Talking to Ghosts (25 page)

“That's probably him now,” Julien said. “They heard him coming.”

Without consulting each other both boys dashed through the dining room, tripping over the jumble of objects strewn over the floor. The carriage clock went flying under the sideboard in a last jangling crash as they rushed out into the warm air just as both dogs gave a howl of pain and began to whimper pitifully. Victor saw the dogs coming towards them, tottering clumsily as though drunk, shaking their big heads. The bitch slumped down in the shade of a tree, rubbing her eyes and her snout with her paws while the male, a little further off, rolled in the dry grass and moaned.

“It's not him,” Julien said.

Victor turned away from the dogs and saw the man, the one called Éric, closing the gate behind him, leaving his grey car parked by the side of the road. He was tucking a canister into his pocket. Tear gas. Julien ran over to the dogs, grabbing them by the scruff of the neck, shaking them and shouting “Attack!”, but the animals lay there sneezing, panting and choking as they whimpered.

The man took out a knife, a flick knife, released the catch and the blade snapped into view.

“Careful with them dogs of yours or I'll gut them, you little wanker,” he said to Julien. “Now take your bike and get the fuck out of here, and keep your mouth shut unless you want me to come around and torch your place.”

“Who is it?” Julien said. “Is it the guy from the other day?”

He came over to Victor. The man stopped about ten metres away from them, half sitting on the bonnet of one of the Peugeots.

“Fuck off, and don't say anything,” Victor said. “This is none of your business. If you say anything I'll kill you, I swear, I'll fucking do it. You got that?”

Julien picked up his backpack and walked quickly towards the gate, head sunk into his shoulders, trembling on his scrawny legs. He had to walk past the cars to get out and tried to give the man a wide berth, but not wide enough because the guy had only to reach out to give him a slap across the face that sent him staggering back two paces.

“Don't fucking threaten me again, you little son of a bitch, you got that? Now go home and fuck your mother before I do it for you!”

The kid ran, pressing a hand to his cheek. He turned briefly to Victor, eyes wide with fear, blood dripping from his face and staining his T-shirt.

The man did not take his eyes off Victor. He did not move, did not blink. He waited, arms wide, the palms of his huge hands turned towards him, until Julien was out of sight. He kept his thumb pressed against the handle of the flick knife. They heard the gate close, the soles of the kid's trainers slapping along the road. The dogs lay slumped on the grass, their sides quivering in the heat.

The man lit a cigarette. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and jerked his chin at Victor.

“So what you gonna do now? Throw stones at me? Gonna call the dogs? Not so tough now, are you? You're just like your mother. Soon as I showed her who was boss, she caved. Nothing but shit on my shoes. That's whores for you. They open their mouths and spread their legs and they don't even know why. Am I right?”

He closed the flick knife and slipped it back into the pocket of his trousers. He ran a tentative hand over his close-cropped hair, glanced up at the white sky, blinked and pulled a face. He stepped towards Victor, skirted around him without making eye contact and leaned against one of the window shutters in the shade. Victor had to turn to look at him.

“What did the pair of you come here for? To steal stuff? Who lives in this shithole anyway?”

Victor shrugged. He thought about the viper now probably coiled up around the old man's napkin, or wriggling about looking for a way out. Then he calculated his chances of escape, of retrieving his bike or running through the vineyards, making it as far as a storehouse or a
winery. No chance. He was sorry he had left his knife in his bag rather that slipping it into the pocket of his shorts. He would have started a fight with this guy, stuck the knife into his throat or slashed his face. He pictured the scene and a shiver ran up his arm and down his back.

Éric opened the door and gestured for him to come over.

“Get inside. Don't make me come over there.”

Slowly, Victor walked towards him and stepped into the filthy hall. The man came in behind and quietly closed the door. Victor could hear him behind him, breathing. He bowed his head. Waited for the blow.

“Jesus fuck, I don't believe it,” the man said.

He opened the door to the dining room and stopped dead when he saw everything smashed on the floor. He turned back to the boy. His piercing blue eyes shone in the darkness. He made a sort of grimace. Perhaps this was how he smiled.

“Been behaving like a little chav, have we? You mother would be disappointed. Did you think about that?”

“So what? You're not my papa, what the fuck's it got to do with you?” Victor said this in a breathless rush without a second's thought. Instantly, he dreaded how the man might react.

The man did not move. He grimaced again.

“How would you know, you little bastard? How would you know who your papa is, with all the guys who fucked your mama over the years? D'you ever think about that? You see, that's the thing with a whore's kids, they never know who they are. You're old enough to think about it now, aren't you, now you're all alone in the world. Maybe I should give you a hug, my son.”

