by T D Griggs
‘No-one could have done that.’
‘Oh, I could have done it. I was perhaps the only skipper on the South Coast who could have brought her in there, in barely four foot of water. They might all have got free, and that would have been a glorious thing. But in my heart I’d damned him for what I thought he’d done to Sally Chessall, and I left him there screaming, on that bell. And after, when the firing started, I panicked. I took the wheel from MacDonald and ordered full ahead, and got it wrong for once in my arrogant bloody life, the only time it mattered. And we struck. And instead of that glorious thing that might have been, I end up with seven of my lads dead, and Lucien dead, and me and Billy in the crypt with the people I might have saved.’ He looked at me. ‘I lost most of my crew that night, Iain. And very soon I lost the Rosens. And with them, I lost myself.’ He glanced at me. ‘And I lost you.’
I reached across and took both his hands in both of mine, and this time he didn’t recoil.
‘I meant to come back after the War,’ he said. ‘Find Lena and her parents. Take their bodies from that miserable cellar. Give them back to their people. I thought I could at least do that much, and that’s why I drew the map. But I kept thinking of this village, and the people who’d risked themselves for us, and I kept thinking of the harm it would do them, the innocent as well as the guilty. And more than that, I was weak. I couldn’t bear that your mother should know. Still, for years I told myself I’d do it one day. Then you were born, and such resolve as I had went out of my world as you came into it. I didn’t want you to grow up beneath the burden of such things. I didn’t want that to be your legacy.’
He straightened, easing his hands gently from my grip.
‘Besides, I’d made promises that night, and they were not to be broken lightly. Not just to ease the weight on my own soul.’
‘What promises?’
‘Promises to the men who saved us. They had a few words of English between them, and they begged us not to speak of it, for it could help no one. And how could I point the finger of blame at anyone? Me? After what I’d done to Lucien? Without that, none of this would have happened.’ He looked past me, out at the storm. ‘I’ll tell you one thing I learned in my long life. All the vileness that smites this world, it don’t spring from Satan and his demons. It springs from ordinary men who fail to do what they know they ought to do.’
‘Why have you come here now?’
‘Because Dominic’s dead. Because the innocent are suffering for the guilty once again, and on into the next generation. Because it’s time for this to stop.’ He lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. ‘And because the maid said you needed me.’
‘I’ve always needed you, Dad.’
The door opened and Kate backed in carrying a tray of coffee mugs. The wind caught the lid of the model’s mahogany case and blew it shut with a bang.
‘Is it safe?’ she said, looking from one of us to the other.
I nodded and took the tray from her.
She closed the door behind her and sat on the bed, still watching us. She was wet through, her hair plastered to her skull and her clothes clinging to her body. She didn’t seem to notice.
I took my jacket from the back of the chair and draped it around her shoulders. She didn’t seem to notice that either.
‘Serge has been here,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. ‘You’ve seen him.’
‘Yes, I have.’ I picked up my coffee and drank a little, grateful for its warmth. ‘He’s on the boat. It’s moored up near the point. I’m meeting him there sometime after eight tonight. Then he wants to go to the police.’
‘In that case we’ll all go to fetch him,’ Kate said with calm certainty. ‘And we’ll all go to the police. And he’ll be free.’
I put my coffee cup down. ‘It’s not as simple as that –’
‘Yes, it is,’ she snapped, cutting across me. ‘Granddad’s here now. I didn’t bring him all this way for Auld Lang Syne. I brought him so the two of you could go and tell that Algerian cop about what happened all those years ago. Then everyone will know why Dominic was killed. And they’ll know it wasn’t Serge. Won’t they?’
She started to cry then, the tears running soundlessly down her face, and I saw how very near the edge she had been. I made a move towards her, but she waved me impatiently away. There was a tense little silence. Over to my right, my father folded open the model’s case again and bent low over it, examining it minutely.
I said: ‘Sweetheart, I know what you hoped would come of this. But we have a problem here.’
