Playing the Martyr

by Ian G Moore

  The Commissaire had listened to his explanations, and while doing so had alternated between anger and disbelief. He couldn’t argue with the logic nor, in the end, with the unspoken implication that Lombard had to go his own way to outwit Llhermanault. There was a sense of hurt, only some of it pride, that Lombard hadn’t felt he could keep Aubret involved. But then Aubret wasn’t aware of Lombard’s own reasons for confronting Galopin. With Aubret finally convinced, they had gone to Saint-Genèse to make the arrest and – to no-one’s great surprise – found that the bird had flown and hadn’t been seen since that afternoon.

  A shocked Professor Galopin had agreed to help set the trap, though defiantly arguing throughout that ‘you people are wrong.’ Loyalty, as nearly always happens, blurring the edges of reason and good judgement. Lombard could see the Professor now sitting at a table in the centre of the square, a hunting cap pulled down tightly on his head, and large dark glasses covering most of his face. He looked like a man trying to disguise himself, which was exactly how Lombard had wanted it. A frightened man whose logic and wit were frayed, and who now needed help from his good Samaritan.

  He watched the man nervously raise his pastis and sip it, and immediately he had his own thirst. ‘A small pastis,’ he said quietly to a passing, nonchalant waiter whose enormous beard was surely a hindrance to his job. He couldn’t just sit there sipping at water, he argued to himself, who knows how long the wait would be?

  They would all be feeling the same nervous excitement, even Aubret who was covering the rue du Commerce entrance, and was inside the Office de Tourisme. Working round clockwise, Texeira had the double task of watching the rue de la Monnaie and the rue du Change, which met just a few yards before the square and where a crowd had gathered in front a juggler on stilts. Lombard knew that Aubret would be fretting about that. Leveque was having a coffee inside a crêperie at the top of rue du Grand Marché and Chrétien, out of sight from Lombard, was leaning, probably conspicuously, against a wall along the rue Briçonnet. Pouget was in a car near the square and in charge of plan B.

  Lombard’s phone beeped: it was Leveque, messaging them all via a WhatsApp group. The target had entered Place Plumereau from the rue du Grand Marché. Lombard put his glass down, then picked it up quickly for one more sip, and then put it down again. He watched as Texeira turned his back casually as the target approached his corner, pretending to read a menu in a window. The crowd around Texeira had become boisterous as the juggler, now throwing burning batons in the air, were thrilled and nervy at the same time.

  Lombard could see their man now, almost casually striding through the square as though he wasn’t stopping there, but nervously looking around at the same time. Suddenly screams erupted from the juggler’s crowd as his hat burst into flames, some of his audience not realising that that was the show, and even a few seconds later still crying out as if the juggler wasn’t aware his head was on fire. The whole square became distracted by the unpleasant noise, a distracting edgy cacophony that bounced off the huddled ancient and timbered walls of the square.

  And when it was laughter that dominated the crowd just a few seconds later, it was already too late. Nicolas Marquand decided to make a run for it.

  Texeira ran after him immediately, but was the wrong side of the juggler’s crowd, and struggled to get through, giving Marquand a formidable distance advantage. Lombard joined Aubret a few seconds later.

  ‘You saw that?’ Aubret said angrily.

  ‘Yes. It was bad luck. Come on, let’s follow as best we can.’ And off they ran after the fleet-footed Texeira and Nicolas Marquand.

  ‘He’s on an earpiece,’ shouted an already breathless Aubret as they crossed the rue Nationale, referring to Texeira, ‘they’re heading along the rue Colbert.’ Lombard, saving his energy, pointed along the parallel rue de la Scellerie instead.

  ‘Cathedral,’ Aubret gasped a few minutes later. ‘He’s at the cathedral.’

  After another few minutes they emerged into the Place de la Cathédrale, and their hearts sank. It was heaving, with hundreds, possibly a thousand tourists gathered in front of the famous old spires, a quiet, almost penitent hush in deference to the celebration of the Eucharist, giving it an eerie atmosphere. They were gathered to worship, to pay tribute to their saviour, yet their throng was now the prefect hiding place for a killer.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted Aubret angrily and got quite of few glares and admonishments from the coach party pilgrims. ‘Texeira said he was headed for the door.’ Chrétien and Leveque arrived in a car and immediately they split up, while Aubret, with difficulty, made his way to the front.

