The Nighthawk
Page 38
Four ‘happy’ pills a day are helping, and thanks to the library here, I’ve begun reading poetry. T.S. Eliot’s ‘Burial Ground’ speaks to me the most. His first three lines in particular... ‘April is the cruellest month.’
So it proved. Not least because of Chernobyl, and neither Carol nor George have yet been in touch.
I often pester my doctor about to going back to my flat, driving my car, being normal again, but his reply “when we feel you’re ready,’ never varies. Worse is when my pulse quickens in fear every time the door opens or my phone rings.
As it does now.
*
“A Brishen Petsha, from Toulouse,” says our new receptionist into my new, brick-like Motorola phone. “His accent’s strange. Shall I transfer him to your new toy?”
“Please.”.
I listen hard to hear the smallest trace of Mireille in her grandfather’svoice, but there’s only age and grief. He hopes my health is improving. How he’s wanted to meet me ever since the May trial in Perpignan. But with still nothing of his beloved only granddaughter to bury, and his son – her father – also dead from a recent stroke, is too heart-broken to travel.
In short, stumbling sentences, the widower recounts how little she and her late parents even his own wife, had known of his traumatic past, and why for her, the Abbaye Saint-Polycarpe had seemed a safe bet. His remorse over her abduction from Port-Vendres by the Suzman brothers, equals that after Dansac.
“But you wait, Monsieur Lyon. I’m not finished yet.”
His tone softens.
“I’ll never forget your kindness in taking Mireille to the nearest station and paying her fare home. How you’d called her ‘pet.’ She found that so amusing. Pet, Petsha, you see...”
In shaky French I explain it’s a term of endearment in Nottinghamshire. Then add I should never have asked for her help.
“She was born a willing child. Do not blame yourself. You’re a good person. She thought so too. And everyone who heard you speak so movingly in Perpignan, forgave your innocent loyalty to that evil woman”
I can’t believe that, neither will Thea Oudekerk who’s also not yet found closure.
“Please listen carefully, Monsieur Petsha,” I say instead. “Here is how I intend tol make amends.”
*
I describe in the greatest detail where that waterproof parcel and its almost vanished white angel is buried. How the four million francs lie too deep for any metal detector or other scavenger to find.
“All yours, if you want it.”
“Thank you, Monsieur. Make no mistake, it will enable those cowardly Suzmans to be brought to justice and help rid our land of hatred. That way, Mireille, Herman, Joel and those other innocent victims, won’t have died in vain.”
All he can say, but it’s enough.
*
Afterwards, from a pouch behind my wheelchair, I extract a file of numbered press cuttings entitled ‘The Nighthawk Case’ as it’s still known. Despite my shrink’s theory that Liesbet Ryjkel’s loveless, abused childhood was the cause of everything, she comes last.
1.Before the Trial, Daniel Boussioux’s exhumed remains showed the damage to both his eye sockets were caused by two serrated cartridges from Joop Rykel’s stolen rifle. The same which Martine Mannion used on herself.
2.Smiling André Besson who’d taken Girard Mannion with him to die at the bottom of a junk-strewn gorge. Why else had Besson revealed so much about Joel and the Suzmans and gone along with my inept impersonation of his influential friend? He’d seen the end of the road.
3.Pablo Lopez, half in half out of shadow, cigarette between his lips. The French Foreign Minister enabled his extradition to Spain where he’ll be staring at his homeland through cell bars until he too, dies.
4.The opportunist Sophie Blumenthal, shot in the head by Christian Ryjkel as she’d fled the hunt.
5.He, with an untreated fractured skull since October10th 1942, and my shot to his left shoulder, the clever mpersonator hanged himself in his custody cell the day before the Trial opened.
6.Grizzled, multi-faceted Robert Taillot who’d known Liesbet Ryjkel had never been disabled. Who’d strayed too far into her deadly web and paid in blood, just like Herman, courtesy of that same, busy pearl-handled knife...
7. Alize Saporo, spared a possible War Crimes Trial along with Lopez, was cremated along with Ricard Suzman. No memorials.
8.Three generations of Suzmans stare out, boxed into two rows. Jowly Michel, felled by a coronary on his second day in the witness box, before admitting the whereabouts of Herman Oudekerk’s head. His surviving brood with their cold eyes, still untraced, who still might have my notebook. Why I pester staff here for a gun to keep near my bed. To no avail.
9. My two unlikely saviours, Brishen Petsha and Capitaine Serrado. Following my full confession, their testimonies spared me Perpignan’s Mailloles prison on a charge of impeding the course of justice. With my Nottingham lawyer, they’d presented a solid defence. How I’d fallen into Liesbet Ryjkel’s psychotic clutches. How a search of my police career found my long service exemplary.
10. Martine Mannion who’d stayed true to me yet too long denied Herman’s mother her dearest wish.
11.Thea Oudekerk’s haunted features fix on mine. She will never forgive me. Why should she? Perhaps my punishment is that although I’m now here in my home city, I may never walk properly again.
12. A bare grave, save for three crows perched on its dry soil. At my request, plus two hundred eagerly-snatched francs, the Pastados had let Liesbet Ryjkel occupy a corner near their old cabane at Mas Camps.
Where I must leave her.
My room door opens.
Gemma, one of my carers, pulls a blue airmail envelope from her overall pocket.
“For you, Mr. Lyon. Just arrived.”
A Belgian stamp. An Antwerp post mark. My address accurate. I tear it open, unfold the flimsy paper inside.
De Blauw Haus
23, Herftsraat. Antwerp.
10/9/’87
Dear Mr Lyon,
I have forgiven your lies. I realise you were in an impossible situation.
However, it is only now I can write to you because, as a widow with no other family, I can no longer bear my burden alone. My beloved Herman suffered the most terrible death in part due to my greed. I will explain.
I knew he’d found out about Dr. Fürst’s hidden money and I pressurised him into finding it, despite knowing others were also leaning on him. You see, my lover had just left me, and although living in this big house, which I inherited, I have struggled a long time to make ends meet. I saw Dr. Fürst’s fortune as a way of securing mine and Herman’s futures. Is that so terrible?
Please do not make contact. There is nothing left to say, except that scheming woman did not deserve you. And I did not deserve Herman.
In sorrow and guilt,
Thea Oudekerk
Still in shock, I switch on Radio 4 for the latest news and listen with less attention than usual. However, as the newsreader begins, this bright, cheerful room seems to become darker.
I sit up and take notice.
“A report has just reached us from Rotterdam that a young, so far unidentified British national and her toddler daughter, have been found drowned in the city’s harbour. Local fishermen returning with their early catch, made the discovery. Dutch police suspect possible foul play and are anxious to establish their identity and trace any known contacts before next of kin can be informed.”
“Shall I switch it off now?” asks Gemma, checking up on me. But her voice is drowned by the sudden din of rushing water filling my head, and the vision of an empty, red-handled wheelchair carried along in the flow, twisting this way and that. Of bubbles rising and vanishing…
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