After the Crash Read online

  ‘When a girl runs away, giving herself an hour’s head start. An

  hour’s head start on the poor guy she’s left sitting alone in my bar!’ Marc paid his bill. He thought fleetingly of the sapphire ring on

  Lylie’s finger, of the Tuareg cross she had not fastened around her

  neck. He managed to shrug, as if unconcerned.

  ‘See you tomorrow, Mariam. Same time, same table. Near the

  window. Save us two chairs, won’t you?’

  He picked up the package with a hand that he managed to stop

  shaking, and left.

  As she handed three packets of cigarettes to her next customer, Mariam watched Marc walk away. She had said too much. She was no longer so sure of herself. Marc and Emilie were a strange pair, not like any other couple she had seen before, but she was certain of one thing: that in the next few hours, Marc’s future would be left up in the air and he would have a crucial decision to make. Would he make the right decision or the wrong one?

  Marc disappeared into the square outside Paris VIII, his grey coat seeming to melt into the tarmac. For a moment, Mariam was distracted by the uninterrupted wave of passers-by.

  Marc was running away, buoyed up by his convictions. But the tiniest thing could turn his world upside down, Mariam thought, make every certainty in his life melt into air. All it would take is a single detail. A grain of sand. The beating of a dragonfly’s wings. *

  Marc walked quickly away from the Lenin. He went up Avenue de Stalingrad, heading vaguely towards the Stade Delaune. The morning rush was beginning to thin out. There were more old people on the streets now, more mothers with young children, plastic bags hanging from the handles of their pushchairs. He walked another few minutes down the street and found himself almost alone. Hands trembling, he ripped the silver gift paper from the package and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. In his hand was a small cardboard box. He opened it nervously.

  The object dropped into the palm of his hand.

  Marc reeled.

  For a few moments, his legs would not carry him. He stumbled

  backward, smashing into the cold metal of a lamp post. He took deep, slow breaths, trying to regain his balance.

  Don’t panic. Take your time.

  The street where he stood was empty, but all he had to do was shout out, and someone would hear him, come to him. No. He had to think rationally.

  In spite of himself, his breathing accelerated, his throat tightened. Always the same symptoms, ever since he was two years old. Marc was agoraphobic.

  Breathe slowly. Calm down.

  Contrary to what many people think, agoraphobia is not a fear of large spaces or crowds. It is, quite simply, the fear of not being able to be saved. The fear of being afraid, one might say. This kind of panic normally occurs in places where the person feels isolated – a desert, a forest, a mountain, the sea – but also in the middle of a crowd, an amphitheatre, a stadium. It is just as likely to happen in a street rammed full of people as in a deserted street.

  Marc was used to it. He knew how to deal with it, as long as the feeling wasn’t too intense. He rarely had attacks these days. He was able to attend lectures in crowded rooms, to take the metro, to go to rock concerts, and so on.

  He took a deep breath.

  Little by little, his breathing went back to normal. He was still leaning against the lamp post, in spite of the pain the metal cylinder was causing his back.

  Marc looked down at his hand.

  He was holding a miniature toy.

  An aeroplane.

  A replica Airbus A300, quite heavy – it was made of metal – and painted a milky white, except for its tail, which was red, white and blue. The kind of toy you could find on the shelves of thousands of little boys’ bedrooms. Marc’s hand shook. His fingers closed over the cold fuselage.

  What did this mean?

  Was it a joke?

  A macabre gift to accompany his reading of Grand-Duc’s notebook?

  Ridiculous . . .

  Marc needed to think. Was this really all there had been in the package?

  Marc fumbled inside his jeans pocket, and smoothed out the wrapping paper. He cursed his stupidity. Folded up in the paper that he had torn so recklessly was a small white page with writing on it. Marc immediately recognised Lylie’s handwriting. Leaning back, he read:

  Marc, I have to leave. Don’t be angry with me. This is something I always promised myself. That I would go away, when I turned eighteen. Go far, far away . . . to India, Africa, the Andes . . . or maybe – why not? – to Turkey. Don’t worry. There is nothing to fear. I’m used to aeroplanes now, after all! I am strong.

