Affairs of State

Friday 13 December

Bornand wakes up in a daze. Blood spurting in the telephone booth, strangers, their faces pressed to the glass, staring at him in curiosity, revulsion? He’s covered in blood. He gets up with difficulty, picks up a pretty Chinese lacquer box from the table behind the sofa and snorts two pinches of cocaine. Lies down again and breathes slowly, his eyes closed.

Dead. A man of around forty, who looks like an ordinary kind of man, a primary school teacher, three streets away from the Michel’s place, and a Communist before the war. ‘A man who supports the Resistance,’ said Michel. Five of them lay in wait for him, with coshes, under a porch on a street corner. In broad daylight. When he came out, they jumped on him. Bornand got him in the shoulder, he fell to his knees, more blows and he keeled over exposing the nape of his neck, and Bornand struck. A sound of snapping wood and the Communist’s body lay motionless on the ground. A few more kicks, to let off steam. Intense. No comparison with Flandin’s abstract murder. They return, accomplices and victors both. Then Thomas locks him in his bedroom. End of story.

He has always been attracted by killers. Flashback to Moricet walking through the streets of Beirut, his gun wedged into his belt in the small of his back, under his elegantly cut jacket. Killers with class. Even Cecchi … A lot of deaths recently. Karim … hardly a murder, more a vanishing shadow. Flandin, Cecchi … Cecchi whose corpse flashes into his mind, half his face blown away, on the pavement outside the Perroquet Bleu …

No doubt a gangland killing, even if I let Mado think I believe the Intelligence Service had him killed. In any case, his death came at an opportune moment, ridding me of a burdensome ally. I have to admit that in the end he had me completely at his mercy. This murder is a stroke of luck. Of course.

He gets up and sits down on the sofa, runs his hand through his hair and smoothes his moustache. The President also has his family secrets, and is very keen for them to remain secret. I am the man who knows. He can’t manage without me. I just need to lie low for a few days at my wife’s house, and I’ll be back.

He gets up and goes into the bathroom. A freezing shower and a handful of amphetamines to keep himself awake.

What do I do with Françoise? When she came to my place, the first time, blackmail and seduction, a real gift out of the blue. I fucked her and flaunted her. So, incest, it’s just a word. You get used to it, you get bored, as with everything else. Don’t want to fuck any more. Flashback to the blonde fury, the other day. I’m losing her. Almost relieved to leave her without a confrontation. When things have calmed down, I’ll set her up in a furnished apartment with an allowance. She’ll understand. She has no choice.

He gets into his Porsche, and drives alongside the Seine towards the west of Paris.

He is tailed by two cars from Intelligence. Departure 05.07. Erratic driving. Pont de Sèvres, 05.30, then he takes the N118. All good, he’s on his way. He accelerates suddenly, they lose him. Presumably he’s heading for Saumur, we’ll take the A10 motorway. Back on Bornand’s trail at the first service station. He fills up. The car is parked in front of the shop. Bornand buys razors, shaving foam. He goes into the toilets and shuts himself in a stall. Makes himself vomit. Then, standing bare-chested at the washbasins, he splashes himself with water, washes his face, rinses out his mouth and has a shave. Peering into the mirror, he is tense and on his guard. He trims his moustache with the razor and combs his hair. He goes into the shop, eats a sandwich, drinks three coffees, swallows two pills and gets back onto the motorway at 06.15. He drives at a steady, moderate speed. They have no difficulty keeping him in sight.

Another stop at Le Mans, where he calls his wife to announce his arrival. It is 07.45.

This is the chance Macquart’s been waiting for.

‘Ghozali, go and see Françoise Michel. She knows about Bornand’s business deals, we had proof of that in Geneva. Find a way of getting her to tell you all she knows. Woman to woman … I’m counting on you …’

He leaves the words hanging in the air.

