just enough to be exciting, but too demure for one not to want to see more. He sits down opposite her. “At last we can start.”
“Photos all right?” In an irritating tone of maternal concern.
He tries to calculate how much genuine kindness there is as opposed to professionalism, and what his chances are of getting a dinner date with her.
For some time now, many things have ceased to interest him. A veil of depression has come between him and the world. He’s plain exhausted. His daughter’s flight has proved that to him. She’s abandoned him, and in the end, he couldn’t care less. Even his inability to feel anything doesn’t bother him anymore. He has the feeling he’s lived thirteen lives and no longer has the slightest energy for the one he’s living at the moment. He feels defeated on all fronts. Only women can still rouse his full consciousness, from time to time, like delightful sirens binding him to the pleasures of life. He’s gone past the age of feeling remorse at cheating on his wife. It’s part of life, Claire knows it, they don’t need to talk about it. Women, a few glasses of wine, certain evenings in good company, the kind of thing that happens less and less often. He gives his answers while looking deep into the journalist’s eyes, affecting the air of condescending tranquillity, with occasional flashes of friendliness, which he knows women adore.
SINCE I’VE BEEN WORKING FOR RELDANCH, I’VE always been careful not to take any interest in the kids I’ve been tailing. In our profession, you call the person you’re following, “the mark,” and the quicker you can forget their first name, the better it works. I have a cell phone with a Carl Zeiss lens, panoramic viewfinder, digital zoom, HD video camera, and an ultrasensitive microphone. I’m more interested in the state of the batteries for my gadgets or scratches on the lens than in the person I’m following. Asking me what Valentine’s like isn’t part of how I’ve learned to do the job. In fact that kind of thing seems unnatural.
My phone rings just before midday, and I haven’t budged from the sofa where I collapsed after my morning coffee. When I sit up to reply, I realize I’ve got a crick in my back, I must have been lying too long in an awkward position, listening to the radio. I say “Uh, yeah, hello,” in a harassed tone, intended to make the caller think they’ve interrupted me in the middle of a task that needs all my concentration.
“Hi, it’s the Hyena, where are you, kid?”
As if we’d been hanging out together every day for years. I’m already sorry I ever asked her for anything, I’m realizing that it would be wise not to succeed in our search, instead we should just wait calmly for the inevitable ghastly fallout. I continue to act evasively. “Oh, hi, yeah, um, I’m going here and there, places I saw Valentine . . . hoping something’ll come back to me.”
“You think you’re Inspector Maigret? Want me to bring you beer and sandwiches?”
I don’t really get her sense of humor and her cheerfulness sounds too loud. I wonder whether she slept with that girl yesterday. I reply more sharply: “I was just going to call her father and try to see him as soon as possible, I think he can help me locate her mother.”
“I’d rather you put the father off till tomorrow. I’ve got someone around there today. I’ll explain. Can we meet?”
This woman’s a loser. Just wants someone to spend the day with. Her reputation must be even more exaggerated than I thought, she’s so much at a loose end that she hasn’t had work for months, so she’s pounced on my case like a tiger on a monkey. Just my luck.
“Well, I was going to . . .”
“Because I called her school, and I’ve got an appointment with the headmistress at two o’clock. The kids eat outside the school, don’t they? I’m going to go around there when classes finish, to try and question a couple of them.”
I feel like reminding her that I arranged with her to do the things I can’t do, not the ones I can carry out perfectly well. I pretend to be immensely busy, checking the calendar to see when I’ve got a spare moment.
“And you want me to come with you, is that it? I was going to . . .”
“But you’re at home, aren’t you?”
“No, I already said.”
“Because I’m not far away from Pyrénées metro. If you’re ready, I can be downstairs from you in ten minutes, I’m in my car.”
“Look, I’m not at home. I just said. I can get to Belleville metro in, ooh, let’s say fifteen minutes?”
I GET THERE a little late. (It’s one stop from Pyrénées.) I look at all the drivers halting at the lights before I see her, watching me, sitting still, on the terrace of the Folies café. When she sees me coming over, she consents to get up and join me. She holds out her hand to greet me, I wonder whether she thinks I’m going to give her some infectious disease or whether at her age she doesn’t know that these days girls kiss each other hello. Or else just say hi. She’s double-parked her car, with a doctor’s permit slipped under the windshield, but that isn’t the oddest thing: she’s driving an old red Mercedes, must date from before I was born. Perfect for a private eye, eh? Nobody would ever notice a car like that, would they?
“I usually take the metro; the traffic’s so awful in Paris.” That’s all I find to say, to sound a bit sulky, to show that I’m not the sort of girl who’s going to be mollified by the luxuriously shabby beige leather of the seats. Cigarette in mouth, she pulls away without a word, stops at the lights, and smiles at two little African girls with cornrows who are holding hands to cross the road. They have identical white socks pulled up tight over their calves. The Hyena looks happy. I wonder if she’s on Prozac. That’s what I tell myself about anyone I find a bit too dynamic. A GPS is clamped to the windshield but it’s not switched on.
I can’t manage to stay silent for long, we don’t know each other well enough to sit side by side without speaking.
“You don’t bother looking for a parking place then.”
“There are plenty of parking lots, we can put it on expenses.”
“As a freelancer, do you get lots of expenses?”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Just that I’m on a wage, and they check things carefully.”
She charitably chooses not to point out that we’re not operating in the same league. “I’m hungry. We’ll stop and have a bite near the school, I know a good Italian place around there.”
We’ve left Chinatown, and drive past the high-rises of Télégraphe. The district is poorer, less commercial.
“You said you’d prefer me to wait before seeing her father?”
“Yep. I’ve got a contact going in there today. She’s going to call me, she had an appointment with him for late morning. I saw that there was a Wi-Fi code mentioned in the file but that you hadn’t copied Valentine’s hard drive. I thought it could interest us though. I asked for the hard drives of the whole family.”
“You’ve got someone who can get into their building and hack their systems?”
“Look, we have the code, we go in, we don’t hack anyone. I also asked for photos of the whole apartment. So I won’t need to go with you. I want to see what it looks like.”
“What
