by Lucy Wadham
He noticed that all her fingers had gold rings on them.
���When was the last time she came?���
���Easter and then, before that, last summer. It was last summer she told me she had to sell. But it���s been on the market nearly a year.��� She shook her head. ���No one���s interested. There���s too much work to do on it, it���s too far from the sea and it���s in Santarosa.��� She raised her eyebrows encouragingly. ���They wrote on the advert, ���an historic village���. Historic for what? For the Movement. Anyone from outside thinks that means terrorists, don���t they?���
���Do you show people around?���
���Of course I do.���
���No you don���t,��� he said.
Babette shrugged.
���When was the last time you showed someone round?���
���After her last visit. The end of April.���
���Who?���
���An Italian couple. Young. She was very unfriendly.���
���Does the agency always send the visitors?���
���Yes.���
���Yesterday night when she didn���t show up, did you call anyone? What did you do that evening?���
���I watched telly.��� She stopped herself. ���What are you suggesting?��� Her voice got on his nerves. It was high-pitched and girlish.
���I���m asking if you told anyone that she hadn���t shown up.���
���No. Why should I?��� He stared at her, unyielding. ���I might have mentioned it to Liliane. We speak all the time. I don���t remember.���
���Liliane.���
���Liliane Santini.���
���I know. Did you?���
���Did I what?��� She spat the last word.
���Did you tell Liliane?��� he asked calmly.
���Yes.���
���Right. Will you show me where I���m sleeping?��� he said. ���And give me keys to the back and front doors.���
*
Upstairs Alice lay fully clothed on the bed. Next to her on a scant bedside table stood a porcelain dragon with an apricot lampshade. It gave off the only light, a smudged haze that thickened the darkness elsewhere. On the other side of her slept Dan, his mouth open, arms thrown back on the pillow in a posture of triumph. She stared at the brown stain on the ceiling and listened to his gentle breathing.
She pressed her hand hard against the bone between her breasts where the constricted feeling was burning her, affecting her breathing. She tried to breathe deeply. She closed her eyes and searched in her mind for Sam���s beginning. He had entered her life before she was ready for him and the expression in his eyes was apologetic, like that of someone who has burst in unannounced.
She saw Mathieu���s naked body laid out before her, chest down, the three creases like small commas behind his ears. She saw herself kneeling beside him, hunched over him studiously and carefully, with both hands stroking his back, his bum, his thighs. She could not remember when Sam had been conceived, but it had been at a time when she still mistrusted Mathieu. She had sensed his deep, ranging boredom, even then.
The fist around her heart squeezed tighter and she breathed shallowly, allowing the pain to take over. It was Mathieu who had convinced her to keep their baby. There had been such an urgency in his desire for the child that it had frightened her. Still, the weeks had passed and the hormones had risen in her like a tide, flooding out her will, and she had held on to his desire as the only tangible thing in her shifting world.
Before telling Mathieu, she had called her mother in England and told her she was going to keep the baby. She had thought of this call as an act of rebellion. She had believed she was cutting loose. Now she saw how she had bypassed Mathieu. She saw that it was a gesture of which her mother would have been proud.
Soon she had discovered that for Mathieu her act of faith made her worthy of a depth of love of which she had never suspected him capable. He had worshipped the mother in her. Only since his death had she allowed herself to accept that this was all she was.
Beside her, Dan slept on. She leaned over to feel his breath on her face. She touched his hair. This one���s existence had always seemed to her a simple matter, broaching no questions. He had arrived in the world complete, appearing to lack nothing. The daily minutiae he required from her he claimed without ceremony. Alice turned off the lamp beside the bed, lay back and stared into the darkness. She felt unable to face Dan unless he was asleep like this; he seemed to her Sam���s opposite in so many ways. She saw Dan as invulnerable and knew she would punish him for it.
She looked at the digital clock beside the bed. Its green digits glowed 4 a.m. She had less than two hours before the search. In the dark she tried to imagine Sam���s fear. But she could not see him as he was, alone and terrified ��� only as he had been. She understood that his little life had brought him to this night of terror, that it was this terror that had been waiting for him. All his questions, from the moment he could recognise them, were a manifestation of this fear that had been building up behind him all his life, like a swell growing into a wave that today had broken over him.
���Oh God. What have I done?���
She felt for the lamp and turned it on, then rose and went to the basin in the corner of the room. She turned on the strip light above the mirror. Her face shocked her. The vein running down the centre of her forehead had swelled, altering her expression. Her eyes were opaque, like two holes. She was changed. Nothing, not even the death of her husband, had prepared her for this. She set her teeth hard against each other until her jaw muscles inflated and a pain developed. She stood clutching the basin with both hands, clenching her teeth, letting the desire to cry pass through and leave her. The policeman was right: she should not give in to her grief. She looked at herself again and realised that everything she had idly loved in herself had gone, leaving this behind.
