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

shiver of disgust ran through her. She
hated that white hair slide, the way her long, straight hair parted
neatly in the middle; she hated her sky-blue wool jumper with its
lace collar; she hated her flat chest, her skinny arms, her six-stonesomething body.
    People in the street thought she must be a fifteen-year-old girl,
at least when they saw her from behind. She was used to seeing the
shock in their eyes when they were confronted by her face. She was
a twenty-four-year-old teenager, dressed as if she’d just been transported from the 1950s.
    Fuck it. She didn’t care.
They could all go screw themselves, all those people who’d
been telling her the same thing for the past eighteen years, all
those shrinks, supposedly the best in the country, whom she had
exhausted, defeated, one by one. All those child psychiatrists, those
nutritionists, those specialists on this and that. And her grandmother. She was sick of the tune they’d been singing to her all these
years. Refusal to grow up. Refusal to age. Refusal to mourn. Refusal
to forget Lyse-Rose.
Lyse-Rose.
She knew what they meant when they talked about mourning
her, forgetting her. They might as well say kill her.
She turned and walked towards the fireplace. She had to step
over the corpse. Not for anything in the world would she have let
go of the Mauser in her right hand. You never knew. Although it
didn’t look as if that bastard Grand-Duc was going to get up any
time soon. A bullet in the chest. And his head in the fireplace.
She grabbed the poker in her left hand and clumsily dug around
in the hearth.
Nothing!
That shithead Grand-Duc had left nothing behind!
Increasingly annoyed, Malvina started to bang the iron rod
around the fireplace, smacking Grand-Duc in the face and raising
a cloud of black smoke. There had to be something : a scrap of paper
that hadn’t been burned, a clue of some kind . . . But no, she had to
face facts. There was nothing here but tiny flakes of black confetti.
The archive file boxes lay scattered over the floor, the dates written in red felt tip on the side: 1980, 1981, 1982-83, 1984-85, 1986-89,
1990-95, 1996 . . .
All of them empty.
A blind, uncontrollable rage rose within Malvina. That piece of
shit detective was really taking the piss. Was this what her grandparents had paid him for, for eighteen years? Not just his salary but all
his expenses, his travel, his costs . . .
For a pile of ashes!
Malvina dropped the poker on the polished floorboards, leaving
a black gash in the wood. It was their money that had paid for this
bastard’s house, in the ultra-chic Butte-aux-Cailles neighbourhood. Their money . And for what, in the end? So that he could burn all the
evidence before shutting his big fat mouth for ever.
She tightened her grip on the Mauser.
Malvina de Carville felt no more compassion for Grand-Duc
than she did for the dragonflies in the vivarium.
Less, in fact.
He had got what he deserved: shot through the heart in his own
home, his eyes, nose and mouth buried in the warm embers of his
lies. He had known the risk he was running when he started double-dealing. Well, now he’d lost. Why waste tears over that? The
only thing she regretted was that he could no longer talk. But she
wasn’t going to give up. She would not abandon her little sister. She
was there for her, always. Her Lyse-Rose, her little dragonfly. She
had to keep searching. She had to find something.
That notebook, for example. The book containing Crédule
Grand-Duc’s notes. From what she had gathered, it had a pale green
cover. Where could he have hidden it? Who might he have given
it to?
Malvina walked into the kitchen. Everything seemed clean
and tidy. A blue dishcloth hung from a nail. Anyway, she’d
already searched this room, and found nothing. It was the
same in every other room – Grand-Duc was a meticulous kind
of guy.
So, the house was a dead end. She needed to think.
Malvina considered the telephone call her