The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (26 page)

They arrive at Île de Ré in the early part of the evening, sailing into a spectacular sunset that feels as if it’s been put on just for them, though other boats are heading
in. For a moment Charles feels as if he and Armand are one person, experiencing the same mystical moment.

‘Look at you two!’ Charles’s mother says. Charles turns to Armand. He is tanned and his eyes are burning bright like the luminous sea and the sun-tinted clouds. Everything is
suffused with evening light. Charles’s pretty mother in her green two-piece bathing suit that matches the colour of her eyes, and his father in red, white and blue bathing
shorts hold each other tight and kiss with their lips open. The boys look away and at each other. Charles winks at Armand and they both laugh.

‘What – you’ve never seen anyone kiss before?’ Charles’s dad says, cuffing them lightly. He places a hand on his wife’s bottom and grins.

Charles’s father pulls the boat up alongside a yacht so large that theirs seems puny in comparison. Charles’s mother is wearing a long T-shirt over her bikini now. She cooks lamb
chops and mashed potatoes and Charles helps her without being asked, by washing and preparing the salad. The four of them eat together below deck. It is cramped and after an afternoon of sailing
and being exposed to the wind and the sun, they are all too tired to speak.

Afterwards Charles and Armand pile the dirty dishes into a bucket and carry it ashore to a sink near the toilets, where they set about washing them as best they can. The owner of the big boat
comes along. He is German and he is smoking a cigar. He stands close, puffing away and watching them rinse the bucket, rinse the dishes and pile them back inside. His grey shorts ride so high up
his legs you can see his balls. His chest is hairy and his stomach sags over the shorts.

‘Want a puff?’ he asks in heavily accented French. They say no and return to the boat, their feet thudding across the wooden planks of the pontoon. There is a rotting smell in the
air, and the lingering odour of the German’s cigar, acrid and mildly addictive. Though neither will admit it, the encounter has unsettled them. There is something in the man’s manner
that they can’t identify but which causes a stir. Both unpleasant and titillating, in a strange kind of way.

‘What a creep,’ Charles says, and Armand agrees.

When they climb back on board, they sit for a short while with Charles’s parents who are leaning back on deck chairs, drinking wine. But they soon grow bored and decide to go below deck.
The parents wave them away, content. They murmur goodnight to the boys.

Charles and Armand don’t bother brushing their teeth. They strip down to their T-shirts and shorts and climb into adjoining bunks. Their conversation is a whisper among the waves. Charles
has rarely felt as happy as he does now. He feels deeply connected to Armand. Feels that somehow he has found his soul mate. How lucky he is. How many people ever have that experience? They lie
still, listening to the murmur of voices up on deck.

‘What’s the story with the German millionaire?’ Armand whispers.

‘He’s a bit of a pervert, I reckon. Did you see the way he looked at you?’ Charles says.

‘Hardly. It was you he was lusting after.’

‘Errgh, gross. Stop it.’

‘Really. He was staring at you. He was practically dribbling.’

‘I mean it. Stop it.’

‘Who can blame him, though?’ Armand says lightly.

Charles doesn’t know what to say to that. Instead he turns to look at Armand, who is lying on his back. He has taken his shirt off and closed his eyes. He is all skin and bones. Wrists and
ankles as narrow as a girl’s. Whereas Charles is strong and muscular. In the dark Charles can just make out the outline of Armand’s chest and the shape of his arms crossed behind his
head. He likes Armand in profile, with his broad forehead and long lashes. There is something noble about him. This isn’t something he’s ever likely to say to Armand, though he often
thinks it.

They talk and doze off, and talk some more. At some point, their hands meet. It isn’t clear who makes the first move, and anyway does it really matter? What is clear is that it’s
Armand who untangles his fingers from Charles’s and rests his hand on his stomach. Moves his fingers lower, so casually it’s like it is happening without him guiding them. Moves his
hand under the elastic waistline and wraps his hand around Charles’s penis, which twitches and comes to life. It is Armand who raises himself on an elbow and lowers his face until they can
feel each other’s breath.

It is Charles, breathing heavily, who raises his head so that their lips can touch, and who parts his just enough to encourage Armand to do the same. Their tongues come together, charging the
air with electricity.

