‘Do you want a hand?’
‘N-no thank you.’
My forensic medicine professor performed the autopsies on three of the victims. He told me that to reach the vertebrae, having gone through the throat, required tremendous strength…
Or a tremendous hatred of women. Of women, or the whole world…
Julie struggled to open the filter and put it in the plastic cone over the coffee pot. Poured ground coffee into the filter. Poured in double the amount before she realised.
‘What do you do?’ asked Guy Georges, behind her.
‘G-graphic designer for a magazine… You?’
‘I was working in a Japanese restaurant, washing up… But I got sick of it, I didn’t go back and they fired me. Can I help with the cups?’
She moved aside.
‘No, stay there… Please.’
In Julie’s handbag, the phone began to ring. Beating her to it, Guy Georges fell on the bag, opened it, found the mobile, pressed the red button. The ring tone broke off. He put the phone in the top pocket of his jean jacket.
‘You can call your friends back tomorrow,’ he smiled. ‘After I’ve gone…’
The water was boiling in the pan. Julie turned off the gas, poured the water onto the coffee. She took two cups and two saucers from the kitchen cabinet and two spoons from the drawer. She turned back to the centre of the tiny studio flat and, making the spoon quiver, put a cup and a saucer on the coffee table, in front of the sofa.
What would he use to tie her up?
Usually, he finds shoelaces in the flat. And he brings his own gaffer tape…
The coffee had almost finished filtering. Julie threw the filter into the sink and picked up the pot of black, boiling liquid.
Which pocket was he hiding the gaffer tape in? And the knife? And when would he say ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to tie you up and gag you for the night’?
After the coffee?
Guy Georges, still with his reassuring smile (but his eyes were cold), raised his cup towards her, holding the edge of the saucer. Julie flung the contents of the coffee pot straight into his face.
He let out a howl. Leapt up from the chair, which toppled over behind him. He lurched forward, his face dripping with black streaks and his skin visibly reddening. He walked forward, hands out in front of him. His big killer’s hands…
Julie turned back to the cooker, grabbed the enormous iron frying pan given her by Grandma Coray, who lived on the Brittany coast.
And brought it down, with all the strength she possessed, on the Bastille killer’s shaved head. Again and again. A red mist passed before her eyes. The man had fallen to his knees, and uttered a groan between every thud of metal to his skull.
By the time Julie Coray had recovered her wits, Guy Georges was no longer moving. A large pool of blood was seeping across the carpet, mixed with the spatterings of coffee.
Julie went to vomit in the sink. Nor having eaten, all she brought up was a little bitter bile. Wiping her mouth and face with a cloth, she went back to the lifeless body.
A wallet was sticking out of the front pocket of the killer’s jeans.
Overcoming her revulsion, Julie tried to find a pulse on the man’s right wrist. Nothing. She placed her fingers on the carotid artery. Nothing there either. Finally, she decided to pull out the wallet, and opened it.
She found an identity card in the name of Florent Chétoui, born 22 September 1967 in Blida (Algeria). And a pay slip from the restaurant Delices d’Osaka, rue de la Croix-Nivert, Paris 15, with a short letter of dismissal.
Julie’s mobile began to ring again. In the front pocket of Florent Chétoui’s jacket. Fighting waves of nausea, the young woman turned the inert body over and retrieved the phone. Big blisters were swelling the face, turning it a purplish red.
‘Julie? You OK?’
Claire.
‘Yes, well… I’m OK. I think…’
‘It didn’t sound like it. Your message, on my voicemail…’
‘Yes, I’m OK… Better.’
‘Did you see, they got him, huh?’
‘What? Got who?’
‘Guy Georges of course! Didn’t you listen to the news? Two cops recognised him and caught him, softly softly, early in the afternoon. He was coming out of Blanche Métro station, went into a Monoprix… They cornered him by the perfume counter,’ she chuckled.
‘…’
‘Apparently he didn’t struggle or anything…’
Stepping over the body, Julie rushed to the TV, pressed the button. She caught the start of the late-night news on TFI. First the presenter’s voice, then his smiling face:
… freely confessed to the murders of Pascale E, in 1991, and Magali S, in 1997. Police are continuing to question him. According to the police, Guy Georges is not North African but mixed race, Afro-European, and only vaguely resembled the two photofits…
Julie had another urge to vomit. She turned down the volume and picked up the mobile again.
What were they talking about, when she had a man’s body in her attic studio in the fourteenth arrondissement? A man she’d just killed, thinking she was acting in self-defence…
Was that Guy Georges’ fault, or Julie Coray’s?
It was all unbelievably unfair.
She had to think hard before calling the police.
Tomorrow, it was Julie Coray who’d be front page news. Unless…
Maybe Claire had the answer.
Dear Claire.
Breton women are strong. They help each other out. If Claire was coming from Cochin, she could borrow a dissection saw from there… Julie eyed the roll of 30-litre bin liners in the open kitchen cabinet, under the sink.
‘Claire…’
‘Yes…’
‘I’ve got a big favour to ask you… If you could come now…’
A sigh.
‘Oh, you poor thing… I called you because I turned my phone on again and got your message. I couldn’t sleep, they’ve stuffed me with painkillers… I’m in Cochin, with a long-leg cylinder cast…’
‘A what?’
‘A long-leg cylinder cast. The kind that goes all the way up your leg from the foot to the top of the thigh. I got hit by a taxi crossing the road outside the hospital, just after we spoke, at midday today… D’you realise, I’m in hospital in my own department. It’s a pain… In plaster for two months! I’m sorry, but I think you’ll have to cope on your own like a big girl…’
Letting the phone fall to her side, Julie Coray straightened up, dazed, and stared at the corpse for a long time. The broken skull, the dented frying pan, the overturned cup and saucer, the coffee pot she’d thrown, smashed to smithereens, the puddle of red, glistening blood with black swirls, reflecting the light bulb on the ceiling. Then her eyes turned back to the TV where the TFI newscaster opened his arms before passing to the next topic. Julie turned up the sound.
… that’s all we can say for the moment on what’s been today’s main news story. Guy Georges will never commit another crime. The spectre no longer haunts Paris, women are safe again and can look forward to the future with a smile!
Putting the mobile back to her ear, Julie wished her friend goodnight and a speedy recovery, promised to visit her in hospital very soon, ended the call, left the TV on for background noise – and pulled from the cupboard a plastic sheet, a broom, a bucket and a floor cloth.
On rue Cels, like everywhere else in the capital, the bin men came every day. Tomorrow morning, Julie would phone Reader’s Digest to tell them she had a cold.
Then she’d go to a DIY store to buy a metal saw.
Translation © Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz