He timed to arrive just after the evening visit. Rounding the next corner, the hospital entrance was fifty yards ahead. He paused for a second, taking a deep breath, then continued at a steady pace; he didn't want to look hesitant, be stopped at reception and asked what he wanted.
There was a small crowd at the reception, and the two nurses behind hardly paid attention. One had her head down, studying something in the register, the other was deep in conversation. Duclos only gave them a brief sideways glance, not wanting to attract undue attention as he made his way quickly through the main hallway to the stairway and elevator.
He waited only a second before deciding on the stairs. Too many prying eyes close by in the elevator, people who might talk to him, ask him which way for so and so ward, notice on which floor he got off. On the stairs he would be far more anonymous. Second floor, far end of corridor, room 4A. His heartbeat seemed to pulse through to his head, its rhythm almost matching the stark echo of his footsteps as he made his way along the second floor corridor. At its end was a T where it split in two directions, with markings and arrows indicating the different departments. It looked like 4A was close to the end. Duclos shortened his step as he got close to the door. Almost unconsciously he held his breath the last few steps, reaching one hand out for the door handle.
His hand hovered by the handle for a second - then he retracted it, wiping the sweat that had built up on his palm on his trouser leg. The plan was straight in his mind: if anyone was there or he was confronted, he would say that he'd arranged to meet Mrs Rosselot. 'Had he missed her?'
Another deep breath, forcing the air deep into his lungs to calm his nerves - he reached for the handle, turning it...
The room opened out before him: A woman's profile, dark hair, a candle glowing... a bed and instruments through a glass partition. A split-second impression. The woman started to look up - Duclos closed the door again equally as swiftly. A sudden exhalation, release of tension, he headed quickly away - afraid that the woman might come to the door and open it, look out to see who had been there. Not daring to look back, Duclos listened intently for sounds behind him. None came. He turned the corner of the T. Safety again.
He was sure the woman hadn't seen him. It was probably the boy's mother, Madame Rosselot. He cursed his bad luck - she should have left at least fifteen minutes ago. Suddenly a door to his side opened, startling him; he almost jumped out of his skin as a nurse and hospital porter came out. Duclos covered hastily with a sheepish grin, but they hardly paid him any attention as they headed towards the stairs.
Duclos thought about giving up, heading back out of the hospital, coming back another day. His nerves were shot, a trembling deep in his stomach, his body weak from lack of sleep and nervous anticipation. But he knew that if he left now, he would never come back, he wouldn't be able to face the same ordeal again. He went across to a bench a few paces to one side with a clear view of the stairway and, when he leant across, the full length of the corridor and room 4A at its end. Perhaps he could wait it out. She was already fifteen minutes late, how much longer could she stay?
He fought to relax again, breathing deeply and steadily. But with each passing minute he became increasingly agitated. Two fresh sets of heels he'd heard, only to lean over and see people coming out of other rooms. False alarms. Only a few minutes had passed, but it seemed like a lifetime.
Another set of heels, faint at first, started their echoing clipping. He leant across half expecting another false alarm - then pulled back quickly, catching his breath. At last! His pulse raced, counting each beat of the slowly receding footsteps.
He waited a full twenty seconds after they had faded down the stairway, then concentrated on the sounds around for a moment. No fresh footsteps on the stairway or the corridor.
He got up and made his way along, covering the distance steadily, half of his senses attuned to the sounds around, the rest focused on what lay ahead: the door... approaching closer the last few footsteps, reaching out for the handle, listening for a brief second for any sounds beyond. Nothing. The corridor was empty, no fresh footsteps approaching. Slowly he turned the handle, the door opened, the view steadily expanding... nobody inside! A quick release of breath. Then he looked through the glass screen to the larger room beyond, stepping fully into the small ante-room, closing the door quickly behind him.
