Instead of answering, she asked, “Who are you going to meet?”
“Some people you don’t know.” It sounded evasive. “Friends. I’m already a little late …” He gestured at a few pound notes that he had left on the table, weighted down by the ashtray. “My treat.”
He took hold of her arms, bent down to her and tried to kiss her, but she turned her head away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
It was a sudden impulse that caused her to get right to the point. Or maybe it was simply her way of doing things. All her life, she’d rarely had much time for evasions or clever stratagems.
“Is it true that you’re in with people who steal ships and sell them in France?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed. His mouth tightened. “Who was that on the phone?”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. All I want is an answer to my question.”
“Oh God!” He put a hand to his forehead. “Oh God!” He sank back into his chair. For the moment it seemed his nerves had left him. All at once he looked very wretched, and very old.
She stared at him. Without really wanting to, she had managed in a second to do what Franca had asked. Julien had no thoughts of leaving now. He’d probably gone weak in the knees. She had taken him off guard, surprised him in such a way that it might be more than a few minutes before he was capable of forming a coherent thought again.
She realized that Franca had been telling the truth. Otherwise Julien’s reaction would have been different. He would have been baffled, bewildered. Or he might well have laughed and asked her what she meant with such nonsense … but he wouldn’t have collapsed, he wouldn’t have gotten so pale. He was the very picture of guilt.
“Oh God!” Now it was she who whispered it.
Nothing in the day’s outward appearance had changed. The sunlight still reflected off the water in a thousand glimmering facets. The seagulls still let their joyful cries ring out in the magnificent summer air. The people all around them still laughed and chattered away. The placid Castle Cornet still towered over the harbor, and benevolently surveyed all the bustling activity.
And yet everything was different. Dark. Threatening. It seemed to Beatrice as if the day around her had receded. As if a wall had been set up, with the world on the one side and her and Julien on the other. They weren’t a part of it anymore. They were alone.
And all of a sudden it was as if the years and decades were falling away. Julien was no longer this old man with the white hair and the wrinkled face, and she herself was no longer the old woman who would soon be celebrating her seventy-second birthday. Before her she saw the young Julien, saw his dark, shining eyes and heard his laugh. But she also saw his tears, she saw his defiance. She saw him in the cramped garret, saw him staring out the window at the blue sky, and felt his despair. His anger and his fear. She saw him mourning the years that were stolen from him. She stood beside him, the young girl who wondered how she could help him and yet knew that she could do nothing, that there was no way she could free him, give him back the life that had been taken from him.
She couldn’t help him, not back then. But today she could.
Reality returned. The wall dissolved. The sun, the gulls, and the people were all close by once more. She was wide awake now. She knew what she had to do.
She shook him by the shoulder. “Come on. Quick. The police will be here any moment. Franca and Alan somehow got on the trail of you and your pals, and Franca’s sending the police here. We’ve got to scram!”
He stared at her, wide-eyed. She took his hand, got him on his feet. “Come on. Hurry. We don’t have much time!”
She pulled him after her and out of the café. On the street outside they stopped. “Where’s your car?”
“What?”
“Your car. You said you had a rental.”
Finally, a little life returned to him. “Down the street a ways. It’s parked right on the side of the road.”
They found the car and got in.
“Where are we going?” Julien asked.
“I don’t know. Just drive.”
“I’ve had my hands in this business for almost twenty years,” said Julien. “So for almost twenty years I’ve been a criminal, if you want to call it that. A twilight career.”
“Why do you do it?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “The thrill of adventure. The adrenaline rush. The money was the least exciting thing to me. I’m not the kind of man who at sixty — as I was then — can just retire. I was looking for a new challenge. And found it. In the wrong field, to be sure.”
They were sitting in Petit Bôt Bay. They’d parked the car up the road and had walked down to the bay in the shadow of overgrown bushes and trees all in bloom. The beach was covered in bright sunshine. Quite a lot of people were there. It was high tide, and so nothing of the broad strip of golden sand could be seen. A few bathers splashed around in the water. A sailboat pitched and rolled at the mouth of the bay. Beatrice and Julien had sought out a flat rock tucked in a spot out of the way. The waves lapped at its lower edge, but up on top you could sit comfortable and protected. The cliffs towered above them.
“The cast was always changing,” said Julien. “Aside from the boss I was the only constant player. We steal yachts all over the Channel Islands, re-paint them and sell them in France. That was my part. The sale, I mean. I coordinate things over there. I find the buyers and handle the exchange of money.”
She blinked in the sunlight. She had a queasy feeling in her stomach.
“I can’t at all reconcile that,” she said, “with the image I have of you.”
“What image is that?”
“You’re the man I once loved. I see you as being a bit reckless, as a person who isn’t particularly careful in the way he treats others. But in a book or in a game you’d be one of the ‘good guys’ for me. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” he said. “I see. You’ll have to revise that image.”
“Yes, it appears so.”