‘A problem?’ she said, losing her fragile control. ‘It’s simple, isn’t it? It’ll all be in the open, won’t it? They’ll know it wasn’t Serge who hurt Dominic. It was someone trying to find the diaries, like you always said!’
‘But Kate, I don’t have the diaries. I can’t even prove they ever existed. And without them there’s no motive for anyone to have hurt Dominic.’
She stared at me in desperation. ‘So what’s Serge supposed to do? Cower on that bloody boat until they find him?’
I reached for her wrist and tried to take her in my arms, but she writhed away from me.
‘Kate –’
We all heard it. A sharp click and the snap of a spring releasing. Kate stepped back from me, letting her arms drop to her sides. We both turned towards my father. He was crouched over the model. The wheelhouse section had folded back to open the centre of the hull.
He lifted them out reverently, and laid them on the table beside the boat. Small, black leather books. Three of them. I stepped up to the table and picked one up. Gold numbers were embossed on the spine: 1942. I riffled the leaves. A little dust escaped. The pages were feint lined, and Father Thomas’ tight and crabby handwriting filled them densely.
I looked at my father.
‘I knew that Oerlikon was wrong,’ he said.
I turned to Kate. She stood with my jacket rucked over one shoulder, her eyes huge.
‘Go and find him,’ I said. ‘Go and get him off the boat and bring him back here.’
‘Yes.’ She took a couple of deep breaths, steadying herself. ‘Yes, of course.’ She walked to the door and opened it against the wind. ‘What are you going to do, Dad?’
‘Your grandfather and I are going to church.’
58
The rain drove horizontally across the village from the sea, and the beech trees in the churchyard surged against the sky. I checked my watch. It was just gone seven and what light there was had begun to fail. We stopped at the iron gate. The west window of the church glowed like the stern galley of a man-of-war. I glanced at my father, but his face revealed nothing, and neither of us spoke. We walked the last few metres up the path.
I caught the west door before the wind did, and closed it gently behind us. We stepped into the body of the church. No one noticed us at first, though there were twenty or so men and women there, and the space was full of quiet activity and soft light. They were preparing the church for Dominic’s funeral. Candles were already lit, bright little flags of flame fluttering in the eddies which chased us in. More were massed near the altar steps. The taste of hot wax hung in the air, and behind it the smell of damp clothing.
My father set off down the aisle without waiting for me, his stick clacking against the flagstones. I moved up beside him, aware of a buzz of surprise. They registered my presence, but I was not the focus of their attention. Perhaps they wondered who this gnarled old man was, with his coarse coat and his stick. Or perhaps they already knew.
My father reached the end of the aisle, and sat down in the front pew, staring straight ahead, his hands crossed over the head of his stick. For all the attention he paid to anyone else, he might have been alone in an empty church.
Felix was up at the altar on his knees, his back to us. He rose slowly and turned, his robes swinging around him. His eyes flicked from my face, down to my father’s, and back to mine. I stepped close to him.
‘So he came at la
st,’ Felix said, so quietly that only I could hear.
‘Yes.’
Felix passed his hand over his pate and sighed. ‘What am I to say to you, Iain? I’m happy for you that he’s come. I know what that means to you.’
‘But?’
‘Do you suppose it’s going to make any difference now? What either of you say? It’s a bad idea for you to be here tonight. Please, go home.’
He turned his back on me. The dismissal was so unmistakable that when I didn’t move there was a brief murmur of concern from the body of the church. They hadn’t been able to hear what we were saying, but they could read the body language well enough and they didn’t like it.
I glanced round at them. I glimpsed familiar faces, hostile faces, tilted up towards me – Daniel, Freycinet, Bonnard, old Garnier. Leaning against a pillar, watchful and sardonic, I caught sight of Inspector Sharif. More people were coming in now. I could hear their feet on the flagstones and their whispered questions and the answers that came hissing back to them. I blocked my mind to that. I took the diaries out of my jacket and laid them gently on the white cloth of the altar table between the communion chalice and the crucifix. Felix looked down at them. His expression did not change, but I saw hope die somewhere behind his eyes.
‘So you finally found what you were looking for,’ he said.
