Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “You helped Christian sell his soul”” She sceamed. “He was a good man before he met you and Papa P.”

  “Too good for you then, greedy Yid.”

  Ricard Suzman, almost comical in his over-sized Nazi uniform, dropped his rifle, attempting to pull both fighters apart. The effort made him groan and grip his chest before toppling to the ground next to the dead crows. His second wife whose shiny rosary beads still winked against her throat, disappeared behind the bank, while the younger, stronger survivor dropped her old weapon to wrap her leather-gloved hands around that hated Notaire’s neck until his throat rattle ceased.

  She then straightened and, hearing Christian Ryjkel’s voice, set off towards it, while the remainder of the shooting party, including cowardly Jules and Paul Suzman scrambling away into the scrub. Only then did I notice the Pastado couple standing motionless, some way off. Their shocked faces turned my way. One of their dogs, probably smelling blood, strained at its leash towards me and Martine.

  Next, came two muffled gunshots and at that point, with the pain from my broken ankles still overpowering, I missed the tall, rangy figure of Christian Ryjkel, until his shadow crossed my eyes.

  “Your turn. Monsieur,” smiling those same, manufactured teeth, “to take me to the precise spot.”

  Shit…

  “If you think your sister would have let me in on her big secret, you didn’t know her,” I mumbled. “She lied to you and everyone. Especially herself.”

  “Move.” He shoved his rifle butt into the small of my back. “Or you’ll be joining Mannion over there...”

  Carol...

  We’re back in Gran’s garden, with my pretend gun - a length of stick - and cowboy hat, whule Indians lurk behind a laurel bush in the corner. Outnumbered, she screams for help until one by one, they emerge, arms raised...

  Now, forty-two years later, my right hand gripped a real, loaded Berretta while the Dutch man’s attention was distracted by the wail of sirens getting louder. I raised its barrel and pulled the trigger.

  *

  Groans and curses as Ryjkel’s ragged footsteps receded while two more bloated crows carrying a flap of skin apiece, flew skywards.

  I must have passed out. But nothingness slowly became light, and in my mind, some half-remembered beach appeared, where luminous, white seagulls looped and cried against a moody sky. Where my mother and father, dressed as if from years ago, stood together, smiling. Beckoning me to join them.

  EPILOGUE.

  September 12th I986. 08:42 hours.

  Often at The Grange, I lie awake, haunted by that Bayrou river; the oppressive stillness broken by rustling bamboos, bursts of rifle fire, the shriek of a startled bird. Mireille Petsha’s remains falling into the sea. Or my plunge from that roaring helicopter into deep snow to save a woman I’d loved.

  Since WPC Alison McConnell’s visits, these terrors have become less frequent, and of all my ex-colleagues from the Force, only she’s forgiven my criminal lapse of judgement in France and shown her face.

  Four ‘happy’ pills a day are helping, and thanks to the library here, I’ve begun reading poetry. T.S. Eliot’s ‘Burial Ground’ speaks to me the most. His first three lines in particular... ‘April is the cruellest month.’

  So it proved. Not least because of Chernobyl, and neither Carol nor George have yet been in touch.

  I often pester my doctor about to going back to my flat, driving my car, being normal again, but his reply “when we feel you’re ready,’ never varies. Worse is when my pulse quickens in fear every time the door opens or my phone rings.

  As it does now.

  *

  “A Brishen Petsha, from Toulouse,” says our new receptionist into my new, brick-like Motorola phone. “His accent’s strange. Shall I transfer him to your new toy?”

  “Please.”.

  I listen hard to hear the smallest trace of Mireille in her grandfather’svoice, but there’s only age and grief. He hopes my health is improving. How he’s wanted to meet me ever since the May trial in Perpignan. But with still nothing of his beloved only granddaughter to bury, and his son – her father – also dead from a recent stroke, is too heart-broken to travel.

  In short, stumbling sentences, the widower recounts how little she and her late parents even his own wife, had known of his traumatic past, and why for her, the Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe had seemed a safe bet. His remorse over her abduction from Port-Vendres by the Suzman brothers, equals that after Dansac.

