Past Imperfect

by John Matthews

  Molet obviously read the guilt, because he commented that he himself had not realized Machanaud was still being held under psychiatric care until year eleven. 'I thought he would have been released ages ago. But it still took three years to press for his release. There was a review only once a year.'

  Molet went on to describe Perrimond's undue influence with hospital governors and state psychiatrists to ensure Machanaud was not released. Provence establishment favour swapping - at the golf club or masonic lodge - at its very worst. 'Each time a negative psychiatric report came through. Machanaud wasn't finally released until a year after Perrimond's death.'

  '... I got a boule close to the white, only a few centimetres away. My father was quite surprised. Only one of the other players got so close - and in the end they had to measure to see who had won.'

  Dominic looked down. It wasn't part of the prepared question sheet. Marinella Calvan had obviously let him ramble; perhaps happy of a diversion allowing Christian to relax, establish a more natural rhythm. It was obviously also an incident he remembered with fondness.

  The boy's faint smile. Dominic found it vaguely disturbing. A reminder of lost happiness, lost years.

  Molet had looked sharply at Dominic, as if perhaps expecting a reciprocal disclosure of guilt. But Dominic said nothing. What could he say? That year seven had been the first time it had occurred to him to check on Machanaud, and when he couldn't trace Molet's number he had finally called Perrimond's office. Three calls later with no reply, his workload had quickly swamped his concern. And on the few occasions since that the thought had arose, he'd convinced himself that Machanaud had probably been released years back. He had never troubled to pick up the phone and check. Too busy.

  And even if he had explained all that, Molet would have questioned why he was concerned. And he would have felt inclined to explain the rest: his past doubts about Machanaud's guilt, the police cover-up over the car description, how he had been pushed into going along with everything because of the veiled threat of being shipped off to a gendarmerie in northern France. That his mother would have been left to die alone. He could explain none of that - so in the end he said nothing.

  But Dominic was sure that in that moment Molet had seen it all in his face, seen the quickly rising burden of guilt and shock as it struck him just how long Machanaud had spent locked away.

  '... it was on a trip to Alassio. We went there for a weekend.'

  'And that was where you bought it?'

  'Yes. I had some pocket money, but it wasn't enough. So I talked my parents into letting me have the rest of the money to buy it.'

  The third question, Dominic noted. A trip to Alassio in Northern Italy. Alassio. Portofino. He remembered seeing a wall plaque for Portofino on his first trip to the Rosselots, sitting in their kitchen asking questions about the last hours they saw their son.

  'How did you talk them into it?'

  'I told them I'd read more. That if I had a bedside lamp like that, so nice, I'd promise to read more. Every night.'

  'What did the lamp look like?'

  'It was made of shell, in the shape of an old galleon. The light inside made the shell almost luminescent and direct light would also shine through the portholes. It was beautiful.'

  'So in the end that promise convinced your parents to give you the extra money for it?'

  'Yes it did.'

  'And did you keep your promise and read more?'

  'Yes. Practically every night in bed I did some reading before going to sleep.'

  Dominic looked down and bit his lip. He could hardly bear it. He didn't realize that sitting in on the session would have such a profound affect on him. Christian's voice, all these years later, telling them what a good boy he'd been. As if it was still somehow important to him.

  THIRTY

  Dominic was staying at the Meridien Waldorf, half a mile from David Lambourne's office in Holborn. He'd stayed over the previous night, but hoped to leave without spending a second night. He was therefore in hotel limbo: bags packed and in a store room, though still using their facilities. Particularly their fax.

  It had taken Philippe almost two hours to put the transcript back in its original French from the on-screen English, and another fifty minutes for it to arrive by messenger at his hotel. He scanned it through for any obvious errors and faxed it straight to Monique in Lyon. He'd already phoned her to expect its arrival, could imagine her standing by the fax machine in his office at home, practically ripping the pages out as they hummed through.

