by John Brooke
Nabi Zidane stood, dusting the seat of his pants, waiting for Aliette to say something.
But what? She had no idea how to deal with Margot Tessier.
Who headed off. ‘Come see how I’ve arranged this.’
Aliette blurted, ‘If you hurt her, I will do everything…everything, Margot, to make sure everyone knows who and what you are.’ But she said it to Margot’s swaying backside as the agent walked away, down the cobblestone street in the direction of the houses.
Nabi said, ‘All we can do is stay as close to it as possible and hope for the right moment.’
She nodded, glum, astounded and baffled by the presumptive black and white thinking that filled the void in the agent’s heart.
‘…And my guys aren’t her guys. The odds are actually with us.’
‘Sure.’
‘Come on, Inspector.’
‘I have to make a call.’ She watched him follow after Margot. Nabi’s non-confrontational approach was surely the better way. Some days you wish you were a different person.
Aliette went back to her car, sipped water, tamped sweat — the wind had died, it was suddenly humid in the shelter of the ridge. She saw people swimming far below on the sunny side of the bridge. That appeared to be Avi Roig in the community garden, moving slowly along a row, hard to mistake his long, stooping carriage. She imagined him watching the gradual gathering of faceless men dressed for the woods, Margot Tessier pointing them in different directions. Avi would be apopletic if he knew what was takng shape. She realized he probably did.
She took her phone from her pocket and punched in a number. No answer, as expected. No more bonjour from Stephanie with that day’s special. Just a digital voice: Please leave a message.
‘Stephanie, it’s Inspector Nouvelle…Aliette? It’s Monday, getting on to five. I’m here at Vieussan. So are a lot of other people. I wish you’d communicate with me. You really should. I hate to use clichés, Stephanie, but if you’re planning some sort of reunion with this man, you will be totally surrounded. Please don’t try to kid yourself otherwise. And believe me, that kind of big event atmosphere can make some people act against their better interests. Please, Stephanie. We know you had nothing to do with the bombs…any of them. Call me. I can help you. I will help you. I promise.’ She closed her phone. Less than true on at least two points. And probably futile. But you have to try.
Then the inspector followed her colleagues.
Margot’s ‘command centre’ in the McLeods’ shabby kitchen featured a large-scale map. She went about dividing it into six sectors. She put a dozen phones on the table, put different coloured tape on each, made some calls, assigned codes. Two computer screens were linked to Antonin’s system in the city. They made a tour through Vieussan and its environs, assessing likely rendezvous sites and possible approaches. Margot made more calls, assigned positions. She had been doing some serious prep. She wanted this to work.
· 41 ·
EXACTLY WHY
Stephanie McLeod sat against the base of a poplar, invisible, fifty metres from the river, watching village children splashing in the shallows. She sipped water and munched hard cheese, the last of her supplies. Her feet ached and she was feeling gross and dirty. She had removed her boots and socks, unfastened buttons, laid out her bra to air. She longed to strip off all her soggy things and fall into the cooling flow. Later she would — she would get to a safe place, have a swim and wash her hair. She would be clean and groomed when she met Prince a final time and it was settled. Self-respect and anger were all she had to bring. She remained unable to find some useful truth as to exactly why she was headed to a rendezvous certain to be doomed.
Revenge? He wanted too much. Worse, there was no reality in what Prince wanted, nowhere it could possibly go. Stephanie hated him for seducing her, making her believe what wasn’t real. And she didn’t even know his name. She would get her own back. But she knew revenge would prove nothing, produce even less. Revenge was a big negative where it came to karma.
Karma? Was it for her mother and father? Closure? That less-than-useful word.
She had tried to explain it to them. Inherited instincts. Anger at things their lives had forced her to uncover. The ugliness of men like Roland Bousquet. Her mother may have been proud to hear it. Or she may have died believing her gifted daughter was far more foolish than she. It was hard to discern those last things in her dying eyes. Papa had merely died. Maman and Papa both died watching her like two old donkeys waiting for the bullet she was bound to fire. Stephanie knew that donkeys would rather be killed by someone who loves them. She knew it was not the closing of the karmic circle, it was the snake that ate its tail. Her rebel parents’ ultimate message: Big ideals left you nowhere, with third-hand furniture, books that didn’t matter…
Revenge was empty. Karma was nebulous. Closure was utter devastation.
