The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (8 page)

‘There’s public education for you,’ Chesnay said, reading his mind. ‘Everything done on the cheap.’ He raised a meaty forefinger. ‘Shitty digs, shitty
classrooms. What does that equal? Grumpy lecturers doing a half-arsed job. Everyone has a right to an education though, just as long as they don’t expect a decent one as well.’

His voice was deep and sonorous. Morel imagined he would have no trouble holding his students’ attention.

‘How have you been, Paul?’ He asked. The two had been on the same mathematics course at university before both realizing they wanted to do something different. Morel hadn’t
contacted his friend in years.

‘Busy and thriving.’ Chesnay gave Morel a keen look filled with the curiosity Morel had always loved him for, and sat back with his hands folded on his stomach. ‘So tell
me,’ he said, ‘how a humble professor of theology such as myself can be of assistance to an eminent commandant of the
brigade criminelle
.’

Morel pulled the pamphlet from his pocket and placed it on the desk before him. ‘I’d like to know what you think of this.’

Chesnay peered at the pamphlet before putting on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

‘My sight isn’t quite what it used to be,’ he said.

‘I bet the girls love the glasses, though.’

‘Yes, I finally look like an academic,’ Chesnay said.

He spent the next few minutes reading through the brochure in silence. Morel looked around the room. Despite being tiny it was comfortable. It was a place that would make you forget the outside
world. Morel couldn’t remember if Chesnay was married.

‘Any idea what sort of church would put out something like that?’ he asked finally.

‘It’s a hodge-podge of things, isn’t it?’ Chesnay said slowly. ‘A bit of this, a bit of that. At times, the language is reminiscent of the sort of evangelical
material you might expect, say, a Baptist church to circulate. For example, where it says:
Are you born again? Have you accepted the shed blood of Christ as the atonement for your sins?
But then there’s this’ – he pointed to an illustration – ‘which is very Russian and one of the leading symbols of the Orthodox Church.’

‘What is it?’

‘A copy of Andrey Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity. It depicts the three angels visiting Abraham.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of Rublev,’ Morel said.

‘Andrey Rublev is perhaps Russia’s most famous iconographer. Late fourteenth-early fifteenth century. The Moscow Patriarchate made a big deal about him in the 1980s – all part
of the Gorbachev-led revival, perestroika and glasnost etc. When all was forgiven and God was no longer considered a pariah.’

‘Russia?’ Morel thought about Irina Volkoff. She had said she thought the boy at her door was Russian.

‘Yes. After the collapse of the USSR, and without the safety net afforded by the Soviet state in areas like housing, health and education, people found themselves struggling, particularly
the older generation. Many Russians started looking for something to fill the void left by the fall of communism. Religion was the obvious answer, but the Russian Orthodox Church, as you may
already know, was discredited during Soviet times; people believed the Church was in cahoots with the Soviet regime, which of course it was. So many Russians turned to other religions.’

‘What kind?’

Paul Chesnay rested his hands on his stomach and looked at Morel.

‘Everything – you name it. Hare Krishnas, Moonies, Mormons. Some have been more successful than others. As it happens, the evangelical churches have done particularly well over
there. Nowadays you’ll find, for example, that roughly half of all Baptists in Europe are Russian. It is astonishing in a way, when you consider how different these evangelical religions are
to the austere formality of the Orthodox Church. Then again, maybe the very reason they have attracted so many people is because their characteristics are so far from the old-school rituals. When
Billy Graham visited Moscow in 1992, just a year or so after the break-up of the Soviet Union, he made quite a splash.’

Morel tried to picture the American pastor on his Russian pilgrimage, anointing a congregation of new converts. It had a touch of the surreal, though it could be said that America had always
exported its beliefs in some form or another. Politics or religion, it was a fine line that separated the two as far as that country was concerned.

‘Is any of that useful to you?’ Chesnay asked.

‘Everything you’ve said is interesting and helps, in a sense. In some ways, though, it doesn’t make my job any easier,’ Morel admitted. ‘I can’t work out
where I should be looking.’

