11:36 A.M.
Imelda has not moved for more than ten minutes. She continues to stand behind the flame tree, lost in thought, observing the black 4x4.
On the opposite pavement, the chouchou vendor watches her suspiciously. Imelda pretends to look in her bag for her mobile phone, then to check one of the apps. No one would guess that her old telephone is incapable of doing anything other than make a simple call. Imelda thinks. The Chevrolet Captiva in front of her was definitely in the Athena’s car park on Friday afternoon, the day Liane Bellion disappeared. From experience, the Cafrine does not believe in chance. There is always a good reason why things are where they are. And the same is true for people.
The casing of the phone is warm in her palm. Imelda hesitates. Logically, she ought to call Christos, explain everything to him, give him the registration number. The affair would be dealt with and she would be able to forget about it.
Christos would make fun of her, of course, but if she insisted, he would research the matter. Christos is not a bad man. In fact, he’s the best man she’s ever known. He is probably also the laziest, the most unfaithful, and the oldest too, the one who comes inside her the quickest and who falls asleep as quickly afterwards; the biggest drinker, the one most hooked on zamal, the whitest man she has ever known . . . And yet, there is no such thing as chance. She has observed Christos when he is not playing one of his macho roles—the disillusioned cop, the cynical lover—when, for just a second, he automatically picks up Joly’s doll, when he secretly checks that Nazir’s scooter is safe, or even when she is reading and she senses his gaze over her shoulder.
Not the gaze of a man made horny by sunshine and alcohol.
But a gaze full of unspoken tenderness.
Yes, when you look more closely, Christos is a man who deserves to be loved.
The Chevrolet Captiva blinks.
Its headlights flash three times. Imelda steps even further behind the tree’s trunk, furtively scanning the car park. A man is pointing his key at the vehicle—a Malbar, a barrel-chested man squeezed into a kurta, with a khaki cap decorated with a red tiger on his head. He must weigh at least as much as her, but he is a good six inches shorter. Under his left arm, he carries a brown bag stuffed full of food bought at the Case à Pain.
In the next moment, the Malbar vanishes inside his car.
Imelda has to make her decision quickly.
Call Christos and look like an idiot.
Let it slide, and never be able to stop thinking about it.
Or get in her old Polo, which is parked ten meters away, and follow this 4x4. To see where it leads her . . .
There is no such thing as chance.
11:37 A.M.
Print.
Christos leans towards the computer and clicks on the icon.
The old printer wheezes and groans as it spits red letters onto an A4 sheet. Christos had to change the color of the PDF file that Graziella Doré emailed to him, because there’s no black ink left in the cartridge and he’s never figured out how to change it. The manager of the Sapphire Bay took less than half an hour to make her decision and send him the list of her employees at Cap Champagne. From ten years ago.
Seven names.
The file is dated. Stamped. Signed.
Christos knows he ought to take the time to verify this list, to cross-check it with official registers, to contact each witness and get their version of events.
Later.
His compass is Imelda’s instinct. He has to find the connection between the past and the present, the employees of the Cap Champagne and those of the Athena.
Christos snatches the sheet from the printer and curses. The red has turned out pale pink. Apparently the toner is almost finished too.
In the police station, two speakers linked to a PC relay the communications between the various police forces and the ComGend. Christos can follow the hunt for Bellion almost second by second, his imminent arrest, the orders choreographing the helicopter ballet . . . All of them, including Aja and Laroche, have better things to do than to look into a ten-year-old accident and the Creole witnesses who may not have had anything to say.
Christos holds the page close to his eyes. Even in this ludicrously pale ink, he can still read the seven names.
Mohamed Dindane
Reneé-Paule Grégoire
Patricia Toquet
Aloé Nativel
Joël Joyeux
Marie-Joseph Insoudou
François Calixte
Or maybe that should be Françoise Calixte . . .
The second lieutenant reads the list again, hesitating over the fourth name, his forehead wrinkling in concentration. Then he folds the sheet and shoves it in his trouser pocket.
He has made his decision.
As he has nothing better to do, he will pay a visit to Armand Zuttor and his employees. Even on Easter Monday, there must be a few of them on duty. It’s barely a kilometer from the police station and the rum there is excellent.
11:39 A.M.
The black 4x4 comes to a halt before the stop sign at the exit of L’Ermitage. Imelda has let three cars get between her Polo and the Chevrolet. She has followed it, though, her curiosity too great. And it turns out that tailing someone on the island is not very hard at all: there is only one coast road, and vehicles tend to drive along it for miles without overtaking. Thank goodness—her old red Polo is especially conspicuous with its orange left rear door, which she picked up from a scrapyard. Christos never even bothered repainting it.
The 4x4 goes through Les Avirons. On the road overlooking the gully, a few goats are sharing the sparse tufts of grass, nicely wrapped up with litter. Imelda curses. Is the Malbar going to continue all the way to the windward shore?
