Malediction

by Sally Spedding

  “What news?” He could hear his heart.

  “Mossad’s getting very agitated. Looks like they’re setting up near the Parc des Vosges… You still there?”

  “I am. What about the yellow stars in Essecotte?”

  “All as planned. But keep your heads down. Double pay, remember? I’ll be away again for a few days. Banja Luka to be precise. Mission of mercy, you know the sort of thing. A horse actually.”

  A pale one, I hope.

  “On Wednesday and yesterday, Antoinette Ruffiac was seen driving you in Paris,” Duvivier accused recklessly. “Yet you’d planned to be in Bosnia.”

  Silence.

  Merde. He might just as well have swallowed a cyanide pill.

  “Number 3? Still with you?” Déchaux barked instead.

  “Er... yes.”

  “Too bad. Get rid or I will.”

  Duvivier’s stomach lapsed into his groin. He saw The Pigface get up and pee against the cabane. His piss an amber arc catching the early sun.

  “And his fucking car. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And by the way, my friend...”

  What now you murderous jackal?

  “Madame Bataille’s given us the slip. Apparently she’s safely installed herself chez-elle with some female she met at Libourne. A nutter with a gun.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I don’t think so. She shot both my best girls in the legs while she was there, so leave her to us. They were too careless. Managed to get picked up by the flics as they were about to board a train back home, if you please. That’s the trouble with today’s skirt. Too much spoon-feeding keeps das kind auf der Kinderzimmer, hein?”

  “I quite agree.”

  “Still, I’ve just sprung them from the Salpêtrière. They’re at home with me now. Safe and sound.”

  I bet they are, poor cows.

  “At least they’ve not been singing, which is more than others I could name. Number 2’s papa’s not been too clever either. A little humility wouldn’t come amiss, so he’ll be crapping in a bucket for the foreseeable future. Keep all this under your hat, by the way. There’s my good man.”

  Duvivier remained speechless until he suddenly remembered Cacheux. His tentative cough was by way of introduction.

  “Someone had a go at Number 4 yesterday, in the Champs-Elysées. Not very nice.” He wasn’t going to mention the Celica, just needed the reaction.

  “You mean, his cock?”

  Another silence.

  “Maybe, my friend, it was a reminder from me to stay alert...”

  The line went dead. Duvivier stared at the phone.

  Sick bastard. Besides, a ‘merci’ for such a successful outcome would have been better appreciated.

  ***

  No birds either. No sound in that high wild place, except his heart pumping the impotence of the bought and sold. He saw The Pigface settling down to more sleep and felt the whispering shrimp net’s mesh embrace him; hold him fast.

  Duvivier scoured the tracks between the beaten vines, but Dominique Mathieu had well and truly vanished. His eyes slitted against the sun that eased into the sky beyond the Roc de l’Aigle, and he imagined a poplar with rogue branches on one of the lower ridges, gradually become a figure. A Revenant, swaying to the southerly breeze. Black, worm-fouled, beckoning his follower to a grave somewhere in those Godforsaken hills. As Kommandant in the pecking order, he, Francke Victor Duvivier, célibataire, but lover of his country, knew he was next.

  He clenched his fists to stop them trembling and felt someone behind him. It was Vidal with sleep on his breath, his open shirt showing brown flesh and smooth, dark hairs.

  “I’ll catch Mathieu, the little runt,” he said.

  “What’s the point?”

  Déchaux will get there first. That is fact.

  “Look here, Robert. You’ve got to help me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve seen too many signs and portents. More than any man of God can bear...”

  Vidal buttoned up his shirt, reset his cap on his head and studied the man who was visibly faltering. “Remember our friend St. Bernard and our sweet anorexic of Sienna?”

  “Can’t you just say yes?”

  “The path of the sinful soul to divine union starts with servile fear...”

  Then Duvivier took it up. “Timor autem servilis est. Cum per timorem gehennae coninet se homo a peccato... I know, I know. But it’s not Death I fear.”

  I have at last the plot next to my loved one, but at what price? And how soon shall I know it?

