He’d fed me to them. Piece by piece.
Did you think, André, that I would never notice that bits of me were missing? And what about Mickey Ashton? You led me to believe he was the source of the leak from the air base and Piquet says the same, but what if he was murdered because he’d danced with your sister? The sister that the CIA believes is a Soviet agent.
There are too many what ifs, André. What if you hadn’t lied to me? What if you hadn’t told me that Bertin and Piquet were enemy agents? I was seeing it all from the wrong end of the telescope, wasn’t I?
‘André!’
I screamed his name at the top of my lungs to get it out of me, to let it be snatched away by the wind and torn to shreds. Tears were streaming down my face, but I dashed them away with the back of my hand. I wanted no part of them. No part of his name. No trace of it in my lungs. If I could have taken my father’s garden shears and sliced through the bond that bound me to him and him to me, I would have.
When I reached the turn-off that led towards Mas Caussade I put my foot down and shot past. I had to speak to him. Of course I did, of course I needed to. So bad the need made me ache. But first I drove to the only place on earth I wanted to be.
*
I was allowed in only because I was a Caussade and the colonel was grateful for Caussade land. A smart salute and a polite greeting, but I was escorted at all times. The Dumoulin Air Base was on high alert. It made sense, because three townspeople had died here yesterday and, whatever the rights and wrongs, the Americans now saw us all as a threat.
I walked down the long corridor lined with oil paintings of aircraft into the white-painted ward with its men and beds that I didn’t even see. It was as if the paint had white-washed them all out as well and only left one bed in shiny military grey. I walked over. Léon was engrossed in a thick pile of paperwork, seated in the chair beside the bed and wearing a navy-blue dressing gown made of some silky material that made him look faintly dissolute. I never thought I would ever say that Léon Roussel looked dissolute. They were two words that didn’t fit together.
Despite the facts and figures that were occupying his mind, he seemed to sense me, as though he could smell the scent of my skin before I’d even reached his bed. He raised his head and instantly threw his paperwork on the blankets, pushing himself awkwardly to his feet. He opened his arms, murmuring my name, and I walked into them.
We stood there holding each other close and not a sound entered our world. Not a cough nor the clatter of a mug nor the shout of ‘Cheat!’ in a game of cards on the next bed. Nothing touched us. At one point he pulled back his head and studied my face, his grey eyes gleaming, the way the evening sun hits the flat steeliness of the marsh pools on a summer’s evening and sets fire to them.
We stood there holding each other close for a long time.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
LÉON ROUSSEL
‘André is a double agent.’
‘Slow down, Eloïse. Piquet might be lying,’ Léon pointed out. ‘We don’t know for certain yet. We have only one man’s word.’
‘Spoken like a true policeman.’
Léon knew she was right, of course, and he was proud to be one, but it was also spoken like someone who didn’t want to see her hurt. Or to wrong his boyhood friend.
‘We have to guard against their lies or we lose our grasp of the truth,’ he told her. ‘They buy control with their lies, these people who live in the shadows with their secrets and their threats and their guns.’
Eloïse leaned against him, her arm warm through his shirt. They were seated on the edge of his hospital bed. He’d managed to dress himself in a hurry but his shoes and socks on the floor might as well have been in the Caussade bull-yard for all the hope he had of picking them up. His back felt as if it had been ripped into by one of Goliath’s horns again.
‘That’s not what André has been telling me, Léon.’
He kissed the side of her head. ‘So which one is lying?’
A faint moan escaped her and she lowered herself to the floor on her knees. Her hand gently lifted one of his feet. ‘I must speak to André,’ she said.
But he could hear the reluctance in her words, spoken in an undertone, her head down, her silky curtain of hair swinging forward across her cheek. He understood. She didn’t want her love for her brother blown apart, and he didn’t blame her, but she’d have to do it. If she didn’t, he would. She handled his feet as though they were fragile and carefully eased on first one sock, then the other, smoothing them with tender touches while he looked down on the sheen of her dark head.
