Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  Death had finally rendered harmless the man who’d known too much and who’d been too ready to interfere, who hunted small boys like St. Eustace along the banks of the Tiber...

  “Worrying times.” Martin patted the bed for the last time as Duvivier noticed the nurse’s economical waist and her breasts tight under the uniform. He could afford a secret smile – there was to be no further investigation of the accident. A tragic loss of concentration, nothing more, nothing less, and as Henri Pereire had been notorious for his solitary jaunts around the area, the Examining Magistrate wasn’t looking for anyone else in connection with his death.

  Besides, no-one had yet come forward to refute this thesis.

  The young nurse avoided his eyes while Martin struggled to give instructions from the Legate in Paris for removal and disposal of the body. Then Duvivier led him smartly out of the building – the place with its reek of mortality and its memories already silting up his mind.

  ...I remember she was taller than Pereire. They had to pull back the pillow so she didn’t look as though she was about to rear up and condemn me to a deeper part of Hell. One hand I couldn’t touch because of the bandages, but the other, with her ring, was free and the only thing she ever let me have. A gift in Death, stiff and cold.

  But at least it was her hand, and without her knowledge, I could touch the new freckles, follow the lie of that pale land to each painted nail. Red again. Red on white. Blood under the dressings darkening and dying... Oh, mother, why?

  When you could have had me...?

  He was aware of René Martin squinting at him in the sun.

  “This is where I must leave you, Father André. I have a trip to the capital tomorrow. The Papal Nuncio is curious. Things to be sorted, you know...”

  “Indeed,” said Duvivier noticing how those two eyebrows knit together in ambition and how soon the tears had dried.

  “In all probability the Requiem will be held in Fayence.”

  “I’d have thought Ste Trinité would be more central. Better roads, more hostelries...”

  “Birthplace, my good man. After all, there’s no other family, no other claims.”

  “Pity.”

  “Your church is enviable, Father André, both historically and ecclesiastically, but I’m sure you’d be the first to admit it’s looking somewhat jaded. Lacklustre’s the word. Especially the grounds. Couple of goats would do the trick.”

  Duvivier stayed silent, watching the smirk of satisfaction creep over Martin’s face. Suddenly, two black Safranes drew up into reserved spaces.

  “Aha. We have company.” The Deacon feigned surprise. He straightened his cape, removed his biretta and smoothed down what remained of his hair. Duvivier saw dandruff but wasn’t going to help him out. He had other plans, besides, his secret journey back to Cavalaire had unnerved him, orienteering without a compass, just the moon and the wind for company.

  “I must go.”

  The lilies hid his face before he turned away, but René Martin with his diaconate future firmly on his mind, hurried over to meet the Archdeacon and Pereire’s ‘Familia.’ All men and all in mourning. Enemies and their shadows sharp as swords in the sun.

  ***

  Duvivier bit his teeth into his lower lip as he picked up a cab in the Square de la Lettre de Tassigny.

  “Ste Trinité. My church,” he barked at the driver. “Make it snappy.”

  The young man cast a furtive glance at his fare as he pulled away, deliberately allowing a coach to overtake.

  “Lovely flowers, Father. For your place?”

  “They are.”

  “Nice touch that.”

  “Like the cost of this trip, if you don’t shift it.”

  The driver stared through his rear-view mirror. Something in those pinprick eyes kindled danger. He stepped on the gas and took the next set of lights on red noting no change of expression.

  “And when we get there, you’re to give me five minutes.”

  “Sorry but I’ve got to be in La Croix by six.”

  Duvivier leaned forwards.

  “Your problem, not mine. I’ve hired you. Simple.”

  The Toledo veered away from the sea, past endless rows of boutiques and tourist kiosks towards the northern hills. After the Camping de l’Horizon, the gradient increased, and suddenly, from the depths of his pocket, Duvivier’s mobile beeped into life. He tried to stifle it but Vidal’s scrambled voice persisted.

  “Not now, Father,” the Provençal snapped, seeing the driver’s growing curiosity.

  “Look here, I’ve been trying to get through since I got back. God knows what’s going on.... Moussac’s dead, murdered, and Toussirot...”

