The Nighthawk

by Sally Spedding

  I should answer Serrado. Tell him everything. Get that wheelchair dusted for prints and the rest. But no. Like I’d said, I had to be free to find her. I looked around; saw both towers in the distance - two slivers of cream against the black, evergreen

  foliage. Was this one chapter closing and another opening? Or the end?

  Chapter 47. Karen.

  Blindfolded, in too much pain, my screams became echoes as both thugs I assumed were French, carried me into what felt like some vast, freezing sepulchre.

  I woke with a shiver and sneezing that seemed to crack every bone in my already broken body. The temperature cold enough to freeze my tongue to the roof of my mouth, and although the air felt too thin to be any use to my lungs, I went through the motions of breathing in and out, aware that sooner rather than later, I’d be struggling.

  Cryogenics? Was that it? Except I wasn’t dead. Not yet, and no thanks to John Lyon who’d been happy to leave me on my own. Meanwhile, these two cowards had argued non-stop as to who was to do what and the best place to dispose of me in the shortest time. One spoke as if local, the other - I wasn’t so sure. All I knew was if that pain kept up, I’d be dead before discovering their identities.

  Incense and garlic, definitely. What else? Think, I told myself. Think or die...

  “I’ll talk if you give me Solpadol,” I managed to mumble. The one who moved more noisily and seemed older than the other, re-positioned me on the rough old table so I could take the two tablets and water he was offering. But his breathing was in trouble. An unhealthy smell floated from his body.

  “Once you’ve helped us, you’re free to return home,” he said, sounding in places, more like a growling wolf.

  Mas Camps?

  “Your delightful Cartier watch tells me it’s now 17:00 hours. You have sixty minutes in which to save yourself. After that, if we’re no further forward, we’ll put you to sleep like the stubborn bitch you are, then take you up the mountain.”

  His voice younger, but why couldn’t I place it? And which mountain?

  “Or, if you co-operate,” added the other, “we can help restore movement at least to your legs. Some reward, hein?”

  “Liar. The only research in bypassing spinal injury involves using monkeys. It’ll take years to apply the results to humans.”

  “There speaks a real doctor,” he sneered then quizzed his companion. “Were you fooled by her disguise?”

  “Not me.”

  Silence, save for water dripping off what must have been a roof.

  “Consider our offer carefully. Think what’s at stake. For nearly forty-four years, you’ve constructed an elaborate diversion away from your crime. Time for the truth, Liesbet Eva Ryjkel.”

  A sudden spasm in my stomach.

  Whoever they were, knew my full name. I struggled to breathe. To not pass out a second time.

  Keep calm. Give nothing away. Think about John…

  “Who are you?” I whispered. “And what crime?”

  “You know damned well. Four million dropped on our land.”

  Our?

  “Zut!” Snarled the older-sounding man. “Crétin.”

  “I meant on Roussillon land,” said the other quickly, yet the slip had been made, leaving me still none the wiser.

  *

  I was the afterthought child all over again. One minute, high up against the hot, still sky, picking figs in Jeanne Tremblant’s garden. The next, hitting the ground, bruised and winded, when the branch I’d been standing on had mysteriously been jerked up and down, hard enough to dislodge me. Of course, I’d cried, but no-one had believed me. Even the old widow who’d not noticed a third person on her property. Could she herself have done it? But why? I got on so well with her, even though she smelt like a fox. And if Sophie Blumenthal had been hanging around, could she have been responsible? Jealous of more than my eyebrows?

  That was another suspicious incident I’d forgotten to tell John Lyon and my latest traitor.

  I also remembered the end of that September, and our wine harvest in full swing, with the sugary tang of grapes in the air, also the Cargolade - a reunion of friends and neighbours at Jeanne Tremblant’s place, with me helping to clean and season the small mountain of snails, ready for the grill Vader had provided.

  Francke Boussioux and his son Daniel, who raised. Béarn sheep on rough ground next to the widow’s land, and never overly friendly with either her or my family, were surprised to be sitting next to some of her relatives from the Ardèche.

