The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  ‘Like the vineyard? Chateau Laveyron?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘I went to school with Patrice, the youngest boy. Well, old man Laveyron liked to use those bamboo canes you train vines with to train his children too. I’d see marks on Patrice sometimes when we were changing for swimming or rugby. They looked exactly like that mark on your arm.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Madjid said, hiding the mark again with his hand.

  Amand nodded. ‘Listen, Monsieur Lellouche. If you have anything to tell me about how you got that mark on your arm or who put it there, now would be the time. Because if you’re not prepared to tell me the truth about something small like this, it makes me wonder if you’re telling the truth about bigger things as well.’

  Madjid looked up at him, a mixture of anger and defiance in his eyes. ‘Ask Monsieur LePoux about it. If he wants to tell you, he will. You won’t hear anything from me.’

  Amand nodded. He didn’t need to ask LePoux about the mark because he knew he was as fond of swinging the cane as old man Laveyron had been; it was clearly a hallmark of the vignerons. ‘Did you know that it was LePoux who tipped us off about you?’ he said, hoping to shake whatever strange loyalty Madjid was bound by. ‘He said he heard you talking about Monsieur Engel last night.’

  Madjid shook his head. ‘Monsieur LePoux is mistaken. The only time I spoke about Monsieur Engel was this morning, when I was talking to the stranger.’

  ‘What stranger?’

  ‘The tall man in the suit jacket.’

  Amand exchanged a glance with Parra. ‘Did you catch this man’s name?’

  Madjid looked up, his brown eyes so dark they almost seemed black. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘He said his name was Solomon Creed.’

  35

  Solomon breathed deeply, focusing on the fresh smell of the countryside rather than the vinegary smells of the car. The vineyards had disappeared now and the hills had flattened into huge fields of maize as they drew closer to Toulouse. He felt a faint tickle on his skin and glanced across to meet the gaze of Léo, sucking on a sippy cup, a small bead of liquid hanging beneath it, bulging and ready to drop. Solomon watched it stretch, then fall and extended his arm to catch it on the tip of his finger.

  ‘Whoa!!’ The boy’s voice sounded slow, like an old record played at the wrong speed. ‘How come you can move so fast?’

  Solomon touched his finger to his tongue and tasted apple juice, which explained the cider-vinegar smell of the car from previous drips soaked into the seat fabric and fermented in the hot summer sun. He winked at Léo. ‘I can move faster. If I need to.’

  ‘Cool. Can you teach me?’

  Solomon considered the question. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not entirely sure how I do it myself. I just concentrate on something hard and everything else slows down.’

  ‘Like Quicksilver in X-Men?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Are you some kind of a mutant?’

  ‘Léo, don’t be rude,’ Marie-Claude said sharply from up front.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Solomon said, looking down at the comics littering the floor beneath Léo’s seat – Marvel, Manga, DC – ‘I think it’s a compliment.’

  Léo nodded. ‘Mutants are cool.’ He continued to stare at Solomon, who stared back. The shutter had not come down on him yet or brought the guarded look he saw in most adults’ eyes, like they were peering out from their walled-city selves as the world lay siege around them. ‘How come you’re so white?’ Léo asked.

  ‘I don’t know. How come you’re so short?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m seven.’

  Solomon smiled. ‘Good answer.’ He turned back to the window and spotted a plane ahead, dropping lower in the sky. He wondered whether he could get into a plane, a sealed metal tube with no chance of escape. The thought made him shudder.

  ‘You get sick in cars?’ Léo asked.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Me too. Mama says if I read in the car, I mostly puke.’

  Marie-Claude’s eyes flicked in the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s right, no reading – and look straight ahead, don’t look down, like you were …’

  ‘… walking on a tightrope or climbing a mountain, I know, I know.’ Léo turned to Solomon, adding in a whisper, ‘Only it’s not the same because I’m not going to fall and die, all I’m going to do is puke.’

  ‘Yeah, and who’ll have to clean it up?’

  Léo rolled his eyes. ‘OK, OK – I got it.’