  “What then?” Vidal careful to keep his voice cold and distant.

  For that way lies the greater dividend. In the confessional, it is the pauses, the sudden silences, like music almost, that like a bare floor, make for a cleaner birth.

  The coward beside him was shaking, looking enviously to where Cacheux and Plagnol lay spreadeagled among the weeds.

  “Someone who will make me his Nevella.”

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  They walked back in silence to rejoin the others and Vidal noticed Cacheux’s eyes on his groin.

  “You’re getting too morbid in your old age, Francke,” he said to Duvivier. “Chill out a bit. We’re not finished yet. The best as you know, is yet to come.”

  Duvivier stopped, shaded his eyes gone to nothing under his hand and let Vidal continue. “Don’t forget, to Jews we are heretics. Our bread is defiled by its manufacture, our baptismal waters impure. And worse, they shit on the notion of Our Lord’s Divinity saying how can one born from a woman be without sin?” His voice refuelling to quiet rage as Cacheux and Plagnol scrambled to their feet, fearing strangers, while a tear, quite detached from this polemic, formed on Duvivier’s cheek.

  Ecce enim in peccatis conceptus sum et in iniquitatem conceput me mater mea...

  Cacheux suddenly shouted something and pointed towards Vilabou where a green camionette was nudging its way through the broken vines.

  “The Cressy’s!” he yelled. “Come on!”

  Using the cabane to block the peasants’ view of them, the four ran down over the feckless stones and roots half-buried by the slide of mud, until the single tall chimney of the Chȃteau de Fourcat appeared.

  “This way.” Cacheux’s bandage uncurled from his head as his dirty white suit made a detour to the far side where the main barn adjoined. Proud to lead on this, his home ground especially as he knew Vidal was behind. But the doors were already open, the padlock dangling. His father’s black Mondeo lay alongside a Citroën van in the shadows, both dusty and unused.

  Vidal eyed the sleek saloon. “Whose is that?”

  “Mine.”

  The Cressy’s were gaining, their old engine roaring.

  “They’re armed!” Plagnol hollered, trying to reach Duvivier and cling on and, as the Renault van came into full view, three rifles bristled from its sides.

  The Devil take you...

  Cacheux had the key ready on his rosary and held the plain, wooden front door open. New blood leaked from his head wound on to his hand as he locked up, and Vidal was close, too close.

  No. not now. Not ever.

  Vidal took over as the Renault outside puttered to a halt followed by the ominous slam of doors. “Vite.” He sped up the marble staircase into a vast salon lit from above by two Velux windows.

  “Papa!” Cacheux yelled behind him. “Are you there?” He hoped by his tone to keep his mother away wherever she was. To frighten her into staying away.

  A shot thundered out from below, then six fists pounded the outer door.

  “Take no notice. Les impétueux have had too much sun, too much booze. We’ll be safe here,” he boasted.

  “What do these half-wits want, then?” Vidal began prowling, looking for the Mondeo’s real owner.

  “Their right of way re-established over our land for a start. You�
�d think they’d have enough gloating to do after our bloody harvest. Pagan turds.”

  “Ssh. Listen!” Duvivier’s big head was cocked. “What are they saying?” Fisherman’s ears tuned to the songs and the sighs of the sea. The shouts grew louder, more pronounced as the pummelling subsided. “Something about your mother. They’ve got her.”

  Cacheux heard it too, and gasped. When he crossed himself, his fingers stuck together with blood. He looked to Vidal, but the man had found a phone and was dialling.

  “Better go see.” Duvivier said without interest. “You never know.”

  “Come with me,” Cacheux pleaded.

  “I’d rather not, thank you. Can’t you see I’m already bearing the world on these shoulders?”

  “Michel?” To the Pigface who’d just slotted a sugared almond into his mouth. “Two grand for you, OK?”

  And Plagnol duly followed, keeping his worker’s hat over his heart as the priest from St. Honoré took a deep breath to steady his voice, then unlocked and opened the main door. “What do you mean, you’ve got my mother?” he shouted at the van.

  “Come and see.”

  Sweet Jesus.

