“Multiple sclerosis,” Bobby explains. “Can you imagine it? With the kids? We just have to trust to Providence now.”
As he says this he nods to the statue of the Virgin Mary swaying
gently beneath the rear-view mirror.
“You think she’s going to do something to help you?”
Alex didn’t mean to say this. Bobby turns towards her. There’s no bitterness in his voice – he’s simply stating the obvious. “The reward for salvation is forgiveness. Don’t you think?”
Alex doesn’t understand; she’s never really understood religion. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now she sees a sticker on the dashboard:
He is coming. Are you ready?
“You don’t believe in God,” Bobby says, laughing, “I can tell.”
There is nothing critical in this observation.
“I tell you, if I didn’t have religion …” he says.
“But it’s the Good Lord who’s got you into this mess,” says Alex. “Aren’t you bitter?”
“God is testing us.”
“Well,” Alex says, “I can’t disagree with that …”
Suddenly the conversation peters out; they stare at the road.
A little later, Bobby says he needs to take a break. It’s a service area the size of a small town.
“This is where I always stop off,” he explains, smiling. “It’ll only take an hour.”
They are twenty kilometres outside Metz.
Bobby climbs down first to stretch his legs, take a breather; he doesn’t smoke. Alex watches him strolling up and down the car park. He’s swinging his arms; she thinks this is because she’s watching him. Does he do it when he’s alone? Then he comes back to the cab.
“Excuse me,” he says, clambering into the sleeper berth. “Don’t worry, I’ve got my alarm clock in here.” He taps his forehead.
“While you’re napping, I think I’ll take a little walk,” Alex says. “And I need to make a call.”
Bobby finds it amusing to say “Give him my love!” as he draws the curtain of the berth.
*
Alex is in the car park, moving between the countless vans and trucks. She needs to walk. The more time passes, the more her heart sinks. It’s the dark, she thinks, but she knows this is not true. It’s the journey.
Her very presence on this autoroute simply serves to highlight the fact that the game is almost over. She pretends she is blasé, but in fact she is terrified of the real end. It will come tomorrow; it will come soon.
Alex starts to weep softly, arms folded across her chest, standing between the hulking lorries lined up like sleeping insects. Life always catches up with us – no-one ever escapes.
She repeats these words to herself, snuffles, blows her nose, tries to take a deep breath to relieve the pressure in her chest, restart her weary, heavy heart, but it’s difficult. Leave all this behind – this is what she tells herself to buck herself up. Afterwards she won’t have to think about it; it will all be dealt with. This is why she is here on this autoroute, because she is leaving everything behind. As she thinks this, her chest feels lighter. She walks on. The cool air revives her, calms her, invigorates her. A few more deep breaths and things feel better.
A plane passes overhead – she can just make out the triangle of winking lights. She gazes up at it for a long moment as it moves across the sky with hypnotic slowness; actually it is moving quite fast, and soon it has disappeared.
Planes often make you think about things.
*
The service area straddles the autoroute. On either side of a
pedestrian bridge are snack bars, newsagents, minimarts and shops of all sorts. On the other side of the bridge is the opposite direction, the road back to Paris. Alex climbs quietly back into the cab of the truck so as not to wake Bobby. Her return disturbed his sleep, but within a few seconds she once again hears the slow, deep breaths, each ending in a hiss.
She pulls her rucksack towards her, slips on her jacket, checks that she hasn’t forgotten anything, that nothing has fallen out of her pockets: no, everything’s there, everything’s fine.
She kneels up on the seat and gently pulls the curtain back.
“Bobby …” she calls in a whisper.
She doesn’t want to startle him. But he’s a heavy sleeper. She turns round, opens the glove compartment – nothing – closes it again. She fumbles under her seat – nothing. Under the driver’s seat she finds a plastic toolbox; she pulls it out.
“Bobby,” she says, leaning over him again. She has more success this time.
“What?”
