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Histoires De Luna

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He is there



I chose my ideal vantage point. Sitting on the floor with my back against the rear wall of the glassbalcony, I can see through the crack in the blinds. Moving my head I can keep watch through almost one hundred and eighty degrees on the surrounding buildings, while no-one can see me from outside, protected as I am by darkness.

At least twice I’ve lost consciousness of where I am, my mind has got lost among woods and ravines. Someone's at the door, stopping me in the middle of a thought that I cannot recapture. The doorbell rings again, this time accompanied by a woman's voice.

'Mr. De la Tour, I'm Carrel! Open, please.'

I do not move, she still calls.

'De la Tour, if you’re okay and can hear me, say something.'

I reach out looking for the remote control for the door, make the lock snap open. I move crawling on the floor as if through treacle. Air is flowing in, the door is ajar. I slowly push it.

'Mr. De la Tour?'

I can see nothing beyond the threshold. Mechanically, without looking away, I draw the gun from its holster, holding it with both hands in front of me. It gives me an uncanny feeling, I feel strange, too light. With my index fingerI release the safety catch, then stretch out my finger along the barrel to prevent accidental discharge. I push the door open with my foot, it stops half-open, bumping against something.

It’s the last straw, I’m stretched beyond my limit, suddenly dark shadows are seething and my ears are filled with shouts and whistles that only I can hear. I’m seized with violent trembling, my throat tightens, a voice tells me one thing, "Run away!"

Instead I stay pointing the gun at the dark shape on the floor that’s blocking the doorway. Only now do I sense that is Didier, crouched in his bathrobe.

I feel a burning need for oxygen, my legs go soft, I hit the wall with the knuckles of my left hand which I’ve taken off the gun, I’m panting and gasping, looking at my gigantic shadow cast into the room.

'All right Mr. De la Tour?' I say in a voice that I perceive as unreal.

'Yup.'

'Are you alone?'

'Yes, but come away from the light.'

Didier shows me to the window,

'He is there...'

I put the gun back in its holster and feel along the wall to find the switch. Didier covers his face from the beam of light. I help him to get up on his feet, snap my fingers in front of his face.

'You’re with me, Mr. de la Tour.'

'Yes, yes ...' , then he throws himself onto the sofa, '... I’ve had it.'

'Do you get this often?'

'Not anymore.'

I bring him a glass of water, then drag a chair over and put myself astride it in front of him.

'You think Father is watching?'

'He left the whistle for me. It means that he knows I'm handling the case.'

'Why didn't you report it, if you’re so sure?'

'Who to? Those two who interrogated me?'

'Have you spoken to your lawyer?'

'He’s already worried enough.'

'I saw the UCV record. The whistle was not there a couple of hours before we came along.'

'I don’t think it's a coincidence.'

'Rationally, I still can’t believe your captor’s returned, and so far I’ve no rational grounds for doubting the guilt of Béjart. But irrationally, I’m afraid I may be wrong. And if so, you are in danger.'

'Thank you for coming to my rescue.'

'So, can you give me something that will transform my fear into a concrete doubt? Something that I can report back to the magistrate?'

'Do you know what Father wanted to tell me with that whistle?'

'He’s dead, De la Tour, years dead.'

' " Stay off my patch." And I'm going to.'

'If – absurdly - it was Father ... we’re in no position to understand his reasoning. Must I remind you what you said about his inscrutable mind?'

'What choice do we have?'

'I can help you get an assessment of the evidence of the case against him and that against Béjart. What you’re claiming is that the girl was not killed by her father, that there are reliable similarities to your abduction, and that we are not looking for a second body but a living child. I'll get the material to the proper authorities, the girl will have some chance of survival and being rescued. Otherwise it means she’s already been killed by Béjart and that there is no-one out there who’s holding her.'

'What is it that makes you so worried about me and that little girl? What’s making you want to help us against all logic?'

'I'm sick of scratching my ass.'

'Or maybe you have sins to be expiated. If you really want to help me, I need to trust you. How many people you shot?'

'That’s a copper’s secret.'

'I’ll make you a coffee before you go back out in the cold.'

'I'm not going to go. But the coffee will help. I’ve got a job to do here. I have to search your flat.'

'I'm still dazed. I think I heard you say you’ll frisk me?'

