With that, he’d gone, like a black, twisting leaf on the wind.
I’d gripped the sides of my bed so hard my fingertips were drained of blood. The same colour as Christine would be - except of course for her face. The same as all of Jacques.
*
Mid-afternoon, with the Home’s routine soon re-established, Aimée lent me one of its cell phones. Her cheeks were too pink, her movements rushed, making me wonder if she’d also had a grilling by one of the Lieutenant’s henchmen. No time to ask, as she passed me the heavy, ivory-coloured contraption with its long aerial jutting out.
“A call from England,” she said. “John Lyon, an ex-flic who’s recently met up with your son-in-law.”
“England?”
I waited until she’d closed my door behind her.
“Madame Jourdain?”
“Oui?”
“My French is passable, unless you speak English…”
“I did learn it years ago. I’ll try.”
“I need a name.”
“Whose?”
The sun had moved to be directly on my head. There was no hiding from its determination.
“The abattoir where your eldest daughter worked.”
Non…
That word ‘daughter’ suddenly stung like a curse. My few mouthfuls of a late lunch defying gravity in my throat.
Who’d told him?
“Why?”
“I can’t speak for long, but I do know what’s happened to you and your grandson, and…” he paused as if to caution himself. “His disappearance may be connected to…”
“Monsieur,” I interrupted. “I’m not listening to any more. I’ve already had the Inquisition round today. Too early. Too upsetting…”
“Police?”
“Oui. About a sleeping drug and syringes gone missing from the store here. Noctran, he said. Too much of it can be dangerous. Lethal, in fact. Look, Monsieur, I’ve endured enough questions to last a lifetime…”
“When?”
Silence.
“Madame Jourdain, it’s your grandson’s life that may depend on how helpful you are. Please think of him. He’s only eight.”
Something about this stranger’s voice seemed to loosen the tight band I’d felt for too long around my heart. Even reminded me of Jacques, my husband and soul-mate, snatched away when I’d needed him most. When our two girls had been most at war with one another.
“I said, when?”
“Tuesday sometime, so I heard.”
“Thank you. And that name I asked for?”
“Gallas. Near Mignonville. Elisabeth worked there for five years once she’d finished university. Jules Gallas, the founder, died a while ago. Not that we ever took our animals there. The son runs it now. Eduard…”
I suddenly recalled a warm May evening just before Jacques and I had finished for the day. A murmuring and moaning from the furthest barn away from the farmhouse where Eduard and Elisabeth had been having sex…
“Madame Jourdain?”
“Oui.?”
“You were about to say…?”
“Yes, I think at some point they may have been…”
“Go on.”
That cruel sun was now on my hands, highlighting two bony, mottled creatures that didn’t seem to belong to me any more.
“Lovers,” I said, and the word felt like a stone in my mouth. A filthy stone. “But I made her go to Confession, for having defiled Les Tourels and for spending so long in such a terrible place.”
“But you must have regularly used abattoirs?”
“Not Halal. Never.”
And then, with a shiver I noticed Aimée had somehow sneaked back into my room and was busy wiping over my already clean wash basin. How much had she heard? And moreover, would it matter?
Merde…
*
Monsieur Lyon had ended by giving me his cell phone number and told me to write it down and keep handy. Just in case. The shock of hearing that Vervain had been taken and Elisabeth dressed as a nurse, had left La Princesse Poole without authorisation, made my
loosened heart to pump blood too quickly around my old frame. Wasn’t this the same ferry that Alain’s Head Lad had been on? Where he’d been shot twice at close range?
Jesus Christ, help us all, miserable sinners…
She was a wanted woman. And where was Laure? The Englishman hadn’t said, and I’d been too numb to ask. But even more urgent, was why her special horse might be going to that bloodbath near Mignonville? Was Elisabeth on her way there too?
Because that’s what her caller had let slip.
Non, Odette. Be rational.
Impossible.
Aimée still had her back to me, now cleaning my toothbrush.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. “Wouldn’t it have been polite to knock?”
She gave me the strangest look before wiping her hands on her apron and clicking her fingers for the phone.
“That’s cost twenty francs,” she said. “I’ll be back for it later.”
*
Tea time. The English way, because so many detainees having settled in our country and ended up here, expected it. I admit, the whole rigmarole was quite enjoyable, especially when the séjour was livened up by a local pianist playing ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ and the like. When the care staff - mostly beurs from Algeria - sat amongst us, exchanging life-histories.
But not today. I stayed in my room and let everyone think what they liked. If they thought anything at all.
I was restless. My own Maman had often said, ‘it’s best not to dwell on things too much,’ but how could I not? I had to try and remember the smallest thing that might throw more light on events beyond the courtyard below and the vast spread of farmland, part of which had once been my home.
Yet more than recollecting, I had to do something. Sitting here by the window in my whicker chair - the only furniture Elisabeth allowed me to bring, along with three other smaller items - wasn’t going to be an option for long.
A knock, then bolder the second time.
“Odette?” A woman’s voice I knew only too well. Nelly Santorin - she of the over-sized crucifix and huge, black rosary beads. French mother, Milanese father. The first inmate in whom I’d confided in when Elisabeth had dumped me here. “Have you heard the news?”
