The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (7 page)

‘I’m not using patches any more.’

‘Ah, that explains it.’

They parked outside a house that was so large Morel checked the mailbox to see whether there was more than one occupant. There wasn’t. He was about to press the intercom button but then
the gates opened. Morel looked up to see a camera pointing at them.

‘Well, that’s handy,’ he murmured.

‘His and hers,’ Lila said, nodding towards the dark blue Jaguar and silver Peugeot convertible parked in the open double garage.

As they walked to the house they could hear a child wailing, and then the sound of a door slamming inside. Lila lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.

‘Sounds like the family’s enjoying some quality time,’ she said.

The front door opened and a woman stood before them. She smiled, though she was evidently distraught. The black eyeliner around her eyes was smudged and the tip of her nose red as though
she’d been crying. She was in her forties and even in this state it was clear she was striking, the sort of woman who would still turn heads in the street.

‘If this is a bad time,’ Morel began, but the woman waved her hand to usher them in.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ she said.

Morel and Lila stepped into a living room that was spotless. The wailing child could still be heard somewhere in the upper floors.

‘You must be Anne Dufour,’ Morel said.

‘Yes. And this is my husband, Jacques,’ she said, and from the sofa a man got up and extended his hand. He was a good-looking man in his fifties, a good ten years older than his
wife, Morel guessed, and not as striking. Still, they made an attractive couple. Morel could imagine they would be popular at dinner parties.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Morel said, looking at Jacques Dufour as he said it. ‘It must have been a shock.’

‘My mother and I were not close,’ he said. Seeing Morel’s expression, he added, ‘but yes, it was a shock. She was getting on but in good health.’

‘I know you said you think it’s a suspicious death,’ Jacques Dufour continued. ‘I really don’t understand how that can be. Who could possibly have wanted to kill
her?’

A woman in a maid’s uniform walked in with a tray and set it on the table.

‘Coffee?’ Anne Dufour asked. Without waiting for an answer she poured two cups, for Lila and Morel. Morel picked his up and looked around the room. He thought about Isabelle Dufour
and remembered something that Lila had noticed straight away at the dead woman’s flat. There hadn’t been a single photograph. It seemed odd, for an elderly woman with children and
grandchildren.

‘At this stage we really don’t know. But it’s what we’re trying to find out. Did you know who her friends were, the people in her life?’ Morel said.

Jacques Dufour stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. ‘She had a few old friends but they’re all the same age as her. Hardly the sort to go around murdering people.’

‘I’d be grateful if you could pass on any names and phone numbers of friends your mother had. Anyone else you’ve noticed in her life? Any new faces lately?’

‘I’ll give you any information I have, but like I said, we weren’t close. If there was anyone else in her life, anyone she met recently, I wouldn’t know, I’m
afraid.’

‘How often did you and your mother see each other?’ Morel asked.

‘She came for dinner once a month.’

‘And I understand you rarely visited her.’

‘Yes, well, I’m a busy man. It was easier for her to come over here.’

Easier for you
, Morel thought.

‘So the last time you saw her would have been—’

‘Two weeks ago. She was here for dinner.’

‘Have you spoken to her at all during the past fortnight?’

Jacques Dufour thought for a moment and shook his head. ‘She didn’t like the phone much. Often she didn’t bother answering it. It was maddening. That’s old age for
you.’

‘Sounds quite healthy to me,’ Lila said. ‘All of us are much too dependent on our phones and gadgets these days, don’t you think?’ She smiled sweetly.

‘I can’t afford not to answer my phone,’ Jacques Dufour said. ‘People depend on me.’

‘That must be hard. That burden of responsibility,’ Lila said.

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters, Monsieur Dufour?’ Morel asked. He gave Lila a look. She’d seen it before. It meant shut up and behave.

‘Two sisters and a brother.’

‘And did they spend much time with your mother?’

Jacques Dufour shrugged his shoulders. ‘My sisters both live in America. They couldn’t wait to get out of here. They know as well as I do that France is still caught up in the Middle
Ages. While the world turns, we’re being left behind with our antiquated socialist ideals. We’re so caught up in the past, so busy venerating our ancestors that we’re completely
unprepared for what lies ahead. The future is elsewhere. I should have followed my sisters but things turned out otherwise.’

