Saturday, March 30, 2013, 9:11 A.M.
Imelda explodes from under the sheets, like a volcano erupting.
“Christos! There’s a message on your mobile from last night. 7:43 P.M. Don’t you ever check your phone?”
“Not when I’m in your bed, no.”
Christos Konstantinov stretches out, his head resting against Imelda’s huge black breasts. She pushes him away unceremoniously, leans over the crate that serves as her bedside table, and reaches out to grab the mobile phone.
“It’s your boss, Christos.”
He has a stunning view of Imelda’s majestic backside. Nothing else matters.
“Aja? So she’s bothering the only Orthodox Christian on the island on Easter weekend? I’ll sue her for harassment.”
Christos groans and climbs across the bed to curl up against the Cafrine’s15 black skin. Imelda is a magical mattress that becomes an inch or two thicker every year. He once found, in a drawer, an old photograph album with pictures of Imelda when she was twenty; she was posing naked for a photographer who must have feasted his eyes as he took pictures from every angle of her tall, slender, goddess-like body, so perfect it could make a sleeping man erect. And yet, not for anything in the world would Christos swap that young body for the luscious form of his mistress now, twenty years later. How could any man love a woman with a wasp’s waist when he has tasted the delights of a queen? Imelda is all chocolate and cream; he could gorge himself on her delicious body forever, her ever-changing curves, a cloud of sensuality that seems to mould itself to his desire.
If she knew . . .
Imelda pouts, phone in hand.
“Can I look?”
Christos sighs. It’s against the rules as this is his work telephone. But who cares, if it makes Imelda happy? There is a pile of thrillers on the crate next to the bed. Imelda is a sort of Cafre Miss Marple, which is part of what he loves about her.
“If you like.”
Imelda clicks on the message while Christos’s hand slides up her thigh, explores the hills of her belly, then redescends from the mountain towards the damp pastures. Christos’s fingers disappear into Imelda’s bush. No waxing or shaving for her, thank God. The origin of the world, Christos thinks, in Réunion mythology . . . The primary forest, dark, protected, sacred, a part of our ancient humanity. Christos feels like a poet this morning. He’s really not in the mood to clock in at the station.
He glances over at the pram next to the wall. Little Dolaine is asleep. With a bit of luck, she will stay that way.
“Hotel Athena,” Imelda announces, her eyes riveted to the screen of the mobile phone. “You have to go there to check for fingerprints, bloodstains, DNA samples, and all the rest.”
Under the insistent pressure of Christos’s fingers, she spreads her legs a little wider.
“O.K.,” Christos says. “I know the score. I’ll go there this evening. Gabin Payet, the barman, makes the best flavored rums on the island. It would be criminal to turn up just for breakfast . . .”
“You’ll end up getting yourself fired . . .”
Christos’s index finger defiles the sacred forest.
“You’ll feed me. What’s one more in the family?”
“What would I do with a lazy arse like you? It’s hard enough making the allowance stretch to cover my five kids . . .”
Christos puts his right knee between Imelda’s legs. Then his left.
“You’re calling Christos Konstantinov lazy?” the policeman gasps. “You shouldn’t have provoked the stallion of the Mascarenes . . .”
He leans on his wrists. She helps him, placing her hot hands on his white rump and guiding him in.
The bed tips over, bounces back, is suddenly transformed into a trampoline.
Three monsters are jumping on the sheets: Dorian, Joly, Amic. One bushy-haired, one frizzy-haired, one shaven-headed. Twelve, seven and four years old. With the little one in the pram, the only child missing is Nazir. As far as Christos knows, Imelda’s progeny are the offspring of three different fathers. He arrived eleven months after the departure of the last one. The family is a joyful jumble that is hard to categorise: Creoles, Malbars, Zoreilles. All crammed into a three-room apartment—or four rooms if you count the garden (the oldest child sleeps in a hammock).
The three kids jump on him. Christos protests feebly.
So much for authority . . .
“Aren’t you working today, Jesus?”
“Christos, not Jesus! And yes, I am working! Clear off, you lot! Don’t you have school to go to?”
No answer, just cascades of laughter, like the Salazie falls.
