Faces in the Rain

by Roland Perry

  ‘Are you from the Pacific?’ I asked.

  ‘Tahiti. I am the priest for many Tahitians who come to Paris for treatment.’

  ‘At the hospital?’

  ‘Yes. It is one of the major centres in Paris. There are other hospitals, but this one has more Polynesians than anywhere else.’

  I took some more port.

  ‘You know Freddie?’ I asked. I still couldn’t put him in the past tense.

  ‘Mr May?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never met him. He had come to the hospital, I believe, in recent days for treatment. It is another sad case. Another victim.’

  ‘What sort of cancer did he have?’

  ‘It was a brain tumour.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said.

  ‘It’s what they said at the hospital. It was on the official report.’ The priest noted my doubt and added, ‘He was taken here in the middle of the night for an emergency operation. He collapsed at his apartment.’

  ‘When you say, “official report”, who is the official?’

  The priest held out his hands.

  ‘When a patient dies, the doctors fill in a form for the Coroner and he approves it.’

  ‘I see. So the cause of death is on the word of the doctor?’

  ‘Oui.’

  The priest poured me more port.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he said.

  ‘Freddie seemed so well. He didn’t say he had any tumour.’

  ‘These things happen very quickly. It’s God’s way.’

  ‘He might not have been strong enough for the operation,’ I suggested, ambivalently.

  The priest smiled sympathetically. It was a look of understanding. His role seemed to be one of providing comfort for the afflicted, but I had a hunch he had more on his mind.

  I sipped the port. I wanted to have an autopsy done on Freddie, but that would have to wait. I thanked him for the drink and shook his hand as we wandered out to the cemetery. I nodded to the hospital.

  ‘It would be a good idea not to say you had met me,’ I said. He looked confused. I moved back into the light of the church’s door so I could see his face more clearly. He wanted to say something.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said, ‘but if you are interested in that place, I think it should be, well, checked on . . . investigated.’

  ‘I think so too.’

  ‘These poor islanders get sick. Usually . . .’ he lowered his voice, ‘usually as victims of the French nuclear tests. Some are here as a result of the aboveground tests twenty years ago. Others are more recent victims.’

  ‘From accidents with the underground tests?’

  ‘I’m not sure about “accidents”,’ he whispered, ‘I talk to these people.’ He swept a hand to indicate the graves, ‘they tell me their life history. Everything. And, yes, some problems do occur.’ He paused and frowned. ‘For instance, a storm once caused radiation waste to be scattered round some of the islands.’

  I moved inside with the priest again. He shut the door. We remained standing.

  ‘On other occasions bombs have malfunctioned.’ he said.

  ‘Stuck in the underground shafts?’

  ‘Yes. And many other strange things have occurred. But the cancers are various and often in very young people.’

  ‘Are you saying that all the patients coming here die?’

  ‘Some recover, but very, very few. For most it is their last home before meeting their Saviour.’

  There was a noise outside. The priest ushered me to a side door behind a curtain near the front altar. I hid behind the curtain as he let a visitor in. They spoke in French and I could just hear bits of the conversation. The visitor was enquiring about the burial of Freddie. The priest assured him that it had been done and led the visitor outside. I tried the door behind the curtain. It opened. I slipped out into the forest and found the track leading back to Rue Des Gardes, which took me down to the town centre, where I waited for a city-bound train.

  It pleased me to leave Meudon with at least some information, even though that would take some sifting. I dwelt on it on the short ride to Gare Montparnasse in the half-filled carriages.

  I mulled over the priest’s words. Cassie had spoken about the the blunders by the French in testing their bombs. The Polynesians were the victims. It made me wonder about the man – the Dominator – who had drugged me in the hospital. Could he be Michel? If he was, that threw fresh light on Vital’s operations at Meudon.

  The victims could be used for experimentation with new cancer drugs. It could also explain why Maniguet was after Cassie’s research. He and Cochard were probably meant to deliver it to Meudon. If this was the case, Michel could be using her research results to experiment on patients with various cancers and then use in drugs marketed by Vital.

  There was still one last chore before I escaped Paris. I had to get some information on Claude Michel.

  TWENTY-TWO

  HER NAME was Nicole and she worked on the front desk at Le Monde’s archive section. Despite her spiked hair and a ring through a nostril, she was sweet. I would have put her at nineteen, and she was the last hope of obtaining a few facts about Claude Michel. It helped that she spoke English and had a brother in Australia.

  Nicole had given some indication over the phone that she knew why no newspaper files on Michel were available to the public. Officials at several papers had either denied a file existed or had refused to even check if there were any cuttings. My chances of finding a photo of the man, or even a report on him had faded. For that reason I had decided Nicole was worth a visit, even though I was loath to venture out.

  She seemed nervous when I arrived. A bespectacled, bald manager eyed us. We were near Boulevard Haussmann in the eighth arrondissement, which I knew a little. I leant forward on the counter.

  ‘You have been most kind,’ I said, ‘when’s your lunch hour?’