And she was weary. The bistro was directly across her field of vision. A German 4X4 was parked out front beside Avi’s van and four other vehicles. She knew they weren’t there for one of Avi’s omelets. She watched Avi watering his rows. He looked over his shoulder, several times, fitful and furtive. More than once he seemed to look straight at her. She had arrived in time to see the silver-blue cabriolet cross the plateau and turn up the road to la place. The good cop. Could there be such a thing? That woman had seemed to care about her. Why not walk into the open, give herself into the care of France? The good cop was there; it might not go so badly.
A reverie: seeing herself walking out and presenting herself, explaining it all to them...
No. She had a date.
Stephanie McLeod contemplated Vieussan on the hillside, picturesque in the softening sun. Up on the ridge, the tower, exuding travelogue romance where it waited at the highest point. Beyond the tower, the Femme Allongée, shrouded in soft layers of early evening stratus. Her heart was in neutral, asleep forever. She was not afraid.
When your life is inevitable, you just have to keep going. Fear is a useless thing, Stephanie told herself, pulling on her boots, hauling herself up, gathering her meagre pack. You tell yourself your life’s story, over and over, you believe you tell it honestly — warts, mistakes, sadness, anger. No matter how faithfully you’ve locked onto the useless facts, something takes you further, adding heroic dreams, no matter how absurd.
She knew the heroic dream of killing Prince was patently absurd.
If Stephanie’s cell had been active she would have heard it ringing. But it wasn’t.
Not that she’d have answered. But if she had, it might have changed a lot of things.
· 42 ·
VIGIL
Night was falling at a measured pace, a noticeable change from the never-ending daylight of St. Jean two weeks before. Aliette Nouvelle was at the midway point on the single-lane bridge across the Orb, leaning on the ironwork rail. She could still make out the cop positioned at the bend a hundred metres downriver. Another farther along was now obscured in the gloaming. Nabi Zidane was at the opposite rail, lazily working on a cigarette. Two more men were placed near sites upstream flagged by Avi Roig as good places to make love with Stephanie McLeod.
Aliette had been dubious when this was revealed as the source of Margot’s intelligence. It was clear the chef did not like the agent; why would he help her lay a trap for his waitress?
But Margot had it all worked out.
A breeze had stirred, carrying away the enervating humidity. ‘What wind is that?’
‘No idea.’
‘Sergio mentioned one. What was it? Cirque? Circe… something like that?’ Sergio and the weather were the only things she and Nabi had in common — apart from work.
No reply. Just the soft sound of a man dragging on his smoke.
She watched swaying branches. Listened. ‘Cers. That was it… Cers at night. Like Circe.’
‘Not much of a local, me,’ Nabi sa
id.
‘Thought you were born and raised in Beziers.’ She caught a whiff of Gauloise.
‘Born in Sète. Moved when I was one… I mean dyed in the wool.’
‘Not a river person then.’
‘Not too much.’
‘Nor me… The beach is more my speed.’
More smoke drifted past her. Then his voice. ‘…we like the beach at Sète.’
‘Haven’t tried it.’ Who was we? She assumed his wife.
This was desultory chat, conducted at a distance of five paces, and back to back into the bargain. Surveillance duty. You let the natural pauses rest where they may. You pick up the thread later. Maybe.
As the last of daylight was stanched from the sky, a car pulled in at Les Oliviers.
Nabi Zidane was immediately on his phone. ‘Male? Female?’
‘It’s just Magui,’ Aliette said.
‘Hold a second… Who?’
‘My assistant, bringing pizza.’
Nabi Zidane informed his inspector up the road that all was fine.
‘You like pizza?’
‘Sure.’
