“Where’s Plagnol’s name?” Mathieu asked.
“Idiot. It’s Lautin. Charles Lautin. Very clever, I must say.” Then Vidal stopped, took a step back. “I can’t.”
“What d’you mean, can’t? We’ve got to see if Bertrand’s alright.”
Vidal scanned the building and shivered. It was as silent as a house of the Dead, and for the first time, he looked Mathieu squarely in the eye.
“Come on. Let’s get back.”
“No. I’m going in.”
Vidal restrained him and Mathieu felt his panic as if it was his own. He took the advantage and pressed the buzzer faintly marked C. L. No sound, nothing, and no intercom either. Merde.
“You’re on your own.”
“I’m not, damn you.”
“What are you saying, then?”
“Haven’t you heard of God?” And as though fortified, Mathieu pressed another with SUZELLE Mme, in pale italics.
Vidal struck him across the mouth. Warm blood cradled his tongue so that when the elderly occupant of flat 7 called from above, he was unable to reply.
“Who’s there?” she cried. “I’ll call the police.”
“That’s what we want,” Mathieu managed to burble.
“Shut up you!” Vidal hit him again. “It’s er… just a little disagreement Madame. Sorry to disturb you...”
“There’s someone in 15 who could be dying!” the Breton yelled, free for a split second. “It’s urgent!”
“You imbecile.” Vidal had him by the hair and crushed him against the wall with a silent strength. “We came, we cannot see because there is after all, nothing to see, and we leave because I do not wish to be maggot fodder just yet. OK?”
Suddenly the sound of keys and a cobwebbed light over the door giving them no quarter.
“Don’t move.” Vidal, the music-lover tried an embrace, but Mathieu was ready, pushing the old woman to one side and taking the stairs behind her three at a time. “Come back you bloody fool!” boomed up the stairwell behind him, as on the fourth floor he found 15a on a scruffy red door, and heard a low moaning in the brief stillness before Vidal reached him. Mathieu’s fists pummelled the wood. He shrieked to Bertrand that his maman and Jesus still loved him and not to lose his faith, before Vidal felled him against the banisters.
A door opposite opened briefly then closed and Madame Suzelle’s screams diminished as she too found sanctuary.
Vidal’s watch was fast and in frustration he slapped Mathieu some more before wiping away the worst of the mess. He pressed his ear tight to the paintwork. Le Bébé was calling for his mother, calling and choking, and a trickle of something invaded the landing, reaching his boot. His own lips moved on a whisper, not a prayer, then he dragged Mathieu down past the bedridden and the drunks, down towards the sound of the one o’clock bell from Notre-Dame-de-la-Consolation. Plagnol’s Gothic church darkly spearing the sky.
Just as they rounded the corner for the station, a white saloon surged down the Rue Gambetta. Vidal saw two silhouettes as familiar as himself and quickly pulled Mathieu into a doorway so he could stare at the disappearing lights of the Laguna. The give-away car, carrying The Kommandant and The Pigface towards their prey.
XVI
“You awake?”
Colette felt the touch of a hand on her elbow. One touch too many, and she pressed it tight against her body.
“It’s me. Nelly. I’ve been hunting everywhere for you. Some idiot must have forgotten to lock the door, thank God.” The girl eased Colette’s arm round to see exactly the same marks as Chloë’s. Then she studied her face and gasped. “What in Hell’s name have they done to you?” Her lovely eyelashes had gone, and it was obvious the pretty pink varnish had been hurriedly scraped from her nails.
The latest recruit opened her eyes to see a stranger with thick glasses and a conspicuous gap between two front teeth.
“Who are you?” she asked with a glazed expression.
“Come on,” Nelly whispered, “let’s get you out of here.”
“I can’t... I need rest.”
“It’ll be in aeternum at this rate.” She tried to raise her, to properly open her eyes, but Colette slumped to one side, like a rag doll.
“Oh Christ!” Nelly kept a check on the door. She’d managed to prise the small window apart and pull the shutters behind her, but soon someone was bound to notice even though most of the Order had gone over to the Mass.