'If there’s anyone watching you, he’s using binoculars - or more. I’ll check for microphones and microcameras.'

'You really want to rummage through my stuff? But if you have to sniff through my rubbish, do you mind if we do it together? It’ll embarrass me less.'

'Of course not.' I nod.

'I'll make some good coffee.'

For the rest of the night I open drawers and boxes, move furniture, dab tiles, dismount electrical outlets and light fixtures, trying not to make too much noise so as not to alarm the neighbors. Sleep overcomes me a couple of times, but it’s not my first sleepless night, it is certainly better indoors than in a police van listening for interceptions through headphones on my ears. Didier follows me around for a couple of hours then collapses.

At seven I wake him with a cup of latte.

'What coffee did you use?'

'Just any old coffee I found.'

'I don’t keep any old coffee in my kitchen! Well?'

'Nothing. I even dismantled the TV. Maybe your paranoia is just paranoia.'

'Maybe he listens to me with a laser that detects vibrations in the windowpane?'


'You read too much bullshit. However, you can’t stay here.'

'Are you kidding?'

'Probably there's fucking nobody out there watching you, but if it really was your captor who hung the whistle there, you’ve become a target.'

'If it was Béjart, he’s already killed his daughter. But Father will be keeping her alive until he can dispose of her safely.'

'I've called Roux, he’ll will provide us with all we ask. So, we relocate you?'

'Together?'

'I’ve got a gun and you haven’t. Until I’m dead sure you’re just paranoid I'll have itching in my ass, and I'm not thrilled at that idea.'

'Let me make a couple of phone calls, I know where to find a safe place.'


*

While Didier picks up the phone and Corinne relaxes on the couch to rest a bit, a man in the street stops, looks up at the window. He’s wearing a raincoat zipped up to the neck, and carrying a bag with all that’s needed for a week’s varied diet suitable for an anorexic girl, a young girl who doesn’t want to eat, and is begging tearfully for her parents. The man in the waterproof knows that soon she’ll become more submissive, that’s the way it goes. But someone’s blundering in to ruin everything.

The man is still looking up at the fifth floor. What is happening behind the windows up there is not to his liking.


And he’s thinking how to remedy it...
 
This is a very satisfying story, Luna. Things coming together. Very beautifully handled.
Velut Luna said:
He is there
...The man is still looking up at the fifth floor. What is happening behind the windows up there is not to his liking.

And he’s thinking how to remedy it...
Click to expand...
It seems like things are about to get more interesting for our friends.
 
Caught up! :)


First step

Tired after trying to explain herself to the local cops, Corinne returns to Didier’s flat. He makes her coffee.

They discuss the man. Trying to see his kid despite an injunction not to do so, violent? Abusive?

Didier reads her files. Pulls her leg that she still uses paper and nor electronic media.

She looks around his flat. He’s into old B-movies apparently.

Didier observes that in each succeeding photo of the girl she looks more resentful, sad, and tense. They wonder if she’s autistic, or has ‘Heller’s syndrome’

Then Didier says he needs to see the scene, but admits that he’s not left his flat for two months. Then he tells Corinne that Mrs Bejart’s killer cannot have been her husband; the killer has been trying to set up her husband but his hand, as he decapitated Mrs Bejart, was too steady.

Mrs Bejart’s murderer is an experienced killer.


The Stone Circle

Didier, with effort, overcomes his agoraphobia and makes it out to the car. Several stops are needed on the way to Fontainbleu.

She calls Roux on the way to the crime scene. Things are looking bad for Bejart. It has been established that he purchased the murder weapon. No sign of the girl.

They get to the scene, now Didier de la Tour is suffering vertigo, too.

She shows Didier where the shoes were, then he notices that the clearing contains a stone circle.

(The end of this chapter made my hair stand on end….)

In a clearing near a shrine to the Virgin Mary, Didier finds a boy scout’s whistle hanging on a telegraph pole.

The same one as he discovered just before he himself was abducted by his kidnapper, ‘Father’.


He’s Back

As you can imagine, this discovery has a significant impact on Didier. Corinne is reluctant to leave him, but he assures her that he won’t die, and she calls Roux back.

She tells Roux about the whistle, making it very clear that de la Tour is not in a good state of mental health. Nevertheless Roux urges her to tell D’Alembert.