Charles can still remember every beat of that moment. The feel of Armand’s lips, the salty taste of his skin. The hot, musky smell of his own body. He’s tried hard to forget it, but
no matter how hard he tries, his life is forever split in two. There is his life before Armand, and then there is his life after.

Everything after is a lie.

Charles stared at the truck bearing down the opposite lane. Just a quick turn of the steering-wheel and it would all be over. He probably wouldn’t even have time to feel
pain. Screeching of tyres, impact of metal on metal, followed by silence.

He must have been driving too close. As the truck passed him, the driver tooted his horn and gave him the finger.

He pulled over. Waited ten, twenty minutes till the shaking stopped.

It was late and most people had left the building. The light was still on in the fourth-floor office where Morel’s team sat. A warm summer breeze floated through the open
windows. Outside, lights had come on along the quays and bridges.

Morel had just checked his phone messages and he returned to the others, triumphant.

‘We’ve got him,’ he said. ‘I just got a call, from the head at a school in Denfert-Rochereau. One of his staff members recognized Armand from the composite sketch in an
article in
Libération.
He’s been working under the name Antoine Leroy.’

‘That explains why my friend at the ministry couldn’t find him,’ Lila said.

Morel nodded.

‘Apparently he hasn’t been in for a couple of weeks. The listed address he gave the school is a two-bedroom flat in Clichy. It’s actually under his real name but he
doesn’t live there. It’s being rented out to a couple of teachers who haven’t heard from him in months.’

After Saint-Malo, Morel would have gladly driven home and poured himself a solitary and well-deserved drink in the privacy of his study. But he and Lila still needed to brief the others about
their trip.

At least Perrin wasn’t in. According to Jean, he’d waited all afternoon for Morel, striding in every half-hour to see whether he and Lila had returned from Brittany yet. But then
he’d been called to a murder scene by one of the other team leaders, one that had nothing to do with Morel’s investigation. Morel couldn’t help feeling just a little bit
grateful.

He was bone-tired and unsteady from the long drive – the lunchtime Muscadet hadn’t helped – but to alleviate everyone’s mood he opened a bottle of red: the best one from
his father’s cellar, which he kept in his bottom desk drawer.

‘Just because we have to work doesn’t mean we have to forgo the
apéritif
,’ he said, handing glasses out. Only Akil declined.

‘I know we all want to go home but I want to make sure we’ve covered every angle and that everyone’s up to speed. This is what we know. Armand Le Bellec was last seen in his
home town in Brittany three days ago. We have good reason to believe he is back in Paris. We know he had a relationship with Charles Berg – a strong friendship that developed into something
more. They fell in love. They carried on in secret until they were found out by Le Bellec’s mother. A deeply religious and conservative woman, by all accounts. A woman people found it
difficult to get on with. After she found out what the boys were up to, she took Armand out of school for six months. We don’t know what happened during those six months but we do know that
when Armand came back to school he was a different person. He avoided Charles and withdrew into himself.’

‘What was Le Bellec doing back in the village?’ Lila asked.

‘We don’t know. Maybe he’s feeling the pressure and he’s scared. Maybe he was reaching out to his old friend.’ Morel looked at his team. ‘Anyone want to say
anything at this stage?’

‘Why the false name?’ Lila said. ‘And if he is guilty, which the false identity implies, I still don’t get what the motive was. What has this Le Bellec got against old
women?’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ Morel said. ‘When I spoke to my old friend Paul Chesnay last week, he mentioned that the American Baptist preacher Billy Graham had made quite
a splash when he visited Moscow in the nineties.’ He shook his head. ‘I was a fool not to work it out earlier. Baptism in the Baptist Church is traditionally by complete
immersion.’

Everyone stared at Morel. Akil was the first to speak.

‘You’re saying that the drownings are a kind of cleansing. By performing the Baptist ritual of immersion, the killer, this Le Bellec, is allowing the victims to be born
again.’

‘Exactly.’ Morel looked at Akil approvingly. ‘I think our friend Armand Le Bellec drowned Isabelle Dufour and Elisabeth Guillou as part of some misguided perception in his head
that he is opening a door to a better life for them – a new beginning.’

‘Seriously?’ Lila said.

