Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [79]
“Where does the one filmed by the surveillance camera of the Pentagon come from?”
“A cousin who works for a security company in Washington … He pirated it before the FBI picked up every piece of material and embargoed it. He was asking a hundred thousand dollars for it. Carvel agreed right away, except I later found out that he was secretly negotiating to resell it for six times that much.”
“Is that what you were talking about in the Mauvoisin? He didn’t want to back off, or return the tape … ?”
“Correct.”
At the end of the day, a special adviser from the State Department came to pick up the video showing the impact of AA Flight 77 on the Pentagon and return it to the American authorities. The only thing Lieutenant Mattéo was still wondering about was what the wino on rue du Gaz was going to do with all the loot she inherited from her son.
DEAD MEMORY
BY PATRICK PÉCHEROT
Les Batignolles
Translated by Carol Cosman
I’m going to kill him and I don’t know why. Wait—“know” isn’t the right word. I certainly knowwhat led me to hold a pistol to his chest. You don’t just do things like that accidentally. To anyone at all. At least that’s what I think. Unless you weren’t brought up right. Which is not the case with me. Or you’re a serial killer. That’s what they’re called now, right? Whatever. I’m not a serial killer. Being like that must leave traces in you—an aftertaste of blood, a smell of death.
The smell comes up without warning, like bile rising after you’ve been on a binge. It’s morning. These moments are always mornings. Dawns, to be precise. Precision is important. So it’s dawn. You wake up out of a troubled sleep, all nauseous. Opening your eyes is sometimes like a sudden need to throw up. In the half-light, the shape lies on the floor. A heap. Soft, of course. Soft? The idea came to you because you thought of a pile of laundry. Each time, you think of a pile of laundry. There; you took that from a bad book and you kept it. Otherwise, why? The body curled up at the foot of the bed is completely rigid, and you know it. And cold. Its muscles hardened, its tendons petrified. Its veins too. Blue under the ivory skin, they’re like ink cartridges in a pen with the ink dried out.
You murdered him before you went to bed. You’d never seen him before, but some nights you have to do it just to get some sleep. There’s nothing to be done about it. At least you know why you’ve killed him. In order to sleep. That’s a reason, right? And a good one too. When you’ve watched the clock going around for days without getting any sleep, it’s understandable.
But him—I don’t even remember why I’m going to kill him.
A memory! That’s the word. There is a reason why he has to die, but I no longer remember what it is. His death is a necessity. Still, it’s embarrassing—his being there at one end of my pistol with me at the other. All the same, I can’t decently ask him why I’m killing him.
“You want to kill me, Monsieur Robert? And why?”
There, you can’t count on anyone. It’s not like I’m asking him for the moon. He’s going to die, so a little piece of information just in passing wouldn’t cost him much.
“No big deal, really.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, don’t make it worse.”
“Make whatworse, Monsieur Robert?”
“Everything. The situation, your dazed expression, your idiotic questions …”
“Ah, I understand …”
“You sure took your time …”
“He’s tired, isn’t he?”
“What?”
“He’s not his best today …”
“Who?”
“It happens to everyone. Does he want to rest a little?”
“For God’s sake, who are you talking about?”
“Take my arm, I’ll help you over to the armchair. And give me that revolver—”
“Pistol!”
“That pistol. It must be very heavy.”
“Not at all. Eight hundred and fifty grams. It’s clear you don’t know anything about weapons.”
“Right.”
“Obviously, you have to add the bullets, which takes us—with eight grams per bullet, at twelve per clip—to around a kilo.”
“Bravo!”
“Good! I can still carry that.