Bright Angel

by Isabelle Merlin

  I was filling my head with trivial stuff like that cos I didn’t want to think about all that had happened. It was best not to until I’d spoken with Mick, because I couldn’t trust myself to think at all clearly on the subject or begin to plan anything at all. But as soon as I saw his white-blond head poke around the corner, I rushed over to him and hugged him tight, and he hugged me back, looking a bit surprised, as you might imagine. He was still wearing his sunglasses, but he pushed them up so I could see directly into his eyes, which were full of anxiety and kindness and something else I didn’t want to think about right now.

  He pushed me gently from him and said, ‘Now tell me properly. What happened? Slowly, Sylvie.’

  So I started telling him – jerkily at first and then a bit more fluently. When I’d finished, he said, ‘My God. So that’s who it was. I heard the sirens.’

  ‘We’ve got to do something, Mick. About Gabriel.’

  ‘Gabriel?’ he said, looking at me in a startled sort of way. ‘I thought it was Daniel.’

  ‘Yes. Later. I don’t know what to do about that. Not right now. Not until I know what happened to Pilar. It’s Gabriel, though, Mick. He’ll be on his own. At least, just with the maid. The cook. The police. He’ll be frightened. Upset.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. Of course. What do you think we should do?’

  ‘I thought maybe you – you speak much better French than me. You can talk to the police, maybe get them to understand that Gabriel needs me, that he knows me–’

  ‘I expect they’ll be sending a social worker to look after him,’ he said gently.

  ‘Oh, no, Mick, that’s not the same! That’ll be a stranger, and I’m not ... surely they can just let me comfort him, be there for him a bit. That’s not breaking the law and, besides, a social worker might take ages to come – and meanwhile he’ll be alone, the poor little boy.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s go there. I’ll do what I can. I can’t promise anything, okay, cos the police can be pretty hard-headed – but we can try, okay?’

  ‘Oh, Mick, you’re an angel!’ I said, and impulsively kissed him on the cheek.

  Something flickered in his eyes. ‘Yeah, well, I was named after one of them, eh?’ he said, and then he took my hand and I didn’t pull it away but, glad of his friendly touch, followed him out of the courtyard.

  When we got back to Daniel’s house, the same burly policeman was standing at the door, but there were other cars pulled up outside too – another police car, and a white van – and the crowd outside had grown too. There was a bald fat man in a rumpled suit, holding a notebook, who I took to be media of some sort and he stared at us and scribbled in his book as we hurried through the crowd towards the policeman.

  Mick tried. He really did. But it was no good. The policeman refused point-blank to let us in no matter what and another policeman came out and told us the same thing. They wouldn’t tell us anything and so we gave up. We were walking back towards my house when we heard footsteps behind us and turned to see the man with the notebook hurrying after us.

  ‘Monsieur, mademoiselle,’he puffed. ‘Je peux vous parler?’Can I talk to you?

  ‘Je suis journaliste,’he went on when we didn’t answer, and I was just saying, to Mick, ‘God, let’s go, I don’t want to speak to a journalist, no way,’ when he interrupted me, saying, in French-accented but passable English, ‘Look, I hear there is a kidnap in that house. A child taken. But there is no more information. The police will not speak. I see you go to them. Are you family? Friends? Neighbours? Do you know more? Please?’

  We stared at him, stunned. I said, feebly, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘A child was kidnapped,’ he said, patiently, looking at us oddly. ‘The woman looking after him was attacked by the criminals and is gravely injured.’

  ‘His brother?’ I croaked. The reporter’s eyes lit up at once.

  ‘You know them, then, mademoiselle? I have heard they are important people. Foreigners. Tell me, who are they exactly? What’s the story? I have heard that once they’d taken the boy, the kidnappers released a statement to the police saying they’d done it. That is strange, is it not? Usually kidnappers tell the family not to tell anyone. But they didn’t work it that way at all. Now it is the police who are desperate to keep it from the media. They confirm the kidnap but nothing else. They have threatened my editor with dire consequences if he prints anything. But I’m independent, so I can go sniffing around. They might stop us printing but they can’t stop me finding out. Go on, tell me what you know.’

