The Returned

by Seth Patrick

  He immediately ordered roadblocks, and it was enough to settle his nerves somewhat. At least the man would be unable to flee the town and take Thomas’s family along for the ride.

  Two things were clear to him now. First, that Simon had had nothing to do with either the Clarsen or Payet attacks. He’d known it instinctively before, since if he had seriously thought the man capable of that, Thomas would have been back at his house within minutes. But now it was beyond doubt. Delaître had been sitting pretty in Thomas’s house while the Payet attack had happened.

  He went to the Payet apartment to oversee the initial investigation, all the while distracted by the thought of what Simon’s intentions really were. It was late afternoon by the time he managed to extricate himself and get back to the office.

  Only to be greeted with the sight of Adèle and Simon. Fucking. In Thomas’s own bed, the bed he and Adèle had shared for so long.

  The first thing to hit was a deep sorrow unlike anything he’d known before. Hope left him, utterly. Hadn’t he given Adèle everything she’d ever wanted, been there when she needed him, brought up her daughter as his own? And now this was the choice she’d made. Anger flooded him, but it was anger toward Simon; he still couldn’t bring himself to blame Adèle. What chance did she stand, against such temptation? Against such forces?

  Because there was something he didn’t lightly admit to himself: he was scared, both of what Simon Delaître was and by the hold he had on Adèle.

  Rage and despair built within him until he couldn’t stand it. Work would have to wait. He left the station with no explanation to his team of where he was going; even he didn’t really know until he pulled up outside the church.

  The priest was at the far side of the nave cleaning around the altar. “Hello, Thomas,” said Father Jean-François. “How’s the groom-to-be? Not long now!”

  Thomas had no time for the niceties. “What did you talk to Adèle about?”

  The priest looked at him, suddenly wary. “Now, Thomas…I wouldn’t be much of a priest if I shared what people say to me.”

  He gripped the priest’s arm. “Was it Simon?”

  Father Jean-François looked at Thomas’s hand until Thomas relented and let go. “Try not to worry, Thomas,” said the priest. “It’s only natural for Adèle to think about Simon now. But she’s marrying you. I think Adèle has come to terms with what happened.”

  “So she did talk to you about him.”

  “Thomas, you’re here. He’s a ghost. She’ll forget him in time.”

  Thomas shook his head, frustrated. He pointed to the large cross on the wall of the church. “When Jesus came back, was he just a ghost?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was here, wasn’t he? Physically here, in flesh and blood.”

  “Are you unwell, Thomas?” said the priest, concerned. “Maybe we should sit until you can calm down.”

  Thomas had no time for this. “Answer my question, Father,” he snapped.

  Father Jean-François paused, but he still looked more concerned for Thomas than fearful. “Some believe that,” he said. “But the resurrection doesn’t have to be read quite so literally.”

  “Father, I’m not a theologian. I need to understand. Would a physical resurrection be permanent, or is it just a matter of time before it ends?”

  “You’re talking about a subtle point of theology. The question must be this—what do you believe? Faith is the important thing. The rest…there aren’t always answers, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m a police officer, Father. I deal in facts. It’s my job to find the answers. So tell me, how long would resurrection last? Would it be permanent?”

  “You’re asking the wrong questions, Thomas.”

  Thomas looked at Father Jean-François with disappointment, verging on disdain. “You’re giving the wrong answers.”

  He left the church and drove, aimless, his police radio off. He still felt unable to go home, his mood dark and confused, not good for confrontation. Nor was he ready to face his officers at the station, feeling unable to put on a facade of strength. So he drove, watching the town through his car windshield for a change, rather than his computer monitor. Time slid away from him; suddenly it was dusk, the sky darkening rapidly, streetlights coming on for the approaching night.

  He wished for Simon to appear in the road, imagined his foot hitting the accelerator. There would be irony in that, he thought, and a sour smile crept onto his face. As he drove in the gathering dark, a power outage spread across town. There had been a few of these power failures in the last week. He’d intended to contact the electricity company to find out if there was an expectation of further problems, but with everything else that was going on, it had slipped his mind.

  He kept driving, looking out for trouble. The streets felt more dangerous in the unlit night, as if every shadow held a nasty surprise. It was a longer outage than before, twenty-seven minutes before the power returned. When it did, he started to head back to the station, so he could use his cameras and see what Adèle was doing. Then he would have to make a proper decision on what action to take.

  As he entered his office, Bruno bounded up from his desk. “The suspect was spotted, sir,” he said. He was eager but wary, trying to worm his way back into favor, thought Thomas, after letting the man go in the first place.

  “Captured? Did you say captured?” Thomas felt the faintest stirring of hope.

  “No, sir,” said Bruno. “Spotted. A patrol saw him walking in the street. As they approached, he made a run for it. Then the power went, and he gave them the slip in the dark. We tried to get hold of you.”

