The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (11 page)

She couldn’t articulate this clearly. Which was why she hadn’t shared her thoughts with Morel or anyone else.

If only she’d brought the quick-footed Argentinian home. Around about now she might be getting a healthy dose of attention. The sort that might help her go back to sleep. Alone, though,
there wasn’t a hope in hell she would. She was buzzing, feeling like she did sometimes coming out of a club in the early hours of the morning, high from the pumping noise and closeness of
bodies, her stomach clamouring for food.

Only it was hours ago she had got home and now she really should be fast asleep. Something had nudged her and woken her up despite her intense tiredness. What was it? Like an urgent reminder in
her ear. Something to do with Isabelle Dufour.

She got up to go to the toilet and brush her teeth. In the dead-end street below a Chinese man, one of the workers at the Happy Dumpling restaurant, was dragging a rubbish bin. He seemed to be
making a point of going slowly, making sure that everyone in the street would hear it. He unlocked the rear entrance to the restaurant and disappeared inside, taking the bin with him. A skeletal
cat followed at a watchful distance and sat on its haunches, waiting for scraps.

‘Forget it, pal. You’re wasting your time,’ Lila said out loud. ‘People are having a hard time of it these days. There’s no room for charity.’

She thought about getting back in bed but she needed to eat something. She could barely remember what she’d had the night before but she was fairly confident none of it included solids. In
the fridge she found a family-sized pot of strawberry yoghurt past its expiry date and she sat at the table with the pot and a spoon. One of two teaspoons in her drawer and a parting gift from the
former tenants, a couple of American students who’d moved back to the States. They’d also left three plates, two bowls, two forks and a knife.

There was no coffee left, Lila remembered. Great. Six o’clock on a Saturday morning and no coffee. She turned to the crossword book on the table and tried to pick up where she had left
off. But her mind kept drifting. She remembered Anne Dufour’s face, closed, alert, as though trying to identify distant sounds.

Morel had told her not to make it personal, as if it was something she could choose. She knew to trust her instinct. Anne Dufour was scared. She had the helpless air of a woman left with no
options. Lila wished they could get her on her own. She might open up then.

Jacques Dufour was not a nice man. Lila didn’t pick him as a murderer, but she wanted to dig deeper into his life. A man like that was bound to have dirty secrets. Who knows, she thought.
I might get lucky. If I could nail him somehow, it might help shift the balance of things in the Dufour household. Maybe Anne Dufour would start smiling again, once in a while.

She could still see his face. Vain. Cruel. Convinced of his own power and superiority. How had he behaved towards his mother, Lila wondered. Had Isabelle Dufour spoilt her son? Was she
responsible for the fact he was such an arse-hole? Was any mother responsible for the way their children turned out? Lila thought of Isabelle Dufour’s apartment and wondered. She remembered
every object, every painting and rug in that house, the same way she could list everything she had seen at Jacques Dufour’s lavish home.

According to the concierge, he had visited his mother four times in eight years. Lila could picture him, pacing the apartment, looking at his watch and trying not to look bored.

‘Jacques Dufour. It’s people like you that make the world a shitty place,’ she said to herself. She got up and dropped the yoghurt pot into an overflowing rubbish bin and the
spoon into the sink. A dirty plate sat in it from two days earlier when she’d warmed up a ready-made lasagne.

She looked at her crossword clue again. In the street below she heard a single plaintive miaow, then another. Soon it became a series of calls, an ongoing lament that made Lila feel like someone
was scraping the inside of her skull with sharp claws. She looked at the ceiling. Cobwebs of dust hung from the corners. She needed to vacuum the place sometime.

‘I need to get out of here,’ she said to the walls. The thing that had nudged her was back, a memory that hovered in the back of her mind. Maybe if she talked to Morel, she would
remember. She picked up the phone and tried his mobile number. It rang eight times before going to a recorded message.

‘Morel. Pick up the phone. It’s important.’

She hung up and swore. Where the hell was he?

She dialled his number again. No answer.

‘Shit.’ Lila hung up. She took her pyjamas off and pulled on a grey T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She would get coffee first, then go to the pool and swim a few lengths. Think
carefully about what she remembered about the Dufours. Maybe it was nothing.

