What She Saw

by Gerard Stembridge

  Vallette isn’t about to waste any time with goodbyes so she grasps at the only ammunition she has left and gibbers, “I recorded an interview about what I saw.”

  “That is exactly why we are here now, Madame Gibson. You cannot be trusted.”

  “I took the memory card from the camera. I have it.”

  She feels his grip tighten involuntarily, then relax again.

  “I understand you will say anything in this situation. If you have this memory card with you, then I will find it and then—”

  “I don’t have it on me. I hid it.”

  “Really? Well, it’s nothing for you to worry about now. We will find it.”

  “You won’t. Not without my—”

  “That will not be your problem. Believe me, Madame Gibson, I do not dislike you. But . . . circumstances . . .”

  He pushes with precise, unstoppable aggression.

  The water is as cold and black as Lana had feared. Her arms and legs flail. She tries to hold her breath but why is the surface so far away? Why can she not reach it? Then her mouth feels air again and she sucks it in. Her shriek seems to come from somewhere else. Stop thrashing, she tells herself over and over, it’s not helping. But she can’t stop. There’s no one to cry out to; even Vallette is no longer to be seen. In the distance, streetlights have come on. Why can’t she get hold of herself, exercise some control? She dips below and pulls herself up and again dips below and pulls herself up, her mouth full of filthy water. She gulps and coughs and can’t breathe. It’s now almost as dark above as below. Lana is cold and shriveling, getting tinier, sinking down with only a forearm, a hand waving above water. Soon, sooner than she’d feared, Lana will no longer have it in her to haul her face back to the twilight air.

  “YOUR GUY HAS DROWNED HER.”

  “What?”

  Ferdie raised his eyes above the wall. Didi gave him the binoculars, but it was so murky dark that they weren’t much help. He couldn’t see Oscar or the American woman, but he recognized Vallette’s shape and gait as he walked away from the river’s edge.

  “He just heaved her in.”

  “Does she have any chance of . . .”

  Didi dismissed that with a snort just as through the binoculars Oscar came into Ferdie’s view, moving quickly, waving his phone. Vallette snatched it. Then a few seconds later he waved a hand and snapped something at Oscar, who started running toward the river, kicking off his shoes and pulling at his clothes. Vallette followed him more casually, still talking on the phone. Oscar dived in. Ferdie shivered instinctively. It had to be very cold in there.

  “Your laptop? Will I?”

  At first Ferdie wasn’t on Didi’s wavelength. The drama down at the river had all his attention.

  “There’s no one near the car.” The tone was demanding. Didi gestured for an immediate answer. “Now’s the time.”

  Ferdie connected the dots and remembered his laptop hidden under the driver’s seat.

  “Yeah, sure, okay.”

  Didi stood up and, like a ball, bounced downhill gathering speed. Ferdie looked through the binoculars to check that Vallette’s attention was still entirely focused on the river, then raised his head enough to peer down and watch Didi creep toward the car. He opened the back door and went in headfirst, and a few moments later his huge body began to wriggle out. When he emerged fully, he turned to show Ferdie the laptop clutched in his mighty paw. Ferdie wiggled the binoculars in acknowledgment, then raised them to see what was happening by the river. Vallette was kneeling by the female body splayed on the ground, but Oscar was no longer visible. Ferdie panned the binoculars quickly and found him, half-naked, holding his wet clothes in a bunch tight to his chest, trotting back toward the car.

  Surely he would spot Didi now. Ferdie looked down and saw him on his knees crawling quickly inside, easing the back door shut behind him. Oscar came closer and closer. Ferdie imagined poor Didi, squeezed low between the front and back seats: a whale in a dinghy. Hopefully, in the poor light Oscar might not notice him as he passed. But what then? As it happened Oscar didn’t pass at all. Instead he stopped at the trunk, threw it open, and pulled out some kind of rug or towel and started to dry himself off.

