Dog Will Have His Day (27 page)

Louis approached the door and rang the bell.

‘As I feared, they’re not answering. Mark, break the French window.’

Marc stepped over the broken glass of the French window and helped Louis through. They heard Sevran running downstairs, and stopped him halfway. Wild-eyed, he was holding a pistol.

‘It’s all right, Sevran, it’s only us. Where is she?’

‘No, please, you don’t understand –’

Louis pushed the engineer gently aside and went up to Lina’s bedroom, followed closely by Marc and Mathias. Lina Sevran was sitting at a small round table. She had stopped writing. Mouth too wide, eyes too big, hair too long, the hand gripping the pen, everything about her frozen and defeated posture alarmed Marc. Louis went over to her, picked up the paper and read in a murmur:

‘I am guilty of the murders of Marie, Diego and my first husband. I am guilty and I’m going to disappear. I am writing this in the hope that my children . . .’

Louis put the paper down with a tired movement. The engineer was wringing his hands in a kind of tortured prayer.

‘Please,’ said Sevran, almost shouting, ‘let her go. What would that change? . . . The children. Let her go away somewhere. Tell her, I beg you. I wanted her to run away, but she won’t listen to me, she says it’s all over for her, I found her writing this with the pistol beside her. Do something, Kehlweiler, tell her to go!’

‘What about Jean?’ asked Louis.

‘What proof is there against him either! We could say it was Diego, couldn’t we? Diego! We could say he’s still alive, he came back to kill everyone, and Lina can get away!’

Louis pulled a face. He gestured to the engineer, who had collapsed on to a chair, and held a whispered conference with Marc and Mathias.

‘Agreed?’ said Louis.

‘It’s a big risk,’ muttered Marc.

‘We must try it for her sake, or she’s had it. OK, Mathias, off you go.’

Mathias went downstairs and out through the broken window.

‘All right,’ Louis said to the engineer. ‘We’ll do it your way. But first we have to go round by the machine – there’s a reason. Lina,’ he said in a low voice, ‘bring your suitcase.’

Since Lina hadn’t moved, he raised her gently by both arms and pushed her towards the door.

‘Marc, take her suitcase and rucksack, and bring her coat too, it’s pouring with rain.’

‘Where’s the other one gone, the big man?’ asked Sevran anxiously. ‘Has he gone to tell someone?’

‘He’s gone to cover us.’

The three men and Lina walked through the rain. When they saw the giant silhouette of the pointless machine, Louis asked Marc to stay behind on guard. Marc stopped and watched them going on in silence. Louis was still holding Lina by the arm; she allowed herself to be pushed with no more reaction than a terrified madwoman.

‘Here we are then,’ said Louis, stopping at the foot of the installation. ‘What do we do about this, Sevran?’ he asked, pointing to the ground. ‘That’s where Diego is, right?’

‘How did you know?’

‘We have someone here who is able to distinguish between the really pointless and the fake pointless, and another who can read signs from underground. Between the pair of them, they realised that this monument to pointlessness actually served to seal Diego in. Am I right?’

‘Yes,’ whispered Sevran in the dark. ‘When Lina realised that Diego had decided to accuse her of Thomas’s murder, she lured him outside. Diego agreed to talk, but he took his rifle with him. The old man was fragile, she easily got it away from him, and she shot him. I had followed them, I saw Lina fire the shot, I was absolutely horrified. I learned it all that night, how Thomas had been murdered, and then this next crime. It only took me a few seconds to make up my mind, I decided I’d help her, always. I took her back into the house, I got a shovel, and I ran back. I dragged the body up to the woods, dug a grave, and put stones on top of it. I was scared stiff. I covered everything back up, stamped it down and spread pine needles over it. Then I went and left the gun by the quayside and untied a boat and sent it off. It wasn’t a brilliant solution, but I had to improvise quickly. Then everything settled down, and Lina did too.’

Sevran stroked Lina’s hair, while Lina, still supported by Louis’s arm, did not turn her head.

‘Later on, I found out they were going to clear the land to build right on the spot. They would start digging and find the body. So I needed a big idea to avoid disaster. That’s when I thought up the machine. I needed something heavy enough that no one would think of moving it for a hundred years, but something that would be able to stand up, without digging big foundations.’

‘Spare us the technical details, engineer.’

‘Yes . . . yes, something that might seem attractive to the mayor, so that he would move the planning permission for the building. I sweated blood making this blessed machine, and nobody will be able to say it isn’t unique in the world –’

‘No, they certainly won’t,’ said Louis. ‘It’s worked very well up to now. But it would be better to dig Diego up, and take him somewhere else, it would be more –’

There was a sudden cry in the night, then another, weaker, more strangled. Louis looked up around him.

‘It’s Marc,’ he said. ‘Wait here, Sevran!’

