‘We’re pretty good friends,’ I murmur.
‘And you’re a pretty good liar. Have you told them about Mme Tremblay’s suicide attempt?’
‘No. I didn’t think she’d like people here gossipping. And she’s got enough on her plate at the moment.’
He nods, takes the next turn without my having to direct him.
‘Do you have the keys to Mme Tremblay’s house.’
‘No. Why?’
‘You’re lying.’
I laugh for what feels like the first time in weeks. ‘I’m glad you’re not omniscient.’
He grunts. ‘So maybe you’re not lying. By the way Mme Tremblay has been taken off by Gisèle Desnos. To stay at her place. She thought she could use an environment a little more cheerful than the hospital.’
‘Thanks for telling me.’
Silence covers us. We drive in it for what feels too long. The sky is a sullen, heavy grey, the heat in the car overpowering. I have the impression Contini is looking forward to our tête-à- tête even less than I am.
‘How much longer are you going to postpone the ordeal?’ I find myself muttering.
‘Only until I’ve bitten into a pastry.’
I make to open the box and he stops me. ‘Not so fast. We’re almost there.’
He turns off the highway and takes the narrow incline with exaggerated slowness, as if deliberately to tax my nerves.
‘That’s where Maryla Orkonova’s car must have gone off the road.’ He points abruptly and I see where the neatly banked snow has been pushed and toppled and tire-tracks edge over the verge.
‘Lucky about the snow, really. Broke her speed, cushioned the impact. Car might have turned over if it wasn’t there.’
I shiver. ‘Do you think…?’
‘Do I think that you suffered a second aberration and followed her down from your house and bludgeoned her over the edge with your car? The answer is no. I don’t have you down as a frenzied serial killer.’
‘I should thank my lucky stars.’
‘Thank them.’
‘Second aberration, you said?’
‘You heard me.’
An imp of the perverse makes me open the box of pastries and take a bite out of an eclair. It is time.
‘Good?’ Contini asks.
‘Not bad.’ I have the odd impression I can hear him salivating. I chew with audible relish for a moment.
‘I didn’t see your little package until yesterday, you know. I’m sure of that. The only time I ever saw those letters before was when I wrote them. All except Madeleine’s, that is. That I saw for the first time, last night. That’s what made me think of suicide again.’
‘So you did write them,’ Contini says softly, though I feel the words as emphatically as a clap of thunder.
‘You didn’t know?’
‘I assumed. I had no way of knowing until you just told me. Madeleine could have been wrong.’
‘Of course.’
We don’t speak again until we are in the house. It feels gloomy. The morning’s coffee is still on the table, the mugs rimmed with a grey brown sludge. Minou is whimpering oddly in her basket. Her ears are peeled back. She looks at me accusingly.
I turn on all the lights, pile the dishes into the sink.
‘Ya. Let’s cheer this place up a bit. It’s almost the New Year, after all.’ Contini reaches for a blue and white platter displayed on the pine dresser, gives it a wipe and arranges the pastries on it. ‘I’ll make the coffee and you light the fire. We can go next door. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
My luck to be given a policeman who’s an Epicurean, I think, as I open a tin for Minou and freshen the water in her dish. She doesn’t come running. It occurs to me that her mentality is a little like Maryla’s. I’ve been neglecting her and now I’ll have to grovel. I bend to stroke her and she whimpers.
‘That’s one unhappy cat,’ Contini says from behind me. ‘You been beating her or something?’
I veer towards him and he holds up a staying hand. ‘Just kidding. But she really doesn’t look too good.’
‘The avalanche in the woodshed frightened her last night.’
As if to contradict me, Minou stretches and slowly comes out of her basket. She is limping. Her back paw doesn’t touch the ground as she covers the short distance to her bowls.
‘She get hit by a log?’ Contini asks.
I shake my head. ‘She was fine last night.’ I bend to examine her. She whimpers again, more emphatically this time. There is a great round gash on her leg where the fur has been stripped away. ‘She must have got caught in a rabbit trap,’ I murmur. ‘I’ll have to take her to the vet.’