‘I think we’ve all been looking for these, Felix. I think you’ve been looking harder than anyone else.’
He held my gaze.
‘Tell me you didn’t mean to hurt him, Felix. Tell me it was an accident.’
He held out for a moment longer, but then, quite suddenly, his resistance crumbled. He groped for the rail and sat down untidily on the altar steps.
‘Iain...’
‘Something wrong, Father?’ Sgt Freycinet called, his voice hard. ‘Want us to get rid of him?’
‘Get on with your work,’ Felix snapped back with more force than I thought he could muster just then. ‘Please. All of you. This is a private matter.’
The moment passed. Sounds of grudging activity began to build up again behind me.
Felix licked dry lips and looked up at me. ‘Have you known for long?’
‘Not long.’
‘How?’
I hunkered down in front of him. ‘Who could have known for sure that Dominic was going to talk to me about the diaries? You knew, Felix, because he asked Father Thomas for guidance. When I came to see you here, the day after I’d found him, his special candle was in Father Thomas’ chapel. He’d prayed out loud, the way he always did, and you overheard him. You thought he was going to give me those journals. You thought they’d be in his flat.’ I looked at him. ‘Felix, Felix. Was it worth it?’
‘Of course it wasn’t worth it. How can you ask that?’
‘So how did it happen?’
He screwed his eyes closed and breathed deeply. ‘I gave him some wine. I told him it was all right to drink it, and he believed me. I thought… I’d get him drunk, get him to tell me where the diaries were. He’d pass out, and I’d take them. It wouldn’t matter what he said after that, nobody’d believe him.’
‘You knew he couldn’t drink.’
‘I thought a couple of glasses wouldn’t hurt, and I figured that was all it would take. And it worked – he started to tell me. In the boat, he said. He kept saying that. But then he had some kind of a fit. He fell and struck his head on the edge of the desk. I got him onto the bed. I waited with him, tried to help, but the fits wouldn’t stop. I went to get Madame Duquesne. But just as I got to the door, he shrieked out. It was the most horrible sound…’ He swallowed. ‘And when I got back to him, he was dead. Just like that. It all happened in a couple of minutes.’
‘In the boat. You thought he meant they were in one of the models?’
He nodded. ‘I just didn’t know which one…’
‘You were right. They were in the boat he gave me.’
‘My God.’ He closed his eyes. ‘He didn’t know how to tell a lie, poor Dominic. Afterwards I decided he must have meant they were in the launch. When I went to look, you’d got there before me. Not that it mattered. If the diaries were hidden in there, neither of us was going to find them.’
‘And the money?’
‘I went a little crazy. I had some idea it would look like a burglary.’ He reached up and grabbed my wrist. ‘Iain, believe me. I never meant any of this to happen. I wouldn’t have hurt Dominic for the world. It never crossed my mind they’d blame Serge.’
‘You didn’t come forward to clear him, though, did you?’
He gazed at me in anguish. ‘I won’t try to excuse that. How could I? I’d have come forward if they had arrested him. I like to think I would.’
I stared at him for a long time, at the smile wrinkles around his eyes sagging in despair.
‘Felix, you bastard. I trusted you.’
‘I know,’ he said, and his voice firmed as he said it. ‘Help me up.’
I took his arm and he got to his feet. He brushed down his vestments.
He said: ‘There’s just one thing I need of you. I’ll tell Sharif what happened to Dominic, that it was my fault, that I wasn’t man enough to own up to it. But destroy the diaries. Let the past rest in peace...’
I picked up the three black notebooks from the altar and weighed them in my hand.
‘Please, Iain. Please. For my father’s sake. You love him too, don’t you? And this has all been for him. Everything I’ve done has been to protect him. Hasn’t he earned that?’ He kept his eyes on me, but shouted over my shoulder. ‘Inspector Sharif? Could I have a word with you?’
The words echoed through the stone vaulting. The hall fell silent again, and I heard the detective making his way down the aisle towards us.
‘Please.’ Felix gripped my arm. ‘I beg you.’
