The Nighthawk

by Sally Spedding

  “Name?”

  “Geoff Saunders. Manchester.”

  “United?” he smiled white teeth.

  “You bet. Best team on the planet. As for the car, I’ve cash in the bank. Would you at least let me take a look at her?” As I spoke, I bent down to pick off a clod of dried mud lodged in the nearside front wheel’s tread and slipped it into my cagoul’s pocket.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “In the square.”

  “Make?”

  I remember hesitating. To lie or not to lie?

  “Volvo. Grey metallic. Three years’ old. Twenty thousand on the clock.”

  The black-haired girl was behind him now, eavesdropping. I had that sick feeling I’d made a mistake.

  “I’ve seen you around before,” he snarled. “Now fuck off.” That part in perfect English.

  “He says fuck off,” the girl added and, as I backed away, at the same time noticing a young, black-clad priest up the street slip from sunshine into the church’s shadow.

  I continued walking, burdened by too many unanswered questions. Aware of Herman’s pieces of paper deep in my jeans’ side pocket, and what I’d been seen yesterday evening while heading towards Les Pins. I should get back to Karen Fürst, but I also needed a dose of God.

  *

  A sudden drop in temperature and the sense of a dark, incense-scented veil

  obscuring my vision as that bell in its weird, wrought-iron cage set above the church roof, pealed one o’clock.

  The side door I’d found led into an area full of miniature, wooden chairs arranged in a circle around a life-size statue of the Madonna and child. Suddenly, I heard a man’s voice from behind me. Smooth, and like Joel Dutroux’s, with no trace of the local accent.

  “We aim to guide their souls from as young an age as possible,” he began. “To keep the Devil and his works at bay.”

  “Quite.” I said, turning to see who’d spoken, and recognising identical basalt eyes to those that had speared me from the garage of number six, Rue de L’Église. “I’m Roger Carpenter. History lecturer. Bristol. UK.”

  He took my hand in a cold, brief welcome.

  “Father Jérôme. I’ve just seen you speaking with my brother. A very private person is Paul. You were lucky to get an audience.”

  “So it seems, and considering I was a total stranger asking if his car might be for sale, he was polite and helpful.”

  “Why his car?”

  I repeated my story, adding as I had for the Pastados, that I was a keen historian. Hard to tell if he believed me or not. That lean, surpliced figure began rearranging a collection of psalters on a nearby shelf until all stood in a neat, upright row. Once his long, tanned fingers had reached the end, he began again. Something other than an obsessive, compulsive disorder was holding him back. I took a chance. Lobbed L’Enfer de Dansac into that dark, holy space.

  “Have you heard of it, by any chance?”

  The temperature seemed to drop.

  “A myth.” His fingers stopped mid-row.

  “Really?”

  “Monsieur Carpenter,” he sighed. “It’s only fair to warn you that in this particular backwater, are a few disgruntled souls - no, sadly more than a few - who’ve

  never prospered or achieved much in conventional terms themselves, yet persist in

  peddling a dangerous and damaging lie.”

  Strong words, making me more determined to nudge him a little more.

  “Damaging? Dangerous? Why?”

  Father Jérôme abandoned his small task, and swept past me up the aisle towards the altar.

  “No-one was incarcerated. No-one died. There aren’t any records of wrong-doing. It’s a wilful fabrication to keep this region and its hard-working inhabitants in the slough of guilt. Now, if you don’t mind, Monsieur Carpenter, I have a funeral to prepare for.”

  Slough of guilt?

  Another reckless moment. Something about the place encouraged it...

  “Was a Herman Oudekerk ever a member of your congregation? I’m merely asking as a friend of mine was expecting him for dinner last night and he never appeared.”

  Father Jérôme kept walking. I followed.

  “He attended here twice last December. I could see he was in conflict with himself. A lonely soul at the crossroads. Of what, he wouldn’t say.”

  God’s representative then crossed himself and disappeared through a small, wooden door, leaving a hostile draught in his wake. Also, a silence hitting my heart.

