He’s just locked the main door on the ground floor.
I’m stuck in a cupboard, between buckets and brooms. From time to time, I get rid of the pins and needles in my legs by gently jumping on the spot. I’m frozen stiff. And my heart’s beating dangerously fast. If Starsky and Hutch return, I’ve had it.
If Jules knew . . . I couldn’t tell him why I’m looking into the circumstances of our parents’ accident. I’d have to lie and tell him that I want to know what the police have got on the anonymous caller. Just like I lied to Gramps when I gave him the wrecking bar and crowbar. He looked puzzled. He even said: “You want me to brreak into a bank?”
As soon as I collected the tools at old Prost’s store, I realized that I’d never know how to use them. That it would be better to do as Hélène did when she let herself be locked inside her school on the day of the seagull.
Late afternoon, I just strolled into the Municipal and Public Space Department.
“Hello.”
The Municipal and Public Space Department is situated in a small, square, two-story building made of concrete. Construction date: 1975. I remember that, when I was little, all the offices were occupied. That there were “real” policemen on the first floor, and that I came with Gran. But it’s been several years now that no one’s there except Starsky and Hutch.
Starsky asked me if I had anything new, any names of colleagues or residents to give him. I told him that since the report had been on TV, there had been no more anonymous calls. But that much he already knew. He looked at me strangely. I sensed that I annoyed him. Or that he suspected me.
The switchboard phone rang. Starsky seemed surprised. As if that never happened.
I pinched the palm of my hand so as not to laugh, because it was Jo who was phoning. I’d said to her: “You call the police station at four on the dot, about some neighborhood issue over parking restrictions, you mumble, you say any old thing, and you hang up. What matters is that the conversation lasts five minutes.” She asked me: “Why?” I replied: “Please.”
The moment Starsky picked up, saying “Municipal Department, hello,” I pretended I was leaving.
“Bye.”
I closed the door to his office behind me, switched my phone onto vibrate, and walked upstairs to the unoccupied part, where there’d been no “real” policemen for ages. If I got caught by Hutch, I could always say I was looking for the restroom. But I met no one on the stairs.
When I shut myself into the broom cupboard, it was 4:04 P.M. I’ve been waiting since then. In theory, there’s no one left in the building by 6 P.M.
When waiting in a broom cupboard, there’s time to think. About everything. I personally thought about Roman. The oh-so-handsome Roman busy photographing gannets in Peru. I thought about his big life and my really small life. His eyes, unique in the entire universe, and me, a messy-haired chick who shakes her ass at the Paradise on a Saturday night and pushes around carts of every sort of disinfectant. I must be far from unique.
We’re not equal. We’re not born equal. It’s not possible. A specimen such as Roman is proof of that.
How could a girl like me share the daily life of a boy like him, except in her dreams? How could you imagine two individuals like us coming back home and saying to each other, “How are you, my love, did you have a good day?”
Everything must have gone right for him since the day he was born. And, also, he has a mother.
Our homes will never be alike. At mine, there’ll be Swedish kit furniture, and at his, furniture he’s garnered from around the globe. At mine, white tiles, and at his, parquet scattered with green and blue Persian rugs.
Even shopping at the supermarket with Roman must be something like a masterpiece. Life’s a masterpiece when you wake up beside a Roman. At least, I imagine so.
I still regularly wake up beside What’s-his-name. I don’t know what work he does, but at the moment, he always arrives a little before the Paradise closes. My stinking of alcohol and sweat doesn’t seem to bother him. He picks me up in the early hours every Sunday, but if I’m on duty later, lets me leave in Gramps’s Renault.
In fact, he still asks me questions, and I never ask him any. Sometimes, I feel like I’m his investigation, a case he doesn’t want to close. At his place, there’s a whole load of books, and often, when I wake up, he’s busy working at his desk. Maybe he’s writing a report on me, the girl who only likes old folk. When he sees me opening my eyes, he squeezes me an orange juice and brings me coffee in bed—like in the ads. Then, smiling, he watches me tucking into my breakfast.
