Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

  ‘Try the other airlines.’

  More clicking. More clicking. Martagon began to sweat.

  ‘There’s a Sabena from Heathrow to Brussels at sixteen twenty with a connection to Marseille, but you won’t catch that.’

  More clicking. More clicking. She found a later Sabena flight via Brussels from Heathrow and he reserved the place. Business class only available. £398. Good God.

  It took about an hour by the special bus, once he found the bus and once it started, between Gatwick and Heathrow. Martagon sat through the journey in a stupor.

  The Brussels flight took off on time. Martagon had an aisle seat, next to an English couple – in their late fifties, he judged. The wife, in the window-seat, had a newspaper. She held it over her own lap and her husband’s, and the two leaned in to one another, arms and thighs pressed together, so that they could both read it at the same time. They were rather stout. Neither was particularly good-looking. Their clothes were tidy and dull. The easy warmth of their companionship was palpable. It was like sitting next to an old-fashioned double radiator.

  No love dramas for them, thought Martagon, no longings to be other than they are, to be rich and famous, to be somewhere else. No betrayals, no anguish other than the anguish endemic to the ordinary trajectory of life. Which for each individual is not ordinary but unique. They had married each other and become more and more married over the years. Perhaps I am getting it wrong, but I don’t think so.

  Chatting with the couple did not disillusion him. They were going to Brussels to visit their son, who would be meeting them at the airport. He was an MEP. They were travelling business class as a treat. They hadn’t had a holiday abroad for years. They were really looking forward to seeing the grandchildren again. They lived in Wantage, and their name was Carter.

  ‘Wantage. Where there’s a statue of King Alfred,’ said Martagon, remembering the newspaper reports of Arthur’s accident.

  ‘That’s right. King Alfred was born in Wantage,’ Mr Carter said, with pride. ‘He was King of Wessex. He drove the Danes out of London in the year eight sixty-eight. He was a great scholar as well. That’s why he’s called Alfred the Great.’

  Martagon thought Mr Carter might be a teacher, or in local government.

  ‘You must know the town, then,’ said Mrs Carter, leaning over. ‘Do you know the Bear Hotel? On the square, where King Alfred is. We have lovely countryside around too, we do a lot of walking, on the downs. Do you know White Horse Hill?’

  Martagon had to confess that he had never even been to Wantage. ‘I had a friend who lived near there, but he died.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Conversation died too, and Martagon sat back and closed his eyes. The Carters were really nice. Decent, unpretentious, unjudgemental, alert, contented, provincial. Enough money for their needs but not rich. ‘Centred’, as Tom Scree would say. English, like King Alfred and the Berkshire downs. There were millions of English people like them. A true tribe, however mixed genetically with invading Danes, not to mention Normans. His Dorset clients were just examples of the London chattering classes, transposed. The Carters loved their England. It went without saying.

  I love England too, but I never really got the chance. Or, rather, I never gave England a chance.

  The plane was beginning its descent. The Carters folded away the newspaper and began fussing with their passports.

  * * *

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye! Have a great time!’ He waved to the Carters. Goodbye, England.

  Martagon’s connection to Marseille was delayed. Technical problems.

  He bought The Economist and read it mindlessly from cover to cover. Battered and shamed by the past few days, he now had no thoughts, no reactions. Almost, no feelings. Time passed. It struck him that he ought to ring Marina and tell her he would be late for their special dinner. Seriously late.

  He tried to call her number on his mobile phone. It didn’t work. He hadn’t recharged it for days. He found the public phones. The first one he tried was out of order. As he was trying another one he heard his flight being called – the ‘final call’. He must have missed the previous announcement. He daren’t risk screwing this flight up. She would know he was on his way. He would call her from Marseille.

  * * *

  When the plane touched down at Marignane there was a maddening wait before the cabin doors were opened. Martagon strode fast, almost ran, to the exit hall, struggling with the painting and the computer case.

  The first thing to do was to rent a car.

