Total Chaos (11 page)

There were three keys hanging from a nail. I tried them. The keys to the door, and the letter box, I supposed. I closed the door and put the keys in my pocket.

 

I passed Pierre Puget's unfinished masterpiece, the Vieille Charité. In the nineteenth century it had sheltered plague victims, at the beginning of the twentieth the destitute, and then, after the Germans ordered the area to be destroyed, all the people who'd been thrown out of their homes. It had seen a lot of misery. Now it was brand new, and looked magnificent, its lines accentuated by the pink stone. The buildings housed several museums, and the big chapel had become an exhibition space. There was a library, and even a tea room and restaurant. Every intellectual and artist Marseilles could muster put in an appearance there, almost as regularly as I went fishing.

There was a show of work by César, the Marseilles genius who'd made a fortune out of compressing pieces of scrap. Most people in Marseilles thought that was funny, but I just wanted to throw up. Tourists were flooding in, by the busload. Italians, Spanish, English, Germans. And Japanese, of course. So much bad taste in a place with such a painful history seemed to me a symbol of the end of the century.

Parisian bullshit had reached Marseilles. The city dreamed of being a capital. The capital of the South. Forgetting that what made it a capital was the fact that it was a port. A place where every race on earth mixed, and had done for centuries, ever since Protis had set foot on the shore and married the beautiful Ligurian princess Gyptis.

Djamel was coming along Rue Rodillat. He froze when he saw me, a look of surprise on his face. But he couldn't do anything except continue in my direction. Desperately hoping, I suppose, that I wouldn't recognize him.

“How are things, Djamel?”

“Fine, monsieur,” he said, half-heartedly.

He looked around. I knew that, for him, just to be seen talking to a cop was shame enough. I took his arm. “Come on, I'll buy you a drink.”

With my chin, I indicated the Bar des Treize-Coins, a bit farther along. The place I hung out. The police station was just over five hundred yards away, at the bottom of Passage des Treize-Coins, on the other side of Rue Sainte-Françoise. I was the only cop to come here. The others had their regular haunts farther down, either on Rue de l'Evêché or on Place des Trois-Cantons.

Despite the heat, we sat down inside, so as not to be seen. Ange, the owner, brought us two draft beers.

“So, what about the moped? Did you put it in a safe place?”

“Yes, monsieur. Just like you said.” He drank some of his beer, then gave me a sidelong look. “Listen, monsieur. They already asked me a whole lotta questions. Do I have to start all over again?”

It was my turn to be surprised. “Who did?”

“You're a cop, ain't you?”

“Did I ask you any questions?”

“The others.”

“What others?”

“The others. You know. The ones who gunned him down. They really put the heat on me. They told me they could take me in as an accessory to murder. Because of the moped. Did he really whack a guy?”

I felt a hot flash. So they knew. I drank, with my eyes closed. I didn't want Djamel to see how agitated I was. The sweat streamed over my forehead and cheeks and down my neck. They knew. Just the thought of it gave me the shivers.

“Who was the guy?”

I opened my eyes. I ordered another beer. My mouth felt dry. I wanted to tell Djamel the whole story. Manu, Ugo and me. The story of three buddies. But whatever way I told him the story, he'd only remember Manu and Ugo. Not the cop. The cop represented everything that made him throw up. Injustice personified.

 

I piss on you and your police machine

Brainless sons of whores

Upholders of the laws

 

That was a lyric by NTM, a rap band from Saint-Denis. A big hit in the suburbs, among fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, despite being boycotted by most radio stations. Hatred of the cops was the one thing that united the kids. True, we didn't help them have a very exalted image of us. I should know. And the words ‘friendly cop' weren't written on my forehead. Anyhow, I wasn't a friendly cop. I believed in justice, the law, things like that. Things that no one respected, because we were the first to ignore them.

“A gangster,” I said.

Dajamel didn't give a fuck about my answer. It was the only kind of answer a cop could give. He hadn't expected me to say, “He was a good guy, and besides, he was my buddy.” But maybe that's what I should have said. Maybe. But I'd stopped knowing what to answer kids like him, kids like the ones I met in the projects. Sons of immigrants, without jobs, without futures, without hope.

