Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  *

  20:00 hours, with no other traffic in sight, and the same starry sky above winking and blinking, I drove over the speed limit through roads that had been snow-ploughed and gritted, towards Roche-les-Bains. A hunch, that was all.

  The gradual climb took me nearer that infinite diorama of sky, and the air outside stung cold on my skin when just for a moment, I let down the window. I’d not prayed since primary school - not even when faced with the worst that man can do. But now I did. Over and over as light clusters from settlements in the next valley, came into view.

  I topped up with petrol on the other side of tha spa town under the garage owner’s wary gaze, sending up a whispered prayer for Karen wherever she was, to hang on. That I. John Edward Lyon, who’d so suddenly lost the two best parts of his life - Sandra and Clive Lyon - wasn’t prepared to lose another.

  *

  The Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe’s main gates were still open, and in the middle distance, a security beam systematically strobed the wide, slushy driveway that separated the administrative block where I’d met Mgr.Besson, from the old chapel and the less striking warehouse.

  I’d had enough of electronically controlled gates and couldn’t risk driving through and becoming trapped inside the compound, so I reversed the car deep into an overgrown plot next to the boundary wall and set the alarm.

  Supper smells still seeped from those grilles set at knee height into the familiar brick wall. A basement canteen, I thought, not remotely tempted. I had Karen to find, and fast, especially as the sky was now crowded with stars, and my breath a white mist. Especially too, as some sicko had meant me to see her wheelchair by the river.

  “Can I help you?” came a young, female voice in perfect, local French. “You must be freezing.”

  It belonged to a youthful, slender nun garbed in white from top to toe, save for an oval space framing her luminous face. However, she seemed wary, continually glancing over her shoulder, as we followed the security light’s beam that lit up the silent, thawing surroundings. When it glowed behind her, I blinked. Thanked her for her concern.

  “No vow of silence, then?” I added.

  “Not between supper and retiring. Otherwise we’d all go mad. Then what would they do?”

  Our pale breaths intermingled in the night air. Hers smelt of vanilla, as if she’d just eaten ice cream. I liked her immediately. There was an openness about her even features, large, bright eyes and slightly prominent teeth. Despite the last five days, I decided to trust her.

  “I’m looking for a friend - a woman aged fifty-one with auburn hair, possibly dressed in a navy-blue trouser suit and disabled enough to have needed help to be moved. She may have been brought here any time since late morning.”

  My new companion frowned. Looked behind her again, then turned to me with a fresh focus. “Here? Why?”

  Time to stop lying. I summarised my previous visit to Monsignor Besson and Karen’s story that began during WWII, connecting it possibly to here. Also, how certain people were still peddling dangerous theories, using this Christian community as cover.” I then lowered my voice. “Have you ever read a copy of Sanctum? If so, you’ll get my drift.”

  “No, I haven’t. Besides, we’re all here to bring about a better world through love, harmony and study of the Scriptures. White Light reaches beyond Christianity and its divisions. Beyond other less forgiving beliefs.”

  “White Light?”

  She nodded then frowned again. “Are you the police?”

  I hardly looked it. Undercover maybe. Part of me wanted to answer yes, yes...

  “No.”

  She shivered, bringing her habit closer around her body. “I don’t think I can help you, except for the missing woman you mentioned.”

  “Go on.”

  “I did notice something unusual, because the threat of bad weather means all van deliveries here have to be made before 15:00 hours.”

  My heart seemed to be pole-vaulting inside my chest. “And?”

  The security light went out. Her perfect skin and the whites of her eyes glistened under the starlight. Only the image of my sister’s garden came close, when I’d once seen its first white crocuses burst into life.

  She pointed towards the brick building on her left where thankfully the ground floor and upper windows were unlit. “I was in my room around midday, finishing my essay on the enduring symbolism of the Annunciation, when I looked up as it came up the drive and turned towards the store next to the chapel. Over there.”

  “A van?”

  “Yes. An 8cwt. Peugeot, I’m sure.”

