Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Now, in the distance, I can see the line of almost face-like rocks, black against the evening sky. I’ve given each one a name and, according to Vader, they’ve been in the same place since time began. Not like Daniel Boussioux who lives next to old Grey Knickers. He’s creeping along between our vines, arms stretched out as if hunting for something he might have lost during this first day of harvest. He’s still there even now, past my bedtime, and I can see him in the moonlight from my unlit bedroom window. Sometimes he straightens up to stare in my direction. as if he’s doing something wrong and mustn’t be caught.

  “Liesbetje,” says a voice behind me, as two big hands rest on my shoulders.

  “What’s so fascinating out there? Some wild boar up to its tricks?”

  Often, I can’t tell my two brothers apart. Not only how they look and

  dress, but often how they sound. Is this Joop who boasts he entered the world first, so he can lord it over Christian? Be more a father here than Vader himself? Or are Christian’s gentle hands caressing my shoulders?

  “Francke Boussioux’s son,” I say, turning to see Joop’s fox-like face with its flecked, animal eye fixed on mine. “He’s been there ages.”

  He presses his nose against the glass.

  Yes, my older brother really is like a predator, always on the look-out for weaker prey. Usually me...

  “He’s a con.”

  Having spat out that forbidden word, he’s gone as quickly as he arrived. Soon there are four figures outside, coated in the moon’s strange light, and the intruder chased and beaten as if he really is a wild boar, until out of sight.

  *

  “I love you...”

  Joop has returned, smelling of the vineyard. The knees of his breeches are torn and stained as if he’s fallen over. Now he’s sitting next to me on my bed, holding up each of my fingers in turn to examine my nails.

  “Black soil. Dirty little meisje.” He tuts then smiles so I can see his pointed front teeth. “Have you been rootling out there, just like Boussioux?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Come on!” he laughs. “You can tell me.”

  The whites of his eyes are even brighter in the gloom. Spit glistens at the corners of his mouth. I really don’t understand what he wants.

  “If you confess, once the vendage is over, I’ll take you out in my new car. That’s a promise.”

  “It’s not yours. It’s for all of us.”

  His face is close to mine. Eager, sweating, while I edge away until I’m nearer the end of my bed. Only Moeder’s used that word ‘confess’ before, when Christian stole a very special bracelet of hers. She never had it back, despite threats from Joop and Vader.

  Joop takes my hand, strokes it. My big brother whom I’ve tried to please since arriving late into the Ryjkel family’s ordered world. Who’s given me prayer lessons every night before bed, and on Sunday mornings; taken me in the trap to L’Église St. Luc where the catechism classes for my confirmation next year, seem to go on

  and on without end. Amen... Am I such a sinner that I need all this? I ask him each time.

  “Ja. And God sees everything...”

  “So, has Daniel Boussioux confessed?”

  “Only for trespassing. Nothing else.” I like the sound of that ‘trespassing’ word, but not how Joop’s grip bruises my hand.

  “Liesbetje,” he coos. “Just supposing you found a large, waterproofed package on our land, with a picture of a white angel on the front, addrressed to me, what would you do?”

  “Tell Vader, then you…Why?”

  “Good. Have you noticed the remains of a small parachute anywhere?”

  “No.”

  My hand’s hurting now. He’s not letting go.

  “You’re a liar, Liesbet Eva Ryjkel. Even though you’re only eight. A liar and a thief.”

  Hot spit lands on my cheek. I turn away so he can’t see me cry.

  “Have Vader and Christian had to confess too?” I dare ask.

  “They don’t need to.”

  “And Moeder?”

  “The same. So, where have you hidden it? This extremely important package meant for me?”

  “Did it fall out of the sky?”

  “Dropped from a light aircraft at midnight yesterday.”

  “I never heard any aeroplane.”

  He lets go of my hands, clenching his fists in out, in out, while his mouth changes shape to something I’d never seen before. I’m so scared.

  “You mean the money?”

  He sucks in his breath.

  “Never say that word again. Ever. Or else pop, pop, pop. Understand?”

