‘Don’t answer, it’s the TV people,’ Zaraoui told Clara.
The girl had finished jabbering. Reyer said to himself that a woman so desperate to talk was capable of making anonymous phone calls. It would be right up her street. He went over to the entryphone.
‘If you don’t confess, I’m going to answer it!’ he barked. ‘The TV lot will rake over every aspect of your life. Then you can say goodbye to your business, you’ll have to practise elsewhere. Bye-bye green oasis in the middle of Paris.’
‘But I didn’t kill Guillaume. I loved him!’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean the anonymous phone call. If that dishevelled-looking guy has just given your name to the muck-rakers, it’s because he knew you were sleeping with Gamier. The whole building probably knows. And your physio husband too.’
Flashes of inspiration were a lot more interesting than the aftermath, so Reyer let Zaraoui add the finishing touches. He searched the bar, found a bottle of rum and took a few swigs from the bottle. He spotted the telephone, dialled Marthe’s number and listened to the message on her answering machine, so professional but so electrifying. This shrink would have no chance in the anonymous phone call business; there was no mistaking her siren voice. He hung up, wiped his damp hand on his shirt and pricked up his ears. Zaraoui was painstakingly preparing the ground. Clara had seen Gamier collapse on the café terrace. For the simple reason that she’d been nearby. Gamier had told her he’d be taking a break at Café Mirage during the morning. He liked playing that kind of game. Arranging to meet her in places he went to with his mates. Exchanging secret looks. She’d been sitting on the terrace, she’d seen him raise his glass to his lips and collapse before he’d even drunk a drop.
‘Why do you think it’s murder?’ asked Zaraoui.
‘This morning, Guillaume took his bike out of the garage and left it in the courtyard for a minute while he popped back upstairs to phone me. He always took his water bottle filled with an energy drink.’
‘Phone you, why?’
‘Just to tell me he loved me…’
That set off the waterworks again. Clara wept, sobbed. Reyer let her cry, then asked, between hiccups, where the husband was. ‘I don’t know.’
‘The water bottle on the bike. Where’s the bike?’
‘Probably at the station,’ replied Zaraoui. ‘Garnier’s friends parked it in the corridor with theirs. You don’t leave expensive machines like that out on the street.’
Reyer called the station. They kept him hanging on. A duty officer said he’d find out about the bike. And informed him it had gone. Reyer asked to speak to his chief. The chief passed the matter on to his team. The chief’s secretary eventually remembered a tall, thin, fair-haired man. He’d calmly walked out with the bike, it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be stealing it. The description matched that of Alexandre Lorieux. Reyer took another swig of rum and reflected on the situation. The number of cyclists in Paris was at its peak during the Tour de France. Might as well try to find a minuscule needle in a colossal haystack. He watched the muck-rakers through the window. They’d let the dishevelled guy go and were hassling another guy. A tall, fair-haired man, the beanpole type, standing beside a bicycle. Looking distraught. Reyer raced down the stairs, bottle of rum in hand. He wielded it like a sabre to threaten the journalists, then sent it flying over the ancient cobblestones. The cameraman filmed him. The sound engineer swung his mammoth-hair device in his direction. Reyer gave the journalist a pithecanthropine clout, grabbed Clara’s husband’s arm and marched him up the stairs, pronto. The physio wouldn’t let go of the bike. Getting up the stairs was a struggle.
Lorieux admitted he’d poisoned Gamier with a shrub brought back from India which was flourishing in his bathroom. It was a magic tree that killed and left no trace. Thousands of Indian wives had found that out to their cost when their husbands had tired of them.
That evening, Reyer hammered on a familiar door in the Canal Saint-Martin district. She opened the door, calm, smiling, wearing a simple tight-fitting T-shirt and a ridiculous little pair of trousers which were too short. He explained that he’d solved a case in a matter of hours but his chief had suspended him all the same for assaulting a bunch of journalists. He needed an emergency consultation. He knew it was 9.46 p.m., but anxiety was quick to spread over ravaged terrain.
‘I’m an ataraxic cop,’ said Reyer sitting down facing Marthe.
That’s a good opener, he thought. With words like that, I might just interest her, surprise her. A surprised woman is always a good thing. After all, that poor sod Gamier managed to surprise little Clara with muscle names. Gastrocnemius is over the top, biceps femoris, I’m losing it, you’re my Achilles heel, my trapezius balance, my brachioradialis muscles want to enfold you, my pectorals marry you…
‘Sorry?’ said Marthe in her melodious voice.
Be still my words, whoa, whoa, slow down my horses running before the cart, it’s to her I must offer you, to her alone, and to her body that could help me so much…
‘An ataraxic cop. From ataraxy, tranquillity of the soul. But not just any tranquillity, Marthe. Absolute tranquillity.’
Translation © Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman
ELLE ET MOI: LE SACRIFICE by JAKE LAMAR
S. has changed her hairstyle. It happened during the rentrée. Before, her chestnut brown mane had hung loosely, girlishly, about shoulder-length. Now she wears it quite short, swept away from her forehead, with a little upward flip at the bottom. It has an early 1960s look about it, this hairdo – and it accentuates her long, porcelain throat. She is no more and no less beautiful to me than before. In fact, S. is not really beautiful at all. But there is a great beauty about her, as Georges Guétary once said of Leslie Caron.
Anyway, I am devoted to her whatever she does with her hair. Because we are meant to be together. I know this. I’m serious: I know it. Like you know you’re you when you look in the mirror. I look at S. and know what our destiny is. And she looks right through me.
Maman mocks me, tells me I have no chance. I hadn’t told her my concept of destiny with S. All I said was that I thought S. could be interested in me. Someday.
‘That’s your medication talking,’ Maman sneered. ‘Do you really think she’d be interested in a mental case?’
This is what Maman always says when she wants to hurt me. But I know I am not a mental case. I was a troubled young man, yes. But I’m OK now. I am completely lucid. And Maman knows I’m not crazy. She wouldn’t call me a mental case if she thought I really was still sick. She says it now just to humiliate me, to rub my nose in the stinking shit of my past.
Besides, Maman doesn’t want me to have any women in my life. She wants me all to herself. She always has. Maybe that was my problem, eh? I’d like to have this all out with her, hold the mirror up to Maman. But I never do. I will, though. Someday. When I can afford my own apartment.