At the height of his shouting match with Aline, Dumont fell to the sidewalk like a marionette suddenly cut from its strings, and what the examiner found made it clear he suffered significant paralysis and was likely dead in minutes. The cause of death was determined and reported as multiple, massive aneurysms throughout Dumont’s brain: a fatal series of hemorrhages unlike anything they’d seen. Dozens of blood vessels suddenly exploded with so devastating an effect the coroner’s report noted the term “catastrophic” couldn’t fully describe the extent of the old man’s injuries.
There were interviews with bystanders at the accident scene the day before but also guests and staff at the hotel where Aline stayed; most of the accounts went along parallel lines with minor variations. Outwardly, and with no reason or suspicion to give them pause, the authorities theorized Dumont’s advanced age and hidden weaknesses inside his brain’s crucial arteries may have taken him literally to the breaking point. Unsure of a cause, and without a reason to suspect wrongdoing, the cops told Aline she was free to go and she did so the next day.
Renard’s annotations told of his doubts, however, and an emerging mystery. The phone conversation with Dumont seemed odd in the extreme, but his death less than twenty-four hours later raised flags for an experienced detective and Renard was determined to find answers. Absent an identifiable crime, the police in Brugge had no case and the matter had to be dropped; there would be no more interviews with the British girl and it was best, Renard’s bosses told him, to leave things as they were. I looked at the side notes and it was clear he couldn’t accept what the local authorities regarded as obvious: Claude Dumont may have died suddenly, but the tragic event was the product of natural causes.
As I thumbed through the pages I felt an odd compulsion to skip ahead to the second bundle Renard had secured beneath a blank cover page. Again, the inspector’s commentary made a sort of briefing to set the stage, but the second group of documents were transcriptions from police interviews regarding an odd episode in Glasgow and nothing to do with Dumont’s bizarre, unexplained death. The timeline shifted, too: forward six years and hundreds of miles from Brugge. I continued, driven by a need to know and the notion Renard’s presence in town carried with it darker intent. Whatever brought him all the way from Belgium would surely be found in those pages.
Renard’s path began to show, and it was clear he made up his mind Claude Dumont’s death, although listed officially as aneurysms, collided with what he knew of his friend and the disturbing late-night conversation that passed between them. The inspector wouldn’t (or couldn’t) let it go and he became obsessed with finding and speaking with Aline. The Brugge police records showed her in residence at a flat in Croydon, but his attempts to reach her by phone ran aground when a manager reported no person by that name lived there.
Renard took matters a step further, calling a former colleague working at Interpol in Lyon. Without a case there was no justification for an official inquiry, but his friend agreed to keep an eye out in the agency’s database if Aline’s name ever popped up. Renard believed in the power of electronic record-keeping and he knew even a simple traffic violation might expose her location. The idea was wishful thinking, at best, but a clever cop will spread his net wide on the mere chance it might snag a clue. In the summer of 2006, the Interpol man was alerted by his database’s automated search function and from it a reference to a person of interest in an unresolved assault case. The record showed Aline Marie Lloyd was injured during an altercation and interviewed by Scottish police in connection to life-threatening injuries suffered by two men at a Glasgow bus stop. I remembered Jeremy’s description of Aline’s difficulties in the Scottish city.
With those words, and his memory of Claude Dumont’s description of visions during his confrontation with Aline, Renard saw enough to know his search had likely found another connection. More notes showed interest in a then-unnamed female in her twenties who, it said, had likely been the victim of a robbery attempt. I resumed flipping the pages one by one, shaking my head as another scenario played itself out in more police reports and witness accounts.
Officers responded to a call from a distraught woman reporting two men seriously injured at a bus stop. She described them as “pushy lads” who’d cornered a lone girl with clear intent to steal her handbag. The girl resisted, and as the caller was dialing police, one of the men struck her in the face. The witness began to shout for help to anyone within earshot when one of the men fell suddenly to the sidewalk and the second was on his knees, grasping at his throat. The female, a young woman with blonde hair, turned abruptly and walked away as if, the witness said, “she was only late for a meeting.” The bystander moved slowly closer until she had a decent line of sight to the bus stop. Finding both men were in desperate trouble, she waited until paramedics arrived a few moments later.
It was strange, the witness told police, that a girl in her position wouldn’t be in tears and shaking after such an ordeal. Instead, the victim simply hurried down the street as though nothing had happened. There was a struggle and one severe punch that left her bloodied, but the men who attacked her went down in pain and the girl only glanced at them for a moment the way she might at a lost wallet or a set of keys in the gutter.
Ambulance drivers arrived to find one of the men unconscious but otherwise unharmed. The second man, their report continued, displayed symptoms that included eyes swollen completely shut and an obvious constricted airway, suggesting at once he was possibly in the grip of anaphylactic shock. They were transported at once to West Glasgow Hospital, but the cops turned their attention to the missing girl and apparent victim of a mugging-gone-wrong, intent on speaking with her before she disappeared into the night.