  Nicole’s eyes flicked to the manager. I didn’t think he understood English.

  ‘I don’t take lunch out, Monsieur.’

  ‘Quelle dommage,’ I said, looking at the clock above her head. It was just noon.

  Nicole blushed. I shook hands with her and slipped her a card with a note. It suggested we meet at 12.30 at Cafe Haussmann, a seafood restaurant.

  I waited in a doorway across from Le Monde. Exactly at 12.30 Nicole bounced out the door. At first it looked as if she might head for the cafe as she reached Haussmann, but she stopped at a bread shop. I hurried after her and caught her on the way out, a breadstick under her arm.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur,’ she said apprehensively.

  ‘Couldn’t you join me at the cafe?’

  ‘No, I am sorry. I only get a ’alf ’our.’

  She glanced down to the street leading to the newspaper building.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘there is a way for you to get the information you want.’ Her eyes flicked towards the same street again. She was making me edgy.

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘You must ask for the papers for the dates concerned.’

  ‘But I don’t know the dates!’

  ‘Try the week of June 23, six years ago.’

  She turned to go. I touched her on the forearm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why is there secrecy around this man?’

  ‘There is no file on him,’ she said with two more furtive glances, ‘the security people removed it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I must go, Monsieur.’

  I watched her step off with a determined swivel on her high heels, and after a minute, I walked round the block back to the newspaper’s archives section.

  The manager was at the counter. I asked for the microfiche of several newspapers from different years and included the first three days of the week Nicole had suggested. I found a cubicle and began reading the microfiche. There were articles each day about Claude Michel but they contained less information than I already knew about him.

  I asked f
or the last four papers in the week of June 23. One of them carried a head and shoulders shot of the man in question and an article concerning Michel’s background. I felt as if I had discovered gold.

  Nicole had reappeared at the counter.

  ‘The microfiche seems to be missing for June 28,’ I said with a smile, ‘could I possibly have a look at the original?’

  Nicole disappeared to a back room.

  When I had the original copy I returned to the cubicle and began looking at every page. I took notes on a Mitterand speech. The manager wandered to me, and with a sibilant and salivatory voice, asked me what I was looking for.

  ‘Je cherche un article au sujet du Président,’ I said beginning a lie off the top. He was distracted by the number of customers at the counter and excused himself.

  I looked round. The manager was serving someone else. Nicole was talking to another customer. Others were coming in and it was busy. I coughed long and hard and tore down the page carrying Michel’s photo. I folded the page and stuffed it down the front of my trousers, returned the papers to the counter and began to walk away.

  I made for the door and dashed for Boulevard Haussmann. I broke into a sprint. A taxi pulled up beside me. I hesitated but it was occupied so I charged on, changed direction down Rue Tronchet and puffed my way to the metro at Madeleine.

  I joined the hundreds of subterranean commuters and jumped on the first train in. I couldn’t resist the temptation to read the article on Claude Michel.

  The article’s author had tried to draw a psychological profile that would make sense of Michel’s brutal indifference to the more than twenty people who were said to have died because of his malpractice. It touched on the relationships with the two people who had brought him up – his mother, now dead, who was described as a ‘cold and ambitious’ medical administrator, and his wealthy grandfather, who owned a chain of old people’s homes across France and Belgium.

  No one seemed to know the identity of Michel’s father. Michel’s mother was quoted as saying there had been violence in the home when young Claude was growing up, but she claimed that it had never been directed at the boy, who was called reclusive at school.

  Because of the conflict between the mother and the grandfather at home he was sent abroad for several years. Without evidence, the journalist even speculated that the grandfather was in fact Michel’s real father. Michel had done his medical training in Switzerland where he had become attached to the pharmaceutical industry.

  I studied the photo. Michel had fair hair, which was thick and brushed straight back, with no part, like Mozart’s. He had a round face and a distinctively big nose. His eyes frowned under ridges of light eyebrows, and his jaw was set aggressively. His large mouth was half caught in a sneer. The sideways glance he was giving the photographer and the movement of his right forearm, which was coming up to hide his face, indicated he didn’t want his snapshot taken.

  Michel wore a light raincoat and was coming out of a doorway. An out-of-focus umbrella was poking up behind his head.

  Over the years I had prided myself on a perfect memory for faces. I would meet people I had not seen for as much as twenty or thirty years and recall them. It had turned me into an amateur physiognomist.

  Michel’s picture bothered me. I was blocked on the face. I didn’t think I had ever seen that visage before. But the demeanour, the frown, the angle of the mouth, the jaw thrust, the sneer. They all rang bells. The photo was slim pickings from my trip abroad, but it was something.

  Another face in the rain.

