Lost (14 page)

The
maestrale
had left the sky surgically clean. The light was now so sharp Stuart could barely open his eyes. He squatted behind the ribbon of orange plastic a hundred metres from the car, buried his face in the crook of his arm and waited for the explosion. For some reason, Mesguish was there, and Van Ruytens, who always came for a bomb and who now settled beside him with his pipe in his mouth and his hands over his ears. It was more the pipe smoke than the imminent explosion that made Stuart bury his face.

‘Twenty-eight minutes,’ someone said.

Stuart looked up to see who had spoken. It was Mesguish’s deputy, who was staring back at him, chewing on a piece of gum. They were waiting for the long hand to reach six. It was impossible to get anyone from Bomb Disposal to go in any more. They had to wait the full half-hour, and make do with the detritus when it did explode, policy now being zero risk. Mesguish’s man grinned sarcastically at him. When he turned away, Stuart saw he was wearing an earring and flushed with anger.

In the thirtieth minute the bomb exploded. Stuart felt the blast on his face. It was too late to cover his ears. The sound vibrated in his chest and throat. Glass and debris began to fall like rain. Something flew through the air towards him; he thought of a body. People were scattering all around him. It was the bonnet of the car that now rocked to and fro a few paces from him in the deserted square.

Stuart stood up. The man with the earring was grinning and chewing at the same time, busily looking about him for an echo of his excitement.

‘Fuck,’ he was saying. ‘Fuck me.’

Stuart saw Van Ruytens brushing dust from his trousers. He was saying something to Mesguish and smiling. Stuart could see the back of Mesguish’s cropped head and two rolls of bristle-covered fat resting on his collar. The prosecutor patted Mesguish on the arm, put his pipe in his mouth and began to climb over the plastic ribbon. Stuart leapt on him, grabbing him by the sleeve.

‘No. No one’s going on to the site.’

Van Ruytens had managed to take the pipe from his mouth with his free hand. He now stared at Stuart, his mouth open.

‘It’s all right. I’m not going to touch anything.’

‘It’s not all right, Prosecutor. No one’s going in there. Not anyone. Not Mesguish and not you. The only people going in there are me and the forensic experts. Do you understand?’

Van Ruytens blinked at him.

‘I’m amazed at your rudeness.’ He was smiling.

‘I don’t care,’ Stuart said. He let go of the prosecutor, noted the aghast faces around him and stepped over the ribbon. Stuart walked across the deserted square towards the car’s scattered remains, his ears still ringing from the blast.

Gérard and Paul, wearing plastic gloves, were already picking their way through the debris. Fabrice was moving about on his own, taking photos. There was a neat crater about thirty centimetres in diameter where the bomb had been. The area was still hot and Stuart could see the tar oozing beneath the crust like toffee. He shielded his eyes with his hand and watched Paul peel off his surgeon’s gloves. In spite of the heat, Gérard was wearing his mac. He took a piece of folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Stuart. Stuart held it at arm’s length from his failing eyes. It was a copy of the communiqué that had been read over the phone to a news trainee at the
Islander
that morning:

Stuart looked up. Gérard was a few paces away, pointing with his foot at a piece of blue metal like a plate.

‘Gas cylinder,’ he said. ‘And they used sugar.’

‘Who was it for?’ Stuart asked, looking about him as though the target might reveal itself. He could feel the crowds gathering behind the barricades. The heat in the white square seemed to isolate them further. ‘There’s a Crédit Lyonnais,’ he said stupidly.

Paul blinked at Stuart, waiting for him to ask something sensible. The alcohol was beginning to show in his boyish face; he had pouches beneath his eyes.

‘It’s cheap,’ he said.

‘What was the target?’ Stuart asked again.

‘Maybe it’s just an inauguration.’

Fabrice moved efficiently through the scattered remains of the car. He had seen enough not to need guidance. Gérard was gliding gracefully behind him, holding a roll of plastic freezer bags for samples. Stuart watched Paul slipping his bare brown foot in and out of his shoe. In winter he wore brightly coloured socks and Stuart had noticed that one pair had ‘Snow Time’ printed on them. He could see why women loved Paul; he was touching.

‘They’re novices,’ Paul said. Gérard came and stood beside Paul and squinted at Stuart. ‘It looks like novices,’ Paul told him.

Stuart folded the paper and put it into his pocket. He looked
at his two friends. They were his friends, that was suddenly clear to him, as the three of them stood there in silence, enjoying this moment of respite, aware of the hundred-metre perimeter behind which a tidal wave of shit was being held back by a plastic ribbon.

