Blood Wedding (13 page)

Parents try to shepherd their children, hackneyed jokes spark from one group to the next. They start to head home. The couples go arm in arm. They try in vain to find a pace to suit them both; his strides are longer than hers, he marks time, she smiles, gives him a shove, he laughs, she smiles. They stop. It is loveless, and yet something about it feels good, something that feels like an overwhelming weariness. For the first time, he kisses her with an
air of authority. In a few short seconds, the New Year will have begun, some cars are already blaring their horns in their eagerness to be first. Suddenly, everything explodes, there are screams, sirens, laughter, lights. A wave of collective happiness sweeps briefly over everyone, the event is carefully stage-managed, but the joy is real.

Sophie says, “So are we getting married?” She has asked the question.

“I’m up for it . . .” he says, as though apologising. She hugs his arm.

There.

It is done.

In a few weeks, Sophie will be married.

Farewell, Sophie the Psycho.

A new life.

She can, for a short while, breathe freely.

He looks around at the world and smiles.

May 3, 2000

I’ve
just seen her for the first time. Her name is Sophie. She was coming out of her apartment block. I barely caught a glimpse. She’s obviously a woman in a hurry. She got into a car and sped off so fast I had difficulty keeping up on my motorbike. Luckily she had trouble finding somewhere to park in the Marais, and that made things a bit easier. I followed her at a distance. At first I thought she was going shopping, in which case I would have had to stop tailing her, too risky. But in fact she was meeting someone. She went into a tea room on rue des Rosiers and headed straight for another woman about the same age, looking at her watch to make it obvious she was rushed off her feet. I knew for a fact that she had left home late. Caught red-handed in a lie.

I hung around outside for about ten minutes, then went in and sat in the back room where I found the perfect seat from which I could discreetly keep an eye on her. Sophie was wearing a print dress, flat heels and a pale-grey jacket. I could see her in profile. She is a good-looking woman, the sort most men probably find attractive. Her friend, on the other hand, looked to me like a slut. Too much make-up, too vain, too
female
. At least Sophie knows how to be natural. They stuffed themselves with cupcakes like a couple of schoolgirls. Watching them, I could tell they were joking about breaking their diet. Women are forever going on diets and forever breaking them. Women are so shallow. Sophie is very slim. Much slimmer than her friend.

I soon regretted coming into the tea room. It was a foolish risk, she might have spotted me and, for some reason or other, remembered my face. Why take unnecessary risks? I resolved to be more careful in future. Though I have to say, I like this girl. She’s bubbly.

I
feel in a very strange state of mind. All my senses are heightened. This was why I was able to turn a futile incident into a fruitful opportunity. I left about twenty minutes after they did, and as I was taking my jacket from the coat rack, I noticed a man had hung his coat there. I quickly slipped my hand into the inside pocket and left with a rather handsome wallet. Its owner was one Lionel Chalvin, born in 1969, so only five years my senior. He lives in Créteil. He still has one of the old-style identity cards. Since I have no intention of using it if asked for my papers, I tinkered with it, pasted a photograph of myself on it – I did a pretty good job, too. There are days when I am glad that I’m good with my hands. If you don’t study it too closely, it looks legit.

June 15

It took me about ten days to come to my decision. I’ve just suffered a terrible blow, years of hopes and waiting dashed in the space of a few short minutes. I never thought I’d get back on my feet so quickly, but, oddly, I think I am over it. I’m a little surprised, to be honest. I followed Sophie Duguet wherever she went, I deliberated, I watched her. I finally came to a decision last night while staring up at the windows of her apartment. I saw her appear for a moment, she drew the curtains with a broad, sweeping gesture. As though sowing the stars. Something in me clicked. I realised that I was going to take the plunge. I needed a Plan B in any case, I couldn’t just give up on everything I had ever dreamed about, everything I had longed for. I decided that, all in all, Sophie would fit the bill.

I opened my notebook. There are a lot of things I need to prepare and taking notes will help me think. Because this plan
is much more complicated than the previous one.