  PART THREE

  HUNTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE TRIP HOME took six days, twice as long as anticipated. Farrar advised me to take a train to Marseilles, and planes to Athens, Bali and Timor, where I was supposed to be helped out by an ex-Australian Intelligence – ASIS – agent. He never appeared and I had to bribe a pilot for Colonial Sugar Refineries to fly me to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Gulf was patrolled by the Australian army and airforce, but because of its vastness, we made it unhindered. Once there I found it easy to befriend prawn fishermen on leave who drove me to Mount Isa in west Queensland, where I caught a plane to Mackay on the east coast. From there it was a matter of a three-day drive down the scenic east-coast road to Melbourne, where I arrived after dark.

  On the way, I put through calls to Oliver Slack who gave instructions on how to reach his hideaway apartment in the city. I also phoned Cassie and got her answer machine each time, which put me off leaving a message. The frustration of not being able to see her made a visit to her apartment my first task.

  Cassie unlocked the door and struggled into her apartment laden with shopping bags, which she threw onto a sofa. Her first act was to switch off the answer machine and play back messages as she flopped in a chair with her back to me. I was standing near the second bedroom, unsure of whether to announce myself now or when she had shut the front door, just in case someone had accompanied her home.

  Cassie pulled a can of diet Coke out of a shopping bag, zipped it open and reached for a pad and pencil as the playback messages began.

  ‘Cassie, it’s Duncan Hamilton here. I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t steal your files. I interrupted the man who was trying to. When I left your apartment the files were sitting on your study desk. If they have been taken, I repeat, it was not me.’

  Cassie stood up.

  ‘When I return to Melbourne I will contact you. I want to explain things to you. (pause) I hope you are well. Bye for now.’

  Cassie didn’t bother to listen to the other messages. She put down the Coke and began dialling.

  ‘Is Senior Detective Benns there please?’ she said. I stepped into the room and grabbed the phone. She screamed. I put the receiver down and kicked the door shut.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said, ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘You can’t get away with this,’ she said. ‘The police are checking me every morning and night.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, slipping into a chair, ‘I’m getting fed up with the charade.’

  Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘The police say you murdered that man in my apartment!’ she said.

  ‘It was an accident! He was stealing your work.’

  ‘When I got back from Paris, the study door was unlocked.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Whoever opened it knew where the study key was.’

  ‘He did, but I didn’t! I still don’t know where you keep it.’

  We stared at each other. I sat next to her.

  ‘It would help to know,’ I said quietly, ‘exactly how Benns got in touch with you.’

  ‘He and O’Dare arrived Sunday.’

  ‘No warning? He just arrived?’

  Cassie nodded.

  ‘If Benns learnt I was in Paris,’ I said, ‘he could have flown from Australia in a day.’

  I weighed that for a moment.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Cassie said, breaking my concentration.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘When Benns actually got in, what did he do? How did he contact you?’

  ‘They arrived at the Lutetia, and demanded to see us. He looked as if he had come straight off the plane. He and O’Dare were jetlagged. Could hardly keep their eyes open.’

  I reached for the can of Coke and took a swig.

  ‘At first they accused me of murder,’ Cassie said, ‘but Peter proved I was out of the country when it happened. Then O’Dare took me aside and got nasty. She said they could charge me with being an accessory to murder. They asked me about you.’ Cassie was crestfallen.

  ‘I admitted I had seen you,’ she said.

  I kissed her gently on the cheek. She was unresponsive but it eased the tension.

  ‘So they forced you to help them?’ I said.

  ‘They were right in the room when you rang.’

  I pulled the article on Michel from an inside pocket and gave it to her.

  ‘Do you recognise this man?’ I asked.

&nbs
p; ‘No,’ she replied.

  The photograph seemed to affect her.

  ‘Do you know him?’ I persisted.

  ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘He may have had cosmetic surgery.’

  She looked up.

  ‘They can change so much these days, especially with lasers,’ she said, ‘you can have just about whatever face you want.’ She looked at me whimsically. ‘Perhaps that would solve your problem,’ she said, ‘you could have a permanent change rather than a disguise.’

  ‘Hey!’ I said, ‘no way. I’m not having surgery.’ I touched my nose. ‘It may not be the prettiest proboscis around, but I’m happy with it. I’d never be as desperate as that.’

  ‘I was only joking,’ she said, ‘I hate that sort of thing. My ex-husband was a plastic surgeon, in more ways than one. He and I had arguments over it all the time.’

  ‘Is he good?’

  ‘Colin is one of the best, if not the best, in the country.’

  ‘Michel may have had surgery here. Going on the little I know about him, he would have sought the best surgeon.’

  ‘Why?”

  I pointed to the photo.

  ‘He was no matinee idol the way he was. He would have given himself the best chance of improving his looks. It would be human nature. His nose was a problem, but the fleshy cheeks could have been hollowed out.’

  ‘And those ears!’ Cassie said. She stood and paced the room.

  ‘I’m not on terrific terms with my ex,’ she said, ‘but I could arrange a meeting, if you really feel it might help.’

  ‘Could I trust him?’

  ‘Not to turn you in?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know.’

  I stood up and moved close to her.

  ‘And what about you?’ I said.

  She turned half away, making direct eye contact difficult.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m confused, OK?’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t rely on you. You were about to tell Benns I was back.’