Journey to Death

by Leigh Russell

  Veronique herself might open the door, her once beautiful features lit up by a welcoming smile. ‘You must be Lucy. Come in. We hoped you would find us. Come, your mother’s waiting for you on the verandah upstairs.’

  Her pleasant reverie was interrupted by a huge Alsatian that bounded onto the path in front of her. Slavering and growling, it glared at her, its legs slightly bent as though it was crouching to pounce. Lucy let out a scream and spun round. A man was standing behind her, blocking the path. Trapped between the snarling dog and the man, she trembled with fear. The man began shouting at her. She did not need to understand a word he was yelling. His red face and bulging eyes conveyed his meaning well enough.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to trespass. I was – I’m looking for Veronique. Veronique est ici?’

  The man shouted at her, waving his arms in the air.

  ‘There is no one of that name here. You go away from my house.’

  Lucy took a step towards him, and the dog let out a deep-throated bark. With a final bellow, the man whirled round and flung the gate open. Lucy took a tentative step towards it. The man stepped aside. Not daring to glance behind her at the dog, Lucy raced back out through the gate and slammed it behind her. A series of rapid barks from the dog rang in her ears as she sprinted to the car. Seated at the wheel, with the doors and windows closed, she struggled to regain her breath. Her outing to the house where her father had once lived had been a waste of time. The man had not recognised Veronique’s name. All Lucy had succeeded in doing was give herself a fright.

  34

  FOR THE FIRST TIME, Adrian joined them at breakfast. Lucy shifted her chair to allow him to share the view towards the gardens and he grinned at her.

  ‘Good morning.’

  George nodded, his mouth full of papaya. He seemed to welcome Adrian’s company. Lucy was pleased too. It was difficult to avoid sliding into despair over her mother’s disappearance when she was alone with her father. Their conversations had become uncomfortably tense. He was obviously being careful not to say anything that might upset her, and she was on tenterhooks in case she let slip her suspicion that her mother might be staying with Veronique. It was no more than a hunch and, as far as her father was aware, she knew nothing about the woman he had met on the island all those years ago. She was becoming quite inured to lying, she thought, with a wretched kind of satisfaction.

  Adrian’s presence lightened the intensity of the atmosphere between them, even if he did not believe Lucy’s claims that she had been attacked. She tried not to look too pleased, in case he interpreted her enthusiasm as flirting, but that was far easier to manage than strained relations with her father. He finished his mouthful, wiped his chin on his serviette and looked at Adrian.

  ‘How are you this morning?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks. I’ve got the day off today so I thought maybe—’ He turned to Lucy. ‘I wondered if you’d like to do something today?’

  She glanced across at her father.

  ‘Both of you, that is,’ Adrian added quickly, smiling at her father.

  ‘Day off?’ Lucy’s father joked. ‘Wouldn’t have happened in my day.’

  They resumed their customary banter, her father joshing Adrian about how easy it was in Accounts these days, compared to the workload of thirty years ago. He reminded his young counterpart yet again that he had not even had a computer when he had worked at the Garden of Eden. After breakfast they made their way down to the beach before it grew too hot and found a pleasant spot under a parasol. Lucy’s father lay back in a recliner, Adrian stretched out on the sand, and she sat up, clutching her knees to her chest, staring out at the sea. On the surface the scene was idyllic, but before long before the conversation moved back to Angela.

  Lucy wondered how she was going to manage to continue her search for Veronique, with her father constantly watching her. She had no idea where to even begin looking for a woman who by all accounts had disappeared decades ago. It turned out she was not alone in suspecting a past enemy was targeting her father. Adrian also raised the possibility that someone on the island resented him coming back.

  ‘Someone you knew when you lived here. I know it seems unlikely, given that it was such a long time ago.’

  Lucy held her breath but her father merely shrugged off the suggestion. ‘To be honest, the thought did cross my mind, but it’s just too ludicrous to even contemplate. As far as I know, I didn’t make a single enemy in all the time I spent here, nothing personal anyway.’

  Lucy jumped on his remark. ‘What do you mean, nothing personal? What else was going on?’

  ‘I was referring to the political situation. You know I was sent home, but that was only because I was British, and spoke out of turn. No one could possibly even remember that now, apart from me.’ He turned to Adrian. ‘I’m just not the kind of person to go around pissing people off. I never have been.’

  Adrian inclined his head. ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘And even if I did antagonise someone without realising it, after an absence of more than thirty years it’s ridiculous to suppose that anyone might still be nursing a grudge vicious enough to result in attacks on my family.’

  He and Adrian agreed the theory was untenable.

  ‘But it’s not impossible,’ Lucy said. ‘And when you eliminate the impossible, the improbable is . . . possible – no, that’s not right. When you eliminate the impossible, what you’re left with is the truth, however improbable. Something like that anyway. According to Sherlock Holmes,’ she added, seeing Adrian’s blank expression. ‘That’s what comes of studying English at university.’

  ‘Hmm. That must make it seem worthwhile,’ he replied sardonically. ‘There’s nothing like misquoting to show how well educated you are.’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘Well, we can’t just sit around doing nothing.’