  *

  I was already running towards that same building, while she kept up alongside, holding her cumbersome habit clear of the ground with both hands.

  “What’s this place used for?” I asked, almost there.

  “Storing stuff mainly. Broken gravestones, battered Bibles etcetera...”

  All part of the clever front, I thought, reminded of Les Pins’ second tower, aware of chippings not tarmac under my boots. We were out of the security light’s radius, in a darkness where the slightest sound seemed magnified. Behind us, people were emerging from supper, huddled in small groups on the accommodation block’s steps. Their robes ghostly white in the roving strobe. Someone lit up. A line of smoke wavered in the air then dispersed.

  I’m Mireille, by the way,” she added. “Shortly to be given a saint’s name instead.”

  And I’m John Lyon. On holiday.”

  “Lucky you.”

  I don’t think so...

  *

  Dirt and loose stones replaced the chippings, slowing us up as we reached the repository that loomed up from its nest of half-grown conifers, planted presumably to shield its ugliness. The metal, double doors, like ice against my hands, were unlocked and opened without making a sound. We slipped inside, into a deeper chill and mix of smells that were nothing to do with old Bibles or graveyard memorabilia, despite their muffled shapes lining what most resembled a cave.

  Suddenly, Mireille pulled on my arm. A desperate look in her eyes.

  “Promise me one thing, Monsieur Lyon. Don’t leave me here at the Abbey, please. I’m nineteen, with the rest of my life ahead of me. But never as Sister Elisabeth. Oh no...”

  I stared at her.

  “You didn’t choose this path, then?”

  She shook her head.

  “They came to my school. Last year, just before we sat the Bac. Made it sound so wonderful. So right. Even Papa and my grandpapa approved.”

  No mother...

  “They?”

  “That fat pig, Monsignor Besson, and Father Jérôme.”

  Not an uncommon name, yet my heart slipped had down a gear. If he was the one Martine claimed to have seen conversing with Joel, then…

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Young, dark-haired, tanned like a pin-up, I suppose. The girls here love him. Not me though. His eyes are like a shark’s. Almost black, dead.”

  Jesus...

  Could he have been the parcel tape expert? Driven me all the way to Pamiers? Stole the Walther? No, not nearly heavy enough. But the attack at Les Pins? Far more likely with brother Paul too. And why hadn’t Besson mentioned him when spieling to me about the rest of his charming family? I didn’t need to ask. Things were adding up all too clearly. Even for that mystery Homburg.

  “I need to go home to Toulouse,” she pleaded again. “You’ve got to help me.” Her grip hardened. I’d never felt so torn.

  “I will,” I said, trying to fast-forward the logistics of it. “Don’t worry. But first, while I’m here, I must find my friend.”

  “Thank you!” She stretched up to plant a cold kiss on my cheek. “In return, I’ll help you. You see, Papa can’t drive, so I’d have to send his rail fare from here.” Besides,” she released my arm, “I’ve heard a rumour that no-one’s allowed to leave until...” Her voice gave out in the cold, clammy air.

  “Until what?”

  “Swearing
to sign up to the AEJ. An organisation to help Jewish kids in places where Jews aren’t welcome.”

  Hey ho...

  “Papa looked them up and isn’t happy. Yes, they’re a recognised charity, but he discovered some controversy over their record during the Occupation. When you said WWII, I didn’t make the connection.”

  Join the club, I thought, imagining an 8cwt van - the most common type - easily moving in, with a terrified Karen, inside. But why here, of all places?

  “Did you notice that same Peugeot van leaving?”

  “I did. After about twenty minutes. I’d just had a quick tutorial with Father Jérôme. I hate him even more than Monsignor Besson”

  The evening chill stroked my bones. “You’re joking?”

  “I’m not. He’s weird. So quiet. Just stares at you.”

  “And the van driver? Passengers?

  “Too far away to see, I’m sorry.” She paused then sniffed. “Can you smell diesel?”

  “Now I can.”

  “It’s over here. Do you have a torch?”