·
Aliette prepared a makeshift table on the stairs to the bistro terrace. The only light was the EDF lamp illuminating the bus stop. The main floor of Les Oliviers was dark. Above, a couple of lights burned dimly in the rear areas of Avi Roig’s apartment. Aliette hoped he was reading a good book. Their picnic included a bowl of salad tossed in Magui’s interesting vinagrette, a big hunk of farmer’s cheese, a pepper grinder, knives and forks and plates and serviettes. Grapes. Biscuits. And four bottles of Kronenbourg beer. ‘Two for later?’
‘Excellent work, Inspector.’
Magui was offering one to Nabi when she suddenly gasped, ‘Oh mon dieu!’ Retracting it, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I — ’
‘It’s not a problem.’ Nabi smiled a smile he used a lot, taking the bottle from her hand.
The boss was delighted. ‘You think of everything.’
‘Not easy when you’re trying to put two very awful boys to bed,’ Magui said.
Nabi commiserated with Magui on the trials and fun of the under-ten crowd; he let it be known that he had five kids. Before leaving them, Magui mentioned some possibly interesting communications extracted from the computer on Noëlli Guatto’s desk, a cell phone whose recent history was being reconstructed. ‘Promised for tomorrow morning.’
‘Good, Mags. And thanks again.’
Wishing them good luck, Inspector Barthès drove off the way she’d come.
Aliette and Nabi ate peacefully, not much more to say to each other it seemed, but if he was comfortable with it, she was too. A beer helped. He seemed to be enjoying his. She dared to broach another unknown. ‘So you’re not…’ but she was stuck for a right word.
‘A believer?’ He shrugged. ‘Are you?’
She shrugged back.
‘My grandfather was. Everyone’s grandfather was…my parents?’ A large bite of cheese. ‘I’m as French as you. I was born here. My children go to the same schools as everyone else’s. Wife’s a dentist.’ He flashed his perfect teeth and sipped his beer. ‘We’re Kabyle. There’s a town in the mountains in Algeria, I went there once. We have our culture, we know who we are, we all love Zinedine, of course. But, you know — Beziers: my two boys and I are rugby men, you can’t change that… My girls? Depends… they’re inclined to play the man and not the ball. Like their mother.’ A big smile, expanding his beautiful face, ‘Eldest is a civil engineer.’ Another bite of pizza. He was a cop who’d made his way up through the streets of his city. ‘I know the place. I can speak the second language. It’s no big secret it’s why I got the job. But I wasn’t going to say no, was I?’ Washing pizza down with a little more beer, reaching for a sprig of grapes. ‘And I know my way around the bars. Chin.’ He raised his bottle.
Aliette clinked her bottle against his. In seven months of professional acquaintance, had she heard him put more than three sentences together?
It had been two years at least since she’d seen a dentist…
She was wiping tomato sauce from her fingers when a muted voice above declared, ‘Nice night for it.’ She looked up at Avi Roig, lean frame extending from the balcony railing, unruly hair tied back in a band, dark shaman eyes gazing down.
‘Evening, Avi.’
Roig said, ‘She’s not a bad person, Inspector. Please remember that.’
‘We will do our best.’
‘Promise me.’
‘You know people like us never promise anything.’
‘Promise!’ He stared down, baleful, expectant, a little scary.
Aliette wished she could promise, but she couldn’t — so she changed the subject. ‘And what are you doing this exquisite night?’
‘Cookbook.’
‘Ah. Well, and I enjoy reading policiers.’
‘I am writing a cookbook.’
‘Enterprising. I’ll look forward to reading it.’
‘It will be in Dutch.’
‘But the French, Avi — there has to be a French version. I mean, all great chefs, no?’
‘No longer true. Or even a truism. But there’s another good reason to bring her home. Stephanie has promised to help me with the French version.’
‘All these promises.’
‘Life is a covenant. We can’t let each other down.’
‘It’s a lovely thought.’
‘It’s our only hope.’ About to withdraw, Avi Roig acknowledged Nabil Zidane with a cursory nod. It was reciprocated.
Aliette raised her hand. ‘Bonsoir, monsieur. Keep your windows barred.’
A few minutes later Nabi stood. ‘Back to the bridge, Horatio?’
