Entienne nodded without looking up. They arranged to meet at four-thirty.
Dominic let them drive off first, and on the way back to Bauriac on his solex he ignored the occasional stares from passing cars - curious why the gendarme was smiling with such a badly bloodied nose.
The new loan schedule was approved within ten days. Dominic even managed to tweak the final conditions to allow five years on the back money and get the penalty interest struck off. Entienne totally erased the judiciaire period; it was as if the file had never gone there.
They celebrated with a bottle of champagne at Louis'. Dominic had made light of it when he told Monique, mentioned only that Entienne had a small skeleton in his closet which he used to advantage. But as the drink flowed, Louis couldn't resist telling the full story.
Monique looked horrified at Louis' dramatic account of Dominic spinning over Entienne's car bonnet. 'You shouldn't have, Dominic. You could have been seriously hurt.' He basked momentarily in the glory as she gripped his arm and kissed him. The third in as many weeks.
Croignon moved in a few days later, the day before taken up with moving suitcases of clothes and personal items between their homes, with Louis helping out with his van.
When they came to the room above the garage with Christian's clothes and toys piled on the bed, she looked on awkwardly. 'Do you mind if I take them to your place, put them in one of the rooms.'
'No, not at all. There's three bedrooms. It's up to you how you use them.' Dominic was more perplexed by the fact that two years had passed and she was still clinging to the memory. And not just one or two personal items, the room had been left as practically a shrine. He also hadn't realized till that moment that the room he would be occupying temporarily had previously been Christian's.
Two weeks later, Monique invited him over to dinner. Symbols of two cultures: lamb and aubergine cassoulet with cous-cous. He brought a bottle of Chateauneuf red and a Pinocchio colouring book for Clarisse. As things mellowed over dinner, she mentioned that she still felt guilty about not paying him any rent the first year and wanted to make a concession by inviting him over to dinner once every week. It would also, she pointed out, compensate for the fact that his own cooking arrangements were far from ideal, having to fit in for those first months around the Croignons. It was the least she could do.
He initially shrugged off the need for any return gesture, but she was insistent and, besides, it was an opportunity to see her regularly. He accepted with gracious reluctance.
The dinners were every Friday night or the first free weekend night if he had Friday night duty. It was difficult to mark the exact time when their friendship transformed first to strong affection, then finally to love. For him, it was probably much earlier than her.
At first it was just small signs. A look in her eyes, a smile, light kisses of thanks on his cheek for the wine or presents he brought. Even when her eyes seemed to openly invite him, he could see the hurt and pain beneath, and he held back. Felt suddenly fearful that he might be taking advantage, was reminded how damaged and frail she might still be.
Even the night when they first made love, five months after the regular dinners started, couldn't be taken as the main point of transition in their relationship. She'd had more to drink than normal that night, was more affectionate. After the meal, over coffee and brandy when Clarisse had gone to bed, she sat on his lap and kissed him, said that she'd like to show him what she'd done to his room.
She led him upstairs and, before opening his door, asked him to close his eyes and wait a second. He opened his eyes to the soft glow of five night lights burning. Their flickering picked out a flokati rug on the floor and ikat fabric draped on the wall above the bed as his eyes adjusted. She kissed him and they tumbled onto the bed, his mumbled 'It's beautiful' quickly lost.
She broke off only to ask him to close his eyes again - and when she prompted him to open them, she was standing at the foot of the bed naked, mocha and cream skin beneath the soft candlelight. She leant across and started taking off his clothes, planting soft butterfly kisses on his skin - then finally rolled her body on top of his. Her body slithered easily against him, glistening with the scented oil she'd applied, a slow and sensuous movement until he was fully aroused.
Their lovemaking was slow and gentle at first, gradually becoming more urgent. Her eyes were deep and soulful, and he traced their contour, the gentle almond slant at their corner, running the same finger slowly down her cheek and her neck. But there was something else in her eyes beyond the joy and abandon, a faint flicker of ghosts from the past that seemed to be holding her back - that the sudden urgency of her frenzy was as much to exorcize herself of them as to lose herself in joyous oblivion. A race between the two.
And as his own climax came, his head lolling breathlessly to one side, the image of the night lights and the soft tears of ecstasy on her cheeks reminded him again of the hospital. Of her long nightly vigils praying that Christian might live.
Some look in his eye, or perhaps the new tension she felt in his body - made her roll away suddenly. She too stared thoughtfully at the night-lights, one finger at her lips in contemplation. 'I'm sorry,' she murmured.
Later that night back with the Croignons in Christian's old room, the wind rose steadily. Dominic could hear it rustling through the trees and the field at the back of the house. He thought of the day that they were down by the river and the wind was high, the gendarmes placed like markers in the field. Uncomfortable, ghostly reminders; it took him a while to get to sleep.
For the next three weeks, Monique came up with an excuse for each of their regular dinner dates. On the fourth, she phoned and said that she wanted him to come over, but that it should be with them just as good friends, as it was before. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done what I did that night. I wasn't ready - and it wasn't fair on you. I'd perfectly understand if you didn't want to see me again.'
