Talking to Ghosts (22 page)

Vilar would sometimes wake in the middle of the night, convinced he had heard a car door slamming in the street. He would lie in the dark listening to the silence of the night, that white noise that conspires against sleep, then he would get up and go out to the balcony and stare at the line of parked cars, trying to pick out the shadow of the man spying on him, and in these moments he was so convinced that it had actually happened, or was about to happen, that sometimes he was sure he saw something move in one of the cars and he would stand, staring at the dark windscreen lit only by the glow of the streetlamps, his heart pounding, until he pictured himself, half dressed, on his balcony playing hide-and-seek with a string of parked cars. Then he would go back to bed, disappointed, humiliated, furious at himself, a lump at the back of his throat, weeping bitter tears.

This time he had leapt out of bed and waited for his heart to stop racing. The man in his nightmare had come back, rung his doorbell and run off again, and outside Vilar could hear a car starting and the shriek of tyres and in that moment, choking with horror, his arms still stiff from clutching Pablo's body to his chest, he did not know how to separate what was dream from what was real. For a moment he resisted the urge to look at the alarm clock because he knew dawn would be either too close or too far away, always discouraging, but when he saw that it was almost 5.00 a.m., he listened through the closed shutters to the chorus of blackbirds greeting the first rays of dawn, seemingly astonished by each new day.

He must have fallen asleep with his eyes open, because now light was pressing against the shutters, pushing at them with warm fingers. It was almost 7.00 a.m. Someone was knocking at the door, calling his name. He had dreamed that they were coming to arrest him, that there was no escape. Some confused story about the Gestapo screaming at him to open up. A story his father had told him.

The knock came again.

Laurent Pradeau seemed surprised to see him open the door. In the mornings he often had a stupefied look that made him seem surprised by everything. He must have something of the blackbird about him.

“They've found Morvan's body. We have to go. I'll make coffee, you get your shit together.”

“What? Where?”

“He was found by a rambler in woods outside Poitiers yesterday afternoon. The body was lying beside a path. No attempt to hide it or anything.”

Vilar shuddered. He watched Pradeau bustling in the kitchen, opening cupboards, rummaging around, not finding what he wanted. He tried to think, keeping his hands busy by making the coffee himself.

“Some lieutenant from Poitiers called the department. He couldn't get through on your mobile – why the fuck have you got it switched off all the time? Anyway, Daras told me to head down there with you to check it out. The autopsy is this afternoon.”

“Do we know what state he was in?”

“I don't. But he was beaten and stabbed.”

Vilar felt his throat tighten.

“No other details?”

“None, just that he was dumped at the side of a path in a wood. That's according to what's-his-name … Delvaille, I think his name is.”

“Yes, Delvaille.” Vilar pictured the calm face, the shy gaze of the young lieutenant.

The telephone rang. He glanced at Pradeau.

“That's probably Daras.”

Vilar picked up and put the telephone on speaker. He recognised at
once the voice that snarled from the receiver, as jolly as a friend who's just called to chat.

“Have you heard yet? Brave boy, that
gendarme
friend of yours. Hardly said a thing. Actually, he didn't know anything, so I probably shouldn't have got so angry.”

“Why did you kill him? Did you enjoy it? Is that the only way you can get it up?”

“Here we go. From the off, the big talk. You really are a real fucking pig. You see, now I'm not sorry I bled him, the other little piglet. Shit, I actually feel pretty good about it. It's a bit like your son, I don't know what they're doing to him right now, but I hope you're thinking hard about it, that it fucks you in the arse like a red-hot poker!”

Vilar found enough breath, enough strength to speak.

“Don't you fucking talk about my son, you hear? I'll kill you, I swear I'll blow your fucking head off!”

His voice choked. He swallowed tears and snot, managed to gulp some air.

“Ooh, I'm so scared, I'm fucking pissing myself. You better aim carefully and shoot first, because I won't miss, you miserable fuck. Hey, if you like, I'll lend you my catapult since I've heard you're scared of actual shooters.”