Corinne wonders if Roux’s hatred for Saintcolomb is clouding his judgement.

Roux tells her to wait, and hangs up.

The one who arrives isn’t D’Alembert, but Saintcolombe.

More superb sniping between Corinne and Saintcolombe. Luna is so good at this. This bit deserves a second view:

Saintcolombe is stuck to the spot, behind my ass.

'Are you afraid that’ll hang someone else?'

'It already has, they’ll send you to stamp passports when you come back.'

'I should learn from you to lick ass with those who matter. How's it going with D'Alembert? Do you bring him coffee in bed?'

He stares at me with hatred.

'You be careful what you say.'

'I am being. Don’t even think what I’d say if I weren’t...'

Didier is saying ‘He’s back’. Saintcolombe addresses him via Corinne; he seems to hate Didier even more than he hates Corinne…

Saintcolombe wants Didier to go and make a statement to D’Alembert; Corinne tries to defend Didier, telling Saintcolombe that de la Tour is traumatized and ill.

One of the technicians with Saintcolombe appears to know de la Tour, but only by reputation from a case that had occurred after Corinne’s ‘disaster’ of the staff of a kindergarten being accused of abuse. De la Tour had helped destroy the case against them. But the mere accusation had destroyed the lives of the teachers, and of the children, who had lost the ability to tell right from wrong and were ‘growing up crooked’.

Saintcolombe gets a couple of cops to guard the scene, orders Corinne to bring Didier to some motorway services where he will meet D’Alembert.


Hyenas and Vultures

At the services, the police are already there, as is Didier’s lawyer, Fleury. Didier tells Fleury that the kidnapper is the Father.

Fleury tells Corinne that he’ll hold her responsible if any harm comes to Didier.

Corinne takes Fleury to one side and urges him to get his client away from there. Fleury has been instructed by Didier that he wants to do this, to ‘move on’.

D’Alembert isn’t pleased to see Fleury, but the meeting goes ahead.

They discuss the whistle; Didier says that he believes it is the same whistle as was taken from him by his kidnapper. So he believes that it was left by his kidnapper, who has now kidnapped Luciole Bejart.

D’Alembert and Saintcolombe don’t believe him. They tell him that his kidnapper (Borrel) is dead. Didier replies that Borrel was not his kidnapper.

The discussion returns to the whistle. The police do not believe Didier’s account of it being his, although the whistle is of a type that is old enough to have been his. There was no record of a whistle being in his possession. They suggest it was dropped by some child. Didier wonders if a child would have thoroughly cleaned it of fingerprints and saliva before losing it.

So Saintcolombe suggests it was de la Tour himself who cleaned it, did Corinne Carrel watch him all the time?

Fleury threatens to withdraw if de la Tour is going to be questioned in this manner, and D’Alembert manages to calm things down.

Corinne closes this question by assuring everyone that she had not let de la Tour out of her sight for a second.

De la Tour cannot account for why the Father might have left the whistle there, but he cannot account for much of what the Father did. He urges D’Alembert to consider what the girl is going through.

But D’Alembert makes it clear that he regards de la Tour to be an unreliable witness.

Fleury and Didier leave.

Saintcolombe want to know what Corinne is up to. What’s she doing and why has she involved a ‘nutcase’ like de la Tour? Is Roux pulling her strings?

Corinne denies it but Saintcolombe makes it clear that he doesn’t believe her.

Now comes another spine-tingling moment. Fleury goes to buy cigarettes, Saintcolombe’s car is seen to drive away, but someone grabs Didier and pulls him into a dark, windowless toilet cubicle.

He recognizes the Father’s voice. 'It’s me you have to be afraid of. If you go on talking about the whistle, I'll lock you in a hole, in a hole in the ground, with only a tube to breathe through. Do you understand?'

‘Father’ leaves Didier on the floor of the toilet. Corinne sees a car speeding off. Fleury returns, and D’Alembert is seen leaving the service station. Luna seems to have excluded D’Alembert, Fleury, and (worst luck) Saintcolombe from suspicion….

Didier is swept away by Fleury. Corinne is collected by Aubert; she tells him to head for Paris with the siren going.


At Home

Fleury takes Didier home, where he takes a much needed shower.

