‘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 were born yesterday. Cynical, case-hardened, or what? I don’t think they come much worse than you, uncle.’
‘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 plates sliding in all directions over the earth, unable to stay put. Tectonic plates, they’re called. Well, he was having tectonic thoughts. The thoughts were sliding about inside his head and sometimes, inevitably, they clashed. With the usual sodding consequences. When tectonic plates move apart, there’s an earthquake, and when they meet, there’s an earthquake. What was Alexandra Haufman up to? How would Leguennec’s interrogation sessions go? Why had Sophia been burnt to death in Maisons-Alfort? Had Alexandra been in love with Kyril’s father? Should he wear some rings on his right hand, why on earth do you need a piece of basalt in order to sing well? Ah yes, basalt. When the plates move apart, basalt comes erupting up, and when the plates clash it’s something else. What was it? Andesite. That was it, andesite. And why was there that difference? No idea, he had forgotten the answer. He heard Alexandra preparing to go to bed. And as he sat there at three in the morning, on his stair, he was waiting for the tectonic activity to subside. Why had he shouted at his godfather? Would Juliette make an tie flottante pudding for them tomorrow, as she usually did on Fridays? Was Relivaux going to own up about his mistress? Who was going to inherit Sophia’s money? Were his ideas about village trade a bit too far-fetched, and why did Mathias go about in a state of undress?
Marc rubbed his eyes. There comes a time when your thoughts are in such a godalmighty tangle that you can’t get a needle through them. All you can do then is drop everything and try to go to sleep. Retire in good order, as Lucien would put it, away from the firing line. And was Lucien in a state of eruption? Could you say that? No, Lucien was more a case of chronic low-level volcanic activity. What about Mathias? Not tectonic at all, Mathias, he was like water, but a vast stretch of water, an ocean. The ocean cools down the lava flow. But on the ocean bed, things aren’t as calm as all that, there’s a lot of bad stuff down there: rifts, trenches, and even some revolting forms of animal life.
Alexandra had gone to bed. There were no more sounds from downstairs, no lights showing. Marc was drowsy but he didn’t feel cold. A light came on on the landing, and he heard the godfather coming softly down the stairs until he reached his level.
‘You really should go to sleep, Marc,’ whispered Vandoosler.
And the old man went on down with his pocket torch. He was going to take a leak outside, presumably. A simple, straightforward and healthy act. The older Vandoosler had never shown any interest in tectonic plates and yet Marc had often talked to him about them. Marc didn’t want to be sitting on the stairs when the old man came back up. He ran upstairs, opened his window to get some fresh air, and lay down. Why was the old man carrying a plastic bag, if he was just going to take a leak outdoors?
XX
THE NEXT DAY, MARC AND LUCIEN TOOK ALEXANDRA TO DINNER AT Juliette’s restaurant. The questioning sessions had begun and they were turning out to be slow, long-winded and unproductive.
Relivaux had been called in that morning, for the second time. Vandoosler passed on to all the information he’d gleaned from Inspecteur Leguennec. Yes, Pierre had a mistress in Paris, but he didn’t see what business that was of theirs, or how they knew about her already. No, Sophia had not known about it. Yes, he stood to inherit one-third of her estate. Yes, it was an enormous sum of money, but he would have preferred Sophia to be alive. If they didn’t believe him, they could go and take a running jump. No, Sophia didn’t have any personal enemies. A lover? That would surprise him.
Next came the turn of Alexandra Haufman. She had had to tell them everything over again, four times. Her mother would inherit a third of the estate. But her mother would certainly not refuse Alexandra anything, would she? So Alexandra would have a direct interest in all this money coming into the family, wouldn’t she? Yes, agreed, but so what? Why had she come to Paris? Who could confirm Sophia’s invitation to her? Where had she been last night? Nowhere. And you expect us to believe that?
Alexandra had been questioned for three hours.
In the late afternoon, it was Juliette’s turn.
‘Juliette doesn’t look too happy,’ Marc observed to Mathias between courses.
‘Leguennec upset her,’ Mathias replied. ‘He didn’t believe an opera singer could be friends with someone who runs a café.’
‘Do you suppose he’s irritating everyone on purpose?’
‘Maybe. At any rate if he wanted to wound her, he managed that.’
Marc looked at Juliette who was tidying away glasses in silence. ‘I’m going to have a word with her,’ he said.
‘No point,’ said Mathias. ‘I’ve already tried.’
‘Well, maybe I’m not going to say the same things,’ said Marc, catching Mathias’ eye for a moment.
He got up and began making his way through the tables to the counter.
‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured to Mathias as he went past, ‘I’ve nothing clever to say to her. But I’ve got a big favour to ask her.’
‘You do what you like,’ said Mathias.
Marc put his elbows on the counter and gestured to Juliette to come over. ‘Did Leguennec upset you?’ he asked her.