Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

  I sat there arranging and rearranging the petals into countless different variations: IRSPA, SPARI, ARISP, SIRAP, PRISA, RAPIS, APSIR, SPIRA ... After half an hour I leaned back in the chair in frustration. None of these were even real words and for a horrible moment I wondered if I could be missing a petal, or even several of them. After all, I had only just gathered them up when Lukas came bursting out of the forest and dragged me onto his horse. I could easily have dropped one of them during the ride ...

  But then I saw it - a single word that leapt up at me from those black petals. I leaned forwards eagerly to rearrange them and make sure, then gazed down as a slow smile spread across my face, convinced that I had suddenly managed to narrow down potential hiding places exponentially. The swansong itself was trying to communicate with me, Lukas had said. For some reason, it wanted me to find it. And the word spelled out in the petals before me read: PARIS.

  I seriously thought about driving to Paris. I could have got in the car and set off that very minute rather than going through the bother and delay of air travel. But I had no idea how to get there, I hadn’t slept all night and I was keen to avoid a drive like that if possible.

  So I slept for an hour or so until the sun came up and I could call my travel agent to make arrangements. Then I packed up my things, returned the rental car and got a taxi to Munich Airport, no longer caring much about the expense but simply wanting to get to Paris as quickly as possible. I was sure that the swansong was there somewhere. I remembered that, according to Ben’s list, the city had been the other place Liam had gone to secretly. And there was also the French name - Henri Rol-Tanguy, the significance of which I was still to discover. I was not overly concerned about the fact that the tiny horse had remained behind in the forest for that was where it appeared to belong and it had led me straight to the rose first. It had done what it was supposed to do.

  I was annoyed with myself for looking at the petals in front of Lukas. They had only been visible in my hand for a moment but, for all I knew, he had still managed to pick the anagram out and might have communicated it to Ben by now, who could already be on his way to Paris. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I got there; my only thought was to start with Henri Rol-Tanguy and attempt to track him down. There surely couldn’t be that many of them living in Paris.

  Failing that, perhaps there was some sort of monument or statue of the famous communist himself and Liam had hidden the swansong around there somewhere ... But it seemed improbable. In fact, I thought it more likely that the black rose was in a safety deposit box in a bank somewhere, for all that Lukas had said he didn’t think Liam would use a bank. After all - a bank would be the only feasible place to hide an object and keep it safe for any great length of time. If the rose were left out in the open then Liam couldn’t have been sure that someone, at some point, wouldn’t stumble across it, even accidentally.

  And why should I trust anything Lukas had said anyway? For all I knew, everything he’d said about the swansong singing at night was a lie to throw me off course. I had already had quite enough of talking to bankers and lawyers about Liam’s death, but I could lose nothing by checking if he’d had a safety deposit box of some kind in one of the banks in Paris.

  Waiting for my gate number to come up in Munich Airport, I just about managed not to fall asleep on my suitcase, and when they finally loaded us onto the plane I was asleep before it even took off. Indeed it seemed I’d barely closed my eyes before we were landing in Charles de Gaulle. I collected my suitcase - thoroughly weary of airports by that point - and eventually managed to work out how to buy a train ticket and get myself into the city centre. It was, at least, a little easier for me to move around now that I only had a suitcase to worry about and not a bulky violin case as well. Although I had packed the broken pieces of my Violectra and brought them with me, I had decided to leave the case behind, unable to bear the heartbreak of carrying it around with nothing inside it.

  I’d asked my travel agent to book me into whichever fairly central hotel she could get the best deal for and she had reserved a single room for me at the Hotel Delambre in the Montparnasse district. I arrived in the afternoon and wanted nothing more than to curl up on the bed and sleep for the rest of the day. But I couldn’t bear to do it knowing the ordeal that lay before me with the banks. So I dumped my stuff into yet another new room - wondering with a brief pang of homesickness when I would ever see my own bedroom again - and then went back out into the city with my Paris guidebook stowed in my shoulder bag.

