Gallic Noir. Pascal Garnier

went all the way up his arm to his shoulder, then to the very highest point of his crown, until it blew the top of his head off.

      Then he got out of the car and fell on his knees in the mud.

      ‘It’s not my fault! I’m the only one who’s dying!’

      There was no echo in this place. The silence absorbed everything, like the sky, the earth, the concrete. Death mopped up life so that no trace of existence should sully the relentless onward march of the A26 autoroute.

      Irène was not to have the same grave as Maryse. Despite scouring the whole of the building site, the best place Bernard could find was the cesspool covered by a small yellow corrugated-iron hut, which the workmen used as their dustbin and lavatories. Just at the moment the body sank into the cesspit, releasing appalling vapours, he remembered: Irène Lefébure. They used to have lunch sitting opposite each other in the school canteen. She wasn’t an unpleasant girl but she’d repelled him a bit because of her bulimia, which meant that she used to finish everyone’s leftovers. They’d called her ‘the dustbin’.

      As he was about to get back into the car, Bernard felt as if someone’s gaze was burning into the back of his neck. The moon pierced the clouds like a cigarette hole in a blackout curtain. As with Maryse, the moon was full. Pure chance. But that wouldn’t stop them talking of a serial killer, the full-moon murderer.

      WOMAN’S BODY FOUND ON SITE OF A26 WORKS

      Workmen on the site made the grisly discovery late on Tuesday afternoon. The police have carried out initial investigations, which are proving very difficult. There has been so much digging and compacting of the ground by machinery that the state of the corpse makes identification impossible for the moment. It will be necessary to wait for the results of the …

      Yolande was reading the newspaper, tracing the words with one finger and using another to swing her ‘More than yesterday and much less than tomorrow’ pendant from side to side like a pendulum. She was speaking in a singsong voice, like a child reciting a fable. Bernard kept his eyes fixed on the pendant.

      …the time to complete additional investigations …

      I know, why don’t I bake an angel-hair cake tonight? You know, with lots of sugar. It’s ages since I did that.’

      ‘I’m not really very hungry.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter, I feel like making a cake. It’s a day for it, and besides there are a lot of ends of packets.’

      ‘If you like. Pass me some water, please. Thanks. Help me to drink, I can’t lift my head.’

      Bernard was searching for the rim of the glass. His eyesight was deteriorating. A whirl of rings with wavy outlines and dark insides was dancing in front of his eyes. The two mouthfuls of water came back up, and dribbled down his chin through his beard.

      ‘You pig!’

      Yolande went back to her reading.

      With the information currently available to the police and magistrates …

      (What’s she going to do with my dead body? Stuff it into the bottom of the wardrobe? Bodies everywhere, in the mud of the building site, at the back of cupboards…)

      It would be rash to link it to the disappearance of the young woman Maryse L …

      What’s the point of me reading to you, Bernard, if you’re not going to listen? Your mind’s elsewhere. If you go on pretending to be dead like this, you really will die, so there. You’re horrible to me, I’m going.’

      Yolande was angry. He’d become a right pain with his illness, no time for anyone but himself. He’d been like that when he was little, snivelling at the slightest knock. Yolande had never been ill, ever. Let him hurry up and die, and that would be an end to it. She didn’t know what it was he wanted. He could always hang himself if it was taking too long. People were always like that, complaining about their lives, going ‘it’s too hot’ or ‘it’s too cold’, ‘I’m too young’, ‘I’m too old’, etc. They only needed to follow her example and not like anything, that way you were never disappointed and other people got a bit of peace as well. She had nothing against her brother, mind you. All their lives the two of them had been like one and the same person, but whether you lost a tooth, a brother or an arm, there was no need to go overboard about it! In any case, it was for his benefit that she was making the angel-hair cake. It was a favourite recipe from La Semaine de Suzette. It was tasty, easy to make and filled you up nicely.

      She trotted off into the kitchen, and poured all the ends of vermicelli packets into a salad bowl. There was an amazing amount. Pulling a saucepan out from under a heap of dirty dishes, she set off an avalanche of metalware.

      ‘Oh shit! Filthy rotten bastards! Damn bitch of a saucepan!!!’

      She kicked the floor clear. Of course, he was wallowing in bed all day, savouring each remaining drop of life, so obviously she was left to see to everything. Shaking with fury, she gave the saucepan, still coated with the remains of last night’s noodles, a quick rinse under the tap.

      ‘What’ve you done with the sugar? Oi, you!’

      And yet the day had begun on a positive note, she’d been in a good mood when she’d got up. A shaft of light coming through a chink in the shutters had bounced off the white enamel of her bowl. That was all it had taken to bring back a whole flood of happy memories. Life was the way it was, but sometimes it gave gifts, even to people who didn’t deserve them, even to wrong’uns like her. That was in the way of things. After all, life killed off plenty of fine people, through wars, road accidents or illness. It was only right that it should make up for its stupid tricks.

      The day they had drowned that bitch Fernande’s cat, a lovely day. The old bag was always spreading evil gossip about her, hands clutching her windowsill, with her mangy cat wedged between her huge tits.

      ‘That Yolande’s been seen leaving the dance with …’

      Yolande wouldn’t have minded going with all the local boys she talked about. There hadn’t been as many as all that, but it still got her a tanning with the razor strop as soon as her father heard about it. Titi, that cat’s name was. It stank. By promising Bernard a lollipop, she had talked him into distracting the old girl long enough for her to stuff the tomcat into a potato sack. Then they’d run to the bomb crater, the one where you could fish for frogs, and she had weighted the sack with pebbles. Inside the cloth, Titi had made a token effort at wriggling. Perhaps he thought it was a game – you could never tell, where children were concerned.

      Yolande had whirled the sack round above her head before flinging it right into the middle of the pool with a loud ‘ha!’ The water had broken into a rippling smile before it grew perfectly impassive again, like a pool of oblivion. Bernard had clung to his sister’s skirt.

      ‘That’s a crime, isn’t it, Yoyo? You’ve committed a crime.’

      ‘Of course not, it’s only a cat. Serves it right, ugly beast.’

      Yolande had lain full length on the bank, hands behind her head, serene, in the satisfaction of a job well done. Her skirt was hitched up to her thighs, letting in the soft April breeze. A flock of white clouds grazed on the blue overhead. Soon it would be Easter. She was seventeen and longing to get stuck in to all that the world had to offer. On the wireless the talk was of nothing but war, today, tomorrow, or the day after, and of Chancellor Hitler who was frightening everyone except her. If he was really such a bogeyman, that chap, then all the big noises spouting into the microphones had only to do what she’d done, stick him in a sack and throw it into a bomb crater. But oh no, they preferred to scare one another, holding up the spectre of war at arm’s length like a scarecrow forming a perch for crows. War, in weather like this, it was a joke! Here, war, 1870, 1914, and earlier still, was just a part of life. All it had left behind were holes you could drown feline collaborators in and where kids fished for frogs. No need to get so worked up about it! In any case, people didn’t go to war when the weather was so fine. All these people needed was a good lay and they’d forget