“I want to stay. Can’t you see? The world is too evil for me. I want to forget everything. Everything.”
Nelly panicked. She could see neither bag nor belongings. The woman had been stripped to a cotton shift with that same bloody red heart on the chest.
“They’ve nicked all your gear, hoping you weren’t going to wake up till Bordeaux… What have they done that for?”
“I don’t care any more. I don’t care...”
“Well, somebody’s got to. They’re leaving at five. Then, where will you be?”
“I’m alright. Just leave me alone.”
“What about your son?”
“Who?”
“Oh God...”
Nelly was under the camp bed, her arms like a swimmer, searching for anything they might have overlooked. But the floor was bare save for a few feathers.
She crawled out and knelt next to the woman twice her age. A mother she’d have far preferred, otherwise what else was she doing here putting herself on the line?
“Chloë was Number 43,” she said. “You’re 44 and I overheard yesterday they need forty-five.”
“Forty-five? What? Apples on a tree? Dairy cows?” Colette’s lips moved on the possibilities.
“Yeah, or else no money to keep going. Finito.”
Colette turned towards her. Her eyes half hooded, still bloodshot.
“I don’t understand...”
“Yesterday, after Nones, Sister Superior was whispering to Sister Agnès. I was pretending to do up my laces. She said the Abbot de Lagrange Vivray would keep his fist tight unless the Soeurs recruit that magic number by All Souls. So you see, that makes us very special. They won’t want to lose you and they need one more. Me. But I’m not that desperate. Ever seen those huge cockerels bursting out of their crates in the Rue des Rosiers? That’s what it’d be like for me. Look, I confess, I just used this lot to get a meal and a bed. I can’t live without the sky...”
She crooked her arms under Colette’s shoulder and began to pull, when all at once something passed by the window, breaking the filament of light.
“That was her. Quick!”
“Please, just let me be...”
“Can’t you see they came here to trawl for poor needy bastards like us.” She tore a corner off the Pater Noster sheet. “Here’s my mama’s address and phone number. Hide it.” As the key rasped in the lock, and the door handle lowered in slow motion, Sister Marie-Ange swept into the room, but Nelly charged past her. Out into the other less dangerous world.
***
And Nelly got her sky but took no pleasure in it. She should have stayed, put up a fight to get Colette out, but, she thought, staring at the ground between her knees, maybe God had his reasons.
She sat hunched on a bench near the Porte d’Auteuil, tense and frightened despite all her bravado at the Résidence. She’d been grateful at first, like anybody would after a week of slumming it, with a tumble drier for a stomach. But she’d been more clever than Colette, dodging round the nutters, keeping one step ahead, even sleeping propped up with a giant hairpin at the ready. She also hadn’t signed anything.
But why was Colette so important to them? Why had she been sedated so quickly in a separate room, and all her things taken? And what about the son she’d mentioned? It just didn’t make sense.
Nelly looked up at two swallows curving and teasing above her head, so obscenely at liberty it was unbearable. They flew off, arching noisily on neurotic little wings towards the river.
Two things she now had to do. The first was to get e
nough money together to rescue Colette, and the second, find a bed. The only reason she’d tagged on to the nuns in the first place was to get away from her mother’s sordid existence and living on her terms fifteen floors up. But the night was only hours away, and she was exhausted.
Nelly found a phone, dialled the Numéro Vert – Student Helpline – and lied she was still in her second year. After an agonising wait she was finally told the Catholic St. Anne’s hostel had one bed left. A cancellation five minutes ago, and lucky she’d phoned. Forty francs a night with a communal bathroom and prayers compulsory.
Thank you God and merciful Jesus.
Next, thirdly and importantly, she must find herself a crucifix.
XVII
Mathieu and Vidal reached the Hôtel Marionnette at 01.45 hours. The night receptionist gave the two men a cursory glance then returned to his Tiercé list for St. Cloud the next day.
The place was hushed as though all the faithful had retired for contemplation and, by the time they reached the third floor, the already stagnant air had noticeably thickened.