  Beep. Dominic waited a few minutes by the machine for a reply. Then, telling the clerk where he would be if one came through, he went to the bar downstairs and ordered an armagnac.

  As the drink hit his stomach, warming it, soothing his nerves, he started thinking about the transcript he'd just read through. The depth of detail came through even more than in the session itself. The contrast to the fractured, garbled descriptions around the murder itself was absolute. He took another quick slug, feeling it cut a warm path. Just his luck: marvellous detail about games of boules, pan chocolat and trips to Alassio - but little or nothing of use about the murder itself.

  Almost twenty minutes had passed when the office clerk came down with a fax. Dominic was on his second armagnac. Hand-written, it read simply:

  I'm convinced it's Christian's voice. Nobody else could possibly know those personal details. I don't know how or why - but it's his voice.

  Twenty minutes? Reading through the transcript would have taken only five minutes. Had Monique cried, caught up in a wave of emotions that stopped her putting pen to paper immediately? Or had she sat and laboured over the brief message she was going to send back, eager not to show sentimentality or the mixture of suspicion and outrage she'd voiced immediately after playing the tape. That had now been boiled down to simply, 'I don't know how or why'. When she'd initially prepared the questions, she'd commented in a subdued, almost acid tone. 'I don't profess to understand the tape that has been sent. But if these questions are answered correctly, Dominic, for God's sake don't expect me to believe that this strange English boy is Christian reborn. Some vague, unexplained psychic link perhaps. But that's as far as I'll go.'

  Dominic checked his watch, timing: phone through to Marinella Calvan and give her the news, arrange a meeting, forty minutes or so for the meeting itself, then back to the hotel to collect his luggage and out to Heathrow airport for 6.35 pm. It was going to be tight, particularly if traffic was bad.

  Dominic wondered whether to forget the meeting with Calvan. Just fax through Monique's message, a brief follow up phone call, and head out to the airport. When he'd originally thought of a meeting, it had been inspired by the foolhardy idea that he might be able to use the information to re-open the case. Now it was just his own curiosity. But Calvan would probably still insist that details surrounding the murder were too scant. Even that last vestige he'd clung to - salving whether all those years of doubt and guilt had been misplaced - wouldn't be satisfied. The meeting would have no purpose.

  The decision made, in a way Dominic felt relieved. He knocked back the last of his armagnac. Fine. No meeting. Perhaps as well. Even if Marinella Calvan had complied, he'd have had to face Monique and explain. Explain everything he'd kept hidden the past thirty years. He'd been dreading that part, and at least that would now also remain buried.

  'I don't understand. A suspect was found, charged and sentenced - at least that's what came out of the few newspaper articles Philippe translated for me. I thought the case was closed all those years back.'

  'You're right. It was. But there were discrepancies with the case that I was never happy with.' Marinella was staring sharply at him, still getting to grips with his suggestion of using information from the session to re-open the murder investigation. Discrepancies? What could he say to this woman he hardly knew? That he'd been press-ganged into joining a cover-up so that he could stay with his dying mother, the resultant years of guilt, re-doubling when he'd learned
how long a possibly innocent man had spent imprisoned. Yet proving Machanaud's innocence would only heighten that guilt, and then his wife would know his part in the cover-up and that her last husband's suicide had been in vain. Marinella Calvan's eyebrow would merely arch more acutely. What did he want out of it all? Perhaps proving Machanaud's guilt: closing the door once and for all on that chink of doubt. In the end, the only other useful thing he could find to say was: 'I was very young then, merely assisting in the investigation. I had very little influence on the way it was conducted. To me, this is like a second chance. How many of us really get a second chance?'

  Second chance? The poignancy of the phrase stung Marinella for a second. 'I can appreciate how much you would like to get to the truth, even after all these years. If I can, I would love to help. But you've listened to the tape of that first session when we stumbled on those final moments of the murder. Eyran's almost catatonic. Apart from the obvious risk of dragging him back through recall of the murder - I just don't think we'll gain anything of any help. Most of it has been pushed away. He doesn't want to think about it.'

