The Nighthawk

by Sally Spedding

  Just before entering the busy little fishing port, I slowed up by the Café des Marins set back from the main road and headed for the one public pay phone that took coins.

  HORS SERVICE

  “Damn.”

  The guy at the bar must have heard me and pointed to a wall-mounted booth next to the espresso machine. He waved away my offer of payment. Here was another angel, this time with a stud in his lip, a scar down one cheek. Serrado was right. You never could tell.

  I punched in the Perpignan number.

  “L’Hötel d’Or, bonjour…” babbled the receptionist.

  “Is a Thea Oudekerk from Antwerp still staying with you. It’s urgent.” My French suddenly clunky, inadequate. “It’s Monsieur John Lyon calling. She does know me…”

  “I’ll try her room.”

  Meanwhile, a Blondie number tinkled into my ear. The wait interminable.

  “Thank God you’ve called,” Herman’s mother said at last. “I was just about to chase up the police. Have you any news of him? There’s nothing in today’s papers.”

  “Not specifically, but I’d better tell you I’m in Port-Vendres where Joel’s funeral may be taking place at sea. The Brigade here expect quite a turnout including those who might have known him and even been involved in his disappearance.”

  “It’s their job to arrest them! And are you telling me Herman might be there?”

  “Who knows?” I lied and loathed myself for it. “Of ccourse I’ll look out for him, but on no account must you go. It could become highly dangerous. Promise me you’ll wait here for myself or Capitaine Serrado to get in touch if there’s any more news?”

  “That’s like telling someone starving not to eat the bread they’ve been given.”

  “Please.”

  A pause.

  “If you do see my Herman, tell him where I am.”

  “Of course.”

  Thankfully that seemed to reassure her. Her voice picked up.

  “I was about to try and see his employer again. The first time after meeting you, hadn’t been any use, but at 19.00 hours yesterday evening, the Clinic said she was making very good progress and might soon be coming out of her coma. That her injured spine had made a miraculous recovery. Well, I could have told them that months ago.”

  A rowdy flock of gulls glistened beyond the Café’s door, wheeling out to sea.

  “She’s missing too,” I said, suppressing a shiver. “May have been taken to this same port as well. Trust me, Thea. I say again, don’t risk anything.”

  “I won’t. And you be careful too. I’ve a bad feeling about all of this.”

  She’d just said goodbye and was about to go, when I remembered Herman’s little note I’d found in his room at Les Pins.

  “Hold on,” I said, extracting it from my borrowed suit’s top pocket. “Something I should have shown you when we met, I’m sorry. Your son wrote it about a month ago. Don’t trust Joel... Does that make any sense?”

  A loaded pause followed.

  “No. As I’ve already said, he got on with him fine. Like he does with everyone. Are you quite sure?”

  The poor woman was still referring to Herman as if he still lived. And why shouldn’t she? I stared at the note again. Something I’d not noticed before about the paper quality on that last word, made me scratch it with the tip of my nail. Flakes of dried correction fluid came away, and beneath what had once been Joel’s name, lay two capital letters, written in the same hand.

  LR

  Good God…

  Maybe Herman and his boss had fallen out.and he’d not meant anyone to find it. If so, rather than altering the initials, why not simply flush the thing away?

  “Are you still there?” Thea asked.

  “Speak soon,” I tried to compose myself. “As I said, do not put yourself in danger.”

  Chapter 61. John.

  The Café des Marins was filling up with thirsty travelers, none of whom looked familiar, With a heart that seemed to belong to an old man, I dialled Mireille’s home number. No reply, so I left a quick message saying I’d try again later.

  I picked up speed again away from the Café, and, with Capitaine Serrado’s precise directions filling my head, drove down towards the hub of boating activity. No sign of either an unplated ambulance, the stolen gendarmerie van, a silver Merc, or that black Range Rover.

