Papa.
“I thought you were in Wales,” I got in first. “That you’d gone back to Ty Capel.”
“Attendez!” he cried, ignoring me, forcing Vervain’s head down, staring at him then me me in a way I’d never seen before. “See this shaved patch on his neck? And a prick of dried blood? He’s been drugged. Lucky to be alive, I’d say.”
“Ask Elisabeth. She’s here, too, did you know? Tried to drug me as well.”
He glanced up at me, as if dismissing what I’d said. “You and I have some talking to do, Laure. The sooner the better.”
*
My cowardly aunt covering her wound, stood some distance behind him at that same front door which had already let her in and out of our lives too often. I wondered how she’d managed to get a key to the place. Stolen one from Maman perhaps? Or the Hulottes hadn’t bothered changing the locks? Not everyone did.
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” I said to him. “Me and Vervain have been to Hell and back…”
“Not been to Hell!” shouted the mad woman. “You’ll soon be going there.”
I took a deep breath. It was now or never to remind her of the hideous threat I believed had killed Maman. “Remember the First Circle,” I began. “Where you deserve nothing, and God will see to it you get nothing but ice and snow and the deaths of your children and everyone fooled into loving you… That must be so familiar. It’s your sick mantra. And the rest...”
Silence.
She began to sway, gripping on to the side of the front door to keep herself upright. Those black eyes on mine.
“What on earth are you talking about? You self-harming destroyer.”
Don’t listen. She’s mad, but still in my grasp…
“I’ve got that note of yours. Remember? The one I found in Maman’s hand when she was dead?”
“Let’s have it,” ordered Papa, tightening his grip on Vervain’s rope. “Now.”
“Why?”
“I said, give it to me…”
“No. And damn you for protecting that slag over your wife.” I snorted, then turned to him, pulling that same rope through my bare hand, making my skin squeal. “I know why she did what she did. And look at the two of you now. Still fucking, I expect. Too busy to find Mathieu. Your little inconvenience.”
“Speak for yourself. You’ve hardly shown much interest in your brother.”
Now.
I managed to kick-box his arm and watched him topple backwards, hit the ground and stay there. I immediately felt better, and again squeezed Vervain’s sides. He galloped towards the open gate, but not before a shot came from the direction of the house. Then another, this time flying past my head.
Jesus…
I whipped round to see my aunt ready to fire at me for a third time. And my father - that man who’d helped make me - doing nothing to stop her.
*
That massive sky had finally filled with cloud and a thin drizzle begun to fall as I rode Vervain at a steady trot towards Soulebec, our old village, keeping to the ragged hedging, shaved to its skeleton every autumn.
After ten minutes, he slowed to a walk and even that seemed too much of an effort, so I slipped off his back and led him along the gravel verge, turning around every few strides in case we were being followed. I wasn’t thinking straight, except that the words “family betrayer” and “destroyer” kept stabbing my mind. And Papa not defending me. Letting her shoot.
As we reached the first small villa and a line of green poubelles, this rejection turned my stomach over. My earlier snacks welled up, re-appeared to land on my coat. The mess stayed there as a reminder of my mistakes too. My guilt.
Things couldn’t get any worse, yet my horse urgently needed the attention of a farrier and a good vet like the one who’d helped our best brood mare foal during a severe bout of colic. Who’d cried with us - except Elisabeth, of course - when he’d had to put the noble Victorine down and take her to Mignonville.
I also needed a phone. The cheap one left behind in the transporter was kaput. I needed to hear John and Alison’s voices. To know they were alright. I’d not have admitted that a day ago. How pathetic was I? But who else was there? And who, if that father of mine was here with the witch, was looking after Ty Capel? Did he have to be by her side at all costs? If so, that would explain a lot.
Mathieu, forgive me…
Suddenly, I heard the sharp ‘ting-a-ling-ling’ of a bicycle bell and a male voice from behind me called out, “Salut, Laure!”
