Cédric Fabre - Marseille Noir

Again I worked hard all day. At twilight, I put my olive crates away in Mademoiselle Niozelles’s garage. I grabbed a dark coat hanging on a peg among other old work clothes. It must have belonged to Mademoiselle Niozelles’s father or husband. It smelled of grass and old dust.

I parked my bike at the very end of boulevard Fernand Durbec, in front of the elementary school I’d gone to for almost ten years.

The gray Mercedes was there, more or less in the same spot as the day before, right in front of the little movie house where I’d seen so many films long ago, every Thursday, with Laurel and Hardy, Fernandel, or Charlie Chaplin. The narrow theater had been closed “for ages,” as Mademoiselle Niozelles would have said. Now you could read above the entrance: Marseille Department of Sanitation.

I pulled up my collar. The night was very dark now. I started walking down one side of the street, then the other, without ever taking my eyes off the gray Mercedes. Through my pocket I could feel the twelve-caliber I was holding under my coat, against my thigh. I had put on thin leather gloves so as to leave no trace in Franck’s car.

The mistral had risen — people were going home with their heads buried in their necks, nobody was looking at anybody else. There was only the hoarse sound of the dead leaves scraping over the asphalt of the boulevard.

Just once, I made a little detour by the restaurant; only three customers were sitting at a table near the bar. The whole village was deserted. It was really the first evening of winter. All there was in the streets was silence and dogs.

I saw him come out fast on the first stroke of nine. He wasn’t looking at anything either. Toward what warmth was he rushing with his head down? From afar, he unlocked his car and jumped in. I unlocked the safety of the rifle with my thumb.

Just as he was about to close his door, he caught a glimpse of me. He turned his head and saw the two dark eyes of the sawed-off shotgun looking right into his eyes. My ice-cold blood was beating through my whole body.

“It’s you?” he managed to utter. His mouth remained agape. In this suburb where I’d spent so many years, he was the only one who recognized me.

“It’s me, Franck. Eight years later. Seemed long to you?”

“What are you doing here, Charlie? I heard you got out. I was glad to hear it. Why didn’t you—”

“Shut up, Franck! Put your hands on your head! You move one centimeter, I rip it off. There are two loads of buckshot inside and you know I’m quick.”

He did exactly as I asked. I opened the back door and sat down behind him. Now he had the two barrels on the right side of his head.

“Close the door and start the car!”

“Charlie, you’re really fucking up now, you’re gonna go back there for twenty more years.”

“Close your door! I won’t say it again!”

He obeyed immediately.

“Start the car!”

“Charlie, I’ll give you all I have — the car, the restaurant, everything. the house. We’ll go have a bite, Charlie, and I’ll give you everything.”

I pushed the double barrel against his temple.

He turned the key and put the car into reverse with a grinding sound. His whole body was vibrating now. He glanced to the right then to the left; the village was even more deserted, dismal.

“Take Palama and stop when you get to the canal.”

He did it. In an instant, the car was filled with the smell of fear. A ghastly stench I had only smelled in prison — from a pedophile they’d mistakenly put in my cell who had inmates waiting for him in the corridor to cut him up. A smell every man or beast recognizes right away, even if he’s never encountered it. A primal smell, wild and revolting. The age-old odor of instinct.

“Park over there.”

I heard his ring clacking against the steering wheel, maybe his teeth clacking too. Years of terror had taken over his body and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Please, Charlie,” he stammered, “please, please, anything you want. ” He was almost screaming. “I have the money from the cash register!”

“Pass me the keys.”

He gave them to me over his shoulder. I got out of the Mercedes and opened the door.

“Get out!”

He was now incapable of doing anything. He almost fell as he tried to get out of his seat. His legs couldn’t carry him anymore. I saw long threads of drool shining in the moonlight.

“Climb up on the bank!”

He slipped on the grass three times. His sweat was stinking up the night. We found ourselves on the little dirt track that runs along the canal.

He began to drone out disconnected phrases that helped him make his way through the night. He seemed drunk.

“Remember, Charlie. We. we. we used to swim here when we were ten. You’d dive off the bridge. you. And the soccer team, Charlie, the goal you scored in Endoume. at least forty yards out. I did something dumb, Charlie, you’re my only friend. Smash my face in if you want, but spare me, please, please, I’m a schmuck, but I’m your friend. I’ll give you everything. Tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the bank and I’ll give you everything! She’s the one who came to see me, Charlie, I swear, I tried to help her, I—”

“And you helped her into bed.”

“People say all kinds of things, please! You’re going to do something crazy, Charlie. You’ll be sorry all your life. Your whole life, you’ll see what you did! You’re not a killer, Charlie, you’re the most—”

“I’m not killing anybody. You’re going to commit suicide. In two days, they’ll find your body in the spot where they found Maurice’s body. Remember little Maurice? You’re going to go through the pipes all the way to Plan-de-Cuques.”

He fell to his knees. His joints were failing him, each of his tendons, every nerve in his body. Terror was twisting his face, shiny with drool and snot. His mouth was a horrible wound and a long sawing sound was coming out of it.

“You’re not just a bastard, you’re a coward, Franck. I remember what the lawyer René Floriot said about his client, Dr. Petiot: He walked to the scaffold as if he were going to the dentist. Think of Dr. Petiot. Stand up and look me in the eye!”

I stuck the double barrels to his forehead.

“Get up and climb onto the wall. I’m giving you a chance. You remember the sluice fifty yards from here, on the other side of the canal? We hung onto it hundreds of times. If you can grab it, I’ll let you live; if not, you go through the pipe.”

“They’ll arrest you, Charlie, you’ll go back there for life. Please. please. please. don’t do this!”

“I’m wearing gloves and a coat that’s not mine. I didn’t even sit on the seat next to you. No prints, no DNA. You committed suicide. I’ve been thinking of this moment for years. I’ve already lived through it ten thousand times. You’ve already died ten thousand times. Even if they question me, they won’t have a thing.” I held out his car keys. “Put them in your pocket!’

He obeyed. If I’d told him to eat his shoes, he would have eaten them.

“Now jump, or I’ll blow your head off! It’s your last chance.”

He huddled up on himself. I turned the rifle toward the canal and pulled the trigger. The report pummeled the night. It banged against the hills, rolled through the valleys, hit the rocks of the Barre de l’Étoile.

With the terrible wind that was now blowing and the blackness of the countryside, I was in no danger. No shutter creaked open on the other side of the fields, behind the rows of cypress trees.

Suddenly, he uncoiled like a spring and threw himself into the canal.

I leaned over the dark water. He was thrashing around, breathing noisily, groaning, suffocating, beating the water like mad to reach the other side of the canal. Fifty yards.