‘Do you think your father is involved?’
She looked up sharply. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because if André has been continuing to work from home for whichever side he is on, before you came home he will have needed help.’
She nodded but looked away and picked up a shoe. ‘The other day I found something written on the leather of André’s wallet.’ She opened up the shoe and slid it on to his foot. He couldn’t see her face but he could feel the tension in her fingers. ‘It was a message. It said, “Take Me Out”. At the time I didn’t understand it.’ Her breathing paused.
‘Now you do?’
She tied the shoelace. ‘Now I think the wallet was intended to be passed to his Soviet handler if ever he thought he was in such danger that he needed to be taken out immediately.’
‘Taken where?’
‘To a Soviet safe house.’ Her voice was as soft as her hands. ‘It makes sense. It also makes sense for Piquet to burn down the cottage where the Communist activists met if he really is a CIA agent.’
She slipped on the second shoe and tied its lace, but when it was done she didn’t move. She sat staring at her hands.
‘Will I go to prison?’ she asked.
‘No, I won’t let that happen. We’ll go together to the police station, you make your statement about how you found the body of Bertin lying dead in his house and we will get you a lawyer. I know a good one. But why did the gunman leave the gun there?’
Still she didn’t move. ‘I entered his house illegally,’ she admitted. ‘It will look to the police as if Bertin might have surprised me while I was skulking around, believed I was a burglar and I shot him to silence him. That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?’
‘No, Eloïse. There’s no reason to think that.’
She lifted her head. ‘You should be in bed, not running round the town.’ She attached a small smile to the end of it, though he could not imagine where she’d got it from.
He stood up but his movements were unsteady and she rose to her feet to balance him with a hand under his elbow.
‘Thanks for doing my shoes.’
‘You’re welcome.’
He lightly kissed her mouth and together they walked out to the air base car park. There was something she wasn’t telling him. He could see it in her smile, hear it in the whisper behind her words. As they walked side by side he wondered which vital piece of information she was keeping from him. And why?
*
They drove both cars, his black Citroën saloon tucked in just behind her 2CV. The sky was the same colour as the earth and the white horses in the fields could smell what was coming, so gathered close and sought shelter under the trees. Léon knew that what lay ahead was about to hit hard, and he didn’t mean the rain.
They drove into the yard and he sat for a moment after the jolting of the rough roads to give his back a break. But Eloïse jumped out of her driving seat the second the handbrake was on and scooted over to his open window. The wind was stronger now, snatching her hair into long threads and tugging at her skirt, so that she had to hold it down. She glanced up at André’s window and his tall figure was silhouetted there, watching them. She bent quickly to Léon’s car window, her hands on the door and her face on a level with his. He could see a jewel of fresh blood glistening inside her nostril.
‘Don’t come in the house, Léon. Please.’
A wave of despair swept over him. She was in no fit state to cope with a man like André when cornered. To confront him on her own was asking too much of herself, if it was true that he was an MGB agent. But Léon knew Eloïse. He’d seen her stand up to a boar with no more than a long stick in her hand and that same expression on her face. She was looking at André’s window again.
‘You shouldn’t let André shape your life,’ he said. ‘You must make your own choices without needing his good opinion. You need to step away, and whether he is CIA or MGB shouldn’t prevent that. He doesn’t deserve you as a sister.’ If André Caussade turned out to be a traitor, it would tear her apart if she didn’t protect herself.
Her head snapped round. ‘No, Léon, don’t say that. You know it’s not true.’ She shook her head, a dark trail of her hair clinging to the sweat at her throat. ‘My mother died when I was four years old and I did everything I could to help look after my tiny new brother, Isaac. Papa hid away with his bulls, grieving. Mathilde was there, but for no more than a few hours each day.’
‘Don’t be hard on yourself, Eloïse. You did what you could, but you were young.’