‘Na. Don’t bother.’ Contini is right beside me scrutinizing the paw like a past expert. ‘Get me a couple of sticks, popsicle sticks if you’ve got them, or those things doctors are always sticking down your gullet. And a roll of bandage. I’ll do as good a job.’ He grins at my evident suspicion. ‘I might not have been much use at Greek and Latin, but I’ve been through a sobering lot of pets in my day.’
By the time I’ve rummaged around and come back with the necessary, Minou is sprawled luxuriously in Contini’s lap. She lies there unmoving until he has tied the splint.
I carry her, unprotesting, back to her basket.
‘Cream,’ Contini says. ‘I gave her some pastry. Wish they were all that easy, eh? Now it’s our turn.’
He busies himself with the making of coffee as if he had done it a hundred times before in my house. I leave him to it, go and lay and light a fresh fire. Minou’s leg worries me. Who could be laying traps around here?
I don’t have much time to consider it. Within minutes, Contini comes in with a tray and reminds me that I have far more serious things to think about.
‘One pastry and then you’re on.’ He prods his fork through the centre of a religieuse and pops the top into his mouth. ‘Not bad.’ He wipes a trickle of cream from the corner of his mouth with a dainty gesture, then pours out coffee. ‘Help yourself.’
‘I’ve had one, thanks.’
‘Okay.’ He finishes his pastry in two heaped mouthfuls. ‘Let’s take it from the top. You wrote all those drooling, anonymous letters to Madeleine Blais. Pretty strong stuff. She didn’t take to them in a big way. Not after a while, in any case. Then you gave the game away somehow. She found out they were from you. You only learned she had found out yesterday. December 30th. Is that right?’
I nod.
‘That’s right then?’
‘You got a tape recorder going? You want me to say it out loud?’
‘I’ve still got a brain,’ he mutters and passes me a cigarette. When he lights it, the flame leaps too high and all but singes my hair.
‘Heh! Should I have a lawyer here?’
‘You’re the lawyer. And this is just a chat. You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise. Like a confessional. Now pay attention.’ He leans comfortably back into his chair. His voice when it comes takes on a musing, intimate note.
‘So the letters don’t come into it just yet. But Madeleine rings you. Around 1.15 a.m. on Christmas day?’
‘That’s what you told me. I don’t remember hearing a voice.’
He puffs at his cigarette. ‘Okay. But you knew it was her. Maybe she breathes a certain way. Like Marilyn Monroe.’ He gives me a happy smile and then rushes on before I can protest. ‘So you hot-foot it over to Mme Tremblay’s. Madeleine is waiting. Maybe she invites you in or maybe she suggests a stroll straight away. Which was it?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Try.’
‘Okay. We went out.’
‘You didn’t fuck her first? In her bedroom? In that nice comfortably dissheveled bed. There are all those prints. Everywhere. On the bedposts.’
Maybe he has spiked my coffee. Maybe it’s just me. But somehow confusion sets in and I can see it all. Like in a movie. A blue movie. Madeleine and I on that bed.
Contini is waiting. ‘It
doesn’t matter,’ he murmurs. ‘So you go out. She’s got her big coat on and nothing underneath. Well, almost nothing. A slip of a nightgown. Soft silk, warmed by her flesh, but turning cold in the night air. The stars are shining. From somewhere an owl screeches. A perfect night with the love of your life. You slip your arm around her, beneath the coat. To warm her. You murmur sweet nothings. She’s irresistible. Just like in the movies. And then suddenly, without warning, she turns on you.
‘Women! They’re always blowing hot, then cold.
‘She says she knows it was you. Yes. She knows. All those letters. You’ve driven her to distraction. Persecuted her. Terrified her. Stalked her. She’s been brought to the very edge. And all because of you. An obsession. A jealous obsession. Vengeful. You’re trying to kill her.’
Contini’s voice has grown hypnotically low and I am straining to hear, the images racing across my mind in time to his words. Like a dream or a nightmare. Already lived. More real than the real.
‘No, no, you protest. You love her.
‘Never, she insists. It’s not love. You don’t want her alive. You don’t want her breathing freely. You’re a pervert. Like that Marc Lépine. Like that assassin, who shot down all those women at the university. And she slaps you hard across the face.
