Numbness. Then blind fear, rage. 'When?' Dominic asked tremulously.
'Vacharet didn't know. Any time — it could have even happened already. Look — I'll mobilize the nearest station straightaway, get someone out there…'
But Dominic was hardly listening. A quick mumbled, 'Fine,' a pounding in his head drowning out all else as he pushed his foot flat to the floor… 150… 160… 170… 180kmph.
As he flashed past cars and trucks at breackneck speed, he dialled out his home number at Vidauban. But it was engaged.
Bennacer looked briefly at a wall map, and phoned the station house at Draguignan. It was on an answerphone. He slammed the phone down and dialled Toulon.
Girls voice: 'Un moment. Ne quittez pas.' Then a radio operator checking positions as Bennacer explained what he needed and stressed the urgency.
'The nearest car we have is just outside Cuers. They're engaged now, but should be free in five or ten minutes. Otherwise we'll have to pull someone up from the motorway section this side of Sollies Pont.'
'How many men in the Sollies Pont car?'
'Two.'
Two rookies up against an expert hit man? 'Send both cars. Dispatch them now! And warn them: they could be up against some heavy firepower.' Bennacer glanced back at the map. In fifteen, twenty minutes they should be there.
Dominic's speed held steady at just under 190kmph. With any luck, he should be there in just under fifteen minutes. His lights had been on for the last ten minutes, and now he flashed wildly at anyone in his way.
The last grey-red remnants of twilight faded over the hills in his rear view mirror. Beyond the beam of his headlights was pitch darkness.
FORTY-FOUR
As the grey skyline turned to black, Brossard moved in closer. Fifty metres from the short stone wall, he could see the farmhouse clearly.
One light on downstairs. He trained the binoculars, and after a moment saw a woman come into their frame, brief profile: late-forties, first wisps of salt in black hair, attractive. She moved out of sight again for a second, going deeper into the drawing room.
Brossard's anticipation surged, but only a trace of what he felt when going up against experienced guns. A woman alone in a remote farmhouse. A cakewalk. He'd put on the infra-red goggles, switch off or cut the mains electricity from the garage, and break in through a downstairs window. The woman would still be fumbling for candles and night-lights when the bullet hit. One head shot, maybe two, and out. It would all be over in seconds.
Brossard kept low as he moved through the last fifty metres of grass towards the stone wall. Then he stopped again, studying the farmhouse closer and trying to work out the likely position of rooms. He quickly checked his gun and silencer, then took out the night-time goggles and put them on.
Waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to their grey-green light, he slid over the wall and started the last distance towards the farmhouse.
'What time would you hope to get here?' Monique was speaking to Yves, her eldest son. He'd phoned to tell her he would be coming up from Marseille for the weekend. She hadn't heard from him for almost two months, so they'd spent a few minutes catching up on news before returning to when he would be arriving.
'I'm on a late shift at the station tomorrow night, finishing at ten. I'll leave straight after that. So probably close to eleven. But I've got Saturday and Sunday free.'
'That's good. Gerome will be here, he's not going anywhere this weekend as far as I know. It'll be nice to have a house full.' Already she was thinking of food and preparation: steamed C'ap Roig with cous-cous, pate en croute to start. A few bottles of wine on the terrace. It was going to be a good weekend. 'Gerome should be back soon. You might get a chance to speak to him.'
'It's okay. I've got to go now. But I'll see him tomorrow anyway.'
'I'll try and make sure your father relaxes a bit as well. At least one full day without calls. See you tomorrow.' Monique looked thoughtfully at the phone as she put it down. Family. New family… Old family.
With the tapes she'd played repeatedly, she'd found herself thinking more about Christian and Jean-Luc. Memories that had plagued her the first few years, sapped her strength before she'd pushed them harshly away: self-preservation for the sake of both her sanity and her new marriage. She couldn't give all to her new family while burdened by ghosts from the past.
The only vestige Dominic had complained about, at times pointedly, had been her obsessive protectiveness with Yves and Gerome. The ghosts of the past might have been buried, but a shadow had remained. She could never face losing another child, going through what she'd suffered with Christian again.
But the tapes and transcripts had brought it all back. With each playing, images of Christian and Jean-Luc had grown stronger. She'd resisted going out to the wheat field the day Dominic had met Eyran and Stuart Capel. She'd always vowed she'd never go there. The memories were too harsh. But knowing the three of them had stood in the empty filed, searching for long lost answers, had raised her curiosity about Taragnon. Perhaps the farm would be different: the memories there happy as well as sad. Alone at Vidauban that afternoon, looking out across the farm fields at the back, she'd finally made the decision. She'd taken the old Simca left permanently at the farm for transporting garden pots and plants, and driven out to Taragnon.
Though it was only thirty-five kilometres away, she hadn't been back to the area for over twenty-five years, after they'd finally sold the old farm.
She parked in the road outside the old farm and looked up. Apart from some modernization with new windows and doors, it had changed little. The outside stonework was much the same.
As she looked, a small boy of no more than four or five came out of the back door and started peddling a toy car around the courtyard. And in that moment, as she closed her eyes, she pictured Christian in the courtyard at little more than that age, laughing and playing, his gentle high-pitched voice echoing slightly from the walls. And Jean-Luc coming in from the fields, picking Christian up on his shoulders and swinging him around playfully, smiling. The proud father.
Tears streamed unashamedly down her face as she drove back to Vidauban. She'd cried bitter tears for both of them for so many years, but not recently.
And then not long after returning, at six o'clock the news item had come on about Duclos. She'd found herself honing in on the face flashed up on the screen as if drawn by a magnet. A face suddenly put to this new suspect Dominic had talked about almost incessantly the past weeks — Christian's real murderer! A rounded, slightly bloated face with thinning black hair and dark green, almost black eyes. Thirty years? She tried to imagine in that moment what he looked like then, when he'd murdered Christian. But it was the one leap back through the years her mind wasn't able to make.
As it grew dark, she took out a night-light and lit it in the small alcove by the telephone at the back of the drawing room. In the first glow of its light, she'd seen Christian's face clearly, the memories of those last nights of hospital vigil flooding back. She could almost feel his presence; as if he was partly with her now, guiding her actions, willing her to light the night-light.
She hadn't prayed for Christian and Jean-Luc for years, but she would that night. She felt that by purposely casting them from her thoughts, she'd also in a way abandoned them. It was time to make some amends.
Now, putting down the phone from Yves, she looked thoughtfully towards the light. She remembered the night that Yves was born, the joy she'd felt. The doctors had told her later she'd been lucky to live. At least she'd been given a second chance at happiness. Some people didn't get even that.