Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “And the lovely Laure?” Rousson added. “Told you where she was, did she? With that Welsh transporter and her horse?”

  “What?”

  His tart kept her mouth open while in vain I tried to catch his eye. There was another attempt at collusion. Again, no luck. But the one called Alison was happy to start yapping again. The Papie-snatcher with her pointy tits and teeth like a rock face.

  But at least she’s not got my bruise…

  “She’s safe,” she boasted, pretending she knew. “And her little brother. Somewhere you can’t touch them.”

  “Liar,” barked Rousson. “They’re….”

  “Shut up!” Yelled Gallas. “Remember orders?”

  “Untie us. Let us go,” said the ex-flic, examining his bloodstained teeth with a finger. “And return our bags back and my car keys. That’s theft.”

  Rousson came over. I found his butt’s deep cleft arousing. He crooked his arm around the couple’s necks. “One false move and you’ll be in wheelchairs for life. Understood?”

  “Threaten all you like,” said the cripple. “Our colleagues back home know we’re here, and France Soir. If you want a long holiday in the slammer and the media floodgates open on the doting aunt and her minions here,” he looked at me. “Continuez. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. “You’re Capitaine Didier Rousson, aren’t you? I’d recognise your voice anywhere.”

  *

  Eduard suddenly began to cough. Deep and prolonged. Rousson thumped him on the back until he bent over to release phlegm, but that didn’t seem to help. Eventually, he went outside, retching air as he went. The place could soon become a death trap, I thought. A big plus when I’d stuck to my choice of venue, but my lungs never that strong, were already furring up. If what Rousson had said about Laure was true, and the ex-flic wasn’t calling his bluff, my plot was disintegrating as quickly as the dawn had conquered the night sky. Yet there was still too much at stake. The Anglais were big trouble. Just as that Dog Collar had been.

  I moved out of earshot to the other side of the mill and reached into my holdall. “I’ve two shots of Noctran left,” I said, pulling out an unused syringe and the drug’s plastic container. “There’ll be no mess, no trace. Just a slow but interesting end…”

  “I’m not sure.” Rousson’s lean, mean face said it all. “We could all be linked with that Jesus-lover who’s unfortunately no longer alive and kicking. Non, merci.”

  “Dead?” I whispered.

  “Too publicly, I’m afraid.”

  Bâtard.

  “Just leave them,” Eduard coughed from the doorway. “Better than the lake, something big out there will soon be hungry enough, so it’ll look like an unfortunate accident. Careless tourists…” He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Decided. Let’s go see what’s afoot in the great, big wide world.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “May I remind you who’s paying…?”

  Then I stopped. All eyes on me.

  Bad move, Elisabeth…

  Eduard’s gloved hand was over my mouth. He still smelt of the quick fuck before I’d hidden my car in the Forêt de Berthigny.

  “Idiote!” he snapped. “Remember that schoolgirl? The simpleton? How you stepped out of line and took over. Just like with Danny Lennox…”

  My heart seemed to stop.

  I didn’t kill her.

  “Even my kid was fingered,” the ex-legionnaire complained, balling his fists like the bully he was. Someone Eduard should have left at home.

  “Come on,” he cajoled, holding my arm as a bat fluttered past my eyes. “We’ve a job to do.”

  “And you,” I looked at Rousson, “have already booked your Caribbean cruise, hein?”

  Before he could respond, Eduard pushed me out of the windmill’s door. My body weight no match for his and, once I’d re-balanced myself, he steered me to the nearest Jeep. A dark green Auverland A3. Meanwhile, the burnt-out Volkswagon’s smoke still hung in the air.

  “Your old Maman’s on the loose,” he murmured. Crazy woman. She’s been blabbing to the wolf food in there.” He gestured towards the windmill where Rousson and Paranza - his on-off lover - were forcing the outer door wide open and wedging it with a rock. “Very dangerous.”

  “Who was it got her into that Home to keep her out of trouble?” I protested. “Let’s not forget.”

  “Given your situation, not enough. And when we get to your place, get rid of that holdall. The emptier your pockets, the better.”

