The Stone Boy (26 page)

There was one notebook left, filled with a nervous handwriting, in which the notes went back to July 2009, so four months before her death. It was about two in the morning when Martin began reading it.

It was all there.

Him.

Audrette.

The Desmoulins.

And the stone boy.

At about five o’clock, Audrette was woken by a contraction. She turned over to change position and discovered her husband sitting in the armchair next to the bed. He was holding the oldest notebook open in front of him. Inside it was a retro postcard of the old town train station, which he was using as a bookmark; the reverse bore the inscription,
For my unbelieving son, take care.

“Martin…”

He ran a hand through his disheveled hair and coughed.

“I knew that it would hurt you to read those notebooks… Come to bed. It’s very late.”

Martin pulled himself up with difficulty and held up the notebook to his wife.

“You have to read that.”

“But, darling…”

“Do you remember what she said about you in court?” he growled in a broken voice. “That you ‘carried evil in you’ but that she forgave you because you didn’t know, or something like that?”

“Does she talk about it in her journal?”

“They’re notes that she took somewhere from a medical text. They go back to April nineteen ninety-seven.”

Audrette obeyed. She put two pillows behind her back, lifted her belly, placed the moleskin notebook on it, and read:

For the majority of people diagnosed with leukemia, there is no way to determine its cause. In some cases, particular risk factors can be singled out:

accidental exposure to radioactivity,

exposure in utero to X-rays,

exposure to certain chemicals (benzene, hydrocarbon fumes) or to certain fertilizers,

exposure (including in utero or low-dose) to certain pesticides.

According to a metastudy performed on 31 epidemiological studies done between 1950 and 2009, maternal exposure through her work during pregnancy doubled the risk of leukemia in the child (an increase of 40 percent in farmers, who seemed to be most exposed). This risk of childhood leukemia increases in cases of exposure to insecticide and herbicide (+ 2.7 and 3.7, respectively).

The last paragraph was underlined with a continuous line.

Audrette closed the notebook.

She put her hands on her belly.

As an agricultural engineer, herbicides had been the major focus of her studies at the time.

“She knew about Bastien,” Martin murmured. “She even knew why he had contracted that disease.”

Audrette made a face and calmed her false contraction with a breathing exercise.

The enlargement given by Martin to Lieutenant Sevran was entered into the missing persons file. The picture would be put up in police stations; the stone boy would join Estelle Mouzin.
²
The media in turn was quick to publish the photograph. Forty-eight hours later, the little boy was recognized by a teacher working in Auxerre, Ms. Le Buisson. The prosecutor handed the matter over to the juvenile crimes division.

At six months pregnant, Audrette had gained ten kilos and was wearing it so well that it was difficult for her husband to prevent her from running to the hardware shop, where she pushed trolleys loaded down with pots of paint, wallpaper borders, fairy lights, curtains, and flat-pack furniture for the baby’s room. Martin left her to it, stunned by the energy exuded by this pregnant woman with the appetite of a lumberjack. She was capable of spending three hours sitting on the couch comparing and matching up colors—an exercise that her husband would have finished off in two minutes. Audrette’s growth was translating into a daily need for sexual gratification. Martin didn’t know quite how to take this, perturbed by this unknown person that she was carrying, whose sex they now knew. He was disoriented by his wife’s changing body, yes, but the prospect of rediscovering his role as a father was scarier by far. Had he not failed the first time, unable to protect his son from disease and death? Martin redoubled his efforts at work. He did extra house calls, eating sandwiches in his car for lunch. He would come home so exhausted that Audrette had no choice but to tuck her husband up in bed, knowing well what effect frustration had on her man.

Then one morning he received an urgent call from the police. Sevran had news.

“This case is still going to be run by social services,” he said, coming to meet him in the lobby.

Martin followed him to his office on the first floor. At nine o’clock, 13 rue Parmentier was brimming with activity. Policemen and women grazed past each other in the narrow hallway, staring at Martin as they passed. Sevran’s office was unusually tidy: the pens were tucked into a pencil holder, his files were lined up on the shelf, and the mouse pad had been changed—the new one was bright yellow, with a smiley face. The lieutenant had swapped his jacquard sweater for a black-and-gray-striped turtleneck. In one year, something had changed. There was probably a woman in his life. And Martin guessed her name.

“I understand that our social worker contacted you recently.”

“Indeed. Valérie Tremblay came to see me at my office.”

“Anything she might have told you about the inquiry is strictly confidential.”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

The lieutenant paused and began again in a clear voice: “Rémi Chaumoi. The child who your mother saw in her neighbors’ garden is called Rémi Chaumoi.”

Martin closed his eyes.

“Are you all right, Doctor? Because I’ve only just begun.”

She hadn’t been wrong. His mother was never wrong. The stone boy had been real. Martin’s heart, swollen with guilt, leapt in his chest. He opened his eyes.

“I’m very well, Lieutenant. Go ahead.”

Sevran recounted what he knew of the story. Rémi Chaumoi had been the pupil of Ms. Le Buisson, from 2004 to 2006. She remembered him clearly. The child had behavioral difficulties. Particularly in his last year. He had become aggressive and reacted badly to authority. Ms. Le Buisson had once witnessed his being hysterical when his mother dropped him off at school. When he was asked to take off his coat, he shouted and took all of his clothes off, throwing his things about in the class. The teacher had calmed him by rocking him in her arms. She had then seen marks on the child’s body where he had been struck. The parents were called in by the school’s headmaster, and the information had been passed on to social services. The father did not appear at the meeting. The headmaster, Mr. Tissey, met the mother along with her older daughter, who was pregnant. He told the police how surreal the meeting had been, as the mother seemed to hold her daughter responsible for the child’s strange behavior. As for the bruising on his body, she maintained that it was the result of his behavior; he was unruly, and lashed out at everything. The same statement was repeated in front of the social worker at the Chaumoi family meeting at the social welfare center.

