by John Brooke
‘We have her phone. We know.’ She felt he should know that.
‘Good. Make sure everyone else does… Put this in your mouth.’ Proffering the towel.
She signalled a disdainful no, don’t be silly.
It was astonishing — the speed and force with which he grabbed her, secured her arms at her waist and shoved the thing inside her mouth. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He was calm and businesslike. ‘I’ll need some time to disappear. That’s all I want. No trouble. Half a day and that will be the end of it…You have a belt?’ No. He took her by the shoulder. ‘I’ll need your pantyhose.’ She flinched. His grip was strong. ‘You want me to do it? Or will you?’ She acquiesced. He kept the gun directly on her and released her hands. ‘Careful…very slowly.’ She moved her hands up inside her skirt and managed to tug her hose down over her bottom, knees, kicked her shoes away and rolled them to the floor.
Standing there at his mercy, Aliette had to blame the wind. The Tramontane had brought the clouds and lowered the comfort zone. She hadn’t worn stockings since early May.
He tied her in a way that was impossible. He must have learned it in the Israeli army. Then he picked her up, carried her behind the bar and sat her on the floor. Gagged. Helpless.
Gun at the ready, he headed toward the sound of Magui clattering around in the back.
Five minutes later she heard the sounds of a heavy groan from the rooms above.
So much for the Saint-Brin detachment of the Police Judiciaire.
· 54 ·
COVERING HER BACK
Allegiance. Covering her back, as those Americans would say.
Sergio Regarri was fretting, worried by a gnawing sense that he’d allowed his bedazzled heart to override his professional judgment. The inspector was set on confronting a man who may have been a highly specialized Israeli soldier, ten years on the run for the gratuitous murder of an Israeli civilian and possibly — her logic was strong — the source of not one but two killings in France. Guatto and Bousquet. And perhaps three. That anarchist boy? A prudent judge might have exercised his authority in demanding a more nuanced approach. Or a bigger team?
Aliette had promised to bring her two junior inspectors to aid her in the search.
If the man was who they thought he was, he was deadly. Three cops would be child’s play.
Sergio turned left and stopped in front of the rusty filigreed iron gate. It had been badly in need of paint two years before and was more so now. Same story in the yard. Margot would be much better in a low-maintenance apartment downtown. A judge in love had not shared that observation with the inspector as she’d described her own visit to Margot the previous evening. Aliette Nouvelle had demonstrated a rather sensitive side where it came to his allegiance. The thing between Margot and himself was long gone.
That was the inspector’s pet word: allegiance. When she spoke of it while lying there on his pillow, it rang in his heart, quietly but surely. Sergio Regarri heard her like no woman before.
So why antagonize her? Why sow seeds of doubt?
Margot Tessier answered the door, looking pleasantly relaxed in the kimono he’d given her. It made him smile. Sergio knew there was nothing underneath it except Margot. Not the worst memory… But not to be dwelt on. ‘Bonjour. Sorry to disturb, but we have to talk.’
She nodded, wary. He entered, smelling coffee. They sat in the kitchen. Whoever her new friend was, he’d gone. Some Customs man? Sergio watched the cloud cover thickening over the mountains. Margot poured coffee and found him a sticky brioche that was not exactly fresh.
‘Alors…’ settling onto a stool on the opposite side of the counter, those ample and still enticingly taut breasts shifting in and out of view.
He explained his worry.
‘Call the gendarmes. My case is over and done, Sergio.’
‘She thinks you knew about this Roig long before yesterday.’
‘And what if I did?’ Hackles rising. ‘My information is my business. When your inspector asked, I gave. She threatens me, comes back with all these silly accusations, comes barging in here last night, a righteous pest. Seemed like the best strategy for getting her out of my hair.’
‘Like giving Red Riding Hood a shortcut through the woods. He could be very dangerous.’
Margot Tessier pursed her lips, rolled her eyes. Sergio Regarri knew the agent’s rueful mama mode. Message: this world works in a certain way, not always nice — a professional must know this or suffer the consequences. ‘She’s so bound and determined to find things that won’t change anything. B’eh…’ A dismissive wave of her hand.
