by Simon Toyne
They turned on to the road leading up the side of the valley and Solomon stared through the rain and wipers at the distant line of stone houses. There was a dark stillness to Hamilton’s house. And there was something else.
‘That car,’ Solomon said, ‘it wasn’t there earlier.’
Amand peered at the car parked on the street. ‘Maybe someone came home late.’
Solomon studied the way it was parked, the steam on the windows, the grime around the wheels. ‘I don’t think so. Look at the registration plate.’
Amand leaned forward, saw the Cathar cross above the number 81 on the right-hand side of the plate. It was a Cordes plate, not a Mulhouse one. ‘Pull up behind it,’ he said. ‘And switch off the headlamps.’
Magellan did as he asked and they cruised to a standstill a few metres back from the car. Solomon listened through the low moan of the wind and soft patter of rain for any sound coming from inside the house, but heard nothing. He breathed in, trying to catch a scent of the place, but the wind was in the wrong direction.
‘Which house are they in?’ Amand asked.
‘The one with the flagpole. Who else is looking for them?’
Amand stiffened. ‘Did Marie-Claude say something?’
‘No, but your reaction did. It’s Léo’s father, isn’t it?’
Amand didn’t reply. ‘I’ll go ahead and check it out.’
‘No,’ Solomon said. ‘Let me. I’ve been inside. I know the layout.’
Amand shook his head. ‘I’ve spent most of today chasing you, I’m hardly going to let you go again that easy.’ He turned to Magellan. ‘If I’m not out in five minutes, call the local police.’ He got out of the car and the wind gusted in, bringing the snapping sound of the flag and the smell of the night – woodsmoke and rain. Amand closed the door softly and moved towards the house, leaving the smell of the night in the car. There was something in there, something small and chemical and Solomon focused on it as he watched Amand draw closer to the house. He paused by the front door, pulled a bottle from his pocket and popped something into his mouth before heading round the back, disappearing from sight just as Solomon’s mind lit up with a single word identifying the scent. ‘Call the police,’ Solomon said, turning to Magellan. ‘Call them now.’
Magellan looked at him in a strange detached way, like Solomon was a horse he was considering buying. ‘He said to give him five minutes.’
‘That’s because he doesn’t know that whoever’s in that house brought petrol with them.’
95
Léo breathed heavily against the hand clamped across his mouth. It was dark in the room with the lights off, but he could still see the colours, swirling in the dark like paint on black card: deep green and yellow for his mama, angry and scared; blues and reds for his father, good colours smeared with bad; and muddy, gloomy greys for the man with the shotgun. There was no brightness in him at all and Léo was frightened of him the most. He was like a vulture, a death creature with dull, greasy feathers.
He heard a noise. Downstairs. Léo wanted it to be Solomon, wanted him to come and save them again like he had on the motorway, but he knew it couldn’t be him. Solomon wouldn’t make any noise at all. The man with the muddy colours stepped out into the hallway and disappeared and Léo felt panic rise in his chest. He wanted to call out and warn whoever was downstairs that someone was coming but the hand on his mouth was too tight. He knew that the muddy-coloured man would kill whoever was down there, because his colours revealed his darkness. And if Léo didn’t warn that person, his death would be partly Léo’s fault. He had to try something. He opened his mouth and bit down as hard as he could and the hand jerked away, enough for him to snatch a breath, and he let out a shout, loud and short. Too short. The hand grabbed him by the throat and threw him on his back, his father’s face appeared, so close that Léo could see the fury in his eyes. His colours were black now, black and red. He grabbed his father’s wrist, his two small hands not even big enough to go all the way round, and tried to pull the hand away. But he was too strong. He could feel the hand squeezing his throat and there was nothing he could do to move it. Then a light came on, sudden and blinding after the darkness, and his father looked up and something hit him hard in the face, throwing him backwards and jarring his hand away from Léo’s throat.
