Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  *

  A motorcyclist on her way downhill to Roche-les-Bains, swerved round me, giving the middle finger sign, while spraying me with snow and grit. I was therefore glad, some minutes later, to reach the then deserted car park.

  My Volvo’s windscreen was white, beginning to freeze, and with no de-icer, I used my bare hands to clear it. Once inside, I extracted my well-used notebook and jotted down those extra questions I should have asked André Besson while I’d had the chance.

  I considered returning to his office to also quiz him about that magazine’s flyer, but what would have been the point? He’d have either dodged the questions or got shirty. Every interview I’d ever conducted, had left me disillusioned. People could be duplicitous, and despite however many seminars on the logic of detection I’d attended, the fault every time was all mine. As an orphan, I’d never thought in straight lines, instead, would weave a cat’s cradle of ideas and possibilities, often leading to dangerous ground.

  Like then.

  *

  A sudden movement came from behind my head, then wide, sticky tape screeched over my eyes, mouth and wrists in that order. Definitely not an amateur. Manhandled into the passenger seat, I felt the Walther being eased from my ski jacket pocket. My precious notebook pulled from my fingers.

  I heard the sigh of my driver’s seat taking a new weight. An unfit biggy alright. But who? I’d been too quickly made blind, mute and powerless to work it out.

  “One false move, you interfering filth, and you’ll not be seeing tomorrow,” growled my assailant in an almost familiar voice, followed by the pull of my car lurching forwards, and grit from the road hitting its windows like a death rattle.

  Chapter 30. Karen.

  I could never vandalise my nails the way Martine did. Instead, had to maintain certain standards to defy this damned body and this damned prison chair. Meanwhile, the sky outside had turned to ink, with snow drifting across my porthole window in hypnotic motion. I was trying to imagine Roche-les-Bains and the mighty Canigou, when Martine switched on the TV’s Metéo just in time to see a giant, graphic snowflake hover over the Pyrenees.

  “A heavy fall overnight could pose significant problems for business and tourism...” prattled the female forecaster, wearing an ugly, purple suit.

  Perhaps that was why John hadn’t phoned. Too busy leaving bad weather behind,

  Martine turned down the volume, opened a new plastic bottle of grapefruit juice with her teeth, and passed me a glassful.

  “Missing him, aren’t you?” She licked away the surplus and poured a glass for herself. “Well, actually, so am I. And you know what I feel about men. Although your ex-lieutenant seems a decent sort.”

  “Robert Taillot?”

  “Correct. You should have let him get you a Motorola 8000X phone after all.”

  “Do you know what they cost? Besides, I wouldn’t trust it.”

  “And him?”

  “Not my type, I’m afraid. And he’s not mine.”

  “I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

  So have I...

  “I’ve a bad feeling this time,” I said. “Your story about Joel and that Father Jérôme seems to connect.”

  “They looked the spit of each other. God’s truth.”

  Joop’s expression, too, Why I didn’t disabuse her.

  “I’d go and ask them questions myself, especially Suzman père, our esteemed Notaire. I mean, how come his kids are allowed to tail innocent motorists and most likely attacked John Lyon?” She set her own glass down. Looked at me enquiringly. “Why do you think?”

  “I have no idea. Some people are bullies and cowards. Maybe they’re hoping intimidation will drive me away. Maybe they’re after this place as I’ve yet to make a Will.”

  Was that a flicker of disappointment in her black eyes? If so, she wouldn’t be the first.

  “By the way, have you finished that recording you started?” She asked rather too quickly.

  “Not quite. I’m stuck on Jeanne Tremblant before she was found in her well.”

  “Let’s get on with it. You said yourself, John Lyon needs as much information as possible.” Martine set up the compact little tape recorder I’d bought last year. Passed me the microphone and plugged it in. Something about the way she did this reminded me of that nosy, smelly widow next door to Mas Camps. The thrust of her hand. The expectant look on her lined face whenever I called in to see her and those big, grey knickers always on her wasing line.

