The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  The sun’s strength was now immense. Mixed in with Franca’s exhaustion were the first signs of an intense headache. This she knew all too well, though usually it had only ever appeared in connection with Michael. Now it was apparently a reaction to her withdrawal from her regular medication.

  Oh, hell, she thought wearily.

  “I know that guy from somewhere,” said Alan. “I just can’t place him. But I’ve seen that face before.”

  “Maybe sometime at your mother’s house?”

  He shook his head. “I’d remember that. No, no. It was in a different context … but for the life of me I can’t think of it now.”

  He said nothing more about it, and soon they were in Torteval. The gate in front of Kevin’s house was closed, and so they parked the car on the side of the road just opposite. The tower of the Torteval church, with its distinctive pointed gables, soared up into the sky, which by then was radiant and cloudless. Franca could see the giant blue hydrangeas that grew along the cemetery wall. A very old stone wall, overgrown with moss … She tried to hold onto her impressions of this idyll, to draw strength from the peace that so marked the enchanted village, with its gardens all in bloom. She needed support against the panic, which was slowly regaining its strength and intent on rearing its head. She hadn’t given up yet.

  Fighting fear with hydrangeas, thought Franca, and made an effort to laugh at this thought. She couldn’t. The magnitude of her fear was too great, there was nothing funny about it.

  They opened the gate and walked into the garden. Bees were buzzing all around them, white blossoms trickled down from the cherry trees in the gentle breeze. All the doors and windows of the house were shut. Alan knocked on the door, but there was no response. They circled the house but couldn’t find anyone.

  “I don’t think Kevin’s home,” said Alan, disappointed. “I don’t get it! Where can he be?”

  “Maybe he’s out on some errand,” said Franca. She was secretly relieved. It had been weighing on her, the thought of confronting Kevin with these monstrous accusations which, for Alan, were clearly almost facts already. Besides, now she could hope they’d get home sooner. Maybe she would manage to get inside the protective walls of her room before the panic crashed over her like a tidal wave.

  Alan looked out over the garden, at the edge of which the sun was reflecting off the glass windows of the greenhouses.

  “Where are these famous new greenhouses anyway? The ones Kevin is allegedly in constant trouble over?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “Those over there have been here forever.”

  “No idea,” said Franca. “This is my first time coming here.”

  The house where Helene had spent the last night of her life … Franca looked up at the façade. Ivy was growing up the eastern side. The windows were latticed and each had green shutters on either side. You couldn’t imagine that a crime had its beginnings in this house. And yet something must have happened … something … because even if Franca didn’t share Alan’s ideas about what went on that night, still there remained a few peculiar facts that Franca couldn’t deny: above all that a rather distraught Helene had stood out on the street and waited on the taxi in the middle of the night, and up to now there’d been no convincing explanation for it.

  She was here, thought Franca, in this pretty, cozy little house. She ate with Kevin, drank with him, chatted … and then she heard something, or Kevin did something, that made her hurry to the telephone and call a cab in a whispering voice and that even made her too anxious to wait in the house until the driver knocked.

  Why was she so afraid? Franca asked herself. What could have frightened her so much at Kevin’s house, Kevin, whom she had known forever, whom she loved, whom she trusted, who was like a son to her?

  “Maybe he has another piece of land somewhere on the island,” Alan was thinking out loud. “And that’s where these mysterious greenhouses are. It’s possible he’s over there now. I’m going to see if I can find a neighbor and ask them.”

  She looked at him with admiration: admiration at how composed and determined his actions were. He had drunk a single glass of wine. He was good without alcohol, he was convincing, confident, and resolute. Franca knew all too well what it meant to go without your substance of choice. Alan, she was now convinced, didn’t need alcohol in the least. He might have taken it up because he thought he couldn’t meet life’s demands in any other way, but it had been an error on his part — a tragic underestimation of what he was capable of. He was a good-looking, intelligent, and educated man, and probably a brilliant lawyer. Still, she suspected that he had never really understood his own worth.

  They went back to the front garden and ran into a young man who was just coming through the gate. He was very tall and unusually thin and had blond hair that had been blow-dried with quite conspicuous care and shone silver in the sunlight. He looked so gay that he could have been the very embodiment of the term homosexual.

  He gave a start when he noticed Franca and Alan, but quickly recovered himself.

  “Mr. Shaye?” he said. “I don’t know if you still remember me. Steve Gray. We met once or twice at your mother’s house. Back when Kevin and I were still together.”

  Alan rubbed his forehead for a minute, then remembered. “Right! Mr. Gray. Good afternoon. We wanted to see Kevin. It seems he’s not at home.”

  “He’s rarely ever here these days,” Steve complained. He seemed very unhappy. Franca assumed that he was still deeply in love with Kevin, but that his feelings weren’t reciprocated. “I’m very worried about him.”

  Alan seized on this immediately, of course. “Yeah? Why?”

  Steve seemed keen to pour his heart out to someone, whoever it was. “He’s so harried. So restless. He’s got terrible worries. He always needs money, and I don’t really understand what it’s actually for.”