  Clatter of cutlery from two tables away, a waitress with an Australian accent talking to one of her colleagues. Dominic was distracted briefly. When he'd phoned at four o’clock and spoken to Marinella, David Lambourne had just started a fresh session. He'd mentioned how tight he was for time with his flight out, and they arranged to meet twenty minutes later at Café Opera in Covent Garden.

  Detail? The contrast between the depth of detail in the transcript and the vague garbled accounts surrounding the murder was what first gave Dominic the clue. What made him suddenly phone Marinella Calvan and arrange the meeting: Christian expanded, detail was stronger relating stories where he felt more relaxed, at ease. This in turn explained why the murder account was so vague and fractured. But forty minutes to an hour earlier, when Christian first met his murderer, before either of the sexual attacks, before Christian even realized he might be in danger - he would have been more relaxed, at ease. Now, explaining these thoughts to Marinella Calvan, words he had already spun over in his mind on the way to the café - he watched her expression closely. 'If nothing else, he would hopefully be able to give a clear, accurate account of those moments. The moments when he first met his murderer.' A chink of acceptance halfway through, then something else: doubt or intrigue, Dominic wasn't sure.

  Marinella shook her head. 'I don't know, it's a possibility, I suppose.' She felt her emotions tugged sharply. An image of a young inexperienced gendarme on the edge of an investigation, unable to wield any real influence yet harbouring a strong doubt nevertheless. A doubt carefully tended through the years, intensified and brought uncomfortably close to home by his marrying the dead boy's mother. Like Javert in 'Les Miserables', never entirely giving up on the investigation - until finally, a generation later, the opportunity arises to uncover the truth. Second chance? Wasn't that how she felt about the case: a chance to prove herself after the Cincinnati case and the other failures?

  Then reality hit. Simple and unequivocal. David Lambourne would never go for it. Let alone Stuart Capel. Unless she could build a strong case to convince them. Intrigue and her desire to help started to bite back. But apart from Fornier's thumbnail account the day before, to her the murder was just a chain of breathless, disjointed words sifted through the decades via Eyran Capel. 'Tell me more about the investigation. All I know so far is from the newspaper coverage and what you told us the other day: the wheat field, sexual assault, blunt instrument, and that Christian was in a coma for five days before dying. The man convicted - what makes you doubt his guilt?'

  'Too circumstantial. He was just a local casual farm labourer and poacher who happened to be there at the time. No history of sexual assault or incidents with young boys. No violence. But the prosecution nevertheless built a convincing case out of that circumstance.'

  'But I understand from the newspaper coverage that he wasn't convicted of murder. In the end he got off with manslaughter.'

  ‘“Got off with”, I'm afraid, is not the most appropriate phrase given what finally happened to Machanaud.' Dominic related the sorry tale of Perrimond playing favours with hospital governors and state psychiatrists. 'Machanaud ended up spending a total of fourteen years imprisoned.'

  Between sips of coffee, Marinella intook breath sharply. 'God. That's ludicrous. I'm sorry. Sounds almost like a personal vendetta.' And immediately wondered why she was saying sorry to Fornier, except that he seemed to care what had happened to Machanaud.

  'It practically was.' Dominic explained how it had quickly developed into an establishment protection case. That the person he suspected was a young assistant prosecutor staying with one of the area's largest landowners. 'A personal friend of the mayor. It was unthinkable that such a person could possibly commit such an atrocity. Whereas Machanaud was a low-life poacher and village drunkard. He was seen as a far easier target, less troublesome - and the weight of circumstantial evidence built up strongly against him.'

  'What happened with the assistant prosecutor?'