  “Your boat’s the L’Aube d’Or,” he added. “Grey with a pale, yellow cabin, moored at the harbour’s northernmost end. Myself, Lieutenant Vollard

  and a team from Perpignan led by Colonel Giraud will be on the Rêve d’Été and Isis 1V covering the bay. Both white power boats flying the Roussillon flag. There are currently two hundred and nine craft registered altogether with the port authority. Most mothballed until the summer, but some you might least expect, are what we’re looking for. Larger rather than smaller, given the funeral’s likely attendance figures. As far as we know, there’s nothing moored there under the Suzman name, but they’re not without connections, are they?”

  “I’m unarmed.”

  “Check out your wc. cistern. There’s also a radio with a fifteen kilometre limit, night-vision binoculars, and for God’s sake, Monsieur, get the lifejacket on.”

  *

  Twenty minutes later, the waves outside my cabin were changing colour from green to purple; rising as they drew inland, buffeting the boat. At least the two-way radio was far superior to those I’d used back home and, as Serrado had promised, a Berretta 92 handgun with enough spare cartridges, all waterproofed, had been secreted in the promised place. I’d just pulled up the life jacket’s zip and folded George’s coat and suit jacket in a tidy pile, when the two-way radio buzzed.

  Shit…

  Lieutenant Vollard, shouting above other voices.

  “A black Range Rover with an Aude plate’s just been found empty in a road near the Clinic. Hairs matching some from Sophie Blumenthal’s pillow at her home, on its rear passenger seat. She and the Ryjkel perp must have been driven there by Ricard Suzman and his wife. It’s a start...”

  How cosy.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “’Isis 1V.’ No action here so far.”

  *

  10:00 hrs. Another call from the Lieutenant, this time with news of a blue Transit van arriving at an inlet south of the port. I gripped the radio like a straw in the wind. His voice barely audible.

  “Either windsurfers or the funeral party itself,” he said.

  An inner vertigo took hold.

  “Quite a gathering. You were right. Two families linked, it seems, by Sophie Blumenthal.”

  And lies. Including mine and Joel’s proud grandmother for a start. Someone who’d so ‘hated’ the Suzmans, yet she must have known of last Wednesday’s suicide verdict.

  “Any sighting of Liesdbet Ryjkel?”

  “None.”

  Shit...

  “Capitaine Serrado’s still convinced she somehow helped herself to the four million and spent it.”

  “Look, I shouldn’t mention this, but his wife’s hard work and overspends. Enough said, and we need real evidence that’ll stand up to scrutiny. Evidence Liesbet Ryjkel’s involved in all this. We must also prove that almost forty-four years ago, a terrible atrocity took place on our doorstep. Our beautiful doorstep.”

  Perhaps if Liesbet hadn’t been snatched from the Clinic, she’d have revealed more. After all, she’d emerged from her coma. Was getting better. Remarkably so. Apparently, using a walking stick before her recent shut-down.

  No time to add how I’d rough-sketched a life with her - in sickness and in health. I didn’t know Vollard well enough. However, I’d seen pure evil in her brother’s eyes. Kindly Father Diderot who’d sat in Les Platanes with the sun reflected on his slippers.

  I glanced towards the harbour, even further away. My missing notebook still out there somewhere. I prayed yet again it wouldn’t show up, and as for my copy of Sanctum that had so noticeably arrived at Les Pins, I’d bette
r have a valid reason for having ordered it.

  “What were the Suzmans hoping to find on her hard drive?” I then asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Must have been something of interest.”

  “And Martine Mannion?”

  “Nothing. The family home is still shuttered up. As for André Besson, bad news. Wait for it.” He paused. “His car’s just been located at the bottom of a gorge near Avignon.”

  Silence.

  All I could think of was that hdeous image of Christ displayed in his study. Tiny fingers tapping his keypad…

  “And Mireille Petsha who helped you pinpoint that van?” I queried.

  “No idea.”

  The Lieutenant’s voice suddenly broke into the pause.

  “Something else. Forensics have found several navy-blue fibres attached to Taillot’s front passenger seat’s cover. A wool/polyester mix is their analysis. Being checked again as we speak...”

  Navy-blue…

  “A bleu de travail, maybe?” My voice suddenly too thin.

  “Early days. Now, Monsieur, I must go…”

  The bad line abruptly died and ‘L’Aube d’Or’ lurched even further from shore. But not even a vicious, southerly wind from the Albères forcing the waves almost as high as the deck, or my stomach’s own turmoil, could erase what Lieutenant Vollard had just said. Time was running out.

