by Jo Mazelis
A perfect victim.
Half an hour later Scott was taken to the phone again. He rang and rang, but no one answered.
On the Road to Calvary
‘None of these men did it,’ Sabine said. She was half sitting, half leaning on a desk, her arms folded over her chest, one ankle hooked around her lower leg.
Vivier looked up and met her eyes.
‘You could be right.’
‘I know I’m right.’
‘No. You don’t know that. You’re talking about instinct.’
‘So what’s your instinct, Inspector? Or do you have none? Is it only women who go by intuition?’
‘Don’t let’s get into that.’
‘Into what?’
‘Gender. Sexual politics. Don’t muddy the waters, Sabine.’
‘Then be honest, sir.’
Vivier sighed. ‘The black kid was terrified, which might suggest guilt, but I don’t buy it. He saw someone lose a cardigan, he tried to give it back, failed and put it in clear sight where it might be reclaimed. It was only chance that someone saw him.’
‘And that someone jumped to ridiculous conclusions because he was black,’ Sabine added.
‘That idiotic woman.’
‘And Florian Lebrun?’
‘Voyoux. Hoodlum, small fry. We need to bring in the girl he says he was with. Confirm the story about the cardigan. Let’s hope she’s not overcome by modesty. Or married.’
‘I know who she is, sir.’
‘You do?’
‘Waitress in the Café Rouge. She had an affair with Bertrand Severin.’
Vivier stared at Sabine in astonishment, but said nothing.
‘It’s true, everyone knew about it. Well, except you.’
‘Sounds like that waitress has a taste for bad boys,’ Vivier said, shaking his head at the irony of it.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Severin’s being investigated. That’s between me and you, strictly off the record.’
‘For?’
‘You name it – accepting bribes and favours. Turning a blind eye. I never liked the man, never trusted him, but we could never pin anything on him.’
Sabine nodded, then said, ‘And the Canadian?’
‘Arrogant. Angry. He’s lying about something – but not this.’
‘And he’s only been in the country six days.’
‘So that rules him out as our serial killer.’
‘If it’s a serial killer.’
Both fell silent, then Sabine spoke. ‘And we still don’t have her name.’
Vivier moved over to the board where they’d pinned up the photos of the victims and gazed at the picture of Lucy Swann that had been taken at the morgue. Apart from her skin colour and the bruise on her neck she might have been sleeping.
‘Someone will miss her,’ he said, ‘we’ll know soon enough.’
Sabine moved to his side and looked at the picture.
‘Everyone we meet,’ she said, ‘those we touch or talk to, then immediately forget. People who see us, when we hardly notice them. None of it matters does it, until…’
‘Until it does matter.’
Sabine sighed, ‘Sorry, I’m tired, I was trying to say…’
‘I knew what you meant and yes, to be honest I don’t think any of these men are the one.’
‘But?’
‘But they tell a story, don’t they? A story about her, about who she was and where she went. So at least…’
‘At least what?’
Vivier looked at a photo of Lucy taken at the crime scene, was shocked once more at the way she was suspended like a discarded marionette over the filthy drainage ditch.
‘So at least we know she didn’t fall out of a clear blue sky. She had her road to Calvary and somewhere along that road…’
Vivier and Sabine continued to stand side by side in front of the pin board. There was an understanding between them. It was unspoken. It was to do with work, with a perfectly matched intelligence, a reluctance to jump to easy conclusions. To enter instead the labyrinth of the crime, all the while painstakingly following procedure.
But there was something else too, something physical, but not quite tangible. It was the other’s nearness, mere inches away. Vivier shifted his weight from one foot to the other and in doing so his hand brushed the back of Sabine’s hand, and she, forgetting where she was, let her fingers ripple smoothly against his.
He withdrew his hand quickly, brought it up to his mouth and coughed uncomfortably.
Sabine folded her arms over her chest again.
‘I…’Vivier began, but whatever he had been about to say was interrupted by the telephone suddenly erupting into life.
