Downfall

by Sally Spedding

  “But why? And how could she have reached that beam on her own?”

  “Not impossible, but we’ll see. The Cousteaux lot are finally pulling their fingers out, and I have to stick around. Mind you,” Confrère lowered her voice, “don’t hold out any great hopes of answers. Especially with Judge Georges Pertus in a permanent slumber. They’re more than peeved I went in in there, and as for you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind. Just get home and, as I’ve already said, start asking your parents some serious questions.”

  *

  Having already sensed that earlier distance widening between them, Delphine could appreciate why, but accepting it was another matter.

  “As the hotel’s closed for a week, I thought I’d see Josette Lecroix again on Thursday,” she persevered. “Could I? I might find out more about her and Miko. I mean why was he missing at such a crucial time?”

  Another pause in which she could tell the Lieutenant was dialling someone else while endless traffic passed close by.

  “God knows, but yes, that could be useful. By the way,” she added when the call ended. “I need my old phone back for re-cycling.”

  “Fine. I’ll drop it in straight away.” Then Delphine realised there’d been no sign of Basma Arouar’s mobile at her house or in her car. Surely its full voicemail and inbox could prove useful?

  “Where are you now?” The Lieutenant broke her train of thought.

  Delphine hesitated.

  “I’ll be fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re a star,” caught her by surprise. Despite the bare, lowering trees overhead and the overwhelming bleakness of her surroundings, it was that baby, Julie and Basma who were the three other reasons why she pushed her gear stick into first and for some reason, thinking of her boss’s oddly marked arms, drove off the blackened snow into the rest of her life.

  LUCIUS

  4.15 p.m.

  The afternoon is just too dark, too confusing, and I can’t tell where the fuck we are, except there are no more dwellings or signs for anything. The rain too, is no longer normal. It batters the car roof and even the wipers can’t clear it enough for me to see what’s ahead.

  I try and stay alert, despite my stomach beginning to eat itself in hunger, and the Not Knowing gnaws at my mind. I tell myself to look for the smallest indication of where we might be, but it’s as if the Devil himself has wiped the slate clean.

  While my aunt with an even more determined expression on her face, doggedly pushes on, I try to remember the name of her farm where she’s lived since Papa moved to Paris. After their parents died in Bonn…

  Think… I’m sure it begins with C… Cime? Cicatrice? Or insects perhaps…

  “Les Cigales,” I hazard a guess out loud, as those bastard wheels grumble over a sudden cattle grid, and on down a water-filled track.

  “Clever boy,” she says, before pulling up outside a large, wooden farmhouse with a massive, sloping roof and a few tiny windows. But before I can grab her neck, she’s produced a gun from somewhere, which she presses against my skull. “One false move, Lucius Seghers, and it’s your last. Got it?”

  It’s then that my churning gut fills with fear. Empties itself down my legs, all over the already damp, carpeted floor.

  15.

  14.50 hrs.

  Three deaths in almost forty hours. Yet Lise Confrère said during the Ericsson handover it was pointless to speculate on possible connections between them until the Gendarmerie Nationale’s forensics laboratory in Le Mans came up with more results. Such procedures sometimes took weeks, and Georges Pertus, the elderly Examining Magistrate sniffing retirement, was hardly throwing his weight about. However, the baby boy’s post-mortem would be tomorrow.

  Feeling bereft at losing the Lieutenant’s smart mobile which had shown an image of the Hôtel les Palmiers during normal times, there was something other than its flaky receptionist and her marginal family that she, Delphine could investigate. That incident on 30th November 1968 which Confrère had mentioned. But how to explore it? There was no internet connection in Bellevue, even if she could afford a second-hand computer. The hotel had one for clients’ use, but what if Martin’s worrying news about the closure had been correct?

  Forget it till next Monday, Delphine told herself, but there was someone she might ask.

  However, first things first. She must try and find the owner of that distinctive, orange binder twine.

