Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Whatever that biche folle tells you,” Elisabeth yelled, “I’ve tried my best to keep Mathieu alive and I hope to God he still is. I only shot Vervain because she’d ordered me to. I knew what would happen if I didn’t. The same for Alain who’d rescued him from the knife, hand- reared him like a baby and had actually loved me too.”

  A terrible second’s silence.

  “You witch!” Laure shrieked.

  “What about Danny Lennox?” I broke in, barely able to take that terrible news in, Trying to cam things down. “Laure here, still seemed fond of him, when I first met her at Ty Capel.”

  “You’re an idiot,” sneered the captive, but Elisabeth wasn’t finished.

  “He’d tilted his cap at Christine after Mathieu was born… Bad move. But she wasn’t interested. Unlike that piece of work.” She jerked her tangled head towards her foe. “Good job your Papa never found out. Or about Mathieu, or how I had to shoot Danny exactly the same way as the others, and hire Gallas and Evans and all the rest. Even had to dispose of that priest from the ferry, as he was sniffing too close…”

  A terrible silrnce.

  “But did you kill Christine?” I pressed. “If so, why?”

  “Never. The coroner’s suicide verdict was right, and you have to believe me. She’d lost her faith, the will to live, and had begged me for days to help her die. She hated the way things were at home, and although I’d said I regretted my longstanding affair with Alain, it was Laure she loathed, for all the upheaval she’d caused. Laure, an accomplished, manipulative liar. Turning Mathieu against me and his Mamie…”

  And Alison had believed her.

  “So, where the Hell’s Mathieu?”

  However, suddenly, without warning, came the violent rocking of trees overhead. A chopper’s engine drowning what might have been an answer. A distraction impossible to ignore. I stared upwards, transfixed by its lowering, yellow belly.

  “Hold it! All of you.” Yelled a male, French voice from behind me. “We’re armed.”

  I turned just a fraction to see six black-clad guys. All with Berettas poised. The nearest one nudged me aside.

  “Shoot me too, I don’t care,” said Laure, suddenly free of that tree, flinging herself and my belt towards the wintry copse. Her open coat flapping either side of her like the broken wings of some crazed, alien bird. Elisabeth followed, white against white. Her small, firm buttocks dimpling rhythmically with each stride.

  “Arrêtez, Mademoiselle Jourdain!” echoed a warning shout. “Or I shoot!”

  “Elisabeth!” My throat burned as I screamed, but she wasn’t listening to me or anyone. Moving faster, in fact. With Laure gone from sight, I disobeyed orders and headed towards this evasive, naked figure.

  “Stop, Monsieur!” Someone bigger, stronger held me back. A rugby player as well, judging by the size of his thighs beneath their black, neoprene skin. I could only watch Elisabeth, who’d begun shouting for her dead mother to forgive her, then calling out out Philippe Aubouchon’s name too loud and clear. And Rousson’s and Paranza’s and all.

  Then another shout.

  “Fire!” ordered the Chef d’Escadron, cupping his veiny hands around his mouth. His finely-booted legs apart.

  No…

  Too late, the single, sullen blast issuing from the guy next to me, turned Elisabeth Jourdain’s white skin a completely different colour.

  Sancerre…

  She teetered before falling, moaning towards the pinkening mattress of snow.

  *

  “Done,” announced a tall, thickset guy in a brown, sheepskin coat. Not someone I recognised. “Straight to the heart.” He returned his spectacles to his nose and addressed Philippe Aubouchon. “A good leaving present for you, Chief?”

  “I’d have preferred to hear more of her story,” I intervened, still in shock after such brutal, cursory justice. Once again, the étranger with little right to be there. “And by the way,” I gestured towards the gloomy trees to the right of where her covered body was being lifted on to a stretcher. “Robert Kassel may also be around with a loaded rifle. I heard it go off.”

  The Chef d’Escadron choosing to ignore me, instead, ordered two men to find Laure Deschamps, while the other four were to hunt for Mathieu.

  “I know where he might be,” spoke a more lightly-built cop, already fixing goggles over his eyes. “Something his Mamie told me earlier today. About a water tunnel.”