I let her in, but not before checking that the corridor outside was clear. That neither Aimée nor anyone else were around. Silent too, save for the drone of a distant vacuum cleaner. “Your grandson’s been spotted on the footbridge over the N147 near Dienné.
Mon Dieu. How on earth did he get there?”
“What?”
“It’s just come on a four o’clock news bulletin.” She took both my shoulders in her hands. I could tell she was staring at that strange bruise on my cheek. “And is it true he’s been missing from west Wales since Friday lunchtime?”
Before signing off, Monsieur Lyon had also warned me to be careful. Not to trust anyone at this tricky time. But she wasn’t anyone. So, I just nodded, hoping this might act as a full stop. Not quite.
“I realise how hard it is to be a good wife and Mamie,” she opined, “but the hardest of all is being a good mother, especially when your one surviving child is suspected of criminal behaviour.”
“She’s not a child,” I glanced again through the same window where that incredible landscape soon be drowned in sunflowers, semed to be beckoning. “And moreover, she’s not my daughter. Do you understand?”
*
4.30 p.m. and the Jacques Cousteau Maison de Repos was at its busiest. The best time to make my escape. Yes, I should have asked Aimée for that phone again and called Monsieur Lyon with Nelly’s news but had to take my chance while I could. Mathieu needed me and I needed him.
Wearing my brown coat and woollen hat not worn since last Christmas, I slipped out through the door marked LIVRAISONS - Deliveries - next to the kitchen. The clatter of washing up interspersed with shrieks of laughter, all
helped disguise my exit, but it wasn’t until I’d crossed the courtyard with its Police- cordoned stores and walked through the archway leading to garages and more buildings housing broken furniture for repair, that I could start breathing properly again.
Having my faithful old handbag also helped. Jacque’s last wedding anniversary present, containing not only my current passport and photographs of my dead younger daughter and both my grandchildren, but also my notebook and a copy of Christine’s Will.
Yes, Alain had been upset at what he’d called her betrayal, but not as much as Elisabeth who, in the months before the tragedy, had been charm itself.
“Why not let me look after the children?” she’d said to her sister. “My being busy at school won’t make any difference. I’m free evenings and weekends. Lean on me, hein? It’s time you did.”
She also raised the bar and their expectations with ever-more expensive presents on the flimsiest of pretexts. Yes, my Elisabeth, whose Catholicism and devotion peaked just before she was fired from her school, had played every possible card right to ingratiate herself with her sister. Why? Had she somehow known when she might die? Or even, God help me, planned it?
*
Those sounds from the kitchen receded, and a bulky, dark cloud covered the sun beginning to slip in the sky. I found myself in the middle of a line of poplars, signed for St. Maure. I knew where there was a public call box and small garage. An oasis amongst too much sweet, greedy earth. My ankles began to complain. At the Clinique, I’d never walked further than the lounge or the rarely-used conservatory. For a once-active farmer’s wife, another imprisonment. Yet with the rest of my belongings hidden only where I knew them to be, I was free to find Mathieu, my darling, petit-fils and be able to give Laure and their over-sexed father good news. But little did I guess that from the moment I’d left my room, I’d been closely watched.
23. John.
Saturday 12th March. 3.30 p.m.
“One must learn how to be in doubt,” I muttered to myself as signs for Tilbury came and went. My brief exchange with the interesting and far from elderly-sounding Odette Jourdain re-winding in my brain.
“About what?” Alison distributed glacier mints, some of which had stuck together. The smell of them brought back too many childhood memories when Carol and I still had a Mum and Dad. When life had seemed too good to last…
The sweet’s sudden sting on my tongue brought me up short.
“I said, about what?” Her eyes were on me. Fired up, as she had been since she’d stepped off the train in Cardiff.
“Just tell her,” Laure said, sucking loudly on her sweet. At least eating something.
“It’s a quote from France’s first forensic scientist who ended up giving his body for medical research. Don’t ask me to remember the name. But I…”
“Another weirdo,” interrupted Laure. “Christ, isn’t there anyone normal we could talk about?”
I glanced at Alison. She didn’t have to say anything. She’d overheard too much of Odette Jourdain’s answers, and the extra information she’d volunteered. “I found myself thinking of it during that conversation. How easy it is to be…”
“Beguiled?”
“Something like that.”
“You should have woken me up,” Laure complained. “I’ve missed out on everything. Did Mamie know the name of the abattoir?”
Damn.
“No.”
She wound down her window and spat out her sweet.
“Or the latest on Mathieu and Vervain?”
I hesitated. The day already too long. Even with Alison alongside, I was flagging.
“She does now, and sends you her love. She hopes we find them both soon.”
Laure’s sigh filled the car as the Dartford Tunnel’s gloomy mouth drew us in. “That stupid quote,” she said with surprising aggression. “You don’t trust me, do you? Neither of you. You think I’m going to - how do you say it? - put a spanner in the works - when all I want is…”
The tunnel was suddenly too dark, my headlights too weak.
