The Warning Bell

by T D Griggs

  ‘Why would they do such a thing, Iain?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘You don’t know? You dream this thing up and haven’t even got a motive? Listen to yourself!’

  ‘My father and Billington must have been taken to La Division, and for some reason the four guys who took them there had to lie about it. The answer must be in the diaries. They’re still there, which is why Garnier wants to bury the place in concrete.’

  ‘Iain, that’s insane. If the diaries say anything so damaging, why wouldn’t Garnier just find them and destroy them?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t know exactly where to look. Maybe that’s why it’s panicked him, me turning up with the map. Serge didn’t do this, Chantal. Whoever killed Dominic was looking for the diaries, and thought the old boy had them. But all the time they were up at La Division.’

  ‘Nobody will believe that, my love,’ she said wearily. ‘Serge has a bad history, and he’s gone on the run from the police. They don’t need another suspect.’

  ‘They might have to look for one if the diaries turned up, and we could all see what Father Thomas wrote in them. There might be another motive then.’

  She put her fingertips on my lips.

  ‘I’m sorry, Iain. This has gone on long enough.’

  ‘No, listen –’

  ‘I’ve listened enough. Too much. I want us out of here. And I don’t want to wait. I mean, right now. Tonight.’ She moved back to the table. ‘I’m serious,’ she said.

  ‘This is you being on my side, is it?’

  ‘You have the nerve to say that to me?’ Her voice dropped dangerously. ‘I never wanted to stay here, you know that. But I bought this place - for you. So that you could get this out of your system. I must have been mad. I thought the past would set you free. But instead, you’re trapped in it.’

  We glared at one another.

  I said: ‘Take the car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re right. Everything you say is right. I’m sorry.’ I took the keys out of my pocket and held them out to her. ‘You have to go, you and Kate. Take the car. Go now.’

  ‘Iain, you can’t stay here alone. What on earth have you got to stay for?’

  ‘I just want another day or two, that’s all. Go on. Take the keys.’

  ‘What do you think this is? Fucking High Noon? What do you hope to achieve by staying?’

  ‘Just a couple of days. Tie up some loose ends.’

  ‘Keep your bloody keys. I’m going to pack.’ She took two steps towards the door and swung back. ‘I’m not coming back, Iain. You do understand that? If you don’t come with me, I’m out.’

  ‘Just a couple of days,’ I repeated.

  She held my eyes for a moment longer and then stalked away through the house.

  I sat at the desk in the cabin I had once hoped would be my father’s. I had lost track of how long I had been here, watching the day fade into night. Two hours, perhaps. Every now and then Chantal would cross in front of one of the windows in the main house, carrying a case or folded clothes. Soon she would be finished with packing. I had several times been on the point of going back inside, making some fresh overture. But I knew Chantal meant what she said. And so did I.

  I heard a light footfall on the step and swung round, but it was Kate who pushed the door open. She was pale, her hair scraped back from her face.

  I said: ‘Come and have a seat, sweetheart.’

  ‘Just chill, Dad,’ she snapped. ‘OK?’

  She stood over by the model of 2548. I had opened the mahogany case as I always did when I came in here. It was a ritual, opening the case, opening my father’s story. Opening the past.

  ‘Mum’s in a state,’ she said finally. ‘I’m not helping much.’

  ‘Me neither, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She’s told me to call a cab.’

  ‘You’d better do it, then. And Kate? I want you to go with her.’

  ‘And you?’

  I didn’t answer.

  She touched the model’s wheelhouse roof, leaned a little closer to look in through the windows at the bearded figure which stood at the helm. ‘This is meant to be Granddad, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘That’s how Dominic saw him, so I guess that’s how he was.’

  She blew a little dust from the wheelhouse windows and squinted in again at the carved figure which represented her grandfather. She walked up to the desk and stood beside my chair.

  She said: ‘What are you doing out here, anyway?’

  ‘Trying to convince myself I’m not completely nuts.’

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We should all go, Dad. Everything’s gone wrong since we got here.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that. But I need a little time.’

  ‘So you can stay here and solve your precious mystery?’

  I covered her hand with mine. ‘It’s not my mystery, Kate. It’s your grandfather’s. And he’s not telling how it all started, far less how it’s going to end.’

  She was quiet for a minute, thinking that through.

  ‘If you’re right about those diaries,’ she said, ‘that would put Serge in the clear, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. But at least there’d be a possible motive for someone else to have killed Dominic. So, yes, it could help Serge if I was right.’

  She reached past me to touch the map where it lay on the desk. She said: ‘A box within a box. That just about sums up this whole village.’

  Chantal called Kate’s name and we both went outside. She was standing on the veranda with four bags at her feet.

  Kate said: ‘I’ll call that cab.’

  ‘I’ve already done it,’ Chantal told her, avoiding my eyes. ‘Get your things.’

  Kate looked from her mother to me and back again. ‘I’ll just…’ she began, but didn’t finish the sentence. She made a vague gesture and went into the house.

  Chantal swallowed and raised her eyes to me with an effort. She said: ‘We’ll go to London. To the flat. Yes. That’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘That would be best.’