Imelda gets up and puts on a pareo. So much for that, thinks Christos. He gets up too, with a sigh.
“What else did the boss say?”
Imelda does not even have to check the phone; it’s as if she memorized the information with just one glance.
“A tourist who has lost his wife. Oops! Off she’s gone with her suitcase!”
“The idiot!”
Christos puts on a pair of ochre canvas trousers. A dubious shirt.
“You know what I’d do, to avoid losing my wife like that?”
Imelda doesn’t reply. She yanks vigorously at the sheets, sending her brood flying.
“Same as I’d do to avoid losing my keys, in fact.”
Still no reply. Imelda bends down to pick up the pillows scattered across the floor.
“I’d keep a spare!”
Christos leaves the room laughing, just before being hit in the face by three pillows.
10:03 A.M.
Hotel Athena. Christos heads towards the bar, instinctively, like a cat guided towards its food bowl. He wasn’t kidding when he told Imelda that Gabin’s rum is the best in Saint-Gilles. It may even be the best on the island. Usually when Christos comes here, it is late at night, to get away from the noisy, excitable young people emerging from the neighboring clubs, the Red White and the Loft. Gabin is a sort of local star, a cocktail artist, a virtuoso of improvisation. For ten years, all the bars on the island have been fighting over him, negotiating his transfer as if he were a high-scoring center forward in Réunion’s premier division.
Gabin smiles as he watches Christos approach. With his long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, his sun-bleached blue shirt and his ancient espadrilles, you would never guess this man had been a second lieutenant in the police force for over thirty years.
“Well, look who it is!” says Gabin. “The prophet himself. It’s not too early. We were saving some croissants for you.”
Christos gives him a thumbs-up, then slowly turns it down towards the ground. The barman does not push the matter. He has a degree in ethylotherapy; he observes his customers, listens to them, analyses them, then delivers a personalized service. He serves Christos a Mai Tai. Then a second, as he tells the policeman all the details of the case: the handsome couple, the kisses in the pool, the annoying six-year-old daughter, the mother who goes upstairs to her room for just a minute, and then—poof—vanishes into thin air.
Christos listens sympathetically, one eye on the ice cubes melting at the bottom of his glass, diluting the rum, the other drifting towards the pool, which is deserted.
“I tell you, Gabin, the Zoreilles should watch out. This island is one hell of a trap. Listen, I’ve got a good story for you: you know how I ended up here?”
Gabin shakes his head, smiling. His official title is psycho-ethylotherapist.
“I lived in La Courneuve,” Christos goes on. “I was twenty-five years old. I applied for a transfer to the force in Saint-Denis. That was only about ten miles from my home. Even with traffic jams, it was just thirty minutes in the car. There was just one detail on the ad that I didn’t notice. A tiny little detail, just a figure . . .”
Christos drains his glass, before concluding:
“The department number. It was 974, not 93. Saint-Denis here, not Saint-Denis near Paris! It had to be fate. So, I came over here with my whole life packed in a container. Thirty years later, I’m still here.”
Gabin wipes the bar, indifferent.
“You don’t think my story’s funny?”
The barman replies without even looking up.
“That’s the fifth time I’ve heard it! You always tell the same old jokes, Christos.”
Christos shrugs. He swirls the ice cubes around in his glass, trying to convince himself that Gabin doesn’t always mean what he says. Finally he gives up.
“You’re a pro, Gabin, but you should work on your sense of humor. It’s important for your customers. Anyway, I’ll say goodbye. I’m going upstairs to take care of the honeymoon suite. Losing your wife, eh? That’s pretty careless . . .”
He walks away, hesitates, then turns around.
“Hey, Gabin, you know what I do to make sure I don’t lose mine?”
The barman rolls his eyes.
“Let me think. You keep a spare?”
Bastard!
10:09 A.M.
Christos places the briefcase on the bed and removes the BlueStar® Forensic vials, the test tubes, the Lumilight lamp and the miniature digital camera from their respective compartments. Apart from Aja, he is the only person in the Saint-Gilles-les-Bains force who knows how to use them. Competency comes with certain privileges, like being able to sleep in. He thinks again about the Madagascan on reception who opened the door to room 38 for him. Naivo Randrianasoloarimino.
