Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Think of Jacques. Of Christine…

  *

  For extra security, I extended my holdall’s strap over my head, so it lay diagonally over my chest. Then I re-opened the back door, letting in the gloomy daylight.

  “Why was the horse to be killed? Did it represent something? Revenge, perhaps?”

  “Miss Jourdain never said nothing like that, and not for us to reason why.”

  I had to believe him, and yet, like a spread of old photographs, memories I’d tried to bury came nudging back to me.

  “Have either of you ever seen a photograph of Mathieu?”

  “Non.”

  “Dim. No.”

  “I’ve one here. Do you both want to help me?”

  “Of course,” Gallas said as the bigger man nodded. His eyes then widening on my grandson’s small school portrait taken last Christmas.

  “It’s him.”

  “So, we search as quickly as we can,” I said. Which of you has a cell phone? I wasn’t allowed to one at the Maison de Repos.”

  “Moi.” Gallas again.

  “I’ll give you a number.”

  “Not John Lyon?” The Welsh man was frowning. A black scar divided his forehead. “He’s trouble.”

  “He’s a man I trust,” I said, before any more protests. “Allons.”

  39. John.

  Tuesday 15th March. 11.30 a.m.

  “I’m warning you all, this is just the start.”

  Laure Deschamps had been right. Like an onion, the layers of her personality had begun to peel away. Perhaps by the day’s end, I’d have discovered who she really was. Victim or perpetrator, or both. For me, her lying about her age had been key. Yes, she’d referred almost affectionately to Mathieu and Danny. Seemed genuinely shocked and distressed by recent events, yet at Trois Ruisseaux as the second shot had felled her beloved horse, there’d also been that strange, secret smile. Never mind a jaw-dropping reaction to news of her father’s coma.

  *

  By late morning with that vast sky yet again preternaturally dark, so much had happened. So many phone calls back and fore across the wires of this flat, historic region once, long ago, within fifteen minutes of becoming an Islamic caliphate, and under German occupation not so long ago, yet just then, it was the Reign of Terror that came to mind.

  I’d neither tried calling Alison again, nor left her a message. Cowardice was to blame. I’d have to imagine how she was. What she was doing… Yet something else kept me from making contact. I didn’t want her mediating take on Laure Deschamps. Things had moved on.

  Meanwhile, the Judge had agreed to let me keep this increasingly resentful young woman under close supervision until the Enquête proper could begin. Until wily Elisabeth Jourdain and her various collaborators were traced. The law reasoned that without all witness statements and forensic reports to hand, there wasn’t enough evidence of wrongdoing for Laure to also be taken into custody. Stealing that transporter had seemed to be the only way to save her horse. But Philippe Aubouchon had disagreed, considering her to be an unknown liability, and me a fool to even think I could get the twenty-one-year-old to say anything meaningful. And keep her out of more trouble.

  I’d been promised full expenses, the latest model cell phone and, instead of my hire car, free use of a four-door, automatic Renault Mégane.

  Another of Aubouchon’s concerns was that Aimée Lecroix who’d so far not shown up for her afternoon shift at the Home, was still unaccounted for. A co-ordinated search for her, Mathieu and his aunt would be centred around Les Saules Pleureurs. For years, the hub of life for both families. At least until Christmas Eve 1984.

  As for Odette, who yet again had given her ‘prison’ the slip, only the local gendarmerie was involved. A concerned Lieutenant Desoulis in particular, was still pressing his boss for a safe house. However, Aubouchon had reasoned that as a septuagenarian without a car, she couldn’t have travelled far. Again, I wasn’t so sure. Especially since a new bike had gone missing from the retirement home’s cycle rack that very morning. The thought of her being mown down as was Beti Morgan’s fate, loomed large. For I was convinced she, more than anyone, held the deepest secrets of the two warring families.