‘Which means?’
‘She will deal with what she finds.’
‘Send your guys, Margot. A gesture. She’s very big on trust.’
‘My guys are in Sète. We’ve been setting up the perfect sting on illegals coming in with the nightly catch. I’ll be there to welcome them tomorrow morning.’
‘When exactly did you receive that file?’
‘When I asked for it.’
Which told him everything, and she knew it. And didn’t care.
Which was what made people mad at Margot.
Sergio Regarri pushed away his coffee and stood. ‘I’m not sure who I can call but I will find someone. This is getting international. That can be embarrassing for the wrong people.’ He was just talking. He knew she would never respond on that level.
She didn’t. ‘I like your inspector. Maybe not as much as you do, but I do. In a girl’s way. You know?’
He had to admit, ‘Not really, no.’ He snatched the last of his sweet bun off the plate and ate it on the way to the door. Where, sucking his sugared fingers clean, he asked, ‘Why can’t you use your ability to manipulate people’s worst tendencies for something good?’
Margot smiled a breezy Saturday morning smile as she showed him out. ‘Sergio, I could say you really should avoid getting involved with the people you work with, but I know there’d be no point. Mm?’ She enjoyed Magistrate Regarri when he was perplexed and a little angry.
In parting, he summoned his authority. ‘I’m asking you to make sure she doesn’t come to harm.’ He tried to imply: or else. Her eyes said that was useless. So he smiled. ‘Please?’
Margot Tessier gave him a kiss and another certain sort of smile.
Not a word spoken, but he left knowing that she would. For him.
·
That last notion was an erroneous male perception. What Margot did, she did for herself. And because, pain in the neck notwithstanding, she did feel an attraction to the chief inspector.
Margot Tessier put no stock in Aliette Nouvelle’s naive notions as to morally correct procedure, didn’t give a fig for her professional resentments, but she enjoyed the woman’s pluck. Respect? Better to say that somewhere between them there lurked a kindred spirit. Margot felt this. She had faith that, given time, they could be friends. It was pointless trying to explain something like that to Sergio Regarri. Maybe to any man.
Agent Tessier noted the silver-blue ragtop parked out front as she drove past Les Oliviers and up to the village place. She remained behind the smoked-in windows of her vehicle and prepared. Exchanged her soft Saturday pumps for the thick-soled boots one sometimes needed for kicking through doors or people’s resistance, secured the cuffs of her jeans with Velcro bands, emptied her pockets of anything that might make any untoward noise, made sure each pocket of the pack she would carry was snug with the requisite objects — three extra clips, handcuffs, spray, cord, wire, first-aid basics, a flashlight, a good sharp German knife, water. She donned the Kevlar vest and dark glasses, and secured her hair under a tight grey toque.
Then she pulled on the tight leather gloves and checked her weapon.
Margot exited the armoured 4X4.
At two in the afternoon on a gloomy Saturday, the village felt deserted. She went fir
st to the house of Stephanie McLeod. She had noticed an attractive ring in the girl’s top drawer during her vigil Monday night. She’d been thinking she may as well have it — the girl would not be returning anytime soon, if ever. Margot Tessier had a desk drawer full of mementos. Poor Stephanie’s appointed guardians would need to sell the place to pay for her extended care. If Margot didn’t take that ring, the notary would grab it.
A notary would never know what such an object meant.
She slipped the ring into her breast pocket. One day she would share the stories of her treasures with someone she could trust completely.
The horrid old neighbour was there when she came out of the house. Margot returned her flat look in kind, then walked away without a word. She turned down the village stairs. Leaving the stairs a quarter of the way down, she sprinted across fifty metres of scrubby hillside and into the shelter of the olive grove.
Adjusting her binoculars, she scanned the bistro.
Quiet. No sign of life. The inert silence of the village had extended down the hill.
Why was it so still?
