25

Tatiana turns towards Inspector Blanc. ‘I know who killed her.’

‘Who was it, Princess?’ He tries to make his voice careless.

She takes a deep breath. ‘You are a man who respects the law, Inspector?’

‘Oui, Princess?’ Blanc demurs. He feels it is he who is being interrogated and resolves to bring this conversation to an end as soon as he can. He has booked himself on to a flight to Faro in exactly four hours’ time and is worried he has overpacked. Are three pairs of shoes excessive for a short winter vacation?

‘I want to sue my parents for being born.’ The girl has dressed up for the occasion, brushed her hair and scrubbed her hands for an hour with a nailbrush over the bath.

‘I know who did it. I want to sue the unloving and make them pay.’

‘Tell me, Princess.’ Blanc stifles a yawn.

‘It is she,’ Tatiana points to her mother, ‘who murdered me.’

‘But you are alive, Mademoiselle.’

‘That does not mean I enjoy my life, Sir.’ The child rests her chin on her knee.

‘Quite so.’ The Inspector takes out a cigar. ‘But nevertheless you are breathing, little one. You are not on my homicide file and this is not a trial.’

‘I pursue my case, Monsieur. I speak English, Italian and German, and I want justice in all three languages. I have been damaged by unlove. It makes me weep at inappropriate moments when I should be dignified. It makes my voice strange and narrows my eyes. My loud laugh has become sly. If I had been loved, I might have had more charm. I might not have been ugly and apologetic. As it is I have only guile.’

The girl gulps for air, clutching her chest. ‘She called me evil.’ Tatiana spits out the word and cries inconsolably. ‘Evil.’

Nancy thinks for the hundredth time that holiday how much she detests, abhors, hates this plump-faced child. How did nature spurt out such a monster?

‘I have always cared for you, my daughter.’ Wilheim bows his fat head, two tears oozing out of his pale blue pig eyes.

The girl nods at him.

‘But all routes lead to Notre-Dame. That means Our Lady The Mother,’ she explains to Claudine who stands half-heartedly on the points of her stained ballet shoes. ‘I have visited the city of the mother many times. The city of Notre-Dame. It is an old city, paved with cobblestones. It is half-comforting but mostly terrible. The women wear hoods and clogs and watch me from the shadows. I do not want to go there for I am not welcome in that city. I get on a bus and ask for the nearest airport but the driver takes me to Notre-Dame instead. He always does. That is because all routes lead to the mother.’

‘You are so dramatic,’ Luciana sighs. ‘Everything for Tatiana is a melodrama.’

‘So you have always said.’ Tatiana looks coolly at her mother, whose long legs are crossed on the most comfortable armchair in the room.

‘My daughter wants revenge for some crime she feels I have committed. But love is not compulsory. Nor is beauty, of which she has very little. You are wasting your time with me.’ Luciana’s eyes seem to suck in the colours of the room, now slate grey, now burgundy, her voice matter-of-fact and low, a cool nouvelle vague heroine in black petticoat, describing the meaning of life as if reading the instructions on the back of a coffee jar.

‘It is a disappointment to me to spawn a child who feels so deeply. I would like to refute the idea that to feel somehow makes you a better person. Who cares? I hope, Tatiana, that in the future you will rip out your womb and pack it with technology. I hope you will completely rewrite the text of your body and that birth will never be your biological destiny as it was mine. I hope you will make your children from a menu that pleases you. Run away now. Take your dirty pointing fingers elsewhere. Go to the TV room and relocate yourself to a simulated city in 3-D. Take control of the water pipes and subways. Placate angry tax payers, disappear into cool grey screens and interact with on-screen actors, interact with concrete, target your enemies with a virus. When you become a politician no one will know you trained on a personal computer. I’m going to cancel all appointments and have a long sleep. I repeat, I have not broken the law.’

‘It depends on which law we are talking about.’ Tatiana continues to jab her finger at her mother. ‘Love is the first and last law. It is the only law worth not breaking. There is nothing else.’

