‘Tell me again.’
‘She arrived about two years ago.’ Claude shrugged. ‘That’s all I know. She doesn’t talk much but she’s sociable enough, fits into the community. I mean… she’s not exactly a good-time girl, you know what I mean?’
‘No secret life, then.’
‘If there is, that’s what she’s kept it — secret. But I don’t believe that.’
‘You didn’t know she was a widow,’ Rocco pointed out.
‘No.’ Claude frowned. ‘I didn’t.’ His frown deepened. ‘Look, where is this going? She’s had a rough time, with the kidnapping thing.’
Rocco ignored him. Two years ago. He felt something about that time frame tugging at his memory. Was it significant?
‘What else happened in Poissons two years ago?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Apart from Francine arriving.’
‘Ah. Let me see… there was Jean-Po Boutin dying. Nasty business, but it was an accident. I told you.’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘That was it. Nothing else major, as far as I can recall.’
Rocco nodded, watching a flurry of activity under the lights by the entrance to the hospital as a crowd of press people gathered around a man in a white coat. They fell back as the man shook his head and waved what looked like a stack of papers, the laugh on them.
Rocco was having difficulty trying to marshal the facts of the various comings and goings around Poissons, and deciding whether they were relevant to his case and why the time frame had lodged in his mind the way it had. Mme Denis arrives several years ago with husband; husband dies. Didier Marthe arrives three years ago. Francine Thorin turns up a year later. Jean-Paul Boutin dies at about the same time.
Didier takes over Boutin’s telephone shortly after.
Nathalie Berbier dies in the marais.
Ishmael Poudric dies near Rouen.
And years before that, at a time of huge upheaval and horror, a group of men and a woman vanish off the face of the earth.
Except that two of them came back.
Discount Mme Denis, he decided. He wasn’t sure why, but instinct told him that anyone with her sense of humour couldn’t be bad.
‘That’s a weird thing, now I come to think of it.’ Claude had his hands thrust into his pockets and was staring up at the night sky with his face screwed up as if delving into the secrets of the universe.
‘What?’
‘Well, coincidence, that’s all. For the first month or so after coming here, Francine lived in the house where you’re staying.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rocco stood just inside the cool side room and watched the slim figure lying in the bed. It occurred to him with a sense of irony that Francine was in the very room vacated not long ago by Didier Marthe. Maybe, he thought vaguely, wondering if he wasn’t still feeling the effects of being shot, the hospital liked to save rooms for patients from the same postal area to give them a feeling of community.
There were no machines here: none of the tubes and wires associated with the wounded, injured or about-to-pass-on; none of the atmosphere normally pervading the space where the seriously ill seem to hover on the doorstep to the next world. It was merely a room where a woman was sleeping.
Bed rest, he’d heard it called.
The doctor he’d spoken to said she was in a fragile mental and physical state, nursing vivid memories and trying to come to grips with being safe after her imprisonment. It would take time, he’d added, a less than subtle warning for Rocco to go easy on her. Mental trauma, he’d added pointedly, was not like gunshot wounds, where the scars were mostly physical.
As Rocco moved towards the window he became aware of the patient’s eyes tracking him across the room.
He stopped. ‘How are you feeling?’ He wondered how many times she had been in his house, either using the key from her own time living there or entering through the French window. It wouldn’t have been difficult to do. She would have seen the photo and it would have triggered… what?
‘OK.’ Her voice was a rasp, echoing sleep and probably drugs. She looked around as if acquainting herself with her surroundings, eyes flickering as they settled on each new item in the room. Then she looked away from him, face turned to the wall. He thought she might have fallen asleep, but when he leant over, her eyes were open.
‘You OK to talk?’ he asked, and sat down before she could say no. His side ached and he felt the bandage tight across his ribs, but it was bearable.
‘What about?’ Her voice was clearer but lacked strength and vitality.
‘What happened?’ When Francine said nothing, he explained, ‘That was a question, not a reply.’
Her face turned towards his, but she didn’t look him in the eye. This close, he could see that the cuts on her skin were vivid red, but already starting to close and fade. The bruising he’d seen on her cheeks in the ruined lodge had diminished as if by magic, and he guessed that a kindly nurse had applied some discreet make-up.
‘Are you interrogating me?’ Her eyes were big, serious.
‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ he said carefully. ‘But I do need your help.’
She sighed and nodded. ‘I went to make the delivery.’ The words came out stronger this time. ‘To leave the crate outside the main lodge as I’d been instructed.’
‘Was it by phone?’ He knew the answer but needed her to confirm it.
‘What? Yes. Yes, by phone.’ Francine looked confused for a moment, eyes almost closing. ‘A man. Several days ago. He said to leave the stuff at the back door and he’d arrange for it to be taken inside. So I did.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’d just got there, and was putting the crate down, looking for a safe spot to leave it where the birds wouldn’t get at it. Then the door opened and he came out.’
‘Who? Did you recognise him?’
‘No. I… no, I didn’t see his face. It was too quick.’ She shook her head, her hair falling across one side of her head. ‘Just too quick.’ A tear slid out of her eye and down her cheek. ‘I never saw him.’
Rocco had to resist the temptation to brush the hair away. ‘Not even when he tied you up? Not a glimpse… nothing?’
‘I told you. No.’ Her voice dropped to a murmur. ‘He told me to look away or he’d drop me in the marais, where nobody would ever find me. He kept talking about the Blue Pool.’ She shuddered and looked at him. ‘Did you hear about it?’
Rocco nodded. ‘I did. But it’s not true — it’s just a geological oddity.’ He wasn’t sure about that but he wanted Francine to feel safe. Secure.
‘If you say so.’
‘Did he at any time say what he was going to do? Why he was keeping you there?’
‘No. He said he had… things to do. Things to finish. I was his laissez-passer, he said. I didn’t know what that meant. I kept asking him why but he didn’t seem to have any idea. I thought I was going… to die.’ She gulped and a tremor went through her shoulders.
‘Pity you didn’t recognise his voice.’ Rocco kept his tone matter-of-fact, yet probing. The art of suggestion often accomplished what direct questions could not.
‘I suppose.’ She still wouldn’t look at him, but he could see her eyes were wet, red-rimmed. ‘I heard a nurse say earlier that there had been explosions and several men killed. What happened?’
‘Some men followed the man who kidnapped you into the woods. They trod on some abandoned ammunition from the wars. They’re all dead.’
‘What about the man? What happened to him?’
Rocco paused, stuck for an answer. If he told her Didier was dead, and no longer a threat, the truth would soon come out; he’d be a liar and for what reason? If he told her Didier was still out there, she might retreat into a shell and not come out again. Then something hit him like a cold shower.
She hadn’t asked about the dead men. She was only interested in Didier. Who wouldn’t show at least some curiosity about who the dead men were? Was that because she already knew?
He forced himself to push on and said, ‘He got away but he’s badly injured. Don’t worry — we don’t think he’ll be back.’