“Take responsibility for what you did,” she said. “In return, I’ll let you have two hours one-on-one with your son. I won’t contact Buron till afterward; then it’ll be up to him to contact the public prosecutor. Two hours.”
Capestan left a pause, enough to make Valincourt aware of the stakes, then brought their talk to a close, the harshness gone from her voice:
“It’s over for you. But not for him. He’s only just beginning.”
Valincourt pulled the keyboard toward him in silence. Before typing, he simply said:
“He has a fiancée. Manon. I’ll give you her number. I’d be grateful if you called and asked her to be here in two hours’ time. Gabriel will need her.”
45
It was time. Alexandre Valincourt had spent the last twenty years of his life dreading this moment. A moment that every single decision in the last twenty years had sought to delay, to avoid. All those murders just for twenty measly years wrenched from the truth. And now here he was, on a wobbly armchair in this degenerate commissariat, typing out his confession on a worn-out keyboard. In two minutes he’ll have to see his son and tell him, tell him . . . How was he supposed to tell his son?
The situation was looking very bleak for him. Valincourt pushed the keyboard back toward Capestan, who printed off the document. She waited over by the printer, then handed the sheets to him without reading them. He took a pen from his suit jacket and scrawled his signature. He stood up, put his pen back in his pocket, and followed Capestan to the office where Gabriel was being held. She knocked and signaled to the two lieutenants to leave before stepping aside to let the divisionnaire in.
He now felt a tremendous calm, a sort of infinite peace that must have been like death, or something similar to death. Capestan closed the door behind him.
“Hello, Gabriel,” Valincourt said, without moving too close to his son. “They’re going to let you go.”
He was reaching for his next words, but nothing at all convincing came to him, so he had to make do with the raw facts.
“I, however . . . I have to stay. I’m giving myself up. I have killed some people. I had no choice. It was . . . It was the only way for you to grow up in peace.”
There was no need for him to ask Gabriel to let him speak, to not interrupt him: his son was sitting bolt upright, not even daring to tremble. One of the braids on the armrest had come loose, and the young man was tugging at it vacantly with his right hand. His feet were planted on the ground. He looked sprightly, ready to pounce. Valincourt took a breath, grabbed a chair from against the wall, sat down at the edge of it, and continued:
“I can explain—”
“It’s the boat, isn’t it? Something happened?” Gabriel cut in, desperate to be wrong.
“Yes,” Valincourt said.
He rubbed his eyes. He was struggling to concentrate. The memory of the shipwreck came flooding back and made his head throb. Alexandre Valincourt was assailed by cries that got louder and louder, the useless blast of a foghorn, and passengers barging their way past him. He shook his head roughly to wake himself up and confront his son, who was staring right at him, but he could not hold his gaze.
“You fled without waiting for Maman?”
“No,” Valincourt murmured.
For her last few hours in Florida, Rosa had chosen to wear a light, turquoise cotton dress over her slim body. She had gone ahead to the boarding deck with the children, pointing Alexandre in the direction of the ticket inspector. Alexandre was looking at her as he handed their booking details to the man, an enormous American in a sweat-soaked T-shirt. He could read the sadness etched across his wife’s melancholy face. She resented him for uprooting her all over again. It was the only possible option, but she still resented him for it. When she turned to gaze across the sea, her son Antonio yet again took the chance to escape her watchful eye. He snuck off toward a parrot that had been caged up by its owners for the journey. The boy hit the bars with his palms, causing the poor animal to flap its wings and squawk in terror.
That child was poisonous. Not only poisonous, but pampered by his mother, who utterly adored him and forgave him everything because he had grown up without his father. A father who was surely no better himself, but who Rosa continued to revere for obscure political reasons. He was just another guerrillero who reveled in his courageous deeds in battle yet ignored any responsibility toward his family. He had abandoned Antonio, leaving the miniature Attila to be raised by Alexandre, who had to watch the little tyrant like a hawk the moment he went near Gabriel, his beloved son, the apple of his eye, the wonderful embodiment of his love for Rosa. Gabriel was sweet, charming, and smiley. He wasn’t even two years old, but already he had nothing in common with his stupid, barbaric half brother, the beast who had bitten off his ear lobe.
From a distance, Alexandre saw Attila grab Gabriel’s hand and shove it against the cage, then try to slip it between the bars so the parrot could bite him. Alexandre dropped the luggage and sprinted toward the children. He lifted Attila up with one hand and with the other he gave him an almighty smack. Rosa let out a scream. Seconds later she was standing in front of Alexandre, berating him furiously. As had happened so many times before, in spite of their boundless love for each other, Rosa and Alexandre were flung into a violent argument sparked by the child rolling around at their feet. Attila would always lie between them, like a tick blighting their perfect happiness, a parasite whose only purpose was to hijack Rosa’s