“A year later, the child was no longer going to school. No one was worried. Except the teacher. Ms. Le Buisson got back in contact with the family and learned that the child had been handed over to his older sister, who had just got married and was currently living near Paris. End of story.”

Martin nodded.

“The third child was Madame Desmoulins’s younger brother,” he murmured.

“That’s what my colleagues in juvenile crimes thought. Until we went to see Rémi’s mother in Auxerre.”

The lieutenant sat down in his armchair and crossed his arms.

“When they stuck the photo under her nose, she recognized her ‘little Rémi’ right away. At first, she denied knowing where her daughter and son-in-law were. So my colleagues got out the photos of the soiled mattress, and let loose about failing to come to the aid of a person in danger. Madame Chaumoi was afraid that it would come back on her, so she let slip that the Desmoulinses were in Belgium. They were hiding in Courtrai. They were arrested three days ago.”

“Were the children with them?”

“The two younger ones, yes. But not Rémi Chaumoi.”

Sevran picked a little wooden ruler out of the pencil pot and used it to scratch his neck.

“That’s where we are. Madame Chaumoi said something else to juvenile crimes.”

He put the ruler back in the pot.

“Rémi wasn’t her son, but the son of her daughter, Blandine Desmoulins.”

“What’s this, now?”

“Nothing too original. The kind of sordid affair we see often enough: the kid discovers she has a bun in the oven at sixteen, and it’s too late for an abortion. Out of shame, for fear of wagging tongues, the family decides to hide the pregnancy. The kid gives birth at her parents’ home, and a week later, the child is registered under the grandmother’s name.”

“Her first birth, at home, at sixteen? That’s medically risky.”

“According to my colleagues, the Chaumoi family isn’t exactly made up of Nobel Prize winners in the natural sciences—more like the types to put on porno flicks in front of the kids. The joint where they were living was something else, apparently. Aside from an enormous country-style kitchen that must have cost them a packet in credit, the rest of the place was revolting. Old carpeting in all the rooms and on all the walls, bare wires running along the baseboards, rooms that were never aired out that smelled to high heaven, and a garden turned into a dump where they were raising rabbits in jerry-rigged shopping carts.”

“Rémi grew up there,” Martin muttered.

“A charming nursery! His second one wasn’t bad, either,” he joked.

“So the child was the victim of mistreatment by his own parents?”

“Point of information…” The officer raised the index finger of his left hand, pointing at the ceiling. “Desmoulins isn’t Rémi’s father. We have a test confirming it, comparing his DNA taken at the time of his first arrest at the station with one from the soiled mattress: no relation.”

“So, his stepfather was hitting him?”

“Exactly. He couldn’t handle the idea that his wife had known another man before him. And it’s the kid who got the brunt of it.”

“And Rémi’s mother didn’t do anything to stop him. He really was a martyred child…”

“I need a coffee. You want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Something else? A glass of water? I’ll bring you one.”

The lieutenant disappeared from his office in a flash, leaving the door open, as was his habit. Martin looked out of the window at the sky becoming a gray-blue.

Sometimes, what he saw of his patients’ private lives wasn’t always rosy. Like the young woman who was six months pregnant, whose husband left her with three children. The father had gone back to Africa because he found Paris “too cold.” Dr. Préau had seen her in the car park at Intermarché one Saturday afternoon, with her three children and her big belly, a shopping cart filled with frozen pizzas and fruit juice, desperately waiting for a taxi that wouldn’t come. Martin had given the whole family a lift in his car, cramming the food in the trunk, and then had driven the young woman home—to newly allocated public housing. She had been left totally to her own devices; she couldn’t drive, she had barely enough to feed her children, and no one to help her other than her mother, who worked all week.

Martin spent time with her at each of his visits. He told her about her rights and put her in contact with social services. The child was born full-term. Then the father returned. And Martin didn’t see the young woman in his waiting room again. Until he happened upon her in the emergency room at Montfermeil one night, her face swollen and one shoulder dislocated.

His ability to block out that kind of experience was indispensable in his job. Too much empathy could kill a doctor, little by little. The world of human misery that Martin navigated contained so much violence and sadism. He tried to help, and often did, but nothing could pretend to protect people from hardship.

“I got you an Evian. It’s not the best. I like Luchon better myself. But we can’t get a distributor for it.”

Martin took the bottle that was being held out to him along with a clear cup. Sevran took his place back behind his desk, sighing, holding a steaming plastic cup in his hands. He decanted it into his Chupa Chups mug.

“What’s troubling us, Doctor, is that this whole thing made us look like fools.”

Martin opened the bottle without looking away from Sevran.

“Yes, but I haven’t told you all of it. It’ll be in the papers in a few hours. It’s probably already on the Internet. We found Rémi Chaumoi. Well, according to the medical examiner, it’s very likely that it’s him.”

Ice-cold water poured into Martin’s cup.

Outside, it was snowing.

The child’s body was located exactly where Laurie had drawn it, where Elsa Préau saw it appear each Sunday, under the weeping birch, buried a meter or so deep, wrapped in a blanket.