  “Later. It’s tricky.”

  Übertolpen.

  He’d kept his anger under control, but was now in danger of losing it. This saloon was in the wrong gear, straying across the road.

  “Here?” asked the imbecile at the wheel.

  “Yes.”

  ***

  His presbytery and the church loomed up on the left, its wrought-iron bell tower resembling a giant insect curled up against the sky. Black and malevolent, dotted by crows. Duvivier felt the driver watch him as he climbed out and passed under the archway, so he took his time through to where weeds devoured the angels and other saintly figurines marking the local graves. Brother Hubert next to his mother, both mottled by laurel, and the one empty plot alongside.

  The cab driver kept the engine running giving impatient little revs, and when that didn’t work, switched on Django Rheinhart and whistled him into the deepening gloom.

  The door of the Portal to The Virgin was already open. That wasn’t unusual, for old Javel and his unmarried daughter were always around fiddling about doing something or other. Checking the offertory boxes, sweeping and dusting, but because outside had grown so wild, that wasn’t now on his agenda. Nevertheless, the priest sensed something was amiss. He ran his hand over the seated Virgin and Child as though her sandstone lips would somehow speak to protect him. But she was merely a copy, and not a very good one at that, planted there long before his time.

  Duvivier blinked in the sudden darkness. That bleak hour before the lighting of candles when the House of God seemed full of spirits. All Souls, every day, unbidden, despite visitors with pushchairs and conscience money from the beach sybarites clattering into the void. He strode up the nave, crossed himself by the altar and headed for the sacristy.

  “Hervé? Renate?” His shoes pattered like a dog’s on the ancient tiles and dust hung blue-green in the light shaft from the west window where the sun struggled to regain the sky. The life-size alabaster of his namesake clasping a fish gave him the same quizzical look as the day he was first installed, and Duvivier called again as he pushed open the small door.

  The sacristy smelt different. Something was up. Smoke not incense, and from a cigar he recognised. A Belgian Panatella...

  “Well, well Francke, quite a flood of raw sewage under the old bridge since we last met.” Georges Déchaux stood killing the stub on the floor leaving a mark like a bullet hole. He’d slipped one of Duvivier’s spare soutanes over his own clothes and twirled round like a girl. “And how do I look? D’you think I could have been like you with a bit more practice, you know, with an Elevation here and a Sanctus there?” A wicked twinkle lit his eyes. The eyes of a puppeteer in full control, except for the fudge-coloured growth on his nose. “My God, how I used to envy your power. With just one word from the Almighty, you could really spoil someone’s whole life. Never mind someone’s day. Especially mine. But it certainly fired me up to go one better.” His smile big, his handshake bigger without this time the usual symbolic pitting of his thumb.

  Duvivier glanced at the door.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve sent both your minions off shopping. More candles and a bloody lawnmower for a start. If my memory serves me, Garden Centres are open till eight round here.” The atheist’s smile vanished. “There’s too much of a mess outside, my friend. A
ttracts the wrong kind of attention. Just keep things dull and ordinary, like it used to be. There’s a good chap.”

  For once the priest was stuck for words.

  “And if you’re about to ask why I didn’t wait for you inside your luxurious presbytery, the reason is obvious. I find your museum collection nauseous. Always have.”

  “Are you referring to my dear late mother by any chance?”

  “Of course. Your dear late suicide. Let’s be accurate.”

  Duvivier stared and shivered. “We could have had some supper, a glass of something,” he tried weakly. “I’ve a nice dry white.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t find clinical photography conducive to such things, besides,” he paused, “this isn’t a social call.”

  “Oh?”

  The NATO général from Reims hauled the soutane over his head and slicked down his eyebrows. “I want some answers, Monsieur le curé. First, Le Bébé. It was not your remit to chop him, at least not until we’d found his maman.”

  Duvivier sat down on the one chair amongst all the stools, shaking beneath his black disguise.

  “You continue to foul things up, my friend. I’m sure had Madame Bataille known her precious son was merely being kept as a precaution, she’d have behaved herself and not gone running off telling tales.”

