Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [3]
‘It’s a ghetto.’
‘How did he die?’
‘He was shot at close range.’
‘I’m going to look up there.’
‘Very well, Monsieur.’ The policeman lifted the rope used to close off the stairwell.
Mathis had to hold his breath as he climbed the pungent steps. He went along the walkway, noting the chains and padlocks with which the residents had tried to reinforce their flimsy front doors. From behind one or two came the sounds of radio and television, or of voices raised. In addition to the foul stairway smell there was the occasional whiff of couscous or merguez.
What a hell this was, thought Mathis, the life of the me´tis, the half-caste or the pied-noir, the French
of Algerian birth. They were like animals, not fenced in but fenced out of the city. It wasn’t his job to set right the inequalities of the world. It was his business to see if this Hashim was anything more than a cheap one-shot killing and, if so, what it might have to do with the Deuxie`me.
The head of his section would require a written report, so he had better at least get a feel for the Arc en Ciel and what went on there. Back in the office, he would look up the files on similar killings, check with Immigration and see if there was a pattern, or a reason for disquiet. An entire section of the Deuxie`me was devoted to the fallout of the French colonial wars. The eight-year struggle for Algerian independence had brutally divided not only Algeria but France itself and caused one political upheaval after another, finding a resolution only with the astonishing return to power of the wartime leader, General de Gaulle. Mathis smiled for a moment as he thought of Sylvie’s reverent look when she mentioned the great man’s name. And at the same time, even more shaming in an international sense, had been the defeat of the French army in Indo-China – or what now called itself Vietnam. The humiliation of the battle of Dien Bien Phu had burned itself into the soul of France, leaving a scar that had been hastily covered over.
The only consolation, thought Mathis, was that the Americans now seemed hell-bent on meeting the same catastrophe. For him and his colleagues, however, Algeria and Indo-China had meant uncountable thousands of immigrants, embittered, violent and excluded, many of them criminals and some of them committed enemies of the Republic.
Mathis methodically noted the layout of the block and the angle at which the killer might have approached the stairwell. He made other rudimentary observations more suited in his mind to the procedure of a local gendarme. He lit another cigarette, and went back down the stairs. He thanked the policeman and walked across the wasteground to where the Citroe¨n’s engine was still idling. ‘ Take me to the morgue.’
As the big car turned slowly, its headlights for a moment picked out a single figure in a ground-floor doorway. He wore a Foreign Legion kepi, and as the Citroe¨n rejoined the road, he moved off swiftly, as though he’d now seen all he needed.
At the morgue, Mathis waited for the attendant to gain authorization to show him in. He told the impassive driver to wait.
‘Monsieur,’ the man grunted, and returned to the car.
The attendant came back with a pathologist, a senior-looking man with gold glasses and a neat black moustache. He shook hands with Mathis and introduced himself as Dumont. Checking and rechecking the numbers on the attendant’s sheet against those on the fridge drawers, Dumont eventually found what he wanted and hauled with both hands on the thick metal handle. It was a moment that had never ceased to give Mathis a frisson of excitement. The cadaver was already greyish, cold, and although it had been cleaned up, the face was a mess.
Hashim looked like thousands of young Algerians who had come to a bad end. And yet . . .
‘Cause of death?’ said Mathis.
‘Single bullet, fired up through the roof of the mouth.’
‘But why the damage to the nose?’
‘He must have been beaten up first,’said Dumont.
‘But it’s not just the nose. Look at his right hand.’
Mathis lifted Hashim’s clenched