The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones

by Tim Roux

  “And where is the ghost?” one of the local commissaires demands.

  “Right next to you,” the Earl replies, provoking a satisfyingly shocked reaction. “In fact, I think you are standing on her toes.” This is entirely untrue. Alice is actually positioned between the Earl and myself. Nonetheless a space opens up all around the commissaire in question and he appears distinctly nervous. “Lunch, then,” he declares, unsure as to which way to turn to avoid flattening Alice who slaps her imaginary forehead in amused despair.

  The grown-ups go off around the corner to La Cave ô Délices, while Mike and I decide to do the touristy thing instead, accompanied by Alice, and end up in a colonnaded square before finding a crêperie.

  We meet back at the Préfecture at 14:00. The police gravediggers have now joined us alongside, I assume, several forensic experts, and we head for the cars.

  We are in the lead. Alice gives precise directions as we head out towards Gaillac. I get the impression that she has rehearsed this route because there is none of the 'I think it is in this direction' that I was expecting. She knows exactly where she is going.

  About eight kilometres out, just after Saint-Nauphary, she says “We are coming up to it now, on the right here. Here!”

  Naturally, M. Picard did not choose an ideal parking location for eight police cars when he decided to dump his daughter’s body here, so we sit in the car and wait for everyone to pull in as best they can along the road and to join us by foot.

  The Earl and I enter the wooded ground first. We clamber down into a dip, skating on the treacherous scree, the Earl clutching my shoulder, reminding me that he is not so young as I am presuming. I can hear scuttling and scraping behind us and expect somebody to sweep our legs from under us in a bowling ball of clumsiness, but we are spared this and we manage to break our own descent by jamming our feet hard against the more substantial stones near the bottom, bruising the soles of our feet with the unnatural impact. Having reached what would be a stream in Belgium but certainly not here, we are forced to climb again, picking out the more anchored stones which are embedded into the earth wherever possible. The Earl is beginning to wheeze. We continue this sauntering progress for about ten minutes before Alice calls us to a halt. “Here,” she says.

  Here?

  There is nothing obviously ‘here’, only more rock, stones and dust which appear to have lain largely undisturbed for decades.

  “Under here,” she repeats.

  “Where exactly?” asks the Earl. “Tell me when I am standing precisely on the spot.”

  “You already are,” Alice replies, surprising me yet again with her confidence.

  “But there is nothing here but a large rock,” the Earl protests.

  “Precisely,” Alice comments bluntly.

  “You are lying under this rock?”

  “Yes.”

  “It looks extremely well stuck in.”

  “It will lift.”

  “Your father rolled this rock on top of you?”

  “Yes. There is a natural hollow underneath, like a stone bowl. My father wanted to make sure that no wild animal would dig me up again.”

  “And the arms and legs and things we kept finding in Inspector John’s garden?”

  “That was a joke – to get your attention.”

  The Earl raises his eyebrows. “Well it certainly did that.”

  The Earl turns to the assembled commissaires, lower order National Police and grave diggers. “The body is under here, apparently.”

  The ‘apparently’ does not inspire confidence. The gravediggers are muttering. This is going to be hot work. Nevertheless, their Capitaine orders them in while we stand around and slurp water. You can tell the hierarchy of a party from what type of water they drink. The higher echelons all prefer plain water. The younger ones take fizzy, except Mike who likes plain. I don’t claim that the theory is infallible.

  The gravediggers are swinging away with picks first to clear away the periphery of the boulder. They make slow progress and silently resent every swing. Once the edge is clean, they discuss how to move the boulder itself. They all stand above it and attempt to push it away. It does not move a centimetre. It does not even shiver. How could one man have manoeuvred it into place? I am sure that I am not alone in questioning this. The gravediggers produce neatly trimmed wooden wedges, but there is still no movement.

  An hour later they are still at it, despairingly.

  One gravedigger suggests, half mockingly, that they use explosives to blast the rock away. He eyes the commissaires as he says it, hoping against hope that they will say “Yes”. They ignore him.

  Each commissaire tosses in sporadic strategic advice as to how the rock can be addressed. Not one of them rolls up his sleeves.

  After two and a half hours of sweat and strategising, one of the commissaries mutters, “It’s like the rock sealing Christ’s grave. Maybe if we leave for the day, by tomorrow it will have rolled away of its own accord.”

  I can tell that everyone is questioning whether the Earl isn’t just completely loopy, turning the gravediggers into some inverse chain gang for his own amusement. Several of the commissaires take their leave, claiming to have urgent matters to attend to, and promising to return.

  The Earl and I periodically glance at Alice who is insistent. “My body is under there,” she states matter-of-factly. “I can see it.”

  Can you suggest how to move the rock?

  “A helicopter?” she replies at the moment when a helicopter arrives to hover over our heads. It is Mihail Romanov who has been necessarily occupied with business calls most of the day, as he warned us, but who is now arriving no doubt to take control of the operation. He is winched down into the thicket by rope and harness, which he removes as he lands.

  “Where have we got to?” he inquires.

  “The body is under here,” replies the Earl, “but we cannot lift off the boulder.”