Holding his knee, Louis ran back into the wood, and found Marc where he had left him, with the suitcase and rucksack.

‘Some miraculous fountain,’ said Louis, rubbing his knee. ‘Quick, better go back, it should have worked.’

A hundred metres away, they heard a thud.

‘That,’ said Marc, ‘is the sound of a prehistoric hunter falling on his prey. No need to hurry, he could fell a bison.’

At the foot of the machine, Mathias was pinning the engineer to the ground, his hands behind his back.

‘In my view,’ said Marc, ‘you shouldn’t leave Sevran too long like that, he’ll be crushed.’

Louis put his arm round Lina’s shoulders. He did so instinctively, since he thought she was about to fall over.

‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t have had time, because Mathias was watching. Right, Mathias?’

‘As you thought,’ said Mathias, who was now sitting astride Sevran’s back as comfortably as on a rolled carpet, ‘as soon as you were out of sight, he pulled out a gun. He put it into his wife’s hand and pressed it against her head. He didn’t have much time to fake a suicide, so I had to move quickly.’

Louis undid the straps of the rucksack.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘you can let the beast go. Pull him upright and tie him to the machine, and then, if you will, please go and fetch Guerrec.’

Louis stared at the engineer through the darkness. Marc didn’t trouble to look at Louis’s face, he was sure he had the expression of the Goth from the Danube, the one on the mosaic.

‘So, Sevran, you want us to get some answers from your machine of death?’ said Louis in a low voice, addressing the engineer as ‘tu’. ‘Why did you kill Thomas? To get Lina, and with her the unique collection of typewriters her husband owned? Go on, Marc, turn the handle.’

Without knowing why, Marc turned it, and the whole mass of metal began to vibrate. Marc went to fetch the little message; by now he had done it so often that he knew exactly where to put his hand, even though it was dark.

‘How you did it, you’ll have to tell us. Some trick to make him lean over the railing, I suppose, to see you down in the courtyard, calling up to him. How did Diego find out the truth? Go on, Marc, keep turning. He understood in the train, by looking at you in the mirror over the luggage rack. You can see everything in it, people’s faces and even their hands if they’re sitting in the space for four, if you’re behind them. That’s a detail one might forget. You think you’re fine in the train, all by yourself, but the whole carriage can see you in the mirror. I know, I spend my time watching people. And what kind of expression did you have on the way home? Turn it, Marc, make the machine spit out the truth. Did you look like the devastated friend you had appeared to be in front of the police? Not at all. You were smiling, you’d won, and Diego saw it. But why did he keep quiet, the brave matador? Because he originally thought Lina had killed her husband, and that you were just her accomplice. To accuse Lina, whom Marie had cared for since her childhood, would be terrible for Marie. And Diego loved Marie, he didn’t want her to find out. But with the pair of you after your marriage, he changed, and one night Diego found out that Lina hadn’t been involved, that she knew nothing about it. How did he do that? Turn, Marc, keep turning. I don’t know, you will have to tell us what he came across. A conversation with Lina, a letter perhaps, some sign that made him understand. Diego realised then that you had acted alone, and he had no reason to keep quiet any more. So he confronts you. You take him off somewhere to have a chat, you’ve been friends for so long. Still, Diego is worried and takes his rifle. But he can’t hold his own against you, sentimental Spaniard versus steel machine: nothing must get in the way of your levers and pistons and gears, all well oiled with ambition, all clanking and tapping away to prove your power. You killed him and buried him here. But why did you kill Marie, poor old Marie who went on hoping her Spanish husband would return, as she went out to gather her shellfish? Because Marie was going to move house! Lina wanted her to move in with you. But that house move could be a problem. What if Diego had left some clues? Of course you’d already searched their house, but does anyone ever know what secret hiding place a couple may have? You get in your car to go to Paris, just like every other Thursday night, you park it somewhere, you stop off at Marie’s place, and you take a look. She hasn’t gone out after winkles, she is crying her eyes out in Diego’s den, where she’s packed everything up in boxes, she comes and goes in the empty room, she pushes furniture that holds memories and what does she find? Where? You may tell us, perhaps a few pages rolled up inside the old umbrella by the door. I say umbrella, because he wouldn’t put it in a box, and there was an umbrella there, I checked. I see it like that, a simple hiding place, you’ll know. She reads it, she knows. You get hold of Marie, you knock her unconscious, you carry her away, you finish her off in the cabin or in the wood somewhere, and you lug her down on to the beach. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes. Finding her lost boot and putting it on makes you lose another ten. You leave for Paris, and that’s when the drama starts. The animal drama that your mechanical mind couldn’t have foreseen. Your dog leaves his shit on a grid round a tree. Nice, that, don’t you think? Basic intestinal nature intrudes, to ruin the stainless-steel perfection of the turbines. In future, you’ll know not to take nature for granted, and you won’t take the dog. Then the cops turn up here, that wasn’t in the script, but you set your machinery going, and you divert them, by using your mechanical know-how. You accuse Gaël and Jean, you slip a note in my pocket. Well played, engineer, you slowed me down, and my mind was on other things just then. But I’ve found out about your Virotyp 1914.