  “Maman?” he called out. “Maman?”

  The sunlight fell on him and the raw bullet graze above his left ear..

  “Our Father has nearly been in Heaven, I see.” Albert Cressy grinned bad teeth and with one hand pushed his rifle behind his seat. The other two still poked threateningly from the dark interior. So dark, Cacheux couldn’t quite make out if his twin sons were with him or not.

  “Where is she?”

  Cressy looked Plagnol up and down with obvious distaste.

  “This one of your friends in arms?”

  He hasn’t forgotten. Mon Dieu.

  “As you say, just a friend.” He leant forwards to test the darkness. “Maman?”

  “Not so fast. Let’s have a name first of all.”

  Cacheux looked round, but Plagnol was already smiling, holding out his hand. The jovial parish priest all over again, willing to shake with anybody. For a price. The younger twin, Alphonse Cressy suddenly got out, opened the boot and whispered a command.

  Cacheux saw the dog first. No muzzle. A ton of hunger, wet leather jaws peeled back ready for Plagnol’s leg. His scream shot down the sunlit morning as he fell to the ground, writhing in delirium. Albert Cressy held the Drancy man down while Sophie Cacheux, moaning and cursing, was helped from the car.

  “And let me tell you, you scum in priest’s clothing, we too have friends in arms. Friends who saved the decent heart of France.”

  Girard Cressy dragged the bleeding Plagnol, too shocked to retaliate, into the old woman’s place. Then as Vidal and Duvivier ran out from the door, the man of the Maquis reversed the van and hurtled out into the scrub, spraying the helpless watchers with a rain of dried silt.

  Vidal took aim and caught a tyre. Tried again into the dust cloud, but Cacheux in a desperate effort to restrain him, brought his arm down.

  “You don’t know bloody anything!”

  Vidal turned to look at him and swung the Zastava against his cheek, making Cacheux cry out. “What do we need to know, you tart?”

  “Leave it.” Duvivier searched for his lighter and loped over to where the Laguna lay secreted under the fig trees. “If The Pigface squeals, we’re stuffed.”

  Cacheux tried to hold on to his mother, but she elbowed him away and stumbled into the chȃteau, where, from a top window, his father, Émile Cacheux looked down.

  The Laguna took four minutes to blow up, taking the trees, spraying the hard figs skywards and making the old Mas tremble. Its smoke drifted over, carrying burnt fragments into their hair.

  “We don’t wait for Marheshvan. We go now. To Essecotte.” Vidal’s face was hard with purpose. His jaw pulsing to its own deep rhythm. He pulled Cacheux towards him until their noses almost touched. “Get your things.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Do I need to correct my hearing?”

  “I’m staying here. My parents need me.” Cacheux’s tone faltered. In the silence he heard Vidal reset his pistol.

  “That won’t make any difference. Look, my father can see you.” His eyes fixed on the two faces of Monsieur and Madame staring out, conjoined, shrunken and pale like old mushrooms.

  Vidal pointed the muzzle upwards, moved it from side to side seeing how they followed it. This neat baton, more powerful than anything he’d waved inside church or even at Colette, was stronger than any prayer. He had nothing to lose.

  Plus ça change...

  Duvivier gripped his wrist and wrenched it sideways. The pistol still in place.

  “We’ll just go.”

  “Are you mad? They’ve seen us. They’ll talk.”

  “We’ll have to trust them.”

  I know someone who won’t. Adieu chair morte.

  Neither looked back, so the priest from St. Honoré’s tears went unnoticed and, as they crouched among the torn crops parallel to the road to St. Julien, the Kommandant felt at least one of his burdens had been lifted. They’d still got cash and phones. Besides, with just one left of the Landsturm, things would be nice and simple. And focussed.

  “I phoned home again,” Vidal lied, as the backs of houses came into view. “No reply. I could try Eberswïhr. See what’s going on.”

  Mad wolf.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  Vidal spun round. “You know something?”

  “No more than what I’ve told you already.”

