and now this little stone… One day they went off to the Dordogne, and had to go back when they were already a hundred kilo-metres out of Paris because Sophia had forgotten her stone. It’s true, she put it in her handbag or in her pocket. On stage, whatever kind of costume she had, she insisted they sew in a little pocket for it. She never went on stage to sing without it.’
Vandoosler sighed. How tiresome Greeks could be sometimes.
‘When you’ve finished your enquiries,’ Alexandra was saying in an undertone, ‘and, you know, if you don’t need it, I’d like to have it. Unless, that is, Uncle Pierre…’
She gave the plastic bag back to
‘We’ll hold on to it for now, of course. But Relivaux didn’t say he wanted it.’
‘So what are the police concluding?’ asked Vandoosler.
Alexandra liked to hear the voice of the old policeman, the uncle or godfather of the one with the rings, if she had got it right. She was a little distrustful of the
‘Shall we go into the other room?’ said Marc. ‘We could have a drink perhaps.’
They moved as one in silence and Mathias put on his jacket. It was time for him to go to work in
‘Juliette hasn’t closed the restaurant?’ asked Marc.
‘No. But I’m going to have to do all the work. She can hardly stand upright. When Leguennec asked her to identify the stone, she asked for explanations.’
With a distressed expression, Leguennec spread his short arms.
‘People will ask for explanations,’ he said. ‘It’s normal, and then they wish they hadn’t, and that is normal too.’
‘See you this evening then, St Matthew,’ said Vandoosler. ‘So what do you conclude, Leguennec?’
‘That two weeks after disappearing, Madame Simeonidis has been found. As you won’t need me to tell you, the state of the body, which is burnt to cinders, makes it impossible to say when she died. She could have been killed two weeks ago, and hidden in the abandoned car, or she could have been murdered last night. In that case, what was she doing in between times, and why? Or she might have gone into the alleyway herself, to wait for someone, and was taken by surprise. The state the alley is in now, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions. There’s soot and rubbish everywhere. Frankly, the investigation is going to be difficult. All our lines of approach are weak. The angle “how did it happen?” is stymied. The angle “who has an alibi?” is no use, because we’ve got a timescale of two weeks. As for physical clues, it’s hopeless. The only line of questioning we have left is “why?” with all that that entails. Possible inheritors, enemies, lovers, blackmailers, all the usual suspects.’
Alexandra pushed away her empty cup and went out of the ‘refectory’. Her son was on the first floor, where Mathias had settled him at a small desk, to do some drawing. She came downstairs with him and took a jacket from the bedroom.
‘I’m going out,’ she told the four men sitting round the table. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up for me.’
‘With your little boy?’ said Marc.
‘Yes. If I’m late back, Kyril will sleep in the back of the car. Don’t worry. I just need to get away.’
‘Car? What car?’ asked Marc.
‘Aunt Sophia’s car. The red one. Pierre gave me the keys and said I could use it when I wanted to. He has his own.’
‘You’ve been over to see Relivaux again?’ said Marc. ‘On your own?’
‘My uncle would have been surprised, don’t you think, if I hadn’t even been to see him for two days. Mathias can say what he likes, but Pierre was just fine with me. I don’t want the police harassing him. He’s got enough on his plate without that.’
Alexandra was at the end of her tether, clearly. Marc wondered if he had not been too hasty after all, to take her in. Perhaps they should send her to stay with Relivaux? No, it really was not the right moment. And Mathias would bar the door again, like a rock. He looked at the young woman, holding her son firmly by the hand, with an expression on her face that was hard to fathom. The waterfall of disillusions, he had almost forgotten the waterfall. And where would she go now in the car? She had said she knew nobody in Paris. Marc ran his hand through Kyril’s curly hair. The kid’s hair was absolutely irresistible. That did not stop his mother being a complete pain when she was worked up.
‘I want to have supper with St Mark,’ said Kyril. ‘And St Luke. I don’t want to go in the car again.’ Marc looked at Alexandra and gestured that it would be no trouble to look after the little boy for the evening, he was not going out.
‘Very well,’ said Alexandra. She kissed her son, told him they were really called Marc and Lucien, and walked out stiffly, with arms folded, after a nod to
‘If she thinks she’s going to Maisons-Alfort,’ said Leguennec, ‘she’s wasting her time. The street’s cordoned off
‘Why would she go there?’ Marc asked, suddenly irritated, forgetting that a few minutes earlier he had been wishing Alexandra would go elsewhere. ‘She’s just going to go somewhere for the sake of it, that’s all.’
Leguennec shrugged and spread his hands without replying.
‘Will you have her followed?’ asked Vandoosler.
‘Not tonight. She won’t get up to anything significant tonight.’
Marc stood up, glancing from Leguennec to Vandoosler and back.
‘Follow her? What the hell do you mean?’
‘Her mother will inherit, and Alexandra stands to gain,’ Leguennec said.
‘So what?’ cried Marc. ‘She’s not the only one, I dare say! Oh, for God’s sake, take a look at yourselves. The original hard-boiled cops! Never giving an inch! Always thinking the worst! This girl goes off, absolutely shattered with grief, she’s just going to drive round the streets, and you’re already thinking of having her followed. Because you think, aha, there’s no way she’s going to pull the wool over our eyes, we weren’t born yesterday. Well, that’s bullshit! Anyone can play that game. You know what I think of people who like to “control the situation”?’
‘Yes, we do know,’ said Vandoosler. ‘You can’t stand them.’
‘You bet I can’t stand them. There are times in this world when it’s better to behave as if you
‘Meet my nephew, St Mark,’ Vandoosler said to Leguennec, smiling. ‘The least little thing and he’ll rewrite the gospel for you.’
Marc shrugged, finished his glass of beer and banged it down on the table.
‘I’ll let you have the last word, uncle, since you’ll take it anyway.’
He left the room and went upstairs. Lucien followed him quietly and caught him by the shoulder as they reached the landing. Unusually for him, Lucien spoke in a normal voice.
‘Calm down, soldier,’ he said. ‘We’ll win through in the end.’
XIX
MARC LOOKED AT HIS WATCH AS LEGUENNEC CAME DOWN FROM Vandoosler’s attic. It was ten past midnight. They had been playing cards. Unable to sleep, he heard Alexandra come in at about three in the morning. He had left all the doors open, so as to be able to look out for Kyril if he woke up. Marc told himself it would not be proper to go down and listen. Nevertheless, he did go down and cocked his ear from the seventh stair. The young woman was moving about quietly, so as not to disturb anyone. Marc heard her fill a glass with water. It was as he had thought. You go shooting off, confidently into the unknown, you take a few firm, if contradictory decisions, but in fact you are just going nowhere, and you end up coming back home.
Marc sat on the seventh stair. His thoughts were in a whirl, clashing or diverging. Like the plates that move along on top of the hot heaving magma underneath, the molten mantle of the earth. It’s a scary thought, those