‘It was André who stepped up. Only ten years old. But André took care of us, he made us a family again, he held us together. He dealt with dirty nappies, he patched up our scrapes, read us books, taught us to swim and climb and to fight our own battles. He taught us loyalty. He sat up at night when we were sick and rocked us in his arms when we had screaming nightmares.’
She put a hand through the open window and curled it into Léon’s hair, gripping tight.
‘It’s not how you think, Léon. Papa taught us manners and how to sweat out hard labour on the farm and Mathilde taught us to laugh and cook. But it was André who put big ideas into our heads. He gave us ambition. He made us self-reliant.’
‘By throwing you in the river or abandoning you alone in the marshes to find your own way home.’
To his surprise, she laughed, delighted to recall that dangerous method of education, and he found himself smiling.
‘Yes, André made me who I am today.’
‘No, Eloïse. You made you who you are today, and you may not know André as well as you think you do. So please be careful.’
She scrubbed her hand through his hair, as if to rearrange his thoughts, and then released it. Her brown eyes in their bruised sockets fixed on his.
‘What is it, Eloïse?’
‘I recognised the gun on the floor in Bertin’s bedroom. It belongs to Mayor Durand.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it in his desk.’
Léon’s sense of foreboding deepened as he tried to slot that piece of information into its place in his mind without making things worse for her. He didn’t ask how or when she’d seen it in the desk.
‘Eloïse, Durand reported his gun as stolen last week.’
‘He’s lying,’ she said fiercely and walked away towards the house.
Léon watched her, each step, each determined swing of her arms. She kept shaking her head as though there was something inside that she was trying to dislodge. From the wide doorway of the new stables, still under construction to the right of the yard, Aristide Caussade stood with a claw hammer in his hand. He watched her enter the house.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I knocked this time, though I knew André had seen me coming. He opened the door and stood back to permit me to enter. The air in the room was too stifling and stale to breathe and I headed quickly to the window to open it.
‘No, Eloïse,’ he said sharply. ‘Don’t open it. Don’t make it easier for them than we have to.’
I stepped back from the window. Whoever they were, I didn’t want any of their bullets lodged in my skull. I was angry. I’d marched in to confront André, ready to hurl my anger at my brother, but when I took a good look at him in the confines of his room, the light soured by the darkening sky as charcoal-grey clouds lowered over Mas Caussade, I felt the sharp edge of my rage grow blunt.
His skin was looking grey and had acquired the papery texture of someone who lives indoors. He’d lost weight. His cheekbones were stark in his face, but his body had gained more solid muscle, the result of hours of working at it. What else was he to do up here? A couple of booklets lay on his bed – ‘If an A-Bomb Falls: Will you know what to do?’ – with a lurid red cover image of a mushroom-cloud explosion. The second one displayed a more muted black-and-white mushroom cloud with the title ‘Survival under Atomic Attack’ and was an official US government civil defence publication.
He saw me staring.
‘I believe in being prepared,’ he commented.
‘If that’s true, why didn’t you prepare me? Why lie to me? Why keep me in the dark? Why let me take unnecessary risks that could have got me killed?’ I couldn’t keep the anger out of my words but I kept the hurt locked away. I didn’t let him see that. ‘I am your sister, yet you threw me to the wolves.’
His face remained still. Not even a frown, just a thin veil of wariness. It dawned on me that he was frightened of what I might do. Other parts of him might have changed, but not his amber eyes, they were the same. Locked on to me.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Tell me what has triggered this outburst.’ His manner was calm, unruffled by my accusations. ‘Is it your friend in the car outside?’
‘No.’ I didn’t sit. ‘Léon is your friend as well.’
He raised an eyebrow in dispute, but let it pass.
‘This has nothing to do with Léon,’ I insisted. ‘It has to do with sharing a drink with Maurice Piquet and finding Gilles Bertin’s dead body.’