Monday
Chapter Eight
It was just after 5 a.m. and the sky was still navy blue. Stuart walked up the main street towards the mairie. Santarosa was at once oppressively familiar and yet so remote; even the houses seemed to shrink from him as he passed. The wind blew dust into his eyes. People had closed their shutters to it because it was the maestrale, a wind that brought out the worst in everyone. His mother said it made cats mad and dogs despondent; it made women plague their husbands, men hit their wives and children crueller than ever.
There were some new graffiti in the main square. Huge red letters in support of the FNL bled on the mairie wall next to the legend: Raymond���s got Aids. A new sum had been daubed on the fountain: Drugs = Capital, and someone had written in elongated black letters: Allah is a faggot.
The wind filled the trees and drove dust in eddies around the empty square, and the weathercock on the church creaked incessantly.
Stuart went and stood in the arched entrance to the mairie and listened to the wind. He took a packet of mints from his pocket. They had been left behind in his car by G��rard. On the packet he read, ���Soothing and refreshing. Recommended for smokers and those given to public speaking���. He smiled and put one in his mouth.
He took a small, spiral-bound notebook from his inside pocket. So rare were the occasions that he wrote anything down that he had had it for several years and it was not full. There were pages of notes from meetings with Central Office or with the magistrates. His attention always flagged and the notes were scant and impenetrable. On the last page was a diagram drawn by Monti, the only decent informer he had ever had, the day before he was shot.
G��rard and Paul Fizzi were the first to arrive. G��rard always climbed out of the car in the same way, first one foot, then his hand grip
ping the roof for leverage to haul out his bulk. Paul Fizzi followed behind. He was in his forties, but his tight jeans and tennis shoes made him walk like a teenager. Stuart pitied his trapped bollocks, which he was always nudging peremptorily. They shook hands, turning their backs to the wind. Paul stood with his feet apart, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, bouncing up and down against an imaginary chill. He grinned. ���Ready to go?��� he said. Stuart smelled wine on his breath. Through his tan Paul looked pale. Stuart watched him take his cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jacket. His sleeves were rolled up and the veins stood out on his forearms. As he bent his head to light a cigarette, a lock of dark hair fell over his face.
���Did you send the printouts?���
Paul nodded as he drew on his cigarette. Stuart had given up. He considered the fact that smoking had been his only serious occupation. It was a cigarette he wanted, not a mint. He spat it out.
���No good?��� G��rard said. Stuart took the bag of mints from his pocket and offered him one.
G��rard looked at the mints.
���No thanks.���
The three of them stood waiting while Paul clicked his gold lighter on and off. He also had a gold wristwatch and a Laguiole knife with which he munificently cut bread for the department at lunchtime. Stuart had heard that these were all presents from women.
The three of them watched the mayor approach. He was wearing a suit instead of his usual blue overalls. He cursed the maestrale apologetically as if he were responsible and shook first Stuart���s hand, then G��rard���s and Paul���s, without looking at them. Stuart remembered the mayor���s jumpy manner, which someone had once mistaken for the efficiency that had made his reputation. He stood beside them, surveying the square. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, spat phlegm into it and put it back, repeating the action several times while firing questions at Stuart and not waiting for the answers.
���You���ve got the old people���s clubhouse. That big enough you think? Who���s coming from the gendarmerie? Is it Morin? I haven���t met him. Who���s car is that, then? It���s the prosecutor���s.���
Stuart could feel the mayor���s eagerness grow as they watched Van Ruytens park beneath the chestnut trees and climb out of his car. The 2CV he drove irritated Stuart ��� like the pipe and the tweeds and everything about him. He walked briskly across the square towards them, carrying his briefcase, his face to the ground. He shook Stuart���s hand vigorously and for a long time, his shoulders curved inwards and his chin jutting forward, faking earnest.
���Well done for getting this thing organised so speedily, Stuart,��� Van Ruytens said.
���I didn���t, Prosecutor. It was the gendarmerie.���
Three CRS vans arrived and parked in a line behind the prosecutor���s car, blocking his exit. Van Ruytens watched, seemed to consider objecting, then decided against it. As the church clock struck the half-hour the gendarme, Morin, arrived at the head of four navy-blue buses. The mayor unlocked the room on the ground floor of the mairie with a large, rusty key.
Stuart stood at the front and watched the men fill the hall. There was a strong smell of baking bread coming from the boulangerie on the other side of the wall, filling the room with the incongruously voluptuous smell of yeast. He spoke before there was quiet and silence came with an abruptness that made his voice sound too loud. He kept his speech short, defining the nature of the search and introducing Morin, the captain of the gendarmerie, as soon as he could. For he was aware of Alice Aron standing there at the back of the room beside two men in CRS uniform, each with a tracker-dog.