  ‘If you ask me, I’d say leave it to the police,’ Adrian said. ‘They’ll find her, if . . .’ He did not finish his sentence but they all knew what he meant.

  Her father leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Adrian’s right. We have to leave this to the police.’

  ‘But the police aren’t doing anything,’ Lucy protested. ‘They’ve as good as told us they’ve given up.’

  Her father closed his eyes. ‘All we can do is be patient, and start to prepare ourselves, just in case.’

  Lucy was shocked. ‘You’ve given up? You think she’s never coming back?’

  ‘No. That’s not what I’m saying. But we have to face up to the bleak reality of the situation. It’s possible she drowned, or had some sort of accident, probably at sea. The worst part of it is that we might never know what happened to her, but we have to be prepared for the worst. She could be—’ He broke off and cleared his throat. Lucy suspected he found it easier to talk like this with Adrian present. ‘Two people died last year in shark attacks and all I’m saying is that it’s just possible . . .’ His voice cracked and he looked away. When he resumed, his voice was stronger. ‘We have to hope that she has gone away for a while – for some reason – but in the meantime, I find it somehow easier to think of her as dead than still alive and suffering somewhere beyond our reach.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy, but I’m too tired to feel guilty any more. All I want to do is sleep and shut out this nightmare.’ He broke down and hid his bruised face in his hands. His shoulders shook. ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to cope without her.’ He mumbled something about twenty-five years.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad.’ Lucy reached across and patted his hand. ‘We’re going to find her. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  It felt strange, comforting her father as though he was a child, but she did not know what else to say. In spite of his lying to her, he was still her father, and he had assured her his letter had been perfectly innocent. She could be jumping to conclusions. It was only her supposition that her father had intended to cheat on her mother. Looking at him now, white-haired and slightly corpulent, it ha
rdly seemed likely.

  Adrian stared out at the sea, waiting, and she was grateful for his stillness. After a moment, her father dropped his hands with a mortified smile.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t apologise for having feelings,’ Adrian said, before her father could speak.

  ‘Why don’t we try to find the van driver,’ Lucy said, trying to sound as though it was a casual suggestion. ‘He might know where Mum is.’

  She pretended to stare at the table as her father glanced at Adrian who raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Lucy, try to forget about the van,’ her father said gently. ‘Too much sun can make anyone confused. It happens. Isn’t that right, Adrian?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t imagine it,’ she muttered.

  Disregarding her father’s anxious expression, she appealed to Adrian. ‘If we did want to trace the van, how would we do it?’

  ‘Do you really want to go out looking for a van?’

  ‘Well, at least we’d be doing something. Couldn’t the police help us?’

  ‘Let’s say there was a van, there’s no reason to suppose the driver owned it necessarily,’ Adrian pointed out.

  ‘You mean it could have been stolen?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Yes, stolen or borrowed, or just untraceable,’ he replied. ‘This isn’t England. Documents here aren’t always up-to-date. Used vehicles get passed around the Seychellois community, especially old ones, even if they’re not actually stolen. The hotel takes deliveries from all sorts of places. It’s just not that simple. And would you recognise the driver again?’

  ‘No. I never saw him. He came up behind me, picked me up and threw me in the back of the van. And, stupidly, I didn’t look at the registration number.’

  ‘Can you remember anything about him at all?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘He stank of beer.’

  ‘That hardly narrows it down. Forget it, Lucy, let the police deal with it.’

  Lucy did not answer. She was convinced the van driver would lead them to Veronique, if they could only find him and follow him for long enough. There was no other reason for him to have been sent with that message for her father. Veronique wanted George to find her, and she was using Angela as bait. If it was improbable her mother was still alive, it was not impossible. The only piece of the puzzle Lucy could not figure out was what Veronique was going to do to Lucy’s father when he turned up. She seemed set on keeping herself hidden from everyone. Like Maria, who knew all the local gossip, no one Lucy had asked had any idea where Veronique was.

  Adrian left for work and her father went up to his room to cool off. Lucy found a seat with a view of the ocean, in the shade of a flowering bush. She reached out and touched a delicate white blossom with the tip of one finger. ‘Frangipani,’ she whispered. Her father had told her the white flowers gave off the strongest scent.

  ‘It’s hard to believe the colour makes a difference,’ he had added. ‘Some people say they’re all the same, but—’ He had broken off, a distant look in his eyes. ‘She used to love frangipani.’

  Lucy knew he had been talking about Veronique. All at once, she felt as though she could see clearly after stumbling around in a fog for days. The floor of the van that had taken her away had been covered in a thick layer of frangipani petals. She recognised the scent. There had been a lot of them, and the strange thing was that there had been no twigs at all, just petals. If she closed her eyes she could still remember the feel of them beneath her, slippery and soft, protecting her from the hard metal floor of the van. She plucked a flower from the frangipani bush and rubbed it between her fingers, crushing it to release the scent. Everything seemed obvious now. She glanced around the patio but there was no sign of the old Seychellois man she had seen sweeping petals from the edge of the patio. Every once in a while he had carefully bent down to pick out the bits of twig and other detritus that he had swept up along with the petals. She was convinced he had been driving the van. He must be working for Veronique. He would know where her mother was being kept.

