Then the door closed and shut her from sight.
Brushing the sand off the package, I go back out of the storeroom. The drizzle has turned to rain as I head across the courtyard towards the barn. Water drips from its entrance as I prop my rucksack against the wall inside. The dark interior is as cold and damp as if it’s never known a summer. I can make out the dull glint of wine bottles in the wooden rack on the back wall, too sour for anyone to want. The patch of concrete on the floor looks smaller than I recall, the crack in it still unrepaired. I’d intended to go up to the loft one last time, but there doesn’t seem any point. Instead, leaving my rucksack in the dry of the barn, I follow the track down to the lake.
The ground is muddy and churned, the leafless grapevines resembling rows of tangled wire. Even the wood is hardly recognizable as the green-canopied place I remember. The chestnut trees are bare, and underneath their dripping branches is a mat of dead leaves and bristling shells.
There’ll be no harvest this year.
I walk straight past the fork leading to the sanglochon pens without slowing. I’ve no desire or reason to go there again. It’s only when I come to the statues that I stop. I thought they might have been taken away, but they’re still here. Unchanged and apparently unmissed. I try to recall how I felt hiding from Arnaud that night, to summon up something of the uncertainty and fear. I can’t. In the grey daylight the statues are just mundane stone carvings. Turning away, I continue down to the lake.
The water is wind-shivered and grey. At the top of the bluff the ground is scarred and gouged with heavy tyre tracks. I stand under the empty branches of the old chestnut tree, staring down at the rain-pocked lake. I can’t see below its surface, but there’s nothing there any more. Louis’s truck has long since been winched out and taken away.
The polythene package in my hand feels solid and heavy. My feelings towards it remain as ambiguous as when I first saw it hidden in the car boot. I had ample opportunities to dispose of it during the summer, yet I didn’t. I could tell myself it was simple cowardice, insurance in case Lenny or any other of Jules’s associates wanted it back, but that isn’t entirely true. Like turning over a rock to see what lies underneath, now I’m here I finally acknowledge the real reason why I’ve kept it all this time.
I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.
I’ve no idea how much it’s worth, but it’s more money than I’ve ever had. Enough to start a new life. And with Jules dead and Lenny in prison, there’s no one else to claim it. I was in London long enough for them to have found me if there were. I weigh the package in my palm, feeling the possibilities beneath the crinkle of plastic. Then, drawing back my arm, I throw it out over the lake as far as I can.
It arcs against the grey sky before landing in the water with a small, unemphatic splash.
I jam my hands in my pockets and watch the ripples flatten out until there’s nothing left. Chloe didn’t get a second chance, and neither did Gretchen. I’m not going to waste mine. Turning away, I retrace my steps through the woods. After stopping off at the barn for my rucksack, I head back to the house. I’ve done what I came here for, but there’s one more thing I want to do before I go.
The kitchen garden is unrecognizable. The goats and chickens have gone, and the ordered rows of vegetables have either died or run amok. The tiny flowerbed has grown wild and straggled, but even this late in the year there are still a few splashes of colour. I stand looking down at it, thinking about the sadness I saw on Mathilde’s face when she was tending this small patch of earth. As if she were tending a shrine.
Or a grave.
Mathilde never said what her father had done with the remains of her stillborn daughter, but I can guess what she chose to believe. The police were unaware of any transgression except Gretchen’s death and Louis’s murder, so the small bed of flowers remains undisturbed. Yet try as I might, I can’t see Arnaud burying evidence of his other crime where it could so easily be found. Not when he had a much more permanent means of disposal, as he showed with Louis. I doubt he’d feel differently just because it was his own flesh and blood.
Especially not another daughter.
That’s only speculation, but there are other unanswered questions. I still can’t decide if what I heard in those last moments in the hut was really the sound of Mathilde lifting the knife from the stone slab. I don’t want to believe it, but then I think about everything else she did to protect her family. Once I’d found Louis’s truck in the lake, she’d nothing to lose by telling me the rest, hoping even then to persuade me to take Gretchen away. But after I’d refused would she really have allowed me to leave, knowing what I did?
In my more optimistic moods I tell myself she would. She’d saved my life once before, when I’d stepped in the trap. Except then I’d represented an opportunity rather than a threat. In my darker moments I wonder what would have happened if I’d got worse instead of better. Would she have seen I received proper medical attention as she’d said, with all the risk that implied? Or would I have ended up like Louis, another offering for her father’s sanglochons?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been so tainted by the farm’s secrets that I’m seeing them where they don’t exist. And my own actions don’t give me the moral right to judge. That night in the hut when I thought Mathilde had taken the knife from the slab, my first thought was of the hammer that Georges had used to stun the sow. If Michel hadn’t announced Gretchen’s presence just then, would I have actually picked it up?
Used it?
Not so long ago I would have said no, but that was before Jules. Even though I didn’t mean to kill him, I keep asking myself if that made any difference. If I’d known what would happen when I drove away, if it came down to a simple question of him or me, would I have acted any differently? There’s no easy answer. Under the skin we’re all still animals. That’s what the society Arnaud so despised is meant to disguise, but the reality is that none of us know what we’re truly capable of.
If we’re lucky we never find out.
On impulse I crouch down and begin plucking weeds from the flowerbed. I’m not sure why, but it feels right. When a semblance of the former neatness has been restored, I stand up and take a last look around. Then, wiping the muddy soil from my hands, I go back to the courtyard and give a sharp whistle.
‘Lulu! Here, girl!’
The spaniel lopes out from behind the stables where she’s been sniffing. She’s barely slowed by the single hind leg, and her enthusiasm makes me smile. I hadn’t planned on claiming her, but no one else wanted to and the vet couldn’t keep her indefinitely. It was either that or let her be destroyed, and I couldn’t do that. Besides, it’s surprising how much easier it is to hitch a lift when you’ve a three-legged dog as a travelling companion.
As we pass the house Lulu stops by the kitchen door and whines. But she doesn’t stay long, and soon follows me out of the courtyard and back up the track. She slips under the gate while I climb over. Once we’re on the other side I look up and down the road. There are no cars in sight. The spaniel watches me with her ears cocked, wobbling slightly as she waits for me to decide which way to go. It’s only when she’s standing still that balance becomes a problem.
So long as we keep moving she’s fine.
Acknowledgements
Even by my standards, Stone Bruises has been a long time coming. People who’ve helped along the way include SCF, Ben Steiner, my agents Mic Cheetham and Simon Kavanagh and all at The Marsh Agency, my editor at Transworld, Simon Taylor, and my parents, Sheila and Frank Beckett.
As ever, a huge thanks to my wife, Hilary, without whose belief, help and support this would never have been written.
Simon Beckett, September 2013
About the Author
Simon Beckett has worked as a freelance journalist, writing for national newspapers and colour supplements. He is the author of four international bestselling crime thrillers featuring his forensic anthropologist hero, Dr David Hunter: The
Chemistry of Death, Written in Bone, Whispers of the Dead and The Calling of the Grave.
Simon is married and lives in Sheffield. To find out more, visit www.simonbeckett.com.
Also by Simon Beckett
The Chemistry of Death
Written in Bone
Whispers of the Dead
The Calling of the Grave
To find out more about the author and his work, visit www.simonbeckett.com
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This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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