  Now Didier Rousson was behind me, his hands on my rear, forcing me up onto that same front seat I’d occupied on the journey here, passing the mess in the road that had once been the peculiar Welsh woman. Before I’d met the English couple racing along in that stupid little car, now burning to a convenient skeleton.

  Both big men, Eduard Gallas and Didier Rousson sat either side of me. Their thighs pressed against mine. They wanted the next instalment of their pay by the middle of next week, and all four had already planned how to spend it. So I’d been told during a makeshift picnic that Eduard had brought along. Salami from his last batch of barren brood mares. Vittel water for clear heads.

  Garlic still on his breath.

  “Thanks to Didier here, who took her call, we know our young cutter’s probably finding a place to hide till she can be picked up. You can bet your life she won’t be searching for Lennox’s precious son. That would be too much trouble… But of course, she may contact her dear Papa who as you know, couldn’t keep his dick in his trousers.”

  “I want that horse dead. Understood?” I said to block that image from my mind and inject a note of realism. “And I don’t care where. No carcass to hide the boy, means no more moolah. Simple. What this is all about.”

  Both men eyed each other before Eduard. with a rough twist of the Jeep’s ignition key, started the engine with Paranza following us away from the windmill. The ex-legionnaire let out a burst of wind. I held my breath waiting for the smell to pass. It didn’t. I was the filling in the rotting sandwich, watching the hazy sky brighten towards the south, wondering when my Maman’s dry old mouth would deliver its harvest. Wondering too, if that mismatched pair in the windmill still had a pulse.

  At last my eyes were closing. My exhausted body shutting down. I thought of my own bed - or rather, the bed my mother had used for too long. A glass of ice-cold Pinot Grigio. A short interlude pleasuring myself before sleep. I wasn’t going to let Gallas travel to my Delectable Mountain again. Once was enough for one day.

  Just then, a phone buzzed into the silence.

  Eduard’s.

  He grabbed it, then said nothing so I could hear the staccato burst of another man’s voice. Urgent, frightened. I also heard the word ’Mathieu’ and the rest. My intricately constructed plan was indeed unravelling.

  *

  “Who was that?” I sat bolt upright, blinking.

  “No-one you know. Just another copain, if that’s OK with you.”

  “He sounded anxious to say the least.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Alain Deschamps said his son’s been picked up somewhere nearVerrières

  and airlifted to Paris.”

  Non…

  “Verrières isn’t far from here. Who told him?”

  “No idea.”

  “So, what now?” My voice thin, weak. A life behind bars beckoning.

  “We need a landline phone from a Service Station,” said Rousson still bearing that lingering whiff of a bad gut. “Urgent. I’ve friends in the Paris Préfecture who owe me favours. Who can act swiftly to limit the collateral damage.” He surveyed me from beneath his unruly eyebrows. I could imagine the body hair - a mat of fur down his back, while Daniel Lennox and his boss had been smooth, and Eduard gone one further with a full wax every fortnight.

  “Your collateral damage.” Rousson flicked me a disdainful glance. The flic who,

  despite a drugs and assault conviction whilst still a soldier, had som
ehow managed to worm his way into the Gendarmerie Française. An appointment that could be easily undone.

  *

  We were over the speed limit drawing away from our other Auverlander and swerving past early-morning tractors and other farm machinery with wheels like those disintegrating year on year at Les Tourels. “Especially if Eduard’s Maman brings up the subject of Sophie Kassel.”

  Twice he’d pressed the wrong button, forgetting I knew something of his shady past. “You were pretty keen to help me out, as I recall,” I said. “You had the necessary expertise. You needed cash for a nice holiday.”

  During the taut silence, Eduard slowed down for Paranza’s Jeep to regain contact. Both vehicles parked at opposite ends of the next Service Station’s forecourt, facing different ways. No need for re-fuelling.

  “I’ll make that call,” I said. “We don’t need to involve Paris. I’ve someone else who’s already been very helpful. It’ll be quicker. Safer. Trust me.”

  Silence. No-one moved. I spotted the cashier looking our way from behind her glass window. She’d soon be getting suspicious.

  “Is that where your S&W came from?” Rousson queried.

  “Please open the door.”