  ‘Who’s your favourite?’ Solomon asked, nodding at the pile of comics.

  ‘Iron Man, maybe.’

  Facts tumbled through Solomon’s head, the usual white noise of everything and nothing. ‘Tony Stark,’ he said, plucking a single scrap from the river of information.

  ‘Yes.’ Léo sounded impressed.

  ‘Why Tony Stark?’

  ‘I think it’s because he’s normal. He doesn’t have super-strength and he can’t fly or anything – at least, not on his own, he needs the suit for that. But he built the suit. He’s really smart and he can fix anything. That’s why I like him. You’re smart too, aren’t you? You know all kinds of stuff.’

  ‘Doesn’t make me smart.’

  ‘I think you’re smart. I bet you can fix things too, can’t you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Solomon said. ‘I’m going to try.’ His shoulder started to ache a little at the thought of this and he rubbed at the pain.

  ‘Did you hurt your arm?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There’s a burn there, like a brand. Do you know what a brand is?’

  ‘Like the mark they put on cows using a red-hot poker.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Léo’s eyes flew wide. ‘Someone did that to you? What is it, is it like a shape or something?’

  ‘Chéri, don’t keep asking Mr Creed questions. It’s not polite.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Solomon said, leaning forward and slipping his jacket off. ‘Focusing on something helps with travel sickness, so he’s doing us both a favour – you too, if it means you won’t have to clean up any puke.’ He unbuttoned his waistcoat and the top few buttons of his shirt and slipped them over his shoulder to reveal the raised welt on his skin, two red lines running parallel to each other.

  ‘Whoa,’ Léo said, studying the symbol. ‘That must have hurt.’

  ‘Still does, from time to time.’

  ‘It’s important, isn’t it?’

  Solomon nodded. ‘Yes, I think it is.’ He put his shirt back on and studied the boy. ‘What makes you think it’s important?’

  Léo glanced at his mother then leaned closer and whispered. ‘Because your colours change when you rub it. They go green, sometimes a little red, but green mostly and green is a good colour, though not as good as white. Mostly you’re white – like me.’ He glanced forward again, caught his mama’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and sat back down like he’d been caught doing something wrong.

  ‘If green is good, what about red?’

  Léo pulled a face.

  ‘Not so good?’

  He shook his head.

  Solomon finished rebuttoning the waistcoat. Whenever the mark started to ache, he felt an odd mixture of euphoria and pain, and the boy had sensed it. He had seen it. ‘You have synaesthesia,’ he murmured. He turned to Léo. ‘Does everything have a colour?’

  Léo shrugged. ‘It’s people mainly. People and words. The colour is different, depending on what sort of person they are or if it’s a nice word or not. Nice people have bright colours and bad people have muddy colours, like different birds have different feathers. The colours look like feathers to me too, soft and downy. Except they can change depending on how someone’s feeling.’

  Solomon’s mind hummed with information and he smiled in happy recognition that something very rare had happened – he had discovered something new about himself. ‘I have it too,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’


  ‘Yes. Only I don’t see colours. Synaesthesia comes from the Greek words meaning together and sensation and can describe the mingling of any of the senses. With me it’s smell. I can smell emotions the same way you can see them.’

  ‘Cool. What do I smell like?’

  ‘At the moment you smell like the car, but beneath that you smell like lemon zest and cotton and sea salt.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘It’s the smell of curiosity and eagerness.’

  ‘What’s eagerness?’

  ‘Enthusiasm.’

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘What about me?’ Marie-Claude asked, drawn into the conversation. ‘Actually, forget it. I don’t want to know what I smell like. Probably dirty laundry or something.’

  ‘Ash and stone,’ Solomon said, ‘and a little smoky.’

  ‘What’s that? Despair? Tiredness?’

  ‘Anger,’ Solomon replied. ‘Anger and guilt.’

  The sound of the wind blowing through the open window filled the silence that followed until Léo broke it. ‘I always thought there was something wrong with me.’

