The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe Page 15

  Desterres sat back, his body upright, and folded his arms. The handcuffs had left a slight weal.

  “Well?”

  “The television said a nurse from Paris had been found on the beach. I assumed it was the same nurse from Paris I’d spoken to on Sunday morning—only a few kilometers from the place where the body was found. I never said the woman was white. I thought she was a Négropolitaine.” He added, “I could see she had West Indian blood.”

  “Evelyne Vaton doesn’t have black blood.”

  He appeared surprised. “Then it wasn’t Evelyne Vaton.” Desterres held his hands with the palms outwards. “I’m merely repeating what the girl told me.”

  “There are things which you’ve not told me.”

  No movement of the eyes. “I’ve not lied to you.”

  The wind danced at the billowing curtain and outside there was the dull buzzing of a pneumatic drill. After years of neglect, Place de la Victoire was being renovated. (Soon there would be the municipal elections. Despite Berlin and perestroika, the Communists were sure to win, as they had won for the last thirty-five years.) The laborers were working overtime; night had fallen and after the rush hour, the cooling evening air carried the tang of the Atlantic.

  He nodded toward the plastic folder. “I gave you the photo, madame le juge, and the bikini top. I was doing my duty.”

  There was more shouting from the ground floor and the clatter of heavy feet down the stairs.

  “This isn’t Evelyne Vaton.”

  “She never told me her surname.”

  “You didn’t ask, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “She was accompanied by the Indian.” A movement of the epaulettes. “He called her Véli. That’s how she introduced herself.”

  “We’ve found Richard, the Indian.”

  “He’ll corroborate everything I’ve said.”

  “At the moment he’s in the hospital.”

  “You’ve arrested him, too?” Desterres smiled, without taking his unblinking eyes from Anne Marie. “Madame le juge, Richard knows the woman was alive when she left my restaurant.”

  “You omitted to tell me you have a criminal record.”

  An impatient gesture. “There’s no reason to keep me here.”

  “And your criminal record, Monsieur Desterres.”

  “Merely allegations.”

  “That is not what I read.”

  “There can be no criminal record, madame le juge, following the presidential amnesty of 1988.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your past.”

  “I do.” The eyes blinked three times in fast succession while he stared at her.

  “I care about the murdered girl.”

  “Precisely because I have been maligned in the past that I immediately came to see you. I repeat: immediately.” His lips were pressed together.

  “You knew Rodolphe Dugain?”

  Another flicker of his eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “I am interested in protecting this island’s heritage. Dugain chose to think of himself as an ecologist but like all politicians he was more interested in power than ecology, more interested in himself than in nature.” A shrug. “Now he is dead.”

  “You knew each other well?”

  “When I stood for election, he gave me his support. Dugain wanted power—and, of course, money. Ecology was a means for him—not an end. My approach worried him. Couldn’t understand what made me tick.”

  “What makes you tick if you’re not interested in money, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “I’ve never been poor—and I have no desire to be rich. I don’t need to buy up apartment blocks and let them out at exorbitant rates. I can live well enough on what I have. Dugain belonged to the old generation—the generation that believes progress is a fast car, more tarmac and ugly condominiums on pristine beaches.”

  “Dugain didn’t take the environment seriously?”

  “The only thing Dugain took seriously was his power base. He was black and like all blacks, he felt he had to show that he was just as good, if not better, than anybody else.”

  “You don’t consider yourself black?”

  “The time will come when we mongrels will inherit the earth.”

  “Mongrels?”

  “Madame le juge, look at all the people suffering from sickle cell disease. All they had to do was marry an outsider, and the danger of a genetic disease like anemia would have disappeared. I’m proud of being a mongrel—black blood, African blood. I also have English blood—and Corsican blood. I am not ashamed of what I am.”

  “Dugain was ashamed of what he was?”

  “Show me someone from Martinique who isn’t.”

  “Harsh words.”

  “Martinique likes to look down on Guadeloupe.”

  “The gentlemen of Martinique, the honest folk of Guadeloupe?”

  “They consider us peasants.”

  “Why did Dugain get involved in the environment?”

  “I never said Dugain was a fool, madame le juge.” Desterres took a deep breath. “There was a time—before he began to smell power—when he was honest. Ten, fifteen years ago when no one had ever heard the word ecology, when politicians were vying with each other to fill the mangrove with concrete. Dugain was the first to speak out and he did useful work saving the mangrove around Pointe-à-Pitre.” A pause. “Later he sold out, but by then he was spending money at the casino in Gosier.”

  “What money?”

  “There’s always money for politicians in our département.”

  “Including yourself, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “If money’d been my motivation, I could’ve gone into an alliance with Dugain and his pals.” He paused. “My family is not nouveau riche. We’ve been here a long time after having moved down to Trinidad when Victor Hugues and the French Revolution set up their guillotine and started chopping off the heads of the aristocrats.” He looked at her without blinking. “A jumped-up mulatto from Martinique.”

  “Victor Hugues?”