That shook him. A flicker when his eyes blanked out, then nothing. ‘Poor Eloïse, I’m sorry. Stumbling over dead bodies is never pleasant.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No. Did you?’
‘No.’
Neither of us knew whether to believe the other. Léon was wrong. I was no longer the sister I’d been in Paris, ready to follow my brother blindly to the ends of the earth. I’d changed. As André looked at me now, I realised he knew it. The gap between us was far greater than the two metres of pine flooring.
‘How did you find his body?’ he asked. ‘Where was he killed?’
‘At his house. Shot in the chest.’ She didn’t mention Isaac, not even to him.
He thought quietly about that. ‘And Piquet?’ he asked eventually. ‘You spoke to him and lived to tell the tale?’
‘Piquet informed me that he is a CIA agent. He doesn’t work for masters in Moscow, as you claimed. He works for Washington. He insists that you are the one in the pay of the Soviet MGB Intelligence agency.’
‘Did he now?’
‘Why don’t you deny it?’
He uttered a short impatient sigh. ‘Do I need to, Eloïse? With you of all people.’
‘Tell me the truth, André. Just tell me the bloody truth.’ My voice was rising. ‘For once, be honest with me.’
He sat down on the edge of the bed and stretched out one leg as if it ached. ‘Very well,’ he said, so calm I wanted to shake him. ‘Ask me something.’
‘Are you spying for the Russians?’
‘No.’
‘Piquet claims you are.’
He leaned forward, hands on his knees. ‘Who are you going to believe? A murdering lying bastard who would slice your tongue out as soon as swill wine with you?’ He paused. We both knew what was coming next. ‘Or me? Your brother.’
I stepped forward, closer to him, and peeled my tongue from the back of my teeth.
‘Are you a double agent? Working for the CIA but pretending to have turned to the MGB?’
‘No. I am a CIA agent, pure and simple.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Why would Piquet tell me he works for the CIA if he doesn’t?’
‘You’re going to have to ask him that.’
‘André, why should I believe you?’
‘Wh
y should you disbelieve me?’
‘Because nothing makes sense anymore.’
He laughed and it smacked me right between the eyes because it was his old laugh, his Paris laugh that I had missed so much.
‘Welcome to the world of spies, Eloïse.’
‘I want to trust you but . . . I don’t know who to believe . . . or who to trust anymore.’
He tried to stand but I pushed him back down and leaned over him, my hands on his shoulders. ‘No more games, André, no more lies. Tell me the truth and then I will trust you. Not before.’
His eyes narrowed to a thin amber gleam. ‘I think you give your trust too easily. Too cheaply.’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘In exchange for a kiss. From your friend in the car outside.’
I didn’t move. But the rage was back and I didn’t trust myself. ‘Léon has nothing to do with this.’
‘Can you be sure? Ever since you came back Léon Roussel has been hanging round here, manipulating you. At Goliath’s burial was he the one who set the fire to make you think you were in danger? To make you turn to him for help. Don’t think that I don’t know he’s been turning up here every evening, beguiling you with his mask of uprightness and trustworthiness. Even now when he should be in a hospital bed he is here with you, trying to find out more.’
‘No!’ I smacked both my hands down hard on to his shoulders. ‘No, you are lying again, André.’
He smiled softly. ‘Can you trust him?’
‘Yes.’ I moved away and wiped my palms on my skirt. ‘Yes, I trust him with my life.’
I walked to the door, slammed it behind me and flew down the stairs. In the yard I walked over to the open window of Léon’s car, bent down and kissed him full on the mouth. When I pulled away, André was watching from his window, as I’d known he would be. I climbed into my own car and sped away from Mas Caussade.
*
The mayor’s house befitted his position. It was grand but not ostentatiously so, a fine square stone-built mansion with beautiful proportions and an elegant portico. I rang the old-fashioned bell and hoped Mayor Durand wasn’t taking a Sunday afternoon nap.
The Guardian of Lies Page 25
