THE NIGHTHAWK
Sally Spedding
© Sally Spedding
Sally Spedding has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This edition published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.
“Have eyes that see nothing.”
(François Mauriac)
“Now loyal Frenchmen have entered the night.”
(Professor Grimm at the Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Métiers, Briançon. 1942)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. John.
Chapter 2. Karen.
Chapter 3. John.
Chapter 4. Karen.
Chapter 5. John.
Chapter 6. Karen.
Chapter 7. John.
Chapter 8. Karen.
Chapter 9. John
Chapter 10. Karen.
Chapter 11. John.
Chapter 12. Karen.
Chapter 13. John.
Chapter 14. Karen.
Chapter 15. John.
Chapter 16. Karen.
Chapter 17. John.
Chapter 18. Karen.
Chapter 19. John.
Chapter 20. Karen.
Chapter 21. John.
Chapter 22. Karen.
Chapter 23. John.
Chapter 24. Karen.
Chapter 25. John.
Chapter 26. Karen.
Chapter 27. John.
Chapter 28. Karen.
Chapter 29. John.
Chapter 30. Karen.
Chapter 31. John.
Chapter 32. Karen.
Chapter 33. Karen.
Chapter 34. John.
Chapter 35. Karen.
Chapter 36. John.
Chapter 37. Karen.
Chapter 38. John.
Chapter 39. Karen.
Chapter 40. John.
Chapter 41. Karen.
Chapter 42. John.
Chapter 43. John.
Chapter 44. John.
Chapter 45. John.
Chapter 46. John.
Chapter 47. Karen.
Chapter 48. John
Chapter 49. Karen.
Chapter 50. John.
Chapter 51. Karen.
Chapter 52. John.
Chapter 53. Karen.
Chapter 54. John.
Chapter 55. Karen.
Chapter 56. John.
Chapter 57. John.
Chapter 58. John.
Chapter 59. Karen.
Chapter 60. John.
Chapter 61. John.
Chapter 62. Karen.
Chapter 63. John.
EPILOGUE.
Chapter 1. John.
Thursday 10th April 1986.
As an infrequent visitor to my sister Carol and her husband’s villa not far from Perpignan, I’d pass through the nondescript settlement of Saint-Antoine de Bayrou in the eastern Pyrenees. However, last April, I found myself there with time to kill, before arriving in their quiet, tree-lined street near Elne’s cathedral.
When I’d phoned her from the motorway services near Carcassonne, she’d sounded tetchy. I knew the signs and, fond as I was of her, alarm bells had rung. It wasn’t my fault that neither she nor her husband wanted to visit me in Nottingham since I’d retired early from the Force.
“That country’s lost it,” she’d complained when I’d invited them over last Christmas. “Grocer’s daughter or no bloody grocer’s daughter.”
She was right. Fall-out from colliery closures and miners’ strikes had left the region a shadow of its former self. Crime on the rise.
*
She’d either had a spat with George or given up smoking, so I’d give her some space, find a café somewhere for supper and be with them later on.
With the rare feeling I’d got something right, I headed south from the main square where I’d parked my car, and was soon in a completely different world. Here, once the odd, derelict factory and boarded-up villa had been left behind, the ancient countryside opened out on either side. Overgrown pastures dotted with small cabanes whose orange-tiled roofs had collapsed under winter storms, while vineyards stretched away as far as the next huddle of houses and the snowy blur of the high Pyrenees beyond.
Just then, a red Saab convertible roared past, spraying me with dust and chippings. Its number plate too filthy to be readable. Moments later, came a silver Merc C class; rock ‘n’roll throbbing from its speakers. I only managed to log the number 11 before the road sloped down towards a stone bridge over the foaming Bayrou. Once the dust had settled, I got out to breathe in pine-scented air blown from the dense plantation on my right.
