Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  I was in halfway through the Ave supplication on my rosary when suddenly I

  spotted the same staff member who’d slipped outside my cublcle door in the Toilettes. She’d appeared from nowhere, leaning against a spare lectern near the wall, looking around. I glanced down at my holdall and when I looked up again, she was on the dais,

  flushed, tired. Hardly likely to make a good impression about what she was about to say, I thought.

  Wrong. She’d been trying to clear the Deck E Toilettes after news of the Englishman’s death had surfaced. She said she remembered the perfume ‘Poison,” definitely coming from that same cubicle where that gun was found.

  “And I’m happy to go around sniffing everyone, to prove it,” she added, but no-one laughed. Least of all, me as I edged a little further away from my nearest neighbours, startled by the sudden influx of younger women in those too-tight red suits, young men too formally dressed for the jobs they did, others wearing oil-stained orange boiler suits and cleaners’ aprons, who barged in, voices raised even louder. Angrier than us long-suffering passengers. The Norman dialect had never sounded so crude, nnd I realised they were protesting at the delays for which they wouldn’t be paid.

  Myself, and fellow internees could only watch and, at the height of the protest, where another older woman - obviously a cabin cleaner - was pushed up on to the dais to replace my betrayer, I spotted someone else I’d seen before.

  Tall, lean inside his orange boiler suit, with oil smears across the bridge of his nose. Looking my way.

  Mère de Dieu…

  I’d glimpsed him two cars away down on car deck A while I’d given Daniel Lennox’s body a final kick. But had he seen me speaking to him beforehand?

  I wasn’t taking that chance. As Captain Serra and his cohort came through one door, and the same thick-thighed woman on the stage ranted on about workers’ rights, I slipped out of the other exit and along a narrow, carpeted corridor towards that same deck’s cabins.

  Few were occupied. The doors of those that weren’t, swung back and fore to the rhythm of the boat’s progress. It was speeding up. On a mission. Number 64 was a lucky find. Untouched and boasting a porthole. Having locked myself in, I strip-washed to remove all traces of that giveaway scent, put on my gloves and opened the misted-up porthole. With the night wind full in my face, I threw Daniel Lennox’s cell phone, wallet and other bits and pieces out on to the waves, still berating myself for not having spotted that Millett’s receipt. Next, I got dressed again, picked up the cabin telephone and pressed 1 for an outside line followed by the number I’d memorised.

  I could have used his, but I’m not the reckless type. However, it might have been useful for checking on any recent calls home to Duns where the ex wouldn’t be getting a centime of his assets. Thanks to my advice, he’d eventually seen sense on that score.

  Ringing.

  I hung on as the lights on that lumpy, dark Cherbourg Peninsular drew closer. While the overly-tentative watercolour of Honfleur on the opposite wall swayed on its hook.

  “We’ve been waiting to hear from you,” said the man. “What’s going on?”

  “A hold-up,” I replied, keeping my back to the door. “Several in fact. I may have to stay over in Cherbourg.”

  “Fuck. Why?”

  “I can’t tell you now. You’ll have to wait.”

  “What are we supposed do?” He then paused. “Perhaps you’re too old for this kind of thing.”

  “Any more complaints?”

  The colours in that insipid painting reminded me of my mother’s beaten mix for crème brulée at the bottom of her bowl.

  “Is it dead?” I asked. “That was the deal, remember? A carcass?”

  “Odi. And we don’t want no customs’ dogs sniffin’ around. Remember last year with our live lambs? How I nearly lost my bloody licence?”

  Most had perished in the heat, waiting for an impromptu strike at Calais to end. When the shorter sea trip had been used. He’d won a hefty sum in compensation.

  “Not my fault. Just remember who’s lining your pockets…”

  I picked up his woman’s voice telling him what to say. I’d never had much time for her, not since our operations began three years ago, supplying my former workplace with sweet, Welsh meat…

  But she was the least of our problems.

  “Make sure you board the next crossing,” I reminded him. “Wait for me at that Aire de Repos as planned. Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Oh, and where was the young, foxy Mademoiselle when you collected her horse?”