  “Easier to include everyone,” Moeder had said. To do otherwise, would have stored up resentment. Father and son - stringy peasants both - who’d begun drinking beforehand - raised a glass to Maréchal Pétain, the “saviour of France, who’ll see that not one Jew walks our precious soil or fouls our rivers and streams with their waste. The same for the Mischlinge too.”

  Everyone had stopped their chatter, uneasy at this sudden outburst. Joop picked up his hunting rifle and ordered both of them away, then sat with it on his lap for the rest of the evening. I saw again the crush of bodies descending on the food. The sweat, the noisy cicadas in the heat. The freshly-slaughtered lamb beginning to brown, sending up a sweet, sickly smell as it turned on the spit. A meat I’ve never been able to eat since. And then had come the unmistakeable sensation of a fist in my back, pushing me forwards step by step on to that glowing bed of snails...

  *

  “You saw your father and brothers searching, so you had to do the same.” That older voice suddenly said. “You never could keep your fucking nose out, could you? Since the day you tore your way into our world?”

  “You nearly killed her.”

  Joop? Christian? God help me. Was it possible, after all this time? No. This was mind games. I shivered again. My back ppain pulsing, deep to my feeble core.

  “No oxygen until you tell us the truth. Simple as that.”

  I had to live. For John.

  “Daniel Boussioux?”

  “Been dead years,” barked the lighter voice. “And his old man’s gone mad. Try harder than that, Liesbet.”

  “It was them. Always hanging around our vineyards, drunk as dogs on all fours. Especially after the Cargolade. They must have struck lucky. Soon afterwards, new barns and sheds sprang up on their land. That’s what my family said.”

  A pause, in which those background drips grew louder, quicker.

  “Better than suspecting a pretty little night owl, hein?”

  Little night owl? Only Joop ever called me that…

  “Would I have come back here if so?” I wheezed. “Get real, and if anything’s stolen from Les Pins, whoever you are, you’ll pay. I’m not the only one who knows about that missing trunk of children’s clothes from my storage tower. And if you think that attacking John Lyon will stop him talking, think again. Besides,” I felt strangely emboldened, “there never was any money. Local officials had to appear to fight evil. As if they cared. Who’s ever kept a record of any missing Roma? No-one. They were like the Spanish - red scum to be cleaned away.”

  “Same as your helpers?”

  Vuil hond…

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I felt their eyes irradiating my body. Shortly, there’d be no oxygen, nor anything else.

  “Sophie Blumenthal’s been busy, hasn.t she?” I took another risk.“Survivor, mother and grandmother. Sneaking around Mas Camps the way she did. Why did I owe her anything?”

  Whispers hissed between one and the other.

  “You and your cling-on cop took her hospitality quick enough.”

  He’d known that?

  “Half an hour left before you too are disposed of.”

  Too?

  “How?”

  “You’ve not been paying attention. In the lovely mountain snow, to be picked clean while still alive by any number of predators. Where no-one will ever find your bones.” The way he said it brought everything back. Then I realised with a hammer blow to my heart, who’
d just spoken.

  “That’s nothing to what I’m thinking, Joop Maurits Ryjkel,” I said. “Believe me.” And then was aware of my own big, wicked brother pulling off my shoes. Tearing that bracelet of silver stars from my wrist.

  *

  John Lyon, who’d kissed away my tear, and washed me so lovingly - yes, lovingly - where were you? Where was anybody? And which bloody mountain was this? The Canigou? That Holy Mountain? If so, please God, help me…

  No blindfold this time. Still no handbag with its comforting gun. No watch or Moeder’s bracelet and her treasured little knife. Just my tights and trouser suit, stiff as coffin wood between me and the deep, deep snow. Not how I’d expected to die. Yes, I could hold my weak breath for too long, even make myself fall off this plateau, but with my blood pressure plummeting every second, this third option - letting nature take its course - would be the easiest way to end it all.