Vidal had checked the parking round the back. No Laguna, so there was time to slide into bed and feign sleep, but as they approached Room 25, a line of brightness edged the bottom of the door. Like some feral night creature, Vidal stood with his dark head cocked, picking up every small sound.
“Cards,” he whispered. “And Cacheux’s losing.”
As expected, the priest from the Languedoc showed no interest in their return, instead he glowered at what he’d dealt himself. Suddenly his mobile burped inside his pocket. He pressed descramble, his sloe eye on his room mates, watching their every move.
“Father Christophe de la Bonté’s playing with himself again, I see,” Vidal sneered, but Cacheux ignored him as he concentrated.
“Got the artichokes in? Yes sir,” he said. “Two tons. One minute thirty-seven seconds exactly. No. Not had a chance… Be unloading immediately. Right on, sir...” Then smugly back to the Solitaire while Mathieu watered his face and Vidal, having unzipped his fly, peeled off his jeans.
“What’s all that crap, eh?” he asked. “Bloody artichokes now, are we?”
“You should have been here.”
Vidal folded his socks into his boots, a habit from Seminary days, and patted the Browning in his nightshirt pocket. The queer was stealing his thunder.
Not good.
Then he checked Mathieu was out of earshot. “Where are the others?”
“You’re mad.”
“I said where?”
Cacheux cringed over his game.
“Went out for a drink, that’s all.”
“Liar.” Vidal’s fingers tightened on the nape of his neck, like he was a dog who’d just fouled the floor.
“Ask them.”
“I’m asking you.” His nine millimetre on the man’s atlas bone, cold and hard.
“Pont Neuf. For a quick drop, if you must know.”
God have mercy… So that’s why the Laguna had been in Drancy.
Vidal let go as Mathieu veered towards his bed, his head swathed in the stale, bloodied towel. Never in the confessional had he been privy to such a terrible secret. He got into bed fully dressed. Even the rosary he’d overworked all the way back couldn’t ease his torment. In his mind’s eye he saw Colette, then his own mother and rolled back and fore, covering his face with his hands. At one point, on the brink of sleep, he called out to St. Thérèse to help him.
“Fat chance.” Cacheux toyed with the card pack, stacking it then letting the cards slide into a path of graceful submission. “Anyhow, what’s up with him?” He tried to soften Vidal up. After all, this was a bedroom and they were almost on their own.
“Too many Schnapps.”
“My, my. Boys’ night out, eh?”
Vidal was still close, so he could also see out of the window. He elbowed a clear patch through the condensation. All quiet in the Rue Goncourt, or so it seemed – shop lights still on with offices above on timers, casting in intermittent darkness the kerb crawlers, the odd lost tourist, and winos using the pavement as their dance floor. Thou God seest us... he mused, then snatched his breath. A white car he recognised was creeping round to the parking.
“Into bed,” he ordered Cacheux. “Not a sound. Move.”
The forty-year-old priest hung up his jacket and dropped his trousers over the chair back, hurriedly checking the creases.
“Leave them.”
Then Vidal slunk behind the door, his gun ready.
Voices he recognised. A shared bonhomie that suddenly sickened him as Plagnol’s underwater laugh swelled to fill the hotel. “A good night’s work, ja?”
“Ausgezeichnet.”
They were dishevelled. Duvivier’s duffel coat damp and stained on the arms, his neck as red as Plagnol’s. He turned his best side to the priest from Lanvière, avoiding his eyes.
“No choice, my friend. His tongue was longer than the Loire. We’d have had it if he and his liebe Mütter had met up again.”
Vidal put his lips to the pulpy ear, to black wax and the smell of a grave.
“It’s a pity your memory has let you down Father André,” he hissed. “Someone’s taking the piss. I’m Number 2, not that pervert.”