Anyway, to work. What a crazy job . . .
Around each dark stain, on the carpet, on the sheets, in the shower, on the edge of the toilet bowl, he will spray a few drops of BlueStar® Forensic. But first it must be meticulously prepared. The preparation is only effective in detecting traces of blood when mixed with an activator composed of distilled water and a hydroxide salt. That idiot Gabin isn’t the only one who knows how to make cocktails, Christos thinks. After that, if the room is reasonably dark, each bloodstain should be transformed into a pretty, fluorescent blue lozenge.
Christos gets to work: the fluorescence lasts only about thirty seconds, which is not a lot of time in which to detect the stains with the aid of the Lumilight’s black light as well as take pictures of the scene. And if he doesn’t get it done in time, he will have to start all over again, ad infinitum.
Christos sighs as he aims the black light at the floor. The blue stains vanish almost instantaneously, as if they’ve been swallowed by the carpet, but one thing is already certain: blood was spilled in this room, and not only on the floor but on the bed and walls too. Try as he might to make arguments to the contrary, Christos has to accept the reality.
Room 38 of the Athena is the scene of a crime. Shit.
Christos throws the Lumilight on to the bed. Most police officers would be excited by such a discovery, like an entomologist accidentally stepping on a new type of anthill, or an astronaut discovering a new planet. But for Christos, it just pisses him off. He has to mix the solution again, and spray it, meter by meter, so that he gets photographs of the entire room. Any time you watch an American crime series, there are always about twenty policemen bustling around the corpse. In Saint-Gilles-les-Bains on Réunion Island, he is stuck on his own, like a big fat . . .
And decorating the place with blue light is only the first step.
Whose blood is this? Madame Bellion’s? Monsieur Bellion’s? A mixture of the two? Christos knows that he will have to stuff plastic bags with fragments of sheets and pillowcases that he has painstakingly cut out. He will have to crawl around on the floor, trying to tear off scraps of carpet. He will go into the bathroom with tweezers and pick up any stray nose hairs, arse hairs or pubic hairs he might find. He will shove his hands into the toilet bowl, armed with a test tube.
He thinks about Imelda’s eldest son, that moron Nazir, high on zamal,16 who spends his days watching episodes of CSI that his pal has downloaded for him. He should have brought Nazir in for a few weeks of work experience. Maybe that would have got rid of his taste for the grass that is turning him into a bourik.17
Or maybe he should have asked him to pass the zamal around. Right at this moment, Christos would have nothing against the idea of rolling himself a joint. It might pep him up.
He looks out through the window. The first female guests are claiming their deckchairs around the pool. Old and flabby. Christos knows from experience that the pretty, young ones do not sunbathe in the hotels around the lagoon. They put Pataugas on their feet and trudge between Mafate and the Piton des Neiges. Christos is too old to follow them. Not that he cares. He has always preferred women ten to fifteen years younger than him. And he is nearly sixty now.
Christos turns around and examines the wooden shelves. He thinks that he should also make an inventory of the room. According to the Madagascan on reception, all of Liane Bellion’s clothes have disappeared: he should verify that. He tries to reassure himself. When it comes down to it, the most likely scenario is still that madame has run away. The discovery of bloodstains is not in itself evidence that a crime has been committed. For proof of a murder, you need a corpse. Or, at the very least, a weapon . . .
Christos has a sudden hunch. He gets up on the bed and carefully removes everything from the shelves. Sports bag, shoes, waterproof clothes, sunglasses, tennis racket, torch.
His hand comes to a halt over a barbecue kit: a high-tech model, made by an upmarket brand such as Nature et Découvertes or Maisons du Monde, the type of gift your friends might buy you when they know you are about to go to a country where people still eat with their fingers. Christos rips open the Velcro that holds the black plastic case together. Inside there are compartments for everything: an XXL fork, a spatula, a scraper, a pair of tongs, a brush for the marinade . . . and, of course, a compartment for the knife. A solid kind of knife, good for slicing ribs of beef. With a nicely sharpened blade and a wooden handle.
Or that’s what Christos imagines, anyway. Because there is no longer any knife in the case.
15 Female Cafre.
16 Cannabis from Réunion.
17 Idiot.