Talking to Ghosts (13 page)

Lataste stepped towards Vilar.

“What do you mean? Go ahead, ask your questions and let's get this over with, I haven't got all day.”

“I've got all day, and all night too if you're going to lie to me. It's up to you. But since we got off to a bad start, maybe it's better if you come down and explain it to me at the station, where we can write up a formal statement. But let's be clear: a young woman has been murdered. Now you don't seem to care too much about that, which is a little strange since you knew her pretty well to judge by the witness statements we have … If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't be so arrogant and dismissive. But that's up to you. Now, we can do this the easy way or keep up the cocky attitude and I'll call for backup, have you dragged out of here and personally call the
procureur
's office to inform them that you made false statements.”

Madame Lataste turned and ran up the stairs, a door slammed, and the children's chatter trailed off.

Vilar had taken out his mobile and was about to call Pradeau, who was probably transferring the three suspects in the stabbing case to court.

“No, that's O.K., I'll come with you,” Lataste said, patting his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, mobile, whatever.

Before he followed Vilar, Lataste stood for a moment staring up at the landing, now utterly silent. He hunched his shoulders as though
about to step out into the rain, muttered, “Let's go,” and slammed the door behind him.

When Vilar explained why he had decided to bring Lataste in, Daras insisted on conducting the interview. She sensed that that man was more likely to respond to a woman, which would save them time. They left Lataste to sit and stew for a quarter of an hour while they had coffee and talked about how good it would be to get a week away from all this bullshit.

Daras went through Lataste's I.D. papers, then laid a picture of Nadia Fournier on the desk in front of him, followed by several photographs taken at the crime scene. Vilar was sitting at the computer, taking down the statement.

“Can you confirm that we are talking about the same person?”

Lataste could not bring himself to look at the close-ups of Nadia's lifeless body, ravaged from the beating and bloated from the early stages of decomposition. When he did not answer, Vilar said:

“We are agreed, aren't we? That's her?”

“Yes … that's her,” Lataste said in a whisper.

Daras slipped the pictures back into a file and ramped things up a notch.

“A routine question, but a crucial one: when did you last see her?”

“I don't remember exactly. Friday, maybe …”

He spoke in a distracted voice, his head bowed, his hands clasped between his thighs, as though thinking about something else, perhaps the repercussions of this whole business for him.

“What do you mean, ‘maybe'?”

“What exactly was the nature of your relationship?” Vilar interrupted.

“I …”

“So when
did
you last see her?” Daras said. “I trust you realise how important it is that you answer truthfully.”

“Were you having an affair? That might explain the tension between you and your wife.”

Lataste looked from one to the other. He had begun to cower a little.

“Yes. We—”

“What do you mean when you say ‘yes'?” Daras said.

“Yes, we were sleeping together,” he said more loudly. “And we saw each other last Friday – I mean the Friday before last.”

Vilar checked the calendar.

“That would have been the eighth. O.K., when and where?” Lataste slumped back in his chair.

“We were together the whole day. I took her to Hossegor, I was supposed to be looking over a couple of houses we're selling there.”

Daras came up behind him and hissed into his ear:

“And where were you on Monday, 11 June?”

He turned around and looked into her eyes. She jerked her chin, demanding an answer.

“Why the eleventh?”

“Answer the question.”

“I was in the office, obviously.”

“You didn't visit any houses that day?”

“Only in the city itself, you can check with my colleagues or with the clients I saw.”

“Oh, we will check, Monsieur Lataste,” Daras said. “Make no mistake.”

“You're saying you're going to turn up at my office and question everyone about my schedule? Put calls in to my clients? That's going to start people talking. Basically you're going to destroy my reputation in a business that's completely dependent on trust.”

“Yeah, because you're really trustworthy, aren't you?” Vilar said. “In our little meeting earlier today, you were – how shall I put it? – economical with the truth.”

“My wife was there, I was hardly going to confess that I was having an affair with that girl.”

“That girl, as you call her, how did you meet her?”

Daras had sat down behind her desk as she asked the question and now cupped her chin in her hands as she waited for an answer, obviously prepared for anything.

Lataste told the story in a monotone, betraying no emotion, and it was impossible to tell whether he felt nothing or whether he was struggling not to let it show. He and Nadia had met at the office one night. He was working late and they had slept together that same night. She had made all the running, and even now he wondered what it was about him that she had been attracted to, although at the time he had simply made the most of the opportunity and surrendered to a sort of feverish passion, watching himself live out the sort of sex scenes he thought only existed in movies.

