L'Assassin Read online

  “Such as?” said the policeman.

  Instead of answering right away, Louis rose from the little table where they had been sitting. He closed his eyes and remembered how the entire business had begun the last time, with the body on his doorstep. “Do you remember?” he said finally. “At first we thought the dead man was African. We thought so because he had an African skullcap on his head. But he wasn’t African, as it turned out; we were just supposed to think he was African. I wonder what I’m thinking now that isn’t true. Something that I am just supposed to be thinking.

  “Just imagine, Renard.” Louis turned back to face the policeman. “We’re looking for something that may not even exist within the realm of our perception, at least not yet. We may be searching for a crime that may not even have been committed yet, that may never be committed, but that could, in some sense, still exist.” Louis was excited by the prospect. “We’re like astronomers looking for something in outer space where there appears to be nothing at all. The radio waves are compressed, or light bends slightly in a suggestive way, but the telescopes reveal nothing. We need very fine instruments—exquisite instruments!—of detection to sort this out.”

  Renard said nothing.

  “So let’s see what we’ve got,” said Louis, forging ahead. “Lefort took the tape and left a blank one. But there’s more to it than just the tape, just like there was more than the sweater. There has to be. And more than the implied threat too. If it’s Bowes at work here, and if he has set something in motion, the trick is to figure out what it is.”

  Renard remained seated and examined his cigarette. “I am not an astronomer,” he growled with a great exhalation of smoke. “I am not like one of your astronomers. I am a village policeman.” He did not like these philosophical disquisitions, and he was not fond of Louis’s premonitions or speculations either. And yet, suddenly—he did not know why—Renard felt a great sadness come over him, as though there had been an imperceptible shift in fate’s weather. He had the sense—entirely new for him—that something impossibly terrible was about to occur, and he had no way to prevent it.

  He turned away, so that Louis would not see his face, and looked across the square at the townspeople talking, walking, carrying their groceries, stepping into and out of their cars. Denis Martel, in his fluorescent green vest, had swept a small pile of debris together and was carefully coaxing it onto the dustpan he would then empty into his cart. Renard envied Denis. If only it were that easy.

  Renard looked at the hills above town, toward the cemetery, just where Louis had been looking a moment earlier. Fields of sunflowers nodded in vanishing rows. Last year there had been wheat planted there. He could not remember what had been there the year before last. The fields of sunflowers rose and disappeared over the hill in a shimmering golden haze that seemed to resemble nothing so much as oblivion. After a long time, Renard said, “It was sunflowers then too, wasn’t it?” In the end, Renard gave Louis a letter of introduction on official stationery to send to the warden of the Granville prison along with his own.

  The village of Granville is just off the Paris autoroute, some fifty kilometers northeast of Le Mans, about an hour by car from Saint Leon sur Dême. The prison stands just at the edge of town, surrounded by wheat fields. The wheat had already been cut this year, and its straw had been bound into square bales that stood in rows in the stubble, waiting to be loaded onto a wagon and taken away like so many prisoners.

  The Granville prison had been built in the nineteenth century on the site of a medieval chateau that had burned many years earlier and had then been razed. The “new” building had tall, windowless walls of pink granite. Its proportions were so graceful that Louis was compelled to stand for a moment and admire it. Even its entry, where so many men had surrendered their freedom, was elegant and almost welcoming.

  Louis knocked, as the paper notice tacked to the door instructed visitors to do. The door was opened immediately by a uniformed porter, a small, graying man who looked more like a schoolteacher than a prison guard. “Monsieur?” he said. Louis introduced himself and presented the letter he had received from the warden. The porter studied it for a moment, then escorted Louis through a narrow hallway to a brightly lit room. Louis was interviewed there by a second man in uniform.

  “Pierre Lefort is …?”

  “The man who robbed my house,” which is what Louis had written in his letter to the warden. “Certain keepsakes of mine are missing. They are precious to me. I was hoping I could persuade him to tell me where they are. I have some experience in such matters.”

  “Experience? In interrogation?”

