The Accident on the A35 Read online

  Praise for Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project

  Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016

  Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Awards 2016

  Winner, Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2016

  Winner, Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year 2016

  ‘A spellbinding piece of serious new fiction…Riveting, dark and ingeniously constructed.’ Edmund Gordon, Sunday Times

  ‘A smart amalgam of legal thriller and literary game that reads as if Umberto Eco has been resurrected in the 19th-century Scottish Highlands.’

  Mark Lawson, Guardian

  ‘An astonishing piece of writing … a voice that sounds startlingly authentic.’

  Jake Kerridge, Telegraph

  ‘Compelling and entirely true to its setting … as good as historical fiction gets.’

  Critics’ Choice, Times

  ‘Brings an extraordinary historical period into focus …This is a fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Man Booker has brought it.’

  Justine Jordan, Guardian

  ‘Gripping, blackly playful and intelligent … one of the few [Man Booker longlist titles] that may set the heather – and imagination – ablaze.’

  Robbie Millen, Times

  ‘His Bloody Project has a feel for authentic-seeming time and geography that transports readers into the moment …but its overarching themes are timeless.’

  New Statesman

  ‘Sucked me in from the very first page with compelling narratives … A series of convincing but unreliable voices circles the central event and left me breathless.’

  Val McDermid, Guardian

  ‘A brilliantly written story of rural hardship, fractured community and eventual, inescapable bloodshed.’

  Ian Rankin, Guardian

  ‘Burnet proves that the undeniable pleasures of the crime novel can be combined with real literary value and an experimental narrative structure … Few readers will be able to put down His Bloody Project as it speeds towards a surprising (and ultimately puzzling) conclusion.’

  Barry Forshaw, Financial Times

  ‘One of the most convincing and engrossing novels of the year.’

  David Robinson, Scotsman

  ‘The dark intimacy of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project – a rich, brooding book … is difficult to classify, and utterly compelling from the first page.’

  Jon Day, Man Booker Prize judge

  ‘Grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let you go. This multilayered novel about a 19th-century murder near Applecross is as heartbreaking as it is desperate.’

  Kirsty Wark, Guardian

  ‘Darkly engaging.’

  Sally Magnusson, Books of the Year, Herald

  ‘The overwhelming appeal of this excellent novel is its authenticity: Macrae Burnet marshals a wide variety of Victorian styles and voices and every single one of them rings true.’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A gripping story, a deeply imagined historical novel, and glorious writing … a tour-de-force.’

  Chris Dolan, Book of the Year, Herald

  ‘Compelling … a fine achievement from an ambitious and accomplished writer.’

  National

  ‘This is a novel on which Robert Louis Stevenson might have bestowed an envious blessing.’

  Robert McCrum, Observer

  ‘A real box of tricks … a truly ingenious thriller as confusingly multilayered as an Escher staircase.’

  Daily Express

  ‘Riveting.’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘Wonderfully vivid and moving … a love letter to Scottish literature … a terrific psychological thriller.’

  Alistair Braidwood, Scots Whay Hae

  ‘Such an engrossing plot that I couldn’t put it down.’

  Nicola Sturgeon, Books of the Year, Herald

  ‘Graeme Macrae Burnet makes such masterly use of the narrative form that the horrifying tale he tells in His Bloody Project … seems plucked straight out of Scotland’s sanguinary historical archives.’

  New York Times

  ‘Halfway between a thriller and a sociological study of an exploitive economic system with eerie echoes to our own time, His Bloody Project is a gripping and relevant read.’

  Newsweek

  ‘Offers an intricate, interactive puzzle, a crime novel written, excuse my British, bloody well.’

  Los Angeles Times

  ‘Burnet has created an eloquent character who will stick with you long after the book is read.’

  Seattle Review of Books

  ‘Maddeningly brilliant… A cunning and unreliable tale that still bloody nags at me.’

  Hannah Kent, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Genius … His Bloody Project is provocative, rewarding reading for its deeply observed explorations of repression, loyalty, justice and truth.’

  Sumana Mukerjee, Livemint

  Praise for The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

  ‘Burnet skilfully knits together a solid detective story and a compelling character study to make a captivating psychological thriller.’

  Herald

  ‘One of the best debuts from a Scottish writer in some time.’

  National

  ‘A character-driven plot that is incredibly engaging … the writing is evocative and the characters intriguing.’

