Before the big bully could ask for a witness name, she’d shut their car door and jogged over to the kiosk rather than let them see which vehicle belonged to her. She had a plan, but there wasn’t a minute to lose, and once they’d driven off, a growing resentment engulfed her.
“Sod it,” she said, leaving her parking place and driving off in the opposite direction. Towards the Rue des Peupliers.
*
She parked halfway along the already familiar street, six houses away from number 82 and continued walking until that street ended opposite l’Église du Christ le Martyr. She took a left, then left again into the narrow alleyway, yet again regretting the brightness of her coat, which couldn’t have been more obvious.
A solid wall behind the small gardens, and low enough to peer over, extended away towards the town square. She noticed each house had a helpfully numbered gate. The one for number 82 seemed newly-painted in black, but what made her stop wasn’t the fact that the shutters on the house’s rear wall were all open, but that gate’s equally new-looking padlock hung open. Its key still inside.
She couldn’t resist; had to be quick, because those same gendarmes and more could be turning up any time soon.
Rather than risk leaving fibres from her gloves, Delphine used the toe of her boot to push the gate further open, and found herself out of the wind, in an immaculately-tiled area surrounding a miniature palm tree set into a pretty, blue-glazed pot with matching gravel. Perhaps the tree had been a gift from the hotel group’s CEO, or perhaps reminded Basma of Algeria. Whatever, seeing such orderliness and distinctive personal taste which also included four metal seats tilted up against a matching table, made her ache to have her own place. Even Josette’s bog-standard flat in Labradelle was covetable.
She stared at each window in turn for the slightest hint of movement beyond, but there was none. Just the wintry sky reflected in each pane of glass. The same for those houses on either side. She hesitated, then remembered what Basma had said.
‘I’ve been looking into your family…’
Another reason for being here.
First, she checked behind her and then over each neighbouring wall. All quiet, save for her pulse banging away. And her phone ringing. Again.
“Delphine?”
Lise Confrère.
“Ssh…”
“Why ssh? Where are you? You were to ring me an hour ago.” Her tone unusually stern.
“Sorry. I’ll tell you afterwards. And by the way, sous-lieutenant Cornet knows you contacted me. He wasn’t too happy. D’you mind if I say that?”
Silence, broken by a dripping gutter from somewhere.
“Look, Delphine, we need you. Easy for him to get all hot under the collar. Cousteaux is well-funded, unlike our backwater, which the flu problem’s making ten times worse.”
Silence, as if Confrère was checking something on her computer.
Delphine ended it. “Have you heard about the suicide here? At the St. Jacques station?”
“Yes. Tragic, but more than worrying if the deceased had come from Madame Arouar’s home.”
“He did, I’m sure of it, and…” Delphine paused, unsure of how much to add. “I’m still here. Just so you know.” There was still no need to mention her recent meeting with Martin. It was unlikely anyone had remembered seeing them together, except perhaps the man in the kiosk.
“Spanish,” the Lieutenant said distractedly. “That’s just been confirmed. But no ID, no personal possessions. He could be anybody, so we have yet another cul-de-sac to add to our collection.”
Delphine then relayed what she’d heard about Basma’s occasional lunches at the hotel with a male companion who’d also had a Spanish accent. How just an hour ago, this could have been that same frightened man. Also, how Basma’s Satnav was still missing from her car.
“Where exactly are you in Cousteaux? It’s hardly a village.”
Delphine paused. Would she be thought weird hanging around her boss’s place?
“Behind her house.” She confessed, then mentioned the open gate. The unshuttered windows.
Another silence, then, “wait there. Impasse de l’Église, yes?”
“Correct, but aren’t you seeing Miko at 16.00 hours?” Delphine ventured. “I mean, Michel Salerne?”
Confrère ignored her question.
“What’s the house number?”
“82.”
“Don’t touch anything and keep out of sight. By the way, I’ve got some other news.”
