Arab Jazz (28 page)

Less resigned to his fate than his brother, Raymond attempts to escape. He’s barely started to run when a shadow emerges from the darkness, the barrel of a Glock shoving into his side. He turns to find himself face-to-face with Enkell’s icy glare. But he doesn’t want to die—no . . . He tries to barge into him and wrestle the gun off him. Before he knows it, barely two seconds later his arm is locked behind his back and his face is being scraped against the wall of the shop. For several days now Enkell has been waiting to take revenge on the person responsible for the grotesque theatrics of Laura’s murder. As he marches Raymond toward the mouse-gray Scenic, whose four doors are all open, he whispers into his ear.

“So, Meyer the Younger . . . You like a bit of a performance, do you? Choose the wrong career, did we? Our real calling was to be an artist but we ended up as a murderer? Because when it comes to murdering, you see, it’s best to keep it discreet. I mean, if you want to stay employed . . .”

The
commissaire
is reveling in the moment. He twists Raymond’s forearm up, slowly at first, taking pleasure from the thought of the pain rushing through the body of the younger Meyer brother, the man’s face reddening, sweat streaming down his neck in filthy rivulets. Then Enkell yanks the arm up with an abrupt movement that is followed by a crack and a muffled cry. Dislocated shoulder. All he needs to do now is fling Raymond into the back seat of the car like a rag.

Francis couldn’t care less about his brother. From the moment he stepped out of the shadow, Enkell had—rather surprisingly—reminded him of his grandfather Meyer. An old
vigneron
from Alsace who didn’t like it when his son, Handsome Roger, became a policeman and a pimp in the capital. Every summer, he and Raymond would spend two months there, terrified of this man who’d never say more than twenty-five words a day in French. And fifty in Alsatian, which the young boys flatly refused to speak. That would have meant forfeiting, renouncing the dubious glamour of their status as little Parisians. This is what is running through Francis’s mind when he lets them cuff his hands behind his back and place him gently next to his brother who is crushed with pain and despair on the rear seat of the car about to take them on their final journey. If he’d been able to understand what old Meyer had been saying, maybe he wouldn’t be here today.

Enkell starts up the car. Benamer, sitting in the front passenger seat, keeps both brothers in view. The car drives alongside the murals that run the length of rue Ordener. Two graffiti artists, armed with gas lamps and cans of spray paint, are drawing an American cop—his cap and gun totally out of proportion—pursuing one of the Beagle Boys as he hightails it out of Scrooge McDuck’s vault-swimming pool with a sack bursting with gold coins. Francis Meyer has always felt an indifference laced with a degree of scorn toward those the
bobos
refer to as “street artists.” He watches as the last human scene he’ll ever behold plays out in front of him: two kids—one black, one white—wearing tracksuits, sneakers and bandanas, digging up one of his fondest childhood memories from those summers in Alsace, awaiting the arrival of the
Mickey Mouse Weekly
each Thursday at the village shop. He would impatiently comb through the magazine to make sure that the Beagle Boys were in it. By far his favorite characters, even if Chief O’Hara did always catch them.

Enkell takes a left down rue de la Chapelle, heading north. Raymond opens an eye and looks around him; lets out a yelp at the faintest of movements as he tries to sit up straight. He collapses in a heap. Benamer smiles at him.

“With that dislocated shoulder of yours, I wouldn’t move too much if I were you. Tell me, just between the two of us, and since we’ve got some time on our hands, I wanted to ask you to clear something up for me: the three orchids laid out on the toilet seat . . . What was that about? I get the pork joint, but the orchids . . . I can’t figure them out . . .”

Raymond gives him a look of pure hatred. Shuts his eyes. Silence.

Francis can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Something funny?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, on one condition.”

“Go on then . . .”

“There’s a Godzwill in the breast pocket of my coat—let me pop it? May as well, right . . .”

Raymond opens his eyes and hisses, “Francis, no!” He lurches toward his brother but falls back heavily into the seat with a terrible groan. Benamer ignores him, reaches for the pill and places it on his colleague’s tongue as if he were performing the Eucharist. Francis swallows the Godzwill dry, inhales deeply, and pauses. Enkell turns right at porte de la Chapelle. On boulevard Ney, Benamer asks his question again.