He came over. It was a lesson that the ghosts from her past would sometimes stand between them; and perhaps if he'd read the signals deeply, he'd have realized that that would always be the case. Part of her heart, her soul, would forever be buried with Christian and Jean-Luc.
It was another three months before they became lovers again. Monique promised that this time she wouldn't leave his bed. But over the coming months, as spring arrived, there would still be times when she felt she just couldn't. She would suddenly be cocooned again in the past, the ghosts and memories ripping her apart - and she would feel that she had nothing to give to the present, to him and Clarisse.
Dominic was always understanding when those times came, would phone her the next day to see if she was better. Her grey moods usually didn't last long, a few days at most.
As the summer arrived, they took to eating outside at night on the back patio. Monique had also found a babysitter nearby and they started to go out more. He took her to see Lawrence of Arabia and they held hands and kissed in the back row like two teenagers. On her birthday, he took her to a new restaurant in Cannes he'd discovered: Pierre T'être. It was on a narrow lane full of restaurants that meandered gently down to Cannes harbour with small candle-lit tables on each staged terrace. Monique found the atmosphere magical.
It was late summer when he finally proposed. She looked concerned. She reminded him not only that she had a daughter but the scars the past had left on her. Part of her heart might always be dragged back there. Could he live with that?
He said that he could, but deep down he was thinking that she would gradually improve - he had seen marked improvement already in the past months - until finally the ghosts and the pain of her memories faded to insignificance or went completely. And he felt very close to Clarisse; with gifts every few visits and occasional hugs, if he was still some way from becoming a surrogate father, he was at least a favourite uncle.
Monique made him wait two months before she answered; to be sure that any impulsiveness on his part had mellowed. They were married the next February, 1967. Louis
was best man and looked comical in a dress suit. The small reception was also held at Louis’, and he had trouble totally escaping from his proprietary role, occasionally barking orders at the waiters. Harrault and Levacher were the only ones present from the gendarmerie.
And Dominic was right, the ghosts from the past did subside - until their first born. A son. Apart from it being an horrific breach birth which could have cost Monique's and the baby's life, Dominic should have read the warnings when she first mentioned during pregnancy that she hoped for a boy.
The second sign that she might see it somehow as a replacement for Christian was when she asked, if it was a boy, if they could call him Yves - Christian's middle name. He began to wish that it was a girl purely to avoid any possible complications. A gain to replace a past loss: a macabre tangle of emotions that could only lead to problems.
But in the end he resigned himself to fate, consoled himself that if it was a boy and somehow managed to bury Monique's reliance on the past - that in an obscure way it might be a godsend.
He didn't know how wrong he would be.
Monique didn't tell him about the dream until two months after the birth. That moments after urging the nurses that she'd like her husband by her side, when she was fully under the anaesthetic and the doctors were fighting to save her life, she'd seen Christian.
In the dream, they were dining at Pierre T'être. Dominic had taken her there the night she'd announced she was pregnant; perhaps that was what had made the connection, he thought. She saw Christian in the distance as she looked up the street. As she left the table and walked towards Christian, the other people and the tables in the street seemed to fade into the background - only the steps and the candlelight from the tables remained prominent. Guide lights marking the path to the solitary figure of Christian ahead, the harbour a misty silhouette far behind her. She'd seen his face clearly, seen the gentle tears in his clear green eyes. As she came closer, she thought she heard him say, 'It's all right... it's all right' - but it was barely a whisper. And in that moment she had reached out to touch him - though their hands never quite connected. She'd awoken then. A nurse was leaning over and telling her that everything was all right. 'You have a little boy.'
She hadn't mentioned the dream earlier, she explained, because at the time the joy of having Yves had consumed all else.
For the first few years, her absorption with Yves seemed natural: the love and affection of a doting mother to her new-born child. But as the years progressed, he began to notice how fearful and protective she was. It became an obsession: never letting Yves out of her sight, ensuring that there was never an unguarded moment in his life. Dominic railed against it. It wasn't a natural childhood, he argued: Yves was unable to have any freedom, could not play with his friends out of sight of her for any length of time.
Monique promised repeatedly that she would change, but any easing in her protectiveness was minimal. The only thing to help was the birth of Gerome a few years later - though mainly when Gerome was old enough to play with Yves, keep him company. They could partly watch and protect each other.
Her intense protectiveness became a recurring argument through their years together. She was well aware that it was a fault: 'But I could never again go through the trauma of losing a child.' She and Jean-Luc partly blamed themselves for Christian's death. Felt they'd allowed him too much freedom, he'd been let loose to play in the fields or with friends most days. Only natural, Dominic supported; he himself had enjoyed such a childhood in Louviers. She had stifled Yves terribly and now Gerome too was heavily under her protective wing.
In turn, Monique's advice with his career was equally as incisive. Drawing it out of him that he'd only stayed in Bauriac because of his ailing mother, she pushed him to take a transfer a year after they were married. Career-wise, he was stagnating in Bauriac. At heart, part of him had recognized that fact, but he'd become numbed into acceptance by routine. It had taken Monique to bring it to the surface.
