Léon frowned, trawling through his prodigious memory for names. It rang no bells.
‘He is Gilles Bertin’s sidekick,’ she explained. ‘Another Soviet agent. This one likes to play rough. He was inside the garden shed.’
She said it calmly, as if saying the colour of his eyes. No mention of the fact that she clearly believed he was here to kill her, but her hand flicked across her forehead as if to ward off a bullet. Léon rose to his feet to rid himself of the desk between them. He stood by the window instead – any closer to her and he would have found himself plucking the strand of charred straw from the back of her hair or brushing the smudge of soot from her neck.
‘We’ll do this together, Eloïse. Tell me how you know Maurice Piquet.’
*
She told him in quick short sentences. To the point.
The hospital in Paris. When Piquet came close to ripping her cheek off. The sight of his bristly head in a photograph on the day of the demonstration. His role as Bertin’s muscle man and the way he’d darted at her on the marshes. The killer look on his face before he’d raced off on the motorcycle, aware of the American military man in the burning cottage.
Léon listened, his gut cold as ice. How close had she come to death? First in the street alongside Mickey Ashton, then at the fire with the officer who was too busy playing intrepid hero to look after Eloïse. When she’d finished, he anchored himself to the window, one hand on the latch as if thinking of opening it. But it was to stop him from running over there and shaking her, to stop him from throwing her in his car right this minute and driving her to Paris without stopping.
‘Eloïse, I am asking you again. Please will you return to Paris? It is not safe for you here.’
‘The question is,’ she was staring not at him, but at a streak of soot on her hand, ‘why would an MGB agent who works for Soviet Russia choose to burn down a meeting place for Communist activists? Surely they would work together.’
‘Eloïse, are you listening to me?’
‘Why would he burn it?’
‘The French Communist Party is made up of many factions and they are always falling out.’
‘Or had they been disobeying orders from Gilles Bertin?’
‘Now can we talk about you?’
‘There’s no need,’ she said, her voice low. She shook her head at him but with a slow smile that drew him forward. ‘You know I will not go back to Paris.’
The room seemed to peel away until there was just her, and he could taste the danger around her, like grit between his teeth. Outside his office there was the tread of police boots and a knock sounded on the door.
‘Not now,’ he called out curtly, but the sharpness of his tone was to do with her, not the man on the other side of the door.
‘You’re busy,’ she said, and rose. She moved quickly to leave but he reached the door before her.
‘Your friend from Paris is here, you said.’
‘Yes. Clarisse Favre.’
Her gaze was quick, examining each part of his face. He reached up and at last plucked the stub of charred straw from her hair, which was tied back from her face. He let his fingers run to the ends of it, and it felt dusty, but thick and warm.
‘Stay at Mas Caussade. I will go hunting for this Maurice Piquet. Stay at home with André.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘The pair of you together should be a match for anyone.’
She nodded. For the first time he saw her hand quiver as it reached for the door and he had no idea whether it was fear or rage, but he drew her close and wrapped his arms around her so tight he could make out each ridge of her spine and feel the softness of her breasts pressed to his chest. Her body moulded to his, melting into his bones, and he heard her breath, rapid and hot. The smell of the smoke in her hair flooded his senses.
‘If you must leave the farm at any time I want you to ring your friend, Clarisse Favre, and ask her to accompany you at all times. Do you still have the gun?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
His arm curled around her narrow waist and she leaned back against the wall, drawing him with her. His lips found hers, hard and urgent, and her hand twisted round the back of his neck, her nails digging in, one leg twining around his. Pinning him to her. They remained like that, tangled together for a long time, not even a hair’s breadth between them, the clock on his desk ticking off the minutes till the heat began to recede and their breathing flowed together.
‘Your father should be proud of you,’ he murmured into her hair.
She gave a small snort of derision.
‘It’s true,’ he insisted. ‘Proud of all three of his offspring – you, André and, yes, even troublesome Isaac. You are all working so hard to change the world. Not all in the same way, but with heart and soul.’