It’s December 20. Roman told me he’d be back for Christmas. He’s going to ask me where I’m at with Hélène’s story. I’m making progress. The pages of the blue notebook are filling up like a bottle. I don’t know what he knows about her. I don’t know what his mother has, or hasn’t, told him.
SLAM. Starsky’s off. I hear the key turning in several locks. No more light in the corridor. It’s dark. It’s cold. I daren’t move. I don’t move. I blow on my hands and down the neck of my sweater to warm myself up.
Hutch could return here before going home.
Just as I’m making up my mind, the switchboard phone rings again. I jump, bang my head, drop my flashlight. I hear the batteries rolling on the floor. Lucky I’ve got the light of my phone to find them.
I go down the stairs using my flashlight. I turned it right down so I won’t be spotted from outside. My legs are like jelly. I need to pee. I can’t see a thing beyond thirty centimeters in front of me. I go into Starsky’s office. A smell of stale smoke and alcohol. And yet there’s neither ashtray nor bottle on the desk.
The archives room is behind Starsky and Hutch’s offices. It’s locked. I wonder if that’s been so since the “real” cops quit, or if Starsky and Hutch still have the key.
I absolutely have to find it. It’s pitch dark. My flashlight barely lights a thing anymore. The silence all around me is terrifying. Then I don’t know what comes over me, but I start thinking about my father. I don’t think about him the way one thinks about the twin of a twin, about someone in a frame on the dresser, about a brief news item, about a grave covered in flowers. No. I start thinking about him the way one thinks of a human being who was killed on the road at forty years old, abandoning a little girl at his parents’ house one Sunday morning. A little girl who was afraid of a garbage chute. Do people who have a father realize how lucky they are?
Where are those damn keys?
My flashlight beams on a tall cupboard with a sliding door. I find a key inside an empty box for staples. It’s not the right one.
Suddenly, a noise.
Someone’s just opened a door. The main entrance. I hide under Starsky’s desk. I hear whispering. No one’s switched on the light. Two people enter Starsky’s office. I can feel the cold from their clothes. They smell of winter, the night, and the clandestine, like me.
I curl up to disappear, become tiny again. It’s over, I’m over, I’m going to get myself arrested. My face will appear in the paper. The name Neige will be dragged through the mud. Gramps and Gran will die of shame . . .
A woman says: “I’m cold.”
The man with her tells her he’s going to warm her up. The man is Hutch: I recognize his nasal voice. I hear them kissing and sighing. As for her, she squawks like a guinea fowl until the two of them groan in unison.
They’re lying on the floor. They still haven’t switched the light on. They’re right beside me. If I reached out, I could touch them.
I feel like laughing and crying at the same time. If they discover me, not only will they lock me up, but they’ll also kill me so I can’t talk. I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears. I even try to stop breathing.
It doesn’t last very long. Hutch is a premature ejaculator. I hear them hurriedly getting dressed.
She says:
“I’d better get home, or he’ll lose it.”
“When do we see each other again, my lovebug?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Next time, I’ll handcuff you.”
“Can’t wait.”
“So why not right now?”
Oh shit, they’re going to go at it again. Thankfully, she says she really must head home. They leave almost immediately.
Ten minutes of silence in the dark. I’ve never smoked in my life, but right here, right now, I’d happily puff my way through a whole packet. I turn my flashlight back on. And that’s when I spot them: keys hanging under Starsky’s desk. A nice touch. Impossible to find them unless you’re on all fours.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, these are the right keys.”
The North Pole. It’s less cold in the freezer at The Hydrangeas than it is in this room. My flashlight picks out around fifty box files, a dusty uniform, two metal trunks, some empty bottles, and books and posters all piled on top of each other. There’s a smell of damp. Underfoot, it feels like soil, a bit like in a cellar.
The box files aren’t ordered alphabetically but by year. From 1953 to 2003. Everything is recorded: hunting accidents, fires, suicides, disappearances, drownings, attempted homicides, burglaries, bicycle thefts, hit-and-runs, floodings, sabotages, altercations, forcible entries, verbal aggressions. Everything. I never thought so many things could happen in a small village like ours.
As the years progress, the files change format: they get thinner. They contain almost nothing. Evidence of how the village gradually emptied. Especially after the textile factory closed in 2000.