  Ferdie remembered how exposed he was. In order to see the car below, his entire head had to be above the wall. If Oscar or Vallette glanced up in this direction . . . He dropped down quickly. What now? Again he cursed the injury that rendered him incapable of even providing a diversion. He listened intently and after some time heard what could only be the trunk slamming shut. Now Oscar would either get into the car—which would be bad luck for Didi—or return to Vallette. Ferdie waited, then just as he was about to cautiously ease himself up, a hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him around.

  “Let’s go,” said Didi. He waddled round the BMW and got in. Ferdie scampered on hands and knees and hoisted himself into the passenger seat. Didi handed him the laptop, which he just tossed into the back, the last thing on his mind at the moment.

  “When I saw Oscar coming back to the car and opening the trunk, I couldn’t watch anymore. I was afraid he’d look up and see me. What happened?”

  “Nothing, I couldn’t see him.”

  “I think he was drying himself and putting his clothes on.”

  Didi shrugged. “Anyway—”

  “He pulled the woman out of the water, but I don’t know if she’s still alive or not.”

  “—look what I found.”

  Didi held up a black plastic rectangle about the size of a credit card.

  “It was hidden.”

  “Hidden?”

  “Pushed into the angle of the backseat.”

  “The American woman?”

  Didi shrugs. “I’d say.”

  Ferdie stared at the card and thought of the woman’s delicate hand, sliding ever so slowly, secretly, to hide it, get rid of it. It must be a very dangerous piece of plastic.

  HER EYES OPEN TO A BLACK SWIRL. HAD SHE LOST CONSCIOUSNESS? HER chest is exploding. For some reason she cannot move her arms and legs. A powerful arm is around her waist, but she does not know whose it is and she has no memory of when it took hold of her. The shock of cold air forces her mouth open and makes her chest heave. She coughs and spews foul-tasting fluid until her tongue and gums and the roof of her mouth feel like a recently emptied trash can. She still doesn’t have the strength to turn and see whose body is pressing against her, but the cold, wet skin is hairy and there’s power in the naked arm holding her, so that even though she resists spasmodically there’s little chance of escaping her rough savior. Eventually, choking, she lets herself be a rag doll in a dog’s mouth.

  Then, suddenly, they are at the river wall, too far down to clamber back on land. A thin rope drops into view. A hairy hand presses her hand to it. A low voice says, “Hold on,” and tries to close her hand around the rope, but when it’s pulled, Lana feels it rip through her palm and she lets go and hears French gasps and mutters. Lana spews again. The French voice hisses urgently. “Hold with both hands. Hold for your life with two hands.” This time she grips hard and feels the rope tug her upward. Below her, two hands on her ass whoosh her toward the riverbank. She’s aware enough by now to press her feet against the wall to help lift herself. Knees and arms scratch against the concrete as she’s dragged over the side onto safe ground. Lana lies facedown, coughing and heaving, but exultant too. By some providence she is still alive. Then she sees shoes, the most beautiful tan shoes. Shamefully scuffed. Who would wear Berluttis in a place like this? She feels a hand grab her hair and yank her face up.

  “Where is the memory card?”

  The waft of Vallette’s sophisticated cologne is at odds with his venomous expression, dangerous growl, and brutal grip.

  “Madame Gibson, can you hear me?”

  Now she sees a figure, naked except for boxer shorts, shivering, running past them toward the car. The other guy. Big Ears. Had he saved her?

  “It seems you have been clever, so we hav
e brought you back from the dead. Do you want to stay safe or not?”

  Vallette doesn’t seem to get it that she can barely make a sound. Her teeth start to clack-clack-clack. A moan comes from somewhere deep inside her.

  “What did you do with the memory card?”

  Now Lana is afraid again. She wishes Big Ears would come back to protect her. Is Vallette going to throw her in again? For now he just jerks her head back.

  “We will find it anyway. They are searching the attic room. It is only a matter of time. But if you save us even a little trouble, Madame Gibson, you can save yourself.”