They had only to switch on the TV news to realize that their fathers had been fucked over and that they themselves were going to fucked over even worse. Driss had told me about a friend of his named Hassan who'd gone straight to the bank, overjoyed, the day he'd received his first wages. He finally felt respectable, even on a minimum wage. “I'd like a loan of 30,000 francs, monsieur. To buy a car.” The bank people had laughed in his face. That day, he'd understood it all. Djamel already knew it. And in his eyes, it was Manu, Ugo and me that I saw. Thirty years before.

“Can I take the moped out again?”

“If you want my advice, you should get rid of it. ”

“The others told me it was no problem.” He gave me another surreptitious look. “I didn't tell them you'd asked me to do the same.”

“The same what?”

“You know. To hide it.”

The telephone rang. From the counter, Ange signaled to me.

“Pérol, for you.”

I took the receiver. “How did you know I was here?”

“Never mind, Fabio. We found the girl.”

I felt the earth vanish beneath my feet. I saw Djamel stand up and leave the bar without turning around. I was holding myself at the bar, like someone gripping a lifebelt. Ange was looking at me anxiously. I gestured to him to serve me a cognac. Just one. I drank it straight down. It wasn't a cognac that could hurt me the most.

I
'd seen a lot of ugly things in my life, but nothing to compare with this. Leila was lying face down and naked in a country lane. Her clothes were bunched together under her left arm and there were three bullets in her back. One of them had perforated her heart. Columns of big black ants were scurrying around the bullet holes and the scratches that streaked her back. Now the flies were attacking too, fighting the ants for their share of dried blood.

Leila's body was covered in insect bites. But it didn't seem to have been bitten by a hungry dog or a field mouse. Small comfort, I told myself. There were long yellowish streaks between her buttocks and on her thighs. Dried shit. Her bowels must have loosened with the fear. Or when the first bullet struck.

After raping her, they must have let her think she was free. It must have excited them to see her running naked. Racing to the end of the lane, to the main road, hoping to see the lights of a car. Retrieving the power of speech. Help! Someone help me! Forgetting her fear, forgetting the terrible thing that had happened to her. Hoping a car would stop and humanity would come to the rescue, at last.

Leila must have kept on running after the first bullet. As if she'd felt nothing. As if that burning sensation in her back that took her breath away didn't even exist. She was already running away from this world, to a place where there was nothing but shit, piss and tears. And the dust she'd be eating forever. A place far from her father, her brothers, her occasional lovers, the love she'd longed for with all her heart, the family she'd never have, the children she'd never give birth to.

She must have screamed when the second bullet hit her. Because, whatever happens, the body just can't keep silent. It cries out. Not because of the pain now, intense as that is. It's gone beyond that. The mind summons all its energy and searches for a way out. Search, keep searching. Forget that what you'd like more than anything is to lie down in the grass and go to sleep. Shout, cry, but run. Run. They'll leave you alone now. The third bullet had put an end to all her dreams. The sadists.

With the back of my hand, I angrily brushed aside the ants and flies. I took a last look at the body, the body I'd once desired. The hot, heady scent of wild thyme rose from the ground. I'd have liked to make love to you here, Leila, on a summer evening. Yes, I'd have liked that. We'd have had as much pleasure and happiness as we wanted. Of course, every new caress would only have taken us closer to the inevitable: break-ups, tears, disillusionment, sadness, anguish, loathing. It wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the mess that human beings make of this world. I knew that. But at least it would have existed, that coming together in a passion that would have challenged the mess. Yes, Leila, I should have loved you. Old fool that I am. Forgive me.

I covered Leila's body again with the white sheet the gendarmes had thrown over her. I hesitated when I reached her face. The burn mark on her neck, the torn left ear where she'd lost an earring, the mouth biting the ground. I felt my stomach heave. I pulled the sheet angrily over her face and stood up. There was silence all around. Nobody was speaking. Only the cicadas continued their whine, indifferent to human tragedies.