On reaching the outskirts of Saumur, Bornand vaguely remembers having been there before when his wife bought the estate, but he gets lost. He asks the way, crosses the whole centre of Saumur, follows the Loire, drives up along the cliff and takes a dirt road between two big paddocks where the horses graze. At 08.50 he parks his car in a gravelled courtyard in front of a small eighteenth-century manor house built of white limestone with a blue slate roof. The front door opens into a hall that runs through the house and leads out via a French window to the terrace and the grounds. A man in his forties wearing brown velvet trousers and a heavy beige polo-neck sweater, greets him.

‘Madame Bornand is finishing off her inspection of the stables.’

Madame Bornand. He knew, of course, that she had kept her married name, but hearing it, today and in this house …

‘I’ll wait for her.’

He is shown into a sort of parlour, a small room adjoining the kitchen, all in white limestone, with a chequered white stone and slate floor, a tall narrow fireplace where a log fire burns lazily, a worn leather armchair in front of the fire, a big oak farmhouse table and a few straw-bottomed chairs. In a corner near the fireplace is a coat rack heaped with old raincoats, hats and leather chaps. There’s a smell of wet earth and horses. He goes over to the French window. In front of him is the end of the terrace, then a vast tree-fringed manicured lawn stretching down to the stables below. He puts a log on the fire, pokes it, then returns to the window. Facing him is a sandy avenue leading directly to the far end of the estate. She’ll come up this path to meet him. His mind goes back to an image of himself standing in the chancel of the church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot, aged twenty-four, wearing morning dress. The church is packed out, there are probably hymns and organ music, but he can’t hear anything. He stares at the red carpet stretching straight ahead of him to the open porch, and in the pool of light, a couple is walking towards him. Thomas, a dashing fifty-something, very slim in his grey morning coat, his daughter on his arm, in her wedding dress, slowly approaching. Thomas watches him intently, only him, smiling. He stops in front of him, places his hand on his shoulder, Bornand closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the girl is now alone beside him, her face concealed by the white tulle veil. What did she look like that day? Impossible to remember. And today, what will she look like? A woman without a face.

He shudders. Nothing stirs in the park outside. He goes back to the fire and sinks into the armchair, resting the back of his neck against the leather, his eyes half closed. A few images, the moving curve of a very long, pear-shaped breast, dense pubic hair, the warmth of an armpit, but no face. From the catalogue of his mistresses, not a single face emerges. Even that of Françoise, always overcast by the ghost of her adolescent mother’s face, is hazy, uncertain. For me, women have been no more than territories where I’ve met men, men with whom I’ve made peace or war, men whom I’ve loved or fought, which amounts to the same thing, he thinks half dreaming.

Christine Bornand comes in through the kitchen door. He jumps. He must have dozed off. He looks at her with curiosity. Not very tall, a bit plump, a lively woman with short, curly chestnut hair, hazel eyes and chubby cheeks, pink from the cold. She’s about the same age as me and not a wrinkle. He gets to his feet, she gives him a cold stare, then begins to remove her anorak and leather chaps. The man who showed Bornand in brings a tray from the kitchen with two china cups, a big coffee pot and a basket full of little pastries, puts it down on the table and leaves the room. Christine Bornand sits down and motions him to do likewise.

‘Coffee, is that all right with you? So to what do I owe this visit? I worked out that we haven’t seen each other for twenty-two years, not since my father’s death. Twenty-two years, exactly the age of the first brood mare that was born here. She didn’t get pregnant this year.’

She bites into a pain au chocolat.

He finds it very hard to approach her. Even though he prepared for this meeting, he’s not on top form as a result of the vodka and amphetamines.

‘I’m in a very nasty mess.’ Christine dithers, then takes a second pain au chocolat. ‘I got dragged into a deal selling arms to Iran that was borderline legal and which, for the time being, is costing me a fortune …’ not good, cut to the chase, you can see she doesn’t give a fuck … ‘worst of all it’s likely to get me into trouble with the law. Until the storm dies down, I’ve got to appear exemplary. But I’m not, and I never have been.’ Bite the bullet and get it over with quickly. ‘The woman who lives with me, or, to be more precise, in the apartment above mine, is my daughter …’

Christine knocks her coffee over onto her trousers, scalds herself, and groans.