  “From everything I’ve heard,” said Alan, “he’s built or bought new greenhouses and completely overextended himself in doing so.”

  “Oh,” Steve brushed this aside, “he can’t have paid much for those greenhouses. Those ancient, rickety things … the previous owner must’ve practically given them to him!”

  “Where are these greenhouses?” Alan looked around. “It’s clear to see they aren’t on the property here!”

  “No, not here. They’re right on Perelle Bay. Originally they belonged to a large nursery, but the owner died two years ago. His heirs had no interest in keeping the company going and divided up the properties and buildings and sold them off. Kevin told me back then …” He broke off and directed a look of profound sorrow at Franca. “Kevin and I were a couple for almost three years,” he explained. “Although I fear he wasn’t always faithful.”

  “He told you that someone had offered to sell him greenhouses in Perelle Bay?” Alan pressed him. Steve’s relationship problems didn’t interest him in the least.

  “Yes, he told me about it. He borrowed money from me. I advised him against it. I thought it was foolish for him to buy greenhouses that were so far away from his own nursery. My thinking was that he’d only have extra work and added hassle with them.”

  “Where is Perelle Bay?” Franca jumped in.

  “On the western coast,” Alan explained. “A bit north of Pleinmont. Just a short trip by car from here, so as far as that goes I don’t find it all that surprising that Kevin acquired something there.”

  “He was incredibly secretive about the things,” said Steve. “He wouldn’t ever take me over there with him. I thought … well, what I thought was that he might be meeting another man there … and so one day I followed without him knowing. They’re real dumps he’s bought. Two of ‘em. Run-down and ramshackle.”

  “What’s he growing in there?”

  Steve shrugged his shoulders. “Back then there weren’t any plans yet, but then he’d also just bought them. He sai
d he mainly wanted to grow vegetables. He was incredibly angry when he found out that I’d followed him. I’ve never seen him so worked up. My God,” he ran a hand through his hair — which, however, was so perfectly styled and blow-dried that it immediately fell back in place. “I think that’s when I ruined things between us. After that our relationship started to fall apart. Nothing was ever quite right again.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Alan. He looked tense and excited. The information he’d just received must have supported his theory. Something wasn’t fitting right with Kevin’s story. And this made him even more suspect.

  “Well, if he isn’t there …,” Steve said waveringly, “I guess I’ll go then … I assume he’s in Perelle Bay, but I’d never follow him there again. I’d like for things to work between us again, you know. I loved Kevin very much. And I think we go well together.”

  Poor guy, Franca thought sympathetically. He seemed lost and lonely. She hoped that one day he would find happiness in love.

  “We absolutely have to speak with Kevin,” said Alan. “It’s best we drive to Perelle Bay now.”

  Steve looked mortified. “But don’t say a word about me! Please! He can’t know that I told you about the greenhouses. He’ll take it as a betrayal of trust. Please, don’t say anything!” His fear was pitiful.

  “No, no,” Alan promised. “We won’t say a word. Are you coming Franca?”

  She followed him to the car. It wasn’t likely, she thought with resignation, that she’d be getting back to her room again anytime soon.

  Even from far away they could already see the two broad greenhouses, which sat right on the edge of the bay. Now, with the tide nearing its peak, the water reached almost to the sides of the buildings. There were only a few yards of separation. A lone hiker crossed the small strip of sand that remained. Otherwise, there was no one in sight.

  They parked the car and went along the narrow, rugged path that led between grass and heather into the bay. Coming closer they understood what Kevin’s ex-lover had meant: the buildings looked extraordinarily run-down and dilapidated. Entire walls had been covered with makeshift boards, windowpanes were missing, discarded shutters nailed over them. It seemed barely imaginable that a person could have taken on such enormous costs to purchase two dumps like these.

  “Over there,” said Franca. “That’s Kevin’s car!”

  It was parked very close to the greenhouses.

  “So he’s here,” Alan affirmed with satisfaction. “We’re really lucky then.”

  They had made it to the first greenhouse. Alan opened the door and looked inside. A dusky light shone inside the warm, humid space. There were hardly any glass panes to let in light from outside, just about everything was boarded over. In the middle and along the walls there were planters with flower boxes in which a few sad vegetable stalks withered. Everything looked uncared for and neglected and showed none of the fussiness and love of order that usually set Kevin apart.

  “Can you see this as a burgeoning business?” Alan asked in disbelief. “This is the most makeshift nursery I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s obvious that Kevin doesn’t really have a handle on things,” said Franca. “This all looks rather chaotic to me.”

  “I’d say that it’s a kind of pseudo-nursery being run here,” said Alan. “This doesn’t look legit to me at all.”

  He looked around but couldn’t see anyone anywhere.

  “Let’s have a look inside the other greenhouse,” he said. “Kevin’s got to be here somewhere if his car’s outside.”

  They left the dilapidated heap. Outside, Franca took deep breaths. The fresh air did her good. There had been a stuffiness inside that had made her stifled feeling and her headache worse.

