“Giuseppe was working for you?” A new line of attack.
“No. I didn’t know him before I came.”
“But you admit you’ve made trips to the island before. You could have met him. Had the opportunity to plan things.”
“There is no plan. I didn’t meet him until I came this summer.”
“But once before you were in Corsica for three weeks.”
“Hiking. Not here.”
“You left the group in Calvi, after the walk. Why?”
Girard’s deputy seemed to have a very good record of my movements.
“To see Nicole.”
“Persistent, aren’t you? Determined to be here and scope the situation. Giuseppe’s death was convenient for you, was it not?”
“I liked him.”
“But he did not perform his duties.”
“He didn’t work for me.”
The man paused and looked through a set of notes he produced from his case. There were maps and guides in them. Brochures. “You have travelled a lot to Italy. Naples three times in the recent years. Why?”
It was true I had, but only on holiday. To see Sorrento, the ruins of Herculaneum, to climb Mount Vesuvius. History, curiosity and sun with a professor friend. “Holidays.”
“France too. You seem fond of the Côte d’Azur.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Hot. A rich man’s playground. Full of crooks.”
“Holidays.”
“You seem to have a lot of spare time.”
“I have worked hard. All over Europe, the States. Business first, then more recently journalism. Literary criticism. Articles, features. As a freelance, one never stops, gathering material, using it.”
“Convenient, all this travel. Good cover.”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Except the odd gun.”
Antoine appeared and suggested the deputy stop for lunch. This genial proposal broke the spell of interrogation. It was going nowhere. The detective screwed up his eyes into the burnishing sun and agreed.
After eating, there was the customary afternoon rest in the oppressive heat. Even police work couldn’t beat that. As the plan was for the team to take me back up the mountain and investigate the maquis path by the light of day, no one was thinking of making the steep climb until the air cooled down. This was to be a more thorough search than had been possible in the darkness of the fire-fight.
Later as the angle of the sun slipped towards the horizon we made a move, and reached the house half-an-hour later. There would be still two hours of light. The intention was to draw evidence from the broken branches of trees and shrubs that proved that it had become possible to move contraband goods – the arms – along the old maquis path up to the road, though we knew from the raid that this was only possible with what must have been considerable difficulty.
“Had I not seen them?” The deputy was on the attack again.
“No.”
“You must have heard them pass the house?”
“I didn’t. I slept in the back room.” One lie was allowed for that night.
“You must have been deaf.”
“Drunk.”
“A convenient excuse.”
“The truth.”
“There seem to be a number of so-called truths in your life, which are not true.”
I felt foolish again under his logical examination. Nicole had done a good job in masking me from the illicit trade routed through the cove. “I didn’t notice anything.”
“But you said you have been to these church ruins before.”
“Well, yes a couple of times.” I couldn’t tell him that Nicole and I had despoiled the sanctity of the building. Though in ruins for centuries, our profane act of passion had still been conducted on a holy site.
“And?”
“I came on it by chance the first time, looking for Nicole. I thought she was out this way collecting specimens, but I didn’t find her that day.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing much. The door was hanging loose. I assumed its hinges had rusted and perished, maybe fallen off in a storm. There was a lot of dust everywhere.”
“Of course.” Girard’s deputy waited for me to be more explicit.
“I admired its structural features. Architraves, stone patterns of yellow and black granite.”
“Yes, yes. But any sign of others being here?”
“Well, there were some marks on the floor, in the dust. I did wonder at the time, but thought the shepherds must come occasionally, and perhaps store fodder or something like that.”
“The shepherds don’t use it anymore.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You seem selective in your observations. You notice much about the architecture, but are not surprised by signs of human visitors to the church.”
“I was surprised to find the church in the first place. The maquis and its trees had completely enveloped it down the years. There are old stone walls of bergeries up on the mountain. I thought they may indicate that the shepherds had used this ruin as a shelter or store.”
“It is obvious that the smugglers used it.”
“Now it is.”
“And you deny you’re not part of helping them? I return to my key point. It is only you who seem to be on hand when bad things occur at the cove. You are the common denominator. We can’t ever discount that.”
I felt he was still probing in the hope that I might let something slip, which would explain how clever and cunning I was to be part of a racket that brought contraband into this corner of Corsica. Perhaps he hoped I had some connection with international gangs out of Italy or France, that I posed as the innocent face of a criminal fraternity.
“Have you been to Marseille recently?”
“Only on my way here. Otherwise no.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“We can check.”
“Not even in your student days, when you were at Aix-en-Provence university?”
“How did you know that?”
“We know a lot.”
“Well, yes, I did then. And a few times down the years. But that is a long time ago.”
“You speak good French.”
“It has been getting rusty.”
