Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Whatever. He’d been legging it to see the slaughterman. Mad thug…

  The news then ended with an updated report on a theft of a powerful sleeping drug from Mamie’s retirement home. Hearing Noctran’s name and seeing the photo of the place made me start, as did news of a priest called François Leboeuf found dead in the forecourt of Villedieu Gendarmerie from an overdose of that very same drug. The police said he’d been my aunt’s fellow passenger on the ferry from Poole to Cherbourg on Friday evening, where Daniel Lennox had also been shot. That a photo of her red Peugeot carrying an Alpes Maritime number plate had been sent to every police station and gendarmerie throughout France.

  They wouldn’t have to look far, I thought. And anyway, that number plate was out of date.

  I was about to switch off when all of a sudden, my little brother’s name came up. That cold mass inside me, just for a moment, beginning to thaw.

  “…and other news just in, confirms that eight-year-old Mathieu Deschamps, son of Alain Deschamps the successful racehorse trainer, who’d been airlifted last night to the Préfecture of Police in Paris has failed to arrive. A national and international search has been launched for the missing helicopter, the pilot and two gendarmes from Hervieux who’d accompanied him…”

  *

  “Hi.”

  John Lyon again, with a full key ring dangling from his right hand. I glanced out of the window to see a black hatchback topped by a layer of snow. Bluish exhaust wandering upwards. My stomach immediately knotted itself. What the fuck was going on?

  “Are you ready?” He said gently.

  “For what?”

  But my legs were already clear of their blanket. My feet soon filling my boots.

  “Your help. Just a few questions which won’t take long, and then…”

  “Fuck off!”

  I was too quick for him, snatching my waxed coat off the chair and charging towards the hallway then outside. I looked back, seeing Robert Kassel give chase behind me up towards a snowy, empty field.

  “For God’s sake, come back!” he hollered.

  “God never cared about me,” I yelled. “Anyway, you and Him can go wank yourselves…”

  Kassel, the one-time farmer slipped then renewed his effort, while I spotted that same black hire car slide out of the gates and up the road following the field’s edge. I reached the brow and looked down a steep drop littered by bare bushes and shrubs full of enormous dark nests. I’d never come here with Sophie, and presumably this drop led to one of the property’s three streams.

  Go.

  The car was invisible, so, like a fox on the run, I slithered all the way down on my derrière, then stopped to listen. Nothing, except my own breath and the squawk of birds disturbed, winging their way into the bleak hinterland beyond.

  34. Odette.

  Monday 14th March. 1 p.m.

  I’d complained twice about Aimée’s harsh treatment of me. How roughly she’d washed my hair and helped me shower as if she were the Mare of Majdanek re-incarnated, spitting out how instead of enjoying her work breaks, she’d been told to join yesterday’s early morning search party for me.

  But had anyone listened? Only Nelly Santorini who’d almost licked her lips as I’d re-lived my horror story in her over-furnished room. However, neither she nor anyone one else would know what Capitaine Desoulis’ parting shot to me had been. How I’d been recognised as Elisabeth Jourdain’s mother while leaving that poor dead priest’s white van. How I might just be minutes away from being arrested.

  “Two men came here looking for you,” she’d almost gloated, once I’d finished.

  Merde…

  “Why? When?”

  “No idea why, but they both looked like army types. Filthy boots, I noticed, and they didn’t hang about, that was for sure. As for when? Let me think…”

  I’d watched her dyed, black curls bob around her rouged cheeks as she went through the motions of trying to remember. To make me sweat perhaps, because I’d had an adventure?

  “Very late last night,” she’d said finally. “Just before lights out. I was scared. We all were, but once the tannoy told us to lock ourselves in our rooms, they ran off.”

  She’d peered at me with those mean, little eyes. “Haven’t you heard the latest news?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “That grandson of yours has gone missing again.”

  I tried to ignore her sick, little smile and the sudden chime from her ornate carriage clock. Steadied myself against the back of her favourite chair as her red lips began to move again. “The helicopter which rescued him has vanished into thin air.”