Vervain skittered against the last of the rubbish bins, causing it to tip over, scatter its junk on the ground.
“What are you doing back here with that filthy creature?” said that same voice. “Didn’t you like Wales?”
I turned around, still thinking of Papa and her.
*
Jean-Claude Houbron from my class at school was all hair. His bleu de travail hanging off his rangy body. I’d rejected him after our fourth date and never answered his early, tortured letters which either included some poetic quote from either Baudelaire or Rimbaud or photos of his cat.
He laid down his bike and righted the poubelle.
“Didn’t mean to scare you both, sorry.” He stared up at me. Then his gaze travelled to the sick still stuck to my coat. “You OK?”
“Not really. But I have to go.”
“Where?”
Always far too nosey.
“Never mind.”
He dug out a grease-stained rag from his pocket and handed it over. When I’d wiped up, he asked for it back. As if even that would do as a souvenir.
Meanwhile, Vervain was snatching at the roadside grass, swishing his piss-yellow tail as I debated whether I could trust someone I’d not seen for three years. And whether I could afford to let my very pressing plan be delayed.
“If I tell you what’s happened so far, can you find a way to help?” I said.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“You know…”
He meant getting inside my pants as he’d done before...
“Never mind.” I pulled up Vervain from his feast and moved on.
“Please tell me,” he persevered. “I didn’t mean what you might have thought.” He checked his watch. Not cheap, I noticed. But then his father had been something big in civil engineering until asthma forced his early retirement.
“Don’t you have to get to work?” I asked as the sun finally crept from behind a gloomy, hovering cloud. He nodded. That loose, dark hair shifting over his forehead.
“At Trois Ruisseaux. A barn conversion.”
“The Kassel’s place?”
He nodded before acknowledging a passing car driven by an elderly woman I half-recognised. I stalled until she’d gone, then began my story.
*
“Shit, Laure,” he said, once I’d finished, and the local church bells racked out the same mournful notes I’d heard since I was born. “There’s been nothing about any of that in the papers or on the news…”
“There wouldn’t be. It’s all hush-hush.”
“Wonder why?”
I thought of Capitaine Rousson again. How weird he’d seemed when I’d phoned him. How unsympathetic.
“But I want it all in the open now. And that nutter with a syringe at my old house, to get the guillotine. Did you know that its most effective forty-five degrees blade was designed by Tobias Schmidt, a harpsichord maker? You couldn’t make it up.”
He frowned.
“It was strange seeing her there earlier,” he added, re-focussing on my aunt. “But who were those men?”
My heart seemed to twist round inside my chest.
“Men?”
He nodded.
“Army types, I’d say. Two, maybe three. Tooled up as well.”
She’d pushed the bloody boat out…
“When exactly?”
“Early. Seven o’clock or thereabouts. I’d had to go back home for this…” He pointed at a toolbox strapped to the
carrier behind his bike’s saddle. “Not the sort of guys to tangle with, that’s for sure. All in camouflage gear, and gone when I’d next passed by.”
“And Papa?”
Another frown.
“Indoors, maybe.”
“He may also have hung on to the keys even after the Hulottes left. Or her. My aunt. Think about it.”
I had, already.
He then glanced at Vervain who’d resumed grazing, oblivious to anything else.
“By the way, why did that couple leave?”
He gave a not very convincing shrug. “Bad vibes apparently. Strange noises, that kind of thing. Someone crying too. Their dogs would go mental.”
Maman, maybe?
“They’ve not even put it on the market,” he added. “So. who knows what’ll happen. But it’s still legally their property.”
I felt weak. Reached out and held his arm. It felt solid. Strong. He was talking again. His voice more animated.
“And Laure, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced one of those three men was Eduard Gallas who’s taken over that Mignonville abattoir from his father.”
I withdrew my hand to again haul Vervain’s head from the grass. “I need to get away from here. Somewhere I can contact my two English friends.” Meaning John Lyon and Alison.
