I then retrieved my reserve weapon, a brand new, fully-loaded 9mm. Browning GP semi-automatic, from the glovebox, shoved it to the bottom of my holdall, and checked my watch. Despite the delay, my planned rendez-vous could still be on target. Perhaps this was the time to properly thank God.
*
In our absence, the three jumped-up clowns on the Conference Room’s dais, had managed to add coffees and snacks to their paperwork. Just to smell the roasted beans and see their well-filled demi-baguettes, delivered a hungry shudder and acid on my tongue at the same time.
“That weapon you described before we left,” I addressed the shorter flic reasonably, “could have been left in the cistern some time ago. And who’s to say one of our staff isn’t responsible? Or a car deck operative? We see enough of them around the boat, don’t we? And,” I added censoriously, “I’ve also witnessed several men unashamedly using the female Toilettes…”
He finished his mouthful.
“As we’ve already stated, Mademoiselle Jourdain, we’ll leave no stone unturned.”
Hearing my name like that had made me blink. A deliberate ploy or love of protocol? Hard to tell. Whatever, discontent was rumbling again like the deep shift of the earth’s crust. I was soon forgotten and left my seat for the nearest window, willing Cherbourg’s lights to appear.
*
A prod in my back.
I jumped, turned to see who’d invaded my personal space in such a rude manner. I quickly sniffed trouble.
Mrs. Crossword Puzzle in all her late middle-aged awfulness. A sneer on her acrylic-filled mouth. “Just because you’re French and on a French-owned boat, doesn’t mean you’re exempt from suspicion…”
“Excuse me?” I said, aware of boudin de paysan on her breath. Aware too, of her husband alongside her, joined it seemed, at the hip. Staring at a well-stacked young woman sitting nearby.
“I’ve been watching you since you hurt my knee, and you’ve never said sorry.”
“Watching me?”
A nod, then a knowing look from her asphalt-coloured eyes.
“You were in those very same Toilettes on deck E from a quarter to six for at least half an hour. Wasn’t she, George? You looked, how shall I say, odd. Tense. I do notice these things. I read Barbara Vine and P.D. James all the time.”
“That’s true,” agreed the downtrodden man, re-focussing, while that rigid steel band around my neck had tightened another notch. “And she’s nosy.”
Attack or defend? Please God point me in the right direction.
“I wasn’t the only one feeling nauseous,” I explained with deliberate care, yet all too aware of the looming risk. “I’ve also not been long hospitalized, so I have to take care not to - how do you say - rupturer mon estomac.”
They looked at each other, then at the platform party still fielding questions from my angry compatriots. You see, the French are easily ignited. But me, non. Jamais.
“In our country, Madame…” she began…
I didn’t correct her. My status was irrelevant.
“As I was saying, we’re brought up to be good citizens. Not to stand by or walk over to the other side.” She then addressed her husband. “I think George, we must also make mention of…”
His glance at me spelt out defeat. But still he trailed her past the other detainees until they were halfway to the dais. I watched and waited like those beef on legs from the Limousin, the Charente and even from west Wales, over whom a strange calm would descend once they’d reached the end of their abattoir’s downward-sloping ramp.
Suddenly, a cry. The woman was faltering, gripping on to her husband’s arm. Her wretched face stiffening into a pale grey mask.
Disarray. Everyone’s attention taken by her falling cleanly, silently like a twig in the wind. Unlike my betrayer…
*
The podium was already bare while someone I presumed to be the ship’s doctor dressed in a dark brown suit, scuttled in from a door behind me and began the usual resuscitation procedures I’d used whilst a headmistress. The cross-country runner who’d not trained hard enough. The caretaker overwhelmed by bullies. The lab assistant felled by ether fumes…
This wasn’t looking good.
Now the husband was crying out. “Save her! Save my wife because she’s strong. She’ll fight.”
But she wasn’t. She didn’t, and amid a tighter confusion was borne by four male stewards who’d appeared it seemed from nowhere, out of the far door, leaving the blonde Mademoiselle Camp’s disembodied voice to take over. I decided to follow at a discreet distance, to show concern but really to eavesdrop on what else the man might be saying. The red suit’s message fading with every step I took.