  He obliged, adding, “for an extra five hundred, I can fix you up with another.”

  “Already sorted, thank you,” I said, and to Gallas brushing a fly off his nose, “I’d like my Peugeot returned to Soulebec pronto. It’ll also give you a chance to find out if those two Anglais have been eaten yet.”

  “And then?”

  “Patience, Eduard. One step at a time.”

  29. Laure.

  Sunday 13th March. 7.45a.m.

  Tante Elisabeth’s sure sense of her own holiness had put me off praying for life, until I’d parked the transporter behind a deserted supermarket just beyond Loubressac. Grateful I’d not been stopped by a passing gendarme, and my inadequate driving licence examined. Nevertheless, my hands had shaken like those of the panicked blind as I’d undone all the vehicle’s stiff, muddied bolts and catches to its rear door and seen my beautiful Vervain lying there in the half-dark. His almost white head turned my way, eyes on fire, it had seemed. However, judging by the rhythmic movement of his ribs, at least he’d been breathing normally.

  “Please be patient,” I’d told him, stroking his forelock, his cold ears. Trying above all, not to inhale the stench of rotting manure. “Soon, you’ll be safe.”

  Then, having refilled his water bucket from a tap by the petrol pumps, drove as fast as I could to the familiar turn-off I’d been aiming for.

  *

  With the sky promising a bright but cloud-scattered morning, we were only five kilometres from my old home. My real home. And his. Here, the air was already sweeter, kinder than in far-off Wales and even with a blindfold, I’d have reached it. But Les Tourels came first. The farmhouse with its two turreted chimneys. Brown-shuttered and half-covered in creepers which turned purple every September. The huge carp lake glinting in the background. Once Mamie Jourdain’s place. At least that’s how it would always be to me.

  I slowed down to take a proper look, but no way was I stopping, not with other places to go, people to see. The wide, four-barred gate was closed, and no car stood on its gravelled driveway, yet why was I so spooked? Why did I have to get away from there as quickly as possible? Because I’d learnt how appearances can deceive. How loving words hide poison. How was I to know Elisabeth the mad witch wasn’t hiding behind those shutters waiting to strike?

  When, in the early hours I’d asked a certain Capitaine Rousson at Hervieux gendarmerie about her and my little brother’s whereabouts, he’d admitted she was still on the loose, and Mathieu still not found. Then had come his threat. As I’d taken illegal ownership of the transporter, I should pull into the nearest gendarmerie and make a statement.

  ‘Dog’s bollocks,’ as Cerys would have said. My one friend in that faraway, foreign place. And I thanked that useless God up there I’d not given that creep my exact whereabouts. Why? Because there’d been something about him that had made me wary. Gilles Dugard our farrier was the same. Nothing obvious. Just a certain inflection in his voice; the loaded pauses…

  *

  That eight-wheeled Scania took up the whole road. Listing into ditches, the steel sides tearing through whatever vegetation stood in its way. And then came the sign I’d been waiting for. LES SAULES PLEUREURS - 2 KMS. ATTENTON CHEVAUX DE COURS!

  Seeing the familiar symbol of a silhouetted racehorse beneath that faded lettering, made my eyes sting. It symbolised another life that still somehow clung on. At least the new people from Rennes who’d bought the farmhouse, stables and gallops after Maman died, would be sure to help me. In their thirties, they’d seemed nice. Normal. No kids, but dogs of all breeds and sizes rescued from police pounds in the area.

  Papa had never let us keep a dog; frightened that one false move on its part, could make even the calmest horse bolt. He was right, of course, but that was just another thing I hated about him.

  Were we too early?

  I half-closed my eyes, unable to take everything in. Its sprawl of stables and other buildings extended out from the house’s sides, like a huge, clinging family. The weeping willows all bare, while the old, black barn - the first structure to be erected on the twenty-hectare site - loomed like a bad spell over everything. It was where Maman had gone from the warm kitchen that Christmas Eve to end it all.

  As for our grounds and gallops, they seemed overgrown as though no-one had used them since we’d left. Perhaps things had gone wrong for the new owners. Perhaps not. There were curtains showing in the four top windows where their shutters lay open, but the ground floor ones were closed. Odd, I thought. As was the silence.

