by Tom Knox
‘And there are lots of tourists in Luang.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It will be safer for you there. You won’t be quite so visible.’ She twisted in the painfully small cabin, looking down at the ruched green pelt of the countryside: the forests already were thinning, the hills mellowing and softening:
‘That is the Mekong. We are nearly there.’
‘Where shall we stay? I know some hotels.’
She shook her head:
‘My family has very good friends in Luang. A French couple. A little hotel by the river, hidden away. Good place to hide for one night . . . Sleep, we need to sleep. No? Then we work out a way to get out of Laos.’
Already they were descending, Jake saw roads and a truck, the metal roofs of rice barns and farmhouses, sugarcane fields. Moments later they bumped to a halt on a brown dirt airstrip. It was another random airport in the bush, even more ramshackle than the Secret City. Just a hut at the side of a broad boulevard of mud and a man in the hut who nodded, knowingly, at the pilot, when they walked from the plane to the perimeter gate.
‘Luang Prabang,’ said the pilot, pointing beyond the wall at a sunlit road. ‘Sabaydee.’ The pilot slapped Jake on the back, and then did an elegant wai – the hands-pressed-together, all purpose, praying-and-bowing gesture of Indochina – to Chemda. She wai’d him in return.
The pilot, Jake noted, still smelled of laolao whisky. Maybe he had been drinking on the plane. But they had made it. Jake and Chemda grabbed their bags, their pathetic remnants of luggage, and walked out onto the road. The traffic was light, bordering on non-existent: a few farm trucks, then nothing, then a Honda motorcycle carrying an entire family – father, mother, two infant children, piglet. Then nothing. But a few minutes later a yellow metal tuk-tuk coughed into view, rounding the lush bamboo stands, the tuk-tuk was decorated with stencils of Australian and British flags.
They hailed the tuk-tuk and climbed aboard. They were heading into Luang. Jake felt his spirits rise and his nerves subside, for a moment, as the warm air breezed his face. He had loved Luang Prabang when he had first seen it, just a week ago – though it felt like a year ago. Luang Prabang: the ancient capital of the kingdom. Half French colonial resort, half glittering Buddhist citadel, royal and sacred Louangphrabang.
And here he was again, where girls with orient smiles bicycyled quietly by the boulangerie. Where old Laotian men played petanque by the water tamarinds. Where the orange-robed monks walked from temple to temple every morning, past a hundred Buddhist shrines, and teakwood bars, and rambling Chinese shops.
Street vendors were hawking pyramids of tangerines, arrayed on wicker baskets. Barefoot men slept on rushes in the shade of papaya trees. The mighty Mekong river slid past unnoticed, like a great and famous actor, forgotten in his dotage.
‘Here,’ said Chemda.
The hotel was indeed discreet, beyond the royal palace and the tall scruffy stupa: so discreet the road gave up before it reached the building.
They climbed out of the tuk-tuk and paced the last hundred metres of dirt. The hotel door was closed. Le Gauguin, said a sign. Chemda pushed a door and they slipped into the coolness of a wooden lobby scented with teak and cedar and incense – expensive, private, tranquil; Jake yearned immediately for a shower. Sleep. Then escape.
‘Chemda! Cherie! Bonjour!’
A late-middle aged French woman strode into the Reception. She was introduced: Madame Agnes Marconnet. She hugged Chemda and smiled warily at Jake. The two women talked quickly in French, too fast for Jake to begin to understand; before he could say please or merci they were escorted by a girl in a silk cheongsam to a couple of guest rooms and Jake struggled through a couple of merci beaucoups and kharb jais and Chemda said she would see him later and then he fell straight into his bed without even showering and he slept immediately, hungrily, like a starveling famished of sleep for a century: he slept so hard he didn’t dream, at first, but then something in the darkness of his subconscious disturbed him and he woke with a vague but ungraspable sense of panic.
For a few moments he lay there, perplexed, collating his wits. He didn’t know what time it was. Dawn maybe. The thin filter of blue light, through the slats of the shutters, pierced the darkness of the room.
Then he stared. Hard.
Something was hanging from the door. Three metres away.