  *

  I took ten minutes to reach the Gorges de Salerne, wondering why Herman, who’d clearly been considering becoming a Jew, had visited the church. I parked in the empty car park well away from the Templar ruins and the vertiginous slope at the southern end, to study the dry, ochre-coloured ground just beyond the tarmac’s edge. In the kind of stillness which had always made me nervous, I compared it with the clod of mud I’d kept from that Merc ’s wheel.

  Not a chance.

  I then trekked to the honey-seller’s closed-up kiosk where deep, dry grass trampled in places, brushed against my jeans. I took a closer look. Perhaps a botanist would have found similarities, but to me, just then, those long, pale specimens seemed totally unrelated to what I’d seen in her Saab’s boot.

  Something and nothing. I told myself, driving away in some relief. Yet these

  small discrepancies just wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Chapter 14. Karen.

  “For God’s sake, Martine! Stop pacing around like a caged lioness. You’re

  making me even more nervous.”

  That was an understatement, for fear raced along my veins, and those bloody oxygen tubes were stuck up my nose again. Their air cool and clean but making no difference to my pulse. My BP was way too high, but who cared? Who?

  “There’s just you and me now, that’s why.”

  The way she said it was like a knife’s tip prodding my heart. And as before, she was right. Joel still hadn’t shown up - not even a phone call - and as for that ex-flic - my imagination did what my body’s not done for years. Ran full tilt.

  My phone rang. I took it.

  “Dr. Fürst? It’s Max Heimlat at Tec Monde speaking. Joel Dutroux asked me to call you once he’d left my shop. He’s on his way.”

  No trace of German, and confident enough.

  “Thank you, but I had told him to contact me once he’d arrived.”

  “Reception’s been bad this end. Snow’s heavy on the Canigou. I must tell you he was very concerned.”

  Pause.

  “And as for your pc. You had a blockage in the hard drive. Something I’ve not come across before. It’s sorted now, but for some reason, certain words, phrases even, were triggering a defence mechanism...”

  Martine, still red-eyed, stared at me, listening hard.

  “What words? What phrases?” I said.

  “I can’t specify on this line. Perhaps you’ve been dealing with sensitive material. I’m only guessing...”

  “I’m writing my memoirs. Is that a crime?”

  “Don’t say I’ve not alerted you.”

  The phone line he’d implied wasn’t secure, went dead, just as the first cloud of the day hovered outside my window. Could snow be coming? The wind certainly strong enough to bring it.

  “Another weirdo?” Martine rinsed out my coffee cup none too carefully and poured me another. Her lunch for me had been Ardennes paté on toast, and passable, given the circumstances. I’d taken a few bites, that was all. My wine untouched.

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on the CCTV screen that showed the gates and surrounding area. But it wasn’t relief I felt when seeing John Lyon’s car arrive. Instead, that some serious wing-clipping might be in order.

  “I’ll go and meet him,” Martine suggested, already by my door. “Tell him about Herman.”

  “No going outside!” I snapped. “Understood?”

  The door sighed shut behind her, and the words ‘dead meat, dog meat’ surfaced agai
n from somewhere in my life. Moments later, I heard voices growing louder, including Martine crying. John Lyon was trying to calm her down but couldn’t. If only I’d had Moeder to talk to. But I had her letters. Something at least...

  *

  The ex-flic’s skin colour matched his grey, cropped hair, and although the shock of seeing that empty freezer had tightened his features, he was in control. A true pro. And as a true pro, he could take a grilling.

  “How did you get on at Mas Camps and Saint-Antoine?” I asked. “Did you meet those Pastados?”

  A nod.

  “Their dogs, too.”

  “And did Herman go to the concert?”

  “Look. I’ll fill you in later. Right now, we have another problem. “What time did Joel leave here?”

  “Around nine-thirty,” sniffed Martine who, like me, had been waiting for news.

  “And you discovered the empty freezer two hours later?”

  “Yes. When I went to check what I could make us for lunch.”

  “Two hours is a long time. I want you both to distract Joel when he comes back, so I can check out his car. A pity I’d not been allowed to search his room.”