  “That’s easy,” Romanov snorts.

  Those commissaires who understand English snort back. “It is easy, he says.”

  Romanov wanders away from the rest of the group, speaking Russian (I assume) urgently down his mobile phone. About five minutes later a large package is lowered down to him. Romanov meticulously unwraps the contents and pulls out what looks like a huge bulky gun.

  “What on earth is that?” Capitaine Herbert demands.

  “A spike gun,” Romanov replies. “A prototype. One of my companies has recently developed it.”

  “Is it licensed?”

  “There is no requirement for it to be,” Romanov responds dismissively. “It is classified as a large mechanical stapler – at least, it will be.”

  “And you carry it around in your helicopter?”

  “You never know when it might come in useful – like now.”

  Romanov unsheathes a thirty centimetre or so metal spike from the package. It is rifled on the outside and looks exceedingly menacing. Capitaine Herbert winces involuntarily and the posse of commissaires mutters.

  “This should be about the right size for the job,” Romanov comments. He slides the spike into a chamber of the gun, and with some difficulty, raises the barrel to point at the rock. He braces all his limbs in a weightlifter’s crouching position and fires. There is a sharp retort, a whoosh, and the sight of Romanov staggering back as the spike penetrates half its length into the rock. Romanov carefully lowers the gun to the floor and approaches the spike, declaring himself more than satisfied with his inspection. He returns to the package and selects two more spikes of the same length and repeats the exercise twice more so that he ends up with three metal pitons, in effect, sticking out of the rock.

  “I told you we should have used explosives,” mutters the gravedigger who made the suggestion earlier. He has a sly, awed, expression on his face. The others laugh, sharing his excitement.

  Romanov confides further instructions to his mobile phone and the rope is lowered again from the helicopter with a pyramid-shaped fra
me dangling from the end. Romanov guides the frame to the rock and tells the helicopter to hold its position. The frame has four cords attached to it, and Romanov ties three of these to the spikes.

  “OK.”

  The helicopter takes up the tension and the rock lifts gently, swivelling in the air.

  The commissaires are clearly impressed as they cluck among themselves. There is another gasp as the forensic people move forward and confirm that there has indeed been a skeleton wedged underneath the rock. Actually, it doesn’t seem to be the skeleton itself which impresses them, but rather something about it. It is lying there curled up upon itself, to fit it into the hole, presumably. It is a foetus fashioned in bone – poignant, defenceless. There is something in particular that the team is examining and commenting agitatedly upon, but I can neither see nor hear what it is.

  The Earl looks relieved. Alice is watching impassively.

  What is it like to see your own body like that? It must be horrible? I would like to be able to hug her.

  “It is not my body.”

  What?

  “It is the body of another unfortunate girl who was murdered.”

  By your father?

  “No, not by my father.”

  But you were murdered by your father!

  “Yes, but my father did not do this.”

  Why did you tell us that it was your body that was lying here?

  “To persuade you to come.”

  You could have told us the truth.

  “You might not have come.”

  “She needed the local connection,” the Earl mutters. “Clever girl!”

  Alice bows coquettishly.

  “Who is she?” asks the Earl.

  “Cathy Desforges.”

  “Cathy Desforges?”

  That gets the interest of the commissaires. “What about Cathy Desforges?” one of them demands sharply.

  “This is the body of Cathy Desforges, apparently,” the Earl elucidates.

  “Of Cathy Desforges – not of Alice Picard?”

  “Correct.”

  The commissaire turns to his colleagues. “Now this could be something, if it is true.”

  “It is true,” Alice insists.

  “It is true,” the Earl confirms.

  “Well, this exercise really has been worthwhile then.”

  “Better than finding only me,” Alice observes sardonically.

  “Whose is the body?” Romanov enquires, catching on that it is not what they were expecting.

  “It is the body of a Cathy Desforges, apparently, whoever she is, or was.”

  “And who was she?”

  “She has been missing for seven years,” explains one of the commissaires. “She and a number of other girls.” He addresses the Earl. “Does your informant happen to know where the other bodies are to be found?”

  “Yes,” Alice replies.

  “Yes,” the Earl replies.

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent,” enthuses the commissaire. “Let us get back to Montauban and discuss it there.”

  “What is happening?” Romanov asks.

  “It appears that this is the body of one victim among many,” explains the Earl.

  “A serial killer?” Romanov suggests.

  “Apparently.”

  “There are six girls missing altogether,” says the commissaire in English. “This is a major find – a major breakthrough.”

  “Thanks to me,” Romanov adds.

  “Thanks, indeed, to you, Monsieur,” the commissaire concedes willingly.

  “And thanks to Alice,” I add.

  “Indeed,” says the Earl.

  The commissaire inclines his head. “And thanks to Mlle. Picard. Maybe we will also find out where she is buried one day.”

  The Earl and I look at Alice.

  “Maybe,” she replies. “My body is not that important.” She turns to me. “You are right, Paul. I have no need to avenge myself on my father. It would not make me feel any better. The shock he has had over the last few days is quite enough. Maybe he will treat my mother better in the future.”

