Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Where?”

  I smell his sweat, his terror. Normally arousing, but my left foot’s bandage is adrift. Where three, pretty toes had been, is dark, clotted blood.

  “In a tree.”

  I’ve always enjoyed a joke.

  “Which one? Along here?”

  “I remember little cones, jabbing into my skin.”

  “A Cypress?”

  “Yes, like those at Les Pins.” I gesture towards the unseen Mediterranean.

  “Try that one.”

  3.50 p.m.

  *

  Vertigo.

  I know the signs. He’s flung down his stupid life-jacket and climbs the nearest tree’s sticky bark, pushing its bushy branches clear of the trunk. He’s too slow. His legs shaking. Then he looks down at me.

  “You’re lying. As ever. You duped me with all that disabled paraphernalia. No wonder Dr. Baerck, Thea Oudekerk and the rest weren’t welcome. Herman had told her how much better you were getting, hadn’t he? Innocent, hapless Hermann. And what did your other minions know, I wonder?

  He lands in the dirt and picks himself up. Moeder’s special little knife should be in my hand. Martine said I was never was any judge of character.

  “So you craved all that cash for yourself,” he shouts. “After almost forty-four years. Not to spend, oh no. Nothing as normal as that. Just to keep, because it was Joop’s, whom you hated.”

  He stares at me. The real crazy.

  “Only the USA can provide the best treatment for my back. It’s expensive, but I want to run and ride again, but you wouldn’t understand that.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your back. Robert Taillot knew that, too. Poor bastard.”

  Five minutes left...

  Time to hit back.

  “By the way, did you notice that delightful novice nun being dumped at sea from a helicopter? Five bags it took, so Paul Suzman said in the van.”

  My ex-flic is unrecognisable.

  “Mireille?”

  “Too right. She turned up for Joel’s funeral. Bad move. Thea Oudekerk’s next if I get half a chance.”

  “You’re deranged.”

  But he’s the one out of control. On his knees, pummelling the ground, groaning like some wounded boar. If only I’d got Moeder’s knife that made such short work of Herman’s soft, dairy skin. If only...

  Run, Liesbetje. Run...

  I do, sheltering among a colony of ancient, black poplars, away from his noise and the tombstone grey sky overhead.

  *

  I’m eight years’ old again. My young, pumping heart in my mouth. Arms and legs aching, watching Daniel Boussioux float away down the river with his two eyeless sockets fixed on Heaven.

  “What the Hell’s that noise?” Yells the scumbag who refused to save me. He doesn’t mean distant sirens, but the rustle of scrub; dead wood cracking as our hunters who’ve broken cover, close in.

  Chapter 63. John.

  Five bags it took…

  How could I ever forget?

  Here they come…

  Apart from the four male Suzmans kitted out in Nazi uniforms, Joop Ryjkel and the hunting party’s three females wore fur-trimmed leather with pilots’ caps covering their ears, and heavy-duty boots. Marie Suzman and Sophie Blumenthal carrying new rifles, while Alize Saporo bore that same S&W45. All after the loot.

  Where the Hell was the law?

  Meanwhile, I’d recognized the others and their weapons, save for old Ricard, lurking in the shadows, while saintly Father Jérôme sported what could have been Herman’s new Glock, though God knew how.

  The cut on my neck from Liesbet’s finger nail, still stung like buggery as hushed chanting grew louder, more menacing.as the purposeful troupe passed me by, kicking up dust near my legs with their booted feet as they went. Except that bulky shit who’d dumped me in Pamiers, holding the same Walther 22 in one hand, my missing notebook in another. He stopped, swastika glistening. Skin basted in sweat.

  The friendly, neighbourhood Notaire, and my life-jacket and Berretta too far away.

  “Your notebook makes fascinating reading, Monsieur,” he purred. “And I’m sure we can agree a monthly sum to keep the contents secret…”

  “Bent merde.”

  Too late,

  His sudden blast to each of my ankles was beyond agony and, like a boulder, I was falling. Dust blinding my eyes, filling my mouth as more hot, sticky blood looped from my wounds while he and the clan, including his hard-faced daughter, began beatng the surrounding scrub with their rifles and sticks.

