The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (28 page)

Armand soaped Dima and repaired his skin with oils and creams which a dermatologist prescribed. At night he kept a close watch on him, waited till he stopped staring at the ceiling with his eyes
wide open and went to sleep, before going to sleep himself. Huddled close, the boy retreating as far as he could into Armand’s waiting arms until they formed a single unit.

It was when he first read a comic to Dima that it happened. The book was
Asterix and the Laurel Wreath.
The words held little meaning for the child but he drank them in. When Julius
Caesar appeared on the page, the boy pressed his finger against him.

‘That’s César, emperor of the Romans,’ Armand said.

In the picture, Caesar wore armour and a wreath of leaves in his hair. The boy was thinking that where he came from, the man could never have got away with it. Not if he wanted
to survive. Where he came from, laughter was never kind. As far as he was concerned, Caesar was a joke and it was no wonder he always got thrashed by the Gauls, the short one and the fat one in the
blue and white striped trousers.

But then Armand opened other books, with maps that showed the colours of the Roman Empire bleeding across a continent, till the rest seemed puny and insignificant.

When they reached the end of the comic for the third time, the boy turned back to the page where he had first seen the image of Caesar. He pointed to the Roman and to himself. He did this
several times, bracing himself for laughter, but it never came. Armand looked up from the picture and into his eyes. He nodded, in a way that showed he understood.

When Armand had gone, the boy lay with his eyes wide open for a long time. The moon’s outline was clearly visible through the blinds. Somewhere a dog barked, until a man shouted for it to
stop.

During the day there was so much to absorb that he never stopped to think. At night, he tried to give a name to his feelings, but found there was nothing inside him except a black hole. The
day’s events were noise, subsiding as soon as he found himself alone in the dark.

There was nothing about his previous life he wanted to hold on to, except maybe for the soft touch and gaze of the woman who had cared for him at the orphanage.

But thinking about her made his heart ache intolerably. It was calmer in the black hole, where he could float without pain.

How would he climb out of the hole and make a new life for himself? Was it even possible?

Maybe the answer was in a name. Something that would enable him to shape a new identity for himself.

A new name, a new life.

César. My name is César.

The storm rode through the city in the middle of the night, causing minor havoc wherever it passed. When Morel opened his window in the morning he found the wind blowing in
gusts and the courtyard awash with debris from the trees planted along the footpath on the other side of the gate. The rain fell steadily and water gushed onto the cobblestones from the downpipe
outside his bedroom wall.

The cool air was a welcome reprieve and he turned his face to it. His body ached and he felt like he’d barely slept. For a moment, he stood still, letting the slanting rain drench him.

He had called Solange around midnight, thinking that she wouldn’t answer but feeling an urge to hear her voice. To his surprise, she had picked up the phone. Henri was asleep, she said. He
had nothing much to say, and thankfully she didn’t feel compelled to fill the silence with chatter. She seemed to guess that he simply wanted company. He was dozing off when she finally hung
up. Now he couldn’t even remember what they had talked about.

He was starting to shiver. He shut the window and went into the bathroom to get ready for work. Once he was dressed, he headed towards the living room.

It was deserted. Adèle was gone. Morel made coffee and waited a while for his father to show up for breakfast. But there was no sign of life from upstairs.

The phone rang and he went to answer it, coffee cup in hand.

‘Good morning, it’s Augustine.’

‘Good morning,’ Morel said. ‘I’m glad you called. I wanted to thank you for taking care of my father yesterday. It must have been a shock for you to see him like
that.’

‘It certainly was,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I was there, I can’t imagine what would have happened otherwise. He wouldn’t have wanted a stranger to approach him,
not in the state he was in.’

‘I’m truly grateful,’ Morel said. ‘Adèle is too.’

‘Never mind that,’ she continued briskly. ‘I’m calling because I’m not supposed to be in today, but I thought that perhaps after what happened yesterday you might
feel better if I came this morning. You know, just in case.’

Morel hesitated.

‘I don’t want to impose on you, Augustine.’