  ‘No,’ Solomon told him. ‘Having synaesthesia makes you different.’ He leaned down and picked up an X-Men comic from the floor. ‘You’re like these guys. You have a special power too.’ He handed the comic to Léo and his face lit up. ‘Plenty of great men have had your gift. Have you ever heard of Jean Sibelius?’ Léo shook his head. ‘Franz Liszt? Duke Ellington? They’re all famous musicians, geniuses. They all had synaesthesia too. Rimsky-Korsakov was another one. He was friends with Liszt and they used to argue about the correct colour of different musical keys. What about Vincent van Gogh?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Dutch painter; he had a thing called timbre synaesthesia, which means he heard sounds when he looked at colours or pictures. Some people’s paintings sounded like violins to him and others like nails on a blackboard. What about Nikola Tesla, I bet you know him?’

  ‘He’s the Night Machine in the SHIELD comics.’

  ‘Yes, but he was also a real person. A genius inventor and physicist. Master of electricity. He had spatial synaesthesia, which allowed him to see numbers and words in three dimensions. It meant he could analyse and manipulate them in a way normal people couldn’t. He saw the world differently and it helped him to change it. Exactly like you.’

  Léo beamed and looked out of the window as if he expected the world to be transformed in the light of what he had learned. Solomon caught Marie-Claude staring in the rear-view mirror and he smiled at her to try and gauge whether she was angry with him or not. Léo had been reluctant to talk about his abilities and he imagined that came from his mother. She probably wanted him to blend in, play down his differences, not be the weird kid at school, and Solomon had encouraged him to do the opposite. He held his smile but she didn’t return it and the scent of ash and stone coming off her held steady.

  Anger and guilt – now where did that come from?

  Anger about what? Guilt about what?

  ‘We’ll be in Toulouse in ten minutes,’ she said, looking back at the road. ‘You might want to hide yourself again when we get there. Plenty of cameras at the airport. Plenty of police too.’

  36

  Belloq placed the cool box and carrier bag in the shade of the porch while LePoux dragged two chairs outside and turned a crate over to serve as a table. Baptiste stood off to one side, washing himself in a bucket drawn fresh from the well, the water running red off him and staining the dirt. Belloq opened the cool box and pulled three beers out, ice-water dripping off them as he twisted the tops off. He gave one to LePoux, kept one for himself and set the third down on the up-ended crate. He sat down and watched Baptiste dry himself, solid muscles moving beneath sun-darkened skin that made his tattoos writhe as if they were alive. He had a large black boar on his right shoulder, a rough impression of the same animal now lying in bloody pieces in the stifling dark of the barn and symbol of their party, the PNFL – National Party of Free France. The smudgy ink suggested Baptiste had acquired it in prison along with his bulked-up physique. The boar was also the sign of the white supremacist gangs in the French prison system. Baptise finished drying himself, slipped his arms through the sleeves of his shirt and walked over to join them in the shade.

  Belloq raised his bottle. ‘Your health, monsieur.’

  Baptiste walked past him and disappeared back into the dark of the barn. The man speaking German was suddenly silenced and Belloq looked at LePoux, who shrugged and gulped his beer greedily, finishing most of it by the time Baptiste reappeared with a tin cup in his hand. He leaned down and filled it with ice-water from the cool box. ‘I don’t drink, Monsieur Belloq,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

  Belloq nodded. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I should have thought to bring something else.’

  Baptiste drank the iced-water in deep gulps. ‘You did,’ he said, and refilled his cup.

  ‘Such a tragedy,’ Belloq lamented, ‘the direction your life has taken. So much taken from you, even the simple pleasure of a cold beer on a hot day.’

  Baptiste ran the chilled cup across his forehead. ‘I am grateful for your hospitality and also for your help, messieurs. I do not need your pity.’

  ‘Good,’ Belloq said, ‘because that’s not why we came.’ He pointed at the remaining chair. ‘Please. Sit.’

  Baptiste wiped a smudge of blood from the back of the chair and sat down. LePoux swapped his empty beer bottle for the one Baptiste had refused.