  'He was questioned only once. The timing of his car being seen in a restaurant appeared to give him an alibi. He went on to become a leading politician, RPR candidate for Limoges.' Dominic raised his coffee cup as if saying salut, and smiled. 'Now he's one of France's illustrious representatives in Brussels. An MEP. He's done very well has our dear Monsieur Alain Duclos.'

  Images of Javert were back. Relentlessly pursuing through the decades. And now a name had been attached: Alain Duclos. But Marinella felt uncomfortable with Dominic's suddenly maudlin tone. A lifetime of battling the odds against the police and the establishment, and now she might let him down yet again. What was she hoping for, what niche to prise open the barricades she knew would confront her if she requested more sessions? 'And Machanaud. What happened to him after he was finally let out.'

  'He died eight years ago. Had only six years of freedom in between.'

  Marinella grimaced, her eyes flickering down slightly. But she began to worry that, like Javert, Fornier's pursuit of Duclos might be equally unfounded. 'If this Duclos' car was seen somewhere that supposedly gave him an alibi, then what makes you suspect him?'

  Dominic ran one finger absently down the side of his coffee cup. How could he explain? A look, a glimmer in the eye from thirty-two years ago? Something that told him Duclos was nervous, had something to hide. Or his supercilious, pretty-boy appearance. That he looked like the type who might molest young boys. Calvan would just laugh at him in the same way Poullain had all those years back. In the end all he said was: 'There were discrepancies with the car sightings. Some of the details I wasn't happy with.' Discrepancies again. His standard trench when shots fired. Stumbling through an account of the car sighting cover up - even if Marinella Calvan might find sympathy with his motive of his ailing mother - he was sure overall wouldn't aid his cause.

  'Do you think the people who saw Duclos' car were lying?'

  'No. But Machanaud said that he saw it passing on the lane while he was poaching - just minutes before he left himself.'

  'But he could have been lying to save his own neck.'

  'Yes. That's what the prosecution said.'

  Marinella forced a wan smile. 'I see. Sorry.' She sensed there was more, but Dominic looked away awkwardly after a second. They were silent, the clatter of the café imposing. Whatever it was, he obviously found it still worth keeping to himself after thirty-two years. If Dominic Fornier truly believed that more information could be gained by avoiding the murder and keeping to when Christian Rosselot first met his attacker - then when and where? All Fornier had mentioned so far was 'forty minutes to an hour beforehand.' 'Where do you think Christian first met his attacker: by the lane and the wheat field, or somewhere else?'

  'Probably close by, at least. The supposition was that whoever he met, they probably hid down by the river bank for most of the time. A few cars passed on the lane. If they'd stayed for any length of time in the wheat
field, they'd have been seen.'

  'Is that where the sexual assault also took place - down by the river bank?'

  'Yes. There were two assaults, with a gap of anything from thirty to fifty minutes in between. Certainly the second took place by the lane, and possibly the first close by.'

  'If it was Duclos, not Machanaud - is that where you think Christian met him?'

  'I don't know. That's one of the details I hoped further sessions might uncover.' Faint shadows from a ceiling fan moved across the floor. Dominic glanced down, memories of the reconstruction drifting. Stormclouds across the shifting white wheat. 'Machanaud admitted poaching in that same position for almost two hours. That became one of the prosecution's strongest arguments. If Christian met someone else there, Machanaud would have seen them.'

  Two assaults? Thirty to fifty minutes gap in between. Marinella was trying to assimilate the rest of the sequence of events, get a clearer picture. 'You realize that details regarding either of the sexual assaults would probably be equally as vague. As with the murder, Christian has very likely blotted it out.'

  'Yes.'

  'Apart from the fact that they would have been deeply disturbing in their own right, Christian might have already suspected that his attacker would later kill him.'

  'I understand.'

  'Probably the only clear detail we'll get, as you have suggested, is from when Christian first met his attacker. Before he realized that anything might happen. But that might only be a few minutes at most.'

  'Then you'll help?'