Lost

by Lucy Wadham

  His nervous system partially untangled, he moved on. The scrub on either side of him went on banging under the hot sun. Coco accelerated, hurrying towards the valley. The idea came to him as he passed a lay-by that was marked by a large ���P���. Some grey-faced moron from the tourist office had put out a couple of tables with benches. As though anyone would choose to have a picnic up here.

  The idea may have come to Coco as he drove by that certain things were not put to their proper use. Perhaps it was the P-sign, but out of the image of the inhospitable lay-by, snatched as he drove past, came that of Philippe Garetta, sitting out his days at the darkest table in The Pescador, violent and idle. Coco thought of the Englishwoman. He saw her pulling back her hair to reveal her shoulders and her neck, curved in offering. In his plan, he saw a way of winning her too. Garetta was dangerous; he was the only one who still talked about revolution. The question was, if he wound him up, could he stop him? As he passed the first eucalyptus trees fringing the road, Coco felt a slackening inside. The banging of the maquis was just blood pumping in his ears. Still, he kept the idea that had come to him when he was not entirely himself. He would start a new movement, make a war.

  *

  Less than an hour later Coco was lying on the back seat of Evelyne���s new black-and-gold Cherokee. Her scent filled the car and though it was still a pleasure to him, he would not miss it.

  ���Okay,��� she said. I���m going in now. There���s nothing behind us.��� Her voice was bad, always had been.

  ���Don���t talk,��� he answered. ���Just park and let me out.���

  ���What time do you want me to pick you up?��� she asked.

  ���I���ll make my own way back.���

  He climbed out, slammed the door and began to walk towards the lifts. The stench of piss rose up in front of him like an invisible wall, sending him off course. There was no ventilation he could see and he could feel petrol fumes filling his lungs and lead seeping into his pores. He was quite angry now, to be hiding in an underground car park like a rat. There had long ceased to be any pleasure for him in the business of losing cops.

  The lift doors opened with a three-chord chime and he stepped into the eternal dusk of the shopping mall. Mauve-tinted neon brought the meat out in people���s complexions. In this place no one was desirable. He could put the Aron woman in here, on the second floor next to Champion Sportswear, and she would lose all her charm. She would look like a laboratory animal. There was some music that came and went like bad breath.

  Outside he breathed in the balm of daylight. He crossed the street to Eve Beaut��. Evelyne���s sister Marie-Laure was sitting behind the till painting her nails. There was a pleasant smell of lacquer and leg wax in the shop. Two middle-aged Italian women were leaning over the coral jewellery in the display counter, deliberating in their belligerent language. Marie-Laure did not greet Coco. Instead she screwed the lid on the polish, raised her wide bottom from the narrow stool she was sitting on and gave him four routine kisses over the counter. She had accumulated all Evelyne���s physical defects. Her lips were thinner and wider, her eyes more globular, and while with Evelyne there could be some hesitation, with Marie-Laure there was no doubt she resembled a frog. Coco waited while she served the Italian women. There was always a kind of grave sexual assurance in Italian women, however ugly. When they had gone Marie-Laure led the way through the bead curtains, past the ���treatment room��� where she flayed, daubed and scalded her customers, to her flat. The TV was on and her five-year-old son was sitting on an untidy floor zapping with an advanced boredom inherited from his mother. Marie-Laure stepped forward and snatched the remote control. The boy looked up and Coco saw an instant of fear turn to resentment.

  ���Go out and play,��� she said.

  Coco watched him drive his hands into the pockets of his tracksuit and pick his way through the toys with a grace and precision that gave him hope for the child. How boys survived their mothers was always a mystery to him.

  When he had gone Marie-Laure flashed him a smile. ���I won���t be a minute. Do you want anything? Pastis?���

  Coco shook his head. He felt superstitious about exchanging words with her on any subject now that he had made his decision about Evelyne.

  When she had gone he sat down at the table where she and her son ate their meals. There was a plastic tablecloth with a cherry motif, sticky to the touch. He pulled the chair away from the table. The carpet stopped abruptly and became lino where the kitchen area began. He recalled Evelyne and Marie-Laure discussing the idea of building a bar to separate the two areas. The two women talked incessantly and about nothing.

  When Marie-Laure pulled back the bead curtain and ushered in Philippe Garetta, Coco did not stand up. The man was too tall for the room and he took possession of it. At the sight of his black leather biker���s garb, his long dark hair hanging in ringlets about his face, Coco thought he had made a mistake. Then Garetta leaned forward and Coco was reassured by the handshake. The leather creaked as he moved. He sat down on a chair beside Coco and rested his clasped hands neatly on the table. A whiff of tobacco came off him.

  ���You wanted to see me.��� His voice was inappropriately gentle.

  ���Are you from Marseilles?���

  ���My dad was.���

  ���You have his accent.���

  Garetta eyed him.

