Rosy & John

by Pierre Lemaitre, Pierre Lemaitre

Genres: Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

A terrifying addition to Lemaitre's award-winning Paris trilogy - Irene, Alex and Camille Jean Garnier lives on the fringes - a lonely nobody who has lost everything dear to him. His girlfriend was killed in an unexplained accident, his mother has just been sent to prison - he has even lost his job after the sudden death of his boss. In one last, desperate cry for help, Jean sets up seven lethal bombs, hidden all over Paris and timed so that one will explode every 24 hours. After the first detonation, Jean gives himself up to the police. He has one simple demand: his mother must be released, or the daily explosions will continue. Camille Verhoeven is faced with a race against time to uncover the secrets of this troubled young man and avert a massive human disaster. Lemaitre's Camille Verhoeven Trilogy - Alex, Irene and Camille - has been a multiple winner of the CWA International Dagger. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Release date: December 14, 2017

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 101

Sample

5.00 p.m.

The unexpected encounter that will forever change your life, the treacherous patch of black ice, the answer you give without thinking . . . It takes only a split second for such decisive events to occur.

Take this little boy, for example, he is eight years old. He has only to make one false step and his whole world might change irreversibly. His mother once had a tarot reading where she was told she would be widowed within the year. She shared this information with her son, her lower lip quivering, her hands clawing at her chest, her voice tremulous with sobs. I had to tell someone, you do understand, don’t you? The little boy had never imagined the death of his father, who seemed to him immortal. Now, he lives in constant fear. Some mothers, honestly . . . This particular mother is thirty but has all the maturity of a teenage schoolgirl. She has long since forgotten this prediction (besides her thoughtlessness, she is also quite scatter-brained, one thought displaces the previous at a frantic rate). For her young son, however, it is a very different matter. His imagination has been overwhelmed by this witch’s tale, he dares not talk to anyone about it; he has constant nightmares. There are days when he is so consumed by the idea of his father’s death it makes him ill; then, for weeks at a time, it will disappear, as if by magic. When it returns, it is with a savage ferocity that makes his knees buckle, forcing him to cling to something, to sit down.

When the threat resurfaces, he resorts to all kinds of rituals, convinced that if his father dies, it will be his fault.

Today: “If I don’t step on a crack, my father won’t die.” It only counts after he passes the boulangerie.

He has scarcely been able to breathe since he left the house, and there is a long way still to go before he reaches his music lesson. Something tells him that this time he will not make it, but he can think of nothing, no excuse that would allow him to give up his challenge. One street, two streets, already he can see the boulevard, but the panic is rising and it seems to him that the closer he comes to deliverance, the closer he comes to catastrophe. He stares at the pavement as he walks, his clarinet case dangling from his wrist. He is sweating. He is two hundred metres from the music school. For no apparent reason – a sense of foreboding perhaps – he looks up and suddenly he sees his father coming in the other direction. There is scaffolding here that forces his father to make a detour, along a wooden walkway that juts out into the street. It is very narrow. Shoulders hunched, his father is walking quickly, decisively. When he walks like this, he looks as though nothing could stop him. The boy is surprised because it is unusual to see him coming home so early.

The slow-motion images that follow will forever be engraved on his memory. Needless to say, this momentary lapse of concentration is all it takes. When he realises his mistake and looks back down at the pavement, he stops dead: his foot is squarely planted on a crack between the paving stones . . .

His father is going to die, it is inevitable.

It takes only a split second for decisive events to occur.

Take the young woman who is walking a little way behind this boy. Not particularly pretty, an economics student, she has never had sex. “The opportunity never presented itself,” she says simply. The truth is more complicated, but that does not matter. It is May, she is twenty-two years old, and all that matters is that at this precise moment she has arrived at the corner of rue Joseph-Merlin, where she now waits for a man who wants her: this is why he suggested that they meet, to tell her that he desires her. She has only to say yes or no and everything will change one way or the other. Nor will it simply affect the pedestrian matter of her virginity. Because she will say no. The man will say that he understands (yeah, right) . . . she will watch him walk away, and just as she is beginning to regret her decision and wants to call him back . . .