  “The morning of October 1st she gave me some balletjes in a little pot.” I began. “We could hear the wild boar hunting going on in the distance. Pop, pop, pop...”

  “Balletjes?”

  “Meat balls.”

  “Nice.” My helper wrinkled her nose. “Had you seen people searching on her land? Had she been threatened?”

  “Not as far as I recall. As for intruders, her boundary hedge was far too overgrown. Her poplars all crammed together from being planted too close. But the worst thing was, she’d been missing for at least a week till anyone noticed. Moeder wanted to organise a search, but Vader said to leave well alone. My brothers as well. I still have a problem with that as the poor woman might have been clinging on in her own stinking well for some time before being cut up.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “So were a lot of things.”

  But I was back again in that cold, misty morning, smelling the meatballs; their cooking pot warming my hands...

  “Tell me one thing,” Martine eyed the tape and decided to keep it running. “What if your father and brothers somehow survived? At least long enough to make a

  fresh start somewhere else.”

  Neen...Neen…

  It was as if she’d suddenly felled me, like one of our unwanted trees.

  “Moeder and I never considered that for a moment. Even the police at the time, dismissed it.”

  Yet all the same, I feel nauseous. Sick with hope…

  “People do,” she went on. “When they’ve had enough of routine...”

  “There’s not been the slightest piece of proof that they are somehow alive.”

  “Or dead.”

  *

  The day had turned black. Martine switched on all the lights.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “Just tired.”

  “Would you recognise any of them now?” She persisted.

  “That’s enough.” I indicated my bed. “You promised me a new sheet.”

  “So I did.”

  I watched her at work, thinking of what had been deleted from my hard drive, and how could disjointed fragments of life at Mas Camps be of any possible use to anyone? I wouldn’t be sleeping that night with this particular maggot in my brain. And where on earth was John? He’d said eight o’clock.

  *

  Yet another chat show flared up on the TV screen, but one press of my remote control sent those babbling faces into a thick silence.

  “OK,” I said. “If they had survived, why no contact with me or Moeder before she died?”

  A shrug. “Sounds like you weren’t that close to her either. Would she have told you if they had?”

  “Of course.”

  “Think of when you were in London and she in Rotterdam.”

  “I have. Time and time again.”

  Martine smoothed out my new sheet with outspread hands, then plumped up the duvet. The sound of her fists on the duck down drove home the truth that Eva Ryjkel had never entrusted me with very much at all, except her pair of thorn-proof gloves and that little, folding knife which she preferred to secateurs for severing ripe grapes.

  I was an extra, unproductive mouth to feed, whom no-one except Jeanne Tremblant had ever taken seriously. Even being accepted to study medicine at Kings College in London was all down to the Ryjkel genes, with my Opa’s success as an anaethsetist etcetera. Even Vader had followed the same path until sensing somewhere safer for our futures in France’s south-west.

  “What about your other neighb
ours. The Boussioux?” Martine straightened up then checked the bed straps. “Did they like you or ever give you anything as a gift?”

  Me? A gift?

  “No, but I remember when the son called my brothers cowards for not joining the Chantier de Jeunesse or the Service D’Ordre Légionnaire, Christian threatened to humiliate him publicly in Saint-Antoine.”

  “Not kill him?”

  “Who knows? But he wasn’t murdered until after the disappearances.”

  She’d seen me shiver and switched off the recorder, leaving it and the microphone on my desk. The CCTV screen showed the snowfall intensifying, but still no reassuring headlights at the gates. Something was badly wrong, I could tell.

  Chapter 31. John.

  Some warning that.

  My first thought once my car had come to a sudden stop; the extra weight lifted from the chassis and the driver’s door slammed shut. I was obviously getting in the way for some people. Well, tough, I told myself. I’m not giving up. Not even after two attacks in as many days. I was beginning to get a taste for it.

  Having used my drinks’ holder’s sharp edge to cut the brown parcel tape around my wrists, I could then reclaim my eyes.