Heights either way have always spooked me, and I clung to that same bridge’s topmost stones to peer at the rush of spume and broken branches, swept along on their way to the Mediterranean. Suddenly, from within the darkest area of forest, I spotted a cream-coloured turret, and another behind it, poking through the foliage like giant-sized stinkhorn fungi. How could anyone live amongst all that growth? I mused, leaving the bridge, regretting my camera was still in the car’s boot.
Further along, I reached an impressive pair of arched, wrought-iron gates with a metal post box fixed to the left pillar. For a moment, the sun almost blinded me to the typewritten words inserted into the box’s front section.
LES PINS
DR. K. FÜRST D.Mus.
A German name plus a UK Doctor of Music qualification. Intrigued, I had a sudden urge to lift its aluminium flap to see what lay inside, but with some CCTV cameras smaller than a button, no way. Instead, I pressed my face between the gate’s iron bars and saw how the curving path, bordered by huge boulders, continued out of sight amongst the monumental pines.
No padlock, no chain, which was odd, unless the gates were electronically controlled. But no, for they’d moved a fraction, and when the whiff of another car’s exhaust reached my nose, I wondered who’d recently arrived there.
Leave it…
I couldn’t. Instead, pushed open the nearest section whose weight almost took me with it. Immediately, I spotted something red protruding from that forest’s undergrowth. The same red Saab I’d seen a few minutes ago, but this time, empty. Its boot gaping open.
Thoughts of supper forgotten, I peered inside and noted the obligatory red triangle, strands of brittle, dried grass and a yellow cagoule with soiled cuffs. I then went to the passenger side door, careful to leave no prints on its dusty surface. All the while tuned to the slightest sound of danger. Why I found a stone to wedge open that left-hand gate for a quick exit. Just in case...
R.E.M, Roch Voisine and Dusty Springfield tapes lay strewn on the worn passenger seat, while an Ibis-shaped air freshener dangled below the rear-view mirror. The glove box, partly open, was crammed with crumpled packets of crisps, empty Tic Tac boxes and chewing gum strips; some unwrapped. Whoever this car belonged to, was neither watching their weight nor of a tidy nature.
Amongst the junk, I found a laminated card dated one month ago showing black and white photos of two women with a thirty-year age gap. Martine Mannion, square-jawed, with staring, black eyes below a deep-fringed crop of dark hair. A native of Carcassonne and named driver for the older woman, her employer, Dr. Karen Fürst. Female. Disabled.
Curiouser and curiouser...
A steely determination accompanied that memorable, seemingly unlined face which to me, still a bachelor, defied her fifty-one years. If Mannion had been the Saab’s driver, what had made her leave it in this way? The more the mystery deepened, the more I sensed time seemed to stop, luring me from my original plans and into this smothering world, where that lowering sun had finally vanished behind the forest.
Chapter 2. Karen.
Why not be like a dolph
in and just stop breathing? I often asked myself. It would be so easy, so peaceful. Then, as young Liesbetje all over again, I’d see Vader and my two older brothers happily perched on a fluffy, white cloud welcoming me into their new world, saying there never was a mystery about their disappearance. That my over-developed imagination and above all, delusion, had wasted too much of my life.
Oh yes, I could have joined them there last night in bed, by pulling the annoying oxygen tubes from my nostrils and letting my lungs have their first big break since I fell from my horse. No-one would be blamed, least of all Herman, my devoted nurse who’d accompanied me from Rotterdam. Who’d helped make this half-life worth living.
Suddenly, steel doors slamming shut, followed by rapid footsteps drawing closer on the floor tiles outside my room. Who the Hell was it? And where was Herman? He should be here, securing my door. Keeping me safe.
I could only turn my head to the right as I forced my wheelchair round, almost scorching my palms on its tough, rubber wheels until I slid the door’s two, cleverly curved bolts across. My pulse banging in my brain. This was taking too long.
Then came a breathless voice I recognized.
“Dr. Fürst? It’s Martine. I was followed through the Gorges de Salerne, but managed to lose them…”
“Them?”