  ‘Don’t say anything, Sylvie,’ said Mick sharply. ‘He’s a chancer.’

  ‘I can pay, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ said the reporter with a nasty smile. He took out his wallet. But he never had a chance to pull out any money because Mick whirled round and took a wild swing at him. It didn’t connect but the man dropped his wallet and backed away, growling, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, young madman?’

  Mick picked up the wallet and flung it at him. ‘Get lost, you revolting vampire!’ he shouted. ‘And don’t let me catch you near her again,’ he yelled, looking so fierce that the man didn’t stop to argue any more, but shambled off, mumbling darkly about ‘young idiots’.

  ‘Jeez, journalists are the pits,’ said Mick, putting an arm around me. ‘You okay, Sylvie?’

  ‘No, not really.’ The little scene with the journalist had been absurd, but that wasn’t what made my teeth chatter and my head swim. I said, ‘Gabriel, my God, Mick – Gabriel. Do you think it’s true?’

  ‘I don’t see why he should have lied,’ said Mick. ‘It must be what happened.’ He looked at me. ‘Well, at least–’ He broke off.

  ‘At least what?’

  ‘Daniel’s off the hook, isn’t he? You were afraid he’d hurt the nanny.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, a hollowness in the pit of my stomach. I knew what it was. It was shame. Shame that I had believed Daniel was capable of doing something like that to someone – that ignorantly I’d spun a whole horrible story out of what I’d seen and the dark fear washed over me again.

  ‘But why would they take him away like that? The police, I mean?’

  ‘To ask him questions, I suppose.’

  ‘But they can’t think–’

  ‘That he had anything to do with the kidnap of his own brother? I don’t know. But I doubt it. Why should he do such a terrible thing?’

  I shook my head, feeling wretchedly ashamed. ‘But the way they were taking him away...’

  ‘It’s just routine, I expect,’ said Mick, comfortingly. ‘They need to find out stuff. Anyway, we know he can’tbe involved, don’t we? The kidnap must have happened while he was out of the house, coming to meet us. So he has an alibi, and if he needs it, we can give it to him.’

  I swallowed, blushed. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say it like that. It sounds like–’

  ‘I know. Sorry. Didn’t mean it like that. Look, I think the kidnappers must have been watching the house. They must have seen him going.’

  ‘Yes, but they wouldn’t know for how long.’

  ‘He had his bike. Reasonable to assume he was going out for a while. Now, what other adults would be in the house besides the nanny?’

  ‘The maid and the cook,’ I said.

  ‘They could have been out too – or having a siesta or something like that. That house looks big – they could even have been in the kitchen, say, and not heard a thing.’

  I nodded. It made sense, even to my flustered mind. I said, with a catch in my throat, ‘Poor little Gabriel.’

  ‘I don’t expect they’re going to hurt him,’ said Mick.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They want money. Publicity. You heard that guy. They even sent a statement to the police. They’re not exactly hiding what they did. They haven’t threatened.’

  ‘We don’t know that. We don’t know what they want. You’re just making up theories,’ I said.

  He
smiled. ‘Okay, so maybe I am. What are your thoughts on it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, helplessly. ‘I really don’t know. I don’t have the heart to think of theories. I just keep thinking of Gabriel with those – those people, and how he must feel. And Daniel at the police station – he must be going through hell and I wish I could...’

  ‘Poor Sylvie,’ he said. ‘You’re going through hell too and here I am blethering on. We need to do something constructive, don’t we? First, I’ll check up on that guy’s story, make sure he hasn’t got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Then we can also find out where Daniel is and go and tell the police about how he was in the woods and all that. He might have told them already but that will back him up. What do you think? Is that a good idea?’

