Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

‘For coming to your house, of course,’ Jaxon said sourly. ‘Apparently it’s a crime to knock on someone’s door and ask a simple question.’

  ‘I think forcing your way into someone’s house is probably the crime part,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Ah well, it worked out all right in the end anyhow because we’ve agreed that if I reach the swansong first I’ll simply sell it to Ben. He wants it more than I do. So that way everyone’s happy.

  As long as I stay away from you, of course.’ He sighed. ‘I was sure it would be hidden here somewhere but I haven’t found it yet.’

  ‘Why did you think it would be here?’ I asked carefully, wondering if apparitions of bones and roses had appeared to Jaxon too.

  But instead he said, ‘Because of that.’

  I turned around to follow his pointing finger and found myself looking right at the nearby white monument.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s called the Separation of a Couple,’ Jaxon said with a smirk.

  I shone my torch right at it. It was a sad, beautiful, life-size work of art that portrayed a woman struggling to rise from her grave to comfort her lover who stood above her with his face in his hands. It made my heart ache just to look at it, so I lowered the torch and turned back to Jaxon.

  ‘What’s the statue got to do with anything?’

  Jaxon said nothing for a long moment before finally saying, ‘It’s poetic. Liam would have liked that. It’s the perfect hiding place. It should be here. When I first thought of it I was convinced that it would be. But I’ve come here four nights in a row now and haven’t heard any singing.’

  He was being evasive. I knew he had to have a better reason than that it was ‘poetic’ to be so convinced that Liam had hidden it there, but he obviously wasn’t in a sharing mood ... But then it wasn’t like I could really trust anything he said anyway. That being the case, I almost didn’t say anything at all but one question forced itself from my lips. ‘Is Ben’s fiancée dying?’

  Jaxon’s face broke into a broad grin and he laughed loudly in what seemed to be genuine amusement. ‘Is that what he told you?’

  ‘It’s not true, is it?’

  He smiled even wider. ‘Well, it is in a sense, my dear.’ Then he added, ‘I’d better go. I don’t want to get another kicking from Ben over this little chat we’ve had so amiably.’

  I didn’t try to stop him from leaving the graveyard. After my recent experience with Ben it seemed better to work all this out on my own. But I felt my lip curl in contempt as I watched him go. Whether or not he was guilty of the crimes Ben had suggested, he certainly seemed a nasty, arrogant bastard from the two brief conversations I’d had with him, and I couldn’t even imagine Liam being in the same room with him, let alone plotting and creeping about with him in Germany. I just couldn’t see them together, not for a moment.

  I dug into my handbag for my wallet and the photo of Liam that was inside. It was amazing how similar he looked to Ben - his height, his build, the shape of his nose and the colour of his hair ... Liam gazed out at me from the photo and I whispered softly to him, ‘Don’t worry, my darling. I know you would have disliked Jaxon intensely. And I know now why you didn’t want Ben around us either. I should have trusted you about him from the start. I’m sorry.’

  Up until that moment, the air in the graveyard had been cool and still with not the faintest hint of breeze. I was therefore unprepared when a wind suddenly blew up so unnaturally and so strongly that it whipped the photo straight from my fingers. Fortunately, because I was standing so close to the monument, the photo hit the side of it and stuck there, glued by the wind. I started forwards hastily and reached out for it but another hand got there first. It was a pale hand - as white as my own - for it belonged to the stone woman of the monument who was trying so hard to rise from her grave.

  When her fingers closed around my photo, I jumped back with a cry of alarm and the half-full bottle I was still carrying slipped from my hand to shatter on the ground. I stared, paralysed to the spot, as the woman tightened her grip around the photograph for a moment, gave a choked sound of pain and anger and then dropped it to land in a screwed-up ball on the floor so that she had both hands free to reach up and grip the edge of the tomb where her lover stood, redoubling her efforts to try to pull herself out.