  Lombard, suddenly alone, found a spare seat on a bench and sat down, initially to get his breath back but then also to gather his thoughts. Why the cathedral? There was no way out so it didn’t make sense. He sat for a few moments, trying to detach himself from the ardent, quiet intensity of the crowd. Two crowds in the space of a few minutes had possibly scuppered the whole thing. He was sitting between two American tourists, who talked across him as if he wasn’t there.

  ‘Well, I for one am just glad to be able to sit down, Barbara. My feet are killing me.’ She had her shoes off and was rubbing her bunyoned left foot.

  ‘Me too,’ her companion replied, fanning herself with a Cathedral leaflet. ‘I think I’ll stay here a while. That museum doesn’t interest me anyway. Who the Heck is Marie de l’Incarnation anyway?’

  Lombard stood up slowly, texted Pouget, and calmly turned right down rue Jules Simon.

  Chapter 36

  After a few minutes he had reached the small museum tucked down a quiet side street. He opened the big wooden door as quietly as he could, but the noise echoed around the high-ceilinged, brick-walled museum anyway, announcing his entrance like a sonorous fanfare. Nicolas Marquand didn’t look round, though. He was sitting bolt upright on a wooden bench, staring out of the window into a small inner garden. Lombard closed the door behind him, said ‘Bonjour’ in a whisper to the attendant at the desk, and noticing that there were, thankfully, only a handful of visitors in the place, he made his way over to the bench.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you Monsieur?’ He asked quietly.

  Marquand looked round, then up at the standing Lombard. There was no emotion, not visibly anyway, no surprise that Lombard had tracked him down, just a vacant stare and a gesture for Lombard to sit down.

  ‘The Musée Marie de l’Incarnation. It had to be really,’ the juge said, looking around the place as he did so. Marquand said nothing. ‘Marie Guyart, born in Tours in 1599. Missionary, educationalist.’ He paused. ‘Traveller, especially. Canada, wasn’t it?’

  He could sense Marquand tensing, and knew he had hit home. ‘We used to meet here all the time.’ Marquand’s voice was rueful, brimming with fond memories. There was even the faintest flicker of a smile on his hard, pale face. ‘When we first got together. Our lycée was just around the corner.’ He put his hands in his pockets in a strangely childish gesture. ‘We weren’t religious. We just wanted to get away.’

  ‘You had dreams of…’

  ‘Not dreams, Lombard!’ Marquand’s sudden anger came with a viciousness in the voice, causing others to stare and, thankfully, think about moving to the door. ‘Plans! We had plans!’

  Lombard let him cool for a moment and looked about the room again. It was quite sparse for a museum, lined with a few glass cases of artefacts. Souvenirs of Marie Guyart’s life, hockey sticks from a girls’ school she had established in Canada and so on. Lombard hadn’t been here for years; no doubt Madame Guyart was a worthy subject but he’d always felt it a bit forced as a museum, a bit wanting.

  ‘What happened to your plans?’ he asked softly.

  Marquand started nodding his head, as if geeing himself up. He was clearly emotional, and had tears in his eyes, and Lombard, despite knowing that the man was a cynical, spiteful killer, felt a bit sorry for him. ‘Her parents were killed. And Marie, my beautiful, loving, spirited Marie… she never rec
overed. She got worse. They say time’s a great healer. It isn’t.’

  ‘But you have children?’ Lombard didn’t know if the question was relevant or not, he just wanted to keep the man talking.

  ‘That made things worse. She became a parent, it reminded her of her own parents.’

  ‘How did her parents die?’

  ‘A car crash,’ he said angrily. ‘Which you know.’ And Lombard could see the viciousness in those last few words. He wasn’t spent yet.

  ‘Yes.’ Lombard was looking out of the window too now, at a small, very calm-looking garden, which he hadn’t remembered from his previous visit. ‘And when did you realise it was Charles Galopin who had caused the crash?’

  ‘A few months ago.’ He sighed deeply, almost with relief. ‘We were discussing the Joan of Arc fête for the town. He was being his usual pompous self, dictating this and that. Then someone, I don’t remember who, mentioned the place their grandmother had said where Joan had stopped for a drink. La Bondice.’ He stopped.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Something changed in Galopin, just like that. He went white as a ghost. We were in a corner on our own, and he was just gibbering. “I’m sorry,” he kept saying, “so sorry.” It was like he was dreaming. He talked about a crash, two deaths.’

