“OK. I’m racking my brains. I remember reading somewhere about a heavily-pregnant teenager from a children’s home in Cahors found wandering near a place called Salvignac. Almost dead from hypothermia…”
“When?”
“I’d say a year ago.”
Delphine’s blood also seemed to cool as she listened.
“What police later discovered – having been ordered by the Public Prosecutor to pull their fingers out, was that she’d escaped from a – wait for it – baby farm.”
Baby farm?
“Where, exactly?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t know either, being so disorientated and afraid.”
“Is she still alive?”
“No. She died two days later. “
“That’s terrible. What a nightmare.”
“You can say that again. And because that children’s home hadn’t reported her missing, it was closed soon afterwards.”
“I’m not surprised. Is Salvignac a village?”
“God knows.”
She retrieved her printout and passed him her Michelin map of France already open at the Lot department. He scanned the web of mostly thin, yellow roads and frowned. “It’s not even mentioned here. Christ…”
The afternoon sun although already beginning its downward slide, was too bright. As were the colours of the surrounding empty landscape.
“Did this poor girl have a name?”
“Withheld, for her protection, apparently. What a joke.”
“Jérôme Meyer, the archivist at Le Maine Express might be able to help. Even the current editor of Midi Libre. It could save us a lot of time and fuel.”
“You win.” Gauffroi then accessed his phone and cursed.
“What’s the matter?”
“No signal. The third time so far.”
*
With a strangely hollow feeling inside, Delphine watched him move towards his van. Head down, still trying to use his phone. Hers the same, still staring back at her with a dead eye.
“Do we have any kind of plan?” She shouted after him. He turned around.
“Yes. I’ll keep close but watch out if and when I decide to turn off.”
We’ll see about that…
She’d had enough bossing about from her parents and yes, Basma Arouar too. Another woman who’d held more secrets than she should. And that’s when she became aware of a distant helicopter circling against the sky, too far away to tell whether a civilian or army one. Could it be part of that SWAT team that Captain Valon had mentioned? Or something else altogether? A sign of hope or danger?
35.
14.35 hrs.
Dammit. She had to trust Patrick Gauffroi just like she was still trusting Martin even after everything he’d been suspected of doing. There was no going back, Delphine told herself. Besides, running out of options wasn’t a good move up here with not a single human dwelling in sight, nor anything living, it seemed, apart from the farmer and various birds of prey, silhouetted against the sky.
What on earth?
He was suddenly right behind her, flashing his lights, gesturing her to move over. Maybe he’d found a signal after all. Maybe had some more information. Whatever, his plan had suddenly changed, and with a wave, he squeezed past her to lead the way. His Renault Trafic’s rear doors jazzed up with safari park stickers from throughout Europe. Maybe like her, his van was on loan or hired because she’d not noticed it before at Le Fin du Monde. But why such a big vehicle? Perhaps she’d soon find out.
Its number plate ending with 46 – the Lot – was essential for anyone wanting to blend in around here, she thought, with the lowering sun now almost behind her. But had he really followed her all this way? Surely, she’d have noticed? And before this niggling doubt could grow, she spotted that same helicopter to her left. Being blue, it was almost indistinguishable from the sky as it descended, circling over the bare, craggy terrain.
The Gendarmerie Nationale.
“Turn right at the next crossroads,” ordered her Satnav suddenly. “And continue for three kilometres.”
She switched on her right indicator, but Gauffroi made no reaction. In fact, when the time came for her to reduce speed as this small junction appeared, he continued straight on down a steep hill lined by weather-bitten pines, chucking up stones as he went.
Tracker?
That sinister word again, made her crash the gears, realising with a dead weight in her stomach that like her own father, she didn’t know him at all. She thought of her mother and her grim legacy, trying to imagine what she’d say if she could see her daughter now, and when the turning came, she duly swung the Suzuki to the right.
*
Here was barely more than a track. The waning sun now on her left, and the odd, small pasture nestling amongst scrub-covered rocks, but the magnet was a collection of red-tiled roofs and a sturdy pigeonnier jutting from between them.
Salvignac, maybe?
No farm animals yet, but she sensed an altogether softer feel to the landscape and wondered where Gauffroi was now. Surely there wouldn’t be room for him to turn a van like that around in a hurry, to catch up with her? As she drove towards the promising settlement, also wondered where Lise Confrère might be. A career cop, but for how much longer? Damaged, like Gauffroi by a father gone too soon, and in a terrible way. While hers… Hers…
All at once, came a rusted old cattle grid that juddered beneath her wheels. Even though she’d not seen or smelled any cows, it was somehow reassuring. Nevertheless, she checked her rear-view mirror and saw nothing unusual. However, in front of her, was quite a different story.
*
“Arrêtez! Stop!” A middle-aged man wearing badly soiled, grey-striped pyjamas, odd-coloured boots too, with greying hair framing his head like a mass of Old Man’s Beard, blocked her way. He held up both hands either as a gesture protecting the space behind him or because she’d been driving too fast.
“Why?” She kept her window almost closed. “Has there been an accident? Are you alright?”
