by David Mark
‘I didn’t kill for more than twenty years,’ he said, his lips barely moving. ‘You might not believe me but after the war I made a decision not to draw any attention to myself. The loss of the war was a shock, Mrs Hemlock. You might not remember that but the Nazis were supposed to win. I had chosen a side that would allow me to do that which I was good at and that decision cost me my liberty. I hid in some terrible places as they hunted me. But Christopher knew my value. I had been a Milice elite. I had been close to the men who would form the new government. I was a man that mattered. Christopher’s unit reached out to me. Made an offer. He had persuaded his people that it was better to use what I knew than to add my name to the list of the damned. There were those who sought my execution for the events of ’44 but when Christopher caught me and I shared all I knew, he made the correct decision. I could help him. I knew things nobody else did. There were many like me. Men who could be valuable to the allies, whether it be for their skills or their secrets. It was my secrets that he needed. For countless days I fed him information. I proved my value. And he was as good as his word. He provided me a new life. He is one of the Old Boys, remember? A good chap.’
His voice twisted at that, as if he was saying something so revolting that it made his gorge rise.
‘Audrey was already one of the team,’ he said, and his voice was without cadence or song; just flat monotonous crochets that fell upon me like hail. ‘She is an exceptional woman. Throughout the war she had helped spread counter-intelligence. Her brother – he is an important man. Loveday. A silly name for one so skilled. He read my file and chose to place me somewhere he knew to be impenetrable.
‘A word in an ear here, a polite letter there. You English are so … well-connected. Our story was a cover. We did not begin as true man and wife. But something grew between us, of that I am certain. We have lived a true marriage, Audrey and I. She has learned so much from the prisoners of war she befriended and who write to her with such glorious titbits each week. Christopher uses her the way a surgeon uses a knife. She sends her old friends the messages that the world needs to hear. She receives replies rich with confidences. She is valuable, and we have been well rewarded. We never spoke of my crimes.’
I tried to speak. Even through the fog I had to understand. ‘Did … she know …?’
He smiled at that – a fleeting thing, like the flash of an axe-blade in the dark.
‘What she knew, I cannot say. But when news came last year that the Maquis bastard in France was asking questions, it was she who thought of Fairfax and a way we could protect ourselves. The old fool was always so interested in stories. Such a busybody – always scrabbling around asking questions as if he were a writer or somebody who mattered. Christopher may have suffered at the thought of his grieving father but he never did a thing to stop his pain. He did what he had to, and that is all I have ever done. Audrey fed Fairfax such a tale. Fed him such a wonderful tapestry of lies. Told him I was this heroic figure by the name of Abel. A hero of the Resistance, tortured by the devil Favre. And so when Defouloy sniffed me out and slithered into this place, Fairfax knew he was looking at a bad man who had done bad things. He got him talking. Acted friendly even as he plotted his end. And then he came and told us.’
He gave the tiniest smile at that. Seemed to like the memory.
‘It pained him, of course. He was such a gentleman, you see. Could not stomach the idea of handing a man over to those who might have done him harm. But he had experienced grief. He hated the Nazis as they had robbed him of his son. I enjoyed that – enjoyed knowing that the man he grieved for was the same who had brought me to Britain.
‘Marcel was just sitting there when we arrived at the church. It was dark. He had fallen asleep, huddled in on himself, and there was blood on his chin. That idiot Pike had thought him to be interested in his pitiful possessions.
‘When I addressed him I did so as an equal. He had been brave beneath the knife all those years before. But the spirit had gone out of him. He did not want conflict. He wanted judgement and told me I should demand the same.’
As Favre spoke, the shadows behind him lengthened. The sound of the flapping leather and the hunch of his back made it seem as though I were trapped in the gloom with a colossal bird.
