Arab Jazz (29 page)

Jean goes bright red and desperately tries to backpedal.

“Ummmm . . . Oh yeah, that night.”

Léna is sparkling now.

“You still don’t want to know?”

Jean gathers himself with a smile.

“Léna, we’re still in the professional part of the evening. If I’ve got any questions about that night, I reserve the right to ask them later, when I’ve finished work for the day. In any case, what I do remember is that you have never wanted to tell me anything at all about Moktar’s time at Maison Blanche.”

“The professional part of the evening?”

Léna leaves the question mark hanging in the air. And Jean realizes that tonight it won’t be necessary for them to drink themselves to oblivion. He thinks back to Rachel teasing him about Léna. How had she known that there was still a connection between the former lovers from Saint-Pol-de-Léon?

“So, Moktar . . .”

“Patient confidentiality. If I start ratting to the police about my patients’ behavior . . .”

“To the police?”

“Well done, you’re catching on. Look, I like you a lot, Jean, but in our line of work it’s vital we stick to the rules. Starting with keeping professional stuff hermetically sealed from our private life.”

“What are you playing at, Léna? Your colleague just exempted you from your patient confidentiality. And, more importantly, we’re closing in on a gang of killers which is potentially made up of religious fundamentalists
and
crooked policemen. So anything you can tell me about Moktar is incredibly valuable. For everyone. You and me, in our different jobs, we’re both doing our part for society, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’ve never thought about it from that angle . . . I wouldn’t be prepared to give in on this point for anyone in the police other than you. Let’s just say that you’ve won this time. Our friend Moktar saw the world as being split into two irreconcilable factions: Muslims and everyone else. And when he said Muslims, he meant the real ones, the purists. This was really tough for the female staff at the hospital. We couldn’t be close to him, even by accident, let alone stand next to him. Great when you’ve got to provide care and dole out drugs! In consultations he would give free rein to his aggressive ranting. At that point, Anna really inspired murderous thoughts in him. He’d endlessly repeat the word ‘
Shaytan, Shaytan
’. Sometimes, when one of us was passing nearby, he’d start reciting verses from the Koran in that tone of his. It freaked us out. After a bit he calmed down, finally noticed that he’d never get out if he kept on spouting off like that. You know how it is: we can’t keep everyone locked up forever. Plus he’d never hurt or killed anybody, even though he did smash up his house. So he left, and after that we didn’t hear a peep.”

“What’s his diagnosis?”

Léna has a sip of her drink, takes a deep breath, and looks Jean straight in the eye.

“This goes no further, okay?”

“Léna, a woman is dead, and there may be more to come. I’ll keep it to myself and to Rachel. And my chief. There’s no way I can avoid telling them this sort of information. But it won’t be written down anywhere.”

“Rachel . . . Fine, I’ll try not to let my jealousy get the better of me. Degenerative paranoid psychosis. There’s no cure and it’ll only get worse. Whether or not he’d act on it is another issue, for sure. I’m no psychiatrist, but if you describe the murder to me a bit then maybe I can tell you if it stacks up.”

“Okay”

Jean describes the scene of Laura’s murder. The meat, the orchids, the balcony.

“Hmmm . . . Strange. Sounds more like the work of a perv. My gut reaction is that if—
if
—he killed her, he wasn’t responsible for the grisly sideshow. Seems over the top. How’d you say . . . ? It’s as if someone knew his profile and attempted to make him a scapegoat.”

“At the moment, it seems more likely they’re trying to make Ahmed the scapegoat . . .”

“Ahmed! Him? No way! Absolutely not. As Dr. Germain said, he’s categorically not the type. Neither a pervert nor an aggressive paranoiac. Just a bit spaced out, in his own world, but not a threat to others. Right, that’s enough work—I’m starving: let’s go and eat! Also, if I have another drink I’ll be over the limit and you’ll have to lead me away in handcuffs . . .”

Clicking into flirtatious mode, Léna looks him directly in the eye. He manages to hold her gaze without blushing.

“Over the limit? You’re already there after those two rum and cokes. I could always swing by the police station and grab the cuffs if you’re happy to wait?”

Later, they will have this conversation:

Jean:
Why that night?