  Whereas before she had only been half-visible, now she succeeded in pulling herself almost all the way out of the stone. But she wasn’t quite able to escape to the ground above. It seemed to take all she had just to cling to the edge and keep herself from being sucked back into the tomb. Up until now, her lover above had remained set in stone, face in hands, unaware of her struggle. But then the fingers of one of her hands slipped from the edge. She flailed desperately to regain a grip but the next moment her other hand came off as well. In the split second before she started to fall, a hand from above clamped around her wrist and caught her. It was her lover, now kneeling at the edge, all the muscles in his shoulders and back straining to keep hold of her. The force that wanted her back down below was strong but - inch by slow inch - he managed to drag her up onto the surface. The wind dropped abruptly and, in the sudden silence, I heard the words the man said. He was on his knees, holding her to his chest as she clung to him, with his head bent to her shoulder. His voice was soft, as if I was hearing it from a great distance rather than a mere few feet away, but I was sure I was not mistaken in what I heard when he spoke:

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here!’

  I clapped my hand over my mouth to muffle the cry that rose in my throat, for that had sounded - so very much - like Liam. I took another step back and my foot crunched on the broken glass of my fallen wine bottle ...

  And then it was over. In the blink of an eye the monument was back to the way it had been before - she struggling beneath the ground and he standing above quite unaware of her and how close she was to him, for all that he had loved her with all his heart once and still did. My breath rasped in my throat and the graveyard suddenly seemed unnaturally silent and still. That had been Liam’s voice - I was sure of it! If I had had more to drink that evening I would have worried that I might have just been seeing things, hearing things. But that wasn’t the case and, despite myself, hope blossomed in my chest. I tried not to feel it, for I didn’t dare to think that I might ever see Liam again. He was dead and gone forever. If I let myself believe - even for a moment - that he might come back, then it would be like having to lose him all over again and I was sure the pain of it would kill me.

  The statue was enchanted somehow. That had to be the explanation. Perhaps Jaxon was right and the swansong was buried beneath it after all. Perhaps this was simply a new way for it to call out to me. Perhaps I should go and get a shovel right now ... I suppressed a groan, suddenly much more aware of how sore my feet were and how damp my clothes were and how tired I was ... I wished I hadn’t dropped the wine bottle as finishing it off right there in the graveyard now seemed like a very good idea indeed.

  I looked around for the photo of Liam but it had been blown away from the monument by the wind and, although I walked around for a while with my torch, I couldn’t find it. I did not particularly relish the idea of having to dig holes all around the statue, for I was sure it would be harder than it looked and take a lot of time and effort to do. Besides which, I didn’t have any firm proof that the swansong was even buried there and so was sorely tempted to go back to my hotel. But then I would have to wait until tomorrow night before I could return. Someone would be sure to notice me digging in the ground during broad daylight.

  I stood there for a moment, wrestling with myself over what to do when I suddenly heard it. It was very faint and if the graveyard hadn’t been so quiet I would never have heard it at all. But the notes of a lovely song drifted up to me through the ground I stood upon. I dropped down onto my hands and knees beside the monument and pressed my ear to the damp earth. Still I couldn’t hear it properly but I could tell that it was the same song I had he
ard in the faery forest back in Germany the night before. The swansong was here - buried beneath the monument - but very far down from the sounds of it.

  This time I groaned aloud and rested my head against the ground. I didn’t have the faintest clue as to how to go about trying to find a shovel in Paris but it seemed most unlikely that I would be able to get one at this hour. And who knew how much digging I might have to do before I reached it? I sighed and straightened up. Well, at least now I knew where it was. In the morning I would get a shovel from somewhere and—I frowned and stared down at the ground, for the singing was suddenly moving, getting further away from me and even fainter.

  Hurriedly, I walked forwards a few steps and found it again. But it continued to move until I had followed the sound of it right out of the cemetery. It was still underground but - somehow - it was moving, leaving me no choice but to follow the sound and see where it led.

