Champ de Mars
OUTSIDE, THE SUN IS DIRECTLY overhead and intrudes into the room like a spotlight. It fills the space where Elena stands with an intense light, showing the dust in the air, the streaks on the windows. She reaches up to the blind revealing dark patches beneath her arms.
‘Did Patrick know any of this?’ I ask.
Her grip falters on the cord and the blinds shudder.
‘And the money Jean-Marc paid you?’ I add quietly.
‘The money allowed me to buy this apartment, a new car, Nathan’s school fees. I told Patrick the money came from an inheritance,’ she says eventually.
I need to keep her talking, so I keep reassuring her. ‘You took on the burden of the lies and the fraud. You deserved to be paid for that.’
Flattery and reassurance. The best ways to get people’s confidence and draw them in. Skills I learned from Sami on the streets all those years ago.
She looks at me like I’ve just thrown her a lifeline. ‘By then, I was well and truly trapped, up to my neck in the illegality, complicit in the lies. I’d been checkmated and had no choice but to keep going, and from that point, I did other things – washing dirty money through his nightclubs and gambling ventures. Jean-Marc had me where he wanted and there was no turning back.’
She pulls at her hair as if trying to drag it off her scalp.
‘Couldn’t you go to the police?’
She shakes her head. ‘Mari wanted to do that, at first. He’d hooked her in too. She confronted Jean-Marc, but he just laughed in her face. He said that if we brought any kind of action against him, he’d make us look like two disgruntled employees looking for a payout. He made it clear that worse would happen if we went to the police.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘Of course. He may seem harmless, stupid even, but that’s just an act. He’s dangerous, and he means what he says.’
I move to the bookshelf, drawn to a black and white picture of my parents and reach in, wiping the dusty glass with my sleeve. It’s a holiday shot, the two of them in the front seats of a convertible car. Elena and Patrick are in the back, and standing by the car on my father’s side are Paul and Céline Chambière. They’re all wearing casual summer clothes and behind them is an old stone house in a pale field, the photo blurred and bleached with age and the light of that sunny day.
‘Is this Jean-Marc?’ I ask, pointing to a man standing on my mother’s side of the car. Although I’d met him years ago, I didn’t recognise the slim man with a full head of dark, shining hair.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That was twenty years ago, maybe longer. We all used to go on holidays together to Jean-Marc’s villa near Épernay. Your father usually found a way to get out of it, but he must have come that year.’
‘Jean-Marc looks so different.’
‘Corruption has made him ugly. Eventually, people get the faces they deserve. The poison surfaces at some point, like a boil.’
She talks for a while on this theme, telling me that Jean-Marc’s bile has worked its way through his body to his lungs, and that he’s ill in a hospital in Neuilly. I only half listen to her, looking at my father in the picture. His face is partly obscured by the glare of the car’s windshield, and although he’s handsome, his smile is anxious, hands gripping the wheel like he wants to escape.
I trace my jaw automatically, feeling for remnants of him out of habit. It’s a reflex I can’t shake even when I know there’s no likeness and the impulse annoys me.
‘He was good-looking once, like you,’ Elena says, reading my thoughts.
‘I don’t resemble my father at all. I never have,’ I say, wondering if she knows, but she looks away.
‘And Céline and Paul. What did they know? How far were they involved?’ I ask.
‘Paul was always Jean-Marc’s sidekick. He helped set Eddy up with Lara at the Matrix Club. Paul more or less ran the place, but he’s managed to distance himself from it all. The place is just a seedy strip club now.’ She raises her eyebrows and I can’t tell whether she’s embarrassed or disappointed.
‘With S&M nights,’ I add.
‘I’ve had nothing to do with any of it for years,’ she says. ‘I know Jean-Marc still owns several places, but the clubs are run by others now.’
‘And Paul?’ I ask.
‘He’s the face of respectability these days, but he was never involved in Ligne Rouge.’
‘So my father just used Paul and Céline for access to Jean-Marc?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Eddy was always suspicious of Jean-Marc, surprised at how powerful he’d become. He worked out that Jean-Marc was the ringleader all those years ago and from then on, Eddy was on a mission to bring him down. He started looking into Jean-Marc’s current activities. The ownership of La Globe that gave Jean-Marc clout and the ear of politicians and business leaders, and the murky political loans which have smoothed the way for his real estate deals.’
‘The Gateway to Paris.’
‘Mari told you about that?’ she asks, fear crossing her face. ‘That was very foolish of her.’
