by T D Griggs
Kate turned away. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, please, Mademoiselle,’ Sharif said quickly. ‘Please do stay for a moment.’
Kate looked at me for guidance.
I said: ‘I don’t think my daughter can be of much help, Inspector.’
‘Please. I’d be very grateful.’
He worked his hand back inside his glove and gave a wry little grin to Kate. That grin said yes, this is all nonsense, but you know how it is. She did not respond, but she didn’t move either.
I said: ‘Shall we go up to the house and talk there?’
‘No need,’ Sharif said. ‘It’s very pleasant here. I like to get out in the open air myself.’
I had rarely seen anyone who seemed less like an enthusiast for the outdoors than Inspector Sharif. I noticed that under his coat he was wearing a lavender shirt and a dark blue tie with a silver clip. I couldn’t remember when I had last seen a man wearing a tie clip. It was some time since I’d seen anyone wearing a tie.
‘I gave a statement to Sgt Freycinet last night,’ I said.
‘So you did, Monsieur. And I came along partly to thank you for your help with this. If you hadn’t been there, I’m not at all sure the estimable sergeant would have noticed the money was missing.’ He broke off a twig and examined it minutely. ‘And if it hadn’t been for the money, we might have thought poor Dominic had got drunk and had some sort of a brainstorm. But thirty-nine thousand euros is a powerful motive for robbery. That’s how much seems to be missing.’
Kate said: ‘There’s a toad on your shoe.’
The inspector looked down quickly. The toad had stumbled against his brogue, and now squatted there with both front feet up on the mirror bright leather.
Sharif smiled. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t mean me any harm.’
‘I was worried about the toad,’ Kate said.
Sharif pulled back his foot. The creature, caught unawares by this retreat, tumbled over and lay with its pale mottled belly upturned, paddling at the sky. I bent down and righted it, and it stumped off indignantly into the undergrowth. Sharif followed the creature’s rocking progress until it was safely out of sight.
‘Don’t they give you warts, or something?’
‘Inspector, what do you think happened to Dominic?’
‘We’re still waiting for forensics, and the rest of the witness statements, and a full pathology report. But I can tell you there’s some bruising to the back of his head.’
‘Somebody hit him? Dominic?’
‘We won’t know for sure until the pathologist’s finished.’
‘But he was in bed when I found him.’
‘Conceivably someone put him there after he was struck. Or he dragged himself there.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible at this stage.’
‘How long had he been dead?’
‘Twenty-four hours or so by the time you found him.’
‘That long?’
‘Madame Duquesne thought he was at the Bourgogne place, getting the float ready. So did everyone at the carnival. The Bourgognes thought he was already there.’ He spread his hands. ‘Everyone thought he was somewhere else.’
‘Saturday, then.’
‘Probably Saturday night. We’ll know more precisely when we get the last of the test results through. We can already say that he seems to have put down a heroic amount of alcohol in quite a short time.’
‘I never saw him drink anything.’
‘According to Freycinet he’d drink when he was upset about something. That was rare, but when he did, he couldn’t stop. It was dangerous for him, because of his condition.’
‘What condition?’
‘He was a severe epileptic. Didn’t you know?’
‘No.’
‘Alcohol interferes with the drugs, apparently.’
‘Why don’t you say what you’re doing here?’ Kate demanded in a tight voice.
‘Mademoiselle?’
‘You didn’t come for this. Not to make small talk and pretend you like the birds and the bees. Why don’t you say it?’ Her voice started to rise. ‘You’re talking about Serge, aren’t you? Everyone knows he’s been in trouble before, so let’s all point the finger at him.’
I said: ‘Kate, no one’s talking about Serge.’
‘I’m sorry to say your daughter is right, at least up to a point.’ Sharif’s voice carried delicate regret. ‘Serge Baladier has indeed been in trouble before. Quite serious trouble. And it could be complete coincidence, of course, but as it happens he is also the only one of Dominic’s visitors on Saturday whom we have so far failed to trace.’