  I try to stand, but he pins me down. Hits me all over and pulls out a handful of my hair.

  “This will remind me of tonight. You’ll never be safe for as long as you live,” he hissed. “Remember that.”

  Chapter 52. John.

  “I’m not leaving France until I’ve seen him again, and if he has been killed, or died of natural causes somewhere, given him a proper funeral...”

  Thea Oudekerk’s heartbreak churned around in my corrupted soul, as more surreal scenery unfolded on either side of the road. It lay bathed - as Karen had been - in what my Cambridge-educated ex-boss would have called a ‘preternatural light.’

  As I drove back along the Bayrou valley towards Villedieu, I wrestled with the Belgian’s astonishing claim that not only had Karen actually walked and considered getting an adapted car, but also her former nurse was probably gay. If true, then everyone at Les Pins had been less than economical with the truth. Including Karen herself. But why? And now doubts about Herman having been the protective, loyal ‘terrier,’ lurked at the edge of my mind.

  As for Joel, it was too late now to find out his secrets. They’d most likely perished with him against that ancient, unforgiving rock.

  I barely noticed a young, female hitch-hiker stepping into the road in front of me, nor the succession of pretty hamlets decked out in spring flowers, but as I approached Villedieu, my grip tightened on the wheel.

  So, Ricard Suzman and Alize Saporo had been off-limits with Capitaine Serrado, but no way was that stopping me from biting some more of that rotten apple like a hungry kid at a Halloween party. My afternoon would be busy and risky, but I owed Karen too much to avoid it.

  *

  Last year’s huge plane tree leaves jostled together by the roadside, some flying upwards in the breeze to fall trapped between my windscreen and wiper blades, as I approached Villedieu from its southern side. Here, against the familiar backdrop of limestone crags and lower down, dusty scree slopes where nothing much was growing, stood once-new villas, some with À Vendre signs and small indications of life. Others stood shuttered up as if abandoned for more convivial surroundings.

  Again, no trace of where any railway line might have been laid, and I wished to a God I suspected didn’t exist, that Robert Taillot had lived to be able to finish his

  explorations.

  Fat chance...

  I pulled in by a modest Alimentation store whose faded awning sagged and billowed in the rising wind, and whose hand-painted sign inside the door read OUVERT. The wizened, little man inside, busy replacing a blackened fly strip over the cooked meats counter, told me to hurry up and make my selection as he’d soon be closing. I picked up half a locally made saucisse and a packet of madeleines whose sell-by date was a fortnight ago, then asked my question.

  “Are there any Children’s Homes around here?” I began, while handing over a twenty franc note.

  “Why? You’re not French.” He pulled open the lower drawer of his antiquated

  till and hunted around for my change.

  “My friend in Saint-Antoine is.”

  He slammed the till drawer shut. There didn’t seem to be many coins left inside.

  “Don’t talk to me about that place,” he said. “Crooks and no-goods the lot of them.” Then he suddenly answered my question. “Les Chanterelles is the only one I’ve heard of. Been
empty a while now, least since I moved here ten years ago. Up on the left it is, before the Maison de Repos and behind the pine forest.”

  “Any idea when it was built?”

  “During the last war sometime. For refugees.”

  Refugees...

  I wondered how much the entrepreneurial collaborator Ricard Suzman had been paid to build it, and run it, or both. If Sophie Blumenthal had been correct, the promised four million francs had surely been the icing on the cake. Perhaps to build another ‘shelter.’ Unless, as I guessed, it had never been collected. Yet if White Light, with everything to hide, really had targeted the Ryjkel’s land for a drop, what was it about that family that had made them the chosen target?

  And then, with the shopkeeper practically pushing me out through his door, I realised with a sour taste in my throat, that I still knew nothing much at all.

  *

  So, here was where those innocent kids had come to in this ‘Town of God.’ I tried imagining being one of them, wondering why here? And what might lie ahead?

