The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe (37 page)

“It’s what Geneviève said. She asked me to be kind to her. Evelyne’d suffered at the hands of her boyfriend …”

“And that she was a lesbian?”

“You seem to have a thing about lesbians,
madame le juge
. Perhaps you’re one yourself.” He shrugged. “Geneviève Lecurieux, Agnès Loisel, Evelyne Vaton—I don’t know if they’re lesbians. I don’t know if you’re lesbian. Nothing would surprise me and really, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“You’re just a loyal, disinterested friend? Zorro to the rescue of these poor, unhappy damsels?”

He looked at her coldly, then let out his breath. “You are a woman,
madame le juge
, and like most women, you’re profoundly misogynistic.”

“Really?”

“You have little time for the other women who fall by the wayside. You’re the perfect woman, the perfect professional, the perfect mother but unfortunately, some women don’t always have such an easy time of it. It’s not always easy to be a woman.”

“Is that why you’ve been accused of rape?”

“Most women want to be loved by a man and nearly all women are
willing to make sacrifices because they feel it’s worth putting up with someone who is selfish, who snores and who spends all his money on Gauloises or his Renault Twelve, who has folds of skin coming over his belt top, who doesn’t wash, who is going bald, who has bad breath.”

“My word, you’re a feminist.”

A cold smile. “Most women shut their mouths and make do with what they get. But women like Geneviève—women who with their good looks should be able to take the pick of the bunch—something frightens them and they look for affection elsewhere.”

“You generalize.”

“Geneviève finds love by being a boy scout, by going out to Africa and by helping the starving children. Vaton has a child on which to shower affection. And Agnès looks for love between the legs of other women.” He held up his hand. “It’s not for me to judge them.”

“That’s why you helped Loisel—because Geneviève Lecurieux phoned you? I find that very noble.”

“I make no claim to being noble. I simply try to be loyal. There are people who’ve helped me—and there are people I try to help. I was expecting Evelyne Vaton to come out from Paris and instead it was Agnès who approached me.”

“You knew Agnès, didn’t you?”

A slight nod of the head. “I’d met her once, when Dugain sent me looking for the black girl.”

“Marie Pierre Augustin?”

“Dugain had gotten involved with her husband, an ex-paratrooper who was trying to set up a garage opposite the university. Dugain had a thing for young black men but unfortunately for him, young black men rarely had a thing for an aging Martinique mulatto like Dugain.” The eyes were turned toward Anne Marie. “The young man got Dugain to give his wife a job and Dugain sent me to find the wretched woman at Dupré and that’s where I met Agnès.” The eyes blinked. “A bitch.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Agnès used me. She knew I was expecting the Vaton girl—I’d even phoned Geneviève’s parents in Basse-Terre—and she came out with this complicated tale about Evelyne Vaton. Something to do with a bank manager in France who was making her life hell.”

“The father of Evelyne’s child?”

“I should’ve phoned Geneviève but she’d already gone off to the Indian Ocean. So I agreed to help Agnès set up the disappearance. She had Vaton’s credit card and …”

“Monsieur Desterres, you expect me to believe you when you say you helped this woman set up her disappearance but you had no idea that the motive was fraud?”

“Believe what you like.”

“No.” Anne Marie banged her hand against the desk. “I’m not interested in beliefs. I want the truth.”

Desterres suddenly and quite unexpectedly started to laugh.

“I don’t see what’s funny.”

“You,
madame le juge
. You think you can frighten me but I’m not scared. I don’t want to go to prison. You seem to think you can bully me into sharing your own petty values. You can’t understand, can you?”

“You are a noble person, Monsieur Desterres, genuinely interested in helping your friends.”

“If I wanted money, you honestly think I’d run a crummy, run-down restaurant on a nudist beach? You think I’d fight for the environment?”

“Dugain made money through the environment.”

“Believe what you choose to believe, Madame Laveaud. There’s no point in my telling you I was trying to help a friend of Geneviève’s. So I won’t bother.” He shrugged one shoulder. “However, you’ll believe me when I tell you I regret ever having met Agnès Loisel. The woman was supposed to spend the day at the Pointe des Châteaux, running into the sea from time to time, getting herself noticed. Instead, at about eleven o’clock, she turned up at my place at Tarare with that stupid Indian banker in tow and with her silly Polaroid camera.”

