All the while we knew nothing of a student in distress because there hadn’t been one. It was a risky move in a small town where everyone knows everyone, but Renard’s play worked well enough when two ladies I won’t name innocently pointed him our way. Armed with an address, it didn’t take long for the theatre to begin.
AFTER A MORNING spent attacking the growth overrunning my backyard, I dialed Aline’s number to see if her dinner plans would call for a night out in Liverpool or something more local. It rang for a long time and I was sure she was in the shower until she answered at last. It was the tone of her voice—suddenly low and cautious—that told me something was wrong, and when I asked her she simply said, “I need you.” There was no explanation or reason given, but when I hurried to her door she was waiting with an expression I’d never seen before.
She wasn’t shaken or wearing the face of worry. Instead I saw only steely determination before she began, not anger, precisely, but more a look that telegraphed her irritated state. A man had been there to see her only moments earlier—a Belgian policeman—called Andre Renard.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“He thinks I did something horrible,” she replied.
Aline pointed me toward her kitchen and waited until I was settled at her table. Thirteen years earlier, she began, a group of Dutch students she’d met in college invited her to join them for a cultural exchange event at the university in Leiden. Because it wrapped early, she took a pleasant side trip to the coast for a visit with a friend in Brugge. The acquaintance, another econ major called Marion Van Den Broeck, worked a finance analyst job and Aline went over so the two could spend a few days catching up.
I listened closely because it was the first time she included details about her adult life before Denbighshire, but the story turned suddenly when Aline said Marion was out of town on business and she decided to stay a while to look around. She explained there was an idea of possibly relocating there, as Marion had been lobbying her boss to find Aline a position. It seemed innocuous enough and made a reconnaissance mission to look at apartments routine and understandable. On her second day an unexpected moment turned an ordinary visit into a nightmare.
As she made her way along the sidewalk near a canal, Aline said, a screech of tires pulled her attention to an intersection where a delivery truck had slammed into a small car. At once, the fuel tank’s rupture sent gasoline into the street as a crowd gathered. Two men rushed to pull the occupants—an unconscious woman and her infant child—free from the wreckage before a potential fire could overwhelm them. Seconds later, Aline said, flames ignited and engulfed the little sedan just as firetrucks arrived.
Her words were measured and precise, but when I asked what any of it had to do with her or the Belgian cop who came to see her, she said Renard was speaking about the unexpected death of a man only a day later, and he believed she was somehow connected. It was confusing so I waved my hand and said, “Hold on a minute; who’s the second guy?”
“A man called Claude Dumont,” Aline answered. “He was there when the lorry ran through a traffic light and crashed.”
“He got hit, too?”
“No, no, but he was there, amongst the crowd.”
Aline walked to the window and spoke with her back to me. I took it for lingering memories of a desperate and harrowing experience, waiting for bystanders to save the trapped mother and child, but it was much more.
“After the fire brigade arrived there was nothing more to see, so I walked to my hotel. The second man must have followed because he called out to me.”
“What did he want with you?”
“He was shouting at me and I began to hurry, but he caught me in the middle of the street, insisting I explain.”
“Explain what?”
“He kept at me, demanding that I talk to him. The hotel people must’ve noticed and they came out to help. The man tried again, begging me to speak with him until they led me inside.”
Her voice changed again and was nothing like the tone you would expect in the description of so odd and threatening a moment. Instead of emotion, I heard the muted patterns of a commentator on the sidelines of a tennis match.
“The next morning, he was there. I turned back but he rushed past and blocked my way, insisting that I talk with him. I was frightened because the hotel people hadn’t seen. I tried to run around him but he shouted and lunged at me.”
The image formed in my mind as Aline continued her description.
“I thought he would miss but his hand caught the collar of my shirt. It tore away the buttons and his nails scratched my neck. I tried to hit his arm—to force him so he would let go—but then he fell.”
At first, I didn’t understand what she meant. Had he tripped on the curb in an awkward, embarrassing moment? When she explained the man collapsed onto the sidewalk, I saw in her expression something new, a look that made me frown in reflex, even if I couldn’t understand its meaning in that brief moment. Her eyes moved left and downward while she spoke, as if suspecting somebody moving close from behind. She appeared free of empathy and I have only seen that look one time since. I remember swallowing hard and sitting perfectly still as she went on.
“The hotel people were around me by then and there was a lot of commotion until somebody gasped and stood away from where he was lying on the sidewalk. There was blood from his nose and ears…some from his mouth as well.”
Aline looked at me and I presumed she wanted to gauge my reaction, but in my thoughts, I could see images of her confrontation with astonishing detail. I heard his voice and the clatter around him as they called for an ambulance. Through it all, the fragrance of perfume—delicate and unmistakable as if recently applied—was suddenly stronger than it had been and I felt sharp pain near my collarbone.
“Anyway,” she continued with a bored tone as if she had run out of interesting things to say, “the paramedics tended to him but he was dead. The police were there and the hotel manager explained.”
