Some dog maybe, who’d wandered off? Or a friend of hers? Whatever, she sounded anxious enough. Having dusted pine needles from my eyebrows and clothes, I emerged just in time to see her take the incline up to both towers too fast and swerve out of sight.
*
With a chill jostled by a growing breeze, I followed, keeping close to the plantation on my left. Soon I was distracted by sounds of the nearby river growing louder, and I realised I was only a few paces from an overgrown drop of some fifty feet to its foaming waterfall below. So engrossed was I yet again, by this force of nature, I almost missed the sight of a snatch of blue fabric hurtling along in the flow, accompanied by dead bamboo stalks, garden debris and, further along, an old pushchair twisting this way and that.
I shivered again, not only because ragged black clouds had covered the darkening sky, bringing another temperature drop, but also because I wondered whose pushchair it was. Would some small, helpless victim of the swollen Bayrou soon be passing by out of reach?
Then came another snatch of blue. This time, trousers whose short legs were bloated not by flesh, but water. Part of a bleu de travail perhaps? Surely not in such a small size. Next, a bare, severed arm followed by another half-covered by a band of white material, borne along on the flow. I was definitely not hallucinating, but while vomit crept up my throat, a head, larger than that of a normal adult, surged into view, face up. I glimpsed blank, white eyes, a mouth agape, and blond hair like wet straw stuck across the head. Definitely male. Blood cradling the base of his neck. However, within seconds, the swift river had carried its grim cargo over that powerful waterfall and out of sight.
Sherwood Forest all over again…
How could I just stand there?
Go...
*
I backed away from the river’s edge, re-living those last, terrible moments of rookie cop Ben Roger’s young life.
Hurry...
But even if I’d managed to haul open half of those gates and run down the road to follow the current, I’d never have made it, so I headed for the first cream-coloured tower thinking how Carol and George by their pool with beers at the ready, belonged to another world.
I focussed on the studded, oak door, then the three stories, each with a closed, round window apiece, to the topmost one where, behind its glass, a face peered down. Male or female I couldn’t tell. Certainly not Martine Mannion.
Waving was useless, so with my hands cupped around my mouth, I yelled. “Body in the river!” ‘Stiff’ was for Nottingham, not here. My two-way radio could have linked up with a local commissariat or gendarmerie. But that particular relic lay up in my attic in Grantham Street amongst other mementos untouched since the day I’d dumped them there. Naturally, my Walther .22 had been signed off. A strange, final moment.
“Anyone at home?” I yelled again.
Suddenly, the first-floor window flipped outwards and Martine Mannion leant out. Her French rapid, angry.
“Who the Hell are you? I’ve a rifle and orders to shoot any intruders.”
Was that the ‘stick’ I’d seen in her boot?
“John Lyon. A UK citizen. On holiday.” I shouted back. My French not perfect, but serviceable. Better than my sister’s, which she’d never admit. “I’ve just seen body parts go by in the river down there. A young male, fair hair, blue trousers...”
She paused. “You got a car somewhere?”
“In the main square.”
My interrogator slammed the window shut and seconds later had opened that reinforced door, both hands now at the ready on the promised rifle. Old, but well-polished, with especially lethal cartridges.
Her black eyes narrowed. “Where in the river?”
“Going over that waterfall.” I pointed to where I’d stood. “Five minutes ago. Less than average height, I’d say, judging by…”
“Jesus Christ.” She then crossed herself. “Let’s see your ID.”
I kept a firm hold of my passport while she studied the details.
“Ex-cop, hein?” Her forefinger rested on my photograph. Her unpainted nail, like the rest, bitten to the quick. “You never said.”
“Not something to advertise.”
“I saw you walking down the road earlier.” Her eyes again met mine as I slotted my identity back in my cagoule’s inner pocket. “So, what made you trespass? Because that’s what you are, Monsieur Lyon. A trespasser.”
I followed her brief glance to the tower’s highest round window where that face I’d spotted seemed even closer to the glass. A handsome woman with vivid red hair, as in that other photo I’d seen. But was fear firming her lipsticked mouth?
