Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Voilà.

  I spotted not a key exactly, but a small piece of steel protruding from the ignition. A device I’d seen too many times when bringing joy-riders and serious car thieves into the slammer. But why in this car? What had been going on? The bruised woman hadn’t referred to it at all in the windmill. She’d been too busy dismantling myself and Alison in the most cruel and clever ways. I couldn’t help comparing her with some of the psychos I’d met in the course of my job. Arsenic and sugar came to mind.

  As for her promised wolves - no time to worry about them. A fingertip search was top of my list, to prove she either owned this car or had hired it.

  Just then, came a second ear-bashing blast from my burning car, making every single bird tear away from the mesh of bare branches overhead. Alison and I could have still been standing next to it, re-living the past one minute. The next… But just then, any future didn’t seem to exist.

  *

  Having cleared away the hurriedly-scattered camouflage from the Peugeot’s roof, I climbed into a neat, clean world with everything in its place. An unmistakeable trace of a perfume I’d often smelt in shops and pubs.

  Hurry up…

  I turned that makeshift key just once and switched on the radio to see what channel had been listened to. France Musique, currently with Mahler’s Der Kindertötenlieder coming to its sorrowful climax, bringing Laure and her little brother to mind. I shivered, and not just because the air seemed to be getting colder. I kept the sound down as I began rooting around the rubber mats which on the driver’s side, harboured several aggregate chippings. Neither yielded up any mud, grass or pine needles. Nothing to suggest rural.

  I pushed a few pieces of the grey chippings into my slacks’ empty back pocket

  Except that, like my shirt pocket, it wasn’t quite empty. The rushed frisking and snatching at the windmill had missed that cut strand of blonde hair I’d taken from the doll in Mathieu’s room in Ty Capel. To see and feel it again and remember exactly where I’d found it, was like a hit to the guts.

  Worse, Mathieu who’d kept it, who might be already dead.

  *

  The glove box smelt of a valeting cleaner, and housed not sweets or cigarettes, the usual clutter, but two cassette tapes. One of them a radio play based upon Dante’s Divine Comedy, the other, a collection of choral works sung by the choir of L’Êglise Saint-Benoȋt in Soulebec, in 1984. The same venue as in that photo of Mathieu’s christening. A strange activity for such a woman, if this car was indeed hers. But Dante was perhaps the giveaway. That quotation Laure had shown me still in my mind while listening hard for any news bulletin to interrupt the Mahler. And of course, danger from outside.

  There being none, I extracted this cassette’s cover sleeve and, despite the poor daylight, read its small print, aware of precious seconds slipping away. After details of the Doucedeluxe recording company in Poitiers and the music’s provenance, came remerciements to a Mlle. Elisabeth Jourdain for her advice and support. I shivered again, trying to reconcile the mismatch between that name and what it represented. But there was more. When I checked the reverse side, there, in sepia format was a photograph of the choir.

  Good God…

  Two heads, not so far apart, had been encircled in thick, black ink. The first, of a young, dark-haired girl; the second, Elisabeth Jourdain herself at the front, looking demure in a cassock and surplice. No sign of that dominant bruise on her cheek. However, that distinctively cocked head was the same.

  I returned everything to its place, aware of a small movement outside, to the front. In that split second, I stuffed the cassette into another of my pockets, switched off the radio and crept away behind the car. My throat dry as pumice. Pulse too fast.

  I’d been hoping to use that key substitute to open the boot, but not for long. A familiar figure came running from behind the windmill. Camouflage gear. A chest, tight as a drum and that face. I’d been unable to erase, glowing with rage. Eyes that had enjoyed too much pain…

  Eduard Gallas, come to retrieve his paymaster’s car?

  *

  Where the hell to go? He’d already seen me. To run might mean a bullet to the head. No thanks. I had to take my chance in the nearest gulley just feet away. Half mud, half water, filled with pigeon feathers, perhaps blown there after some fight, judging by their pinkened spines and clots of blood.

  The Peugeot’s chassis creaked and sagged as he threw himself into the driver’s seat and, after a crash of gears, revved with such force, a pall of black exhaust bloomed into the air.