  “Off somewhere with her Da. In a rush they were, which suited us, to be honest.”

  The receiver felt hot and slippery in my hand. The re-processed air in that miserable little cabin, too stale.

  “Where?”

  The line began to disintegrate. Also, it seemed, that same workers’ protest was growing louder. Was it coming my way?

  “There was someone else, mind,” my confidante added. “But Gilles said not to worry just because the head lad’s run off somewhere…”

  “Who was this ‘someone else?’ I diverted him. “We know Dugard is unreliable.”

  More accurately, a worm of a man. However, a well-endowed worm, nevertheless.

  “Some cripple, that’s all.” The man grunted.

  “You’d better say, Sion,” hissed the barnacle. “She’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “What cripple?” I snapped. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Some ex-cop. Turned up after the boy gone missing. We thought it best to take care of him. Get my meaning?”

  My left hand gripped on to the bedside table, blood draining from its knuckles.

  Crétins.

  I’d seen and heard enough for today and it wasn’t over yet.

  “Name?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  Silence.

  “Did he sniff the meat?”

  No answer. I didn’t need to ask again.

  *

  I stared at the sink’s plughole as the last of my rushed lunch at Sarn Park Services circled away into its mysterious darkness. I forced another Tamezepan between my teeth, then

  looked up to dry my face and stopped. That blemish on my right cheek, the colour of a ripe aubergine, had not only spread but darkened. Marking me out. I re-covered it with the last of my special ‘Velveta’ make-up for noirs, then removed my black nail varnish, with one thought pressing my anxiety button harder than anything else. Even news of that ex-flic. I had to get down to my car. I’d only two doses of Noctran left, and after 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, then what?

  That useful uniform I’d stolen from my school nurse’s office when I’d left, was safe in my holdall and, minutes later, for the second time that day, I looked like a proper nurse. The spectacles helped, too.

  I let myself out of the cabin. With my holdall tucked beneath my arm, I ran to the end of the corridor and down the metal stairs towards the car decks.

  16. Odette.

  Saturday 11th March. 12.28 a.m.

  What they never tell you at this Jacques Cousteau Maison de Repos, is how long you have left to live. And I needed to know. Yes, my meals arrived on time, my suppositories, my newspaper and the coiffeuse when I face her endless, invasive chatter. But of the black-cloaked reaper who’s stalked my dreams since aged nine, when I’d seen my revered Papie run over and killed, rien. Nothing. No small matter, or another means of drawing attention. One had too much of that here as it was.

  Half past midnight, with another day to come, stretched out in front of me like the flat, endless farmland beyond my window, making the distant church - tolling six, doleful notes - and that ominous fir copse seem closer than they really were.

  Another night without hearing my beloved daughter Christine’s voice and those of Laure and Mathieu whenever they were around. But not any more, since they moved far away with that father of theirs, and Elisabeth - yes, the ever reliable, ever prepared helper
- moved me in here a year ago.

  “Madame Jourdain?” said Aimée, my normally placid, designated ‘carer’ with an edge to her voice. “You’ll need to get up a bit earlier in the morning. “The Brigade Criminelle are paying us a special visit.”

  I shivered at those first three words I hated most. “Why?”

  The girl paused.

  “There’s been a break-in.”

  “When? Where?”

  “In our Store, where we keep all our drugs and syringes.” She checked my night light and the pink, heart-shaped panic button. “They’re not sure exactly when it happened, but want to find out if anyone saw or heard anything unusual.”

  And then, like Christine’s silent ghost that I sometimes see before sleep, she was gone.

  Drugs, maaybe?

  I immediately thought of the farrier my son-in-law hired six years ago. Christine hadn’t been happy about it from the moment that marginal appeared in her kitchen without any warning. Could he have perhaps…?

  Enough…

  Her post-mortem had confirmed what many wanted to believe. A straightforward suicide. But how can that ever be ‘straightforward?’ Sometimes I think she’s still trying to tell me what really happened. Why knowing how long I had to discover the truth was so important.

