Free The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet

support as well and begins walking through the empty streets in the direction he has decided on. Apparently no one is interested in what he is doing: the doors remain closed, no face appears in the windows to watch him pass. Yet his presence on these premises is necessary: no one else is concerned with this murder. It ’ s his own case; they have sent him to solve it.
    The commissioner, like the workmen earlier this morning, stares at him with astonishment—hostility perhaps—and turns his head away: his role is already over; he has no access, on the other side of the brick walls, to the realm in which this story is happening; the sole purpose of his speeches is to make Wallas feel the virtual impossibility of entering it. But Wallas is confident. Though at first glance the difficulty is even greater for himself—a stranger in this city, and knowing neither its secrets nor its short cuts—he is sure he has not been asked to come here for nothing: once the weak spot is found, he will unhesitatingly advance toward his goal.
     
    He asks, just to make sure:
    “ What would you have done, if you had gone on with the investigation yourself? ”
    “ It ’ s not in my line, ” the commissioner answers, “ which is why they took it away from me. ”
    “ Then what is the responsibility of the police, in your opinion? ”
    Laurent rubs his hands a little faster.
    “ We keep criminals within certain limits more or less fixed by the law. ”
    “ And? ”
    “ This one is beyond us, he doesn ’ t belong to the category of ordinary malefactors. I know every criminal in this city: they ’ re all listed in my files; I arrest them when they forget the conventions society imposes on them. If one of them had killed Dupont to rob him or even to be paid by a political party, do you think we would still be wondering, more than twelve hours after the murder, whether it wasn ’ t a suicide after all? This district isn ’ t very big, and informers are legion here. We don ’ t always manage to prevent crime, sometimes the criminal even manages to escape, but there ’ s never been a case where we haven ’ t found his tracks, whereas this time we ’ re left with a lot of unidentified fingerprints and some drafts that open doors. Our informers are no help here. If we ’ re dealing, as you think, with a terrorist organization, they ’ ve been very careful to keep from being contaminated; in this sense, their hands are clean, cleaner than those of a police that maintains such close relations with the men they ’ re watching. Here, between the policeman and the criminal, you find every grade of intermediary. Our whole system is based on them. Unfortunately the shot that killed Daniel Dupont came from another world! ”
    “ But you know there ’ s no such thing as a perfect crime; we must look for the flaw that has to exist somewhere. ”
    “ Where are you going to look? Make no mistake about it, Monsieur: this is the work of specialists, they ’ ve obviously left few things to chance; but what makes the few clues we have useless is our inability to test them against anything else. ”
    “ This case is already the ninth, ” Wallas says.
    “ Yes, but you ’ ll agree that only the political opinions of the victims and the hour of their deaths have allowed us to connect them. Besides, I ’ m not so convinced as you that such coincidences correspond to anything real. And even supposing they do, we ’ re not much further: what use would it be to me, for instance, if a second murder just as anonymous were committed in this city tonight? As for the central services, they don ’ t have any more opportunities than I do to get results: they have the same files and the same methods. They ’ ve taken the body away from me, and it ’ s all the easier for me to abandon it to them since you tell me they have eight more they don ’ t know what to do with. Before your visit, I already had the impression that the case didn ’ t have