“So, the orchids?”

Francis smiles, as if there’s some in-joke only he gets.

“You didn’t notice the little tattoo on the inside of his wrist?”

“No.”

“Three dots. That mean anything to you?”

“‘Death to the pigs!’ His father and brother are in the force, and the police cover him for all his crimes.”

“Jealous. He’s always been jealous. He couldn’t handle it when he flunked the entrance exam. Too thick to even direct traffic. So one day he got himself that tattoo. My father unleashed one of his major beatings. It was his last, but it was one hell of a walloping! And then most recently, with that drug . . . I don’t know, he was inspired. There was something beautiful about it, wasn’t there? Something poetic.”

Francis Meyer falls silent, the pill starting to take effect. He feels good. Happy that he is able to reflect upon his end. The corrupt, criminal officer resigned to his fate. He understands. His consciousness is reaching the cosmos. His role on Earth has been and will be to inflict harm, which is no small matter. He’ll have his place in the Great Scheme, the infinite Oneness. Enkell and Benamer are at a higher level. It is their lot to continue. To do evil for evil’s sake; to fulfill their destiny as they halt his. He realizes—albeit a little late—that crime is a serious business. It’s not a vacation. They’re professional evildoers, while he was just an amateur. Step aside. Give way. Case closed.

FINAL JOURNEY

Too thick to even direct traffic!
Francis’s words are spinning around his younger brother’s head. On boulevard MacDonald he sits up gently, trying suppress the pain. The car slows down, turns left, and heads down an alleyway. Raymond is pure, cold fury. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t give a fuck about dying. He just wants to kill his older brother. To murder him. Show him the man he holds in such contempt.

The Scenic comes to a stop in front of a warehouse. An orange lightbulb glows dimly above a metal door. They’ve got to usher the victims toward their fate, in the belief that one more minute of life is acceptable, because it’s better to kill inside than outside. Absurd, blind obedience. Works most of the time, but it’s never a given. Enkell gets out of the vehicle and opens Francis’s door, keeping him in his sights all the time. Benamer does the same on Raymond’s side, but he doesn’t move an inch. His brother is already approaching the orange halo at the entrance, followed by the
commissaire central
of the eighteenth arrondissement and his non-standard-issue Glock. Benamer loses his patience.

“Raymond, stop fucking around and get out.”

“I can’t. It hurts too much.”

The situation is in danger of dragging on. They can’t afford to delay too long. Enkell’s voice is cold.

“Do it there. It’s fine, we’ll clear it up.”

“No—I don’t have a silencer. Plus I don’t want to have to lug his great big corpse inside afterward.”

Benamer moves closer to the hulking Raymond, who appears to be suffering horribly. Even real professionals sometimes slip up. Everything happens very quickly. Meyer the Younger grabs the barrel of the Kabyle
commissaire
’s weapon and in the same movement cracks the man’s forehead against the top of the door before taking the gun out of his hand. By the time Enkell’s turned around, Raymond is standing opposite him, pistol to pistol.

“Just let me kill my brother and I’ll vanish into thin air. I’m not interested in you and your piece of Arab shit.”

The two men trace out an elegant curve as they move, never taking their eyes off each other, until Francis finds himself midway between the shooters, facing his brother. The older Meyer is now high as a kite. He addresses his brother in full living-god mode.

“What you are looking for is not here. You’re killing me when I’m becoming divine. You’re killing me when I want death. Oh how much better to be in my shoes than yours! How long will it take for you to realize? How life is . . .”

Bang, bang, bang. Three shots bring his sermon to a close. One in each knee, and one in the balls. Enkell turns to face Raymond, who’s backing slowly away into the darkness.

“Pain will cut through any drug. You can finish him off, I couldn’t give two fucks—he’ll die knowing what his brother is made of.”

For a moment, the
commissaire central
thinks he’s hallucinating himself: all that’s left of Raymond is a sardonic grin floating in the night.

37

At the Sarah-Bernhardt, Jean has been studying the bubbles in his bottle of Perrier for twelve minutes when Léna makes her entrance with a tall man of about sixty—almost thin, his shoulders slightly hunched. Once the introductions are over, drinks are ordered. Cappuccino for the psychiatrist; rum and coke for the social worker. Dr. Germain checks his watch.