Pradeau was standing next to him, one hand on his shoulder, gripping through his T-shirt to hold him upright or to let him know he was not about to let go of his friend. Then he whispered in his free ear:

“I'll go downstairs and have a look around. I'll catch the fucker. He must have seen me arrive. He has to be nearby. Just keep him talking.”

Vilar tried to signal to Pradeau that did not have the strength to go on talking to this guy, that it was pointless, but Pradeau lifted the flap of his jacket, tapped his gun with a wink, and headed out, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

“Hey! You still there? Listen, I gotta go. But don't worry, this isn't over. You're going to cry and shit blood. You're going to understand what it's all about.”

The line went dead. Vilar tossed the phone onto the sofa and opened
the shutters on the balcony to see if he could spot Pradeau, saw him standing in the middle of the road, waving his arms, stepping back onto the pavement to avoid a woman in a car.

“Come in, there's no point, he's hung up.”

Pradeau looked up, then walked back towards the building, shaking his head. Gradually the street was coming to life: cars passed, the rumble of the city began. A cool breeze whipped along the front of the building, which was still in shade, and whirled around Vilar. He heard Pradeau coming back into the apartment, swearing and cursing this guy who kept getting away. He asked for coffee and a cigarette, carried the cafetière and two cups into the living room where Vilar stood, frozen, his mind empty, his head reeling, the ground beneath his feet a shifting quagmire.

*

Vilar could not suppress the shudder that ran down his spine when Lazzaro, the pathologist, showed them the body. Vilar hardly recognised Morvan's bruised face, his eyes were swollen shut from the beating. He found the pale, hairy, naked body almost embarrassing and it required a sheer effort of will to confront what was not yet real to him: the man lying dead on the slab was officer Louis-Marie Morvan, he had been beaten and stabbed in the stomach, a gash of about three centimetres was clearly visible just below the navel. The face was so bloated that Vilar, struggling to recognise the man he had known, did not even have the fleeting sensation, as he so often did, that the body might stir and come back to life.

Lazzaro detailed the bruises, the wounds and the contusions. The victim had probably been stabbed several hours before death, he estimated, and the knife wound had not been the cause of death. This was something he would need to confirm, but it seemed Morvan had been beaten while already in excruciating pain from the wound in his stomach. Given the circumstances, it might be described as torture. They were about to find out.

Watching the autopsy, Vilar stood closer than usual to the table,
1??

while Pradeau, pale and queasy, hung back, leaning against one of the sinks flanked by Lieutenant Delvaille, seconded from the local force in Poitiers so they could be kept in the loop: there had been two hours of outraged recriminations when it was discovered that Bordeaux were taking over the case, but then presumably there was some mention of Vilar and his connection with Morvan and maybe they suspected the case was a poisoned chalice anyway and everyone calmed down. The two investigations teams in Poitiers already had their hands full with a serial arsonist who had already killed four, plus a ring of drug dealers, so in the end they were happy to hand over this case.

Vilar did not tremble. His eyes were not misted with tears this time. He watched Lazzaro work with the meticulous attention of an eager student, leaning over when the pathologist pointed something out, nodding at the running commentary Lazzaro made so his assistant could take notes. Only his jaw muscles, quivering beneath his cheeks, betrayed his horror.

Vilar could not help but stare at the shattered eye socket, the bulging eyeball barely contained behind half-closed lids that revealed a dull yellowish membrane where once a human gaze had glittered. He contemplated the ruined face – multiple fractures to the facial bones, broken teeth, fracture to the right parietal bone exposing damage to the brain, dislocation of the jaw – and tried to recognise in the mutilated features, this rictus of utter agony, the peaceful, benign face of Morvan; and yet something prevented him from quite accepting that this mangled body was indeed his, the same one he had seen walk, move lithely, jump up and down if an idea came to him mid- conversation. As always, he found it difficult to accept that the person whose abdomen or whose skull was being cut open, rummaged through in the unbearable stench of viscera, was actually dead, was
the deceased
: was it really him, or was it someone else, someone anonymous, more or less abstract?