Sophie’s husband is a tall guy who seems intelligent and very self-assured. I like that. Well dressed, elegant in fact, though in a casual way. I showed up early this morning so I would be here when he left and I could follow him. They’re doing well for themselves. They own two cars and a luxury apartment. They could be a perfect couple with a bright future ahead of them.

June 20

Vincent Duguet works for Lanzer Gesellschaft, a petrochemical company about which I have managed to track down a lot of information: I don’t understand all the details, but basically it’s a German limited-liability company with branches all over the world and one of the market leaders in solvents and elastomers. The headquarters of Lanzer Gesellschaft are in Munich, the French head office is in La Défense (where Vincent works), and they have three research centres across the country, in Talence, Grenoble and Senlis. In the company’s organisational chart, Vincent appears close to the top, as Assistant Director of Research and Development. He has a Ph.D. from the Université de Jussieu. The photograph in their promotional leaflet looks just like him. It is obviously recent. I cut it out and pinned it to my corkboard.

Sophie works for Percy’s, the auction house (antiquarian books, fine art, etc.). I don’t know what exactly she does just yet.

I started with the easier part, gathering information on Vincent. As for Sophie, things seem a bit more complicated. Percy’s is reluctant to give out anything. With companies like that, you only ever get to see the shop window. Percy’s itself is quite well known, but if you try to track down any information,
you come up only with vague details. This is not enough for me. There is no point hanging around Saint-Philippe-du-Roule where their showrooms are, because of the risk of being spotted.

July 11

I need more detailed information about Sophie and I have noticed that, of late, she has been using her car more frequently – it being July, the streets of Paris are pretty quiet. It didn’t take me long to put two and two together. I had new number plates made for my motorbike and, yesterday, I followed her car at a distance. Every time we stopped at a traffic light, I mentally rehearsed the scene. And when Sophie’s car stopped at the front of the line at a red light, I was ready. Everything went to plan. I felt calm. I rode up on her right-hand side, careful to leave myself room to manoeuvre. As soon as the lights turned amber, I had only to reach out to open the passenger door, grab her handbag, accelerate away and take the first turn to the right. In no time I had covered several hundred metres, zigzagged through three or four side streets, and five minutes later I was casually sailing along the
Périphérique
. If everything were this simple, it wouldn’t be any fun.

A woman’s handbag is such a wonder! What a marvel of grace, intimacy and childishness! In Sophie’s bag I found a pile of things that defy all classification. I worked through them in order. I began with those that told me nothing about her: a travel card (I clipped out the photograph), a nail file, a shopping list (probably for tonight’s dinner), a black biro, a pack of tissues, a packet of chewing gum. The remainder proved more enlightening.

Firstly, about Sophie’s tastes: a “Multi-Active Hand Cream” from Cebelia; lipstick by Agnès b. (“Perfect”, pink spice), a notebook
with a few scribbles, mostly illegible, including a list of books she plans to read (Grossman:
Vie et destin
; Musset:
Confessions d’un enfant du siècle
; Tolstoy:
Resurrection
; Citati:
Portraits de femmes
; Ikonnikov:
Dernières nouvelles du bourbier
. . .) She clearly has a thing for Russian authors. At the time she was reading Coetzee’s
Le Maître de Petersbourg
. She had got to
page 63
.

I read and re-read her notes. I like her handwriting, though barely legible, it is decisive, spirited: it gives a sense of her determination, her intelligence.

About her private life: an open box of tampons (Nett “mini”) and a pack of Nurofen (maybe for period pain). Just in case, I put an X on the wall calendar at home.

About her habits: from her company card, I can see she rarely eats at Percy’s in-house canteen, that she loves movies (she has a loyalty card for Cinéma Le Balzac), that she does not carry much cash (barely thirty euros in her purse), that she has signed up for a series of conferences at La Villette on the cognitive sciences.

Most importantly: the keys to her apartment, her car, her mailbox, her mobile phone – I immediately made a copy of her contacts – an address book that must be ancient, since the handwriting and the colour of the pen varies, a recently issued identity card (she was born on November 5, 1974, in Paris), a birthday card addressed to Valérie Jourdain, 36 rue Courfeyrac, Lyon, that reads:

*

My little poppet,

I can’t believe that a little girl so much younger than me is all grown up now.

