by Jane Holland
‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ His voice deepens. ‘You’re accusing Jean-Luc of murder. My half-brother.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry. But it’s true.’
His gaze locks with mine. Then he holds out his hand. ‘Okay, well, we’d better continue this conversation inside.’
‘But he’s in there.’
‘Who is?’
‘I told you. The man who attacked me.’
He shakes his head, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t think so, honey. This old place has been empty for years. Come on, let me prove it to you.’
‘Wait, there’s something else you need to know. Something awful.’
His brows rise. ‘What now?’
‘It’s Aunt Tamsin. She …’ My voice is suddenly hoarse. I clear my throat and try again. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Christ.’
‘The police think it might have been an overdose.’
He draws in his breath, instantly understanding. ‘Because of your dad?’
‘And Emily, yes.’
‘Shit.’ Robin closes his eyes briefly, running a hand over his face. Then he looks at me, his eyes full of pity. ‘God, I don’t know what to say. But I’m glad you came to me, Caitlin.’
‘You were the first person I thought of,’ I whisper.
‘Does this mean you forgive me for what happened at Les Baux?’ I hear the uncertainty in his voice. ‘For the crappy way I treated you? I’ve hated myself for that ever since. Your dad had just died, and all I could think about was myself.’
I wipe away a tear, surprised to find that I’m crying.
He makes an anguished face. ‘Oh God, no, don’t cry. Honey, come here. Let me hold you.’ He puts his arms around me, his warmth and strength reassuring, and for a few minutes I feel safe again. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me,’ he says softly, and kisses my forehead. ‘I don’t think you’re right about Jean-Luc. He was a crazy kid, sure. But not that crazy.’ He hugs me again, then releases me. ‘Still, it’s good to know I’m no longer the bad guy. Now let’s get inside, and you can tell me all about Tante Tamsin. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’
‘No, I told you, there’s someone in there. I saw him myself. The guy with dreadlocks. He’s dangerous.’ I back away. ‘I’ll ride pillion, you can take me to the police.’
The door opens at that moment and the man with dreadlocks peers out at us, his eyes intense.
‘Shit, I told you he was in there.’
I turn to escape, and Robin makes a grab for my wrist. ‘Wait, wait. Not so fast.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You’re a clever girl,’ he says, that drawl back in his voice. Only he’s speaking in French now. And he’s smiling. ‘But not quite clever enough for me, I’m afraid.’
The man with dreadlocks is grinning too.
Oh Christ.
They’re friends, I realise too late. I’ve made a terrible mistake. The worst mistake of my life.
Shocked, I pull my hand free, backing away from him.
‘Caitlin, no.’ There’s warning and mockery in Robin’s voice now. ‘You’d better come back here, baby. You’ll only make things worse for yourself. And really, there’s nowhere to run.’
Stumbling down the steps, I fall amongst debris-filled undergrowth beside the porch, skinning my knees on some broken bricks.
I struggle back to my feet but it’s too late. A strong pair of arms closes round me, and I’m lifted straight off my feet as though I weigh nothing. I fight, kicking my legs but it’s useless. The man with dreadlocks crushes me back against his chest, laughing at my struggles.
‘Doucement,’ he says in my ear, exactly the same word he used when he tried to abduct me in Vieil Antibes. Softly, he’s saying. Don’t struggle. Only this time Robin is not rushing in to rescue me. He’s watching instead, with apparent approval.
I open my mouth to shout for help. The Halifax villa may be isolated, hidden behind high walls, surrounded by cypresses and thickly clustered umbrella pines, but it’s not that far from the main road. Somebody might hear and call the police. Or at least come and investigate.
But as soon as I utter my first gasping cry of, ‘Au secours,’ a large hand closes round my throat, hard and vicelike, as though attempting to crush my windpipe.
The man with dreadlocks is strangling me.
I choke, struggling to get my own hands up to free myself. But it’s pointless. He’s too strong for me. The world starts to blacken before my eyes and my chest is bursting.
