‘They are scared of you, Eloïse.’
‘That’s good. Because I’m scared of them.’
He studied me by the dim light of the lamp. ‘But they don’t know you,’ he said softly, ‘like I know you.’ He patted my hand. ‘Now go to sleep. It won’t feel so bad when you wake up.’
I let myself believe him.
‘I’ll read you to sleep.’
When I was a child he always read me a bedtime story, always, in which good triumphed over evil. Books, I’ve learned since, do not tell the truth. He sat back in his chair with what came close to a contented sigh and opened the book.
‘I may not be here when you wake up,’ he told me as he turned to the first page.
‘Where will you be?’ I asked, anxious.
‘At church.’
I blinked with shock. Even that hurt.
André started to read aloud the story of man’s attempt to make amends in life for something he did wrong, his voice smooth and comforting. I closed my eyes.
*
I was woken by shouting. Somewhere downstairs in the house.
‘Get out of my way, you piece of pig-shit.’
‘Non.’
‘Don’t you point your rifle at me.’
‘Allez-vous en.’
‘I’m going nowhere, so get off the stairs.’
‘Clarisse!’ I called out.
‘There, you see?’ Clarisse’s voice spiralled up to me, triumphant. ‘She wants me to go up there.’
I heard Louis’ belligerent tone on the stairs and I realised André must have set him there to guard me, the way I’d done for him yesterday. I liked that. Not just the extra safety, but the fact that my brother cared enough to do so.
‘Louis,’ I yelled, ‘let her come up.’
I heard his grunt in response. And her delighted laugh.
Clarisse swept into my bedroom with all the ferocity of the mistral, except that the mistral is a cold wind whereas Clarisse was brimming with warmth and flowers.
‘Chérie,’ she said, throwing open the shutters, ‘ma pauvre chérie.’
The day was overcast, the sky a dirty white and the air cooler, which made my pounding head easier to ignore. ‘Clarisse, what are you doing here on a stinking farm? I never thought to see you step foot in a bull-yard.’ I grinned at her and felt my nose pop painfully.
‘Only for you, Eloïse, only for you.’ She rolled her eyes in disgust and dumped a vast bouquet of flowers on my bedcover.
‘Thank you. You are kind to me.’
‘I am. And don’t you forget it when you get back to work.’
I skipped over that thought. She bent close and kissed my cheek so lightly that I barely felt it. She smelled even better than the flowers.
‘You look a terrible mess,’ she declared bluntly.
‘Have you heard anything more? About Madeleine Caron, the woman who did the attack?’
‘I’ve been asking around and everyone says the same, just that she was a headmistress with strong anti-American views. One old gossip smacked her toothless gums with pleasure in telling me that Madeleine Caron had an affair with Mayor Durand in their younger days, but that might just be the old crone sticking the knife in. It seems that Colonel Masson wanted some people like her to come to the open day because he had the messianic belief he could convert them.’
‘Such hubris would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. What about the others who were killed in the blast?’
‘Unlucky bastards.’
She reached into her bag, pulled out a silver hip-flask and unscrewed the top. She tipped it to her lips and took a long swig, before offering it to me.
‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘Good for sore heads.’
I took the flask, drank and felt a small fire spring into life in my gut. Cognac.
‘Thanks. Now, one more favour, please?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I can guess.’
*
The military hospital on Dumoulin Air Base was sterile. The building was newly constructed, white painted, perfectly clean and run with military precision. If I were sick, I mean really sick, I’d rather burrow into the warm straw in our barn next to Cosette and the rats than be pinned between pristine sheets in this soulless sterile USAF box. But I was grateful to them. When I saw Léon lying on his side swathed in bandages and bruises, I wanted to kneel down and kiss their shiny germ-free floor in thanks for taking good care of him.
‘Hello, Captain. How are you feeling?’
He opened his grey eyes. Bloodshot, I admit, but open and looking at me with the kind of expression that made me want to strip my clothes off and climb right in there with him. To wrap myself around him and hold him till his injuries were forgotten.