  “Damned battery’sused up. I should have bought another, but…”

  “Don’t worry. I always keep one handy because they’re so stingy with lights here. Especially in the corridors. And,” she whispered, “I bet Besson’s been spying on us.”

  Her mini-torch’s narrow beam picked out a glossy, black pool leaking between the floor’s rough stone slabs. I bent down to savour the even more distinct whiff of. diesel.

  “Fresh too,” I said, straightening up. “Maybe another one came in.”

  Mireille then passed me her torch. Almost immediately I noticed something else, small and solitary on a scratched refectory table. A single pearl stud earring.

  Good God.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Just about.”

  For it was surely one of two that I’d helped Karen set in place only that morning. I scoured the rest of that table’s old wood. No blood. Nothing else. Had she removed it deliberately for someone to find? Had she lain on this hard, cold slab? Been tortured, drugged, then taken way to be killed? Or had someone else left it as a cruel taunt?

  “I think this belongs to my missing friend,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Lord.”

  Without caring, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled. “Karen? “Are you here?”

  My appeal echoed in my head and that gloomy dump, as I willed myself to pick out any other sign of her earlier presence.

  Nothing.

  I led Mireille, reluctant White Light novice towards the double doors, wondering if Herman’s head had also been in that van? Anything was possible.

  *

  “Hang on,” I said, suddenly recognising something else stll close to my mind. A metal trunk whose shape and paint damage seemed identical to the one I’d found in the second tower at Les Pins. Closer inspection showed the lettering on top had been scraped away.

  “This is old,” observed Mireille. “My uncle had the same while in the army in Algeria”

  “Let’s take a look,” I said. “Ready? One, two, three…” But when we both lifted the heavy lid, not only were we faced by a gaping void, but that same, unmistakeable smell of death.

  *

  I closed the store’s doors behind us, convinced that an original plan to capture and hide Karen dead or alive had probably gone awry. That she had, despite severe limitations, put up so much of a fight in Les Pins, her captor or captors had brought her to this Abbaye Saint-Saint Polycarpe to shake off a suspicious follower or pick up more personnel.

  But if so, why here? And could Saint Jérôme be involved?

  I stared upwards. The universe above our heads had rarely seemed so beautiful, so detached. The bejewelled Ice Queen waiting...

  “Did you ever see a youngish, blond Belgian guy around the place, asking questions, being nosy?” I then quizzed my companion as we kept close to the neighbouring chapel’s walls out of the security light’s mobile glare. “Short, sturdily built? He was my friend’s devoted nurse.”

  “Was?”

  Careful.

  “Is, sorry.”

  “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

  “Or has a Joel Dutroux ever been mentioned?”

  Her frown didn’t last long.

  “Joel Dutroux? Yes. It was awful. He tried to kill himself by jumping off the Chapel roof. When that didn’t work, he almost gassed himself in his room. Didn’t Monsignor Besson say?”

  He wouldn’t…

  “No. When was all this?”

  “Let me see. In 1985, The last year he was here, so I heard.”

  My pulse was rioting. I stopped walking. Nothing to do with an empty stomach because that senior cleric who’d seemed so liberal with certain information, had held back twice as much. So what influence might Joel’s priestly brother have exerted on him? I wished now I’d given him more to think about at the Café des Étoiles...

  “Joel was my friend’s brilliant cook,” I said. “Actually, lots of things...”

  “Is he dead? Mireille stared up at me.

  “Sadly, yes.”

  She crossed herself. “God rest his soul.”

  “I’m sure He will. Now then, what about your belongings?”

  “Please just give me two minutes.”

  “My car’s outside, to the left of the gates. A grey Volvo. Hurry.”

  She sprinted away, and just ten minutes later, was sitting next to me dressed in jeans and a shiny, red mac. One of three full carrier bags perched on her lap.

  *

  I took the mountain road up and away from Roche-Les-Bains, following the thinnest thread of logic that might decide whether Karen lived or died.