  Just then, another male voice with a distinct Dutch accent, rose above the din.

  “Come on, Liesbetje, my precious little night owl? Where are you? I’m your dear brother. The one who showed you more affection than the other, remember?”

  This must be some sick mistake?

  The noise around him stopped as he prodded me with a shiny, new rifle butt. Christian Maurits Ryjkel who’d thieved his older brother’s identity, peered down at me. Those veins and same large, acrylic teeth again on full show.

  ““So, my nosy visitor, where’s our thief gone? Tell me now, or else.”

  Silence deepened around fake Father Diderot; the sonorous, slightly-stooped Dr. Kurt Gamelin. His back on this occasion, straight as a board.

  With no conscience, I’d nothing to lose…

  “That way,” I pointed towards the first black cluster of poplars. “Child murderer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard.”

  But other, more important matters held his attention, and within seconds, La Chasse began in earnest.

  *

  Having found his sister struggling to run in that cumbersome, black skirt, Christian Ryjkel pushed her over and, grabbing what remained of her feet, hauled his prey away from that dense, dark copse. She screamed at me to save her. But why should I? Unarmed, half-dead myself, trying to staunch my blood with whatever lay to hand. Coarse grass. Last year’s leaves. A wish and a prayer. All useless.

  ‘Look at her,’ I told myself. ‘It’ll be the last time.’

  I did, at that once perfect skin ruptured by grazes; hair shredded and tangled. She kicked out, blaspheming until her beloved brother booted her in the teeth. And again for luck.

  “Once you’d fastened your little claws on that four million, you bribed Daniel Boussioux to waste us, didn’t you?” He shrieked “His greedy, little night owl? He’d heard Joop call you that often enough…”

  “And you must have clung to Blumenthal like slime to the inside of a fosse septique.,” she mumbled. “Even working at Les Chanterelles and helping with the tunnel massacre didn’t put her off. She’d already sniffed rich pickings.”

  At she spoke, a spray of reddened teeth left her mouth, but her beloved sibling didn’t reply. Instead, reached inside his breeches’ pocket…

  “My knife!” She spat more then blood. “Give it to me!”

  “Wrong. It was Moeder’s, but hey, all yours. Again.” He opened out the blade and flung it beyond her reach.Then tore those pretty, silver stars from their mother’s bracelet and scattered them in the dust.

  The pain in my ankles grew worse. My vision, too, but I had to focus to hear every punishing word, egged on by his eager, fellow chasseurs.

  “Weren’t Herman and Robert Taillot lucky, hein? At least I only suffered a fractured skull. But Daniel Boussioux? When your mission with him was accomplished, you shot both his eyes out with Joop’s rifle. The one he’d hidden from Lieutenant Espaza. Remember how fearful we were at his visit? But not you. Too late, Sophie Blumenthal saw you drag him into the Bayrou. Pretty little Liesbetje, but really as strong as an ox. And if you’d not thieved that rifle and his Spreewerk before we left for Saint-Antoine, he might have survived.”

  The other hunters began baying like wolves.

  “You can’t bend me,” she spluttered. “This isn’t the old days.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “Change the record.”<
br />
  “Arddig Liesbet?” he wheedled, as a hush descended.

  “Never.”

  A curse, then slow hand-clapping began…

  “Perhaps your new friend here, needs to know more about my little sister. According to her Rotterdam doctor, there was a hairline fracture in just one lumbral vertebra. She’d soon have been mobile, but not our cunning little night owl. Oh no. And eighteen months ago, before transplanting herself in Les Pins, she pushed our beloved Moeder down the stairs. Did you know that? Clever, kind Moeder who’d realised her true nature. Who’d seen her blood-spattered clothes after shooting young Boussioux. But I bided my time, waiting for the right moment. And there you were at her burial in Rotterdam. Your fakery made me puke.”

  The handclapping continued, quickening.

  “That was you?”

  “Ja.” As he switched the rifle to his left hand and withdrew a black, wartime pistol from inside his sheepskin pocket.

  “My Spreewerk!”