  *

  Just then, came a loss of light and a quite different noise from above. A chopper’s camouflage-coloured belly drawing ever closer, before turning north-east.

  My Dad’s old binoculars tracked its progress, but why all those black ‘floaties,’ as Carol called them? Was my eyesight to blame? I re-focussed, only to realise those same black shapes falling into the Mediterranean Sea were too solid, of some weight to be an eye problem.

  Rubbish being dumped, perhaps? Afterwards, that same chopper flew inland, vanishing over those hilly vineyards behind the port.

  Chapter 62. Karen.

  The moment I hear the church of Saint-Luc’s old bells clanking out half past three over the Bayrou valley, I know I’m home. But not quite. My armed enemies who’d torn away my Clinic’s nightdress, had driven me in hostile silence past Mas Camps, up into No Man’s Land beyond Les Cicadas, until that lying, old hermit swore that the night before Moeder and I moved away for good, she’d seen me dragging a bg bag in this direction. Hoping I’d lead her to riches she was owed.

  Fuck these dreadful, stinking clothes. Fuck Jules Suzman too, for stealing my precious Spreewerk, and his jail-bird brother who’d pressed Joel’s Glock against my heart up in that snow.

  *

  The RÉSERVE DE CHASSE signs dotted around, nailed to trees, look brand new. Their blood-red lettering stops me in my tracks. Barefoot, minus three toes and my lucky, old rifle which really belonged to Joop, and Moeder’s special knife, I’m as defenceless as a baby.

  Prey.

  That first time I’d revisited this wilderness at dusk to check my treasure was safe before signing the Acte de Vente on Les Pins, seems a lifetime ago. Apart from others’ fruitless efforts at digging, nothing’s changed. Loose stones still clutter this path, but at least I’d erased my car’s tyre tracks from my most recent visit.

  Last September, a cycle route was being planned, but that threat soon quashed, so this old track still winds upwards past forests of pines and cypresses while that dirt-clogged bandage around my left foot continues to unravel.

  As for my ‘new’ clothes, Blumenthal was never going to do me any favours with her old cardigan, shawl and piss-stained skirt which keeps dropping with every step. She’d only handed back Moeder’s bracelet to trick me and the ex-flic into thinking she had a heart. But to losers like her, money is everything. Why, after her sickly outpourings of love for her grandson, she’d not shed one tear at his death,

  Although feeling quite alone, I knew my hunters were hiding out of sight. Three of them armed, courtesy of the man I’d welcomed into Les Pins, who’d been so bloody careless.

  God help me.

  My cheap, little watch shows I’ve only twenty minutes to find what they want. Twelve hundred minutes sounds better.

  Footsteps.

  Monsieur Perseverance himself, wearing some ridiculous, black and red life-jacket over that grey suit’s trousers, is running towards me, elbows jerking in and out at each stride. His perspiring face just as red.

  “Look at me,” I say, and he does, shocked that I’m able-bodied after all, despite my foot. These demeaning cast-offs.

  Sixteen minutes left...

  “There’s still time to tell me everything.”

  “Why? Twice you deserted me at that Clinic when I needed you most and involved the flics when you’d promised not to. What sort of friend is that? To be frank, Monsieur, I distrusted you from the moment you barged into my life that unlucky Thursday evening.”

  My words sound like Moeder’s old teeth, bouncing off her wooden stairs after she’d spat out too many of the wrong sort of memories. “You’ve made things so bloody hard for me…”

  “I stuck by you, because you’d been given a raw deal. I’d actually grown too love you. Did you know that?”

  A typical flic, softening me up.

  Fifteen minutes...

  “You betrayed me,” I repeat.

  “Never. I covered up for you about Herman. Even to his poor mother.” His eyes narrowing. “Where’s his head?”

  “You and that dyke chose to hide it. Remember?”

  I pincer his forearm with my thumb and forefinger, but nearly lose my footing when he shakes me off.

  “Thea Oudekerk’s out for justice, too.”

  He’s met her. Just pretend he’s not saying these things.

