Now that, Joseph – he chided himself – could so easily have ended in farce.
He looked around. Weirdly, there was nobody in sight; or maybe it was normal – what did Joe know about this particular street at this particular time of the morning? Key safely in his fist, he released a breath just as a bus passed the end of the road, on its way to collect Tessa Greenlaw and transport her out of the area. There was no more room for hesitation. He had the key in hand, the door in his sights. What he was about to do was illegal, but would only look unusual if he farted about while doing it. Farting about was not something Marlowe would do. Again, QED.
Nobody shouted as he walked directly to Tessa’s door; no sirens blared as he slid the key into its lock. It turned. The door opened.
He was in.
This was only the second time he’d let himself into another person’s house without their knowledge – not without help, either time. But this was different. He was here to do damage: well-deserved damage, he reminded himself, as his conscience threatened to kick in – this wasn’t random vandalism; it was a message. That’s what it was. A message.
Nothing immediately suggested itself as Joe scouted round the ground floor, but once he’d climbed the stairs and discovered what was evidently an office, his next move became clear.
He set to with a will.
“So why did you break into Tessa’s place?”
“I wanted to see if the key worked,” Joe explained. He took it from his pocket: a recent copy, shiny and unscratched. “They exchanged keys. He told me that. But when they broke up, he made an extra copy of hers before giving it back. That’s why he was so sure she wouldn’t have changed the locks. She didn’t know he had it.”
“It was Tom stalking Tessa, wasn’t it?” Zoë said flatly. “Not the other way round.”
“It’s a creepy thing to do, isn’t it? Keep a copy of your ex-girlfriend’s key. Except he had me doing the actual stalking,” Joe said. “There’s the crux, you might call it. The nub.” He recalled his self-clarification, following Tessa: that this wasn’t stalking but surveillance. “Prior to persuading me to – I think the word would be – trash her place. Yes, trash.” He recalled for her Tom’s words in the bar: “Why do things yourself when you can pay someone else to do them? He was talking about fetching drinks. But . . . ”
“You discerned a principle,” said Zoë.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I didn’t much like him.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But what?”
“You don’t much like anyone, Zoë,” Joe explained. “It’s not like you were making an exception.”
They were in the office, which was the most neutral ground of their marriage.
“Point,” Zoë said. “But I thought you were his friend.”
“I was, but was he mine? What sort of friend sends you off on a job like that?”
“The kind who’s taking revenge.”
“On poor Tessa, yes. She dumped him, I’m assuming.”
“Guess so,” Zoë said. “And he called her, didn’t he? Asked her to meet him after work, once he’d arranged for you to be following her. Then blew her off when he eventually came out. So what you saw was her quite reasonably losing her rag, and you never did hear what he was saying.”
“I think so, yes. There are ways someone clever could find out, probably, with phone records and technological trickery, but for myself, yes, I’m sure he faked it.”
“Can’t think why she went.”
“Sometimes women are gentle like that,” Joe suggested. “She would have been feeling guilty, perhaps, about dumping him. He maybe made an overture of friendship, or offered to apologise for something.”
“And you’re not worried she trashed his place first?”
Joe smiled kindly. “Don’t you get it? He made that up so I’d be on his side. It didn’t happen, Zoë. Not before today. And even if she had – well. I don’t like stalkers.”
“Me neither,” Zoë said. And meant it. Tom had made a pass at her shortly after that meeting in the market, and evidently didn’t take rejection well, hence the spate of late night calls she and Joe had suffered a while back. But Joe had been right about one thing; there were ways, with technological trickery, that someone clever could find out who’d been making phonecalls, no matter that they thought they’d shielded their number. Trashing Tom Parker’s place had been her reasonable response. It hadn’t occurred to her he’d think Tessa had done it, but the more she listened to Joe, the more she was sure he’d thought no such thing. He’d known it was Zoë. Using Joe – steering him to where he’d do to Tessa what Zoë had done to Tom – was the typical stalker’s revenge: manipulative, distant, pleased with itself. His hard luck Joe had seen through him. Not that she was about to share any of this. “How’d you get into his place anyway?”
His second break-in. Harder when you don’t have a key.
“Bob Poland helped,” he said. For a fee. “Policemen know the strangest things. Like getting through locks.”
Zoë nodded. Getting through locks was a skill she’d been tutored in by a local tearaway. “And what did you do?” she asked, curious. “Once you were in?”
There’d been a moment when he’d almost turned and left, overcome by the enormity of it: of breaking in, of wreaking havoc. But then he’d seen Tom’s office. I like things ordered, Joe, he’d said. And there, to prove it, stood his filing cabinets, with its reams of carefully alphabetized records that Joe had carefully, randomly, reordered. Tom would be hours straightening that lot out. Hours. Maybe days.
“It’s better you don’t know,” he told her.
He was sure that’s what Marlowe would have said.
SWORD LILIES
Sally Spedding
SINCE CHRISTMAS, THE Rue des Platanes in Villerchamp has become known as the Rue des Morts.