“…and we hope to arrive in Cherbourg at approximately 23.00 hours CET where accommodation has been arranged at Le Ciel Blue hotel for those of you remaining in this Conference Room. All your expenses will be paid…”
I nearly fell myself, already aware of seven pairs of eyes on my back as I pushed through that same door only to find the carpeted landing and corridor ahead were empty. Eerily empty.
“Can I help?”
I spun round. The older flic’s sweaty pores were too close. As was every fleck of black stubble. I backed away only to find his clammy hand on my left forearm.
“There’s a cabin reserved for you until we reach the port,” he said.
“Merci, but will that poor woman be alright? I mean, I’d just been talking to her and her husband. Reminding them of the driving laws in France…”
He looked me up and down. His hand still in place. “If I were you, I’d get some rest. Tomorrow might be a long day as well.”
Could he see my smile open like a wound? My eyes dry as dust even though I’d willed them to moisten. “Another long day. Why?”
He removed his hand to tug at each of his nostrils in turn.
“Just get some rest.”
*
Having been ushered back into the Conference Room, I noticed Mr. Dog Collar standing by one of the windows facing the sea. I also noticed how the waves had sunk in on themselves and the only foam came from the boat itself.
“I’ve an important meeting in Rennes tomorrow,” he said as if knowing I was nearby. “If I miss it, my whole career’s at risk.” His accent was definitely Parisian, with a touch of something else.
“Career? With God?”
“That’s right.” As the ominous sound of yet another helicopter competed with the rest of his wisdom. “And what, may I ask, are your commitments, Mademoiselle? Let me guess.” He finally faced me, his appraising gaze immediately on my crucifix. His clothes were a size too tight and from a sly glance at his fly, I wondered what he’d be like in bed. He was one of those who mixed formal with informal. Black jackets and Levi’s. Desert boots and well-cut hair. He may also, on second thoughts, and despite the untrimmed eyebrows, have been gay. “I’d say you had a rendez-vous,” he ventured. “A secret of some kind. Am I right?”
I noticed that sweaty flic had gone but ‘my wretched ‘birthmark’ as I called it, was beginning to burn again beneath its make-up
“A rendez-vous with two hundred exercise books and a new timetable to draft for next term,” I said, by way of a reply. “As for a secret,” I shook my head in mock wistfulness. “I’m too old to have those.”
He rolled his clear, grey-green eyes upwards. “We’ll need to pray a little harder, then.” Those same eyes lowered to meet mine. “Where’s your school? May I ask?”
I was prepared.
“Lisieux.”
“Good Lord. I’m from there too. L’Église de la Sainte-Thérèse is my church. Surely you know it?”
In that instant, Christine’s dead, bloated face floated into my mind. That fleshy neck puckered and bruised by the lungeing rope.
Keep your distance. Walk away…
I clamped a hand over my mouth and despite the subtle shifting of deep water beneath me, willed the contents of my stomach to creep up my throat.
“I’m sorry, I’m feeling unwell,” I said. “It must be something I ate. Please excuse me.”
“Sure. Hope you feel better soon.”
But then, as I reached the opposite door to where the stubbled flic had waylaid me, I picked up the tail-end of an announcement that had obviously begun too quietly.
“…so the police have requested that all remaining passengers in the Conference Room make their vehicles’ keys available for collection.”
Merde.
This was never-ending, like the path through Hell down to Judecca. The lowest of the low.
It was then I remembered my cell phone. In two swift seconds, its slate was wiped clean. But my heartbeat wasn’t normal. Neither were the Dog Collar’s eyes fixed on me as might a hungry wolf.
13. Laure.
Friday 11th March. 8.45 p.m.
I kept telling myself not to cry. Like in Cher’s ‘I Believe,’ I must be strong. For Mathieu and for Maman who’d said the same when Vervain suffered a severe bout of colic on the day my school broke up for our first Christmas without her. The day she’d seemed more pre-occupied than usual.
