‘My mother is ill.’
‘Oh,’ says Ginette, ‘I’m sorry. Shall I ask Father to come and see her?’
Marcel remembers that his father told them they couldn’t afford a doctor and that it was nothing too serious, so he knows what to say.
‘No.’
Ginette blinks, and now she does not know what to say either.
‘I’m going to get some bread,’ Marcel says.
He leaves.
‘Goodbye, Marcel,’ Ginette calls as he goes, and he turns and waves, smiling.
‘Goodbye, Ginette.’
Marcel remembers it all from the cell at the back of the commissariat in the 6th. He plays it over and over again in his mind, this tiny exchange. He could have chosen any of the moments between them, but today this is what comes to his mind: he was buying bread when his mother was ill, and Ginette had no shoes on. Her feet were muddy; the hem of her skirts too. This was all before the incident with the bee sting, where there was no bee. He is trying to understand something about this exchange; something that a more normal man would have realised long before, but although he knows that there is something to be understood, it remains just beyond his grasp, elusive, tantalising and mysterious.
Marcel starts again at the beginning.
He walks down the hill from the road, cutting through the gently sloping vines to the village, and there are Ginette’s muddy feet in the row next to him.
THE DOSSIER OF PAUL DELORME
Chef Cavard greets the two watchmen at the Quai des Orfèvres as if it’s common practice to come to work on a Sunday. He does not carry it off, and the two men peer curiously back at him through the little hatch in the wall. They are so confused by his presence that they even seem unaware that he is asking them to let him in. They know who he is. Cavard, the head of the Sûreté. But that he is asking to be let into the building on a Sunday is almost too much for them. One is old, the other older still. Mostly these men are former soldiers who earn a pittance watching for intruders, fires and other incidents when the offices are closed. He wonders if he should have tried one of the smaller doors to the side of the building, but no doubt he would have faced the same mystification anywhere; he must be the first Chief of Police ever to show his face on a Sunday. He hesitates between telling them that he has urgent and important business (which is, after all, true) or that he has left something behind. An umbrella, or such, which is also probably true. In the end he decides on a simple course.
‘Open the damn door or I will have you both sacked,’ he barks, and before another minute has passed he is striding down the deserted and darkened corridors, heading for the archives in the basement.
As he waddles down the steps to the archives, he only now realises the problem: he does not have a key. The head archivist and his assistant have a key, but they are not here. The watchmen will have a key, but Cavard does not want to ask them; the whole point of coming on a Sunday is to conduct an enquiry off the record.
He tries the handle of the door, and rattles it gently, looking behind him and up the steps as he does so, furtively. He forgot to check if he was being followed as he came in off the street, the business with the watchmen having distracted him for a moment. Yet he knows that there can be no Okhrana agents in the building, nor any of Delorme’s men; it is merely reflexive guilt that makes him glance over his shoulder.
He considers his options. The double doors are half glass. Beyond he can see where he needs to be, murky in the faint light that seeps down from fanlights that lead to the pavement level. A sharp tap with the elbow and he can climb through. Probably. At least, he might have been able to ten years ago . . . But also, ten years ago, he knew how to do other things. He pats his pockets and finds his fountain pen, lifts it up in the gloom and pings the clip on the cap.
It was a present from his wife, but he sees no other option, and he prises the clip out and bends it sideways, leaving the cap itself as a useful handle. He kneels slowly down beside the lock, and starts to work.
The lock is not complicated. Though the building itself is well fortified, internal doors are not seen as a threat, for only policemen will be inside the building. On this occasion, however, the policeman in question happens to be the Chef of the Sûreté, who will be disgraced, lose his job and his pension if he is caught breaking into the archives. So be it, he thinks. He let that young inspector down, badly, and the only way he can think of making amends is to prove whatever it was that Petit suspected. In addition, he genuinely believes that the city of Paris will be a better place if Delorme is removed from office.
A minute more and Cavard feels the little metal tooth that he is pushing finally flick over inside the barrel of the lock, and the door pops open.
A minute later, in the half-light, he discovers that he will be defeated. Most of the archives are low-level security, but the dossiers blancs are quite the opposite. They contain highly secret information about the most powerful men, and women, in France. Having checked in a file card system on the archivist’s desk, Cavard reads that the dossiers are kept in the strongroom. A room beyond a door that stands behind the desk. He curses himself for acting without thinking; he would have known this if he’d given himself a minute to think first.
To be sure, Cavard steals round the desk up on to the little platform, and tries the handle of the strongroom. It is locked, firmly, and the lock is a much finer precision piece, consisting of a Swedish-made four-pin cylinder, in combination with a permutation lock. He has neither the skills nor the tools to pick the cylinder lock, and even if he had, he would still need the code for the wheels of the permutation lock.
It can’t be done. He thumps a hand against the metal door of the strongroom, once, and then leaves, having the sense to make a detour to his office, where he indeed finds an umbrella he can convincingly display to the watchmen on his way out.
As he sets off for home, darkness is falling across the city. He broods. The only means of getting that dossier is by making a request for it from the archivist himself, and in order to obtain permission the archivist needs the written approval of the very man Cavard wishes to investigate: the Prefect, Paul Delorme.