I heard Sharif climbing the altar steps. I slipped the diaries into my pocket.
Sharif came up beside me.
‘Father Felix has something to say to you,’ I said.
I stood back a little as they spoke. Down in the body of the church the people were gathered in small suspicious knots. Their eyes were hard when they met mine.
My father still stared straight ahead, his hands knotted like hickory. As I looked down at him, I heard the handle turn on the door of Father Thomas’ chapel. Dr Pasqual walked out of the darkness and into the space in front of the pews, as if stepping onto a stage. He saw my father at once and stopped a couple of metres away, standing very erect, staring at him. There must have been some reaction from the congregation in the body of the church, but I wasn’t aware of it. I was aware only of this small, neat old man standing to attention in the light thrown by the banks of candles which flanked the altar steps.
Beside me Felix and Sharif stopped speaking. In a wrenching voice, Felix cried: ‘Papa!’
But the old man didn’t seem to hear him. He moved towards my father, who had risen to his feet and stood there motionless. Dr Pasqual looked up into my father’s creased face, and when he spoke it was in a precise and elegant English I had not heard him use before.
‘Pilot Officer George Madoc. Welcome back.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ my father said.
‘I’ve been waiting for you. And what message is it you bring me?’
My father looked into his eyes. ‘That it won’t ever go away,’ he said. ‘That we were fools to try to hide it. That we’re all to blame.’
Dr Pasqual took a small, sharp breath, and his composure faltered. ‘I was so very frightened,’ he said, quietly. ‘So very frightened.’
‘You were not alone in that,’ my father told him. ‘No more you are now.’
Dr Pasqual touched my father’s hands where they lay locked over the head of his stick, then went down like a marionette when its strings are cut.
My father reacted with an agility I didn’t expect from him. His stick clattered onto the floor as he caught Dr Pasqual awkwardly in his arms. I heard gasps from the
front pews and before I could move people had clumped around the two figures. A woman – it might have been Marie-Louise – was screaming for someone to call an ambulance, and I saw Bonnard talking urgently into a mobile.
I tried to get closer. My father knelt with Dr Pasqual’s head in his lap, while Daniel Bourgogne tugged at the fallen man’s collar. Dr Pasqual’s lips were blue and his face the colour of parchment. There was a lot of shouting, echoes of shock and distress amplified in the stone cavern of the church. Sharif turned away from Felix and strode past me.
Felix still stood by the altar steps, one hand on the rail. His gaze was directed away up the aisle and over the ranks of pews, now empty of people and littered with fallen prayer books, hymn sheets, discarded coats.
I walked over to him.
‘Is he dead?’ he asked. He did not meet my eye.
‘I don’t know, Felix. They’re getting help.’
‘If he died now,’ Felix said, ‘he’d die without ever knowing what happened at Dominic’s.’ He clutched at my arm. ‘That would be best, wouldn’t it?’
I turned unhappily away from him, letting his hand slip from my arm. On the edge of the clustered group I could see Sharif, his charcoal cashmere coat slung over his shoulders, talking on his phone. He snapped it closed, and began moving people aside, speaking calmly to them, reasserting order.
Sgt Freycinet was in the porch, marshalling help to wedge open the main doors. The wind came swooping in and riffled through the pages of the prayer books and made the candle flames shiver, so that shadows loomed and shrank between the pillars.
It must have taken at least a few minutes, but it seemed that almost at once a siren was wailing and spikes of blue light, dulled by the stained glass, were lancing into the church. Four pompiers in blue uniforms came clattering up the aisle and took over, moving the helpers back, easing the old man from my father’s lap and setting down boxes of equipment beside him. One of them put his ear to Dr Pasqual’s chest. Another drew Sharif aside and they held a low, urgent conversation.
A minute or two later they lifted the stretcher, and bore the old man out. One of them held high a bag of liquid and light glinted on a plastic oxygen mask. Everyone followed the little cortege out into the night. There was a brief press around the door as they funnelled through and then they were gone and someone closed the door behind them. I heard an engine rev, and the siren slowly receded. The candle flames steadied and it grew quiet again.