  I nodded, mutely. I certainly couldn’t think of anything else I could do right at this moment. And I was just so glad of his energy and his brave good humour. I couldn’t share it myself but it made me feel a little bit better, less scared. My instinct had been right about Michael the fighter, I thought, vaguely. His presence was just what I needed, right now.

  Déjà vu

  It was no use going back to Daniel’s house. The policemen there wouldn’t tell us anything. Instead, Mick made a few phone calls and finally managed to work out that Daniel had most likely been taken to Toulouse.

  Mick’s old car wasn’t exactly capable of going like the wind but we still managed to cover the hundred and twenty kilometres to Toulouse in a whole lot less time than normal. It couldn’t have been too quick for me. I get a bit scared when people go fast in cars but today I didn’t even think about it. Nothing mattered except getting to Daniel as soon as possible.

  We talked a bit along the way, but I can hardly remember what we said, my head was booming with too much anxiety. At one point I thought briefly about Freddy and Claire and what they might think if I was away too long but I didn’t think about it too much. After all, I had told Freddy that I would not be back till dinnertime, and it was still only early afternoon. As to Claire, she was busy with Marc and the film, and she wouldn’t notice. We’d be back before they even knew anything had happened, I told myself. Freddy was shut up in her room writing and Claire was in the forest watching the shoot. Neither of them would have any idea of the drama at Daniel’s house.

  We had to park some distance away from police headquarters in Toulouse, an imposing red brick building that filled me with dread just looking at it. But Mick didn’t seem at all intimidated. He strode in through the revolving door with me following timidly after him and at the front desk explained in rapid French what we wanted.

  We were asked to wait and sat in the reception area for what seemed like ages and ages but was maybe half an hour or so. We didn’t talk. Mick leafed through a magazine but I couldn’t concentrate on anything like that. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing sort of place to be. Hard-faced, armed, uniformed cops patrolled the lobby, and there was a big security check area through which people came and went. Nobody looked at us or took any notice of us, but I could feel my heart beating fast, and my palms felt sticky with sweat. And it wasn’t just because of what had happened, but also because the last time I’d been in a police station was after Thomas Radic had killed himself, and I’d had to give a witness statement. The same feeling of sitting there, waiting, unable to process the terrible event I’d just been through or to make sense of anything, was flooding through me again. This sure was deja vu. Why me? I thought, desperately. Why does this have to happen again? Then I scolded myself for being so selfish and self-pitying. This wasn’t about me. This was about Daniel. And Gabriel. Just as before hadn’t been about me, but about Thomas Radic. And Helen. I’d just been a bystander. In the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh, God, the wrong place at the wrong time. If I hadn’t been in that clearing with Mick – if Daniel had been at the house when the kidnap occurred instead, then what? How could he have stopped it? The kidnapper – or kidnappers, quite likely there had been more than one of them – must have come prepared. Armed. He would just have been attacked too, like her, if he tried to stop them. Maybe even worse.

  At last our names were called. A uniformed cop escorted us through the security check – it was just like in an airport, you had to put your things through a bag check and then go through one of those metal detector things – and then down some corridors to yet another waiting room. We waited there for about ten minutes. Then one of the doors along the passage opened and a couple of plainclothes police came towards us. One was a blond guy about forty, dressed in a grey suit. The other was a small, slim woman in her late twenties or early thirties. With dark, elegantly cropped hair and startlingly green eyes, she was wearing jeans and a white shirt under a leather jacket.

  ‘Mademoiselle Mandon? Monsieur Stephan?’ said the man, consulting a file he held in his hands.

  We nodded.

  ‘I am Captain Gaudry. This is Lieutenant Jettou. She speaks English. I understand you prefer this to French, mademoiselle?’

  I said, haltingly, ‘I – I do not prefer, I just can’t speak it fast.’