  *

  Back in my own room, I had to sit down, barely noticing Aimée delivering me a cup of milky coffee - the kind she knows I loathe - and deliberately letting its lukewarm contents slop over into the saucer.

  “What’s up?” she barked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “It’s nothing.” But I had to phone Poitiers Police HQ fast.

  “Liar.” She kicked out at my ankle with her working shoe. The stout, lace-up variety. Similar to mine in the Resistance. I had to bite my bottom lip till it bled.

  “I’m calling the Director.”

  A short laugh. “Let’s see you try.”

  I picked up the receiver and gasped.

  Dead.

  I was back on duty again, all those years ago, in the now demolished barn at Les Tourels when my radio phone had not only been my lifeline, but everyone else’s.

  Aimée tried to prevent me leaving the room, but my strength had returned.

  I took the lift and was by the ground floor office well before her and her shrieked curses

  Once inside, I faced Renée Lamont, a fleshy, unmarried forty-six-year-old administrator wearing a mushroom-coloured suit who, according to gossip, had been drafted in from Strasbourg to keep the outside world at bay. Each month she received 2,500 francs from my bank account, so at least owed me my phone with an outside line connection. Then, before I could register my complaints, Aimée had also pushed her way in.

  “Madame Jourdain’s been putting herself at risk again,” she shouted. “She should be placed in The Special Care Unit at least until another assessment can be done.”

  The Special Care Unit meant drugs and a strait-jacket. Non, merci…

  In reply, Mademoiselle Lamont looked over the top of her glasses at the girl, then at me.

  “My phone line’s been cut,” I said to her as calmly as I could. “That’s what I call a risky situation, especially since my grandson’s trip to Paris has gone wrong and he’s…”

  “I am aware,” said the overpaid pen-pusher. “And we’ll have France Telecom round as soon as possible. Even the police if necessary.” She gestured for Aimée to leave, then leant forwards in her swivel chair. “She’s going through a bad divorce, but that doesn’t excuse her intolerance. What I have to say to you is private and of the utmost importance.” She stood up, checked the door behind me was shut tight, then pulled down her blind against the sudden darkness.

  “I haven’t ever said how much I respect your heroic efforts during the Occupation here in the Poitou-Charentes and more recently, your attempt to locate your grandson, but I fear dark forces are at work…”

  “Dark forces?” Yet in an instant, those two words had brought back all the terror of those interminable years. The suspicion, betrayals and brutal deaths of those who because of poor Intelligence, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “I’ve done some research, and those two men who appeared in this very room asking for you, were dissemblers. I immediately contacted Capitaine Desoulis.

  and he reinforced my concerns. It seems they’re working for…” she paused. Took a deep breath. “Your daughter Elisabeth, together with an Eduard Gallas…”

  I crossed myself. Felt dizzy again and focussed on a framed watercolour of Chinon Castle at sunset. Another place of torments if ever there was.

  “And a Monsieur Jo
hn Lyon has also phoned half an hour ago. He’s very concerned about you and asked me to make sure you were kept safe. He even suggested we have your room guarded, but I’m afraid we can’t run to that. Besides, it could upset our other clients.”

  “She’s not my daughter,” I said, dwelling only on her previous statement, wishing Christine had married a man of similar kindness. “And this whole terrible business is like a maze whose hedges are closing in and in until I can’t breathe.”

  “She may have stolen that sleeping drug from our Store. They were the same as found in that poor dead priest’s bloodstream at Villedieu. Another fellow passenger on her ferry from Poole to Cherbourg.”

  I began edging towards the door, dreading any mention of my having been in that same poor man’s van. But she came over and rested both be-jewelled hands on my shoulders. “You’re in a very tricky situation, Odette. However, the police are now on her tail, and I personally want to reassure you that your safety has and always will be, our prime concern.”

  Smooth words and a comforting smile, but why should I for one minute believe her?

  *

  Those same words which hadn’t quite convinced me, hurtled around in my brain as I returned to my room and tried the dead phone again while staring out at the wintry scene beyond the window.