  All the car-rental kiosks were closed. Every one of them.

  I don’t believe it.

  An official told him that his flight was the last one in for the evening, and pointed out where he could collect his key and rental documents if he had prebooked.

  He hadn’t prebooked, he never had before. But, then, maybe he had never flown in at this hour.

  He waited for a taxi, and when he reached the top of the queue he clumsily explained his predicament to the driver. He had to rent a car. Any car. Tonight, now. The driver looked dubious, then trundled off, round the airport access roads and into the industrial outskirts of Marseille. It seemed to take an age. The first garage they stopped at was closed. So was the second.

  The driver pondered. He then sped off towards the centre of the city, stopping in a back-street. The forecourt of this third garage was dark, but there was a light on in the office. Someone was still there.

  With the cab-driver’s help Martagon negotiated, for a silly price, paid in cash, the rental of the garage-owner’s nephew’s car, left with him while the nephew was en vacances with his wife and family in Orlando, Florida.

  A digression then ensued while the driver and the garage-man, who were well acquainted, held a lively and well-informed discussion about the respective merits of the Paris Disneyland and the Florida one. Martagon, who had been to neither, and only understood half of what they were saying, stood by.

  The nephew’s car, parked at the back of the premises, turned out to be an old grey Opel Kadett, which looked as if it had led a hard life. There were rusted dents in the bodywork, and splashes of dried-on mud. But it was a car.

  The garage-man went into his office to search for the ignition key. Martagon paid off the cab-driver, and shook hands with him cordially. The taxi disappeared at speed.

  The garage-man shunted various other cars out of the way in order to make space for the Opel to get out. The Opel then failed to start. The garage-man sloped off to look for jump-leads. While he was gone, Martagon used the telephone in his office to call Marina. The number was engaged.

  The garage-man got the Opel going, and left the engine running. Martagon threw the wrapped painting and his computer case into the passenger seat, shook hands with the garage-man, and drove off.

  He had no idea where he was, and it took him a good half-hour to navigate through the maze of streets, and to get on course for the northbound autoroute. But he was, now, at last, on his way. Only about an hour to go.

  It was not until he was rattling along the autoroute that he asked himself why on earth he hadn’t told the taxi, straight off, to take him all the way to Cabrières d’Aigues. It was so obvious. It would have been money well spent. The painful session with Julie, and the nightmare of his journey back to Marina, had caused his brain to go into neutral in order to avoid flipping altogether. He hadn’t been thinking well. He hadn’t been thinking at all. His eyes stung, he felt a bit sick. He hadn’t slept properly for about a week, he hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

  But it was going to be all right now.

  He dared to look at the luminous face of his watch. Christ. Half past eleven – could that be right? Of course, French time was an hour ahead of British time, so he had started at a disadvantage. There had still been some light in the western sky when he was in the taxi. But it was midsummer; tomorrow, which was nearly today, was the longest day of the year.

  Just then, as he attempted to slacken his speed becau
se of a truck pulling out in front of him to overtake another truck, he realized that something was going wrong with the Opel’s brakes. They were not responding properly. His armpits prickled, red alerts flashed in his tired mind. He tried the brake pedal again. This time, nothing at all. With his hand on the handbrake, he veered right, into the slow lane, and proceeded in low gear at thirty kilometres an hour, praying for an exit, any exit, from the autoroute.

  Finally there was one. He took a turning at random where the access road forked, and struggled on for half a kilometre, praying for a village. Then, finding himself about to ram the back of a van going even more slowly than himself around a bend, he obeyed an impulse and shot off the road to the right, through an open gate, and into a field of maize – where he turned off the engine, jerked up the handbrake, juddered to a halt, and thanked his lucky stars that he was still alive.

  He just had time, before he was overwhelmed by sleepiness, to think: I should have telephoned Marina again. Then, oblivion.