  ���I was brought up there till I was thirteen. When he died we came back to the island.���

  ���You and your mother?���

  ���And my brother.���

  ���Do I know your brother?���

  ���He works for Soulas.���

  Coco nodded, unwilling to waste more time.

  ���You���re interested in politics.��� He leaned back in his chair for emphasis.

  ���It depends what you mean by politics. I���m not interested in the kind that gets men like Russo elected.���

  Coco smiled.

  ���Well well.���

  Garetta glanced down and then took a fresh look, this time holding his hair away from his face in an unnervingly effeminate gesture.

  ���I can���t be bought, Santini.���

  ���I didn���t think you could. I have a proposition for you, though. I���m interested in your zeal. It���s your zeal I need.��� Coco paused. ���I wonder how far you���d go for your ideals.���

  Garetta blinked attentively at him. He had a gaunt face with an unhealthy, grey complexion and deep-set eyes. Coco could see a disquieting passivity in them that made him doubt the man���s reputation for a moment.

  ���How far would you go, Garetta?���

  Garetta folded his arms.

  ���What are you offering?���

  ���I want some idea of how far you would go for your ideals.���

  Garetta looked away and smiled at some unseen object.

  ���We don���t speak the same language, Santini,��� he said, facing Coco again.

  Coco looked at the pale face, neither young nor old but haggard.

  ���Do you take heroin?���

  Garetta turned his head away again to hide his smile as if it were some shameful tick.

  ���No, I don���t take heroin. There���s not enough time to be a junkie and a revolutionary.���

  ���Why aren���t you in the FNL, Garetta?���

  ���They���re not radical enough.���

  ���They believe in the armed struggle.���

  Garetta puffed out a laugh.

  ���The armed struggle. The armed struggle���s become the island���s family business. Joining the FNL is an economic not an ideological decision. They���re not i
nterested in change; they just want to hold on to their piece of the cake.���

  ���And you want a revolution. Do you have a following?���

  ���Small.���

  ���Do you know Mickey da Cruz?���

  ���I do.���

  Coco hesitated.

  ���Would you kidnap the child of a rich industrialist for the cause?���

  Garetta folded his arms and stared at him. It was not passivity Coco had seen in his eyes but an unblinking, animal detachment.

  ���Certainly.���

  ���And would you kill the child? Would you carry out the threat?���

  ���Absolutely,��� he said in his soft voice.

  ���It���s against the island���s deepest values.���

  ���I believe in progress.���

  Coco detected no irony in the remark. He stood up and stepped over the child���s debris to the glass cabinet behind the TV set.

  ���I���m going to have a drink. Do you want one?��� He took two glasses from the cabinet, holding them in one hand. ���Pastis?���

  ���No thanks.���

  Coco found a bottle of Ricard in the lower half of the cabinet and poured himself a drink. He went to the sink for water, letting the tap run on his finger until it grew cold.

  ���I think it���s time for a new independence movement,��� he said, keeping his back to Garetta.

  ���I���m not stupid, Santini. Nothing you could create could lead to revolution.���

  Santini turned and faced him across the room.

  ���You���re not going to get a revolution without a movement, and you can���t start a movement without funds.��� He walked back to the table and sat down. ���I love this island as much as you do, Garetta. I can feel the place is sick. Deeply sick. If I���ve contributed to that ������ He drained his glass.

  ���If a revolution is what it takes,��� Coco said, putting down his empty glass. Garetta continued to watch him with the intelligence of a wild animal. ���The kids need something new. They need new ideas, a new agenda; they���ll come flocking. Use tough words, the harder the better.��� Coco opened his hands. ���Let me help you,��� he said, watching with satisfaction as Garetta prepared to light a roll-up. ���For the world your group will begin with a bombing. Modest, unpretentious. Like yourself, Garetta.���

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alice knelt on the floor in the dark, looking up at the viscous blank of the TV screen while the kidnappers��� videotape rewound. It had arrived with the post early that morning.

  When Stuart handed her the package, he had warned her, ���It���s their aim to make you suffer.���

  The machine stopped with a click and she pressed PLAY on the remote control. She reached out and touched the screen. She was quiet now and exhausted from crying. She hoped by watching the film over and over again to inure herself. She now used the FREEZE-FRAME button, setting herself against the pain.

  There they were again, the three of them walking across the tarmac towards the camera. The image was distorted for a moment and then cleared, revealing the boys at her side, Sam skipping around her, weaving close to her and moving away again, impeding her progress. She pressed PAUSE as Sam trod in her path, his arms raised at quarter to nine. There: she could see her irritation. She pressed PLAY and watched herself step aside to avoid him. Stay close to me, Sam, she had said. Here, take hold of my dress. And you, Dan. She pressed PAUSE and stared at this tableau of the three of them, her two boys holding on to a piece of her dress. She stared at the three of them blurred by the PAUSE function. She pressed PLAY and then PAUSE. His knee was raised in mid-skip, his feet turned in. Please don���t be cross, Mummy. Every frame showed her how it was. She had not loved him enough and so he had been taken from her.

