Ghosts from the Past
Page 53
A filthy van hooted behind us. Nose-to-tail traffic shuffled by. That dank tunnel still casting its oppressive gloom into the car.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll wait till we meet Alison if that’s OK.”
Divide and rule? No way.
“Is that it?” I said. “A journey to nowhere?”
*
I re-started the engine. The Nottingham train was due in fifteen minutes. Laure sniffed as if tears were close by.
“You mustn’t give up on this, Monsieur Lyon. I want my little brother and Vervain found alive.”
I gave her arm a squeeze and pulled out in front of a bus. Cardiff Central station now clearly visible on our left. That mean, pale threat that I suspected originated in Dante’s Divine Comedy, now in my wallet.
“We won’t ever give up.”
“Merci.”
*
I turned into the forecourt’s crowded waiting area and manoeuvred into the one small space remaining at the far end of the concourse.
“Why not use the Disabled section?” she suggested. “They’re all free, and you’ve got your blue card. Is it because you want Alison to think you’re normal?”
Smart girl…
My smile flickered and died. Something else had crossed my mind.
“Had your mother left a Will of any kind? Any special arrangements for after her death?”
Laure wiped her eyes with her hand. Focussed on the ceaseless to-ing and fro-ing outside. “You must know the law in France.”
“I do,” but wanted to hear it from her. She explained that as far as property was concerned, the rights of children over any surviving spouse could only be altered at the time of purchase, in a Clause Tontine.
“Did your parents do this?”
“Non. But she paid a lawyer a lot of money to ensure her share went to her own Maman, Odette Jourdain. I didn’t really understand, but Papa was really angry. Kept trying to get her to change her mind. And after that…”
“Go on.”
“They slept in separate rooms.”
“Did she say why she’d gone to so much trouble to alter the system? It does seem unusual.”
“To protect me and Mathieu until we were older.”
Was this true? Seconds were ticking away.
“Protect? From what?” I said, taking the key out of the ignition.
A shrug. She began to move her door handle.
“You mean, who?”
*
Alison’s train was twenty minutes late due to a signal failure outside Coventry. This news deflated my anticipation like yesterday’s party balloon, bringing instead a growing anxiety that meeting up in this way was a reckless idea. That selfishly, if it all went wrong, I’d be spending the rest of my life alone.
Meanwhile, the concourse was filling up with late commuters and damp shoppers coming into Wales’s capital for the day. Most seemed jaded, old beyond their years, yet some had the look of eager anticipation on their faces, little knowing - or so I thought - what was unfolding in two places, both some hundred and fifty miles away.
“Look!” Laure pointed to a Western Mail news placard outside W H Smith’s. The coffee I’d bought her slopped out of its carton a she went to take a closer look.
TRIPLE MYSTERY.
A well-known French racing trainer’s young son and steeplechaser have gone missing, and his Head Lad shot on…
She turned to stare at me as if suddenly stricken. Then, moments later came the announcement that the overdue train was now approaching the station. My heart turned over. Was I ready for this? But Laure, no longer frozen, was already heading for platform 3 where Alison’s train slid into view. Her skinny legs covered the damp concrete faster than anyone else, as if the woman who’d left such a vacuum in my life might just be the ray of hope she needed.
We stood together as the driver’s front cab glided towards then past us, filling in the grey block of Welsh drizzle. Then came the sigh of brakes, the opening of doors like so many gills on a giant fish. Feet stepping down…
“There she is!” Cried Laure.
“She’s not as tall as that.”
“Her then?” Pointing at a dark-haired woman in a trouser suit. A mac slung over her arm.
“Alison’s is more brown than black,” I said in a strange voice. “And she never wears trouser suits.”
We were looking too hard. Wanting too much to see her, when “Hi John,” came a voice I recognised from behind us. “And is this Laure I’ve heard so much about?”
