Significance

by Jo Mazelis

  As he had no key to Lucy’s flat and as he had now gained entry, he did not feel able to leave until he had done as much as he could to solve the riddle of her disappearance. He was searching for something, but he did not know what it was.

  Thirty minutes of blank time. His gaze regarding the steady glow of the red light as the sun shifted itself by degrees around the room until it reached the shadowy alcove where her telephone was and seemingly extinguished the tiny light.

  Perhaps he had blinked as the sunlight hit the phone. Perhaps he had forgotten why he was staring at it. Forgotten indeed where he was, who he was – who Lucy was. But suddenly he realised that the light had gone out, and thought that someone, Lucy or some other evil tormenting trickster, had crept into the flat without his knowledge and switched off the machine.

  He was familiar with the sort of narrative where the main protagonist is deliberately driven mad by tricks such as these.

  He stood up with a start and crossed quickly to the phone. He peered closely at it. There was no sign of an electronic light. Then he cupped his hand around the edge of the machine shielding it from the sun and saw with relief that the light still gave off its signalling red glow.

  He sighed and shook his head, annoyed at his momentary foolishness and gullibility. He needed to stay calm, to think straight, to above all remain rational.

  He wandered unthinkingly into Lucy’s kitchen and opened the fridge. Her fridge, but as familiar to him as his own. In the middle of a restless night, while Lucy still slept, he’d creep through to her kitchen in darkness, opening the fridge to find in its welcoming light, juice or beer or cold leftovers. Or on a Sunday morning he might, while Lucy went out to get the papers, rustle up some fried mushrooms or eggs. A cheese omelette with sautéed potatoes.

  In the fridge door was a two-litre container of semi-skimmed milk which was half full. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed. A sour cheesy smell invaded his nostrils. He poured it down the sink, ran the cold tap to wash the last of it away, then threw the empty container into the rubbish. On the shelf there was a small and unopened carton of long life milk. Typical of Lucy to prepare for her return (and the possible need for milk) but to fail to throw away what could only perish while she was away. In the salad drawer he was not surprised to find a liquefying cucumber, sad blackening lettuce and furry tomatoes. On the shelves, a cream cheese with an exotic landscape of grey and khaki-coloured mould, as well as out-of-date smoked salmon, cartons of ‘fresh’ soup, yoghurts and pepperoni sausage.

  Thom closed the fridge and opened the small freezer compartment. Lucy tended to use the freezer as a back up for her often disorganised and admittedly busy life, so there were quite a few ready meals always to hand. Chicken kormas from Marks and Sparks, pizzas, reduced-price Naan breads, anything that could be zapped in the microwave or under the grill at a minute’s notice.

  She rarely, unlike Thom, cooked things from scratch, but when she did, she made enough for a small army, and here at the front of the freezer was a clear plastic bag filled with a reddish brown substance that was bejewelled with burgundy-coloured kidney beans.

  He took it out, got a Pyrex dish from the cupboard next to the sink, put the bag inside it, then put it in the microwave and set it to defrost. He filled a saucepan with water and set it to boil on the stove, then washed some rice in a colander.

  While he waited for the water to boil, he went back to Lucy’s study and scanned the books on the shelves. She swore that, while she was disorganised, she knew roughly where everything was. She arranged things according to some mysterious system which was based on emotional connections rather than any other logical means he could see.

  ‘What you have to understand,’ she’d once said to him, laughing, ‘is that I am a lateral thinker, which is both a blessing and a curse, but I can’t change it, and you, my love, shouldn’t try.’

  His eye traversed the rows of books picking out the odd title at random: The Body, Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction, White Bicycles, Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, Women, Art and Society, The Bell Jar, The Ongoing Moment. No clues there.

  In the kitchen he tipped the rice into the boiling water. Without thinking he had washed enough for two portions, as if at any moment Lucy would come banging through the front door, calling out, ‘Oh, God! I’m knackered. How long’s food gonna be?’