‘Oh, Eloïse,’ he said with an ache in his voice, ‘look at you.’
‘You’re not doing so good yourself,’ I said with a smile. It hurt to smile, so I kept it for when it was needed.
I kissed his unshaven cheek and then his lips, a gentle brush, but he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to him. I buried my battered face in his neck and we stayed like that, breathing each other in, letting our skin grow together again. When a nurse came to re-dress the wounds on his back, Léon said, ‘Not now,’ in a tone that sent her scurrying further down the ward. She was accustomed to obeying the voice of authority. I sat down on the chair next to his bed, a stiff military seat not designed for comfort. He continued to lie on his side to ease any pressure on his back, but he held my hand as if he might slide down somewhere dark if he let go.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me. Broken nose?’
I nodded. Carefully.
‘I’m sorry.’ He pulled a face. ‘Concussion?’
‘Better now.’
I had stripped the bandaging off my face and I thought I didn’t look too bad. Clearly I was wrong. My forehead was bruised from one side to the other, with a wide scrape of skin removed, nose swollen, cheekbones puffy, eyes blackened. I still wore a small dressing on my nose to keep it straight. Compared to the Paris crash, this was nothing.
‘And you?’ I asked.
‘Just a few holes in my back.’
‘Just?’
‘That’s it. Now let’s talk about what went on there yesterday.’ Even in bed he had his policeman’s face on. ‘There was more news that I wanted to tell you, not just about the bull’s horns we found at the burned cottage.’
‘What?’
‘It’s about Gilles Bertin.’
‘You’ve found him?’
‘No. But I found something of interest.’
I wrapped his fingers tight in mine. A snake of fear shifted position inside me. ‘Tell me.’
‘I finally got my hands on a search warrant. On suspicion of criminal activities.’
‘To search what place?’
‘Guess.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Gilles Bertin’s house. You’ve searched it?’
‘Bullseye.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
LÉON ROUSSEL
Her face.
Hadn’t it been through enough? Léon wanted to take it in his hands and kiss each rip and bruise and break. There was black blood in her nostrils, panda rings around her eyes. Yet she seemed indifferent to it and unselfconscious when a passing patient stared openly.
Her fingers touched his lips, as if to pull the words from behind them. ‘Tell me,’ she said again.
He described the search of Gilles Bertin’s house in Arles, just the way he’d written it up in his report. The house was rented, so he’d looked up the owner on the town’s register and acquired a key from her. On Friday the premises were empty, so he and his two officers proceeded to search every cupboard and drawer, as well as all possible places of concealment.
‘I did that too,’ she whispered.
‘What? How did you get in?’
She gave him a hint of a smile. ‘I have hidden skills. I didn’t tell you because I knew it was illegal and I didn’t dig up anything that helped
us.’ She paused, cupped his chin in her hand and gave it a sharp shake. ‘Did you?’
He imagined her finding the photographs of herself hidden behind the bedhead and the sickness that must have welled up in her when she shuffled through them.
‘Yes, I think we did.’
‘You found the photographs? Of me.’
He nodded and a dull flush seeped up her neck.
‘And the aircraft ones as well?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What else?’
‘Guns and a rifle.’
Her eyes widened and her scabbed eyebrows shot up. ‘Where? I searched but didn’t find them.’
‘They were under the floorboards.’
She gave a low-key whoop of delight. In the next bed a pleasant young crew-cut airman with his leg in plaster looked across but quickly went back to his Life magazine.
‘Did you take the guns away?’
‘Of course. We are now searching for Bertin himself.’
She sat back in her chair. She looked a small figure in this large impersonal ward but there was something in her that filled the space, something like those nuclear bombs out there on the base. Something unstoppable. She narrowed her eyes and smacked her hand on his wrist.
‘Stop teasing me,’ she said.
But he hesitated a moment longer. This was police business. He shouldn’t be telling her.
‘I found a small diary. Under the linoleum in the bathroom.’
‘You are very thorough.’
