Free Nazis in the Metro by Didier Daeninckx Page B

changed her life, and every minute that followed was devoted to revenge … She went off to study nursing, then came back to practice, settling back in as if nothing had happened, as if that horrible night never had occurred. Or so everyone thought …
    The eel rose up in Gabriel’s throat; he downed the dregs of his Tsingtao in an effort to calm the nausea.
    —And which one of the bastards killed her?
    —None of them, in my view. Those men, now drowning in their own rotten blood, still don’t know how the virus got to them … They think they got unlucky with a one-night stand. It’s even more terrible not knowing who to blame. No, the murderer is to be found elsewhere … If you have five more minutes to spare, come to my office, and I’ll show you his photo …

12
WITH HIS TAIL BETWEEN HIS LEGS
    When they pushed open the door to the printshop, the worker was finishing his bagged lunch, sitting on the ladder of the hulking press. Ledoeunf steered Gabriel toward a small furnished office in the back, behind the stockpiles of paper. He pulled out a large binder that contained a copy of every edition of the newspaper that had appeared since the beginning of the year, and shuffled through to find the one from the first week of July. He set it down on a ream bearing the Conquéror logo.
    —That’s him!
    Gabriel leaned over the photo, which was framed with a thick black border and occupied most of the front page below the headline. You could sense the official nature of the posed shot, and how the figure facing the lens, a man of about sixty, was trying to present an image of himself as energetic, responsible. Gabriel read the blocky type that appeared above the portrait:
    TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE OF THE
INDUSTRIALIST EUGÈNE AUDIAT
    He skimmed the opening of Ledoeunf’s article, in which allof the titular responsibilities of the President Director General Founder of the Society for Audiat’s Metal Fabricators were enumerated. The important phrase was drowned in an accretion of commonplaces, a festival of fluff:
    Monsieur Eugène Audiat never recovered from the murder of his daughter Valérie, on July 4, 1990, five years ago to the day. Those close to him connect that family tragedy with his own fatal act.
    Ledoeunf closed the binder over the collection of newspapers.
    —In my opinion, he killed his daughter when he found out what she’d done … We’ll never know the circumstances … Anything is possible … We can’t even know whether he was aware of Valérie’s own motive …
    Gabriel was visibly shaken.
    —When André Sloga came to see you, in the spring, did you tell him what you just told me?
    —Barely a tenth of it … He didn’t need me to: he’d been alert to the slightest shred of gossip for weeks. He knew almost everything already.
    —All the more reason for someone wanting to shut him up …
    —In these parts, people settle scores the old-fashioned way. Why hire Parisian thugs when there was no lack of opportunities here in the swamps? It just wouldn’t be done.
    Gabriel walked over to the door. He turned back around when the printer started up the offset and the grippers began to claw at the void.
    —You’re going to put this in the next edition?
    Ledoeunf lowered his eyes behind his bulletproof glasses. He pressed the palm of his hand to his head.
    —The paper is here, in its ideal, perfectly calibrated state … I don’t think it’s time yet to put it out … I’m going to add two or three new bits of information, put an end to this whole Swamp Fever myth, and in a month, or at the most two, people will be ready to know the whole truth.
    Gabriel could see from the look in the journalist’s eyes that it would never happen, that the ideal paper would stay right where it was, nice and warm. Too much time had passed since Ledoeunf had abandoned his youth, his
Vendée Fury …
The natives of Bonvix and its environs would learn more from buying Sloga’s book, if he managed