  For a while I walked on through the streets, glad that there was no one around to see me for I must have looked strangely erratic - or more likely drunk - first going in one direction, then another, and sometimes getting back down onto all fours when the song became particularly faint.

  Finally, after almost ten minutes of going this way and that through a tangle of streets, I turned into another road and the song stopped dead, not leaving so much as a melancholy echo in its wake. I looked around in confusion. In every way it seemed a totally unremarkable street although it was busier than the others and cars passed by fairly regularly, heading towards the roundabout at the end of the road that had a huge statue of a lion in the centre. Most of the nearby buildings seemed to be shops, although of course they were all closed up now.

  I couldn’t understand it. The graveyard had made sense but this road did not. I rubbed my eyes in weariness and a certain amount of annoyance. That was it. I had had enough for one day. I turned on my heel to walk straight back to my hotel. And that was when I saw the road sign: l’avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy.

  20

  The Catacombs

  At least I had been on the right track with graveyards. What lay beneath l’avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy was similar in a way. After seeing the road sign I wandered up and down for some while trying to work out why it was relevant. I already knew there was no graveyard there. But there had to be something else - another monument or statue or some sort of X to mark the spot. After all, Liam had to have known how to find it again himself.

  But the only statue I could see was the huge bronze lion in the very centre of the busy roundabout. I stood frowning at it from the other side of the road. It couldn’t be that for, even now, late at night, there was a fairly regular stream of traffic passing round it. No one could ever get to it unnoticed. I wondered if the road may have been less busy a year ago ... But it didn’t seem likely and, at any rate, I couldn’t imagine Liam being that stupid with his hiding place. If he knew he was leaving the swansong there for a significant amount of time, he would have chosen somewhere he was absolutely sure was not only safe but would remain so. He wouldn’t have left it to chance.

  But, excepting ultra-secure bank accounts, what hiding place could possibly offer that sort of guarantee? You could never be sure, especially with cities, what new planning developments might arise; what buildings may be pulled down and replaced; what streets might be dug up or where the next shopping mall might be built. If the swansong wasn’t hidden in a bank then how could Liam possibly have been sure? Even graveyards themselves were sometimes cleared away to make room for new things. Nothing was that permanent.

  Finally, fed up with peering into closed up shops and trying to work out if they had once been something else, I went back to my hotel room. It was dry and warm after the icy damp outside and it was a huge relief to get my shoes off and stretch out on the bed to rest my aching body. Before I could fall asleep where I lay, I forced myself to get up and reach for the guidebook tucked away in my bag.

  I opened the page to the Montparnasse quarter and flicked through the section irritably, for all it seemed to have was art houses and cafés. If it hadn’t been for the swansong stopping there so abruptly, I might have been tempted to think that the name of the avenue had been nothing more than a strange coincidence. But then I turned the page and froze. For grinning up at me were at least a dozen skulls arranged in the shape of a cross, surrounded on all sides by other, less readily identifiable human bones. The caption beneath it read: The Catacombs of Paris and, when I turned my eye to the text accompanying the photo, I saw that l’avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy was listed as the address.

  It seemed that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the largest cemetery in Paris had been closed for health reasons and the bones and rotting corpses had been transported in carts across the city to Montparnasse over a period of fifteen months. Bones continued to be taken there until 1860, and today the catacombs were the final resting place of about six million people. They were sixty-five feet below the ground, far deeper than the sewage system or even the Metro, and consisted of a two and a half thousand foot quadrangle of galleries. People could visit the catacombs, but only until five p.m. after which they were securely locked up for the night.

  They were perfect. Lying deep, deep underground, there was no way anyone would ever hear anything from them if the swansong were to sing - which did, of course, beg the question of how I had been able to hear it all the way from the cemetery, but I put that out of my mind for the time being. Liam could have guaranteed that the catacombs were not going to be moved or disrupted if the remains of six million people lay down there. It was in the centre of Paris but deep enough underground to be securely hidden away. And it explained why skulls and human bones had kept appearing with the black roses in California and Germany even better than my graveyard theory had. And, of course, it explained why the tiny faery horse had written Henri Rol-Tanguy in the dust. It had been an address, not a name.