Chesnay took off his glasses and pinched his nose. ‘All I can say is that it’s unlikely to have come from an established organization. It’s not coherent at all. I’d say
it’s the work of an individual on a personal crusade. Incidentally,’ Chesnay continued, ‘I notice your guy keeps coming back to the word “crusade”. Now there’s a
word that crops up often among Baptists, particularly your modern-day Southern Baptists. Including the illustrious Billy Graham,’ he said, articulating the word
illustrious
with
exaggerated emphasis.

‘In what sense?’ Morel asked.

‘Graham called his evangelizing sessions crusades, after the medieval Christian campaigns to conquer Jerusalem. Like I said, these are people who see themselves as crusaders for truth,
seeking to redeem a new Holy Land.’

Morel was wondering what any of this had to do with his case. ‘So you think my evangelist could be one of these crusaders?’

Chesnay stood up and paced the narrow area behind his desk. He cut a ludicrous figure, like a bear trying to pace inside a phone booth.

‘Could be, could be. He’s definitely on a mission. Though
what
he’s preaching is hard to tell. Going by what’s in here –’ he tapped the pamphlet with
his hand, ‘he’s pretty confused. And he’s not acting on anyone’s behalf. Organizations that are trying to draw people in usually have some sort of contact details on their
brochures. This one has no number, website or email – nothing.’

‘I noticed that too,’ Morel said. ‘So why distribute something like this at all, if no one can come back to you? What would someone get out of it?’

‘Maybe they genuinely believe they are spreading the word of God.’

‘Saving souls.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s trying to save himself.’

Morel got back to Quai des Orfèvres at 12.30 and parked the car. From the office he walked towards the Pont-Neuf, past the bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV, one of
France’s most popular kings before he was killed by a fanatical Catholic at the age of fifty-six. His popularity had stemmed from the novel fact that he seemed genuinely interested in the
welfare of his subjects. Even more untypical at the time was the monarch’s religious tolerance. Maybe someone like Henry IV would be better suited as France’s ruler in 2010 than
Sarkozy, Morel reflected. Tolerance was not high on this government’s agenda.

Henry IV was getting a fair bit of media coverage this week following the announcement that a forensic examiner with Poincaré University Hospital in Garches had identified the
king’s mummified head, thus solving a 400-year-old mystery. The head had vanished in 1793, presumed taken by robbers during an attack on graves at the Royal Basilica.

Leaving Henry IV behind, Morel thought back to his conversation with Paul Chesnay. He thought about Russia and the New Age missionaries who were flocking there. His conversation with Paul had
been stimulating, as always, but did it have anything to do with Dufour’s death? Morel felt like a man without a compass. He had no idea which direction he needed to take.

Adèle was at a table drinking coffee when he got there. She smiled when he walked in.

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ she said. Of Morel’s two sisters she resembled him the more. They had both inherited their father’s height and their mother’s dusky
looks – her thick black hair and smooth complexion.

Adèle stirred her coffee and crossed her legs. She wore a red strapless dress that fell to just above her ankles. Black sandals and crimson toenails. Hair worn loose around her shoulders.
The dress clung to her body, drawing stares.

‘What is it? Has something happened?’ He caught the waiter’s eye and called him over. He ordered a coffee. Tables were set up outside on the cobbled footpath. Morel watched the
smokers sitting at the outdoor tables and wished he were among them.

‘It’s Maly. Karl has asked her to marry him.’

‘And?’ Morel said. Already he was beginning to wonder why he’d agreed to this meeting in the middle of a busy day. He didn’t have time to discuss his sisters’ love
lives.

‘She said yes.’

‘Did she now?’ He looked at his sister. ‘That’s great.’

‘Is it?’

‘I think so. Karl’s a nice guy.’

‘You don’t know a thing about him.’

‘Do you?’

‘I know he’s dull.’

‘What has that got to do with you?’ Morel said.

‘She’s not happy. I think she’s going through with this because she’s getting on and worries that otherwise she’ll miss the boat.’

‘What boat?’

‘The baby boat.’

Morel sighed and looked at his watch. ‘I really can’t discuss this now. I have to get back to work,’ he said.