‘… That has led to all sorts of rumours, unfounded of course. But I have to put an end to them. I’ve come to ask you if I might possibly come and stay here, or if you would accompany me to Paris, and live in my apartment for a few months.’

The telephone rings. Christine gets up, goes into the hall and picks it up. She calls:

‘François, it’s for you … have you already given your secretary my number?’

When he picks up the receiver, the caller hangs up. Françoise, without a doubt. Who else? She already knows? Who told her? I’ll sort that out when I get back.

Christine has poured herself another coffee and is smiling at him.

‘I don’t want to hear another word about that girl. You have no idea how delighted I am to learn you’re in the shit. How could you imagine for one moment that I would lift a finger to help you?’

‘We’re still married …’

‘We have never been married, François. You didn’t marry me, you were adopted by my father. Two very different things.’

Irritated, Bornand adds:

‘I meant we’re still legally married, and with a shared inheritance which your father insisted upon. Which means that this estate, for example, is as much mine as it is yours. Which means that we had better come to some agreement and support each other.’

He speaks in an assured, frankly menacing tone. Christine rubs her hand mechanically over her coffee-stained trousers. She remains silent for a long time, gazing at the fire. Then she gets up:

‘Wait here for me, I’m going to get changed.’

Once the door closes behind her, Bornand goes to sit in the old armchair and lets himself go, his body slumped, his eyes closed. Is it possible that I’ve won, once again? He feels a sort of numb indifference.

Noria rings the ground-floor bell of Bornand’s apartment. A man opens the door.

‘Police. I’d like to speak to Françoise Michel.’

He shows her into the drawing room, quite coolly, without offering to take her coat, and leaves her there without saying a word.

Noria walks around the room, fingering her card wallet. She feels so fundamentally foreign to the scenes of Venetian life that they make her want to laugh. Her intuition is to emphasise the difference between them, and so enhance her sense of superiority and safety. She pictures Bornand again, at the cemetery gate, pinning Françoise Michel to his side with a violent movement, which she accepted. I’m the stronger one.

Françoise Michel comes in, wearing a chunky white Arran sweater. You really have to be skinny to wear one of those. Noria looks at her with curiosity. She’s got class. I haven’t.

‘Antoine tells me you’re from the police …’

‘Officer Ghozali, Intelligence, Paris.’

Noria shows her ID.

‘What do you want of me?’

‘I have been asked to give you some information about an ongoing investigation which concerns you directly.’

Françoise Michel remains ostentatiously standing, propped against the mantelpiece.

‘I’m listening. Make it quick, please.’

Noria leans against the back of the sofa, to give an impression of composure, seems to falter, then takes the plunge:

‘The President was informed yesterday that you are Bornand’s daughter.’

Françoise Michel starts. Good point, I’m ahead, Macquart was right.

‘And what has my relationship with Bornand got to do with you?’

‘Me personally, absolutely nothing, but apparently, the President is not of the same opinion.’

‘What does he know of our private life? Nothing. And there’s nothing to know. We’re not married, as far as I know.’

‘That is not his view at all. He considers that a scandal among his entourage would be very damaging, with the elections coming up in March ’86, in a country which, as you know, still has a strong Catholic tradition and in which people take a dim view of incest.’

‘Who says we sleep together?’

‘Nobody. And I repeat that I don’t care. But Bornand didn’t react in the same way as you.’ She’s wavering. Go for it. ‘The President insisted on his going back home to live with his wife. To which he agreed.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

Bingo. I’ve got her.

‘As you wish. He arrived at his wife’s place in Saumur at 08.50 this morning. And he’s still there.’

Shock. She hesitates, staring intently at Noria. Then she strides resolutely over to the telephone sitting on an occasional table, looks up a number in an address book and dials.

‘Hello … May I speak to François Bornand, please …’

‘One moment …’ A woman’s voice dripping with irony, at some distance from the phone. ‘François, it’s for you. Have you already given your secretary my number?’

She hangs up, ashen-faced, unplugs the telephone and goes over to sit on the sofa. Concentrate, she’s mine. Noria takes off her coat and lays it on the wooden seat. Then she settles in one of the armchairs. Françoise doesn’t have the energy to protest.