  I pulled the eiderdown over my chest. It still bore smells of the bed’s previous occupant. Someone high up in the Sapeurs Pompiers, who’d died of an over-worked liver. I turned to face the one window where a gap between both curtains showed the clouds to-ing and fro-ing over the moon, and all the while, my bedside clock, one of four items I’d been allowed to bring from Les Tourels, ticked away precious seconds.

  Sleep was such a waste of time for someone of my age, and what if The Reaper took me while I slept? Before I’d salved my conscience?

  Tomorrow, therefore, I’d purchase a notebook from the volunteer’s trolley and begin writing down what’s troubled me for two years, two months and eighteen days. I then replaced my gramophone needle at the start of Gabriel Fauré’s song, La Sécret, and let its lyrical beauty wash over me, healing in part, my troubled soul.

  *

  I woke at 3a.m. to that same needle scratching the record’s vinyl until I snatched it clear. The moon had gone, replaced by a cruel wind and the kind of slanting rain that each spring would batter our new crops to the ground. In the end, it was this kind of weather which drove my Jacques to an early grave, although after he’d gone, I wanted to run away and leave everything, including our two young daughters. At least there’d been a plausible reason for his death. One I could later live with.

  Not so Christine.

  Even Elisabeth and the grandchildren couldn’t fill the gaping hole in my heart. I’ll admit she’s an attentive aunt to them - how could I not? Before their move to Wales, she’d even offered to take them in, and finish paying for their schooling, but Alain in his usual stubborn way, put a stop to that.

  Elisabeth, who never took no for an answer, took this rejection out on me. Her own mother. Persuaded my doctor that I needed round-the-clock supervision, while she’d look after my house and keep gypsies from coming in, as they’ve been doing in the Poitou-Charentes for too long.

  “Remember when you left your bath water running?” She’d repeated at our first meeting with the Home’s Director. “And the time you went out shopping without your pantalons?” But what she’d left out was how I was heartbroken. Not thinking straight, and my inadequate explanation between tears and frustrated outbursts had only reinforced this Director’s opinion. That I did indeed need monitoring.

  Monitoring?

  Non, merci. I wanted justice for my girl with the laughing face who’d married the wrong man. Who was used. Yes, used, and punished.

  The rain intensified, rapping at the window glass like so many unanswered questions. One in particular. Elisabeth pestering me to know if, as French law dictates, she’d become my sole beneficiary.

  *

  5 a.m. And awake again too early to a dark dawn and rain still falling. But I barely noticed, still half in, half out of my dream, back in time, unable to recall the exact year when too much had gone wrong. My son-in-law, accused of doping one of his winning horses at Chantilly, had been fined and banned from training for six months, while Christine had suffered yet another miscarriage before Mathieu came along. Equally devastating was Elisabeth’s decision to end all prospects of a well-paid career once her university course had finished. In 1963 she’d applied successfully for a job with Jules Gallas et Fils - the biggest slaughterhouse south of the Loire.

  I recall her coming home after her first day. Not in the office there, no. Not our careful, organised daughter. She’d been in the front line and even now, so many years later, it’s hard for me to describe the blood that stuck her hair together. Smeared her overalls, lay caked on her arms above the wrist line of her protective gloves. Made her smell like one of those poor beasts she’d helped to kill. But how exactly?

  Whenever she’d helped dispatch the New Year goose or the autumn pig, there’d not been a mark on her.

  “Halal,” was all she’d said by way of an explanation, before I made her strip off in the tractor shed that led into the kitchen. I’d then watched her bundle her overalls and underwear into our machine, wondering like Christine, what had changed such a young woman keen to make her mark in the field of Mediaeval literature, become a butcher.

  Also, what that strange, dark blue tattoo of a mountain I’d recently spotted on her shaved pubis had represented.

  “Stop staring,” she’d snapped. “I know what you’re thinking. How I’m wasting the money you spent on me in Paris. How this isn’t woman’s work. Especially a Jourdain woman’s work.”