It is as he broods on this puzzle that he realises that in his dismay at being defeated and in his hurry to leave before being discovered, he left the outer door to the archives unlocked.
MOREL MAKES A DISCOVERY
When we stop loving, it becomes impossible to go on. Whatever the object of our love was, a person, an idea, a career, when the love for it vanishes, so does the desire to continue. To do so from that point is to move like a mindless machine, because it is what we are made to do, not because it is what we want to be.
These are the thoughts that crowd into Dr Morel’s mind one morning as he crunches through an early snowfall that has covered the courtyards of the Salpêtrière. He walks, but with no particular energy. His strange gait, however, at last has a purpose, now no longer clearing imaginary snow but the real thing. Though he is unaware of it, he clears a neat little pathway as he goes.
What has died? His desire for the truth. It has finally dawned on him that although he has spent his whole life seeking the truth, about mental illness, about what caused his patients to be the way they are, he has been seeking an illusion. There is no such thing as the truth, that is what he has now learned, and he has learned it because of Marcel.
The only question he now asks himself is why studying this strangest of strange men with his perfect memory has finally brought him to this realisation. He is close to understanding, but for now, this morning, in the cold, in the snow, the connection eludes him.
With this love of the pursuit of truth suddenly dead inside him, he finds it takes an almost unbearable effort of will just to go through the motions of the morning’s rounds, and bitterly but with some comfort he tells himself that at least he is an old man. He will not have to be troubled long by this emptiness.
In its place, Morel sees just one tiny spark of desire: he would l
ike to make Marcel’s life easier. He wishes he could have ‘cured’ his memory, but there is no hope of that; his patient has been taken away from him and if what the policeman, Cavard, said is true, he will be tried and possibly executed. That at least will bring an end to Marcel’s maze-wandering mind, and the suffering that has gone with it. But Morel finds that he would at least like to speak to Marcel once more, and perhaps see if there is any way of making what may be the final days of his life a little easier. He determines that if he is allowed, he will visit Marcel in his imprisonment, before the end, whatever that might be, comes.
That same Monday morning, Cavard faces no choice but to summon the chief archivist to his office, a man he barely knows. He could not risk returning to the archives to re-lock the door on Sunday. Instead he tried to arrive early and make good his error, but even at six he found the building crawling with too many people to take the chance.
He has spent two hours bitterly chewing over the possibilities, and decides he has to gamble. It still takes half an hour for the archivist to arrive in Cavard’s office, and when he does, he is clearly resentful at being summoned.
Gilbert, the archivist, gives off the air of a man permanently lost in the stacks, while at the same time clearly believing that everyone else is lost, not him. He mutters something about doors and Cavard, as innocently as possible, asks what the matter is.
‘The doors to the archive,’ Gilbert says, ‘were found unlocked this morning.’
‘Who found them so?’ asks Cavard.
‘I did,’ says Gilbert, and Cavard wonders why he didn’t say that in the first place. ‘I left ahead of Monsieur Tissot on Friday, and he was to lock up. He obviously did no such thing but now denies the possibility, even the possibility, that he was remiss in his responsibilities and failed to do his job. I have to consider how to take this matter to a disciplinary level and meanwhile Tissot himself is creating all—’
‘I unlocked the door,’ says Cavard, so abruptly that Gilbert clearly cannot understand what has been said at first. Cavard repeats himself. ‘I unlocked the door. Over the weekend. I did not lock it again. It was an error, for which I apologise.’
Gilbert stares at the chef for a good amount of time. Then he half gets out of his chair and looks behind him, at the door, as if checking for an escape route, or possibly to be sure that no one else has entered, before sitting back down again.
‘Chef?’
Gilbert may be pompous, Cavard sees, but he clearly respects rank. That’s a good start.
‘I apologise again, for the lack of security on your archives for a period of ten or so hours. It was unforgivable. I also apologise for letting myself in in the first place.’
Cavard cannot bring himself to say ‘breaking in’ and Gilbert does not correct him. Anyway, he broke nothing, the most gentle of thieves.
‘Can I trust you, Gilbert?’
Gilbert panics visibly. He runs his hand over the top of his thinning hair and checks the exits once again. Cavard senses he needs to help him, that the librarian is out of his depth. But what to say?
‘How can I put this? I, your chef, am a firm believer in this country of ours, in its declarations and laws. I believe what the state believes, and I believe in the three words that are carved over the entrance to this building. Those three words are the basis on which our society is founded. Do you know which of the three I find to be the most . . . vital? The one that I find myself feeling the most . . . passionate about? Of course I believe in liberty and equality. Who can say they do not? But brotherhood is the thing above all else, is it not? That we are one family, seeking to work together, rather than enemies, seeking to do each other down. Do you understand me?’
Gilbert shakes his head, and Cavard tells himself to keep calm and be patient. Probably nothing like this has ever happened in the archivist’s whole career.
‘To put it simply,’ Cavard adds, ‘I am a man of the people.’