It didn’t take long for the search to bear fruit when an alert hotel clerk reported a guest moving quickly through his lobby with a “smashed face” and blood down the front of her shirt. When police arrived and knocked at a second-floor room, a woman answered toweling wet hair and fresh from a shower with a split lip and swollen nose but oddly calm and unconcerned. As I knew it would, the report showed her as Aline M. Lloyd, visiting Glasgow from Cardiff for a job interview at Royal Bank of Scotland. Renard knew it, too.
I read on, moving quickly to hospital reports about the would-be muggers filled out by attending physicians who described unusual injuries hospital staff couldn’t explain. One collapsed unconscious and could not be wakened. Though he suffered no outward injuries, the man was clinging to life with dangerously low blood pressure and an unstable pulse. The other fared no better but his injuries seemed to defy logic. His face was severely swollen and a tracheotomy procedure in the ambulance was needed to relieve a windpipe constricted so badly, little or no oxygen was flowing into his lungs.
Suddenly, the reports said, and for no apparent reason, the first man woke slowly. He was disoriented and confused, leaving police officers to wait it out until he regained consciousness. The second attacker’s symptoms eased only minutes later and swelling that threatened his life where he lay near the bus stop was nearly gone. Emergency staff had no explanation for the abrupt reversal, but bloodwork and toxicology results showed nothing out of the ordinary beyond cotinine, alcohol, and trace residue of amphetamine. In each subject, the hospital records noted, there were no unusual, foreign compounds or a history of allergies, leaving doctors unable to establish cause and identify appropriate treatments. Both men simply lost their symptoms and were resting comfortably.
I continued and saw the prognoses for both men were encouraging, at least from their perspective, but attention shifted once more to the lone girl who would surely have become a victim but for the sudden and inexplicable injuries to her attackers. The police made Aline sit in a patrol car for a while as their colleagues took statements from witnesses. They were in agreement, yet no one could reconcile the outcome; the men had indeed meant to isolate and rob her. Once stable and out of danger, hospital staff cleared them both for interviews by the Glasgow police, but
the result was unexpected as both freely admitted their intent to rob Aline. The second man asked if anyone knew they had been taken to West Glasgow’s emergency room and when a cop asked why, the man worried she might “find them and finish the job.”
I read his words in disbelief but the mugger-turned-victim had no problem confessing so long as they kept the “mad bitch” away. He said she “looked at them in a queer manner and mumbled.” There were horrible images forming in his mind—images he couldn’t describe—and then the pain. The man likened his experience to being strangled by invisible hands, and his companion said it felt as if he’d been “knocked out by a mean bastard with a bloody great pipe.”
Investigating officers scoured the bus stop for clues and, of course, found nothing. There was no physical evidence or weapons and Aline’s disheveled appearance and bloodied face only confirmed eyewitness accounts. There was no plausible way a slight girl could have meted out such terrible injury, they said, which pointed logically to the actions of another—a vigilante or very dangerous Good Samaritan, perhaps—yet none of the witnesses reported a fourth actor. A mystery had been dropped in the lap of Glasgow P.D. and the answer, they said, would likely be found from a conversation with Aline Lloyd.
The document flow went suddenly (and inexplicably) blank, but I felt my heart sink when a final entry recorded a week after the attempted assault showed an abrupt transfer authorization moving Aline to a psychiatric facility outside the city, the kind of place that cares for people unable to care for themselves and does so under lock and key. At last, and in the midst of Renard’s determined hunt for answers, I understood: though she never allowed me in close enough to speak of it, her admittance to a mental ward was laid bare in the reference to a “sectioning” order.
I read the reports again as if the words might have changed somehow or that my understanding was incomplete. The notes suggested her stay for “observation, evaluation, and treatment” would, by its very definition, involve weeks or even months, and I shuddered under the weight of my own imagination and how it must’ve been for her in that dark, frightening bus stop, cornered by thugs who meant her harm.
It seems unlikely today, but in that moment, I thought only of Aline. I cared nothing for two criminals who wanted to hurt her—they deserved the horrible result—but more than that, I didn’t consider Renard’s persistent belief Aline was somehow connected to Claude Dumont’s death in Belgium. It meant nothing to me that a skilled and seasoned police veteran’s nose smelled something off; I didn’t care what he thought or why. I simply wanted to see her and let her know I understood.
Still, the commentary and sidenotes from Renard remained and within them his unwavering belief there was more to Aline’s story. Something was wrong, he wrote in a desperate scribble, and it was now a mystery that needed to be explained. I looked at his card but it wasn’t with the sensation of noble self-reproach Miss Persimmon wanted to hear. Mo still thinks the better half of my conscience drove me to call, that I overcame my romantic attachment to Aline by the sheer force of goodness and proper human behavior. Instead, I wanted only to see how far the man was willing to go and what it would mean. I had to gauge him and find for myself if his pile of papers was supposed to take him across the finish line and bring relief to a grieving friend or if he meant to force Aline into a corner and make her spill out the full story so that action could be taken. It wasn’t clear what that might be, but I thumbed a message into the phone and waited until he arrived twenty minutes later.
WHEN I met him in the driveway, Renard leaned against the side of his car with folded arms as if annoyed and waiting for me.
“Have you examined the documents, Mr. Morgan?” he asked.