  “You’re mad, Monsieur,” spat Martine. “He’ll go ape.”

  Suddenly my screen showed more action. “He’s alreadyhere.”

  John Lyon tapped my shoulder. “Not a word that Herman’s head has gone. Keep him busy with your computer for as long as you can. I know you don’t like what I’ve implied about him, but I have to roll back every stone I can.”

  My neck burned red. This was crazy. Had I been so deluded? No...

  “He’s rarely put a foot wrong,” I said. “I think, Monsieur Lyon, we should be looking elsewhere. Whoever killed Herman has panicked. Came here and removed the evidence.”

  “But who, apart from you, me, Joel and Martine, knew where the head had been hidden? Who else has keys to the tower and knows your main alarm code?”

  The morning’s wind had strengthened, butting the tops of the cypresses back and fore in a frenzy. Gusting against my tower’s wall, bringing more black-bellied clouds. More unwanted memories.

  “No-one.” My voice seemed to belong to someone else. Then I gave him the alarm’s four important numbers. My family’s birthdays. All in May.

  “Take a look at these,” he then said. “From Herman’s room last night. Tucked away out of sight.”

  “You’d no right, without my permission.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  But he didn’t mean it. My wing-clipping resolution already melted away. Instead, I watched him dig deep in his jeans’ pocket and pull out a piece of torn paper which I recognised as being part of my old repeat prescription for Solpadol.

  “Here, on the back,” he pointed at the familiar, neat letters. “Is this his handwriting?”

  I tried taking the paper from him, but no. His grip was stronger than mine. I gave in. “Yes. It must be a joke. He and Joel, they got on so well.”

  Martine was crying again.

  “Bear it in mind is all I’m saying. And this...” He then extracted from the same pocket, a small printed card, edged in gold colour, “is a Jewish poem from the Kabala. Apparently to ward off the evil eye...”

  “Kabala? Evil eye? Why would that have been of interest to him? He was Christian. Even went to church in Saint-Antoine a few times.”

  “I don’t get it either,” sniffed Martine. “He never said anything about stuff like that.”

  “Someone was bugging him, so remember what I’ve just said about Joel.” And with that, he slipped away, leaving Martine and myself with a far bigger cloud inside the room than anything outside in that darkening sky.

  *

  Five minutes later, came a discreet knock on my door before Martine admitted Joel the errand boy with my precious computer in his arms. A blue label marked TM dangled behind it. My cook’s normally lustrous hair lay pasted to his head. His cheeks bright red. Neither said a word, while too many thoughts jostled together in my brain as he placed the computer back into position and began re-connecting all its wires.

  Martine just stared at him. If she didn’t watch it, he’d pick up something was wrong.

  “Your guy at Tec Monde phoned,” I began, before he could interrupt. “He explained about the bad weather when you’d arrived.”

  “Blame that bloody mountain, and the mast there is rubbish. I’m sorry too about not getting your lunch.” He looked up, perspiring. Martine passed him a glass of water and a clean tissue.

  “I did alright though, didn’t I?” she glanced my way before relaying her single- course menu.

  “Delicious,” I smiled. Keeping things light was one thing, another was wondering about that strange note which John Lyon had found in Herman’s room. Was he making too much headway in the wrong direction?

  “You were saying about the repair guy...” Martine reminded me.

  I hesitated. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned.

  “Yes, he said something pretty odd about the hard drive.”

  “Odd?” Joel queried while making progress. One more wire to connect.

  “Certain words in my memoir have apparently acted as triggers. Harmful triggers. Did he mention that to you?”

  Panic flared in his eyes. “Nothing.”

  “OK. Once you’ve got my baby functioning again, I need to check my material’s intact.”

  He finally stood up, looking at the blank screen.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” he said. “Max isn’t some bloody spy.”

  The silence that followed was broken only by my Amstrad booting up and the wind itself which would bring rain or worse within the hour. Silence laced with the distinct whiff of fear...

  Chapter 15. John.

