The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (6 page)

He didn’t go up immediately. Instead he sat on the sofa and took his shirt off. The air felt cool against his back. He took a deep breath and waited for the past hours to recede.

Morel’s living quarters, on the ground floor, were private. Several years ago, his father had hired an architect to see whether he could come up with a solution that he and his son could
live with. The place had become too big for the two of them. All that space reminded them of the woman whose death had robbed them both of their closest ally.

The architect had done a good job. Now Morel accessed his quarters through a door in the living room. There were only two sets of keys, one for Morel and the other for Augustine, the cleaning
lady. Morel had a bedroom and a large study which could double up as a small living room if anyone visited, as well as a bathroom.

His father occupied the whole top floor, which included a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. Hardly anyone used the shared downstairs living room any more, and the dining room stood empty
too. Morel senior was too much of a recluse these days to entertain and his son tended to work late.

This way they managed to keep out of each other’s way, though the kitchen was still communal. The two men had their meals at the counter on a set of Ikea stools Morel had bought when he
realized how formal and stilted meals at the dining table had become with just the two of them.

Morel threw his clothes into the laundry basket in his bathroom and fetched a clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Then, with a sigh, he crossed the silent living room, climbed the stairs to his
father’s bedroom and knocked on the door.

‘Come in.’

The old man lay propped up by a stack of pillows. He still had an abundant head of hair though it had turned completely white shortly after his sixtieth birthday, in the days following his
retirement. He was tall and wiry, with deep blue eyes and a prominent nose set in a narrow face. Except for his height, Morel looked nothing like him.

He looked up from his book and took his glasses off. The news was on, the sound muted.

‘You just got back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Another long day, then.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Have you had dinner?’

‘Yes,’ Morel lied.

He could see his father didn’t believe him, but he was too tired to make something up.

‘What are you reading?’ he asked, still standing in the doorway.

‘It’s not something you’d be very interested in, I think.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘
The Monk and the Philosopher.
It’s a conversation between the French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and his father Jean-François Revel.’

‘Sounds interesting,’ said Morel, who had never heard of either man. He tried to remember the last book he’d read.

‘It’s a fascinating exchange, between a father with a rational, scientific mind and a son he hoped would build on his budding scientific career but instead chose a completely
different path. He became a Buddhist monk.’

‘Disappointing for the father, I expect.’

‘It isn’t as simple as all that. You should read it.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Morel said.

His father smiled, as though at some private thought, and put his glasses back on.

‘I’ll let you get on with it then. Goodnight,’ Morel said.

‘Goodnight.’

Morel went downstairs to the kitchen, where he found the remains of a roast chicken and a ratatouille. Today was one of Augustine’s visiting days. She would have cooked for the two of them
once she’d finished the housework. It always shamed Morel to think of the old woman having to prepare food for him and his father. But she had known him since he was a child and insisted that
she wanted to, particularly now that her children were all grown.

‘What else am I going to do?’ she said. ‘Sit at home and watch TV?’

While he waited for his ratatouille to warm in the microwave, he tried calling his elder sister Maly’s mobile number. It rang six times before going to voicemail. He left a message asking
her to call back.

He hadn’t heard from her in weeks. It was unlike her.

In his room he placed a glass of wine on the bedside table and propped himself up with pillows before sitting up to eat and watch the news. The newsreader was saying the world’s population
had now reached seven billion.

Seven billion. It was best not to think about it.

His father had turned the volume up on his TV. Morel knew it would continue now, long after he turned the lights off. His father seemed to get by on four or five hours’ sleep.

Philippe had been a diplomat. Morel still clearly remembered the day he’d found out that his son was joining the police force. He hadn’t even bothered to conceal his
disappointment.

‘Well, it’s up to you of course,’ he’d said. The two of them had gone out for lunch. Neither of them had spoken much and Morel had ended up drinking two-thirds of a
bottle of wine. During the drive home, a violent argument had flared up, and both had said things they later regretted, things that were impossible to unsay.