  I will survive. Again.

  If I had told you about my plan, you wouldn’t have agreed. But if you take the time to think about it, I am sure you will realise that I am right. We can’t go on like this, not knowing. That is why I have to distance myself, Marc – from you. I have to take stock. To cut away the dead branches . . .

  Marc, don’t try to find me. Don’t call me. Don’t do anything. I need space, and time.

  I believe this: that one day, we will know who we are, and what we are to each other.

  Take care of yourself.

  Emilie

  Marc’s breathing accelerated again. He forced himself to quell the swarm of questions massing in his head.

  He needed to act. Do something.

  He opened his rucksack and shoved the miniature aeroplane inside, along with the letter and the wrapping paper. He took a breath, then grabbed his mobile phone. Because he worked for France Telecom, he had been able to get the latest, state-of-the-art model – with automatic memorisation of phone numbers – both for himself and for Lylie.

  Without thinking, he scrolled through the list of names, stopped on Lylie’s, and pressed the green circle. The screen cleared. The phone seemed to ring forever.

  He was used to calling Lylie and her not replying. The answering machine always clicked in after the seventh ring. He counted in his head as he waited. After the fourth ring, he knew she wasn’t going to pick up.

  ‘Hello, this is Emilie. Leave me a message, and I’ll call you back when I can. Bye . . .’

  Marc swallowed. The sound of Lylie’s voice brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘Lylie, it’s Marc. Please call me, wherever you are. Please, please call me back. I love you. More than ever. Come back to me.’

  Marc hung up. He walked slowly up the Avenue de Stalingrad, turning over Lylie’s words in his mind.

  ‘Far, far away . . .’

  ‘Take stock . . .’

  ‘Cut away the dead branches . . .’

  What did it all mean?

  Marc was not stupid. Lylie’s eighteenth birthday was just a pretext. This whole situation was connected to Grand-Duc’s notebook – the notebook that Lylie had spent all night reading. What had she discovered? What had it made her think?

  ‘Know who we are, and what we are to each other . . .’

  No! Marc did not share Lylie’s doubts. Nothing in the world could shake his conviction. It was absolute.

  Marc reached Place du Général-Leclerc. Rows of buses crossed into Rue Gabriel-Peri and Avenue du Colonel-Fabien.

  What could he do? How could he find Lylie? Follow her footsteps? Read the whole of Grand-Duc’s notebook, and guess what Lylie must have guessed?

  Marc cursed. He stood motionless as the buses came and went in front of him. The idea that he could just sit there and read the rest of that one-hundred-page notebook in the hope that he might find a clue seemed ridiculous. He picked up his mobile phone again and scrolled down until he reached the letter W.

  Work.

  Marc moved away from the noisy square where he had been standing.

  ‘Hello? Jennifer? . . . Great! This is Marc. Sorry about this, but I’m in a massive rush. I need information, for personal reasons. The telephone number of a guy in Paris. Are you writing this down? He’s called Grand-Duc. Crédule Grand-Duc. Yeah,
I know, not exactly a common name. So you shouldn’t have any problem finding him . . .’

  Jennifer, who worked with him at France Telecom, was the same age as Marc and was studying Applied Languages. Marc was pretty sure that, given a little nudge, she would have fallen for him. While he waited for her response, the phone still glued to his ear, he admired the bell tower of the Basilica of St Denis that stood out, high above the buildings that lined the streets in between.

  ‘Yeah? You’ve got it? Fantastic!’

  Marc scribbled down Grand-Duc’s phone number and address. He said a quick thank you to Jennifer, then immediately started dialling the private detective’s number. It rang for a long time, before another answering machine clicked on. Marc cursed inwardly. Never mind – he had to lay his cards on the table. There was no time to lose.