  But where was my swing? A special part of me for so long?

  Gone.

  *

  Like Les Tourels, there was neither any car nor obvious sign of life and, for a moment I hesitated. Was this the right thing to be doing? If our buyers Melanie and Ricard Hulotte were at home, I realised I hadn’t really known them at all, and ever since Gilles Dugard’s treachery and the Welsh pair hounding me on Friday night, who could be trusted? Besides, where were their dogs?

  Strange…

  Vervain was getting to his feet. Moving around. Worse, he was neighing non-stop, bashing a hoof against the transporter’s side. I had to get him out before he drew too much attention to us. Injured himself. Got covered in too much shit. As for me, I needed a wash, a shower. Anything. I opened the driver’s side door and got out. Legs unsteady. My head a mess.

  I was about to unfasten the first tricky catch at the back, when I felt someone standing behind me. I sniffed.

  Non.

  Poison…

  I spun round.

  She was there. Her and her stinky perfume. Her scary bruise. Hate sealed in her eyes. My legs seemed about to give way, like Papa’s first winner at Auteuil whose front canon bones had snapped upon landing. No pain, but no strength either, as if she’d taken my life away.

  Remember the First Circle…you deserve nothing. and God will see to it you get nothing but ice and snow and the deaths of your children and everyone fooled into loving you…

  “Sad, needy girl,” she sneered. “Nowhere else to turn, hein? How about the abattoir? At least then I can get on with my life.”

  “Leave me alone you home-breaker, or I’ll call the police.”

  “You mean him, that useless cripple? Don’t waste your breath.”

  What did she mean, useless?

  “Is he dead?” I breathed.

  “You’ll soon find out. And you can stop playing the little innocent too. Everything’s going wrong. Well, let me tell you, this is just the start.”

  I had to save my skin and keep Vervain from any more risk. With her standing so close, and a full syringe at the ready, there was only one option. My hand closed over my own makeshift weapon in my Barbour pocket, then drew it free. Like a claw, it struck her bruise bringing t
he darkest coloured blood I’d ever seen. Like a late afterbirth, thick and slow.

  She screamed. Seemed to fall away before stumbling towards the eerily silent house while I grappled with the Scania’s remaining clasps. Frightened, angry, but realising this was our last chance at life. Mine without Vervain or Mathieu for that matter, wasn’t worth living.

  Damn.

  Since Chȃtellerault, these locks had become caked in dried salt. Weirdly, impossibly so, as if I wasn’t meant to see my horse again. Despite its less than thorough re-spray and newish 82 number plates, this transporter was no more than a crate on wheels.

  I shouted to Vervain to wait. That I was doing my best.

  And then, as if by a miracle, the last obstacle clicked open. I pulled both heavy doors apart and secured them back, to see my boy standing over me like one of the four horses of the Apocalypse. A mottled, grey spectre, except for his belly and flanks green with wet dung. Nostrils wide, showing blood. Eyes re-adjusting to the light, stared past me. His legs trembling. I leapt into the transporter to join him. To run my hand down his sweating neck, then with dismay, saw his near fore shoe was missing.

  I’d forgotten to release the ramp and suddenly there was nothing between him and the Tarmac too far below, so I tried pushing him back, away from the edge. But he stood his ground, butting me with his white head.

  “Be still!” I yelled. “Give me a chance.”

  And that chance was the only one. Risking everything.

  *

  I’d reasoned it was better he was underneath than on top of me. Although his halter rope had broken just below the noseband buckle, another thinner one hung from a nearby hook just within arm’s reach.

  Merci Dieu…

  He stood on my left foot, then both, pinning me down. But I was nearly there. Reins of a sort now slung over his neck, in my hands. Where my strength came from to mount him, I didn’t know, but he was between my knees. I knew the signs. He was ready to rear; take my head off.

  Now…

  I squeezed his sides. He lunged forwards as if into space and landed on all four feet, almost jolting me from my perch. And it was in that split second before taking off down the drive, that a shadow loomed up beside me as if from nowhere. A tall, familiar shadow. Unshaven, wild around the eyes. Wild altogether.