*
Carmarthen station was deserted. There was no-one here for me. Not a soul, and Danny’s absence which would be for ever, brought what felt like a sliver of ice trickling down inside my clothes. No Mathieu either, but at least here was only thirty miles from what I could never call home. At least I’d hoarded enough cash from last month’s stable chores and domestic duties. Well below the minimum wage of course, but with nothing much to spend it on apart from liquorice and chewing gum at Kevin’s mother’s shop. The total, including fifty francs from aunt Elisabeth made a comforting bump in my purse.
Two taxis stood in the rank outside the station forecourt. A yellow minicab and a white saloon. One empty. Mathieu would have known the exact makes and year of manufacture of both. ‘A typical boy,’ Danny would often say, and kiss the top of his head.
Dear, dead and - dare I say it - sexy Danny, who only today had driven over that expanse of cliff-top grass to check I was in one piece.
The driver of the yellow cab smiled at me. Even with all those wrinkles, he looked too kosher to be un pervert, but I was right to be aware. In France recently, several girls of my age - and a couple of boys - had gone missing and been found stabbed to death. A serial killer starting as he or she had meant to go on.
“Ty Capel racing stables,” I said to him through the open passenger window. “Near Glan y Mor village. And vite.”
“Course. Jump in. You’re soaked to the skin.”
“I’m OK.”
I settled myself on the back seat, aware that he’d switched off his radio’s dribble music. Not a good sign. For something to do, I checked my purse. All in order, plus those things no-one else yet knew about. A photo of Vervain out at grass. A heart-shaped head and shoulders shot of Maman folded just below her neck. Smiling, but on that occasion, only with her mouth. Her eyes seemed to be saying, ‘help me. Laure. Lay me to rest…”
I remember when it was taken. At Mathieu’s confirmation, which like his baptism, Mamie and Tante Elisabeth had insisted on before he got any older. ‘We don’t want a limbo situation, do we?” She’d said to her mother beforehand. “How come I know the Church’s teachings and you don’t?’
I stared more closely at the photograph and noticed where scissors had made a slight, curved nick in its right-hand edge. Where Mathieu had stood closer to Mamie.
“You’re one of those Daychamps, aren’t you?” The driver interrupted my thoughts. The way he said our surname was rubbish, but at least he wasn’t Welsh. “Them racing people?”
“Oui.”
“I’ve taken a punt on one of your nags as it happens,” said the man. “Trying to remember the name…”
I didn’t oblige. Couldn’t. Just wanted him to keep driving, especially since the sodium lights past the hospital that I’d narrowly missed attending, had ended and the Teifi Valley’s black, wet night seemed to be crowding in.
“You remind me of a fare I had only this morning,” he persevered, skewering me through his rear-view mirror. “A cop she said she was. Not a bad looker. neither.”
“A cop?” Half thinking of John Lyon. That I should have tried phoning him again. “Where was she from?”
“Now you’re asking. Wait a minute. Nottingham, that’s it. Didn’t say a lot, mind…”
“I meant where did you pick her up?”
“Coed Glas Hotel it was, middle of bloody nowhere I can tell you. But I guessed
she’d just had a pretty big contretemps with someone. Being French, you should know that word.”
Alison.
Another glance through his mirror.
I wasn’t sure where this was leading and was glad to see the sign for Newcastle Emlyn. Not far to go now.
“Anyway,” I began, “to be honest” - a phrase Cerys aways used - “I just want to get home, if that’s OK with you.”
Silence as I put away my purse and its secrets, until Glan y Mor came and went. Only the Post Office showed any light from the room behind the counter. Perhaps Kevin was on the beer instead of sweating off the pounds or swotting up on Vervain’s rivals in tomorrow’s race. And could I blame him?
Whatever his boss had planned, wouldn’t be happening. I’d already made that clear.
“Any news of your litle brother?” Came winging out of the blue as Ty Capel’s plain shape came into view. “Poor little bugger’s been missing a while, hasn’t he?”
And I’d almost forgotten his name.