Léna:
Because you were ready.

Jean:
How did you know?

Léna:
Because I’m an observant woman.

But that happens later. Hours, months, even years later. An eternity later.

38

Bintou, Aïcha, Alpha, and Mourad. Onur’s place. Only Moktar, Ruben, and Rébecca are missing to bring back the good old days. 10:45 p.m. A table at the back, far from the tourists. The atmosphere is charged with both love and pain. Brothers and sisters estranged for years without ever asking themselves why. Silence to start with, then tea appears before each of them, set down by the owner who knows them all well. The boys drop in two little sugar cubes, stirring them in. The girls watch them, happy beyond belief. How they’d looked up to their big brothers! Loved them so much. Until they argued and went their separate ways. Moktar, Alpha, and Mourad one way, Ruben the other. The Muslims and the Jew. All the girls know is that it all happened when Moktar went crazy. Their brothers had never offered the tiniest explanation. From that moment on, they simply ignored Rébecca, their ex–best friend’s little sister. As if the Aboulafia family in its entirety had ceased to exist from one day to the next. This had really upset them. Then when Ruben displayed the same attitude toward them, they had decided to laugh it off together . . .

The boys know that they are expected to talk. Mourad takes up the challenge, even though he’s always found words hard when the beats aren’t rolling.

“We fucked up, right . . . But you got to see things from our side, too. In this world, Muslims . . .”

The two girls stare at him in disbelief. Alpha places a hand on his friend’s arm to bring him back to the reality of the situation.

“No, no, not that . . . I mean . . . We didn’t do anything . . . That’s the thing—we didn’t do anything . . .”

Mourad’s voice falters. As if it’s finally dawned on him, right there, his glass of tea nearly drained in front of him. Alpha speaks instead.

“Yeah, that’s exactly it: we didn’t do anything and that’s what’s eating us up . . .”

He looks up at the ceiling. Breathes in. Blows out hard.

“Every day I wake up and I think of Laura. She’s there when I go to sleep. Through the day she comes back again and again. Her wheelie case, her uniform . . . Every day. And them too: Sam, Moktar, that pussy Haqiqi who didn’t even show up . . . And there was this other bizarre guy in the background, this real bruiser, who watched us without saying anything. Every time I think of him I get the creeps . . .”

Bintou, her eyes welling up with tears, takes his hand and squeezes it with all her strength.

“Alpha, you’ve got to tell us everything. Afterward we’ll go to the police together. And then Laura will leave you in peace because you’ll have done the right thing.”

“The right thing . . .”

Boys Don’t Cry.
Alpha continues, visibly distressed.

“Nothing will ever be right again. Never. We let it happen. We listened to them and then we left. Like cowards.”

Emptiness. Mourad’s eyes finally stop staring at his tea and catch sight of a familiar silhouette entering the kebab house. He shuts them for half a second as a greeting before carrying on as the new arrival goes to the counter and greets Onur.

“Haqiqi insisted we went to the meeting. He needed us to sort out something important. Moktar explained that, as a one-off, we’d be working with Jews. We thought that was weird, but at the time we trusted him. He’d often counted on us for little missions, as he called them: handing out leaflets outside the mosques in Paris or Évry, burning DVDs, simple stuff that made us feel important, made us feel we were bringing about the
Ummah
. Might sound stupid, but we really believed it. And we believed in Moktar. He was our childhood friend, but since his journey to the
bled
he seemed inspired, like he was walking with God: and by following him, we felt that we were on the right path too. Moktar explained that there was a dangerous woman living among us. Laura had looked at him several times. It was Haqiqi who wised him up about it; reminded him it was those kinds of look that nearly made him lose his way in his old life. He said that she got kicks from turning on all the true believers in the neighborhood. That made him think that she had been sent by
Shaytan
to unsettle our community. At that point, me and Alpha looked at each other. Sam noticed, and so did the weird dude, who hadn’t come out with a single word but who listened to everything we said, monitoring our every movement. Moktar was in full flow and didn’t notice anything. Two nights earlier, Haqiqi had had an amazing, troubling dream which took place in Medina at the time of the Prophet. Some horny woman was walking down a street turning on all the men. She went past the group of first believers—the holy ancestors—who were getting ready to pray. The sun was setting to their right, in the west. Then she committed a grave error: she revealed herself to them with her head, arms, and chest uncovered. But the pure-hearted had raised their hands and closed their eyes, and uttered the holy words
Allahu Akbar
. The next second the woman disappeared. Because the sun was setting in the west, the event happened before the Prophet had instructed them to turn toward Mecca rather than Jerusalem to pray. For Haqiqi, the meaning was clear: however wacky it might seem, we needed to ask the Jews for help to find out what to do with this impure woman.”