‘You’re not imposing at all. That’s settled, then. I’ll come in this morning.’

‘I think he’s still asleep, and I have to leave for work. But I’ll do my best to get home early.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You do what you have to do.’

‘Thank you.’

He finished his coffee, hoping to catch a glimpse of Philippe before he left. In the end he climbed the stairs and quietly opened the door to his father’s room. The old man lay in the
dark, buried beneath the duvet. Only his head stuck out. He was snoring lightly. Morel listened for a while before closing the door.

He decided to leave the car and walked the hundred metres or so to the nearest Métro station. The rain was easing but the wind kept up. Morel stepped around an overturned bin, its
contents strewn across the footpath. A black spaniel stopped to sniff at the rubbish, wagging its tail, but its owner tugged at the lead and dragged the mutt away.

On the train, he was so caught up in his thoughts about the investigation that he nearly missed his stop. He headed up the stairs towards the exit with the other commuters. When he reached the
top, he stopped for a moment, trying to make sense of the confusion in his head.

Over the past couple of days, Morel had pulled together enough information about Le Bellec to form a picture of the man. It was enough for him to feel that if he had him across the table, he
would know where to begin a conversation.

Yet something wasn’t right. Morel couldn’t work out what it was, but the fact that he didn’t quite understand what he was looking at made him uneasy. Part of the picture was
out of focus.

As he entered the police building, he thought about his Russian counterpart and wondered how soon he might hear from him. He needed Golyubov to come through fast.

‘Everyone’s in nice and early,’ Morel commented as he walked into the office. ‘I know it’s Saturday. Thanks for being here.’

Jean was hanging his leather jacket on the back of his chair. Lila, Akil and Marco were standing up, getting ready to go.

‘We’re off to see if, by some divine miracle, someone’s seen our man,’ Lila said gloomily, waving Le Bellec’s photograph at Morel.

‘Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking,’ Morel said. ‘I know I said we should take a closer look at the Baptists. But I think we need to cast our net a little
wider.’

‘How much wider?’ Lila asked, with a look that said she was not enthralled by his suggestion.

‘I’m thinking about where they’re staying. We know Le Bellec and the boy aren’t at the Clichy flat. So where are they? I’m thinking somewhere cheap, and relatively
discreet, where no one’s going to pay too much attention to them. A youth hostel, maybe? We need to look further afield.’

‘Let me handle that,’ Jean said, glancing at Lila. ‘These guys have enough on their plate. I’ll draw up a list.’

‘Thanks, Jean.’

Lila, Akil and Marco left and Morel sat at his desk and checked his email. There was one from his friend Paul Chesnay. It was a continuation of the conversation they’d had in
Chesnay’s office at Nanterre University.

I thought I’d send you this – an article written around the time of Billy Graham’s trip to Moscow,
Chesnay wrote.

The article described the 1992 Baptist mission to Russia in great detail. The size of Graham’s operation was astonishing: 1,500 billboards across the city, ads on buses and subway cars, in
the newspapers and on television, as well as three million leaflets sent through the mail. Graham had chartered a dozen trains to bring thousands of people in from outlying cities in Russia, the
Ukraine and Belarus. Tens of thousands of people had gathered at the Olympic Stadium to hear him speak.

One could say he started a revolution,
Chesnay went on.
Introducing God as a friend to people for whom God was more like a stern and distant father figure. The sort of parent who
tends to think of their offspring as something of a disappointment.

There was a PS:
Any chance of interviewing your suspect when you catch him? The more I think about it, the more I believe he could form the basis of an interesting paper. Or a lively
discussion with my students, at the very least.

Morel wrote to his friend thanking him. Rather than address the possibility of handing Le Bellec over to Chesnay to liven up his lectures, he promised instead to let him know how things
developed.

Then he sat and thought about Le Bellec, with his absent father and bigoted mother. What had happened to this man since leaving his village? And where was he now?

