Fatale

14

“Well, well, well, my little lady,” said Commissioner Fellouque when he saw Aimée. “You’re going to break your neck. Where are you off to like that? Is something wrong?”

“I have just killed Baron Jules with a sporting gun,” said Aimée.

“My God!”

The dandified policeman drew the back of his hand across his mouth in indecision. He was on the sidewalk with one hand on his car, a Citroën DS21. Despite the biting cold he was wearing only a jacket; in his other hand he held his car keys; the front door of the car on the sidewalk side was open. Aimée had just appeared pedaling like mad, swung in towards the curb, and braked at the last moment; her bicycle had gone into a skid, the rear wheel banging into the sidewalk and the front one fetching up with a slight thud against the bumper of the DS21. The young woman had scrambled off her bike, almost falling to the ground, hopping aside. She let go of the bike, which tumbled onto its side with a clatter. Aimée’s face was streaming with sweat. She tried to get past the commissioner and make for the door to the police station, which was fifteen or twenty meters farther on. The man caught her by the upper arm.

“Where are you going?”

“To the cops,” Aimée told the commissioner. She shook her head impatiently. “Let me past. Come with me. I’m going to turn myself in. I’m going to confess.”

“You are not in a normal state,” said Fellouque, keeping a firm grasp on her arm. It was two thirty in the morning. The street was deserted. The tall lamps on low power bathed it in an orange half-light.

“What the fuck is it to you?” Aimée turned to face the commissioner with his large head. “What do you know about this anyway? I’m going to sink the lot of them. I’m going to give them all up. They’re rats! Swine! Dogs!”

“Who do you mean?” asked Fellouque.

“They paid me to kill Baron Jules,” said Aimée. “So come with me to the police station. I’ll make a complete statement.”

“But who? Who do you mean?” he repeated rather distantly.

“All of them,” answered Aimée, naming a few names and then giving a short laugh. “All of them,” she said again. “All those fine gentlemen.”

Without releasing Aimée, who seemed to be tottering, Commissioner Fellouque leaned over and reached into the DS21 to get his overcoat. Awkwardly, he slammed the door shut. With his coat under one arm, he pushed Aimée forward but did not let go of her.

“Lorque and Lenverguez?” he asked, repeating two of the names that Aimée had just supplied. “You mean to walk into the Bléville police station in the middle of the night and claim that Lorque and Lenverguez paid you to shoot a man? You must be crazy.”

“It’s the truth,” said Aimée. “Let go of me.”

She threw a forearm blow to the side of the commissioner’s neck. Fellouque let go of her and fell back. Had it not been for the parked DS21, he would have fallen flat on his back. Leaning against the car, he struggled to get his wind back, wincing, his eyes bulging. Aimée walked towards the police station.

“You are playing into their hands,” said Fellouque in a hoarse, very weak voice. Aimée halted. “You just don’t understand the situation here in Bléville. You’ll be found hanged. Tomorrow morning you’ll turn up hanging in your cell.” Fellouque was beginning to recover his voice. Aimée had struck him a rather moderate blow. She turned and looked at the policeman uncertainly. “It’s the examining magistrate you need to see. Not the station cops. You don’t understand anything.”

He shook his head and sighed. Grimacing, he bent down to pick up his overcoat, which he had dropped on the ground. Aimée came back to him as he straightened up.

“They have to be picked up right away,” she said. She consulted her Cartier watch. “Five minutes from now, that fat Lorque will be waiting for me behind the fish market. Between two forty and four fifteen I have eight appointments. You can pick every one of them up. They will have keys on them, keys to the station luggage lockers. There is money in those lockers. That’s your proof. You can nab the lot of them.”

Fellouque slipped into his overcoat. He did not button it up, and once again he grasped Aimée by the upper arm.

“First, let’s get you inside,” he said. His voice was still rather hoarse and he was breathing heavily. “Come.” He pulled her along, and she allowed herself to be pulled. “You can give me the details, very quickly. I’ll run and scare up the magistrate. Together, the magistrate and I will nab them. Leave it to me. You don’t know how things work in Bléville. I do.”