  He did not smile. His expression did not change. ‘Very well. You will go with Lieutenant Jettou, Mademoiselle. Monsieur, please come with me.’

  Lieutenant Jettou took me to a small room where another police officer, a young guy whose name she mentioned, but that I don’t remember, was also waiting. He was clearly junior to her. His job mainly seemed to turn on the recorder and listen.

  She asked me my full name first and date and place of birth and then she looked at me and said, ‘Mademoiselle Mandon, you are here to make a statement about Daniel Aubrac. Is that so?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Please say it, for the benefit of the tape.’

  I blushed. ‘Yes. I am here to make a statement about Daniel Aubrac.’

  Her green eyes searched my face. ‘Why do you want to do this?’

  The question threw me. ‘I – I don’t want anyone to think that–’ I broke off. She said nothing, just kept her gaze fixed on me. I swallowed, and went on, ‘That he could be in any way involved with the crime. The kidnap of Gabriel.’

  ‘I see.’ She consulted her file. But rather than ask me more about that – rather than ask me to give my statement as to how I knew that, she said, ‘How long have you known Daniel and Gabriel Aubrac?’

  ‘Only a few days. But I–’

  ‘How many days, precisely, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Um, since I, since we arrived in St-Bertrand.’ I saw her expression, and hurried on, ‘Three days ago.’

  ‘Not before then? You are quite sure?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I live in Australia. I first met Gabriel and Daniel in the cathedral the afternoon of the day we arrived. Later we became ... good friends.’

  ‘I see. Did you go to their house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did Daniel ever speak to you of any threats made against his family?’

  My pulse raced. ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know Benedict Udo? Daniel Aubrac’s uncle, mademoiselle,’ she asked, watching me.

  ‘No. No. Not at all. But I’ve heard – I’ve heard he was attacked in London.’

  Her eyes sharpened. ‘Daniel told you?’

  ‘No. A friend – er – my sister’s friend, Marc Fleury.’

  ‘Ah yes. The writer. He is in St-Bertrand to watch the filming of his book, yes?’

  ‘That’s right. ‘

  ‘Very well. Why did you come to St-Bertrand, mademoiselle? It is remote and not really the sort of place I would expect a young person to choose for their holiday.’

  ‘My aunt Freddy – she – she invited my sister Claire and me. She’s rented a house here. She’s a writer. She–’

  ‘She is working with the filmmakers?’

  ‘No. That was just a coincidence. We–’

  ‘What is your aunt’s name, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Freddy – I mean – Frederique Mandon.’

  ‘A French name.’

&n
bsp; ‘She’s American. From Louisiana. Like my father. She writes under the name FS Mandon. I don’t know if any of her books have been translated into French.’

  She raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘What is an American writer doing in St-Bertrand, of all places?’

  ‘She’s writing a book about Herod.’

  ‘Herod?’

  ‘He was exiled to St-Bertrand by the Roman emperor. That’s why she came here, to get, like, the local colour. The atmosphere.’ I felt more and more nervous, my palms sweating. Why was she asking me all these irrelevant questions? I just wanted to make my statement and go.

  ‘I see. Your aunt is your father’s sister, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your parents did not come with you to France, madem oiselle. Why is that?’

  ‘They’re at home, working,’ I said. ‘A very demanding job. They could not get away.’

  ‘Do you live with them?’

  ‘No. I live in the city with my sister. Mum and Dad – where they live it’s very remote. There are no schools.’

  ‘So you are a student, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You are at school.’

  I nodded, then remembered I had to say it. ‘Yes. I’m at school.’

  ‘It is school holidays in Australia?’

  ‘No. But–’

  ‘Is your sister a student too?’

  ‘No. She works in a publisher’s office. She–’

  ‘It is unusual for a school student to have a holiday in school term time, no? It would be so in France, anyway. Perhaps in Australia they have a more relaxed attitude.’

  I swallowed. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with–’

  ‘Please, mademoiselle. Answer the question.’