His face reflected his bewilderment.
“In Sydney? No, I didn’t. If you’ve looked me up, you already know that, so why ask?”
“The only islander who came home with a medal that year was Sophie Webb. How did that make you feel?”
He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “How the hell should I know? It didn’t bother me. I mean, she was a woman. The competition was obviously not nearly as tough for her. She was some kind of fencer, wasn’t she? Yes, that’s right. The women’s foil event. So, she won a medal. Big deal. You can’t compare that to the decathlon. That event takes place over two days. There’s no comparison. You’re up against men at the absolute peak of human physical condition. The smaller and skinnier you are, the faster you can run in the hurdles and the fifteen-hundred meters. The bigger and more muscular you are, the better you do in the hundred meters, and in the throwing events like the javelin and the discus. You have to able to do it all – speed, strength, endurance. You can’t compare that to a bunch of women leaping around in white outfits poking each other with toothpicks.”
“Where did you go last night at around six o’clock, Mr. Coward?”
“Last night?” He shot his wife a resentful look.
“I didn’t say anything, Ronnie,” she protested. “I explained how you went to buy some cream for me.”
“Yes… that’s right. I bought cream for my wife.”
“You were gone a long time.”
“I couldn’t find any. I had to drive around looking for it. I didn’t go and murder some girl while I was out and then go back to my wife for dinner.”
“Nobody is saying you did, Mr. Coward. Tell me about your fellow Olympians in Sydney. Did any of them strike you as odd – as potentially violent?”
Coward thought about this for a while. He seemed to suspect a trap.
“That table tennis player had a temper,” said his wife. “Do you remember that, Ronnie? What was his name again? Jules something or other. He was always pitching a fit about something or other.”
“Yeah, that’s right. And the other guy – the one who did archery – didn’t he get into trouble with security for something?”
“Drunk and disorderly.” His wife nodded. “I still remember how rowdy he was that night. Somebody from the Norwegian team called security.”
“Anything else?” Eulalie asked.
“There was the boxer, Ronnie. Remember him? They say boxers are always aggressive, don’t they?”
Ronald Coward shrugged. He had no opinion on boxers.
“Did you leave the house last night around midnight, Mr. Coward? Please bear in mind that large parts of Queen’s Town are monitored by CCTV cameras. If you did go out, there’s a good chance that footage of it exists somewhere in the system. It would be better for you if you told us about it now. The Queen’s Town Police Department takes a dim view of witnesses who lie.”
If Eulalie was watching him closely, it was nothing compared to the way his wife was looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on his face with an almost painful intensity.
“You didn’t, did you, Ronnie?”
“Of course, I didn’t,” he said at last. “I went to bed at the same time you did and didn’t stir the whole night. Why the hell would I go out after midnight? I’m a busy man. I need my sleep.”
“Fair enough. My last question is for you, Mrs. Coward.” Eulalie took out her phone and scrolled through her gallery of images. “Does your husband own anything like this?”
She held up the screen and showed Elizabeth a picture of the navy polo shirt with the Sydney Olympics logo on it.
“Of course, he does. It’s one of his most prized possessions. You won’t even believe me when I tell you that I’m not allowed to wash that shirt. I have it specially dry-cleaned. It was part of the athlete’s kit at the Sydney games. Mind you, Ronnie doesn’t wear it so much anymore. It’s a bit of a tight fit these days, isn’t it, darling?”
She poked her husband in his side with a playful forefinger. His scowl deepened.
“Maybe. But there was a time I used to wear it a lot.”
“Were the athletes the only ones who wore this shirt? Not coaches, administrators, or friends and family?”
“Just the athletes,” said Elizabeth.
“What about the supporters’ gear? Especially the unofficial knock-offs. Did you ever see anyone who wasn’t an athlete in one of these shirts?”
“I don’t think so, Ms. Park. I can’t see the supporters bothering with it. It’s such a low-key design. It was only the athletes who knew how special it was.”
Eulalie rose to her feet. “In that case, I think you’ve answered all my questions. Thank you both for your cooperation.”
As she left the dealership, Ronald and Elizabeth Coward watched her with identical frozen expressions until she was out of the building. She checked her messages before getting on her scooter. There was only one.
Chief Macgregor: Lisa Lavalle’s identity confirmed. Cadaver dogs scheduled for ten tomorrow morning. You’re welcome to come if you want to watch.
Chapter 14
You are dizzy with your own daring.
You feel giddy and light. Your blood fizzes with excitement. Somewhere at the back of your mind there is an awareness of the life you have left behind. But it is easy to push it away and enjoy this wonderful, sun-kissed day.
You didn’t know that sunlight could be like this. So bright and warm against your skin. In the forest, the sunlight is always filtered through the canopy of leaves above. Even in the clearings, the light is never as brilliant as this.
You love everything about this place. The cars roar past at unimaginable speeds. The people peacock around in their colorful clothes. The shops have a dizzying array of wares on sale. Your senses are drunk with stimulation.