  It made sense. According to Maria, Veronique had gone into hiding when she shot her husband. Someone must have been delivering supplies to her ever since. Who better than a man with a van? The pieces of the jigsaw all fitted. When Adrian joined them for a drink after lunch, she asked him about the old man.

  Adrian shook his head. ‘There was some tragedy in his life, I don’t know what exactly, but I remember my grandmother telling me he was a sad case. I wish I could tell you what happened to him. All I can remember is that it was something to do with a woman.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ Lucy’s father said.

  ‘Why do you want to know about him?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered,’ she answered vaguely.

  The two men began discussing the state of the gardens. Lucy sat quietly, planning. One way or another, she was going to persuade Baptiste to help her. She was looking forward to seeing her father’s face when he discovered who had been looking after Angela.

  35

  THAT AFTERNOON, LUCY KEPT a look out for the old man. Excited but scared, she was sure she was getting close to finding Veronique, and her mother. By early evening she had not spotted the sweeper. At her suggestion she and her father sat outside on the patio. Baptiste usually turned up there at some point in the evening. Once she saw him she would not let him out of her sight. When he left the hotel, she would follow him. Sooner or later he would lead her to where Veronique was living. While she had determined to do this alone, she did not intend to take any risks. The attacks against her had made her wary. But all she was going to do was discover where Veronique was living, and find her mother. She could not see how she could go wrong with that plan. The worst that might happen was that Baptiste would simply go home, in which case she would have followed him for nothing and would have to try again the next day.

  During a break, Adrian joined them on the patio. Struggling against the temptation to look around, Lucy pretended to follow the strained conversation between her father and Adrian. After about ten minutes, Adrian made his excuses and returned to work. Lucy and her father finished their drinks in silence. After a while, he stirred in his seat and said he was going upstairs for a rest.

  ‘I’m really tired. I’m going up to my room. I’ll see you in an hour or so. Why don’t you have a rest yourself this afternoon?’

  She nodded and he disappeared into the hotel. As soon as he had gone, Baptiste arrived, as though on cue, flat broom in hand. He looked innocuous enough in his battered straw hat and tattered shirt, sweeping leaves and petals from the patio. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, a thin trail of smoke rising from it, but he never removed it from his lips and did not appear to be smoking it. He gave the impression of being very old, with his bent figure and wizened face, frail compared to the robust figure of her father. Lucy doubted if he possessed the power to have captured her, or to have fought with her father, giving him a black eye. She did not believe the old man could have been involved in the attacks on her and her parents.

  But as she continued observing him out of the corner of her eye, she was surprised at how agile he seemed when he bent down to poke around in the sweepings. She watched, mesmerised by the regular motion of his broom only interrupted when he bent down to separate the petals from the leaves. It appeared he might indeed be strong enough to have subdued her, and even her father.

  After a while, he picked up his bag stuffed with petals, rested his broom against his shoulder, and crossed the patio. Suddenly nervous, Lucy turned to beckon Adrian, but he had gone. She only hesitated for a second. She could not afford to lose sight of Baptiste. For all she knew, with every passing day her mother’s situation might be deteriorating. She had no choice but to follow him while she had the chance. Trembling, she hurried after Baptiste to find out where he was going.

  He led her along a path through the garden. She kept several paces behind him, stepping silently on the earth. If he turned, she hoped the bushes wo
uld conceal her, but he did not look back. She watched him make his way to the side of the hotel. When he turned the corner of the building, she darted forward and pressed herself against the wall. Hurrying to the corner, she peered round just in time to see his figure disappear around next corner. She ran after him. There were a few people loitering near the front of the building which made it easier for her to observe Baptiste without attracting attention. Meanwhile, he was easy to spot, with his bent back and straw hat. As she watched, he climbed onto a bright red moped and sped away.

  Cursing, she ran to the hire car, scrabbling in her pocket for the key. Leaping in, she put her foot down and shot out of the car park in first gear. The engine whined and creaked but she took no notice, more concerned that she had lost Baptiste than that she might be ruining the engine. Struggling to change up a gear, she reached the T-junction at the end of the road. There was no sign of the red moped. She could not afford to waste any time and spun the wheel, barely halting at the intersection. If she did not catch up with Baptiste soon, she would try the other direction.

  After driving for about half a mile, she caught sight of him up ahead and slowed down. Relieved that she had not lost him, she watched the moped bumping along the empty road, the old man’s hat flapping up and down. With difficulty she manoeuvred her phone out of her pocket and hesitated over who to call. Her father would only insist she return to the hotel. She could not even tell him exactly where she was, although she would be able to find the road again. Her best option remained to mark where Baptiste went without him spotting her. If her suspicions of him were mistaken, no one need ever know she had followed him. Her father might wonder how they had used up more petrol than he expected, but they had been driving around so much, he was unlikely to notice.