‘Will you talk to her?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Nothing! Just see how she is.’

‘Sure, I’ll give her a ring,’ Morel said. He didn’t tell Adèle that he’d already tried several times and left messages. Maly wasn’t returning his
calls.

‘Thank you.’ She seemed to relax, and she looked at him now, while he fished in his pocket for change to pay for their drinks. ‘What about you? How’s life at home with
Dad?’

Morel counted out the coins and left them on the table. ‘It’s fine. He’s a bit difficult at times.’

Adèle snorted. ‘A bit! I don’t know how you can stand it.’

Morel leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘I have to go.’

‘Promise you’ll call Maly?’ Adèle said.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

‘When are you going to move out?’ she called out as he started to cross the road.

‘Soon.’ He raised his hand.

Walking back to the office, he thought about Maly. He liked Karl. Maly had always had a weakness for academics. Karl was one of the more presentable ones she’d latched on
to. In her younger days Morel had watched them come and go, a few of them insufferable, more interested in posing as writers and thinkers than in actually producing anything. They let their hair
grow long and wore scarves all year round, regardless of the weather. In their back pockets they carried poetry paperbacks, making sure the title was clearly visible. On more than one occasion, as
a younger man, Morel had sat and argued with Maly’s boyfriends over a cheap bottle of wine at her flat. Animated discussions where some pseudo-intellectual with Trotsky-like hair and glasses
would try to tell him that art without suffering was meaningless. That communism was the future, even when it became apparent that the communists themselves had stopped believing it.

Pompous narcissists, many of them. Entertaining, though. Morel had enjoyed riling them.

How long had it been since he’d last seen Maly? Six, seven weeks? It niggled at him, the fact that he’d let so much time go by. The two of them had been close since their
mother’s death. Over the past year they had grown apart. He wasn’t sure why.

He thought about Adèle’s question. When was he going to move out and get his own place?

It was more than twenty years now since his mother’s death. Morel had made the decision then to move back in with his father.

It hadn’t been an entirely selfless decision. Walking back across the Pont-Neuf, Morel thought of Mathilde, his first love, whose memory he couldn’t seem to shake, even now.
He’d lived with her for two years, the happiest time of his life, before throwing it all away. Then he’d lost his mother. Frightened at the extent of his despair, he’d retreated
to his childhood home.

He had grown used to his mother’s absence, but he still mourned Mathilde, who was living her life without him.

The truth was that, since moving back in with his father he had never seriously contemplated a change. He’d never hankered for his own place.

It struck him as strange now.

As he neared the police headquarters on Quai des Orfèvres, he started to feel anxious. Would he always live with his father? Would he wake up one day and find that they had become two
grumpy old men living together, bickering over who had forgotten to turn the lights off before going to bed? His father lost in his books, and Morel seeking some form of resolution to the violence
he dealt with each day. It was a bleak prospect, but for now he couldn’t see his way out of it.

Back at his desk, Morel went over his interview with Chesnay and studied the pamphlet. He scanned Lila’s list of religious organizations again and added a couple of names
to it, based on Paul’s suggestions. Lila and Marco were out talking to every religious organization that seemed most relevant. Morel made some calls of his own, but drew a blank.

He tried to picture the sort of man who would produce a pamphlet like the one he had before him. A man who seemed to be acting on his own behalf. Chesnay was right. There was no consistency in
the message. Morel had the impression that the pamphlet’s author was confused.

Maybe it was a sign of the times, Morel thought. Every day he encountered people who had lost their way. Many who were down at heel and many who had only recently fallen on hard times. Often
when he worked nights he saw people brought in looking like they had no clue how they’d arrived here. Once when he’d been working late, it had been a middle-aged woman in a Chanel suit.
A couple of the regular girls who worked the Place Dauphine had got into a brawl with her for trying to sell her wares on their patch. Bloody and dishevelled, she’d stayed at the station
until her husband was tracked down. When he’d come to fetch her Morel had recognized him as the CEO of one of the larger banks. It was getting harder to predict what you might see, who might
come staggering through the door, who might be handcuffed because they were a threat to others or to themselves.