  ‘You may not want pity,’ Belloq said, ‘but your situation is worthy of pity nevertheless. You committed a crime, yes, but you have paid a far greater price for it than most. You are still paying the price, are you not?’

  Baptiste drank his water and said nothing.

  ‘I can only imagine how hard it must have been for you in prison, an ex-policeman amongst all those criminals. It must have taken all your courage, all your willpower to survive. And for such a long time. Too long. Much too long.’ Belloq raised his bottle. ‘I know you don’t drink but, nevertheless, I will drink a toast to you. I drink to your courage and to your patriotism.’

  Baptiste shook his head. ‘It was not my courage or my patriotism that put me in prison. It was my anger.’ He pointed at the bottle in Belloq’s hand. ‘And it was that.’

  Belloq placed his bottle down on the crate and looked at Baptiste. ‘You blame yourself. Your temper. Alcohol. But I blame a country that has lost its way. The country our party would build would not seek to blame you for what you did. I know your story, everyone in town knows it. I cannot imagine how betrayed you must have felt when you discovered that the woman you loved, the mother of your child, had lied to you about what she really was. Some may say you over-reacted when you discovered the truth, but you paid the price and more. How long was your initial sentence?’

  Baptiste stared into his cup as if his lost years were inside. ‘Eighteen months.’

  ‘Eighteen months. With good behaviour and time served, you should have been out in six. But good behaviour was never an option for you, was it? How long was it before you were first attacked?’

  Baptiste ran a finger along a pale scar visible through his dark beard. ‘The second day.’

  ‘Your second day inside and someone tried to kill you. You had no choice. It was dog eat dog. Kill or be killed. What was your sentence for killing the Arab who gave you that scar?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  Belloq spat in the dust and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘Eight years for manslaughter. Eight years when what you slaughtered was no better than that wild boar you were butchering – less even. At least a pig you can eat. What can you do with a dead Arab? Nothing. Celebrate one less in the world, maybe.’

  LePoux snorted in agreement and downed the rest of Baptiste’s beer.

  ‘All of this injustice you have suffered, all these trials, and yet you survived. With the help of the Brotherhood, you survived. I saw the tattoo on you
r shoulder. The Brotherhood became your family, didn’t it? And families look after each other, as we have looked after you. Did you not wonder how you managed to attain such an early release from a near ten-year sentence?’

  Baptiste looked up and surveyed the green valley all around. ‘I am grateful for all you have done. But being here, keeping out of sight. It’s another form of prison.’

  ‘I agree, it’s intolerable you should have to live like this. But things are changing, not only for you but for all of France. We have party members in every strata of society and France is finally waking up, along with the rest of Europe. Our party is stronger in the polls than it has ever been. We are challenging for power – real power – and real power will enable us to make real changes.

  ‘And when those changes come, anyone who helped the party can expect to be rewarded in the new society we will build from the ashes of the old. I cannot promise to give back everything you have lost, but I can give you back your home. I can give you back your position within the community, maybe even your old job.’

  Baptiste looked Belloq squarely in the eye. ‘What about Léo?’

  Belloq smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We can give you your son.’

  Baptiste spat into the dust. ‘Then why don’t you stop making speeches and tell me what it is you want me to do.’

  37

  Amand re-emerged into the noise of the Commissariat and moved over to Henri’s desk.

  ‘No news,’ Henri said, without even being asked. ‘Did he confess?’

  ‘No. Did you send the cane to Albi?’

  ‘It’s on its way now.’

  Amand nodded. Part of him wanted it to be as simple as it appeared: the cane would match the wounds on Josef Engel, the blood would match too and they might even find a few fingerprints to seal the deal. But another part of him didn’t buy it. Madjid Lellouche did not strike him as the sort of man who would carve a Star of David into an old man’s flesh, or bring rats to gnaw at his corpse. Solomon Creed, however, the man Madjid had spoken to and who had asked about Josef Engel, the man who had taken Amand’s gun and field-stripped it without even looking, and walked out of the Commissariat in broad daylight, he imagined he was capable of all of it.