“Help me! For God’s sake don’t leave me here!” His accent half Parisian, half local.
He crossed himself, muttering a prayer she couldn’t hear, and so alarming was his presence, she didn’t notice the white mass of another vehicle looming up behind her. Its shape vaguely familiar.
Damn.
Her pulse was out of control. She was trapped, and the harder she tried to see who that huge van’s driver was, also its number plate, the more she was aware of that frantic stranger hastening towards her, occasionally stumbling then determinedly righting himself. Meanwhile, the van driver – definitely male – sat motionless behind the wheel until, thanks to the glancing sun on its windscreen, she recognised the shape of his head.
Gauffroi…
She should have felt relief that here was someone she knew. That he’d somehow managed to return, perhaps to see if she was OK, or in case she’d gone the wrong way. But just then, all she wanted was to move on.
Mr Pyjamas suddenly stopped by her left wheel arch, and in that moment, she saw not only fear in his eyes, but something chillingly familiar.
That photo.
“Where are you going?” He demanded. His blue eyes bloodshot. His bad smell obvious. For a split second, Delphine was tempted to lie, but realised he could be useful.
“I was given the name ‘Les Cigales’ in Salvignac in the Causses,” she began. “Where a good friend of mine could well be in trouble. This may not be the right place. It’s such a huge area, he could be anywhere.”
“His name?”
Having given it, she began a potted history of events at the Hôtel les Palmiers.
“Martin Dobbs? Yes, I’ve vaguely heard of it,” he said, fixed on the waiting van. “But there’s no Anglais with that name around here. It would be common knowledge otherwise.”
Not if he was inside a bin liner…
“As would anyone Dutch or German.”
What?
“A
nd yours?”
“God knows. Does it matter anyway? Just help me. Quick!” He glanced behind him. Crossed himself again. “Get me out of here.”
Delphine blinked, and not just because of the sudden sun directly in front of her, that sense of entrapment grew.
“I can’t turn back!” she shouted at him. “And I can’t help you, I’m sorry. I’m on my own and I don’t know you at all, so please just let me through. This is a public road, after all.”
She revved up, unable to mow him down in cold blood, but she could give him a fright. She’d come all this way…
Before she realised it, his bare hands rested on the end of the Suzuki’s bonnet, while he shook his head back and fore, mumbling about driving out all Hell’s devils and demons. While he ranted on, she noticed a still-closed handcuff dangling from his left wrist, before a sudden lump of cloud covered the dying sun, while in the near-darkness, Gauffroi began running towards her car, rifle cocked.
“Get out of the way, or else, you moron!” he yelled at her hysterical incubus. Delphine held her breath, keeping up the revs. Anything could happen. The wacko now rocking her car back and fore might also be armed…
Gauffroi prodded his rifle barrel below the man’s ribs. “I said, move!”
The older man spun round.
“May Satan take you to that Hell where I’ve just been.” This stranger was about to pull something from inside his grubby pyjama jacket, but Gauffroi was quicker, snatching what looked like an old-fashioned pistol from his grasp. Instead of using it, kneed him so hard in the groin he toppled backwards. His anguished cries lost to the Suzuki’s engine noise.
“Drive!” The farmer shrieked at her while checking his victim’s pulse then rifling his pockets. Searching in a way that suggested he’d done it before. And, the crazy thought occurred to her – could she be next?
“Wait for me by the sign for Latronque, the nearest village before the D19!” Gauffroi called out. “Don’t phone anyone even if you get a signal, and don’t answer if it rings.” He began dragging the prone man by his mismatched boots towards his van.
No wonder he’d brought it here…
Suddenly she heard a terrible din from behind the same cloud which had devoured the setting sun. That blue chopper she’d seen earlier, emerged, hovering, as if trying to find somewhere to land, creating turmoil wherever she looked.
*
Delphine sped away on what had once been a reasonable road, now home to varying degrees of mud, with no visible tyre tracks. And where had those dwellings and pigeonnier gone? Had they been Salvignac? How could she know? The terrain was again becoming more primitive. Home to only the worsening weather, and all the while, that helicopter circled behind her before angling north to where the Trafic van was erratically reversing. Her final image of Gauffroi had been of him loading the clearly willing man into the back of the van.
Nothing was making sense, and she told herself that when and if she did reach that sign he’d mentioned, she wouldn’t be stopping. If that nutter died, she could be an accessory to murder. And then what? She’d already decided there was no going back to the hotel if it re-opened, but she might not have any choice if the gendarmerie training course at Saint-Arnoult rejected her.
Gauffroi’s instruction evaporated like that sunlit morning one fateful June day almost sixty years ago…Her phone’s sudden ring cut off her bleak thoughts. Number withheld. Nevertheless, there came a miracle. She took her foot off the accelerator and changed down to second gear.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, Lise. Can you see us? In the blue chopper?”
“Us?”
“I can.”
“So, wait right there, OK?” she ordered.
“Captain Valon’s been wondering where you were.”
“So bloody what?”
Hello? Was she hearing things?
Delphine felt as if a piece of her pathetic little safety net had been torn away. She wanted to stop the Suzuki but couldn’t. Her need to survive truly kicking in.