“What?”
“Later.”
*
She’d keep out of sight alright, by going indoors if she could, but first, a cigarette. Yes, every second mattered, but she also needed to calm down. Having stubbed out her dimp in the palm tree’s pot, and dropped it down a handy drain, Delphine then investigated the back door which matched the shutters in new PVC. However, like the back gate – yet even more mysteriously – it was slightly open, housing a Yale key on the inside.
From the moment she’d shut it behind her and stepped on to a doormat bearing the cheery word BIENVENUE, a trace of lavender scent reached her nose. She sneezed, almost colliding with two poubelles almost blocking the cold, tiled passageway. Both empty and clean as if unused.
A dead house, she thought. Like a body with no heartbeat. Even the wall-mounted storage heater’s dial showed zero.
“Madame Arouar?” she called up the pale, marble stairs that faded to darkness near the first floor. “Are you there?”
No reply, so she tried the first door on her right which led to a room doubling as an office and storage space. In the far corner stood a steel filing cabinet, all drawers locked. No visible key. On top of it stood a small, round goldfish bowl occupied by a pale orange specimen staring at her with its mouth agape, obviously hungry. There was no sign of any recent food on or below the water’s surface and she wondered where her boss kept a supply of it until her eye was drawn to a long, white-painted desk by the window. This was home to a metallic red Toshiba laptop and various files and papers which at first glance, seemed to relate to her job. All tidy, and seemingly untouched by curious hands.
She also spotted a pink, plastic file marked ÉVALUATIONS, from which, towards the end of it, protruded a shred of white paper. Delphine swallowed.
Take a look. No harm done.
Besides, a creeping fear kept her from venturing upstairs. At least, if any flics should turn up through the front door, she could escape…
*
Whatever else her boss was, orderliness was clearly her thing, and all her underlings’ surnames were listed in alphabetical order, from the day, month and year they’d begun and/or finished work at the hotel. Each had their own green tab marked A… B… C and so on, jutting out, and most surnames were familiar. While typed profiles and backgrounds were kept brief, their monthly Appraisal results covered much more ground, written in the Algerian’s fluid, forward-sloping hand. Delphine had no doubt that these would have been transferred on to her pc, but she wouldn’t have time to find out.
D… E…
Her almost numb, gloved fingers flicked through the pages, then stopped. There was nothing at all for F.
Facchietti?
Where on earth was Adriana’s information? Delphine checked back and fore, holding her breath. Her already queasy stomach feeling hollow. Even more so when she tried R, for among the numerous entries from Ranaton to Rudiczi, there was nothing for Rougier either. Just that snip of green paper.
‘I’ve been looking into your family…’
Suddenly, she heard a noise and realised she wasn’t alone. The door behind her was opening, bringing a draught of icy wind. She froze. Let the file close, and in doing so, that clearly significant marker fell to the floor.
LUCIUS
3.05 p.m.
“Here, use this,” says my captor, pulling out the promised bottle. White porcelain with a pouting rim containing a cork stopper. The kind I’d seen in Papa’s catalogues for medical aids. B
ut why has Aunt Estelle brought something that she can’t use? It doesn’t make sense, except…
I brushed away the thought that my entrapment had been planned all along as being way too weird, and I pulled out the bung. Brand new, and I’d be the first to Christen it.
“I’m not looking,” she promises, but does, as I poke the end of my cock into its ice-cold neck and at last feel relief for my aching bladder. When I withdraw it, wiping the head dry with my palm, she tries to touch it.
“No!” I push her away, and receive a slap on my ear, making her swerve from left to right.
“Do that again, and I’ll…”
“What? Tell me.”
“Kill you.”
After that, things are a bit different, but not much, and as we climb higher and higher away from sodden winter fields of God knows where, I keep thinking of how I can distract her and somehow get out. But no. Not a chance, at least for now…
And another thing, there’s not a snowflake to be seen.
