Bed of Nails Read online

  “So, Alan started to take heroin, because it’s a drug that cuts you off from the world. He was already pretty hooked on drugs anyway, coming out of the army. And afterwards he found it perfectly normal to be like the men he had tortured. To take his clothes off in the street, to roll on broken glass, not to sleep any more, to have nightmares and to have sex with guys he felt nothing for. The army made a success of him, but the wrong way round: now he started warning Americans off going to war. That’s what his fakir show was all about. A fight inside one man, between the victim and the torturer, in front of the public that had created him. He was doing what he had done to his victims the other way round. So we worked together to try and fix what my colleagues had broken. When he got to Paris, the worst was over. He’d become a kind of image of himself and he was soon going to lose that. In the Caveau, when he met this embassy guy, Hirsh, he thought it was hilarious. Picking up a gay American diplomat who went to the same kind of hangout that he did? Another mirror image, another one claiming some kind of false victory. Having sex in Hirsh’s office, I don’t know how he managed it. It must have made him laugh so much. Then one day, meeting Hirsh at the embassy, he saw Frazer, the so-called secretary. That’s not his real name. The man who recruited Alan back in ’90, in South Carolina. He was with Alan in the Gulf. Frazer came to see Patricia this morning, and he beat her up. I’ve never seen him, but Alan told me about him. When she described him, I knew just who she was talking about. His real name’s Lundquist. Alan went nuts when he recognised him. He started injecting again. He just collapsed.

  “That was two months ago. That’s when he came to see me. After that, and I know how, he blackmailed Lundquist. It’s not Alan’s dealer who wants me out of town, it’s Lundquist, Samuel Lundquist. His name is all over my thesis. Alan must have used my work to blackmail him. Patricia said that Lundquist gave Alan some money. Three days before he died.”

  Bunker looking somewhat stunned had his glass to his lips, but forgot to drink.

  “And you know the funny thing? The reason I didn’t publish my thesis, was to protect Alan. The F.B.I. contacted me when I’d done all the research, and they told me not to publish it, or Alan would go to jail. He had signed a contract with the army, security clearance. Access to Sensitive Compartmented Information. Compartmented! That’s a real military euphemism. They were blackmailing me, they didn’t want any of my thesis in the public domain. Well, I signed up to the deal, and told Alan to get out of the country, to go to France. He died because he went back on the deal that was protecting him. So Lundquist – and the people who must be behind him – will be wondering what I’m going to do now. All that stuff, the first Gulf War, it was fifteen years ago, but of course now we’re into another never-ending war, with more torture. And in my thesis there are plenty of names of people still in post. When I was writing it, Alan and I, we’d decided we would spill the beans. I didn’t respect scientific objectivity, as my profs would say. But that’s what Alan wanted, and me too. But, now, what am I going to do? I’ve no idea, no fucking idea at all.”

  Bunker waited for the rest. The kid’s indecision didn’t seem like a proper conclusion. John smiled and raised his glass.

  “The girl, Patricia, she told me to get out of her life and never try to see her again. If that’s what interests you.”

  “Ah. So she wasn’t lying.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So she said the opposite of what she thought.”

  “Bunk, I called my mother in San Francisco. The F.B.I. came and did a search in the house. They took everything, my laptop, my notes, all the work I had left there. And I called my thesis supervisor. Same thing at U.C.L.A.: they took everything.”

  The old keeper was twiddling his cap in his fingers, staring into the distance, over a playground, a tennis court, the park railings and the rue Guynemer. His boyish smile had vanished, leaving just an ersatz fixed grin, in contradiction to the anger in his eyes.

  “Something there doesn’t fit, son.”

  “The Aouch brothers …”

  “Boukrissi’s just an ordinary crook, it must be your Lundquist who’s pulling his strings.”

  “He may have killed Alan.”

  “They know where I am. You’ve put a bomb under my cabin, sonny.”

  John dropped his gaze, breathed out and then faced up to Bunker’s thermonuclear expression.

  “Um, it’s not over, yet. I … I met this French detective and he thinks Alan didn’t commit suicide. He wants us to share what we’ve got, work together.”

  The ex-con’s jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. His gappy teeth ground like rusty hinges.

  “Bunk …”

  “Shut up!”

  “I’ve got something else to ask you.”

  Mesrine had pressed himself up against his master’s legs. Bunker’s lips didn’t move. The words seemed to come out of his forehead, from a swollen vein throbbing under the scar.

  “Son, I told you to drop it. Your artist was right. Maybe you got your reasons, but you don’t half go round dumping other people in the shit.”

  13

  The cup of decaff reeked of pointlessness. Guérin fiddled with the stitches on his cheek to try to stay awake. He kept looking at his watch, checking that time was going past outside the room with no windows: 6.12 p.m.

  Nobody in No. 36 was yet aware that the whole floor was smouldering away underneath them. Savane had relit the fuse by blowing his brains out.