“But you manage to communicate well.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” I was trying to bat away anything that he was gluing to my profile.
A gendarme came up and debriefed the deputy on the state of the path beyond the church, and on the route that the smugglers had battered through the undergrowth. “It is as we thought. This year they have managed to undercut the shrubs and widen an ancient sheep track that had become lost over time. They were clever in keeping the overhanging trees untrimmed, so concealing the way, which was cut to the height of a man and wide enough to carry weapons up to the road. The mules would have been left at the church and unloaded.”
“The marks in the dust?” I had to ask.
“They would have dumped the panniers in there to break down the weight to manageable loads for the climb up to the nearest road. It was extremely difficult, but worth the effort to them. We had cut off so many of their routes, they were getting pinned down.”
I thought of the ruins of the Pisan church in a new light. This staging post had been brought back into the world centuries after the maquis had drowned its presence in the dense foliage. It had fallen into an invisibility shared with many other remote chapels across the island. A few fine examples today have been restored in inhabited villages, but many had been sited in the medieval pievi – the tiny communities inland, often hidden in deep mountain valleys, way off the beaten track of later centuries. I tried to picture the pious congregation of its original worshippers. Peasants too poor to risk not believing in the powers of God to watch over them and keep their flocks alive throughout the storms of life.
When we
returned to the taverne for a debrief, an air of suspicion focused on me. Girard stood defiant and accusing before me.
“I have nothing to do with the smugglers,” I said, “nor the dead man on the buoy, the shooting of the taverne dog or Giuseppe’s murder. Or the attack on Nicole.”
“Quite a catalogue of disaster,” Girard riposted, “don’t you think? All happening since you arrived.”
He had a point.
4
REMEMBRANCE
Mimoria
i
I was summoned back to the hospital a second time, with the extra botanical notes I had found. It appeared there had been little progress and though Nicole’s condition was stable there had been no response from her to stimuli. The doctors were willing now to let me be beside her bed.
“We’ll leave you here with her for a while. Talk at her from time to time and look out for any response.”
“Is it worth …?”
“It is always worth trying,” the younger doctor said. They left the room and I found myself alone with Nicole.
The afternoon sunlight through the window was filtered by the mesh of linen curtains and I saw her, lightly covered in the hospital gown, a cotton shift, just as she had first entranced me back at the house. Understandably that image had remained with me ever since, her slight form outlined against the cloth, her breasts tilted forward, her corn-coloured hair tumbling down over her bare shoulders. I was wishing that somehow we could go back three months and start this venture again, that I could change events, protect her from attack. To restore the idyllic nature of the haven and eradicate the deaths which had been imposed on it. The two murders – and now probably the third, Nicole.
I moved to the other side of the bed and sat beside her sleeping form. Without meaning to, my hand brushed against her arm and I found myself taking her hand in mine and squeezing it. Did I detect more than a pulse? Or was that in my imagination, a wishful thought too? No, I think not.
I watched her in silence. Her face seemed at peace. So still as to be in the proximity of death? I continued my devoted watch. For how long I was unaware.
Then in the shaded darkness of the room I moved my hand across her breast. I didn’t know why, or whether there was some mistaken desire in doing so, to retrace the body that had lain so often naked beside me, as we had explored each other in the cool of the summer evenings. In the haven. In that private heaven she had created for me.
I remembered the soft hairy green leaves of Borago officinalis with which she had once brushed my naked body as if this culinary herb could cook up some desire in me by touch rather than in the pot. We had sought the large blue flowers, opening into a star, in the depths of the maquis. Long, egg-shaped leaves toothed and narrowed into the stalks. She had discussed its medicinal value, and doubted its efficacy, yet I knew in Arab countries it was still used for veterinary purposes. ‘You treat me as an animal?’ I had chided at the time, but could not resist the sensations she had created in my limbs.
My hand traced over her body. In the small corners, the deeper retreats of her privacy that she had shared with me. As if it was to be the last time I should have the chance, let alone be permitted to do this. I felt she would understand, that my memory should be allowed to store all that passion she had created, given so willingly, a library of knowledge I could carry with me and refer to for the rest of my life. I took her hand in mine again. Tears began to form in my eyes and I found it hard to look at her quiet face without crying. Then I touched that very private zone, in which she had so generously acknowledged my caress as a touch of magic. A touch that had often been a signal between us of a shared passion, a trigger of lust, a mutual entrance to lovemaking.
Then a squeeze on my hand that was so slight at first I reckoned I imagined it. I dare not move, dared not hope. But it was there. Or was it? I waited unsure, but in a moment another squeeze on my hand, this time slightly firmer. Looking down I confirmed that there was a small movement, ever so small, but real.