With one hand on the steering wheel, she dials her home phone number.
“Nazir? It’s Maman.”
“What the hell are you doing? We’ve all been waiting for you!”
“I’m going to be a bit late.”
“But you’re coming home for dinner, right?”
“Maybe not. Can you look after Dorian, Joly and the little ones?”
“What? No way!”
Inside her Polo, Imelda stifles a curse. The Chevrolet drives slowly through L’Etang-Salé. She imagines Nazir, joint between his lips, too lazy even to get off his arse. She raises her voice:
“Yes, you can, my boy! There’s chicken curry in the fridge. Not enough, but you can add some vegetables. Just see what you can find in the garden.”
The 4x4 enters Saint-Pierre then turns towards the housing development of Ligne Paradis. Nazir coughs into the phone.
“For God’s sake, you can’t just . . .”
“You can sort yourself out, for once. Ask Joly to give you a hand.” Silence.
For once, Imelda repeats inside her head, they can do without her. She feels like a kid sneaking out to go clubbing, a young lover with a pounding heart. She needs to calm down.
“You’ll manage, won’t you, eh?”
“You sound excited, Maman. You’ve found a bloke, haven’t you? A real one this time? A Cafre?”
As they approach Ligne Paradis, there is less traffic on the road. Imelda has to be careful if she’s to avoid being spotted. She slows down.
“I have to hang up now, Nazir. You’re not stupid—you’ll manage.”
She switches off the mobile phone and places it between her thighs.
The Chevrolet turns left, then right. A few seconds after it, she enters a labyrinth of seedy backstreets. The 4x4 finally goes down Chemin Sapan. A dead end. She parks the Polo at the side of the road. A skinny dog comes over and sniffs at her tyre and a curtain flicks opens in the house opposite; an old woman in a dressing gown stares out at her. Children kick a ball between two rubbish bins.
The kartié, or local housing estate, is exactly the same as her own, back in Saint-Louis. At least she feels at home. She gets out of the Polo and walks towards the entrance of the cul-de-sac.
The Chevrolet is parked in front of a little house with a corrugated-iron roof. The luxuriousness of the gleaming 4x4 clashes with the poverty of the house, but Imelda knows that some Creoles would rather live under the stars than deprive themselves of a brand new car.
The Malbar gets out. Vanishes inside the house.
Imelda waits. A minute passes. Her phone rings.
“Maman, it’s Nazir.”
The Cafrine rolls her eyes. “I’m busy!”
“Maman, can we just have rice instead of the stupid vegetables from the garden? Dorian, Amic and Joly all agree.”
For God’s sake.
“I’m busy, my boy.”
“I understand, Maman. So that’s a yes, then?”
Imelda sighs.
“All right. But now listen to me very carefully, Nazir. No more phone calls. If there’s an emergency, send me a text. O.K.?”
“O.K.! I’m happy for you, Maman. Enjoy . . .”
Idiot!
He hangs up.
Another minute. Again, Imelda thinks about calling Christos. When she reads thrillers, she is always cursing the protagonists who refuse, for completely implausible reasons, to ask the police for help, then end up getting into deep trouble, if not actually being bumped off.
And now she is making the exact same stupid mistake.
The Malbar comes out of the house. Over his shoulder, he is carrying a bag almost as wide as his torso. He stuffs it into the boot of the Chevrolet. A few moments later, the 4x4 vibrates and the twin exhaust pipes cough out carbon dioxide.
Imelda is unsure whether she should get in her Polo and follow it or stay here and take a closer look at the house. In the end, she is more curious about the house. Besides, the 4x4 has already disappeared up the street.
Imelda waits for several minutes. What if it’s a trap? The Malbar might have spotted her car, just like the rest of the kartié has—the old woman with her nose stuck to the window, the dog now sniffing her other tyres, or the kids who have, on three separate occasions, come very close to hitting the Polo’s bodywork with their ball. And they are getting better.
Imelda gets out of the car.
She has decided just to take a look around the garden. Maybe have a peek through a window, see if she can spot anything. She’ll call Christos if she finds anything unusual.
The gate squeaks when she opens it. Imelda pushes a dry eucalyptus branch out of her way, then walks on. The windows are so filthy that it’s difficult to see anything inside the house.
Not that there’s any need.
The front door is not closed. It’s just been pushed to. Besides, the rusty lock does not look like it’s been used in several years.
Imelda is aware of how stupid it would be to enter the house. She’s read these scenes a thousand times: overly curious witnesses are always caught that way, by being naïve and guileless.
She looks back at the street.
What could happen to her in this kartié? In broad daylight? She grew up in a kartié just like this one; she has lived there all her life. She knows its codes, its rituals, its spies, the kids yelling in the street, the men you only see after sunset.
Imelda clutches the mobile phone in her hand and checks that she has a signal.
Then she pushes open the door of the house.