Field of Play
Marilyn continued to walk in the direction the old woman had indicated. She no longer expected to see the familiar landmarks along the way, but confidently assumed that this road ran parallel to the one they usually took in the car. She believed herself to be equipped with a fairly accurate internal sense of direction, though Scott often argued with her about this. He fell just short of repeating the cliché (or was it a proven scientific fact) that women couldn’t read maps. The street she was walking along was all residential, and it narrowed halfway along, and the houses grew smaller and more cramped. Yet their shutters were freshly painted, the gardens well tended, and the window ledges were graced by boxes of trailing plants with abundant flowers; nasturtium, lobelia and clematis. In some of the houses the blinds had not been drawn and Marilyn glimpsed families sitting around tables, while TV sets sent out flickering multicoloured light, sometimes illuminating a man pouring himself a tumbler of wine from an outsized plastic bottle, or a woman hunched over a sink or children moving about in some strangely jerky rapid game. There was the scent of honeysuckle in the air, then onions, then the rinsed-earth scent of just-watered plants, then fish, then meat, then onions, petrol, garlic.
Two or three times cars passed, going down the street, with as few coming back up it. A boy on a bicycle whizzed by, he was pedalling furiously, his body raised off the seat, the front wheel wobbling slightly, his face rapt, in a storm of determination as if he were dreaming of the finish line at the Tour de France.
Marilyn thought guiltily of Aaron locked in the house, and yet she was glad to be out here on the street, taking action. Aaron would be okay. Scott would be okay, it was all some dumb error, a case of mistaken identity. Something to do with the hire car probably, all easily explained once the full picture emerged.
A little way ahead Marilyn saw a break in the line of houses on the right-hand side of the road. There was a long low wooden fence and beyond it open ground and a few trees. As she drew closer she heard the sounds of loud and excited voices, the rise and fall of laughter, the clunk and ringing sounds of metal moving against metal.
Set back from the pavement by ten or so yards was a children’s playground, but as with such spaces everywhere, nightfall had driven away the younger children for whom it was intended and replaced them with a tribe of older kids; young teenagers who lolled against the slides and swings smoking illicit cigarettes, or raced BMX bikes, or used the play equipment’s sturdy structures to practise feats of gymnastic skill; standing on the swing seats, then leaping off at the high point or hanging upside down from the cross bar.
There were about fifteen kids in there that she could see, mostly boys, but three or four girls too. Marilyn slowed her pace, then stopped to watch them. In the distance under the cover of the trees she saw that there was yet another boy and girl walking together, heads tipped slightly towards each other suggesting intimacy.
None of them noticed her watching them, so she was able to judge their level of menace. Why is youth always thought to be malevolent, she wondered, why do we bestow upon this in-between age group such levels of mistrust – why do we forget so easily that we were once thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen – with our harmless gangs and cliques, our ripped jeans, our black eyeliner, wild h
air, loud voices, our raging hormones, and countless insecurities deftly hidden by insolent stares. Not every kid in a tracksuit or with jeans hanging halfway down his ass to reveal designer underwear was a stoner, a mugger, a rapist. And besides, the nature of the playground’s location, the proximity of those neat little homes, the smallness of the town, its quaint European charms, its resistance to the taint of urban blight and alienation, all spelled innocence.
Confidently Marilyn stepped over the low fence and began to walk directly towards the nearest group of teenagers. A few of them now noticed her, one boy nudged another in warning and something was quickly hidden behind a back.
‘Excusez moi, ou est le Hotel de Ville?’ Marilyn called, as soon as she was within earshot.
‘Huh?’ one of the boys said. He was the one with his hand behind his back.
Marilyn repeated her question, aware of the obviousness of her bad accent.
‘Huh? Wha?’ the boy said, his expression was playful, exaggerated. Then in a perfect imitation of a line from a rap song, he said, ‘Waasup?’ and shrugging his shoulders he shook out his hands in that distinctive way the gangsta rappers from Compton or Watts in L.A. did.