“Of course, I knew that what we’re doing is criminal. I’ve never had any illusions about that. But before now …”
“Before now?”
“Before now it was really only a matter of theft. Trafficking in stolen goods. And now …”
Beatrice felt the chill come over her. Even though the sun burned brightly down, her arms got goosebumps, and a shiver ran through her body.
Franca had been right about everything.
“Helene,” she asked. “You really did have something to do with Helene’s death?”
“Until yesterday I didn’t know anything about it,” said Julien. “Strictly speaking, I also didn’t know until just now that it was Helene. I came over from St.-Malo yesterday, not this morning. I lied to you because … oh, it seemed easier that way. And it was yesterday that I heard from Gérard — that’s somebody from the gang, maybe not the most pleasant guy you’d ever meet — that there’d been an accident. That they’d killed an old woman who’d stumbled onto their trail. An old woman who simply had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time … I was shocked. Horrified.” He was quiet for a moment, scratched a bit of sand out of a hollow in the stone, let it glide through his fingers. Next to them some kids were shouting and tossing a Frisbee. Their thin, tanned bodies darted from rock to rock.
“Like I said,” he went on, “I had no idea it was Helene. I also didn’t know that they … slit her throat. Even still, I thought it was bad enough. Theft is one thing. Murder is another.”
“Kevin Hammond is also one of you?” It hit Beatrice that Franca had actually delivered every relevant piece of information.
“Kevin Hammond? That’s the gardener at whose place we’ve been repainting the boats for the past two years or so. He got hold of some greenhouses in Perelle
Bay. Everything can play out unnoticed over there.” He looked at her closely. “Do you know Kevin?”
“We’ve been friends for a long time. And Helene was very attached to him. He was her confidant. Her closest friend. The night she was murdered was one she had spent at his house. I assume she heard or saw something there that she wasn’t meant to.”
“I don’t know how it happened exactly. But your guess sounds plausible. That must have been what happened.”
“Did Kevin …?”
“No. It was Gérard. He’s just the type for something like that. He worked for years as a hired killer in the south of France. He’s got some kind of connection to the French mafia. From the beginning, I was opposed to letting him join us. I considered him highly dangerous. But I had no say in the matter.”
“Franca said she was going to get the police over to Perelle Bay.”
Julien winced. “Then they’re all going to get caught. I’m supposed to be there too. They’re picking up a ship that’s bound for Calais. Just about all of us are gathered here on that account. The ship goes out today with the tide. Or at any rate, that was the plan. But the police might be there already.”
“I hope so,” said Beatrice fervently. “I hope with all my heart that they nab those crooks. God knows Helene was no angel, but she didn’t deserve such an end. No one does. I’ll never forget that gruesome sight.” She raised her shoulders, wrapped both arms around her body, as if trying to protect herself from the things life could do to the living. “I’d like for them to be punished. I’d like for this Gérard to spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
Julien nodded slowly. Without looking at Beatrice, he asked, “Why don’t you want the same for me?”
“What?”
“I’m one of these people too. Why don’t you want me to spend the rest of my life behind bars?”
“You have nothing to do with Helene’s murder.”
“Is it just about Helene?”
She thought for a moment. In certain respects, it was entirely about Helene.
“I want her to be avenged. She lied to me and deceived me. She stole years of my life from me. But I let myself get robbed. I think the victim is often as responsible for the crime as the perpetrator. I made room for Helene to take the place in my life that she did. Without my participation she wouldn’t have managed it. And so I don’t think there are any grounds for me to condemn her.”
“That’s what your reason tells you. But what about your emotions?”
The Frisbee came whistling past, missing their heads by just inches before it hit the water. The pack of kids went diving in after it, splashing and screaming.
“My emotions,” said Beatrice, “tell me that Helene gave me something. It sounds absurd to hear myself say it, but part of my strength I drew from Helene. She was always there. She whined without end. She begged to stay in my good graces. She moved heaven and earth to keep me with her. And today I think that that was something I needed. I needed the demands she placed on me, I needed her courting me, I needed her constant wailing and gnashing of teeth. I was the strong one, because she was the weak one. And even if this didn’t actually line up with reality, it was at least a consistent, lifelong illusion that we maintained, that neither of us would let go of. And that we couldn’t have been without. So,” she shrugged her shoulders, a gesture that made her seem more composed than she actually felt, “I made my peace with her. And for her to have peace, it’s important that her murderers go to trial.”
“Despite all that,” Julien persisted, “you still didn’t answer my question. Why did you warn me?”
“For the sake of an old friendship.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “Friendship?”
“From your end it was never anything more.”
“What was it on your end?”
At her age, as Beatrice saw it, she didn’t have to be clever or coquettish anymore.
“On my end it was love. What else would you have expected from the fourteen-year-old girl I was back then? It was love, and it was strong enough, and deep enough, to ruin me for any other man for the rest of my life.”