Though that seemed improbable, Lila thought as she jogged down the stairs. Her beating heart told her that she was on to something.

The swimming pool was busier than she’d hoped. While the desk attendant scanned her card, she saw through the glass people swimming two or three to each lane. She’d
hoped for a lane to herself, where she could pound the water till exhaustion overcame her. This was the only way she knew how to exercise, by reaching her limit then surpassing it, until there was
no feeling left.

Once she had changed into her blue one-piece swimsuit she looked for a lane that was not as busy as the others. She picked one that had just a single swimmer, a man with a powerful back and
strong arms whose butterfly stroke came across as a warning for others to keep away.

Perfect, she thought. This was someone unused to having to share his space. With a bit of luck it would piss him off to have her in his lane and he’d leave.

With the goggles on, everything receded. Feet and wet floors and the smell of chlorine, the shrieks of children and repeated instructions by swimming coaches. Everything except the underwater
sound of her breathing and the water’s movement where her body flew.

Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke. And back to freestyle again. Normally she could keep this up indefinitely. But today was different. After twenty-five minutes she stopped to catch her
breath. She stood at the end of the lane, waist-deep in the warm water and leaned her elbows on the concrete. Looked at the families coming in with small children, loaded with bags. Coming to the
pool seemed like a major expedition. The time it took to get the kids changed and unload bags filled with towels, goggles and toys.

On the seats a boy sat in his swimming trunks, alone. His fringe was too long but he did nothing to push his hair out of his eyes. An old man wearing a white polo shirt and tight white shorts
went over to him. Lila could see him speaking intently to the boy, whose face betrayed nothing, not even polite interest. There was something wrong with the whole scene. Lila realized what it was.
The old man was leaning far too close, his face inches from the boy’s.

Before she knew what she was doing, she’d pulled herself out of the water and hurried, dripping, to where they were.

As she got near the old man looked up. He immediately scurried away.

‘Everything OK?’ she asked the boy. ‘Do you know that man?’

The boy shook his head.

‘What did he want?’

The boy was growing uneasy. Time to shove off, Lila, she thought. Before someone starts wondering what you’re doing. She gave the boy a quick smile which she hoped seemed reassuring and
walked over to where her towel lay on a chair. She’d swum half the distance she’d normally swim but she wasn’t in the mood for it any more.

Once she was dressed, she dialled Morel’s number again.

‘Pharisee? Remind me what that means?’ Morel said.

‘It refers to many things. A member of an ancient Jewish sect, for one.’

‘Surely it has a capital P?’

‘A minute ago you didn’t know what the word meant. Now you’re assuring me it has a capital P.’

‘Look, never mind, just put it down.’

‘I’ll look for another word, it’s all the same to me.’

‘Please, just put it down,’ Morel said.

His father complied with the air of a man acting under duress. Morel watched his father count his points. He tried to remember whether the old man had always played games like this, with such
avidity, as though he were scoring points against the whole world. Then he remembered that the two of them had never done this together before.

‘What are you working on these days?’

‘Me?’

‘Do you see someone else in this room?’ his father said.

‘I have this one strange case,’ Morel said.

‘And?’

‘A man and a boy, knocking on people’s doors and talking to them about God.’

‘Doesn’t sound like much of a case.’

‘We have one victim. Though it isn’t clear how she died, and whether these two are involved. There are a number of things that point to a link.’

His father said nothing. Morel wondered how long a game of Scrabble might last.

‘You ready to put a word down?’ his father said.

Morel put down the word ‘tube’ and his father laughed.

‘Is that it?’

‘How about a snack?’ Morel said.

‘We ate breakfast an hour ago.’

‘Coffee, then. Would you like another coffee? I’m having one. You think about your next word and I’ll be right back,’ Morel said. He needed to get out of the room.

When he came back with his cup, his father pointed to the board.

‘I’ve done my turn. It’s yours now. Try to do something a bit better this time.’

Morel looked down at the board, then at his father. ‘Very funny.’

‘What? What’s funny?’

‘Your word. FXUTJS. Now why don’t you put down a real word?’