Fleury is worried about him, but Didier assures him that he’s not much worse off; he was already convinced that Father was still alive but now he is totally certain.

Fleury leaves. Didier watches him go. Father is still out there and Didier is still his prisoner.


Meanwhile an exhausted Aubert gets Corinne to Paris. She walks the last few streets to Roux’s place, walking long dark alleys in the hope of meeting some skunk that she can knock the living shit out of, even perhaps the neighbor of Roux’s that had one given her a thong that he’d found, but instead she find Roux sitting on the top stair.


The Gun

Tempted though she is to push him downstairs, she sits down next to Roux.

He gives her a gun and some ammunition, and some authorization papers that are valid until she resigns, which she promptly tries to do. She stands up to go and write the letter, but Roux holds her arm. He tells her that de la Tour is right about the whistle. He shows her an old magazine article about Didier in which he mentions the whistle.

Roux then showed her a photograph of the crime scene taken earlier. Clearly, no whistle on the telegraph pole. It has been put there subsequently.

By someone who’d known that de la Tour was coming.

Corinne grabs her gun and leaves.

(Luna, this is getting unbearably tense!)


He is There


Corinne goes to Didier’s flat. Reluctantly, he lets her in, but the flat is in darkness and she comes damn close to shooting him.

Didier knows only too well that ‘Father’ left the whistle for him to discover, and is not surprised when Corinne tells him that it appeared after the initial inspection of the area.

Corinne says that her head doesn’t believe him but her heart fears that he is right, and if so he is in mortal danger.

Didier says that ‘Father’ was warning him off his patch, and that he intends to heed that warning.

If, Corinne says, Didier is right, then Luciole is still alive, not killed by her violent father.

She searches his flat overnight, looking for bugs; he helps her for a couple of hours then falls asleep, and she wakes him at seven with a coffee. She found no bugs. Nevertheless she has to get him out of there.

Didier knows where to go, and makes a call.

A man is watching the flat. A man who has a girl in his custody. And who doesn’t like what’s happening in the flat…
 
Before


Inside the fake Millet backpack that’s been placed on the bottom of the teak and ricepaper wardrobe is a pressure cooker containing about two kg of a mixture commonly called C-4, a powerful high explosive much loved by the military, but also by terrorists. At 21.30 a digital timer sends an electrical pulse from four AA batteries into a small steel capsule, it is the detonator that produces the necessary temperature for the trigger. The C-4 explodes, instantly transforming into gas that travels at a speed more than three times that of sound. The pressure cooker is fragmented into shards and a mass of hot air expands.

Shards, fragments of the wardrobe, pieces of pulverized wall and hot gases pepper the elderly couple sitting at the table near the entrance. The first to be affected is the man, he is literally lifted into the air. For an instant he appears in a pose of crucifixion, then his limbs are torn from their joints and ripped from his body, while the splinters, fragments and dust pass through it. The shock wave continues, overwhelming his wife. She still has her head bent toward the dessert bowl, immersed in her gloomy reflections, she is pushed back, assuming a semi-foetal position. She rolls, but at every turn her body loses its integrity she crumbles. Fragments of her body and that of her husband, the table, the glasses, the Chardonnay bottle - contents vaporised - go to swell the cloud of shrapnel, reaching the newlyweds at the centre table.

The bride is hit first, her left eye-socket is gouged by a dessert spoon from the elderly neighbours, while her body is split into two by the impact of the table and hits her husband who falls backwards still sitting on his chair with the menu in his hand catching fire. But flames have yet to burst when the shock-wave and the salad of fragments swoops on to the German executive and his novel. The arm-bones of the elderly woman impale his skull and chest like spears. He falls backwards, the remains of his neck hit the feet of the bridegroom who is continuing his slide along the floor.

The shock wave spreads to the group of Japanese and the maitre. The kinetic energy is uneven, there are differences in pressure and direction due to the obstacles that the expanding gas-bubble meets in its path. This factor gives the five men no protection, they are simply pulled in all directions at once, as if condemned to be quartered bound to wild horses. Three of the Japanese lost their upper limbs, the back of the fourth is torn open from the shoulder-blades to the tailbone, the spine broken into pieces. The maitre, partially shielded by the four Japanese but standing taller than them, is hit in the face by a piece of concrete like a big bar of soap. The fragment penetrates his mouth and comes out of the back of his head. The maitre is projected towards the window, which explodes as it is hit by the shock-wave. The energy of the explosion is dispersing outwards, but not enough.