  Christ.

  Was this how I was going to die? In a shitty ditch? After everything?

  The bastard was reversing towards me. Survival made me leap upwards. Somehow, I made it on to the roof, winded, gasping for breath. But at least I was on top. Better than being under those mud - encrusted wheels.

  I clung, as if to a surfboard with no waves. A toboggan without snow. First, he tried an emergency stop, then a sudden surge up a weedy bank. Next, tight circles executed on two wheels. The kind I’d seen on Nottingham’s Norton Street enough times on a Saturday night, until he stopped again and began to get out.

  *

  All the while, that windmill loomed like some malevolent spectre in the distance. The prematurely bald crown of Gallas’s long head, inviting me to kick it. I did, taking him by surprise. And again, before he could dodge away. He was down, roaring like one of his doomed beasts. Spit and blood drooling from his mouth.

  Me, I was back at Hendon Police College, in their Restrain and Hold class. But this time, I was doing more than restraining and holding. I was energized, blocking his air, compressing his lungs that had breathed for too long. Finally, feeling him grow limp beneath me. He legs giving up their fight…

  This was now or never…

  “So, you’re the servant come to get her car?” I sneered, adding pressure around his throat so his cheeks darkened from pink to plum. “What’s your copaine got planned next, eh?”

  “Nothing” he gurgled. “Besides, I stole it for her.”

  “Really? That’s quite risky.”

  A nod.

  “She’d have sliced off my balls, otherwise.”

  I winced. But stayed focussed. “You could be banged up for theft as well as abduction and attempted murder…”

  “You don’t know the full story.”

  “I’ll get it, but first I want both mine and DC McConnell’s passports and other property returned pronto. Understood? And which of you cowardly bastards torched my car? And who’ll be volunteering to trot along to the British Consul on our behalf?”

  “Ask her. The crazy.”

  I recalled Elisabeth Jourdain’s disfigurement. How in the windmill, she’d constantly kept that cheek turned away from her three assistants. Sometimes covering it with her gloved hand.

  “Who bruised her? You?”

  “Non.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Can’t say.”

  His epiglottis softened beneath my fingers as he moaned in protest.

  “Just between you and me, Eduard,” I wheedled in the same sour-sweet tone I’d used with tricky customers in ‘The Box.’ “Scout’s honour.”

  A pause, in which more red gunk eked from the corner of his mouth. He was thinking…

  “Some girl,” he said eventually.

  Cue a piano sonata on France Musique. Softly tinkling…

  For a moment, my determined hands lost their grip. “Which girl? Sophie Kassel? His stare hardened. We were little more than two animals locked in a fight to the death. His, if I concentrated enough to forget my aching left ankle.

  “Being an ex-flic, you should know.”

  Laure? No…

  He kept staring, then spoke again. “They’re all mad. Even old Mamie who might at this very moment be on her way to Paris with her grandson. And be warned, our Mediaevalist has a second firearm. A Police-issue 9 milimetre Browning, courtesy of yet another friend.”

  “We saw it.
Which friend?”

  “Let me go. I just want to get this car back and get on with my life. Making a decent living. Unlike you…”

  That stung, but not as much as the startling red herrings he’d strewn my way. As for that word ‘Mediaevalist… ‘

  “Not good enough, mon ami,” I countered, tightening my grip. “You’re leaving too much out of the equation. Why were Capitaine Rousson and Lieutenant Paranza involved at that windmill over there? Why has Mathieu Deschamps gone missing and, according to the Welsh couple who’d abducted me in their transporter, his sister’s horse destined for an abattoir? Yours, I’m sure.”

  “Not mine, Monsieur.” Having cannily avoided my previous questions. “I only take in horses on their last legs. Mature meat’s better.”

  I detected a smile…

  “And why was Danny Lennox shot?” I kept going despite wanting to finish him off. “What’s really going on? Why is she paying you serious money?”

  Gallas had given up struggling. His breathing shallow, causing him effort.