  “Yes,” said Louis. “That is all I am permitted to say.”

  Louis’s response was noted down by the guard. He wrote unhurriedly in a careful, round hand, his pointed tongue sliding about between his lips as he wrote. He read over what he had written, and only then did he pose the next question.

  After the questions were finished Louis was made to stand with his legs spread and his arms raised. “I am sorry, monsieur, but it is part of the routine.”

  “Of course,” said Louis. He was patted down by a third man while the porter and the guard who had interviewed him stood against the wall in a respectful pose of attention, their feet together and their arms at their sides. Even though they had witnessed this procedure many times, they were still made uncomfortable by it. It seemed particularly unseemly to them to show this kind of disrespect to a man of Louis’s years.

  Louis was required to sign several forms, including one that contained his responses to the questions he had been asked. Then he was instructed to sit down and was left alone in the room. After a short while the third guard returned. “Monsieur, follow me please,” he said. “Are you a relation of Pierre Lefort?” The guard spoke casually as they walked, as though he were just making conversation. Everything seemed to change in prison, including the meaning of words.

  “You could say that I am,” said Louis. “In a manner of speaking.”

  The guard continued walking. He did not turn toward Louis or indicate in any way that Louis’s answer had been impertinent or mysterious or otherwise noteworthy. “Have a seat, monsieur,” he said, and Louis again found himself alone on a hard metal chair in a brightly lit room.

  This room was small and there were no windows. Louis had the sense that they were deep within the prison. The green walls were clean, but you could tell they had not been painted for many years. The ceiling lamps were bare bulbs surrounded by steel cages. The chair on which Louis sat was bolted to the floor. It faced a similar chair across a heavy wooden table, which was also bolted to the floor. A vertical board ran lengthwise down the center of the table, put there, presumably, to prevent physical contact between visitors and prisoners, and to prevent the passing of anything between them. The room had an antiseptic smell, which Louis found strangely agreeable.

  The metal door at the other end of the room opened. Pierre Lefort was escorted in by the guard who had brought Louis there. The guard gestured toward the chair and Lefort sat down. He looked across the table at Louis and smiled. His dark hair was unkempt and looked as though he had just been brought inside on a windy day. He studied Louis, his eyebrows raised, and smiled a pleasant, even friendly, smile. “Here’s your cousin, Lefort,” said the guard, without apparent irony, and stepped back.

  Louis and Lefort looked at one another. After a few moments had passed, Lefort’s eyebrows formed a question. “So?” he said.

  “Do you know who I am?” said Louis.

  “Yes,” said Lefort. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re the guy whose crap I took. They told me you were coming.”

  “It was not crap to me,” said Louis.

  “It was crap,” said Lefort. His face remained friendly.

  “And you took it because …”

  “I took it because? Why does anybody take anything? I took it because I wanted it.”

  “You wanted a broken lawnmower and some old screwdrivers?” said
Louis.

  “That’s right.” Lefort smiled at Louis as though he had just made a joke. “I wanted your lawnmower.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “It didn’t work,” said Lefort. “It was a piece of shit. I threw it away.”

  “You know,” said Louis, “there was money in the house—it wasn’t even hidden. A television—a fairly new one.”

  “I didn’t need money. I didn’t need a television,” said Lefort. “I only take what I need. Besides,” he laughed, “there’s nothing good on television anyway, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t,” said Louis. “And you needed the sweaters too?”

  “Is this going somewhere?” Lefort asked. He made a show of turning toward the guard. The guard shrugged and gestured with his head toward Louis, as if to say, “Talk to him, not to me.”

  “That depends on you,” said Louis. “Whether it’s going anywhere depends on you. Anyway, do you have some other pressing engagement?” Lefort leaned forward a bit and his smile widened. The guard shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I just have to wonder,” said Louis, “why someone would serve a year in jail for an old sweater and a broken lawnmower. That just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Lefort smiled even more broadly now. “No, it doesn’t, does it? Maybe there’s more to it than that, you know?”

  “Like what?” said Louis.

