She took a deep breath, and rushed out.
She was instantly drenched, rain pouring down her face, seeping up through her shoes, trickling into her ears and down the back of her collar. When she reached the metal sliding door, she tugged on it, and it gave a rusty groan. Her hand fumbled in her pocket for the keys, and found them. She sat behind the wheel and turned on the headlights, which transformed the rain into myriad sparks. She started the ignition and drove a few metres. The downpour hammered on the roof of the car. She got out, leaving the motor running, was heading towards the front door when the engine shuddered and died behind her. She was seized with panic. She rushed back and sat at the wheel, turned the key. Nothing! She tried again. Still no luck. Damn, damn, damn! No matter how she tried, the engine would not start. They were stuck there. Thomas! That psychopath might still be in the house. She slammed the car door hard and ran back into the house, leaving a wet trail in her wake. Her son had dropped off again with his thumb in his mouth. The vibrant glow from the television was reflected on his closed lids.
The phone.
She had to get help this time. Up until now, she had always tried to keep the police away from the house, and the woods behind it in particular. Now she hurried over and picked up the receiver. No dialling tone! He’d cut the line … Her mobile! Ordinarily she left it on the countertop in the kitchen. Or on the dining table. But it wasn’t there.
By the time she had searched all the rooms she’d been into during the day, she was convinced that he had taken it.
He was here. He had always been here.
She shivered. Not a simple shiver. But a long shudder through her entire body, like a flow of ice through her bones, her neck, her heart. The self-defence gun: where had she left it? She found it on the bed in her room, and grabbed it. Desperate, she entertained the prospect of opening the trapdoor to the loft, pulling down the ladder and climbing up. But what if he was up there? It would be too easy for him to overcome her as she emerged through the trapdoor, and she was terrified at the very idea of leaving him alone with Thomas. She went back down to the ground floor.
Fear was snapping at her heels. And yet she had been to outer space, she had survived every ordeal, she had always been strong.
Pull yourself together! Fight back!
But she was so tired. As she had been for so long. She hadn’t eaten anything in such a long time. She woke up at night to throw up. She hardly slept, and when she did it was so badly. Thomas! Do it for him! Her maternal instinct gained the upper hand. No way would he touch a hair on her son’s head. She would protect him the way a lioness protects her cubs.
Downstairs on the ground floor everything was silent except for the rain engulfing the house. A terrible silence. Thomas was asleep on the sofa. She went to fetch his winter parka, his scarf and an umbrella.
She figured that the nearest farm, the Grouards, was a kilometre away. Ten minutes’ walk when she was on her own. It would take twenty with Thomas half asleep. In the night. In the rain.
She woke him gently.
‘Come on, sweetie.’
For a moment, he seemed disoriented. Again he rubbed his sleep-heavy eyelids.
‘The flood?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Let’s go.’
She tried to make her voice sound reassuring. Docile, he let her put on his parka and scarf. She decided against the umbrella. She would carry him on her back. She pulled the hood up over his head. Opened the front door wide.
‘Climb on my back.’
He obeyed. When he was snuggled tight against her, his arms around her neck, she straightened up and went down the front steps, across the empty, gloomy space around the house, and headed for the dark road.
‘Mummy, why aren’t we taking the car?’
‘It won’t start, sweetie.’
‘Where are we going, Mummy?’
‘To the Grouard farm.’
‘Mummy, let’s go back. I’m frightened, Mummy. Please.’
‘Hush. Don’t worry: in ten minutes, we’ll be nice and warm. And safe.’
‘Mummy…’
She could tell he was beginning to sob uncontrollably against her back. She could hear the rain pattering against his hood, against her ear; she felt it, cold and unfriendly, on her scalp.
‘I’m frightened.’
She looked down and saw the tunnel of trees straight ahead. Silence all around. The countryside was completely black. She marched down the centre of the straight road. Every step shook her body with the weight of her son trembling on her shoulders. She was trembling, too. With cold, with fear. Huge knotty branches were entwined above their heads. She could feel the tears on her cheeks, their salt on her lips. Above all, she did not want to start crying in front of him. He was quiet, but she was aware of how he was shaking, uncontrollably.