‘You see?’ Kate cried. ‘The usual suspects.’
‘Serge went to Dominic’s flat?’ I said.
‘According to Madame Duquesne he was there briefly, close to midnight on Saturday evening. Drunk, she thought. She was in bed in her apartment, reading, but she heard something and saw Serge Baladier going up the stairs. Apparently Dominic’s light was still on, but that wasn’t unusual. She watched for a bit, but the boy left not long afterwards and she thought no more of it. Do you know why he’d have gone there?’
‘I had dinner with Serge last week, Inspector, and I did say he should call in on Dominic, to see his models.’
‘You think he’d do that at midnight? Drunk?’
‘I’ve really no idea what he was doing there.’
‘Neither have I. It would be nice to ask young Monsieur Baladier himself, but somehow our Serge isn’t anywhere to be found.’ Sharif looked from Kate’s face to mine and back again. ‘I hate to ask anything quite so predictable, but when did you last see him? Either of you?’
Kate turned and walked sobbing towards the house. Sharif and I gazed at one another in silence until the door banged behind her.
‘Saturday afternoon,’ I said. ‘They had a row.’
‘What did they argue about?’
‘He wanted to go out in his boat. She wanted him to stay with her. I didn’t think it was serious.’
‘They were…’ he searched for the word, ‘attached to one another?’
‘She loves him,’ I said. ‘And he loves her.’
I was aware that in saying so I had allowed the truth of it to take root in my mind. Perhaps Sharif sensed this, for he lost some of his polish for a moment and looked hard and weary.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t take any pleasure in this.’
‘Inspector Sharif, anyone could have come into Dominic’s room and found him that way. Anyone could have taken that money. One of the old derelicts in the other flats. €39,000 is more cash than most of us see in our entire lives.’
‘You’re quite anxious to defend the boy, aren’t you?’
‘Serge and Kate had a fight, and he took off in a temper. That’s all. What can I say? I like him. And I just can’t see him doing anything like this.’
‘You knew he had a police record?’
‘He hinted at… some trouble in the past.’
‘You didn’t ask what?’
‘No.’ I stiffened. ‘Kids can make mistakes, can’t they? Even gipsy kids.’
All at once he didn’t seem smooth and urbane at all. ‘I’m Algerian, Monsieur. I don’t care if he’s a Hottentot with a bone through his nose. But if he was screwing my daughter it would worry me that he’d been arrested three times.’ When he saw he had my attention he held up his gloved hand and counted on his fingers. ‘Car theft at fourteen. Drug dealing at fifteen. Malicious wounding at seventeen.’
‘Malicious wounding?’
‘Yannick Garnier’s missing a kidney, thanks to him.’
‘But he’s a bright kid. A student.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘He’s at that marine science place. I’ve seen his work.’
‘He told other people that, too. The place we’re talking about is IFREMER, Monsieur Madoc, and it doesn’t have students. It’s a research institute, not a university. Not a college. And for the record
, they’ve never heard of any Serge Baladier.’
‘Maybe I misunderstood –’
‘You didn’t misunderstand. The boy lied to you. Almost certainly he lied to your daughter too.’ He relented a little. ‘Look, I appreciate your liberal sentiments, Monsieur. It’s true, the boy might have nothing to do with this, but we won’t know until we talk to him. And he doesn’t seem to welcome that prospect. We have a witness, a police patrolman who spotted him and that BMW motorbike of his in a service station outside Rennes at five o’clock on Sunday morning. That’s before we even had an alert out for him, but the patrolman was an enthusiast and noticed the old bike. Rennes is a long way to go to make a point after a lover’s tiff, you’d have to admit.’
I stood looking at him, not knowing what to say. I couldn’t fault his logic, but equally I couldn’t believe the conclusion he’d reached. I hardly noticed that Inspector Sharif had wished me good morning and was already walking away.