“You’ve not answered my question.”
“I was curious about the name on the letterbox.”
“Doctor Fürst, my employer? Why?”
“Old habits die hard, I suppose.” I glanced at my watch. Ten, vital minutes had passed. “I want to follow that river. Catch up with the poor sod who’s in it.”
“OK. Let’s go.”
But no way would I turn my back on her just then. Not with that old rifle already raised in my direction.
“That’s unnecessary. Put it down.” I kept my voice level. Long-ago training taking over. “We need to focus.”
“It’s my job.” She finally lowered her weapon. “And jobs round here don’t grow on fucking trees.”
“I can imagine.”
Yet I’d sensed a sea-change in her tone before she yelled up to her employer that she’d be gone for half an hour. That Joel was still in the kitchen in case of any emergency.
“Why not use phones?” I ventured as we jogged towards the Saab,
“It’s good to yell sometimes.”
I was tempted to agree.
*
“You could be anyone for all I know,” she said, flinging her rifle and music tapes on to the back seat before reversing to face the drive ahead. “I just don’t trust men anymore.” She steered towards the gates and hauled up the handbrake. “Both these bastards are kaput. Can you pull them open till I’m through?”
I did, just about, and with me alongside, she took a right turn and followed the river down under yet another, smaller bridge. In a deepening dusk, we sped through Dansac, a drab hamlet of modest dwellings, until more open country, again contained on either side by ragged limestone ridges. With hands gripping the wheel and her jaw set in grim concentration, she turned left on to a dirt track bordering a dead vineyard, until her headlights picked out river water covering what was once the bank.
We both bailed out and her powerful torch soon revealed a homemade dam made of anything and everything, rearing up above the spreading flow.
“Fucking kids,” she sighed. “Big fuss about this in the papers the other day. And here it is again. Easter holidays with nothing to do. That’s the bloody trouble.”
Now wasn’t the time to compare this with the level of vandalism at home, nor probe about her possible problem with men. That early evening was turning into all-too familiar territory. I rolled up my jeans and we headed for the water where huge bamboos swayed and rattled in the wind. From somewhere came the moan of an unseen animal while distant dogs guarding the vines, yelped from inside their compound.
Martine knelt down to train her beam on the river’s incoming surge before suddenly wavering. I snatched the torch from her and held her back. That white-eyed face just inches away, had lodged in a nest of branches. Bruised, scratched, the cleanly-severed edge of neck too fresh, too raw. His butcher had been skilled alright. And maybe still out there...
“It’s him.”
“Who?”
“Herman.”
Silence, save for the river’s flow.
“It’s possible he was butchered while still alive.” I ventured. “Some sicko giving themselves a thrill. Maybe more than one. But why?”
“How should I know?” She was sobbing without pausing for breath. “Poor little bugger.” She looked up at him. Eyes as glossy as marbles. “What the Hell do we do now?”
Chapter 4. Karen.
Dinner time, but I didn’t feel the least bit hungry. How could I, when my stomach was always first to react to fear and anxiety? But here came Joel anyway, like the well-trained cook he was, clanking his hostess trolley across from the lift to my door.
“You OK?” He let himself in then announced, “I’ve got lamb couscous and tarte au citron...”
Normally, I’d have bitten his hand off to have them set in front of me, especially the couscous, but the thought of rice-coated squares of seasoned sheep filling my throat, brought a warning lurch.
I turned away from the useless CCTV screen and watched him setting everything out for me, including a carafe of local white wine. 14% volume. My Rotterdam doctor still harassed me to quit alcohol, but he wasn’t stuck in a wheelchair. Nor strapped to his bed at night.
“Voilà.” Joel smiled the smile of a saint. “Bon appétit, Docteur.”
Was he blind? Couldn’t he read my expression at all?
“Thank you.” I managed to say. “Have you had your dinner yet?”
He gave the thumbs up and made to leave. But I’m not finished.