‘She gave me the information the same way she’d given it to Eddy – on a stick. But I was attacked and it was stolen.’
‘Attacked?’
‘I ended up in hospital. I lost the material, but I found the investment site online.’
She moves towards me, puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘You must be careful, Alex. Mari has her own agenda. She was Eddy’s last, most dangerous relationship. I don’t know the status of the Gateway project, but I know Mari still works with Jean-Marc’s investors.’
‘Why did she tell Dad? Why endanger him like that?’
‘She can’t go to the police as she’s in too deep, but she has a score to settle with Jean-Marc. He used her and she wants to punish him for that, and for dragging her into it too. When the legal system doesn’t work, you use investigative journalists.’
‘I tried to contact her again. I was worried after I’d been attacked. I thought they might have got her too.’
‘Don’t worry about her. She knows how to look after herself, that’s why I was surprised by your text yesterday. After what happened to Eddy, she just disappeared. She felt responsible for his death but it didn’t stop her continuing to take Jean-Marc’s money. I haven’t heard from her in years.’
Elena drifts off into her own thoughts. ‘At first, I didn’t know Eddy knew Mari, or what she had told him. I just thought it was odd that Eddy was seeing Jean-Marc socially. Eddy had always loathed him, but there they were having lunch, drinking together in the lead-up to Christmas, laughing and joking like old friends.’
Elena turns to me as if she’s just remembered something. The light catches her off-guard, and her cheeks look sunken, dark lines etched into her face. ‘The last time I saw them together was just before Christmas, in fact. Eddy and Jean-Marc came back to the office after lunch and I could see them from my desk. You know these stupid glass cubicles that they put in offices these days that are supposed to signal transparency and openness? You can’t hear what’s going on, but you can see it. They were shouting and then Eddy left abruptly.’
‘He confronted Jean-Marc.’
‘Yes. Eddy called me later that night, accusing me of being involved, of using the Ligne Rouge charities to stir up tension. Eddy said that Jean-Marc had set up gyms and sports centres in areas he wanted to develop. His thugs used them to create trouble in those areas, drive down prices, get the government onside to make it easier for him to buy up the land cheaply.’
She looks at me, her whole body transformed, like she’s unfolded and the words are just coming out now.
‘Eddy was right. It was a crude plan, but it worked. Jean-Marc sowed animosity between the police and local groups. La Globe ran stories on the lack of effective policing, accusing the authorities of losing control, terrifying everyone about the suburbs and no-go zones. Jean-Marc sent in his own security to maintain order, but that just made things worse because they provoked things further. What he was doing suited many people’s agenda. Making the suburbs out to be dangerous meant they could increase policing, gain votes. He didn’t have to do much apart from light the fuse. There were riots and demonstrations, and things just got worse.’
‘And your stories about contamination at Aubervilliers.’
‘At least they were true,’ she says, looking at me defiantly, ‘but yes, of course, the stories exaggerated the problem to reduce the value.’ She shrugs, as if it was all an obvious, reasonable thing to do.
‘And the car bomb we saw that time that you and Patrick were at our place. That was all fake?’
She looks away. ‘Yes.’
‘What about the Les Halles attack?’
She raises her hands in a protective gesture. ‘I have no idea about that. After Eddy died, I resigned from the charities and distanced myself from Jean-Marc. Everything went quiet on the scheme for several years and I hoped it had all just gone away.’
‘But all the news reports say the gunmen were from the site at Aubervilliers.’
She nods. ‘I don’t know if Les Halles was a real attack or not. Whatever it was, Jean-Marc will have used it to advance his agenda. I know he wants that site cleared.’
‘So that’s the plan, is it – to get control of the forts around Paris and develop the land?’ I ask.
‘Eventually. At the moment, the sites at Issy and Aubervilliers just look like normal developments. The first stage is to acquire the forts, enhance security, and then build high-tech apartment complexes on each site. The final stage is to link them together into a security ring that will surround the city.’
‘Ligne Rouge. A red line around Paris. A luxurious borderland separating rich from poor. The whole thing is madness,’ I say.
‘Jean-Marc really believes in it. He thinks it’s high time to protect the super-rich, insulate them from the rest of us, and by God, he wants to be one of them.’
‘It’s not as if they’re on the same planet as us now, anyway.’
‘No, they’re not, but they’re keen to make their mark on this one, and to tell the rest of us how to live.’
‘So how is he keeping all this quiet?’ I ask.
‘Jean-Marc is litigious; he’ll sue anyone who criticises him.’