  “But you wait, Monsieur Lyon. I’m not finished yet.”

  His tone softens.

  “I’ll never forget your kindness in taking Mireille to the nearest station and paying her fare home. How you’d called her ‘pet.’ She found that so amusing. Pet, Petsha, you see...”

  In shaky French I explain it’s a term of endearment in Nottinghamshire. Then add I should never have asked for her help.

  “She was born a willing child. Do not blame yourself. You’re a good person. She thought so too. And everyone who heard you speak so movingly in Perpignan, forgave your innocent loyalty to that evil woman”

  I can’t believe that, neither will Thea Oudekerk who’s also not yet found closure.

  “Please listen carefully, Monsieur Petsha,” I say instead. “Here is how I intend tol make amends.”

  *

  I describe in the greatest detail where that waterproof parcel and its almost vanished white angel is buried. How the four million francs lie too deep for any metal detector or other scavenger to find.

  “All yours, if you want it.”

  “Thank you, Monsieur. Make no mistake, it will enable those cowardly Suzmans to be brought to justice and help rid our land of hatred. That way, Mireille, Herman, Joel and those other innocent victims, won’t have died in vain.”

  All he can say, but it’s enough.

  *

  Afterwards, from a pouch behind my wheelchair, I extract a file of numbered press cuttings entitled ‘The Nighthawk Case’ as it’s still known. Despite my shrink’s theory that Liesbet Ryjkel’s loveless, abused childhood was the cause of everything, she comes last.

  1.Before the Trial, Daniel Boussioux’s exhumed remains showed the damage to both his eye sockets were caused by two serrated cartridges from Joop Rykel’s stolen rifle. The same which Martine Mannion used on herself.

  2.Smiling André Besson who’d taken Girard Mannion with him to die at the bottom of a junk-strewn gorge. Why else had Besson revealed so much about Joel and the Suzmans and gone along with my inept impersonation of his influential friend? He’d seen the end of the road.

  3.Pablo Lopez, half in half out of shadow, cigarette between his lips. The French Foreign Minister enabled his extradition to Spain where he’ll be staring at his homeland through cell bars until he too, dies.

  4.The opportunist Sophie Blumenthal, shot in the head by Christian Ryjkel as she’d fled the hunt.

  5.He, with an untreated fractured skull since October10th 1942, and my shot to his left shoulder, the clever mpersonator hanged himself in his custody cell the day before the Trial opened.

  6.Grizzled, multi-faceted Robert Taillot who’d known Liesbet Ryjkel had never been disabled. Who’d strayed too far into her deadly web and paid in blood, just like Herman, courtesy of that same, busy pearl-handled knife...

  7. Alize Saporo, spared a possible War Crimes Trial along with Lopez, was cremated along with Ricard Suzman. No memorials.

  8.Three generations of Suzmans stare out, boxed into two rows. Jowly Michel, felled by a coronary on his second day in the witness box, before admitting the whereabouts of Herman Oudekerk’s head. His surviving brood with their cold eyes, still untraced, who still might have my notebook. Why I pester staff here for a gun to keep near my bed. To no avail.

  9. My two unlikely saviours, Brishen Petsha and Capitaine Serrado. Following my full confession, their testimonies spared me Perpignan’s Mailloles prison on a charge of impeding the course of justice. With my Nottingham lawyer, they’d p
resented a solid defence. How I’d fallen into Liesbet Ryjkel’s psychotic clutches. How a search of my police career found my long service exemplary.

  10. Martine Mannion who’d stayed true to me yet too long denied Herman’s mother her dearest wish.

  11.Thea Oudekerk’s haunted features fix on mine. She will never forgive me. Why should she? Perhaps my punishment is that although I’m now here in my home city, I may never walk properly again.

  12. A bare grave, save for three crows perched on its dry soil. At my request, plus two hundred eagerly-snatched francs, the Pastados had let Liesbet Ryjkel occupy a corner near their old cabane at Mas Camps.

  Where I must leave her.

  My room door opens.

  Gemma, one of my carers, pulls a blue airmail envelope from her overall pocket.

  “For you, Mr. Lyon. Just arrived.”