‘What do you want from me? You haven’t come here just to tell me I’ve been dumped?’

‘No, I haven’t …’

Noria takes a set of black and white photos out of the back pocket of her trousers, and lays them on the coffee table. Françoise Michel and Moricet, easily recognisable, in Geneva, in the lobby of the Hilton, in the street, outside the banks … She spreads them out and contemplates them. I swear she’s afraid.

‘… I’m afraid you may not be aware of who the man beside you is …’

Françoise Michel loses track for a second. A disappointing night, once the initial excitement was over. As is often the case. Rough and ready virility … She turns her attention back to Noria, who adds:

‘… Moricet, a French mercenary based in Lebanon, wanted by the police in several countries for murder. You’re the one giving him money, are you aware what that means? Money that we can easily trace, since we have the date the deposit was made and the name of the bank. Money which we assume is of criminal origin, arms trafficking, corruption, and murder. You are an accomplice.’

Françoise Michel, huddled on the sofa, says nothing. She stares at this girl who looks so young, she could be anyone, with such an ordinary face, and suddenly, such power … I’m honestly afraid I’m no match for her. She picks up the photos, slowly inspects them, trying to buy time to muster her thoughts.

‘Was it you who followed me to Geneva?’

‘Yes.’ Becoming aggressive: ‘I saw you getting picked up by a stranger.’

Shocked, Françoise Michel rises: ‘Thank you for all this information, which I shall try to make good use of. I’ll see you out.’

Noria doesn’t move.

‘I wouldn’t play that game if I were you. You don’t seem to realise the gravity of your situation. Well I’m going to tell you. You’re in big trouble, very big trouble. Accomplice to a murderer, accomplice to the misuse of company property and to money laundering. That’s not all. You’re going to be crucified by the press as a perverse seductress, and it won’t be long before you’re accused of having blackmailed poor Bornand, with all that money you regularly pay into your mother’s account. You’d do better to listen to what I have to say to you.’

Françoise Michel sits down again. Cornered. Then, after a silence:

‘I’m listening.’

‘Bornand’s ditched you, and he’s finished. You must leave here. Look out for yourself and your mother and salvage what there still is to be salvaged.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Cooperate with the police. We want to know about Bornand’s business dealings, his bank accounts, his friends and his foibles. And we think you can help us. We’ll find out everything we need to know in the end, with or without your help, but it will take time, and to move fast, we need you.’

‘And?’

‘And you remain free, we play down your involvement, we protect your private life as far as possible. That’s already quite a lot. It means you have a chance of coming out of this without being completely broken and ruined.’

‘Are you asking me to betray Bornand?’

Noria leans forward, on the tip of her tongue the words to evoke the beatings, her own mother’s moans as she lay on the kitchen floor, her father dazed, the fraction of a second of nothingness, desertion and deliverance. And with a sudden warmth:

‘Madame, for women, freedom often begins with a betrayal. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’

‘You’re unusually sincere for a cop.’

She’s going to come round. Give her time. Noria stands up, turns towards the fireplace, and contemplates the snake goddess.

Françoise Michel retreats further into the back of the sofa, her eyes closed. She feels like vomiting. Dumped, just like that. He jumps into his Porsche, and takes off. Not a word, and goes back to his wife. Dumped after twenty years’ submission and dependence. What you want doesn’t count. Dumped, like her mother, in the middle of the war, and pregnant. And she feels that knot of rage form in her belly and rise to her throat with a vengeance. Fury, hatred, the blows, Martenot on the floor, doing nothing to defend himself. I am that woman too, even if I try to forget it. She stares at Noria’s back; the young female cop is still absorbed in studying the snake goddess. And at this precise moment, I hate Bornand. Freedom begins with betrayal. She sits up.

‘Men are always full of surprises, don’t you think?’ Noria turns around. ‘And they’re reckless. I’m prepared to tell you everything I know.’

‘Not here. I’ll accompany you to the station to make an official statement.’