  “Never.yours.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “Ten seconds to make amends, Nighthawk, or I’ll forge the signature on your bank card. Take your savings and the rest of your fucking toes off. And that’ll just be the start. Incidentally,” glancing at me, his tone sickly-sweet. “Liesbet Ryjkel sends her love. Thank you, Monsieur Lyon for phoning me at Les Platanes. As for your fabricated friend’s query, my answer’s no. And by the way, dear Liesbet, I hope you appreciated those photos I sent of you jumping ‘The Jungle’ fence on your useless horse. Made enough money from it, didn’t you, fraudster?”

  He’d been there all along…

  Louder, faster clapping drowned her moans, accompanying the count-down.

  “One, two, three...”

  She turned her head towards me. Blumenthal’s shawl already in the dirt.

  “… seven, eight, nine…”

  More strands of shining blood slid from his sister’s mouth. Another pleading look before a single shot to her heart spread her out like so much litter. He spat on her face, opened his fly and pissed up and down her remains before pulling his silent prize up the track and out of sight, as three crows perched in a nearby conifer, vanished from sight.

  *

  I sicked up again, all over myself. The smell of it bringing another lurch. This was Death Row, alright, in filth, stink and madness. It was then, wanting to live to see Carol again, that I hauled myself to where his victim had lain, and retrieved that deadly knife. Making sure I was alone, I collapsed its razor-sharp blade to slip it deep inside the side pocket of my borrowed trousers. Next, I retrieved my life-jacket, hiding the Berretta before almost passing out.

  Just then, I recognized a crop-haired woman in a crumpled, yellow cagoule step out from the scrub. Martine Mannion, gripping that same loaned, polished rifle. Her black eyes wild as those of a horse freed from captivity.

  “Where’s that nut job?” She roared. “You must have seen her!”

  “Don’t waste your time. It’s all over”

  “Who did it? You?”

  “Christian. Hans Ryykel. Sole survivor of October 7th 1942.”

  Silence, save for crackling branches and those other voices fading.

  “Holy shit. He should get a fucking medal.”

  She glanced to her left, where the uphill track diminished, then at the blood-smeared ground by her feet. A filthy, trampled shawl.

  “This her stuff?”

  “Just go while you can, Martine.”.

  “Why? I don’t need to be on the run. I was only obeying her orders.” She shifted the rifle to hold it with both hands across her body.

  “I didn’t mean that. It’s too dangerous here. For us both.”

  She stared at my blood and vomit. The splintered ankle bones. She set down her weapon, tore both arms from that same cagoule which had hidden Herman’s head, to wrap each one tight around my wreckage. Her breath hot, rapid as inch by inch, those sleeves turned dull red.

  “That’ll do till the flics get here. My Saab’s down by the road. Not that I’ll be seeing it again.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” Her face came closer to mine. “It was that freak who made me pull Herman towards the river. He was still pleading with his eyes and shouting some strange prayer, but was she moved? Never. She gave him chloroform. A lot. Quick, it was. Then worked that knife on his busy tongue, and the rest...”

  “His mother must know why.”

  “You tell her. I trust you. Apparently, Sophie Blumenthal told Herman she’d seen the greedy kid drag a heavy package and spade up here just before leaving for Holland. The night too dark to reveal exactly where she’d dug. I bet she’s tried a few times herself ince then. Even egged him on to find it, saying they’d be Jews together.”

  All supposition. Yet. despite my pain, I had to keep her talking. Christian Ryjkel could return at any minute.

  “His new Glock?”

  “Mad bitch forgot it was still on him.”

  “As for Joel, think about it. He handed over bits of your boss’s hard drive with all its clues, to his hated family. Then what? Kills himself for his disloyalty.”

  She paused. Still on a deadly wire.

  “You’re right. And the verdict. What a fucking tragedy.”

  “Did either Herman or Joel ever mention this place?”

  “Herman said he’d seen other holes dug way beyond Les Cicadas. I’d warned him to shut up. But no. Too open and honest he was. And afterwards, if you please, I had to pretend the Suzman sons must have used my car to take him up to the Gorges de Salerne. To cut him up there and get rid. Christ, how I had to act it out with her. Even down to those sodding grasses.”

  “When they ddn’t match those from Les Pins I knew things weren’t straightforward...”