“Not the police here?”
My laugh was more a sneer.
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m sure Monsieur Kassel won’t mind you using his phone. And stopping there for a bit.” He eyed brave Vervain. “There’s even an empty paddock for him...”
I hesitated. Too many bad memories had begun to surge towards me. Sophie Kassel for a start. Besides, what about my agenda?
Cutter. Destroyer…
“Did her father ever re-marry?” I asked, having blanked out my shortcomings as we reached Soulebec. Its few familiar shops were opening. The Tabac owner with his Manchester United shirt, arranging fruit and vegetables outside his window. The florist fiddling with her displays. To my relief, neither paid us much attention as we went by.
“Yes. A secretary from the Banque Populaire in Moulismes. She’s calmed him down, but he’s still like a dog with a bone about Sophie. Can you blame him?” Jean-Claude turned to me, still pedalling. “Poor kid…”
“I know.”
Yet why was that earlier sick feeling rising up? Touching my tonsils where the dead Danny Lennox’s busy tongue had once been. And the rest…
Blood seemed to leave my head.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, fine. It’s nothing.”
30. John.
Sunday 13th March. 8.35 a.m.
We’d neither been eaten alive nor killed by some passing, opportunistic vagrant. We were alright. Just. For that we should have been grateful, but I’d wasted too much time blaming myself for going into that damned windmill in the first place. Alison had berated me me for not putting up more of a fight against the abattoir owner and both bent cops. It had taken a rushed hug to at least get us speaking to each other again, but what to say?
Having both stood too long choking on that foul dust deliberately churned up by those three thugs, we heard them careering away back to the main road. We’d also heard my new VW exploding somewhere not so far away. The brain-numbing sound of it reminded us - if we needed reminding - of what not only we ourselves were up against, but Odette Jourdain and her two luckless grandchildren.
“Did you see the crazed aunt’s body language?” Alison had said as I’d managed to finally free her from the mill’s upright shaft. “Playing one weak moron off against the other. Especially Gallas…”
“Eduard Gallas,” I’d added, not to correct her, but still recalling that slaughterer’s weirdly empty eyes. How his smooth hands had so swiftly tied us up, then chucked my stick into the far darkness. “Groupie number one, I’d say. We’ve a lot to thank Odette Jourdain for.”
She’d not argued with that, instead gripped my hand and together we’d fought our way out into the lingering veil of acrid smoke where a mound of hot ash and a few twisted, blackened scraps of metal were all that remained of my car. Our means of escape.
“Did they have to do that?”
“See it as a compliment,” I’d replied grimly. “We must be very important to them.”
Alison’s face had said it all. Not the first time my attempt at humour hadn’t impressed.
Silence.
“Look, John. I want out. Pronto,” she’d then let go of my hand.
“She had a Browning Grand Puissance semi-automatic,” I’d said, still thinking about its newness, and possible provenance. Also, the fact that such a weapon boasted a thirteen-round capacity. “Didn’t you notice?”
“No. Only that hideous thing on her cheek. Do you think lover boy bashed her up?”
“God knows, but he was pretty tightly strung. Nasty piece of work, alright.”
I’d been about to mention drugs when my instinct to get the Hell out had also become too strong, with all that smouldering destruction going on. Some hidden part of my car could blow again at any minute, and neither of us wanted to be zipped up in a French body bag.
“Why say their names? I don’t get it,” Alison had already picked her way ahead of me.
“I do,” I muttered, already missing my stick. My upper lip still sore. “Nothing to lose. Stiffs can’t sing, can they?”
*
I turned around for one last look at the burnt-out wreck and that huge, gaunt relic of the past whose sails listed in the breeze. We were both filthy and starving, like refugees in an unwelcoming country where Capitaine Rousson and Lieutenant Paranza had already made it plain we were personae non gratis. To be denied justice. Then conveniently die.
We wanted to slough off our clothes. Find somewhere to bathe, but not here. Not then, coughing as we were. Still in shock.