Now Gilbert understands. Chef Cavard has just as good as admitted that, were he ten years older, he would have been manning the barricades of the Commune eighteen years ago. Such an admission is a dreadful risk for a man in his position, and as Gilbert checks the door for the third time, that is all the signal Cavard needs to know that the old archivist perhaps shares his political sympathies.
Cavard presses on.
‘I would never do anything to endanger the well-being of the nation. I would never do anything to undermine our security, and, furthermore, Monsieur Gilbert, I would never ask you to do the same. I will tell you why I broke into the archives over the weekend, and then you can decide how to answer me.’
Gilbert nods.
‘I need access to a dossier blanc. I have received information that leads me to conclude that the subject of this particular dossier is guilty of crimes against the state, and that the explanation for them can be found in the dossier.’
Cavard, of course, knows no such thing, but if he has gambled correctly that Gilbert is a man of principle, this is the sort of suspicion that will make the quashing of his conscience easier.
‘My problem,’ Cavard concludes, ‘is this. The ultimate authority to whom you and I need to apply to access that dossier is the very man who is its subject.’
He lets that hang, for as long as is needed, but Gilbert is not stupid. His eyes widen so far that Cavard is almost convinced he intends to make a bolt for the door there and then. But he does not. He wipes his hand over his head once more, and then, in the lowest whisper he can manage, mouths a single word.
‘Delorme?’
Cavard nods. ‘Can you get it for me? Unofficially.’
Cavard believes he has Gilbert in the palm of his hand, so he is taken aback when the archivist shakes his head.
‘I cannot get it for you, officially or otherwise.’
‘Why not?’
Gilbert speaks louder now. Although what he says is extremely potent, even dangerous, for some reason he feels the need to say it loudly. It is as if he has been affronted, as if this is the only chance he will ever have to set something right.
‘Because it is missing.’
Now it is Cavard’s turn to be unsettled. He has to force himself not to show any lack of equilibrium.
‘It is . . . ?’
‘Missing,’ says Gilbert, and again he speaks a little louder than Cavard would like. He almost takes pride, as if he is getting some evil matter off his hands, when he adds, ‘And as to who took it, and why, well, you’re the policeman. It was removed from the archives immediately after the Prefect’s appointment. I don’t feel I need say more.’
Cavard sits, screwed into place in his chair, while the world revolves around him.
‘But only Delorme could have authorised that.’
‘Indeed. It was Delorme himself who came. Said he would borrow it. That was over two years ago. He has not seen fit to return it. And I have not seen fit to ask for it back. I presume it would do little good.’
‘No,’ Cavard stammers at last. ‘I agree with that presumption. Who else knows about this?’
‘No one. How stupid must you think me, Chef? Delorme is a powerful man. And I do not trust him one bit.’
‘You kept this to yourself?’
Gilbert hangs his head, just a touch.
‘Never mind,’ says Cavard, waving a hand. ‘Perhaps that’s for the best, now . . . Listen. I have one more question. Did you ever read it?’
‘I did not.’
‘So you don’t know what was so explosive that he had the file removed?’
Gilbert shakes his head, then looks directly at Cavard. He seems more nervous than ever. Eventually, he lowers his eyes.
‘Like I say, you’re the policeman.’
As Gilbert goes, they agree, without the use of words, but by their eyes alone, that all this will remain secret between them. Gilbert merely mentions that perhaps he forgot to lock the door on Friday after all, not his assistant, Tissot. The matter can be allowed to rest. Cavard nods, and
watches the departing archivist before slumping back into his chair.
Yes, he is the policeman. And if this conversation tells him one thing, it’s that the secret that Delorme is hiding is something very large indeed.
THE END OF THE WORLD
Two of the inspectors on whom Cavard has been relying have been watching the movements of Delorme himself, outside work hours. The third has been testing the waters of the world of the Okhrana. None of them has found anything of use and Cavard is getting impatient.
‘I cannot press too hard,’ says the man who’s been trying to make contact with the Russian secret service, and Cavard knows he is right. He himself told him to exercise extreme subtlety, for if Delorme catches wind of their investigations, matters will be escalated very rapidly.
Yet time is running out.
On Tuesday morning, as Cavard sits in his office, one hand on an envelope that contains the lurid photographs of their Prefect and of the minister, the exact amount of time he has is announced.
He is sitting with Boissenot, toying with the idea of showing him the photographs. In desperation, he wondered whether Boissenot, being Petit’s boss, had any inkling of what his young inspector was up to. It appears that he did not, and now it is too late to do anything but take the risk and trust Boissenot.
Cavard goes for the direct approach.
Still with one hand on the envelope, he says, ‘Boissenot, what do you think of our Prefect?’
Boissenot’s eyes still for a second as he takes in the question. Cavard can see he is trying to work out the meaning of this enquiry, as well as a hundred other things, such as whose side he is on. Cavard knows it’s a gamble, but he has to make something happen now.
‘What . . .’ says Boissenot. ‘What do I think of our Prefect?’
‘That is the question I asked.’
‘He is the best man for the job, I would say. Wouldn’t you?’
No, I wouldn’t, thinks Cavard. And neither would you.