  Stuart had sat through the film with her. Then he had watched it again, as she was doing now, pausing, rewinding. He wrote down time codes in a little notebook. Then he went to the airport to see if they had been picked up on the closed-circuit system. Outside the shutters she sensed the heat of the afternoon. She had been sitting there for hours. She picked up the mobile and called David���s number again. As soon as the secretary heard her voice she put her straight on hold. Alice listened to Carmen, speeded up a little.

  ���Alice.��� His voice was the same as Mathieu���s. ���Nothing yet. I���m waiting for Gerbier to call me back.���

  ���David ������

  ���I know, Alice.���

  ���We���ve only got two days.���

  ���It���ll be all right. Gerbier���s going to work something out. His family���s been looking after our money for a hundred years. I���m confident, Alice. Trust me.���

  In his voice Alice heard Mathieu���s love of a crisis.

  ���Why won���t they take the house as collateral?��� she said. ���It���s worth more than nine million. I can���t mortgage it, David. It���ll take a month. We���ve got two days.��� Her throat was dry.

  ���It���s all right.��� He spoke softly. ���Gerbier knows, Alice. He knows. He���s just got to convince the others to take an affidavit. He can���t get the cash out alone.���

  ���They said yes, then they called back ������

  ���Alice? I���m getting another call. If it���s him I���ll call you straight back.���

  ���Call me back, David. Please.���

  She hung up and stared at the phone. She longed to call her mother. She suddenly wanted her here. She was ready to be gathered up, not tenderly but ineluctably, in her mother���s way. ���There there,��� she would say. ���Old thing,��� she would say; her mother���s mark of camaraderie in the face of their fate ��� that all they���d ever have was each other. This was how her mother had arranged things, at least. She had organised her life to fit her low expectations. She would have no man and Alice would have no father. Mathieu had called her the Immaculate Conception. His joke had been sweet to Alice then and the memory of it made her smile again. No, Sam had always been the buffer against her mother. She would not call her in.

  She pressed PLAY again. They were in the terminal building, filmed from behind. How had she not noticed someone with a camera so close to them? She watched herself taking Dan into her arms and then held the frame. The camera remained on Sam, at his reaction to this moment of exclusion. She saw his shape in profile. His resignation was discernible in his bowed head and in his shoulders that hung forward a little as though to protect his chest from the slight. She pressed PLAY again. She felt that all this was very precise and very careful; that Stuart was wrong: this was no amateur. She watched the three of them waiting for the luggage. She saw how Sam was never still. At this moment he was imprisoned somewhere, perhaps in the dark. As her greatest fear was drowning, Sam���s was being confined. He had once told her that what frightened him about being dead was that you couldn���t move. She sat in the dark, her head resting against the back of the sofa, and watched the three of them disappear, rubbed out by the bright sunlight.

  She sat there, TV light splashing over her face, adhering in her eyes.

  When the phone rang, she leapt to her feet. She picked up Stuart���s phone from the table by the sofa.

  ���Hello?��� There was silence. ���Hello?��� They had gone.

  The policeman, Paul, was now standing in the doorway, looking inquiringly at her. ���Hello?��� She hung up but still clutched the phone. She looked at Paul. He was about to say something so she turned her back on him. She picked it up before the end of the first ring. She heard a man���
��s voice.

  ���Who is it?���

  ���This phone isn���t working properly.���

  It was Stuart. Her shoulders dropped in relief.

  ���Where are you?���

  ���Someone���s planted a bomb in town. A new group. It could be linked.���

  ���A bomb? Stuart, wait.���

  ���I���m going to the site. I���ll call you afterwards.���

  ���What about the video at the airport?��� she asked.

  ���Nothing. They���ve been through the footage of the day you arrived. He knew where the cameras were.���

  ���You see, they���re not stupid.���

  He did not answer.

  ���What���s the bomb? Is it them?���

  ���I don���t know. I don���t think so. I���ll be up by six,��� he said.

  ���Stuart?���

  He had gone. She turned round. Paul was standing just behind her, his hands a little out to his sides as though he was trying to corral her. There was a smell of alcohol on his breath.

  ���Get out of here!��� she shouted. ���Leave me alone.���

  He hesitated a moment, weighing up his options, then turned and left the room, quietly closing the door behind him. Alice strode after him towards the door, suddenly eager to see Dan and hold him. She found him in the laundry room on the first floor, sitting on Babette���s knee. He was crying.

  Alice went to him and gathered him in her arms. She clasped his little body to her, welcoming him back. She kissed his hair and rocked him back and forth.

  ���Don���t cry, darling; Mummy���s here.��� She held him tight and closed her eyes, feeling how great the gap between them had become. ���Mummy���s here.��� It did her good to say this. Over and over again she murmured, ���You���re Mummy���s little boy.��� Babette sat on the chair, her hands covered in gold, resting on her knees, watching them.