‘What we want and what we get are different things.’ Luciana is smiling now.

‘Yes.’ Tatiana turns once again to Inspector Blanc. ‘My mother did it. Take her away.’

Blanc looks sideways at Luciana, who gazes into her sheer grey stockings, as if watching TV.

‘But it is not you we are talking about, little one.’

The Inspector stubs out his cigar and addresses the English man.

‘Monsieur. Is there any detail you would like me to consider before I close my file?’

Ben’s fingers tear at the flesh on his elbow.

‘I can’t remember anything. It’s gone. Nothing there.’ His voice is anguished and sincere. The Inspector nods sympathetically.

‘What is that?’

‘Rat blood.’ Philippe ambles over to the skirting-board. ‘We killed a rat.’

‘That is a lot of blood.’ Blanc is surprised to find a new note of interest in his voice. Perhaps he should miss his flight after all?

‘It was big.’ Philippe holds out his hands, describing how large it was for the Inspector. ‘It might still be in the bins outside if you want to see.’

‘Which one of you killed it?’

‘We finished it off.’ Philippe smiles, pointing to Ben and himself.

Blanc glances at his watch.

‘I think she found me interesting company,’ Luciana interrupts in Italian.

‘I don’t want an interesting mother,’ Tatiana replies in German and, despite herself, smiles when she catches Luciana laughing into her gossamer eggshell-blue sleeve.

Nancy strokes her daughter’s hair, wondering why it has lost its shine. ‘Just before she died, when she talked on the stairs about love and um … stuff … she kinda looked like she was on the edge of paradise.’

Philippe throws up his hands. ‘C’est folie!’ he shouts hoarsely, and the Inspector nods in agreement. Encouraged, the French man makes a joke about Detective Inspector Blanc smelling a rat, all the while opening a bottle of champagne with a flourish of the wrist. When he leaves the room, everyone wants him to come back as quickly as possible, missing his panache and good cheer and declaring him champion of the day when he returns with a silver tray laden with iced pale green glasses carved into the shape of lilies.

Biddy Ba Ba sits on the roof of the barn, hypnotised by the snow falling in slow-motion on to the cedars. Where once the agonising vista of open space made his fur rise as he hid behind chairs and under beds, now he wants to be outside for ever. If anything, the frightening place is inside. The danger zones are interiors. Inside is where fearful things happen. Not even snow will force the beast to risk shelter there.

Warmed by the fragrant logs crackling in the stone fireplace, the tourists and the Detective Inspector raise their glasses and toast the New Year, making lists of all the good things they want to happen to them. They joke about losing weight and giving up smoking, careful with each other as they make light-hearted polite conversation, smiling at anecdotes and confessions of weakness.

‘I know who killed her,’ Tatiana declares once again.

‘Who was it, Princess?’

‘You did it.’ She points to the Inspector.

‘You killed her,’ she repeats, loudly, in German.

‘What does she say?’ Blanc looks bemused.

‘She says you are the killer,’ Yasmina translates in French, and when she does not take her eyes off his puffed face colonised by a network of angry blue veins, the Inspector, who was in the middle of congratulating the French man on his choice of excellent champagne, spills the entire contents of his glass on to his immaculately ironed navy serge trousers.

‘Blanc has gone pale,’ Luciana whispers deadpan in Italian. When she knows she has her daughter’s attention she says, ‘I can’t remember a thing. It’s all gone Blanc.’ Despite herself, Tatiana guffaws reluctantly into her hand at her mother’s bad joke. Even Claudine, who has decided to be mute for at least three years to make her parents suffer, manages to smile at her friend’s infectious laugh. The globe moves into Omsk, Stalino Bay, Baku and finally, when the two girls can no longer conceal their hilarity at the sight of their fathers offering the Detective Inspector an assortment of handkerchiefs to mop himself up, the world stops at Alaska.