Sauveur read the pages of Sharon’s translation with an increasing sense of disbelief and finally, with anger. It was nearly midnight and the station was quiet; there was no one to hear him speak aloud: ‘Merde et merde! How dare that little shit puff out his feathers like this, a cockerel in the land of its emblem?’ If he wasn’t a murderer, he was doing a very good job of putting his neck in the noose, and Sauveur would have a hard time stopping the charges unless a very good alternative suspect came along and quickly. Yes, he had some nagging doubts about how much of a murderer this gormless young man appeared to be, but honest to God, on the night of the murder, the writer-murderer is writing about the commonality of writer and murderer as planners and improvisers in the craft of demise!
Genet is killed cleverly: struck and then finished off with poison (this is how Sauveur understands the chain of events) and the writer returns home to philosophise about his deed in a repulsive, off-hand manner. And this pool scene, with talk of bliss and violence… All the while, Blake Knox appears as unmoved by his own deed as Meursault in L’etranger, as perplexed as Joseph K in The Trial. In a murder involving a deceased artist and an accused writer, one turns to literature for guidance, to understand how the accused might fail to grasp the reality of his situation, or claim conspiracy when his own hands are covered in blood.
The question as to whether Blake was stupid enough to write about a murder and commit one almost identical, assumes that he would be caught and interrogated, something which was not automatic, but fortuitous. If Blake hadn’t been picked up by Benjamin, for example, he would have been just another villager to interview – they wouldn’t have his laptop or his story to link him to the murder scene. He might have continued to write in their midst, and returned to England or Australia when aspects of the investigation had finished and been made public, and said simply that he was writing from what he had heard and seen, but not what he had participated in.
He stared at his bookshelf. Strange that he hadn’t made the connection before with The Trial. Joseph K, the protagonist. JosK – the signature on Genet’s copyart, and the name of an email address on his computer! But what did that mean? A code between Genet and his audience? Between Genet and Knox? He pulled the book off the shelf and thought, what would make a mature-aged painter identify with the bizarre hero of this Kafka fantasy? The dangers of sexual relations, perhaps? A nod to the ever-prying eye, as one tries to go about one’s private business? A fantasy about a creative individual in the grip of an uncaring, bureaucratic state?
He wrote notes summarising these thoughts then turned his attention to emails from Julien Lambert and Faby’s report concerning her research into Genet’s finances. Then at last he closed his office door and headed for his car. Somewhere overhead, a bright moon shone down on the village of Piégon where an artist had once lived an assumed, quiet life. Soft jazz greeted him as green neon told him the time and the temperature — 28 degrees. It would be a nice night for a swim, he thought, pushing aside an image of Birna’s body as described by Blake; and as captured on a security camera, black and white like an arty film from a bygone era.