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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2015 by Editions Payot & Rivages

  First publication 2019 by Europa Editions

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by MacLehose Press,

  an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd

  Translation by Sam Taylor

  Original Title: Après la guerre

  Translation copyright © 2016 by Sam Taylor

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  Cover photo: Willy Ronis (©) Ministère de la Culture - Médiathèque

  de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

  ISBN 9781609455415

  Hervé Le Corre

  AFTER THE WAR

  Translated from the French

  by Sam Taylor

  AFTER THE WAR

  1

  A man is on a chair, hands tied behind his back. Wearing only a vest and underpants, he sits motionless, jaw slack, chin on his chest, breathing through his mouth. A thread of bloody spit dangles from his smashed lips. With each breath his chest heaves, though it’s hard to tell if he is sobbing or retching. The arch of his right eyebrow is cut, and blood trickles into his swollen eye, a blackened egg. A huge bruise bulges from his forehead. Blood from his face has dripped onto his undershirt. There’s blood on the floor too.

  The room is lit only by the lamp suspended above the pool table, which shines in a tight, yellowish cone and leaves everything else in the shade: four circular café tables with orange chairs around them, a scoreboard, a storage cabinet. There are wall lights, with little green lampshades, but apparently no-one thought to turn them on.

  Around the man on the chair stand three other men who smoke cigarettes and, for the moment, say nothing. They are slightly out of breath too; their breathing comes in fits and starts, slowly returning to normal. One of them in particular—a tall, fat man—coughs violently, almost choking, as he drops his cigarette butt to the floor and crushes it under his heel. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, revealing powerful biceps. The shirt he wears is tight around his protuberant belly, the buttons threatening to burst open at any moment. He has curly black hair that gives his round face the look of an ill-tempered angel. Lips pursed, he frowns, his pale eyes with their large pupils trained at this moment on the back of the neck of the man slumped in the chair.

  “Alright, so what do we do?”

  The other two stare dreamily at the man’s inanimate body, as if they have not heard this question. The oldest of the three steps closer to the unconscious man. He leans down to examine the swollen face, snaps his fingers near one of the ears.

  “We have to wake him up. He can’t take it, this pussy.”

  He stands straight and slaps the man on the top of his head.

  The man flinches, his good eye opening wide.

  “You know where you are? You know why you’re here? Do you remember? Hey, I’m talking to you! Can you hear me?” With a groan, the man nods. Maybe that’s the word yes forming at the back of his throat. “You know Penot? Yeah, of course you know him. All we want is the guy who killed him. That’s all. So tell us where Crabos is and we’ll let you go home. You understand?”

  The fat man sighs. He clears his throat then spits on the ground. Breathing more easily, he lights another cigarette. The click of his American lighter. The third man is sitting on a chair now, elbows leaning back on a table, his legs stretched out, ankles crossed. He looks at his watch. The only sound is the victim’s labored breathing.

  “We’re wasting time,” he says. “Fuck’s sake, it’s nearly midnight. He’s not going to talk.”

  “Yes, he is. Aren’t you, eh? Grab his head!”

  The man gets up from his chair, removes his jacket, rolls up his shirtsleeves and wraps his arm around the man’s neck, choking him with the hollow of his elbow. The oldest one lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag, watching the tobacco flare red, then steps closer to the man, who is now trying to scream, the sound muffled by the vice-like pressure of the arm around his throat.

  “Where is Crabos? It’s obvious he’d have murdered Penot the first chance he got, given what Penot did to his brother during the Occupation. We know it’s him, or one of his pals. So fucking tell us, or we’ll torture you until you’re fucking dead.”

  He moves the cigarette close to the man’s right eye.

  The man gasps that he doesn’t know, the words sputtering out in a spray of blood. Then the end of the cigarette is crushed into the skin just below his eye and he screams. The man holding him struggles to stop him shaking his head, and his body convulses so that the chair moves, the legs scraping quietly on the wooden floorboards. The fat man comes to his rescue, flattening his hands against the victim’s temples with the vexed expression of a man who is wearied and annoyed by this type of routine obligation.

  “Shut your mouth,” he says. “And answer Albert, unless you like having only one eye.”

  He pronounces these words without raising his voice, in a tone of impatient advice. His hands are posed on the man’s bloody head like a helmet, with his thick fingers as the visor.

  The man called Albert removes the cigarette from the victim’s face and takes another drag. The stink of burned skin and flesh. Smoke floats under the pool-table lamp, thick and nonchalant. He makes a sign to the other two and moves in again. He holds the tobacco embers close to the corner of the man’s eye.

  “Listen, if Penot was here, he’d already have given you a manicure. He always did that to fags like you when he sniffed one out, and then they’d have to use more nail polish for a while! And your prick would already be plugged into the mains. So, you see, in a way it’s better that he’s dead. But we know how to make people talk too. We have other ways. We’ll work you over with a flick-knife, like a pig.”

  The man in the chair shakes his head. He moans that he’s done nothing wrong, that it’s not him. That he doesn’t know anything. Tears roll endlessly down his cheeks.