  ‘Grand-Duc? It’s Marc Vitral. Listen, I have to speak to you as soon as possible. Or better still, see you in person. It’s about Lylie. And your notebook – the one you wrote for her. I’m holding it right now. She gave it to me and I’m reading it. So if you get this message, please call me back on my mobile. I’m on my way to your place now: I’ll be there in forty-five minutes at the latest.’

  Marc quickly strode back towards the metro station. Grand-Duc lived at 21 Rue de la Butte-aux-Cailles. In his head, Marc envisioned all the main lines on the metro map. Line 13, towards Châtillon-Montrouge, would take him into the centre, past Saint-Lazare, the Champs-Elysées, Invalides, Montparnasse . . . Grand-Duc’s street must be towards Nation, on Line 6, between Glacière and Place d’Italie. So, he would have to change at Montparnasse. About twenty stations in all.

  Marc took the stairs down into the metro and as he turned the first corner, he noticed a man sleeping on a dirty sheet alongside his dog, a thin yellow mongrel. The man was not even begging. Without even breaking his stride, Marc dropped two francs on the sheet. The dog raised its head and watched him walk past, a surprised look on its face. After two years of using the Paris metro, Marc still gave money almost every time he saw a homeless person. He had formed this habit in Dieppe, where his grandmother always gave money to people who lived on the streets. She had taught him these fundamental principles as he grew up: solidarity with his fellow man; never to be afraid of poor people; never to be ashamed of giving. This was still part of his moral landscape now, in Paris, just as it had been in Dieppe or would be in any other city in the world he might visit. Lylie gently teased him for the amount of money his principles cost him. No Parisian would do that, she said. True, but he wasn’t a Parisian.

  The metro platform was almost deserted. Some good luck at last, thought Marc. Forty-five minutes on the metro, twenty stations . . . he would have time to read more of Grand-Duc’s notebook, and that might help him to understand what was going on, to walk in Lylie’s footsteps.

  But five words haunted Marc: ‘Cut away the dead branches . . .’

  What did she mean?

  Cut away the dead branches.

  The train entered the station. Marc got on board and took out the green notebook.

  An idea had become lodged in his brain, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it: what if the toy aeroplane had been nothing but a decoy, a form of misdirection? Lylie had not told him everything. What about that ring, for instance? The sapphire she was wearing: where had that come from? There were too many unknowns.

  What if Lylie did not intend to go far away, after all? What if she was still here, close to him, with another goal in mind.

  To distance herself from him.

  Why?

  Because she was going to do something risky, something dangerous.

  Because it was something he would not have agreed to.

  Cut away the dead branches . . .

  What if Lylie had discovered the truth and was now out for revenge?

  12

  Crédule Grand-Duc’s Journal The advantage of dealing with journalists from the regional press is that they rarely break stories before the Parisian press. Even when the events take place in their backyard, a Parisian newspaper is usually alerted before the regionals, arrives before them, and scoops the interviews with the main protagonists in time for the evening news. So, when a regional paper gets hold of a story with national appeal, it does not do things by halves. It milks the story for all it is worth.

  Fifteen minutes after Pierre Vitral’s telephone call, a journalist from Informations Dieppoises, the local weekly paper, was sent to their house in Rue Pocholle. The Est Républicain belonged to the same media group, so Lucile Moraud had opted for the fastest solution. The freelance journalist’s mission was to extract the main story, take the first pictures, and fax everything over to the company’s headquarters in Nancy. Lucile Moraud was already negotiating her scoop with the regional television channels, FR3-Franche-Comté and FR3-Haute-Normandie, aiming to squeeze the maximum number of sales out of tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper. The strategy was to tantalise the public with a few details on television that evening, so that they would want to read the full, exclusive interview with the Vitrals on page two of the Est Républicain the following morning.

  The brief bulletins on regional television were taken up that evening by the nationals. A team from TF1 even caught Léonce de Carville on his driveway, in Coupvray, before his lawyers had time to interpose themselves and tell him to say nothing more. His words threw oil on the media fire.

  No, he did not deny it.

  Yes, he had offered money to the Vitral family.