One of the girls giggled.
Marilyn had a sudden intimation of threat, she had misjudged the situation; she began to turn back the way she had come.
‘Vincent!’ A girl’s voice cut through the crisp night air, it was schoolmarmish, scolding, then it changed, became pleasant, reasonable. ‘Madame? Madame!’
Marilyn turned. One of the girls had stepped forward from the group. She was exquisitely beautiful, with shining dark hair in tumbling corkscrew curls framing her fine-boned face. She might have been thirteen or seventeen, it was hard to tell, but she was confident, her gaze suggesting maturity and concern. The concern was for Marilyn and spoke of a sisterly understanding of the world.
‘Are you lost?’ she said in carefully modulated English.
‘You speak English?’ Marilyn asked.
Proudly the girl nodded, then lifted her hand to indicate a small pinch of air between her thumb and forefinger.
‘The Hotel de Ville? Near the police headquarters? I need to get there,’ Marilyn said.
The girl nodded, then pointed in the direction of the trees beyond the play equipment. As Marilyn looked towards the place indicated she saw that the young boy and girl who had been standing apart were now moving forward to rejoin the main group, alerted somehow by the quietness and stillness that Marilyn’s presence had caused.
‘Oh!’ Marilyn said, uncertainly. She could see nothing beyond the black shapes of the trees, no lights, only indistinct greyness.
This was difficult. She had asked the way and they had answered, but to set off into that unknown darkness seemed folly. She shook her head, aware of the audience that now surrounded her.
Several of them nodded emphatically ‘yes’ and pointed into the furthest reaches of the park as the girl had done.
Marilyn shook her head. ‘Non, non. Too dark. Is there another way?’
Again several enthusiastically jabbed hands and fingers pointed at the black void.
‘Ah!’ the pretty girl said at last. ‘You are scared? No worry. It is okay. We’ll walk with you.’
‘Hey, Vincent!’ she called, and when he stepped forward she spoke in rapid French to him and another girl. Then she set off towards the trees beckoning Marilyn forward with a broad circling gesture of her arm. Vincent and the other girl also set off, falling into step beside them and turning their faces towards Marilyn, smiling pleasantly, nodding in friendly encouragement and inviting her to trust them.
Two girls and a single boy.
Marilyn would not have followed three teenage boys into the darkest corner of the woods. Two boys and a girl might have tipped the balance slightly. But two girls and a lone boy decided her. She threw up her hands, shook her head as if shaking off her own silliness and mistrust then hurried forward to catch up with them. The two girls had already linked arms with one another and as Marilyn drew level her arm was linked too.
Oh, how long it had been since Marilyn had walked companionably arm-in-arm with another female? Not since the age of ten or eleven when some boys had pointed at her and her best friend and called them lesbians. She hadn’t quite understood what it meant, but there was something ugly about the way it was said and her friend had instantly pulled her arm away. End of.
The boy called Vincent trailed along on the outer edge of the group with a slightly self-conscious swagger. Then without warning or reason, he suddenly took a running leap and ripped a longish branch from one of the trees. He then proceeded to rip off all the smaller stems and the abundant leaves until he had produced a four-foot-long switch which he used to swipe at the long grass, occasionally beheading stalky, high-growing weeds.
‘Tsk,’ the beautiful girl at Marilyn’s side said. ‘Stop the killing, Vincent, mon amour!’
Vincent scowled, but complying, flung the branch away. It whistled faintly as it spun through the air before it landed soundlessly in the distant undergrowth.
Soon Marilyn saw the trees thinning out and beyond them high aluminium fencing with industrial-looking buildings behind. They veered to the right-hand side of the downward-sloping sward where an open gate led to a narrow lane. Halfway along the lane was a single street lamp that cast a yellow pool of dim light.
