The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe Read online

  Anne Marie ran a hand along her forehead. “Arnaud, give me a cigarette.” Overhead, the helicopter hovered and cast down its cone of bright light onto the corrugated roofs.

  “Stupid bastards,” Bastia said, and rasped an order into the walkie-talkie.

  “Can’t be many people inside the school at the moment.”

  The procureur asked, “How are you operating?”

  Bastia gave the procureur a brief glance, devoid of sympathy. “Waiting for you, monsieur le procureur.” If he was being sarcastic, there was no hint of it in his voice. “I’ve sent three men in through the back, through the boulangerie in the rue Sadi Carnot. Equipped with tear gas and stun grenades but no night vision, I’m afraid. The helicopter’s working as a decoy. At the moment we don’t know what kind of firepower he’s got and we don’t know who he’s got in there with him.”

  “Hostages?”

  “He mixes his French with Dominican Creole. I can’t understand his English. High on ganja or something. Up there”—he pointed—“behind the window. Screaming a minute ago, saying he was going to kill everybody.”

  “Is he going to kill everybody?”

  “We tried to phone into the school but nobody’s answering,” Bastia said. “You can hear the phone ringing from here. Ignorant bastard probably doesn’t know what a telephone is. Immigrants. Too many damn immigrants in this island.”

  “Where exactly is he?”

  “There’s the concierge and his family still in there. From what the Dominican seems to be saying, there are two women with him.”

  “You could drop somebody onto the roof.”

  “Corrugated iron, monsieur le procureur. If our rasta gets suspicious, he’ll shoot through the ceiling.”

  “A risk we’ll have to take.”

  “No point in losing a set of balls.” Bastia grimaced at Anne Marie.

  The procureur asked dryly, “The préfet’s been informed?”

  A rising note of irritation in Bastia’s voice. “I don’t know who’s informed. I just try to stop the bullets.”

  “Give me that speaker,” the procureur said, holding out his hand. “And get me the phone. We’ll have to get him to calm down. Set of balls or otherwise. This is Pointe-à-Pitre—not Beirut. Or Corsica.”

  44

  Aftermath

  It was a modern, lightweight mask, but it was nonetheless uncomfortable, pulling at the skin of her face. Anne Marie had the feeling she looked like a snub-nosed black pig. She still had the taste of Arnaud’s cigarette in her mouth. Her head had begun to spin.

  She wanted to sneeze, to vomit. Above all she wanted to get away, escape from the noise and the smoke. Take off the bulletproof jacket and escape. Escape with Lucette, go somewhere safe.

  The Cacharel skirt was filthy.

  From where Anne Marie was standing, the Rastafarian appeared to be sleeping.

  He was slumped on a chair and from between his long, delicate fingers, a copy of the Bulletin Officiel de l’Education Nationale had fallen to the floor. His skin was the color of tobacco and his hair hung around the sharp face in matted locks. Beside his bare feet was a woolen bonnet, grubby and knitted in the green, yellow and black of Abyssinia. A large bruise above one eye.

  Blood on the wall, beneath the photograph of a placid and arrogant President François Mitterrand.

  The entry hole in his singlet was scarcely perceptible. The bullet had disintegrated much of his lung and then splattered flesh and blood against the wall.

  Two men were crouched down, tentatively touching the corpse. They had opened the doors and windows but the air still swirled with the fumes of tear gas and cordite.

  (Oran. The smell that in the end Papa could no longer endure. The smell of death that had driven Monsieur Bloch and his two daughters and the maid to France and Sarlat-la-Canéda.)

  The young man’s copper cheeks were damp. He had been dribbling like a child; saliva had run from the corner of his mouth and onto the dirty singlet. A singlet advertising But Baie-Mahault. The eyes were wide open.

  Like a zombie, Anne Marie thought, a mindless zombie. Killing and now killed.

  The procureur was standing beside Anne Marie, bulky in the flak jacket. He said something, but the words were meaningless. He had pushed the mask up onto his forehead.

  Anne Marie knelt down beside the woman.