The boy lay beyond the glass partition, his skin pallid like yellow porcelain, wires and tubes connected and monitoring. It was certainly the boy from the day before, and there was nobody else in the room. Duclos' mouth was dry with anticipation. The boy's breathing was probably so shallow that all he would have to do was reach out and cover his nose and mouth for a minute to finish him. But he would have to be quick - at any moment somebody could come back in the room.
His nerves were racing, his palm suddenly clammy on the handle of the door to the main room. His whole body trembled and he felt cold, even though the night air was close to 80ºF. With a final deep breath, he opened the door and stepped inside.
'When this old world starts getting me down, and people are just too much for me to face... I climb right up to the top of the stairs and all my cares just drift right into space. On the roof, the only place I know... where you just have to wish to make it so...'
Dominic lay on his back on his bedroom terrace, staring up at the star lit sky above Bauriac, the Drifters on his record player, soothing his thoughts. It was one of the best songs of the year, his favourite. The record had been in his collection and on Louis' juke box since early January, just as it was climbing up the American billboard charts. Files and notes lay scattered over his bedroom floor. He'd finished his summary report for Poullain - all but the last paragraph. He'd searched for the right tone, that key phrase which neatly encapsulated everything, before finally giving up after half an hour and deciding on a break to clear his thoughts.
His mother had gone to bed over an hour before with some hot chocolate and biscuits, just after ten. The day's basic household activities seemed to tire her earlier by the day. He'd positioned his record player close to the double terrace doors so that it didn't disturb her asleep downstairs.
His mind drifted back to Algeria. The Foreign Legion. Where he'd first found the habit of laying on his back staring up at the stars. The desert sky had been even more spectacular, crystal clear skies of deep blue velvet sprinkled with a snowstorm of stars. After a few months, the idea had caught on with half the platoon. Somebody would light a camp fire, he'd spend a while rigging up his record player to a car battery and would put on some Ray Charles or Sam Cooke, and on occasions some hashish would appear that somebody had picked up at a souq. It was easier to get hashish in Algeria than alcohol. The sessions made him popular with comrades. The thought that they were laying in the middle of the desert, cut off from civilization and all they knew, yet listening to the very latest sounds courtesy of Dominic's uncle almost two months before the rest of France had the privilege. It somehow made them feel in touch, in tune. Compensated for the isolation.
The legion had left its scars. Not so much on him personally - he'd been a back room radio and communications sergeant and had hardly seen any fighting - but with his present career. The gendarmerie treated ex-Foreign Legion recruits with an air of suspicion, as if they were all unarmed combat experts or reformed cut-throat murderers. At the end of the last century with uprisings in Morocco and Algeria, many recruits had come from the French prison system, an alternative to the Bastille or Devil's Island - but not in the last few decades.
Dominic didn't trouble to put them right, tell them he'd hardly seen any action during the Algerian war. Sometimes the tough guy image had its advantages; colleagues were careful not to tread on his toes. Local prejudices could be used to advantage - but he feared that they might work against Machanaud if the interview didn't go well tomorrow.
The forensics report revealed little. The blood tested was the boy's group, no semen deposits were found, and there were no startling fibre d
iscoveries. Rock particles found in the blood confirmed the medical examiner's suspicion about murder weapon. Though no blood stained rock had been found by the search team, nor the boy's shirt, and the few items of paper from the field and a man's torn jacket and shoe by the river bank looked too weathered to be connected. Still they'd been passed to forensics for checking.
With little or no forensics findings, they became more reliant on the timing of the attack and eye witnesses - which pointed back to Machanaud. But with his protest to Poullain the day before that it was ridiculous to suspect Machanaud, he was just a troublesome drunkard and poacher - if Poullain's look of thunderous reproach was any gauge of local opinion - Dominic feared it could rise swiftly against Machanaud. Like himself and Louis, Machanaud was from outside, originally from the foothills of the Pyrannees, and had been in Bauriac less than three years. More than a few times, Dominic or others from the gendarmerie had been called to a local bar because of Machanaud's drunken antics. Machanaud would usually either want to sing or fight, or both. Having warmed up for the evening's renditions with stories of his wartime exploits, how as a young lad of eighteen in the resistance he tried to blow up a Nazi truck with vital supplies; but the truck spun off the road and hit him and he'd ended up with a metal plate in his head. Most villagers thought he was half mad and treated him with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.