“And that’s when I turned up.”

Surprised at the interruption, the girls swing around to see Ruben standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, his sidelocks half let down, a glass of tea in his hand.

“Right when Sam took the floor to explain that Imam Haqiqi and Rabbi Seror had decided to act together to protect their respective communities from this depraved woman. I know Sam well—he’s my uncle. A doofus who thinks he’s smart. As for Seror and Haqiqi, they were sure we’d all agree to rein Laura in, our sisters’ best friend. She was the one, they thought, who prevented us from keeping you girls under control. They saw us as good little soldiers, and they weren’t wrong. But they overestimated the grip they had on us when they tried to get us to kidnap Laura. I’m not sure how, but they’d gotten their hands on her flight schedule, and they asked us to intercept her at midnight between the Métro station and her apartment. Then we had to take her in a van to some warehouse beyond the
périphérique
where Moktar and the other guy would be waiting. It was all supposed to be about scaring her, making her move away from the neighborhood, and making her leave the faithful, and our sisters, in peace. All three of us looked at each other for the first time in four or five years and it was like we’d just woken up from a bad dream. Like in the movies, when the hero is released from the witch’s spell. It was when Sam used the words ‘the believers’: it didn’t ring true. All of a sudden we realized that it sounded just as false coming from the mouths of our leaders, the people we’d been following for so many years. We looked at each other and we replied as one that we were refusing to do it; we weren’t going to be part of it. Moktar was about to insist, but Sam realized there was no point. Then the other guy—the one who hadn’t said a word—came out of the shadows. He smiled at us and threatened us by running his thumb across his throat. Without saying a word. That’s the truth. We were scared. If we’d gone to the police when we left Sam’s, Laura would still be alive.”

Aïcha and Bintou stare at Ruben wide-eyed. Then at Alpha, then at Mourad. They saw the killer. They could have prevented Laura’s death. The girls begin to cry. The boys stay quiet as they are forced to face up to themselves. To their passivity. To the unforgivable.

THE CRIME

THEIR CRIME

Several minutes later and the silence becomes unbearable.

“What do we do now?” Alpha asks in a whisper. “Go and see the police?”

Bintou dries her tears with a paper napkin.

“Soon. Before, you’ve got to talk to us.”

With a hesitant motion she goes to squeeze her brother’s hand again.

“You’ve got to tell us about you. How did you get like this? What made you become the way you did?”

“It’s a long story. You know a bit about the start: four kids play superheroes in the schoolyard, discover rap at secondary school, become local celebs, and then, a few years later, fall out over standard girl problems.”

“Not sure ‘standard’ is the word.”

Ruben finally sits down and continues.

“You remember the romance between Moktar and Anna? When his parents banned him from seeing her, Moktar smashed up the whole house. He ended up in Sainte-Anne; later on, his father decided to send him to the
bled
. Anna was totally devastated. One day, I bumped into her outside the Picard on boulevard Magenta. She was like a sleepwalker. We went for a coffee. She begged me to talk to Moktar when he got back. We saw each other again quite a few times over the summer. I promised to do what I could. When Moktar came back, he had changed inside. There was something completely different about him. A power, an aura. It was fascinating and disturbing. When I spoke to him about Anna, he asked me if I had joined the side of
Shaytan
. Mourad and Alpha were there. They tried to defuse the situation, to laugh it off, but Moktar’s words affected them in a way that I didn’t realize at the time. Feeling alone and sad, I went to tell Anna that there was no hope. That’s the day it happened between me and her. After, it was too heavy for me to bear, so I went to tell Moktar to his face.”