“No news yet,” I said.
“Well, try not to worry. My kids used to take themselves off all the time. Found one of them on the Swansea-Cork Ferry if you please.” He lowered his voice as if the cab was bugged. “Mind you, the cops round here are crap. Even my best mate who’s a traffic cop says the same. The only reason you join the Force, according to him, is the parties. Know what I mean? Wearing an apron, rolling up the trouser leg…”
I wasn’t listening. The Sea Breeze Hotel was so many tiny pinpricks of light and I watched out for that strange, black-clad woman who’d bragged she lived everywhere…
Then I realised our gates were wide open, whereas I’d shut them before Papa and me had left for Poole. And where in the wispy fog and drizzle was the kitchen light’s welcome glow? Something felt wrong, yet I’d planned my next moves God knew how many times. Check on my darling boy, shower and bed. If John Lyon wanted to spend the night cosying up to the Aga, so be it.
The taxi pulled up by the front door. My purse at the ready. Fingers on the worn notes Papa had only recently handed over.
“Don’t need them,” said the guy, turned in his seat. “Been glad to assist. Could tell the minute I saw you something was up. And if you need any more help, I’m Ron Lever. Here’s my card.”
I pocketed it, feeling feel tears burn the backs of my eyes.
Don’t cry, I told myself yet again. Not now.
“Thank you. Really.” I said and meant it. “It’s not been great.” More of Cerys’s words which seemed to fit.
“I’ll wait till you’re safe indoors.”
“She’ll be fine with me,” came another man’s voice from nowhere.
John Lyon?
Wrong.
*
“Let’s go.”
Gilles’s hand was on my wrist the moment I stepped outside on to the gravel. Firm, strong as if I too, had to be shod. Beer and the salty smell of the sea up my nose. But why no smoke from Ty Capel’s chimney? And where the Hell was John Lyon?
“You have to believe me, Laure,” he reverted to his own rough French. “I did my best…”
“What are you talking about, you schmuck? Let me go!”
We were in the cobbled yard, his grip tightening with every step we took. The smell of my pee too obvious as that yellow taxi bombed off into the murky night.
“Where’s Vervain?” I asked. “He normally whinnies when he hears me. What’s happened?”
I tried to free myself, to run towards his loose box, but the farrier hadn’t been a jailbird and hot iron slave all those years for nothing.
“Like I said, I did my best. Tried phoning you but yours was dead. Listen, Laure,” he took a breath. “I’m afraid he’s gone.”
For meat…
I screamed till my lungs were empty. Broke away and saw for myself how, amongst all the other horses and hacks, my beautiful fellow wasn’t there. Just his smell and a strand of hay caught between the wooden slats in the top of his stable’s lower door.
“Is anyone else here?” I could barely speak for the torrent of dire possibilities pouring into my mind. “You must have seen something. Heard something…”
“Non.”
He’d caught up. His arm like a yoke round my shoulders. I couldn’t shake him off.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. “And where’s John Lyon?”
“Ha. We’ll have to find out, if and when he deigns to come back.”
“Come back?” I repeated. “But he’s got our keys, the…”
“Your Papa should never have trusted him. Remember when he was planning to buy here, and I tried to warn him? How the Royaume Uni is full of traitors and money-grabbers?”
My throat was hoarse. I couldn’t scream any more. What was the point? And then, like a black worm, came another thought wriggling into my mind, I “Are you saying he’s taken Vervain somewhere? Even Mathieu?”
“Who else?”
“Have you called the police?”
He shook his ugly head.
“You know he won’t have them near the place, so how could I go against his principles?”
“You mean you don’t want them around. Not surprised with your record. You must think I’m thick. Does Papa know?”
No reply as the security light overhead flickered and died. I then realised the others weren’t working either. There was just him and me with maybe that all-knowing weirdo woman lurking somewhere in the gloom.
“I think I deserve an apology, Mademoiselle,” was all he could say.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Although I’d lost weight, I could still kick, throw a punch like at school when gossip about Papa and his many affairs had got out of hand.
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