  ‘And Marie’s parents died in a crash at La Bondice.’

  ‘They didn’t just die, juge,’ he added the job title needlessly and venomously, ‘they were murdered. Murdered. And he murdered them. He murdered Marie. He murdered our life together. Murdered any plans we, I, had.’

  ‘You needn’t have stayed.’

  ‘And where would we have gone? I couldn’t leave her. No. We had to stay, we were trapped here. Marie wanted to stay. He made her stay. And I had no choice.’

  ‘So you decided to get closer to him?’

  ‘I found out he was dying so I had to move quickly and I wanted this backdated.’ The businessman in Marquand came to the fore. ‘I wanted the man to be so hated that all of his achievements, his fame, such as it is, his professional standing, everything, everything he’d spent his life working for would be wiped out. Struck from the records. Galopin would only exist as a murderer. Nothing else. Not some respected academic.’

  ‘You may have got that just by revealing the truth of the car crash.’ Lombard was searching his legal brain trying to think of a precedent, which he couldn’t.

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘There would have been another way. There always is.’ It was inadequate and he knew it; just as long as Marquand was calm though, it didn’t matter.

  Marquand looked down at his hands. ‘I’m sorry for Émile. That was a mistake. I thought it was the American and I didn’t think.’

  ‘You made a widow of your sister.’

  ‘I know.’ He brushed it off lightly. ‘She could have done better anyway.’ Ah, thought Lombard, so compassion doesn’t extend beyond Marie.

  ‘So Lagasse was opportunistic. Singleterry an opportunity.’ He said it almost like a compliment, drawing on the ego of the man.

  ‘I liked Graham. We were actually very similar. Both disappointed in our own way. Both without hope, just a dull future, in a dull town. Of course, he loved Saint-Genèse, but then he chose to be there. But if you put a pot plant in a prison cell, it’s still a prison cell.’ He folded his arms. ‘He was unlucky too. I had planned to kill Allardyce, a nasty, nasty man that. But he died.’

  Not for the first time Lombard felt aggrieved on Graham Singleterry’s behalf. A small man, in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the perfect victim. The perfect vessel for Marquand’s framing of Galopin, despite being a friend.

  ‘That was the message, wasn’t it?’ He said, nodding. Marquand looked at him, confused. ‘Singleterry’s death. I couldn’t get away from the fact that I was supposed to see something when I was standing on that hill. You meant Singleterry to be a sign of division, of rancour and historical grudges. Joan of Arc, history professor. But it was the town too, you couldn’t help yourself, you couldn’t avoid making that the object of your contempt.’

  ‘Did I?’ Marquand looked down at his lap. ‘Probably. I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes.’

  ‘Not obvious ones, no. You were just too,’ he paused looking for the right word, ‘businesslike. You had an idea and you threw everything at it. Burnt three times became burnt half a dozen times. The Joan of Arc shrine at Galopin’s flat. You should have included one of his own books.’

  Again, there was silence. If Marquand was regretting his errors, he didn’t show it.

  ‘And Jane Allardyce? You couldn’t go through with it because you didn’t know if Galopin was in custody or not. You’d put him in the cabin, you even stole his brother’s car and hid it nearby. I’m assuming you were going to kill Jane there, at the cabin – with the necklace maybe, though you dropped that. But he wasn’t there anymore, was he? If he was in custody, Jane’s death would prove his innocence and you panicked. You lost your bottle. She survived only because you had to save yourself.’ He felt a sense of relief again. ‘I dread to think what you had in mind for her. Something theatrical and showy like poor Singleterry.’ Lombard was feeling the anger rise, he’d had enough of this frustrated little man, exacting revenge on the world because he didn’t get his way.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe, nobody’s interested in mundane deaths though are they? Who investigated Marie’s parents? No-one. Bang. Dead. Accident. Singleterry had to attract attention, stand alone, pique the interest. It worked on you. Anyway, she saw me at Blanchard’s apartment.’

  ‘She didn’t. She had no idea. Like you and Marie sitting here all those years ago, she was wrapped up in a moment and had no thought for anything else. Lost in something and ignoring everything else, fearful, hopeful… to the point of blindness. If you’d killed her,’ he leant in closer, ‘I’d have killed you myself.’