  “Dugain’d done good work on the mangrove—and dined off that for ten years. The mangrove was excellent for his profile among the researchers at the university, and through them, with the Ministry of the Environment.”

  “You got Dugain to give a job to a young lady.”

  Silence.

  “Mademoiselle Augustin—Marie Pierre Augustin—tells me you helped her get a job in Dugain’s shop.”

  “She can also tell you why I helped her.”

  “You raped her.”

  “I’ve never raped anybody.” He began to lose control of the immobile face. “Why do you accuse me of rape? Why not the Indian? He was with the damn nurse. Why don’t you accuse him?”

  “You helped Mademoiselle Augustin find a job with Dugain and now she has sufficient funds to travel to Brazil with her friend and to set up a little business in leather goods.”

  “I know nothing about that. With a male friend?”

  Anne Marie nodded.

  Desterres’s blank face broke into a broad smile.

  41

  Millet

  “Geneviève Lecurieux?”

  Anne Marie watched carefully as he ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “You knew her? Before the meeting at Tarare beach, had you ever met Geneviève Lecurieux?”

  “You think the nurse was Geneviève Lecurieux?” The unblinking eyes stared back at her.

  “You are going to lie?”

  “Why should I lie?”

  “You’re scared and because there’s something you wish to hide.”

  “I’ve told you the truth.”

  “Monsieur Desterres, you knew it wasn’t Vaton who was killed.”

  He raised his hand in a spontaneous gesture of protest. “I knew nothing, madame, and I still don’t.”

  “You knew Evelyne Vaton was a friend of Geneviève Lecurieux.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen Geneviève Lecurieux in a very
long time.” A dismissive shrug. “She lives in Paris. She’s a doctor, not a nurse. It was a young nurse I met on the beach. Along with the strange Indian. What has any of this got to do with Geneviève?”

  “The murdered woman was staying with Geneviève’s family.”

  “She said she was in Basse-Terre—nothing else.”

  “Vaton and Lecurieux work in the same hospital.” A pause. “Lecurieux was with Richard and the murdered girl—but you didn’t tell me.” She folded her arms. “That’s lying.”

  Although the evening air was now cool, there were large patches of sweat under the arms of Desterres’s green shirt. Perspiration pearled his forehead. “As far as I know, Mademoiselle Lecurieux’s in Paris.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me who you spent Sunday afternoon with?”

  “I met the two people on Sunday morning.”

  “There was another woman, wasn’t there, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “No.” He ran his tongue along the pale lips.

  “You don’t have an alibi for Sunday afternoon.”

  “I was in my restaurant.”

  “Until what time?”

  “Until the last customer had left … eight, nine o’clock in the evening.”

  “The girl was murdered around midnight on Sunday night.”

  “She left with the Indian. I never saw her again.”

  He licked his lip again as he turned to glance at the police officer sitting by the door. The eyes were slightly bloodshot.

  The ocean breeze wafted through the open window, tugging at the lace curtain.

  “Well, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “I’ve told you everything, madame le juge.”

  “There was another woman, wasn’t there?”

  Desterres looked at her without speaking, without blinking.

  “You’ve nothing to add?”

  “You’ve already made up your mind.”

  Anne Marie opened her drawer. She took out the black and white photograph. Without looking at them—the closed eyes and the false tranquility of death—she pushed it toward him. “This is the woman in the morgue.”

  Taking the photograph he frowned slightly, but there was no hint of recognition.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  “Whatever I say,” Desterres said, holding the photograph at a distance from his eyes, then looking up at Anne Marie, “I get to spend the night at the maison d’arrêt.”

  Anne Marie made a movement of irritation with her hand. She pointed at the photograph. “Do you know this woman?”

  “Geneviève has parents here, people who know her. This isn’t her.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The nurse who called herself Véli.”

  From the open drawer she pulled out a thick pad of lined paper.

  “I think it’s the nurse. I’d never seen her before and once she left, I never saw her again. She went off with the Indian. It’s not Lecurieux. You’re bent upon arresting me—so why bother asking me? Ask the other witnesses—the two gays on the beach.”

  “Who?”

  “They saw me. A schoolteacher and another man—he’s a technician at RFO by the name of Léonidas. Check with him—but you won’t, will you, because it’s me you want to put in the shit.” Desterres emitted a rasping laugh as he handed the photographs back to her. “You’ll regret the mistake, madame le juge.”

  Anne Marie looked at the photograph. A full frontal view— narrow hips and large breasts. The girl must have been pretty, a pleasant face and youthful body. Now she was dead. Dead and unclaimed in the city morgue. Repressing a sigh of empathy, Anne Marie placed the photographs back in the folder.

  There was a mocking tone to Desterres’s voice, “It certainly isn’t Geneviève Lecurieux.”

  Anne Marie nodded to the policeman, who, catching her eye, stood up.

  “Phone her—Lecurieux should be in Paris.”

  “Should be, Monsieur Desterres?”

  “She’s one of those women who aren’t interested in men. There was a time—a long, long time ago—when Geneviève was interested in the environment.” He paused. “Five, six years ago before she went off to Africa. I’ve had no news—she’s probably pounding millet in Togo and getting back to her African roots.”

