Abduction (15 page)

“I'm looking to sell a building plot… in a very good location. I inherited it… But I'm having some trouble with certain civil servants at the land and property office. You know, things involving the repeal of the agrarian revolution, land being nationalised and then handed back to its owners. My late father was lucky enough… I mean, if we can really call it luck because the land was only restored after his death. The plot's huge, it's worth a fortune and I desperately need money… A wife and child, our flat's too small… I'm sure you can help me out,
Si
Abdou.”

I looked at him with a deliberately fearful expression to show that it hadn't escaped me that he worked in the upper echelons of the ‘office' and that he must have – it went without saying in such cases – some influence in just about every council department.

“I know how to show my gratitude, believe me. I'm a man of my word.”

This phrase was so bombastic and out-of-place that he blinked in surprise. He stood there, dumbfounded, his teeth nibbling at his lower lip. He had ordinary features that could either have been those of a good family father or the worst kind of criminal. He had put down his newspaper on a bench to open his packet of peanuts. Wordlessly, he motioned for me to dig into the packet of peanuts. I thanked him with a smile, though I was afraid it might twist into a grimace. To stiffen my courage, I thought of all the gossip about my neighbour, particularly stories about him being guilty of raping teenagers during the riots.

“Don't give me your answer just yet. We'll talk about it later, if you agree, when you get back from work.”

I took his hand and shook it gratefully. At that precise moment, my gesture was completely heartfelt but for reasons that would have horrified my interlocutor: I thought that I had detected in his eyes the glint of greed that any hunter looks for when he has laid his trap. The informer let me clasp his flaccid hands without any resistance.

Bending my head, I whispered, “I shall be waiting for you in my car at about seven this evening. We'll go and have a look at the plot of land and you'll see how good a location it is. It's a real bargain, trust me. You'll come, I hope?”

He studied me with his expressionless pupils. He put his packet of peanuts in his pocket and walked off with a curt nod by way of goodbye. To judge by his impassiveness, the man I imagined to be an expert in dirty tricks must have sensed a trap!

I collapsed on a bench under the shock of this new onslaught of despair. I leaned back on the bench and put my arm over my face. For a few seconds of dizzying abjection, I gleefully considered the thought of publicly drowning myself in a pool of tears.

“Ooh, what a face! Is it that trouble with your land that's put you in this state?”

I was aghast. The man was bending over me, examining me without any decency, just intense curiosity. Straightening up, he wagged his chin in satisfaction.

“I forgot this,” he said at last grabbing his newspaper, before adding, as if it was of no importance, “Seven o'clock, right? And don't keep me waiting.”

I watched the hunched man as he strode off. I began to feel myself breathing again. A stranger had slowly stretched out his body within mine, knocking aside everything that got in his way; the snarl he had sketched did not appear on my face, but its bitter cheer spread almost voluptuously through the ruins of my blood.

I looked around for a place to spit – I felt, in fact, as if my mouth was flooded with blood.

Initially I had thought of asking Mathieu and his wife to go home, but meeting Abdou had changed everything; there was no longer any question of Meriem staying in the flat on her own. That afternoon I'd got a call from Hajji Sadok. I didn't feel up to arguing with him. I allowed my voicemail to record a message in which he ordered me to explain my incomprehensible behaviour that morning; “hysterical” he called it. But right now, he scolded me, that wasn't the most urgent matter; the delegation had been extremely put out by the fornicating monkeys. For reasons of public morality, it had advised the relevant ministry to give them to an Algerian university as soon as possible or, even better, to sell them for a high price to a foreign pharmaceutical company. To spare the Congolese president's feelings, the zoo would find a way of replacing the bonobos with some ordinary chimpanzees that were less keen on petting. There were two endings to my boss's message: first, a threatening “Come back quickly, you knucklehead, or I'll be forced to file a report to the ministry!”, before he thought better of it and said, in a beseeching tone I'd never heard him use before: “Hurry up, Aziz, I… I don't want those fucking monkeys put down or turned into laboratory sausages. Shit… It's
haram
– they're almost human!”