  Even with her brain churning and bewildered, Lana knows the expiration date on that offer has long passed. She’s too close to the water and too weak for Vallette to resist rolling her back in once she’s given him the information. Especially when the truth would only take him seconds to confirm. Some tiny part of her can still find comedy in the fact that they’re tearing an apartment apart up on rue d’Aboukir for a prize that’s only a few yards away. When she coughs up more—only a dribble this time—Vallette lets go of her hair and steps back. She hears him mutter something and then feels that hairy grip again. Big Ears has returned and once more she’s a rag doll in his hands. Away from the river, so that’s good. Back to the car, please. Leather seats so soft and warm, they might even give her something to—Lana is dropped rather than thrown, but that doesn’t make the grit and cold any less uncomfortable. It only takes a second or two for her hands and cheek to recognize the damp, soft, but rough texture: sand. He had dumped her into one of the sandpits. Now she’s getting a forced facial scrub, accompanied by Vallette’s voice, calm again, all outward anger gone. The real terror of it, returned.

  “I cannot believe that you want to die, but you are about to.”

  Whatever the calm in Vallette’s voice, there’s rage in the pressure on the back of her neck that holds her face helpless in the grit.

  “Oscar, attrape-elle.”

  There is a switch of hands. Oscar’s hold is a little more relaxed. Lana can hear Vallette speak quietly and rapidly. On the phone presumably, checking. Her only chance now is to keep this story alive and kicking. As long as they don’t have the memory card, surely Vallette won’t dare kill her. And they can’t hang around here forever, right?

  He finishes the call and barks something at Oscar, whose hand now roves up her body from feet to ass, between her legs and up her back. Then he flips her around and she watches Vallette do the same search on her front with unembarrassed efficiency. Only because she knows how lucky it was that she’d been unable to grab the memory card when Vallette had pulled her from the car does she manage to restrain herself from biting his hand as it passes from her breasts up to her hair.

  “So, you do not have it, and every inch of the attic space is being searched. It won’t be very long now.”

  “What about outside the apartment, or in the elevator? Or the courtyard? Maybe I dropped it there somewhere as we left.”

  The sand clings to her and she is chilled now, but the giddy pleasure of baiting Vallette almost makes up for the misery. He struts toward the car waving at them to follow. Little by little, she thinks, she’s working her way back to some kind of safety.

  It’s a setback that Vallette sits in the back of the car on the side she had occupied, at exactly the spot where the memory card is: no chance of Lana recovering it right now. Oscar throws her a thick woolen blanket from the trunk and steers her to the front passenger seat, before settling in behind the wheel. But he doesn’t start the engine. Instead they sit in silence for what seems like ten or fifteen minutes. She rubs her head dry with the blanket and tries to keep the rest of herself warm and considers how she might recover the memory card. There’s certainly no chance with this seating arrangement and they won’t leave her alone in the car. Without the card her strategy is little more than dangerous bluff on a tight deadline. Just now, damp and shivering and dirty, Lana actually finds it hard to care much. Behind her the clicking of fingernails begins, grating in the silence.

  The way Vallette snaps at his cell when it rings suggests anxiety, which is good. As he talks, he pushes the door open and raises himself from his seat. Lana can guess what he’s being told. The attic room has been taken apart, but no memory card has been found. He sits back, his hard ass right where the precious card is hidden, and spits into the phone. Then he ends the call, leans forward, and grabs Lana by the throat.

  “Where is it?”

  Lana’s only reply is to match the flaming intensity in his eyes. Oscar puts a hand on his boss’s elbow and the warning touch seems to bring him to his senses. But the bottle has been shaken, the cork popped, and real psychotic rage has spurted out.

  Despite her fear that Vallette might yet be pushed too far, Lana’s secret knowledge gives her the courage, or the foolhardiness to say, “And I’m supposed to be the one who’s manic.”

  Now Vallette’s demeanor shifts unexpectedly to weary admiration.

  “All right, Madame Gibson. I give you the victory. Tell me where the memory card is and as soon as it is in our possession, you can go free.”

  “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “You have no choice.”

  “Well, yes. Actually I have. We both know that. First things first. Take me away from here. I want to be somewhere I feel safer. Then we’ll see.”