‘You slap her back. You hit her hard and she stumbles, slips, but her leg kicks you in the crotch. Once it’s started, it’s hard to stop and suddenly your hands are round her neck. You just want to stop her talking, to stop her railing against you, calling you names, and you squeeze, you squeeze hard and she goes all limp. She stops resisting.
‘But you’re not limp. You’re hard. Too hard. And you take her hand and you wrap it round your cock and together you squeeze and there it is, your spunk all over her coat. You wipe it with your handkerchief and get up.
‘Yet she doesn’t get up when you do. She just lies there. And abruptly it comes to you. This time you’ve gone too far. Really too far. You didn’t mean to. You love her. You really love her. But now it’s too late.
‘You don’t actually know what you’re doing. You’re on automatic pilot. No one will understand that it was an accident. Just a row that got out of hand. So you find the rope. It doesn’t take long. You know exactly where everything is. And minutes later, you’ve strung her up. Too late you realise that her eyes have fluttered open. She wasn’t dead. But now she is. She’s hanging there. Madeleine. Poor Madeleine. Your great love.’
‘Is that how it was?’ Contini whispers after a moment.
I can barely hear him. My head is buried in my hands. I think I am crying. The acrid fumes of my guilt clog my mind, paralyse limbs, stab at my eyes.
‘Is that how it was?’ His hand is on my shoulder.
I look up at his hazy face and see the features swim into solemnity. My head feels as if it is nodding. My voice creaks through my throat. ‘Yes. That’s how it was. More or less. I killed her.’
‘You know you’re confessing to murder.’
‘Whatever.’
He stares at me from his protruding eyes.
‘You got a toilet around here?’
15
________
Contini is gone a long time. Too long. Maybe the food really didn’t agree with him.
I don’t mind. My head feels light. My heart feels light. If I believed in an afterlife, I would run through the door now and scramble to the top of some tree or house and fling myself down. To join Madeleine.
But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to hide any more. Don’t have to construct reasons for myself. Don’t have to get through each solitary day with a pretence of purpose. No more burden of guilt. So easy. Everything will be taken care of. A child again. With Contini as my mother. He feeds me pastries.
I stare at the flames.
Contini comes in so softly his voice startles me.
‘Feeling better?’
I shrug, stretch out my arms in expectation of handcuffs.
They don’t come. Instead Contini casts me a rueful look and settles into the sofa.
‘Confessions are great, Rousseau. But what I need is evidence. I’ve borrowed these.’ He puts two blue sweaters down beside him and pats them reflectively.
‘By the way. How’d you get Madeleine’s body up to the loft?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. How’d you string her up?’
My head is fuzzy. ‘A ladder. There was a ladder.’
‘A ladder. Okay.’ He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small black box, prods a button. ‘It was on, by the way.’
We both stare at the tape-recorder.
‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade you the tape for a sperm sample. Tuesday morning. Eleven o’clock should do it. At Headquarters.’
I gaze at him in disbelief. ‘You mean… all that…?’
‘Could be true.’ He ambles towards the liquor cabinet, takes out a bottle of whisky and pours us both a small shot. ‘We could use this.’ He lifts his glass to me.
‘So, Tuesday at eleven?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you? Some men are very particular about their sperm. And for what purpose it’s extracted.’
There is a dull thudding in my head. I try to shake off my confusion. ‘What were you doing upstairs?’
‘And the story works, doesn’t it?’
‘What were you doing upstairs?’ I repeat more emphatically.
‘Having a crap. Having a look round.’ He grins. ‘Some men are pretty particular about having their houses searched too. And warrants with guys like you… with the local police chief on their side, can take forever.’
I feel for the attic keys in my pocket. ‘What did you find?’
‘These two.’ He pokes the sweaters. ‘And a whole lot of garbage. Christ you’ve got a lot of garbage in this house. It would take me a year to sift through it.’
‘Anything useful?’