Now he felt something like what he’d felt then. A wave of anger so intense that it seemed to drain him of energy. Then, just as quickly as it had flared, it died.

He’d been a rookie still when his mother died. Fresh from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Officiers de Police, painfully and proudly aware of his father’s disappointment.
He’d always looked to his mother for affirmation. His father wasn’t talking to him, not since he’d decided not to pursue a career in mathematics even after completing his degree.
Morel’s mother, who’d arrived in the French capital from Cambodia as a seventeen-year-old music prodigy, knew something about her son’s state of mind. Her own father, a minister
in Sihanouk’s government, had sent her to Paris to study music at the conservatory. She never finished her studies, choosing instead to follow an ambitious young man who’d joined the
civil service to his first posting in Beijing, the day after her nineteenth birthday.

The courtyard was filled with shadows. As Morel watched, he saw the neighbour’s lights go out. His eyelids were getting heavy but he was on edge, thinking about his father – and of
Isabelle Dufour.

In the family living room, among his father’s CDs, he found Fauré’s
Requiem
, as he had known he would. Back in his room, he put headphones on so that his father
wouldn’t hear him and sat in the blue armchair by the window, with all the lights off except for his bedside lamp.

‘In Paradisum’, the tune that Elisabeth Guillou had hummed and whistled so vigorously for him, was the work’s seventh and final movement. He listened for a while but found he
could not bear it for long. It reminded him of weekends when, as a child, he struggled to fill the emptiness around him. Each hour seemed like it would never end. He re-enacted war games with his
toy soldiers on the stairs while just steps away behind closed doors his father played music loudly in the living room, lost in his own private world. His mother and sisters remained upstairs.
There was always noise and laughter there. Morel could have joined them but something drew him to the closed door and the presence of the solitary man behind it.

He turned off the CD player and tried to read for a while but ended up watching TV instead. An American cop show where investigators collected evidence in the most improbable ways. Morel found
it mildly entertaining for a while, until the absurdity of it all irritated him. Why were these shows so moronic? He poured himself another glass of wine and watched the late news. There was
nothing fresh since the earlier broadcast, and nothing about Isabelle Dufour, but then he hadn’t expected anything. One old woman’s death was hardly news.

Close to midnight, Morel dialled Solange’s number. It was far too late to call her but some perverse reflex made him wait until the moment he knew for certain his call
would be disruptive.

Neither she nor her husband bothered to answer. He let the phone ring twenty, twenty-five times before hanging up.

He undressed and brushed his teeth, and got under the covers. He was exhausted but too wound up to sleep. As he lay there on his back, he thought about Isabelle Dufour, lying in her tidy bed,
her fingers folded around a crucifix.

He thought about the man and the boy going around knocking on doors, seeking out the vulnerable. Could they be responsible for Isabelle Dufour’s death somehow? It seemed an unlikely
supposition. Where was the motive?

But if not those two, then who? And why had they taken so much care with the body? She had looked so peaceful, lying there. Like she was asleep. It was hard to picture what had gone on before,
the violence that had preceded her death. Morel thought about what Martin had said, about the bruises on Dufour’s arms. Had she tried to fight back? Or had she given up at once, knowing she
was no match for her aggressor?

He got up again and made his bed, tucking the sheets in tight at each end. Then, slowly and carefully, he slid under the covers. One side was not as tidy as the other now. He reached one arm out
and tried to pull the sheet tighter at that end.

He lay still with his eyes closed, picturing the apartment where Dufour had died. Among her many belongings there had been a sense of neglect. The cleaning woman had come three times a week to
sweep and collect the dust, to freshen the place up, but you couldn’t breathe life into things that were unloved.

What was it Maria had said? That Isabelle Dufour had lived an introverted life. Had she lost interest in the outside world as she grew older or had she always been this way? Morel pictured his
father, sitting up in bed upstairs.