  Bookseller

  ‘A strikingly singular talent, Burnet blends a gripping story with compelling characters and surprising sweeps of the imagination. This is an accomplished, elegantly written and exciting first novel.’

  Booktrust

  ‘Clever, playful and bleakly funny, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau has all the makings of a cult classic.’

  A Novel Bookblog

  ‘Imagine Crime and Punishment filtered through the sensibilities of Simenon and Beckett and distilled into a novel … Gripping and mysterious, The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau lingers in the reader's mind long after the late nights of reading it has inspired.’

  John Langan, author of The Fisherman

  ‘This is a crime novel but it is so much more than that, and whilst it owes a lot to Simenon, it is in no way diminished by that comparison.’

  Crime Review UK

  ‘A deeply atmospheric read … in Graeme Macrae Burnet, we have a refreshing new storyteller, one who presents his morbidly interestingly tales in a most assured and riveting fashion.’

  Scottish Books

  Longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award

  Selected amongst Scotland’s Best 2014 Titles by The List Magazine

  Contraband is an imprint of Saraband

  Published by Saraband

  Digital World Centre,

  1 Lowry Plaza,The Quays,

  Salford, M50 3UB,

  United Kingdom

  www.saraband.net

  Copyright © Graeme Macrae Burnet 2017

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN: 9781910192870

  ISBNe: 9781910192887

  Editor: Craig Hillsley. Cover artist: Scott Smyth.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  1

  2

  3


  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Translators Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  On the 20th of November 2014, a package addressed to Raymond Brunet’s former editor, Georges Pires, was delivered by courier to the offices of Éditions Gaspard-Moreau on Rue Mouffetard in Paris. Pires had died of cancer nine years earlier, and the parcel was instead opened by a young trainee. It contained two manuscripts and a letter from a Mulhouse-based firm of solicitors stating that they had been instructed to dispatch the enclosed documents to the publishing house on the occasion of the death of Brunet’s mother, Marie.

  Brunet, the author of a single previous novel, The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, had thrown himself in front of a train at Saint-Louis railway station in 1992. Marie Brunet, having outlived her son by some twenty-two years, died in her sleep at the age of eighty-four, two days before the dispatch of the package.

  Despite (or perhaps even because of) the anachronistic nature of the submission, the trainee, who had not been born when Brunet’s earlier book appeared in 1982, did not grasp the significance of the contents. The manuscripts were logged in the usual way and consigned to the firm’s slush pile. It was not until four months later that a more senior member of staff at Gaspard-Moreau realised what they had in their possession. It is the first of these manuscripts, L’Accident sur l’A35, which you now hold in your hands.

  The decision to publish was not taken in haste. It had first to be ascertained that Gaspard-Moreau was not the victim of a hoax. It was, however, a simple matter to confirm that Brunet had indeed lodged the manuscripts with a lawyer shortly before his suicide. The solicitor in question, Jean-Claude Lussac, was long retired, but he remembered the incident well and, as the only accessory to the scheme, had observed the rumours about the existence of unpublished works that followed Brunet’s suicide with a mixture of amusement and guilt. A simple test also showed that the manuscripts had been written on the typewriter that still sat on the desk of what had once been Brunet’s father’s study at the family home in Saint-Louis. Such proofs, however, are entirely redundant. Even to the casual reader, it is obvious that the style, milieu and thematic concerns of The Accident on the A35 are indistinguishable from those of Brunet’s earlier novel. And for those inclined to interpret the work as a roman-à-clef, it was quite obvious why Brunet did not want the novel to be published in his mother’s lifetime.

  GMB, April 2017

  What I have just written is false. True. Neither true nor false.

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Words

  One

  There did not appear to be anything remarkable about the accident on the A35. It occurred on a perfectly ordinary stretch of the trunk road that runs between Strasbourg and Saint-Louis. A dark green Mercedes saloon left the southbound carriageway, careered down a slope and collided with a tree on the edge of a copse. The vehicle was not immediately visible from the road, so although it was spotted by a passer-by at around 10:45pm, it was not possible to say with any certainty when the crash had occurred. In any case, when the car was discovered, the sole occupant was dead.

