‘Yes.’
‘That’ll make our job easier. Tomorrow evening I’m sending you an expert in phone-tapping and bugging. Find a way of getting him into Quignard’s office tomorrow night. He and I will take care of the rest. Call me back tomorrow afternoon so I can fix up a meeting.’ Montoya exhales, I’m still in. Valentin hesitates for a moment. ‘In the meantime, your instructions stay the same: watch out.’
‘Goodbye, chief.’
In the meantime, I’m off to fuck Stakhanova.
Montoya has a date with Rolande. Dinner in Brussels. They could have gone somewhere closer, but it was her idea, and she seemed keen on it. ‘If you want a good night out, you can’t go to Metz or Nancy, only Brussels will do,’ she said. ‘It’s more cheerful, more lively, a capital city.’ She’s standing waiting for him on the pavement in front of the Cité des Jonquilles estate. She’s a tall figure in a severe, well-cut grey wool suit, the black overcoat flung around her shoulders in a casual fashion, carefully contrived. As she stands immobile beneath a lamp post, smoking, her light helmet of bleached hair cut in a bob is eyecatching. Hard to say what it is that makes her a beauty. Men’s eyes are drawn to Rolande in the way that the spotlight loves some actresses. When he pulls up, she throws away her cigarette, slides inside the car, and slams the door.
‘Let’s get out of here quickly, you never know. If they catch up with us …’
When the car moves into the fast lane she sighs, loosens her overcoat, stretches out her legs in her beautiful black leather boots, and turns to Montoya.
‘So you’ve got your article on the strike, thanks to my friend’s story.’
Montoya concentrates on the road so as not to miss the Brussels turn-off.
‘More or less. I’m still looking for more information about this and that.’
‘I’m always amazed when she finally opens her mouth. I don’t know where she gets her strength from. It’s as though her words come from her gut and have the texture of flesh.’
She fiddles with the radio and soon finds a Belgian station that plays popular, all-purpose disco music which she seems to like. She hums along. Montoya returns to the subject.
‘Did you notice that Aisha mentioned several arsonists, most likely people unknown to Étienne Neveu?’
‘Of course.’ Pointing: ‘Turn right. There, now it’s straight ahead to Brussels.’ Silence for a while. ‘I’d never have thought of asking her to talk about her experience of the strike if you hadn’t been there. I don’t know, perhaps I assumed it had been the same for all of us so there was no point talking about it. I was very taken aback.’
Montoya stares into the rear-view mirror.
‘What she says clears your friend, this Nourredine who’s in prison. But will she agree to testify, to tell the police, the judges, the whole of Pondange, what she told us yesterday?’
‘Announce to her father and to the whole town: I slept with Étienne Neveu during the strike? I wouldn’t bet on it. Though I already talked to her about it today and I think she’ll come round. She needs a little time. The day when she does that, she’ll be free. She knows it, and wants it.’
He feels like telling her: If your friend agrees to testify, she won’t be free, she’ll be in danger of being killed. Étienne Neveu was murdered because he saw the men who started the fire. He looks at her. Relaxed and happy. Brussels is a long way away. If you explode this bombshell in her face, you’ve blown it. You won’t get any more out of her. He decides not to.
‘What kind of man was Étienne Neveu?’
‘I don’t really know. A skirt-chaser, for sure, but you know, men and women hardly mixed at the factory.’
‘Did he have any friends?’
‘No idea.’
‘Did he know Karim Bouziane?’
‘I really don’t know.’ She thinks. ‘They’re quite similar, the pair of them. Why are you asking me that question?’
He avoids answering. ‘If Nourredine didn’t start the fire, then who did, in your opinion?’ She suddenly looks pensive.
‘It was a strange outfit, Daewoo. I say “was” because I don’t believe it’ll ever re-open. Amrouche is already trying to find alternative employment for as many people as possible. An odd outfit.’ Her hands caress the dashboard, wipe away an imaginary speck of dust. ‘The atmosphere was weird. Not easy to put into words. There were huge numbers of Korean managers, too many for that kind of operation, and you never knew where they were or what they were doing. At first, it used to make Maréchal furious, then he calmed down. The workers turned up when and if they felt like it and the production lines carried on, even if the shift was short-staffed. Safety levels were a disaster, with the highest accident rate in the region. Even though we were handling hazardous chemicals, nobody gave a damn. The same went for the quality of the products. No real quality control. In my opinion, what we produced was pretty much worthless.’ Her hands flutter and hesitate, in front of the windscreen swallowing up the road. ‘The workers were all very young. For a lot of them, it was their first job, it all seemed normal to them. But I … it’s as though the whole factory was a stage set, and we were acting in a play without understanding what it was about …’
Montoya sees another woman, poised over her Murmure in the bar at the Lutétia. She belongs in another world and comes from a different perspective but, while speaking a different language in different tones, she says more or less the same thing: the factory was a front for money laundering and embezzlement. The weight of two overlapping views. The weight of Rolande’s hand on his arm.
‘… It’s almost as though the director had had enough and set fire to the theatre. I like that idea. Besides, the Korean managers vanished into thin air like extras after the show.’ She smiles. ‘Or you could also imagine that the audience burned the whole place down, enraged at the sight of the actors’ rebellion.’ She rubs her hands together. ‘You can imagine anything.’ She dreams for a moment, leaning against the door, looking out at the road, absently listening to the disco songs which keep on thumping out. ‘It’s funny, I almost said: you can hope for anything.’
‘Rolande, may I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Aren’t you intrigued by those lists of bank accounts in Luxembourg that Neveu was talking about and on which your name appears?’
‘Of course I am.’ Silence. Her hands smooth her trouser pleats. ‘I went and asked Quignard for an explanation this morning.’ Montoya’s hands clench the steering wheel. He concentrates on overtaking an articulated lorry. ‘Maréchal was there, he also …’
She allows a silence to set in.
‘Maréchal, the foreman?’
‘Yes.’ A hand flutters, seeking a word. ‘A brute. I slapped him after Émilienne’s accident.’ Her hand pauses on the armrest, caressing it. ‘But he’s also a man who respects the worker, and a man I respect in return.’
He respects the worker. A covert glance at Rolande’s profile. No trace of irony. The last witness of a vanished world, Atlantis, or not far off. She continues: ‘Well, I did have respect for him until today.’
‘Do he and Quignard know each other?’
‘Very well. They used to work in the same steelworks. That creates a bond and they’ve remained very close. Quignard listens to what Maréchal tells him. They may not be friends, because now Quignard’s a boss and Maréchal’s still a foreman, just a glorified worker, but they’re very close.’ She turns to him, looks at him, hesitates, makes up her mind. ‘I’m convinced Maréchal and Quignard knew about the lists of bank accounts. They merely asked who’d told me. And then Quignard threw me out, like a little girl who’s slightly simple. If Maréchal’s in on it, he’s also …’