  I groaned and snapped the book shut, running my hands through my hair. I was sure the swansong must be down in the catacombs somewhere but finding it meant ... It meant I was going to have to go down there with the other visitors, find a place to hide and then try to remain unnoticed when they were locked up for the night so that I could stay and hope to hear the swansong singing. It could be anywhere in that underground labyrinth and I would have no hope of finding it unless it called to me. Besides which, I couldn’t hope to go burrowing through bones unnoticed if there were staff and other tourists down there. So it had to be at night. But once I’d found the swansong I would not be able to simply walk out with it. Even if I climbed the steps back to the surface, the exit would be locked. I would have to spend the entire night down there. On my own. By myself. In the dark. Waiting until ten a.m. the next day when visitors started being admitted once again and I could walk out with them as if I had only just arrived. An entire night in the catacombs, a full sixty-five feet underground with nothing but six million skeletons for company. The thought made me cringe all over.

  There was no use dwelling on it. It had to be done and I would just have to try not to think about it too much between now and then. And get a good night’s rest tonight, for I could pretty much guarantee not getting any sleep tomorrow. I needed to unwind before going to bed so I reached for my Violectra. For a moment, a brief spasm of panic rushed through me when I glanced around and couldn’t see the violin case. Then I remembered why it wasn’t there and despair settled on me so that I had to swallow hard to get rid of the lump in my throat. What on earth was I going to do? I needed the instrument. It helped me cope. After a difficult day - and every day on this trip had been damn difficult - the familiar music and the feel of the violin tucked beneath my chin had soothed me. I had to breathe deeply to slow the sudden anxious beating of my heart and wipe the cold sweat forming on my forehead away with the back of my hand.

  My whole body ached for the Violectra. I think it must be similar to the way an alcoholic’s body cramps for a drink. My right hand itched
to hold the bow and my left hand longed to cradle the neck of the instrument. I wanted the music and the soothing sensation of the bow gliding over the strings, the smell of rosin in the air ...

  Out of sheer desperation I closed my eyes, raised my arms and drew a nonexistent bow over invisible strings, playing one of the many pieces I knew by heart, hearing the music inside my head. By the time the piece was finished, I could almost feel the Violectra tucked beneath my chin and the steel strings pressed against my fingertips. But when I opened my eyes my hands were empty and the illusion was broken. My real Violectra had been smashed to bits beneath Ben’s boot back in Germany - the sad pieces tucked away in the suitcase at my feet.

  I avoided looking at them as I dug out my pyjamas and toothbrush, and when I got into bed a few minutes later I pulled the covers up over my head and tried as hard as I could not to think about what I was going to have to do tomorrow.

  I slept in the next day. I wanted to get as much rest as I could and to delay going down into the catacombs until the last possible moment. After all, once inside I was going to have to stay down there until the following morning and I wanted to minimise that time. The catacombs were open until five o’clock but the last visitors’ entrance was at four.

  So, at five minutes to four, I walked into the innocuous little building at the end of the road that I had dismissed the night before, and paid for my ticket. I had spent the morning buying everything I thought I might possibly need for that night as well as disguising myself as best I could. Once again I cursed my appearance for I knew that I could not blend anonymously with the rest of the visitors because of my albinism. With my long white hair, pale skin and light-blue eyes I would stick out to anyone who saw me. The staff might remember me and realise that I hadn’t left the catacombs when they went to close up and I couldn’t take any chances. So I was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over my face with my long hair tucked into my jumper. I wore gloves to hide my hands and had pulled up the collar of my coat so that between it and my cap, my face was barely noticeable. This may have raised suspicion on a warmer day but, on this winter morning, most of the people around me were similarly bundled up.