Another Sun (3 page)

“Really?”

The yellow skin of Lafitte’s face seemed to tinge with a blush. “He worked alongside the Senegalese. He even shook hands with Pétain once—which made him a life-long admirer of the
Maréchal
. A quarter of a century later he was indignant about being sent to prison alongside people who denigrated the Maréchal.”

Anne Marie smiled.

“Wounded in the first war. And decorated. Possibly that’s what helped him get off the death sentence in 1940. Above all, what stood him in good stead with the judges was the fact he was Calais’ favorite employee. At the age of twelve he’d started work on the Calais estate—first as a stable boy, then in the fields. Later he was put in charge of the horses. Very good with animals and the old man Calais was impressed by him—at least, that’s what the half sister says.”

“She’s told you a lot of things, Monsieur Lafitte.”

“Back from the trenches, Calais gave him a job as a foreman. With horses, a house of his own, a maid—and the responsibility of going round the plantation, seeing everything was in order. And paying the workers at the end of each month. Hégésippe Bray got on well with the coolies.”

“Coolies?”

“The Indians. At the end of slavery—after 1848, the Negroes didn’t want to work in the fields any more—the planters brought over indentured laborers from India. Good workers.” He smiled, turning in his seat. “I’m sure Monsieur Trousseau’ll agree with me.”

Trousseau looked up. “Negroes, mulattos, Indians, whites—all the same to me.”

“Negroes and Indians don’t always get on very well.”

Trousseau sucked his teeth noisily.

“Go on,
monsieur l’inspecteur
.”

“There was … there appears to have been a bond of loyalty between the old man Calais and Hégésippe Bray. According to the half sister, Calais considered Bray a son. By 1937, Bray was able to buy land from Calais, and he started growing his own sugar.”

“He continued to work for Calais?”

Lafitte nodded. “And he took a common law wife. This was in 1939, so he was already fairly old.”

Trousseau said, “Forty-two.”

“She was from Saint-Pierre in Martinique. A maid who worked in Calais’ house—a mulatto woman of considerable beauty. However Bray must eventually have decided she was a soucougnan because of the curse she put on him.”

“What kind of curse?”

“She took away.…” Lafitte blushed again. “She took away his virility.”

“Many witches still about,” Anne Marie remarked.

“There was a child,” Lafitte said. “A boy. The boy was found drowned in a rain pond. Bray claimed she killed the child to spite him.”

“Bray killed his wife out of revenge?”

“He killed the woman because she was a witch, a soucougnan. She was young and beautiful, whereas he was old. She wanted a vigorous young man. One night he cut her throat—with a machete. Then he burned the corpse.”

“And he was sentenced to a mere seven years?”

Lafitte’s smile was apologetic. “In those days, courts were more sympathetic to jealous husbands.”

“And they knew all about witches.”

“Bray had the good testimony of Calais. He got life—more than life. Thirty-eight years in a tropical prison.”

Listening, Anne Marie kneaded the back of her bandaged hand.

“When the Salvation Army contacted the half sister, she went down to Cayenne, and she persuaded Hégésippe Bray to return
to Guadeloupe. He agreed on the understanding he would live in the country—on his own. The years of solitude had made him something of a hermit. Bray lived on the edge of the Calais estate.”

“Then why kill Calais?”

“An old grudge.” Lafitte shrugged. “Really there was no reason for Calais not to have taken the land back, even supposing that it’d once belonged to Bray. Like everybody else, Calais must’ve assumed Bray was dead.”

“You believe Bray killed Calais?”

“The motive was there. Hégésippe Bray had made threats.” Lafitte ran his hand through his hair. “And if it wasn’t Bray, who could it have been?”

Drops of condensation had formed on the bulbous glass of the Pepsi Cola bottles.

“Always possible that it was somebody completely different.”

“Such as, madame le juge?”

“Such as terrorists.”

Bray had blue eyes—bright blue eyes as clear as polar water.

The old man shuffled in like a man who had forgotten how to lift his feet. He advanced very slowly, guided by the prison officer who held his arm. Hégésippe Bray’s hands hung loosely before him; they were chained together.

“Unlock those cuffs.” Anne Marie spoke curtly to the officer. “And then kindly wait outside.”