  *

  Her petrol gauge was ominously near the red marker yet again as she made for the slushy turning for St Eustache. Then she remembered old Bertrand Dufeu at La Pipistrelle who kept a pump for his farm machinery which had been repaired at Bellevue before her father had given up what he was best at. A tractor surgeon who could tweak and tease the smallest of machine parts into service so that not only could boundless hectares be torn up for the next year’s harvest, but their crops be gathered in.

  Yes, given their history, surely Bertrand would oblige, and so, shutting her eyes at the spot where Julie’s life had ended, Delphine drove on past her home and its tilting shrine, towards the narrowing lane with no passing places. Yet once past that substantial monument to St Eustache himself, topped by a stone-carved stag’s head, the road widened again into a land of various dwellings like so much Tetra-pack litter scattered far and wide. A strange commune, without even a church or meeting place. No school or doctor’s surgery. Not even a simple boulangerie. To live, you needed wheels. Unlike in Pauline Fillol’s village of Bonlieu, fifteen kilometres to the south-east of St Eustache, served by the internet and boasting a chemist and renowned crêperie.

  So, La Pipistrelle was the closest thing to a hub, where each summer, Bertrand du Feu would set out three or four metal tables and chairs, and his hospitable wife Céline – who’d died last year – would serve home-made chips and citron pressés mostly to visitors who’d found themselves lost.

  *

  “Not at work, then?” quizzed the eighty-year-old dressed in what seemed to be an even older bleu de travail, while pulling over the filthy fuel pipe and guiding its nozzle into the 2CV’s empty tank. “Alright for some.”

  “I only do mornings,” Delphine lied, then forgot all about Roland Seligman’s gagging order. “Haven’t you heard what’s happened at the hotel?”

  Bertrand du Feu shook his almost bald head. “No TV, see, and my wireless is playing up. Besides, no-one’s stopped by since last Thursday.” His wrinkle-wrapped eyes fixed on her before he shook off the last drops of Total sans plomb, with exactly three litres now safely in her tank. “Everyone’s too busy with their own lives to bother with me. Even your Papa.”

  She said that he often spoke of him and their shared past, then mentioned Julie and the guy who’d driven the John Deere tractor and found her. “It’s her blood on this coat, in case you’re wondering.”

  “I was. Did the hunt get her? That lot of hooligans wouldn’t care.”

  “Let me pay you first.”

  “Five euros, special offer,” he said, oily palm outstretched. Then once she’d thanked him and paid, pulled the pieces of orange baler twine from her pocket. Dried blood still trapped in their fibres.

  “Her legs had been tied with this, and she’d been run over.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded while he eyed the twine. “Went out with the ark that stuff did. It’s all wire now. Damned Euroterrorists.” His sudden anger made Delphine start. He then pointed at the not-so-distant pylons. “See that white villa with the big roof over there? More fucking Krauts. Think they own the place, over-confident bastards.” He slid her euros into his overall’s side pocket. “Mark my words, trouble’s coming. At least I won’t be around to see it.”

  He glanced again at the twine. “Only place I can think of is the Gauffroi’s. Le Fin du Monde. And it was, too. The farming stopped after Antoine shot himself. Long while back now. Too much sun and not enough subsidy for sprinklers. Getting more common are suicides these days.”


  “Antoine?”

  “The widower. Poor sod.”

  A sparrow-hawk drifted low overhead. Beak open, talons spread, ready to strike at something invisible nearby. The wind was picking up as quickly as daylight was waning. Ice in the air, making it hard to remember what last summer had been like.

  “Wouldn’t go there on your own, though,” advised Dufeu, without warning.

  “Why?”

  “Roma.” He gathered spit in his mouth and ejected it.

  “So?”

  “Been on the Gauffroi land since October 12th. Most are lowlife criminals. Just what we need.”

  Delphine felt more than a twinge of unease. Yes, Bernard had helped her out with the petrol and for that she was grateful, but the longer she stayed in his company, the more her determination was undermined.

