Three Days and a Life Read online

  Just at that moment, the lights of a police car strobed the windows. Madame Courtin was the first to her feet. She opened the door.

  The police van pulled to a halt, not outside the Desmedts’ house, but outside their house.

  Madame Courtin quickly took off her apron. Antoine stood behind her.

  The young gendarme was walking towards them.

  Antoine thought he would die.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Madame Courtin, but if we could have a word with your son . . .”

  As he said this, he bent down and tried to catch Antoine’s eye. Madame Courtin frowned.

  “Why . . .?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality. Antoine?”

  This time, the gendarme did not crouch down to be on the same level as the boy.

  “Can you come with me, please?

  Antoine followed him into the neighbours’ garden where two other officers were standing. Monsieur Desmedt was also there, his expression inscrutable. He glowered at Antoine.

  The gendarme turned to Antoine.

  “Can you point out to me the exact spot where you last saw Rémi?”

  Everyone was staring at him. His mother was standing directly behind him.

  What had he told Bernadette? What had he told the gendarme? He could not remember exactly, he was terrified of making a mistake. He had mentioned the dog, Antoine did not move, the gendarme repeated his question:

  “Antoine, can you please point out to me the exact spot where you last saw Rémi?”

  It was then that Antoine realised that the officer had deliberately taken up this position to block his view of the rubbish sacks. Everything suddenly seemed much simpler. He took a step forwards and extended his arm.

  “There.”

  “Go and stand exactly where he was standing.”

  Antoine walked over to the sacks. He could picture the scene, could imagine himself walking past and seeing Rémi standing near the sacks, crying . . .

  He took a few paces forwards. Here.

  The gendarme came over to him, grabbed the first sack, dragged it towards him, opened it and glanced inside. Monsieur Desmedt looked on, his arms folded.

  Bernadette was standing in the porch, a silhouette framed against the light. She was tugging the collar of her coat tightly at her throat.

  “And what was Rémi doing . . .?” the officer asked.

  It was all too much. If it had only been for a few minutes, Antoine would have been able to hold up, but being here in this garden lit only by the porch light and the dim glow of the streetlamps, feeling the watchful eyes of Bernadette, of Monsieur Desmedt, of the gendarme, of his mother who was wondering what all this was about . . . By the people who were now gathering in the street to watch the scene.

  He burst into tears.

  “It’s alright, lad,” the gendarme said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  At that moment, there came a muffled beating, like the fluttering wings of some enormous far-off bird. Above the woods near Saint-Eustache, a helicopter hovered, its flickering searchlight raking the ground.

  Antoine’s heart beat in frantic time with the unseen blades of the helicopter as it traced circles in the night sky.

  The gendarme turned towards Monsieur Desmedt, touched his index finger to the brim of his kepi.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, sir . . . An all-points bulletin has been issued, if there is any news, we’ll let you know, of course.”

  With his fellow officers, he headed back to the police van and drove off.

  Everyone went home.

  “He was trying to work out how it happened . . .” Madame Courtin said.

  She closed the door, locked it and went into the living room.

  Antoine stood motionless in the doorway, staring at the television screen as Rémi’s face stared back, smiling, his unruly tuft of hair carefully combed into place. It was a school photograph from last year, Antoine recognised the yellow T-shirt printed with a picture of a blue elephant.

  The newsreader was giving a description of the boy: what he had been wearing when he disappeared, the theories as to the route he might have taken. His height was given as one metre fifteen. Who knows why, but this figure broke Antoine’s heart.

  There was a call for witnesses, a telephone number scrolled past at the bottom of the screen. There was talk of sending divers up to drag the pond. Antoine imagined the emergency services, lights whirling, vans parked on the path leading up to the pond, frogmen sitting on the edges of inflatable dinghies, tipping backwards into the water in one quick, expert movement . . .

  The newsreader was a woman of about forty. Antoine had often seen her on television, but today he saw her differently because she was talking about them, in a grave, solemn tone: “Initial searches have proved fruitless . . .”

  There was footage of Beauval that seemed somewhat dated, archive footage no doubt. A few scenes of the police cars that were supposedly driving around the town.

  “. . . and with nightfall, investigators had to call off the searches until tomorrow.”

  Antoine could not tear his eyes from the screen. He had an overpowering feeling of déjà vu, here was a tragic news story of the kind he had seen so often, but this time, he was directly involved because he was the killer.

  “. . . judicial inquiry has been launched into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance by the public prosecutor’s office in Villeneuve.”

  “Are you coming to eat, Antoine?” Madame Courtin said.

  She turned to look at her son and saw that he was deathly pale.

  “If you’re coming down with something, I wouldn’t be at all surprised . . .”

  5

  Antoine barely ate, which is to say he ate nothing. Not hungry.

  “I’m not surprised,” his mother said, “what with all that’s been going on . . .”

  Antoine helped to clear the table, then, as he did every night, he went over to her, proffered his cheek for a kiss and went up to his room.

  He needed to get ready, to finish packing – what time could he leave without being seen? In the middle of the night . . .

  He dragged his backpack from under the bed, then felt a nagging doubt: how was he going to get the money out of his savings account?