For a brief moment, in the depths of my Sahara-like sorrow, I felt like laughing. So, despite his prudery my director had finally taken a liking to our new lodgers! Immediately afterwards, the tiny part of me with any generosity left judged that I deserved a good slap for my sarcasm. “The coming days will lap up your blood, my dear Lucy, and you won't have a clue how to save your own skin or your baby girl!” I thought disconsolately.

Time was running out unbearably slowly, as if every second now had to squeeze through far too small a hole. Mathieu and I frequently caught each other checking our phones were on properly. I didn't speak to him, as I was scared that I would arouse his suspicions. I felt his eyes on my back the whole time. My mother-in-law was slumped on the sofa like a heap of rags, crying.

As for Meriem, she was beyond tears. She flicked endlessly through the family photo album, repeatedly shutting it and opening it with stifled groans. Her hand furtively stroked a portrait of our daughter. Her suffering gradually filled the whole room like a liquid. With a heavy heart, I watched my wife's lacerated face. Somehow or other, I was certain that she would refuse to carry on living if our daughter were not returned to us.

“Do you think he's treating her well,” she asked me suddenly as she examined a photograph of Shehera on her first day at school.

I coughed before explaining, with as much conviction as I could muster, “It's not in his interest to harm her. His sort only have one so-called political objective. The hostages are in no danger as long as everyone does what they're told to. They must just have got the wrong person with us.”

She stared eagerly at me.

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. We'll have her back by tomorrow at the latest.”

She studied every line of my face in search of arguments to back up the idiotic phrase I'd just pronounced. She finally shrugged her shoulders.

“Aziz, I don't need lying to. Especially now.”

I laid one hand on her hair. She pulled her head away, leaving me with my hand hanging there and my useless love.

“I'm not lying to you, Meriem. It's just what I believe deep down.”

Mathieu, who was bringing us an umpteenth cup of tea, gave me an inquisitorial glance. I sought refuge in the kitchen and my father-in-law soon joined me there. As he put the cups in the sink, he whispered, “How come you're so sure, Aziz?”

I lost my cool.

“What do you want me to do? Break her heart by telling her I expect him to kill the girl after raping her first? Mind your own business, for God's sake!”

His eyes, their pupils half-hidden by the grey irises, looked me up and down with hostile disdain.

“But Aziz, this
is
my business.”

He carried on drying the cup that he had rinsed under the tap, holding my gaze the whole time. I couldn't think of a riposte.

“Leave that,” I said, grabbing the tea towel, “I'll wash up the rest.”

“If you don't mind, I'd prefer to do it myself. Look at your hands: you must be allergic to something, you haven't stopped scratching yourself since early afternoon. Put some ointment on them.”

The Frenchman's voice contained no trace of irony. I plunged my hands into my pockets because I was indeed scratching them just then.

In the bathroom, I washed my face instead of looking for the ointment because I knew what was causing the terrible rash covering my hands as well as my back and lower thighs.

Fear, pure fear. I thought I could feel countless white worms boring their way between my muscles and my skin. Ever since the informer had agreed to meet me, I'd been thinking of how to go about it. In vain: my brain seemed incapable of deciding to murder someone
for real.
I realised that I couldn't count on my brain – not the
logical
part of my brain anyway – because it kept saying that my attempt would go horribly wrong and that at the end of the day the kidnapper wouldn't keep his word.

It was already twenty past six. In the kitchen, I looked for the longest knife we owned – the one Meriem had taken to the mosque. I stuck it in the inside pocket of my jacket. Short of breath, I carefully buttoned up the item of clothing, concentrating hard on every movement. Back in the lounge, I picked up my raincoat on the way past and after giving Meriema quick kiss on the head as she sat there curled up on her chair, I walked out without looking round.