He wished he was dreaming; but he was awake.
This was something truly and purely terrible, something beyond hellish.
Jake’s mind swarmed with the horror.
Please No.
Chapter 10
The French policemen arrived at Annika’s cottage an hour later. The sleek Peugeot oiled into the drive with an authoritative scrunch; red and blue police lights flashed exotically across the dark and drizzly wastes of the Cham.
The Belgian woman was needed to identify the body; Julia immediately offered to accompany her friend for this grisly task – though Annika’s composure was so superb, Julia wondered if any help was truly required.
The same blue and red lights shone briefly on Annika’s impassive face as she climbed into the back of the police car, and sat, almost rigid, staring ahead. Julia followed; the car started; they drove the moorland miles up onto the Causse, heading for Mende.
Ghislaine Quoinelles had lived in a large isolated villa near Marvejols – but his body had already been moved.
Annika shared a few words in French with the fifty-something officer, his hair brindled grey. Officer Rouvier had arrived with a suitably dignified demeanour, and a junior officer behind the steering wheel, for the sombre task of escorting them to the morgue at Mende hospital. After a few minutes, Julia added her own halting comment to the conversation.
Her interruption silenced the car. The officer turned in the front passenger seat, and briefly smiled at Julia. And then he said in perfect and very educated English, his words punctuated by the melancholy percussion of the windscreen wipers:
‘You are from Quebec?’
Julia groaned, inwardly. She answered, in English:
‘I talk like a lumberjack from Chicoutimi, don’t I?’
‘Please. Your French is . . .’ The smile persisted. ‘Charming. But I speak very good English. So it is not remotely necessary. But thankyou.’
Julia sat back and was quiet, trying not to be insulted, trying not to feel anything selfish: she was in the middle of Annika’s shock and horror. But that was the problem of being an only child: the selfish reaction, it was conditioned and immediate, and Julia was always on the watch for it, in herself.
She gazed at the metronomic smearing of the rain on the windscreen, and the brief glimpses of other cars, shooting past them on the narrow country roads. It was only fifty kilometres to Mende but the drive would take an hour, in this weather, on these circuitous roads.
A memory returned, importunate, like a meek child knocking timidly at the door: a memory of herself and her father and mother, driving in the rain, the snow and rain of Ontario: watching lonely snowflakes settling on the car window, trusting her father’s driving, absorbed by the way the flakes were beaten and crushed by the wipers, dissolved.
Julia recalled the way she felt safe and privileged yet sad: the only child, alone in the too-big back-seat of her parents’ SUV; it was a family vehicle, all the seats were meant to be filled, but she had no brother to argue with, no sister to play with. So she sat upright in the middle of the empty space. Importantly. Talking to the adults. Precocious and garrulous and selfish, like so many only children.
And also lonely.
The Peugeot was quiet now, this was truly a morbid business. Yet Julia felt the urge to converse. She found silence – when she was on her own – quite soothing and enriching; but silence between people she could not bear. It made her feel lonely, again.
A question recurred. Why was Annika going to identify the body? She and Ghislaine were not married, they were just friends – and ex lovers. Surely he had someone else, someone related? Hadn
’t there been a mention of children, or siblings? Nephews maybe?
Julia knew it might be an insensitive inquiry, but she couldn’t help it: she was intrigued as well as horrified by the whole scenario.
‘Annika?’
The Belgian woman didn’t even turn to face her questioner. But she answered, coldly:
‘Oui?’
‘Ghislaine has no other family?’
‘No.’ Annika’s reply was curt, and barely softened by her continuance: ‘There is a sister but she is in America. No one else.’
‘But I thought . . . I thought he had kids from a –’
‘No children!’ Annika’s composure had fractured, momentarily; and now she turned: ‘Nothing like that. He was alone.’
Then the studied calmness returned, like the older woman had neatly zipped her unwanted emotions into a bag, and dropped this bag disdainfully in a bin. Julia noted that Rouvier, in the front passenger seat, had turned to observe this female exchange. His frown was not unhappy, it was the frown of curiosity. Professional and clever.