  Lucette Salondy, too, was weeping. Her face was grey, drained of blood.

  “She’s going to die, isn’t she?” Anne Marie wanted to gather the large body into her arms and drag her sister, her friend out into the fresh night air. “Going to die.” Anne Marie pulled off the mask and immediately the gas began insidiously burning at her unprotected face, burning her eyes and her nostrils. “Why, for God’s sake, why?”

  Anger, frustration and a welling-up of hate.

  Two men—they were not wearing masks but wet handkerchiefs were tied about the mouth—firmly elbowed Anne Marie aside so they could place Lucette Salondy on the stretcher. One set an oxygen mask to the grey face.

  A flutter of an eyelid?

  Another man wiped Lucette’s forehead with a damp cloth.

  Anne Marie coughed. “Will she be all right?”

  Their faces were damp with tears and their eyes were red as they raised the stretcher. “Is she going to live? She’s my sister-in-law.” She added pointlessly, “The sister of the wife of my brother-in-law.”

  “You need some fresh air, madame le juge.”

  Anne Marie impatiently pushed past the doctor—a friend of Bouton’s—and followed the men out of the room, down the wooden stairs and out into the evening.

  The fresh air did not stop the gas from burning her eyes, burning into the flesh of her nostrils.

  “Care for something to calm you, madame le juge?”

  “Don’t die.” She breathed deeply. “Don’t die, Lucette, damn it, woman.” The gas clung to her clothes and Anne Marie rubbed her face. Then she broke into a run, trying to keep up with the firemen. Her lungs were burning.

  The doctor was saying something.

  “Don’t die, Lucette, please don’t die,” Anne Marie said over and again, angry, trembling, coughing and crying. A terrible sense of being here before, of having said the same things before. A sense of loss. Impending, permanent loss.

  A red van stood waiting in the rue Sadi Carnot, its blue light turning.

  The rear door was opened, the stretcher lifted inside and then one of the men held out his hand. Anne Marie took it and clambered aboard. “She’s my sister-in-law,” she repeated.

  As the van started to move forward, a man put a woolen blanket over Lucette Salondy’s body. At the same time, he glanced up at Anne Marie, sitting on the bench opposite him.

  His eyelids were bright red and his cheeks smeared with tears. There was blood on the black knuckles. He did not try to smile but he handed Anne Marie a plastic bottle of water, a bottle that cyclists used.

  45

  Bloodshot

  Saturday, May 19, 1990

  The telephone rang.

  The doctor’s pill had taken its effect and while Anne Marie was sleeping, the children had dressed, eaten the breakfast that Béatrice prepared and gone off to school in a neighbor’s car, whose imperious hooting had failed to disturb Anne Marie’s drugged sleep.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when Anne Marie finally opened eyes that were still hot and irritated. Too late for the telephone that had ceased to ring just as she picked it up.

  “My God.”

  Anne Marie sat up slowly in the dark, chill bedroom and shook her head. She turned and replaced the telephone in its cradle. Her neck was stiff. The conditioner hummed.

  She could still taste the cigarette in her mouth, a taste of ashes, and smell the tear gas on her skin. She ran her hand across her lips, then got up, flung open the blinds, went to the kitchen, put on the coffee and returned to the telephone.

  All the lines to the hospital were engaged.

  With her left hand, she f
licked through the pages of the directory, trying to find another number for the hospital. Centre hospitalier régional Pointe-à-Pitre/Abymes.

  Nothing.

  The pleasing smell of percolating coffee came from the kitchen—normality, a smell that reminded her of her childhood.

  Anne Marie sighed, then rang her office at the palais de justice. It took over a minute to get through.

  “Why didn’t you call me, Trousseau?”

  “Is that part of my job?”

  “I left a message.”

  “I just rang you.”

  “What’s the news from the hospital?”

  “I assumed you were sleeping.”

  “Lucette Salondy—my sister-in-law.”

  “You were with her until past midnight, madame.”

  “Tell me how she is.” She could hear Trousseau’s breathing. “Just tell me how she is. You’ve been to the hospital?”