Why has Angel kept it from you all these years? She knows this world well. She always said she would take you when you were older, but age has come upon you suddenly with motherhood. Your carefree, childish life has been replaced overnight with one of responsibility and toil.
If you are old enough to care for a child, you are old enough to come to this place. In the end, it had been too tempting to resist. It had seemed like your last chance before you were shut away forever – joining the matrons in their endless round of duties and responsibilities. You weren’t able to resist seizing this last chance at happiness.
A tiny, far off part of you longs for the baby you left behind. Your breasts are swollen and aching with milk. They have become frighteningly hard to the touch. You didn’t expect that. You thought they could wait a few days until you got back to the baby. Your left breast has developed angry red streaks on the side.
But it is worth it. It is worth it for the sunshine, the brightly dressed people, and the music that is unlike anything you have heard before.
You can hardly believe you achieved all this on your own. You were right about everything – from the secret tin where Angel kept her money, to the fact that a car would stop and give you a lift if you just put out your hand and pointed your thumb. You can’t believe how easy it has been. You stood at the side of the road for no more than five minutes before a red car stopped to pick you up. The man is so charming. He speaks fluent French, even though it is not his language. He listens to you with flattering attention. He is so sympathetic to your plight.
He completely understands how trapped you felt, how you needed to get away for a while even though you love the baby you left behind. How you needed to do this one last thing for yourself.
He makes you feel heard and understood. He makes you feel as though your choices are valid, and not just the impulses of a child prematurely elevated to adulthood.
He wants to show you everything. He has driven you all over town, showing you all the sights. He has shown you the ocean, and what a wonderful, breathtaking sight that was. He stopped to buy you something he referred to as glace – cold, sweet ice-cream that tasted like joy on your tongue.
You love driving in his car. You love the feel of the wind in your hair. Most of the other cars have a top that encloses you completely, but this one is open to the sun and the air.
Now he is taking you out on the open road. He has told you that he wants to show you something. You are sad to leave the town with all its sights and smells, but you are excited for the surprise as well. You drive and drive for many minutes. The sea is on your right and there are flat fields of sugarcane on your left. You didn’t know that such featureless flatness could exist. You didn’t know what it was to see the horizon on both sides of you.
He stops the car and invites you to get out. You are in a place of tumbledown buildings, as of a dwelling that was abandoned many years earlier. He explains to you that people used to live here but left because nothing would grow. It is an eerie, unhallowed place. You wish you were back in the town with its cheerful atmosphere and its friendly people. The very first tendrils of uneasiness tickle your mind.
From the beginning, you have sensed a great darkness in this man. But it is so overlaid with kindness and good cheer that it is easy to ignore.
You will take a quick look at whatever he wants to show you, and then ask him to drive you back to town. Perhaps he will buy you another glace.
“Over there,” he says. “It is over there.”
And you think, Thank goodness. It is close. Soon we can go back to town.
You don’t see it coming. The blow that ends your life strikes out of nowhere and catches you unawares. One moment you are conscious and happy, and the next there is just blackness.
Eulalie’s sleeping head rocked forward as though it had been struck hard from behind. The darkness closed in on her, threatening to pull her down. But before she could sink into its clammy embrace, she felt the insistent digging of something sharp into her chest and a relentless tapping against her cheek.
Opening her eyes blindly, she realized she had forgotten how to breathe. She sat up with a choking sound and hit her chest with a fist until her lungs began to work and she could drag in air.
Satisfied that he had done his job, the cat began to purr and knead the duvet.
Eulalie slung her legs out of bed and listened to the hammering of her own heart. Then she stumbled to her feet and crossed the room to write down everything she could remember about the dream before it faded. Only when that was done did she stand under a hot shower and try to wash away the icy blackness that had threatened to claim her. Warmth returned to her bones, and with it came another kind of warmth.
Her mother had loved her. Her mother had not abandoned her. She had been coming back. Others had told her this before, but now she knew it for sure. It felt as though a burden she had been carrying for the last twenty-eight years was suddenly lighter. Her mother had been coming back.
With that weight lifted, a new anger blazed in Eulalie. Somewhere out there was a man who had taken her mother from her. He had been living his life all these years – going about his business without a care in the world, while she had grown up motherless. She would find him, and she would bring him to justice.
Eulalie took her time over breakfast, feeding herself and the cat at a leisurely pace.
She had to be at Robson’s Field at ten o’clock, which gave her time to read the news headlines and review her notes on the case. She had three more interviews to go, and then she would have spoken to all the male athletes who went to the Sydney Olympic Games. There was still a chance that the man wearing the T-shirt had acquired it by other means. She would wait to see what Mrs. Belfast came up with in her research into the other men who had gone to Sydney that year. Perhaps that would yield more leads.
If only she had been able to see the man’s face in her dream. Unfortunately, her dreams seldom worked like that. She couldn’t see what the other person was seeing. She just knew what they were thinking and feeling. It was an empathetic connection that often didn’t have much of a visual component.
