Downfall

by Sally Spedding

  “You had enough to do,” Delphine then wondered out loud if the Suzuki she’d borrowed was undamaged. Despite the dogs’ scratches, apparently it was, and Jules Charbon would be helpfully bringing her 2CV back on Tuesday.

  Relief dulled her pain enough to let her ask her father where on earth he’d gone after leaving her under that overhanging roof.

  “Never you mind,” he retorted, not unkindly. “Just settling old scores. But if I’d known what had happened to you after that… The cocktail of drugs with which Confrère tried to inject you was the same as American prisons use for lethal injections.”

  Delphine’s whole body trembled.

  “You mean Death Row?”

  He nodded.

  “I did warn her,” insisted her mother. “But would she listen?”

  “And Henri Seghers?” Delphine cut in. “Has he been caught?”

  “All in good time.” Irène Rougier let go of his hand. Nothing had changed there, then. Perhaps keeping secrets was something to be lived with until that tight-fitting lid – meaning them – was finally lifted off her life.

  I don’t think so…

  “Thanks for stumping up for this ward for me and Roza,” she said, instead of challenging them further. “How did you manage it?”

  “Never you mind about that either,” said her father. “You just get better. Then we must talk about the future.”

  “You mean, yours,” muttered Irène Rougier mysteriously.

  That odd comment lingered in Delphine’s fuzzy mind until overlaid by a bigger anxiety. “Has anyone contacted Pauline Fillol, and is she alright?”

  Both parents looked as if they’d forgotten who her best friend was.

  “No,” said her father. “We’ve had you to worry about.”

  She could tell Roza was listening. Her knowledge of French quite serviceable when it mattered.

  “Someone must call her,” Delphine insisted. “Please.”

  Eventually, he did, from the number she’d remembered, but there was no reply and he left no answerphone message, despite her asking him to do so. Delphine knew the Fillols went shopping on Saturday mornings, and anyway, her friend was probably still too annoyed to bother with her. But that still didn’t stop her worrying, and when Roza suddenly demanded that she ‘smile,’ she couldn’t. Instead relayed how the weird, pink-haired Earth Mother had wanted her to see those two grim birthing rooms. As if to taunt her before knocking her out.

  “There was no way I could help rescue anyone,” she said, closing her eyes to stop the tears. “Mothers or babies. Whatever’s happened to them all?”

  “Evacuated to safe houses, and as for the five so-called ‘helpers’ plus other callous bastards, the Cahors team assume they must have fled into the night. All their possessions were found in their dormitories, so they’re bound to be traced eventually.”

  “Let her sleep now,” said her mother. “And don’t you swear again. Not here, in front of a child.” She then spoke of the vulnerable, pregnant Adriana Facchietti and her toxic twin, being questioned less than a kilometre away. Finally, with a mix of loathing and incomprehension, how Lise Confrère had really been a deadly enemy from the word go. “Bad blood there too, if you ask me,” she sniffed, and her husband nodded.

  Delphine tried turning her hurting body over as if to block out that wicked Lieutenant’s image but couldn’t. Especially that distinctive emerald ring which Basma Arouar always wore on her left index finger.

  François Rougier moved his chair closer and checked Roza wasn’t listening. “Although Captain Valon’s still in shock about his two colleagues, some useful information’s come from that traitor Confrère’s house in Labradelle,” he said. “The marital home she took over when her husband left for the Foreign Legion two years ago.”

  What?

  “She told me she was single!”

  “Another lie. Anyway, that’s being investigated, and the deeper the digging, the murkier it gets.”

  “You mean, the bent cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “I was betrayed too, remember?” Said her mother.

  And all those others…

  Delphine bit back what Pauline’s research had revealed. This wasn’t the right time, but it would come. Indeed, have to come soon. Meanwhile, Irène Rougier was speaking again, feeling her still ringless wedding finger.

  “An old diary shows how Lise Confrère met up with Henri Seghers while still a teenager in Solesmes. He’d been leaning on her father to find Lucius’ attacker, and she fell under his spell. That says it all, don’t you think? What’s also interesting is that her handwriting, almost unchanged since she was thirteen, seems a close match with those threats we’ve received.”