He winks at me and plumps the tape-recorder into his pocket. ‘Just get yourself to Headquarters Tuesday, Rousseau. Okay? That gives you two days grace. A New Year’s present from me. And bring Mme Tremblay along with you. Just so we can clear up loose ends, check on whether poor Henderson was or wasn’t Madeleine’s so-called hitchhiker. I want this case over and done with. Before anyone else gets hurt. The inquest is set for Monday week.’
He glances at the telephone where the tell-tale light is blinking again. ‘And pick up your messages, will you. You’ve got to start behaving responsibly.’ He presses the button and we both listen to the voice of Gisèle Desnos.
‘Pierre. I’ve got Mme Tremblay staying with me. And we’re having a little party tonight. Why don’t you drive over. You can stay the night. About nine. See you then.’
‘I think you should go,’ Contini says. ‘It will do you good. And you never know how long freedom will last.’
The next voice cuts him off. ‘Pierre. It’s Marie-Ange Corot. I’m flying into Mirabelle on Wednesday at 2.30. Air France. Meet me if you can. If you can’t, I’ve got a room booked at the Ritz.’
Contini whistles beneath his breath. ‘Classy woman. I talked to her on the phone. Good she’s coming. And now I’d better get back to the wife. Or she’ll murder me.’
I stiffen and he chuckles.
‘You’re not a bad man you know, Rousseau,’ he says as I walk him to the door. ‘A little too obsessional maybe. But you were always like that. Even as a kid. All those patriots. All that remembering. Some of the boys in my class nicknamed you, ‘Je me souviens’ - after the motto on the licence plates. ‘Did you know that?’ He lets out a guffaw.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, now you do.’ He pauses for a moment as he pulls on his coat. ‘Something else. Were you aware that Madeleine Blais had a child?’
‘A child!’ I can feel my mouth hanging open, but I can’t quite close it.
‘So you didn’t know. Funny. I always thought men could detect that of their lovers. The change in their bodies I
mean. But maybe you never looked closely enough. Or maybe, afterwards, you didn’t… Oh never mind. A better new year, eh!’ He pats me on the shoulder. ‘That’s what we need.’
I grunt something that might be a return greeting and watch him as he unlocks his car.
The door is already wide open when he turns back to me, ‘Two more things I forgot to mention, Rousseau. We’ve located the last voice on Madeleine’s answering machine. One Fernando Ruiz. Mean anything to you? No?’ He glances at his watch. ‘Lavigne should be talking to him right now. And this.’ He shuffles through his trouser pocket and brings out a small gold plaque bearing the letter R. ‘Belong to you? I noticed a bunch of keys in the hall that looked as if they could use it.’
I turn the plaque round and round. It burns a hole in my hand, but I can’t let it go.
‘Yes, I thought so. Funny that we found it in the snow just outside Madeleine’s window…’ He prises it from my fingers. ‘Tuesday at 11. Don’t forget.’
I stand there gazing into the gathering darkness for a long time after he has vanished. Images of that fateful night scud across my mind with dizzying pace. Like the distorted fragments of a nightmare, they refuse clarity and sequence. Am I mad? I can no longer distinguish the lived from the fantasized.
But the imprint of the key-ring plaque squeezed in my hand brings me back, a small cold object in the midst of fugitive dreams. A small, cold, identifying object, like the pebble I wanted.
In some buried recess of my self, the phone rings. Yes, the phone rings rupturing sleep. Despite my grogginess, despite the answering silence, I know it is Madeleine. The need to see her is overwhelming. I need to explain. To confess to those letters. Quietly, privately. Before Christmas traps us in a familial moment. Yes, now. I must. I leave the warmth of the blankets and like a sleepwalker set out across the familiar fields.
The lamp glows in her window above the landing. It casts shadows through the cold darkness. Madeleine is waiting for me. I will hurl a pebble at her window to catch her attention. Without waking Mme Tremblay. As in childhood.
But there are no pebbles. Only my key ring with the tell-tale R.
And then I see the figures etched against the light. Madeleine and a man. Kissing. Her head is thrown back in the same way as when she is kissing me. One hand is firm on her buttocks. The other caresses her hair, her back. I stare.
The Dead of Winter Page 30