  ‘I’ll make…’ she hesitated, her voice quivering, ‘I’ll make other plans then.’

  The lights of the cab were already coming down the road and had almost reached the drive.

  ‘Chantal…’

  ‘I can’t talk about it any more now.’ She let out a long breath as if it hurt her. ‘Please don’t stand there and watch us. I couldn’t bear it.’

  I went back into the cabin and listened to the cab crunch on the gravel, and heard them lug their bags down the steps. I stayed there even when the car doors clumped shut and the diesel clattered away into the night. I couldn’t watch it go. I had never been able to watch Chantal leave.

  When it was quiet again I went through to the kitchen. I took a bottle of scotch and a glass from the cupboard and sat at the kitchen table, listening to the night wind as it flapped and rattled around the house.

  52

  I surfaced into something like wakefulness and got shakily to my feet, feeling stiff and nauseous. The kitchen was rinsed in cold grey light. I lurched to the phone and grabbed the receiver before it could shriek at me again.

  Chantal’s voice was hollow. ‘It’s me.’

  I opened my mouth to answer, but no sound came out. I tried again. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We’re at the ferry terminal at St Malo. We’re OK.’

  I could see the clock on the kitchen wall. It was seven-thirty in the morning. I shook my head, trying to get my brain to work.

  ‘We stayed in some awful little dive,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to call you until this morning.’ She waited. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

  My head ached and my mouth was dry. ‘It doesn’t feel like it.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘Chantal –’

  ‘Be quiet a minute.’

  I could hear her breathing, readying herself for some announcement
. I clenched my fingers around the phone.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be there,’ she said. ‘I hoped maybe you’d…come to your senses. I lay awake all night wondering if you’d come after us. Hoping you would.’

  ‘Chantal -’

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing there, but I want you to remember this, Iain. You never needed to play the tough guy. Not for me. You never needed to throw it all away for that.’

  She hung up without waiting for a reply.

  I put the phone back on the hook and felt a loneliness I had not experienced since childhood. For a second I was tempted to follow her, right now, and to hell with it. My head was beating like a trip hammer. I put the scotch away, and went into the bathroom for a couple of paracetamols. In the mirror I looked exhausted, battered. But I knew I wouldn’t follow Chantal to London. I knew I couldn’t.

  I washed and changed, went back into the kitchen and forced myself to eat. At about nine I locked up, went out to the car and drove through the bright morning to St Brieuc. I found a shop selling outdoor gear and bought myself a backpack and a torch and a folding spade and a dark, zip-up windbreaker. I loaded them in the back of the car and went into a hardware store on the square and bought a pair of heavy duty wire cutters.

  I got back about three in the afternoon, took my purchases through into the bedroom, locked the house and slept for a couple of hours. When I came round I found a bottle of Chablis in the fridge, poured myself one, and carried it out onto the veranda at the front of the house. The light was beginning to soften. I stood leaning on the wooden rail with my glass in my hand, letting the sea breeze cool my skin, listening as it stirred the bushes in the garden. The shadows lengthened around the house. I sipped the wine, put the glass down, and went down the steps into the garden.

  I found what I was looking for in the lean-to toolshed beside the house: a pickaxe handle in smooth white wood. The balanced weight of the hardwood in my hands gave me reassurance. I took it into the house and leaned it against the wall inside the bedroom door. After that I came back out to the kitchen, heated something in the microwave, and took my time eating it.

  I didn’t want any interruptions, nor any further demands on my resolution. I unplugged the phone from the wall and turned my mobile off. I went to bed early and set the alarm for two in the morning.

  In the event it wasn’t the alarm that woke me. It was the cigarette smoke.

  It hung in the darkness, raw and pungent. I lay with my eyes open and slowly raised my head. Moonlight fell through the window and across the foot of the bed and over the floor. The red numerals of the digital clock beside the bed told me that it was a little after one o’clock. I eased myself into a sitting position, placed my bare feet on the floor and stood up. I grabbed the pick handle and soundlessly opened the door.

  The hallway was flooded with moonlight. A trail of wet footprints led from the locked front door. They had paused at my bedroom door, just where I now stood; their owner had looked in on me while I slept before heading down the dark corridor towards the kitchen. I felt the short hairs rise on the back of my neck. I breathed steadily for a minute, and then followed the tracks.

  The kitchen door stood half open. I nudged it with my shoulder and it swung noiselessly inwards. A rasher of cigarette smoke slipped sideways through the kitchen window. A man sat with his back to me at the kitchen table, a pool of water gathering beneath his chair. I stopped breathing. I glimpsed dark hair, dark sodden clothes. I shifted my grip on the stave and the figure rose with astonishing speed and turned to face me. I saw white eyes and a smeared face.

  ‘Christ, M’sieur Madoc!’ Serge blurted. ‘Who were you expecting?’

  53

  My hands shook as I poured him a scotch. I took a few more deep breaths and steadied myself, though Serge probably didn’t notice. He was spent, soaked and filthy. There was mud in his hair and on his face and he stank of the estuary. His canvas backpack lay in a wet mound on the floor beside him.