  Forget. Forget or die...

  “Herman’s head? Tell me.”

  “Ask Joop or Saint Jérôme. They dumped it on me in the snow so I’d confess where my money is. The deadline to find it is 16:00 hours. We’ve fourteen minutes left.”

  “We?”

  I nod, pulling up that wretched skirt so I can walk. “You and I have been in this together since April 10th, remember?”

  *

  Angry is an understatement. I like it. He glances at the painted signs.

  “You’ve a chance to sort this crap out. What’s wrong with you? Haven’t enough people died already?”

  No.

  “Come with me and give yourself up.”

  Twelve minutes left.

  “And you’d better find those millions before they shoot you.”.

  “Me?”

  His face a picture.

  “Perhaps I should explain. Hints about events here in 1942 were on my hard drive. Stupid me for getting carried away. The cash’s waterproof package was addressed to Joop, but I took it before he disappeared. I’d earned it after all his terrible threats. His humiliations. His rapes…”

  For a mamont, he pauses.

  “And?”

  “I hid it the night before Moeder and I moved away.”

  “Where?”

  I smell his sweat, his terror. Normally arousing, but my left foot’s bandage is adrift. Where three, pretty toes had been, is dark, clotted blood.

  “In a tree.”

  I’ve always enjoyed a joke.

  “Which one? Along here?”

  “I remember little cones, jabbing into my skin.”

  “A Cypress?”

  “Yes, like those at Les Pins.” I gesture towards the unseen Mediterranean.

  “Try that one.”

  3.50 p.m.

  *

  Vertigo.

  I know the signs. He’s flung down his stupid life-jacket and climbs the nearest tree’s sticky bark, pushing its bushy branches clear of the trunk. He’s too slow. His legs shaking. Then he looks down at me.

  “You’re lying. As ever. You duped me with all that disabled paraphernalia. No wonder Dr. Baerck, Thea Oudekerk and the rest weren’t welcome. Herman had told her how much better you were getting, hadn�
�t he? Innocent, hapless Hermann. And what did your other minions know, I wonder?

  He lands in the dirt and picks himself up. Moeder’s special little knife should be in my hand. Martine said I was never was any judge of character.

  “So you craved all that cash for yourself,” he shouts. “After almost forty-four years. Not to spend, oh no. Nothing as normal as that. Just to keep, because it was Joop’s, whom you hated.”

  He stares at me. The real crazy.

  “Only the USA can provide the best treatment for my back. It’s expensive, but I want to run and ride again, but you wouldn’t understand that.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your back. Robert Taillot knew that, too. Poor bastard.”

  Five minutes left...

  Time to hit back.

  “By the way, did you notice that delightful novice nun being dumped at sea from a helicopter? Five bags it took, so Paul Suzman said in the van.”

  My ex-flic is unrecognisable.

  “Mireille?”

  “Too right. She turned up for Joel’s funeral. Bad move. Thea Oudekerk’s next if I get half a chance.”

  “You’re deranged.”

  But he’s the one out of control. On his knees, pummelling the ground, groaning like some wounded boar. If only I’d got Moeder’s knife that made such short work of Herman’s soft, dairy skin. If only...

  Run, Liesbetje. Run...

  I do, sheltering among a colony of ancient, black poplars, away from his noise and the tombstone grey sky overhead.

  *

  I’m eight years’ old again. My young, pumping heart in my mouth. Arms and legs aching, watching Daniel Boussioux float away down the river with his two eyeless sockets fixed on Heaven.

  “What the Hell’s that noise?” Yells the scumbag who refused to save me. He doesn’t mean distant sirens, but the rustle of scrub; dead wood cracking as our hunters who’ve broken cover, close in.

  Chapter 63. John.

  Five bags it took…

  How could I ever forget?

  Here they come…

  Apart from the four male Suzmans kitted out in Nazi uniforms, Joop Ryjkel and the hunting party’s three females wore fur-trimmed leather with pilots’ caps covering their ears, and heavy-duty boots. Marie Suzman and Sophie Blumenthal carrying new rifles, while Alize Saporo bore that same S&W45. All after the loot.