  Having negotiated a steeply rutted track concealed from the road below by a large plantation of tall cypresses, I continued in their shadow; my every step an echo of other human beings, while it seemed as if the undead whispered in the circling breeze. How this latest effort of mine was all too bloody late. And what of Les Pins, similarly planted, with that attic eyrie lined with rotting hooks? Surely that old dress and spinning top Karen had noticed, were remnants she’d been meant to see. How many of its motherless, fatherless brood had perished from cold in that dense forest, or, like Herman Oudekerk, fed to the river below?

  So, what next?

  I reached the steepest part of the rutted track, and immediately noticed the once red-tiled roof of a large house and two extremely tall chimneys rearing up against the sky, also ravaged and discoloured by the elements.

  Having waded through a large patch of rough grass on what had once been a driveway, there appeared three stone steps leading to Les Chanterelle’s front door. Set behind a pair of stained pillars, its pale green paint had mostly curled away, adding to the air of abandonment.

  Not a sound as I checked behind me before easing open that conveniently unlocked door. I suddenly missed Karen’s armoury, and instead, picked up a fist-sized lump of limestone, dislodged from the hallway’s inner wall. Just in case.

  The dank, heavy atmosphere intensified as I looked in all the empty. lower rooms with their high ceilings, elaborate, but degraded wallpaper and floor tiles mostly gone, leaving dirt and dying insects n their place. What was I looking for? Human life? Human death? Herman’s head tucked away somewhere? Buried too deep for me to bring back to his mother...

  I’d just bent down at the end of the hallway, to pick up a child’s rattle protruding from the soil, when a sharp, female voice made me straighten up.

  “Leave that alone, Monsieur Lyon! You’re trespassing.”

  Good God.

  Alize Saporo all in black as before, stood with her back to the door, a familiar, new-looking S&W 45 calibre revolver gripped in both, gloved hands. Aimed at my head. Her scraped-back, dyed dark hair emphasised a made-up face filled with hate. Those same hazel eyes bright with evil in the sun’s glare, and above them, painted eyebrows had replaced her own. Her once dry lips were glossed dark red, matching those same rosary beads I’d seen in Dansac, showing above her high-necked coat disguising her wrinkly neck.

  *

  I was a kid all over again, curled up against nightmares in the bed I’d shoved next to Carol’s. Waiting for morning to show through our Gran’s thin curtains.

  That chunk of sausage I’d recently eaten while parking the car, was on its way up. Fast.

  Time to fight back. Gun or no gun. But was this glammed-up new model alone? Impossible to tell.

  “Where’s Ricard Suzman?” I challenged her. “And why are you here?”

  A blink of surprise.

  “I used to live in this house as a young girl. My family owned it. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Not at all. If it’s the truth.”

  “You’re famous now,” she sneered. “but soon you’re going to be even more well known. Despite warnings, you still can’t stop interfering. And as for this…” An ominous click. A slight adjustment to her stance. “If you think it belongs to your crippled tart, you’re mistaken. It’s mine.”

  Stay focussed.

  “I’ll gve you its serial number if you like.”

  A tiny hesitation.

  “Once a flic, always a flic,” I said, capitalizing on my coup. “Hard to shake off habits of a lifetime, wouldn’t you agree, Madame Suzman?”

  She blinked again. Another click of that semi-automatic lifted from me at Les Pins.

  “Exactly what habits are you implying?”

  “You tell me. And as for this house, does it mean something more to you and those children you so heroically tried to save? Was this where they were made to feel protected until they re-joined their parents? Come on, Alize Saporo, I’m all ears. Especially after I was told you’d gone for good.”

  Those weird eyebrows rose in surprise. In all my years as a cop, the easiest emotion to fake.

  “Alize Saporo? Who’s she?”

  “You saved my life, Monsieur. Remember that?” I reminded her.

  Her painted mouth shrunk to a vicious scar.

  “How about Black Bitch, then?” I persisted. My useless stone at the ready, until the grumble of a car engine outside grew louder.

  “The Black Bitch of Les Chanterelles? Or Maman P? And why keep that photograph of young Sophie Blumenthal? Was it to track her down? Finish her off to keep her mouth shut?”

