wouldn’t give him marks for GSOH, but he’s pretty straight as far as I know. No miracle worker. But then neither am I.’

‘From your interviews for the Marcel Thomas affair, is there anything that sticks out in your mind?’

‘I’m trying to remember, but I can’t think of anything. If it really was a murder, then I fucked up. But there wasn’t anything to go on.’

‘Could one of the women have crept out to the terrace?’

‘You can bet I checked that out. They had an old parquet floor, Hungarian Point chevrons, that I remember very well, the blessed parquet. Every section of it creaked. If one of the women killed him, it must have been with the connivance of the other, no doubt about that.’

‘And no one came to see them after Sevran and Lacasta left?’

‘No, that was clearly established.’

‘How come you remember the case so well?’

‘Because of, well, because of a few niggling doubts. Some of the cases I’ve handled, the killers have been caught, and I’ve wiped them from my memory, but the ones where there was a shadow of doubt linger in corners of your mind.’

‘What kind of doubt?’

‘About Diego Lacasta. He did a U-turn. He was a warm, expansive guy, all Spanish honour and emotion, determined to defend the two women, especially the nanny. Doesn’t surprise me if he married her. He was obviously besotted with her. And when he came back with his boss a week later for the reconstruction, he’d retreated into being a proud haughty Spaniard, without speaking a word. He didn’t defend anyone, he just let the situation take its course, in sulky silence. I thought it was his Iberian temperament – you have to remember I was young and prejudiced in those days. But still, because of him, I remember the reconstruction, the creaking floorboards, his closed face. He’d been the only one who had lit up the case for me, and the flame had gone out. That’s all. It doesn’t take much to plant a doubt, but that’s just me.’

After hanging up, Louis lay on his bed for another five minutes, with arms folded. Time to get moving and have something to eat. As he left his room, he picked up a message slipped under the door, which he hadn’t noticed when he came in.

If you want me, I’ve gone to the machine with some questions needing answers. Look out for your wretched toad, it’s poncing about in the bathroom.

Marc

Louis asked at the hotel for some bread and two bananas, and set off on foot for the machine. He walked slowly. Guerrec didn’t appeal to him, too much of a sobersides. René Blanchet certainly didn’t appeal to him. The mayor, although more inoffensive, didn’t appeal to him either. Nor did the anonymous letter. But Darnas
did
appeal to him, and he was precisely the man he’d have liked to demolish. He was out of luck. With Sevran, you could have a conversation if you kept off dogs, but the dog was dead. As for the women, Marie Lacasta’s old face did appeal to him, he seemed to see it all the time, but she was dead too. Lina was also beginning to obsess him. She had killed the dog, in an act which was far from normal, despite what her husband said in his efforts to protect her. He seemed to want to protect her all the time, the hand on the shoulder to protect her, calm her down or hold her back. As for Pauline, yes, she still appealed to him, and he was out of luck there as well. Because Pauline didn’t seem to want to come near him, she was stiff, out of defiance or something. Well, he’d said he’d leave her in peace, better make an effort to keep his promise. Very noble to make promises, easily done, then you have to keep them, which is a pain in the backside. Just now, Mathias must be on the train, with the yellow folder. Thinking about that folder required an effort of him. It was a heavy and painful thought, and gave him a nagging headache.

He saw from a distance the weird black shape of the machine Marc had talked about. As he got nearer he could hear various rattles, clanks and squeaks. Kehlweiler shook his head. Marc was becoming obsessed with this pointless machine. What stupid question had he asked it now? And what machine could ever reconcile the incompatible contrasts of young Vandoosler, his nervous emotion and his capacity for concentrated study? Louis couldn’t have said which had the upper hand, Marc’s deep calm plunges into research, or his panic attacks like a swimmer about to drown. Would he have described him as a slender cetacean, a regular denizen of the deep, or a desperate pup, thrashing about on the surface of the waves?

Marc was standing there, reading the message the machine had just delivered to him by the flame of his cigarette lighter, and at the same time, singing a song. He didn’t seem to be thrashing about. It wasn’t the first time Kehlweiler had heard him sing. He stopped a few metres away to watch and listen. If it hadn’t been for the murder of the old woman, which made him furious, and the difficult thoughts attached to the yellow folder travelling towards him, he would have appreciated the scene. The night was chilly, the rain had stopped, the stupefying machine had suspended its clanking, and alone in the dark, young Vandoosler was singing.

Farewell to life, farewell to love,

Farewell to you ladies of France.

The war goes on, the guns still boom,

A soldier’s the plaything of chance.

In chalky Craonne, our bones will be laid,

For death is leading the dance.

‘What did the machine answer?’ Louis asked, interrupting him.

‘The machine can go fuck itself,’ said Marc, crumpling up the message. ‘All it does is shit on everything, the Middle Ages, life, the solar system. You’ll see, but ask it out loud, otherwise it doesn’t work.’

‘Out loud – is that the rule?’

‘I just made that one up, so as to find out what you’re thinking. Clever, eh?’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Basically what you think of the murder, what you think of Pauline Darnas, what you’re expecting from the folder marked “M”, for which you have made Mathias your slave. And as supplementaries, what you think about the future explosion of the sun, and about me.’

Kehlweiler went nearer the machine.

‘We’ll ask it. Is this the handle?’

‘Yes, you do five turns, hard. Then I’ll pick up the answer.’

The machine set in motion all its workings and Louis watched it with interest.

‘Impressive, isn’t it? Here’s your message. Read it yourself, I don’t poke my nose into other people’s correspondence.’

‘It’s dark, I haven’t got a lighter, or my toad, or anything. Read it to me.’

‘“
Don’t panic. Souvenir of Port-Nicolas.
” See what I mean? See how infuriating it is. Don’t panic, but what else can you do?’