  At last.

  Delphine also tried to shut out imagined scenes of a young Lise Confrère with that sly fiend. How she’d probably checked all her conversations and searches on the Ericsson she’d so generously loaned her, only to pass them on. How she’d known no-one had been at Bellevue last Sunday.

  “And my dead boss, Basma Arouar? Where did she and Carlos Serovia fit in?” Delphine asked. “I never heard any more about their brothel in Saint-Denis.”

  She glanced over at Roza, thankfully engrossed with her new teddy, before the nurse told François Rougier that the media wanted to speak to him on the phone in the corridor outside. He got up, scowling, and turned to Delphine. “You surely must have some idea?”

  “Just answer the phone,” reminded her mother. But her father wasn’t finished.

  “Captain Valon claims that way back, she and Serovia helped start Seghers’ enterprise with his sister in the Causses. Nice pair, hein? And apparently never married. No official record of any dead baby girl either. So, what kind of boss was she?”

  Delphine clamped her bandaged hands over her ears. This news was another seismic blow to her perceptions, until a possible link began to form. “How did Dr Seghers know about that brothel? Could he have been a client?”

  Irène Rougier stepped in. “That’s enough. But you can imagine it. Pregnant, vulnerable women and teenagers off the Capital’s streets, glad of a bed and shelter wherever it was. But,” she lowered her voice, “it’s what happened to their babies once born, that’s the truly sickening part…”

  Delphine tried turning away.

  “No more. Please.”

  Her mother leaned forwards to stroke the one area of her right arm not buried under a dressing. “But so far, no-one’s any the wiser why that particular baby boy ended up in your hotel like that. Or where he’d come from.”

  I think I am….

  Irène Rougier then planted a kiss on Delphine’s sore cheek. “We’ll be back tomorrow. You just rest, and please eat something. And by the way, Captain Valon who’ll be calling in to take another Statement, regards you as a brave young woman of principle, unlike… well… you know who he means.”

  Delphine did, and as she watched her father escort her mother out to mingle with others beyond the door, called out to him. “Was it you who destroyed that shrine in the hedge? We found it broken on Thursday morning.”

  He turned to face her, shaking his head.

  “As if. It half-killed me to make the damned thing.”

  “I did,” said her mother. “It was time.”

  41.

  11.45 hrs.

  The rest of the obscenely bright morning passed in a morphine-induced blur in which Roza’s perfumed mother had come and gone without disturbing Delphine. She’d also missed seeing the silvery Christmas tree set in place near the nurses’ station outside the ward. The depredations to her body were nothing compared to the despair in her soul, and the past five days would blemish it not like a birthmark but an equally permanent death mark.

  Near midday, and still anxious about Pauline, she asked for a phone to be brought to her bedside, as her own hadn’t yet been recovered. Within minutes, she’d dialled her number and again, like her father, heard nothing. No a
nswerphone either.

  “The police should call round there as soon as possible,” she urged the nurse, then explained why. But just then, as the telephone trolley was being wheeled away, a subdued, rather scruffy Captain Serge Valon appeared in the doorway. His creased, black waterproof’s collar still turned up. His hair, a touch grey above his ears, obviously hadn’t seen a comb for a while. Shock and exhaustion still in his eyes.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” Roza piped up from the next bed. Clearly on the mend.

  “No,” Valon did his best to smile, then, having checked that Delphine was willing and able to complete another Statement, pulled up the chair her mother had sat on, positioned a sleek little tape recorder on his lap and clicked it on. “Let’s start with yesterday, and if there’s anything you want to add later, you can. The Public Prosecutor’s leaning on Georges Pertus to interview you the moment you’re better.”

  “Can’t wait,” she murmured, hoping her brain wasn’t as damaged as her body.

  “He’s seeing your parents this afternoon.”

  *

  Afterwards, he covered one of Delphine’s bandaged hands with his. “As I told your mother, you’re a brave young woman,” he said. “And your father a hero.”