She considered competing scenarios: Perhaps they were chatting in a civilized manner, the Israeli felon seeing reason, submitting peacefully to his fate. Margot could withdraw without even appearing and leave the inspector to her win. Or she could go in, heartily congratulate Aliette, and ensure the package was delivered. Play second fiddle, as it were. How would the righteous inspector respond to that? There was no guarantee Aliette would be pleased. New relationship, new territory. In their line of work, female friends were few and far between.
Or perhaps the inspector was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Sergio Regarri had mentioned her aversion to firearms, a philosophical thing linked to her notions of civilized police work. It was a real possibility: Exposed, Avi Roig/Avrum Louk would have nothing to lose. Another tragedy in the wake of a mistake. True, it would be the cleanest way to put this entire episode to bed. But a beautiful friendship would be over before it really started.
The quiet house was suddenly worrisome. Margot began to assess the best way in.
· 55 ·
THE ACCUSING SILENCE
He hastily packed a couple of bags. Wrote brief notes to Roos, the mayor, the inspector. It was like writing a will. A living will. He’d done it before. He would be dead — but he would be alive. He began to compose a message for Stephanie but found he could barely write her name. How to explain himself in a way that one day she might be able to accept? Stuck for words, Avi was sitting on his bed trying to come to terms with the fact of leaving once again. Beyond his window, his beautiful olive trees. It had been hard, soul-sapping work bringing them back, making them his, a labour of love and regret, atonement, an opportunity directly tied to the enduring weight of his impulsive sin. Even under the cloudy sky, the waves of leaves appeared to glitter. That meant something. Something like belief? Devotion.
God would never let him know.
He saw her enter the frame of his contemplation and hunker at the base of one of his trees. Like a cat, but a woman. Clearly. The combat glasses, hat, boots — from thirty metres it was still obviously a woman. The way she ran. An errant strand of blondish hair. When she removed the cap to rebundle and carefully refit the arrangement, he saw that it was her. Her business card was still right there on his bedside table: Margot Tessier, Agente, Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. Perhaps she had come to collect her gun. Her useless French gun.
He’d done as ordered, the quid quo pro for promised anonymity. And worth it for the soul of one young woman with promise that should not be wasted. A self-important boy with bombs would not be regretted, the killing shot would be a fudged detail in a report soon buried and lost to time. With a halfway decent rifle Avi would have made the kill shot. The boy would have gone straight down and it would have been done. No staggering around in an absurd show of battling back, no return fire from the French police, no hysterical Stephanie rushing into the middle of it, no calamity on the ridge. No tests. No one the wiser. Ten steps closer perhaps? But ten steps closer were impossible that night, the gun wasn’t true, Avi had missed.
Now his life was over. Again.
Agent Margot Tessier had retroactively changed the terms of their deal. The information backing the inspector’s warrant was irrefutable proof of that.
The anger rushed through him, flooding his eyes. Margot Tessier was another one of those with the power to make right decisions but who could not see past themselves, their inflated sense of mission. There were too many. Politicians. Generals. Billionaires. Rabbis and imams and priests. Dreamers and bombers. Police. It really was an epidemic.
When Avi saw DST Agent Tessier creep forward, sidearm at the ready, he moved — quick, silent, down the stairs, out the front door and around the far side. She was tight against the storeroom wall, edging her way to the kitchen door. He caught her from behind and broke her neck before she could react or make a sound.
The anger drained away, leaving Avi in a fearful daze as he laid her on the ground and gently removed the mirrored shades, searching the dimmed eyes of Margot Tessier. For what? A livable reason? A hint from God? Yes, she was corrupted. Yes, she had surprised him with what she knew, what she demanded, but she had died without the faintest clue, in no way prepared for the likes of him. His anger was a curse. It made him act like a beast, beyond reason, lost from God.
God knew the thing in Avi’s heart provoked by intractable people. And God was spiteful. In lashing out against the fact of too many people lost to self-righteous fantasy, he had consigned himself to permanent exile from a land, a dream, he loved. Avi’s violence had no truth in the promised land. It had nothing to do with God’s dream.
Avi missed the dream more than the land.