‘Disappeared... for good.’
14.
14.10 hrs.
“Thank God!” Delphine’s fear ebbed away as Lieutenant Lise Confrère stepped cautiously through the office’s open door. “My nerves are shot.”
“Just wait there,” said the Lieutenant, who in turn looked flushed, anxious. “Something doesn’t feel right. I won’t be long.”
Delphine had heard that one before. Too many times in fact, from both her parents when she’d been left on her own as a kid in Bellevue, with Julie not allowed in to keep her company. “Where are you going?”
Confrère indicated upstairs, but Delphine had something important to tell her.
“There are two files missing from Madame Arouar’s staff records’ file. Adriana Facchietti’s and mine. Coincidence, or what?”
Her companion paused, frowning. Then glanced back at the rear door and shot its upper and lower bolts across. “Just in case,” she added, “and if Facchietti’s file really has gone, yes, that could be significant. But time’s too tight to…”
“What about mine?”
“You tell me.”
Delphine hesitated. Decided to trust her.
“Basma said yesterday she’d been looking into my family. That she knew how tough things had been for us. I keep wondering why…”
“Just give me two minutes. OK?”
The Lieutenant loosened her laces of her heavy boots, kicked them off and took the stairs two at a time until she disappeared.
Delphine waited, aware of her speeding pulse. Also, of rapid footsteps overhead followed by a silence lasting too long.
Enough.
She too, shed her boots, before taking the stairs two at a time.
‘You tell me…’
She had to tell the Lieutenant how Basma’s earlier, almost threatening remark about having researched the Rougier family, had churned up stuff she’d rather forget, but less than a minute later, all that was forgotten.
Jésu…
Through the half-open bedroom door, she glimpsed an image that defied words and could never be erased. Her boss, stark naked, slightly twisting on the end of a thin, grey washing line, wound several times around her substantial neck, hung from a ceiling beam overhead. Her mouth agape. A thick blue tongue visible. Both eyes scrolled to white. No blood, she noticed, and nothing else seemed to have been disturbed.
Confrere checked both pulses in her wrists. Saw Delphine staring.
“I’m afraid she’s gone. Recently, too. I’d say suicide, poor woman.”
If so, thought Delphine, how could she have reached that beam? The only chair near a dressing table seemed way too low. And why those strange, dark marks on both her plump arms? Perhaps they’d happened earlier. But how?
“Where are her clothes?” she then thought out loud. “She can’t be left like this.”
“We mustn’t touch a thing. Come on.”
And while Lise Confrere swiftly led the way downstairs, Delphine paused to take a photo on her phone. The Lieutenant must have heard her and turned round. An angry blush on her cheeks.
“No, Delphine. Please delete it. Not your job.”
*
So, they both left everything untouched and, without another sound, slipped out of the house then the Impasse de l’Église the same way they’d come. Delphine unsteady on her feet, hurt by Confrere’s sudden put-down and unable to process the horror of Basma Arouar’s death. Those bare, brown feet moving slightly as if on some hidden draught. Those blank eyes.
“Did you smell lavender?” She said finally, while Confrère closed the back gate.
“No. Not at all.”
Delphine thought that odd but pressed on. “Come to think of it, that Spanish man I’d seen running away, smelt of it too.”
“Really?” Confrère extracted her new phone from inside her reinforced gilet and tapped in a number.
“Yes. And I wonder…” Delphine had been about to add how he might have been the husband Basma mentioned. Why she was referred to as ‘Madame,” and if there’d been a row, but the Lieutenant raised her free hand.
“Hang on.”
She was informing Cousteaux gendarmerie’s Captain Gayak about the possible suicide, then Captain Valon in Labradelle, keeping her voice cool and calm throughout. Just facts, no frills. A detachment which Delphine should have admired but couldn’t. And once that second call ended, ventured, “Basma Arouar told me she’d been married and had a…”
“That’ll all be checked,” Confrère interrupted. “And her other contacts. This is just the start. Something or someone must have made her snap.”