For the next couple of hours, he prepared his report for Perrin, knowing it wouldn’t be long before his boss appeared and demanded an explanation for the past forty-eight hours. Sometime
after lunch, Morel heard Lila and Marco come back, well before they entered the room. Lila’s voice carried all the way from the ground floor and Morel knew before she entered the room that
she was in an argumentative mood.

He left his lair, grateful for a reprieve from the paperwork, and stopped before Lila’s desk while she dumped her bag on the floor.

‘If I have to talk to another religious nut, I’m handing in my resignation,’ she told Morel.

‘Nothing new, then?’

‘No.’

‘Where’s Akil?’

‘Getting coffee.’

‘A Baptist pastor in the thirteenth tried to convert Lila,’ Marco said, grinning.

‘I would have loved to see that,’ Morel said. ‘He must have seen that you were suffering.’

‘I was suffering. Suffering from all the pointless traipsing around.’

Jean stood up and came over to them. ‘I’ve pulled together a list of places where our guys might be staying,’ he said. ‘Anyone care to do the rounds with me this
afternoon? Some of these are quite close.’

There was a loud groan from Lila, and a limp protest from Marco who had taken his shoes off and was massaging his feet.

‘New shoes,’ he said, when Jean raised his eyebrows.

Akil entered the room, bearing a tray of coffees.

‘At last,’ Lila said. ‘Someone who cares.’

Just then Perrin, who had come in to work at lunchtime, popped his head into the office and glared at Morel. ‘In my office, now.’

‘Certainly.’

When Morel returned from his meeting with Perrin, he found only Marco and Akil. Akil was sitting in Lila’s chair and Marco was doing his best to pretend the other man
wasn’t there.

‘Perrin is in good spirits,’ Morel reported, noting the relief on Marco’s face at no longer being alone with his colleague.

‘How come?’ Marco said.

‘That other murder, the one he was called to yesterday. It looks like they’re going to close the case, in less than twenty-four hours. He’s over the moon.’

‘Press conference?’

‘Of course.’

Perrin had asked Morel whether there was any sign of progress in his investigation.

‘It’s all in here,’ Morel said, handing his report over. He gave his boss a brief summary of the trip to Brittany.

‘What a pity this case isn’t going quite so smoothly as the other one,’ he told Morel.

There was no point in responding. At least he seemed to have forgotten Morel’s late entrance the day before.

In the afternoon, Morel tried to call Golyubov but the Russian wasn’t answering his phone. Using the mobile number she’d given his team, he called the deputy head at the school where
Le Bellec taught, even though it was Saturday and there was unlikely to be any news.

‘We did tell your colleague that we’ll be in touch if he shows up,’ the deputy head said.

‘I know. Thank you.’

All this waiting around. It was maddening.

He left the office at half past four. On his way home, he called Augustine to tell her not to wait for him. Stepping out of the Métro in Neuilly, he heard the frantic
siren of an ambulance drawing nearer and his heartbeat quickened, until it faded out. It had rained earlier and the sky was the colour of chalk.

When he got home, he found his younger sister sitting in the kitchen, leafing through a copy of
Void
magazine.

‘Guess what? Britney’s in love,’ she announced without looking up.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her.

Adèle shrugged her shoulders. ‘I thought I’d drop by to see how everyone is,’ she said. ‘I had a chat with Augustine before she left. I was just leaving
myself.’

‘You don’t have to go. Why don’t you stay and have dinner with me?’

‘I can’t, I’ve got to go. Dinner date.’

She picked up a pair of red sandals lying by the door and slid them on. Then she kissed her brother’s cheek.

‘He’s taking a nap, but according to Augustine he was OK today,’ she told Morel.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

Part of him would have liked to ask her to cancel her dinner, to stay to take his mind off things, but he let her go.

Once he was alone, he spent a couple of hours in his room, folding a succession of birds. They were quick and basic, and he threw them out one after the other.

Hunger finally drove him out to the kitchen, where he found his father sitting at the counter in his dressing-gown, eating quiche. Morel joined him and they ate in silence. It was clear to Morel
that his father didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him, and besides, Morel wouldn’t have known what to say. He thought about his mother and wished she were here.