He’s not really awake. He asks the question automatically; his mind still hasn’t surfaced. Never mind. She grips the screwdriver like a dagger and, with a single thrust, plunges it into his right eye. A very exact strike. Hardly surprising, given that she is a nurse. And since it was a powerful thrust the screwdriver has travelled deep into his skull – it looks as though it’s buried into the brain. Obviously it isn’t, but it is certainly deep enough to slow Bobby’s reflexes as he tries to sit up, legs flailing. He is screaming. So Alex plunges the second screwdriver into his throat. Again, very precise, though she can hardly claim much credit – she had plenty of time to aim. Just below the Adam’s apple. The scream becomes a sort of unintelligible gurgle. In fact, Alex
bends down, frowning:
I can’t make out what this guy’s saying
. But she manages to avoid Bobby’s thrashing arms, since the hulk could floor an ox with a single blow.
In spite of the confusion, Alex follows through with her plan. She rips the screwdriver out of his eye socket, shields herself and stabs it into the side of his neck; blood immediately spurts out. Then, taking her time, she goes back down to find her rucksack. It’s not as if Bobby’s going anywhere with a screwdriver embedded in his throat. By the time she comes back to him, he’s half dead. There’s no point tying him up; he’s still breathing, but only just; his muscles seem paralysed, and she can hear the death rattle. The most difficult part is forcing his mouth open – short of using a hammer it could take all day. So she grabs the hammer. These little toolboxes are great; they’ve got everything you might ever need. Alex smashes the top and bottom teeth, making just enough space to insert the neck of the sulphuric acid bottle into Bobby’s mouth. It’s impossible to tell what he can feel, the state he’s in, what it must be like to have acid pouring into his mouth, his throat; no-one will ever know how he felt and it doesn’t matter. As they say, it’s the thought that counts.
Alex gets her things together and she’s ready to leave. A last glance at Bobby, who’s gone to thank the good Lord for all His bounty. It’s a holy sight. A guy sprawled out with a screwdriver buried to the hilt in one eye, he looks like a Cyclops come to earth. Severing the jugular has caused massive blood loss in a few short minutes and already his face is white as a sheet – the top half, at least, because the bottom half is a bloody pulp; there are no other words for it. The whole sleeper berth is crimson with blood. When it coagulates, it will be an awesome sight.
It’s impossible to kill a man this way without getting dirty.
The jugular makes a hell of a spray. Alex rummages in her backpack, changes her T-shirt. Using what is left of the bottle of mineral water, she swiftly washes her hands and forearms then dries them on her old T-shirt which she tosses onto the seat. Then, shouldering her rucksack, Alex sets off across the pedestrian bridge to the far side of the autoroute, heading back towards Paris.
She chooses a fast car because she doesn’t want to waste time. The registration plate is from the Hauts-de-Seine area. She doesn’t know much about cars, but she can tell that this one is fast. The driver is a slim, dark-haired, elegant woman of about thirty who reeks so much of money it’s uncomfortable. All smiles, she immediately agrees to give Alex a lift. Alex dumps her bag on the back seat and gets in. The young woman is already behind the wheel.
“Shall we?”
Alex smiles, holds out her hand.
“Hi, my name’s Alex.”
Back in Paris, Alex collects her car and drives to Roissy airport. She spends a long time staring at the departures board: South America is way beyond her budget, America itself is a police state, which leaves only Europe, and as far as she’s concerned Europe leaves only Switzerland. This is the best possible
destination. It’s an international hub with people constantly coming and going, a haven of anonymity where anyone can reinvent themselves. In Switzerland they launder drug money, war criminals – it’s a country that welcomes murderers. Alex buys a ticket for Zurich leaving the following day at 08.40 and makes the most of her time at the airport to buy a handsome suitcase. She’s never been one to buy herself expensive things. This is a first; there’ll never be a better time. She lingers over a suitcase, but in the end plumps for a stylish monogrammed leather travel bag. It costs a fortune. But she loves it. She also buys a bottle of Bowmore from the duty-free shop. She pays for it all by credit card. She does a mental calculation: she’s pushing it, but it’s fine.
When she’s done she heads for Villepinte, miles and miles of industrial estates and a scattering of chain hotels. Aside from one or two deserts, there’s no place more anonymous, more forsaken than this. The Hotel Volubilis. An impersonal chain hotel boasting “comfort and privacy”. The comfort entails a hundred parking spaces, the privacy, a hundred identical rooms all paid for in advance: trust does not figure in the equation. Alex pays by credit card again. “How long to get to the airport?” she asks. “Twenty-five minutes,” the receptionist gives the standard answer. Alex decides to be on the safe side and orders a cab for seven in the morning.
