Karim slowly comes to his senses. Feels like throwing up. Utterly lost. His last memory: Aisha’s dead. He groans. He got into the Clio. Was going where? Can’t remember. He’s half lying down. Glimpses foliage and blinks, the trees are very close and aren’t moving. Rubs his cheek against a familiar fabric, blinks, grey fabric, he’s lying on a seat in a stationary car. A surge of panic. Sits up, sharp pain in his chest, a man is sitting on the front seat, watching him without moving, hazy face, the lawyer? Tries to get up. Impossible, arm hurts, pinned behind his back. The nightmare comes back, tied up in the four-wheel drive, the lawyer. He howls, pulls frantically on his arms, kicks the back of the seat with both feet, a spasm, vomits on his shoes.
‘Finished blubbering like a woman? I’m not going to rape you, for fuck’s sake.’
Down to earth with a bump. Recognises the guy who was in the cafe with Rolande. Still doesn’t understand what’s happened to him. Shuts up. Wipes his mouth on his right shoulder.
‘That’s better. Are you capable of understanding what I say to you?’
Nods. ‘Who are you?’
‘The Hakim brothers, does that name ring a bell?’
Karim feels his bladder empty into his trousers. Dense trees all around, dusk outside, no way out. He closes his eyes, leans back and groans.
‘My wrists and arms really hurt. Can’t you loosen these handcuffs?’
‘Let’s try and make this quick. The brothers weren’t very happy about you grassing on them.’
‘I didn’t grass.’
‘But they seem to think you did.’
‘When they came to pick up their last delivery, someone had tipped off the cops. They took photos.’
‘Who snitched then, if you didn’t?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And they forced you to testify against Nourredine.’
‘You know about that too?’
‘I know a lot about it. Except that it wasn’t the cops that were behind it, it was Tomaso. The cops only saw the fire.’ Karim opens his eyes and wriggles his back slightly.
‘You know more than I do. I don’t know any Tomaso.’
‘A guy from Nancy who used you to grass on the Hakims and is taking over their business. I don’t think they’ll let him walk all over them. There was an explosion in Tomaso’s nightclub two days ago, and the battle has only just begun. And you’re right in the middle of it. Not a good place to be.’
‘Why me? I’m small fry, I don’t count.’
Here we come to the epistemological disassociation, as my intellectual student friends would have said. Concentrate and cross your fingers in the hope that the kid will be scared enough not to realise that you’re changing the subject and that there’s no logical link between the two.
Montoya leans over towards Karim and strokes his cheek. A nervous twitch from the corner of his mouth to the corner of his eye. The smell of vomit, urine, sour sweat.
‘Poor kid. You saw the lists of names in the Daewoo accounts, when you were playing on the computer with Neveu, and everyone’s interested in those lists. Neveu was murdered because he’d seen them.’ The cheek twitches again. ‘Aisha was murdered because she was with Neveu during the strike. You haven’t been murdered yet because I’m the only person who knows that you were messing around on the computer with Neveu.’ Karim pictures himself sitting next to Étienne, shoulder to shoulder, the porn pop-ups against a background of accounting information which he didn’t even glance at. He hears Amrouche coming in and going out, slamming the door. Amrouche … ‘So you see, you may not have too long to live.’
Karim’s arms have gone numb. Now, all the pain is concentrated between his shoulders and up into the back of his neck. How long before Amrouche grasses on me, to Quignard, Tomaso, whoever? Despair. He shouts, ‘But I never saw those accounts. We were watching the porn. Étienne copied it on to a disk for me. We wanted to duplicate it and sell it. I took it with me and went home, that’s all, I never saw anything else. I haven’t even had time to do anything with it yet. I don’t know anything about disks and computers. Étienne was going to do the editing, and I was just going to sell it.’
Montoya turned back to face the windscreen. This kid’s telling the truth. I got close, but missed it. Wait. Pursue this idea to the end.
‘Give me the disk.’
‘Whenever you like. Right away, if you want. It’s in the Clio’s glove box.’ Montoya starts up the engine.
‘Fine, we’ll go there. Then, I’ll let you go and I advise you to disappear for a month or two, until things calm down. You’re out of your depth.’
Montoya pulls up at a junction between a farm track and a secondary road. A sweeping glance over the plateau’s clear horizon to check that he’s not being followed. The majestic swell of ploughed fields, as far as the eye can see. He hears Neveu’s widow: ‘It’s unbelievable how beautiful the plateau can look when you see it from the windows of our farm.’ He takes out his ‘special Valentin’ phone and calls him.
A groan. Montoya smiles.
‘I’ve got the list of Luxembourg accounts.’
‘Well … What does it look like?’
‘It looks like provincial wheeling and dealing. That’s what you called it, isn’t it?’
‘Something like that. Fill me in on the detail.’
‘Ten names of Daewoo workers, payments every month for just over a year which all come from another Luxembourg bank account. Sums ranging from fifty thousand to a hundred thousand francs.’
‘Which amounts to around three million a year. It’s a wealthy region.’
‘But these aren’t the sort of figures you’re interested in, am I right?’
‘Yes, but we can still make good use of them. Do you have the instructions?’
‘Not yet. The files I have were copied by mistake. The person who made the disk thought he was copying the porn videos the accountant watched while performing his onerous duties, but he copied the bank statements instead. I have an idea of how to find an explanation for all this. I just need a little time — forty-eight hours.’
‘That’s much too long. Fax me that list and we’ll work on it at our end too. I’ll give you twenty-four hours.’
Laughs. ‘I can’t do exactly as I please here. You said yourself that Pondange was the Wild West. This morning, we had two more corpses.’
Silence. ‘Clearly, you’re not joking.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Have the corpses got anything to do with our affair?’
‘Of course. Elimination of a potential witness.’
‘Fine. Forty-eight hours, if you insist. Things have been dead quiet at this end. Quignard hasn’t set foot in his office. More worrying, our phone tap hasn’t picked up any calls between Quignard and Tomaso.’