The affair had gone on for about four months, made easier by Lataste's frequent trips in the region and the fact that they could use the properties he had to visit for his work: empty houses, quirky old cottages, luxury or dilapidated apartments, barely completed studios in buildings where labourers would sometimes be finishing work on the other side of the partition wall … It had been his idea, this sort of furtive, itinerant existence which he found exciting and which Nadia seemed to get a taste for, though it was hard for him to know what she really thought or felt, she could be secretive, sometimes mysterious, lost in her own thoughts, and there were days when she just let him drive her around and fuck her, as though she were not really there at all.

No, she had never asked for money – what a ridiculous idea. Although thinking about it, perhaps she had been expecting something else, she was never completely happy, but for the most part cheerful enough during their jaunts together.

“It turns out you didn't know her very well, then,” Daras said. Lataste stared at her, mulling over what he was about to say.

“I don't think I gave a shit about knowing her. For me it was almost a dream, meeting this young girl who put the moves on me and going … well, going around and screwing in all these different places, you can't imagine the freedom, the excitement … she was just a fuck buddy, really. That's all. If she had wanted to stop, I wouldn't have insisted on keeping it going. We didn't talk about our lives. I knew she had a thirteen-year-old son, she knew that I was married, and that's it.”

“How did you feel when you heard she'd been murdered?”

Lataste shrugged slowly. He could not bring himself to look up at Daras and he stared down at the desk.

“I don't know. It felt weird. Like I was still in some sort of movie. Obviously I wasn't about to say anything in front of my wife. For me, it was like a break from the real world, something that happened once or twice a week, that's all. A sort of forbidden thrill.”

“With death at the end, just like in the movies? Is that why you didn't get in touch with the police? Nadia's death was the inevitable fate of a misspent life, in some way? You must have known that we'd track you down, surely?”

Lataste bowed his head and sighed.

“Obviously, I was hoping you wouldn't.”

Vilar tapped away at the keyboard for a few seconds, then, unexpectedly, all was silence. The printer suddenly clicked and whirred. It was Lataste who finally spoke.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“We're not bound to answer, but ask away,” Vilar said.

“Why did you ask if she'd ever asked me for money?”

Vilar and Daras exchanged a look, found themselves in agreement.

“We have every reason to suspect that Nadia Fournier was working, at least some of the time, as a prostitute. When a girl like that hooks up with your type, she usually shakes him down one way or another.”

“And what exactly is ‘my type'?”

“Filthy rich and dumb enough to mistake your life for a fantasy. I thought you were an arrogant prick, but right now I think you're just a pathetic fucker.”

“Well you're half right … I have been a bit of a fucker, and when my wife finds out about it I'll be royally screwed.”

“Very good,” Daras said. “Nice to see you haven't lost your sense of humour. You're resourceful. Here we are practically standing over the body of the woman you were fucking not two weeks ago, and you're making jokes.

“Maybe I'd make a good cop.”

“For that you'd need to know which side you're on …” Vilar said.

He and Daras exchanged another look, and Vilar pushed the statement across the desk to Lataste. The man read through it and signed with a sigh.

“This statement will be on the case file,” Daras said. “I hope you haven't forgotten anything, or kept anything from us. We'll call you in again if we need clarification. And obviously if we do call, you'd better make sure you come. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Lataste said in a low voice. “Can I go now?”

The irony and superciliousness seemed to have drained from him. He trudged out slowly, closing the door softly behind him.

“So?” Daras said.

“So? We've found ourselves a true romantic, don't you think? Led around by his dick with his brain in his Y-fronts.”

“Like most guys …”

Vilar smiled.

“Maybe … But he knows more than he's letting on, at least about how Nadia supplemented her income. I can't believe he didn't suspect.”

“Agreed. We can keep up the pressure, but he doesn't look like the type to buckle easily. Just when you think he's about to spill his guts, he suddenly gets a grip. Funny guy.”

The mobile in Daras' pocket rang. She took the call, heaved a sigh, and said she was on her way.

“I've got a meeting with Judge Dardenne in five minutes. I'd completely forgotten. It's about the two corpses we found two years ago, the couple we found bled dry in Montalivet a couple of months dead? Chaintrier has been working on the case. From the witness statements, we'd assumed it was a woman who cut their throats, turns out it was a transvestite, the husband's boyfriend! Sounds like it's turning into a bit of a farce – Dardenne and I always did have trouble taking the case seriously.”

She went out, trailing a ribbon of citrus scent. Vilar slumped into
his chair and sat motionless in the perfumed atmosphere, savouring the smell until the last fragrant molecules had dispersed. He thought again about Lataste, who had just had the shock of his life, a shock from which he might never recover because, at the end of the day, he was simply a middle-class pillock slumming it. An ignorant arsehole for whom ignorance was no longer bliss.