‘Killing him brought me no joy,’ said Favre. ‘I didn’t know I had done it until he was at my feet. It was over in seconds. It brought me no pleasure. Audrey didn’t turn away as I did what I had to. And when it was over it was she who fetched Fairfax and told him that Defouloy – the man he thought was Jean Favre – had attacked her and that I had no choice but to defend her. Fairfax chose the tomb. He said it would be years before it would be needed. Perhaps we should have demanded that the body be put in the bog but at that time, we needed the body stashing away as quick as could be. We dumped him in the old Kinmont tomb. We set fire to Fairfax’s transcript of our conversations. We demanded all evidence of his visit be removed.’
Favre wiped his forehead, running his delicate fingers back over his smooth scalp.
He sighed, displeased with people’s inability to do what they promised.
‘I know now that Marcel had a tape recorder and that Fairfax kept this for his own purposes. I know too that he did not burn all the papers as instructed. But none of that mattered these past months because killing that bastard Maquisard set something free in me. The man I was – the man I hide inside this pitiful shell. It felt good to be him again.’
He turned at that, staring at the hideous skins along one wall. Slowly, he gazed along the mound of skulls which were stacked like fine china behind me.
‘This is who I am,’ he said, with a note of triumph. ‘Le Tanneur. The torturer they despised and feared. For years I have been practising my skills on animals. I have satisfied the craving within me by watching the agonies in the eyes of God’s creatures. Have you heard the sound a deer makes when you stake it down and open its guts and it slowly empties onto the forest floor? Do you know how it feels to take the skin from cattle as the beast still bucks and lows beneath the blade?’
He moved quickly, towards the pot, and reached inside. He pulled out what at first I took to be a heavy coat. Slowly, the dreadfulness of the truth filtered into my understanding.
‘He has been softening for months now,’ said Favre, looking at the skin of Marcel Defouloy. ‘I find it pleasing – this idea of working again on a skin that I last played with so many years ago. There is a pleasing symmetry to it, is there not? If you look carefully, you will see the pattern of the coins which seared his flesh.’
I tried again to move. Managed to half slide and half shuffle into a position that allowed me a glimpse of the light that bled in through the open door. I saw a flicker of movement. A flash of colour against the grass and the mud and the snow.
‘Fairfax brought him to us after you found his resting place,’ said Favre, shaking his head, as if it had all been too perfect for words. ‘There was something in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen before. He told us what had happened. A tree had come down and you and that stupid Goose woman had seen Marcel’s corpse. So he gathered him up and stuffed him in his car and drove him here. To us! I helped him remove the body from the boot. That was when it happened. Defouloy’s shirt tore open and we both looked upon the damage I had done to him in ’44. He still had the imprint of those burning coins against his skin. And Fairfax suddenly knew he had been lied to. He had not helped a victim avenge himself upon his persecutor. He had helped me – the Milice’s chief torturer – finally murder the man he had abused years before.’
I was coming back to myself. Could feel the blood in my veins. Could hear my own heart.
Keep trying, I demanded of myself. Don’t give in. Live. Live! They call you wicked. They call you stubborn. So be both. Fight. Fight!
‘He drove away before I could stop him,’ said Favre, and he reached down to his left and picked up a wooden frame, and a wicked-looking implement with two handles and a curved blade. ‘He was
heading for the camp. Looking for a military man he could tell everything to. It was the storm and his own guilt that killed him. I don’t know whether he drove into the tree on purpose or whether fortune was simply on my side but his death was a pleasing thing. And now I have Marcel to myself again. I took his body from the boot of the car and have enjoyed every moment of his transformation. Did you know I once made a Maquisard into a handbag? I can tell you while I skin you, if you wish …’
I had been feigning utter incomprehension as he spoke. I had ensured my eyelids fluttered and that my breath had been shallow. I looked like somebody nearly dead. He did not look like he was expecting me to suddenly scramble to my feet and launch myself at him. But whether he was prepared or not I was too weak to capitalize. He caught me by the arms as I sprang for him and with strength I did not expect him to possess, forced me back onto the stone like he was forcing a reluctant lover onto his bed.