  “Let them tell you, because I’d like to reach my fortieth birthday.” He glanced at his watch. A gesture of pure gamesmanship. I told myself not to react. “They should soon be at Les Saules Pleureurs. That was the arrangement. And…”

  But before the coward could finish, that sonata on the radio was interrupted by an announcer’s urgent voice, making me lose concentration on the job in hand.

  “… the body of Paul-François Leboeuf, a part-time priest and home-schooling specialist from Lisieux, was discovered outside the Villedieu Gendarmerie earlier this morning,” he began. “Tests are still being conducted into the cause of death, but all signs point to a drugs overdose and…”

  Without warning, the slaughterman reared up, knocking me backwards, then scrambled away into the densest part of the plantation. Semi-stunned, I watched him vanish, my mind like a monkey cage at a zoo, but full of faces frenziedly veering from side to side, up and down, until one in particular, came close. As ominous as those clouds congressing overhead. A face foretelling what could only be a death sentence.

  31. Odette.

  Sunday 13th March 9.15 a.m.

  I’d failed little Mathieu, or rather, my old heart had let both of us down, not because of a lack of will and courage, but because its beat had become irregular. Those police airlifting him to safety, had considered me too risky to fly. They’d also given another, more painful reason. Because Elisabeth, his alleged abductor, was my next-of- kin.

  So, I’d had to stand by as my weary, grubby grandson, still suffering from the effects of some kind of sleeping drug, had been herded crying and screaming into the helicopter. All the while, Annie and Thierry Solus, the tough, young owners of La Rigolette - where Mathieu had appeared late last night - forcibly stopped me from following him.

  I was told he was being taken to the Préfecture de Police in Paris from where his father could collect him and answer more questions, just as I’d done, with hopefully more honesty.

  *

  Finally. back at the Maison de Repos, I slumped down on my bed, consumed by the terrible realisation that my elder daughter, who’d inhabited me for nine draining months, was now an enemy. A clever, cunning woman whose overt show of the Catholic faith had resulted in her appointment as head of the most sought-after Church school in the region. The perfect cover for her sins.

  The moment I’d been dropped off by Lieutenant Desoulis and ordered to stay within its confines until Elisabeth had been caught, I telephoned my son-in-law’s home in west Wales. No reply from all three lines. Just an awful, empty silence in which my imagination started spinning.

  Now, after a breakfast I couldn’t bear to eat, and while small flakes of snow fluttered past my room’s window, I tried phoning again. This time, a man with a strong Welsh accent answered and introduced himself as DC Eifion Evans from Cardigan Police Headquarters. He then explained he knew hardly any French and could I therefore speak more slowly?

  “No need,” I said, faintly aware of a click on the line. “I learnt English during the war. And four other languages.”

  He wasn’t impressed.

  “Not Welsh?”

  I didn’t want to offend him, but Welsh and Breton had been the very least of our linguistic priorities. “I need to speak to Monsieur Deschamps,” I said instead. “He’s my son-in-law. I’ve some vital news.”

  “Tell me and I’ll see he gets your message.”

  I heard another click. Was that an intercept, or had paranoia taken a complete hold?

  “Where is he?” I persisted.

  A short cough. The detective was muttering to someone else, perhaps on another phone. “I don’t know. Which is why I’m here in the kitchen at Ty Capel, making sure the house is secure and his team are seeing to the horses…”

  “You don’t know?” I repeated, aware of those snowflakes thickening, joining up. “How long has he been away?”

  “Not sure, but the replacement Head Lad said his Mitsubishi wasn’t here when he turned up for work extra early this morning.”

  “When exactly?”

  “4 a.m.”

  I tried to keep panic from my voice.

  “Alain has no living parents and as his mother-in-law, I’m desperately worried about his daughter Laure. Never mind that little Mathieu has…”

  “Mr. Deschamps won’t speak to you, and that’s the truth,” the detective interrupted. “Doesn’t trust you. Never has. Said you’d caused enough trouble to his family… I’m sorry, Mrs. Jourdain…”

  Normally, I’d have corrected such ignorance, but not now. My old blood was beginning to burn. My unreliable pulse working a little faster. “Yes, I admit Alain and I have had our differences,” I said. “But it’s as if you’re describing someone else. She must somehow be working on him.”