Julia guessed he was very senior in the Lozère police force: because she likewise surmised there weren’t many murders, out here on the moors and the steppes of France’s loneliest departement. So any such crime would attract the most senior policeman.
The lights of suburban Mende glowed fizzydrink orange on the rain blurred horizon. Rouvier spoke quickly and quietly with Annika. Julia tried to listen in, even as she tried to pretend she was not listening out of politeness; she definitely caught the phrase – prepare yourself.
For what? How had he died? Who murdered him?
The shock of the situation kicked in, once again, or maybe for the first time properly. Julia felt a shiver of fear run through her. Murdered.
Now they were in Mende the car was actually speeding up: emancipated by these empty urban motorways, which were virtually deserted at this time of night – and in this type of weather. They slashed through rainy Mende, jumping amber lights, their police siren howling in a satisfying way.
She watched the sights of her adopted and temporary hometown flee past the windows. The cathedral, the museum, the Hotel Lion d’Or. Why did every French town have a Hotel Lion d’Or?
And then the hospital. Julia had never visited Mende hospital before, but it was just like any hospital. It could have been a hospital in Toronto.
‘Par là . . . je connais bien la route.’
Doors opened, nurses passed, old people lay on trolleys, staring grimly at nothing: people cuckolded by their own bodies, betrayed.
The four of them took an enormous steel elevator to the basement. Again Julia felt the absurd urge to fill conversational silence. What could she say: Hey, isn’t this a big elevator?
She said nothing. Shut her eyes. Tried not to think of what they were about to see. Would she even see anything, would they allow her in as well? Ghoulishly, Julia wanted to observe the body. She had never seen a murdered person. She desired the unique experience even as she despaired at her own heartlessness. Poor Annika. Poor Ghislaine.
The French being spoken was urgent, but whispered, like they were in church, as they walked the long corridor to the mortuary; Julia asked herself why people always whispered in the presence of the dead. The dead, she thought, are also deaf.
A wide door swung open, automatically. As they crossed the threshold, a man in light blue rubber gloves came over, briefly smiled at Rouvier, scanned the other faces, and met Annika’s eyes with his own. She nodded.
He motioned: this way.
It was all happening very quickly, Julia had expected more of a palaver, a prologue, some polite and ritual ablutions. But this was brisk French efficiency, verging on harsh un sentimentality. The four of them filed through a wide overbright room, full of trolleys and the shapes of bodies under plastic sheets.
Now they paused, but only for a fraction of a second, and then the doctor pulled the top of the plastic sheet down to the neck.
It was Ghislaine’s face. He seemed almost calm. The eyes were shut, with just a smudge of blood on the nose. The skin was ghastly pale, but the relaxation of death gave the professor, oddly, a more youthful appearance. No longer straining and posing; the absurd hair was tousled, like a young man’s hair, actually unkempt. It looked better that way.
What a horrible horrible pity. A huge engulfing wave of sadness and pity nearly knocked Julia down, she steadied herself, gripped her feelings. Poor Ghislaine, why had he died? How? Who?
‘Oui. C’est lui,’ Annika had spoken; she had identifie le corps. The doctor went to pull the sheet back, but Annika reached out a dignified arm and gripped his wrist.
‘Non, laissez-moi voir –’
She wanted to see the rest of the body. The doctor threw an anxious glance at Officer Rouvier, who hesitated – and then nodded, discreetly.
The doctor pulled back the sheet. They stared.
And they flinched.
Ghislaine had been almost ripped apart. That was the only description: he had been cut up with such savagery it was practically a dismemberment. The blood was splattered on the underside of the plastic sheet; so much blood was smeared on his wounded corpse he looked like he was tattooed red and purple, all over.
Whoever had knifed him to death had done it with wild anger, lust even. Slashing his arms and legs, plunging a knife into the groin – several times, cutting and slashing. Seeing the corpse was like looking at disgusting pornography. Bestiality.
Lost in her own thoughts, Julia only now realized, Annika was sobbing.