  Once a cop, always a cop, and time to make a start closer to home. In the passageway leading from the freezer room past the kitchen to the outer door, I checked for stray signs of ice, melted or not. But the floor tiles were dry and clean. Too damned clean in fact.

  Inside the chilly room itself - the same.

  “… we’ve told you, his head’s in Freezer 2.”

  I’d seen it for myself. Been party to a criminal act, and with my handkerchief covering the fingers of my right hand, I opened the second chest where several boxed Brie cheeses bordered the dented void that had indeed provided Herman’s head with a brief, icy home.

  What next?

  Dusting its steel handle for prints would prove impossible. Only the sweatiest sample would yield a result, and to me, on hands and knees checking the chest’s underside, its sleek, curved casing seemed flawless. As for possible fibres, forget it. Anyone with half a brain cell would have kept themselves well clear.

  I closed the lid, overpowered by that recurring sense of impotence. How the Hell could I sort this one out without access to a forensics lab and other expertise? And what was so secret about Karen Fürst’s past that couldn’t even now involve the police?

  Habit made me open the first chest freezer, full of yoghurts and desserts which seemed undisturbed. The third, stuffed with assorted portions of ribs and rumps sealed tight under cling-film, brought acid on my tongue as I moved them aside to see how only their weighty shapes had dimpled the bottom layer of ice. No human head had been transferred there.

  *

  Next, the large, airy kitchen - abattoir and embalming room all in one - with the knife rack on full view. Six sharp, solid weapons bristled from their oak holder, each marked with Fabriqué par C. P. Blanchard, a firm in Clermont Ferrand. Not cheap. All sparkling, with no trace of blood or muscle anywhere to be seen. However, even the smallest five-inch blade, if sharp enough, was capable of severing flesh from bone.

  And this specimen was sharp.

  Having explored the numerous drawers and cupboards and finding nothing untoward, I let myself out of the tower, dodging the security camera’s eye in case Joel Dutroux was still checking his boss’s screen. I made for the river bank from where I’d first seen those body par
ts and that pushchair floating by. It seemed the rough grass had been badly trampled on since then. Wet earth skid marks had replaced what I’d stood on earlier. Nevertheless, there was no sign of any blood. None at all, nor of any struggle. After five minutes I gave up, convinced poor Herman Oudekerk had been dismembered elsewhere. The Bayrou river merely the dumping ground.

  *

  Spots of rain fell on the cook’s black VW hatchback, parked next to the Saab and the Seat. Unlocked, and like Martine yesterday, its owner must have left it in a hurry...

  My fingertip search of seats and carpets yielded nothing useful except the strongest impression that this too, had been recently cleaned. That might explain the distinctive smell; the wiped-over dashboard. Its boot too, was pristine, spread with various maps of the Languedoc, a new hazard warning triangle and First Aid kit in a white plastic box. Hardly typical of most thirty-two year-old bachelors, unless Joel Dutroux suffered from a cleaning disorder...

  Tricky, I thought, wondering how many possible valeting outfits lay between here and Roche-les-Bains. If that had indeed been where he’d gone. The glove box was empty, save for a VW Golf handbook and service history. I flicked through its oil-stained pages and stopped short, aware of my beating pulse. The car had been fitted with new brake pads and given a Gold Star valet at 13:30 hours today, Friday, at Ets Tanguy’s garage on the outskirts of Saint-Antoine de Bayrou.

  I was getting nervous. Whoever had severed Herman’s head and limbs, could be blabbing right now to the gendarmerie, bringing an unwelcome investigation to Les Pins. In a flash, I imagined the weight of handcuffs shackling my wrists. The hopelessness of being a misunderstood foreigner on borrowed soil. At least Karen Fürst would vouch for me. Even the other two, if I played my cards right.

  *

  Rain found the back of my neck. This was a losing battle alright, but the brave, complex woman three floors up, somehow kept my resolve alive. I then checked its wheels as I’d done with the Merc. Like people’s shoes, they can be revealing.

  “Anything wrong, Monsieur?”