Perhaps the other leads would prove fruitful and divert attention away from Machanaud. When he'd phoned the gendarmerie earlier, Servan brought him up to date on progress: a green Alpha Romeo had been seen in Pourrières, the number taken, and they were now putting through a trace request with vehicle registration in Paris. The Lyon van was seen sixty kilometeres away about the time of the attack, and no news yet on the passing traveller.
Dominic sat up. Filtering down through his thoughts, his summary notes finally gelled. He went back to the folder before the thought flow went, and wrote: Distinct lack of forensic evidence. No other blood groups other than the boy’s, no semen, no fibres. The weapon cannot be found, nor the boy's shirt. Whoever committed this crime was extremely careful. If we are to suspect Machanaud, then we also have to ask ourselves - is he really the type to be this careful and meticulous?
Dominic scanned quickly back over the report. The time gap between the two attacks had introduced a new, puzzling perspective, but with no specific relevance to suspicion of Machanaud. Whoever had made the attack, the question was the same: Where had they been in that time? No other area of flattened wheat had been discovered, and from the strength of body imprints where the attack was finally made, the Marseille teams' view was that it had been occupied for no more than ten minutes. The supposition was therefore that beforehand the boy and his assailant had been by the riverbank, mostly obscured by trees and bushes from the bordering farm lane, or somewhere else?
The record had finished without Dominic noticing, the needle clicking repeatedly on the inner circle. Dominic took it off and put on Sam Cooke's 'Another Saturday Night', then came back onto the terrace. He closed his eyes for a moment as he laid back, then opened them again, letting the broad blanket of the sky and the mass of stars sink slowly through his consciousness, suffuse through his body until it touched every nerve end. Touched his soul. Solitude.
A single candle flickered at the back of his mind. Monique Rosselot's profile, partly in shadow against the dancing light, a raw essence of beauty and motherhood hoping and praying that her only son lived. He remembered in Algeria a woman at the souq in El Asnam. He never normally paid much attention to the local women, generally a non-descript rabble covered from nose to toe in black sheets. This woman had been dressed the same, except that her eyes above her face mask had been large and captivating - and she'd met his stare for a second longer than was probably considered discreet. Her eyes laughed at him provocatively, hazel with green flecks, soulful, bright. Then she was gone, disappearing quickly among the market stalls and back street warrens of the souq. Many times since he had wondered what her face looked like, images forming in the flames of the campfire or from the starry depths of the velvet sky during those long and lonely desert nights. But the image that superimposed now, as the face veil was gently removed, was of Monique Rosselot. He shook the image away.
Sam Cooke was singing '...It's hard on a fella, when he don't know his way around. If I don't find a honey to help me spend my money, I'm gonna have to blow this town...' It reminded Dominic of one of his last dates with Odette; the song had been playing at a fairground they'd visited in Draguignan. Another Saturday night. Bright lights, candy floss, a fluffy baby blue toy cat he'd won for her at the rifle range. But the single candle burned through, the sullen but proud profile half in shadow reflected against the glass. He found it hard to get the image of Monique Rosselot out of his mind.
EIGHT
Session 1: 11.06am, 16th February, 1995
Stuart Capel looked anxiously at the door ahead. Through it he could hear only muted mumbling; only the occasional word could be picked up clearly. He leant forward keenly, his arms resting on his knees.
Around him were a mixture of diplomas - Dr David Lambourne, PhD, MR Psych - and theatre posters. Collection of magazines on a small coffee table. No receptionist, just an answerphone that would kick in. Only two calls the past fifteen minutes.