*
A short hug. Sympathy for Laure and an almost regretful smile for me, as if the Coed Glas episode still lingered. She looked better than good, in jeans, heeled boots, a pink top and matching cagoule with a white fur trim around its hood. Her hair scraped back into a neat pony tail. I’d wanted that hug to last much longer, but a growing sense of urgency seemed to stir the very air we breathed. Alison meant business, giving me the impression that with the job done, she’d not be hanging about. That I wasn’t even number two on her agenda.
“You both need phones,” she said, pulling out two from her briefcase. “On loan till we get yours sorted. They’re clean.”
“Brilliant,” I said, pleased it was considerably smaller than Sion Evans’s Motorola. I then noticed her pink nail varnish. Something she’d never bothered with when we’d been together. Why did Ben Rogers slither back into my mind?
Poor bugger…
“Merci!” Laure beamed at her. “Are you sure?”
“Course. And I’ve tried to get a trace on where yours might be,” she eyed me. “No luck so far. The technology’s not quite there yet.”
“Have you eaten?” I asked.
“Yes. What about you two?”
“Laure needs some sustenance,” I said, hiving off towards a kiosk selling packed sandwiches. I bought back a selection. “This could be a long day.”
*
Laure nibbled at her tuna sandwich on the hoof, clutching her new, white phone tight as she walked between us back to the car. Once inside my VW, Alison began her brief update.
“Up until 8a.m. this morning, that transporter hadn’t been booked for any cross-Channel sailings. I checked all the ferry companies’ manifests before I left. And as for the local plate number you gave me, nothing’s been picked up. Changed, maybe.”
“Bastards,” said Laure, pulling out a piece of lettuce from her sandwich, and examining it.
“Look at it this way,” I added. “La Princesse Poole’s delay near Cherbourg could be just what we want. Time to re-check people. Get an update.”
Alison glanced at me. “What are you on about, John? Danny Lennox’s body was taken off a while back.”
Damn..
“Sorry, but there was no way of getting to you with the latest news, and we’re wasting time,” she snapped as I rejoined the M4 towards Newport and the bridge.
“You’re right,” Laure crumpled up her sandwich wrapper. “I know what they’ll do to my lovely horse. Chop him up, take him over to Europe somewhere in a van, even a bloody estate car, like those French ambulances…”
“La Princesse Poole?” Alison reminded me.
“Wait.”
I punched in DS Rickards’ number. Fortunately, he was at at his desk.
“I’ll take it,” said Alison, seeing my steering had become less than perfect, but I had to hear the latest for myself. It didn’t take long, and all the while I was aware of Laure listening intently. Staring at me through my rear-view mirror.
“Well?” she said once we’d finished. “Any useful news?”
“Yep. We need to check the ferry’s manifest again because a senior cop has just told me – and wait for it - there’s an Elisabeth Jourdain also on the boat.” I eyed Laure in my rear-view mirror. “Your aunt? If so, it’s either a weird coincidence or planned. Apparently, her car was near Danny’s Range Rover on the lowest car deck, while a Smith & Wesson with a silencer and the same ammo used to kill him, has been fo
und hidden in a cistern in the Ladies’ wc. With a clear thumb print, if you please. That should be interesting.”
Silence, in which Laure retreated. Head in hands.
My new phone began to ring. This time. Alison picked it up.
“Alain Deschamps for you, John. A re-directed call. Can we try the hard shoulder?”
“No. You speak to him.”
That name had come like a bolt out of the blue. He’d not so far told me anything, and maybe now would volunteer even less. I had newborn Mathieu’s little wristband in my pocket and a question that needed answering.
“Ask if he ever took any paternity tests,” I said to her. “Better coming from you.”
Laure let out a small shriek as Alison’s blue eyes widened.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered, handing the phone over as I slowed down. “We could lose him.”
We could lose him anyway, unless he’s picked up for obstructing the course of justice.