A Jealous Ghost
Suzette paced the room. She had cried fitfully for hours it seemed and now she was all cried out. There were two versions of truth that she had to consider, one was that Florian was a murderer, the other was that Bertrand Severin was back. What had said to her once, long ago? If I can’t have you, no one will. Had his words frightened her then? Vaguely she seemed to remember they hadn’t, she had taken them as an expression of his passion for her. Meaningless. Like I’d do anything for you. Or you are the world for me. Eventually she’d taken it for nothing but extravagant bullshit.
She’d never promised him anything and while he was still married she had presumed that she was free to pursue other lovers. Not that she had. Then he had left. Just at the point when the scales were beginning to fall from her eyes and she had begun to grow frightened of him.
Florian wasn’t a killer. He lived a little beyond the law, but a killer? Yet how well did she know him? These truths sat uncomfortably side by side, each depended upon her judgement of the characters of two men. If she had been wrong about Severin she could also be wrong about Florian. A statue symbolising justice came to mind, a female figure holding a balance in one hand, a sword in the other, but her eyes were blindfolded. Suzette never understood that, to know the truth one must see everything.
Florian was innocent.
She was going mad. He was innocent. He’d been set up.
Nothing was real. There was nothing outside this room. Nothing.
She picked up a handful of money and jammed it into the pocket of her jeans, then made her way over to the bar. Nothing was more real than the bar. The night air was refreshing, cool on her burning red-rimmed eyes. They would know she’d been crying. Not that it mattered.
She turned a corner and there it was. A few customers sat outside, inside she could see the familiar figures behind the bar. Then her eye caught sight of him. He was sitting with his back to the window, hunched over a table, shoulders bristling with angry muscle, the thick neck bullish, like the man. Severin.
She stopped walking, moved sideways to a doorway, stared and stared. It was him. It couldn’t be him. It could. It was. It explained everything. Where else would he go to collect his prize, his possession? If I can’t have you, no one will.
She turned back the way she had come, walked briskly, hugging the walls and shop fronts, shrinking from what she imagined was the searchlight of his gaze.
Into the Shadows
‘Here,’ said the girl and she let go of Marilyn’s arm.
Marilyn looked down the lane hoping to see an immediate sign of either the boule green or th
e Hotel de Ville or the police headquarters, but the lane sloped away downhill and at its end seemed to drop out of sight completely. Marilyn guessed there must be steps there.
She hesitated.
‘Down there, turn…’ the girl sought the English word, but failing to find it reverted to French and a hand gesture. ‘OK?’
Marilyn wavered, she was on the brink of moving off and yet she wanted to be certain of her direction. Of her safety also, as she did not like the look of the narrow lane.
But the three teenagers were already losing interest and turning away. Vincent had thrown his arm around the prettiest girl’s neck and was steering her off.
‘Au revoir,’ the girl called happily, turning her head and smiling, confident of her kindness.
Marilyn began down the lane, after a few steps she turned back to take a last look at the three young people, but they had already gone, vanishing quickly into the clotted shadows under the trees.
She walked briskly. On either side of the path there were high walls, to her left was one built from dirty grey breezeblocks, while the one to her right was brick and looked much older. Moss gathered on the outer edges of the path, as well as brambles and nettles and tall orchid-like flowers that must have been weeds of some sort. Above the breeze-block wall there loomed an ugly 1960s’ steel and panel construction building with boarded-up windows. It might have been a small factory or office or school, but it seemed to have deteriorated rapidly, even in the dim light Marilyn could make out large shadowy stains streaking the building’s side. She could not see much over the brick wall on the other side as it was taller and whatever buildings were behind it must have been some distance away.
It seemed unnaturally quiet where she was, her own footfalls barely made a noise, and she could hear the sounds of her clothing rubbing and rustling with her every movement. She was aware too of her breathing which she realised sounded a little strained and noisy as if she were exerting herself by running on a treadmill or up too many flights of stairs. There again the moment became like one in a film; a lone woman walking at night down a badly lit alleyway; the soundtrack would emphasise her breathing, it would alert the audience to her vulnerability. A more clichéd film would add a resonating heartbeat.