She went silent for a moment and I asked softly what happened next.
“After they were finished, an employee told us the ambulance driver believed the man might have died from a massive stroke. I haven’t thought about that day in a very long time.”
“But this cop obviously has,” I said at last.
“He told me Claude Dumont, the man who died, was his friend.”
“That was a long time ago, Aline; why would he ask about it now? And anyway, how did he know where to find you?”
She reached for a card on the counter and handed it to me. On it was Renard’s name and his position as a former detective in the Liège police department.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him the same thing I told the police in Brugge,” she replied sadly, “but he thinks I’m lying.”
“He said that?” I demanded.
“No, but it was very clear in his voice. He told me it ‘wasn’t finished’ and then he drove away.”
I stayed with her, presuming wrongly she needed time to come back from a place in her memory and a tragic, unexplained incident years before. When she finished, I decided to leave it alone, and for a few days things returned to normal. I resumed my fight with the shrubbery, and a search for new work gloves (mine had been worn through at the palm) sent me into town to buy a fresh pair. As I walked from Watkin & Williams to where my car was parked, he was waiting.
“Evan Morgan?”
The accent was obvious and I knew at once Renard didn’t give up so easily.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I replied.
“May I speak with you a moment?”
“Sure,” I answered, but my agitation was growing and I know he could see it easily.
“I am Andre Renard, and…”
“I know who you are, Inspector, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you.”
He paused when my answer made it obvious any pretense otherwise would be a wasted effort.
“
Then you know why I am here.”
“I know enough.”
“Do you? I don’t wish to seem impudent, but I don’t believe that’s true.”
I could feel my face flush when the moment arrived—that certain point where customary, polite deference is blown away by rising anger.
“I know you’re here about some guy who died after assaulting Aline thirteen years ago, but apparently, her answers weren’t good enough.”
He smiled the way people do when they hear ignorance and a demand for patience they’d rather not extend. It was unlikely Aline would have neglected to tell me about their encounter, but Renard was sure the story had been told in carefully segmented half-truths.
“Miss Lloyd is understandably hesitant to discuss the event, but there’s more to this than you know.”
I looked at him with the intent of putting him in his place. I wanted to make clear his intrusion was neither wanted nor would it be tolerated, but I thought better of it and tried to beg off.
“I’m sorry, Inspector, but I wasn’t there. Aline has already told you what happened; if you’ll excuse me…”
When I reached for the car door, Renard blocked me.
“Why don’t we just talk for a moment, eh?”
I looked again and said, “I don’t have time right now, so if you wouldn’t mind…”
“I do mind, Mr. Morgan,” he said softly. “I think you would be well-advised to listen.”
“Or what?” I demanded. “Look around, Inspector—this isn’t Belgium and you’re out of your jurisdiction. Take your hand off my car or I’ll do it for you.”
He smiled again and stood away. I thought it was finished, but as I hurried to fasten my seatbelt he leaned close and said, “This won’t go away only because Aline Lloyd wants to pretend!”
I turned the ignition and slammed the car into drive, but as I looked for traffic he called out from the sidewalk.
“Have you seen things, Mr. Morgan? Visions, like dreams from nowhere?”
I ignored him and did an abrupt U-turn in the narrow street, speeding away as he shouted my name again. The ride home was made in nervous agitation as his words echoed in my mind. I had seen things, of course, but I was too angry to give Renard a reason for hope. As I turned into my driveway the thoughts were running rampant. How could he know about the sudden unexplained images? The “visions” Renard meant were strange, but I hadn’t revealed them to anyone.
I sat in my garage as memories showed me again those moments when daydreams become silent movies—stark and realistic beyond all reason. Dreams are never so vivid, leaving us lost in a netherworld where reality blurs and sensory input has no limit, but worse still, Renard seemed to know as if I’d described them in painstaking detail. Had he experienced the phenomenon too? I thought at once of Aline and with a disturbing sensation that went far beyond suggestion. Was there something she hadn’t bothered to tell me?
She was in Colwyn Bay for three days, but when I told her about Renard’s sudden appearance in town she didn’t seem overly concerned and I wondered why she didn’t react with anger at the news. A policeman knocking on the door might rattle most people, but most people are not Aline. When she returned from the coast the following Friday there was no sign of Renard. On Saturday, my hopes were dashed when I heard a car door in the driveway as I finished clearing my breakfast things, already late for a customary tea date with Jeremy.
I knew it wasn’t Aline, and when I glanced out the front window, Renard stood beside his car, surveying my house. He carried a thick manila envelope under an arm, but the rage swelled up at once, boiling over as I burst from the house on a straight line to meet him.
“You’re pushing your luck now, Inspector,” I declared firmly, but he simply held out the envelope.
“I’ve included the transcriptions into English so you will understand, Mr. Morgan. My mobile number is on the card; call when you’re ready to talk.”
