Dominique Manotti: Rough Trade

Wednesday 21 May, 10 p.m. Roissy

Romero, unshaven, exhausted, his clothes creased, came to meet Daquin. The airport was almost deserted. Daquin glanced critically at Romero’s appearance but seemed in a better temper than the day before.

‘Was Istanbul OK?’

‘Beautiful, beautiful town.’ A heartfelt thought for the wife of the director for Anatolian Studies, the little wooden hotel below Saint Sophia, the seagulls in the pinnacles, the dark shape of the basilica against the clear sky, the radiophonic tone of the muezzins. ‘I met police officers who knew Agça. According to them he’s crazy enough to plot the assassination of the Pope and lucid enough to have a chance of success. On the other hand, according to the Turkish cops, he’s a rather bad shot, which explains why he always shoots at point-blank range. That gives us a chance. After his escape, last November, he settled in Germany. They thought he was still there. As for the rest, no real clues. What about you?’

‘We’ve begun all the interrogations again. We’ve had no sleep since yesterday morning. Results: on Wednesday 5 March, the day when the photo was taken, Agça arrived in Paris, coming from Germany, apparently. Since then he’s completely disappeared. The Turks think he wasn’t living in Paris. One detail, interesting, perhaps: he doesn’t speak a word of French. We identified the two men who put up the leaflets round the Gymnase about the assassination of Osman Celik, and we got them to talk. It really was Agça who assassinated Celik. They were there to create a diversion and cover his flight. He didn’t even need it. He left again that same evening by car, with Celebi, the little dealer whose corpse I identified in Rouen. The decisions to kill Celik and Sener were taken by the leader of the network in France, whom no Turk has ever met. He was the only man to have had contact with Agça. He issued his orders by post to the two Turkish leaders in the shops, poste restante, written in Turkish. When they had to say or to ask for something, it went through Moreira and Kutluer.’

‘Well protected.’

‘So it seems. The Turks didn’t know that Celebi had been killed and they don’t understand why. That’s it. That’s all we’ve been able to get in two days of uninterrupted interrogations. They’re not kind-hearted. We’re tired, but so are they.’

‘From the little I was able to see over there, they must have acquired a certain resistance to tough interrogations, they’ve got used to them. Do you think there’s anything more to be got out of them?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Thursday 22 May, 8 a.m. Passage du Désir

Attali, the first to arrive, had acquired a television from another office, with some difficulty, together with a video recorder, and prepared the cassette. He waited for the others. Tense, exhausted, somewhat confused by what he had seen during the last few days. Romero, Lavorel, and then Daquin came in and sat down round the table.

Attali switched on the television and inserted the cassette.

*

The girl was there, sitting naked on the edge of the vast white bed in the middle of the room, with mirrors all round. She’s childlike yet already world-weary. In a corner is a Louis XV armchair, at the far end, a table-height fridge. On it are tumblers, flutes, goblets, an assortment of glasses. She’s gently swinging her legs and singing to herself. A man comes in. He’s also naked. She studies him, gives him the once-over. Around forty-five, bullneck, fat, small bum, thin legs, balding, but a real mat of ginger hair on his chest. She smiles and beckons, and he, with gluttonous face, sidles slowly towards the icebox, opens it, pours himself a very generous whisky. ‘Want a drink, baby girl?’ — he raises his glass to her. The gesture is rather too expansive: he sloshes the whisky on the thick white carpet. She shakes her head, says nothing, but has a constant smile. He drinks, lets the glass fall on the carpet, goes over to her, collapses on the bed, laughing.

She makes him lie face down, sits on the small of his back. Next to him, she’s incredibly fragile. She begins massaging him, mewing softly to get herself into the rhythm. He lets her do it, groans with pleasure, encourages her. ‘Give your little daddy a cuddle.’ She lies on top of him, nibbles his neck, his ears. He stirs slowly, emits a few inaudible sounds, snatches at the carpet with his fingers. She turns him over on to his back. He looks pleased. She gently massages his dick. The man leans up on his elbows. He looks at this tiny body barely able to balance on his, turns towards the mirrors and smiles at them. He’s humming. She solemnly applies herself to her task. Her face is more attentive, her smile fixed, her eyes watching the other person’s reaction.

All at once the man senses he’s being watched. He seems to be waking from a long sleep, but his eyes are glazed. The girl slowly raises her hands towards the man’s nipples and starts pinching them gently. The humming transmutes to a long moan. He sits up and she falls on the bed. He’s overcome with panicky fear. His eyes are dilated. He screams ‘She’s going to kill me’. He curls up, hands over eyes, and starts kicking out at the girl. ‘Is it a game?’ she asks, still smiling, but seems a little anxious. She avoids the kicks and tries to calm him by drawing him down on the bed, caressing his shoulders and nipples. ‘Remember, I’m your baby.’ But he screams again. ‘Don’t grow up, don’t grow up.’ Then he grabs her by the throat, shakes her, throws her down on the bed and squeezes, squeezes. ‘You won’t have me.’ She struggles a bit, not much, she’s completely crushed by the man’s massive weight. She can’t cry out any more. After one, two minutes she stops struggling altogether.

*

The cassette came to an end.

‘So, it was Bertrand.’ Romero and Daquin looked at each other.

‘That fat pig had had a bad trip.’

‘I’d expected it to be Kashguri.’

‘He must have been in a corner, full of heroin, masturbating. Then the two of them came out of it. Picked up the body, which they wrapped up in just anything. The girl was very small. They left Simon Video by the back alleys, completely deserted at night, to dump the body as far away as possible, but without crossing rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin, which was busier. They went into the last building, found the door to Bostic’s workroom inadequately locked, hid the body beneath the gypsy pants and slammed the door behind them. They threw away the clothes somewhere else, or gave them to the Salvation Army. And, since they’d barely got over the trip, they forgot the video cassette. VL came by and found it. Things must have happened more or less like that.’

‘Can Bertrand lead us to Kashguri and Ali Agça?’

‘Wait. That’s not all I must tell you where I found the cassette. Baker’s video cassettes were divided up into three series by the FBI. First series, the cassettes filmed in Tehran, “secret defence”. I was spared those. Second series, the commercial stock. I worked with an agent from the FBI who helped me sort them out. Everything showing boys was eliminated, since I was looking for the murder of a young girl. I viewed a hundred speeded up cassettes. I didn’t know such things were possible. A young girl whose sex and anus had been slashed with a razor … I’ll skip that. In the end, nothing. Then the FBI guy told me there was a third series, Baker’s private cassettes, those he hadn’t had reproduced for commercial distribution, and the FBI thought that he used them for applying pressure or blackmail. Twenty or so altogether, usually scenes that were much more “soft”, classic adultery or homosexual love scenes.’

Daquin laughed.