I called to him: ‘Why were Dominic’s models smashed?’
He turned back. ‘What?’
‘Why would anyone break up his beautiful models?’
‘The thief did it,’ he said impatiently. ‘In case the old boy had more money hidden away.’
‘His money wasn’t hidden away. It was lying in the drawer. When I went there the drawer was open and anyone could see it. Dominic didn’t care about money. He’d have given it to anyone who’d asked.’
Sharif stepped back through the hedge. ‘So have you got another suggestion?’
I hesitated. ‘Not right now,’ I said.
I found Kate in the cabin. She was sitting with her back to me on the single bed we had put in there. The bright counterpane had been Kate’s own contribution. I think secretly, like me, she had never entirely given up on the idea that the cabin was my father’s room, and that one day he would occupy it. She was staring out of the window over the shining sea.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, without turning. ‘I’ve finished with the crying business.’
‘How much did you know, Kate? You need to tell me.’
‘About Serge? Everything. More or less from the start.’
‘You knew he’d been in trouble with the police?’
‘Yes, I knew.’ She looked defiantly at me. ‘You must have guessed something. Don’t say you didn’t.’
I sat down. ‘Yes, something. He hinted at something. I thought maybe some petty crime. But drug dealing? Malicious wounding?’
‘Yannick Garnier and his brother attacked him. Didn’t you ever see that scar he has? The families had some kind of a feud. It went back years.’
‘Kate, you’ve got to admit this is all a bit heavier than teenage high spirits.’
‘He didn’t hurt poor Dominic. I know he didn’t and so do you.’
‘How do I know that?’
‘Because he couldn’t have!’ Her voice rose. ‘Serge, do a thing like that? It’s crazy! He’s the gentlest, sweetest -’
‘All over the world, Kate, there are the mothers and sisters and lovers of people who’ve done awful things, and half of them say oh, he was the gentlest, the sweetest -’
‘Don’t you talk like that!’ she shouted suddenly. ‘Don’t you point the finger like all the others! Not you!’
Her anguish silenced both of us.
She went on, more quietly: ‘I’m not a fool, Dad. I’m not talking this way just because he was mine for a while. He didn’t do this thing, that’s all. It’s not right they should say he did.’
I said: ‘If only he hadn’t run away. And why did he lie? About being a student – at IFREMER of all places?’
‘He didn’t lie, Dad,’ she said. ‘Not the way you mean.’
‘What other way is there to lie?’
‘His project on the Shoals was real. I saw it. You saw it too. Notes, photos, maps, drawings. He virtually had to teach himself to read and write to do that, but he was going to present it to IFREMER in the summer. He’d even fixed the meeting.’
‘But they don’t have students at IFREMER, Kate. That’s what Sharif says.’
‘I know that. But Serge had this dream that they’d give him a job on one of their research boats. Anything. He’d have done anything. He’d work his way up. Maybe later they’d help fund him through college. It was all he wanted. A step on the ladder. All he wanted…’
She turned back to the window. I got up and walked to the door, letting my hand rest briefly on her shoulder as I passed. I knew as well as she did that she hadn’t finished with the crying business yet.
The kitchen smelled of coffee and bacon. Chantal turned from the stove and gave me a tight little look as I came in.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi.’ I sat down at the pine table.
She pointed at the stove. ‘I thought we ought to eat something. I seem to have gone a bit over the top. I don’t quite know how it happened.’ She looked sadly at the food. ‘Do you want some of this, now it’s done?’
‘Why not?’
She brought me a plate of bacon and eggs and spent some time loading the table up around me: toast rack, marmalade, coffee pot. We never ate breakfast like this, and she would never normally wait on me in this way, but I could see that this morning she wanted to be busy. At length she sat down opposite me, nursing her coffee cup.
‘I heard you talking, with that cop,’ she said. ‘It was good of you to stick up for Serge. That would have meant a lot to Katrine.’