She realised her eyes were closing as she walked. She shook her head to rouse herself. Head down, she saw the toes of her trainers moving forward, step by step. Mechanically. Except that something had changed. The surface of the road: it was lit up. Every piece of gravel, every bump, every hole, every crack had its own hard dark shadow, and the tarmac was shining with a yellow glow like a sheet of metal under a lamp …
‘MUMMY!’
Thomas had almost screamed. She looked up. And blinked. She was dazzled by a pair of headlights. A car, facing them, less than three hundred metres away. Immobile. Its headlights lit up the tunnel of trees as if someone had switched on a projector inside a cathedral. She felt as if her brain was beginning to melt. Then the headlights were switched off. Darkest night. She couldn’t hear anything other than the wind. Her pounding heart, tunnelling through her chest. She tried to think. What could she do? Panic was taking over. Then the headlights came back on, blinding them, and she heard the sound of an engine starting up.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’
Thomas on her shoulders, wailing. She felt her mind give way, like a dyke yielding to pressure. She crouched down and set her son on the ground. She turned back to face the house. Took him by the hand.
‘Run!’ she cried. ‘RUN!’
She heard the car shift gear behind them.
42
Finale
‘Questo è il fin di chi fa mal’ (Don Giovanni)
Fontaine met Servaz in a bar on the place des Carmes the next morning, 24 February. He had requested the appointment. When he saw the cop coming, Fontaine moved his beer to one side and reached into his jacket pocket.
‘Hey,’ he said.
He pushed the prints across the damp table.
‘Is this what I asked you for?’ said Servaz.
‘The “little something”,’ Fontaine confirmed.
Servaz leaned closer. He recognised her right away: Mila. Going into the building where Cordélia lived in La Reynerie. And coming back out. Annoyed. Photographs taken with a telephoto lens.
‘How did you get this?’
Fontaine simply smiled.
‘Did you take them?’
Another smile. ‘Do you know where they are now?’ Fontaine asked.
Servaz was studying him.
‘Cordélia and Marcus? Vanished without a trace. If you ask me, they’ve already left the area.’
‘Perhaps they’re in Russia by now,’ suggested Fontaine.
He thought of the €20,000 he had given Marcus, and the phone call he’d made to Moscow, to his friends who had other friends. He never thought he would make such a call. He had deposited the money in an account in Luxembourg, and gave his contact the flight number and arrival time. Marcus’s body would never be found. And Cordélia must be on board another plane by now.
‘I’ll ask you again: did you take these pictures?’
‘Does it matter?’ said Fontaine. ‘It doesn’t, does it? What does matter is that you have what you wanted: evidence connecting Mila to this Marcus person and to Corinne Délia – both of whom have fled and whom the police strongly suspect of being involved in the disappearance, and possibly murder of Christine
Steinmeyer. That should be enough for you to get your warrant.’
‘We’ll have to have a chat, one of these days, Léo,’ said Servaz, getting to his feet, the photographs in his hand.
‘I thought we already had,’ he replied. ‘But it will be with pleasure, Commandant. We’ll talk about whatever you want. About space, for example. An interesting subject.’
Servaz smiled in turn; he really was beginning to like this guy, more and more. Who was the imbecile who said that first impressions were always right?
* * *
She opened the door and glanced outside. There was no one in sight. A dreary day was beginning on the grey plain. She went back inside, in her dressing gown, features drawn and her hair a mess. Mila remembered a time – not so long ago – when she used to call the shots. She felt as if a century had gone by since then. Everything had changed. How could she have lost her touch in so little time? When had the pendulum begun to swing the other way?