  “Stop fucking whining, you’re getting on my nerves. Just tell me where I can find Crabos or I’ll stub out my cigarette in your eye, you cunt. I’ll use you as an ashtray all night long if I have to.”

  The two others immobilise the man the way they did before. They are calm, methodical. Diligent. They betray no impatience, no anger. Only a faint weariness can be read in their glistening faces. The man tries to put up a fight, but his struggle is futile given the straitjacket of arms and hands holding him tight. A couple of eyelashes are already sizzling and the air smells of scorched hair. All three of them are startled by the scream the man lets out. Albert takes a step back, holding his cigarette between thumb and index finger. The man groans and gasps and chokes, his throat filled with phlegm. He has given up his struggle now, too preoccupied with the important task of breathing. Then suddenly he shouts out, throwing his torso forward so violently that the chair almost tips over:

  “Rue du Pont de la Mousque! He’s spending the night at Rolande’s place with his girl. He’ll go to Spain tomorrow for the winter. He hasn’t stayed in his own flat for the last week; he says it’s not safe cos the others are looking for him after what happened to Penot.”

  He slumps, breathless, head down. His chest jerks as he gobbles up air, his lungs whistling like burst tires.

  “That gives us a bit of time,” say
s Albert.

  He gestures to the fat man, who takes a flick-knife from his trouser pocket, unfolds the blade and stands there looking at the steel gleam, turning it over in his hands so it catches the meagre light from every possible angle. The man on the chair weeps silently, mouth twisted. Then, in a whiny voice, he manages to say that they shouldn’t do that to him, that he’s told them what they wanted to know.

  The fat man cleans one of his fingernails with the point of the knife. He sniggers.

  “Do what?” he asks, in mock surprise. “You think we’re going to butcher you here? You think we’re going to mess up these nice floorboards with your filthy blood? And who’d clean up afterwards? You? The old lady would go bananas if we got her pool room dirty.”

  “That’s enough, let’s get out of here. Francis, go and fetch the car.”

  Albert throws him the keys. Francis uses a large handkerchief to wipe the blood from his hands and forearms, then puts on his jacket, followed by a coat that he’s picked up from a table.

  The street lies somewhere behind the station, pockmarked with large cobblestones and cut across in many places by train tracks where diesel locomotives sometimes rumble through, towing freight wagons. No-one around. In the distance, the sounds of metal creaking, a dog barking. They shove their prisoner into the back of the car. He is crying.

  They drive, Albert at the wheel, Francis next to him. On the back seat, the fat man and the man they tortured. No-one speaks. Someone called the fat man Jeff, a little earlier, when they were starting the car. They talked to the other man but never used his name. They tied his hands behind his back before making him sit down. They never gave him time to get dressed, so now, wearing only underwear on the imitation leather car seats, he is shivering and sniffing and his teeth are chattering. His name? It will probably appear, a few days from now, in the local news section—or maybe even on the front page—of the Sud-Ouest newspaper, after his body has been discovered and identified.

  On the other hand, it is important to understand why Albert insisted on driving: the car, an almost new 403, belongs to the judicial police department, of which he is the head.

  Commissaire Albert Darlac.

  They slow down in a dark street on the north side of the city, in a district full of factories and workers, trapped between the marshland with its flooded paths and the muddy river that flows northward. Riverside poverty. They turn on to a concrete track that leads to the submarine base near the docks, left behind by the Germans. You can sense its gigantic mass absorbing the night and condensing it into impenetrable darkness. They stop on a rutted part of the track next to a wasteland invaded by thistles and brambles. Francis and the fat man open the car’s back doors and drag out their victim, who falls to his knees in a puddle of water. Francis picks him up like a rag doll, standing him back on his feetand cutting the rope that binds his wrists. Then he pushes him in front of the car, where he’s illuminated by the headlights.

  “You’re free to go. Now fuck off!”

  The man trembles and moans. He doesn’t move. He stares at them uncomprehendingly, trying to read the truth in their faces but seeing there, probably, only the night. He hugs himself tight in this frozen darkness, then begins to walk cautiously—because he’s barefoot—along a path that can just be made out amid the scrubland.

  Jeff, the fat man, takes a Luger pistol from the inside pocket of his pea coat, silently loads the breech, then moves forward and aims at the back of the man, who is panting and groaning a little further up the path, as his feet are hurt by the thorns and other junk that litter this squalid wasteland. When the gunshot rings out, Darlac and Francis flinch slightly because the noise rebounds from the concrete walls of the monstrous blockhouse, amplifying the detonation and seeming to spread its echo all across the city.

  The man is thrown forward by the impact and he trips, one knee to the ground, and yells out in pain, then stands up again and tries to run. He goes two or three meters, shrieking, and his figure is about to disappear into the darkness, beyond the headlight beams, when the fat man fires again and they see a pale shape fall and then the dried-out vegetation moving, collapsing, where he crawls perhaps, or fights against what is killing him. They hear the rattle of his breath, muffled groans, the sounds of leaves rustling, dead branches snapping.