  The Big Theory was on the point of collapse, sabotaged by Kowalski’s return. It was sinking, and Guérin along with it, in a tangle of obscure, isolated trails. The Caveau, Nichols, three ghosts and Savane. The letter. An incoherent mess. One thought obsessed Guérin, a keystone with rocky foundations: he had to move in on Roman. And prove that the whole edifice was built on nothing. A precarious shell suspended from a set of illusions. Which he proposed to sweep away. There was no victory on the horizon. He would just have to introduce a wedge, and whatever the scale of the collapse, he would either be crushed or survive. Move in on Roman.

  He stared at the door to the archive room, his arms folded, enveloped in a silence loud with questions. In his mind, he walked in between the shelves, revisiting the files, without remembering having ever found sufficient reasons for the suicides listed there. The dead have no way of justifying themselves, and the dossiers could never contain all the possible elements behind their choice. The reasons of the dead have to be looked for in the living. The choice made by Savane. Move in on Roman.

  All he lacked now was some excuse to move into action; but he could find none. He scratched at his stitches, glanced at his watch again: 6.14 p.m. Why was he so reluctant to do what he had to do?

  The telephone rang. Guérin sat without moving, deaf to the sounds of the telephone that was shouting an answer at him.

  It went on ringing. Lambert looked enquiringly at the boss, and in the end he picked it up. He listened, took notes, using his elbow to anchor a slip of paper. His voice echoing in the office sounded like Guérin’s.

  “Car exhaust, underground garage, avenue Victor Hugo. Boss?”

  Guérin was looking at Lambert with his head on one side: his face lit up with a friendly smile.

  The little lieutenant took a deep breath and slipped Savane’s letter into his pocket, not worried now about his career, or the consequences, or the reasons of the people who were still in post. Death, the leader of the dance, had just made a phone call. The answer had come from the catacombs, the foundations of everything, delivered by a Hermes in a tracksuit.

  In his little world of the archives, what could he ever change except the past? His mistake had been to think that he would act for the future.

  He stood up, in the name of the dead.

  “O.K., let’s go, Lambert, but I need to drop in at my place on the way.”

  Guérin slipped a few tools into his coat pockets. A set of skeleton keys, a torch, a small clawhammer, and a pair of gloves. Churchill said nothing. Ju
st a bundle of feathers, crouching on his perch. The parrot’s breast was now bare, revealing his sad, grey wrinkled skin. His clipped wings were mere stumps. The bird who had never flown was methodically pulling out his plumage.

  Guérin put some seed in his dish. The bird gave him a baleful look and went back to work on itself.

  Avenue Victor Hugo: a parking space in the basement of a stone building. The man had made it a point of honour to die gripping the wheel in the official driving-school position, hands at ten past ten.

  De Rochebrune, a writer, journalist, economist, publisher and essayist. Yes, he’d tried everything: the remaining possibilities must have seemed too trivial. His wife, talking non-stop, for fear of having to surrender to the evidence, insisted on telling her husband’s life story in detail. She drowned her lack of understanding in sociological explanations, a futile stream of words that Guérin let flow without interrupting. This man had left a much longer suicide note than Savane’s. A typescript of 200 pages on the passenger seat. This couple were both wordy. Either he’d written something really good before dying, or he hadn’t and was providing an explanation for his death. Box ticked.

  Guérin’s notebook had not come out. Lambert was making some awkward jottings in his pocket diary. The two policemen were mournful, tired presences, communicating their gloom to anyone else in the parking lot not already depressed. Lambert muttered a few words of sympathy without conviction. They moved off, while the voice of the woman, now hanging onto the arm of a haggard fireman, echoed through the underground garage. Their departure made the atmosphere lift a little

  Lambert, dark circles under his eyes, stuffed his hands in his pockets, dragging his trainers on the concrete floor.

  “Back to the office, or will I take you home?” he asked, not really believing the day was over.

  The boss wasn’t listening.

  It was getting dark outside. The stitches looked like flies on his cheeks.

  Guérin called Enquiries from the car.

  Address and phone number, Frédéric Roman, Clamart.

  The mobile beeped and a text appeared.

  “Clamart, rue Barbusse, No. 13, Lambert.”

  Lambert did not reply or ask what they were doing.

  They took cover in the southern suburb of Clamart, in a street lined with bungalows. 9.00 p.m. Guérin remembered reading Henri Barbusse’s book, Under Fire. Images of the trenches and of bombs tearing bodies to pieces came back to him. Pacifists make the best war reporters and monks the best writers about love.

  A light was on in Roman’s house.

  Guérin tapped a number into his mobile.

  “Yeah?”

  “Guérin here.”

  “… What do you want?”

  “Savane left a note. We need to talk.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Either me or the disciplinary tribunal”.

  “…”

  “In my office, in an hour.”

  “What about Berlion?”

  “Looking for a scapegoat already? Savane not enough for you?”

  “… You can’t touch me.”

  “One hour.”

  Roman emerged from the house ten minutes later, pulling on his leather jacket. He got into his car and drove off at speed.