  “Are you suggesting they might have killed our dog?”

  He shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Saw one of their women selling dolls made from orange baler twine a few weeks back, outside the farm gate.” He patted her shoulder. “Just don’t go there, is all I’m saying. If anything happened to you, God knows how your folks would manage. It’s hard enough losing your wife. And I like to think that’s why your father’s just put up that shrine by your place. To remember the departed of St. Eustache.”

  She’d not thought of that.

  “You could be right.”

  With that, he shuffled off towards his drab little bungalow, leaving her for a brief moment, undecided about her next move.

  *

  Hail hit her windscreen like so many tiny mothballs as she followed the winding road past several turnings off to other individual dwellings almost smothered by fields of standing barley left to rot. A few fields had, in contrast, been industrially ploughed. Their blood-brown soil left in churned-up chaos, picked over by only the hardiest of birds. The crow, the magpie, even the gull come inland from the Atlantic coast.

  She saw not a single soul. No farm animals either, come to think of it, but in this region, La Chasse was king. Where every able-bodied male brought his rifle and dogs along for the fun lasting from September until March. Last year, there’d been two fatal shootings, but the quieter time hadn’t lasted long. Sometimes Julie would howl as if a primitive urge in her had been awakened, and Papa had to chain her to the barn wall until darkness fell.

  15.15 hours. She’d have to hurry. No way could she be ferreting around without a torch. Julie or no Julie, so in this his dead backwater with her beating heart the only living thing, she approached a six-barred gate topped by a faded sign.

  LE FIN DU MONDE.

  If she was going to scoot, best do it then. And yet she was curious. As far as she could see, this run-down estate was deserted. So where were these marauding invaders? The litter? Feral dogs? Stray kids? Instead, there was a stone-built farmhouse partially-covered in dark green ivy, its numerous outbuildings in degrees of disrepair. Not only that, but in the big Dutch barn’s gloomy interior, she spotted something familiar. A large, red tractor. There was also an old, beige-coloured car, so perhaps someone was around after all. Someone connected to Julie’s callous and needless death?

  Delphine made her way to the farmhouse’s front door, still dwelling on the growing improbability of Basma having committed suicide, rang the dirt-clotted bell twice and waited, aware of her heartbeat quickening.

  LUCIUS

  4.45 p.m.

  I’ve seen enough films and TV to know that when a gun’s pressed to your head, you don’t play games. Not even with your aunt who’s let you play with her for long enough to make her moan out loud and beg for relief.

  I don’t move a muscle, even though my smell is enough to make me sick, until my passenger’s side door clicks open and someone – a man I don’t recognise because of a balaclava and other black stuff – drags me out into the rain. Suddenly, and without a word, using all his strength, he thwacks my forehead.

  Everything begins to spin faster and faster as he hauls me indoors, along a black and white tiled passageway and into a bathroom without a bath, where he switches on a shower in the corner and begins pulling off my clothes. Aunt Estelle, meanwhile, watches everything.

  “Get yourself clean,” he barks. “Schnell! Then it’s down to business.”

  Schnell? Business?

  “What the fuck do you mean?” My teeth knock together with the cold as he strips me bare.

  “Fuck’s the right word,” she almost laughs. “But never again with this.” Another hit, this time to my backside, then my aunt yells at him to hurry. To be on his way…

  And then I know.

  It’s Papa…

  16.

  15.20 hrs.

  “You again.”

  His tone neutral, non-threatening. That same guy who’d found Julie dead in the lane, and now filled the doorway of Le Fin du Monde, had obviously combed his hair and cleaned himself up. Instead of his earlier, working gear, he wore clean jeans and a thick, roll-neck ‘pull’ that seemed handknitted. His curious, hazel eyes flicked up and down her body, then switched to her car, taking a hit from a sudden burst of hail.

  “They’re much softer than in summer,” he observed.

  “What are?”

  “Hailstones. And, get this, a storm of hail brings frost in its tail.”