  A Belgian stamp. An Antwerp post mark. My address accurate. I tear it open, unfold the flimsy paper inside.

  De Blauw Haus

  23, Herftsraat. Antwerp.

  10/9/’87

  Dear Mr Lyon,

  I have forgiven your lies. I realise you were in an impossible situation.

  However, it is only now I can write to you because, as a widow with no other family, I can no longer bear my burden alone. My beloved Herman suffered the most terrible death in part due to my greed. I will explain.

  I knew he’d found out about Dr. Fürst’s hidden money and I pressurised him into finding it, despite knowing others were also leaning on him. You see, my lover had just left me, and although living in this big house, which I inherited, I have struggled a long time to make ends meet. I saw Dr. Fürst’s fortune as a way of securing mine and Herman’s futures. Is that so terrible?

  Please do not make contact. There is nothing left to say, except that scheming woman did not deserve you. And I did not deserve Herman.

  In sorrow and guilt,

  Thea Oudekerk

  Still in shock, I switch on Radio 4 for the latest news and listen with less attention than usual. However, as the newsreader begins, this bright, cheerful room seems to become darker.

  I sit up and take notice.

  “A report has just reached us from Rotterdam that a young, so far unidentified British national and her toddler daughter, have been found drowned in the city’s harbour. Local fishermen returning with their early catch, made the discovery. Dutch police suspect possible foul play and are anxious to establish their identity and trace any known contacts before next of kin can be informed.”

  “Shall I switch it off now?” asks Gemma, checking up on me. But her voice is drowned by the sudden din of rushing water filling my head, and the vision of an empty, red-handled wheelchair carried along in the flow, twisting this way and that. Of bubbles rising and vanishing…

  Bloodlines

  Sally Spedding

  Copyright © Sally Spedding 2018

  The right of Sally Spedding to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.

  To our special friends in France, Craig, Jackie, Orla and Aoife Eady.

  “Here pity is alive when it is dead.”

  Dante. ’The Divine Comedy.’ (Inferno XX.28 )

  PROLOGUE.

  “Just keep your breathing steady,” says the woman standing over the straining, screaming mother-to-be, in her final stages of labour. “This won’t hurt. Giving birth’s the most natural thing in God’s world, even if you did sin so young.”

  The sufferer wonders how having a suction cap shoved up inside her is natural, and why him? Surely, it’s the Devil who’s got her into this mess, and his servants making her pay? Besides, this particular preacher’s a fine one to talk. Her and her rattling rosary, the glinting crucifix, when all that’s come from her barren body is pale piss and hard, little turds deliberately left bobbing in the wc. A warped carte de visite if ever there was. And like a leopard prowling for prey, she’s invited herself over to the house yet again,

  Somewhere a tap drips, and the sun spools in between the curtains, showing up underlying bones in that damaged face as she strokes the victim’s arm, cooing and singing in turn. A carol from L’Enfance du Christ, usually saved for Christmas, but since her church choir has produced a tape recording, ‘The Shepherd’s Farewell’ is partout.

  “That’s hardly appropriate,” comes another voice. The oldest, most experienced female in the room. “Please stop!” But that won’t make any difference to the victim whose waters have long since broken. A prisoner in this ungenerous bed. Her gaolers too close. Too keen to please God.

  All at once, a scuffle begins. The scrape of chairs on the tiles, the slap of skin on skin while a certain toxic scent wafts nearby and the birthing bed judders against the wall. Its bloated occupant yells that she’s dying, as each of her wrists is strapped too tight to the bedstead. The smell of wet rubber overpowering.

  “Help me! Help!”

  But the curtains are slapped together and in that darker light, two eager hands push up the top sheet and prise those reluctant, trembling knees apart.

  “It’s coming,” breathes the one whose black-varnished nails resemble so many death-watch beetles. “Holy Mary, blessed Virgin, it’s coming…”

  “Push! Now!” Urges the old voyeur. “Push!”

  But there’s no breath left and her young heart’s giving up because that fire between between her legs is too big. The suck and pull against stinging flesh too deep. Then the eventual flop and plop of something huge landing on the sheet beyond her. The stink of stored blood.