  Damn…

  And then, with a sudden jolt, realised I’d left the door unlocked. When I turned to investigate, saw Aimée coming towards me, holding something I couldn’t quite distinguish in her left hand. No longer my carer but my killer?

  I was right.

  “Don’t move, or you get this round your crinkly old throat.” She lifted up a length of net curtain probably stolen from a linen cupboard, twisting it between both hands to form a tight, strong weapon. But I’d faced death too many times to let this frighten me, and despite my recent ordeal near La Rigolette, was ready to fight.

  “Who are you involved with?” I said, working out my next moves. “Whose ego are you stroking?”

  “Nobody’s. I’ve loathed you since the minute you turned up here.”

  I noticed how her wedding finger minus its ring, showed a paler strip of skin. It seemed Renée Lamont had been right about marital problems, but that didn’t excuse the threat. I took a deep breath, ready to court more danger.

  “I bet it’s my daughter, Elisabeth Jourdain.”

  Those bony cheeks burned redder than those of my neighbour. She took a step closer. “You stole her share of the house in Soulebec to leave everything to your no-good grandkids. How unfair is that?”

  She nearly added that was the reason I’d been dumped here, but didn’t.

  “And that begs the question why my little Mathieu’s been subjected to a nightmare. What’s he done wrong?”

  The girl took another step forward. That twisted length of net even more taut in her grip. But I was ready.

  “Alain Deschamps isn’t his Papa,” she hissed. “Did you ever meet the sexed-up Danny Lennox? Head lad, he was, but hey, much more than that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Yet buried deep in that old, unreliable heart of mine, I’d known all along.

  “Your precious petite fille Laure had sex with him a soon as she could, just to get at Elisabeth. How would that make you feel?”

  Silence, save for the noise of my dripping tap, reminding me of a sunlit room and screams and cries from too long ago.

  “What are you implying?”

  “You tell me, old simpleton. Prove your marbles are still intact. That you’re still…”

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest of her insult. Just raised my left leg as if a dancer in the Folies Bergères and caught her chin with the tip of my shoe.

  “Jésu! You witch!” She jabbered through her teeth, clutching her jaw, letting that twisted net drop to the floor. Having scooped it up, I flung it round her neck the way I’d roped those newly-weaned calves who’d threatened to barge out of our field gates. Then pulled it tighter and tighter while she tried fighting me off. But I was winning, burying her foul words while managing to secure both ends to the hooks on my ensuite bathroom’s door. High enough to be out of reach, so the more she’d struggle, the less she could breathe. A trick I’d learnt while on patrol.

  I gathered up my old handbag and, willing myself to inhale more evenly, called in again on Nelly Santroino and paid her handsomely for access to an outside line. I then dialled the number of a man whom Jacques and I had long trusted. Poitiers’ Chef d’Escadron. Not only had we leaned on him after Christine’s suicide, but he was someone nearing retirement whose aim was to leave behind a clean slate of cases solved.

  The first item on his checklist was that my first-born daughter was in custody at Police Headquarters in Poitiers.

  “Would you like to visit her?” he asked.

  “But what would there be to say?”

  35. JOHN

  Monday 14th March. 5.35p.m.

  With recent horrors hi-jacking my mind, I’d spent a restless Sunday night in a pleasant enough Bar Hotel near Poitiers’ Parc de Blossac. In the morning, a long shower had felt like balm. Even the plain soap and less than fluffy towel, seemed exquisite luxuries. I’d stepped out on to the bath mat glistening like the new-borns we all are before the crap takes over, but as my razor ploughed through the shaving foam to leave clean, straight lines of skin, I’d sensed more terrible times ahead. When the seething past would keep attacking the present with even less mercy. Like last year in hot, dry Roussillon.

  This dread leached not only into my bones, but my nerves and tendons, bringing a sudden show of blood staining the shaving cream. The same as slaughtered Vervain had left in the snow, also the mysterious Beti Morgan where she’d lain on that dark, wet trunk road. Cause of death still uncertain. Alain Deschamps too, damaged for life, by a single shot to the groin. Laure had guessed right about that.

