Mister Memory

  Cavard nods slowly, his skin itching with impatience for the connection.

  ‘Marcel covered that incident for his newspaper. He took the names of every one of the witnesses, the survivors, the staff. The policemen present. Pontalis was there that night. That is where Marcel once met our Prefect of Police. Furthermore, Marcel recalls something that was mentioned in passing in the newspaper reports, but which he himself witnessed. There was an altercation between Pontalis and a Russian man shortly after the bombing, a Russian who was later found with a knife in his back in an alley around the corner from the station. Given the uproar over the bombing, an unsolved murder slipped away into obscurity, was soon forgotten. But not, of course, by Marcel. Now what do you make of that?’

  Cavard makes a lot of that. The trouble is knowing what is madness and what is truth. He stares at Morel for very long while, saying nothing. He pours more wine for both of them, finds that the pitcher is empty, and orders another one from the waiter. Only when the waiter has returned and departed again does he speak.

  ‘The first thing I think is this. We have been hoping that Ondine Després was privy to some secret about Delorme, and that she had passed this information on to her husband, that he was involved in blackmailing him too. Uncomfortable with a trial involving Ondine’s murderous husband, during which who knows what might be revealed, Delorme moves to close everything down. And yet I see the actions of a man who is panicking – he is fighting fires as they break out, and he escalates things to the point where he has people killed to protect knowledge that Marcel never even had. And yet here is a touch of the universe playing its jokes: Marcel does know something about Delorme. He just doesn’t know that he knows. What a memory! As you said, Doctor. Extraordinary. What I could have done with my career if I had had a memory like that.’

  Morel shakes his head. ‘Trust me, Cavard. You have no idea what you’re saying.’

  ‘Maybe. But Després can pull from his head the name of Paul Pontalis. And he was present at that bombing. That was a bad one. You remember . . . That young anarchist, Henry. Went to the guillotine.’

  Morel nods. ‘Yes, but I don’t see the connection.’

  ‘I do,’ says Cavard. ‘Or at least, I think I do. Delorme, or Pontalis as he was then, was a covert officer for the Sûreté. He was responsible for liaising with the Okhrana. As I told you, they have had their uses, their presence in Paris is tolerated within certain limits. We and they have had one mutual enemy over the last few years. The anarchist. They have the same issues in Russia, with the same perpetrators seeking the same goal: overthrowing the state. In our case, our centrist politicians. In their case, the Tsar.’

  ‘What does this have to do with Delorme?’

  ‘There were rumours about certain operations a few years ago. There were one or two remarkable arrests made, of whole groups of anarchists and sympathisers; potential bombers and actual ones. The story going about the station was that these arrests were not what they seemed; not just good detective work and smart policing. In all my days I have never before or since seen such clean and successful operations. The rumour was that the Okhrana and certain officers in the Sûreté had set up covert groups in the enemy camp. I found out earlier today that Pontalis, that is, Delorme, was one of the officers liaising with the Russians. The story was that they organised the meetings between them, put the word out on the streets in the right parts of town, attracting leftists and the like, that they even supplied the bombs that were to have been used by the anarchists. The plan was that they let these people incriminate themselves so far, and then, arranging one last meeting, had had the whole damn lot arrested.’

  ‘So? But the explosion at the café?’

  ‘Yes. The explosion at the café. From here, we are in the realm of speculation. But that Paul Delorme was present there that evening seems to me to be too much of a coincidence. Perhaps one of the bombers, Émile Henry, never showed up at that final meeting. Perhaps he decided to act on his own. Or there is perhaps a more sinister explanation.’

  Even as he says this, and his skin crawls as though beetles are hatching from inside him, he believes he has stumbled across the truth. Petit guessed that there was more to the case than a murder. Then he guessed that there was more to Delorme’s involvement than some embarrassment over courtesans. What Cavard now thinks is something so terrible he can barely give it credit, struggles to believe that someone, a Frenchman, an important and powerful man, could do something so despicable. Then, in the next moment, he realises how preposterous that sentiment is. Of course that’s what powerful men can do. That’s one of the ways in which powerful men become powerful: they do despicable things, and if they get away with it, then stories are rewritten, facts are ignored. History, as we know, is written by the victor.

  Morel can see that Cavard has found something, and he waits for a long time for the right moment to whisper, as gently as he can, ‘Well?’

  Cavard shakes his head. ‘Do you remember the wave of revulsion after that bombing? In the press? On every one’s lips? That was a watershed. If there had been any lingering sympathy for the days of the Commune, for the left, for the people, all of Paris was finally united in the face of such a horrific act of terror. The blood of twenty thousand Communards may have turned the waters of the Seine red but, well, that was twenty years ago, wasn’t it? And here was the most appalling and unmotivated attack against innocent bystanders in a railway station café. No one said anything, no one felt anything other than anger and fear in the days that followed. ’

  Morel nods. He begins to understand himself, but Cavard says it aloud anyway.

  ‘Supposing there was a very clever man who knew that a terrible bombing was just what was needed to make all that happen? To bring everyone together on the same side. On his side . . . ? So he orchestrated it all, even using the Okhrana without them realising at first that they were being used. He supplies the bomb that the young anarchist delivers to the café . . . The bomb explodes, all Paris is outraged and the political spectrum lurches firmly to the right. For good.’