Too late.

The explosion is so powerful it rocks the whole neighbourhood. It is like an earthquake, the shockwaves from are felt a hundred metres away.

In a split-second, the little boy sees the body of his father soar into the air as though a giant hand has punched him in the solar plexus. The young woman scarcely has time to open her mouth when her ex-future lover is swept off his feet and thrown through the glass shop front of Women’s Secret.

The rue Joseph-Merlin is a shopping precinct. Clothes shops, shoe shops, delicatessens, dry cleaners, pharmacies . . . it is the most commercial street in the area. To find anything better would mean walking as far as the junction with avenue Pradelle. It is May 20: for days now, a warm summer sun has settled over the city. At 5 p.m., it feels almost like a July afternoon with its tempting promise of an aperitif on a café terrace, there are people everywhere, so, naturally, when the bomb explodes, it is a tragedy, but it is also an injustice.

Then again, if there were any justice in this world . . .

Pedestrians thrown to the ground shield themselves with their arms. A woman in a print dress is pitched backwards, her head slamming against the wooden posts in front of the scaffolding. On the far side of the street, a man dismounting from his moped is hit by an iron bar that appears from nowhere, it shatters his pelvis, doubling him in two; although he is still wearing his crash helmet, it may not be enough to save his life.

The roar of the explosion is followed by an ear-splitting shriek of metal: having wavered briefly after the blast, as though taking a moment to think, the huge edifice of scaffolding shudders, lifts slightly off the ground, and crumples, as though slumping onto the pavement, like those tower blocks dynamited on television that seem to dissolve in an instant. On the pavement opposite, a girl in high-heeled white boots looks up and sees the scaffolding poles disperse like sparks from a firework and fall towards her in a rain as slow as it is inexorable . . .

The explosion obliterates shop windows, cars, the very thoughts in people’s heads. In these endless seconds, no-one can think, ideas seem to have been snuffed out like candles. Even ordinary sounds have been obliterated, a tremulous, unsettling silence hangs over the scene, as though every last person in the city has been killed outright.

When finally the reality of the situation gathers momentum, it flares into every mind. Above the street, those windows not shattered by the explosion timidly begin to open and incredulous faces appear.

Down below, the survivors struggle to their feet and stare, uncomprehending, at the new cityscape.

A war-torn city.

Shop fronts have vanished, the walls behind the scaffolding have collapsed, sending up clouds of plaster dust that settles slowly like tainted snow. The most spectacular new landmark is the vast pile of metal poles and planks that all but blocks the street, four storeys of scaffolding make for an impressive heap. The collapse was almost vertically, completely crushing two parked cars. The heap of planks bristling with metal rods pointing towards the heavens looks like a giant mohawk.

How many are buried beneath the rubble, the shards of glass, the slabs of tarmac? It is impossible to say.

Here and there lie a few prone bodies, a scattering of soil and sand and settling dust, but there are strange sights, like the blue-trimmed jacket on the coat hanger dangling from a “No Entry” sign. The sort of things one might see in houses ravaged by an earthquake: a baby’s cot, a doll, a bride’s tiara, small objects that God seems to have carefully placed here and there to illustrate the black irony of His mysterious ways.

Before his son’s astonished eyes, the father traced an improbable arc. The explosion that lifted him off the wooden walkway has set him down on the bonnet of a parked van where he sits, motionless, looking for all the world as though he is about to play a game of dominos with his son, but his eyes are vacant, his face blood-streaked, his head lists to left and right as though trying to ease a crick in his neck.

The little boy was also swept up by the explosion. His eyes wide, one cheek pressed against the pavement, he is lying next to the portico that broke his flight, still clutching the clarinet case that has snapped open; the clarinet is gone, it will never be found.

Sirens begin to wail.

Confusion gives way to a sense of urgency, a rush of energy, of compassion; those who survived unscathed race towards the fallen bodies.

Some struggle to their feet only to fall to their knees, exhausted.

The dazed silence is followed by a growing clamour of shouts, screams, orders, whistles.

Whimpers are drowned out by a chorus . . .