  * * *

  Martagon opened his eyes to morning sunlight, and to the sound of thud-thud, thud-thud, on the window of the car. He thought he was awake; but he must be still asleep and having the dream again. He steeled himself to turn his head. The arms had little fists on the ends of them, and the fists belonged to a small boy with a terrified face. Martagon opened the car door.

  The child spoke with such a strong Provençal accent that Martagon understood almost nothing – except that he had thought Martagon was dead. A dead man. No, no, said Martagon, it’s all right, I was asleep. He tried to explain about the car and the brakes. The boy pointed across the field to a house half hidden by trees. That was where he and his parents lived. Martagon shouldered his computer case, grasped the painting, left the key in the car, and stumbled after the boy through the maize.

  The parents insisted on giving him coffee, and they let him use their telephone. Marina’s number was engaged, as before. Perhaps your friend’s telephone is out of order, they surmised, taking an interest. The boy’s mother, who was pretty and seemingly did not have much to do, offered to drive him to his friend’s house. It was not all that far, and she needed to go to the tabac anyway. It would be a privilege.

  He went into the tabac with her. While she chatted to the man behind the counter, he picked up the Herald Tribune and started to read it idly. The man looked at him with disapproval. Martagon found coins in his pocket and paid for the paper, which he hadn’t wanted. His rescuer was a voluble woman and his conversational French was sorely tested during the remainder of the drive. He asked her to drop him where the track to the farmhouse turned off from the road, and they parted with mutual expressions of pleasure. He knew that she was a little disappointed not to be making the acquaintance of his friend.

  When Martagon crossed the bridge over the stream and started up the track towards the farmhouse he stretched his eyes wide, not believing what he saw.

  There were two police cars parked in the garden. There were three men walking around, their hands in their pockets. He heard the incoherent crackle of radio communication.

  Two of the men detached themselves from the scene when they saw him coming, and walked purposefully towards the spot where he would reach the paved yard, where he and Marina always parked their cars.

  Marina’s Alfa Romeo was not where it ought to be. It wasn’t anywhere.

  Martagon’s first thought, as he approached the policemen, was: Jean-Louis. Bloody Jean-Louis.

  I should have taken all those threats from her crazy brother more seriously. What in hell has been going on?

  And then: Where is Marina?

  A dog came lolloping round the side of the house and started jumping up on him, whining with joy.

  ‘He appears to know you,’ said one of the policemen.

  ‘Yes, he knows me,’ replied Martagon, pushing George away. ‘His name is George.’

  I don’t understand anything.

  ‘The name of the dog is George,’ said the policeman, ironically, taking a note. ‘And your name, Monsieur?’

  He told them his name. He asked them where Madame was.

  Madame is not here. At this moment we do not know where Madame is.

  Martagon looked around. Everything looked normal, except that the door to the bicycle shed was hanging open.

  Yes, Monsieur, we have already ascertained. There is a gun missing from the shed. But we have found it already.

  The policemen spoke to Martagon in a mixture of French and bad English. Martagon spoke to them in a mixture of English and bad French. There were some misunderstandings.

  Had Marina been shot? Was she lying wounded, or dead, somewhere in the garden? He would find her, he could make her well, he could bring her alive again. Of course he could.

  At that moment Martagon saw a patch of blood, still wet and red, on the paving of the terrace. Beside it, Marina’s great chair lay on its side, one arm broken clean off. He picked up the broken arm, and passed his fingers over the sphinx head without touching it.

  Please – no fingerprints. Do not distress yourself. Let us go into the house, there are some questions.

  George began licking at the patch of blood. Martagon grasped him by the collar and dragged him into the house too, shutting the kitchen door. George went to the dog-bowl and began drinking noisily.

  The policemen wrote down everything that Martagon said in their notebooks. When did he last see Marina de Cabrières? When did he last speak to her? What was his relationship with her? What was in that big package he was carrying? Where had he been between dawn and nine o’clock this morning? Could he provide witnesses for that? Did he have a key to the farmhouse? Why had he come? Was he expected?