“Paternity test?” Laure repeated, still leaning against our front seats. The whiff of tuna floating my way. “Why? For me? For Mathieu? I don’t get it.”
I had to ignore her. There was too much background noise from his end and my car in the motorway’s middle lane, seemed like a minnow in a sea of sharks.
“Where are you, Monsieur?” I asked the trainer instead.
“Aust Services.”
Excellent.
“Stay there please. We’ll meet you in the cafeteria in around ten minutes.”
“We?”
Was that a note of expectation in his voice?
“Not Mathieu, I’m afraid. You need to help us a lot more there.”
Another silence.
“And Laure?”
“She’s fine. Please stay put, or this investigation goes nowhere.”
Alison was giving me warning signs to keep him on board. Laure listened in, her frown more pronounced. Her eyes almost closed, while a sign showed the Services to be 10 miles away over the bridge.
*
The warm sun felt all wrong, highlighting happy travellers in the Aust Services’ spacious cafeteria in its benign glow. Judging by the numerous racing papers on show, many travellers were off to the Chepstow races. Others in walking and cycling gear heading off for the hills and the coast. Their chatter and laughter encircled but didn’t touch us as we sat at a window table overlooking the busy Severn Bridge, a mug of coffee apiece and tension crackling like a newly-lit firework.
Laure sat between me and Alison, glaring at the tall man opposite. His uncombed head down, but not entirely in defeat. He’d had time to absorb the news about Vervain when I’d told him what Gilles Dugard had implied about the saintly aunt Elisabeth. Not only her lasciviousness, but how the racehorse might well be on the way to where she lived at Les Tourels. His derisory laugh hadn’t convinced anyone, and once he knew his farrier was in the can, his whole demeanour changed.
“You’re as nuts as she is if you believe that.”
“I don’t think so. So how long did your affair with Elisabeth last?” I pressed on, now filling up page three of my pad. My writing reflecting my rising anger. The words merging one with another, some indecipherable.
“It wasn’t an affair.”
“She may have thought so,” said Alison, clearly not impressed with this man who on the outside needed a shave and general clean up, but inside was harder to open than a sardine tin with no key.
“We became close during one of Christine’s depressions early in her pregnancy and after Mathieu was born,” began the trianer, avoiding Laure’s eyes. “That was all. Nothing physical. Just moral support. And when that ended, she turned on me, threatening to blacken my name.”
“Liar!” shouted Laure, causing a family at a nearby table to turn and stare. “You used to sniff after her like an old fox. I saw you wait for her after she’d finished work at her school. And Maman said she was chasing you even when you’d both first met…”
Her father pushed back his chair. Began to stand until I forced him down into his seat.
“This school,” I said, aware that Alison was discreetly setting up a tape inside her briefcase. “Tell me more. What did she do there?”
Laure finished her coffee. “It was the Coeur de la Sainte-Marie in Boisvilliers, if you must know. Run by Papist creeps. She was its head.”
Alison looked up.
“A church school?”
Laure nodded.
“And ten years ago last summer, an eleven year-old girl went missing from its Special Needs department. Tante Elisabeth spent several nights with the search teams and was regarded as a heroine.”
“This girl’s name?” Alison probed.
“Sophie,” the trainer obliged unexpectedly. “Sophie Kassel.”
“Do you have Elisabeth’s phone numbers?”
“Oui,” said Laure immediately.
“No. I want your Papa to tell us.”
“Why?”
Another defensive look.
“Because your aunt’s ferry, La Princesse Poole, already delayed, is due to stay parked in Cherbourg for another hour.”
20. Laure.
Saturday 12th March.9.10 a.m.
Tante Elisabeth’s phone went unanswered, but John Lyon, no longer an ex-cop, but rather - and with Papa’s agreement – a pretend stable lad who’d recently joined the yard, left his message on it in schoolboy French. Mathieu and Vervain were missing, he’d said and, because his boss was out searching for them, she was to call his phone urgently. He’d neither mentioned Danny, nor the ferry, and when finished, his sigh of frustration, added to the tense and fearful mood inside the car.