  He emptied the partially defrosted chilli from the freezer bag into the bowl and broke up the solid mass with a wooden spoon, then returned it to the microwave and set it on medium.

  In twenty or so minutes he would eat, but first, in a flash of inspiration, he realised there was something he wanted to do. Needed to do. It was suddenly a desire as acute as his hunger. He got his mobile from his jacket pocket, found Lucy’s home number and pressed call. There was a moment of silence before his phone made the ringing tone twice and then Lucy’s phone itself took up the cry. It rang seven times, then the machine clicked into action and he heard her voice.

  When her message ended and once the bleeps had signalled him to speak, he said in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, ‘Lucy, where are you? Don’t do this to me, please.’

  He hung up, stirred the rice and the chilli, then stood by her kitchen window looking out vacantly.

  Her voice, or at least the familiar echo of it from her answer machine, still filled his ears.

  He was in her flat surrounded by her belongings. He had looked at her photograph, he had heard her voice, he could smell her, or if not her exactly, then the traces of her that lingered in the flat in the form of her particular perfumes, soaps, shampoos and bath oils. But she was not there and all of these signs and signifiers of her only exaggerated her absence.

  The microwave dinged. Mechanically he switched off the gas flame under the rice and tipped it into the strainer over the sink, got the slotted spoon and then two plates from the cupboard which he placed side by side on the counter. He scooped up a portion of rice and looked with surprise at the plates he’d set out. He shook his head at the folly of it, at the madness, and before he put any food on either plate, he quickly put the unwanted one back on its shelf.

  At the table he sat in the chair facing the window. It was the chair he habitually sat in. Lucy always sat to his right beside the window. If he had lain down on her bed, he would have chosen the side nearest the door. His side – where the top of the bedside cabinet was a void, except for when he was there and put his loose change and wristwatch on it.

  The first night they spent together, joking, she had said, as he stacked paper money and coins from his pocket on the cabinet by the bed, ‘It’s fifty quid for straight sex, more if you want fifty/fifty. Or anything… you know… kinky.’ She had shocked him, and for a nanosecond, he thought she meant it. Then she’d laughed. She undermined him, dizzied him – changing rapidly from seriousness to hilarity and play-acting, to real tears. She confused and unnerved him at first, then she’d begun to change, to mature, to be more controlled.

  Moving around her flat he found that there were particular, more highly charged absences within the greater space of her general absence; hotspots that, if measured by such a thing as an emotional Geiger counter, would have set it beeping wildly.

  The chilli was good. He had first eaten it with her, three or perhaps four weeks ago. Then there had been a pot of natural yoghurt that she had glooped over the dish. She had unselfconsciously complimented her own cooking, making ‘mm’ sounds and saying how she loved the cool sharpness of the yoghurt contrasted with the heat of the meat sauce.

  He had said nothing. Why had he not told her it was good? Because it had been good, but somehow, perhaps because he suspected her of bragging, he had only nodded in accord with her words.

  Maybe he had sensed that her enthusiasm was becoming overblown, that she was heading towards one of those slightly mad, frenzied moods when she tried to do a dozen things at once, talked incessantly; laughed, danced, drank and fucked like all four were due to be banned by gov
ernment order the next day.

  But then that was Lucy. Who wouldn’t love a woman with such appetites? Except for those moments when they seemed to reach an apex and then she could become belligerent or sulky or burst into tears.

  Had he missed something there? Was there a pathological aspect to her moods?

  He spooned the chilli into his mouth. It was spicy and the heat seemed to increase exponentially with each bite he took.

  Last time they’d eaten chilli together, Lucy had, again somewhat unselfconsciously and with enthusiasm, blown her nose into a piece of kitchen towel after they had finished eating.

  His eyes had been watering.

  ‘Don’t cry, laddie,’ she’d said in an exaggerated Scottish accent. ‘There’s nae need ti greet ony mair. Wheesht, wheesht ye auld fule!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he had said, tiring of the silliness, the patched together vernacular which he could make little sense of and which he found faintly embarrassing.