  Morel stares at Cavard. Are such things even possible? Do such minds even exist?

  ‘But what can you do?’ he asks eventually, though even the old doctor, who understands little about politics or policing, seems already to know the answer.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Cavard. ‘It is just a story. And the end of the story is guesswork. I have an idea what happened, but I am unable to be sure. We have no proof of anything. Just a witness who knows that Delorme happened to be at the scene of the bombing.’

  ‘And what happens to that witness?’

  Cavard finishes his drink and puts the glass back on the table gently, as if he fears it will break if it makes the slightest sound. He knows that without Marcel he would not have this final piece of the puzzle. A strange man, a captive for many months, held in cells of one kind or another, a funny kind of hero, doing nothing, saying little. Passive and impenetrable, he sat in darkness as the days became weeks and then months while the doctor and others pored over him, probing him and pondering him. And yet, all that time, the secret lay inside Marcel. And now he has provided the one piece of information that could not only save him, but which could end Delorme’s career and possibly his life.

  Cavard speaks softly, staring at the table top as he does.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can do nothing. We have no proof of any of these events in ’94. We can only prove that Delorme belongs to a powerful club of men who like to indulge in outrageous activities after dark. Després will have to take his chances on the train. And if he survives to Toulon, he might even survive the five years he’s been given on Devil’s Island.’

  ‘You don’t think either of those things are likely, do you?’ says Morel, and it is not a question, but an accusation.

  ‘No,’ whispers Cavard. ‘I do not.’

  THE ALLEY

  Cavard’s mind changes a dozen times before he has even made it as far as a cab. It is late and his wife will b
e wondering what has become of him. It is so close to Christmas now, and it’s even more important to her that he is home once in a while, maybe even to see the children before they go to bed.

  He looks at his watch. It is half past nine; those children of his should be sleeping. His wife will be worrying but that is something she is more than used to; as he often tells her, you shouldn’t have married a policeman if you wanted to live without worry.

  He finds a cab and gives the driver his home address, then, before they are even at the end of the street, he flicks through his pocket book, and calls out another address, Principal Inspector Boissenot’s.

  Boissenot lives in the new developments in Clichy, just inside the old walls. He is married and Cavard hopes that Boissenot’s wife is just as forgiving as his own. It will be even later by the time Cavard gets there, but that cannot be helped. He cannot also help checking that he is not being followed. Every corner he leans from the window and checks backwards, looking for other vehicles that might contain thugs of Delorme’s. He seems to be safe, but he does not give up checking. Twenty minutes later, the cab pulls into Boissenot’s street. The Rue de Printemps is narrow, with tall Haussmann buildings of six storeys on both sides, apart from a lower stretch of houses halfway along on the right.

  Cavard has never visited Boissenot at home before, but he can already tell which house is the inspector’s. It will be the one with the five gardiens de la paix standing outside, and a gaggle of neighbours hanging around, craning their necks to see. There is a police wagon there too, presumably from the 17th.

  ‘Here?’ calls the driver, and Cavard steps down, almost forgetting to pay. He walks slowly towards the scene. Two of the gardiens see him coming, and try to block his way, until he displays his identity card to them. He passes through the crowd of people, over the threshold and up the steps to the first floor, where he shows his card to another gardien blocking the entry to Boissenot’s home.

  The policeman nods at him.

  ‘They’ve sent for an examining magistrate,’ he tells Cavard, but Cavard is not really listening. He moves inside, and finds that he is alone with the victims.

  It has obviously not been long since the crime was committed. As Cavard enters, he sees through into the kitchen, where a pair of feet clad in women’s stockings protrudes from underneath an overturned chair. There is the smell of blood in the air, and burning. Something acrid that makes him want to gag. Hair maybe.

  He moves on into the sitting room, and there is Boissenot. He is tied to a chair, and it is clear that he has been tortured. His eyes are open, and blood is still pooling on the floor beneath his hands, which hang to each side of the arms of the chair, mutilated.

  Cavard hears voices outside the apartment, down in the street, dimly. He cannot make out what is being said, nor does he focus on it. Instead, he turns, and moves into a small room that Boissenot must have used as his study. A cupboard door stands open, and inside, Cavard sees a mess. The shelves have been pulled out, and there, on the floor, the wooden boards have been up, ripped apart. The voices are coming up the stairs. Cavard kneels and finds the ruins of a board with two holes in it, now in two pieces, split through these holes. He knows the design; he has the same arrangement at home himself: a small steel safe bolted to the floor inside a cupboard. The safe would have been heavy; they would have made a terrible noise wrenching it from the boards, boards that were unsuitable to the task of fixing the thing in place, and which were then perhaps pried away with a chisel.