She lifted her head. ‘Thank you, Léon.’ Her dark eyes glittered. ‘I will tell Papa to make a note of that.’
‘Will you please make a note of what I am going to say next?’
She kissed his chin. ‘Try me.’
‘Make a note of not going riding with good-looking Americans in future.’
She laughed, a rich sound that lapped around them, and she put a finger to his lips, silencing him. ‘I’ll just choose the ugly ones from now on.’
But the thought of how close she’d come to death while in the company of Major Dirke in the wetlands swept over him. He felt a spike of anger spring at him. He released his hold on Eloïse and walked over to the telephone on his desk. He held out the receiver to her.
‘Call Clarisse Favre.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I stated.
‘Yes, I do, chérie. I promised that gorgeous policeman.’ Clarisse swept an elegant hand, weighted by its heavy square emerald that rippled with the light from the window, in a careless arc. But there was nothing careless about her eyes. They were stern. ‘I don’t break my promises, Eloïse. I came down from Paris because I was worried about you.’ She switched on her radiant smile. ‘It seems I was right to be.’
We were seated in Serriac’s smartest hotel, Le Karur. It was constructed by an adventurer who made his fortune from mining gemstones in India and possessed a tall crenellated viewing tower. That’s where we sat. Sipping our coffee, surrounded by ruby-red cushions and looking down like eagles on the town spread out below us. Only Father Jerome’s church tower rivalled ours.
I was overwhelmed by Clarisse’s kindness. I had not always been the easiest of employees to handle, I admit, especially since the crash that ripped my life to shreds last winter. She had been generous to me then. Keeping me on full pay while I hid, wounded, in my lair and waited for my bones to knit. I’d once asked when we were drunk together in Les Deux Magots whether she was married and she’d snarled a ‘Non’ at me, as if I’d asked was she a child-killer. And now this. This kindness.
‘You have a business to run in Paris,’ I pointed out.
‘Rubbish! I’m on holiday. Monique is handling it.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Monique couldn’t handle her way out of a paper bag.’
‘You are wicked, chérie.’
‘I don’t need baby-sitting.’
‘Monsieur le Capitaine thinks you do.’ She took her time lighting a cigarette and I could see her mind ticking over as she squinted at me through the fog of smoke. ‘Captain Léon Roussel believes you are in danger. So do you, or you wouldn’t be sitting here now. These thugs, Bertin and Piquet, need to be tracked down and thrown into prison. While the police try to find them, you must go into hiding. So I have decided we will go back to Paris.’
‘No.’
‘For God’s sake, Eloïse.’ She threw her hand in the air leaving a trail of smoke. ‘Have some sense. I don’t want you in danger. What are we going to do?’
André’s words whipped through my mind. One of us is going to have to kill Maurice Piquet. André was not exactly in a position to do so.
‘I am not returning to Paris until this is over,’
I said. Calm and quiet.
Her green eyes narrowed further, her lipstick staining her cigarette. ‘You stubborn little bastard,’ she muttered. ‘So get back to your horse-shit farm if you must and stay there. From all you’ve told me, it sounds as if you will be safest there. Stick tight to your brother and his hunting rifle. When you want to go anywhere, telephone me and I’ll come for you. Got that?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Now I will escort you back to your piggery.’
‘We don’t have pigs.’
‘Pigs, bulls, chickens. What’s the difference? All the same.’ She shuddered melodramatically. ‘None of them smell of Chanel.’
‘Do you know what I love about you, boss?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Your perceptive mind.’ I grinned.
But she didn’t even crack a smile. ‘Don’t ever doubt it, Eloïse.’
*
I dismantled, cleaned and reassembled my gun. Even though it hadn’t been fired. It made me feel better. I told André about the fire on the marshes, about the radio, about Léon’s theory that it was a Communist cell.
I didn’t mention Piquet. I’m not sure why. I didn’t want him to jump at every shadow in the yard or at every creak of a stair the way I did.