  “How should I know? You tell me,” said Lefort. He shrugged and looked away as though he were bored. “You’re the smart guy. I’m just a guy doing time.”

  “You took the tape too, didn’t you?” said Louis.

  Lefort turned to the guard. “It took him long enough, didn’t it?”

  Louis locked his eyes on his own hands, folded on the table in front of him. So he was right. His hands were wrinkled and spotted with age and had red paint on them. They looked old and helpless. He opened them and looked into the palms. Finally he looked up at Lefort again, and Lefort was studying him. His smile had vanished.

  “There are other copies, you know,” said Louis.

  Lefort shrugged. He continued watching Louis but said nothing. Finally he said, “I don’t know about any of that.”

  “So,” said Louis, “you took the other stuff so that I would notice the tape had been switched. Is that it?”

  Lefort seemed to consider whether he might be giving anything away. “It was in the drawer with the sweaters,” he said finally.

  “You know, I thought you were a moron for taking all that junk.” Lefort shifted in his chair. “Well,” said Louis, “it turns out I’m the moron. I mean, I didn’t even notice. I didn’t even know the tape was gone. All this time your elaborate message went undelivered.”

  “Really?” said Lefort. “Well, it’s been delivered now, hasn’t it?” With that, he shaped his hand like a pistol and pointed it at Louis. “Bang.” He mouthed the word soundlessly, so that the guard standing behind him did not notice.

  III

  It was plainly a threat,” said Louis, “or it was meant to sound like a threat. I wonder, though, was he supposed to deliver it or was he just improvising?”

  “Is that important?” said Solesme. She and Louis were sitting in her garden. She had been clipping dead blossoms from the rosebush beside the front door when he arrived. He had been startled to find her on a ladder. “How else am I going to get up here?” she had said.

  “It does sound like a threat,” she said now. “In fact, so does the whole robbery. But why?” she wondered. “Why would he threaten you in such a peculiar and convoluted way? There must be something else to it. Maybe there is something, some other aspect of the robbery, that’s still missing.” He could tell she loved the mystery of it as much as he did.

  “I think there is something missing,” said Louis. “Something’s still missing, but I don’t know what it could be.” His own voice struck him as soft and sad, as though he were reciting a love poem or an elegy:

  Something is missing, but what could it be?

  I think there is something that I can’t see.

  Solesme got a disapproving look on her face. She withdrew her hand from his and folded her arms across her chest. “No dog eyes, please,” she said.

  Louis smiled at the expression. “No dog eyes,” he promised.

  Solesme’s skin had grown pale in recent weeks. Blue veins showed at her temples, and her eyes glistened with bright intensity. She was thinner now, and her chin was pointed and more defiant. Her hair, as unruly as ever, had gone almost completely white, and it wafted about her head like a cloud.

  Then Solesme relented. “Is it very difficult for you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t want … I don’t know how …”

  She smiled at him and touched his cheek. She stood up in that peculiar way she had. Louis could see the pulse throbbing at her throat. He stood up and followed her.

  It was cool and dark inside the house. Solesme stepped out of her dress and lay down on the bed while Louis undressed. She held her head propped on one hand and watched him. Her other arm lay along her side and draped over her hip. She seemed oblivious to her own nakedness.

  She laughed as Louis folded his clothes into a neat pile on the chair by the window. Louis got in bed next to her. They slid together and they wrapped their bodies as closely as they could around one another. Their breathing slowed down, and they synchronized it so that they were breathing in and out in unison. Their faces were pressed together side to side. Louis heard Solesme’s soft breath and felt it on his cheek, like an object almost, like something he could take in his hand. This is life, he thought, without knowing quite what he meant.

  Solesme felt Louis’s breath against her cheek. His ear rested like a cool pillow beneath her eye where she could see its entire delicacy. With each breath they took, she felt his chest rise and fall and her own breasts sliding up and down against him. Each felt the other’s stomach expand and contract. Their legs entwined, and they lost themselves in gentle, ardent motion.