  It was what he came for, this safe, or, rather, its contents. He had finally made up his mind that with or without the proof of Delorme’s greater crime, it was the right thing to do to bring him down from office with the scandal. That might then enable Cavard to engineer an investigation to prove the bigger guilt. He would get the packet of photographs back from Boissenot, and by tomorrow morning they would be placed on every important desk in the Palais des Justices, as well as the desk of every newspaper editor in the city. Not knowing who he can trust, and who might be part of Delorme’s club, he would scatter the information so widely that not even God himself could suppress it. But the photographs have gone, and that route is now closed to him. Or almost. He now remembers that one picture, the first one that Petit gave him. He barely looked at it at the time, and he left it . . . My God, he thinks. He remembers now where he left it, lying loose in his top desk drawer at home. That’s all he has left to play with now.

  As he returns to look at Boissenot and pay his respects, he can see just how far the corruption extends into his own department.

  ‘The end of the world, Boissenot,’ Cavard whispers, his eyes closed. He wants to bring himself to close the dead man’s eyes too, but when he steps forward to do it, he finds he cannot. His hand wavers in the air above Boissenot’s face for a while, then he pulls away. He closes his own eyes again.

  Rapidly, connections form in his mind. Someone knew about the photographs, and they told Delorme. Delorme has taken the most brutal action possible, and if he knows about all this, then Cavard himself is in danger now. He hears the voice in the corridor, speaking to the gardien on the door. He knows the voice. It is Peletier.

  He curses, quietly, and decides he has no desire to be found here.

  Opposite the kitchen, where Madame Boissenot lies murdered, is another room, its door open. Cavard slips quietly inside, cursing his bad shape and lack of speed, but something still and quiet has arrived inside him, some reaction to the incomprehensible horror of what he has just seen, and he moves easily into the darkened room, where he stands motionless as Peletier enters the apartment, making straight for the kitchen. He spends no more than a few moments appraising the dead woman, and heads out again.

  Cavard holds his breath as Peletier moves further into the apartment. The examining magistrate enters the living room, and the next thing he hears is the sound of Peletier being sick on the floor. Cavard takes his chance, moving out of the apartment.

  As he passes the gardien, he quietly asks, ‘What’s my name?’

  The gardien looks back at him blankly. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve forgotten.’

  No matter, thinks Cavard, and moves quickly down the stairs and out into the night. That will buy him some time; Peletier won’t know it was him inside the apartment. Unless one of the gardiens in the street told him, and he can do nothing about that. He puts his head down and moves away down the street, but no one is paying him any attention.

  It is at the Rue Saussure that he realises there are footsteps behind him. He hurries and turns left, annoyed with himself; Peletier might have thrown up at the sight of what Delorme’s men had done to Boissenot, but Cavard himself, though made of sterner stuff, has dropped his guard long enough to be caught out.

  He turns backward as he turns the corner and sees three men following him. They are big men, and there is no one else about. Once around the corner, he uses the moment of grace to put on the best turn of speed he can manage, and seeing an opening on the left, runs into it, hoping to be out of sight before the men make the corner.

  He moves as quietly as he can, trying to find a dark doorway to hide himself in. But even by the weak light from the feeble gas lamps that glow from the occasional window, he can see he has made a mistake.

  The alley is a dead-end.

  He runs forward a step or two, panting hard already, more from the fear than the effort, ridiculously thinking to himself that his last thoughts will be of how he really does move like a duck, how much he deserved his cruel nickname.

  He reaches the end of the alley, but there is indeed no way out.

  He turns towards the men.

  THE END OF MARCEL DESPRÉS

  Marcel is still dressed in his hospital garments when they come to take him to the train. He tries to ask to wear his own clothes again, but they take no notice of him. Even the Commissaire, who has been more than fair to Marcel, sadly shakes his head, telling him that by tomorrow he will be dressed in prison clothes, and in prison clothe
s he will remain for the next five years.

  Or until he is dead, Marcel knows, but that goes unspoken by both sides. Marcel knows about the transportations. In Toulon, in the harbour, a prison hulk will be waiting for him. He has never been to Toulon, and he has never seen a prison ship, but he has read about them. Even before those days of reading newspaper after newspaper, he read about them, and he remembers every detail. One article he read carefully explained every aspect of their construction, of their size, of the number of men who would be held captive inside in darkness and squalor for the duration of the journey to Cayenne. In Cayenne, those who had not succumbed to illness or violence in the darkness of the hold would be transferred to smaller boats to make the short trip out to Devil’s Island, the dry guillotine. There, death by disease, starvation, or brutality was the normal turn of events. He would be more than lucky to survive his five years. It would be a miracle.

  In chains and under escort he is locked in the back of a Black Maria whose horses make a fair clip of the short journey from the 6th to the Gare de Lyon. At the station, he is removed from the carriage, again under close guard. Marcel is filled with the strange sense that he is in some way very precious. They appear to be taking very great care of him. He is placed in a special carriage at the rear of the train, one half of which contains mailbags, and the other half is a cage, in which he is imprisoned. His ankles are put into shackles which are chained though a ring in the floor of the carriage; his guards climb into the small area between the cage where Marcel is held and the cage containing the mail. There are two of them, and they do not even look at him. They are dressed in plain clothes, but he sees the flash of a gun under the coat of one of them, and he has no reason to suppose the other man is not armed as well.