Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  It was only then Colette realised in a rush of shameful despair that she’d forgotten Bertrand’s birthday. September 6th had been weeks ago.

  XLI

  Mathieu had started smoking again and lit up his sixth Gauloises since boarding the Roquette IV. Despite his foul throat and raw diaphragm, he still craved the same comfort as on the day of his Ordination. After all, St. Thérèse hadn’t made the boat disappear or struck any of their sinful number down. So what else was there? And now the packet lay soft, half-empty in his jeans pocket alongside his rosary.

  “Came off the nipple too early, obviously.” Plagnol stared down at the dark green water as the Bateau-Mouche plied her way past the Trocadéro. “Me, I could never get enough, so Mother says. She kept me going till I had a good set of teeth. Bless her.”

  I bet she did, you greedy, amoral pig.

  Mathieu eyed his companion’s profile below the baseball cap and secretly resolved to give this creature special mention when seeking Absolution at the end of it all. One lapse in twenty-four years and nothing to do with Free Will. He’d been duped by Satan himself. Easy pickings, and, oh, the shame of it.

  There were more tables than usual near the stern’s lifebelts, casting a cross- -hatch of shadows on the small deck space so he took a few shots. Also of a black Celica tailing the boat along the Porte de Passy. With the smell of new paint still strong in the clinging heat, he edged round the crowd of diners darkened by glass. Saw Duvivier and Vidal sitting close together over a pastis with Cacheux ever attentive, like a white paper sculpture in his sharp new suit.

  Four exposures left.

  Good word, that. One for each of them, which is only fair.

  Mathieu then made his way down to the toilettes, borne by waves of conversations and sudden laughter. There, he plucked out the roll of Fuji Colour from the camera and hid it tight inside his briefs next to his folded, forbidden portrait.

  XLII

  As Roquette IV slid between the narrow confines of the Allée des Cygnes and the Porte Georges Pompidou, people moved to its deck’s rails to see Barnard’s modernist Maison de Radio France rear up in the hazy sunlight.

  Vidal finished his second Ricard and let his glass rock back and fore in his hand, gripping tighter as tension took hold. It was time to act. Time to focus, for Duvivier had received a message from Toussirot cancelling the choir’s trip to St. Sébastien, due to Father Anselme’s angina. The Bishop hadn’t had the guts to tell him personally. Bad move. Not just for him.

  “Nature calls.” He suddenly scraped back his chair still aware of Cacheux directly behind. “Éxcusez-moi.” He smiled for the benefit of others close by, but really wanted to knee the clinging creep in his balls.

  Duvivier simply stared at his beer mat, focussed only on what he’d recently revealed to Vidal. But sharing his problems hadn’t halved them, rather increased his anxiety as to how the man from Lanvière might abuse his vulnerability. Hadn’t he already had a preview with the Jaliberts? Quite an impressive performance by any standards.

  Well, so be it. Déchaux can screw him instead.

  The one name he’d withheld on pain of death, but his own crucifixion was to be a silent and secret affair.

  He was now so deep in that man’s dark pocket there was only one method of repayment, and Duvivier shivered despite the clinging heat. Déchaux had connived with the malleable coroner at the Judicial Enquiry to write the word Suicide on his father’s death certificate, helped by the addition of binder twine and a Whitebeam tree. But he’d threatened to relieve the priest of his legacy by his namesake’s day, if anything further went awry. Everything to lose, he’d said. And that didn’t just mean francs. The burial plot next to his mother as well.

  In the name of Jesus, what is life if I can’t end it there?

  From his eye corner he saw the white suit move to follow Vidal. Down the little faux marble steps, too well lit, too public, but Cacheux stayed close, and the moment his amour fou chose a cubicle, he was on him.

  The lavatory still smelt of Gauloises, and to Cacheux’s surprise, his living icon, tense and silent, let him bring down his zip and begin to stroke with a connoisseur’s care.

  “Anges de Dieu...”

  Tessier all over again. What is it about angels? But this one’s a living corpse. Blind to the snare...