In its very horror, the probing, inquisitive attentiveness of the path-ologist, this surgery not only dissected the corpse but made one forget this was a man at all: this body, whose most secret crannies were
sounded and sliced by the scalpel, ceased to be a human being and became an anatomical inventory. A harrowing litany of death. Vilar did not believe in an afterlife, nor in any supernatural being, but it seemed to him that the dead man was no longer here, that he had departed his sundered body even as his dying agony was being described with horrifyingly clinical coldness.

Eventually, the pathologist stopped. He lifted his visor, pulled off his mask and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was white and cropped short. A short salt-and-pepper beard covered his cheeks. Vilar could not put an age to him. Sixty, perhaps.

“He was beaten, slashed. You can see the wounds here, probably made with a razor or a Stanley knife. I was told he was kidnapped ten days ago? It's reasonable to assume he was tortured every day and that he died from the beatings, having been weakened by the deep stab wound to his stomach. I'm astonished that he survived as long as he did – seven, possibly eight days … He has been dead for seventy-two hours at least. I'll know more tomorrow. I'll be able to give you the details when we've run some more tests.”

He seemed to be talking to himself, staring down at the face of what had once been the Maréchal des Logis Morvan, then he shrugged, checked the time on the clock hanging above the row of sinks. He began removing his gloves.

“Did you know him well?”

“Yes,” Vilar said. “For a couple of years now we'd been working on an investigation together. We met up regularly.”

“Ah, yes … I heard something about that. Your son, wasn't it?”

The pathologist looked Vilar in the eye, unblinking. Vilar reeled a little from the shock. He was not used to people talking about Pablo so bluntly.

“He suffered a great deal, you know,” Lazzaro said.

Vilar shuddered and stared at the pathologist, puzzled.

“No, no. Him …” Lazzaro said, jerking his chin towards Morvan lying on the slab. “You know, I find this very upsetting.”

Pulling off their scrubs and tossing them in a bin, they followed
Lazzaro out of the morgue, and Vilar was surprised by the heat and the noise: from everywhere came laughter, snatches of conversation, the creaking of doors, and, curiously, he began to shiver as sweat once again began to trickle down his back. The pathologist led them to a coffee machine and offered them espressos, which he paid for, after a fashion, using copper tokens which the machine initially accepted as ten centime pieces.

“Not to be repeated,” he said, smiling.

“You're now guilty of receiving stolen goods.”

The officers smiled too, noses in their plastic coffee cups. Lazzaro fumbled in the pocket of his white coat and took out a pack of cigarettes which he offered around.

“It's my round. Cigarettes kill the stench. These I acquired honestly in Spain. Cancer is cheaper on the other side of the border.”

“Sounds tempting,” Pradeau said, taking his pick.

Vilar accepted one in turn. Only Delvaille, tipping back his empty cup in search of sugar, declined. They savoured the cigarettes in silence, staring out through the picture window at the trees in the grounds. After a moment, Lazzaro announced he had work to do and would not be seeing them out. He briskly took his leave, shaking their hands without meeting their eyes, distant now, remote.

As soon as they got outside again, Delvaille ran to a small mound and doubled over, retching. Some distance away, in the shade of a chestnut tree, Vilar and Pradeau waited, dripping with sweat, their breathing laboured in the sweltering air. None of them dared to speak of this malaise, this fever that would unexpectedly come over them, causing stabbing pains all through their bodies and pounding in their heads like a migraine.

When he rejoined them, the young lieutenant was deathly pale, but he managed to smile as he apologised.

“It's my third corpse, but every time it's the fucking same. I'll never get used to it.”

“I hope not,” Vilar said.

“It's not something you should get used to.”

In the car park they went their separate ways, undertaking to keep
each other up to speed. Vilar thanked Delvaille for having got in touch and asked him when he was planning to request a transfer to Bordeaux. The young lieutenant mumbled something about his wife, a teacher, his two daughters and having a house where everyone seemed happy.

“Forget I mentioned it,” Vilar said as a tremor of grief ran through him. “Make the most of what you've got.”