At the end of the street, past the police station, Aimée and Fellouque emerged onto the waterfront. Aimée let the commissioner lead her. Her face registered barely any emotion. From time to time she shot a sideways glance at the man, who was walking a step or so ahead of her with his hand behind him, drawing her along after him.

A sole café-bar was lit up and open on the road along the wharves. Fellouque and Aimée went in. It had a narrow frontage and was six or eight meters deep. On the right was a red Formica-topped counter, on the left four red Formica-topped tables in booths with red banquettes. A jukebox stood silent. At the counter, perched on one of three barstools, a drunk in blue worker’s coveralls and a peacoat was peering into a Picon and beer as if trying to read the future. A fat man of around thirty-five, in shirtsleeves, sat behind the counter at the cash register, reading the softcover comic-book edition of Special Operative 117 in Lebanon.

“Good evening, Commissioner,” said the fat man when he saw Fellouque.

“Good evening, lad.”

Fellouque steered Aimée into a booth and made her sit. The barman had put down his comic book, come around the bar, and stood deferentially near the booth as Fellouque took a seat opposite Aimée.

“What would you like to drink?” asked Fellouque.

“I’m hungry,” said Aimée.

“Do you have anything to eat?” the commissioner asked the barman. “A sandwich?”

“Bread’s all gone. I have pastries. Or at least cookies.”

“What we don’t have is music!” cried the drunk at the counter.

Aimée ordered a beer, Fellouque a Viandox. The fat young man went and busied himself behind the counter. He came back and placed on the table half a pint of Slavia and a large white cup which bore the word “Viandox” in blue letters and held steaming beef bouillon. The left wall of the café was mirrored. There was sawdust on the tiled floor.

“Should I bring the pastries then?” asked the barman.

Aimée shook her head. She was thinking about the baron lying dead in his blood. She had left the lights on in the room where his body lay. The commissioner asked her in a low voice to summarize the situation more clearly than she had done up to now. She summarized.

“As for Lorque and all of them,” she said towards the end of her summary, “I gave them appointments to make things sound right. But I was not intending to meet anyone. I have all the keys to the lockers. I made copies. I was planning to catch the four-thirty-five boat train to Paris. Before that I would have picked up all the dough they had left in those lockers. I did the math. It comes to about 200,000 francs. They all wanted me to meet them and hand over the files the Baron had on each of them, and they are supposed to give me their locker key in exchange, but I don’t need their keys at all.”

“What have you done with the documents?”

“Nothing, I didn’t give them a thought. They are back there at the Baron’s somewhere. I don’t know.”

“We’ll take care of that later,” said Fellouque. “Right now, I am going to see the magistrate. It’s best that you stay here.”

“If you say so.”

Fellouque rose. Aimée stared at the head on her beer; she had not so much as raised the glass to her lips. She half-smiled. Her hair had lost its curl and was sticking to her forehead with sweat. Fellouque gave her an uncertain little tap on the shoulder and went over to the counter.

“Hey, lad,” he said to the barman in a half whisper, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb at the motionless Aimée. “Just keep an eye on her. I’ll be back. She mustn’t leave.”

“Got it.”

Fellouque returned to Aimée.

“Just don’t budge, okay? I’m coming back.”

Aimée nodded. The commissioner stood still for a moment longer, then walked very quickly out of the establishment. All of a sudden Aimée gulped down her entire glass of beer, greedily. It left her with a mustache of foam. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She banged the glass on the table and signaled to the barman. The man raised his chin questioningly. She ordered another half-pint and a cognac. He brought them to her. She had emptied both glasses before he got back to the cash register.

“The same again,” she called. “And bring me your shitty pastries.”

“You like to joke, huh?” said the barman.

“Yes.”

“Are you joking?”

“Not really, no.”