In the street, Levert is waiting at the wheel of an Intelligence Service vehicle. Françoise Michel climbs into the back, and Noria the front. There is a heavy silence. Levert concentrates on driving the car, Françoise Michel, gutted, mulls over her loathings and her woes, and Noria looks out at the city speeding past, no pedestrians about, the traffic is moving freely. They head for the city centre along the left bank, crossing the Seine at Les Invalides. A grey light. The darker mass of the glass roof of the Grand Palais, the Seine, vaguely luminescent, no wind, barely any movement of the water as a barge passes.

It’s in the bag.

When you take the time to look, this city is wonderfully tranquil. Macquart’s words echo: I don’t know what comes closer than this to pure happiness …

The door opens and Bornand turns around. Just in time to say to himself: a very elegant trouser suit, navy blue with white stripes, Yves Saint Laurent no doubt, looks good on all women, even the plump ones. She’s pointing a twelve-bore double-barrelled shotgun at him, buckshot cartridges dangling from a tungsten wire. She shoots twice, in quick succession, aiming for his chest. She hits him in the heart, Bornand is almost split in two: death is instantaneous. She stares at the pool of blood spreading on the black and white flagstones. The local stone is porous. It’ll have to be sanded to get rid of the bloodstains, maybe it’ll even be necessary to replace several flagstones. The opposite wall is also spattered. She sighs. Lays the hot gun on the table, next to the coffee cups. The smell of burnt gunpowder is stronger than that of horses, stronger than that of blood. Then she walks over to the telephone in the hall and dials the number of the local police.

‘Good morning, chief, Madame Bornand speaking.’

‘Good morning to you. madame. Has one of your horses bolted again?’

‘No, chief. You’ll have to come up to the stables. I’ve just killed my husband.’

Fernandez waits in a poky, windowless office, more of a cubby-hole than an office to be honest. Two chairs, a table, a standard lamp. A padded door. The sounds of the building barely filter through. A cross-examination room. Conditioning. He goes over and over what he will and won’t say. Yes, Katryn. If Cecchi knew, Macquart is also likely to know. An unfortunate accident. Nothing about Chardon, since nobody suspects me. Yes, everything I know about Bornand, including Flandin’s death. Nothing about Cecchi’s killing, I have an alibi.

He’s already been waiting two hours when Macquart comes in, places a transistor on the table and sits down. He exudes a sort of tight-lipped inner jubilation. Never seen him like that before. He’s scary. Fernandez clears his throat.

‘I’ve come to ask you if I can be transferred back to my original department.’

Macquart looks at him, on the verge of a smile.

‘So the life of a bent cop’s hell, is it?’

Fernandez doesn’t respond. Macquart continues:

‘There’s an entrance fee.’

‘I’m prepared to pay it.’

‘I’m going to come clean with you. I know a lot of things. I’m going to let you talk. If you tell me what I want to hear, I’ll do everything within my power to take you back. If you don’t, I’ll have you charged. I’ve got what I need to do so. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

‘Let’s go.’

Fernandez begins to speak. The plane crash, Chardon and the Iranian arms deal dossier …

‘How did Bornand get hold of it?’

‘Through Bestégui, from the Bavard Impénitent … Katryn as a possible source … Her death, my fault, a cock-up, Bornand doesn’t know … After that, Bornand contacts Beauchamp to get him to watch Flandin … He hushes up the dossier … which reappears on Monday, I don’t know how, and eliminates Flandin in front of me, at Laurent’s. I still don’t know how. Probably with Beauchamp’s help. I didn’t see a thing.’

‘It’s not very hard to murder cleanly when you know there’ll be no autopsy and no inquest …’

‘Yes, but Bornand a killer, things were getting too heavy for me and I panicked. I went into hiding that evening in a hotel in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where I’d stayed in happier times, and where I called you from. And I stayed there until today. I think that’s all.’

Macquart leans towards him:

‘Is that really all?’

‘I think so.’

‘Cecchi was murdered forty-eight hours ago.’

‘I know, I saw it on TV.’