The night before, once they’d made it back to the house, they had locked themselves in and she had collected everything that might serve as a weapon: knives from the rack, a hammer, a poker from the fireplace, the self-defence gun, a large two-pronged carving fork … Thomas had been terrified at the sight of it all. He’d opened his big, frightened eyes wide and stared at her. She’d had to give him a mild tranquilliser, then hug him and reassure him until eventually he fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. She had fortified her courage with two gin and tonics and stayed up until dawn began to lighten the windows. By morning she felt too tired to concentrate, unable to put any sort of strategy together. These last few days and hours had severely tested her nerves. Thomas was still asleep. She drank a second coffee. When he woke up, they would hurry to the Grouard farm to ask for help. Then she heard the paper boy’s scooter, and she rushed outside.
‘Have you got a phone?’ she asked. ‘Mine’s not working, and the car isn’t either.’ She pointed to the open garage. ‘We’re stuck here!’
‘That sounds like really bad luck,’ said the young man, handing her his mobile.
‘Can you wait five minutes? I just want to call a breakdown vehicle…’
When she came back out, the young man asked her, ‘Are you the one who forgot to put the cap back on the fuel tank?’
‘No.’
‘Then someone probably put something nasty in your petrol. Either sugar or sand. You really have to be sick to think it’s funny doing stuff like that.’
* * *
The breakdown mechanic confirmed the diagnosis: the engine was dead. A wave of despair came over her as she watched him go away again. Thomas was still sleeping. Distraught, dishevelled, in her dressing gown, she wandered through the house, and the echo of her slippers shuffling along the floor was a pitiful accompaniment to her aimlessness. She was exhausted, at the end of her tether. Thomas would not go to school today: she would let him sleep. She wanted to call work to say she wouldn’t be in either, when she remembered she had no phone. Fuck! She swore, furious with herself. She should have ordered a taxi at the same time as the mechanic. She switched on the computer, but the verdict was instant: cannot connect. Obviously. The bloody connection was linked to the telephone line. She stared at the ceiling.
Someone wanted to mess with her life and, by the looks of it, they were succeeding.
She thought for a moment.
The postman! He would be here soon.
That morning, she waited hours for him to arrive, increasingly nervous as time went by, pulling her dressing gown closer because of the chill in her bones. What if there was no post? What if he didn’t come today? She no longer had the strength to go to the Grouard farm. What would they think if they saw her in this state? Maybe she’d go tomorrow. When she got her strength back. It was so much easier to let oneself go, to throw in the towel, to put it off till tomorrow …
‘Aren’t I going to school today, Mummy?’
‘No, darling. It’s a holiday today. Go up to your room and play.’
He didn’t have to be told twice. She stared out of the window at the road. At last she saw the yellow scooter. She rushed out of the front door and explained the situation once again; the first call she made was to Isabelle, her colleague at work.
‘Mila, what is going on?’ said Isabelle anxiously.
‘I’ll explain.’
‘Mila, this is the fourth time this month! And there have been those two incidents.’
She knew what Isabelle was referring to. There had been two major incidents when she’d shown up for a meeting with important foreign partners looking absolutely terrible, and had not prepared her presentation properly.
‘You’d better come in,’ insisted Isabelle. ‘They won’t let you off this time, believe me. Shit, you’re already in the management’s bad books…’
Mila muttered some excuse and hung up. She was too tired to argue. Then she called a taxi. The first thing to do would be to rent a car and get a new phone. Escape this isolation.
‘Here,’ said the postman, handing her some letters and taking back his mobile – with a disapproving look at her appearance.
She watched him walk away in the darkening light. A mass of clouds was arriving from the west; gloomy, spreading across the entire horizon. The sky was turning black, and there was thunder. Crows were whirling in flight, tense with the approaching storm. She noticed there was one envelope among the letters that had neither stamp nor return address. It was like the one she’d put in a mailbox on Christmas Eve. Mila opened it, her hand trembling. Photographs. She had a shock when she saw them: someone had photographed the turned earth at the foot of an old, twisted tree. Three prints, all identical: three pictures of the grave.