She’s obviously tired – she barely recognises herself in the mirrored elevator.
Third floor. The carpet here is tired too. The room defies description. The number of guests who have passed through here is incalculable, the number of lonely nights, of restless nights, of sleepless nights. How many illicit couples walked into this room
all fire and passion, tumbled onto the bed and left feeling they had ruined their lives? Now Alex dumps her bag near the door and gazes at the repulsive décor, wondering what to do next.
It is exactly 8.00 p.m. She doesn’t even need to check her watch – she can hear the news starting on the T.V. in the room next door. She’ll take a shower later; right now, she peels off her blonde wig, takes out her toiletry bag, removes her cobalt-blue contact lenses and flushes them down the toilet. Then she changes into a pair of baggy jeans and a figure-hugging sweater. She empties all her stuff out onto the bed, slings the empty rucksack over her shoulder and leaves the room, taking the stairs rather than the lift. As she comes to the bottom steps, she waits for a moment until the receptionist disappears, then darts outside and back to her car. It suddenly feels abominably cold. It’s dark already. She has goosepimples. Above the car park, the roar of planes is muffled by the heavy clouds scurrying across the sky.
She has bought a roll of bin liners. She opens the boot of her car. Her eyes well with tears she refuses to see. She opens the two cardboard boxes marked
PERSONAL
and, without giving herself time to think, starts grabbing everything in them, racked by sobs she refuses to hear, and stuffing it all into the bags: copybooks, letters, sections of her private diary, Mexican coins. Now and then she wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve, but she doesn’t stop, she can’t stop, it’s impossible, she has to see it through, put everything behind her – the costume jewellery, the photographs – she has to throw it all away, without thinking or remembering – the novels, the carved black wooden head, the lock of blonde hair tied with red elastic, the heart-shaped keyring inscribed
DANIEL
, the name of her first great love in primary school, the letters faded now. Alex ties off the third bag, but it’s
all too much for her, too brutal and she turns, sits down heavily, collapsing onto the open boot of the car and takes her head in her hands. What she really wants to do is scream. If only she could. If only she still had the strength. A car moves slowly down the car park aisle. Alex quickly gets to her feet and pretends to be rummaging in the boot; the car passes and parks further along, closer to the hotel lobby: it’s always better when you don’t have so far to walk.
The three bin bags are on the ground. Alex locks the boot of the car, picks up the bags and strides across the car park. The sliding gate separating it from the road clearly hasn’t been used in years; beneath the paint which was once white it’s rusted. Outside, the road is almost deserted: a few lost cars looking for a hotel, a moped, but no pedestrians. Why would anyone want to wander around such a wasteland unless they were Alex? Where is there to go, in these identical streets? The rubbish containers are lined up along the side of the road outside the gates of each business; there are dozens of them. Alex walks for several minutes then suddenly, she decides: this one. She opens the container, tosses the bin bags inside, slips off her rucksack and throws it in too, then slams down the lid and walks back to the hotel. Here lies the life of Alex, unhappy, murderous, methodical, weak, seductive, lost, no police record. Tonight Alex is a big girl: she dries her tears, takes a deep breath, walks purposefully, arrives back at the hotel, this time strolling straight past the receptionist who is watching television. Alex goes back up to her room, takes off her clothes and melts beneath a warm shower. She turns the water up to scalding, opens her mouth wide beneath the spray.
Decisions can be mysterious. Camille, for example, would be incapable of explaining the decision he has just made.
Earlier this evening, he brooded about this case, about the number of crimes this girl will go on to commit before they put her out of harm’s way. But mostly he was thinking about the girl, about the face he has sketched a hundred times, about how she has brought him back to life. This evening, he realises his mistake. This girl has nothing to do with Irène; he simply confused two people, two situations. Obviously being kidnapped immediately connected her to Irène and since that moment Camille has been unable to dissociate the two because this case evoked similar feelings, similar fears, and stirred in him a similar sense of guilt. This is precisely why a detective is not assigned a case in which he is personally involved. But Camille can see that in this case, he didn’t fall into the trap, he created it. His friend Le Guen had simply offered him a way finally to face up to his fears. Camille could have handed the case over, but he didn’t. What is happening to him is what he wanted to happen; what he needed.