‘In the inside pocket of his jacket, the Crime Squad found a handwritten document describing the entire financial workings of the Iran missiles deal. It would appear that the SEA is just a front to buy the missiles from the armaments division of the Defence Ministry and transfer the sales commissions. But the initial outlay, five million francs, and the guarantee of three and a half million were paid by the SAPA to the IBL, Bornand’s Lebanese bank which is covering the entire operation. And it’s the SAPA that will receive most of the anticipated profits, i.e. around thirty million francs. If we deduct twenty per cent for the commissions, that still makes a tidy little profit of over twenty million. Now the SAPA belongs to one man, and that is Bornand. Did you know that?’

‘No.’ After a pause: ‘Bornand always talks about France’s interests in Iran, and never about his own.’

‘And you truly believe he’s capable of distinguishing between the two? This is hardly new.’

Macquart stops and looks at Fernandez who doesn’t need to pretend he’s at a loss. He allows him a breather and continues:

‘Obviously, a presidential advisor who speculates privately on clandestine arms trafficking with Iran, and who pockets such huge sums is bound to make waves.’ Macquart adopts an aggressive tone: ‘You thought you were being clever, but you were nothing but a minnow in a sea of sharks. You were their stooge.’ A pause. ‘I’ll continue. Cecchi was intending to blackmail Bornand. He met the journalist from the Tribune de Lille and dug up the Chardon dossier last Monday, by way of a warning shot. And he had an appointment with Bornand at the Perroquet Bleu to offer him a deal. What deal?’

‘Maybe the re-opening of the Bois de Boulogne gambling club. He was set on it, and Bornand didn’t want to touch it.’

‘Cecchi got hold of the Chardon dossier from Combat Présent. It was Tardivel who gave it to him.’ In his mind’s eye, Fernandez sees Tardivel’s head lolling backwards, his glasses flying off, his vision blurred. It must have been even worse with Cecchi. ‘It remains to be seen how he obtained the information he was carrying on his person when he was shot. None of it seemed to appear in the Chardon dossier. Do you have any suggestions?’

‘No.’ Way out of my depth, and have been from the start, running in all directions without ever grasping what was going on. ‘I had no idea of any of this.’

‘There are two men who know the entire set-up. Flandin, who had no interest in a scandal erupting, and who’s dead, and Bornand’s head of security, Beauchamp. Beauchamp, a business associate of Chardon’s − they were in Africa together in the seventies and every so often since then they’ve smuggled in a bit of Lebanese heroin. It was Beauchamp who met Cecchi at Mado’s last weekend. And who was still with him when they met Bornand at the Perroquet Bleu. For the time being, that’s all we know, but we’re still digging. The papers found on Cecchi have been sent off for analysis. Beauchamp has been arrested. He’s the lynchpin in the whole thing, that’s certain. Who was he working for? A rival arms dealer? The Americans? The RPR which wanted to prevent the release of the hostages before the elections at all costs? All of the above? We may find out eventually. On the other hand, we can’t count on an autopsy for Flandin. But that scarcely matters now.’

Fernandez’s head’s spinning. Macquart is triumphant.

‘The fact that all that went over your head doesn’t bother me. But the fact that you didn’t talk to me about Chardon, that is serious. You were seen picking him up in Katryn’s car the day of her murder. Fernandez, this memory lapse is one ruse too many. I warned you. You don’t get a second chance.’

Fernandez is gutted. Macquart looks at his watch, 17.00 hours, time for the news. He switches on the transistor. Newsflash on France Info.

‘The Élysée press office has just informed us of the death of François Bornand, one of the President’s closest friends and advisors. He was the victim of a hunting accident, at the home of his wife in the Saumur region. He was cleaning his shotgun without having checked whether it was loaded, when it went off, killing him outright. The President immediately sent his condolences to his widow. The funeral will take place tomorrow, in Saumur, in the strictest privacy.’

Macquart switches off the radio.

‘You made the right choice in coming to see me, pity you didn’t see things through to the end.’

Then with a wan and wholly ambiguous smile on his lips:

‘The rule of law prevails. More or less.’