  I settled myself on to the still-warm driver’s seat, switched on the engine, then set the heater to max. With gritted teeth, I peeled away the rest of the tape, taking with it several eye lashes and skin from my cheek bones. The gummed section I’d removed from around my mouth, bristled with depilated stubble. A glance in the mirror confirmed my chin and eyebrows looked like parts of some mangy cat.

  *

  I’d not imagined it. The new Walther 22 had indeed vanished from my jeans’ side pocket Also, more alarmingly, my note book of observations on Besson, Joel Dutroux and his possible background, plus many other thoughts and ideas jotted down at Les Pins before sleep.

  My wallet?

  Untouched, also the car’s keys, which was bizarre. Most thieves would have nicked them, but whoever had brought me fifty-three miles, using my own petrol, was no ordinary thief. And more to the point, where the Hell was I?

  Hard to tell because snow still clung to the Volvo’s windows.

  Could that saintly Pastoral Director have shifted his considerable bulk to find a short-cut to the car park, disabled me and driven us down from the Abbey in such tricky conditions? Anything was possible, and as I hunted for clues, something wasn’t adding up. How come he’d been so forthcoming about Joel Dutroux if he’d not wanted me to know? Unless he was a barrel of lies.

  Then, all at once I noticed a folded piece of plain, white copying paper inserted into the air vent by the steering wheel and opened it up.

  TOO MANY PIES, MONSIEUR.

  What?

  I dug out the original calling card from my jeans’ back pocket and, forgetting about possible prints, compared both fonts and paper used. They were identical.

  Panic.

  Could Besson have also visited Les Pins? Did his apparent revulsion for Joel’s views really mask fear of his former protégé spilling beans? At least, unlike that inscrutable cook, I still possessed ten fingers. Time to move my butt, find out exactly where I was, and get to a phone. All the while promising to invest in a BT Pearl mobile when I got home.

  If I got home…

  *

  The falling snow couldn’t disguise the fact that I was in a substantial town whose wide-trunked plane trees lined a main street of slow-moving traffic. Beyond these trees were a succession of pavement bars whose neon strips winked invitingly through the gloom. Light-headed after that blow which hadn’t so far produced any swelling, I alarmed the Volvo and picked my way over the slushy street to the Bar Heloïse.

  Here, in its welcome warmth, I ordered a Stella Artois and, under the barman’s curious gaze, asked where I was, and did the café have a phone?

  “Pamiers. In the Ariège,” he said, taking my money and giving me change.

  . “And the phone’s just by the Toilettes.”

  I had a hunch, that was all, but worth a try. If Besson answered my call, then there was no way he could have dumped me here and got back to the Abbey in so short a time. But what if he wasn’t there?

  Whatever. I’d pretend to be Michel Suzman, and to that end, with the help of Pages Blanches, dialled the Abbey’s ‘Acceuil’ number and partially covered the receiver. The busy world around me seemed to fade as I waited to be connected to Mgr.Besson’s office.

  “Speaking,” he said eventually. “Who’s calling?”

  Did this tub of lard sound breathless? Not a bit. Wary? Hell, no.

  “Michel here,” I said, in my best French with perhaps too much confidence. “Some news.”

  “Excellent. I’m assuming you’ve given our nuisance friend the fright you promised?”

  Yesss...

  “I did. I’ve just been showing him the delights of Pamiers, at his expense of course. I can guarantee he’ll soon be off back to Angleterre with his tail between his legs.”

  “Good. He was here earlier. Very persistent, I must say. A serial liar too. Could be troublesome.”

  “If we let him.”

  Besson’s tone changed.

  “No prints? No carelessness, hein? A nice little warning, as we agreed?”

  “Naturally.”

  A tricky pause. Someone pushed past me to reach the other cubicle.

  “Now I must find Joel. He’s been pretty upset recently about some Belgian guy called Herman Oudekerk. Any ideas?”

  “That chicken choker who came up here two weeks ago? You never mentioned him this morning. Joel loathed queers, like he loathed a lot of things which we don’t speak of on an unsafe line.”