  Thomas felt a stab of frustration. He’d turned off his radio. Maybe, just maybe, that idea of finding Delaître in the streets himself hadn’t been so crazy after all. “Get more people out there,” he said. “Focus on that area.” Knowing Bruno couldn’t see what was on his monitor, he opened his security camera program, wanting to make sure Adèle and Chloé were OK. His face fell when he saw what was on the screen. All the cameras in his house had failed, he thought; every image was dark. Then he noticed a corner of one image was still barely visible.

  “No,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Bruno. Just go. Get back to me if the suspect is brought in.”

  Bruno left, and Thomas hit the desk with his fist. The cameras hadn’t failed. Their view was being obscured somehow. And that meant they’d been discovered, that Adèle knew about them. He didn’t relish the thought of explaining them to her.

  He left the station again and drove straight home. He didn’t want to call Adèle, and without the cameras, he had no idea if she and Chloé were even there. If they were safe. As he approached, he could see that Chloé’s bedroom light was on. There was movement in the room. He breathed a sigh of relief but still checked his gun before he went to the door—Simon could have come back. Adèle was in the hallway as he entered, her face like a dark storm.

  “Is he here?” asked Thomas. There was no point in trying to pretend.

  “No,” she said, her voice cold. “He left.”

  She stood in the hallway, glaring at him. Irritated, Thomas walked past her.

  “How long have the cameras been there?” she snarled, suddenly furious.

  “So that’s how you want to play it?” said Thomas. “You think you’re the only one with the right to be angry? How long have you been fucking your dead boyfriend, Adèle?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “Chloé.”

  Thomas bowed his head, his anger deflated. Yes. Chloé. “I installed the cameras two years ago.”

  She nodded, and it was a few seconds before she spoke again. “I’m leaving you,” she said. There was no triumph in her voice, he noted. Just certainty.

  He felt all emotion drain from him, felt as cold and dead in
side as the creature she claimed to love. “You’re leaving me for Simon?”

  Adèle looked at him with despair and shook her head. “How can I trust you? You’ve been spying on me for two years.”

  “I wasn’t spying on you,” he said.

  “Really?” He saw the anger grow in her. “On Chloé then?”

  He was distraught. “God, Adèle…how can you think that? I was away from home so often, I was terrified of leaving you on your own, and then sometimes you didn’t hear the phone and you didn’t answer it. Every time, I’d be scared that you’d done it again. I’d see you in my head, covered in blood, your wrists…open.” He felt tears start to come, thinking of how he’d felt all those times, just imagining Adèle like that. “I couldn’t cope with it, and I couldn’t tell you how I felt. So I put the cameras in. Then when you didn’t answer the phone, I could make sure you were safe. That was all. To make sure that you were OK. That you hadn’t hurt yourself again.”

  He could see in her eyes that she believed him. He could see her anger shrink as her thoughts settled. Then she shook her head. “I’m still leaving, Thomas.” But she sounded far less certain than she had a moment before, he thought.

  He felt a tear fall from his eye; he wiped at it hurriedly. “For a dead man you were afraid of even when he was alive?”

  She frowned at him. “I never said that. All I said was that sometimes…sometimes I was wary of him. He never hurt me.”

  Thomas shook his head. “Of course he hurt you. The scars may not have been physical, Adèle, but we’ve both been living with them for years.”

  She turned away from him, and he knew she was thinking: weighing up her options, the decision to leave him not quite made. At last, she turned back. “If I do go with Simon, it’s a chance for Chloé to know her true father,” she said, sounding desolate. “It might be a chance for everything to be put right. Everything Simon’s accident took away from me.”

  Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, torn. He could let her go. Let her go and make the worst mistake possible. Or he could fight for what they had and tell her the truth. The secret that he and everyone else who had known had kept from her these last ten years. Their only desire had been to protect her: she’d suffered enough and didn’t need to know what had really happened that day. But now? Now she had to be told. Had to know the truth about the man she was planning to abandon him for. For her sake, and for Chloé’s.

  But it would hurt, and he knew it. He opened his eyes and took her hands in his. “It wasn’t an accident,” he said. “Simon wasn’t taken from you, Adèle. He abandoned you.”

  Adèle looked blank, unable to grasp what he meant. Then a shadow of fear crept across her face. “What?”

  “When Simon died. The priest asked us to call it an accident. But it wasn’t.”

  She looked at him, lost. “What was it?” she asked. “Thomas, what was it?”

  He told her.

  • • •

  That night, he read Chloé her bedtime story. When he’d finished and returned to his and Adèle’s bedroom, Adèle was still dazed, looking at herself in the mirror. Telling her the truth had seemed to shake her clear of Simon’s grip, at least for now.

  Thomas made a point of changing the sheets. Then he made sure to give Adèle her medication himself. Perhaps she’d stopped taking it, he thought. She’d done that before without discussing it with him, stopped it or reduced the dosage. But it was up to him now to make the decisions she could not. He hoped that everything he’d told her would sink in—and that she would understand.

  Soon enough, Simon would be in custody again. It would be complicated. Simon was an enigma: a dead man walking through the streets of the town. No home. No family. I’ll be damned if I let him take mine, he thought. The creature—he couldn’t even think of him as a real man—was a loose end.