The car clock showed that I had only twenty minutes at the most to prepare for the murder. “
Help me, Mother, ask your God to give me a hand…”
– this preposterous prayer blossomed on my lips. My poor mother, whom I hadn't seen for over a year and a half at least, and who complained on the phone that I was unfairly keeping her granddaughter from her! Seized by a searing pang of remorse, I swore that if things got back to normal, I would make sure that my mother could see her fill of her granddaughter, even if it meant crossing three-quarters of Algeria to do so.

I had spent a large part of my years at university devouring pile after pile of detective novels. I realised that I was about to act in the crassest possible manner, leaving behind a series of compromising clues, each of them leading to almost certain arrest, the prelude to the death penalty if the victim turned out not to be a mere informer but a fully fledged member of the state security services. On second thoughts I might not be lucky enough, relatively speaking, to attend my own trial: I could end up on the verge of motorway, done in with a couple of bullets in the head after a few good torture sessions.

Despite the chilly dusk, I felt the dampness of sweat on the collar of my shirt. A neighbour greeted me as he walked past.
There goes the first witness – one! You little bastard son of Mother Folly and Father Ineptitude, are you really going to sit here and wait while all your neighbours file past?
squealed the shrill-voiced tenant who never missed a chance to stick his nose into my incompetence. I decided to go away and only come back at the exact time of our appointment so as to avoid any other unwelcome encounters. I had only walked about a hundred yards when I saw him getting out of his own car. From the tense expression on his face, I guessed that the man had been observing me for some time. Pretending to be overjoyed, I signalled to him to meet me in my car. He seemed to hesitate, then a semblance of a smile broke over his face. He strode vigorously across the space separating us and, after a quick glance round, jumped into the car. He held out a condescending hand to me as if he were the one deigning to invite me into his own vehicle.

“Thank you for coming,
Si
Abdou.”

My voice had cracked.

“You won't regret it. I mean…”

The weasel-eyed informer cut me off. “We'll see about that, but don't they say that to help one's neighbour is to reserve one's place in paradise? Now, tell me about this business of yours and how it might benefit us both.”

I consented with my most gutless smile, feeling how the ridiculousness and the horror of the situation were gradually paralysing me. Only a few inches separated the tip of the knife from my passenger's heart, but it might as well have been the distance between the two shores of the Mediterranean. As if scalded by the acidic hormones of fear, my brain had refused to take part in planning such an insane crime. I had therefore not ‘thought' of how events might unfold, in particular to where I would lure the creature presently to my right in order to turn him into a corpse.

“So, shall we talk?” said my passenger with a hint of impatience.

“Actually…”

“
Si
Aziz, I hope you're not messing me around?”

His voice had taken on a threatening undertone.

“Erm,
Si
Abdou, this situation requires trust and confidentiality because the sums at stake are very large… Can… Can I expect both of those from you?”

Stunned by the stupidity of the words that had streamed out of my mouth, I sat there staring into the other man's eyes, which I saw go wide with astonishment and then almost immediately narrow with anger.

“What do you take me for? A thief? You aren't showing me enough respect! It was you who came to see me! I… I…”

One trembling hand on the door handle, he made a move to get out. Covering myself in apologies, I reached out to stop him. My hand touched his, lingering there one or two seconds too long. Then I pulled away from him, as if I had just realised the impudence of my familiarity. Still pouring out a stream of apologies, I hoped with all my might that I had managed to conceal the small surge of joy that threatened to become a smile of triumph.

My passenger's hand was not activating the door-opening mechanism at all.

In fact, the man was just putting on an act of indignation for my benefit. My ever-so-cunning fox had taken the bait, convinced that there was money to be made from some shady administrative dealings…

Abdou magnanimously conceded, “All right, all right, I accept your apologies. But for God's sake don't offend me like that again!”

He raised the palm of his hand to his lips to wipe away a strand of saliva.

“Of course we are all trustworthy people here, dear neighbour,” he murmured solemnly with no trace of anger in his voice. “I know quite a few people…”