  To cut a long and boring story short, I spent the afternoon trailing from bank to bank. It was the same tedious, rather humiliating routine every time. A staff member would be fetched who spoke and understood English. I would explain that I had been recently widowed and wanted to check whether my late husband had held an account here. Some places were difficult and would insist on all the proper documentation being faxed over by my solicitor before they would even check for an account under the name of Liam Gracey, but a couple of the smaller banks saved us all a lot of trouble by looking straight away and telling me that there was no such account. They all looked at me like I was mad. After all, I clearly wasn’t French and I could offer no sensible explanation whatsoever for why I thought my husband might have kept a secret account with their bank.

  The afternoon was a total waste of time and - to make it an even more miserable experience - it had been raining constantly ever since I left the hotel. I’d had the foresight to take an umbrella with me but the rain blew under it and by the time my tour of Parisian banks was finished I was thoroughly soaked. With my white hair hanging down in damp tendrils and tiny droplets clinging to my pale skin, I looked like some sort of drowned Lady of the Lake and I was sure I saw several people in the street start at the sight of me.

  By seven o’clock I found myself in the Invalides and Eiffel Tower quarter, as I realised when I saw the Eiffel Tower not too far away. The lights had been turned on and it shone golden against the dark sky. I stood looking at it for a moment, wondering what I should do now. It was no longer raining quite so hard but there was still a thin drizzle. I was starving. I had never been to Paris before but I knew that it was acclaimed for its cuisine ... I looked longingly at the restaurants and bistros lining the street - all with views of the Eiffel Tower and delicious smells wafting from the doors ...

  But I knew I shouldn’t spend the money. I cringed to think of what I had spent already between plane tickets and car rentals and train tickets and guest houses ... The responsible thing would be to look for a street stand and get a baguette to take back to the hotel with me. But it was raining, so it would probably be soggy and squashed by the time I got the Metro back. My feet ached from all the traipsing around I had done. Other than a sandwich at Munich Airport I hadn’t had anything else to eat that day. I glanced again at the window of the nearest restaurant and saw warm, happy-looking people sitting at tables that were covered with crisp, white cloths, sharing bottles of wine and eating hot dishes bathed in rich, buttery sauces that I was sure I could practically taste when I looked at them ...

  Ignoring the tiny voice still shouting about the expense in the back of my mind, I opened the door to the nearest restaurant and walked in. The smells made my mouth water and my stomach rumble. Because it was still early it was easy to get a table by the window looking back at the glittering outline of the Eiffel Tower.

  I ordered the works. When I opened the menu I didn’t even look at the prices. To start with I had a French onion soup with a baked cheese top served with crusty bread; truffle feuillete for the main course and then a cheese board to finish that included Tomme de Chèvre, Roquefort and Brie de Meaux. And to go with it all I ordered a bottle of Bordeaux.

  I’m not ashamed to say I enjoyed it immensely. It was the first proper meal out I’d had since the dinner aboard the Queen Mary. It was hard to believe that had only been a week ago. When I’d finished eating I ordered coffee and lingered in the restaurant, for I could
see that it had started to rain outside again and just the thought of the trek back to my hotel through the wet streets and damp, slippery Metro made me feel weary. So I turned my thoughts instead to where in Paris the swansong could possibly be, if it really wasn’t in any of the banks.

  My mind went to what Lukas had said back at the Alpsee Lake in Germany - that he thought Liam would have hidden it in a central, easy-to-reach place that, at the same time, was guaranteed to be deserted at night. Paris was central - it would only take a few hours to get there from home. But what hiding place was always going to be deserted at night in a city like Paris?

  I was stirring cream into my second cup of coffee, watching it swirl about on the dark surface, when it hit me. Graveyards. On two of the occasions when a black rose had appeared - on the Queen Mary and in my first guest house room in Germany - it had either been accompanied, or followed, by old, yellowed human bones. Surely that must mean that it was hidden with bones somewhere. A graveyard seemed a perfect hiding place seeing as most people were uncomfortable being in them at night. And even if someone did happen to wander in after dark and hear a bird singing there they were unlikely to think anything much of it.

