Free Nazis in the Metro by Didier Daeninckx Page A

as long as you assure them you won’t use it … It’s the way the regional press works, but they don’t explain that to you in journalism school: they take advantage of the naïveté of novices … The Audiat affair could easily be a case study for deciphering these invisible practices of censorship and self-censorship … I didn’t speak about it to André Sloga when he came to see me at the paper, but I’m thoroughly convinced that the police arrested that innocent vagrant, when the investigation had barely begun, for the sole reason of covering up the trail … They had to put out the fire and offer a bogus story to the public so that everyone would be thinking the same thing!
    —This would be plausible if it was your local celebrity Ségolène Royal who’d been found in the swamp … But Valérie Audiat doesn’t justify such a conspiracy of silence!
    Ledoeunf let out a hiccup that made his shoulders shake.
    —You’re losing sight of the context. From the point of view of a Parisian, a man who is directly responsible for five hundred jobs, and indirectly for just as many, is nothing special. And it wouldn’t mean anything that he is also the heir of one of the oldest families in the region. The fact that, in addition, he’s vice president of the chamber of commerce, president of the Rotary club, and a councilman for the marshland’s most important city, Bonvix, would only make him more of a rube in your eyes … And yet, from the pointof view of the people here, that’s a considerable amount of power. Everyone is indebted to him for something: a job for their youngest child who’s been acting out, help getting a loan from the Agricultural Credit Union, an intervention with a congressman or tax collector, a dispensation for a driver’s license …
    —A powerhouse.
    —Exactly. He can get anything done. And after we learned about the murder of his daughter, the entire region was walking on eggshells, starting with the cops. It was of the most urgent importance to disconnect this heinous crime from the family of the region’s biggest benefactor. Hence the arrest of the wild coypu breeder … Rumors had started to spread when the illness struck all of Bonvix’s medical professionals, who shared the additional distinguishing feature of having been seen by Valérie: the pharmacist, the two doctors, the surgeon, and the vet, one after the other …
    —You’ve forgotten the forest ranger, the one Sloga called Fernand in his book …
    The journalist tapped his forehead with the tip of his index finger.
    —Don’t worry, I have the whole story here, perfectly intact! In reality, his name wasn’t Fernand but Alfred Tourneur. He died first, from AIDS, less than a month after Valérie’s murder. I knew her well as a child. Her father paraded her about like a mascot. Pretty as a picture, cunning as a fox; she conquered everything in her path. He talked about how he would make a scholar of her, how she’d be in line for a Nobel Prize, but at around seventeen, eighteen, things took a turn. She shut down and started to keep toherself, she let her studies go completely and settled for a shitty job as a nurse in the district run by her own father!
    Gabriel felt a sense of fatigue descend on his shoulders. He had a vague idea about what Ledoeunf was going to throw at him, but he couldn’t help asking the question.
    —What had happened to her?
    —The absolute worst horror … For the daughter of a proletarian from Aubervilliers or for a wealthy Vandéean! She was raped after one of the debauched parties that are common here among the bourgeoisie. According to my sources, it took place in the gardens of the house belonging to Francois Corn, the surgeon from Niort … The two doctors, the vet, and the pharmacist waited their turns … The forest ranger approached when he heard Valérie’s screams. She cried to him for help, but he did nothing, out of cowardice … That was the night that