Morel pulled a pillow from beneath his head and rolled over to his side. He longed for a cigarette.

His bedside lamp was still on, casting shadows on the ceiling. For a long time he lay awake with his eyes wide open.

‘So you’re still driving that tractor,’ Lila said, looking at his car parked next to the police vehicle they were taking to visit Jacques Dufour at his
Neuilly home.

Morel ignored her comment. The cherry red Volvo, a 1962 PV544 model, was close to his heart. Never mind that it was a subject of great hilarity to his colleagues, who thought it a middle-aged
car. After all, he and his car were only four years apart in age.

Jean and Marco had spent the previous afternoon talking to everyone in the vicinity of Guillou’s, Latour’s and Volkoff’s homes. Before meeting up with Jean, Marco had also gone
back to Dufour’s building. It seemed that no one recognized the description of the two evangelists.

‘How is that possible?’ Lila said. ‘It’s like they don’t exist, except in these women’s imaginations.’

‘We can only assume that there’s a reason why the evangelists picked these women. Did they think they needed saving? They turn up on their doorstep and preach to them. Make them feel
uncomfortable,’ Morel said.

‘But why?’

‘Let’s imagine a scenario where they had something to do with Isabelle Dufour’s death,’ Morel said, ignoring her question. ‘They visit her, stand on her doorstep
for a while delivering their spiel on religion, then come back a week later to kill her.’

‘Maybe they knew her personally? Maybe she had something they wanted?’ Lila said.

‘There’s no evidence anything was taken,’ Morel said.

‘So she said or did something that threatened them?’

They were both silent for a while, trying to make sense of this.

‘Remember the concierge in Dufour’s building didn’t always have her eye on the ball,’ Lila said. ‘Someone else might have visited Dufour without her
noticing.’

‘True,’ Morel said. ‘But we also know that the evangelists didn’t visit anyone else in the building. So it was her specifically they were looking for. They also went
straight to Guillou, Latour and Volkoff. None of their neighbours. That means we need to find them. Right now they are the only strong lead we have.’

Lila began rolling a cigarette. Morel tried to ignore the sharp smell of tobacco, which immediately made him think of the gratification of taking a long, satisfying draw. Lila’s fingers
moved deftly over the paper, rolling it into a perfect, tight cylinder. A quick flick of the tongue and she was done.

‘Did Jean call the lab yesterday?’ Lila asked.

‘Yes. No fingerprints on the pamphlets at the Dufour apartment, except hers.’

Lila raised the cigarette to her lips before remembering that she couldn’t light it yet. She kept it between her fingers, in her lap.

‘What’s the link between the four women?’ she said. ‘All four of them, if we include Dufour, live well away from each other,’ Lila said.

‘Maybe they were acquainted through a shared hobby or interest. Or they frequented the same place. A place where for some reason these two guys marked them. Without being noticed
themselves, apparently. None of the widows remember seeing them before they turned up at their door.’

‘So maybe the theatre or opera. Or a swimming-pool?’

‘They live too far apart to go to the same pool. So it has to be something else.’

‘They do have a few things in common, don’t they? They are all widows. And they all seem to spend very little time with their kids. At least that’s the impression I got,
reading through the transcripts,’ Lila said. ‘Also, they may live in different areas, but the places these women live in are quite similar, when you think about it. Latour lives in
Maisons-Laffitte, Guillou in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Volkoff in Versailles. Not exactly working-class areas,’ Lila concluded. ‘You’d have to be pretty well off to afford a house
in any of them.’

‘What about Dufour? She lives in Neuilly, that’s an inner-city suburb. All the others live further out of the city. So Dufour’s different.’

‘Still wealthy, though. Those apartments, in her building? What would they be worth? A million euros? More maybe?’

Lila pulled a lighter from her pocket.

‘Don’t even think of lighting that before we get there and you’re out of the car,’ Morel said.

She gave him a malevolent look. ‘I meant to ask: how are those patches working for you?’