  “She’s under sedation.”

  “Give me the number, will you?

  “Overweight and diabetic. I rang at seven o’clock. As soon as I found your message on the answering machine. She’ll be in intensive care for some time.”

  “Why intensive care?”

  “There may have been damage to the skull. When she fell, she struck the table with the back of her head.”

  “Who did you speak to at the hospital?”

  “Perhaps you’d like to ring.”

  “I can’t get through.”

  Trousseau laughed. “I called again about half an hour ago but there was no answer on Bouton’s extension. Extension three-oh-seven. Ten minutes just to get them to pick up the phone in that place. Saturday morning and in the People’s Republic of the City Hospital, it’s an English weekend.” The humorless laugh. “What they call decentralization. West Indies run by West Indians.” A pause. “Give me the bad old days any day.”

  “No visitors?”

  “Not until at least Monday.”

  “Lucette’s not even sixty years old.”

  “You’re going to take the day off, madame?”

  It was some time before Anne Marie replied, “I’m not overweight and I’m not diabetic.”

  “You need the rest after last night.”

  “Are Lafitte and Parise there, Trousseau?” Again she rubbed her eyes. The hissing of the coffee machine.

  (Nobody could make coffee like the Berber maid. She had helped Papa bring up the children after Anne Marie’s mother died in 1955. Nassérine, with little Arabic and no French, spent her time toing and froing between the kitchen, the laundry and Papa’s bedroom.)

  “Before going over to Carnot, I was with Desterres. Trying to get a confession out of him.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing—other than he knew Mademoiselle Lecurieux.”

  “You didn’t arrest him?”

  “On what grounds?”

  Trousseau said in an aggrieved voice, “I’m only a greffier, madame.”

  “If the autopsy’s correct, there was no rape and there are no grounds for his arrest—whatever my friend Arnaud says.”

  “You seem to think I’ve studied the law.”

  “I’m going to the television station later today. According to Desterres, one of the gay men on the beach at Tarare can support his alibi. Léonidas—a technician called Léonidas.”

  “You seem to think I’ve studied law like you, that I have every Dalloz at my fingertips, that I’m party to the workings of our judicial forces. A greffier, madame. An Indian and a greffier. My wife may be a white woman like you, but I’m an Indian.” Trousseau coughed and she could imagine him running his finger along the line of his moustache.

  “You have a friend at the Pointe des Châteaux—she finds you very attractive, Monsieur Trousseau.”

  “Despite a night’s rest, your sarcasm has lost none of its sting, madame le juge.”

  “Olga calls you Alphonse.”

  “You know my name, madame le juge.”

  “Nat King Cole?”

  There was an indignant silence.

  Anne Marie rubbed her face again. “Any developments from Lafitte and Parise?”

  “Lafitte checked with Air France. Air France checked with the other airlines—American, LIAT, even the Venezuelans at Aeropostal. Nobody by the name of Vaton on any flight. The only reference is for the AF flight she came out from France on.” A pause. “May fifth, 1990.”

  “So the Vaton girl is here somewhere.”

  “Perhaps she was murdered—or kidnapped—and then the dead girl took her credit card.” He added, “Carte Bleue, supplied through the Banque Nationale de Paris, through the branch in the Place de la Nation, twelfth arrondissement. Parise’s expecting a fax from Paris and details on what the girl bought.”

  “If the credit card was stolen, you’d’ve thought Vaton would inform the Carte Bleue.” She rubbed her neck. “The dead girl knew Mademoiselle Lecurieux well enough to imitate Vaton—and stay with Lecurieux’s parents.” Anne Marie sighed. She still felt sleepy and dearly would have liked to lie down again. She rubbed more forcefully at her neck. “Hold the line.” She went to the kitchen, put four spoonfuls of sugar into the black coffee—just like Papa. With age she was getting more and more like him, irascible and fixed in her ways.

  “I’d better come in.”

  “You should rest, madame.”

  “You can wait for me, Monsieur Trousseau?”