‘No,’ he said, and the light caught his tiny black eyes. ‘You do not get to escape from this. Soon you will be with your son – the son who died so magnificently; whose soul I watched depart. But first, there is pain. So much pain …’
I didn’t need to fight him off. Didn’t need to push him back or try to get my fingers in his eyes. All I had to do was keep him there, hunched over me like a pecking bird; my fingers digging into his wrists and keeping him still, above me, distracted …
He never heard Felicity. Never saw the timid little woman scoop up the broken bottle by its neck.
He didn’t make a sound as she stuck it in his back. Just twisted in shock and pain and let go of me to round upon her.
I pulled the glass from his back as he advanced towards her. It made a vile sucking sound as it popped out of his skin.
Favre half turned at that. Parted his grotesque lips to show the tiny row of sharp teeth. For a moment he blocked out all the light. The world beyond the skull room disappeared and there was just him and me and Felicity in a room that reeked of skin and blood.
And then I thought of Stefan. That moment, as I held him, and his soul went wherever it wanted to be.
This thing had been there. Had witnessed his last breath.
I lunged forward with the broken bottle.
And stabbed.
And stabbed.
And stabbed.
FELICITY
Transcript 0012, recorded November 1, 2010
Where do I even start with what happened next? It was me who stopped her stabbing him but by then he was long since dead and I only stopped her because it had gone on long enough. Most of the next few hours were a blur.
We supported each other as we made our way back across the snow. She was bleeding and couldn’t hear out of one ear. She kept stumbling and didn’t know which way was up nor down. And I was trembling enough for the both of us and if I hadn’t kept telling myself that the blood on my wrist was Cordelia’s, I think I’d have started scrubbing myself clean in the snow.
It was Cordy who insisted we go to the Parker house first of all. The door was open and Audrey wasn’t back from church. I didn’t like being back there. Told her we had to get down to the village before we were discovered. But she insisted. I can see her now; blood all over her face and clothes, picking up the telephone from the cradle and saying, bold as you like, that her name was Cordelia Hemlock, and that Jean Favre was dead. She didn’t ask to be connected to a number. Just said it into the receiver. When I asked her why, she looked at me like I was mad.
‘They’re listening,’ she said. ‘They’ve always been listening.’
We holed up at her house. I wanted to call the police straight away but she told me to wait.
‘They won’t be long,’ she said.
She looked at herself then. Saw the state of herself and I think she realized what had happened, and what she had done. I can see her still; half nodding to herself, then wiping away the tears.
I ran her a bath. There didn’t seem much else to do of any use. I made tea, because that’s what you do. Around one p.m., John and the kids turned up, frantic. The pans had boiled over and they had played the recording. What was I thinking of? What had happened?
They joined me in Cordelia’s kitchen. She was upstairs, soaping herself human again.
The men who arrived mid-afternoon were smartly dressed and drove big, grey cars. One of them smelled of cigars. The one who knocked on the door was a slight man. He had a peculiarly-shaped head that was wider at the bottom than the top, so he looked like a lampshade. He had thinning red hair. He wore a pinstripe suit and a black hat and though it was bitterly cold on the doorstep, he didn’t look uncomfortable. He asked to see Mrs Hemlock. John was at my side in a flash. The boys were behind us, like we were trying to form a wall of bodies between this man and Cordelia.
‘She had to do it,’ I said, straight out. ‘He were killing her. Go up there. See what he’s been doing. See what’s been living among us!’
He let me rant for a while. Then he angled his head to see between myself and John and I turned to see Cordelia walking into the kitchen. She was pale and her hair was wet and the bruise in her hairline was an ugly, blue-black mound the size of a cracked egg.
‘Let him in,’ she said, quietly. ‘Thanks for staying with me, Flick. But you can go now. Things will be OK.’
