Moon in a Dead Eye: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir. Pascal Garnier

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      Praise for Pascal Garnier:

      ‘Garnier’s take on the frailty of life has a bracing originality.’

       Sunday Times

      ‘Bleak, often funny and never predictable.’ Observer

      ‘Action-packed and full of gallows humour.’ Sunday Telegraph

      ‘Grimly humorous and tremendously dark … Superb.’

       Figaro Littéraire

      ‘Pascal Garnier is not just an accomplished stylist but also an exceptional storyteller … The Panda Theory is both dazzlingly humane and heartbreakingly lucid.’ Lire

      Moon in a Dead Eye

      Pascal Garnier

      Translated from the French

      by Emily Boyce

      Contents

      Title Page

      Epigraph

      Moon in a Dead Eye

      About the Author

      Also by Pascal Garnier

      Copyright

      Une poussière dans l’œil et le monde entier soudain se trouble.

      A speck of dust in your eye, and the whole world’s a blur. Alain Bashung and Jean Fauque

       Moon in a Dead Eye

      LES CONVIVIALES:

       THE RETIREMENT VILLAGE EXPERTS

       Les Conviviales offers a fresh approach to retirement, allowing you to spend an active life in the sunshine. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find at Les Conviviales:

      A SECURE GATED COMMUNITY

       There’s nothing quite like knowing you’re protected and secure. With a dedicated caretaker-manager on site 365 days of the year, our residents can enjoy total peace of mind.

      Martial compared the photo on the cover of the brochure with the view from the window. It was raining. It had rained almost every day for the past month. A slick of water shone on the Roman-tiled roofs of the identikit ochre pebbledash bungalows, each fronted by a matching patch of Astroturf-green lawn. At this time of year, the regimented rows of broom-like shrubs provided neither leaves, nor flowers, nor shade. All the shutters were closed. The fifty or so little houses were lined up obediently on either side of a wide road, with gravel paths leading off to each home. Viewed from the air, it must have looked something like a fish skeleton.

      HOMES BUILT FOR YOUR COMFORT

       Our single-storey houses are designed with accessibility in mind. Each comes with a sun deck, patio garden, fully equipped kitchen, ergonomically designed bathroom, two stunning bedrooms …

      Aside from a few family heirlooms that had still not found their place, Odette had seized the opportunity to furnish the house with a whole new set of furniture which, by accident or design, bore a curious resemblance to the contents of the show home they had looked around a few months earlier. Martial could not get used to it. Everything had that box-fresh, plastic smell. Fair enough, it was practical, everything worked as it should, but it was like living in a hotel. Odette, meanwhile, was colonising the place with missionary zeal. She could not go into town without bringing some useful or decorative object back with her: a bath mat, a vase, a toilet-roll holder, a hideous black and yellow ceramic cicada … The only territory she had conceded to him was a corner of the cellar for his workbench and tools. This was where he had spent most of his time since the move, working under the lamp sorting screws, nails and bolts by size and storing them in little boxes, which he labelled and stacked on shelves. It was a monotonous task, but he found it soothing.

      THE CLUBHOUSE

      The clubhouse provides a place to get together and take part in all kinds of activities. It’s where everyone meets to chat, play chess, surf the internet, have a game of snooker, enjoy a cuppa, make pancakes … Our friendly and helpful social secretary puts on competitions, walks, day trips, visits to local places of interest and evening entertainment.

      For the moment, it was closed, and they had not yet met nor even caught sight of the social secretary. Not that Martial was overly concerned. In fact, he was somewhat dreading the opening of the clubhouse. He had no desire to take part in pancake-tossing competitions with people he didn’t know.

      SOLAR-HEATED SWIMMING POOL

       Take a refreshing dip in the pool. What better way to relax while keeping fit?

      The pool was empty. A few centimetres of rainwater stagnated on the bottom.

      YEAR-ROUND SUNSHINE

       All our villages are located in the south of France to make the most of …

      ‘As if!’

      The catalogue landed with a dull thud on the smoked-glass coffee table, whose gilded feet were shaped like lion paws. Martial locked his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Suresnes, the Parisian suburb they had called home for more than twenty years, now seemed like a lost paradise. All those years spent doggedly accumulating a thousand little habits from which to spin a cosy cocoon of existence, on first-name terms with the newsagent, butcher and baker, going to the market on a Saturday morning and taking the Sunday stroll up to Mont Valérien … Then, one by one, their neighbours had retired to the Loire valley, Brittany, Cannes … or the cemetery. The area had changed almost overnight, before they had a chance to notice. A different demographic. Where once peace and quiet had reigned, now screaming children ruled the roost. After months of putting up with Odette nagging him about moving to a gated, sun-soaked retirement village, he gave in. They went to look around the show home in early September. The weather was glorious.

      ‘Just think, Martial, it’ll be like being on holiday every day of the year!’

      Monsieur Dacapo, the estate agent, had plenty of charm and the gift of the gab. Martial and Odette exactly fitted the owner profile the property company was seeking. Both were retired professionals with a suitable monthly income. The sale of their house in Suresnes would provide a more than adequate deposit. They had no dependants and no pets. Monsieur Dacapo had smoothly reeled off all the retirement community’s advantages: security, above all, with intruder-proof fences and strategically located CCTV cameras, and of course the caretaker-manager, whom he made sound like a cross between a bodyguard and a guardian angel. Work on the site was not yet complete but their home would be ready to welcome them in December. Of course, they could go away and think about it, but they shouldn’t take too long to do it. A thousand visitors had been expected at an open weekend for a similar village the previous year, but in the event three thousand had turned up!

      The deal had been wrapped up in the space of a month during which Martial felt he was going about his life under hypnosis, signing papers he had not even read, carried along by Odette’s gushing enthusiasm.

      As the first residents to move into the village, they had spent the past month in total solitude. Aside from Monsieur Flesh, the caretaker-manager they sometimes bumped into at the gate, they saw no one. Flesh was a strapping fellow, but didn’t have much to say for himself. He seemed to be very good at his job, but he wasn’t the sort to slap on the back or have a glass of beer with. Judging by his accent, he was from Alsace, or Lorraine. The tight lips of this timid Cerberus had parted just long enough to let Martial know that another couple was due to arrive in March or April.

      Martial