“So, you want information on Ahmed Taroudant. Information that I am not within my rights to give you . . . Léna explained the situation to me, and I trust her inherently. Nevertheless, I need to emphasize two points: firstly, this meeting never happened. We’ve never seen each other. Is that clear?”

His sky-blue eyes drill into Jean’s.

“Perfectly clear, Doctor.”

“Secondly, I will tell you only the bare essentials. Just enough to let you see that he is innocent. If I thought for a second that he might be guilty, I definitely wouldn’t say a word to the police. I would, quite simply, keep my mouth shut. Psychiatrists—and particularly psychoanalysts—are not in the business of sending people to prison . . .”

“Just out of curiosity, Doctor: is that true? If you thought he was guilty, you wouldn’t do anything at all?”

“Just out of courtesy, Lieutenant: what I would do does not concern you in the slightest . . . Now, let us begin. I have known Ahmed Taroudant for five years. He came to me after entering a state of delirium. He was found walking along the
périphérique
without any idea where he was. He no longer knew who he was, and was uttering incomprehensible words. He stayed at Maison Blanche for twenty days. After that, I monitored him at my clinic. You should know that his mother had been a patient for schizophrenia at Maison Blanche since he was a teenager. One could say that he brought it upon himself. I consider his delirious spell normal given what he had experienced. Quite healthy, even—it was definitely either that or ending up schizophrenic himself.”

“And his mother?”

“The last time they saw each other, it went . . . It went very badly. I advised Ahmed not to visit her again. It was the only way for him to keep himself on the straight and narrow, psychologically speaking.”

“Sorry to push you, Doctor, but what do you mean by ‘it went very badly’?”

Germain’s eyes are like two poison darts.

“Nothing more than it would appear to mean, Lieutenant.”

Hamelot takes the barbed comment without flinching. He waits.

“To avoid any misunderstanding, it was she who behaved aggressively toward her son. Happy with that?”

“We’ll make do, Doctor, we’ll make do . . . While we’re on the subject, how was his behavior toward the other patients? Was he at all aggressive?”

“Ahmed is not the sort of person who provokes others, nor is he one to be pushed around. His stay went more or less smoothly. Only a few passing difficulties with a local acquaintance, I believe. Without it getting out of hand, however.”

“A local acquaintance? Who was that? Moktar?”

Dr. Germain’s jaw twitches slightly.

“Listen, Lieutenant Hamelot. I’ve already said too much, and I’m not about to share with you the extent of my knowledge of any one of my patients. I really need to leave now. I have a session beginning in fifteen minutes.”

“Doctor, it’s extremely important. It relates to an atrocious murder that was very carefully crafted. Crimes like this one are often followed by others. Please answer one final question: the ‘local acquaintance’ he had trouble with was Moktar, wasn’t it?”

Somewhat disarmed, the psychoanalyst looks across to Léna, who nods reassuringly: it will go no further than here.

“Yes, it was him. I really have to go now. Bearing in mind the circumstances, I grant Léna permission to talk to you about this particular case. She would have anyway. Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

“Goodbye, Doctor. And thank you.”

Fifteen minutes later and Jean has moved on to the Guinness. Léna’s sticking to the rum and coke.

“Moktar was in, like, full-on mystical delirium. Think bad trip . . . A real handful! We were all a target for him. He never stopped talking about Anna . . .”

“The girlfriend he’d been banned from seeing?”

“You know the story already, I remember it clearly when you told me. That night we’d had a few too many of those Cameroonian beers at Mireille la Fine’s on rue Marcadet?”

Jean can’t help but blush at the memory of that night, which he’d completely wiped from his memory. The morning after, dragging himself out of Léna’s bed with some difficulty, he hadn’t the first idea what had gone on between them. He had a thumping headache, and turned up in the kitchen looking rough and hunting for aspirin, only to find the social worker from Brittany, all freshness and smiles, making breakfast. Why was she feeling the need to bring up that humiliating episode, let alone add salt to the wound?

“You remember, the evening before that morning when you didn’t have the guts to ask me what had happened between us.”