“I read them, but I don’t find anything that tells me where you’re going with this.”
“I am not certain,” he replied.
“That’s helpful.”
Renard heard the sarcasm clearly but he wouldn’t take the bait.
“When it happened years ago, I wanted only to learn what my friend was trying to understand: how so unnatural an event could be possible, but…”
“But?”
“He died, Mr. Morgan. I knew Claude since we were children and he never once showed signs of mental distress. They dismissed it as though he had gone mad and his insanity caused the blood vessels in his brain to burst. He couldn’t find the answer from Miss Lloyd, but he shouldn’t have to pay for curiosity with his life.”
“He shouldn’t have grabbed at her, either,” I answered at once, “but he did. Was assault and battery supposed to convince her to talk to him, Inspector?”
“Of course not, but things happen—accidents! Claude was not a violent man; he would never have harmed her.”
“He damn near tore her shirt off!”
“You’re losing sight of the larger issue, Mr. Morgan.”
“Am I? Enlighten me, please!”
Renard walked slowly from his car but his eyes were aimed at the hill behind my house.
“Your girlfriend played a direct part in two unrelated incidents over six years; the first resulted in sudden and unexplained death and the second could have as well. Each time, each incident, she was there.”
“Yes,” I replied, “and each time, there was no crime committed and no charges against Aline were brought, nor could they be. You say I’m forgetting the big picture, but I think you’re just pissing around with a mystery you can’t solve, trying to find and lay blame for the death of your friend.”
“Then what of the two men in Scotland, eh?” he said quickly and with a louder tone to show determined purpose.
“I don’t give a shit about them,” I replied evenly. “And I don’t give a shit about you.”
Renard looked at me and it was easy to see his temper was being tested. Suddenly under stress and long-held frustration, his accent was growing thicker but he held his bearing.
“And the visions?” he demanded. “Claude spoke of seeing things in his mind; frightening things. In Scotland the men who attacked her begged police to keep her away; both of them report sudden, horrible thoughts, like watching at the cinema.”
“That doesn’t prove a damn thing,” I replied, dismissing his direction at once, but it felt wrong and I knew it. Before I could withdraw, he went to the bone.
“And you? Have you seen these strange things in your mind since you became involved with Aline Lloyd?”
I wanted to know how it was Renard knew my name, let alone my relationship with Aline, but his voice was growing louder and years of chasing Aline pulled him past a point at which decorum still mattered. In his mind, she was a detached and uncaring figure standing in front of Claude Dumont the moment he died. Worse still, her name surfaced again under strange and inexplicable circumstances that resulted in severe injury, only as a prelude to certain death were it not for the skilled and timely intervention of Scottish emergency crews. For Renard, the connection ceased to be mere coincidence long ago; despite a glaring lack of evidence that might explain or bring him a measure of peace, the old detective was unwilling to let it go.
I couldn’t speak. For moments that seemed like hours, I couldn’t tell him what I knew perfectly well was true. I had seen sudden and unexpected thoughts so real and vivid calling them “visions” was at least as accurate as anything I could manage. I swallowed hard and it made me angry to think Renard knew he’d found the flaw in my armor—that my hesitance would somehow stamp his assertions with a mark of validity and force me into a corner.
“What do you want, Inspector?” I asked at last. “Aline hasn’t committed a crime and your badge doesn’t work here anyway. What do you hope to gain by all of this?”
He only blinked at me and I thought I saw the edge of his chin quiver slightly with the rage that was building, but I went on quickly.
“I’m sorry your friend’s brain exploded, and I can understand how that must feel for you, but it wasn’t her fault!”
“How do you know, eh?” he shouted
suddenly. “Just because you are fucking her?”
“Careful, Inspector,” I replied slowly, but he went on without pause.
“Claude believed she was moved by the hand of God—the bringer of a miracle! But godly servants don’t kill innocent people, Mr. Morgan; they don’t perform wonderful, selfless acts this day and then murder on the next!”
I felt my own restraint failing and I went toward him in response.
“But Aline does? You think she’s some kind of hell-sent demon, bent on destroying the world?”
“No, I think she is something much worse than that,” he replied evenly. “I think she is a murderer who has been clever for a long time. I think she will murder again, and that is something you should consider, Monsieur.”
“Are things that dull down in Liège, Inspector? Too bored with retired life and looking for a reason to be relevant again?”
On his face, there was only the expression of astonishment and disbelief. He shook his head and smiled, telling me without words he saw only an ignorant fool, desperate to protect a love interest—a failed defense in the face of truth.
“I know who you were,” he said with a voice that was low and quiet. “In America, you looked after air accidents; you were also an investigator. Can’t you hear the stupidity in your own words? Don’t you wonder why these unexplained events all point to her?”
I felt a churn in the pit of my stomach as Renard’s logic blasted its way through every wall of scornful disbelief I’d built around me to protect against my own suspicions and doubt. The documentation was thorough and the case he could make was disturbing. If moved at all by the inspector’s accusatory tone, I decided, there would be nothing done until I could reach her and ask Aline’s side of so strange and unlikely a tale. I owed far more consideration to her than Renard.
The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd Page 15