“My God,” Julien murmured.
She made an effort to hold back the emotional mood that threatened to overpower her before it could gain a foothold.
“Anyway,” she said. “I don’t think anyone should lock you up again. You spent many years of your life in a prison. Innocent. Penned in by the Germans. If you like, you’ve long worked off the guilt you carry for Helene’s death, if there even is any such thing. Justice has been served well enough.”
He looked at her. “You’re a remarkable woman, Beatrice. You really don’t want to see me locked up again?”
He could tell by looking at her how serious she was. “No,” she answered. “I don’t want to see that ever again. I don’t want to experience it ever again. I’ve never forgotten the look in your eyes from that time. It has always haunted me. It always … filled me. And that’s why I made the decision I did at the Sea View. For you.”
“I have to leave the island,” said Julien. “As quickly as possible. Before my name becomes known to the police and they tighten the passport controls on the ships and at the airport.” He suddenly seemed restless. All this time he had given the appearance of a man in shock, a man steamrolled by events, not knowing how he should react. But now he was wide awake and tense once more. Now he knew that he had to hurry.
“I have to go,” he said again, and stood up.
Beatrice got up as well. “You’ll have to see to it yourself, how you arrange things. I wish you the best of luck. I hope you make it.”
They looked at each other. They knew they would never meet again. Neither knew what to say. But no matter — already Beatrice’s thoughts were elsewhere.
“Alan,” she said, suddenly nervous. “Franca didn’t say anything about where Alan was. Why was it her that called and not him? I have to go to Perelle Bay at once. Drive me home, Julien, quick. I can get me car there. My God, I hope nothing’s happened to Alan!”
10
Even from far away she could see the police barricade. Could see the mass of people crowding around, the many eager onlookers who, following some unknown intuition, had yet again arrived in time to watch. She heard the voice speaking through a megaphone, but she couldn’t understand a single word. A helicopter circled the scene. She could make out police boats at the mouth of the bay. Her disquiet grew. Now she was afraid. She knew that something bad had happened. She could feel it. She accelerated but had to brake again immediately. There were too many people around.
A policeman walked in front of her car and put a hand on the hood, signaling for her to stop. She rolled down the window. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“You can’t go any farther, ma’am. I have to ask you to stay here.”
“My son,” she said. “My son is up there somewhere.”
“Up where, ma’am?”
“With the criminals. He must be up there somewhere.”
The policeman looked at her skeptically. “What is your name?”
“Shaye. Beatrice Shaye.”
“Wait one moment please,” he said, and went off a few steps to confer with a fellow officer.
Beatrice took the moment to act. She jumped out of the car and ran through the crowd. She heedlessly pushed people aside. From somewhere behind her she heard the officer calling.
“Mrs. Shaye! Mrs. Shaye, wait!”
But she wouldn’t even think of stopping. She saw the ambulance on the other side of the barricade. For seconds she thought her heart was standing still. What was the ambulance doing here? Were people injured? Was Alan injured?
Dear God, she prayed silently, not Alan. Not Alan. Dear God, don’t do that to me!
She was right in front now, right at the
barrier that the police had set up there. She grabbed onto it. She was panting.
She tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
Two paramedics were carrying a gurney on the sandy path that led up from the bay. On it lay a body, completely covered by a sheet.
Why didn’t they leave his head uncovered, Beatrice asked herself. She knew the answer, but she tried not to let the realization work its way through to her conscious mind: the person on the gurney had to be dead.
Down towards the bay, men were coming out of the greenhouses. They’d been put in handcuffs. Heavily armed police officers walked alongside them. Somehow it all looked unreal. As if a movie was being shot. There should have been cameras around there somewhere, and a director, shouting out orders and notes. A scene like this couldn’t be true. It wasn’t part of reality.
Beatrice pushed the barrier to one side, slipped through, quick as the wind. A policeman who was standing a short way off looked at her, aghast. “Ma’am,” he started to protest, but she ran off before he could reach for her. In spite of her seventy years she was agile and quick as a fox. She plodded over the field, luckily she was wearing sneakers, like always. Mae, in her pumps, wouldn’t have made it five feet.
She made it to the gurney. It was one of the moments in her life when all thought, all feeling, everything that lived and stirred within her, shut down. She was a cold, functional shell. The shell did what had to be done, and it allowed nothing that happened around it to penetrate through to its core.
Before the two paramedics even knew what was happening, she’d pulled back the sheet that covered the lifeless body on the gurney.
She looked into the stiff, dead face of Kevin Hammond.
11
“Here’s what I don’t understand, Mum,” said Alan, “what I really just cannot fathom. How could you let Julien get away?”
He was sitting in a comfortable chair on the porch at his mother’s house. Another chair was in front of him on which he’d propped his thickly bandaged foot. He had torn a tendon, and the doctor had ordered uninterrupted rest. The order wasn’t necessary; Alan wouldn’t have been moving much either way.
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