He gave a soundless laugh. He spoke quietly, almost gently, but every word hit Victor like a kick in the stomach. The boy thought of a knife being twisted in a wound. He knew for a fact that this man had killed his mother and had enjoyed it. He knew for a fact that he would kill this man. Or this, at least, was what he vowed as the man looked to see how much pain he had inflicted with his words, and this is what gave him the strength to stand there, to stare him down.

“So what did you kids come here for? There's nothing worth nicking here.”

Éric stood in the middle of the kitchen glancing around suspiciously, looking for some clue that might betray the boy's intentions. Then he grabbed Victor by the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him towards him.

“What's the matter, you little queer? Got nothing to say?”

Victor lashed out, jabbing an elbow into his belly, probably surprising him more than it actually hurt. The man pushed him against the table, slammed his head down between a dirty bowl and a hunk of stale bread. Victor let out a high-pitched scream and started sobbing, his jaws clenched tight, his face lined with pain and rage. The man almost lay on top of him, pressing his lips against Victor's ear, still forcing the boy's head down on the filthy tablecloth.

“Readies, is it? The old bastard stashes his cash here and you little shits came here to rip him off? Where is it, then, where's the money?”

“No, no,” Victor gasped, “it's not money.”

Outside the dogs began to whine, the gate squealed and there was the sound of a car rolling across the gravel, its engine turned off, probably being pushed by the old man. Victor tensed, he felt sweat stream down his back as though someone had poured a bottle of water between his shoulder blades. Éric stood up and pressed an ear to the door leading in to the hall. He took out his knife, placed his thumb on the catch and waited.

The dogs fell silent. There was a sound of metal, the noise of things being moved around in the shed. The man was grumbling, muttering to himself, or maybe talking to the dogs. The front door was opened slowly, then the old man seemed to stand for a moment on the threshold as though listening for something suspicious. Éric was breathing through his mouth, his lips formed an O, his eyes stared at Victor without seeing him, or tried to drill through doors and walls so he could know exactly what the old man was doing as he wandered into this house that had suddenly become a trap, sensing the danger and muttering to himself to allay his fears. The living-room door opened and
there was total silence as the old man surveyed the wreckage, paralysed with shock or choking with rage while Éric, knife in hand, looking less vicious now, less arrogant, stared at the door behind which the old man still stood, reeling from the shock. He kept giving Victor quick sidelong glances and the boy realised he no longer knew what to do and thought perhaps he might make the most of the anxious hesitation he could see in Éric's eyes to try and make his escape. He was trying to summon strength to his trembling legs when suddenly he felt a draught on his face as the living-room door was wrenched open and the old man bounded into the kitchen with a furious roar, waving his rifle, firing wildly at Éric and missing, cocking the rifle again, cursing and swearing as his target rushed at him, one hand grabbing the barrel to deflect it or yank it from him, while with the other he slashed the old man's face and throat with the flick knife.

Victor had backed away against the fridge and if he could he would have slipped between it and the wall because by now the old man was covered in blood and bellowing, still clinging to his rifle, occasionally finding enough breath to swear at his assailant. Another shot rang out and hit the tiled floor a metre from where Victor was crouched. The bullet must have ricocheted because one of the windows exploded with a crash that made him cower in panic. It was then that he realised that the door was still open and he turned, preparing to make a run for it, and when he saw the two men rear up, both clutching the rifle, and whirl around the room like two drunken dancers, he dodged past the table, shuddering as his hand grazed the drawer in which the snake was lurking, then ran and ran, knocking into furniture, bumping into doorframes, slipping on the filthy linoleum in the hall before finding a foothold on the gravel outside while the howling dogs dashed through the door he left wide open.

Back on the road, looking around for his bicycle, he realised he was deaf. He stood stock-still but could hear nothing but a dizzying buzz underscored by the frantic pounding in his veins. He shook his head, stuck his fingers in his deafened ears, but it made no difference. This scared him a little and he turned back towards the house, expecting
that at any moment it would explode or go up in flames, then spotted the E.D.F. substation, ran over to it and got on his bike. The breeze on his face brought him round and he concentrated on the effort he had to make to pedal, he felt sweat stream down him, felt sensation return to his body, something more than the trembling and the cold that had gripped him in the kitchen where the two men were fighting. Gradually his eardrums also recovered and the muffled buzzing was replaced by a permanent whistling which seemed to come from the depths of his brain. As he passed the water tower, he saw the village at the bottom of the hill and this reassured him as, almost happily, he allowed the bike to freewheel down.