Shards, fragments and hot dust continue their trajectory, hitting the waiter like machine-gun fire as he waits for the DJ make his stupid joke, piercing his back, mincing his heart, lungs, liver and intestines, bursting through and riddling the agent's face – he’s still in search of words to say to the girl. They hit the DJ and his girlfriend, slamming them against a pillar. The left hand of the DJ and the right hand of the girl, still entwined, tear off and fly across to the four Albanian models and their Greek escort, preceding by a horizontal rain of concrete fragments. A javelin of flaming teak from the wardrobe, about fifty centimetres long, drives into the spine of one of the girls, just above a tattoo of two butterflies kissing, and exits from her navel. The shock-wave scatters them like skittles and they glide across the now burning floor. The man's sternum breaks inwards, crushing the heart muscle.

While the head of the DJ is projected backwards, breaking off from the cervical vertebrae, what's left of the young husband hurtles through a window and falls down into the street at the same instant as one of the models, the one that was about to get up to get the last snort of coke, impacts against another column that grinds her backbone to gravel. The table-top where she and the others were seated rises and flies like a frisbee – one weighing more than fifty pounds.

The shock waves continue to spread out. One part continues to expand into the room, the other is forced into the stairwell, the air is compressed as if forced on by a train in a tunnel, and it gets even hotter. The force uproots the balustrade, rips the plaster from the walls and reaches the floor below. A bartender ends belly up on the counter, while the shaking of walls, like a force five earthquake, throws down shelving and bottles, shattering the glass cases with their sweets and hurls the coffee machine onto the bartender, breaking his ribs and several vertebrae.

The shockwave is unleashed towards the Fashion Emporium. The ceiling collapses, dragging electric lighting wires, cutting off the power to the lower floors. Dummies and display cases collapse, the dresses of the Zara collection fly away blazing in the fiery air. The windows of Bar and those of the Emporium explode outward, strafing parked cars at the kerbside with glass shards.

On one of these, a Smart parked illegally, with its parking lights flashing - the owner is drinking an aperitif at balcony table of the cafe round the corner - the long journey of the young bridegroom ends, bursting through the roof of the car with the remains of his upper body. On impact his face is almost completely devoid of nose, lips or eyes.

The table-top turned frisbee ends its flight too, with its weight it has lost a lot of the energy it initially had. If it had just glanced against one of the pillars, or an updraught of hot air had deflected it, it would have been rendered harmless. But today is not the day for miracles, the frisbee continues its trajectory unimpeded. The woman with piercing eyes doesn’t really see it, but later she will be convinced she at least sensed it, the shadow of a fireball that flashed in the corner of her eye. The table plummets down, hitting the pot, throwing her to the ground, bursting out her breath.

It's three seconds since the explosion. The roar, bouncing along the walls of the buildings, fills the square, the frightened pigeons take flight.


Then the screaming begins.
 
Velut Luna said:
Before


Inside the fake Millet backpack that’s been placed on the bottom of the teak and ricepaper wardrobe is a pressure cooker containing about two kg of a mixture commonly called C-4, a powerful high explosive much loved by the military, but also by terrorists. At 21.30 a digital timer sends an electrical pulse from four AA batteries into a small steel capsule, it is the detonator that produces the necessary temperature for the trigger. The C-4 explodes, instantly transforming into gas that travels at a speed more than three times that of sound. The pressure cooker is fragmented into shards and a mass of hot air expands.

Shards, fragments of the wardrobe, pieces of pulverized wall and hot gases pepper the elderly couple sitting at the table near the entrance. The first to be affected is the man, he is literally lifted into the air. For an instant he appears in a pose of crucifixion, then his limbs are torn from their joints and ripped from his body, while the splinters, fragments and dust pass through it. The shock wave continues, overwhelming his wife. She still has her head bent toward the dessert bowl, immersed in her gloomy reflections, she is pushed back, assuming a semi-foetal position. She rolls, but at every turn her body loses its integrity she crumbles. Fragments of her body and that of her husband, the table, the glasses, the Chardonnay bottle - contents vaporised - go to swell the cloud of shrapnel, reaching the newlyweds at the centre table.