“Is Herman anywhere?” I asked. “He’d normally have taken my blood pressure and temperature by now.”
“Not a whisper. But he might have gone into Saint-Antoine for the concert.”
“Concert? He never said.”
“At the Salle de Concert. He’d mentioned a matinée featuring Jordi Barre. A Catalan folk singer. He went last time, remember?”
“I do. And he checked with me first.”
“Perhaps this was a spur-of-the-moment decision. We all do it...” He re-folded my napkin in the shape of some exotic flower and handed me my cutlery. “Sorry, that was tactless of me.” A reference to my decision last year to buy Les Pins after only one viewing. He was right.
“Phone me immediately you see him.”
“I will.”
“And Martine’s just driven off somewhere with a stranger. I mean...” My voice rose, making an unpleasant sound. “What is going on?”
Joel ran a hand through his glossy hair, while those melting, brown eyes focussed on the CCTV screen where it was just possible to make out two cars - one red, one grey - entering the drive. Was that same stranger holding my gates open? Hard to tell, with the screen’s vision quality so poor.
“I’ll get down there now,” said Joel.
“Your Glock?”
“Never without it.”
Ignoring my dinner cooling under its silver covers, I pushed my chair to the window in time to see two sets of headlights strobing their way up my drive. Then minutes later, my phone rang.
“Yes?”
“Martine here, down in the lobby. I’ve picked up some English guy. An ex- flic, so his passport says.”
That ‘f’ word hit my pulse.
“No strangers, especially the law, wherever they’re from. You should know better, given our discussions on the subject.”
“He insists on seeing you. Wants to help.”
“Why?”
She paused. That always made me nervous.
“Something’s up. I’ll tell you when I’m with you.”
“Is Joel there? And Herman?”
“Just wait. Please.”
She ended the call, leaving a poisonous void, in which my CCTV screen suddenly became blank, while black pines beyond the glass seemed to gyrate to the Devil’s tune, as if to deliver yet another stormy, sleepless night.
Chapter 5. John.
I’d attended too many crime scenes to know that before the forensic team comes in, the SOCO secures the site. But nothing so organised here. Christ no. Not with Martine’s elusive boss wanting minimal contact with the outside world, especially the law. Whatever the situation. She’d let slip her employer’s real reason for buying and living in Les Pins with a new identity, was for privacy in which to pursue some important past event which only she knew about. Why no guard dogs.
“Too obvious,” Martine had said. So how could I, a stranger. prevent her from wrapping that severed head in her yellow cagoule and, with shaking hands, place it on her rear passenger seat? I couldn’t. Instead of reality, I was watching some horror flick, except for the indescribable smell blocking the real question in my throat.
*
Having driven me to the town’s Place des Étoiles to collect my Volvo, and making sure no-one was tailing us, she suggested I follow her back to Les Pins where she’d introduce me to Doctor Fürst.
“I’ll say you’re willing and able to help her solve that mystery I’ve just mentioned,” she added as I got out. “So far, she’s made no headway.”
Hang on…
I tried ignoring the steel band that seemed to be tightening round my chest.
“I’m not sure… “
“Well, I am. I’ve lived with it long enough.”
“Did Herman have any family?”
She shrugged. “He never said, and I never asked.”
Judging by her body language, that was probably true.
“And his surname?”
“Oudekerk.”
“Sounds Dutch or Belgian. Could mean ‘old church.’
She was too busy rummaging in her glove box to comment.
“Whatever. His death will have to be reported.” I added as she folded a strip of chewing gum into her mouth. “Statements made, and forensics brought in…”
Her fierce, black eyes fixed on me through her open window.
“Please remember, Monsieur Lyon, we can’t involve the gendarmerie or any other official from round here. Dr. Fürst won’t trust them. She’ll decide what to do.” She then revved up her engine.
Should I be too late for my sister, there might be a meal and a bed here, but was that a good enough reason to pervert the course of justice? A no-brainer, back in my Nottingham job, but this wasn’t Nottingham. And what exactly was this so-called mystery all about?