When the officer had left, Anne Marie pointed to a chair. Lafitte took a couple of steps forward and placed it behind the old man.

Hégésippe Bray was wearing a faded prison uniform. The top buttons of the shirt were undone, revealing tight curls of white chest hair. He had not shaved. The skin of the jaw—a matte black like leather—was partially hidden beneath white stubble that gave him the look of an escaped convict.

Hégésippe Bray had once been strong; his chest was deep and his shoulders broad. Now as he lowered himself carefully into the wooden chair, putting his weight on Lafitte’s arm, he winced with pain.

Trousseau remained behind his desk, watching the old man.

In silence, Anne Marie and Hégésippe Bray stared at each other. Anne Marie had never seen a black man with blue eyes.

The innocent, clear eyes of a child.

“I am Madame Laveaud—the
juge d’instruction
—and I’ve been charged with the Calais dossier—the murder of Raymond Calais.” She tapped the beige folder. “There’d appear to be a prima facie case against you, Monsieur Bray, and you’re temporarily being held at the
maison d’arrêt
in Pointe-à-Pitre so that you can help us in our enquiries.”

There was no reaction.

“It’s my job to see whether the accusations that the gendarmerie of Sainte-Anne has made against you are sufficiently founded for you to be sent for trial before a court of law.” She paused. “Do I make myself clear?”

The eyes stared at her.

“Do you understand, Monsieur Bray?”

The old man turned, moving his head with his shoulders. He looked at the greffier.

Anne Marie said, “I want to help you, Monsieur Bray.”

Lafitte coughed. Behind the typewriter, Trousseau was silent.

The old man’s forehead formed long ridges. Slowly, very slowly, he looked about the office, at the lace curtains and the filing cabinets. He looked at the photograph of the president of the Republic, Giscard d’Estaing.

“Please tell me if you understand.”

Lafitte gave the old man a reassuring nod.

Hégésippe Bray spoke in Creole. His voice was higher and thinner than Anne Marie had expected.

Trousseau grinned.

“What’s he saying?”

Trousseau rubbed at his moustache and his dark eyes twinkled. Glancing at Lafitte, he tried to smother his smile behind his hand.

“Well, Monsieur Trousseau?”

Hégésippe Bray saw the smile on Trousseau’s face and nodded.

“Kindly tell me what Monsieur Bray’s just said.”

“You’re a woman.”

“Of course I’m a woman, Monsieur Trousseau.”

“He’d like to speak with Monsieur Lafitte—alone.” Trousseau wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He doesn’t wish to talk with you.”

“Tell Monsieur Bray to remember how he was treated by men.” Anne Marie had to stop herself from bridling. “How men deported him, men put him in prison, men sent him to work in a foreign country. Remind him how men punished him and then forgot all about him. And when it was time for him to return to Guadeloupe, those same men couldn’t be bothered to send him home. Kindly tell him that, Monsieur Trousseau.”

Trousseau shrugged. “I think he knows.”

“Kindly do as I say.”

“He can speak French.”

“Then why doesn’t he speak French with me?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t want to.”

“I’m not going to send him to rot on Devil’s Island. Or on the Moroni.”

It was Lafitte who then cleared his throat to speak. “He’s not used to dealing with women.”

“More’s the pity.” She took a deep breath and turned. She gave Hégésippe Bray a reassuring smile. “I’m not going to send you away to die in prison. You’ve already suffered enough, Monsieur Bray.” She stood up and moved round the desk. Today Anne Marie was wearing her Courrèges skirt. The blue eyes followed her.

With a movement of her hand, she gestured to Trousseau to stop his typing. She approached Hégésippe Bray—he smelt of carbolic soap—and bending down, she placed a hand on the worn cotton of his shirt. “I’m your friend.” She could feel the bones of his shoulder. “I want to help you.”

The old face remained impassive.

“There are things I need to know, and I can’t help you if you won’t help me.” She spoke slowly. “You must tell me what happened, Monsieur Bray.”

The silence was broken only by the brush of the curtains against the wood of the window and the distant sound of traffic.

“Please help me.”

Lafitte coughed.

“For your own sake, you must help me.”

Hégésippe Bray shook his head, and at the same time, he shrugged her hand away from where it lay on his shoulder. “
Une greluche
,” he said defiantly.