When he got back, Nicole, just back from doing the weekly shopping in Pauillac, asked him to help unload the car. She did not notice anything was wrong, and he could breathe easy again. He felt as though he had been reborn, as though everything around him was returning to its proper size and place, to a stillness that did him good. He carried the drums of mineral water and the heaviest bags, and was careful to bolt the doors behind him. When he had finished, Nicole slipped an arm around his neck and hugged him to her chest, kissed the back of his damp neck. He let himself be hugged, smelling the perfume that seemed to come from her breasts and he thought about Rebecca and his groin ached with a terrible desire for her.

Feeling suddenly exhausted, he wandered aimlessly into the living room, where the television was chatting to itself, and as he passed the sofa he saw, leaning against the high back among the cushions, the small, skinny figure of a sleeping Julien, his mouth hanging open, his face slick, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wanted to wake him, to make sure he had said nothing about what had happened at old Georges' place and his heart beat faster at the thought that by now the old man was probably dead, slaughtered by Éric. In the end he gave up, not knowing what to do; Rebecca would be happy when she found out that piece of scum was dead. Reassured by that thought, he went upstairs leaving the scrawny kid sleeping.

In his room, he quickly fell asleep in the darkness that was almost cool.

He was woken with a start by raised voices which had merged with a sad dream in which his mother did not recognise him. He wiped away the tears from his nightmare, touching only his dry cheeks, then went to the door to listen.

Denis was there, Victor could hear him talking loudly, probably into the phone. Nicole was also saying something unintelligible. Victor held his breath for what seemed like forever when he heard that old Georges' had gone up in flames, that it had been almost completely razed by the time the fire brigade arrived. Slowly, he went down the stairs and immediately he saw Julien, still on the sofa, staring at him wild-eyed, a panicked look on his face.

He and Pradeau had decided to go and forget their troubles “somewhere pumping with sound and fury” and they found such a place; from the moment they stepped inside they had been bludgeoned by the deafening howl of feral rock music and overwhelmed by the oppressive heat and the swirl of smoke.

Right now, Pradeau was talking to him, but he could not make out what he was saying, catching only a word or a syllable here and there and attempting to string them into something that made sense, but more often than not the crushing wall of sound which kept them pressed against the bar almost as effectively as the people crowded around them reduced all human language to gibberish, so Vilar simply nodded and smiled, or adopted a serious look, trying to coordinate himself with the alternately satisfied, excited or distraught expressions flickering across the face hovering above a pint of Guinness less than fifty centimetres away. From time to time an arm would be thrust between them only to immediately withdraw clutching the handle of a tankard, and they would have to step back or duck their heads to make way for the countless beers of varying hues being swilled by the gallon all round. The place was pounding to a fusion of rock and heavy metal with shrieking guitars and a thumping bass that hit you in the solar plexus like a dozen Lilliputian boxers let loose among the clientele. Vilar thought he recognised a Gary Moore song he used to listen to long ago, the high-pitched harmonies sounding horrible at this volume.

Vilar blinked, trying to keep his eyes open in the thick, acrid pall of
smoke that clung to his sweaty face and even seemed to compact the glare of the spots into tangible slabs of light through which hazy shadows moved. From the moment they arrived, his mouth had been filled with a coppery taste which he did his best to wash away with long swigs of beer, only to immediately light another cigarette since there was nothing else to do, because he had long since lost any desire to do anything at all tonight.

Pradeau began by talking about his ex-wife, how he still did not understand why she had left, yet still he felt vaguely guilty – miserable, wretched – and Vilar could hear the mournful intonations in his voice as it grew hoarse from drinking, smoking and having to shout in order to be heard. Then he talked about his sick mother, whose memory was completely gone, his distraught father trying to take care of her, stooped, shrunken in his grief, constantly by her side, a shadow of the shadow she had become. He looked up and Vilar saw the heartbroken look of a little boy, then he smiled bravely as he lit his umpteenth cigarette. He and his brother sometimes met up at their parents' house, but found they had nothing to say to each other.

Once or twice he had talked bitterly and regretfully about the brother with whom he had cut all ties.

Pradeau trailed off and sipped his beer. He shook his head.

“He'd be better off dead.”

“It can't be that bad, can it? He's your brother …”

“Oh, not really … If only you knew. A toast,” he said raising his tankard, “to traitorous brothers and true friends!”

They clinked glasses, forcing themselves to smile, but their pinched faces, their eyes red from the smoke, suggested only weary melancholy.