‘It’s my job to be.’ But he hesitated once more.
‘Come on, Léon,’ she said softly with the sideways look she gave when she knew he was uncertain how she would take something. ‘Let me hear it.’
‘In the diary was a list of your movements each day, what you do and where you go.’
To his surprise she shrugged. ‘I have got used to the idea that I am being watched. I don’t know why. Gilles Bertin seems,’ again the dull flush, ‘obsessed.’
‘Obsessed, maybe. Or reporting to someone.’
This time he felt a tremor ripple through her fingers, though her expression didn’t change.
She thought for a minute and then pointed out, ‘But none of that helps us.’ She moved closer, her voice a whisper. ‘Which means there must be something else you found.’
His fears for her safety were growing stronger. ‘I hope you came here with Clarisse, not alone,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’
‘Outside in the car.’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘What is the something else?’
‘It’s a photograph of two men. Drinking in a bar together somewhere, laughing as if they know each other well.’
‘Who are they?’
‘A man who I believe, from your description, to be Gilles Bertin. Pencil moustache and deep chin cleft.’
‘And the other?’
‘Colonel Frank Masson.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Clarisse drove me home. She wouldn’t come into the house, so we sat in silence listening to the ticking of the engine of her cream Ford Vedette. One of the dogs wandered over and cocked a leg on the front wheel, but to my surprise she laughed.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for all you’ve done. It has meant a lot to have you here.’
I stretched across the seat and enfolded my fragrant friend in my arms, and she stayed there, her head against mine, far longer than I expected. ‘Go back to Paris,’ I said with an affectionate hug. ‘It’s safer there.’
She drew back with a wince. Her poor ribs had taken a bad knock in the general panic to escape the grenade yesterday. ‘I’ll go if you come with me,’ she said. ‘Come with me now. Right now. Before things get worse.’
She was smiling her usual sleek smile but I could see in her eyes how earnestly she meant it.
‘I can’t. Not until I’ve found the driver of the van. André will not be safe till I do.’
‘Oh Eloïse,’ she sighed. ‘And what will you do when you find him? Kill him?’
It wasn’t said as a joke. She was deadly serious.
‘Of course not,’ I said lightly. ‘That’s what the police are for.’
She stared at me, examining my battered face, completely unconvinced. ‘I worry about you,’ she muttered.
Four simple words that squeezed my heart. I was so touched, so tempted to shout, ‘Drive, Clarisse, drive. To Paris. To safety. To a life without bullets whistling through my hair or grenades hurtling at my face.’
To a life without Léon?
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I intend to come out of this in one piece. But thank you, I’m grateful, I truly am.’ I opened the car door. ‘Now go back to Paris.’ I climbed out.
‘Damn you,’ she laughed, and smacked the cream fascia with her palm, ‘you’ll be the death of me.’ She roared off in a cloud of dust.
I gave her half an hour head start and then I drove to Arles.
*
I took my time. On foot in the old part of town. Using window reflections to check behind me, dodging down shortcuts, twisting through alleyways only fit for cats. The ancient stone walls wrapped around me and I kept in their deep shadow as I doubled back on myself in the maze of tiny narrow streets where the sun rarely reached. The strips of sky overhead were thin and grey as the cobbles. I liked it that way. Trapped. No escape.
This time I would wait in his house till he came home. However long it took. Days. Weeks. I’d be there to greet him. I touched the canvas bag at my side, felt the weight of the gun and the weight of my decision. Both took me to the edge.
Clarisse’s words whispered in my ear. What will you do when you find him? Kill him?
*
To my surprise, the door of Bertin’s house was unlocked. I stood in the tiled entrance hall and listened. No sound, no movement except the movement of the thoughts in my head. They were crashing into each other until I drew out the gun and curled my hand around its metal grip. That silenced them.