I worked on the farm the next day. I rose at five o’clock in the morning, took a silent breakfast with my father, then did the job of a gardian. I worked all day till the sun was exhausted and spilled out of the sky and my limbs ached from the unaccustomed hours in the saddle. If anyone was watching – with or without a camera – they would see nothing but me with the bulls, me with my father, me with the gardians. Never me on my own. All day I stuck to my companions, as Clarisse would say, like horse-shit.
*
That evening when I rode into the yard, stinking of sweat and bulls, I was surprised and pleased to find André sitting outside. A stiff breeze was blowing that had shifted the mosquitoes and scoured the sky to a blue that was so vivid it hurt the eyes.
André was tucked out of the wind in a nook between barn and house. Seated in an ancient chair of woven reeds, a book on his lap, with one of the feral cats regarding the world with suspicion from under his seat. I dismounted, trying not to look too stiff and sore, and nuzzled my face against Achille’s velvety muzzle, his long tongue licking the salt off my cheek. Around me Papa and three other gardians were swinging easily out of the saddle and leading their horses over to the stone trough for water.
As I flipped the reins over Achille’s head I saw André watching me with an odd expression on his face. I waved. He waved back and called out, ‘You look happy.’
It startled me. Happiness was not something I associated with Mas Caussade these days. Yet when I let his words settle in my mind, I knew that he was right. This ache and sweat. These men and horses. This smell of salt marshes in my nostrils and taste of the Camargue wind on my lips. This was a brief spike of happiness.
*
The telephone call came late that evening; I was reading. My father put down the piece of dogwood he’d been whittling into the shape of an owl and answered it in the hall, his voice a low rumble, brief and polite in tone. His footsteps returned across the tiles.
‘Who was it, Papa?’
The telephone rang infrequently, never in the evenings. I hoped it wasn’t Clarisse.
‘It was some slick Yank from Dumoulin Air Base. A Sergeant Wilkinson, who thinks you get a man to like you by calling him “sir” ten times in three sentences.’
‘What did he want?’
‘I told him it is too late for calls.’
‘It’s only nine o’clock, Papa.’
‘Americans think the world is ready to jump to do their bidding.’
‘Why did he ring?’
‘It seems they are running scared.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Papa had lowered himself into his chair and took his knife to the wooden owl’s eye, scratching out a groove. I watched him for a full minute. I’d spent my childhood winters fascinated by the flick and twist of the knife in his skilled hand and had tried myself but with no success.
At the end of the minute I prompted, ‘What makes you think they’re scared?’
‘The Yanks have invited a bunch of what he called “dignitaries” over there on Saturday. Some kind of goodwill occasion, he called it.’
That was it.
I waited for more. None came. I stood up, walked over to the cupboard, poured out two glasses of wine and placed one at Papa’s elbow. I took the other one back to my seat with me.
‘Have you been invited, Papa?’
‘I have.’
I sipped my wine and was tempted to take a bite out of the glass. Papa’s leathery face was totally focused on one of the owl’s feathers.
‘Which other dignitaries?’ He didn’t look up. ‘No idea.’
‘Will you go?’
A huff, like one of his horses, came out of his wide nostrils. ‘I will.’
I swilled wine around my mouth.
‘Am I invited?’
‘You are. Though I don’t know why.’
I exhaled very quietly so that he would not hear my relief. Thank you, Major Dirke.
*
How could I make such a mistake?
I was being so careful. I’d drawn in my claws. Talking to no one. Upsetting no one. Stirring up no trouble. I was determined that nothing should go wrong before the visit to the air base, no risk of any calamities that would cause it to be cancelled. I kept my head down. My mouth shut.
The next two days were spent in a blur of bridles and leather, herding black mean-eyed four-legged creatures of solid muscle and cleaning out hooves. Scrubbing my horse’s muddy coat. Falling into bed with aching bones, still wet from a shower. And eating, always eating alongside the men. When did I last eat like this? Not since a child. As if there were a gigantic hole inside me. Léon had laughed when I’d complained I would end up as fat as Madame Cazal who ran the bakery, and he wrapped his arms around me.