  “OK, but I really don’t have much time for all that. I need to find out who killed our dog.” She pulled her coat collar against the blast of icy air. “I heard there’s a Roma camp near here and wondered how to reach it.”

  He bristled. His hand tightening around the door’s edge. “Who told you that?”

  “Someone at the hotel where I work.”

  “Come in,” he said, pulling the door wider. “I’m Patrick Gauffroi,” by the way. And you?”

  “Delphine.”

  “You sounded really upset while I was seeing your Papa about a welding job.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “No.”

  She knew why.

  “And what was all that about being pissed off with their secrets and them getting a threat? I shouldn’t be asking but it’s been on my mind.”

  Patrick Gauffroi wasn’t Martin, so it didn’t matter.

  “Another one arrived on Sunday. Usually they happen every ten years, apparently, since the end of November 1978. The 30th to be precise.”

  “What about?”

  “God knows. I’m never told a thing. I’d only found out by accident.”

  He reached out to her but didn’t touch. “Please, come in out of the weather.”

  She hesitated.

  “Look, I can assure you I’m neither a rapist nor a killer. I might actually be able to help, and if you must know, I’m bloody freezing.”

  Gut instinct kicked in. He was OK, but she’d stay close to the front door, making sure he couldn’t lock it behind her. The hallway smelt of diesel and earth, laced with a hint of manure, yet so far, she’d not seen any animals.

  “Even when old Angélique’s poisoned pen was still busy, there’s been trouble on and off round here,” he said, kicking the disorderly array of boots and shoes into line. All men’s, Delphine noticed, and some could have belonged to his late father. “Small stuff, mainly, but unnerving all the same.”

  “Such as?”

  “A dead crow here, a disembowelled sheep there. Why, in the end, Papa chucked in the towel.” His eyes half-closed then snapped open. “And why, after he died, I let Roma on to the land. Giving the small-minded idiots round here something to think about.”

  “And?”

  “It’s working out fine. They keep a look out and take pride in their individual plots.” He studied Delphine more closely. “I did try to find out if any of them knew about your dog, but most had travelled to Ballon to buy pigs.” He reached up for a battered, waxed coat and nimbly plunged each foot into a pair of muddy boots. “The site’s round the back of the farm, for their own safety.” He glanced up at her while tucking in the legs of his jeans and pulling on a pair o
f black gloves. “The way things are going politically, it makes sense. Why wait for the free movement in the Eurozone box to be ticked? It’ll happen soon enough.”

  He then locked up after them both and led the way through the rough weather to a yard backing onto a huge, open field where various well-used caravans sat in clearly marked-off areas. Each one contained a potager and a shed for housing small livestock.

  Delphine felt sorry for these much-maligned incomers who’d travelled so far from home to reach this ‘End of the World,’ from where woodsmoke drifted horizontally in the hail. Nevertheless, here might lie the key to what had happened in the lane yesterday. Even everything else?

  No. That was ridiculous.

  “I don’t let them keep dogs, mind,” Patrick Gauffroi added, opening a new, steel gate topped by razor wire. “Not with all the hunting going on. But they’re fine about that. All they want is to live in peace with their families, and who knows, maybe help me get this place back on its feet again. Mind you,” he gave her a knowing look. “There’s a few around here who’d hate me for it.”

  Maman, maybe? If so, how? Her mother’s strange mix of politics was hers alone. Delphine walked past him into the field. The light fading fast. She didn’t want to be out there in the dark with a man she didn’t properly know, and people who may or may not prove hostile.

  Her Nokia buzzed in her pocket.

  “Oui?”

  Martin once more, sounding terrible.

  “Are you still in Cousteaux?” she said, excusing herself to her helpful host.

  “Can’t say. Just that I’m doing some digging of my own, and guess what? My mate on the Courrier de l’Ouest told me something else about Basma Arouar. You couldn’t make it up.”

  *

  “What exactly?”

  Gauffroi was striding on ahead down towards the Romanians’ settlement.