Old Monsieur Renaud in number ten succumbed to liver failure on Millennium Eve, while further up, next to the public telephone, Madame Pla had fallen senseless from her bed. On February 14, young Thierry Santos had mounted his moped only to be struck by a VW camper van belonging to a German couple from Kohl. They’d been too hysterical to park it safely afterwards, so the street was blocked off for at least half an hour.
Now, as always, Madame Laval was busy by her front window, wiping over the inner shutters with a new chamois leather, and re arranging the plastic gladioli in their faux Sèvres vase. It was already mid-April, and soon more tourists from the north would be passing through the village to the famous gorge and its chapel cut deep into the rock. No, she’d never written in its Book of Supplication to the Blessed Virgin, preferring to keep her wishes private. Besides, one way and another, most of them had been granted without Divine intervention.
It was more important that this retired school teacher kept a continual and visible presence in the street, something for which the Dreille family opposite were always grateful, seeing as their absences were growing more frequent. They had a sole remaining relative in Brittany, and were no doubt hoping their solicitous attentions would soon be paying off.
She’d be the first to know of any decease by the inevitable brand new car parked outside, complete with tinted glass and fancy wheels. Even an A Vendre sign, she guessed, presaging a move to the better side of the town. That’s when her smile would become a little less warm, her gift of confiture aux framboises proffered in a smaller pot than usual . . .
She looked out again, the morning sun glancing in on her grey head. The church bells clanged eleven and here on the dot was old Monsieur José from number four with his terrier. Why in God’s name did a man in such poor health keep such a handful as that? She asked herself as the dog roamed from left to right, oblivious to its owner’s feeble whistling. Then horror of horrors, it squatted outside her door. She watched as a brown coil extruded from under its tail, sending up a fuzz of steam.
Dilemma. Monsieur José’s son Yves was the electrician. She needed him to upg
rade the wiring in her house and put in an extra point for her special new equipment arriving next week. She sighed. All she could do was stare at the aberration and remove it as soon as Monsieur José had struggled by.
She put on her coat, for although the sun was warm in a clear sky, a northerly breeze still persisted. Two pieces of kitchen roll and a plastic bag lay ready in her basket, and mercifully, the turd proved a clean lift. Then, with the bundle still exuding its own rich smell, she set off up the street and rounded the bend by the poubelles.
To the right lay steps up to another row of houses which could only be reached by foot. A mere three were occupied, the rest had been for sale for months, their handwritten notices bleached by the sun. An unpruned rose together with an array of terracotta pots stood outside number four. She squeezed the smelly package to fit the letterbox and pushed it in, then with the agility of someone ten years younger descended the steps and walked home as if nothing was amiss. She made herself a tisane of honey and elderberry, before sitting down once more by the window with the accoutrements of her trade.
She had a fine-nibbed pen, royal blue ink and an empty mustard pot for water, in which rested a pastry brush. However, her paper was the common variety found in any tabac or kiosk, each page a pattern of fine turquoise squares.
“For the peasants,” she told herself, but anything more personal or special was out of the question.
As always, before the first word, she drained the surplus ink into a piece of white blotting paper and watched as its stain spread and darkened.
In the boulangerie next morning, she learned that the elderly and fragile Mademoiselle Bertrand in number fifty-two had died after lunch the day before. A fact she later recorded on her Fleurs de Campagne calendar, and not without a quiet satisfaction. For Renée Bertrand was, like many in that rundown part of the town, ready enough to take her charity, whether it was a clutch of violets or a carton of ready-mashed potato, but unwilling to give anything in return. And since her son’s win on the Lotto – whereby 50,000 francs had trickled her way – she’d withdrawn even more behind her fly-speckled curtains.
Madame Laval never had need of a thesaurus or dictionary, for her words flowed like the irrigating water in the local jardins. She knew exactly how to infer, emphasize or simply leave to the imagination whenever that was more effective. It was her craft, after all, just like tapestry work or crochet, perfected over the years . . .
Her pen paused between sentences as she watched Simone Dunoine wrestle with her three children on the way home to dinner from the nursery school. Probably nothing worth eating on their table, she mused, but what else could you expect from an unmarried mother who worked part-time at the Esso pumps? They’d be better off coming to her for tuition, except she couldn’t abide anyone bringing in the street on their shoes, or the clamour of youthful ignorance.
Sweat built up under her latex gloves as she folded the paper in two, eased it into the envelope and brushed water under the flap.
“Voilà.” The same with the stamp. The pile of letters was growing. It was all very satisfying, and never failed to give her an appetite. One o’clock.
The street was quiet. Everyone’s tucking in, she smiled to herself, and as it’s Thursday it’ll be ham and leeks with fruit tart to follow. She could smell the pig meat wafting from nearby chimneys as she went to buy her croissant. How these people could afford a joint of meat and a pâtisserie day in day out, was nobody’s business. Even those on Social Security.
She opened her larder door on a crust of cheese and two pickled dills in a cloudy liquid at the bottom of the jar. There was a knob of baguette and a scraping of margarine from the economy-sized tub. Small wonder Renée Bertrand hadn’t lasted. She reminded herself to write in the Book of Condolence which the woman’s son had left outside their front door. Of course, her sympathies would be in an entirely different hand with a different pen.