  “Please take a look at this,” my passenger began to rummage in the carrier bag. “I found it behind a few old books left behind in Besson’s study. The rest was pretty much cleared out...”

  I bet it was.

  I glanced sideways at the plain cassette tape as she read out its title.

  “Pierre Laval, Vichy’s Prime Minister, rousing his homeland against Jews in the spring of 1942.” She looked up at me. “Proof if you need it.”

  I should have smiled at her resourcefulness but couldn’t. I was still too choked up thinking of Karen.

  “Thanks, pet. I’m really grateful for what you’ve done. I just hope that from today, you begin to live the life you want.”

  She squeezed my arm. “I will, Monsieur Lyon, and it’ll all be because of you.”

  Chapter 49. Karen.

  For my sixth birthday, Vader rigged me up a kaleidoscope in which, depending upon how I held it, tiny enamelled fragments would form endless, colour-filled images. Here a forest, there a river, and now, as if I was inside the same long box, being turned and turned this way and that. Just another particle in a crazy, random world.

  Then Christian had broken it in two because he’d wanted the same. How sad and mean was that, considering he’d had a go-kart, fishing gear and God knows what else? Never mind the big, new Renault when it arrived at Mas Camps. He’d said sorry, of course, and brought me a bag of lollipops to compensate, but I never forgot that sudden crack of plywood under his hammer. Colours scattering on our black-tiled kitchen floor.

  *

  My hands and bare feet were completely numb. My navy-blue suit way too thin. I was also barely breathing to keep my lungs as free as possible from that killing night. But my open eyes still focussed on Venus in the small hope I could connect with her bright, burning energy.

  Someone with half a brain cell would hopefully have found my pearl earring and then what? Taken it to a gendarmerie or commissariat? I’d not thought of that scenario, only of John. Might he have found it in that dark, strange-smelling place and set off for here? And was Herman looking down on me, with forgiveness in his heart, willing me to live? Tell me, Venus, tell me. Also, about Christian who stole our Moeder’s bracelet for that Blumenthal parasite. Was I supposed to pity her? To hide her? I didn’t think so. And what
of Joop, hunting me down the years. Was he my only brother alive, or had Christian’s heart kept beating too? Even Vader’s at eighty-seven wasn’t impossible. As for poor Edwige, horse meat had then been cheap and very popular...

  So, who’d be trekking up this bloody mountain to see whether I’d still got a pulse or not? The younger, thorough one, always checking things twice, three times? Or the elder sibling, quiet and contemplative until regularly driven to explosive rages and other more secretive crimes? Either, although at that very moment, the silence around me was as impenetrable as our dear, dead Moeder’s eyes.

  *

  Awake again but shutting down. Not in a spectacular way, but organ by organ, muscle by muscle. Cell by cell. Sure, I could recite by rote the subtle, degenerative process of death, but Venus was up there, willing me with all my might, to focus on living.

  Yet why had there been the faintest trace of incense in that freezing place where we’d stopped? And in the van quite a different smell growing stronger and stronger? Rotting meat, that was it. During last summer’s heat, Martine and I came across a dead doe amongst my pines. Eviscerated by some predator, coated in black flies, she must have lain there for days. Poor, innocent creature...

  Just like me.

  I managed to stretch out my right arm, to strain my numb fingers to their limits, but instead of snow, they met something hard. A rock of some kind, maybe. But a closer look showed a rock with eyebrows, a nose, and beneath it, an open cavity with no tongue.

  Jésu Christ...

  Had Herman been here with me all along?

  My scream must have drowned the sound of oncoming feet crunching through the snow. The followers were behind me, knowing bloody well I couldn’t turn my head.

  “Shut your face,” said whoever.

  “Give it another half hour,” the other one chipped in, with that same, deeper voice. “That’ll do the trick. Oh, and I think our little Belge here, might appreciate some even closer company. Here we go.”

  Before I could decide who was tormenting me, that figure all in black grabbed that dead, blond hair and dropped the weight on my chest. “There.” He brushed snow from his gloves. “How cosy.”