Softly, but wrenchingly, the Belgian woman was crying, and trying to hide her flowing tears behind her hands. Rouvier gestured to his junior officer, and requested, in French, that Annika be driven back to her cottage. The junior obeyed, taking Annika gently by the arm. The doctor did his duty and wheeled away the traumatized corpse of Professeur Ghislaine Quoinelles.
Rouvier and Julia were alone in the mortuary. He sighed.
‘These places. Always I think – one day I shall come in here, and I will never come out again. But, let us be thankful, not today.’
They took the elevator to the ground floor. Rouvier seemed keen to talk, lingering by the front door of the hospital, where a few patients in dressing gowns were smoking the midnight hours under a steel and glass awning.
‘There is a machine over there with the most terrible coffee. I believe I need one. And for you?’
‘Black. Thanks.’
Rouvier jangled some coins and went to the drinks machine.
Julia sighed into the rainy night. In the chaos and con fusion she had left her car at Annika’s. She had quite forgotten. But she couldn’t be bothered to arrange a wearying or expensive lift to the Cham now – especially as she’d just have to drive all the way back, the same night.
She would sleep here in Mende, in her nearby apartment, and maybe get a lift from Alex in the morning. After all, he would want to go and see Annika. Offer comfort.
Moreover she was happy to be right here, at the hospital, surrounded by people. She didn’t want to go home alone to her empty rooms, not right now, not immediately. She was actually scared. Who did that appalling killing? The randomness and barbarity was frightening. Julia noticed her hand was shaking as she reached to accept the white plastic cup of coffee from Rouvier.
She sipped.
‘You’re right. It’s disgusting coffee.’
‘It is a miracle, non? To make coffee this bad is practically a Biblical event.’
‘And stupidly hot, too.’
He nodded and smiled. She noticed he had very neatly manicured hands. She liked Rouvier: he reminded her of her father at his nicest: clever, gentle, wise.
It seemed a shame not to take this opportunity to ask him a few questions. Julia’s scientific brain was keen to take control again, to exert a grip on her febrile emotions. That way she could fend off the sadness and fear, and memories.
‘Do you have any theories? Any suspects?’
Rouvier
shook his head, blowing cold air on the coffee.
‘No. But there are some clues. The arrangement of the knife blows is interesting. He has many many cuts on the hands and fingers.’
‘I saw.’
‘The distribution of the cuts shows he had his arms, hmm, what is the word . . . elevated. Elevated. To protect himself.’
This was a little mysterious.
‘Protect himself. How?’
‘Maybe the killer was trying to stab him high in the head. That is our suspicion. The front of the head. The forehead or the eyes. Naturally there is a reflex: to lift your hands. In that situation.’
It was a horrible image.
‘How do you know it was one killer?’
‘We don’t. But I think, just a guess, I think I am right. One big man, frustrated, and then frenzied. Yes that is a very good English word. Frenzied.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘A neighbour. I understand she is very upset.’
‘Not surprised. Jesus. Jesus.’ Julia was gulping her coffee now: it was cooler, and the bitter taste was apposite. ‘So. Do you have any theories about motivations? Did Ghislaine have enemies?’
‘Motivations?’ said Rouvier, half smiling, half avoiding her gaze. ‘No. Yes. No. A man with no close family? No girlfriend. No rivals in his small field. Yet a man with a famous name.’
‘Famous?’
‘OK, perhaps not famous. But well known.’ Rouvier crushed the plastic cup in his hand and chucked it in a bin from a distance; he smiled at the accuracy of his aim. Then he sobered and turned. ‘I knew Ghislaine Quoinelles. He was, perhaps, a little haunted by his surname.’
‘How so?’
‘His grandfather was a famous scientist.’ Another moue of a shrug. Rouvier was looking ready to leave. ‘I do not know much more. But I often wondered why he came south, to little Lozère. In France a famous surname can be a wonderful advantage. We are meant to be a meritocracy, the great republic! But enarques descend from enarques. The sons of small Hungarians in the Élysées get to run La Défense at the age of twenty-three. Quoinelles was rich and clever and descended from famous men, politicians, scientists – yet he came here to tiny Mende where literally nobody lives! For a Parisian, the Lozère is like Siberia. Maybe he tried to escape the shadow of his surname.’