I looked at her. ‘Do you believe Serge did this, Chantal?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’ She stared down into her cup. ‘Except that right now I wish we’d never come here.’
I couldn’t find an answer to that.
In a moment, Chantal went on: ‘Sylvie Bertrand rang about an hour ago.’
I glanced at her, wondering what the connection was.
‘She’s cancelled Katrine’s music lessons.’ Chantal lifted her head. ‘Oh, she was awfully correct about it. Unexpected pressures of work. Only so many hours in the day. Katrine deserves someone’s complete attention. All that.’
‘And?’
‘We made him one of us, Iain. If there’s a shadow over Serge it’s bound to fall on us too. When things go wrong in a community like this, someone has to get the blame, and it’s usually the outsider.’
She came round the table and pulled up a chair next to me and put her arm around me. There was no mistaking the protectiveness of that encircling arm, and no denying the message it conveyed: that she would stand by me, no matter what.
I said: ‘This is my fault, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think I’d listen to that kind of talk? Even for a moment?’
Her vehemence told me that she had already had to listen to that kind of talk, and that whatever Sylvie Bertrand had wanted it was more than a chat about music lessons. I kissed her hand where it rested on my shoulder, got up and quietly left the room.
47
I took a shower after that, scrubbing savagely at my skin.
I kept telling myself that the world was still the same as the one I had occupied yesterday. The sun still streamed through the frosted glass window, and the clunking of the pipes in the half-painted bathroom was just as it had always been. Surely the village too would be just as it had been, and the people in it.
But I knew that everything had changed, had flipped from positive to negative. Under the too-hot water I spooled through an endless litany of self-justifications. But there was no escape. If I had never come here, if I had never started asking questions, poor Dominic would still be sitting on the prow of the old boat right now, dangling his line into the bright river, smiling that guileless smile.
I dressed quickly and walked through the house. I could hear Kate and Chantal in the kitchen, talking softly, Kate’s voice shuddering a little, Chantal’s soothing, sympathetic. I was glad they were together but I didn’t want to interrupt them and I didn’t want to know what course
their conversation was taking. I was afraid it involved me. I shut the front door quietly behind me.
Three shiny tourist buses stood outside the Hotel de Ville and cars with foreign plates were parked under the plane trees. A Dutch driver had got his caravan stuck in the alley next to the photo shop and people were shouting instructions to him in three different languages. The square was noisy with strangers eating ice creams and taking photos of one another while their kids splashed in the fountains. There was not a face I knew among them, hardly an expression I recognised. These people knew nothing of Dominic, or St Cyriac, or the past.
At first sight the church appeared to be empty. I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could, but the iron latch clicked like a pistol shot. Felix was sitting on a chorister’s chair near the altar, looking at me. From the angle of his body I knew he had been holding his head in his hands. Light glinted on the silver thread of the cross woven into the chasuble he wore and on the amber beads of a rosary hanging from his fingers. This formality, and the fact that he looked ten years older than when I had last seen him, made me stop at the foot of the altar steps, suddenly unsure of my reception.
He came down and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘St Cyriac without Dominic. Can you imagine such a thing?’
I shook my head.
He stood back half a pace, letting his hands slip away. ‘Everyone’s in a state of shock. Papa’s here now. He’s been in Father Thomas’ chapel for hours.’
‘How’s he taking it?’
‘Papa’s still a bit of an old-world aristo when all’s said and done, and Dominic was just a funny old guy who wasn’t all there. But they shared so much history.’ Felix gave a strained little smile. ‘And they were the only two who used that chapel. They’d both be in there, communing with Father Thomas. Dominic used to annoy the hell out of Papa by praying out loud. You know how he was.’
‘Yes, I know.’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘If I hadn’t been so busy here, Iain, I’d have called round to see you before now.’
‘Did you think I needed special attention?’
He gave me a quizzical look. ‘We all need special attention. But the police said you found the body, and that must have been terrible for you.’