It was also Monique's encouragement that led him to take his Inspectorate exams not long after, and she had advised on many of his career moves since. Her style was gentle, no more than a series of questions, so that in the end he felt he had all but arrived at the decision himself.
It was ironic, Dominic thought. She had such intuitive views about his career in the same way that he could see the errors she was making as a mother. A clear picture only gained by being detached from the problem, taking an overview. But in the case of Yves, he wished he'd been wrong.
In his teens came the backlash effect of Monique's protectiveness. At fifteen he left home and got in with the wrong crowd. He started off with sporadic promotional work for a chain of clubs and discotheques, handing out cards on street corners. He would turn up at the clubs late evening and started drinking heavily, peppered later with some drugs - marijuana at first, then cocaine. He started free-basing and took extra work as a drugs packet 'runner' to some of the clubs to pay for his habit. Often he was paid half in cash, half in cocaine. Dominic picked him up one night after one of the clubs had been raided.
Yves had been lost to them for almost two years. Throughout, Monique had been inconsolable. Where had she gone wrong? She'd done everything to shield him, to guide him on the right path, but still he'd drifted away. Not once did Dominic say, 'I told you so,' suggest that her obsessive protectiveness might have caused the problem, made Yves crave freedom and rebel.
Dominic kept Yves' name clear of any charge sheets, but added a condition: that he remain with them at least six months and attempt to dry out before deciding what he wanted to do with his life. In the end he stayed ten months - a painful period of adjustment and regular visits to a drugs counsellor - before embarking on his national service. He joined the French navy.
The two years of discipline combined with the frisson of travel broadened Yves outlook. He came back a changed person and enrolled for another year, taking a special course in maritime communications. When he returned, he joined the national police in Marseille as a sergeant. History was repeating itself.
Within two years, he was covering the Vieux Port area attached to narcotics. His maritime communications background and his knowledge of the drugs trade was invaluable in an area where most shipments came in by sea. Gerome was at Nice University, studying pure maths with a second in IT software architecture, hoping later for a career in computer programming. He had never been a problem.
Monique had long ago ceased to view either of them as any form of replacement for Christian, but she still worried about Yves, especially with his current work. That one day he might swing open the wrong warehouse door to face a milieu gun in the shadows.
Throughout the years of arguing against her unreasonable protectiveness, a recurring fear for Dominic had been that one day he might be wrong. That having urged her to loosen the reigns, told her not to worry, nothing would happen - against all odds it might. He'd often contemplated how he'd face her given such a circumstance. For it to happen twice and him feel that he was partly to blame: it was unthinkable.
When Marinella Calvan's call caught up with Dominic in Lyon, Yves was a DI still stationed in Marseille and Gerome was working for a computer company in Sophia Antipolis. Clarisse was married with three children - two girls and a boy - and lived with her husband, a sales manager for an agricultural feed company, near Alès.
Dominic maintained an apartment for himself and Monique in Lyon, but six years ago had bought a four bedroom farmhouse just north of Vidauban, only thirty-five kilometres from Taragnon. Gerome stayed there and commuted to work, and they came down at least every other weekend. Some weekends Yves would also join them and Clarisse and her family would visit every few months.
The words echoed in his mind. 'Yes, I do know someone who could verify Christian Rosselot's background.' But apart from the ghosts that might be awoken in Monique's mind, he had also buried his own secrets through the years: he'd never told Monique that he had doubted Machanaud's guilt. Since the
light sentence had been so controversial and Monique felt that it was partly at the root of Jean-Luc's suicide, it would have been insensitive and mocking. It would have hinted that Jean-Luc's suicide was completely in vain rather than just misguided. He couldn't do that to her.
For the same reason, when years later he discovered just how long Machanaud had been incarcerated - fourteen years between prison and mental institutions - he didn't tell Monique. The fact that Jean-Luc could have smiled from his grave because Machanaud had received just punishment would have been scant compensation. The overriding image would be that his suicide had been pointless.
Marinella Calvan said that she would send over a tape and accompanying transcript by messenger. It would be with him early tomorrow. His first reaction was that it was all nonsense, would probably all quickly evaporate to no avail. Though he wondered if his underlying curiosity was because of the terrible injustice he suspected might have been wielded against Machanaud, compounded by his own guilt at discovering later, too late, the severity of that injustice. But how many ghosts and secrets from the past would he need to trade to discover the truth?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Limoges, May 1982
Alain Duclos picked up the smoked salmon on a small octagonal wedge of bread and popped it in his mouth. The waiter paused to see if he'd choose another: caviar, prawns or paté with chives. Duclos just nodded and the waiter moved on.
RPR celebrations for victory at the local elections. The last bash two years ago had been held in a grand downtown civic hall, replete with marble columns, ornate chandeliers and filigreed plaster ceilings. But parking had been atrocious, so they'd opted for a modern hotel function room on the edge of town. The waiters with their liveried costumes and silver trays looked somehow out of place in this room with its low ceilings and suffused fluorescent lighting.
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