  Vidal let him cup his balls then letting both thumbs stray along to the frenulum, stretching him, drawing the blood along until he finally clasped the pulsing shaft with a moist, pale hand.

  “Now see what God in his goodness has given me,” murmured Cacheux.

  “My turn now.”

  Cacheux’s prick was jutting from his suit, jerking its desire. “It’s for you, Robert. Take it. I’ve waited my whole life for this...” His pleading dissolved into different tears, his face a crumple of longing.

  Vidal obliged, kneeling so his boots were wedged between the lavatory bowl and the partition. No gaps, perfectly private, and as a prelude to his confession, he closed his eyes. His aniseed tongue then toyed with the queer’s purpling helmet beneath its foreskin, tasting anchovies, making it bob and throb, taking the queer to his limits while his own cock stayed inert in Cacheux’s grasp. The symphony of gasps and groans suddenly quickened when his mouth was on it, gliding from end to end, cushioning his teeth with his wet lips.

  No pubic hair. Instead, the waxed mons veneris resembled a mound of duck breast, and the scrotum below, two bald damsons. Crystallised, ready.

  “God help me,” moaned the queer, but the predator from Lanvière was waiting for the exact moment when Cacheux’s prayer for mercy would reach its most urgent height. When as anticipated, that cry became a cry for all eternity, the wolf was ready.

  XLIII

  Guy Baralet prised open the blinds of his office window at the top of the Medex building in Lanvière, and peered down at the Rue Marchessant.

  His wife was late.

  The sun’s brightness made him scan rather than linger on the scene below. Five floats decked out with fruit and vegetables and a little girl dressed as The Green Spirit perched on the middle lorry. Ten years to the day since his daughter Céline had done the same. But she was different now from most of Lanvière’s young. She had a job. She was a perfect dentist in Nancy, making perfect teeth. Rebuilding with the latest porcelain and acrylics so her wealthy patients could smile again.

  If only our kind and clever child could do the same for me. But I mustn’t ask too much...

  He fiddled with his blotter till it lay parallel to the desk edge, and for the third time restacked his pens into the ceramic pot she’d made at school, then rang for Marie-Claude.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Would you see if my wife’s downstairs? Tell her I’m waiting.”

  This temp wasn’t prone to smiling either. Smart to a fault, never a crease or hair out of place, but she wasn’t Colette, and he still hadn’t got used to her at his cherished secretary’s desk. The moment his right-hand superwoman returned, this one would get short shrift. Unemployment or no unemployment.

  13.58. Come on, Lise.

  She was never late. Couldn’t afford to be, as funerals don’t wait for flowers to grow. Besides, with her business Fleur de Lise, she was known for her unfailing reliability.

  You promised.

  Since Colette had vanished, only he would lock the office, there being too much at stake in the Files Strong-room for him to trust anyone else, let alone the replacement secretary. He’d even put New York on hold until she showed up. Her audio and shorthand were his lifeline and he wasn’t prepared to swim alone with unknown quantities.

  The bell from La Sainte Vierge was also late. Its two o’clock chimes mingled with cheers from the local crowd as the procession moved off towards the Place 11 Novembre. Even though he’d never set foot in the place, he’d just been touched by Bishop Toussirot for 10,000 francs to restore the decapitated Virgin.

  The cheque lay unsigned in his drawer. Also, Colette had asked him to help with t
he purchase of new copies of Pérotin’s Quadrupla for the choir. That was different, and how could he refuse? Although he’d thought it a rather odd request at the time.

  The books had been delivered just before poor Moussac’s funeral, and a moving letter of thanks from Father Jean-Baptiste had arrived ending with an invitation to come and hear his choir. No, thank you; he’d replied in his own handwriting. My family and my work is my religion, besides, incense is like the breath of the dying. Forgive me.

  The temp reappeared.

  “Monsieur? Your wife isn’t there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The girl looked put out.

  “OK,” he said. “Thanks. Any calls that come in for me here, transfer to reception. Just in case.”

  Within thirty seconds, Colette’s diary was safe in his inside pocket, his office locked and triple checked.