He gave Morel a bitter look.

A well-rehearsed little speech, Morel thought. He imagined it had been delivered many times and was well received among the Dufours’ wealthy friends.

‘And your brother? Does he live overseas too?’

‘He lives in Marseille. He owns a fishing business. Takes people out on fishing expeditions, that sort of thing. He rarely comes up to Paris.’

‘I see.’ Morel pretended to write something in his notebook but he was thinking about Isabelle Dufour. A woman with four children, who had lived and loved and raised a family, yet
ended up dying on her own, surrounded by indifference.

‘I’ve contacted my siblings,’ Dufour said. ‘To tell them about our mother. They’ll fly back for the funeral, of course.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Was
there anything else?’

‘At this point, probably not,’ Morel said. He stood up. ‘We’ll be in touch once we know more.’

Anne Dufour had remained on the edge of the sofa, quiet, smiling vacantly, but now she suddenly spoke up.

‘Jacques wasn’t always here when his mother came for dinner. But she came regardless of that. And I visited her with the children. Our youngest loved his grandmother.’

‘I understand you have two children?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Look,’ Jacques Dufour said, standing up. ‘I need to leave now if I’m going to catch my flight.’

‘How long are you away for, Monsieur Dufour?’ Morel asked.

‘Two nights.’

‘I see.’

‘Talk to my wife, she has all the time in the world to answer your questions. The most she’s got on is a manicure or a date with her personal trainer, isn’t that right,
dear?’

His words hung in the air while Morel and Lila glanced at each other and at Anne Dufour, whose face looked like it might crack from the tightness of her smile. Jacques Dufour gave his wife a
perfunctory kiss and strode out the door with a wave. They heard the sound of the car engine and tyres on gravel as he pulled out of the driveway.

Upstairs, the sound of the crying child had stopped. There was instead the sound of a vacuum-cleaner being moved across the floor. Anne Dufour looked at her hands.

‘How old are the children?’ Morel asked.

She looked up and her eyes flitted over his face, as though struggling to remember what he was doing here.

‘The youngest is five. The older boy is fourteen. He’s at boarding school.’ She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. ‘Jacques isn’t his father.’

‘Madame Dufour,’ Morel said. ‘Would you sit down and tell us about your mother-in-law. The sort of woman she was. Whether she had many friends, whether she went out much,
whether she was religious at all.’

Anne Dufour continued to smile. Morel realized he was smiling too, the same insincere widening of the lips. He stopped.

‘I don’t know if she had any friends,’ she said finally. ‘I only know she got very little from her family.’

‘Were there any problems?’ Morel asked.

Anne Dufour looked at Morel properly then. ‘Problems? I suppose it depends what you define as a problem. I mean, these things are relative, aren’t they?’

‘When did you see or speak to her last, Madame Dufour?’ Morel asked.

The reply came without hesitation. ‘It was two days before she died.’

Anne Dufour smiled. This time the smile was both sad and genuine.

‘She told me on the phone that she was happy, that she hadn’t felt so good in years. She sounded cheerful, optimistic.’

‘Any idea why that was?’ Lila asked.

Anne Morel wiped a tear from her face.

‘I didn’t ask,’ she said.

He knows the neighbourhood well. He comes here each Saturday when the boys are playing soccer, sits on the sidelines with the other dads and mums. Pretends he is here with his
kid too. Cheers, but not too loudly. Wouldn’t want anyone to get too friendly, to start asking, which one is yours? It happened to him once before and he pointed his chin towards the playing
field, keeping his arms crossed against his chest. He thought he saw the woman look at him a little more carefully than she should after that.

It freaked him out. Not that he’s doing anything wrong, it’s just an innocent game he likes to play. He sits there and makes himself believe he is a father watching his son kick a
ball on a football pitch. Him and César. Only César isn’t there, he doesn’t take him to the soccer grounds and he knows what people would think if they realized he was on
his own.