‘Go?’ spluttered Brian. ‘We’re going bloody nowhere, Miss. The second we’re gone you’ll be in handcuffs and they’ll be dragging you off to one of their underground chambers for probing and prodding and all that, so if you think we’re leaving you’re off your rocker.’
She smiled at Brian. He’d barely stopped cuddling me since he arrived at Cordelia’s place. John neither. James was a little more reserved. He knew I’d seen his drawings.
‘My name is Tom,’ said the man, as if we hadn’t spoken. He looked around him at the warm, comfortable surroundings of the kitchen, then poured himself a tea from the pot in the centre of the table. He took it black without sugar and winced as he tasted the bitter brew.
‘I don’t care who you are …’ began Brian, but Cordelia shushed him.
‘I believe we have a little situation to deal with,’ said Tom smoothly. ‘Your neighbour, Mr Parker. I understand he suffered an accident in one of his outbuildings. You heard him screaming in pain, is that right? But by the time you arrived he had already lost too much blood. A tragedy, but farms are dangerous places and one does hear often of people being dragged into their machinery when not paying attention.’
Cordelia watched him, face unreadable. Me and my family just stayed in the doorway, watching the discussion like it was a game of tennis.
‘Mrs Parker, too,’ said Tom, and he took a long white cigarette from a silver case and lit it with a gold lighter. He lit another and passed it to Cordelia, who took it without saying a word.
‘Mrs Parker?’ she said, at last, when she had blown out a lungful of smoke.
‘She saw his body and went quite mad. Grief will do that. She has been taken to a facility that will treat her but I fear she is unlikely to return home any time soon. Truly, it is a terrible thing to happen to such good people. Thankfully, the village has benefited hugely from their generosity over the years and I am sure this will be the same when the will is read out. I fancy the local area will benefit greatly.’
Cordelia pursed her lips.
‘Did he know?’ she asked. ‘Christopher? Their handler? Did he know the truth?’
Tom sucked at his lip, weighing up the value of discretion. ‘He has been forced to make many difficult decisions,’ he said, holding Cordelia’s gaze. ‘He has done a great deal for Queen and country. He is, above all, a good man. It was not his choice for Mr Parker to be placed here. But there are those in power who have different priorities. We all serve different masters. I am sure the gentleman you spoke to at the farm will have done all he could to prevent situations such as the one we find ourselves in. And yet, it can sometimes be impossible to contain a spirit that wants to get out. You can nail three co
ffin lids in place and malevolence will still seep through the cracks.’
Cordelia chewed on this for a while. I could see her half agreeing with him.
‘That stone. The one he placed me on. It was from the river …’
Tom spread his hands. ‘Two Irish workmen and a hydraulic lift. It wasn’t difficult.’
‘And the workmen?’
Tom shook his head and my mind was suddenly full of skins and screams.
‘And we go on, do we?’ asked John, sullenly. ‘Just forget what happened.’
Tom turned on him and dropped the soft voice he had been using for Cordelia. ‘You don’t know what happened,’ he snapped. ‘You have guesses and the word of your wife. I have evidence of a terrible farming accident. And that is all.’
‘But Fairfax,’ I began.
‘Crashed his car during a storm.’
‘And Marcel? A Frenchman, a decorated Maquisard – nobody will look for him?’
‘I’m quite sure somebody will,’ said Tom, ‘but I’m quite sure you will all be alert for outsiders snooping around.’
Cordelia rubbed her fingertips on the wound upon her skull. ‘And if we disagree with your version of events?’ she asked.
‘Why would you do that?’ he replied. ‘There are so many opportunities for advancement when one does one’s duty.’
‘Advancement?’ asked Cordelia.
He smiled at that, I swear it. It was just a flash of a thing, like a bird taking a fish from still water, but in that moment he knew he had her. She did too. Standing in the kitchen of a house she never wanted, in the village where she was born to a mother who never gave a damn. I could see her working it out. Could see her trying to decide if she was selling any part of herself if she made this bargain.