  ***

  They reached Leclerc et Fils. A misnomer, for the only living soul, apart from a sleepy dog, was a dark-haired woman perched in the tiny reception area. Her green eyes took in the two paysans, the one with the sensual eyes and mouth, the other repellent without one redeeming feature while she prattled on about the loss of the Domaine de Fourcat’s vines.

  “That’s why we need a car,” Vidal explained, noting her knees at the end of her skirt. “To get us to Domaine de Lantour. Just west of Perpignan. Plenty of work there.”

  “I know it. They’ve been one of the lucky ones.” She tapped into her desktop, then dialled a nine-figure number as Duvivier nudged him.

  What the Hell can she be checking in this dump? There’s either a car or there isn’t...

  Duvivier also sniffed danger. The same as off Cap Lardier with a sea swell beginning. He told the woman they’d changed their minds and pushed his way out of the office.

  ***

  Vidal caught him up by a half-finished villa where they lay breathless in a forest of dead sunflowers, and when the Provençal had recovered, he crawled away on the pretext of taking a squat, and phoned Déchaux just before he left his office. Without giving the général a chance to interject, told him to have a car, five new IDs and sets of the bleu de travail at Tautavel by midday. They weren’t going to hang around. Nor could he admit the team was down to two.

  “Who did you phone?” said Vidal, when he returned. It was time the crater face came clean.

  “I’m not permitted to say.”

  “You’d better.”

  The sunflowers’ woody stems cracked and buckled under his weight as he lunged at Duvivier.

  “No secrets, remember?” He pinned him down under a hail of dead seeds. “Is this some other God Almighty I don’t know about?”

  A knee on the older man’s chest, crushing his diaphragm.

  “If I tell you, I’m dead,” gasped Duvivier.

  “You’re dead anyway.”

  His patella found the hollow and the soft lung tissue beneath his breast bone. Duvivier moaned before the last of the air gave out. “Déchaux... Général...” the Provençal spluttered.

  “Never heard of him. What does he do?”

  “He’s a horse lover.”

  Vidal pressed down again, enjoying himself, sensing victory over the bungler.

  “Do me a favour.”

  “And a peacekeeper in Bosnia.”

  “That’s hilarious
. Anything else?”

  Duvivier’s breath was a succession of painful grunts. His mouth contorted with the effort. “SRM. Part-time, I think.”

  Vidal eased off, realising why the Tronchet warehouse had served them so well. The diving school and the rest. The Société du Renseignement Militaire probably had more pots of gold than Midas.

  And the king has long arms.

  “Does he pay us, this Général?”

  A nod.

  “Double for Essecotte.”

  Vidal suddenly jumped up, watching the older man struggle to his feet. “Well pal, we’d better go and earn our keep.”

  And then, I’ll go and find Colette.

  LV

  Monday October 6th

  After three sleepless nights at the Hôtel Fleuris in Tours, Vidal and Duvivier with new IDs as artisan plumbers and clothes to match, sat outside the Café Dauphine opposite the Cathédrale St. Gatien and the Musée de Beaux-Arts. When a police car cruised by, checking the pavements, they studied the menu with sudden intensity.

  “My father knows when to keep his mouth shut, so it’s not a problem.” Vidal tasted the hot dark coffee, felt it travel through his body, warming him against the sour Atlantic wind.

  But Baralet’s diary is, my friend. So watch out.

  “Well, you know him better than I do,” Duvivier mumbled. “What’s he got on you?”

  “Nothing.” Vidal put his cup down and frowned into it.

  “Well, our Bébé Bataille found something not to his advantage, hein?”

  Vidal replied by pressing a dark finger on to the Provençal’s hand, which was small, white as dough. “And so have I. I can’t ever trust you again.” He said suddenly, summoning the garçon over. “You were never going to say about the letter he stole from me, or about our Friend in High Places, were you?”

  “If you’d been in my boots for the past two months, you’d feel differently. The waters of Acheron are already licking my knees.”

  Amen to that.

  Vidal watched as the Café Dauphin filled up with the grey brigade looking for a late lunch after taking in the early Italian Masters and The Flight into Egypt, while the speciality steak hachés dribbled their blood into the flames.