‘There are other churches that perform baptism by immersion,’ Morel said. ‘Traditionally the Russian Orthodox Church, for example, practises baptism by immersion. Particularly
with infants. But given the language used in Le Bellec’s pamphlet, there is good reason to believe that he is a Baptist.’

There was silence.

‘So when Le Bellec drowned Dufour and Guillou, he was actually baptizing them?’ Lila said.

Morel nodded. ‘It explains the way the two widows were dressed and the way they were laid in their beds.’

‘What about the make-up? Is that a Baptist tradition too?’

‘It does seem to be in complete contradiction to the rest,’ Akil said. ‘The purity of the act, followed by the desecration of the face.’

Morel turned to Akil. ‘You know, there’s something in that,’ he said slowly.

‘What?’ Lila asked.

‘What Akil said. First the ritual, the immersion of the victim, a baptism of sorts. Then the make-up. The make-up comes after. It’s almost as though Le Bellec himself is undergoing a
change as he performs this act.’

‘Almost as though he is two people,’ Jean said.

Morel gave him a sharp look. ‘Exactly.’

‘So what does the make-up symbolize?’ Lila asked. ‘Is it a reminder of the victim’s sinful past?’

They all laughed. But there was confusion on everyone’s faces.

‘What about the boy?’ Lila asked.

‘We have to do our best to track him down too,’ Morel said. ‘It’s hard to imagine what his part is in all this. But I’m concerned about his welfare.’

‘Should we be talking to the child-protection squad?’ Lila asked.

‘We may have to at some stage. But at the moment I don’t see how they can help us.’

Morel stood up.

‘We need to find every Baptist organization there is in Paris and its outskirts and run our photo of Armand past them. If he calls himself a Baptist then at some point he must have had
some contact with one of these organizations.’

‘We’ve been through all that,’ Lila said.

‘Then we go through it again. This time we focus on the Baptists. Meanwhile, I’ve asked the school where Armand worked to let us know if he shows up again.’

‘Seems unlikely. The story’s been in the papers; there’s no way he’s going to waltz into the classroom as if nothing’s happened,’ Lila said.

‘I would have thought by now we’d have had a sighting. Given, as you say, that the picture’s been in the papers. Yet no one’s seen him apart from Charles and Amelia Berg.
We’ve had dozens of calls, but none of them have given us anything useful,’ Jean said.

‘We can only hope that changes,’ Morel said. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky. I’m also making contact with Moscow,’ he continued. ‘Until now we’ve focused
all our efforts on finding Le Bellec. But we need to find out more about the boy. How and where Le Bellec found him, whether the adoption process was legal. And also when and where Le Bellec
converted. My feeling is that the more we know about the boy, the closer we are to understanding Le Bellec.’ Morel looked around the room. ‘Any questions?’

No one spoke.

‘Good. Then I suggest we all head home and catch up on some sleep. I’ll see you all here tomorrow morning, bright and early.’

Morel watched Jean and Marco leave the room while Lila gathered her things. He was completely exhausted. But they were close. For the first time he allowed himself to relax, just a little.

Maybe tonight he would spare some time for his plans. He was almost at the point where he could begin with the folding. Give shape to the owl.

Tomorrow, he would track Le Bellec down.

Lila headed for the stairs and was surprised to encounter Akil, whom she thought had already left. She realized now that she hadn’t once been alone with him. She was
annoyed to find herself blushing.

‘I’m starving,’ he said, with a smile that made her blush even more. ‘Want to join me for a quick bite?’

Before he left the office Morel called a number in Moscow. He was surprised when the man answered. He had expected to get the answering machine.

‘Good evening, comrade,’ he said.

The man at the other end of the line laughed. ‘Monsieur Morel, very pleased to hear from you. By the way, you know that word is out of fashion these days.’ His accent was thick but
his French was good.

Morel had met Ivan Golyubov during a three-day international symposium in Paris on policing and security. Morel had warmed to his gruff Russian counterpart and even spent an evening with him,
trawling the streets around the Porte Maillot conference centre for a quiet place to drink. They’d ended up in the Russian’s room, drinking into the early hours of the morning. Maybe it
was the vodka, which Morel wasn’t used to, but he had ended up talking more openly with the man than he’d done with anyone in years.