I removed my shoes and edged my way on silent feet through the rooms. The place felt different. Less serene, more jumpy. Or was that me? The image of Léon in his dark police uniform and with a legal warrant in his pocket searching each room slid into my mind and loosened my breathing. I didn’t expect to find Gilles Bertin here this morning but I was willing to wait. And wait. But first I checked the downstairs rooms and the kitchen. No hint of him in the living room or dining room, but the kitchen bore his imprint.
A cup of coffee sat half-drunk on the table alongside the flaky remains of a croissant and a small glass dish of apricot jam. A jacket hung on the chair. The window at the back looked out on to a miniature courtyard with a slatted bench and a limp climbing rose. No sunlight, just the dirty lid of the grey sky. On the table lay an open newspaper and a pair of heavy-rimmed spectacles. The yard was empty.
I stepped back against the wall just inside the kitchen door and stood there immobile, my ears straining to catch the faintest scratch or whisper. After a further two minutes I shifted to the bottom of the stairs. Out in the open, I moved quickly, racing on tiptoe to the upper floor. I stopped, listened. With fingers cold as ice on the gun grip I edged to the first door and stepped inside.
No one. Nothing. An empty bedroom with no wardrobe to hide in. Musty and unused.
Yet I was convinced Gilles Bertin was here. Somewhere. Unless he’d left in such a hurry he’d had to abandon his coffee and spectacles. He didn’t strike me as a man that careless, so I made my way silently across the landing towards what I remembered to be the main bedroom. The door was part-open. With my foot I pushed it further, gun out in front of me.
I saw him at once, Gilles Bertin himself, and I resisted the urge to back away. Smart dark suit trousers, Ronald Colman moustache, hair slicked down. The distinctive shaded cleft in his chin. Stupidly it occurred to me that it must be hard to shave in there. Not that he’d be shaving anymore. Gilles Bertin was sprawled flat on his back and the front of his white shirt had been decorated with a scarlet sunburst.
Something shut down in my head. First Mickey. Now Bertin. My legs wanted to rush me to his side, but I clung on to my sense of caution and I entered slowly. Eyes and gun barrel darting over every corner of the room. Skin prickling. Finger itching to pull the trigger.
No one else was in the room. I stood at Bertin’s side, staring down at the dead body of the man who had struck such fear in me, and I hated the feel of tears on my cheeks. I turned away. He wasn’t worth my tears. Quickly I searched the rest of the house, creeping on tiptoe, jumping at the slightest shadow, but I forced myself into every room.
Reluctantly I returned to the main bedroom. Neat, tidy, dark furniture, damask bedcover. I recalled only too well what was hiding behind the bedhead, so I went over, located the photographs in the pouch and dropped it into my bag. I forced my gaze back to the bloody shirt on the body on the floor.
I must go and telephone the police. Léon won’t be there. But still. Go. Telephone.
Instead I dropped to my knees on the hard wooden floor that Léon had torn up. This close, Bertin’s face was slack and without menace, eyes closed, specks of blood glistening in his moustache.
Glistening? Not dried to black flecks?
It had only just happened. Get out. Get out now. Run.
A noise behind me. I spun round still on my knees and found myself nose to nose with the wrong end of a gun.
*
‘Eloïse! Merde! I almost shot you.’
I looked up. My mother’s face stared back at me.
‘Isaac!’ He’d been behind the door. I jumped to my feet. ‘Isaac, what are you doing here?’ My words came to a halt as I took in the gun in his fist. The blood on his fingers. The smear of scarlet streaked across his shirt-front. My hand grasped at his arm and clenched it tight. ‘What have you done?’
My brother’s wide eyes clouded with panic. ‘No, Eloïse, no, no. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.’
He opened his fingers and released the gun as though it burned his skin. It clattered to the floor and both of us jumped back from it. I stared at its blued metal. I knew the weapon, a Smith & Wesson revolver, Chief’s Special. Small, compact, a five-round cylinder, American manufacture. Somewhere my brain registered these facts. As if they were more important than the fact of a man lying dead at my feet with a sticky hole blasted through his chest. That fact got pushed away to somewhere dark. Somewhere I didn’t want to touch.
The Guardian of Lies Page 23