  “She?”

  “Elisabeth Jourdain. My elder daughter.” The words tasted like bad meat in my mouth. “They were having an affair when his wife Christine - her younger sister - hanged herself. Has he told you that? How Laure saw her father and aunt doing things together that no girl of that young age should see?” I stopped to draw breath. “But I don’t understand why Elisabeth is the chief suspect in Danny Lennox’s shooting on the ferry.”

  “She had him too, it seems.”

  This snow would be settled by nightfall, I thought. I, who knew the Poitou-Charentes and its weather extremes off by heart, but not some of its people who’d risk anything for land and more land. Or even it seemed, another’s husband.

  “You were about to add something about Mathieu…” he said.

  The sky outside was now as black as my firstborn’s heart.

  “When was this affair?” I persevered.

  “A while back, I believe. Before the lad was born…”

  Before the lad was born?

  “The farrier, Gilles Dugard who’s in custody in Cardigan, has sworn on the Bible that it’s true. And how upset this Laure had seemed. Enough to attack Elisabeth with a fork and badly damage her left cheek. He’d seen it all, but only yesterday felt he could speak out.”

  Enfin…At last…

  I’d never liked that ‘marginal’ my son-in-law had hired straight out of prison and brought over from France, but the Welsh detective’s tone convinced me. So, Elisabeth’s wicked lie about my Jacques disfiguring her, was evaporating, accompanied by a vivid image of my granddaughter. The thin, troubled tomboy who’d harmed herself whenever life had let her down. Whenever Maman had let her down or given little Mathieu too much attention. Laure, always unfathomable, always reticent, who’d refused any professional counselling until…

  A sharp knock at my room door. Aimée Lecroix’s scowl came first, then her pristine, white overall. She, my so-called ‘personal carer’ was still punishing me for having absconded from my retirement home with her being blamed. Instead of her usual neat folding-over of bedclothes for later, she tore back the eiderdown, blankets and top sheet, and threw the pillows to the floor.

>   Meanwhile, Detective Constable Evans was speaking again. This time less clearly as if what he had to say was difficult. I had to strain hard to listen, all the while aware of the human tornado still slamming around in my room.

  “Thought you also ought to know the Chȃtellerault unit have just confirmed that a Welsh woman travelling in the Scania transporter carrying your son-in-law’s racehorse, was found dead on the road last night near L’hommaizé. We’ve yet no clue why or how this happened, but the driver and trailer with hopefully the missing animal still inside, must be found.”

  “Where was this vehicle going?”

  A short pause.

  “We believe to an abattoir.”

  My insides contracted. I made a guess.

  “Gallas in Mignonville?”

  No reply.

  “And this driver’s name?”

  Another pause. Aimée was taking a break. Her hard, little face staring at me

  “Sion Evans.”

  “Evans? The same as yours.”

  “Plenty of them in Wales,” he snapped, and I wondered what had rattled him.

  Snow was settling on my windowsill. Soft and silent…

  “Please let me know if you hear any more news of anyone,” I said. “Including Monsieur John Lyon. And please, I beg you let me know about Mathieu and do all you can to find Laure. Not forgetting her beloved horse.”

  “Course, Madame. That’s my job.”

  Once I’d given him the retirement home’s number and the extension to my room, I added Capitaine Desoulis’ name to my list.

  *

  Now there was just me and my carer. At war.

  “Is this telephone line being bugged?” I quizzed her. “Because if so, without my knowledge, that’s illegal.”

  “You really are nuts,” she snapped, moving away into the bathroom.

  My phone began to ring. I gripped its receiver, only to suddenly feel as chilled as that ever-whitening landscape outside. Aimée stared intently as Lieutenant Desoulis began by checking up on me after my recent, fruitless hunt for Mathieu. Then, in a more sombre tone, added that not only had a priest from Lisieux been found dead from a drugs overdose in Villedieu gendarmerie’s car park, but I’d been filmed by a CCTV camera leaving his white van and running towards the gates. The vehicle’s left rear light smashed. No evidence of what might have caused it.