  Odette? Christ, I’d forgotten all about her…

  “Where?” Barked Aubouchon. Flushed and tense as newly-stretched pig wire.

  “This whole episode is putting the wrong kind off attention on our region. It’s not good for tourism, trade or…” Here he stopped. “Lieutenant Desoulis, you’ll face a hearing if you’ve been witholding important information. Understood?”

  “Ihe pit of Cocytus and its River of Lamentations,” I said, clinging to a hunch before Desoulis could reply. “It’s just over there. I hope to God we’re not too late.”

  *

  Things happened fast after that. The team from the Met, barely giving me a glance, had changed into neoprene suits and followed me to where I lay down beside that huge, thick lid set into muddy, slushy ground

  “According to Odette Jourdain, there are two other exits like this,” said Desoulis who’d joined them. “One along the channel shortly to your right, the other, some way along the main one.” He glanced down at me. “I’d go back if I was you, Monsieur. This is no place for civilians.”

  Civilians?

  That final insult was the decider.

  “I’m going in,” I said.

  *

  He didn’t follow immediately. Someone had called him back to say Robert Kassel had just been found, barely alive, but in with a chance. I wondered as the tunnel’s thick, icy sludge froze my feet, calves and knees, what the future would hold for that strangely enigmatic man.

  The stench filled my throat, and my stomach began to heave. ‘The last place God made’ an apt description of what was little more than a sewer, where the only feeble light came from that hole in its roof. Respite soon fading to blackness. Then came anguished, fearful screams echoing along the narrow passageway, followed by men’s voices calling for calm. During training in Derbyshire’s Blue John mines at the start of my career, I’d soon learnt how deceptive such confined spaces could be. How instruments were continually being developed for rescue teams to gauge exactly where victims were. No such luck here. Then I recognised Laure’s voice, as cold as those ancient stones encasing us. She couldn’t be far away, and although I didn’t how she’d got in, I did know why.

  “There are two other exits.”

  “Down you go, you damned boulder. That’s right. And don’t dare come up again. Got it?”

  Boulder?

  “Help!” Was surely a young boy’s shriek? “She’s pushing me under and… and…” His words gurgled to a close just as another’s replaced it. Female. Old and frail.

  “Leave him alone, Laure! Pass him to me!” she cried.

  “Piss off, old meddler. You’re not in the War now.”

  “Oh yes I am. But a different one. With sly, Godless enemies…”

  By then, I’d managed to edge closer to the commotion. The slosh and splash of it now up to my thighs, in the wake of those wetsuits who, for some reason had taken the slightly larger tunnel to the right. Away from the threshing din of bodies and detritus. Of rotting rubbish and I’d swear, human bones stripped of their flesh.

  Hell indeed. And not a second to waste.

  *

  “You’ve been in here recently, haven’t you?” I challenged the creature whose eyes shone wild in the gloom. “Why? To finish off your grandmother?”

  “Keep away, dumb con!” She spat in my face. Both her hands covering what could only be a young, wet head, keeping it beneath the fetid surface. “What do you know? Have you ever had to push a boulder out from your arsehole?”

  I threw myself forwards, snatching at one of the sma
ll, flailing hands, and managed to haul a young, terrified lad free of her clutches. Then, with all my strength, dragged him behind me out of her way.

  *

  “Mathieu Deschamps?” I said.

  A grunt.

  The lad was vomiting, gasping for air, but I couldn’t heave his body over my shoulder or attend to him in any other way. Laure was coming for him again. The young woman whose hatred for her son and the man who’d helped make him, who’d also recklessly, loved her mother, knew no depths.

  “Don’t let her near me!” Shrieked Mathieu. “Please, please…”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry.” Then I noticed nearby bubbles rising to the sludgy surface. Pale, bony fingers outstretched; appearing then disappearing. A hint of grey curls.

  Odette? My God…

  I only had two hands. One already gripped Mathieu’s own slimy fist, while my other tried reaching out to those sinking fingers and failed. The distance between us increasing with every second.

  Forgive me, Odette… I’m so sorry.