Delphine then recalled an important question she’d meant to ask.
“You said earlier you’d some news. What was it?”
“OK,” Confrère relented as they crept along the alley, keeping their heads below the level of the other rear gardens’ wall. “That dead baby’s blood doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the stain on the bed’s bottom sheet that someone had tried to clean. Forensics are certain of that. So, we know he wasn’t in it beforehand. Not that there was much blood anyway, just that little bit from his mouth.”
In that instant, Delphine wondered if she herself was really cut out for this grisly kind of work. But the Lieutenant was speaking again. “There’s something else.” She then paused. “A hair – only small, mind – was found trapped in the used pillow case already on the trolley.” She turned towards her. “Female, which is interesting.”
Delphine reached out to the wall for support.
“That changes everything.”
“Too right, and while we’re here,” the gendarme lowered her voice even further. “There’s something else you must understand. Don’t expect much help from Captain Gayak’s lot. In fact, they may actually be obstructive.” She re-tied her pony tail and returned her képi to her head. “Ever since the Labradelle team was chosen to investigate a missing schoolboy – and that goes way back to when I was only three – they’ve been tricky. Pathetic really, come to think of it.”
“When exactly?”
“End of November 1968.”
Just before François and Irène Rougier sold their café in Beaumont-sur-Sarthe and moved to Bellevue in St. Eustache. When giant-sized tractors and harvesters had replaced the coffee machines and juke box…
They both walked a few paces in silence until Delphine muttered, “what is it with some guys?”
“Why I’m still single, and not looking too hard either.”
Neither smiled. Instead, they parted company and within minutes, Delphine had begun the journey back to her small hamlet under a yellow sky promising more snow. Sorrow misted up her eyes, slowing her progress through the flat, wintry landscape, so she didn’t see her car’s fuel gauge, showing almost empty, and only when a red warning light flashed up on the dashboard, did she panic.
*
Having filled up with just two litres of the lowest grade petrol in a one-horse garage, she switched on France Musique f
or Schubert’s Winterreise to fill her small space, and just as she tucked the 2CV in between a slow-moving animal transporter and an off-duty SAMU ambulance, her tears came. Something inside had snapped, and it took a huge effort to focus on the distance between herself and the monster in front, chucking up muddy spray.
A sliver of slush and dirt to her left provided a temporary berth before grief overwhelmed her. For Julie, with her stiff tongue trapped between her teeth until the hard soil had eventually covered her. For Basma and the newborn baby boy whose violated necks were no different to those of the force-fed capons sold in Labradelle’s weekly market. Doomed for the pot.
She thought of her parents, too. How they needed her, but while using her gloves to dry her salted, wet face, she remembered something Martin had said.
‘Those fancy rings she wears are hardly your normal wedding ring, even though one’s always on that finger.’
Yes, Basma always wore rings. At least two per hand. Not like the mean, gold band her own mother wore, but exotic, gem-encrusted knuckledusters. So, where had they gone? If suicide, had she removed them beforehand? Or, if murder, had her killer or killers helped themselves?
*
Delphine switched off Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s haunting voice, then punched Confrère’s number into the Ericsson. As she did so, her sorrow shifted a little; the clarity of her question surprising even herself.
“Yes, her fingers were quite bare,” conceded the Lieutenant. “But I did notice indentations where rings had been, including her wedding ring finger, and striations in the surrounding flesh, as if they’d been hurriedly prised off. Maybe hidden somewhere. The same on her right wrist where she’d worn a watch.”
Delphine also remembered it. “Expensive too, with a gold strap.”
Was Confrère writing this down?
“OK,” said the Lieutenant after the pause. “My overriding impression was, as far as I could tell, of suicide, with no signs of a struggle. However, if that Spanish-speaking guy had visited number 82, she could have killed herself straight after he’d left.”
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