‘You can wait. I don’t have an answer to any of the questions you asked me. I don’t understand the Marie Lacasta business, I fear I understand only too well the case of Pauline, and as for the file marked “M”, we’ll wait for your hunter-gatherer friend. Something new has turned up, a snide note that someone put in my pocket when we were in the cafe.
There was a couple in the Vauban cabin and nobody’s letting on about it
, stuff like that. Not you, by any chance?’

‘Why would I put something in your pocket? Take the risk of touching your filthy toad? Lose a chance to talk? You must be kidding. Tell me more.’

The two men walked slowly back towards the hotel. As Louis explained to Marc about the screw of paper, he kept looking at his watch.

AS SOON AS
Mathias arrived at the hotel, Kehlweiler took the folder from him and shut himself up in his room.

‘For the past half-hour I haven’t been able to get a complete sentence out of him,’ Marc told Mathias. ‘Did you look inside the folder?’

‘No.’

Marc had no need to add: ‘Are you sure you didn’t?’ because when Mathias said yes or no, he really meant yes or no, no need to look further.

‘You’re a noble soul, St Matthew. I think I might have risked taking a peep.’

‘I didn’t have a chance to put my soul to the test, because the folder was stapled. I’m off to see the sea.’

Marc wheeled his bike to accompany Mathias down to the beach. Mathias didn’t pass comment. He knew that Marc, even when he was on foot, liked to have a bicycle to push whenever he had a chance. It acted as his horse, the noble charger of a medieval knight, a peasant’s old nag, or a Sioux brave’s warhorse. Marc noticed that despite the cold, Mathias’s feet remained stubbornly bare in his sandals, and he was dressed as ever with the utmost simplicity, cotton trousers held up with a rustic piece of string, and a sweater next to the skin. But he didn’t comment either. No one would ever change the hunter-gatherer. At the slightest opportunity, Mathias took the whole lot off. If people asked him why, he just said he felt imprisoned in clothes.

Wheeling the bike, taking quick steps to keep up with Mathias, who had immensely long legs, Marc described the local situation while Mathias listened in silence. Marc could have given him a five-minute outline, but he liked detours, nuances, digressions, fleeting impressions, traceries of words, all the ornaments of speech which Mathias simply called chatter. Marc was now launched on what he called the dark squares on the chessboard: Lina Sevran’s melancholy state, her two fatal shots at the dog, the inscrutability of the mayor, the hulking presence of René Blanchet, Marie’s little hands poking about in the dustbins of the old brute, the disappearance of Spanish Diego, the poem denouncing some couple in the Vauban cabin, Kehlweiler’s stricken face when he had asked for his yellow folder, the ruins of Louis’s old love affair, Darnas’s lively intelligence locked into the body of an ape with delicate fingers, when Mathias suddenly interrupted him.

‘Hush!’ he said, grabbing the crossbar of the bike to stop Marc in his tracks.

Mathias was standing stock-still in the dark. Marc made no objection. He could hear nothing for the sound of the wind, nor could he see or feel anything, but he knew enough about Mathias to be aware that he was on the alert. Mathias had a way of using his five physical senses as captors, sensors, decoders and much else. Marc would willingly have marketed Mathias instead of those expensive inventions that pick up sound waves, detect pollen, read infrared signals and other complex things, the functions of which Mathias would have performed perfectly without costing a sou. He maintained that if the hunter-gatherer put his ear to the ground in the desert, he would be able to hear the Paris–Strasbourg express, although it was hard to see what use that would be to anyone.

Mathias let go the bike.

‘Run!’ he said to Marc, who saw Mathias rush off into the night, without understanding what they were chasing. Mathias’s animal capacities – primitive, according to Lucien – always disconcerted him and cut short his constant talking. He dropped the bike to the ground and ran after the crazy prehistorian, who was moving silently and faster than him, taking no notice of the nearby cliff edge. He caught up with him two hundred metres further on.

‘Down there,’ said Mathias, pointing to the shingle beach. ‘Go and see to him, I’m going to look around – someone else is here.’

Mathias disappeared at speed, and Marc looked down at the seashore. A dark figure was lying there, someone who must have had a bad fall, of six or seven metres. Holding on to the rocks to make his way down, he wondered whether someone might have pushed this person from the path. Reaching solid ground, he ran over to the motionless form. He prodded it gently, his face tense, found a wrist, and felt for a pulse. It was beating slightly, but the man wasn’t moving, not even moaning. Marc on the other hand felt the blood rushing to his temples. If someone had pushed this person over the edge, it must have happened only a minute ago, in a few rapid movements which Mathias had heard. When Mathias started to run, it must have prevented the murderer finishing off the job and now Mathias was after him. Marc didn’t give the runaway much of a chance. Whether he lay low or plunged ahead, it was unlikely he would escape the primitive hunter, and illogically enough Marc felt no fear on Mathias’s behalf, although Mathias was as vulnerable as the next man, after all, and didn’t have thirty thousand years of accumulated strength, contrary to what one might think. Marc didn’t dare move the head of the man on the ground, in case of damaged vertebrae. He knew just enough to know he shouldn’t do anything. But he had managed to push aside the man’s hair, and to fumble in his pocket for his cigarette lighter. He had to strike it several times before he recognised the youth whom Darnas had described as an inveterate dreamer, the young seventeen-year-old who’d been in the cafe a while back, sitting with the pale-faced buddy of the priest. He wasn’t sure of this one’s name – was it perhaps Gaël? When he touched the boy’s hair, Marc had felt wet blood, and now, his stomach in cramps, he was squeamishly stretching his hand away from his body. He would have liked to go and wash it in the sea, but dared not leave the young man.