Now again: Here I am without a name, without a life. Just me and my spiteful God, thought Avi. Because even if you hate yourself, it doesn’t mean you don’t believe.
What about the dream of sunshine? Olive trees. Creating beautiful food. Doing something good. Loving a girl named Stephanie, protecting her so she could have a real life in God’s world.
He went back inside, weeping.
·
The storage room was stuffy, dark and cramped, filled with things a bistro owner needed. Flageolet beans in cans. Sugar cubes in boxes. Flour in sacks. Toilet paper and serviettes in industrial-sized packs. Securely bound, tightly gagged, Inspectors Nouvelle, Barthès and Dardé had been stowed like three more bundles of stuff on a filthy linoleum floor. At a certain point, Aliette strained to hear, sure she detected sounds on the other side of the wall. A flurry of movement. A partial, muffled sound — in response to pain? Whatever it was, it was finished before she could focus her mind on it. She wished she could see Magui’s eyes, if only for a signal that she had heard it too, that it wasn’t a captive’s dream. But Henri lolled between them, senseless, and his sagging bulk obstructed her view. She hadn’t noticed any blood or facial swelling when Avi left him in a heavy heap between Magui and herself. The man was efficiently dangerous. Every few minutes Henri let out another violent, stuttered gasp — horrible, like an apnea sufferer snoring. She and Magui could only communicate through breathy expressions of helpless frustration.
She had screwed up. There was nothing to do now but sit and wait in the accusing silence, interrupted only by the sporadic shifting and grunting humans tend to do when confined to a hard surface, and Henri’s disjointed efforts to find his way out of the fog of unconsciousness.
Was it an hour? It’s hard to gauge the time in such uncomfortable straits.
The door handle jiggled, the one dim light came on overhead.
Avi avoided her eyes as he knelt and manoeuvred Henri Dardé into a more upright position. Taking a couple of pills from a pocket, he lowered the gag around Henri’s mouth and worked them between his lips. ‘Just ASA. It’ll ease the throb when he comes to.’ He redid the
gag.
Aliette tried to tell him with her eyes that she was ready to listen.
He pulled a pair of Polaroid snaps from his breast pocket and held them in before her like a warrant card. ‘That’s Avi. Roig.’ A soldier, grinning in the desert, a big man, huge compared to the one who’d taken his name to an unknown village in France. The other picture showed Stephanie McLeod, happy, sunny and topless on a rock, river in the background. Contemplating it for a haunted moment, he said, ‘We could have helped each other get past our pasts. She never knew my real life, but she knew I was as disgusted and disoriented by my just cause as she’d become with hers. Well, not her cause — her parents’. And not mine — my people’s. This is all I have to remember her. And this place. This place I built. And my olive trees.’ A woeful nod. ‘I left a note. And there are notes for Roos and Planes. This place is Stephanie’s if she wants it. Or she’ll find a good person to sell it to. Or the people taking care of her…’ He stopped, breathed in hard, squelching a rising burst of emotion. Then said, ‘Planes better take care of my olive trees. I’ll know if he doesn’t. I’ll come back and kill him too. I swear I will.’
Aliette nodded. She would see they got the notes.
‘When I get to the next place, wherever that is, some people will start to want to know me. To know where I’ve come from. They never will. But I’ll show them my snaps. That will help them to trust me. Showing people a bit of beauty always helps. In any event, please don’t think I’m getting away with anything. Only some pictures.’
Avi replaced the photos close to his heart and wiped away tears that were falling again. The inspector could see that this man’s self-recrimination was not just for show. Tears magnify. His eyes were packed with pain. His voice was reduced to a baffled murmur. ‘Stephanie never made love to him along the river. Those were our spots. It had to be up there. I knew that. It’s such a shame.’ He stood. ‘Stupid, isn’t it? All the tragedy that grows out of fantasies. The holy past, the better future — these don’t exist. People get stuck inside their minds. Immovable walls. God is the present tense.’ He tried a wretched smile... ‘No one ever died eating Avi’s omelets. You have to trust me on that.’