  *

  Meanwhile, Les Saules Pleureurs was a cordoned-off crime scene, where Sion Evans’ Hunter rifle had just been discovered in the abandoned transporter’s filth. The stables’ latest owners had hurried back from Rennes, anxious that recent bad publicity would make selling the place impossible. Les Tourels would be next for occupation - perhaps even Trois Ruisseaux - with an armed unit ready to embed themselves in its immediate surroundings. So far so good. Except I couldn’t shift from my mind what Alain Deschamps had claimed about Vervain’s earliest days and the latest development in Laure’s own, chequered story. We’d not spoken about it since leaving the Hôtel de Ville, although her anger about my showing baby Mathieu’s wrist band showed in every curl of her lips and aggressive move of her body. Now wasn’t the time to probe further. If she jumped ship, nothing in this whole tragic mess might never be solved.

  Keep her sweet. On board…

  *

  11.50 a.m.

  Given the growing media interest in the case, it was risky to be sitting in the window of the Café des Artisans near the Cathédral Saint-Pierre, but Laure herself had suggested it, and at that moment, my sole agenda was to keep her on board. The huge Gothic building dominated the surrounding area. Its two, mismatched towers barely distinguishable from the ominous sky, as if echoing the current situation.

  With a fresh bandage between her left thumb and forefinger, she stared up at them. “Have you seen the carvings over the main doors? They’ve always freaked me out,” she announced as the waiter delivered our espressos. “I mean, how could anyone actually make stuff like that. To scare people? Make them more pious?”

  I shrugged, obecause other things were gnawing at me. “You’re right about mediaeval carvings like that,” I conceded, absently. “Fear was the key.”

  She smiled a short, rueful smile. “Hey, cool. I like that.” Then took a gulp of her coffee

  “Did your termination succeed?” I ventured as carefully as I could, while new customers jostled behind us.

  “Why? What are you implying?”

  “Nothing, and you needn’t say any more. But it must have been strange, even upsetting for your mother to help with something like that.”

  Laure set down her cup loudly enough to send out a signal that, unlike the Examining Magistrate, I was off-limits. He’d studied that disturbing, typed message and the tiny, plastic wrist band for several minutes. Kept them and the blonde hair sample for analysis, and afterwards, to me in private, said there’d be an immediate search for both Christine Jourdain’s medical records and Mathieu’s birth certificate. He’d also, albeit rather brusquely, thanked me. Unlike her…

  “She never said, although she’d offered to keep it if I went full term,” Laure went on. “But I wanted a life. To be a top jockey. Win big prizes for my…” Here she stopped. Screwed up her eyes and bit her chapped lips. Clenched her cut hand bringing fresh blood seeping through the bandage.

  “Dad?”

  Another nod.

  “And now look…”

  Here goes…

  “I’m still puzzled why you said ‘good’ after news of his coma.”

  Again, she stared out of the window.

  “Nerves, that’s all. I didn’t mean it. OK?”

  “We’re both seeing him at six o’clock,” I said, wanting to believe her. “Apparently, he’s out of his coma and keeps mentioning your and Mathieu’s names. So that’s very good news, but for a once-virile man, a tragedy.”

  Silence.

  “By the way,” I continued tentatively, while studying the menu. “Who was your baby’s father?”

  She fixed me with a hawk-like stare.

  “Don’t say ‘my baby.’ OK?”

  “Sorry.”

  “If you must know, that goof working at th
e Keppel’s place. The one with the bike.”

  “Jean-Claude?”

  “Correct. And he never knew a thing.”

  *

  Outside, the lunch time rush hour was beginning early. More vehicles had appeared, some still topped by snow, stopping and starting; their exhaust fumes eking into the café each time its door was opened. More pedestrians too, avoiding the messiest areas of the pavement. Smart, young women in high-heeled boots with not a hair out of place seemed almost an obscene contrast with the one sitting opposite me. Someone who, in different circumstances, could be just as stunning…

  I wondered what secrets lurked beneath these strangers’ seemingly normal exteriors, and because I knew myself only too well, guessed the answer. Even Alison and that poor sod Ben Rogers who’d shot himself in that faraway forest, had been chameleons…

  “It felt like un aspirateur,” Laure said, catching me by surprise. “on the highest setting.”