  “For a charming woman like you? Of course, madame.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I’ll take a taxi.” She glanced at her Kelton watch—there was more humidity beneath the plastic. “I’m going to the lycée and I should’ve finished by ten. Come and pick me up at a quarter past ten. At the lycée—you can drive into the school.”

  “There was a very young woman.” The sound of his hand being placed over the mouthpiece.

  “Who’s there, Trousseau?”

  His voice came back on the line, clear again, with the strong, nasal intonation of the islands. “I was hoping to get some breadfruit at the market for the weekend.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “A young lady wanted to see you.”

  “What did she want?”

  “To see you.”

  “Is she still there?”

  There was the muffled sound of talking and then laughter.

  “Who is she?”

  “She left about half an hour ago, madame le juge. Said she knows who the murdered girl was. She recognized the photo and said she’d be back later in the morning.”

  “What young lady?”

  “You ask her, madame le juge.”

  Anne Marie knew better than to argue with Trousseau over the telephone. “Buy your breadfruit, Monsieur Trousseau. But first get hold of Bouton and find out what’s happening to my sister-in-law.” A slight hesitation. “Intensive care?”

  “She was out of danger last night by the time you left the hospital. That is what I was told but I’m merely repeating what people want to tell me.”

  She took a sip of the hot coffee. “A good woman, Lucette Salondy.”

  “Will you be wanting any breadfruit, madame?”

  “Thanks for the compliment, Trousseau. A charming woman like me.”

  “Charming, intelligent and loyal.”

  Anne Marie smiled a weary smile into the mouthpiece. “This charming, middle-aged woman with bags under her eyes and wrinkles and the beginning of a double chin and with sleeping pills and too much coffee in the blood—she thanks you for the compliment.”

  “I was being sarcastic, madame le juge. Even Indians can attempt humor.”

  46

  Baimbridge

  She took a local taxi into Pointe-à-Pitre.

  The surly driver dropped her off at Baimbridge, on the edge of the ring road. Anne Marie should have told him to do something about the noisy exhaust pipe and the broken headlamps but instead she quietly paid her fare and turned toward the school.
/>   The complex was now nearly thirty years old; the reinforced concrete had weathered with the years, but the architecture remained functional, French colonial and ugly. The metallic blinds were in need of repair and a coat of fresh paint.

  Anne Marie had forgotten to ask the driver for a receipt but she was relieved to see that she was going to be on time for the appointment; it was the beginning of the break. An unbroken flow of adolescents—mostly West Indian with one or two whites—was streaming out of the buildings, heading for the vans and a mid-morning snack.

  The main entrance to the lycée was cluttered with vans—similar to Olga’s at the Pointe des Châteaux—selling sandwiches, candy and fruit juice to the pupils who jostled forward, holding out their money while shouting to attract the attention of the vendors.

  Anne Marie went up the hill.

  The sidewalk was blocked with parked cars—for the most part, middle-market five-seaters that teachers invested in; an occasional BMW, but mainly sensible, well-maintained Peugeots, Citroens and Fords.

  The stream of pupils drew apart to let her past. One or two smiled in her direction.

  Anne Marie found herself smiling, too. She wondered—and not for the first time—whether she had chosen the right career. Her father had always wanted her to be a schoolteacher. Since returning to Pointe-à-Pitre, Anne Marie had in fact given several courses at the faculty of law and enjoyed the experience.

  But teach in a lycée?

  Motivated, well-dressed and well-behaved adolescents. Eighteen hours’ teaching a week. Three months’ holiday a year and enough free time to be able to be with Létitia and Fabrice, help them with their school work. Teacher’s children, as her father liked to remark, always made good pupils. And she would not be coming now into the school to discuss her son’s wayward behavior.

  As Anne Marie walked up the incline, she thought she caught sight of Fabrice in a small group of white boys. As she got closer, she realized it was not her son, but the boys, local or white, all looked very much alike in their casual uniform. Surfing T-shirts, long Bermudas, Vuarnet sunglasses on string and sailing shoes; one or two had gold rings in their ear lobes. A couple smoked.