  If it was pathological, if she had a bi-polar disorder or manic depression, then which parts of her personality were really her?

  He chased the last grains of rice around the plate scooping up smears of sauce as he did so, then he took the empty plate to the sink, ran it under the hot tap and put it in the drainer.

  Went back to her study and looked at her bookshelves again. Women who Run with the Wolves, Morvern Callar, Post Modern Fairy Tales, The Virgin Suicides.

  You could read something into her state of mind in that selection, he thought, but that would be a madness in itself, and it did not tell him where she was, or what was happening.

  As he stood, considering this, her phone suddenly erupted into life. The noise startled him and the urgency of the ringing drew him to it.

  ‘It’s her,’ he said to himself, ‘it’s got to be her.’

  Why he thought this, he could not later explain, perhaps it was because the last voice he had heard speaking from this machine had been hers and thus the next voice and the one after, ad infinitum, must also be hers.

  He picked up after the fourth ring.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  There was a listening silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘Lucy?’ he asked.

  A beat of time passed, then an unfamiliar man with a gruff Scottish accent spoke sternly to him.

  ‘Who’re you?’

  Lucy’s father.

  Thom almost put the phone down on him, then stopped himself, breathed deeply and began to talk.

  Voyeur

  The suspect, Florian Lebrun, entered the rear of the house occupied by his mother, Madame Eve-Marie Lebrun and exited thirteen minutes later from the front door. He ran from there to the butcher’s at St Bernadette’s where he was observed purchasing red meat. At the general store nearby he entered and exited four minutes later with a carrier bag.

  Montaldo had left his unmarked car and followed the man on foot until he disappeared through the front door of a building on the rue de la Roche. Now Montaldo was sitting on a bench near the building and drinking a can of lemonade. He had reported the suspect’s movements and noted them down. Not that he thought this was to any purpose.

  Montaldo was acquainted with Lebrun having arrested him four years earlier on a drugs charge. Lebrun had got off with a fine. Lebrun was no one. Small fry. He had, at one time, been linked to the Quinet family, he had attended the same school as the youngest kid, François Quinet, and the two boys had been caught shoplifting together. No doubt Quinet’s father had issued his son a far harsher punishment for the crime than the law offered. Not from any moral high point or concern that François was going off the rails, but because the son’s misdemeanor represented a crack in the carefully maintained fortress which surrounded the Quinet family’s criminal dealings.

  Florian Lebrun was a clown in comparison to the Quinets. A drunk and an opportunist thief, a fraudster and fool. But a murderer? No way.

  Montaldo drank the last dregs from the can, burped, then crushed it in his right hand and threw it into a rubbish bin five feet away. It pleased him that his aim was still accurate.

  He lit a cigarette and leaned back on the seat keeping watch on the door opposite. Now and then, certain women caught his gaze as they went by. He liked to watch how women moved, the roll of their hips, the sharp attenuated clip of a woman in high heels, the graceful glide of a girl in casual footwear, long slim golden legs in shorts, the dimpled knees of chubby young tourists, the round jiggly breasts of one woman, the pert high bra-less points of another’s. It was a pleasure just to consider the endless variety of women, long and lean, taut and muscular, or oozing with plump pinchable flesh. All of them with their secrets, their weaknesses and foibles.

  The door Montaldo was watching remained shut. Some woman’s apartment, Montaldo surmised, and he pictured a woman lying in bed waiting for that idiot Lebrun to show up.

  He pictured her welcoming smile, then suddenly it was not the suspect Lebrun crossing the room to the bed, but Montaldo himself.

  ‘Pleased to see me?’ he imagined himself saying, then he sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over to kiss her. His hands slipped under the covers, exploring her body. Her skin, warm and smooth, slid gratifyingly under his hands and she was sighing hungrily. He kept his shirt and trousers on, even in his imagination he couldn’t quite get rid of the enflamed boils on his neck and his arse.

