8:34 P.M.
Sopha has not touched her grilled chicken or her rice. She is sulking, her nose buried in a collection of stories about Ti-Jean.14 Martial Bellion is forcing himself to eat his smoked rougail. He is attempting to put a brave face on it, whereas Liane’s disappearance does not seem to have diminished Jacques and Margaux Jourdain’s appetite one bit.
The three of them eat in silence. Next to the pool, a guy in a floral shirt is bellowing ’80s hits into a microphone. A woman in a skintight dress, a garland of bright red flowers hanging round her wrinkled neck, is moving around behind him. From time to time, she half-heartedly claps her hands or echoes a chorus.
Of the twenty or so guests at the Grain de Sable, the Hotel Athena’s restaurant, not one applauds. Nobody is talking either. This must be what the singing couple are paid for: not for providing some atmosphere, but for filling the silence between all these couples. Jacques Jourdain pours Martial another glass of wine. His hand is shaking slightly and he hesitates, then leans towards Martial to make himself heard above the shrieking of the duo by the pool.
“She’ll come back, Martial. Don’t worry, she’s bound to come back.”
Martial does not reply. Jacques’ sympathetic expression is not very convincing. Is this Parisian lawyer really saddened by the calamity that has struck a man he didn’t even know five days ago? Martial doubts it. Jacques and Margaux seem more like the kind of couple who are relieved to have found someone more miserable than themselves. Their true sentiments, he guesses, probably lie somewhere between pity and indifference.
Martial forces himself to see the ironic side. Yes, his wife’s disappearance probably has affected Jacques in a small way. He’s not stupid. Staring at Liane’s body as she lay by the pool was one of the lawyer’s secret pleasures on this holiday.
Martial thinks about getting up, taking Sopha with him, and leaving them there, but decides against it. Overcoming his disgust, he chews a mouthful of cold rougail. No, this time, he will not give in to impulse; he must remain patient, keep up appearances, play the role of the husband genuinely affected by the disappearance of his wife. Not an easy task, he knows. Everything depends on the details, on his ability to hide the truth from the police. Suspicion will tighten around him like a noose around his neck, and even if they find no clear evidence, the doubts will remain . . . If things go badly, he might need the Jourdains—Jacques in particular. He must be extremely in demand as a lawyer, judging from the hundreds of emails he receives every day.
The silence is growing unbearable.
As is the duo’s screeching. And yet none of the couples in the restaurant have left their tables.
Martial briefly imagines how tomorrow will unfold. The trap closing in on him. The police, the interrogations, the tourists confined to their hotel. The Jourdains summoned to the police station. Well, at least he’ll have helped ruin those hypocrites’ holiday! That’s better than nothing.
9:17 P.M.
“Let’s go upstairs, Sopha.”
Martial approaches Gabin’s bar, wallet in hand. Gabin passes him a rhum arrangé, a flavored rum. Hard to tell which fruit has been used in this one—some sort of yellow medlar.
When Martial passes him the banknote, the barman touches his hand. He shivers.
“It’s a rhum bibasse, monsieur. A special batch. She’ll come back, your wife, don’t you worry.”
At least this guy seems sincere. Martial forces himself to give a sad smile.
“You have to see it from her point of view,” Gabin goes on. “She has taste, your wife. Who in their right mind would want to listen to this music? There’s a good group on tomorrow night—she’ll be back for that.”
10:12 P.M.
The couple continue to wail out their songs. In the halo of yellow lights above the swimming pool, the mosquitoes are the only ones dancing.
Martial moves away from the window of room 17. It’s on the first floor. He turns towards the child’s bed that Naivo has, with great difficulty, squeezed between the double bed and the wall. Sopha has finally fallen asleep, after an hour of begging for her mother. Martial did his best to explain things, albeit clumsily.
“She’ll come back, Sopha. She just went out for a walk. She’ll be back soon.”
He was wasting his breath.
The questions came thick and fast.
Why has Maman not called us?
Why didn’t she give me a hug before she left?
Why didn’t she take me with her?
Where is Maman? WHERE IS SHE?
Why aren’t we sleeping in the same room as yesterday?
“Because a policeman has gone there to take fingerprints.” But Martial couldn’t tell his daughter that.
He read her the adventures of Ti-Jean, Grand-mère Kalle and Grand Diable several times over until, finally, she fell asleep. Lucky her. Down below, the duo is still caterwauling.
Martial takes off his T-shirt and trousers, and stands there, naked, in the shadows.
Anxious.
Nothing is going as planned.
Above him, in a few hours’ time—tomorrow morning at the latest—a policeman will come and remove the seal on room 38. Naivo must have told them about the clothes scattered all over the room, the objects knocked down . . . and the bloodstains. Of course he did.
Martial walks over to the shower cubicle.
This evening, until dinner, he was in control of the situation. But in the last few minutes, something has gone adrift.
The water pours down on him. Almost cold.
His thoughts twist, slide over the smooth walls of his brain, disappear down a gaping chasm. Why on earth did he concoct this insane plan? Is he about to get caught in the trap he built himself?
He dries himself, wishing he could rub the towel so hard against his skin that it made him bleed, turning the white embroidered hotel logo a deep shade of scarlet.
Terrible images come back to him. Did he have any choice?
Martial walks back through the room. He stands, naked, at the window, barely concealed by the darkness. But no one is looking towards the window. There are only a few tourists left outside, couples embracing as they dance on the teak boards. The Jourdains aren’t there. This isn’t their scene.
The singers have moved on to the kind of interminable ballad that signals they will soon be packing up their equipment.
Martial takes a step back and watches Sopha’s chest rise and fall as she sleeps on the cot that is almost too small for her.
His bed is too big. “Kingsize,” as Naivo called it. The tactless moron!
Martial lifts up the cotton sheet, stiffened into a shroud by the air conditioning. The contact disturbs him. Suddenly he can’t bear Liane’s absence. Martial stuffs a corner of the sheet into his mouth and bites down to stop himself from screaming; he realizes that he is mimicking the very gesture that Liane made every night when she silently bit down on the cotton cloth to stifle the groans of her orgasm.
My God, what has he done?
What wouldn’t he give to feel Liane’s naked body against his now? To go back in time, just one day. Or a week, if he could.
Never to have set foot on this island.
At the window, the lights of the pool are going out, like dying stars.
Tonight, he will not sleep.
14 A hero in many folk tales from Réunion Island.