“These girls all have a thing for bankers.”

“What could I do? She didn’t want to go ahead with the plan. It was her plan all along. Hiring the car, using Evelyne Vaton’s credit card to buy the camera and the cheap bikini, even lying to Geneviève’s parents. Her plan—a plan she’d worked out with Vaton—and now she’d roped me in, she got cold feet. I told her to go back with the Indian to the Pointe des Châteaux.”

“Did she?”

“We took a few photographs and then she went off before midday, but within couple of hours later, she turned up again at Tarare.”

“You lost your temper with her?”

The eyes looked at Anne Marie. “Wouldn’t you? She’d left the car in the parking lot at the Pointe des Châteaux. The Indian had disappeared and I couldn’t run her back and she refused to walk the three kilometers again. Said she was tired. Tired and sun-sick.”

“She stayed in your restaurant?”

“Nobody saw her there. She lay down and she fell asleep immediately. Heaven only knows how because during the day it’s unbearably hot inside. That’s where she slept, at the back. And that’s where she killed herself.”

“With an overdose?”

Desterres shrugged.

“You didn’t do anything?”

“I thought she was asleep.”

“The girl overdosed on cocaine and you thought she was asleep.”

“A little less arrogance,
madame le juge
. Loisel’d pissed me off. She’d used me and when I agreed to help her and her lover friend, for heaven’s sake, she started acting up. Of course I thought she was asleep. I wanted her to be asleep so I could drive back to Pointe-à-Pitre.”

“At what time?”

A hesitation. “After dark—at about seven. I went home but I left a message for her—there was food in the refrigerator and I left the key.”

“You forgot all about her?”

“I didn’t give Mademoiselle Loisel a second thought until Tuesday morning, when I found her dead. Dead—beneath a swarm of flies. Dead for over a day.” He looked at Anne Marie. The eyes blinked a couple of times is succession. “What else could I do but dump her and her bikini on the beach?”

“You didn’t have to go through with the Evelyne Vaton rigmarole.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Why did you come here, telling your lies?”

He shook his head. “How was I to know you could see through my inventions?”

“You panicked?”

“I didn’t panic,
madame le juge
. I felt ashamed of myself. Agnès had pissed me off and I’d wanted to punish the bitch and I knew perfectly well what I was doing when I left her there alone on an isolated beach.
I knew what I was doing—I was even proud of myself. I wanted to teach the wretched woman a lesson.”

“She died?”

“By her own hand.”

“Your fault.”

“She was a stupid, egotistical bitch but she wouldn’t have died if I’d stayed with her. If I’d looked after her, if I’d just looked in on her—a young woman in the bloom of her life. Agnès would still be alive and instead I allowed her to die alone and abandoned.” He picked up his attaché case. “You’d better call in your
greffier
,
madame le juge
. There are some things I don’t like to admit in front of other people. Like all West Indians, I’m proud—possibly because deep down I’m not so sure of myself after all. Agnès Loisel was a scheming, selfish bitch, no doubt, but she was a human being and she was alive. Like you and me, she was alive on this earth.” Desterres clicked his fingers. “Now she’s gone. Gone forever because of my male pride.”

A lie.

“The masculine presence in the house is Fabrice and that’s enough for me and my daughter. Fabrice, Létitia and Anne Marie—it’s a winning team. We don’t need anybody else, Luc. We don’t need you.”

A lie that she believed at the moment of speaking. In the smart restaurant that gave onto the harbor, she had been so sure of herself, convinced she could survive alone, convinced she did not need him. Him or indeed anybody else.

A lie because there had always been a man in her life. Papa, Jean Michel and then for the last four years Luc.

A winning team?

Only once had Anne Marie been alone. It was when she was pregnant with Létitia. After the discovery of the trunk, Jean Michel disappeared. Almost overnight, the man who had sworn his everlasting love in the Jardins de Luxembourg had moved out of her life and Anne Marie was overcome by a grief worse than when Maman had died. Fabrice was staying with his grandmother and Anne Marie took to her bed and for two days, she stayed in her room and wept until there were no more tears. On the third day, after having slept for nearly fourteen hours, she was woken by Létitia moving in her belly. Lying on her back, Anne Marie stared at the ceiling and she knew then a moment of intense euphoria. She would never be alone again.