‘So people know?’
‘A few people – journalists – have tried to find out what’s going on, but they’ve been threatened with legal action and worse. The Ministry of Defence owns the forts and their dealings are classified, so the sales and leases to Ligne Rouge and its affiliates are secret for now. And the Ligne Rouge companies are held in a complicated network of offshore companies and trusts, so Jean-Marc’s stake is doubly hidden.’
‘And the money?’
‘The investors are the same people Jean-Marc worked with all those years ago. Oligarchs, criminals, money men keen to invest and hide their dirty money. Your mother’s husband is involved too.’
‘Olivier?’
‘Yes, that’s the reason they left Paris. Olivier had a falling-out with Jean-Marc and the other investors. He became a threat to their project and these are powerful people. They have so much cash that they’ve run out of places to keep it, and they’ve invested billions into the project. There are similar schemes planned for other major cities – Sydney, Shanghai, Delhi. There’s a rumour there’s even one to be built from scratch in the American desert.’
She paces the room, muttering again, like she’s reprimanding herself, twisting her hands. Then she turns to me. ‘I didn’t know the full extent of the plan, but the future cities sounded like Utopia. They’d have gardens, zoos, and the canals of the Seine would be diverted into waterfalls and lakes. There’d be beaches and swimming pools in the summer. The developments would have sustainable energy production and organic food grown on-site.’
‘If Jean-Marc had gone to such lengths to hide everything then it was dangerous Eddy being so open with him,’ I say.
‘Of course. Eddy should have kept it to himself until he was ready to blow the lid and publish the story. But he hated Jean-Marc and couldn’t resist letting him know he had the power to destroy him, his grand project, and to drag his past out into the light. If the scheme had become public, investors would have panicked, the money would have vapourised. If it all came out about Vestnik, then the project would have collapsed, along with Jean-Marc’s reputation. I think it was the damage to his reputation that concerned Jean-Marc the most.’
She’s agitated now and keeps getting up only to sit down again. There’s a bottle of water on the side, and I pour her a glass.
‘I warned Eddy to keep it quiet, but he ignored me,’ she says.
‘When did you warn him?’
She takes the glass, her eyes unreadable. ‘The week before Christmas. At dinner. You were there too.’
‘So you knew they were going to harm him?’
She grabs my arm. Her hand is hot and clammy. ‘Of course I didn’t! I warned him they were dangerous, that he shouldn’t be so open about what he’d discovered. But you and Patrick were there, and then you had that argument and Eddy was drunk.’ She looks pained and her voice catches. ‘I was in an impossible situation. I didn’t know the lengths they’d go to keep it secret. Jean-Marc was working with dangerous people who had millions invested and a lot to lose, but I had never met them. To me, they were just company names on documents.’ She stops herself and then says as almost an afterthought. ‘Though I should have known. Eddy had been attacked.’
‘Attacked?’
‘He tried to pass it off as a bicycle accident that night, you remember. I just froze. I couldn’t say anything with you and Patrick there.’
‘And on Christmas Eve? When Sami and I were there? The person that came later was sent by Jean-Marc?’
‘Eddy told me he’d arranged to meet a whistleblower. He said it was someone from the Ministry of Defence. God knows why Eddy agreed to see them on Christmas Eve, let alone invited them into his home.’
‘You must have known he was in danger. You knew what the stakes were. You knew that Eddy had already been attacked!’
‘I didn’t know this person was sent by Jean-Marc. Oh, God.’ She puts her head in her hands and collapses on the sofa.
‘And then Sami and I set the scene up so well, leaving Eddy helpless and sprawled in the doorway so that all his killer had to do was finish him off,’ I say, pacing the room. ‘And that’s why Jean-Marc was so helpful in finding me a lawyer. Dintrans was working for Jean-Marc, too, making sure I implicated Sami, that we both went down and left no loose ends.’
She looks up at me, nodding through her tears, and I’m overcome with rage. ‘Why didn’t you say something when we were charged? I spent seven years in jail being treated like an animal for something I didn’t do! How can you live with yourself?’
‘Please, Alex, understand – I didn’t know all this back then. I really thought you and Sami had killed Eddy. You always hated him so much. I only found all this out later, much later.’
‘When?’
‘These last years. As I said, I had distanced myself from it all, but last year development started on the Aubervilliers site, and then earlier this year, Patrick started looking into Eddy’s death. He became obsessed with it and found out about the Gateway to Paris project and tried to publish something about it.’