  I dug into my bag and took out the Paris guidebook to look up cemeteries - praying that there would be one in Paris. Actually, there were three. The largest one - Cimetière du Père Lachaise - was outside the city centre, the second was just a little way out in Montmartre but the third and smallest graveyard was right in the centre of the Montparnasse quarter, and from the looks of it, only about a street away from my hotel. I felt a momentary flicker of self-satisfaction, for a graveyard seemed to fit all the criteria. But then I realised what that meant and my heart sank. If the swansong really was hidden in a graveyard then I would have to go there. At night. By myself ...

  Well, so what? I had done worse than that already. I’d take a little graveyard in the centre of Paris over wandering about the faery-and-knight-infested Bavarian Alps any day. They were only bones, after all.

  I paid the bill and then, because I had only drunk half the bottle of wine, I picked it up to take with me. But when I got to the door, one of the waiters stopped me, pointing at the bottle and saying something about not being licensed for guests to take it away.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I began. I was already in the act of passing it over when I suddenly hesitated. Then I snatched the bottle back, clamped it to my chest and ran for it. It was my wine - I had paid for it and by God I was going to drink it.

  Unsurprisingly, no one from the restaurant gave chase into the street to wrestle the bottle back from me and I made it to the Metro feeling highly pleased with myself for my petty victory. I was feeling so rebellious, I even drank some of the wine straight from the bottle as I walked back through the streets after getting off the Metro - probably the most unladylike thing I’d ever done in my cosy, sheltered, privileged life.

  I had thought about just going straight back to my hotel, getting a good night’s sleep and starting with the graveyards the next day but, as it happened, I saw the Montparnasse cemetery on the walk back. I must have passed it when I left the hotel earlier that day for it was only a few minutes away but, with my head down under an umbrella, I had not noticed it.

  I paused outside the arch and looked in rather miserably. It was no longer raining but a chilly mist hung in the air and my clothes and hair were damp with it. I had been cold all afternoon and, more than anything, I wanted to return to my room so I could have a hot shower and warm up. But I was right here outside the gates. It would be so easy to just go in and have a quick walk around. If, by some glorious good luck, the swansong was there, then I might be able to find it, take it away with me and be back home in England by this time tomorrow with the whole traumatic experience behind me once and for all.

  Of course, it did occur to me that if the black rose had been hidden there over a year ago then it would not simply be resting on top of a gravestone but would more likely actually be inside a grave, maybe even inside a coffin. So getting it out would involve digging and grave desecration. This was where I could really do with a large, strong man or two, armed with shovels. Even if I worked out which grave it was, it was sure to take me bloody ages to dig through that compact, damp earth on my own. And I would have to find a shovel from somewhere too ...

  I squared my shoulders and walked into the cemetery. There was enough light from the surrounding street lamps for me to see by but I took out my torch anyway, in order to better read the names on the gravestones, for it occurred to me that perhaps the famous communist Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy was buried there. Perhaps that was the significance of his name - perhaps his was the grave in which the swansong was hidden ... I was so taken with this idea, which seemed to me to be a very neat explanation, that I felt increasingly annoyed as I walked about the gravel paths, checking gravestone after gravestone but finding no Colonel Rol-Tanguy anywhere.

  A few weeks ago I would have cringed to be walking around a graveyard alone at night. Now it hardly bothered me. There were buildings within sight and lamp-lit streets and roads with the odd car passing by. Although no one was walking with me I did not feel alone. And the graves seemed more peaceful than sinister anyway.