I finally unbolted my door and there she stood, flushed, coal-eyed. Sweat under each armpit of her green tracksuit and in the air.
“Two tossers wearing shades in a Silver Merc with an Aude plate.”
“Are our gates locked?”
Silence.
My voice moved up a notch. “Are our gates locked?”
“No. I reckon the electronics are stuffed. I just pushed my way back in.”
Damn.
“Where’s Herman?”
She hesitated, frowning. I waited.
“God knows. Fancied some fresh air, maybe.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” I said, although my belief in Him had long gone. “And Joel?”
My cook, always around to prepare a meal or clear it up. Like now.
“I’ll see if he’s in the kitchen.”
“Move!”
More panic as I steered myself over to the CCTV console. And to think that during lunch, I’d been musing how quiet things had got here, letting my explorations into events all those years ago, gain momentum. For too long they’d ended in one cul-de-sac after another. Now, so tense and vulnerable, was another setback.
Damn.
Outside my one round window, the black pine tops licked that sunless sky as an evening breeze stiffened and clouds moved in from the west. On the CCTV’s main screen, I could just about make out Martine’s solid figure running down the drive. Then, having pushed the left gate shut, slammed the Saab’s boot’s lid down. But why park it there and leave the boot open in the first place? Was there something else she’d not told me?
*
It had taken me two months at least to choose my three staff after rigorous psychometric and lie detection tests plus graphology analysis. She, my guard and gardener, had been the most resourceful and forthcoming. Herman the most caring, and my cook, well… He’d had an IT career before entering the Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe near Roche-les-Bains in the next valley, where he’d kept a vow of silence for three years while developing kitchen skills. That aspect of his CV had appealed to me the most. Self-discipline and rigour. While his crème caramels were to die for.
The CCTV screen seemed even more grainy as daylight deteriorated. But hang on, I said to myself. What was that? A definite movement in the shadows where Martine had parked. An animal perhaps? Or something else? And why were these images so damned poor? I pressed the clarity button too abruptly, but it made no difference. That sudden disturbance had gone and couldn’t be accessed again. Unease crept in. From the day I bought this place with the Els Focs de St. Jean fires burning on top of Mount Canigou, danger has tainted the air. Brought such vivid, lasting nightmares that Herman would often place his little body alongside mine in my bed, holding hands until dawn’s milky light filled my window.
*
Although a fit, thirty-one-year-old, Martine was panting. “Joel’s unpacking the dishwasher,” she began on her return. “He’s not seen Herman anywhere. Nor me, but his car’s still here. All locked.”
A green, specially-adapted Seat. His pride and joy.
“The lavatory?” I suggested. An en-suite bathroom adjoined his bedroom next to mine. Somewhere he enjoyed a good read.
She shook her head. Her black fringe sticking to her forehead.
“Ring the special bell,” I said.
“OK.”
“And why was your car boot open?”
“Good question. How I found it.”
“So, someone else inside my grounds left it that way?”
No reply, and my pulse on red alert told me something was up. I nudged my chair into the circular passageway outside my room, noticing how those dark, sweat maps had spread beneath Martine’s armpits as she pulled with all her might on the brass alarm bell’s rope attached to the wall. The speakers did the rest, and if dear Herman was within earshot, he’d surely be half- running to me in his own unique way. New Glock at the ready.
No Herman.
Damn, again…
“Take Joel with you and search inside and out, but don’t go beyond the camera’s reach. Not that it’s much good at the moment. Understood?”
“Can I borrow your old rifle?” Meaning the rabbit dispatcher. She was a good shot.
“I’ll get it.”
I duly reversed my wheelchair into the room where that damned bed was king, draped with tubes for oxygen, morphine, antibiotics and the rest. I also saw my catheter and its empty bag which Herman fitted so delicately, lay ready for the night.
I shivered as I reached the locked cupboard housing what every vulnerable woman needs; sensing everything had changed. That my main defence in this place of secrets had gone.