‘A very unusual machine, the top can be taken off, and fixed to a little carriage, and that makes it a portable typewriter. So portable that it can be carried in a large pocket, and with some skill, which you have in spades, you can type a note with your hand inside your coat. How? How do you see the letters on the disc? You type blind? Precisely, that’s what you do, because there’s a Braille version of the Virotyp, made for men blinded in the Great War. That’s the one you own, a very rare machine. I went and read up about it in Rennes, in the book by Ernst Martin, the collector’s Bible, the one you have on the sideboard in your kitchen, I’d noticed it, you see, because it’s a German book. Your Virotyp was an idea of genius. As everyone had seen, you stayed all afternoon in the cafe. You couldn’t possibly have typed the note, you are free of all suspicion, perfectly protected by the secrets of the marvellous machine. I told Guerrec that myself. In fact, you typed your message on the spot, in your pocket after playing the 7 ball. You put your coat back on after the game. Then it was easy, just grab the paper with a handkerchief, crumple it, and drop it into my jacket. When you got home, you put the movable piece back on the base of the Virotyp. You’ll permit me to go and take another look at it, I hope, it interests me, I admit, I’d never heard of it. Which is what you bargained for, because who on earth would know that? Who would imagine that an ancient typewriter could be put in a coat pocket? But because it was puzzling me, I went to consult some books, I sometimes do a bit of research, you shouldn’t think the world is full of idiots, that’s a big mistake. Then you pushed Gaël over the edge, although you had no connection with Gaël at all, he was just a cog in your revolting machinery.’

Louis stopped talking and stretched his arms. He looked at Marc and Mathias.

‘Stuff this for a lark, as Marthe would say. Let’s finish it off. Lina followed you, when you went out to find Gaël. If she followed you, it was because she suspected something. And if she suspected something, her fate was sealed. You let suspicions pile up against
her
. Jean’s arrest didn’t seem to be in the bag, Guerrec didn’t seem too keen, this morning by the church, since the man was weeping desperately over his friend Gaël. So it was Lina who would have to pay, before she cracked. You must have done all you could to stop her talking. I presume you went for the simplest method: you threatened to harm her children. So Lina kept her mouth shut, she was paralysed with fear. She’s been afraid ever since I arrived with my story about the dog. Good evening, Guerrec, I’m just finishing with this man, then I’ll pass him on to you. What’s the news on Gaël?’

‘Coming round,’ said Guerrec.

Guerrec seemed relieved, he had grown attached to the young lad.

‘Just listen to the end,’ said Louis. ‘I’ll tell you the beginning later. Lina got frightened because of the toe in the dog’s mouth. Because on Thursday nights, the dog knows you are about to leave, and it follows you everywhere. Any dog would be the same, even your pit bull, but I’ve spent too long with my toad to have thought about that at first. But Lina knows. The idea festers. If the dog ate Marie’s toe on Thursday night, it must mean you, Sevran, were nearby, the dog wouldn’t have left your side the night you get the car out of the garage. The idea keeps on growing, it chokes her, she starts thinking about her first husband and Diego, the whole scenario comes out of the shadows, she panics, she thinks she’s going mad, she can’t act normally. She is so scared, and so silent, that she lays herself open to all kinds of suspicions. She watches you, she follows you. From that point, she’s doomed, and we, like fools, follow the trail you laid, for a day too long. When I got back this evening, with the secret of the Virotyp, I knew I’d got you, but I didn’t have any evidence. Just Lina’s total ignorance of the typewriters, which didn’t count. Or my evidence from the dog. He had excreted one bit of truth and he gave me something else post-mortem. The dog didn’t like Lina, he wouldn’t ever have followed her to the cove. With fragile bits of evidence like that, and with Lina refusing to talk because she was protecting her kids, she was cornered. So I had to create some evidence. Tonight, when I saw you forcing her to provide proof of her guilt, with the possibility that you would fake her suicide afterwards, you offered me a way. I came back from Quimper as fast as I could, when I heard she was planning to escape today. If Lina ran away, it would be too risky for you, so you would certainly want to eliminate her. And yet, I suppose, you loved her enough to take her from Marcel Thomas? – unless it was more that you wanted his machines, that’s possible. I brought you out here for you to fake the suicide in the only moment when I left you alone, by running over to Marc, you couldn’t choose the time or place, but there’d be no witnesses. And you know now that Mathias had been placed ready. I’d never have taken the risk without being sure he could jump you at the critical moment. You are one piece of shit, Sevran, I hope you’ve understood that, because I haven’t the heart to go over this again.’