Even if she proved to her own satisfaction who had done it, proving it sufficiently for an arrest and prosecution was another matter. Fauve’s death was the coldest of cold cases. Eulalie’s only hope lay in connecting it to the death of Lisa Lavalle. There was at least a fighting chance of there being useful evidence in that murder.
It would be interesting to see whether the cadaver dogs turned up anything.
At nine-thirty, Eulalie sent Mrs. Belfast a text letting her know where she would be that morning. Paddy the cat had already trotted down to the office to join her. She hopped on her Vespa and headed out on the north-bound coast road toward Robson’s Field. She got there just after ten and found that the dogs and their handlers had beaten her to it.
A woman in khaki cargo pants, a white tank top, and a baseball cap, was standing talking to Chief Macgregor. There was a beagle dog sitting patiently at her heels. Chief Macgregor turned as Eulalie approached.
“Ms. Njovane, this is Eulalie Park, one of our community liaison officers. She is looking into the Robson’s Field murders. Eulalie, this is Sibongile Njovane, the head of the dog unit from Johannesburg. They have very kindly sent us three dogs and three handlers. I was telling Ms. Njovane about my desire to start up a dog unit here on Prince William Island. She has been giving me some excellent advice.”
“So, it’s no good thinking you can train dogs in more than one discipline,” the woman explained as she shook hands with Eulalie. “I know it sounds like a great time and money saver, but in practice it doesn’t work. Let’s say you’ve got a hiker lost in the mountains. You want your dog to be concentrating purely on finding that hiker. Every time he alerts to a scent, you want to know that he is still on the trail of the hiker. If he picks up the scent of someone who died there ten years earlier, you’re not going to know whether he is following the cadaver scent or the hiker’s scent. Then the whole thing turns into a guessing game.”
Chief Macgregor listened intently. “Yes, that makes sense.”
“With bomb-detection dogs, in particular, you don’t want them alerting for anything except explosives. That’s a life or death situation, and there must be no confusion. Drug dogs usually get taught to recognize a variety of illegal substances, because that’s useful and doesn’t cause problems. Same with dogs that are trained to detect other forms of contraband at airports.”
“I would imagine that cadaver dogs already have a wide enough variety of smells they need to be able to recognize,” said Eulalie.
The dog-handler agreed. “Very true. They need to be able to recognize anything from a body that has just died to bone and tooth fragments that might be many decades old. For a place like Prince William Island, I’d say you’d need two fully trained search and rescue dogs to start off with. That’s your priority, isn’t it? Saving lives. Then you’d want a couple of dogs trained to recognize drugs and other contraband working at your airport and at the Port of Prince William. A cadaver dog would be a luxury, in my opinion. I’m sure you don’t spend all that much time hunting for bodies.”
“No,” agreed Chief Macgregor. “Search and rescue is our biggest priority.”
Ms. Njovane looked around. “It’s a lovely morning with hardly any wind. That’s good for the dogs. They’re super excited to be here and can’t wait to get going. We’ve got Billy over here – he’s my beagle. There’s a black Lab over there, and a bloodhound too. All excellent breeds for scent work. We have a lot of ground to cover so we’ll get started now. I’ve divided the area into a grid and distributed it among the three of us. You can watch us in action if you’re interested. Watch the dogs, not the handlers. They’ll tell you if they’ve found something interesting.”
She gave a quick salute and went to join the rest of her team.
&n
bsp; “You’re serious about this dog training thing,” said Eulalie.
“Definitely. We may be small, but there’s no reason why we can’t have excellent resources. Luckily the new governor is running an administration that seems to agree with me.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder and watched as the team went into action.
The handlers allowed their dogs a lot of freedom. The only restrictions they placed on them were to stay within their own grid and to cover the area systematically. Apart from that, they seemed to want to stay out of the dogs’ way as much as possible and let them do their jobs.
The first alert came when the bloodhound found the shallow grave where Lisa Lavalle had been buried. It was a strong and confident alert.
Chief Macgregor hurried over to explain the significance of that area. The dog was lavishly praised and given treats. Then the area was staked off so that he wouldn’t repeatedly return to it.
The second alert came from Sibongile Njovane’s beagle.
“That’s where they found your mother,” Chief Macgregor explained. “We’d better stake that off too.”
It seemed incredible to Eulalie that a dog could detect such an old scent, especially when it had been removed several days earlier. Dozens of people and vehicles must have crisscrossed that ground, because it was one of the first to be dug up by the Waylon crew. It was amazing that the dog could detect the smells he was looking for amongst all the other competing scents.
There was quite a long lull as nothing further was discovered. The dogs were actively enjoying the game. Their tails were up and waving, and their bodies quivered with excitement.
There was another false alarm when the black Lab got too close to the old family cemetery of Robson’s Field farm. The Robson family had only lived there for about fifteen years, but a small handful of family members were buried there. Waylon Construction had obtained permission from the Governor’s office to move the graves to one of the official Queen’s Town cemeteries so that the whole plot of land could be developed.
The Complete H-Series of The Eulalie Park Mysteries Page 108