Léo gasped for air and looked over at the door expecting Solomon to be standing there, but saw his mother instead, holding a broken chair in her hands. She staggered to regain her balance, lifted the chair again, but his father kicked out and caught her knee and she screamed in pain and crumpled to the floor.
Baptiste was on top of her almost before she hit the ground. He pinned her down and started hitting her, his colours blooming red. Léo looked up at the door but there was no sign of Solomon, no sign of anyone. It was happening again, the nightmare happening again, but no one was coming. No one would save them this time. He had to be the one. He had to become the superhero.
He looked around for a weapon, anything to stop his father beating his mama, saw her backpack on the floor by the bed and reached for it. Behind him his mama cried out but the dull thud of another punch silenced her. Léo saw the gun the moment he opened the backpack. It was heavy in his hand but he knew how to do this, he’d seen it a million times in comics and in movies – two hands to keep it steady, aim at the centre, squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it.
He swung the gun round and saw his father sitting up and looking down at his mama. Léo steadied the gun in a two-handed grip and saw what his father held in his hand. ‘No!’ he screamed.
His father looked up, his gun whipping up to point at Léo.
The flash of a gunshot lit the room.
96
Amand was in the study, holding his arm across his face against the smell of petrol, when he heard the cry, short and high-pitched, like a child. It set him sprinting out of the study and into the darkened hallway, leading with his gun. It had come from above, somewhere on the far side of the house. There was a door ahead, set into the wall by the stairs, and he surged towards it, pushed it open and swept the small hallway beyond.
There was a door directly opposite and another set of stairs leading up. The door was open slightly, the room dark, and there was a light on in the upstairs landing. He could hear sounds too, like a struggle. He knew he should check the room on the ground floor first to make sure it was clear, but he was on his own and the sounds of the struggle were coming from above him. Then he heard Léo scream ‘No!’ and he leaped up the stairs as a gunshot rang out above him and he sensed movement behind. Instinct made him drop and the shotgun blast tore up the wall around him and turned the bannisters to splinters. He heard another cry from above, Marie-Claude this time, but he stayed focused on the bottom of the stairs, firing blindly back through the smoke, three shots grouped at the spot by the door where the shotgun blast had bloomed in the dark.
He slid down the stairs on his side, blood blinding him in his left eye from a head-wound. He fired again, two more shots, the muzzle flashes lighting up the smoky dark. He came to rest in a pile at the bottom of the stairs, his brain screaming orders but his body not responding. It was darker after the brightness of the gunshots and he couldn’t make out much through the smoke and blood that stung his eyes. He blinked to get his night vision back and tried to breathe deeply, but the tightness in his chest felt like it was expanding, trying to split him open from within, and pain lanced through his left arm, spreading through his shoulder and chest. Verbier had warned him this would happen if he didn’t take it easy, but what choice had he had?
The pain continued to spread and he raised his gun and pointed it through the smoky darkness at the doorway, waiting for his heart to burst or someone to fire at him. The smoke cleared a little and he saw something lying on the floor in front of him, a body. The light filtering down from the landing picked out the outline and Amand recognized who it was. LePoux’s sightless eyes stared up at him. A shotgun lay on the floor beside him. He h
ad two holes in his centre mass and his shirt was drenched in blood.
Amand flexed his left hand and looked down at himself. His jacket was shredded and his chest was wet and stained red from multiple wounds. He looked up the splintered staircase at the light above him, tried listening out for any new sounds but his ears were ringing from the gunshots. He needed to get up the stairs and make sure Léo and Marie-Claude were OK, only his body didn’t want to move. He could feel it shutting down as the pain grew out from his arm and chest. But he had to move, somehow he had to. Because if LePoux was here, he knew that Baptiste would be here too.
97
The gunshot snapped Marie-Claude to attention. She looked up at Baptiste, straddling her and pinning her to the floor. He had a gun in his hand and was pointing it into the corner, the corner where …
‘NO!!’