  * * *

  We are asked to stay the night. The police were going to book us into the local Crowne Plaza, but Romanov happens to have some friends who are already renting a private hilltop village near Lectoure, and we are invited there instead, disconcerting le Capitaine Moreau, our allocated Montauban police liaison official, who recognises that he is dealing with people way outside his league. I know how he feels, except for the moment that I am an insider.

  Romanov flies us across to the village by helicopter, a Eurocopter EC155 he informs us, with plenty of space for the four of us and the pilot.

  The people renting the village are also Russian - a large extended family of about thirty-five people or so - Romanov is not quite sure. Still, there is plenty of extra space for us as we are distributed among different parts of the family. Romanov stays with the main family of Ivan and Cristina. Mike and I are allocated to some lively cousins who insist on us drinking a lot of wine and telling jokes which Mike is better at than I am. After a few desultory attempts where we realise that Anglo-Belgian humour is not the same as its Russian equivalent, Mike sidetracks them by introducing party games instead, improvising a game of Twister which goes down extremely well with all the cousins, including some very pretty ones whom I don’t mind in the least rubbing up against, and they do not object either, although Alice does. She goes off in a huff and does not appear again until the morning when she has confirmed that Mike and I slept innocently all night in our own room.

  The village was presumably deserted before it was restored as a wealthy tourist trap, and it is certainly deserted in the morning after a hard night’s drinking. However, Romanov is up and ready, as is the Earl, so as soon as we appear we are all invited aboard the helicopter and taken back to Montauban for breakfast, followed by an interrogation by Capitaine Moreau and his team in front of the commissaires to list and identify the graves of the rest of the bodies.

  We spend two more days with a growing army of police and discrete groups of gravediggers as they decide to attack all the sites at once so that they can have a mega news story no doubt without the residual pressure of having to come up with more bodies. Nevertheless, they are not fast enough. The press has heard rumours of all the local activity and reporters are beginning to intermingle intrusively with the working parties, not that most of them are working.

  We find all the bodies, at which point we are dismissed back to Freyrargues where Romanov calls a press conference of his own, claiming a personal victory for his privately funded venture on behalf of the people of France, who are bemused but delighted, no doubt.

  Amid euphoric celebration, and relief among the rest of the family that the Earl has not been shown up to be as batty as he might have been, we are all invited to stay at Freyrargues, Mum and Dad too, where Fiona and Sarah have already returned.

  Sarah is the first to talk to us as we arrive. “Quite the heroes,” she declares to Mike and me. “A bit gruesome, but it has taken fifty years off the Earl’s clock from the look of things. He is so pleased with himself. Was he talking to the ghost all of the time?”

  “I wasn’t counting,” I reply, “but he certainly spoke to her quite a bit.”

  “Did he speak to her out loud?”

  “Yes, or at least some of the time. I am not quite sure how they communicate.” Mike gives me a quizzical glance.

  “Thank God they found the bodies, otherwise the Earl would have been incarcerated in the local lunatic asylum by now, except that the French have a fairly tolerant view of British eccentrics, especially aristocratic ones.”

  “And what have you been doing?” Mike asks her.

  “Waiting for you mostly. That is all we have talked about for four days. Have they caught the killer yet?”

  “They haven’t said, but as they are announcing it all over the press I woul
d guess that they probably have somebody under garde à vue.”

  “Probably,” Mike adds.

  “Where is Alice now?” asks Sarah.

  Mike and I both shrug. Actually, she said she was going off to visit her mother.

  “They are cracking open the champagne,” Sarah informs us. “Come and have a glass. Dad is already tucking in. Inspector John is coming over shortly, and Mum will be here tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be flat by then,” says Mike.

  Sarah pulls a mock-strained face. “I think we have more than one bottle,” she ripostes.

  “Well,” calls Fiona as she approaches us, flanked by Peter and John, “quite a trip!”

  “Did you do a lot of strenuous digging?” Peter inquires.

  “We never had a shovel out of our hands,” I reply deadpan.

  Peter punches me. “You dirty liar,” he declares affectionately. “Give me your hands.” He takes them, stroking the palms gently. “Not exactly calloused, are they?” He eyes me intently. “I would guess that your true work is of a softer nature.”

  “Paul is a student,” Sarah chimes in.

  “There you are, then. What did I tell you? Such wonderfully delicate hands. I could do a lot with these,” he adds.

  “I am sure you could,” Sarah replies, “but you might have to cut them off first. I don’t think that Paul is one of yours.”

  “I am definitely not one of yours,” I confirm.

  “Told you,” crows Sarah. “Paul is one of ours, as it turns out, luckily for us.”

  “And Mike,” I suggest.

  “Yes, and Mike too. We are truly blessed. Besides, Peter, have you forgotten that you are married?”

  “How could I ever forget that?”

  “So keep your hands off him. Leave him to us women.”

  “You mean that I cannot talk to him.”

  “Of course you can talk to him, Peter. How could we ever stop you? But holding his hands is as far as you are allowed to go, isn’t that right, Paul?”