  Not my style. Physician, heal thyself…

  Chapter 48. John

  Lucky to have avoided a slippery dip in the Bayrou river, I’d driven my Volvo away from where I’d left it outside Les Pins, while Capitaine Serrado and his trigger-happy cohort still roamed around inside.

  Meanwhile, somewhere out there was Karen’s handbag hiding a lethal Spreewerk 38 and ammunition.

  As for other possessions, her mother’s letters, employee tests, files, and her jewellery, if I’d not lost the plot by giving Serrado the slip, I could have hidden them until her return. To make amends.

  Should I phone some late-night news-desk and make my presence felt, or keep digging in the shadows? A no-brainer. Why Puylaurens was again my first port of call.

  *

  The early night sky arced above the Fenouillèdes’ limestone cliffs and mountains like a vast, magic carpet studded with glass stars. The biggest, most vivid light came from Venus, the evening star, winking at me as if saying wherever Karen was, she wouldn’t give up without a fight. Neither would I, but first I had to reach even deeper into the black heart that was October 1942.

  Starlit sawdust patches on the road and an oblong -shaped police cordon replaced Taillot’s absent Nissan. Nevertheless, despite the Capitaine’s warning, I needed more clues about the ex-Lieutenant, and what else he might have put to paper.

  Also, to mourn the man who, whatever his past, had tried to help us. Who’d endured a savage violation while clearly still alive.

  *

  Puylauren’s stark Cathar castle loomed upwards into those same stars as I parked without lights further on towards the cement works, alarmed the Volvo, mindful of those bungalow dwellers’ understandable fear.

  All six windows of Taillot’s unnamed home had been boarded up, as were both front and back doors. However, the battered outhouse attached to the side wall, might yield something. I’d also noticed how its cracked, plastic-corrugated roof would provide little protection to whatever lay inside.

  I sneaked around to the back and soon stood in a rear courtyard littered with boxes of empty, dusty wine bottles.

  No padlock to that outhouse’s flimsy door. Good.

  Once inside, I directed my torch’s beam from one pile of junk to another, all clearly undisturbed for years. Not even, it seemed by the forensic team. Perhaps Taillot had inherited this place and the rubbish. How little I’d really known about him. Probably Karen too. How seductive a slick business card could be, promising a bright new world...

  *

  I expected to find electronics trade magazines old or new; how to create a fresh ID and other useful stunts, but there was nothing, until a printed word made me stop in my tracks. Serrado was right. Here lay SANCTUM March 1987 and beneath this damp, buckled magazine lay older, even more damp editions dating back to December 1963. Probably belonging to that guy who’d emigrated. All peddling not only anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate, but rants against ‘noirs,’ and gipsies, particularly Romanians. Serrado had been right on that score.

  I soon found the June 1985 copy and thumbed through until Joel Dutroux’s double-page essay. The most chilling sentences and paragraphs had been encircled in red felt-tipped pen. One of which, criticising Heidrich’s Wannsee Conference began ‘...deportation was never going to provide the optimum solution. Better to have nipped the little buds at source before puberty. In fact, sooner rather than later...’

  ...nipped the little buds...

  For a start, that essay’s use of language seemed to me a world away from Joel’s own. These were surely no more his than the Magna Carta was mine. He’d been set up, and that might explain why his finger had been severed and he then killed. He’d either outgrown his usefulness, botched a job, or refused to dance. But who’d cared? The psychopath who’d probably delivered him to the microlight centre and messed with his machine? Left that grim little souvenir at Les Pins as a warning to us, knowing his employer wasn’t keen on the law?

  But who?

  TOO MANY PIES...

  I carefully removed both pages, remembering that triumphant yell at Les Pins, for my newly-arrived copy. I’d been a fool to use Karen’s address. Either I’d be branded a racist or seen as a fellow fascist.

  More bad news.

  My watch’s vermilion face showed 19:50 hours. Every second, every minute speeding up as I flicked through the magazines’ topmost copies. So, the helpful ex-Lieutenant hadn’t got rid and now, with danger kissing the back of my neck, these reams of thinly-veiled rants began to undulate like a choppy sea before my eyes.