“She won’t repy,” he said. “She’s not that dumb.”
“She may do, to find out what’s going on,” I chipped in. My recent cuts stung so much I had to suck at my forearms to calm them down. Especially CAJ - Maman’s initials making me remember her in the wrong way. I made up my mind there and then never again to do such a stupid trick with a compass point.
*
I was glad Papa had fucked off back to Ty Capel with his tail between his legs after his obvious lies. Glad I’d not given him the expected kiss goodbye or any other physical contact, because our aunt wasn’t the person who me and Mathieu had thought she was.
We were on the move again, this time, chasing Sion Evans’s transporter east to the North Sea port of Harwich. According to Alison who’d also kept horses before she joined the police, if Vervain was still on board and had been drugged with say, Xylazine, it wouldn’t last long enough for the crossing. Too many doses of could lead to paralysis and death.
“No-one’ll buy a heavily-doped horse alive or dead,” she said, passing me a barley sugar sweet which I refused. “So, we have two possibilities. I’m sorry, Laure, but his abductors will either panic and he’ll be killed then dumped somewhere, or he’s crossing into Europe for a reason. Is he a stallion?”
I couldn’t respond. Not with that mean, pale sun smirking up in the sky, and the vision of him being hauled along some filthy, bloodied floor by his back legs while still conscious, filling my mind…
“Laure?”
“No. A gelding. Kiss of death, hein?”
I saw them both exchange a glance. Closed my eyes as John’s phone began to ring. Someone called DS Rickards from Poole CID.with yet more news. Alison handed it over, leaning towards him, her hand on his left thigh. More than used to each other, I thought, despite what that taxi driver had said. I found myself remembering things I shouldn’t. No, I wasn’t envious, not like I’d been about Danny…
Listen…
“She’s what?” gasped John. His grip loosening on the steering wheel. “Done a bunk? There must be some mistake…”
I held my breath till it hurt.
“She’s driving a red Peugeot 104 ZS,” he repeated aloud, so Alison could write it down. “With an Alpes Maritime number plate. The Brigade Nationale are co-ordinating a search, but as you know, France is a big country.”
“The flics are crap,” I said, breathing again.
“Didn’t anyone check on it during the voyage?” asked Alison into the phone.
“No. Everything’s been pretty chaotic…”
“Or her?”
“She was about to be finger-printed, along with nine other motorists, but it never happened.”
John looked pissed off, as Cerys would say. Then seemed to re-focus.
Listen again…
“When I was in the transporter last night, some mystery female phoned Sion Evans on his Motorola. I clearly heard her say the words ‘delay’ ‘money’ and ‘knife,’ and had the feeling that although there’d been a major problem, she was calling the shots. It’s been on my mind ever since. Especially since news of La Princesse Poole being held up.”
“Pity we didn’t get this earlier.”
For a second, he bit his lower lip then spoke again.
“It’s hardly been a picnic this end.”
“We could run a trace. Motorola, you said?”
“Yes. I’d managed to take it off him, but…”
“Where is it?”
“Back at the stables. I’d tried locating that particular call, but nothing came up. So why hang on to it?”
Exactly.
*
With that call ended, John Lyon was putting his foot down, and with each mile along the A12 dual carriageway taking us into open, flatter country, I began to realise what a dim cow I’d been. How I’d both ignored and missed so much, not wanting to see what was obvious for so long. Perhaps I should finally trust the man who kept glancing sideways at his lover. Even if it meant putting us all in danger.
*
I’d not seen Mamie Jourdain since Maman died. Since her funeral, to be exact, when Elisabeth had guided her by the elbow towards that open wound in the black earth and, it seemed, forced her to watch until the oblong box had sunk to the bottom. She’d passed her a handful of soil to scatter on its lid. On her favourite daughter.