  Jeff walks over to him, holding his gun down at his side. His massive body waddles.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Darlac asks.

  “Nothing,” Jeff replies, without turning around.

  He fires three more shots and looks at what lies at his feet, which the other two cannot see.

  Albert Darlac starts the car and puts it into reverse. Francis gets in just before it begins to move. They watch Jeff running towards them in the headlight beams. He’s heavy but so quick, so agile as he opens the door on the fly, yelling angrily.

  “Fuck’s sake, Albert, what’re you playing at?”

  Darlac does not respond. He manoeuvres the car onto the cobblestones of the street.

  Behind him, the fat man wheezes, coughs, mutters.

  “He had to die, didn’t he? So what’s the problem?”

  “Couldn’t miss your chance, could you? Gets you hard, does it? You’re a fucking lunatic! You like that, do you, a nice bit of red meat?”

  Half turned to the back of the car, Darlac bellows at the fat man as the car rattles over the cobblestones. His gloved hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, he shakes it as if he means to yank it free. Francis, shrinking imperceptibly into his seat, looks through the windows at the empty boulevards moving past in the dimly lit night. Suddenly there is silence inside the car. The only sound is Jeff breathing through his nose like a sulky child, trying to contain his rage.

  “You didn’t ought to talk to me like that,” he says at last in a quiet voice, as they drive past the wall of the Chartreuse cemetery.

  “‘I didn’t ought to?’ I’ll talk to you how I want. You obey, and that’s it. We kill this piece of shit, and that’s how it goes. One bullet, nice clean job, leave him to rot, end of story. So calm the fuck down, or I’ll send you back where you came from!”

  The fat man says nothing. He looks down, his hands touching.

  “You’re a hard bastard,” Francis says. “Christ, people don’t say stuff like that.”

  “A hard bastard, am I? We’re doing this to make sure that Destang jerk doesn’t declare war and set fire to the whole fucking city. And this asshole goes and does that? He was out of line, and you know it. He’s not following the rules anymore.”

  Leaning against the door, Francis sniggers.

  “Oh, there are rules, are there? First I’ve heard of it. The only fucking rule I know is the law of the jungle—you don’t mess with the lion. And right now, the lion is us.”

  “True. But you still do things a certain way. What we left behind there is the work of a weirdo, a psychopath, not the work of serious men. People won’t respect us if we leave that kind of shit lying around.”

  Francis nods. Jeff sniffs. Everyone goes silent. Then, as they approach place Gambetta, they look at the people coming out of the Rio cinema in little groups, then at those rushing into the square in the cold. Here the city has a little light, a little life. Cafés with tables outside, the neon signs of the cinema. They take the cours de l’Intendance down to the docks, the street still packed with cars and pedestrians. They have to wait at a red light at the corner of rue de Grassi. Some women pass, laughing. Francis lowers his window and calls out to them. They turn towards him, giggling and nudging each other.

  “I’d do one of them. Just a quickie, you know, take her up the ass . . .”

  The car starts up again and he winds the window up, shifting awkwardly in his seat. They have to take a detour via the stock exchange to reach rue Saint-Rémi. At the corner of rue du Pont de la Mousque, Darlac parks the car on the sidewalk and they get out, the doo
rs banging shut at almost exactly the same time. They run towards the blue hotel sign, lit by the feeble glow of a single bulb. In the small lobby, the manageress, Rolande, wakes up as they arrive, weary eyes peering out from folds of wrinkles. With a sigh, she asks them what they want.

  “Police,” says Darlac, holding up his I.D.

  She puts her glasses on the end of her nose and compares the photograph with Darlac’s face.

  “And them?”

  Husky voice. Tobacco, alcohol, a vile life.

  The commissaire nods. In unison, they show their red, white and blue cards.

  Darlac spots a telephone behind her.

  “Don’t touch that or I’ll shove it down your throat. Got it?”

  The woman shrugs.

  “Oh, stop it, Darlac, I’m terrified. What do you want?”

  “Crabos.”

  “Don’t know him. Seafood isn’t my thing.”

  He slaps her so hard he knocks her off the chair and sends her flying into a little table behind, overturning an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and two phone books. All of this comes crashing noisily to the floor. Darlac bends over the counter, leaning on his crossed arms.

  “Crabos,” he repeats. “Don’t make us get nasty.”

  The woman sits up a little bit, leaning against the partition and pulling her dress down over her thighs. She stares at the three men and wipes her split lip with the back of her hand. Blood trickles down her chin.

  “Room eight. Second floor.”

  She gets to her feet, still leaning against the wall, out of their reach. Darlac nods at the telephone and Jeff goes behind the counter, rips out the wires and ties them around the woman’s neck.

  “I won’t make it too tight, this time. There you go—pretty as a bollard!”

  Francis laughs.

  The woman doesn’t move. She is short of breath, face frozen, mouth open and full of blood. Tears roll down her cheeks, blackened by mascara.