‘Hey, not so rough there, Serge,’ Robin tells his friend in rapid, colloquial French. ‘Let’s keep her in good condition, yes? If I wanted the silly bitch dead, she’d be dead by now. N’est-ce pas?’
Both hands drop at once, and I collapse onto the gravelled path among the weeds, gasping and retching. My throat feels like it’s on fire.
‘No, pick her up,’ Robin says, and he sounds irritated now. ‘Come on, hurry it up. Let’s get her inside before somebody sees us.’
The man called Serge hoists me over his shoulder and carries me into the villa, ignoring my protests. ‘Where do you want her?’
‘It doesn’t matter. We can clean up later.’ Robin locks the door as soon as we’re inside, and pockets the key. He sounds calm again now. Almost unmoved. ‘Just dump her anywhere.’
There’s plastic sheeting covering the new floorboards near the hearth, and Serge drops me on it, his smile deeply unpleasant.
‘There you go.’
I roll away from his hands, and kneel up on the plastic sheeting, still gasping for breath. The villa used to be a beautiful, elegant home. Now it smells musty and unlived-in, even a little smoky still, though it’s years since the fire that partially destroyed it. I came here two or three times that summer with Emily, to play board games with Robin up in his room while Tamsin and David Halifax spent an intimate evening together. I guess Robin’s mother must have been in Paris for the weekend. I recall being warned never to mention those evening visits to anyone. Especially not the paparazzi.
Robin comes to stare down at me. ‘So you came here to see me,’ he says in English, almost musing. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘I didn’t. I had a blazing row with Lucille and just walked straight over here. I wasn’t thinking straight.’ I can’t stop rubbing my throat, my voice still a hoarse whisper. ‘Robin, what’s going on?’ I glare at the man with dreadlocks. ‘And who the hell is he?’
‘You mean you haven’t worked it out yet?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I can’t believe what you just did, Robin, what you let that man do.’ I scramble to my feet, aching and bewildered. ‘He could have killed me.’
There’s a noise somewhere in the house. A soft shuffling noise, so brief I can’t be sure I didn’t imagine it. Though it’s like the sound I heard before he arrived, when I was knocking on the front door.
Robin turns his head slightly, as though he hears the noise too. But he does not explain it. Nor does he answer my questions.
‘So you had a row with Lucille today?’ His voice sharpens. ‘About Jean-Luc?’
I nod silently.
‘Did you tell Lucille what you just told me?’ he persists.
‘Yes, and she didn’t deny it. She told me her son is sick. That he needs help.’
His smile is barbaric, a mixture of savage amusement and triumph and disbelief, his lips drawn back, revealing his teeth. ‘Is that so?’
I burst out, ‘Robin, please. You’re frightening me.’
The smile disappears. ‘Stop calling me that. It was funny at first. Now it’s just boring.’
‘Calling you what?’
‘Robin.’ His hand sweeps up so quickly, I don’t see it coming. But I catch the full, stunning force of the blow on my cheekbone. ‘That’s not my name.’
Knocked backwards into the wall, I collapse onto the plastic sheeting again, my legs dissolving under me.
‘Oh, Caitlin.’ A dark
figure bends towards me as my vision blurs. ‘I would have married you, you know. I would have taken this little charade all the way. But just like a woman, you had to get demanding and ruin everything, didn’t you?’
I’m dazed but not unconscious when Serge carries me down a flight of dim, narrow steps – wooden, by the sound of his heavy footsteps – into an even darker room.
The cellar?
I remember Robin had a den down here as a teenager, with a sofa and scatter cushions and a television. It must have been renovated since the fire, as the walls show no sign of damage. The stench is appalling though. Not fire damage, but a deeper, more visceral smell. Human sweat and ordure.
Serge sets me down and retreats back up the stairs. A door thuds shut at the top. The key turns in the lock, then a bolt is unmistakably drawn across.
They’re never going to let me out, I think wildly.
My head is spinning, and I can taste something like iron in my mouth. Tentatively, I lick my hurt lip.
Blood.
Don’t panic. Think, look around.
Feeling sick, I struggle up onto one elbow. I’ve been deposited on some kind of rough mattress on the floor. The cellar is lit by one meagre strip light at the far end that flickers constantly, giving only the barest, pale light.