As I stood up, I noticed that the sky was blue. An absolutely pure blue, made all the more luminous by the dark green of the pines. Like a picture postcard. Fucking sky. Fucking cicadas. Fucking country. Not that I was any better. I staggered away, drunk with hate and grief.

I walked back down the lane, with the cicadas singing all around me. We weren't far from the village of Vauvenargues, a few kilometers from Aix-en-Provence. Leila's body had been found by a couple of hikers. The lane was one of those that lead to Sainte-Victoire, the mountain that was such an inspiration to Cézanne. How many times had he come this way? Maybe he'd even stopped here and set up his easel and tried once more to capture its light.

I folded my arms on the hood of the car and laid my forehead on them and closed my eyes. Leila's smile. I couldn't feel the heat anymore. The blood was running cold in my veins. My heart had dried up. So much violence. If God existed, I'd have strangled him on the spot. Without batting an eyelid. And with all the fury of the damned. I felt an almost timid hand on my shoulder, followed by Pérol's voice:

“Do you want to stick around?”

“There's nothing to stick around for. Nobody needs us. Here or anywhere. You know that, Pérol, don't you? We're just worthless cops. We don't exist. Come on, let's get out of here.”

He sat down at the wheel. I wedged myself into the seat, lit a cigarette, and closed my eyes. “Who's on the case?”

“Loubet. He was on duty. I think that's good.”

“Yeah, he's a good cop.”

 

Pérol took the Saint-Antoine turnoff from the highway. Being the conscientious cop he was, he'd switched on the police radio frequency. Its crackling filled the silence. Neither of us had said another word. But he didn't need to ask any questions, he'd already guessed what I wanted to do: see Mouloud before the others got to him. I knew Loubet would be tactful, but to me, Leila was like family. Pérol had understood that, and I was touched. I'd never confided in him. I'd gradually gotten to know him since he joined the squad. We respected each other, but that was as far as it went. We could have a drink together, but we were both too cautious to go beyond that and become friends. One thing was for sure: like me, he had no future as a cop.

He was thinking about what he'd seen. He felt the same pain and the same hatred as I did. And I knew why.

“How old is your daughter?”

“Twenty.”

“And... is everything OK?”

“She listens to the Doors, the Stones, and Dylan. It could have been worse.” He smiled. “I mean, I'd have preferred her to be a teacher or a doctor. Anything. Instead of which, she's a cashier at FNAC, and I can't say I'm crazy about it.”

“And you think she's crazy about it? You know, there are hundreds of cashiers out there who may be all kinds of things one day. Kids don't have much of a future these days, so they grab whatever they can, when they can.”

“Have you ever wanted to have children?”

“I've thought about it.”

“Did you love the girl?” he asked, and immediately bit his tongue for daring to be so direct. But I knew he'd asked as a friend, and again, I was touched. All the same, I didn't want to answer. I don't like answering private questions. The answers are often ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. Even when the other person is close to you. He sensed that.

“You don't have to talk about it.”

“You know, Leila had the kind of opportunities only one immigrant's child in a thousand has. It must have been too much. Life took it all away from her again. I should have married her, Pérol.”

“That's doesn't stop shit from happening.”

“Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone's life. Even if you know it won't last forever. Did you think about your daughter?”

“I think about her every time she goes out. But you don't find scumbags like these on every street corner.”

“True. But right now, they're out there somewhere.”

Pérol suggested he wait for me in the car. I told Mouloud everything. Apart from the ants and the flies. I told him that other cops would come see him, and that he'd have to identify the body and fill out a lot of papers. And that if he needed me, of course I'd be there.

He'd sat down and listened to me without flinching. Looking me right in the eyes. The tears weren't ready to flow yet. Like mine, his heart had turned to ice. Forever. He started to shake, without even realizing it. He'd stopped listening. He was ageing right there in front of my eyes. The years were suddenly moving faster, catching up with him. Even the happy years had a bitter taste now. It's at moments of misfortune that we remember we're all exiles. My father had told me that.