After lunch, she washed up, leaving the solitary plate to dry in the rack, then, with her mail in her handbag went down the tiled steps to the garage. Most people in the street had converted what had once been stabling into utility rooms with boilers, freezers and unwanted gifts, keeping their cars outside but to her this space was a necessary cool and sombre womb for her most inventive notions.
Her white Renault Clio was a common enough car and it was the reason she’d bought it. In fact, she’d once sat by the window all day checking the tally of all the various makes, and this far outstripped the rest. Thus would she merge more anonymously with the region’s traffic as she travelled from letterbox to letterbox.
Today it was the Ariège. A department dotted with sizeable towns sufficiently far away, yet plausible, for most of Villerchamp’s residents had relatives within 200 kilometres. The bird must stay close to the worm, she told herself, unlocking the car door. And what worms they were . . .
She could hear next door’s telephone as she checked her black leather gloves were handy. More news, no doubt, for Monsieur and Madame Vouziez, who spent their days in their garden at the top of the street. It was probably their former lodger, a student at Montpellier university, who phoned once a week on Thursdays.
Her car nudged its way into the daylight and she left the engine running while she closed the garage door. There was no one around, just the buzz of afternoon television through the shutters. Everyone was digesting the news and weather. She was soon out of Viller-champ and picking up speed between the pruned plane trees that lined the route. She tuned in to France Musique and a heated debate on Berlioz, then hummed along to excerpts of “L’Enfance du Christ” as the road climbed up away from Quillan and into the high pastures.
The bells were chiming five o’clock as she returned to the Rue des Morts, and immediately she recognized Madame Vouziez with her wheelbarrow, and her other next door neighbour, Madame Baro standing by the new phone booth shaking their heads.
They beckoned her to join them and dispensed the news that old Monsieur José had been rushed to hospital with a defibrillator attached to his heart.
“Mon Dieu. It never ends.” Sybille Vouziez sighed. “Soon there’ll be none of us left.”
“But he’s had a bad heart for years.” Madame Laval feigned concern, yet her eyes were unchanged. “His sister told me he had a funny turn last Toussaint. I could hardly believe he’d once played rugby for Béziers. It’s a good job we don’t know what’s round the corner, that’s for sure . . .”
The other two nodded, staring in at passing cars. “I expect Yves has already had a valuation on it,” she added, looking up the street.
“But his Papa’s not dead yet.” Madame Baro gave her a sharp look. “He may come back fit as a flea.”
“Well let’s hope so, but I say it’s too much for someone like him having a house here, a Maison Bourgeoise in Perpignan, and a farm near Toulouse, as well as that dog . . .”
“Maybe that’s what’s kept him going. But I’ve never understood why he chose to stay in this old street,” Madame Vouziez removed her hat and shook it. “Unless it’s to be near his son, and of course he’s always got us, his friends . . .”
“Exactly. We’ve never let him down, have we?”
“No. That’s why I’ve already offered to look after little ‘Chipie’ for him while he’s away.”
Madame Vouziez forgot to return her hat to her head as an all-too-familiar figure had emerged from number twenty-three. The now childless widow Pauline Santos.
It was impossible for Madame Laval to make her excuses and leave. That would have been too obvious. Instead, she fixed her mouth in a rictus of pity while holding out both hands.
“Paulette, chérie, how are you?” she said. “We’ve all been so worried. We’ve not seen anything of you for weeks.”
The woman looked ill, her skin as grey as the tombs in the cemetery, and she kept her eyes downcast, refusing Madame Laval’s kindly gesture. The former schoolteacher noticed a télécarte in her hand for as well she knew, the Santos had never had their own ph
one.
“Not good. It gets worse,” sighed the widow. “Each day I think, dear Thierry wouldn’t want to see me like this, that his Mama should be strong, but no. I must be a terrible disappointment to him and it cannot be otherwise . . .”
Madame Vouviez reached into her wheelbarrow and pulled out a big celeriac with leaves still bearing a few beige slugs.
“Have this, Paulette. Better than pills any day.”
However the woman barely noticed. Her tired eyes began to water.
“I’m just on my way to telephone the police.” That last word made Madame Laval flinch. “I’ve been meaning to since it happened, you know,” she gulped. “The accident . . .”
“Police?” Madame Baro looked shocked. “Why?”
“I’ll show you.” Pauline Santos dug in her pocket and pulled out a long white envelope which had obviously been studied many times. She then extracted the note and held her breath.
“Go on. What is it?” Madame Laval tried to get a closer look. Tried to keep her voice steady.
“It arrived the day he . . .” the younger woman broke off, unable to continue.
“We’re your friends,” encouraged Madame Laval in her carefully rehearsed caring tone. “You can trust us.”
“Well, after reading it, he went round like a mad thing, yelling, slamming doors, not like him at all.” She sniffed. “He should never have taken his moped out in that state, but there it is. He did.”
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