But despite Stuart's posture - every nerve and muscle tense, his jaw set tight - his eyes were dull and unfocused. Dulled by the nightmare of the past two months. Clinging to one last chance as his hands clasped and unclasped. Oh God, I hope this will help. I hope this will help...
'... and so you'll be twelve soon, Eyran. Is that right?'
'Yes, in April. The fifteenth.'
'And what would you like for your birthday?' Lambourne asked. 'Any thoughts?'
'I don't know, really. I was going to get a surf board in San Diego.' Eyran drifted off for a second, scanning the ceiling. The couch he was laying on was old and over-stuffed, with a fading floral print. It would have looked more at home in a country cottage than a psychiatrist's office in Holborn. 'Perhaps a new bike. Some more computer games.'
'Have you thought of asking for a pet? A dog, maybe.'
'No, not really. But the boy two doors away has got a red setter. We went playing in the fields with it a few days back.'
'Did you get on well with the boy?'
'Yes, sort of. His name's Kevin. He's two years older than me. He was asking a lot about San Diego, said that he'd like to go there.'
Fresh faced, light-brown hair. A few faint freckles across the bridge of his nose. It was difficult for Lambourne to relate the boy before him with what he knew from the report on his desk: Accident victim. Nineteen day coma. Temporal and parietal lobe trauma. Both parents lost in the same accident. And now possible psychological discordance: increasingly violent dreams and development of a secondary character to push away acceptance of his parents' death.
'Have you ever had a pet before?' asked Lambourne.
'No. But I like them, dogs more than cats.'
'Maybe you should ask your uncle for one. With all of those fields around, it could be fun. The perfect place for a dog.' It had come out of his discussion with Stuart Capel the day before: new object attachments to help diminish what Eyran had lost. 'And at school. Any friends yet? I understand that you started at the beginning of last week.'
'Only one. Simon. He was at my primary school from before in England. I didn't know him so well then, but we're becoming friendlier now.'
'And how are you getting on with Tessa?'
'Okay. But she's a few years younger than me. She has her own friends.'
David Lambourne looked down at his notes briefly, was about to ask another question about home or school, trying to gauge how Eyran was settling in, when Eyran continued.
'My other old friends from before are too far away. Though I went over to Broadhurst Farm the other day with Kevin. Being there with his dog reminded me of Sarah and Salman, her labrador. We used to play there years ag
o, before I went to America. They were in one of my first dreams.'
Too early. Lambourne didn't want to explore the dreams yet. His first aim was to put Eyran at ease, establish comfortable ground: birthday, presents, friends, possibly a pet. From his two hour meeting with Stuart Capel the previous day, he'd planned his guideposts well: he knew that the mention of a pet would trigger Eyran mentioning one friend, school another. But the past kept interjecting - San Diego, old friends and memories - spoiling the rhythm.
'How are you settling in at your Uncle's house. I understand you're right out in the country. It must be nice.'
'Yes, it's very nice. My room looks over fields at the back.'
'So, they've given you one of the best rooms in the house.'
Faint smile from Eyran. The first so far. Stuart Capel had told him Eyran smiled rarely, uneasily, was generally slow to respond. It was one of Stuart's main areas of concern. 'And you've got all your favourite things around you...'
Lambourne continued building on areas of familiarity - but the answers gradually became more stilted and relied on past reference. Understandable. Eyran had only been in the house six weeks; his main memory of it was from when he lived with his parents nearby. Eyran was still pre-occupied with the old house, its position and distance from his uncle's house.
'It's only four or five miles away, and Broadhurst Farm is just at the back. When I look out of my bedroom window now, there's a hill in the distance. It's not too far the other side of that.'
'And that's where you went with Kevin the other day? That's quite a distance to walk.'
'It wasn't too bad. I wanted to see how it had changed from before. Perhaps I might have bumped into some of my old friends there. It was strange, the pond was much smaller than I remembered. And in one of my dreams, it was enormous.'
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