The man gave up. He brought Aimée another beer and another cognac and shortbread cookies and slices of fruitcake enclosed in cellophane. Aimée stuffed herself and drank. Then she got up and made a run for the toilet at the back of the bar. The Turkish-style john was filthy. Aimée vomited. Around her on the walls were a host of inscriptions, obscene for the most part. I love sailors with big thighs, a homosexual who loved sailors with big thighs had written. Someone else had scrawled Muss es sein?, doubtless a German tourist, or a German sailor. Aimée remained in the john for a few more moments, not sure whether she was going to throw up again or not. Eventually she came out. Commissioner Fellouque, who had just returned, was standing stock-still in the middle of the dive looking worried. When he saw the young woman he relaxed.

“Come with me,” he said. He looked towards the fat barman. “Chalk it all up to me,” he said. Then he turned back to Aimée. “Come on,” he repeated. “The examining magistrate is waiting for us.”

Aimée followed the commissioner, who made for the door. They emerged onto the sidewalk across from the port and braved the damp cold of the night. Fellouque set off towards the bridges and the inner docks.

“Why did you decide to turn yourself in?” he asked.

“I can’t do it anymore,” said Aimée. “And this time I can take down half a dozen of the real assholes with me.”

They crossed the tracks of the railroad that runs the length of the port and started over a bridge. They were headed towards the fish market. This is located, remember, on a sort of promontory flanked by two docking basins, and the pair of moving bridges are attached to the promontory’s tip, so that this kind of peninsula constitutes an area accessible from two directions, either across the bridges or, at the other, eastern end, from the mainland of France. Dimmed streetlamps bathed everything in an orange-tinted or perhaps rather a deep coppery light. Aimée spotted DiBona’s WSK motorbike in a dark corner in the vicinity of the market. But she did not notice the tobacco-colored Mercedes of the fat Lorque parked in the dirty roadway that runs alongside the market hall, nor the blond Sonia Lorque sitting stiff and tense inside the car. Aimée and Fellouque entered the market precinct.

“Is the magistrate somewhere in here?” asked Aimée.

“What?” responded Fellouque. “Oh, yes, yes…”

He veered towards a warehouse. He and Aimée went inside through an open wicket in a vast door on runners. They were in darkness. Fellouque took Aimée’s elbow.

“This way,” he murmured. “Careful, there are steps.”

They climbed a wooden staircase in the obscurity and emerged into a glassed-in room not unlike a harbor-master’s lookout or an airport control tower. Outside, dimmed streetlights were visible on every side, and, much brighter, the dazzling white glare of floodlights set up here and there along the wharves beyond the docking basins. In the shadows of the glassed-in room several people were standing, at least seven or eight. Behind Aimée, Commissioner Fellouque closed and bolted the door at the head of the stairs.

“Don’t put the lights on,” said Lorque’s voice, “or we’ll be in a fishbowl here.”

“Yes, I mean no, okay,” said Fellouque.

Aimée took two or three steps into the glassed-in room. She was half smiling, disdainful and weary.

“I was rather expecting this,” she remarked in a low voice. The others remained silent. In the yellowish half-light they exchanged embarrassed glances. Commissioner Fellouque was leaning against the bolted door with a detached expression. “It didn’t take you long to get together,” said Aimée.

“I have a telephone in my car,” said Lorque. He took a step towards Aimée. He drew his palm across his cheek, the gesture making no sound and thus showing that he had shaved a second time that evening. “You had a pretty good plan. Risky, though. We could easily have spoken to one another and found out that several of us were paying you off. There’s a tidy sum waiting for you at the station.”

“Two hundred thousand francs.”

“Only a hundred and eighty thousand. Our good friend the doctor here got cold feet at the last minute.”

“I have nothing to do with all this,” declared Sinistrat in a high-pitched, quavering voice. “I tried to telephone at one o’clock in the morning to tell you, but there was no answer. I’m not going along anymore. The baron has nothing-he didn’t have anything against me, in any case.”

“But you were in a blue funk, weren’t you, Sinistrat, when you opened that envelope?” came a loud voice that probably belonged to senior manager Moutet.

“It was about an abortion,” said Sinistrat. “I don’t care if it comes out. In fact I’m proud of it.”

“There must be some inconvenient facts in there,” grumbled Lorque. “Medical complications, or money matters. Because it’s true, you were in a funk, my dear doctor. And you still are. But that’s not the point. The baron is dead because we ordered him killed. We are all in this mess together.”