  Georges Gorski of the Saint-Louis police was standing on the grass verge of the road. It was November. Drizzle glazed the road surface. There were no tyre marks. The most likely explanation was that the driver had simply fallen asleep at the wheel. Even in cases of cardiac arrest, drivers usually managed to apply the brakes or make some attempt to bring the vehicle under control. Nevertheless, Gorski resolved to keep an open mind. His predecessor, Jules Ribéry, had always urged him to follow his instincts. You solve cases with this, not this, he would say, pointing first to his considerable gut and then to his forehead. Gorski was sceptical about such an approach. It encouraged an investigator to disregard evidence that did not support the initial hypothesis. Instead, Gorski believed, each potential piece of evidence should be given due and equal consideration. Ribéry’s methodology had more to do with ensuring that he was comfortably ensconced in one of Saint-Louis’ bars by mid-afternoon. Still, Gorski’s initial impression of the scene before him suggested that in this case there would not be much call for alternative theories.

  The area had been cordoned off by the time he arrived. A photographer was taking pictures of the crumpled vehicle. The flash intermittently illuminated the surrounding trees. An ambulance and a number of police vehicles with flashing lights occupied the southbound lane of the carriageway. A pair of bored gendarmes directed the sparse traffic.

  Gorski ground out his cigarette on the shingle at the side of the road and made his way down the embankment. If he did so, it was less because he thought his inspection of the scene would offer up any insights into the cause of the accident than because it was expected of him. Those gathered around the vehicle awaited his verdict. The body could not be removed from the car until the investigating officer was satisfied. If the accident had occurred just a few kilometres north, it would have fallen under the jurisdiction of the Mulhouse station, but it had not. Gorski was conscious of the eyes of those gathered on the edge of the copse upon him as he scrambled down the slope. The grass was greasy from the evening’s rain and his leather-soled slip-ons were ill suited to such conditions. He had to break into a run to prevent himself losing his balance and collided with a young gendarme holding a flashlight. There were suppressed titters.

  Gorski took a slow turn around the vehicle. The photographer ceased his activity and stood back to allow him an unencumbered view. The victim had been propelled, head and shoulders, through the windscreen. His arms remained by his sides, suggesting he had made no attempt to shield himself from the impact. His head slumped on the concertinaed bonnet of the car. The man had a full greying beard, but Gorski could ascertain little more about his appearance, as his face, or at least the part that was visible, was entirely smashed in. The drizzle had plastered his hair to what was left of his forehead. Gorski continued his tour around the Mercedes. The paintwork on the driver’s side of the vehicle was deeply scratched, indicating that the car might have travelled down the slope on its side before righting itself. Gorski paused and ran his fingers over the crumpled bodywork, as if expecting it to communicate something to him. It did not. And if he now took his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and scribbled a few perfunctory notes, it was only to satisfy those observing him. The Road Accident Investigation Unit would determine the cause of the accident in due course. No flashes of intuition were required from Gorski or anyone else.

  The offside door had been forced ajar by the impact. Gorski wrenched it further open and reached inside the overcoat of the victim. He indicated to the sergeant in charge of the scene that he had concluded his inspection and made his way up the slope to his car. Once inside he lit another cigarette and opened the wallet he had retrieved. The dead man’s name was Bertrand Barthelme, of 14 Rue des Bois, Saint-Louis.

  The property was one of a handful of grand family homes on the northern outskirts of the town. Saint-Louis is a place of little note, situated at the Dreyeckland, the junction of Germany, Switzerland and eastern France. The municipality’s twenty thousand inhabitants can be divided into three groups: those who have no aspiration to live somewhere less dreary; those who lack the wherewithal to leave; and those who, for reasons best known to themselves, like it. Despite the modest nature of the town, there are still a few families who have, in one way or another, built up what passes for a fortune in these parts. Their properties never come up for sale. They are passed down through the generations in the way that wedding rings and items of furniture are passed down among the poor.

  Gorski pulled up at the kerb and
lit a cigarette. The house was shielded from view by a screen of sycamores. It was the sort of street where an unfamiliar vehicle parked late at night swiftly elicited a call to the police. Gorski could quite legitimately have delegated the disagreeable task of informing the family to a junior officer, but he did not wish it to appear that he was not up to the job. There was a second, more insidious, reason, however; one that Gorki had difficulty admitting even to himself. He was here in person because of the address of the deceased. Would he have had the same misgivings about sending a lower-ranking officer to a home in one of the less salubrious quarters of the town? He would not. The truth was that he believed that the people who lived on Rue des Bois were entitled to the attention of the town’s highest officer of the law. They expected it, and were Gorski not to carry out the task in person, it would later be whispered about.