  Lise, for God’s sake...

  The lift was crammed with employees coming down from lunch in the canteen, so he half ran half slid to the bottom of the shallow stairs.

  “In a hurry?” asked one of the guys from Research.

  “Seen my wife anywhere?”

  “I’d know if I had,” he smiled. “Anything wrong?”

  “I bloody hope not.” As the receptionist stared up from behind her glass partition, in the car park Barelet searched for the familiar red Punto.

  Rien.

  His Safrane’s interior was like a furnace until the air conditioning sighed into action and he noticed with dismay that a boiled sweet had liquefied next to his cigar. He could hear the carnival lorries moving closer. He’d have been better off walking or even picking her up from the shop.

  Hindsight is the Devil’s tease...

  His fingers drummed against the warm steel as he followed a posse of schoolchildren turning cartwheels into the Rue Montbois. Saw too, the freckles on his hand conspiring towards old age, but not with Medex. Not now. Natolyn had just taken some bad press after a date-rape trial in St. Die. Besides, the company had let him down over Colette and maybe he should reword his insouciant reply to the priest and look into the deals for early retirement.

  No-one had been willing to go to the police. Not even the bloody caretaker. So a week ago, he’d gone solo to the Gendarmerie, seen Noblet, the young agent, and asked for a daily update to be faxed to his office. What had he been sent? Nothing. It was a sick farce.

  Suddenly he spotted the Punto parked in front of the Telephone Exchange, its legend FLEURS DE LISE along the doors, bright gold in the sun. His wife was in the driver’s seat, motionless, head bowed.

  What the Hell’s going on?

  “Lise?” He yelled, crashing his gear into third and swerved across into the slip road. When her reached her, he leant in and embraced her. The scent of freesias, from inside the van, was overpowering. “Mon ange? Tell me.”

  “It’s been awful. I knew something was wrong the minute I started unloading the wreaths for tomorrow. I was rushing, trying to get to you before the procession started...”

  “And? Come on...”

  “These two skinheads, about eighteen, nineteen, were hanging around by the shop, and when I drove off they followed.”

  “Bastards.”

  “I was terrified they were after money, as Madame Duforge and the restaurant had just paid me.”

  “What make of car? Did you get any of its number?” Baralet felt his hands begin to sweat, the back of his neck to tingle. A warning he’d learnt to trust.

  ”Citroën. Saxo, I think. Blue. But I just wanted to get away, give them the slip. Christ...” She violently shook her head as though that would somehow lose it all. “I went everywhere. To Stenay, to Montmédy... Thank God I’d enough petrol. They didn’t though. I passed them on my way back. Serve them bloody right. They looked pathetic, half up the verge.”

  Not so pathetic. They know her shop, they know her car, and Medex.

  He suddenly held her tighter and felt her heartbeat on his. Then he detached her car’s mobile phone but just as quickly replaced it.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look, Lise, I think we’re being tapped. Left right and centre. How else would they know we were going to the Gendarmerie? I tell you, this whole thing’s beginning to bloody stink.”

  He didn’t normally swear. Didn’t normally perspire. But she had to tell him the rest. “I’ve noticed one of them before, but didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Where?”

  “I was delivering a bouquet to old Madame Blainville from her daughter in Lyons. Apartments Cornay in the Rue de l’Église...”

  “Colette lives there.”

  “Well, this thin youth was on the first landing, I remember. Smoking.” She paused, hearing the procession throb over the roundabout and down the Rue Montbois. “He looked pretty evil. Just sort of stared at me.”

  “Oh Lise. Someone’s trying to stop us finding Colette. I mean for God’s sake, I told the world I was worried about the way she’d not come back from that Mass. That I was going to get it investigated. What an idiot I’ve been.”

  Although his wife stayed silent, her eyes spoke with fresh tears.

  “No you haven’t, but there’s our daughter as well.”

  “She’s a big girl now, and we have to move. Come on, I’ll drive.”