  “What did?”

  “The procedure. Having the foetus removed. It was the vilest experience. I never told Maman quite how vile. She’d wanted to hold my hand, but no way…”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No.”

  A young, swift waitress removed our empty cups, flicked her damp cloth over the table and asked if we wanted asomething from the menu. I shook my head, wanting this little saga to play itself out. Hopefully towards some truth.

  “Can’t you guess? Her.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “She turned up, didn’t she? Said Maman had told her everything. That someone should be with me, just in case. All lies. She’d snooped in my diary. Seen the big, black mark when my last period had been. Bitch. Kept trying to get me to change my mind. Even offered money. Failing that, would have the kid herself. Her?” Her voice rose in indignation. “That total weirdo? She’s not fit to own a bloody goldfish.”

  “Where did this procedure take place?”

  Laure took a brown sugar lump from the small bowl. Popped it in her mouth.

  “Do I have to?”

  “It would help.”

  “Some basement appartment in the Rue des Maçons. All I remember.”

  The café was filling up and I looked in vain for our waitress, aware of too may

  possibilities. Why I mustn’t let this twenty-one-year-old out of my sight, even for an unescorted visit to the Toilettes. If she decided to scarper, would help really be at hand?

  *

  As Laure had refused to tell Eugene Salibris any more and, as neither her aunt nor her grandmother was contactable, I had to make a fresh approach.

  “At the time of your termination, how many months pregnant were you?”

  A shrug. She swallowed the sugar lump.

  “Can’t remember. Why do you keep going on about it?”

  “Did you ever receive any counselling afterwards,” I asked, having finally ordered more coffee and this time, two tartes aux fraises. The last thing I felt like eating, but Laure seemed even thinner than yesterday. “Did Jean-Claude?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I told you, he didn’t even know. Now can we leave it?” She glanced out of the café window. Twenty-one, not seventeen years-old and, denying any knowledge of the Lagarderie psychiatric hospital. Moreover, until that specially adapted metal coat hanger had been forcibly confiscated, she’d been prepared to use it.

  “He could be questioned,” I said gently, stirring in a drop of milk. “As will whoever performed the procedure, if they can be traced.”

  Another shrug. “See if I care. I’m more concerned about what’s happening at Ty Capel? How everyone’s going to manage without poor Papa.” She leant forwards. “Have you heard anything?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Except the racing media are making a nuisance of themselves. And…”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” But it did. I’d been about to say that the farrier, Gilles Dugard had been busy ‘singing,’ and his revelations would soon be passed on to Poitiers Police Commissariat.

  She then focussed on me with such a venomous stare as if I was the source of all her woes. Her dissembling.

  “More to the point, when will the bullets that killed my darling boy be matched up with her gun? That Browning GP?”

  My first mouthful of coffee went down the wrong way, and Laure patted me too vigorously on the back, making it worse.

  “These things take time,” I lied again, between coughs, “and right now, your aunt is priority.” Normally, I’d have mentioned the Interpol teams activated at all France’s ports and airports; the hand-picked UK cops due to have arrived at midnight but held up by bad weather. But I couldn’t. Alison would be giving me a hard time. I could even hear her…

  What was she doing? I wondered again, shamefully aware that I’d not heard if she’d got back to the Midlands in one piece. However, my widowed sister, Carol ensconced down in distant Elne, would have told me to stop beating myself up.

  ‘She’s a grown woman. A trained cop,’ I could hear her say. ‘Give yourself a break…’

  Easier said than done.

  “I want to go,” Laure said, pushing her untouched coffee and uneaten tart away from her. “To Les Tourels. That’s where the cow will be. She took that house off Mamie, and anything she takes, becomes hers.”

  “You can’t. Remember the deal?”

  “Look, I’m too old to be baby-sat.”

  I checked my watch. Philippe Aubouchon said he’d be calling me at twelve-thirty with any more news. “Just give me a few minutes.”