In a sudden panic, she hurried up the hill through the woods. The wind was rising, and the first drops of rain fell as she ran down into the hollow. The carpet of leaves hiding the pit was intact: nothing had been touched.
A car horn sounded, back at the house.
The taxi: she’d forgotten it!
She hurried down the hill again, while the rain fell harder. Another impatient beep of the horn. She ran around the house and emerged in the downpour, breathless. The driver stared at her clothes and her appearance, stunned: her streaming dressing gown, her Crocs covered in mud, her wet, tangled hair, her wild eyes. She saw him frown and look at his watch.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’d forgotten you! As you can see, I’m not ready. Go on home.’
‘Bloody hell, who’s going to pay for the trip then? You look like you’ve got some serious problems,’ he said, staring critically at her and pointing at his temple with his forefinger.
‘What did you say? Get the fuck out of here!’ she roared. ‘Right now!’
‘Fucking nutter,’ he grumbled, getting back in the taxi.
He made a sharp turn that sent a spray of mud and water in her direction.
‘Bitch!’ he cried out of the window, to be sure to have the last word, and it made her think of all those words still smeared on the bathroom walls.
* * *
She glanced at the rest of the letters. Bills, junk mail, special offers. Then her gaze lingered on an envelope from the Social Assistance to Children Division for the Haute-Garonne. She tore it open with foreboding, and took out a letter, typed and folded in two.
Madame,
You have been brought to our attention by Valérie Dévignes, the head of the school at Névac, and Pierre Chabrillac, a teacher there, on the suspicion of physical and psychological mistreatment of your three-year-old son, Thomas. Several times Thomas has come to school with bruises on his elbows, knees and face [pictures accompanied this description of events]. Mlle Dévignes and M. Chabrillac also told the authorities of Thomas’s frequent absences of late, and said that he seemed uninterested in what was going on in class, that his behaviour was erratic and that he often seemed sad. He has been interviewed by a psychologist, and admitted to being afraid of you.
Consequently, a multidisc
iplinary team has been appointed by the Social Assistance to Children Division in order to establish the facts of the matter. They will interview you in the near future. But given the gravity of the suspected situation, a request for placement has already been submitted to the prosecutor of the Republic, and the matter has been referred to the family judge. Should Thomas be entrusted to our services by the judge, you will be able to give your opinion regarding the choice and conditions of placement. Thomas himself will also be consulted. These opinions will be considered but may not be adhered to.
Yours faithfully …
For a moment, Mila stood there paralysed. Her eyes looked over the letter a second time, unbelieving, while the paper quivered in her hands. There were several photographs attached, where she could indeed see bruises on Thomas. She tried to laugh at it, but her laugh turned into a sob. Ridiculous! Thomas was an intrepid little boy, a daredevil, who was constantly falling down or banging into things. She had often sent him to school with bumps and bruises – but to imagine that someone might think …
At another time in her life she would have reacted instantly and called her lawyer – and that imbecile of a head teacher. She would have shown her claws and lashed out where it hurt, would have unleashed the full fury of her indignation; she would have made them cower. How dare they imagine she could ever lay a finger on her son! But now she was so weak, so emaciated. So distraught. Tomorrow. It could wait another day … or two. The time it took for her to regain her strength. She was so weary. She put the letters down on the kitchen table, poured another gin and tonic, went to fetch the box of tranquillisers from the medicine cabinet and took three in a row.
* * *
Servaz looked at the notes he had taken as he made one phone call after another.
Mila Hélène Bolsanski, born 21 April 1977 in Paris. Only daughter of Konstantin Arkadyevich Bolsanski and Marie-Hélène Jauffrey-Bertin (deceased 21 August 1982 in a car accident). Foster families and boarding school – where her marks improved rapidly under the influence of a form tutor: M. Willm. Went on to become the top student in the class. Medical doctor, specialised in aeronautical medicine, doctor of science, second Frenchwoman in space, in 2008 took part in a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station.
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