  The way she’d looked at me with those wild eyes that neither Jacques nor I had given her, made me retreat to the other side of the kitchen table.

  “I just want you to be happy like…”

  “Christine, you mean? La Chasseuse?”

  “That’s unfair. Just because men seem to like her…”

  “She hasn’t got this.” She’d slapped a scrubbed hand over the thing that almost covered her left cheek. “How many times have I endured a skin graft till I couldn’t take any more, hein?”

  “Your Papa’s said sorry often enough, and even bought you that new Renault…”

  “Never enough.”

  Then, in a flash, she was next to me, pinching my own left cheek between her thumb and forefinger, still smelling of fat and stale blood. I’d nearly fainted with the pain of it.

  “That’s what it feels like, Maman, every second of every day, hot or cold, rain or shine.”

  *

  Someone came in and switched on my wireless, opened the curtains then finally turned to me. Not Aimée, but someone called Yveline.

  “Another bad dream, Odette? You do look pale.” She wheeled over my commode and lifted its lid, before turning up the volume of the early morning news. “Except for that funny mark on your cheek. What have you been up to?” She then picked up my hand mirror from my bedside table, but I pushed it away. The news reader’s tone had changed, giving out names I recognised. Daniel Lennox shot dead on the ferry from Poole to Cherbourg, and Alain Deschamps, his employer had identified the body. Worse, Mathieu his son, my precious, little grandson, was still missing since yesterday lunch time.

  17. John.

  Saturday 12th March. 7 a.m.

  We’d arrived back late at Ty Capel from Glan y Mor to find it unlocked and the stable staff who’d called in earlier, gone. The only sign of life being a faint light glowing from Gilles Dugard’s static caravan. A tearful Laure wanted to knock him up straight away but finally let me persuade her that neither of us were in any state to deal with a dangerous ex-con who could, like Sion Evans’ strange helpmate, be armed. Until Alain Deschamps showed up, I was in loco parentis.

  Having bolted both external doors behind us before checking nothing obvious had been nicked, we then dragged ourselves upstairs. While I�
�d tried to sleep, Laure had been crying in her room. Her sobs rising and falling like the sea. She wasn’t my kid. I couldn’t go and put my arms around her. Give her the hug she needed. In fact, there was nothing to be done until the transporter and its grim load had been located.

  *

  When I’d woken next morning, dawn hadn’t fully shifted the night sky and little Mathieu Deschamps was still out there somewhere. I felt as rough as an old dog might after a night on the streets. Too rough in fact to make any contact with Laure or to even think straight about last night. As for the traitorous farrier, I’d need my wits about me. He could also have taken Ty Capel’s house keys and had a snoop round.

  I wanted to speak to young Rhys Evans again, preferably away from his father, and to call Elisabeth Jourdain whose home phone number had been conveniently left on the blotter in her brother-in-law’s study.

  I glanced at my bedside table and saw that two messages had been stored on Sion Evans’s two-way. One from Cardigan Police HQ. The other from some media jerk wanting a story. How he’d got the number, I couldn’t guess, and equally worrying - why they’d so far heard nothing from Alain Deschamps.

  The first message was at least useful and although perhaps too early, I returned the call.

  “We’ve arranged for a change of locks on Ty Capel, also on your Nottingham flat,” said PC Gwallter Williams, sounding as fresh as a daisy, once I’d given him my ID and former CID number. “Keys should arrive with us by courier on Monday morning.”

  “I’m truly grateful,” I said, and meant it. “As I’m sure Alain Deschamps will be too. I’ll phone again to confirm their collection.”

  “Fine. Now then, an update. We’ve just issued a warrant for the arrest of Sion Gwilym Evans and Ms Beti Morgan. All UK police forces and border controls south of the M4 and London have been alerted. As for that call you saw being made near Glan y Mor last afternoon, nothing doing, but the one to DC Eifion Evans at Coed Glas Hotel in your presence, came from the Sea Breeze Hotel. Now who could that have been?”