‘I manhandled the prosecutor,’ Stuart said.

‘Did he like it?’ Gérard asked.

Stuart smiled.

‘The prosecutor, Zanetecci, Mesguish and his pirates, even Lasserre. They’re all waiting for me to make a mistake. And that woman …’ He noticed their intent expressions and paused. ‘She’s sitting up in that house. Just waiting.’ He stood in the hot, white square and looked at the charred spring of the car’s seat, lying on the ground. He looked up. ‘And why in God’s name is Mesguish here?’

‘The fire brigade got the call,’ Paul said. ‘They used the radio to call the commissariat and Mesguish picked it up.’

Stuart stared at him.

‘There’s something odd about this bombing,’ he said. ‘Look at the name. FAR. Anarchy’s not a word people use any more, is it?’

‘Too radical,’ said Paul.

Stuart didn’t answer.

‘The communiqué’s from another planet,’ Gérard said.

Stuart was following his own thoughts.

‘Raymond’s not talking,’ he said. ‘Do you think we should let him go?’

‘How long have you got left?’ Paul asked.

‘A few more hours,’ Stuart said.

Paul had taken up his bouncer’s posture, feet apart, arms clasped across his chest.

‘You might as well use up the time,’ he said.

Stuart could feel Gérard’s disapproval. He stood between them, delaying his departure. They waited politely. He found nothing else to say. They nodded goodbye at him, Paul jerking his chin upwards, and watched him cross the no-man’s
land towards what was coming to him.

Mesguish was waiting for him. Stuart climbed over the ribbon and stood facing his large skull glowing with a halo of white bristles. He had a face like a gargoyle, full of exaggeration: fiery eyes, a bitter mouth and a belligerent chin. Stuart felt weary looking at him.

‘So?’ Mesguish said. ‘What’s the Front for Anarchist Revolution?’

Stuart spoke quietly to expose the man’s unnecessary loudness.

‘They’re new. They’re nothing serious. They used sugar. And there doesn’t seem to be a target.’ Mesguish stared angrily at him, lost. ‘It’s not a splinter group because there’s no expertise. It could be outsiders.’

‘You’re saying it’s not connected in any way to the business at hand?’

Stuart woke up.

‘The business at hand? The business at hand seems to be the surveillance, the scrupulous surveillance of the three or four streets around the Fritz Bar. The call box is the only lead we’ve got. I’m still trying to work out what you’re doing here.’

Mesguish’s mouth drooped more steeply at the corners. With his scowl, a marble of fat appeared on the bridge of his nose.

‘Zanetecci told me to check it out.’

Stuart was aware of someone standing behind him, too close. He turned and saw Lopez looking up at him, a pencil between his teeth. He grinned, then removed the pencil.

‘Who let you in?’

‘The prosecutor did.’

‘Wait for me over there. I’ll be one minute.’

Lopez held up his hands and stepped back, then he turned and walked over to a group of Mesguish’s men. He reminded Stuart of that dog in Santarosa, foraging in the rubbish.

‘Talking to the press now,’ Mesguish said, nodding slowly.

‘Listen. You were called in as back-up. You have one task,’ Stuart said, striking the air with his index finger. ‘Surveillance. That’s all. Do you understand?’

Mesguish’s hands were in his pockets, so it was his nose he thrust at Stuart.

‘Listen, you little shit. If you knew just how long you had left on the top of this dung heap of an island, you might show me more respect. Central Office is sick of telexes spewing out complaints about your incompetence. You’re on the way out.’

Stuart stared at the ball of fat between his eyes.

‘You shouldn’t let your men wear earrings, Mesguish,’ he said. ‘It reflects badly on the police.’

As he walked away, the back of his head tingled where he expected the blow. He even hoped it would come. But he cleared the car park unscathed. Lopez was standing beside the prosecutor, taking notes. So far he had kept his part of the bargain. There had been a short side-bar on the search and the following day an interview with the gendarme, Morin, saying that it looked like a runaway. This theory would be well received. It would just confirm what everyone knew: that continentals had no idea how to treat children. Stuart was too angry after his conversation with Mesguish. He would call Lopez later and he ducked into the crowd that had gathered on the other side of the CRS barriers.

As he drove away from the scene he smiled at the thought of the prosecutor’s indignation. In one day he had undone years of grudging obedience and caught a glimpse of his own potential. It occurred to him that it was this sense that had driven Titi and he asked himself, for the first time, if Titi had ever loved anyone.