Now he turns up at a different field, at the other end of the city. Here the parents seem less concerned with chatting. No one’s bringing back coffees for everyone or walking expensive
dogs on leashes around the pitch. There are no long-legged, smooth-complexioned girls standing on the field looking bored while the fathers try their best to look as if they don’t see the
unattainable future in their daughters’ sleek limbs.

He is not interested in the girls but they are fascinating, in a way. To be so certain that you own the future, that the world will flatter and reward you. Looking at these girls, it seems to
him that attitude is all you need. The rest just follows. Someone should have told him that back then.

César too is slender. He has the same refined looks that can’t be bought. He could be one of them if it weren’t for the weakness in his leg. And then there is his muteness. He
cannot speak, has no means to defend himself or tell people his story.

Armand doesn’t know the full story but he has lain awake at night trying to block the images. The cold, bleak building where he first met César. Rows of tightly packed beds. The
still, malnourished bodies of small children. Lying on their backs or curled up for days on end because no one has the time or the heart to pick them up. And the smell! The first time he’d
walked into the room, he’d gagged.

Armand knows what it’s like to have a broken heart, but he cannot begin to imagine what César has borne. There is a point at which numbness overtakes pain, which is where
César is at, he thinks. How else can you live?

Sometimes he thinks about what will happen to César if he dies. César is not his real name, but he thought it a kindness to give it to him. What better way to wipe out the past and
get a fresh start than to take an emperor’s name? They had picked it together, that first year of their new life together.

‘César,’ Armand had said. ‘Emperor of the Romans.’ The boy had smiled then, for the first time.

God is on their side, Armand thinks. So many people think this means something big and obvious, but it doesn’t. Armand sees it as a constellation of stars that brightens a corner of your
life, the way a torch will form a tidy circle of light in the dark.

After they’d interviewed the Dufours, Morel dropped Lila back at the office to brief the rest of the team.

‘Where are you off to?’ she asked.

‘Going to see a friend of mine who might be able to help us with the pamphlet,’ Morel said.

He had intended to drive straight to Nanterre but instead Morel took a detour by Neuilly, thinking he might drop in at home and check on his father. He’d left early to avoid having
breakfast with him, but he felt uneasy. His father was becoming more solitary, withdrawing further into his books. He wondered whether the old man was all right.

It was a broody, restless sort of day. On Avenue de Neuilly, a woman who looked a lot like Solange stepped out of a caterer’s carrying a large box tied with a ribbon. A traffic warden was
walking the streets, avoiding eye contact. It looked like it might rain. Morel hoped it would, just to clear the air.

He parked outside his house and got out. Just then his phone rang. It was Adèle, asking whether they could meet up.

‘When?’

‘Now, if you can.’

‘Now is a bit difficult.’ It amazed him, the way his sisters believed he could drop everything whenever they wanted to see him. He wondered what it was about this time. Not a week
went by without one or the other calling about something they thought was essential for him to know. Except that lately Maly hadn’t been calling at all.

‘Then when? It’s important.’

He named a cafe near the Pont-Neuf Métro station, and told her to meet him there at one.

After he hung up, he let himself into the house. In the hallway he ran into Augustine. She greeted him with a kiss on both cheeks.

‘Is my father here?’ Morel asked.

She shook her head. ‘He went out half an hour ago.’

‘How did he look?’

‘Same as always. Like a gentleman.’

Morel smiled. Augustine searched his face.

‘Is something the matter?’

He reached out and touched her arm.

‘No, nothing at all. I’d better go, I have a meeting.’

At Nanterre University it took him a while to find the building he was looking for. The place was like a rabbit warren. When he finally found the right door, he knocked. Before
Morel knew it, he was wrapped in a hug that left him momentarily deprived of oxygen.

Morel stood back and looked at his old university buddy. He was as big and unkempt as ever. His hair was longer and he wore a beard now, making him look even more like a playful and vigorous Old
English Sheepdog. ‘Well, well,’ the man said, ‘this is quite a treat.’ He patted Morel on the back and invited him to sit down. Morel looked around him. The office was tiny
and chaotic. He wondered how his friend managed to manoeuvre his way around the place without upsetting the many books and piles of paper. It would require some delicate footwork. That was hard to
picture.