There was a pause, a silence that lasted less than ten seconds but seemed to fill the room. When Morel looked up at his father he saw an expression there he’d never seen before. He looked
like a man who has come to an intersection and doesn’t know which way to turn.

Morel could not look at the old man’s face now. Instead, he watched Morel Senior’s hand move across the board and pick the letters up, one by one. It seemed to take a very long
time.

‘Yeah, OK. I was just mucking around. I wanted to give you a fighting chance,’ he said.

While Morel struggled with how to respond, the phone rang and he reached for it, grateful for the interruption.

‘Morel speaking,’ he said, while his father walked out of the room.

‘It’s me. Lila.’

‘Why are you calling this number?’

‘I wouldn’t have to if you bothered answering your mobile phone.’

‘Shit. I left it in the car. Sorry.’

‘Yeah well. We need to talk. Can we meet somewhere? I can come to your place if you like.’

‘No need,’ Morel said quickly. He suggested they catch up over lunch. He gave her the name of a bistro in Neuilly and heard her snort.

‘I hope you’re paying,’ she said, before hanging up.

‘I was picturing something fancy but this is OK,’ Lila said.

They were sitting in a booth, in an Italian restaurant. The tablecloths were red and white checks and the walls decorated with trellis and fake vine. Andrea Bocelli was belting out that tune
that people seemed to like so much. Lila didn’t get it. Already the tables were filling up with families, all very presentable, even the children with their neatly combed hair and good
manners.

Morel opened a menu. Lila looked him over. He was dressed in jeans and a blue collared shirt. She wondered whether she had ever seen him wearing jeans before. It didn’t make any
difference. He wore denim the way he wore a suit. His clothes still had that look of having been pressed just moments before he put them on. He was clean-shaven and sharp. Good cheekbones, eyes
slightly slanted, reminding her that he was part Asian, though most people never saw it. Dimples when he smiled. Not her type exactly, but she knew plenty of women who would think differently.
Looking him over, she realized all of a sudden how she must look. She’d had about three hours’ sleep and the T-shirt she wore had a rip at the collar and a stain at the centre where
she’d spilt a takeaway coffee earlier.

‘I hope I didn’t interrupt anything this morning,’ Lila said.

Morel thought of his father’s confusion over the word he’d put down. The old man had said he didn’t want to play any more and retreated to his room. Morel had escaped to his
until it was time to meet Lila.

‘Not at all.’ Morel pretended to skim through the menu but he knew it by heart, having come here so often over the years.

‘What do you feel like?’ Morel asked.

‘I’ll have the gnocchi and a Coke.’

‘OK.’ He gestured to one of the waiters hovering around the tables and placed their order. When the waiter had left, Morel turned to Lila.

‘So what is it you want to tell me, that couldn’t wait till tomorrow?’

‘I was thinking about the Dufours,’ she said.

‘What about them?’ Morel pulled open a packet of bread-sticks and bit into one.

‘Something stayed with me. Remember the cross we found in Isabelle Dufour’s hands?’

‘What about it?’

‘It had those stones embedded in each arm of the cross. I remember thinking it was quite pretty, as far as these things go . . . Remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Anne Dufour, the daughter-in-law. She was wearing a cross around her neck when we went to interview them the first time. She wasn’t flaunting it, in fact it was quite
discreet, tucked away beneath her buttoned-up shirt. But when she leaned forward to pour more coffee, I noticed it.’

‘Lots of people wear crosses.’

‘It was the exact same one. Wooden, with those blue stones. How many of those have you come across?’

Morel leaned forward and Lila moved back slightly, her eyebrows raised.

‘What’s so special about it?’ he asked.

‘Well, I did a Google search, to see whether I could find it. And it finally came up.’ She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. It was a colour print-out of the cross, with a
brief description under it. Morel looked at it, then at Lila.

‘It’s an Orthodox cross,’ she said triumphantly. ‘It’s not immediately obvious, with this one. But it definitely is. And it occurred to me that we should visit the
Orthodox churches – starting with the Russian Orthodox Church in Rue Daru. Maybe someone there has seen our two guys.’