The two boys were forced to shake hands. They eyed each other suspiciously. Between clenched teeth, Nicolas muttered something by way of apology. His nose was still swollen, his cheek bruised, his hair had been cropped short to disguise the spot where Victor had ripped out a hank. They filed out into the hallway. Nicolas went first, and Victor stared at the muscular shoulders that moved as he swung his powerful arms. Outside, sitting in the shade, Nicolas' friends Lucas and Fabrice were waiting: the three boys hung around together, snickering and intimidating the younger kids or talking about pranks they had pulled or were about to pull. The two stooges got up as their leader swaggered out, and the three boys watched Victor head off towards the trees. He could feel their eyes burning into the back of his neck.

Once again the days began to pass in a muggy heat relieved only by the occasional thunderstorm, but by the following morning everything was parched again, tiny plumes of dirt rose from the footsteps of anyone walking along the garden paths, and football matches were enveloped in a grey dust cloud that looked as though it had been drummed up by stampeding herbivores pursued by predators on a sun-baked savannah.

Nothing changed. Victor was looked on with fear or respect, it all depended. Some younger kids came up, shook his hand and introduced themselves, waddling on their spindly legs but trying to swagger, like panicky wrestlers. One day the two brothers, the silent fraternal twins, asked permission to eat at the table where he had been sitting on
his own. Without looking at each other, with synchronised movements, they sat down. Their names were Éric and Cédric, and, yes, they were twins.

“But fraternal twins,” Éric, the dark-haired one, insisted. “My mother always said that we were fraternal, that that's why we don't look like each other, and why we only look like our father.”

“Where are they, your parents?”

The two boys looked at each other and buried their noses in their tomato salads. Victor was sorry he had asked.

“Papa is in Gradignan prison,” Cédric said after a moment.

“Is he coming out soon?”

“He's only just gone inside,” Cédric said. “And this is his second stretch, so …”

Victor did not dare ask about their mother. Here they were, too small for the chairs, there was no need to know the rest.

Nothing else happened. In the evening he liked to watch the night draw in over the grounds and to catch the stars as they appeared in the sky, surprise them at the very moment they began to shine or to flicker, like the one he had spotted just above the lime tree, not far from Venus. It was so delicate, its quavering light so easily masked by the thinnest veil of cloud, that he expected to see it suddenly gutter out in the terrifying darkness, snuffed out by the breeze, and no-one but he would notice. He wondered whether people reported the disappearance of stars the way they reported their discovery, whether you had to telephone the astronomers and announce your observation, or whether it was better to keep such an insignificant yet colossal death a secret.

He had been watching for a long time, waiting for it to appear, letting the star-spangled heavens wheel about him. The high clouds blowing in from the west meant that he could barely make out its quivering light. Just as he finally saw its tremulous glow, someone knocked at the door. Three faint knocks, followed by Cédric's plaintive

“Open up!”

He was begging. The door shook with the weight of his body pressing against it, desperate to come in.

“What do you want?”

“It's the other boys. Let me in and I'll tell you.”

“What boys?”

“Nicolas and his friends. They want to kill me.”

Victor heard the little kid snuffling and pushing against the door with his whole body.

“Open up, they're coming for me.”

“What about your brother?”

There was a silence. Victor heard the kid swallow painfully.

“I don't fucking know. I don't know where he is.”

“Tell the social workers, I can't do anything.”

“The social workers don't give a shit.”

The kid let out a continuous wail, the lock juddering under his attempts to get in.

When Victor unlocked the door, the kid flinched and stood frozen in the middle of the hallway. Then he vanished, swallowed by a confusion of shadows that Victor did not understand.

“Shut your mouth, or I'll skin you alive.”

Hands grabbed his shoulders and gripped his throat. He staggered back onto the bed, someone knelt on his chest, and he could no longer get air into his lungs. He wondered how long he could last without being able to breathe – or only barely. He focused on what was going on around him: he heard his door shut, saw Nicolas lean over him, whip out a flick knife, and press the blade to his throat. There were three of them. They were breathing shallowly, almost panting, like dogs. Soundlessly, wordlessly, the third boy rummaged through the wardrobe.

“Got it!”

Victor heard the boy pick up the urn and set it on the floor. He tried to move, but his body refused to respond. He thought he might suffocate beneath the weight of this thug. His eyes glazed over. He felt his strength ebb away, he no longer had the will to move or even to think. He thought about his mother, about what she must have felt and thought as she was dying. Had there been someone looming over her, was her killer's face the last thing she had ever seen? He decided to close
s eyes, and when the weight was lifted from his chest and he could finally breathe he let out a groan, almost a sob, coughing, spluttering oblivious to the tip of the blade that was still pricking his neck.