  She scowled. Ran a nervy hand through her unbrushed hair, so different from the sample I’d kept in my pocket. Since that session in the Hôtel de Ville, she’d lost all trust in me. Only by agreeing to stay by my side, had she been deemed free to go. How long that promise would last, I dared not think. Perhaps if Alison was around, things would be different. But I’d stopped wishing for the moon the day my parents’ bodies lay strewn along that picturesque Norfolk railway track set between dunes and the cold North Sea.

  *

  On the dot, my new Nokia began to ring. Aubouchon seemed in a hurry, engulfed in traffic noise.

  “Monsieur,” he began, “a Detective Inspector Alison McConnell is on the line from Nottingham. She didn’t have any number for you.”

  Before I could reply, her voice filled my right ear. I was expecting anger, retribution, but no. She seemed calm, as if she had something important to say. “Are you on your own?” she began, with Laure staring at me, trying to work out who’d called.

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “Tricky.”

  “Laure?”

  “Sssh.”

  “OK. I’m telling you just the once. We’ve been in touch with Gemma Lennox, Danny’s ex. Plot thickens…”

  And when she’d finished whispering, with Laure’s chin practically touching mine, I realised that the unhappy, untidy young woman opposite me had a few more searching questions to answer.

  “Alison, wasn’t it?” She challenged.

  “Yes. And she asked after you. Hoped you and…”

  “Vervain? You liar. She never mentioned anything of the sort. I heard the name Gemma Lennox. Bitch.”

  Damn.

  “She only said Danny never stopped talking about you.”

  Those flecked eyes narrowed.

  “Crap. He fancied my mother. Even Black Face will tell you that.”

  *

  The Café had suddenly become too busy. Too stifling. The continual shrieks from its espresso machine, the laughter, clattering plates, made the past five days fold in all together. My trip to west Wales a bad dream, so really this din was far away in The Lacemaker’s Arms in Nottingham’s Rugby Street. And Alison, not this relative stranger was sitting opposite me, with Ben Rogers at the bar, looking pointedly in our direction. Her brown hair gathered into a French pleat. That wide smile fading to a mere mirage…

  Laure was getting up, but my hand closed over those thin, taut
muscles under her waxed coat’s sleeve, cracked by the cold in Kassel’s shack.

  “Get off.”

  “Did you have a fling with him?”

  “Who said? His mouthy ex again?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she pulled her arm free. “Don’t try and stop me. Or else…”

  Damn…

  She’d picked up her knife.

  “Where?”

  A pause. A second’s doubt. Had her trust really gone?

  “Les Tourels of course.”

  All was not lost.

  “Come on, Laure,” I then said evenly. “Give me that knife. We’re seeing your Dad soon.”

  “Fuck off, you useless piece of work.”

  “I said, give me…” But before I could dodge out of her way, that glint of steel flickered near my right eye. Stung my cheekbone just as my new phone began to ring. Eduard Gallas, panting, incoherent. He and Sion Evans were with Odette Jourdain at Les Tourels, shitting seriously large bricks.

  40. Elisabeth.

  Tuesday 15th March. 12.40 p.m.

  So, Laure Deschamps had reaped the whirlwind. I hoped wherever she was, she was enjoying the aftermath and keeping her loose-mouth closed at least until I’d stopped it for ever.

  The longer and deeper our metaphorical valley became, the sooner the better I could position myself to the best advantage. We both had everything to lose, but I wasn’t prepared to lose to her. Not given the history…

  How I loathed this weather, like winter all over again. Everything dreary, cold. The roads to Aucentrelle and the Maison de Repos, awash with surplus water that despite the Citroën’s efficient wipers, obliterated my windscreen - or rather, my old Maman’s windscreen. But Maman or not, time was against me. I switched on the early morning news only to suffer an army of voices invading the car, with nothing intelligible until the announcer emerged from the melée with a name that almost made the car slide over in front of an oncoming truck.

  “…that a Mademoiselle Aimée Lecroix is now being questioned on her relationship to members of the Jourdain/Deschamps families and for the theft of several syringes and distribution of a powerful sleeping drug from the Clinique Jacques Cousteau in Aucentrelle last Tuesday…”