  With this motion came the possibility that the real HQ behind the money drop to aid the destruction of life, could well have been the Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe with its tentacles spread deep and wide. Who, like a rogue oyster, clasped a black pearl to its heart.

  By visiting Sophie Blumenthal, we’d probably put her in the gravest danger. But how to reach her in time, and Karen too? Her motto, ‘trust no-one’ could prove to be right.

  *

  Even with those two typed calling cards and Joel’s finger now with the gendarmerie’s forensic team, not for a moment did I believe the Suzmans would be seriously pursued, even with an ex-con in their ranks.

  “Get real,” I muttered to myself. Capitaine Serrado’s recent remarks were a ruse to shut me up. He wouldn’t be touching that family ‘of ‘influential people’ with a kilometre-long barge pole. I also dwelt on how Taillot, the entrepreneur who’d helped others ‘disappear,’ was now himself a disparu. What else might still lie hidden in his seemingly ordinary home?

  “You’ll be the last to find out,” said my inner voice as reclaimed my car and released the handbrake to purr down the slope away from the sleeping couple in their bumgalow, probably still holding hands.

  *

  20:00 hours, with no other traffic in sight, and the same starry sky above winking and blinking, I drove over the speed limit through roads that had been snow-ploughed and gritted, towards Roche-les-Bains. A hunch, that was all.

  The gradual climb took me nearer that infinite diorama of sky, and the air outside stung cold on my skin when just for a moment, I let down the window. I’d not prayed since primary school - not even when faced with the worst that man can do. But now I did. Over and over as light clusters from settlements in the next valley, came into view.

  I topped up with petrol on the other side of tha spa town under the garage owner’s wary gaze, sending up a whispered prayer for Karen wherever she was, to hang on. That I. John Edward Lyon, who’d so suddenly lost the two best parts of his life - Sandra and Clive Lyon - wasn’t prepared to lose another.

  *

  The Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe’s main gates were still open, and in the middle distance, a security beam systematically strobed the wide, slushy driveway that separated the administrative block where I’d met Mgr.Besson, from the old chapel and the less striking warehouse.

  I’d had enough of electronically controlled gates and couldn’t risk driving through and becoming trapped inside the compound, so I reversed the car deep into an overgrown plot next to the boundary wall
and set the alarm.

  Supper smells still seeped from those grilles set at knee height into the familiar brick wall. A basement canteen, I thought, not remotely tempted. I had Karen to find, and fast, especially as the sky was now crowded with stars, and my breath a white mist. Especially too, as some sicko had meant me to see her wheelchair by the river.

  “Can I help you?” came a young, female voice in perfect, local French. “You must be freezing.”

  It belonged to a youthful, slender nun garbed in white from top to toe, save for an oval space framing her luminous face. However, she seemed wary, continually glancing over her shoulder, as we followed the security light’s beam that lit up the silent, thawing surroundings. When it glowed behind her, I blinked. Thanked her for her concern.

  “No vow of silence, then?” I added.

  “Not between supper and retiring. Otherwise we’d all go mad. Then what would they do?”

  Our pale breaths intermingled in the night air. Hers smelt of vanilla, as if she’d just eaten ice cream. I liked her immediately. There was an openness about her even features, large, bright eyes and slightly prominent teeth. Despite the last five days, I decided to trust her.

  “I’m looking for a friend - a woman aged fifty-one with auburn hair, possibly dressed in a navy-blue trouser suit and disabled enough to have needed help to be moved. She may have been brought here any time since late morning.”

  My new companion frowned. Looked behind her again, then turned to me with a fresh focus. “Here? Why?”

  Time to stop lying. I summarised my previous visit to Monsignor Besson and Karen’s story that began during WWII, connecting it possibly to here. Also, how certain people were still peddling dangerous theories, using this Christian community as cover.” I then lowered my voice. “Have you ever read a copy of Sanctum? If so, you’ll get my drift.”