  It seemed to Louis to be a peculiar fact of his life that important things revealed themselves to him when he least expected that they would, like his sudden sense on the beach that Hugh Bowes was up to something. Louis had not been expecting that insight, he had not been ready for it, and so it came. The following weekend Louis cooked dinner for his friends, and, in the course of the dinner, the meaning of the robbery was suddenly, and unexpectedly, revealed to him.

  Solesme had made a pear tart, and she arrived early to help Louis cook. Louis had also invited the new neighbors from up the road, Isabelle and Luc Martin, recently arrived from Paris. Luc was a painter, which pleased Louis. In fact, Luc had actually earned his living as a painter of portraits and landscapes. His work had been exhibited regularly in Paris and Berlin and had been favorably reviewed in some important newspapers. Louis looked forward to long conversations about art, but, as it turned out, Luc did not want to talk about art. “It’s my job,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about my job. Would you enjoy talking about your job?”

  “No,” Louis admitted. But they became friends anyway and talked about other things.

  Renard arrived with his wife, who was also named Isabelle, and their son, Jean Marie, who was visiting from Paris. Jean Marie worked for the customs service as an electronics expert, designing and installing electronic surveillance systems in France’s airports, and he had been instrumental in obtaining the incriminating recording of Hugh Bowes.

  Louis had bought some monkfish at the fish market and had made a stew with tomatoes from the garden, olives, capers, and fennel; he had served it with saffron rice and green beans. They had all been sitting around the long kitchen table for several hours now. Four wine bottles stood empty. They had finished the salad. Isabelle Martin asked for Louis’s vinaigrette recipe. “Champagne vinegar is the secret,” he said. The cheese plate had gone around twice. Renard lit a cigarette.

  Louis was making coffee, and Solesme had just set her tart in
the center of the table. The others cleared away bottles and plates and glasses to make room. Everyone was oohing and aahing over the tart. Jean Marie, the Renards’ son, began rhapsodizing too, but he stopped in mid-sentence. “Excuse me,” he said suddenly, and got up from the table and hurried outside. “Is he all right?” someone wondered.

  “He’s fine,” said Renard, looking puzzled.

  “I’ll go see,” said Isabelle Renard. She was still his mother. Isabelle went outside and Louis followed.

  The night was cool and clear for July, and there was no moon. The stars were myriad and vivid in the vaulting sky, and Louis paused a moment to look at them. The enormity of a clear night sky always took him by surprise. Jean Marie was walking down the driveway away from the house, and Isabelle hurried after him. “Jean Marie,” she called. “Jean Marie! What is it?”

  Jean Marie stopped about a hundred meters from the house and turned toward them. He waited silently while Isabelle and Louis caught up to him. “What is it, Jean Marie?”

  Jean Marie took out a cigarette and lit it. The flame from his lighter seemed to illuminate the entire yard. The linden trees threw great dancing shadows against the barn. “Louis,” said Jean Marie. He spoke softly. “Can I have a word with you?”

  “Of course, Jean Marie. What is it?”

  “Mother, excuse me, but I have to speak with Louis … alone. It’s nothing for you to be worried about, I promise. But it’s very important. Please, would you go back inside? Say that my stomach is upset and I just need a little air. Please.”

  “Jean Marie …”

  “Please, Mother. I can’t explain right now.”

  Isabelle did as Jean Marie asked. “Jean Marie doesn’t feel well,” she said. “It’s nothing serious.” She waved her hand. “He just needed a little fresh air. I’ll get the coffee.” Renard studied her face and then looked toward the door.

  Jean Marie drew on his cigarette. “Louis,” he said, “I don’t know how to say this gently. Maybe you already … did you know that your house is under surveillance?” Louis did not seem to comprehend his words at first. “Your house is bugged, Louis,” said Jean Marie. “I just spotted a camera, and there are probably more. Microphones too, undoubtedly. I don’t know how many or where, but it’s obviously a professional job. I only saw it by chance, and I deal with this stuff all the time,” he added, sounding slightly embarrassed.