I take the file for 1996, the year of the accident. I open it. It contains three reports of car theft. And this:
On October 6, 1996, at 9:40 A.M., the station is alerted by Monsieur Pierre Léger, an inhabitant of Milly on Route de Clermain, that a car has just crashed into a tree on the Route Nationale 217.
We go immediately to the scene.
When we arrive, at around 10 A.M., we find Monsieur Léger and the fire brigade, which has already been there for twenty minutes.
We note that the vehicle involved, a black Renault Clio, license plate 2408 ZM 69, has been partly destroyed by the impact.
At 10:30 A.M., fire officers proceed to cut off the car’s roof in order to extricate four lifeless bodies from the vehicle.
Monsieur Pierre Léger, the only eyewitness of the accident, was present when the vehicle came off the road. The facts are relayed to us succinctly, as follows: the vehicle came off the road at very high speed after zigzagging forward several times, and ended up crashing headlong into a tree.
Monsieur Pierre Léger immediately alerted the fire brigade using his mobile phone; they arrived around ten minutes later.
While the fire officers proceed to extricate the four bodies, a request message is sent to the central database to identify the owner of the vehicle.
At 12 noon, we are informed that the vehicle belongs to Messieurs Alain and Christian Neige, domiciled in Lyon (69).
At 12:30 P.M., specialists from the investigations squad join us on the scene. Police officer Claude Mougin takes photos of the exterior and interior of the vehicle.
At 12:45 P.M., the four bodies—two men and two women presenting with fatal injuries—are taken to the mortuary at Poinçon Hospital, Mâcon (71), once the medical examiner, Bernard Delattre, has certified their death.
Tire marks: with Monsieur Pierre Léger having told us that the vehicle left the road at speed, we note the tire tracks. The tracks aren’t clear. The tires, due to extreme acceleration, seem to have spun around on the spot. The clearest stretches of track were photographed (photo no. 13).
We search in the vicinity for any other people who may have been woken by the impact of the accident, or may have witnessed anything at all.
At 2 P.M., back at the station, we give an oral account to our force commander and station commander of the progress of the investigation underway.
In short, the situation is reviewed, and arrangements are made for different officers to carry out the various urgent checks on the identities of the three other “conveyed passenger” victims.
At 3 P.M., I and our force commander visit the home of Monsieur Armand Neige, the father of the owner of the car, Christian Neige, on Rue Pasteur in Milly (71). He confirms to our commander that his two sons, Christian and Alain Neige, accompanied by their two wives, Sandrine Caroline Berri and Annette Strömblad, left the domicile of the said Armand Neige, where they were staying for the weekend, at around 8:10 A.M. on Sunday, October 6.
At 5 P.M., formal identification of the four bodies is carried out by Monsieur Armand Neige at Poinçon Hospital in Mâcon (71). He identifies his two sons, Alain and Christian Neige, and his two daughters-in-law, Sandrine and Annette, married name Neige.
It wasn’t possible to ascertain whether the driver of the Renault was Christian or Alain Neige, both owners of the vehicle.
In addition, the post-mortem toxicological tests conducted on the four victims turned out to be negative.
The vehicle—the Renault—was transported to the Millet garage, in Milly. It was noted that the braking system might be faulty, but it couldn’t be established whether this state was prior to, or due to, the violent impact of the accident.
Furthermore, it would seem that the driver braked before leaving the road, but the tire tracks aren’t sufficiently clear to be sure, considering that the official weather forecaster reported, on that October 6, 1996, the presence of patches of black ice in the area. The driver could have blacked out, or been distracted for a few seconds within the vehicle.
Having read the above statement, I stand by it and have nothing to change in it, or add to it, or remove from it.
First copy (with hand-written report) to Monsieur le Procureur de la République in Mâcon.
Second copy for the records.
Signed and sealed in Milly, October 6, 1996
Warrant Officer Bonneton,
Officer Tribou,
Officer Rialin,
Officer Mougin.
At midnight in Milly, one November 20, even the hearths have long been asleep. Not a single light on inside the houses.
I pee behind a trash can. It’s perishingly cold.