  “You’re talking in riddles.”

  “Am I? I do beg your pardon.” The général again ground his cigar stub on the tiles, this time leaving a black circular graze. Duvivier looked on, helpless. “What did you do to frighten her off I wonder? A quick grope or worse?” He placed a finger hard into the priest’s knee. ”Come on, confess to uncle Georges. Out in the open. Face to face. That’s the thing these days, isn’t it?”

  “I swear to God I didn’t do anything. She was hysterical from the moment we got to the Hôtel Marionnette when she found out there was nothing doing with Number 2. Besides, you’d told me and the others not to tell a soul...”

  Duvivier tried to leave, but the army man pinned him down by the shoulders, his shadow cast by the high west window. “Save your breath my friend, for secondly, and just as worrying, we have the matter of Henri Pereire, which, through your good offices has become a major incident.”

  “He was on to me, I’m telling you. Christ knows I was just hoping for a peaceful journey back. I never asked him to pick me up, he was just there at the station, waiting.”

  Déchaux sat down on a stool used by the shorter choirboys to reach their surplices, and lit another cigar. His movements slow and considered, designed to cause the most uncertainty.

  “Pereire knew something I’m sure of that,” he inhaled deeply, calming himself down, “but they’re not going to prod about too much, so we don’t tempt Providence. Like yourself, he has a murky underbelly, which we all know about, but what interests me is, who was throwing titbits to the big fish?”

  “God knows.”

  Duvivier relieved, crossed his heart, yet still felt those cool, brown eyes work into his. “He said Moussac had cancer.”

  “Our friend was probably lying. Testing you.” He bent down to tie a shoe lace. City brogues with stitching detail. “But I didn’t tell you to feed him to the eels.” When he looked up, blood had pinked his normally white face. The mole on his nose even more prominent.

  “He’d locked me in the car. He had a gun.”

  “They never found one. Besides, Francke, this sort of thing, this sort of recklessness just opens up unnecessary cans of worms.”

  Duvivier’s fists clenched in his pockets. His pitted cheek beginning to burn again.

  “When the only worms we’re interested in will be wriggling nicely in the Seine on the third of October. But what I really came to see you about, Father André, is the widow. We know exactly where she is.”

  They heard the taxi make a screeching turn outside and blast off into the evening. Duvivier remembered his forgotten lilies, then suddenly jumped. His mobile once again, louder in the vaulted room, this time, more insistent. He checked Déchaux for his next move.

  “Answer it.”

  Duvivier held the phone close as though it was a lover whose secrets he couldn’t share.

  “Yes. I’m on my own.” He covered the mouthpiece and when the warbling became a voice, signalled to Déchaux. “It’s just Number 2. Keeping in touch.”

  The général sat down again, scraping his stool on the terracotta floor. Duvivier kept his eyes on his every move and the next chore for the Javels.

  “Moussac? Yes, it’s shocking...” Then he held the phone in such a way for Déchaux to hear the other priest’s lamentation on the loss of his musical collaborator. “But there’s plenty more can fiddle with the organ, I’d have thought.” Duvivier’s nerves mercifully winning. “Take the girl I’ve got here, Renate. Self taught. When everyone’s singing no-one can hear the odd bum notes...” He forced a smile for the général’s benefit, but the man wasn’t interested.

  “That’s insulting, and you know it.”

  “Apologies.”

  “All I know right now is there’s to be an autopsy and Toussirot’s smelling like a piece of shit.” Vidal shouted into the sacristy.

  Déchaux got up. Vidal still in full flow. “Tell me, why was Moussac poisoned? And what did that turd Toussirot do with my letter?”

  The général blew out smoke like a sperm whale. He took the mobile, punched OFF, and handed it back to a startled Duvivier.

  “What letter is he talking about?”

  “Nothing. The sooner the better he starts diving again then he’ll forget about things that aren’t important.”

  Déchaux toyed with his gold lighter and brought the flame close to the Provençal’s sleeve. “I said no more questions, remember? And as far as any autopsy’s concerned, our dear Lord Bishop of Ramonville is dealing with it, and our very important friend, Dr. Brébisson sips from his hand like a kitten. Isn’t that nice?”