Two men with black visors passed him on a bike. In a reflex motion he swerved away from them, though if they had wanted to shoot him they would have had time. As the adrenaline subsided he thought of the woman alone in the house, waiting for news, and he felt useless again and
overcome
.
He accelerated along the seafront. Through the open window a siren, heralding some other disaster, sounded further and further away.

There was a hot, dry wind blowing in his office. Someone had opened the window and left the fan running at high speed, and the room was slatting. A paper folder was opening and closing on his desk. The smell of his office, hitherto his element, now made him feel nauseous. Stuart sat down at his desk and opened the folder.

Inside were several large black-and-white surveillance photos from the day’s shift. They were poor, slightly overexposed and the grain was swollen. They must have been taken from about 500 metres away. The first was of a car in a lay-by with the driver’s head tipped back and in profile. On the back of the photograph Stuart read: SANTINI, Claude Augustin: 12
H
47, 17/7/99.

They had noted the registration number beneath. He didn’t know the car, but Santini’s profile was unmistakable. He leafed through the other photos. The last one was of Jean Filippi standing alone in the lay-by with his dick poking from his flies. Stuart judged from his expression – eyes raised to heaven in an expression of contrition – that they had caught him in that split instant before the flow begins. Stuart pulled out a shot of Jean climbing into the car, in which Coco’s face was recognisable, and laid it on top of the folder for inclusion in the file.

He pulled out Raymond’s file and began to read through Gérard’s interrogation. He read the first three sentences without taking them in, then reached out and put his hand on the telephone. He held it there for a few minutes as though he were taking its pulse, thought better of calling her before he had some good news and went back to Gérard’s assertively juvenile script. He could tell from the PV that Gérard thought Raymond’s custody a waste of time. He had let him ramble and the narrative was full of unexplored
threads fluttering like kite tails. He stopped reading and looked at his watch. He would see her in a little over an hour. He unlocked the drawer to his desk, looked at the tiny plastic bag of brown he had kept from the last bust and closed the drawer again. What was Coco risking a meeting with Jean Filippi for? He took his notepad and wrote down Filippi’s name with an arrow beside it. Then he opened the drawer and began to make up a dose for Raymond.

In the basement Raymond sat in the cell, tugging at the side of his hair that had not been cut. His mother always did first one side, then the other and they had snatched him from the chair in the alley before she had finished. He had had his eyes closed and was enjoying the sun on his face when they appeared from nowhere, bursting into his dream, brutalising him but still not managing to reach him, he felt so good. They had dragged him off to the sound of his mother’s cries. That had been yesterday morning. Now he was sweating all over and hair cuttings were sticking to his chest and neck. His legs were heavy but weak, as though they had been stretched thin like two long pieces of plasticine hanging over the edge of the bed and running along the floor. There was a dragging sensation in his hips and thighs and he wanted to kick out but couldn’t. He retched twice, but there was nothing inside him and he closed his eyes and retched again and then again until his eyes were filled with spaniel’s tears, thick and gluey. They had left the light on and the bulb hung above him, white and blinding; they had done it on purpose. He shouted into the empty corridor, ‘My head! My fucking head.’ He hugged himself. It was so cold in here and damp, he could feel the moisture on his skin, like a poisonous film. His nose ran and ran and the skin on his face hurt, felt as if it were hanging off in strips like dirty hotel wallpaper. He was so dirty he could smell himself like old onions in a pan and his clothes clung to him and offered no warmth against the cold. He pulled the hood of his tracksuit over his head. ‘Turn the
light off!’ he screamed. But his voice stuck in his throat and no one could hear him down here anyway. ‘I want coffee. Get me some coffee, for Christ’s sake.’ He tried to lift his legs in order to lie down, but his dick, standing between his legs like some stupid sentinel faithful to his post when the city had been destroyed, barred his way so that he could not move and he could not get his dick to lie down. His arousal was like a sick torture he was inflicting on himself and his dick strained upwards, taking with it all his energy. ‘Get me a cigarette.’ He retched again. ‘Please.’ His eyes were still weeping glue. ‘I need a cigarette. Somebody. Please.’ And he rocked to and fro, gripping the hard, cold edge of his camp bed. ‘Mum,’ he moaned. ‘I want my mum. You bastards!’ It hurt his head to speak and he rocked and whimpered, ‘Mum.’