HER NAME was Nicole and she worked on the front desk at Le Monde’s archive section. Despite her spiked hair and a ring through a nostril, she was sweet. I would have put her at nineteen, and she was the last hope of obtaining a few facts about Claude Michel. It helped that she spoke English and had a brother in Australia.
Nicole had given some indication over the phone that she knew why no newspaper files on Michel were available to the public. Officials at several papers had either denied a file existed or had refused to even check if there were any cuttings. My chances of finding a photo of the man, or even a report on him had faded. For that reason I had decided Nicole was worth a visit, even though I was loath to venture out.
She seemed nervous when I arrived. A bespectacled, bald manager eyed us. We were near Boulevard Haussmann in the eighth arrondissement, which I knew a little. I leant forward on the counter.
‘You have been most kind,’ I said, ‘when’s your lunch hour?’
Nicole’s eyes flicked to the manager. I didn’t think he understood English.
‘I don’t take lunch out, Monsieur.’
‘Quelle dommage,’ I said, looking at the clock above her head. It was just noon.
Nicole blushed. I shook hands with her and slipped her a card with a note. It suggested we meet at 12.30 at Cafe Haussmann, a seafood restaurant.
I waited in a doorway across from Le Monde. Exactly at 12.30 Nicole bounced out the door. At first it looked as if she might head for the cafe as she reached Haussmann, but she stopped at a bread shop. I hurried after her and caught her on the way out, a breadstick under her arm.
‘Oh, Monsieur,’ she said apprehensively.
‘Couldn’t you join me at the cafe?’
‘No, I am sorry. I only get a ’alf ’our.’
She glanced down to the street leading to the newspaper building.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘there is a way for you to get the information you want.’ Her eyes flicked towards the same street again. She was making me edgy.
‘How?’ I said.
‘You must ask for the papers for the dates concerned.’
‘But I don’t know the dates!’
‘Try the week of June 23, six years ago.’
She turned to go. I touched her on the forearm.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why is there secrecy around this man?’
‘There is no file on him,’ she said with two more furtive glances, ‘the security people removed it.’
‘I must go, Monsieur.’
I watched her step off with a determined swivel on her high heels, and after a minute, I walked round the block back to the newspaper’s archives section.
The manager was at the counter. I asked for the microfiche of several newspapers from different years and included the first three days of the week Nicole had suggested. I found a cubicle and began reading the microfiche. There were articles each day about Claude Michel but they contained less information than I already knew about him.
I asked for the last four papers in the week of June 23. One of them carried a head and shoulders shot of the man in question and an article concerning Michel’s background. I felt as if I had discovered gold.
Nicole had reappeared at the counter.
‘The microfiche seems to be missing for June 28,’ I said with a smile, ‘could I possibly have a look at the original?’
Nicole disappeared to a back room.
When I had the original copy I returned to the cubicle and began looking at every page. I took notes on a Mitterand speech. The manager wandered to me, and with a sibilant and salivatory voice, asked me what I was looking for.
‘Je cherche un article au sujet du Président,’ I said beginning a lie off the top. He was distracted by the number of customers at the counter and excused himself.
I looked round. The manager was serving someone else. Nicole was talking to another customer. Others were coming in and it was busy. I coughed long and hard and tore down the page carrying Michel’s photo. I folded the page and stuffed it down the front of my trousers, returned the papers to the counter and began to walk away.
I made for the door and dashed for Boulevard Haussmann. I broke into a sprint. A taxi pulled up beside me. I hesitated but it was occupied so I charged on, changed direction down Rue Tronchet and puffed my way to the metro at Madeleine.
I joined the hundreds of subterranean commuters and jumped on the first train in. I couldn’t resist the temptation to read the article on Claude Michel.
The article’s author had tried to draw a psychological profile that would make sense of Michel’s brutal indifference to the more than twenty people who were said to have died because of his malpractice. It touched on the relationships with the two people who had brought him up – his mother, now dead, who was described as a ‘cold and ambitious’ medical administrator, and his wealthy grandfather, who owned a chain of old people’s homes across France and Belgium.
No one seemed to know the identity of Michel’s father. Michel’s mother was quoted as saying there had been violence in the home when young Claude was growing up, but she claimed that it had never been directed at the boy, who was called reclusive at school.
Because of the conflict between the mother and the grandfather at home he was sent abroad for several years. Without evidence, the journalist even speculated that the grandfather was in fact Michel’s real father. Michel had done his medical training in Switzerland where he had become attached to the pharmaceutical industry.
I studied the photo. Michel had fair hair, which was thick and brushed straight back, with no part, like Mozart’s. He had a round face and a distinctively big nose. His eyes frowned under ridges of light eyebrows, and his jaw was set aggressively. His large mouth was half caught in a sneer. The sideways glance he was giving the photographer and the movement of his right forearm, which was coming up to hide his face, indicated he didn’t want his snapshot taken.
Michel wore a light raincoat and was coming out of a doorway. An out-of-focus umbrella was poking up behind his head.
Over the years I had prided myself on a perfect memory for faces. I would meet people I had not seen for as much as twenty or thirty years and recall them. It had turned me into an amateur physiognomist.
Michel’s picture bothered me. I was blocked on the face. I didn’t think I had ever seen that visage before. But the demeanour, the frown, the angle of the mouth, the jaw thrust, the sneer. They all rang bells. The photo was slim pickings from my trip abroad, but it was something.
Another face in the rain.