  Meanwhile, several people in the bar were checking me out. Like many of their compatriots, wary of strangers. I then realised the full meaning of a rock and a hard place. Hard also, to keep cool about that callous slur on the dead nurse.

  “I’ll just have to keep searching.”

  Another tricky pause, like crossing a river on slippery stones.

  “He’ll turn up. Meanwhile, may our Lord and His saints smile on you, mon ami. Supper calls. Our English pest has given me quite an appetite. Watch him, Michel.”

  “I certainly will. May our Lord bless you too”

  End of call, and relief that my French had worked. But ‘nuisance friend?’ Well, I was going to me more than that. At least that fat toad hadn’t connected Herman to Karen. Something at least, except that vicious functionary, Michel Suzman was on the loose.

  *

  Just then, the bar seemed to too dark. Its drinkers’ glances too knowing. Supposing I’d been deliberately lured away from Roche-les-Bains leaving Karen and Martine vulnerable?

  I phoned Les Pins, relieved to hear both Karen and Martine were OK, but I still debated whether or not to mention her stolen Walther. The answer was no.

  “What about you?” Karen said. “We’ve been really worried.”

  “Fine and I’ll soon be back. Importanly, stay vigilant.”

  “Why say that now?”

  “I’ll explain more later.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Pamiers. My guess is Michel Suzman’s been playing chauffeur. You won’t like my chin. Or my eyebrows...”

  “Try me.”

  “And it’s still snowing.”

  “You take care,” Karen said as if she meant it. “Oh, and by the way, I’ve been recording more memories.”

  “I’m looking forward to hearing them. Meanwhile, you and Martine be on your guard.”

  *

  Carol next. However, not even the kind offer of home-made bouillabaisse and

  croûtons could drag me over to Elne. There was too much going on here. She quizzed me about Karen, but I promised that next time, she’d get the full story. Meanwhile, the young barman was staring at my mouth. More skin had peeled from my lower lip. It stung on the Stella Artois, but boy, did the beer taste good.

  “Been in a scrape?” he quizzed as I placed my half-finished g
lass on the counter.

  “You could say that.”

  “Well if it’s justice you want, forget it. Here was one of the Dominican inquisition’s HQ way back. Nothing’s fucking changed, the way some flics treat us.”

  I didn’t need a history lesson just then. I needed help. “You’ve a big window at the front. Did you notice anyone apart from me, get out of that Volvo over there? Male, overweight…”

  He nodded.

  “Big guy. Seemed in a hurry. Wore a short mac over a brown suit. His hat fell off and got crushed. Odd he never picked it up.” He then paused. “Want something for that lip of yours?”

  “No thanks. What was his age, roughly?”

  “Hard to tell. Wrong side of fity at a guess.”

  Too dangerous to give a name, instead I pointed to my half-full glass. “Thanks. I’ll be back for the rest.”

  *

  Within seconds of leaving the bar, I spotted what seemed to be a squashed, black hat lying by a slush-filled drain. Wishing I’d brought my police issue night-vision camera, I brushed it down, straightened out the brim. Definitely a Homburg. I sniffed the faint odour of sweat on its inner band which bore a small, embroidered label.

  Fentiman & Sons, Bond Street. London. Est.1858.

  I’d be giving them a call.

  With this souvenir and a portion of parcel tape plus my attached hairs safe in the Volvo’s boot, I returned to the Bar, swallowed the rest of my beer and, before anyone else could strike up a conversation, was heading south to Quillan, on full alert.

  I stopped at the very first garage and topped up the tank. While withdrawing the petrol’s hose, I noticed a patch of snow cleared around the boot’s lock. Scratches too, which hadn’t been there before. Perhaps Michel Suzman had been intent on burgling it and been disturbed.

  Inside the shop where I paid, a TV screen showed the region littered with stranded vehicles. So where had my middle-aged creep got to? Had there been another vehicle waiting out of sight of the Bar? One or more of the Notaire’s delectable kids?

  *