‘Didn’t you warn him? You knew how dangerous it was.’
‘He had been threatened but he said he wouldn’t be intimidated. I told him enough so he’d see I was implicated, and that if it all came out, I’d be found guilty. I told him to keep it quiet and to be careful. I didn’t tell him everything because I knew I’d lose him . . .’
Her voice trails off, and I realise she knew she’d lost him then already. The reason Patrick hadn’t told Elena he was looking through my father’s files or that he’d visited me in jail was because he suspected her.
‘There were so many lies between us,’ she says, crying softly. ‘Then, one weekend, Patrick pretended to go away. He said he was going to eastern Europe on a job, but I knew he was lying. I thought he was having an affair.’ She wipes her cheeks and laughs bitterly. ‘In fact, I hoped he was. I can’t bear the thought that he died thinking I was involved in Eddy’s death.’
She seems so pathetic that it’s hard to maintain my anger. She’s consumed by remorse and has been for years. The frailty of her body shows that. Jean-Marc had tricked her, and no matter what she did, she’d never be able to fix it. She was trapped forever with her own brand of guilt. She’d lost herself within it and I know how that feels.
‘And they’re after me too,’ I say. ‘These people have been following me, harassing me ever since I got out of prison.’
‘They know you’re following Eddy’s trail, that you have something on Jean-Marc, the Vestnik material. I tried to warn you that day you visited.’
It occurs to me that I need to leave town and go somewhere no one knows me for a while. A plan is forming in my mind, and it’s dangerous to stay. They’ve attacked me once, and they’ll come for me again.
‘I promise I won’t contact Nathan. But I need you to do one last thing,’ I say.
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want any more involvement in this.’
‘You can’t be any more involved than you already are, and you can’t escape this anymore. I’m going public with all this, I’m going to show Jean-Marc who the real messenger is, so prepare yourself.’
I tell her I need her help to get Sami released, and that she needs to speak to his lawyer, to give a witness statement.
Afterwards she looks spent, wrung out, but there’s a lightness to her now that wasn’t there before.
Before I leave, I go back over to the photo of my parents and Jean-Marc. I bend in and take a picture of it with my phone, and then suddenly it hits me and I have to lean against the bookshelf as shock crashes over me, and I stand there stunned by what I’ve learned, and by what’s staring straight at me.
*
A few minutes later the intercom buzzes and Elena looks at her watch, flustered.
‘It’s Nathan,’ she says. ‘I need to leave.
‘It’s Father’s Day,’ she adds awkwardly. ‘We’re going to Patrick’s favourite restaurant.’
I follow her from the apartment to the landing, numbed by what I’ve discovered about my father and Jean-Marc, confused by the sudden appearance of Nathan.
She opens the heavy iron door, steps into the lift and stands facing me.
‘Wait here a few minutes, he mustn’t see us together. Not yet,’ she says. Then, just before the lift doors close, she reaches out and touches my arm. ‘It’s true, you don’t resemble him, but you’re more like him than you know.’
Left alone on the landing as the lift descends, the sympathy I felt for her amid all the confusion and the echo of her parting words sours into an overwhelming sense of rage. I want to destroy her life like she’s destroyed mine. How dare she tell me I’m like Eddy on Father’s Day of all days, and then just go downstairs to meet her own son and carry on with her life, unburdened now by her confession.
Anger surges in me like a fever, and I race downstairs. The lift’s empty, and there’s no one in the lobby, but they can’t be far. I push the door to the street and see them a little way ahead, crossing the road. They’re talking, Nathan looking at her with the sunlight on his face. He’s well built, his hair short. He’s not the beggar I saw this morning at all, and I shrink back, confused.
I watch Elena’s small frame as they pass onto the pavement, into the shade. Is the rage I feel now because I see in her something of myself? My deals with Tomas, hers for Jean-Marc, both of us checkmated by the same fear, the same cowardice. And then me, blaming Sami for my father’s murder. We both made one false step and then just carried on, putting one foot in front of the other because it was so much easier to do than anything else. We were absorbed in something larger, something we couldn’t stop, our guilt like grit, rubbing uncomfortably for a while, but eventually becoming such a part of us that we didn’t notice it anymore.
I look at them one last time – Nathan with his arm over her shoulder, and Elena looking up at him, smiling at something he’s said. I release my hand from the door. What would be the point of destroying her now? What would that do? And besides, I have an urgent visit to make, an overdue score to settle. I let the door close behind me and walk in the opposite direction towards that hospital in Neuilly.