The bride is hit first, her left eye-socket is gouged by a dessert spoon from the elderly neighbours, while her body is split into two by the impact of the table and hits her husband who falls backwards still sitting on his chair with the menu in his hand catching fire. But flames have yet to burst when the shock-wave and the salad of fragments swoops on to the German executive and his novel. The arm-bones of the elderly woman impale his skull and chest like spears. He falls backwards, the remains of his neck hit the feet of the bridegroom who is continuing his slide along the floor.

The shock wave spreads to the group of Japanese and the maitre. The kinetic energy is uneven, there are differences in pressure and direction due to the obstacles that the expanding gas-bubble meets in its path. This factor gives the five men no protection, they are simply pulled in all directions at once, as if condemned to be quartered bound to wild horses. Three of the Japanese lost their upper limbs, the back of the fourth is torn open from the shoulder-blades to the tailbone, the spine broken into pieces. The maitre, partially shielded by the four Japanese but standing taller than them, is hit in the face by a piece of concrete like a big bar of soap. The fragment penetrates his mouth and comes out of the back of his head. The maitre is projected towards the window, which explodes as it is hit by the shock-wave. The energy of the explosion is dispersing outwards, but not enough.

Shards, fragments and hot dust continue their trajectory, hitting the waiter like machine-gun fire as he waits for the DJ make his stupid joke, piercing his back, mincing his heart, lungs, liver and intestines, bursting through and riddling the agent's face – he’s still in search of words to say to the girl. They hit the DJ and his girlfriend, slamming them against a pillar. The left hand of the DJ and the right hand of the girl, still entwined, tear off and fly across to the four Albanian models and their Greek escort, preceding by a horizontal rain of concrete fragments. A javelin of flaming teak from the wardrobe, about fifty centimetres long, drives into the spine of one of the girls, just above a tattoo of two butterflies kissing, and exits from her navel. The shock-wave scatters them like skittles and they glide across the now burning floor. The man's sternum breaks inwards, crushing the heart muscle.

While the head of the DJ is projected backwards, breaking off from the cervical vertebrae, what's left of the young husband hurtles through a window and falls down into the street at the same instant as one of the models, the one that was about to get up to get the last snort of coke, impacts against another column that grinds her backbone to gravel. The table-top where she and the others were seated rises and flies like a frisbee – one weighing more than fifty pounds.

The shock waves continue to spread out. One part continues to expand into the room, the other is forced into the stairwell, the air is compressed as if forced on by a train in a tunnel, and it gets even hotter. The force uproots the balustrade, rips the plaster from the walls and reaches the floor below. A bartender ends belly up on the counter, while the shaking of walls, like a force five earthquake, throws down shelving and bottles, shattering the glass cases with their sweets and hurls the coffee machine onto the bartender, breaking his ribs and several vertebrae.

The shockwave is unleashed towards the Fashion Emporium. The ceiling collapses, dragging electric lighting wires, cutting off the power to the lower floors. Dummies and display cases collapse, the dresses of the Zara collection fly away blazing in the fiery air. The windows of Bar and those of the Emporium explode outward, strafing parked cars at the kerbside with glass shards.

On one of these, a Smart parked illegally, with its parking lights flashing - the owner is drinking an aperitif at balcony table of the cafe round the corner - the long journey of the young bridegroom ends, bursting through the roof of the car with the remains of his upper body. On impact his face is almost completely devoid of nose, lips or eyes.

The table-top turned frisbee ends its flight too, with its weight it has lost a lot of the energy it initially had. If it had just glanced against one of the pillars, or an updraught of hot air had deflected it, it would have been rendered harmless. But today is not the day for miracles, the frisbee continues its trajectory unimpeded. The woman with piercing eyes doesn’t really see it, but later she will be convinced she at least sensed it, the shadow of a fireball that flashed in the corner of her eye. The table plummets down, hitting the pot, throwing her to the ground, bursting out her breath.

It's three seconds since the explosion. The roar, bouncing along the walls of the buildings, fills the square, the frightened pigeons take flight.


Then the screaming begins.
Click to expand...

My God!

What will Luna do next?

Here's my summary:

Before

BANG!

:eek:
 
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