  “Straightforward? She was off her head. Couldn’t you tell?”

  I didn’t want to…

  “So, them following you when I first turned up at Les Pins, was a coincidence?”

  “Till they realised you were on the case.”

  Suddenly, Martine moved the old rifle’s barrel towards her mouth. My training on how to disarm a potential suicide part of somewhere too far away. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t move. Just as with rookie cop Ben Rogers in Sherwood Forest.

  “I gave them Herman’s head, didn’t I?” Her voice wobbled as her fingers tightened around the trigger. “My one fucking disobedience. I took it from the freezer and hid it in in that other unlocked tower for Michel Suzman to help himself while his sons roughed you up. I’m sorry about that, Monsieur Lyon. I really am. Why I’ve not mentioned your involvement to anyone. But did I care about her? No chance. I hated her for what she’d made me do. How we had to act our roles while she went off on her obsessive little visits.”

  Was I hearing things?

  “She had a car?”

  “You bet.”

  “A Deux Chevaux, if you please. No special adaptations, and common as muck here n France..”

  Serrado was right, and until then, I’d buried Lieutenant Vollard’s news about navy-blue fibres.

  “Midnight blue?”

  A nod.

  “But you were her driver. That card in your Saab…”

  “Official trips only, not undercover ones. Herman knew why she used it and wanted to follow whenever she went, but I said not if you value your life. As for Taillot, the flics think she drove herself to Puylaurens and copied how Paul Suzman had mutilated Marie Suzman’s ex in the past.”

  ‘Dog meat. All cut up, cut, cut, cut…

  “She didn’t have to kick his dog to death,”

  “But had to be rid, so she said. A sex pest since meeting her in Holland. All lies. He knew too much. Capitaine Serrado told me at Port-Vendres before going after that Transit van. But no way can I answer stuff about my father. Never. And God knows where he is.”

  Her lower lip trembled.

  “What about Chantelle?”

  A shrug.

&
nbsp; “History.”

  She cocked her head. “Hear those sirens? Closer now.”

  “Come here,” I held out my arms. “You’ll be safe with me.”

  “I don’t want to be safe. I came here to kill that monster, but that’s been done. And now, like Herman, I’ll be a missing person for ever.”

  She shoved the end of the slighty rusted barrel deep into her throat.

  “No!” I yelled. “She’s not worth it!”

  Ben Rogers all over again....

  I tried reaching her, but she was gone. Just like her father and Dr. Karen Fürst D.Mus. C.H.K. Cold-Hearted Killer and more besides.

  *

  Bloodied chunks of her brain clung to me and my abandoned life-jacket and there they stayed, even as I inched forward to cover what remained of her face with her sleeveless cagoule. Retrieve that old rifle and hide it beneath me. All the while, those same sirens’ growing louderr.

  What next? Suppose Christian Ryjkel, all fired up, should re-appear to act out his older brother’s grisly ‘dead meat’ mantra? But for now, I was irrelevant. My task to watch and listen, for the future, if there was one.

  Was this it? In the form of a stooped, white-bearded figure emerging from behind the wooded bank? I took in the battered trilby skewed on his wrinkled head, and him cocking his hunting rifle skyward, firing in all directions, killing those same three crows who’d returned to their former perch.

  I shuffled my butt backwards, gripping my Berretta. The Pasdados were right. Another nutter...

  “Where is she?” he rasped in advanced Catalan.” Or I’ll sort the rest of your legs out too...”

  “Who?”

  He pointed the weapon at my calves with a steadiness to be proud of.

  “Liesbet Ryjkel, who also butchered Jeanne Tremblant then chucked her in her well.”

  “Monsieur Boussioux?”

  “It is. And little Liesbet?”

  I gestured to my right, where poplar and cypress plantations were thicker, that track narrowing. The crow killer scuttled along it, his rifle again pop-popping as he went. Eighty plus and fit as a flea. Soon to be disappointed,

  As for me, I was gasping in agony, telling myself. grown men don’t cry...

  *

  Because Christian Ryjkel was still out of sight, he missed Sophie Blumenthal wielding her new rifle, barge into the ‘Black Bitch’ and snatch her revolver.