  “Come on!” I then urged him, aware he was weakening with every step. Coughing and heaving. “Not far now.”

  “That’s what she told me outside Glan y Mor,” he burbled. “Tante Elisabeth, dressed up as a nurse. She put me here in the first place…”

  “Let’s just move.”

  Mathieu resisted, trying to free himself. “So why should I believe you?”

  I held him tighter, aware of my left ankle giving way under the extra weight.

  “One day you might ungerstand that she’d actually decided to save you.”

  “Who from? And where’s Danny? And Mamie?”

  Not his step-father. Not Laure…

  Just then, I didn’t have the answer.

  *

  Cops. The same as before. George Hopper and his trio, grappling with a sodden, dripping Laure whose obscenities echoed to fill every cranny of that ancient, watery grave.

  “Odette Jourdain’s still in there,” I gestured to where I’d seen the last of those old fingers. “Hurry, for Chrissake. Laure Deschamps has been trying to drown her. Just like Mathieu…”

  “We’ll do our very best,” said Hopper, relishing his role. “You two get out quick. There’s a chopper waiting…”

  “No! Not another one!” screamed Mathieu, his big blue eyes full of slime and terror, and who could blame him after his earlier experience? But I nevertheless pushed hs retching, buckling body towards that dingy light and the hole above. Into other hands pulling him upwards from Hell and on to a soft bank of snow.

  I glanced back to where Laure was still fighting in every way she could. Still cursing. Her reasons for blackmailing her aunt solid. Unbreakable. Yet despite Elisabeth admitting she’d given way to Laure’s evil demands, both damaged women had, through their various actions, proved to be monsters in human form.

  *

  I reached down to give Mathieu the biggest hug I could, before he was wrapped in a warm rug and carried out of the copse towards the chopper where a gibbering Robert Kassel handed me his daughter’s crucifix necklace for Laure. Where the lifeless bodies of Odette Jourdain and her elder daughter, concealed under red blankets, had already been loaded on board.

  The last time I’d see Mathieu before the Enquête. The boy who from now on would have to block out most of his life so far. Find reasons to forgive, if that were possible. And of course, find space to grieve…

  As for Philippe Aubouchon, whose promise of a safe house for Odette had never materialised, not a sign. And before setting off for my hired car, I finally unfolded that piece of cream-coloured paper Elisabeth Jourdain had given me. Headed by the Hôtel de Ville’s address in Aucentrelle, the italicized script was still forcefully black.

  MÈRE; Laure France Deschamps. PÈRE; Daniel Liam Lennox

  The most important part of Mathieu’s valid birth certificate. The final, most significant piece of the deadliest puzzle, which neither his murdered father nor his wounded employer had ever seen.

  EPILOGUE.

  Calm is the morn without a sound,

  Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

  And only through the faded leaf, the

  Chestnut pattering to the ground…

  From ‘In Memoriam.’ Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Saturday 19th September. 2p.m.

  One month on after the lengthy Enquête in Poitiers, Elisabeth Jourdain still occupied my thoughts. A blackmailed, sex-obsessed killer who, at the eleventh hour had tried saving Mathieu from his real mother, also provided timely proof of his real parentage and fraught home birth at Les Saules Pleureurs.

  There’d been no tape or photographs of Christine Deschamps’ presumed assisted suicide, and during the investigation, several of her former friends re-iterated their awareness of her deep despair. Laure had also ruthlessly played upon her aunt’s guilty conscience to fulfil her destructive agenda. That bleak threat she’d supposedly found in her mother’s hand had originated not from Elisabeth, but Laure’s own portable Olivetti.

  The only identifiable prints were those of an embarrassed Judge Eugène Salibris.

  Meanwhile, the former Head teacher’s estate, including Les Saules Pleureurs and Les Tourels would pass solely to the young boy being cared for by a family near Hervieux. Laure, however, convicted of drowning Odette Jourdain, was excluded for life.

  .As for Danny Lennox, he’d also made a Will in favour of his young son just a week before his murder. Almost as if having a premonition of his death. As if finally knowing that brave, little lad was his.