“I, I, I,” Alison did a neat imitation of the girl, risking a battle. “Look, Mademoiselle,” she said, “we want the same as you, remember? A result, with your brother Mathieu and Vervain safe at home. So, we all pull together, otherwise…”
“It’s all Papa’s fault,” a suddenly subdued Laure muttered. “He led Aunt Elisabeth on. I told him she hated Maman. I’d seen her watching her as if looks could kill, but he slapped me - more than once - for making up fairy stories. Me. A teenager.”
“Indeed,” I said, relieved to find signs for Dover at the tunnel’s end, wondering when any more news of her might be coming through. “No-one likes being found out.”
*
Four o’clock, with the sun struggling to re-appear behind ever more fragmented rain clouds. A drab unfolding of urban sprawl along the Medway. Another last place God made, it seemed to me. “Until there’s solid evidence that Elisabeth Jourdain murdered Danny Lennox on the ferry yesterday, everything is hearsay. We’re going to need more forensic research and reliable information on her movements since Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?” muttered Laure.
“That’s when a substantial amount of Noctran - a sleeping drug – and four syringes were stolen either then or early yesterday morning from your grandmother’s Maison de Repos in Aucentrelle.”
“You don’t think my aunt did it?”
“Apparently, before jumping ship, she’d changed into a nurse’s uniform. Perhaps even wore it to steal those items.”
“She’s crazy.”
“She may well be,” said Alison. “But there is one thing I’d be interested to know, and so far,” she half-turned towards the trainer’s daughter, “you’ve been really helpful. But why exactly did your aunt leave her Headmistress’s job?”
I saw Laure’s surprise.
“You mean at La Coeur de la Sainte-Marie school in Boisvilliers?”
“If you say so.”
“There’d been rumours about her and Sophie Kassel. Is that what you mean?”
She’d remembered. Her eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror.
“Yes.”
“And she was sacked.”
*
We were near Canterbury on the A2 with just thirty miles to go, when Kevin Lockley, transferred to my new cell phone, came through with what he thought might be useful information. He’d got himself drunk on Friday night and hadn’t woken up until mid-morning. He’d suddenly recalled noticing a small, red car near Glan y Mor village around midday on Friday. “Not doin’ much,” he added, on an ever- worsening line. But goin’ slow, before turning up by that old phone box…”
My pulse began to dance the polka in my neck. Had that black-clad woman I’d seen in the phone box been driving it?
“The make of that car is important.”
“Could have been anything.”
“Who was at the wheel?”
“Some nurse, I think. I thought that was odd, mind, and almost ran after the car to see if she was lost and had to get somewhere.”
Alison, who’d been leaning closer against me, bringing back old times, sprang back.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“A French registration by any chance?”
A bleak laugh. “Sir, you know what the fuckin’ weather was like.”
“Where did it go from there?”
“God knows. But that’s the kind of grass you can drive on for ever. “I had to get back to the stables, what with that big race coming up. Mind you, I thought it odd the boss hadn’t been chivvying. Where is he? Is it true about Danny?”
“It is, and if you think of anything else, let me know. I can’t say too much more except…”
Suddenly the cell phone was snatched from behind. Laure shouting. “But I can. We’re going to Dover then Calais. We think Vervain’s being taken to…”
“Give that to me!” Alison was leaning right over the back of her seat. An
elbow jabbed my neck. Made me swerve into the oncoming lane. Laure fighting back.
“Non!”
“I’ll pull in,” I said, aware of the car tilting from side to side. Alison now in the back seat was practically on top of the teenager, putting her restraining skills into good use. She passed me back the cell phone and told her captive not to say another word.
“Loose talk costs lives. My grandfather had that drummed into him during the last war.”
“This is 1987.”
“Same difference. And while you’re with us, you toe the line.”
*
“There’s no way we can go back to Glan y Mor,” I said. “But - and this is all hypothesis - if Elisabeth Jourdain was around then, she may have travelled over earlier in
the week, to check things out. Think oof that French woman at the Sea Breeze Hotel.”
“Rubbish!” Snapped Laure. “She couldn’t organise a rice pudding. Never went anywhere outside our region except to go to unversity. I was amazed to hear she’d even been on that ferry.”
“I’ll try that hotel again,” I said, not entirely convinced by her tone. Was it more than just jealousy? “Just a hunch, if she’d needed somewhere to stay.”
No-one replied, and leaving a message was too risky. I’d persevere later on, and meanwhile, as signs for the port and its cross-Channnel ferries became more frequent, I
asked Eifion Evans to pull out all stops and follow up Kevin Lockley’s story.
*
At a very busy Dover, while a truculent Laure under Alison’s watchful eye, visited the Ladies’ wc. I paid for the next crossing’s last few tickets and checked no messages for either of us had come through. While she’d organised contacts in Nottingham to search Danny Lennox’s background, I’d been more eclectic. Any clue would do, particularly as to motive, and until they proved useful, I’d had to bat away the strongest feeling of being kept out of the loop. Sidelined by bigger fish with reputations to build. DS Dave Rickards over in Poole, a case in point.
After all, nothing is more history than an ex-cop. But this ex-cop wasn’t over yet. I could use Rickards, and I bloody well would.
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