He could see nothing, too busy gulping air, his eyes filled with tears. He felt them move, get up and sit down next to him, lift him up and stand him against the wall, twisting an arm behind his back. When he finally managed to open his eyes, he saw Nicolas taking out his cock, waving it around and sniggering.

“Next time I'll make you suck it, fuckface! This is what I use it for the rest of the time.”

He started to piss into the urn.

“Jesus, you're really doing it? You're really doing it?” one of the boys said.

Victor howled and threw himself forward, only to be stopped dead by the blade of the knife, which left a nick just above his Adam's apple, the tip burying itself in his jaw, and at the same time he felt his arm being wrenched behind his back so hard he thought his shoulder might come out of its socket. He lashed out, kicking wildly two or three times and hitting empty air, impotently. Then panting with pain he slumped onto his side, his face pressed into the bedspread, moaning as he heard the sound of the piss as it hit the ashes, inundating the only thing he had left in the world, and then he wept, no longer aware of what was happening, not even reacting when someone kicked him in the ribs.

He did not hear them leave.

He went on sobbing as the silence returned, a hard, bitter lump of poison in his throat, the taste of it, like metal, in his mouth. He rolled heavily off the bed and lay, curled up, his face in his hands, lost in a fathomless abyss of grief.

And when he heard a commotion in the room, people asking what had happened, what they had done to him, when he felt someone gently take him by the shoulders and lay him down on the bed, mop his forehead with a damp cloth –
Victor, Victor, we're here, it's O.K
. – he let out a howl that made them recoil, a howl that sank its sharpened
teeth into their privileged hearts, a howl that could have shaken the distant flickering star he had waited so long to see.

They got him to his feet and he stood, eyes closed, swaying like a punch-drunk boxer, then he passed out, dropping to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, burning and feverish, and they could not support the dead weight of his body.

The following afternoon, while he was lying half asleep in his bed, Bernard came to tell him they had found him a foster family, good, kind people, they were used to looking after kids, they understood them. They lived near Pauillac, in the Médoc. The sea was close by. It would be nice.

The Médoc. All Victor knew about the area was sitting in traffic jams on Sunday night coming back from Montalivet or Soulac, his skin taut from the salt water, his shoulders scorched from the sun, looking forward to a shower, to a little coolness.

“Nicolas has gone. We couldn't allow him to stay here after what he did.”

Victor silently vowed that he would find the boy and kill him. He had dreamed about it that night. A brutal dream from which he had woken with a start, afraid of himself. He watched the light shimmering in the cracks between the shutters. He could just make out the shifting leaves of the poplars. Everything outside seemed blinding.

“When?”

“Tomorrow. We'll take you there. Next week we'll go back to your house and get your things. The police have said we can.”

“Tomorrow?”

His eyelids fluttered. He felt as though he had stepped off a cliff, the way Wile E. Coyote steps into mid-air but does not immediately fall.

He curled up again, turning his back on Bernard, waiting for him to leave, driven out by his silence. He thought about what Bernard had said, about this family who were going to take him in, these people he had never met and did not want to meet. These people who could change nothing, who would count for nothing. From now on, he knew, he was on his own, and the image that kept coming back to him was of
a deserted world, peopled by whispering shadows that glided around him, whose words he could hardly ever make out in a fog of confused murmurings.

He waited for stillness to return, for the moment when the heat would gradually stifle all activity. He listened for the slightest sound, a creak of doors, laughter dying away. He heard snatches of conversation outside, a burst of music.

He picked up the urn, which no-one had dared touch, screwed the lid down tighter, and opened the bedroom door. He made sure the corridor was empty, listened again, then stepped outside.

He locked himself in a shower cubicle and immediately felt himself bathed in sweat, though it was no hotter there than anywhere else. He sat on the edge of the tub, tilted the urn and poured out some of the contents. The liquid ran almost clear, and he was glad that the ashes had sunk to the bottom. He poured away these dregs with the fastidiousness of a
sommelier
decanting a vintage wine. The acrid smell turned his stomach, and he nearly dropped the urn to bring his hands up to his mouth. He turned away, took a deep breath and swallowed hard. When there was nothing left, or almost nothing, he poured in some water and waited for a while for the ashes to settle again.

He was finding it hard to breathe, he gulped air with his mouth wide open, as if he had almost drowned. Keeping his lips pressed together, he began to pour again, but this time the stench had almost disappeared, and he could breathe more easily. He repeated the process three times, until he could no longer smell anything, and then slumped back against the cool, hard, tiled partition, whispering to the damp ashes as he clutched them tightly to him:
Don't worry, we're together, they can't hurt you, don't worry, we don't care about them
.