  What Montaldo didn’t imagine was a tiny kitchen, a kitchen not much bigger than a cupboard if the truth be told, and a frying pan on the two-ring stove heating up butter. He did not see a man separating egg yolks, then beating them furiously with a balloon whisk. Who makes mayonnaise when there’s a woman waiting for you in bed? Perhaps if Montaldo had been hungry he might have imagined this. Not that Montaldo’s imagination really mattered. What mattered was the job, keeping his eyes on the closed door.

  Forty minutes had passed. A thought occurred to Montaldo. The suspect had neither used a key, nor had he waited for someone to open the door for him. He had simply, in one easy movement, turned the handle, opened the door and slipped inside.

  Montaldo crossed the road. The door was a plain cream-painted wooden one secreted between a hardware store and a shop selling sewing and craft materials. A clear amber blind, which was meant to protect the goods on display, had been pulled down in the window of the craft shop, turning all the goods a sickly piss colour.

  Montaldo put his hand on the door handle and pressed down, the unlocked door opened easily. Cautiously he swung it back. Ahead of him was a long narrow passage and halfway along a flight of steep, uncarpeted stairs. There were no signs of life, no sounds. At the far end of the passage, Montaldo could make out the outline of another door. He entered the building, closing the door quietly behind him. The light in the passage was dim, but there was just enough light to see by. He took a few steps towards the foot of the stairs and glanced up, there were three floors and above them, set into the roof, a dirty skylight that showed a smeary blue sky and one ragged cloud. He moved along the passage, which he figured ran the depth of the building. To his left, concealed under the slope of the first flight of stairs were two bicycles and a baby stroller. He tried opening the back door, but it was locked. Montaldo squatted on his haunches so that his face was level with the lock. He peered through the keyhole and glimpsed a breeze block wall in shadow and a few straggly weeds banked against it. His view was limited so he could not tell if the back yard had a gate that could provide an escape route.

  Montaldo started up the stairs. He caught a waft of meat frying close by. Someone was here.

  On the first floor, he stopped by the single door and studied it for clues as to its occupants. He listened, then hearing nothing, moved away and made his way up the next flight of stairs. Another door was directly above the one below. Montaldo paused to listen again. It was here that the cooking smell was the strongest.

  Inside he thought he could hear a fast repetitive noise. Bed springs? An old-fashioned headboard beating aga
inst a wall? He leaned in closer so that his ear was almost pressed against the door.

  What the hell was that noise?

  Then his radio cracked into life.

  Montaldo sprang away from the door and, with his hand pressed over his breast pocket, managed to muffle the sound to some degree.

  He moved quickly back to the stairs and descended them two at a time. He was surprisingly light on his feet, graceful even.

  Sur la Table

  Suzette had put on a vintage black silk slip. She wasn’t sure if it was a petticoat or a bed gown, but she wore it as a dress. It had cost her just five francs at a fleamarket years ago. It made her feel like a character in a film; someone played by Isabelle Huppert or Juliette Binoche.

  She was sitting at the table and watching Florian in the kitchen through the open door. He was frying steak and making mayonnaise at the same time. He jiggled the pan and prodded the steak with a fork, then he’d drizzled oil into the emulsifying eggs, beating the mixture like crazy, clenching his teeth with the effort.

  Suzette watched, her bare legs stretched out straight and crossed at the ankles, her head tilted to the right while she languidly stroked her left shoulder and arm with her fingertips.

  A sudden noise startled her. It sounded like a dial tuning into a radio station, then rapidly tuning away again. There was a staticky voice, then a muffled electronic buzz.

  ‘What was that?’

  Florian looked up at the sound of her voice, raised his eyebrows and gave a questioning flick of his head.

  Suzette could not tell where the sound had come from exactly. It seemed to be in the room itself.

  She looked about the room, searching for the source of the noise.

  ‘Huh?’ Florian asked. He put the bowl down and was eyeing the steaks in the pan.