  Anne Marie took out the enlargement of the Polaroid—the photograph of Desterres, the dead girl and Richard. “You admit this is you?”

  “Of course—and that is the nurse. And that’s the crazy Indian.”

  “Crazy?”

  Desterres smiled. “For an intelligent woman, you don’t have much of an understanding of men.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Men resort to physical violence when they can’t satisfy their needs in other, more persuasive ways. I may not be intelligent, I may not be rich and I have good reason to believe I’m not physically prepossessing—but rest assured, madame le juge, there’s no shortage of women in my bed.” He smiled. “At least, there used not to be, before we all started to worry about AIDS.”

  “Monsieur Desterres, you know this girl and I’m convinced you know what happened to her. You came to see me to protect yourself.”

  The policeman was standing behind Desterres and held the unlocked handcuffs in his hand.

  42

  Luc

  “Luc, I was just about to leave.”

  “Glad I caught you.”

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  “I’m not going to be available over the weekend.”

  “You told me that this morning.”

  “I wanted to hear your voice, Anne Marie.”

  “If you want to hear my voice, you can give me a ring during the week.”

  “Why are you so aggressive?”

  “Your wife isn’t waiting for you?”

  “I missed you and now that I phone you, you start to attack me.”

  “Luc, I’m tired.”

  “I know you’re tired and I want to be of help.”

  “That’s why you accuse me of attacking you?”

  “I want to help. I’m your friend, remember?”

  “It’s been a long day. I was in the morgue again this evening. I seem to spend my time talking to people whose company I could easily do without.”

  “You can do without my company?”

  “Luc, why do you take everything so personally?”

  “I’d like to see you.”

  “You have your wife.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before, Anne Marie.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I’d willingly get a divorce. You’ve only to say the word.”

  “Luc, let’s not go into all that. Not now. Another time, but not now.”

  “You never want to talk.”

  “In bed, I recall it was you who refused to talk.”

  “At two in the morning I’m not really interested in the difference between male and female pubic hair.”

  “I can understand that, Luc.”

  “Can you understand I’m your friend?”

  “Go home, Luc. I’m sure your wife’ll be pleased to see you, and unlike me, she won’t be aggressive. She loves your company and she isn’t difficult as I am. She won’t wake up in the night and make unreasonable demands. Perhaps she doesn’t care about female pubic hair—and even less about male pubic hair. A good and loving wife, you don’t want to lose her. She can give you all the warmth and affection an aggressive magistrate could never give you. Then in the middle of next week, if you really feel you want to talk to me—about pubic hair or my aggressiveness—you can give me a ring. But only if you feel like it. Goodnight, Luc, and have a pleasant weekend.”

  43

  Corsica

  The procureur had appeared out of the crowd. He smiled tensely and took Anne Marie by the arm.

  The reflected light on a steel helmet reminded her of Algeria and she felt fear in her belly—fear that took her back to 1958.

  The rue Henri IV had been sealed off to traffic. One or
two cars remained, perched with two wheels on the sidewalk outside the school. The police had set red tape across the road to keep the hushed crowd at a distance.

  The air away from the sea was warm and damp.

  Bright beams were trained on the front of the school. Two men with machine guns and leather boots, heavily overdressed in the tropical night, their bodies bulky beneath the flak jackets, were like insects caught against the pink wall.

  The center of the city had fallen silent, apart from the croaking threnody of the frogs. The crowd did not speak. From somewhere far distant came the wail of a siren and the approaching clap clap clap of a helicopter rotor blade.

  One of the officers gestured and the two men moved sideways, out of the circle of light, toward the nearest of the CRS vans.

  Bastia was in charge. He stood behind the Renault truck, holding the transmitter loosely in one hand, while in the other he had a hailer. He was not in uniform and Anne Marie noticed incongruously that he wore scuffed boating shoes without socks. He was blaspheming in his soft, Corsican accent.

  Beside him, two unsmiling men had trained their rifles on the school. Another man had climbed onto the roof of the optician’s.

  “Tell Bourguignon to switch that damn light off.” Bastia turned and caught sight of Anne Marie. “A rasta and he’s already killed someone.” He saluted perfunctorily.

  “Who?”

  “About five minutes ago there were was the sound of gunfire. Somebody crying and then another explosion.”

  “Who?” Anne Marie spoke with difficulty. A knot in her gut. “I was on the phone to Lucette about an hour ago,” Anne Marie said.

  “Lucette?”

  “Miss Salondy—the headmistress. My sister-in-law. She’s in her office.”

  Bastia rubbed his chin unhappily, looking at Anne Marie.

  “Where’s Miss Salondy now?”

  Bastia pointed to the administration buildings where Anne Marie had been talking with Lucette, where the two women had walked across the yard, between the trees, beneath the pendulous, unripe mangoes swaying gently at the end of their long stalks. Where Anne Marie had been reminded of her school years in Algeria.

  “The perpetrator’s hiding there. He’s armed—and he’s already killed the janitor. Stabbed in the heart with a syringe.”