“There’s been an incident,” she volunteered, being economical with the truth. Her own voice almost lost amid the racket from above and the unreliable line. “Patrick Gauffroi’s got some injured nutter in his van who was armed. He was trying to defend me…”
“We know. He’s just called the police.”
“I’m getting out of here.”
“No, just hang on for us.”
“I can’t.”
A brief pause, during which that ominous metallic-blue shape with a lighter toned strip was almost overhead, flattening the long grass, making the few bare trees to bend and bow.
“Do you want to see your father or not?”
What?
Then the bad line cut out
36.
15.00 hrs.
’Do you want to see your father or not?’
Blackmail writ large, braising Delphine’s mind as she drove into a dark grove of cypresses, giving some respite from the following helicopter. Yet this brief shelter calmed her panic enough for her to re-consider it. Perhaps the Lieutenant was merely testing her desire to see him because he in turn, might not want to be seen. Perhaps…
Non.
She mustn’t forget that threatening tone and trust her initial reaction, because most of her problems in life had been caused by gullibility and a childlike desire to please. She didn’t need a counsellor to tell her that, or the harsh reality of her being the least suitable person to train for the gendarmerie. Hadn’t she quietly believed her father might have actually approached the teenager for sex, rather than being coerced? And her needy mother fabricating a hideous past?
But just then, only Pauline could hopefully offer proof of that and Noah Baudart’s criminality. She’d have to stop soon and make contact with her, but not just yet.
That nutter hadn’t said ‘Les Cigales’ didn’t exist…
She had no choice but to keep looking, bumping along that uneven track until suddenly it ended.
So where was that strange man’s home? Anybody’s in fact? And as for a baby farm, forget it. She continued to follow the barely visible road through that strange, desolate place, while the sun finally disappeared and a thin, wet snow began to fall.
*
“You are almost at your destination,” the Satnav announced without warning, making her almost jump from her seat. “Proceed for five hundred metres and ‘Les Cigales’ will be on the left.”
OK.
Yet there must be some mistake. It was as if she’d landed on the moon, for within minutes, every bony outcrop, every mean piece of vegetation was coated in what could have been its white dust. Sparse, raw. Above all, hostile. She checked her mirrors yet again but saw neither that chopper nor the van as the stone-strewn gradient descended to what might or might not be a river valley. Her tank was half full, and while this tiny relief lasted, she decided to give Pauline a call. But her phone beat her to it.
She stared at it, suddenly smitten by a bolt of danger. That luminous, green screen again showing number withheld. She pressed the tiny ‘telephone’ symbol, holding her breath, letting the car slow to a stop.
“I’m waiting,” said the low-key, androgynous voice on the other end. “So, don’t be long.”
“Who are you?”
No reply.
Immediately, the Suzuki felt colder than outside, even though its heater was pumping out warm air. All the while, names and faces of those who’d entered and left the stage of events so far, milled around in her memory. The last being Lieutenant Lise Confrère, who during her latest call, had sounded completely different.
Listen…
She pulled up the handbrake, knowing there’d be nothing more. Just another cheap stunt to unnerve her, but it didn’t stop her from dialling 17 for police.
Delphine gave her ID to the female voice who answered, also the reason for her call and an approximation of where she might be. “There’s a blue helicopter, the kind the gendarmerie uses, that’s be
en following me for a while for no apparent reason. It’s really intimidating, and I’m wondering if such a reconnaissance mission has been authorized.”
“Please hold. This is an unusual request. I’m checking now.”
“Thank you. May I ask your name?”
“Aspirant Helena Strovsky.”
Come on… come on…
“Mademoiselle Rougier?” Strovsky said after a minute that had seemed like an hour.
“It is.”
“Regarding your query, there’s no gendarmerie helicopter officially operating in that area, but I can check again…”
Delphine’s heart seemed to stop.
“Thanks.” She then paused. Should she, or shouldn’t she go one step further? A no-brainer. “You need to check on a Lieutenant Lise Confrère from Labradelle near Le Mans, who may be in that same helicopter,” she added, hearing her heart.
“Why?”
“She could be in trouble.”
“Right.”
“Also, from Labradelle is sous-lieutenant Noah Baudart who on Wednesday afternoon, helped the currently wanted man Lucius Seghers lure me and my mother into a deserted field near Beaumont-sur-Sarthe…”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I need to know what these people are up to, because I can’t trust anyone.”
She must have sounded mad, but the rookie cop remained polite and calm.
“Are you on your own?”
Delphine recalled that weird message. ‘I’m waiting. So, don’t be long…’
Could she trust this unseen person? And the line? Had total paranoia eroded all reason?
“Yes. Looking for a place called ‘Les Cigales.’” She then took a punt. “It could be a baby farm.”
“I’m logging this as well. Are you in trouble too?”
“I will be if you can’t help.”
Delphine had just added her number plate, and following a short reassurance, had just ended the call when the phone rang again. Pauline Fillol’s number came up. Delphine checked that neither the helicopter nor any other follower was lurking and pressed the cool handset even tighter against her ear.
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