  “Thank you. But is Lieutenant Confrère really in the morgue here?” She asked not really wanting the answer.

  A nod.

  Then she remembered something.

  “I could swear she’d been wearing one of Basma’s rings. The emerald one.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me, but I’ve not heard about that. Perhaps Baudart later helped himself. And to the rest, including her mobile. He’ll be checked again. It’s still early days.”

  He then glanced towards Roza, before moving his chair a little further away so she couldn’t read his lips. “Some important forensic news has just come in. And by the way, Cahors are still searching for your belongings.”

  “Thank you.”

  Although Delphine sensed he wanted to say more about his duplicitous ex-colleague and her dodgy cousin, she willed herself to listen.

  “It was Filipo Facchietti’s hair under that pillow in room 56. The crime scene.”

  “Never.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Confrère said it came from a female.”

  He paused. Suddenly seeming older.

  “We can ignore that for now. He was apparently paid cash by Henri Seghers and his sister, Estelle to bring street girls and runaways to ‘Les Cigales.’ And to service them.”

  “I felt uneasy from the moment I saw him,” she interrupted. “Talk about hostile.”

  “We now know why.”

  “Adriana told me what went on there. I still can’t believe it.”

  She recounted how that desperate figure in dirty pyjamas, with a gun, had approached her. How his oddly cold eyes had matched those in the old photograph from Le Maine Express. “But surely he was…”

  “Gay?” volunteered Valon without embarrassment. “Maybe. Your father’s ordeal in 1968 certainly indicated it, but bisexual might be more accurate. Whatever, there was serious money involved and demand for babies by certain individuals and organisations in the African sub-continent. And, equally shamefully, here in France. Hard to believe, but true.”

  “What for? Adoption? I thought Africa had enough babies already. As for here…”

  “These were all white. Had to be. That was the deal. At least three had been albinos.”

  Despite the warm room, Delphine felt herself shiver.

  “Is that significant?”

  He glanced back at Roza, still too alert. His nice mouth a tense line.

  “Later, but for now,” he whispered, “Henri Seghers had paid Facchietti to rape his own twin sister and bring her to the baby farm two weeks ago. Did she tell you that as well?”

  “Sort of, without mentioning any payment. It’s truly terrible. How is she?”

  Valon nodded. “Shaken up, understandably. She’s refused a termination and will be moved somewhere safe until the birth. At least her brother is banged up and spilling the beans. Despite his badass act, he’s nervous, and the icing on the cake is that Paris have just confirmed his extremely rare blood group containing evidence of heroin, matches that of the murdered baby. ABRh-NS.”

  “His?”

  “Yes. As was that bloodstain on the bottom sheet in room 56. From an earlier cut on his ankle, apparently. Interestingly, fraternal twins don’t share the same blood group, which I suppose is logical enough.”

  “And Adriana?”

  “B Positive. With traces of snow there too, mind.”

  My God.

  Death Row again sprang to mind. Also, how the lying Lise Confrère had claimed there’d been no match between that baby’s blood and the sample left on the bed sheet. She thought too, of the Facchietti twins’ unborn child. What future there?

  “So could their mother, wherever she is, also be a serious criminal? Or their father?”

  Valon blinked in surprise.

  “I did unearth that possible connection.”

  She wasn’t trying to impress him. He was too pre-occupied for that.

  “How can we know? Rumour has it she’s somewhere in South America, but their father’s flying to Orly from Palermo later today. Perhaps he’ll tell us. He’ll also find out both his kids are space cadets and he’s just lost a beautiful grandson.”

  Normally Delphine would have remarked on his almost comical slang, but not then. However, Valon wasn’t finished.

  “Facchietti’s admitted supplying his sister and Josette,” he continued. “But not killing what had been his own child. According to him, he’d been forced by Henri Seghers to bring the corpse to the hotel in a wheeled suitcase and to stay in room 56 – which he knew from Basma Arouar that you cleaned – and leave it there. That Impulse body spray was to deliberately mislead you.”