  *

  “Well, well, enfin. God has given you a fine boy,” smiles the singer with ice in her voice, severing his bloodied cord with a kitchen knife before crossing herself.

  “Deo Gratias.”

  This is the signal for a third woman, younger, prettier, much plumper than the other, to slip into the birthing room, shedding her padded layers, one by one.

  1. John.

  Friday 11th March. 1987.1.10 p.m.

  A windy day in Pembrokeshire just south of the Landsker Line, with my new VW Golf bumping in and out of unavoidable potholes on a narrow, frost-savaged road snaking west towards Fishguard. The worst ones causing DI Alison McConnell, my former Nottingham colleague, to lurch against me.

  “Sorry,” she smiled after the latest jolt, while re-adjusting her seat belt. “I don’t normally chuck myself at men like that.”

  I laughed, deliberately hunting down another one..

  Her tone tightened.

  “What did we agree, John? No unnecessary risks.”

  She was right.

  Since leaving Nottingham’s General Hospital then The Grange - an upmarket nuthouse - the wait for this new car with automatic transmission, had seemed endless. But for many reasons - the most important one sitting beside me - I must persevere. Stick to my physio’s orders. Lay off the St. Émilion and generally behave myself. And right now, this car represented a freedom I’d feared lost forever, having bern shot in both ankles in the eastern Pyrenees a year ago. Sucked into a scheming woman’s crazy world, believing her lies. Almost dying for it.

  Alison was the right woman, but - as my jealous, ex-colleague DC Ben Rogers had so bitterly stated in his suicide note - young enough to be my daughter. Nevertheless, she’d been my only regular visitor to The Grange, where his name had been off-limits.

  During more public visiting times, she’d shared her latest policing news, but between tea and supper - left to our own devices - she’d brought her own life-enhancing treats. A possible future together away from the Midlands, and what better way to begin it than a week far from Nottingham’s mean streets, in idyllic surroundings with someone I’d fancied from the moment she’d walked into my briefing session three years ago?

  “Wait till you see Coed Glas,” she added, patting my left thigh before returning the neatly folded map of west Wales to the top
of the dashboard. “Talk about out of this world. My folks stayed there for their honeymoon. Didn’t I tell you?”

  A hidden blush burnt the base of my neck.

  “Nope.” As an overgrown hawthorn hedge scraped my side of the car. “Setting a precedent, I wonder?”

  She laughed. I loved the sound of it. Nothing like the way Dr. Karen Fürst had laughed on those rare occasions in Saint-Antoine de Bayrou. I glanced at her shining face. Half-Welsh, half-Scottish with the Celtic combination of blue eyes and brown hair. A natural vitality, too. Rare anywhere.

  I was a lucky man. But still nagging thought persisted. For how much longer would she put up with a borderline Blue Badge case? My Indian consultant’s jokey but apt expression. Not only that. What of those recurring nightmares hijacking my sleep ever since that murderous hunt in a parched, scrubby hinterland in the eastern Pyrenees? Since my perjury trial in Perpignan? An ordeal, often leaving me waking up in a sweat-soaked bed…

  Hardly a turn-on, and more than once during our love-making, I’d failed to satisfy even myself.

  “It’ll pass,” Alison had reassured me after the last, unsuccessful time. “That’s why a break will do us both good. God knows my workload’s been crazy and George Hopper’s doing my head in…”

  This Detective Sergeant, newly drafted in from the Met to help put a lid on Nottingham’s rising crime stats, wasn’t a man I’d have met up with for an after-hours’ beer. Already he’d driven several experienced officers away. No, she was right. Coed Glas might be just what we needed.

  *

  “See that?” Alison pointed to a large hotel sign nailed to a dead tree. “Two miles to go.”

  I was getting the picture. Luxury among the cow pats, except herds of grazing cattle gradually became a multitude of sheep, scratching at the already bare hillsides. I’d experienced enough of the Tramontane’s lashing wind in south-west France, and here too, judging by the lines of leaning hawthorns and tumbledown, dry-stone walls, the vicious westerly blast from the Irish Sea was also a permanent feature.