  But then, as I turned a corner in the path, I came upon another person, standing before a white monument of some kind. He was wearing a long, waterproof coat and a closed umbrella dangled from his hand as he stood and glared at the monument. The soft light from the street lamps on the other side of the wall near the road illuminated his face enough for me to see the fading bruises around his left eye and the healing cut stretching from his upper lip down to his chin. He had strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes that I recognised from our meeting almost three weeks ago - it was Jaxon.

  I stopped abruptly, touched by a cold fear at coming across him alone like this so suddenly. It was too late to hide for he had already seen me, but I tightened my hand around the neck of the wine bottle in case I needed to use it as a weapon to defend myself against him for I already knew that he was ruthless and dangerous.

  I’m not sure what I expected him to do but his reaction stunned me. When his eyes fell on me they widened in a sort of horror, so that for a moment I was convinced that he must think I was a ghost - that being in a dark graveyard alone at night had made him nervous, and when I’d come suddenly around the corner he’d mistaken my pale skin and long white hair for a ghostly apparition. But then he scowled and said, ‘This doesn’t count. It’s not my fault. Tell Ben I didn’t know you were going to be here.’

  I stared at him. He spoke quietly but I was sure I detected a note of fear concealed beneath his voice. Why should a career criminal - someone who had been arrested for beating a man almost to death - be afraid of Ben? For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps Jaxon wasn’t all the things Ben had said he was. Still ... a deserted graveyard was not the ideal place to find out either way.

  ‘Is he here?’ Jaxon said, twisting his head to glance around the graveyard. ‘I thought he was in the graveyard in Montmartre tonight.’

  ‘He’s right behind me,’ I lied quickly, secretly rather horrified to find out that both Jaxon and Ben were in the city even if it did confirm that I was in the right place.

  ‘He is, is he?’ Jaxon said with a sudden smile. I wasn’t sure what had given me away but he plainly did not believe me. ‘You’re nowhere near as good a liar as Liam was.’

  The tilt of his head caused the lower half of his face to fall into the light of the nearby street lamp so that I could clearly see the ugly jagged cut that began at his upper lip and the fading mottled bruise surrounding it.

  ‘Who have you been fighting with?’ I said coldly.

  ‘You mean who did all this?’ Jaxon said, gesturing at his messed-up face. ‘Well, it was Ben, naturally.’

  ‘Ben? ’ I repeated. ‘When?’

  ‘Just over a week ago. Before he went to California.’

  ‘I met up with Ben around that time and there wasn
’t a mark on him,’ I said. As soon as I spoke, I realised that wasn’t actually true - his knuckles had been in a terrible state ...

  Jaxon scowled. ‘That’s because he waited until I was out of my head drunk, the coward! Ben only likes fighting defenceless men. You should know that.’

  ‘I should know that?’ I repeated, frowning in total non-comprehension.

  ‘Ben knocked Liam around a bit while you were on your honeymoon, didn’t he?’

  ‘Ben did that?’ I said. Or - at least - that was what I meant to say. The sound that came out was actually more like: ‘Blerghh? ’

  My mind went back to that occasion: waiting in our hotel room for Liam to return with the ice; thinking that he was taking a long time; feeling horrified when he walked through the door with a swollen eye and blood still dribbling from his lip and then bursting uselessly into tears once we’d cleaned him up.

  ‘Ah, so Liam never told you it was Ben?’ Jaxon said, correctly reading the expression on my face.

  I didn’t want to believe him. A few days ago I wouldn’t even have considered it. But I had seen Ben smash my treasured Violectra into tiny broken bits and I had listened to him scream in my face that he hated Liam and always had. And I found myself believing Jaxon, for he hardly seemed likely to benefit from the statement whether it was true or not. Liam had told me it was just another guest looking to make trouble and that the hotel had thrown him out but ... I hadn’t been there, I hadn’t seen it. It was our honeymoon - perhaps Liam had lied to avoid upsetting me. In fact, considering the timing, perhaps that was the incident the two of them had fallen out about so irrevocably.

  ‘Why is Ben so angry with you?’ I asked, not wanting to think about Liam and the honeymoon right then.