I did not know whether to call out, yet find myself mistaken when the doctors came in, or whether to wait for further reassurance that I was not imagining these movements. Then her eyes blinked, opening for a split second, her glance falling on me, before closing again.
“They want the house.”
These words whispered their way from her throat. Then she seemed to fall as if asleep again, back into the coma.
The doctors came as soon as I pressed the bedside bell. Not in a panic, more with a sense of curiosity, not expecting anything significant from my vigil. Then the first one noticed my hand held Nicole’s and the direction of my eyes towards it. For a terrible moment there was no response to my squeeze of her hand and I doubted my own testimony, but then they saw a slight exchange between our hands as her fingers closed round mine, and their eyes lit up as they acknowledged this fresh sign of recovery.
I dared not believe that I had helped in some way to create a stimulus by moving my hand across her body and into our private zone. I found I could not mention my actions to the doctors, whether in shame or concern at making some false claim, which might just have been coincidence. Had she woken by chance when it was my turn to sit beside her? Was the random effect of a coma patient waking by some indiscernible act of fate the more likely cause of bringing her back towards consciousness?
“One can never tell,” the young doctor said into the silent space of the room, even
before her colleagues had spoken. “The speed of recovery, the pace with which a patient wakes is a variable factor. One cannot be certain about these things.”
I felt she had read my thoughts, and I was relieved that random chance may have been the primary factor in Nicole’s responses. That or the medication she was receiving through the drips. It wasn’t the moment to query everything. She was responding and that was all that mattered.
I felt at a loss as to what to do, and they encouraged me to move aside, so they could try and repeat stimuli, all the time looking sideways at the monitors. It must have been nearly an hour before there was a regularity in the responses from Nicole, as we waited patiently for encouragement, for hope. Then briefly her eyes opened and she saw above her the white-coated doctors and seemed to understand she was a patient in their care. Then she looked wearily around the room and saw me. A glimmer of recognition.
“They want the house.” This phrase again whispered.
“What does she mean?” the doctor asked of me.
“I don’t know.”
“It must be troubling her.”
I didn’t know what to reply. It remained a mystery to me too.
Nicole slipped back into a gentle sleep and the doctors indicated I should wait outside whilst they examined and tested her reactions. If any more. It was a further hour before they came out and told me there was new hope that she would emerge, in time, from the coma, that her life might be restored – to one degree or another.
“Will she be changed?”
“We cannot say. But we now have something to work on. Leave us to do our best. You may have helped by holding her hand, caused a reaction, however small, that may have started to reverse her condition. That is enough for the present, the rest is up to us.”
I went outside and down the street, into the bright Corsican sunshine. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. Until I remembered I had been ordered to report back to the Gendarmerie as soon as I left the hospital. I was still a suspect, under investigation. They had my passport. I was not free. The focus on Nicole, the most natural obsession I held, dominated my situation and future inevitably, and I realised I was caught between motives. To finish up my work and return to London – as soon as allowed, indeed if allowed – or to stay on the island for as long as was needed to oversee the turn of events. My editor could wait a little longer for information. I decided to take this moment of freedom to go down to the quay and have a stiff drink, whilst my thoughts cleared. I wasn’t going anywhere, I cou
ld report in later.
In fact one of my jailers, the gendarme who had called to collect me, found me at the table gazing absently into space.
“I was just coming,” I bleated absurdly.
“Pas de problème, we have you under observation at all times. The hospital say you may have done a good thing, so you can have a break …”
“Before?”
“The doctors say they can cope. You must go back to the cove, and stay there whilst we decide what to do with you. We have traced the lady’s next-of-kin. Her brother-in-law is coming out to look after her.”
“You have found her family?”
“We all have someone. Her brother-in-law is coming out.”
“Of course.”
I saw at once how selfish, how self-centred had been my preoccupation with Nicole, as if somehow I had earned the right to possess her after a short acquaintance.
“If she recovers, he will take her back to England, when it is the right time.”
“Yes, I understand.”
But in my heart of hearts I did not. She was mine, surely, to look after, to restore her medicinal ambitions here, before I let her go back at the end of the summer to … I paused. I had not managed to learn of her life in England. She had not offered up any information, and we had existed, embraced, loved together without recourse to the reality of her normal life. We had stayed in our bubble of satisfaction within the seclusion of her island bolthole.
The gendarme was addressing me again. “You’ll go back on the patrol-boat in the morning. We’re keeping two gendarmes there until all this is sorted out. Until we have gathered all the evidence from the church, anything we need from the house, everything we need from you. The only person who has been there at the time of all the murders – attempts.
“I have told you all I know.”
“Which is surprisingly little. You say you know nothing about the gangs landing arms. It is very odd, don’t you think that you never heard them, never saw anything?”
The Dark Side of the Sun Page 22