“We don’t need you, Luc.”

After the frugal yet expensive meal she had left the restaurant She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

The winning team.

The afternoon had been unbearably long and now, at last, she was home with her children and Béatrice was clearing the table. The television was turned on to the evening news from RFO and there were traces of pineapple yogurt on the tip of Létitia’s nose. Fabrice was reading a surfing magazine under the table.

The telephone rang and Anne Marie felt relief flood through her. Relief and guilt.

Létitia slipped out of her chair and ran to pick up the handset. Apart from Luc, very few people had her ex-directory number.

Fabrice spoke softly, almost inaudibly, without looking up. “Maman, stay with us tonight.”

“For your brilliant conversation, Fabrice?”

He raised his eyes in hurt silence as his sister handed Anne Marie the telephone. “A man,” Létitia said.

“
Le juge
Laveaud?”

She held the receiver to her ear.

“Anne Marie, I hear you’ve been upsetting some important people.”

“Good evening, Arnaud. How are you? How’s your wife? How are the children?”

“I thought you decided to let the Dugain dossier drop.”

“Important people? What important people?”

“Your brother-in-law.”

“I didn’t know Eric André was important.”

“You asked for his passport.”

“Dugain committed suicide.”

“Then you needn’t bother Eric André, need you?”

“As you wish, Arnaud.” She looked at Fabrice. “Now, if you don’t mind, I should like to get back to my supper. Unless of course—”

“Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit about André—an upstart with more ambition than brains.”

“Then why the phone call, Arnaud?”

“You know who killed her?”

“Her?”

“The Pointe des Châteaux girl? You know how she died?”

Anne Marie stood up and took the telephone into the kitchen,
closing the door behind her. Béatrice was stacking plates into the washer.

“An overdose of cocaine—she was staying with Desterres. At least, that’s where she died—in his bed at Mère Nature.”

She could hear the
procureur
light up a cigarette. A Peter Stuyvesant. She could almost smell the nicotine of his breath over the line.

“You’re going to arrest him, Anne Marie?”

“We’ll need the Vaton girl from Paris.” She added, “As I understand it, the murdered woman and Vaton were having an affair and they wanted to get out of Paris and were thinking of going to Canada to start a new life. They wanted to set up their little
ménage à trois
—Vaton, Loisel and Vaton’s little baby. But they needed money—insurance money, so Loisel accepted to impersonate Vaton and pretend to drown at the Pointe des Châteaux.”

“Instead she killed herself with an overdose?”

“Precisely, Arnaud.”

“Good work.” Again the sucking sound of his cigarette. “You’ve been quicker than I thought. A lot quicker than I feared. You have proof?”

“Desterres’s made a statement.”

“But no arrest?”

“Desterres lied to me, he set us all up with the Vaton thing and he deliberately went ahead with the mysterious disappearance.”

“Why?”

“The idea cocaine was being used at his restaurant.” Anne Marie caught her breath. “He’s a strange person—a cold fish, but I believe he has a sense of honor. At least I’d like to think so. Something about him that makes my flesh creep, but at the same time …”

“A lot of people make your flesh creep.”

“You noticed?”

“No arrest, Anne Marie?”

“I can wait.”

“Probably a good idea.”

“Arnaud, I’d like to remind you that a few days ago you were pressing me to arrest Desterres.”

“That was before the Collège Carnot thing and before the Dominican got himself killed. Fortunately we’ve come out of the Carnot siege fairly well.”

“Sometimes I wonder who you work for, Arnaud.”

“Guadeloupe was in a state of high anxiety following the girl’s death and in next to no time we identified the culprit—who also happened to be a foreigner.” He gave a brief, smoker’s laugh. “That can suit us all a lot.”

“Can suit you, Arnaud.”

“The
préfet
’ll be only too happy to impose more stringent rules on immigrants. The mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre can count on central funding for the renovation of the ghetto at Boissard—and kicking out the Dominican rastas and dealers. Not a bad thing. Even you will agree that can’t be bad. And …”