The slang word for a woman. He used the intonation of Paris. Of Pigalle and Belleville, beyond the boulevards. Paris—the cheap pimps, the dry smell of the
métro
, the weasel-faced gangsters, the painted whores, the
gonzesses
. Paris—a soulless world of asphalt and despair.

“The penal colony doesn’t exist anymore—you know that.” Anne Marie returned to her seat. “Nobody wants to send you there. You will not leave this island—even supposing you’re found guilty.”

The old man lowered his head.

“If you want to live in peace with your goats and your garden, then you must help me—help me by telling me the truth. Monsieur Bray, the gendarmerie at Sainte-Anne believes you’re involved in the death of Raymond Calais. In his murder.”

“I didn’t kill no one.”

He spoke in his throat, guttural and tough. He must have picked up the accent from the riffraff of the penal colony—the murderers and gangsters who were sent out to Cayenne at the time of the
Front Populaire
. And before.

“You wanted revenge.”

A ship—a cruiser, perhaps bringing American tourists—sounded its horn in the harbor.

“You wanted revenge because Raymond Calais took your land—land his father had sold you forty years ago.”

“Old man Calais was just.”

“You wanted to get your revenge on his son.”

“Monsieur Calais was good to me. I was his foreman for more than twenty years.”

“His son is dead.” She folded her arms. “You’re accused of killing him. Of shooting him point-blank through the chest.”

Hégésippe Bray shook his head.

“You told everybody you wanted revenge.” She leaned forward. “Did you kill Raymond Calais?”

He did not speak.

“Did you shoot him?”

He waited before shaking his head slowly.

“Then who did, Monsieur Bray?”

The blue eyes stared at her.

“Who killed Raymond Calais?”

He spoke slowly. “I didn’t kill the son of my employer.”

“Who killed him? Who shot Raymond Calais in the chest with a gun?”

“You are a clever woman. You have studied. You speak French. You can read. You’ve been to school.” A wrinkled finger pointed toward the pile of well-thumbed Dalloz texts. “You’ve studied many things. And you have soft hands.”

“Answer my questions.”

“Very clever.”

“Did you willfully murder Raymond Calais on the Sainte Marthe estate on September 7, 1980?”

“Clever.” The leather of his face broke into a watery smile. “But you don’t understand nothing.”

“It was your gun.”

“I know whites,” Hégésippe Bray said. “People like you. With your skin. I have known many whites—criminals, hard men who did bad things. Men who murdered their mothers. With some, I even became a friend—if you can be the friend of a white man.” He spoke very slowly. “Hard men. They understood what they could touch. Things they could touch and see. Things they could kill.” He stopped. “What they could not see they never understood.”

Tired by the exertion of speaking, the old man fell silent.

“Did you murder Calais?”

With a crooked thumb, he tapped his chest. “What a black man sees a white man can never understand. We are not the same. We
are different—like cats and dogs. We were never meant to live together.” He pointed at her chest, “You’re white and you have your books and your soft white skin. But a black man”—he made a gesture toward Trousseau, whose hands were now motionless on the Japy typewriter—“A black man sees things no white man will never see.” A grimace that extended the old, cracked lips. “White man, white woman.”

“What do black men see?”

“He had to die.”

“You murdered him?”

“I did not kill Raymond Calais.”

“Sunday morning and there was nobody in the fields. You saw him and you pulled the trigger. After thirty-eight years. You killed Raymond Calais, you shot him in the chest. It was your revenge.”

“You don’t understand nothing, white woman.”

“I understand only too well.”

“He had to suffer.”

“So you shot him dead.”

“To suffer as he had made me suffer.”

The blue eyes were now cold and small, and they stared at something beyond Anne Marie.

“Like a cockroach that flaps and kicks. You hold it in the candle flame and it knows it has to die. It kicks and its flaps its dirty wings.” He looked at her sharply. “You don’t understand.”

“Understand?”

“Raymond Calais was going to die. He’d lived enough and now it was his turn to suffer. Not shot with a bullet through his heart.” Hégésippe Bray showed her a toothless smile. “Die like a cockroach. In torment, endless torment.”

A bicycle had been padlocked to the parking meter.

“What would you like to drink, madame?”