When the music stopped, suddenly, brutally, Vilar felt relieved, as though some guy who had been sitting on his chest for the past hour had finally got up. Even Pradeau was quiet, his momentum lost, plunging his nose into his beer. It seemed that the sea of faces was thinning out, bodies straightened up and remnants of the crowd stood, revelling in this precious moment. At the far end of the room, he saw a group of musicians setting up on a small stage. There were five of them: guitar,
bass, lead singer with bodhrán, violin and drums, flanked by an impressive battery of speakers from which one could but fear the worst. Vilar emptied his glass, felt a cool breeze on his face: someone had opened the door onto the street. It was at that moment he realised he was drunk, because the cool air rekindled the embers smouldering inside his head. Then someone tapped his hand and he looked at his fist curled around the handle of the tankard and up into the eyes of the waitress who wanted to take the glass; she smiled at him and asked if he wanted another. He nodded and, leaning towards her, felt a smile stretch his face, which probably looked like a crumpled sheet of paper suddenly smoothed out to reveal a message you did not want to read a moment earlier, because this girl was beautiful, luminous in this murky light, in this fetid atmosphere, singular amid this sweaty crowd. He was surprised not to have noticed her earlier, probably because since he had come into the bar, he had moved in a bubble, the sort of diving suit or survival suit into which he often withdrew to try to keep on breathing.

It was precisely the sort of beauty that, once seen, makes every other human presence disappear. Some guy ordered something and Vilar felt a fleeting pang of hatred for this intruder, hated the way she leaned forward, almost touching the man, so that she could hear what he was saying as though oblivious to the fact the music had stopped and it was possible now to be heard without having to scream. The girl shared some joke with the stranger and they both burst out laughing, then she went back to the beer pump. She must have felt Vilar's eyes on her shoulders, bare in her sleeveless black T-shirt, because she turned and shouted, “Be right with you!”, shaking her dark hair. She had a slim figure and to Vilar it seemed that behind the bar strewn with barrels, the boxes and the crates, she moved with the grace and suppleness of a dancer.

“Camille,” Pradeau suddenly whispered into his ear.

He looked at him for a moment, puzzled.

“Her name's Camille. And her boyfriend's the guitarist.”

Vilar shrugged. The girl came back to them, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She addressed him, asking what they wanted in a hoarse, cracked tone that made him think of scratches made by a cat.

“Same again,” he said, nodding at the glasses.

He racked his brain for something halfway intelligent to say to her, but all he could find in his addled brain were tedious platitudes. She turned away and walked off. Pradeau too stared after those shoulders, that back, that waist.

“Just looking at her I feel better,” he said with a sigh.

Victor was about to say he felt the same thing when a guitar chord exploded from an amplifier. Both men simultaneously shrugged and smiled. The drummer started warming up.

“Let's finish this one and get out of here,” Pradeau shouted.

“Too bad about the beautiful Camille, I'm sure she'll survive without us. It feels like he's drumming right into my brain.”

The waitress came back with their beers and set them down. Vilar quickly whipped out a twenty-euro note but she was already at the far end of the bar. As the band started playing, Vilar felt the phone in his pocket vibrate. He put a finger in one ear, yelled into the mouthpiece for the caller to speak up, shook his head. Pradeau realised something was happening and leaned forward, staring at him worriedly.

He did not understand the first words, but he recognised the voice as that of Daras.

“Sandra de Melo, in Pessac.”

“What do you mean, Sandra de Melo? What about her?”

Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. The connection was bad, Daras spoke haltingly as though she were walking briskly.

“A massacre. Some kid had his throat cut. The neighbours called the police … Around 9.00 p.m.”

Vilar felt his heart stop. He sucked in a lungful of air.

“What do you mean, massacre? Who?”

“Shift your arse. We'll meet up there. I'll call the
procureur
.”

“I'll be right there,” he yelled twice, so loudly that people turned and looked at him in astonishment. He caught the stricken gaze of the waitress, whose beauty now seemed like a lantern disappearing into the darkness. He swallowed a long draught of beer, not taking his eyes off her until, with Pradeau stumbling after him, he elbowed his way
through the crowd, this bunch of morons, determined to smash the face of the first person to hassle him. As soon as they were outside, he tried to run, but his stomach lurched, he felt completely breathless, panting as he told Pradeau what little he had learned and why they had to hurry.

They walked in silence back to the car, Pradeau's, which was parked by the gardens outside the town hall. Both stopped and leaned on the bonnet to catch their breath, shaking themselves in an attempt to shed their inebriation, coughing up the cigarettes they had chain-smoked, sweating in the summer night filled with the bustle of pedestrians making the most of the illusory cool of evening, whereas to them the warm air felt muggy, heavy and squalid, and waiting at the end of their journey was another corpse. More blood.