Chapter 3. John.
Odd there’d been no blood-curdling sounds of dogs and odder still that the gates to such a remote place weren’t electronically controlled. Perhaps this Dr. Fürst was more relaxed about security than me, based in the edgy, north midlands. Perhaps being disabled, she’d let a few things go...
Nevertheless, I sensed I was being watched. Years of tailing and being tailed by Nottingham’s low-life had sharpened this awareness. At least my cagoule and jeans were black. But as for my hair, turned grey the day after I resigned from the Force, it was way too conspicuous.
Bang, clang...
The din of that iron gate closing behind me, made me straighten up from my hiding place to see a stocky, black-haired young woman I recognised from that photo in the Saab, flinging what looked like a large stick into its boot, slamming it shut, then in one swift manoeuvre, backed the car out.
“Herman?” She yelled through her open window. “Herman?”
Some dog maybe, who’d wandered off? Or a friend of hers? Whatever, she sounded anxious enough. Having dusted pine needles from my eyebrows and clothes, I emerged just in time to see her take the incline up to both towers too fast and swerve out of sight.
*
With a chill jostled by a growing breeze, I followed, keeping close to the plantation on my left. Soon I was distracted by sounds of the nearby river growing louder, and I realised I was only a few paces from an overgrown drop of some fifty feet to its foaming waterfall below. So engrossed was I yet again, by this force of nature, I almost missed the sight of a snatch of blue fabric hurtling along in the flow, accompanied by dead bamboo stalks, garden debris and, further along, an old pushchair twisting this way and that.
I shivered again, not only because ragged black clouds had covered the darkening sky, bringing another temperature drop, but also because I wondered whose pushchair it was. Would some small, helpless victim of the swollen Bayrou soon be passing by out of reach?
Then came another snatch of blue. This time, trousers whose short legs we
re bloated not by flesh, but water. Part of a bleu de travail perhaps? Surely not in such a small size. Next, a bare, severed arm followed by another half-covered by a band of white material, borne along on the flow. I was definitely not hallucinating, but while vomit crept up my throat, a head, larger than that of a normal adult, surged into view, face up. I glimpsed blank, white eyes, a mouth agape, and blond hair like wet straw stuck across the head. Definitely male. Blood cradling the base of his neck. However, within seconds, the swift river had carried its grim cargo over that powerful waterfall and out of sight.
Sherwood Forest all over again…
How could I just stand there?
Go...
*
I backed away from the river’s edge, re-living those last, terrible moments of rookie cop Ben Roger’s young life.
Hurry...
But even if I’d managed to haul open half of those gates and run down the road to follow the current, I’d never have made it, so I headed for the first cream-coloured tower thinking how Carol and George by their pool with beers at the ready, belonged to another world.
I focussed on the studded, oak door, then the three stories, each with a closed, round window apiece, to the topmost one where, behind its glass, a face peered down. Male or female I couldn’t tell. Certainly not Martine Mannion.
Waving was useless, so with my hands cupped around my mouth, I yelled. “Body in the river!” ‘Stiff’ was for Nottingham, not here. My two-way radio could have linked up with a local commissariat or gendarmerie. But that particular relic lay up in my attic in Grantham Street amongst other mementos untouched since the day I’d dumped them there. Naturally, my Walther .22 had been signed off. A strange, final moment.
“Anyone at home?” I yelled again.
Suddenly, the first-floor window flipped outwards and Martine Mannion leant out. Her French rapid, angry.
“Who the Hell are you? I’ve a rifle and orders to shoot any intruders.”
Was that the ‘stick’ I’d seen in her boot?
“John Lyon. A UK citizen. On holiday.” I shouted back. My French not perfect, but serviceable. Better than my sister’s, which she’d never admit. “I’ve just seen body parts go by in the river down there. A young male, fair hair, blue trousers...”
The Nighthawk Page 1