He returned to his car and aimed it toward my gate as I stood in silence eyeing the envelope. I pulled its contents and it was clear Renard was deliberate and thorough, separating photocopied documents into distinct groups according to a timeline. Some of the annotations were in French, but I could understand well enough to know most of them were copies of his original source material.
PART OF ME demanded the papers’ return to their envelope unread, if only to demonstrate my indifference to the inspector’s annoying persistence. The other parts of my nature—those which guided my professional career as an objective analyst—demanded at the minimum a simple review. The latter won out and I walked with them to my kitchen.
It was unclear why Renard was so determined to connect Aline with the death of his friend, but soon a picture began to emerge. He’d jotted contemporaneous notes for the purpose of explaining, but he did so likely knowing his attempts at speaking with Aline would get him nowhere. The words were a chronology—a menu, of sorts—designed to distill a clutter of police reports and medical examination results into plain language.
As I guessed it would, the story began with the unfortunate death of Claude Dumont, a jewelry store owner who moved his shop from Liège over to Brugge in 1991 so that he could be closer to a relocated son. The text didn’t say so directly, but it became clear the two were lifelong friends, and I read carefully when the chronology described a frantic call to Renard. Transcribed text showed the detective jotting notes at a furious pace as Dumont told of a traffic accident involving a large truck and a young mother with her infant child trapped inside their car. The words were hastily written as Renard listened to his friend’s desperate and impassioned tale. Accompanying documentation from the local cops showed much of what Aline already told me, but there was more.
A truck had indeed crashed into the young woman’s car, but the fuel ignited almost immediately. In the rising heat and flames there was no chance for bystanders to reach the driver where she sat unconscious inside with her baby. I remembered Aline’s account and she had said specifically the gasoline didn’t begin to burn until after the car’s occupants had been rescued. I frowned at the inconsistency but Dumont’s description of the event continued.
The old man made his way across the street toward a gathering crowd, the notes read, but he stopped when the wind came up suddenly. A powerful, frightening gust from above blasted downward onto the stricken Renault, sending a cloud of smoke, loose dirt and dust roiling into the sky like an upside-down mushroom cloud. There was nothing else, he said: no sweeping breeze along that narrow street on an otherwise calm and clear afternoon. For a full minute, Dumont continued, the wind screamed straight down onto the car as if pushed by a jet engine, forcing the flames away to create an opening for two brave men who rushed to pull the mother and child free. Once they were safely removed, the powerful wind subsided as quickly as it appeared and when it did, the flames grew again until the little hatchback was completely engulfed.
There were supporting accounts for police made by witnesses gathered at the scene, each describing the solitary column of impossibly strong wind, but Dumont saw something else—something he couldn’t explain. Nearby, he reported, a girl in her early twenties stood alone and away from the crowd between Dumont and the wreckage. Her hand was slightly raised, he said, and her eyes were closed. It struck Dumont as a strange sight in the midst of a desperate attempt to rescue the driver and child, but he was compelled to watch her. After they pulled the woman and baby from her car, the girl lowered her hand and turned to go just as the gust died out and the flames resumed as if with a vengeance.
I read Renard’s comments in the margins of his notes and Dumont’s reason for calling made me stop and reread to make sure there was no mistake. The two had been friends for nearly thirty years; it made sense Dumont would alert Renard immediately, but the words sent a shiver up my spine and Renard underlined the translated sentence twice to affirm its importance:
Witnessed a miracle? Not a joke or having me on—he believes.
I continued
to read as if pulled by an unseen force demanding more. The notes resumed and Renard’s commentary was at least as valuable when Dumont described his first attempt to make contact with the mysterious girl after following her to a local hotel. He begged her to speak with him, to make him understand how she could accomplish such a thing. The girl refused, he said, but it was clear Dumont believed she was an instrument in divine hands, perhaps not knowing herself what happened. Still, he tried to convince her to tell him what she knew and how it felt. Dumont described a sudden, inexplicable parade of thoughts and images as though his mind had been taken over “by a demon” and made to see things that weren’t there, frightening images filled with violence and a terrifying sensation of dread. When he recovered, she was gone.
I stood and paced around my table where the pile of papers seemed to mock me as I searched for a reason to stop reading. None of it should have made sense and yet all of it did. An eerie sensation filtered through my body and I knew better than to think Renard was chasing phantoms. The condensed police reports included still images from security cameras at a hotel the following day, and in them Claude Dumont embroiled in a heated argument with a guest. I looked closely but supporting statements made by witnesses were needless; it was her. The report and accompanying video showed an obvious assault made by Dumont against a hotel guest only seconds before he collapsed, and a police report identified the girl as Aline M. Lloyd—a citizen of the United Kingdom.
I continued to read in numb silence, troubled by the details Aline hadn’t included when she told me of Renard’s visit. There had been no mention or reference to Claude Dumont’s dramatic declaration he’d seen a modern-day miracle and assigned its existence to Aline. The next pages described the results from a medical examiner and an autopsy performed at the request of the police. I read it all but their words shocked me back to reality.
The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd Page 14