  Marquand turned slightly towards him and it was clear from the direction of the hand, which was now in his jacket pocket, that he was pointing a gun at Lombard.

  ‘And how would you have done that juge?’ he said, the threat a clear one.

  ‘With a little help from his friends monsieur.’ Aubret whispered equally menacingly, and placed his own gun at the back of Marquand’s neck. ‘Take your hands out of your pockets. Put them on your head.’

  Marquand sat still for a second but noticed something reflected in the window in front of him. Lombard turned around and saw Commandant Pouget standing at the door, at her side a ghost. A pale, gaunt, once obviously beautiful woman with a haunted, vacant expression on her face. Marie Marquand.

  Nicolas Marquand took his hands out of his pockets and did as he was told.

  It was over.

  Chapter 37

  The cat curled through his legs in an endless figure-of-eight movement and miaowed needily. It was early morning and it seemed to be chastising Lombard who hadn’t been home all night.

  ‘I’ll feed you in a minute.’ He was distracted, and rubbed his unshaven face while looking in the gaudy, crested mirror. I should feed myself too while I’m at it, he thought, though he had a big lunch planned with Maichin. He looked rough though, like a tramp. How quickly you can look the part. He shook his head. He’d only spent one night sleeping outside and already he had the wrinkled fatigue of the permanently homeless, but it had been a long day and the stars seemed to offer the most comfort. Let the others pick over the bones for once, he’d thought, he had felt the need to hide. In the end Marquand had got some of what he wanted. Galopin’s role in the death of Marie’s parents would lead to humiliation, if not conviction. A selfish, spur of the moment, youthful indiscretion that had now ruined how many lives? Seven, eight?

  The upside was that Llhermanault was placated, possibly only temporarily, but he was happily taking the plaudits for saving Jane Allardyce’s life while using the previously renowned Professor Galopin, and by extension the media, as bait. ‘Genius’, La Nouvelle République had described it, picturin
g the Procureur and a grateful Blanchard senior either side of a recovering, slightly embarrassed-looking Mark. It was the reason Lombard would be paying for the lunch with Maichin. Aubret was happy but still didn’t trust him. He’d heard Lombard threaten to kill Marquand and so his new-found reputation as a shifty maverick was established, for better or for worse.

  It hadn’t been his plan to sleep rough, but late on he’d ended up in the Parc Mirabeau, having jumped the locked gates. He had sat at the foot of Allaphillipe’s statue and waited patiently at first for Madeleine to come to him, but nothing had happened and he’d got angry. Then tearful, then sorry. And then he’d slept. It was in his waking moments that she was there, he was sure. It was as though she was watching over him, looking after him, nursing him in the way he had with her, but unconditionally. With a warmth and compassion that he felt had been beyond him when he needed it, they needed it, most.

  She wasn’t angry with him, she never was, and at times it felt like she was wiping his brow, breathing gently in his ear as she always had done, sleepily and with unwavering, unquestioning love. They had made their peace, albeit too late, but it meant that he missed her all the more. And so the hurt was sharpened, more stinging than it had been recently and he realised that he was grieving again. Possibly this time for real.

  Maybe now it was time to get away for good, and he thought again of his mythical bar, the sea gently rolling in the distance. The cat miaowed impatiently now, and his phone rang as if in support. He ignored it, feeling the cat deserved priority, but then a text followed, and he picked up his phone. The text was from Sergent Brosse. ‘We have your mother here again’ it said. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while yet then.

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  This book has gone through many guises since I first came up with the character of Lombard; more re-writes than an international treaty and more name changes than a witness protection programme. Having written two best-selling non-fiction books (under the name Ian Moore), I realised very early on that ironically, you must be more precise with fiction. As a result, I’ve had a lot of help and encouragement along the way. Abbie Headon was a wonderful editor, patient and enthusiastic, and Dr Christelle Couchoux was a life-saver for the French corrections. Caimh McDonnel, a terrific author and comedian himself, was always on hand for advice and a few ‘are you absolutely sure about thats’. Markus Birdman, another great comic, created the cover artwork and my old mate John Morgan, of Seascape Design, knocked it into shape. Mark Billingham has also been unfailingly helpful along the road.