  ***

  At three o’clock, an hour later than arranged, the Managing Director of Medex Pharmaceuticals and his wife sat down with Lieutenant Audugard in the Gendarmerie and told him their phones were no longer private and their lives were in danger. They also threatened him with his Superior, the Préfet de Police unless the hunt for mother and son was made urgently and conspicuously public and their line was cleared.

  Finally, Guy Baralet also left him her diary, in which the last entry dated August 20th was the most interesting of all and nothing to do with the office.

  Robert. Out of Villerscourt. 10 a.m. tomorrow – Paris. R-V TBC.

  XLIV

  Thursday October 2nd. 03.59 hrs.

  “One must know three things if one is to write an Organum; how to begin, how to proceed and how to conclude.”

  How apt, I must say.

  Father Jean-Baptiste carefully laid shaving cream on his cheeks, and while he waited for his skin to soften for the razor, used his mobile to dial home in the Rue Fosse.

  04.06, and François Vidal, his father, spat his annoyance at the interruption. His son smiled under the foam and ended the call without a word, leaving his lodger sleepless and wondering who the Hell that had been.

  The diver finished shaving and slapped water over his face. The Seine would be colder, filthier than this. Ayache had already tried him in oil and shit, at different depths testing the radio and re-breather, and been more than pleased. Vidal shut his eyes, something he’d not done all night, and rehearsed each minutiae in his mind. Then finally prayed that the old clochard would be in his usual dossing place on the Port de la Conférence and had read the script.

  The priest from La Sainte Vierge arranged all his gear on the bed. Neoprene suit and undersuit, torch, twin hose regulator, knife, and specially silenced compressor. Then, forgetting he was naked, checked the southern sky from the window where smog blanketed the city as far as his eye could see. Nothing of the Louvre, the Pompidou, or Notre-Dame. Even St. Sébastien was veiled for the day. But not in his heart.

  Excellent. Merci.

  He would deal with Toussirot when this was all over.

  First, his eyes. He squeezed in Opticlaire and blinked until his sight returned.

  Merciful Guardian Angels, may I live so Perotinus lives... Deo gratias...

  He hummed through the tenor part of Viderunt Omnes as he pulled on his black jock strap, then suddenly stopped, remembering the queer’s repugnant display on the boat.

  A pity he still lives.

  04.16 a.m.

  The dawn although still persisting in its mystery, failed to muffle the first Shofar blast from the neighbouring Marais.

 
Rosh Hashanah with a vengeance. The cry of war. If that’s what they want, so be it. Now the broken sounds. But we mustn’t be fooled into thinking they represent la condition humaine. In the shit called humanity, some are more equal than others. How simple, how literal it all is. And limited to one purpose only, despite what the Torah says. A pity the great masters Leoninus and Perotinus have passed them by, so the gutter is where they stay. To my mind. And like Nebuchadnezzar I ask if their God can save them...

  The curé from the Meuse zipped up the dry-suit leaving the hood to lie flat under the black tee and matching jeans. Anonymous and easy to shift, part of the shadows by the Bridge of the Soul, under the gaze of the old Zouave sculpture who only yesterday had stood in water up to his chest.

  He placed everything in readiness by the door and made a cup of coffee with the things provided. All scaled down, even the cellophaned cookies – camping size for the tourists and commercial travellers in perpetual motion. He was different in every way from them, with almost too much time, the cartes de visites of other more tangential thoughts arriving like uninvited guests.

  Plagnol was due at 5.24 with just a bag each and the Semtex. Nothing obvious, then the casual drop by the plane tree with the litter bin. Father Jean-Baptiste found his rosary, and used each bead as an aide-mémoire until he was satisfied; until he could plan no more, while the backdrop of wailing notes from the Synagogue in the Avenue Chény permeated his brain.

  Father forgive me.

  Then he lay on the bed in a strangely altered state, as though Hypoxia had taken hold. The pristine room, the hospital curtains, and glimpse of white bowls and receptacles for bodily fluids and solids in the en suite. The bed like a slab and one reason he’d not slept. And now he knew. It was in reality, a birthing bed, a place of hard labour, and above, to the left, hung all the accoutrements for invasive inducement.