  “Ok then,” she said. “Let’s go look.”

  They opened the door to the second greenhouse. It was a huge gate, very wide, with two doors that both opened outwards. Here, too, the windows were covered over with wood planks and cardboard, but a few lights were on. Along the walls there were the same meagerly stocked planters and flower boxes that they had just seen. But in the middle of the floor there stood a white and green sailboat. A group of men was gathered around it.

  One of the men was Kevin.

  Franca didn’t understand what she was seeing at first, and she sensed that Alan, too, didn’t know right away what was happening before his eyes. The men’s conversation had suddenly gone silent; they turned towards the door and stared at those who had come in. Kevin grew pale, and it seemed like even the bags under his eyes grew darker.

  He was the first to break the silence.

  “Alan,” he cried out.

  The two men with Kevin looked at one another, not speaking, as if each was trying to figure out what the other was thinking.

  The spell was broken. One of them said sharply, “Who are those two?”

  Thoughts flew through Franca’s head. A sailboat, five strange men, Kevin, the half-decayed greenhouse, the atmosphere of fear and menace … she still couldn’t explain how they all fit together, but her gaze fell on Alan, and from the expression on his face she saw that he had just realized something and was piecing things together. She recognized something else as well: a barely noticeable twitch in his face, which let her know that he would be playing dumb — that he would be keeping his knowledge to himself.

  “We’re friends of Kevin’s,” said Alan. “We were just taking a trip around the island and thought we’d stop by. We didn’t know we’d be interrupting, of course.” The way he spoke was very carefree and disarming. Anyone who knew him would have been thrown: Alan displayed this kind of off-hand attitude only when there was something he wanted to hide.

  He casually raised his hand. “Ok, Kevin. You’re busy. We’re going to drive north along the coast for a bit. Franca should see the parts of the island she doesn’t know.”

  “Of course,” said Kevin, forcing a smile. “She still knows far too little of Guernsey.”

  “See you soon,” said Alan, nodded to the strange men and guided Franca out the door ahead of him. She felt his hand press unusually hard on her back, his fingers dug into her skin, hurt her.

  He wanted to get away from there as quickly as he could, and he had to maintain control of himself to make their exit look as natural as possible.

  They were barely outside when he whispered to her, “Quick! To the car! But we can’t run. They’re watching us, and they’ll know that we’ve picked up on something.”

  “Who are those people?”

  “Did you see the boat? They steal yachts. In Kevin’s so-called greenhouses the ships get re-painted. Then they probably go to France.”

  Keeping a normal pace they put distance between themselves and the shack. Franca felt her heart was racing, sweat breaking out on her palms and her stomach. The threat that she’d just been feeling as something vague and incomprehensible had suddenly become reality. The solitude all around them was no longer wild and beautiful, but rather dangerous and suffused with dread. The tide roared over the beach, the gulls’ cries were like cries of warning. She saw Helene before her, saw her lying on the meadow path, while blood spread all around her.

  My God, she thought in terror, because somehow it became clear to her at that moment that this was all connected, and that she had just seen the old woman’s murderers. That they were completely alone with those murderers.

  “Do you think that Kevin …” she began, and Alan knew what she was going to ask, spoke the words for her.

  “… has something to do with it? No question. He’s right in the middle of it. And I know one of those other guys too. Maya had a thing with him.”

  Who, Franca thought, has Maya not had a thing with?

  The path from the car to the greenhouses hadn’t seemed that long to her before — but with men at her back who had slit an old
woman’s throat, it seemed endless. She wanted to run, but a strange force within her held her back. She moved as normally as if she was going for a stroll on a warm early summer’s day.

  “I also remember where I know this Julien guy from,” Alan murmured. “I saw him yesterday at The Terrace. He was with Gérard — the guy who just asked who we were.”

  “But then …”

  He nodded. “We should warn my mother about him as quickly as possible. Or ask her to delay him until the police arrive. My cellphone’s in the car. What was the name of the café where she’s sitting with him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Franca. “No idea, I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “I’ll think of it in a second,” said Alan. “I’ve sat there myself a hundred times.”

  At the same moment they heard a harsh voice: “Just a minute! Stay where you are!”

  Alan cursed. “Now they’ve figured out that we figured something out. Go, Franca, run! As fast as you can!”

  She felt him take her hand. Felt him pull her forward. Her knees grew weak, began to shake.

  “I can’t,” she gasped, but he pulled her pitilessly along.

  “Think about Helene! Think about what they did to her! We’ve got to get to the car!”

  She stumbled more than she ran. She probably would have fallen if he hadn’t held her. She thought about Helene, and the panic towered over her like a dark, giant wave. She managed to push it back, but the next one, she knew, would get her. Get her completely. Then she wouldn’t be able to take another step.

  She could hear that the criminals were following them. She heard their shouting, felt their steps shake the ground. Another five hundred yards to the car. Had they locked the door? What if it didn’t start?

  In movies it never started, she thought, and since she felt like she was in a movie — or a nightmare — she was already convinced that the car would let them down.