  Duvivier shivered. He was simply a pawn in a game whose rules changed on the whims of the wind. He suddenly needed the toilet.

  “Our handsome friend has too much temperament, I’m afraid. Mountain people.” Déchaux pocketed his lighter. “And on occasions, too much sentimentality, which is far more dangerous. Our purpose is not best served by that particular weakness, and I wouldn’t discuss anything with him. Now, as to why I’m here.” He fastened each leather button on his Paul Smith jacket with great care, for Monday’s sun had sunk low behind the Col de Canébas, and a chill from the empty church seeped through into the room. “Madame Bataille has latched on to a women’s Holy Order. Hiding amongst skirts, just like Le Bébé. I’m afraid any more detail is strictly Classified. I’m dealing with it.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  Déchaux tapped his nose avoiding the wart.

  “She’s been squealing. They warned me.” The général consulted his Rolex. “Our little team should be on the way by now and our irritant taken care of. Nothing to Number 2, OK? Oh, and by the way, Francke.” His tone hardened. “Next time a woman of a certain age, comme votre maman comes along, try and resist the temptation to how shall I say, impress?”

  Those three little words slotted like bromide in a sandwich, made Duvivier pale, and nerves suddenly reach his bowels.

  “Comme votre maman. What do you mean, like your mother?”

  Déchaux’s eyes narrowed like those of a hunting hawk poised to strike, but his intended victim had already turned for the door and the sanctuary of the transept.

  “Your lust will do for us all, unless you curb it, Father André. It’s already given you un casier judicaire which at the time of your brother’s demise caused me no small embarrassment. Fortunately for you, it was my vote to keep you out of gaol that counted in the end. Don’t forget.”

  The Provençal tried to wrestle the grip from his shoulder, but the brown square hand, always efficient and trained to fight, stayed put.

  “Out there, how sweetly they lie together, your dear mother and your sibling. I
n death as in life, inseparable.” He smiled. “I think you get my drift, Father. And now I must away before my, I’m sorry, your minions return.”

  Duvivier fumbled for the key to the small outer door as Déchaux pressed close, the smell of the hair restorer Brunaugment suddenly obvious.

  “Now, Kommandant, on the fourth time of asking, is there Any Other Business?”

  “Nein, Hauptsturmbannführer.” Duvivier clicked his heels and gave a brief salute. “Number 2 is seeing Ayache on September 4th. The rest are on line. Just waiting for prints from 5, that’s all.” Omitting that Cacheux was too busy fantasising to help with any forward planning and The Pigface was gaining grammes not losing them.

  “Nice and straightforward. Good oh. I’ll be in touch.” Déchaux pulled up his jacket collar. “By the way,” he turned unexpectedly, “I’ve arranged with le commandant Malaigue – not his real name of course – to give you all some upgraded drills, on a date to be arranged.” He smiled. “And guess what? Someone’s made us some straw dummies in striped uniforms complete with yellow stars. What do you think?”

  “Kussel used to do that.”

  “Oh, Francke, you’re such a spoilsport.” Then he picked his way back among the nettles to where a black Toyota Celica had drawn up by the side gate. Through its tinted glass Duvivier could just make out a swatch of blonde hair beneath a chauffeur’s cap as the woman’s gloved hands turned the wheel and bore him away.

  Déchaux was messing him about, keeping secrets, and worse, leaning too much on his past, on his one true act of passion. The priest felt his pitted cheek, hot even though the air had cooled and thunderous clouds had seen off the sunset. His pulse lurched beneath his punishment, anarchy and chaos in unison. The young Doctor Brébisson had announced that with God on his side, he’d got ten years left unless he went for major maxillofacial surgery.

  Not an option, for he loathed hospitals. So every day, like now, he’d check the border for escapees. Eleven pot holes at the last count, but there was no logical progression, no plan he could intercept. The only constant was knowing God was most certainly on his side, even though The Almighty moved in mysterious ways, usually during the disadvantage of sleep.