After the Crash by Michel Bussi Read Free Book Online Page A

to land at Roissy on 23 December, then spend a day in
Paris so they could admire the Christmas lights. Another whim of
Stéphanie’s. She was an orphan, adored by the entire Vitral family.
Her presence made them feel good. In truth, she did not need a trip
to Turkey in order to be happy. Everything she wanted from life she
could find in Marc and Emilie, her little darlings, their father and
their doting grandparents.
    Pierre and Nicole Vitral were together when they heard the news.
They were listening, as they always did, to the seven o’clock bulletin
on France Inter.
    Facing one another, on either side of the cluttered kitchen table.
The two stoneware bowls – Nicole’s filled with tea, Pierre’s with
coffee – remained there for a long time afterwards, the whole scene
frozen in the moment when life stopped in that little house on Rue
Pocholle, Pollet, the old fishermen’s quarter that lay like an island
in the middle of Dieppe.
*
‘Why Lyse-Rose?’ Nicole Vitral suddenly yelled.
    They lived in a street of semi-detached houses. There were ten
buildings in the cul-de-sac, each of them containing two dwellings.
Everyone could hear everyone else. Nicole’s shout alerted the whole
neighbourhood.
    ‘Why would they say the baby was called Lyse-Rose? Huh? Who told them that was her name? The baby? She said her name to the
firemen, did she? A three-month-old baby on that aeroplane, a
little girl with blue eyes . . . That’s our Emilie! She’s alive. How can
anyone say she’s not? They’re plotting against us because she’s the
only one who survived. They want to steal her from us . . .’
    There were tears in her eyes. The neighbours began to come out
of their houses, in spite of the cold. She collapsed into her husband’s arms.
    ‘No, Pierre, no. Promise me . . . promise me they won’t take our
granddaughter. She didn’t survive that crash just for someone else
to steal her from us.’
    In the little bedroom that adjoined the living room, two-year-old
Marc Vitral, woken by his grandmother’s cries, began to scream. He
could not possibly understand what was happening, though, and he
would not retain any memory of that terrible morning.
2 October, 1998, 9.24 a.m.
    Marc stopped reading, and wiped the tears from his eyes.
No, of course he did not remember that morning. Not until he
read this account of it.
There was something surreal about discovering each detail of the
tragedy that had consumed his childhood in this way.
The noise and movement around him in the bar was making his
head spin. The five guys from the student association got up and
left, still laughing, and the glass door banged shut behind them.
Marc breathed slowly, trying to calm himself down. After all, he
already knew almost all of this story. His story.
Almost all.
The clock said it was 9.25 a.m.
And he had only just begun.

6
2 October, 1998, 9.17 a.m.
    Malvina de Carville knocked on the glass with the barrel of her
Mauser L110. The dragonflies barely stirred. Only the largest, with
its sparkling red body and gigantic wings, attempted to raise itself
an inch or two into the air before falling to the floor of the vivarium, where it lay piled up with dozens of other insect corpses. Not
for a moment did Malvina de Carville think of switching on the
oxygen in the tank or lifting the glass lid to allow the survivors to
escape. She preferred to watch the creatures suffer. After all, she was
not to blame for this massacre.
    She hit the glass with her revolver again, harder this time. She
was fascinated by the insects’ despairing attempts to flap their heavy
wings in that thin, deadly air. She stood watching them for several
minutes. Let them all die, these dragonflies – what did she care?
They weren’t why she was here. She was here for Lyse-Rose. Her dragonfly. The only one that mattered. Malvina moved off into the
room. Surprised by the living-room mirror, she found herself staring at her own reflection. A