  Guérin put on the gloves.

  “Keep watch, Lambert. Call me if you see him coming back.”

  *

  He had about an hour. Time for Roman to get to 36 quai des Orfèvres, realise he’d been fooled, and come back. The garden gate was still open. It was a modest bungalow, bought for immediate occupancy ten years ago, the householder’s pride having faded somewhat now. Guérin peered through the window of the living room and checked out the inside doors. No alarms. Noticing a decorative brick on the ground by a dead lilac bush, he decided not to bother with his locksmith tools and used a quicker and not too damaging alternative. He placed his cap against one of the panes, and hit it with the brick. The broken glass fell on the carpet. He put his hand inside and opened the catch.

  Roman’s place was a mess, when inspected by torchlight. Living-room: racks for D.V.D.s, American action movies or French comedies. A locked wooden desk. Empty beer cans on a low table, a shabby sofa. He broke open the door of the desk. Porn films, locked away from the kids. Guérin felt around among the D.V.D.s, turned over cushions, opened drawers. He had a whole house to search, at least in the obvious places, hoping Roman wasn’t a genius at hiding stuff. And that the photographs were still there. Drinks cupboard, look behind the bottles. Nothing in the sitting room. Kitchen: the neglected kitchen of a divorced man. Cupboards, drawers, on the units, under them, under the sink. The pool of light flickered hesitantly from place to place. Nothing in the kitchen. What about the hall? A cupboard with concertina doors.

  More clutter, work tools, a sawn-off shotgun and cartridges, knuckledusters, copies of Playboy and Target, a new Browning rifle, a Mauser survival knife, well sharpened. Bullets, cleaning stuff. Old shoes, rusty secateurs, gardening gloves, and a dusty box of toys. Nothing. Guérin put the claw back in his pocket and carried on, knife in one hand, torch in the other. W.C. stinking of piss. Nothing in the tank.

  Main bedroom. The stuffy smell of dirty sheets, feet. Under the mattress, in the wardrobe, under the bed: more porn mags. A framed poster, Dirty Harry under glass. What a cretin. Look behind the frame. Nothing. Cut up the mattress, open up the pillows, Nothing. Carpet, use the knife. Nothing. Guérin was sweating now. Spare bedroom. Bunk beds. Kids’ room, neat and tidy. Toys in a chest, plastic guns, childish drawings pinned to the wall, Walt Disney duvets on the bed ends. Photos on the bedside table. Two boys, aged about eight and ten. Miniature versions of their father. Graceless, tough-looking. The family was low of brow. The room was orderly and dust lay thick. The kids didn’t visit often. Look round, cut up the mattresses, with some reluctance. But nothing. Roman at least had the decency not to hide photographs of corpses in the kids’ bedroom. Bathroom. Rancid towels, peeling wallpaper, patches of damp. Guérin looked at his watch. Half an hour already. Dirty linen, shelves, cupboards. Nothing. Under the washbasin, behind the bath, nothing under the bath. Ventilator grill. Knife out again. No, nothing behind it.

  Back to the sitting room, open up the sofa. Nothing. Carpet, attacked again with the knife. Nothing. Back to the kitchen. Fitted cooker. More and more frantic, Guérin pulled the oven from its fitting. Nothing behind it, nothing inside. Moved the fridge, holding the torch between his teeth. No, nothing behind it. Had Savane got it wrong? Roman must have got rid of the photographs. Forty-five minutes. The kitchen smelled of grease, cooking oil, unwashed dishes. There was bound to be an attic, maybe a cellar as well. Guérin exhaled deeply.

  *

  9.30 p.m., 16th arrondissement. John put the visiting card back in his pocket.

  He rang the bell of the building in the rue de Longchamp several times, waiting two minutes. No reply from Hirsh’s flat. He hadn’t really expected it. He hesitated, then pressed the concierge’s bell three times. The big wooden door swung open a few centimetres and an old woman’s eye moved up and down behind the crack of light.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I was looking for Mr Hirsh.”

  “He’s not here. Are you from the embassy?”

  John exaggerated his accent.

  “Yeah, that’s right, I’m a colleague of Mr Hirsh’s.”

  The concierge opened the door a bit wider. Dressing gown, slippers, smell of vegetable soup wafting out.

  “Would you be Monsieur Trapper?”

  John cleared his throat and smiled broadly.

  “That’s right!”

  “He told me you’d be round.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  “He left something for you.”

  The old woman disappeared, behind the door, went into her lodge which she had left open, and brought out an envelope. She had glasses on now and scrutinised John before handing it to him.

  “What
do you do in the embassy?”

  “I’m in the cultural service, I, erm … deal with artists.”

  “Ah, I thought so. You don’t look like the others. We’ve got two more people from the embassy in this house. Lots of them in the area. Here it is.”

  She passed him a white envelope. Handwritten: John Trapper. John smiled again and pocketed it as naturally as he could.

  “Tell me, Madame, when did Mr Hirsh leave?”