As he stood aside for Captain Morin he noticed how his hands were shaking and he hid them in his pockets. The new captain was in his late fifties. He had silver, crew-cut hair and blue eyes that sloped downwards at the corners. He wore the ridiculous new gendarme���s sweater with the epaulettes sewn on. His eyes moved conscientiously back and forth from the spreadsheet in his hands to the assembly as he assigned a sector to each group. Stuart could see he had a scout leader���s mentality and he did not give him long on the island.
Christine Lasserre, the investigating magistrate, came and stood in the open door as the gendarme was finishing. Stuart nodded at her and she smiled gleefully at him like a mother who has spotted her child. She was a strange woman but he liked her. As the men began to leave, she came over to greet him.
���I came to meet Madame Aron,��� she whispered. ���I asked Monsieur Van Ruytens if he minded. If I am called it���s simpler for her if she can put a face to my name.���
Stuart nodded. Alice Aron was still at the back of the room, hemmed in by the mayor and the prosecutor.
���You���re up early,��� Stuart said.
���I���m not a great sleeper anyway,��� Lasserre said, touching Stuart���s arm.
She stood beside him, fingering the silver pendant she always wore. He was not sure, but he thought it might be a pear. He had always liked Lasserre, even at the beginning when she had just crossed over from civil law, having sat the exams at the age of fifty. The others were irritated by her homeliness. But Stuart saw how quickly she learned. She was not afraid to look stupid.
���Stuart. Are you Scottish?��� she asked him.
He shook his head.
���Stuart was the name they gave to the illegitimate children left behind by the English after they occupied the island. It���s a generic term for bastard.���
Lasserre smiled.
���You must have English in you then,��� she said. She nodded at Alice Aron, who was still trapped. ���Shall we wait for her outside?���
Stuart followed her out through the door. Lasserre leaned back against the wall of the mairie and looked earnestly at him. Her very blue eyes were watering from the wind.
���What do you think, Stuart?��� A gust of wind swept her grey hair over her face and she held it back with her hand, waiting patiently.
He felt she was on his side, but a policeman���s mistrust of investigating magistrates made him hesitate.
���Come on,��� she said, smiling. ���You think the child���s been kidnapped and you���re hoping Santini has something to do with it.���
Stuart spoke his mind, almost in anger at having been encouraged to do so.
���Russo���s deputy for the north of the island. So theoretically Santini can hope for a peaceful life ������
���Theoretically, yes.���
She held up her hand. The journalist Angel Lopez was coming towards them at a jog, the vents of his suit flapping behind him.
���Your friend.���
Stuart���s heart sank.
���Who told him?���
Lasserre smiled. Angel Lopez took her hand and held it, inclining his head slightly.
���Madame le juge.���
Lopez had left Spain over twenty years ago but he still spoke with a strong accent. He faced Stuart and clicked his heels then smiled, revealing his little grey teeth. His complexion was sallow and his cheeks were perforated with acne scars.
Lopez slid his hands into the pockets of his suit, and lifted his shoulders.
���Bad wind,��� he said. ���When do they set off?���
���What are you doing here?��� Stuart asked.
���I���m doing my job. Like you, Stuart.��� He grinned and turned to Lasserre. ���So you���ve been called, Madame le juge,��� he said, taking his hands from his pockets and folding his arms.
���Do stop calling me Madame le juge, Lopez. No, I have not been called.���
���So ������ He opened his hands. ���Why are you here?���
��
��A child���s disappeared,��� she said. ���I���m here in case they don���t find him.���
���A rich child,��� Lopez said, nodding sadly. ���Is that the mother I saw? The beautiful dark woman.���
That Lopez should pronounce her beautiful made Stuart suddenly uncomfortable. Lopez knew how to provoke discomfort. His method was always to find out where it hurt and press hard. A former revolutionary from GRAPO, he had come to the island in the seventies after a spell in one of Franco���s prisons. He had heard of Titi���s movement and had come to join him. When Titi was killed he had come down to the city and started to write for the Islander, his past as an anti-Francist giving him an aura that covered his bad writing. Beneath his formal Spanish manners he still had the same uncompromising logic of a revolutionary Marxist.
���Lopez, listen. If you���re going to do a story on this, I want to talk to you first.���
���Sure,��� Lopez said. ���I can understand that.���
Van Ruytens was coming towards them with Alice Aron at his side.
���I hear she���s English,��� Lopez said. ���Does she understand everything?���
���She speaks perfectly,��� Stuart said.
The prosecutor was wearing new glasses, a ridiculous pair of narrow rectangles without frames that made him look like a glass-blower. He shook hands with everyone with a misplaced enthusiasm. Alice Aron stood on the edge of the group, taller than all the men, her bag on her shoulder.
Van Ruytens introduced her to Lasserre, then to Lopez. Stuart looked for her reaction to the journalist, but her face was a pale mask.
���And Stuart you know, of course.���
Stuart nodded at Alice and turned quickly to Lopez.
���Meet me in my office at ten.��� He nodded at Lasserre, who smiled at him.