  On the rare occasions his mother allowed him to withdraw money – as she had when he bought the diver’s watch – it was she who had gone to the Post Office, you can’t do it yourself, you have to be eighteen . . . He would step up to the counter, they would ask to see his carte d’identité, not even that, they would take one look at him and that would be enough, no, sorry, I’m afraid it’s impossible, sonny, you’ll have to come back with your mother or father.

  With no money, he could not possibly run away.

  This ruined his whole plan. There was nothing he could do but stay here and wait to be arrested.

  He felt upset, of course, but less so than he would have expected. He saw the trappings of his room through new eyes and immediately everything seemed ridiculous, the backpack stuffed with socks and T-shirts, the Spiderman action figure sticking out of the side pocket.

  He had been carried away by the notion of running away, of becoming a fugitive, but would he actually have done it?

  He felt crippled with tiredness. He had no tears left to cry. He was simply exhausted.

  He pushed his backpack under the bed, slipped his savings book and his papers into a desk drawer and lay down on the bed.

  His sleep was haunted by dreams of staggering towards the huge, fallen beech tree with Rémi on his back. Again and again, he saw the child’s limp, dangling arms flashing before his eyes. But he could not seem to move. However much he struggled, the distance to the tree seemed constantly to reset itself. It was just as it had been in real life, the fluorescent green strap of his watch, though it seemed much bigger, impossible to not notice. Rémi had vanished from his shoulders. In his place, Antoine was carrying this huge wristwatch that weighed more than the boy. He
was tramping through the forest, moving away from Saint-Eustache. Hearing a noise somewhere behind him, he stopped and turned.

  It was Rémi. Lying on his belly in the dark crevasse. He was not dead, merely injured, but he was in terrible pain, his legs and ribs were broken. He was reaching up his hand towards the edge of the pit, up towards the light. Towards Antoine. He was screaming for help, for someone to help him climb out of the pit. He did not want to die.

  Antoine!

  Rémi went on screaming.

  Antoine wanted to help, but his feet refused to move, he could see the little boy reaching out to him, could hear his pleas rise to a terrible wail . . .

  Antoine!

  Antoine!

  He woke with a start. His mother was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at him worriedly. She was wringing her hands.

  Antoine . . .

  He sat up, instantly awake. Everything came flooding back.

  What time was it?

  The only light in the bedroom was a faint yellow glow from downstairs.

  “You gave me such a fright, screaming like that . . . Is something wrong, Antoine?”

  Antoine swallowed hard. He shook his head.

  “Tell me, Antoine, is something wrong?”

  Was this the moment to confess everything? If he had been more awake, he would probably have given in to temptation, anything to rid himself of this weight that was too much for him to bear, he would have told his mother everything. Everything. But he could not quite work out what was happening.

  “Sleeping there fully clothed, with your shoes on and everything . . . It’s not like you . . . If you’re not feeling well, why don’t you just tell me?”

  His mother laid a hand on his arm; he pulled away, he did not like her being physically affectionate. She was not offended, boys are like that, she had read an article about it somewhere, you shouldn’t take these things personally, it was a phase, he would get over it.

  “Are you feeling sick?”

  “I’m fine,” Antoine said.

  Madame Courtin placed her hand on his forehead, the same familiar gesture she always made.

  “This whole thing has upset you, that’s only natural. And being questioned by the police, well, obviously, you’re not used to it . . .”

  She looked at him, smiling tenderly. Usually, this was something Antoine found irritating, stop looking at me like that, I’m not a baby, but this time he allowed himself to be comforted. He closed his eyes.

  “Go on, now,” his mother said after a moment, “get undressed and get into bed.”

  She left the bedroom door open.

  It was dawn before Antoine finally fell asleep.

  6

  At first light the helicopter from the sécurité civile began circling again. It droned past at regular intervals, people looked up, watched as it flew over. Gendarmes from other towns in the département arrived to provide reinforcements for the officers in Beauval. Vans and police cars criss-crossed the town centre, heading out to scour the country roads.

  Soon, Rémi would have been missing for twenty-four hours.

  In the shops, where snippets of news were exchanged, there was a deep pessimism. And a nebulous anger directed sometimes at the gendarmerie and sometimes at the mayor’s office. After all, the gendarmes had taken their time before starting an investigation into the disappearance, hadn’t they? By rights, they should have started searching straight away. On the extent of the delay, opinions were varied, some claimed three hours (three hours is a long time when a six-year-old is missing!), others insisted it was more than five; in fact, their calculations differed because they were starting from different points. People had realised the little boy was missing around noon, hadn’t they? Not at all – it was at about two o’clock when Madame Desmedt had begun to worry and asked around the shops. That doesn’t make sense, Rémi walked part of the way to work with his father, and his afternoon shift at the factory doesn’t start until a quarter to two. Alright, Madame Kernevel said, we can’t be sure of the precise time, but even so, it was up to the mayor’s office to do something. On this point, almost everyone was agreed, after all Monsieur Weiser had not even wanted to get the gendarmes involved! He kept saying the kid would come back and we’d all look stupid for having called them in for no reason!