  ‘I came down the track beside the river,’ he said. ‘I waded the last bit, where it comes round the point, so I couldn’t be seen from the village.’

  I poured myself a drink and sat down. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I still have a key. I was going to wait till morning, but it’s cold out there. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I thought I’d been as quiet as a mouse.’

  ‘It was the smoke that woke me. I didn’t know you smoked.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t.’

  I said nothing, my drink halfway to my mouth.

  ‘And who was this for?’ He touched the pickaxe handle with his fingertip.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have been any use.’

  He didn’t pursue that. He cupped his glass in his hands and drank gratefully.

  ‘She’s gone, hasn’t she?’ he said.

  ‘They left last night.’ I got up and pulled down the kitchen blinds. ‘Things got… difficult here.’

  ‘I just wanted to see her again, Monsieur Madoc. One last time.’

  ‘One last time before what?’

  ‘Before going to the police.’ He saw the way I glanced across at him. ‘This mess won’t sort itself out, will it?’

  I primed the percolator then went to the fridge, found cheese, olives, a cold lamb joint, and dumped it all on the table with some bread. He fell on it as if he hadn’t eaten for months.

  ‘You’re going to give yourself up?’

  ‘I should, shouldn’t I, Monsieur Madoc?’ His mouth was full and his voice muffled, but the appeal was clear. ‘Should probably have done it before. I mean, they’re not going to stop looking for me.’

  ‘Serge… What happened on Saturday night?’

  He swallowed and put down the wad of bread and cheese that was folded in his fist. ‘I got drunk,’ he said. ‘Kate and I had a row, so I went out and got drunk.’

  ‘There are witnesses?’

  ‘I was feeling pretty bad. I took a couple of bottles down to the beach and got blasted all on my own.’

  ‘Christ, Serge.’

  ‘I didn’t know I’d need an alibi,’ he said, his resentment sparking up, ‘or I’d have got drunk in better company. Anyway, when I came to my senses it was about midnight. I wanted to come back here, but didn’t think I’d get much of a welcome.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go home?’

  ‘There was no way I could use the bike. I left it in the village and started walking. I got as far as the Old Mill, saw the light on in Dominic’s apartment. It was the only light on in the whole place. You said he’d be glad if I went to see him, and I had some crazy idea that maybe he was sitting up there, all alone, working on his models. The door was open, and off the latch. I knocked and the door just came open. I went in. And there he was.’

  The percolator began to gobble.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘He was in his bed with all these bottles and stuff around him. But he was dead.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said sharply. ‘If he’d still been alive do you think I’d have left him there drowning in his own puke?’

  He was getting his strength back, and his attitude with it. I poured two mugs of coffee. ‘How could you be sure?’

  ‘He had no pulse in his neck or his wrist. He was almost cold. His eyes were rolled back. His bladder had released. I thought those were pretty bad signs. What would you think?’

  I handed over his coffee. ‘Point taken.’

  He looked away. ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.’

  I suddenly saw that beneath the dirt and the commando outfit he was just a frightened kid. I saw too that he had not come here just to find Kate. He had come to find me; to ask me to take charge.

  I said: ‘Go on.’

  ‘His place was destroyed. All his beautiful models. Everything; just smashed up. I didn’t know about the money, not until I read about it in the papers. But anyone could see he’d
been robbed. That sobered me up pretty quickly.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I panicked, I suppose. I went back the way I’d come, picked up the bike and headed east. I didn’t know where I was going. I just rode until I had to stop for fuel. I sat and thought about it then, but it was too late to go back. That’s what I figured at the time, anyway.’

  ‘You thought they’d blame you?’

  ‘Was I wrong?’

  I drank some coffee.

  ‘I did do right, didn’t I, Monsieur Madoc?’ he said. ‘Coming back, I mean? I know I shouldn’t have bolted. But now I’ve come back they’ll sort it all out. They’ll find out who really did this. Won’t they?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said quietly. ‘They’ve developed a habit around here of avoiding the truth wherever possible...’

  He stared at me. ‘So what should I do?’

  I reached across and poured him another scotch, then put the cap on the bottle and moved it away from both of us. ‘The first thing you should do is drink that coffee. Then this stuff. Then go and stand under the shower for ten minutes and I’ll find you some dry clothes.’

  He picked up his bag and looked at me uncertainly. ‘And after that?’

  ‘After that we’re going out.’

  54

  I drove through the sleeping village with Serge crouched low in the passenger seat. The square was empty, the buildings dark and silent. A halo of moths swung around the streetlamp outside the school gates. I headed past the shuttered minimarket and the garage and up to the junction with the coast road. I turned right and drove on for a kilometre or two. Black woods crowded in on us from the seaward side, punctuated occasionally by the glitter of water.

  ‘Here,’ Serge said, and sat up.

  I would have missed it if he hadn’t spoken: a narrow lane that forked down towards the sea. I killed the engine and let the car coast on parking lights through the tunnel of conifers.

  After a couple of hundred yards he touched my arm.