The well-organised gang had taken our watches, phones, passports and money, but not our resolve. And with the morning sky replete with clouds, we re-traced our steps to where we’d turned off the N147. Numerous tyre tracks wove to and from the windmill through the rough wasteland. I wanted to examine them more closely, as both larger sets most likely belonged to those ex-military Jeeps we’d spotted overtaking us. I recognised the first set of smaller treads as mine, ending in the cremation. But not the other, leading towards the forest’s ragged edge…
“Hang on,” I said.
“Why?”
“Seems there’s a vehicle missing.”
Alison rolled her red-rimmed eyes.
“Can’t we just get out of here?”
“No. I’m thinking Peugeot…”
“You’re on your own, then.”
Damn.
She was walking away. Just like she’d done on Friday morning at the Coed Glas hotel. And like that same morning, I didn’t go after her. All I could think of was Elisabeth Jourdain arriving here in her own wheels. Who might soon be back…
“Stop!” I yelled.
“I’ve had enough.” Alison didn’t even turn around. Perhaps when you appreciate me a bit more…”
I didn’t hear the rest. She was too far away, and with each determined stride, her tangled, brown hair bobbed wildly against her shoulders Like me. she’d no money, cards, nor travellers’ cheques. And no means of transport.
When she was gone, I realised with a shudder that her coming to Cardiff all the way from Nottingham had been a sop. A placebo. She wasn’t really interested in Laure and had no more intention of sharing any future with me than I would with Ivana Trump. She’d snared someone else. I’d guessed as much at the Campanile hotel, when she’d moved away from me in the bed, saying she was bone-weary. When she’d pushed my hands off her breasts while she’d been washing. Ignored my stubborn stiffness, whereas before, at The Grange last year, she’d…
Stop it.
So what next?
I had to reach that abattoir in Mignonville. But first, find where those other car tracks led.
> *
In another world. No wind, no sound except my pulse throbbing in my ears, and a growing sense of loss. Of Alison and her naked body next to mine. Her expertise. Alison going back to someone else. And here I was, wading through knee-high neglect, following what little remained of those once positive tracks, and each dizzy step delivered frame by frame, Ben Rogers’ last, terrible moments. Her denial of any affair…
Only when I was alone, did that particular horror flick unspool itself in my mind. And never had I felt so adrift from the anchor of my previous job and its contacts. Its procedures. What fucking procedures could I follow now? Here? Sans everything?
*
Damn.
Fetid, brown water had pooled over what were Eifion Evan’s old, donated boots, wetting my socks and freezing my toes together. However, where the muddy ground sloped upwards between several saplings that lay bent and crushed, were those same, unmistakeable tyre tracks.
Whoever had been driving the vehicle, must have deliberately secreted it out of sight. But why? That was the puzzle, and if I should find it, what then?
I glanced back at the old windmill still visible through the plantation like some lingering black omen, but the further I went into a darker, damper setting, it became subsumed by bare trees and yet more bare trees.
Next, a clearing, just like in Sherwood Forest. But here was no Ben Rogers ready to die, or myself in another life. Just a wreck of a man I hardly knew, who suddenly, in the blink of a dust-filled eye, spotted a red, three-door Peugeot 104, partially covered by branches and pine trees’ foliage. I guessed it to be around five years old and clearly well looked after. Then I noticed the letters ZS next to the 104.
All very useful. However, its number plates were a surprise. Home-made, attached to the bumpers with string, ending with the number 11, not 86, as previously, and both side doors unlocked, but not the boot. I was careful not to leave prints as I explored the outside of that modest, unmemorable car, sensing it had to be the one belonging to Elisabeth Jourdain who’d shot Danny Lennox and driven away from the ferry. Anything in this crazy world was possible. But had she journeyed in it all the way to Glan y Mor? I was still waiting to hear from Dave Rickards in Poole, and the Sea Breeze Hotel.
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