‘It’s all the physical activity.’ He’d smiled and kissed my mouth. ‘You taste and feel more like a Camargue girl again.’ He took a gentle bite of my good cheek as though eating an apple straight off the tree.
But I liked it. I liked feeling my arms stronger and my legs more muscular. It made me feel safer.
‘Don’t go to the air base on Saturday,’ he said.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and lifted his hand to kiss its palm. It was warm and robust under the touch of my lips and smelled of ink. I didn’t want to argue. We had little time.
Each day, late in the evening, Léon turned up at Mas Caussade under cover of darkness. A dark shadow in the night and each time my heart stopped. I had not expected this. This pain when we were apart. This sense of something tearing inside me when he left. He didn’t drive out to the farm, he walked the five miles, or rather, ran, so that there would be no sound of a car for someone to track. I waited for him in the barn with Cosette and each time the heat of him engulfed me.
‘Don’t go to the air base,’ he said again. But he knew me too well. ‘I’m trying to protect you.’
‘I know.’
‘So why do you make it so . . .’
‘Difficult?’
‘Yes. So damn difficult. We aren’t talking about breaking a limb or grazing a knee falling from a tree. We are talking about a knife in the back or a bullet in the throat. Take care. Oh, my love, take care.’
We did not know then. About the bullet that was about to strike. Just when I thought I was safe.
*
I had laid down rules for myself. To do as Léon asked, to take care. My mistake – my fatal mistake – lay in ignoring one of them. It was Friday morning and the clouds had drifted in, obscuring the sun. They were ragged and untidy, as if someone had tried to shred them the way Bertin and Piquet shredded my nerves. My rule was – never stand still outdoors. Don’t give them an easy target. A simple rule that can save yo
ur life the way not stepping off a cliff is a simple rule that can save your life. Easy to put into practice.
So why did I break it? Why did I pause outside the barn on my way to tend Cosette and bend to pet the feral cat? It was automatic, unthinking, a triggered response when the little striped animal curled itself around my ankles. As I straightened up, the crack of a rifle shot ripped through the silence. I felt the bullet lift my loose hair as it whistled past the side of my neck and heard it smack into the side of the barn. I stood a finger’s breadth away from death.
A second shot from somewhere in the distant fields followed in less than a heartbeat. The cat fell limp and lifeless at my feet. I leaped into the barn, mind spinning, my heart clattering in my chest, and snatched at a billhook lying against a pile of wood.
If you’ve never been shot at, you don’t know what it does to you. Believe me. It alters who you are. It cuts you loose from the things that bind you to being a civilised human being. If the person wielding the rifle had walked into the barn right then, I would have cleaved his skull in two with the billhook. I know that sounds inhuman. But it’s not. It is the essence of humanity. It is what makes the human race survive, that white fear, that naked panic, that burning desire to live.
I pressed myself tight to the inside of the barn wall. Peered around the edge of the door, scanning the horizon, searching the fields for the position of the rifle. For any sign of a figure. Approaching. Or fleeing.
A third shot crashed through the yard. But this time it came from the house. I jerked round to look. André was in his upstairs bedroom, window wide open, a rifle levelled at his shoulder and aimed at a spot where a clump of tamarisk trees had spread into each other like a dense fortress. He pulled the trigger again. The shot ripped into the small copse, sending up a grey wave of wood pigeons that wheeled around the sky, their wings heavy with alarm.
‘There,’ André shouted, ‘there, beyond the stream.’
I tightened my grip on the billhook and ran.
*
Blood glistened on the slender leaves of a mimosa. A lady-bird had dragged its feet through it, leaving threads of scarlet cotton, and the glasswort was trampled underfoot. But there was no sign of the gunman. The murdering bastard had fled.
The Guardian of Lies Page 20