It was five in the morning. Félix had slept in his clothes. He stood in front of the sitting-room window. He would have liked to see the sea but the view was obscured by the darkened block of flats opposite. They were all sleeping well, but he had never been able to manage eight hours of unconsciousness. Even when Mark had been there, even when they had been happy. But had they really been happy? After all, he had left. Even then he would often wake up with cramps in his legs, his eyes wide open, full of dark thoughts. He wanted the day to start, to change his shirt and go to the office. There at least things were happening.
“Can we search Louchsky’s house?” he had asked the judge the previous day.
“Risky. The prosecutor won’t sign.”
“You could try getting an emergency warrant from his deputy, order the car for nine o’clock and be off by nine fifteen, you’ve done it before.”
“Well, you might consider shaving, Félix, just in case I do decide to do that…”
He went into the kitchen, made some coffee, turned the radio on, and then off again immediately when all he found was the stock-market report, a series of incomprehensible figures. He sat down in front of his computer, where his email offered him fifty-per-cent reductions on hotels all over the world, loans at criminally high rates of interest, old books, Viagra, but nothing from Mark. He Googled Sergei Louchsky: hundreds of references appeared in French and English. Félix went through them. The man was famous. You could see him already in the winter of 1993, during the great post-Communism car-boot sale of bargain privatizations, shivering at the gates of a factory in Siberia. He was only twenty-five and he was buying shares from the workers, who had no idea that in two years’ time he would be their boss.
The rest was the story of an oligarch surviving purges and battles, always close to those in power, trailing behind him billions of dollars in oil and financial structures all over the world, as well as persistent rumours of corruption and money-laundering. Félix lingered over some of the articles that had been translated from the Russian press. He was particularly interested in a report concerning a bauxite mine acquired by Louchsky. The journalist had repeatedly tried to gain entry to a sinister mining complex. He wanted to find out what had happened to those who had dared to go on strike after the deaths a year earlier of two of their number down the mine. They had refused to come up to the surface, had told of how they were paid according to output, with all production limits and safety rules ignored. “We are serfs,” they had said at the time. The article described the silence and the fear that reigned a year later. Voices from behind doors said: “It’s better not to talk now.” Only one trade unionist would speak, but anonymously. He had holes in his boots despite the cold, and he said that the revolt had cost him dear. He advised the journalist to take care. Félix looked at the byline, that of a woman, Lira Kazan. Her name cropped up frequently. She had written a great deal about Louchsky, his billions, his financial empire, his political contacts and his miserable workers.
Félix arrived at the law courts at five past nine, shaved. The judge informed him that the deputy, barely awake, had signed for the transport. The prosecutor was on holiday. They set off at once, as the order might be countermanded at any moment. They drove towards Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, an area that seemed outside the law, and was certainly unfamiliar to the police services. The most expensive real estate in France, villas were bought and sold through shell companies whose shareholders remained concealed in tax havens. Money could be laundered with total impunity.
This villa was invisible from the road, nestling behind a bank of trees and an iron gate mounted with a moving camera. Through the intercom, a servant informed them that the proprietors were absent. The judge announced himself and said that they had to open up. The gate slowly and reluctantly swung open, controlled from within. There were noises from the pool, and a visibly embarrassed butler advanced towards them, explaining that Mr Louchsky was not there, that his sisters had come with their children. Then a man in a dressing gown appeared, a brother-in-law he said, bald except for two thick, bushy eyebrows. He lost his temper, clenching his fist and grinding his teeth when asked to surrender his telephone. Beside the pool, a row of dazed and dripping blondes in ill-fitting bikinis sat silent and embarrassed.
The judge ordered his team to work fast and to remain totally calm. They were all aware of how unusual it was to be conducting a search in this neighbourhood. Félix searched for a plug, as the police took up their positions and began opening cupboards. Later, at home, round the table with their families, they would laugh about the little lacquer cabinet full of imperial porcelain behind bulletproof glass, the cupboard with 250 pairs of shoes, the dressing room with 120 white shirts and the bathrooms! Madame’s had a bathtub in the middle in the shape of a high-heeled shoe covered in pink mosaic, with a giant pair of glass lips on the wall. Monsieur’s bath was carved from a single block of marble with, on the wall, a huge man’s face in black-and-white pâte de verre.
“That’s Louchsky,” Félix sighed, stunned by the giant portrait. He recognized him from his Internet searches the night before. And then he thought of the miners in their stricken town. He remembered how Mark had complained about his Russian clients: “It’s always the same, they want too much, and all the things they buy just clash with one another! They don’t respect anything. They spend a fortune on a whole lot of mother-of-pearl doors at the salerooms and then insist on putting modern dimmer-switches right next to them.”
The brother-in-law followed them, the top of his head gleaming more and more brightly. He was no longer protesting but his eyes widened when he saw the judge going into Louchsky’s office, sitting down on his chair and trying to open some of the drawers. He went and stood in front of him, stared at him, and ostentatiously put his hand on his neck. The message was clear. It meant you’re a dead man, or at any rate a dead judge. The photos in the room conveyed a similar message: Louchsky had had himself framed posing beside all the most powerful men in Russia, here, in Sochi, Moscow or Paris, all in casual or social settings.
Félix knew the judge well enough to notice his expression clouding over. He drew his attention to a painting leaning against the wall.
“Monet. The same one as on the yacht.”
“One genuine and one fake?”
“The experts can tell us. One thing is certain, she was doing business with him just before she died.”
The judge, Félix and the policemen set off with two automatic pistols, the painting and folders full of documents. They hadn’t gone five miles before the judge’s mobile rang. It was the prosecutor spitting with rage, demanding an explanation as soon as they got back to the law courts. The judge hung up, not saying anything.
Félix tried to lighten the atmosphere by trying an imitation of the prosecutor. “My deeear friend, you know perfectly well that ninety-eight per cent of cases can be dealt with by the law, two per cent have to remain outside it, and of those two per cent nought point five per cent can be deadly…”
But the judge didn’t smile.