“There’s surely someone here that Dr. Fürst can trust?” I persisted, as Martine’s noisy revs continued.
“There isn’t, and who can blame her? Each day she’s in fear for her life. At night, Herman had to secure to her bed. Made specially in Holland, it was.”
Just to think of such entrapment was bad enough. Me, who couldn’t abide even wearing braces.
“Why Holland?” I asked, as nearby cars came and went.
Another silence, as if she’d said too much already.
“You can trust me.”
“Where her own family came from.”
*
Everything looked so different in the windy dark, especially when both towers’ searchlights rotated their blinding beams on to the surrounding, turbulent trees.
Carol’s phone had been engaged when I’d tried calling from the town’s square and for a moment, with the Saab moving away from me, I’d been tempted to hold back. Go to Elne and have a normal, if rather predictable break in her and George’s perfect home.
But I’d become like a fish, hooked by curiosity. However, curiosity was one thing, answers another, and all I knew was that twenty-seven-year-old Herman Oudekerk who’d accompanied Dr. Fürst to Les Pins from Rotterdam when she’d bought it just under a year ago, had been her nurse and secretary ever since. He’d also made someone want to kill him.
*
With Martine clutching her hideous bundle close to her chest, she and I walked along the tiled vestibule to a still-room that lay next to a fitted kitchen - all glass and steel - where overhead, a red light on an alarm console winked at our disturbance.
“Joel Dutroux, our cook,” she announced as we moved past a slim, good-looking man I guessed to be around thirty. I also noticed the bulge of a gun in his white tunic’s side pocket. He didn’t reply.
“I’m John Lyon from Nottingham.” I volunteered. “Just passing through...”
He caught up with us and our eyes met. Clearly unused to strangers, he was wary.
“Does Doctor Fürst know you’re here?”
His voice, unlike Martine’s, bore no trace of a Catalan accent.
“Of course.” She answered instead, placing the loaded cagoule upon a steel worktop to unwrap it. Herman Oudekerk’s skin had turned blue. His hair that same dead straw, where twigs and other leavings from the river still lay trapped. What little blood there was, trickled thin and pale on that pristine surface.
I’d seen enough death in my time, but not this. Someone had given him life...
“Who’s that? And what in Jesus’ name are you doing?” The cook broke into my thoughts. His earlier cool pose evaporated. He too, backed off, fearful, shocked.
“Don’t you recognise him?” Martine looked up. “Your friend Herman.”
A nod, then the cook crossed himself twice as with shaking hands, she began re-wrapping the head in layer upon layer of clingfilm then foil, before finding a lidded carton and lowering it into one of the three large chest freezers.
“Rest in peace, little man.” She added, closing its heavy lid.
“You can’t do that!” Joel Dutroux came close as if to intervene.
“Got a better idea?” She began wiping down the inside of her cagoule with pieces of kitchen roll and pushed them into the waste disposal unit. “This is evidence. Proof of what happened to him.”
“Where’s the… the rest of his body?” He’d begun to cry big, slow tears.
“Gone down river. We were lucky to find this much.”
“I’m going.”
“No, you don’t!”
She restrained him. Brought her rifle butt down on his foot.
“Look, we stay together, in control. I was followed here not long ago. OK?” She wiped her own eyes with her tracksuit sleeve. Glanced at me for support.
“Who by?” I asked.
“Two cons in a silver Merc. Come on, let’s go. Get this over with. And we’d better tell the boss about her gates not working.”
*
The cook made up our threesome as we took the lift to the third floor. Panic buttons everywhere. Dr. Fürst clearly under siege in her tower. But from what, and why?
“Remember,” warned Martine. “Not to call her Karen.”
She then knocked on a dull, steel door perfectly aligned with the surrounding curved walls, and seconds later, we faced a large, circular room; part office, part hospital, with a long, black desk set under that same round window I’d seen from below. Everything else was white. In fact, blinding white thanks to four fluorescent strip lights. Even the oxygen cylinder and bars surrounding a raised bed; the paraphernalia for survival suspended overhead.
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