  And Thomas didn’t like loose ends.

  38

  When the power outage came after dusk, Pierre went to stand outside the Helping Hand. High on the valley slope, he watched the town lie in darkness, feeling the cold mountain breeze on his skin. The only buildings he could see lit were those important enough to have their own sources of power: the hospital, the police station, and, further up the valley, the control room of the dam itself.

  The Helping Hand was also part of that select group. This thought gave him immense satisfaction. He could hear their generator purring; they had their own source of water too, with the borehole under the building. Everything was ready, for whatever challenges were coming.

  Finally the lights came up again, spreading rapidly across the vista in front of him.

  He lingered for a moment, enjoying the solitude, then heard Sandrine call his name. It was the police on the phone, asking if he could take in a nine-year-old boy while they tracked down his parents.

  It was proving to be a busy night at the shelter. There was already a homeless woman staying with them, sour-faced and stubbornly silent, and as Pierre waited for the police to arrive, he had another unexpected visitor: Simon, a little out of breath, disheveled, and strangely excited.

  “I wondered if I could take up your offer again,” said Simon. “I hope I’m still welcome?”

  “Absolutely,” Pierre reassured him. “You’re free to come and go, but I knew you’d be back. Follow me. Are the police still looking for you?”

  Simon grew visibly agitated. He nodded, silent.

  “Then you’ll have to stay out of sight. They’ll be here soon with another lost sheep. Just keep your head down, and there won’t be a problem.” Pierre led him through to one of the rooms at the back, somewhere quiet to wait until the coast was clear.

  When the police rang again, he was half expecting their overzealous captain to pester him about whether he’d seen Simon. Instead it was Michael, the officer he’d spoken to at the roadblock earlier.

  “You asked about Jérôme Séguret,” said Michael. He was keeping his voice low, and Pierre knew that whatever was coming was confidential. “I found out a few things, but they go no further, OK?”

  “Of course,” Pierre assured him. A minor lie, he thought. Telling Claire hardly counted.

  “He was questioned about the attack on a barmaid from the Lake Pub. Lucy Clarsen.”

  “Really?” Pierre said, shocked. “Wasn’t that why you had the roadblocks?” He’d heard more about the attack since then—the local media had played it down, but for those with an ear to the ground, there were plenty of rumors that made for grim listening.

  “Yes, but he’s been ruled out. There were two things that cropped up as a result, though. First, he’d been visiting Lucy Clarsen regularly for quite some time. I couldn’t find out the details, but he was paying her for favors, if you get me.”

  Pierre understood at once. There were plenty of people in town eager to tell him about those they felt were of loose morals, and he’d heard about a barmaid at the Lake Pub whose virtue was for hire. The idea that Jérôme had been a customer didn’t surprise him a great deal. “And the second?”

  “Something happened with his daughter Léna last year. The girl was brought to the hospital with a back injury and the doctors reported it as possible parental abuse. They think he hit her. With no prior concerns, it was put on file, and no further action was taken.”

  “Thank you, Michael,” said Pierre. He took a long, satisfied breath. Jérôme Séguret had been an inconvenience for long enough. He considered for just a moment whether passing on the information was the right thing to do. After all, he had decided to encourage Claire to take her husband back for Camille’s sake. That too had been the right thing to do, and he certainly hadn’t found it easy, but now Jérôme had sealed his own fate.

  It seemed only fair. He called Claire and told her everything. She sounded tired, having just gotten home from the hospital, where she’d left Léna for the night.

  “I had to
tell you, Claire,” he said, sounding almost pained by the task. “I had no choice. This kind of thing just festers if left alone. Now, you have to forgive him.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” Claire said. “I have to go. Jérôme’s just gotten back.”

  Wonderful timing, he thought. Satisfied, Pierre could hear the rage in her voice. “I’m here for you, Claire,” he said. “Always.”

  He hung up, pleased with the way things had gone—Claire would be furious with Jérôme and the shambles of their relationship would go down in flames. Pierre, having done all he could to help them salvage things, was blameless.

  And now Simon was back, needing Pierre’s help. It had been a good day, all around.

  Shortly after he’d spoken to Claire, the little boy was dropped off at the Helping Hand by a female officer he recognized as the captain’s second in command, Pierre and Sandrine both there as welcoming party. The officer seemed oddly reticent about leaving the boy with them.

  “Don’t worry, Laure,” he said to her, and the look she gave him made him regret being so informal. “Inspector Valère,” he said, switching tack. “He’ll be fine.”

  She stepped a little away from the boy and lowered her voice. “His name’s Victor,” she said. “He hasn’t spoken, not to anyone. It doesn’t seem to be a hearing problem, though.”

  Pierre nodded, his expression suitably serious. “Trauma, maybe,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get him to open up, but the best thing will be to make him feel safe here.” He looked Victor over. The boy was dressed in oddly outdated clothes, possibly indicating a poor home, but the coat he wore seemed new; he was gripping it tightly like a security blanket, looking around with a gaze entirely free from emotion, staying unnervingly silent.