  Her first bullet hit the fireplace behind me as I’d leapt to the right and through a pair of half-open French windows. The second skimmed past my shoulder, out into more overgrown land whose wooden fencing had collapsed. A fetid stink rose up with each of my galloping steps, as did a group of crows enjoying the remains of a small, dead dog.

  *

  Despite repeated warnings...

  Having dropped the stone, I crouched behind the biggest bush in the plot’s furthest corner, listening hard to two receding voices. Seeing between the bare branches an old man with a grey, clipped beard, dressed like her, as if for a funeral, carrying matching suitcases. His black Homburg made me start. The Suzman trademark, obviously. And was this their elusive patriarch?

  “I recognised that grey Volvo from its visit to us in Banyuls,” he said, “Now it’s damned well here again.”

  “I’ve just seen that Anglais con off. Where were you?”

  “Being careful.”

  She made him stop.

  “Ricard, I have to kill him. Now. I want another chance.”

  So, Ricard it was...

  “Non, non! Everyone’s waiting, and you know how impatient Michel gets if his time’s wasted.”

  A funeral, maybe? The final farewell to a motherless, bullied thirty-two year-old whose chief mourners might be Sophie Blumenthal and her very own security guard? If so, they must be warned.

  Above the cackle of more crows and swallows over my head, I’d strained to catch the old man’s every tense word, while her froideur was deadly.

  “That Anglais will soon be sent home in a body bag. Mark my words.”

  I was right.

  He took the Smith&Wesson and escorted her on to the track leading down to the road. So keen to exit, he occasionally tripped. This former lawyer and maker of railways and his long-term collaborator. Killers both.

  Suddenly, they turned around.

  “Au revoir, Les Chanterelles,” she began. “You helped cleanse our beloved country, and future generations will give thanks.”

  Her cruel eyes scanned what had housed to so many displaced and anxious, even terrified young people. As the couple reached their black, polished Range Rover, I crept closer, sure it was the same one as in Dansac’s Impasse des Oliviers. I memorised its Roussillon plate and noted the Tanguy dealer
ship.

  Next, a phone.

  *

  While I kept a discreet distance, the Range Rover pulled into Les Platanes’ tree-lined, sunlit drive and, having reversed to face the gate, waited, engine running, by the front door. I couldn’t identify who was driving or anyone else, but recognised a neatly-groomed Father Diderot emerge almost skipping down the front steps. A weirdly white smile creasing his veined skin. A red, leather suitcase in his hand. Having stepped up into the rear of the 4X4 and shut the door, it pulled away.

  *

  Having hidden my number and, with the help of an almost defunct phone card, I phoned the Saint-Antoine gendarmerie from the public call box in Les Platane’s entrance hall. Lieutenant Vollard promising a rapid response, warning me to keep out of trouble.

  “Alize Saporo is armed,” I added, giving the S&W’s seral number. “I saw that same black Range Rover pulling away from her poky house in Dansac last Sunday at 14:00 hours. Apparently, she was leaving for good.”

  *

  “Who’s just collected Father Diderot just now?” I asked that same nurse I’d seen before, who’d appeared to watch ithe 4X4 disappear beyond the gates.

  “Friends.Taking him to a funeral.”

  With a rather large suitcase...

  “I hope he doesn’t get upset. He hates them.”

  “Part of his old job, surely?” I was edging towards my real purpose. “Hatching, matching, despatching?”

  No reply.

  “Didn’t you phone him the other day, leaving a little message? Made him laugh, he said, and that’s rare.”

  “I was told by a receptionist he’d not returned.”

  “How odd. Only first thing this morning did he know he was off out.”

  “Via the phone in his room?”

  “Yes. A personal line gives a sense of independence.”

  A cleaner clomped by with a mop and bucket. Body odour followed in her wake.

  “These friends, will they look after him?”

  “Oh yes. The woman especially. She comes here twice a week. Always brings something nice for him.”

  “You mean, Madame Suzman?” Worth a shot.