  He answered all their questions truthfully to the best of his ability.

  They told him that the old man who leased the vine-fields overlooking the house had seen Madame get into her car with a bag and drive off, very fast, shortly after he came to work, at dawn. The dog chased her car down the avenue, barking, then gave up and wandered back towards the house.

  A couple of hours later another car had driven up. It was a taxi. The person who got out of it was Madame’s brother. The farmer knew all the family from way back, he used to work for them in the old days.

  The farmer said that Jean-Louis paid off the taxi and then walked all round the house, banging at the doors and windows. The dog followed after him, barking. After a while the farmer stopped watching and moved away from his vantage-point to get on with his spraying. He thought of going down to tell Monsieur Jean-Louis that Madame his sister was not there, but it was none of his business. A family matter. One would not wish to intrude.

  Half an hour later the farmer heard a gunshot, and then another, and more barking. The sound of guns is not uncommon: hunters from the village taking birds or wild boar, perhaps. But the shots had not come from the woods. He walked back over his field to where he had a good view of the farmhouse and garden. There were two men there now – Madame’s brother and another, on the terrace. Madame’s brother had fallen on the ground.

  ‘Did he say which one had the gun?’

  The other man. The farmer could not or would not say whether he recognized the second man. He was very cautious. But he got on to his tractor immediately, and went home and telephoned the police. He was, quite naturally, afraid, said the policeman.

  Afraid – and probably protecting someone he knew, thought Martagon. A neighbour, or a friend or relative.

  They showed Martagon a gun, wrapped in transparent plastic. Did he recognize it? Had he ever used it?

  Martagon shook his head.

  The police had broken into the house and found the telephone off the hook, the receiver lying beside the cradle. Did he know anything about that?

  He shook his head.

  They found a sealed envelope with his name on it on the kitchen table. Would he recognize Madame’s handwriting?

  Yes.

  The envelope was produced. This, too, was wrapped i
n transparent plastic.

  Yes, that is her handwriting.

  The two policemen turned discreetly away as Martagon tore open the envelope. They looked out of the window, both with their hands behind their backs, rocking on their heels.

  Martagon stepped outside the door on to the terrace to read Marina’s letter.

  * * *

  Afterwards they took the letter back, in its envelope. It would be needed for evidence, if there had been a serious felony. It was his property and would be returned to him, when their investigations were completed and the case closed. They smoothed the ragged top of the envelope and replaced it in the plastic covering. They took down his address and his various contact numbers.

  He waited while the answers he had given, and the little that he had said of his own volition, were typed out and printed from a police notebook-computer. He read what constituted a statement, and signed it. He would be recalled, they told him, for further questioning. He should keep himself available.

  Of course, he said.

  The third policeman was testing the broken chair for fingerprints with powder and brush. When he was satisfied, and had packed up his equipment, he moved away towards the cars. Martagon set the great chair upright and sat down in it, resting his right elbow on the one good arm, nursing the broken one on his knee, his fingers tracing the worn, gilded carving of the sphinx-head. George lay at his feet, his nose on his paws. The two of them watched the police slowly moving off, taking the gun with them. When the sound of their motors had faded away down the track, Martagon went back inside, opened his laptop on the kitchen table, and e-mailed Giles: ‘Not coming. Something terrible has happened. Martagon.’

  He went back into the garden and stretched out on his back under the olive tree, on the still-flattened patch of grass where Marina had lain during that difficult night.

  She had said, in the restaurant in Marseille: ‘Pierre would kill Jean-Louis for me.’

  Pierre probably did kill Jean-Louis, when he arrived and found Jean-Louis banging about and attempting to carry off Marina’s great chair. Then Pierre took the body away in his jeep to dump it in some ditch or thicket. He would know where to hide it. Or maybe Pierre had just wounded Jean-Louis, and had taken him to hospital. If Jean-Louis were lying wounded somewhere on the property, the police – or George – would have found him.