She exploded in rage and fear, bucking against the floor and battering Baptiste with her arms to get him off her. The bed was in the way, blocking her view of the corner where Léo had been, where Baptiste had been pointing his gun. She thrashed harder and Baptiste tilted backwards, offering no resistance. She wriggled out from under him and clambered up the side of the bed and sobbed in relief when she saw Léo, standing against the wall, staring at Baptiste. The gun looked huge in his tiny hand. He blinked and looked at her and she saw a flicker of pain in his eyes as he saw her beaten face.
‘I remembered what to do,’ he said, sounding dazed and distant. ‘They always thumb the safety off before squeezing the trigger. I remembered.’
Marie-Claude scrambled across the bed and hugged him tight, reaching for the gun and pulling it from his fingers. She turned back to look at Baptiste. He was slumped on the floor and against the wall, clutching at his chest where blood ran thick over the hand that still held the gun. She could hear the wheeze and whistle of his breathing. Baptiste looked up at her, his eyes filled with hate. He tried to lift his gun but only managed to raise it a few inches before it dropped back down again.
Marie-Claude looked past him into the smoke-filled hallway. She had heard the gunshots coming from downstairs. LePoux was out there and he had a shotgun. She remembered the pile of paper in the study, the open can of petrol next to it. Her instinct was to hunker down and stay quiet, but they couldn’t. They needed to get out of here.
‘Come on, Léo,’ she whispered, her mouth stinging where her lip was split. She scooped her rucksack off the floor and slid it on to her shoulder. She listened out for any noises in the house, but all she could hear was the wet sucking sound of Baptiste’s breathing. She looked at the gun clutched in his hand and thought about taking it from him, but it was covered in blood and she didn’t want to touch him or go anywhere near him. Instead, she grabbed Léo’s hand and pulled him after her, switching the light off before stepping out into the smoky corridor, leaving Baptiste alone in the dark with the awful sound of his own breathing.
98
Solomon turned to Magellan at the first gunshot. ‘We need to help them.’
‘No,’ Magellan said, ‘we really don’t.’ He switched on the engine and started to turn the car round.
A shotgun blast shook the night, followed by the crackle of more gunfire. ‘But there’s a woman and young boy in that house. He’s the reason I’m here. I need to save him.’
Magellan shook his head. ‘A fantasy. This quest you think you’re on, to save people and discover who you are, is an invention, a narrative to frame your delusions. You don’t need to save anyone to find out who you are. I can tell you who you are.’
Pain burned on Solomon’s arm. ‘Turn back,’ he said. They were picking up speed now, racing along wet roads towards the town centre.
Magellan glanced at him. ‘You’d rather go back there and help those strangers than find out who you are?’
Solomon did want to know who he was, had walked thousands of miles to try and find out, but there was something stronger compelling him, something bigger than himself. ‘We need to go back,’ he repeated.
Magellan shook his head. ‘A neighbour will have heard the gunshots and called the police by now. We can’t risk it.’
Solomon knew he was probably right. He was a fugitive from the French authorities so it was safer for him to get away. But his own safety wasn’t important, not as important as his responsibility to Léo, the burning pain in his shoulder told him that much, and he trusted that more than anything Magellan told him. ‘Tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘How is it that I know many things yet nothing of myself? How can I know the phone number for an obscure address in France, or what fear smells like, or that if you hold your finger against your wrist while putting on handcuffs you leave enough of a gap to be able to escape?’
He held his right hand up, free from the cuff, then moved, fast and fluid, unclipping Magellan’s seat belt with one hand while he grabbed the steering wheel with the other and yanked down hard.
Magellan stamped on the brakes but it was too late, the front dipped savagely and their momentum flipped them over. The interior exploded with dust and noise as airbags deployed. The car rolled down the road three times before skidding to a halt on its side in a shower of sparks and shattered glass.