  ‘I bet it was his balls.’

  But why Elisabeth? The victim was, according by the police surgeon’s initial observations, perhaps still her lover. Could a jealous Gallas be to blame? Or someone else entirely? He’d also analysed a hurriedly-washed race-riding whip hanging from a nearby hook. Made from resin with a knot at the business end. Very nasty indeed.

  As I’d buttoned up my less than clean shirt and combed my hair into some sort of order, I’d recalled what that slaughterman had implied about Laure harming Elisabeth so badly. Also, if she really was twenty-one years old, why she’d lied.

  *

  Courtesy of my courier-delivered bank card safe in a new wallet, I’d then bought some necessary clothes, underwear, and a serviceable pair of shoes. Also, a cell phone. Cheaper than my last, but good enough. As for a replacemnt passport, the British Consul was doing his level best.

  I’d also caught up with both DC Eifion Evans and DS Rickards.

  While the sky outside turned an ominous black, threatening more snow, the Welsh cop, just come on duty, had some interesting news which he’d promptly passed on to Dave Rickards. A Jeanne Tisseyre had arrived at the Sea Breeze Hotel on the night of Wednesday 9th March in a small, red Peugeot 104 plus a French number plate and barely any luggage. She’d left late Friday morning and had previously been seen chatting to Beti Morgan as if already friends. Her description, but not her demeanour, matched that of the woman who’d ruled the roost at the Berthigny Mill. Bruise included.

  Guilt that I’d not leaned harder on that hotel, made this hard to hear.

  “Mr. Galbraith, the proprietor, was shocked that Beti Morgan had died the way she had, mind. She was a good worker, he said. A grafter. Wish I could feel the same, but I’m thinking she led my brother astray. Money, see. Always important to her. And a good carcass… well… you can’t go wrong…”

  I let it go. He could have his theories. I had mine. I also cut short his negative opinion of Laure, by asking him to keep an eye on Ty Capel and keep the farrier ‘singing.’ To let him know that the more he co-operated, the less his sentence might be.

  While dia
lling Poole HQ, I switched on TV1 for any news, but was met instead by talking heads discussing the implications of Gorbachov’s new ‘Glasnost.’

  Dave Rickards was finishing a sandwich. He’d be on until late and needed sustenance. He also apologised for not having kept in touch. Phone lines had been damaged by a freak storm. Loss of young life too, out at sea.

  “Snow here,” I said, suddenly recalling a hot, sunny holiday with my sister and parents at Weymouth a year before they’d died. I then updated him on the grim events so far at my end and was met by a shocked silence.

  “For your records, just in case…” I added afterwards.

  “Of course. Now some more news. DC Evans’ latest info ties in with a Brittany Ferries’ Caen to Portsmouth crossing at 11.30 a.m. CET, last Wednesday afternoon. We knew that same, red Peugeot car boarded under an owner name Jeanne Tisseyre. A nurse.”

  How inventive…

  “There’s no phone record detailing the actual booking request, but it originated in the Poitou-Charentes near Mazerolles.”

  “Brilliant.” Nevertheless, I sensed a deepening shadow creeping over any progress made so far. I had a meeting with the Chef d’Escadron at 6 p.m. The impressive-looing library I’d passed while out shopping in the Rue de l’Université, was open for another hour. They might hold various parish records. Some useful old newspapers…

  But first, Alison.

  *

  Her phone wasn’t taking messages and I never made it to the library. Instead, while both my room’s radiators gently burbled as they warmed up, I sat at the small table by the window, people-watching. People-thinking. Preparing myself for what might lie ahead during my appointment at Police Headquarters.

  An underling had shown me into Philippe Aubouchon’s office on the fourth floor of the modernist building in Poitiers city centre, where the earlier snowfall had become a dingy slush. His grey suit immaculate, as were his top-end English shoes of stitched, chestnut-coloured leather. Putting my more hasty purchases to shame.