Something shuffles behind me.
I hold my breath, not daring to move, my heart thumping.
Slowly, someone comes round to face me.
The first thing I see are two feet wrapped in blackened rag strips, then hairy legs above them, painfully thin, followed by a pair of filthy denim shorts with a ragged hem. It’s a man, and he’s breathing harshly like he’s sick, staring down at me on the mattress.
I try not to show my fear but peer up at him, my vision still blurred, the flickering light behind his head.
The man is bearded, though his beard is unkempt. His matted hair too is long, almost shoulder-length. He is not wearing a shirt of any kind, and he’s thin, his stomach hollowed-out. He looks like a homeless person who’s been sleeping on the streets for months. Except for his pronounced pallor.
He looks just like Robin.
‘Caitlin?’ His voice grates horribly on the silence.
I stare up at him, stunned.
‘Oh my God.’ The man is speaking in English, his voice husky, the accent American, pure West Coast. ‘Caitlin, it is you.’ He drops awkwardly to his knees in front of me, and reaches for my face. My aching cheek, my bleeding lip. ‘Sweet Jesus, Caitlin. Why are you here? Here, of all places.’
I flinch at his touch.
He pulls back slightly, his hand shaking. ‘I thought it couldn’t get any worse. But I was so fucking wrong.’ He rocks back and forth, tears running down sunken cheeks into the dark tangled strands of his beard. ‘Now we’re dead for sure, don’t you see? Now he’s got both of us.’
I know that voice, that accent.
‘Robin?’ I whisper.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I don’t know exactly how much time passes as we stare at each other, while above our heads someone paces noisily to and fro, the ceiling creaking under the heavy tread. I hear raised voices, the words too muffled to make out properly. Our two captors arguing in French.
It’s one of the darkest and yet most beautiful moments of my life.
‘Robin?’ I whisper. ‘Is that really you?’
He nods.
I am stunned, ‘How … how long have you been down here?’
‘I don’t know. I kind of lost track.’ Robin wipes his damp eyes with the back of his hand, then frowns. The clever, thoughtful frown I remember so perfectly. ‘Hang on. What month is this?’
‘August.’
‘Nearly a year, then.’
‘Oh my God,’ I say, dazed, my head struggling to take in the truth. ‘You mean … Jean-Luc has kept you locked up in this cellar for a whole year? Is he mad?’
‘Pretty much, yeah.’ Robin touches my face again, more gently this time. ‘This looks bad. What did he do to you?’
‘It’s nothing. He smacked me, that’s all.’ I study him, trying to conceal my horror at his gaunt, ragged appearance. ‘But what about you? You look …’
‘Half dead?’ He gives a twisted smile when I hesitate. ‘Well, at least I’m not actually dead.’
‘Which is good to know. Bloody good to know.’ I’m still whispering, even though it’s unlikely they can hear us from above. ‘Though I have to admit I’m surprised that you are.’
‘You’re wondering why Jean-Luc didn’t simply kill me and have done with it? I’ve wondered about that myself. He killed Emily, after all.’
Pain shoots through my heart. ‘So I was right to be suspicious. I knew it, I knew it. She didn’t drown?’
‘Oh, she drowned all right. But only with his help,’ he says grimly. ‘Or so he told me when he came back here that night. Boasting like the crazy bastard he is. Showing me his wet clothes.’
‘Christ.’
I feel sick, trying not to imagine what happened that night. Emily may not have been the kindest person in the world, but she didn’t deserve to drown at the hands of Jean-Luc. Especially after what he had already put her through.
Briefly, I close my eyes. She must have been so frightened.
‘But why let you live?’
‘Insurance of a kind, that’s my best guess. In case all this unravels and he needs a scapegoat for what he’s done.’ He hesitates. ‘Perhaps out of some sick desire for vengeance also.’
‘Vengeance?’
‘You know, the sins of the father and all that self-righteous bullshit he buys into. Jean-Luc hates me for being the legitimate son. He hated our father too, for not acknowledging him publicly. And your aunt, for encouraging him not to come clean. Which nobody can blame him for, of course. Jean-Luc has got every reason to be aggrieved. Except he didn’t need to be such a fucking bastard about it, and go round killing people.’