Suddenly cold hands closed round his throat for blood and river water to rain down his neck. Plagnol was enjoying himself but not smiling while Duvivier helped himself to the gun. “We still have a small problem, my friend. You see, our Bébé couldn’t stop talking, even at the end. He swore that just before we arrived, someone, maybe two people had come to jump him. Naturally, we wonder who they might have been. And then to cap it all, he hoped Jesus and his own maman would still love him. I ask you...”
“He was entitled to something, poor bastard.” Vidal murmured. “Big mistake. As long as I don’t live to regret it.”
“If she hadn’t run off it might have been different, and now Monsieur le curé, we have other things to attend to which are far more important.” Duvivier nodded to The Pigface to let go. “We must finalise plans for October 3rd. Order new phones and equipment etcetera. We won’t need any ‘pianists’ after all. Sorry about that, Number 4.” He looked over to where Cacheux was simply a lump in the bedding. “I know how much you were looking forward to twiddling with your own transmitter, but the good Lord has put better technology at our disposal. And finally,” he pushed Vidal against the wall and placed his parchment lips on his cheek, “most urgent of all, we hunt the tart.”
Vidal stared, his thoughts in delirium. “You can’t.”
“Insubordination. Tut, tut. Such a disagreeable trait, don’t you think, Father Jérôme?”
The Parisian from Drancy chuckled as he pulled back the covers to see if Mathieu and Cacheux were really asleep. “Absolutely.”
“However, our friend here knows the score...” The Provençal’s voice rose to its full preaching height. “Any more of that and we’ll have mother and son meeting up at last. As fish food. And bon appétit to that.” The words were intoned like his grim Sunday bell in Les Pradels, and Mathieu who’d woken on their return then tried to sustain the rhythm of sleep, heard every word as invisible tears burned his blindness.
XVIII
The cream and green Vacances Mémorables coach left the Résidence over an hour late and the driver, a mannish woman in her early forties, wearing a black open-necked shirt, wove in and out of departing traffic on the capital’s outer Périphérique, to gain any small advantage.
With a clearer run after the Porte d’Orléans, she touched 100 kms an hour and her steady speed lulled the party of Pauvres Soeurs into a sleepy trance. No radio or video, instead it was interminable rewinds of the Holy Father’s message that invaded their sleepy minds while silent prayers and other more personal convocations lay on their lips.
Colette opened her eyes. Warm next to the window in the westerly sun, she saw a huge silver sculpture, brazen white in parts, then the low buildings of a flying club and posters peeled by the
long summer diminishing into countryside. Trees and more trees, cattle grazing uphill. Suddenly a hand she didn’t recognise on hers and a voice whispering urgently in the silence.
“It’s me, Chloë. I kept trying to find you, but you weren’t at the Mass...”
“Oh?”
“So they’ve got you too now. Join the club.” Resignation and resentment in equal measure, but her fellow passenger hardly noticed.
“This is just the beginning for me...”
“What do you mean?”
“My new journey...” Colette’s veiled head rested against the view. Bone directly on glass, as all her cushioning hair had gone.
Her hair... The colour of Limousin corn, he’d said...
But it didn’t matter, like all the rest of her worldly goods as the wheels droned south through fields flattened by the sky, stained by an early sunset.
“I’m thirty-nine kilometres from my dead baby,” Chloë announced. “Thirty-nine and a half... forty...” She’d worked it all out and her frail hand tapped on her knee, keeping tracks.
“I had one once,” Colette said dreamily, seeing a gypsy with a papoose strapped to her back, picking weeds by the roadside. Then Chloë nudged her.
“They’re coming.”
Suddenly a commotion rose from the far end. The aisle was blocked by both senior nuns making their way towards the back of the bus. A stack of bedpans rattled underneath as Sister Agnès advanced with a trolleyful of brown paper picnic parcels. The driver took no notice. After eighteen months with the PSS, she was used to all their idiosyncrasies.
“You’re looking much better today, Sister Barbara.” The tall, young woman stooped over Colette. “But it’s time for your multivitamins again.” Four capsules were shaken from a little box and handed over.
“She doesn’t need anything. She’s fine.” Chloë kept eye contact, and her hand on Colette’s.
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