  Yes, he was absolutely convinced that the miracle child was his

  granddaughter, Lyse-Rose. He had acted out of pure generosity towards the Vitrals, or pity – the two sentiments intricately interlinked to him. God, of course, had been kind to his family. He could not behave otherwise.

  The next day – 19 February, 1981 – he went even further, announcing live on the ten o’clock news: ‘If there is any doubt about the identity of the child, if the truth is uncertain, then obviously the judge is going to make his decision based on the child’s best interests. If it were possible, the baby would make the decision herself. And, if that were the case, who could possibly doubt that this infant would choose the future I am offering her, rather than that offered by the Vitral family?’

  Through working on this case, I have learned how the media operates. It is like a giant snowball thrown down a mountainside, and once it starts rolling, no one can control its direction or velocity. If you remember anything at all about the ‘Dragonfly’ case, then this is almost certainly the moment that would stick in your memory; the few weeks that preceded the judgement. Between February and March 1981, it was – with the obvious exception of the presidential election campaign – the dominant news story. France was divided in two. It was, in the crudest possible terms, a battle between the rich and the poor. So two unequal sides. If you split France in two along the line of the average salary, there are far more people below that line than above it, therefore the vast majority of French people supported the cause of the Vitral family. They made frequent appearances on television, the radio, and in the newspapers and it was sensational: a soap opera with an unscripted ending.

  De Carville had to shoulder the role of the villain. Around this time, the American series Dallas had just started screening in France. Léonce de Carville did not resemble J.R. Ewing in any physical sense, but the parallel was unmissable. And, as in the series, there was every chance that the bad guy was going to win.

  Suspense. Emotion.

  Perhaps you were supporting one side or the other back then? I wasn’t. At the time, I couldn’t have cared less about the ‘Dragonfly’ case. In February 1981, I was still busy with the casino affair; I had moved from the Basque coast to the Côte d’Azur and the Italian Riviera. I spent my whole life in my car, on stake-out: a boring job with ever diminishing returns. I do remember catching a brief glimpse of a TV programme – some sort of reality show before such things were invented – late one night while I was relaxing in my hotel
room. Nicole Vitral was being interviewed. It was she who had increasingly taken over the family’s dealings with the media. Pierre Vitral may have set the machine in motion, but it had left him behind and now he shunned the cameras. Given the choice, he might well have called a halt to the entire media circus and let justice take its course, even at the risk of losing.

  Nicole Vitral must have been about forty-seven at the time. She was a young grandmother, not really beautiful in the classical sense of the term, but undeniably what the media might call a hot property. She radiated a sort of infectious energy. Her cause was a crusade, and she was its saint, its martyr, preaching with a disarming directness and an inimitable Caux accent. She was sincere, honest, moving, funny, and extremely telegenic. Her face – gaunt and ravaged from years of working in the salty winds of the Manche

  – did not stand up particularly well to close-ups, but she was a strong woman. And as I sat in front of my television screen that night, knowing nothing about the case or this woman’s crusade, I felt deeply aroused by her. Physically, I mean.

  I certainly wasn’t the only one. She had those blue eyes, sparkling with life, defying fate and all the misery it had thrown at her. But most of all, she had those breasts. Nicole Vitral always tended to wear clothes – low-cut dresses or open-necked blouses – that showcased her generous bust. This had undoubtedly helped increase the sales of sausages on the beach at Dieppe. And to spice things up, she also almost always wore a cardigan or a jacket, which she kept pulling shut to cover her exposed flesh. I have had the opportunity to observe her on many occasions since then, and it has become one of her nervous habits, a reflex. You are talking to her and, inevitably, your eyes drift downward, if only for the briefest of moments. Almost instantaneously, Nicole Vitral will reach for her lapels and wrap them around her, only for them to fall open again a few seconds later.

  It is a strangely arousing routine that I have always found irresistible.

  On television, the effect was even more perverse, because the viewer was given an almost godlike view: we could see the curtain of her jacket falling open to expose that opulent chest, and the cameraman slowly, suggestively zooming in towards it, while Nicole failed to notice this invasion of her privacy.