‘I can’t argue with that.’
‘I just wish he hadn’t dragged you into this too.’ His voice becomes hoarse. ‘Jean-Luc took great pleasure telling me what he did to Tamsin. I’m so sorry.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He told me how he killed your aunt. Force-fed her half a bottle of sleeping pills was what he told me …’ Robin stops, staring at me in consternation. ‘You didn’t know.’
‘I knew she was dead. I was the one who found her. I … I just wasn’t sure how she died.’
‘Jesus, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I assumed you knew.’
I try to hold myself together. ‘The doctor thinks it was suicide.’
‘There’ll be a post-mortem?’
‘Yes.’ I remember what Dr Mercier said. ‘Definitely.’
‘Then we just have to hope someone spots that it was murder. That she didn’t take those pills willingly. There may be bruising –’
‘He’s killing us all,’ I say, interrupting him. ‘One by one. And I’ll be next.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ he says fiercely.
I try to smile at his courage, but what on earth can Robin do to stop Jean-Luc? He’s so weak, he can barely stand up.
‘I’m sorry about your wife and child,’ I whisper, and touch his arm. ‘Her name was Diane, wasn’t it? Diane and –’
‘Charlie,’ he says, interrupting me. His eyes well up with tears. ‘My perfect little boy, my son, Charlie.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say again.
He rubs his wet cheeks, almost angrily this time. ‘God, don’t fucking pity me. It was my fault. My fault entirely. I was so high in those days, I had no idea what I was doing. I failed them both.’ His voice hardens. ‘I deserve everything Jean-Luc’s done to me.’
‘My aunt told me you and Emily were together the night of the fire. At Les Baux.’
He nods, his face full of self-contempt. ‘I was never in love with Diane, though I tried hard to be. I married her because she was pregnant with Charlie, and … Well, I thought it would please my dad to
see me settling down at last. My life had been such a mess up to that point. But Emily only had to click her fingers and I was there. It was pathetic. And Jean-Luc was always there. Waiting for his chance at revenge.’ He closes his eyes on a wave of horror. ‘He told me later how he set the fire that night, and stood watching while …’
‘Don’t,’ I say, horrified. ‘Don’t torment yourself like this.’
‘Why shouldn’t I? I deserve to be tormented. He raped Emily simply to spite me. My beautiful Emily.’ His voice hardens into hatred. Self-hatred. ‘It’s my fault, all of it.’
‘You can’t blame yourself for what Jean-Luc did. He’s a terrible, wicked man. And probably insane.’ I glance round at our dingy surroundings. ‘How the hell did he even manage to get you down here?’
‘I was in rehab nearly a year after my dad died. Felt like half a lifetime. I wanted to kill myself, but I was too much of a coward. Then the clinic said I was cured. That I could come back home if there was someone willing to look after me.’ He hesitates. ‘I only knew one person to ask.’
‘Jean-Luc.’
He nods. ‘I wasn’t suicidal anymore, but I was still in a bad place emotionally. And he was so friendly when I reached out to him, so warm. I believed everything he said, and so did my doctors. Christ, the way Jean-Luc hugged me when he came to the clinic, you’d think we’d been best friends.’ He shakes his head. ‘I was so fucking vulnerable, I didn’t even question his change of character. Just signed the release papers, got in the car with him, and that was that. He was totally convincing.’
‘Then he brought you down into the cellar and locked the door.’
‘Yes,’ he says flatly.
‘To hurt you.’
‘To get revenge, he said. On me, on my dad, his mom, on the whole damn lot of us.’ He looks away. ‘And to be frank, now I know the truth, I can see his point. Though the way he’s taken his revenge is sick.’
‘But why hurt me?’
Robin hesitates. ‘Jean-Luc told me you were in love with him. He gloated over it. Said you and he were getting married, and then he’d get the chateau as well as you.’
I suck in my breath, seeing the pain in his face. ‘That’s bullshit.’