  She can feel his laser look at the back of her head for the longest time, as if in a silently deranged attempt to break her, impose his will. Then he seems to give up because Oscar reacts to a signal in the rearview mirror and drives back out onto the road. Despite her own exhaustion and fear, Lana can appreciate how wearying this must be for Vallette: right now, more than anything he’d love to swat this fly, but the more calculating part of him accepts that this is not a good option. Does his particular illness have a name? Maybe it’s been diagnosed and he’s taking something for it. She should handle things more delicately so as not to push him over the edge. But delicacy had never been Lana’s thing and certainly isn’t in her present mood. The meds would actually be very welcome now. It’s going to be so challenging to keep her insolent tongue under control. If only she could channel some of Brian’s caution. Right now it goes against her every instinct, but it’s the sensible strategy.

  To her intense relief it’s clear that they’re heading back toward the center of Paris. Traffic becomes heavier, and the cityscape ahead begins to assume a recognizable shape. The Île St.-Louis appears and, beyond it, the first sighting of Notre Dame. Even the bridges start to look familiar and soon they pass in quick succession, Petit Pont, Pont St.-Michel, and Pont Neuf, where, less than twenty hours ago, she had crossed to the Left Bank in search of Nathan and, instead of finding refuge and solace, had accelerated her free fall into peril. Yet her rage at his betrayal had calmed. Why? Because it wasn’t real betrayal, more like the law of unintended consequences delivering a more than usually aggressive body blow. Of course, it’s also because her conscience likes the idea of some punishment to atone for what she’d done to Nathan long ago. After today, they must be about even.

  At Pont Alexandre, Oscar swings right and crosses the river once more. Lana guesses they are traveling north. Moving at speed now in dark dusk, she can’t even read street names.

  Finally, they pull up outside a row of rather beautifully maintained Haussmann buildings, and Oscar gets out, goes to a door, and speaks into an intercom. Then he pushes the door and holds it open. Vallette steps out, opens the front passenger door, clamps a hand on Lana’s arm, and whips her very speedily into the building. Once they are inside, Oscar pulls the door shut. He remains outside with the car. And the memory card.

  Vallette marches her silently up a curving stairway and guides her into a dark room. He flicks on the hard, sudden light to reveal an opulent bathroom.

  “You will want to clean yourself.”

  He pulls the door after him. Lana hears a key being turned and doesn’t even bother to confirm
that she’s been locked in. There is no tub, just a spacious enclosed shower. The only window has a frosted glass pane and is too small to climb through. She opens it all the same and sees a steep drop to a little garden with high walls. In the mirror Lana catches sight of her sand-spattered face and wild graveled hair. Perhaps it’s the physical discomfort and general wretchedness of her situation, but she feels no vulnerability, no danger at all as she peels off her damp, stinking clothes. The shower is instantly hot and powerful, as is the pleasure. The grime of violation, a trickle of death stream down her body into the drain, down to the Parisian sewers.

  She wishes Brian would come to her now, slipping in silently as he used to do, suddenly caressing her with soapy hands, fingers massaging her scalp. It’s such a long time since he’d last molded his body against hers all the way from foot to calf, to thigh, his penis tickling, his heart thumping against her shoulder blades, his mouth breathing warm air on her neck, his tongue searching for her lobe; long before Dublin, way too long ago. Not his doing, he had merely picked up the signal that such passionate intrusions weren’t welcome anymore. How Lana would welcome him now. She has so very little fight left, probably not enough at this point to attempt escape and get to the airport to board that plane. Her most comforting image comes from some old airline commercial: a slo-mo shot of a gorgeous but anxious boyfriend in the arrivals lounge, running to greet his fabulous girlfriend as soon as she appears. The delirious embrace, the ecstatic expressions on those perfect cheekbones. In Lana’s mind the faces now become hers and Brian’s. But another part of her cannot envisage such a scene ever happening. She no longer holds the ace card in her hand and sooner or later will be found out.

  Stepping out of the shower, she discovers that, creepily, her clothes have been removed and a fluffy bathrobe has been placed on a stool. Who had entered while she showered? Vallette or some underling? She hadn’t heard a thing. She wraps the robe tightly around herself. The door is still locked. She dries herself, then sits on the stool. After a few more minutes there’s a tap on the door.