  Antoine did not leave his bedroom, He tried to concentrate on playing with his Transformers and kept an eye on the Desmedts’ garden where nothing much appeared to be happening. Monsieur Desmedt had left at dawn to search for Rémi and had not been seen since.

  Antoine’s mother was constantly coming and going with snippets of information that contradicted what she had told him previously.

  In the late morning, a van from a local television station drove into town, a female journalist interviewed passers-by; the crew came and shot footage of the Desmedts’ house, then left.

  Madame Courtin came home towards noon and announced that one of the teachers at the local secondary school had been helping the police with their enquiries since early morning, but she could not put a name to him.

  Shortly afterwards, an update began to circulate: the frogmen from the sécurité civile would begin dragging the pond at 2.00 p.m. Madame Courtin went round to Bernadette to try to convince her not to go (and she was not the only one), but she was wasting her breath. By 1.30 p.m., a dozen people had gathered in the garden to insist they would go with her, some offering to help, others to support her. They set off as though they were going to a funeral, they did not look as though they held out much hope.

  Antoine watched them leave. Should he go too? In the end he decided he would go only because he knew they would find nothing.

  The street was thronged with people. From a distance, it would have been difficult to tell whether it was a procession or a day trip.

  Sitting in a wicker chair out on the pavement, Madame Antonetti watched the populace of Beauval troop past with a brazen contempt they had long since learned to ignore.

  The gendarmes had erected safety barriers to prevent people from getting too close to the pond, the divers had to be left to work in peace. When Bernadette arrived, flanked by Claudine and Madame Courtin, the duty officer did not know what to do. You can hardly prevent the boy’s mother from being present, people muttered indignantly. The officer hesitated, but the safety barriers were already beginning to shake, there were catcalls, someone shouted an insult, the feverish atmosphere that had marked the investigation from the start bubbled up again. In the end, the officer thought it best to stand aside, only to have to ask: who should he allow past the barrier to support Bernadette?

  Fortunately, the capitaine de gendarmes arrived. Without a second thought, he took Bernadette by the arm and personally led her to the police van where he offered her tea from his thermos. From this position, she could see nothing of what was happening on the pond, but at least she was there.

  Antoine kept his distance. Émilie came to join him. She was about to strike up a conversation, but she did not have time before first Théo and Kevin, and then all the other boys and girls showed up. They had adopted the manner and the words of their parents. Some of them knew Rémi only vaguely, but already it felt as though he was their little brother, just as he had become every parent’s son.

  “It was Monsieur Guénot who got arrested by the police,” Théo said.

  This revelation caused a ripple of shock. Monsieur Guénot was a science teacher, a fat guy who had attracted various rumours. People claimed to have seen him coming out of certain establishments in Saint-Hilaire . . .

  Émilie turned to Théo in surprise.

  “Monsieur Guénot’s not under arrest, we saw him this morning!”

  Théo was categorical:

  “If you saw him this morning, you saw him before he was arrested. But I can guarantee that he’s being held by the police now and that . . . you know, I probably shouldn’t tell you any more.”

  It was infuriating, this way he had of withholding information just t
o make people beg, but he had always been like this, wanting to seem important. Several voices insisted they needed to know. Théo stared at his shoes, tight-lipped, as though uncertain which attitude to adopt.

  “O.K. . . .” he said at last, “but you have to keep it to yourselves.”

  There were whispered promises. Théo lowered his voice until he was barely audible, they had to lean in to hear.

  “Guénot . . . he’s a queer. People are saying he’s done things to pupils before . . . There were complaints, but it was all hushed up. By the headmaster, obviously. Apparently he likes them young, if you know what I mean. He’s been seen hanging around the Desmedts’ house a couple of times. Some people are wondering whether the headmaster isn’t . . .”

  The little group was stunned by this news.

  Antoine, on the other hand, could not work out what was happening. Last night, the police were apparently investigating Monsieur Desmedt, but then they just dropped it. This morning, it was Monsieur Guénot. And maybe even the headmaster. The police had moved the search to the pond, where Antoine knew they would find nothing. For the first time in twenty-four hours, he felt his chest relax a little. Was he out of danger? He could not run away, but neither could he put a lingering question out of his mind: what if Rémi was never found?

  For one whole day, this patch of ground by the pond, from where no-one could see anything and no-one could go anywhere – was like an annex of Beauval; scraps of news arrived by some path no-one could retrace only to leave so heavily embellished with comments and opinions that they became major bulletins.

  In mid-afternoon, a distinct connection was made between the search of the pond by the frogmen and the arrest of a man about whose identity – despite Théo’s protestations – opinions were divided. In this race to be found guilty, Monsieur Guénot was on the inside track, but the road hog who had knocked down Monsieur Desmedt’s dog the day before was putting up a good show. Killed stone dead, people said. Poor Roger, all he could do was put the dog into a rubbish sack, and did the guy even stop to say sorry? Did he hell! And, come to think of it, someone saw him later, spotted his car just outside Beauval, a Fiat. Or maybe a Citroën. Metallic-blue. With a Rhône number plate, they’re all road hogs there. But did that happen the same day? Surely the dog was killed the day before the kid went missing? But that’s what I’m saying, the Fiat came back.