Solomon unclipped his belt, battered airbags down and wriggled out of the broken side window. He heard a moan and Magellan’s face appeared among the deflating airbags, a large cut above his eye dripping blood on to his face. He looked up at Solomon and tried to unclip his seat belt but some internal injury sent agony lancing through him and he cried out in pain. ‘Help me,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘Only I can tell you who you really are.’
Solomon saw something in amongst the wreckage. ‘I’d rather find out for myself,’ he said, reaching inside for the file with his photograph clipped to the front that had spilled from Magellan’s briefcase.
Then he turned and started to run, cutting across driveways and gardens to take the most direct route up the hill and back to Hamilton’s house.
99
Marie-Claude listened through the silence, her eyes wide against the dark. The shotgun blast had come from downstairs so they couldn’t go that way.
She heard a car starting up outside and driving away. Maybe LePoux had left, scared away by the gunfire, but she couldn’t risk it. Pulling Léo after her, she set off up the stairs, keeping away from the bannister in case the vigneron was lurking below, pointing the barrel of a shotgun up and waiting for movement.
They reached the top landing and she pressed her ear to the connecting door for a moment before twisting the key to unlock it. The door creaked open, revealing the dark upper landing of the main house. She pulled Léo through the door, locked it behind them and left the key in the lock. She listened again, hoping for a friendly sound, a voice calling out for them, Solomon or Hamilton, but all she heard was the thump of her own heartbeat and the hiss of blood in her ears.
Marie-Claude looked down at Léo, pressed her finger to her lips as she moved to the stairs and they started to creep down, one step at a time, listening the whole way. She could smell a burned salt odour that reminded her of Bastille Day fireworks and she gripped Léo’s hand tighter as she realized that the gunshots must have happened here and that whoever fired them might still be around. She could see the front door now, across the hallway from the stairs, and she swept the darkness with the gun, ready to fire at anything that moved or stood in her way as she moved towards it. The doors to the lounge and Hamilton’s study were both open, the rooms beyond dark, and she caught a new smell, like paint or petrol, and her lizard brain lit up with the urge to flee.
They reached the door and she turned back to the hallway, pushing Léo behind her and fumbling with the lock. She heard a noise, like something being dragged up the gîte stairs, and panic rose up as she considered what it might be. She twisted the handle and the front door thankfully opened, bringing a blast of cold night air into the house. She saw movement, over by Hamilton’s study, and she whipped the gun towards it. The door creaked a litt
le then settled.
Only the wind. It was only the wind.
She backed out through the door, closed it behind her and leaned back against the stone wall of the house, allowing herself to breathe for what seemed like the first time in hours. She looked down at Léo, smiling in an effort to reassure him that they were safe.
‘Find the car keys, Léo,’ she whispered, handing him the backpack. She scanned the driveway, the shadowy garden, the street beyond, keeping guard until Léo held the keys up with a tiny jingling sound. ‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
Marie-Claude forced herself away from the solid reassuring stone wall of the house and moved across the drive, heading back to where she’d parked the car. She pressed the electronic key fob and the indicator lights flashed, too bright in the darkness, and opened the back door for Léo, dropping her backpack on the floor and strapping him in out of ingrained habit.
She didn’t notice the shutter on the first-floor window swing open, or the gun appear and point down at her, wavering slightly in the darkness.
100
The gun felt heavy in Baptiste’s hand and it took every grain of his dwindling energy to keep it steady.
He could feel the blood filling his lungs, drowning him breath by breath, his strength leaking out of him with every heartbeat. The journey across the bedroom floor to open the shutter had been a pure effort of will, every inch a tiny victory. One single thought had driven him on, acting like a light in the growing dark:
Léo had done this to him. His own son had shot him.
He could see him now, tiny and distant in the back seat of the car, coming in and out of sight as Marie-Claude strapped him in. She had done this. She had turned his son against him.
He took a breath to try and steady his aim and his chest wound sucked and gurgled. He was waiting for Marie-Claude to stand up and move away from Léo, but she was taking too long. What kind of stupid bitch worries about seat belts at a time like this? He took another breath and felt the gun get heavier.