“Not me,” said Sinistrat in a stricken voice. “I am merely an observer here.”

“Shut up, Sinistrat,” commanded DiBona. “You are pissing us off.”

“Yes, quite,” said Lorque. “Besides, these subtleties are of no concern to Madame Joubert.” He took another step towards Aimée. The young woman could clearly discern the features of the fat man with the brownish eyelids. His expression was concerned and sleepy. “I have arranged for the two million old francs you are short to be brought,” he said, “and they are here in this room. So you can still take them and go to the station. The commissioner will be delighted to drive you there. You can collect the hundred and eighty thousand francs from the lockers and get on the train to Paris with your plentiful booty. As for the documents, since you didn’t take them they are still there at the baron’s; the commissioner will have to pay a visit to the scene of the tragic event and take possession of them, then make his initial report concluding that the death was accidental. So even though you have failed to comply fully with the terms of the contract, everything can still be worked out if you wish. But do you wish it? From what I hear, you do not.”

A match was struck in the darkness. By its light Aimée saw the calm face of Lenverguez as he lit a cigar. Near the young woman, Lorque remained silent and thoughtful for a moment, his eyes lowered. From the group of men came a cough and the sound of shuffling feet. Having nothing to say, Aimée said nothing.

“In any event,” said Lorque, “how can you be trusted now?”

“I can’t,” said Aimée.

There were two desks in the room, cluttered with papers, along with metal filing cabinets and two chairs. Aimée grabbed one of the chairs, jumped onto a filing cabinet, and, holding the chair out in front of her, leaped through the closed window. She fell from the second story in a shower of broken glass. She landed on all fours; the chair, which she was still holding, shattered into pieces beneath her. A long splinter of wood from the seat broke off and penetrated the left forearm of the young woman, who rolled onto her side, bruising her shoulder and causing the glass fragments beneath her to snap and crackle. She also twisted an ankle slightly.

“Don’t shoot, Fellouque!” cried Lorque.

Aimée got to her feet. In the half-light she could see the glassed-in room above, a gaping hole on one side, and the white patches of the faces peering down at her. She wrenched the splinter of wood from her arm and made off as fast as she could, limping a little, towards a dark corner. She slipped into a narrow alley and emerged into the dirty street that runs behind the market. She followed it for some twenty meters, tripping over the piles of empty shells. Then she turned off again down another alley between warehouses. There, in the dark, she stopped and felt herself all over. No bones broken. The glass had cut her superficially on both elbows and one side of her head. Her scalp was bleeding, as was the wound from the wood splinter. But still, she was not losing a great deal of blood. She heard the sound of people running at top speed. At the end of the alleyway where the young woman was lying low two figures passed quickly, breathing heavily, running along the street. Farther away other racing footsteps on the asphalt were audible. After a moment silence returned. Aimée stayed still where she was. She was barely bleeding now. She massaged her painful ankle and her shoulder.

“Madame Joubert?” Lorque called out.

He must have been about fifty meters away. He was not shouting very loudly. Aimée had to listen hard to make out his words.

“We know you are there,” he was saying. “You can’t get out of this area. We have both ends covered. You can still make a deal with us.” The source of his voice shifted, moving farther off. Lorque obviously had no clear idea of exactly where she was. “We are not murderers. It is essential that we come to terms. Answer me!”

The blustering voice continued for a few more moments, less and less intelligibly. Aimée was no longer listening, being taken up with closer sounds. Someone was advancing cautiously down the street, getting close to the entrance to the alley. Aimée groped around silently on the ground. She found and got hold of an empty shell, a large shell, a scallop or the like. Bent double, she crept towards the end of the alley. Against the clear night sky the bookseller Rougneux suddenly appeared in silhouette. For a moment the man peered into the obscurity of the alley, then a flashlight in his hand came on, its beam casting a rather weak light into the shadows.

“She is here!” the man cried in a high-pitched voice.

He took a step back. At the same moment, Aimée stood up straight and, taking three steps forward, struck the man with the shell. Though the shell had not been sharpened, the single blow cut Rougneux’s throat.