They returned to their position, the quiet vigil.
The air was still pleasantly warm against the inspector’s face. Darkness added lush substance to the breeze. A delicate lashing of branches and bows along the riverbank provided pleasure for the ears, the sound of it rich and rhythmic.
· 43 ·
THE MEETING WAS ON
MacGregor Spratt, aka Prince, crawled toward the tower, exhausted, aching, very alone. And thrilled. What love will make you do! He was amazed at himself. He clutched the pistol in his hand, now accepting it as part of his compressed reality. Yesterday it had bought him lunch. Bringing Stephanie out tonight might entail some fighting. It could come at any moment. There was still a good thirty metres of open space between the forest’s edge and his goal. He crawled. Heroic. Inspired. Still alive. Dream it through, man, dream it to the bloody end.
The day had been long but easy — now that he knew where he was and where she would be. Easy to be a solitary Brit backpacker whose walking project was to avoid Departmentals. Equipped with that, he’d wandered into Roquebrun at noon. Having purchased things for lunch, he was instructed, You climb past the gardens at the end of town, you’ll find an EDF maintenance road that’ll take you along the spine of the ridge straight to a tower at Vieussan. Five hours later he finished his pilgrimage on the same road Stephanie McLeod had taken a week before when she’d run from his nasty call tying her to the bombings.
Of course he had no notion of this. But if he had known? Would Prince have cried a tear or two, felt a twinge of shame? More likely, given inexorable forward motion, imagination on the boil, he would have chalked it up to one more strand of spiritual synchronicity tying his life irrevocably to hers. The fact was, events (and dreams) had pushed that shameful catalyst moment to the farthest back rooms of his mind. He had halted his trek a hundred paces from the tower, well in the cover of the woods. He was early. Time enough to rest and fortify himself on cheese and biscuits and wait for dark.
Prince had looked across the evening sky at the giant woman sleeping, her face shining in the twilight. He’d watched the sun go down. Everything was o
f a piece — mythic, historic, for the cause, the greater good. He’d made a silent declaration. When they rendezvoused he would tell her his name, first thing. My name is Greg. A promise to himself. He’d bought a bottle of wine with his lunch. It was waiting in his pack under a tree, fifty metres behind him. Once safely on their way, they would drink to Stephanie and Greg…
Prince continued inching forward, belly tight to the terrain, enveloped in the sound of wind. If they were watching, he was dead. Part of him expected to be. But when he reached the mossy stone base that was his destination, he was still alive. He rolled over and breathed, searching the vast sky for his lucky star. Then bellied round the tower, on the steep side, hidden from the village vantage. Five paces away, the drop was long and sheer.
The rotting wooden door waited, innocently half open. No light within, of course. No sound or sense of any presence there. No point whispering her name — the unchallenged wind dominated imperiously and left no room for that. He might well find a cop with a loaded gun. Or two fifteen-year-olds under a blanket — Steph had said it was lots of lovers’ favourite secret place. Prince swallowed his last-moment fears. Standing to full height, he stepped once, twice, and through the door.
Pitch dark. ‘Steph…Steph?’
Prince’s princess wasn’t there.
·
Over her shoulder, across the distance, the sleeping giantess waited. Far below, the Orb carved a dark thread through the hills. The climb was steep, dangerous, the paths were for goats, not people. The trick was to avoid coming to a cul-de-sac. Twice she was forced to retrace her steps, find a different track. The police had not appeared. Now Stephanie McLeod was curled in the shelter of a rock on the windy side of the ridge, feeling the chill, though snug enough in her stolen jacket. Lulled by the constant wind and a dreamy sense of tragedy, she watched in a sad trance, mesmerized by the sight of Prince crawling across the scrubby path from the edge of the forest. Expected, but unreal after a week wandering in the wilds of her imagination. Prince like a snake. Like a soldier. A prisoner inching his way to freedom. She froze as he scuttled round the back of the tower. He’d have seen her if he looked. She saw him stand, exposed to the world, take two long steps and go inside. She waited for him to burst back out and run. But he didn’t.