  “It did.”

  “And that suitcase still hasn’t turned up.” Valon then seemed to gather his thoughts before asking, “how old would you say that man was who left room 45 on Friday morning? This is crucial.”

  Delphine already knew.

  “Late sixties to early seventies max. Definitely well-preserved.”

  “Not fifties? Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I am. As you know, I’d seen Lucius Seghers close-up, and despite his white hair, that older guy had to be his father. Eyes like a wily old fox.”

  The Captain leant back a little in his chair, visibly relieved. But not for long.

  “Because of the CCTV’s breakdown, we have no idea when or how Facchietti left room 56 and the hotel premises without being seen.”

  “Maybe after dark sometime, he used that fire escape door and hid in the Nissan. Why Seghers was in such a rush to get away.”

  “Possibly. Let’s hope Facchietti himself can fill in the gaps.”

  “And Adriana, sir. As for proof of Henri Seghers stalking me and my mother in that field on Wednesday, is that cigarette butt which Lieutenant Confrère found, being tested for traces of DNA? I’m sure Noah Baudart hadn’t been smoking.”

  “Good question,” Valon frowned. “She never passed it on.”

  No surprise there…

  “Of course not.”

  “And I never chased it up, what with everything else.”

  “Let’s hope there’ll be more evidence of them in the Nissan.”

  “If so, like everything else, they’ll be DNA tested.”

  The nurse then appeared, bringing with her the whiff of lunch and, having checked on her two patients, asked the Captain if he’d like anything to eat or drink. He barely heard her, and she discreetly moved away.

  “However, something still isn’t adding up,” he added. “Have you any idea as to why anyone, would want to wreak such havoc not only on your workplace, causing its CEO to kill himself, its Head of Cleaning Services to be found hanged, but also your family and your dog harmed? Never mind the restaurant manager still missing.”

&n
bsp; Maybe.

  “No,” she said instead, still too vulnerable, despite his presence. “But as you told my parents, Basma Arouar and Carlos Serovia had helped create his criminal enterprise, while my family’s troubles probably stem from that night at the Auberge de l’Aube.” She looked up at him. “And the beast himself? Has he still got a pulse?”

  “If you mean Henri Seghers, your father shot him in the stomach in self-defence near the hamlet of Marcillon at 20.00 hours last night.”

  “With that old pistol of his?”

  A nod.

  “He also began searching for the sister but was too worried about you to continue. And something else. Fifteen hunting dogs have just been found in a nearby barn, shot in the head.”

  Oradour and its Laudy barn crammed with innocent men and boys suddenly filled her mind, while those starved, mistreated creatures hadn’t known any other way to be. Except that one who’d briefly licked her hand.

  Delphine could only stare at the senior gendarme, because the world had surely gone mad.

  “Seghers senior’s now under guard in a Cahors hospital,” Valon went on. “Conscious, in a stable condition, so he’ll live to stand trial along with his son whom Monsieur Gauffroi heroically delivered to the Rue des Hortes in Cahors yesterday evening. Hopefully, any banks and possible offshore accounts can be checked up on. Also, where earlier, pregnant prisoners might be.”

  “Won’t Gauffroi and my father be prosecuted for injury and abduction?”

  Valon checked his watch. Re-positioned the tape recorder on his lap.

  “No. Both Public Prosecutors and their Examining Magistrates from the Lot and Sarthe departments have already reassured them.”

  “So, there is some justice.”

  “Indeed, and Patrick Gauffroi’s been released from questioning here in Le Mans an hour ago.” He managed a brief smile. “Preventing an attack on you by an armed man was the least he could have done.”

  Delphine matched his smile, but beneath it swilled an ocean of anxiety. Where were those two files missing from her dead boss’s house? What exactly had they contained? If – and just if – Lise Confrère had stolen Basma’s phone, watch and rings, never mind the nerve to wear one of them, could she also, on a previous visit, have taken the files on someone’s orders? Even been in that house earlier and killed her? Perhaps with someone’s help?