It was Vilar who drove, since he felt a little less drunk than Pradeau, and he barrelled down the empty city boulevards and through the deserted suburban streets, windows rolled down, running every red light with every ounce of concentration he had left. Both men sat rigid in their seats, eyes wide and staring, neither of them spoke. It was difficult to tell whether they were drunk or aggressive, since the alcohol set their expressions in a scowl and exhaustion made them blink more even than did the hot air reeking of tar and motor oil that whipped at their faces.

They were stopped a hundred metres from the tower block by three officers in riot gear who had set up a roadblock with their van and glanced up from time to time at the windows, most of which were lit up. A little further on, there was a patrol car parked beneath the trees with four men in plain clothes armed with tear gas.

“O.K., go ahead,” the officer said, after checking Pradeau's warrant card.

“That your own car? Well watch out, we had beer cans lobbed at us earlier tonight.”

Vilar drove on and parked behind a fire brigade ambulance. There were police everywhere, he could see about thirty posted around the tower block, patrolling the green areas or climbing back into their patrol cars and driving off slowly.

As he got out of the car, Vilar heard yelling, a commotion that
echoed harshly off the buildings. At the far end of this stretch of road that ran alongside the building a group of about fifteen figures was being kept at a respectful distance by uniformed security guards. Daras' voice from behind made him start. She was accompanied by Annelise Leroux, the deputy
procureur
, who watched dazed as the two officers approached.

“Sorry … I'll never quite get used to this.”

Daras was watching the small groups of busybodies chatting at the foot of the building.

“I see the French underclasses have crawled out of their holes … Nice around here, isn't it?” she said with a sweeping gesture of her hand.

“And then we wonder why they kick off … I had to talk down the C.R.S. captain from mounting a baton charge. Fancied kettling some chavs … I mean, Jesus, twenty cretins screaming ‘police scum' and throwing empty coke cans. If they'd had gone in, we'd have cars burning and truncheons flailing all over the crime scene by now. What a tosser! He brought the C.R.S. to ‘secure the scene' as they say. O.K., come on, we need to get a move on. There's someone waiting for us.
Madame procureur
, I'll call you tomorrow morning, O.K.?”

The young woman nodded, tight-lipped, and took her leave without a word.

“Poor girl's got a weak stomach. But I've got a lot of time for her, she's straight up,” Daras said as she watched the deputy
procureur
walk back to her car.

“Shall we go take a look?
L'Identité judiciaire
got here about five minutes ago.”

She walked towards the entrance of the tower block being guarded by two officers.

“So what's the deal?” Vilar said.

“Some kid from the estate. Sofiane Khalef. Stab wound to the throat. I called you in when I realised it happened in the block your witness lives in.”

“And where's she?”

Vilar climbed the four steps leading to the lobby.

“No-one knows,” Daras said as she stepped over the threshold.

“Before we set off, I asked for an officer to be sent around to her apartment, but the place was empty. The door wasn't locked.”

The police in the lobby were doing very little, as were the various witnesses, who seemed to be setting up some sort of shrine. As they turned to look at him, Vilar felt the hostility they reserved for all intruders.

A body lay beneath a blanket at the foot of the stairs, a pool of blood spreading next to the head. There were also long blood spatters on the wall above the body. Vilar lifted the blanket and shuddered: it was one of the three little thugs who had tried to wind him up the day he came to interview Sandra de Melo.

“Was he with his mates?”

“What mates?” Daras said, astonished.

“You know this kid?”

“They were hanging around the first time I came here. They did their best to piss me off. Might be worth checking if these brave gentlemen were present when it happened and took off after the kid got shanked to avoid any grief.”

Daras jotted this in her notebook.

“We haven't got the manpower. Door-to-door will have to wait for tomorrow, but I'll put a call in to Ferrand anyway …”

Vilar did not let her finish. He stepped around the body and took the stairs three at a time until, reaching the first landing, he felt sweat course down his back, his legs buckle and his head spin. He tried to catch his breath, grabbed the banister and hauled himself to his feet, panting, then spat bile onto the ground and carried on up.

When he got to Sandra de Melo's door on the third floor, he hesitated for a moment, listening to the sounds coming from the neighbouring apartments, then stepped inside.

He flicked the light switch with a fingernail and peered about the hallway. The kitchen was directly opposite him, then the living room and two bedrooms. He took the kitchen first, it was spotless, glowing in the warm light of the red and yellow lampshade, everything meticulously tidy. Nothing was left within reach of little José, nothing with which he could hurt himself or someone else. Then, under the
table, between the metal chair legs, he saw the clown. Seen upside down, the painted smile on the little cloth head looked like a rictus.