You promised to come and visit me in Paris: your present is waiting.

Vincent
sends his regards. I am sending much more: my love, and lots of hugs and kisses.

*

Happy birthday, poppet. Be crazy.

*

Lastly, there is a diary that offers a great deal of precious information on the past weeks and those to come.

I photocopied everything and pinned it to the corkboard, I had copies made of all the keys (some of which I don’t recognise), and then I went and handed in everything – apart from the wallet – at the police station in the next arrondissement. A relieved Sophie got her bag back the following morning.

A nice little trick. And a nice result.

Best of all is finally to feel that I’m doing something. I spent so much time (so many years) thinking and going round in circles, filling my head with images, poring over the family album, my father’s military record, the wedding photos with my mother looking so beautiful . . .

July 15

Last Sunday, Sophie and Vincent went to a family lunch. I followed them from a respectable distance and, from what I knew of Sophie’s address book, I soon worked out that they were going to Vincent’s parents’ house in Montgeron. I went there via a different route and discovered, on that beautiful summer Sunday (why did they not go on holiday?), that they were having lunch in the garden. The long afternoon stretched out ahead of me. So I went back to Paris and investigated their apartment.

At first, I was in two minds about this visit. I was happy at the
considerable potential offered by the situation – unrivalled access to the most private parts of their life – yet at the same time I felt sad, for no reason I could put my finger on. It took me a little while to understand. The fact is, I do not like Vincent. I realise, in fact, that I disliked him on sight. I’m not going to be sentimental, but there is something about that man that I immediately found unpleasant.

The apartment has two bedrooms, one of which has been converted into a study with a relatively up-to-date computer set-up. For the most part, it’s equipment I’m familiar with, but I will probably download the technical manuals anyway. They have a nice kitchen, large enough to have breakfast in, a beautiful bathroom with twin washbasins and separate cabinets. I will have to check later, but an apartment like this must be very expensive. Admittedly, they both earn a comfortable living (I found their payslips in the desk).

There was plenty of light, so I was able to take a lot of photographs from various angles, enough to reconstruct the whole apartment. Photos of open drawers and wardrobes, of various documents (Vincent’s passports, photographs of Sophie’s family, snaps of her and Vincent together which seem all to date from several years ago). I checked their sheets. They seem to have a pretty average sex life.

I disturbed nothing, I took nothing. My little visit will go unnoticed. I plan to come back soon in order to scan for their login details for e-mail, banking, messaging, company intranet. It should take two or three hours – my I.T. certificate will come in useful for once – so I need to be very wary. After my next visit, I will only come back when I have very good reasons to do so.

July 17

I
did not need to rush: they have just gone away on holiday. Since I have access to Sophie’s e-mail I know that they’re in Greece and won’t be back before August 15 or 16. That gives me all the time I need. Their apartment is at my disposal the whole time they are away.

I need a contact who is close to them, a neighbour perhaps, or a colleague, someone who can give me information about their life.

August 1

Calmly, I prepare for battle. Napoleon apparently used to say: “I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good.” However great your patience and your determination, sooner or later you are bound to rely on luck. Right now, I’m a happy general. Even if I feel sad when I think about Maman. I think about her too much. About her love, which is what I miss most. I miss her terribly. Luckily, I have Sophie.

August 10

I’ve enquired with a number of estate agents, but so far without success. I had to visit several apartments I knew would be of no interest to me, but I need to be careful not to attract attention. It has to be said, it was difficult to explain my criteria. After the third agency, I decided to give up the idea. But I hesitated. Then an idea came to me as I was walking along Sophie’s street. I believe in signs. I went into the building opposite theirs. I knocked politely at the lodge of the concierge, a fat woman with a jowly face. I
had nothing prepared, and this is probably why things went so well. I asked her if there were any apartments for rent. No, there was nothing. Well, not nothing exactly. Nothing “that would be worth your trouble”. My ears pricked up immediately. She took me up to see an apartment on the top floor. The owner lives in the country somewhere, and he rents out the apartment to students. I say “apartment”, but actually it’s a tiny studio with a kitchenette; the toilets are along the landing. This year, the student who rented the room has just given notice and the owner has not had time to put it back on the market.