  As for me, I’d spent a tense week with Alison in that same Bar Hotel I’d used before visiting Philippe Aubouchon then Elisabeth Jourdain’s empty holding cell.

  Now it was time to renew contact with her and apologise again for my desertion at the Berthigny windmill. To give thanks where due, and try perhaps for one last time to re-kindle what we’d shared before our fateful drive to the Coed Glas Hotel on that inauspicious Friday back in March.

  With too many needless deaths and both Jourdain and Deschamps families destroyed, it was surely time for peace.

  Or so I hoped, driving north-east out of Nottingham on a rare, cloudless day to Burnside, Alison’s former home. A farmhouse in Bottesford, with no farm animals now, just two retired collies and a cat with three legs, who’d survived being run over. She was regularly keeping an eye on the place while her parents were cruising Norway’s fjords, and she’d agreed to see me. Not for long, though, as she still had reports to write up for next week. The kind of work I’d once done and, if I was honest, still missed. Especially when even the newly-promoted George Hopper had brushed me aside at Les Tourels on that violent, snowy day five months ago.

  *

  Most people would have admired these fields gently curving beyond the ancient, golden-leaved oaks lining the minor road that would eventually lead to the Lincolnshire Wolds. But not me. I’d seen enough of what the countryside can hide, and Odette Jourdain’s wintry burial next to both her daughters, with the world’s media crowded behind the church gates, said it all. The elderly woman whose neck had almost been severed by a bull’s mating collar, had risked her life for her country, then given it to protect her great-grandson now in a temporary foster home, whose origins she’d always known. Who must have regretted making an unstable adolescent to go full term. Someone who’d hated her son from the moment he’d arrived, was now back in Lagarderie’s secure unit, never to be released.

  I’d made a brief visit there just before coming home and, in the presence of two female security guards, had handed over Sophie Kassel’s glistening crucifix to her former school friend, who’d immediately - and it seemed, almost gratefully - slipped over her head.

  Dr. Hassan Aziz, serving three years imprisonnment for providing Mathieu’s false birth certificate and hospital wrist band, wonders to this day how his manipulative patient could have stood by, watching her mother choke to death. But that had been all part of the punishment plan…

  My belov
ed Vervain. My beloved Maman…

  All sick....

  Odette had been posthumously cleared of any involvement in Father François Leboeuf’s death, and as for Sophie Kassel’s duplicitous father, he remained on Suicide Watch after his daughter’s skeleton had been dredged from the farthest end of that same water tunnel where sludge had lain thickest. Her unsparingly written account of his sexual abuse, was discovered behind a picture in her former headmistress’s bedroom at Les Tourels.

  Meanwhile, Alain Deschamps, regretting his liaisons with Elisabeth, and duped for so long about his own daughter, was, despite painful, reconstructive surgery, determined to keep his racing stables going. I’d considered calling in on him too, but what could I have said that he didn’t already know? Or want to know? His farrier wouldn’t be free for two years, in company with fellow songster, Sion Evans also residing at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in Cardiff. His dead partner’s Beretta Elite still hadn’t surfaced, and perhaps never would in that unpopulated area. Nor the exact manner of her death.

  Excluding the helicopter pilot who’d since suffered a debilitating stroke, Poitiers’ prison population had also been augmented. Gallas, Rousson and Paranza were serving terms of varying lengths. All were in Elisabeth Jourdain’s pay. Each guarding his own back, resentful of their boss, Philippe Aubouchon, receiving a shorter sentence than even the slaughterman-turned whistle-blower. His police pension pot unaffected by having provided Elisabeth with two police-issue weapons and enabling her escape from custody. Also diverting Mathieu’s rescue helicopter from Paris to a rural backwater, and deliberately failing to protect his only grandmother.

  An internal investigation into Aubouchon’s desperate order to shoot her elder daughter had soon fizzled out. But what could I, a mere étranger do? I’d been a complete prat to have been fooled by his status and his cool. His formidable footwear, and although Laure had boasted of shoving Odette into that foul water tunnel, that terrible, slow death could be laid squarely at my door. Safe house or no safe house.