Poullain looked up expectantly at Monique and waited for her to set down her cup and join them. Dominic flipped over to a fresh page in his notebook and Poullain started speaking.
'First of all, my condolences. On my own part and on behalf of the Gendarmerie. I understand, Madame Rosselot, that you stayed with your son until the early hours of the morning.' Poullain looked pointedly towards Monique. 'To bring you up to date, I managed to check with the hospital just before leaving, and your boy has rallied well after the operation of last night. Though the doctors won't know the full extent of just how successful the operation had been until this afternoon. We can only pray for some improvement.'
Monique nodded appreciatively. She had gone with Jean-Luc to the nearby phone kiosk only half an hour before their arrival to call the hospital, but it was hardly worth mentioning. Poullain realized she was some distance from a phone and therefore checking was difficult. No point in dampening the good intent of his gesture.
Poullain placed one hand firmly on the table top, as if he might reach out to Monique's hand for comfort, but stopped halfway short. 'Now, as painful as this might be for both of you, we need to go through the times you last saw your son before the attack. When you first realized there might be a problem, and the timing of you finding the bike.' Poullain looked at Jean-Luc. 'We will also need you to show us afterwards exactly where you found the bike. But for now we are trying to establish the timing of events.'
Monique and Jean-Luc glanced at each other briefly, as if deciding who should be main spokesperson. Jean-Luc shrugged and held out one hand. 'You first. I was in the fields for much of the time.'
Monique drew a breath and glanced for a moment out of the window towards the courtyard and Christian's bike. 'I let Christian out to play at about 11.15. He took his bike because he was visiting his friend Stephan who lives five kilometres away on the other side of Taragnon.'
'What route does he normally take to Stephan's house?' Poullain asked.
'About six hundred metres down the road, a track cuts between our neighbour and the next farm. It goes between two more farms for half a kilometre, then comes out on the main Taragnon-Bauriac road. He goes along the main road through Taragnon village, and the farm is just over a kilometre past.'
‘Which side of the road?'
'On the left as you come out of Taragnon. It's set back a few hundred metres from the road. From the roadside you can see mainly vines, though they also have some fields for grazing.'
'What is the family name?'
'Maillots.'
'And your son never arrived there.'
Monique looked down and bit her lip. Dominic noticed that she looked at them directly only at intervals, the rest of the time she looked down at the table or at the notepad as he recorded the interview in shorthand. 'We didn't know straightaway. We're not on the phone, nor are they. I finally called Jean-Luc in from the fields at just past 4 pm. We had expected Christian back by 3 pm, and normally he's very good with coming back on time. Jean-Luc went over to Stephan's house and checked. They hadn't seen Christian. That was when Jean-Luc checked back along the route Christian normally took and found the bike. At first we thought that with the bike broken down he'd decided to walk the rest, which would have taken him far longer — then perhaps he'd got distracted and stopped off in the village.'
'How far away was the bike?'
Monique looked at Jean-Luc. Jean Luc answered. 'Almost towards the end of the track down the road. Not far from where it joins the Taragnon road — a few hundred metres at most.'
'So it looked to you as if Christian had walked the rest of the distance to the main road, then the two kilometres to Taragnon village.'
Jean-Luc nodded. Poullain paused for a moment, looking over at Dominic's notes and taking stock of the information so far. Christian was found on a farm track little more than half a kilometre from the Maillots' farm, but on the other side of the road bordering the river. But somehow the boy had made it through the village. Poullain voiced the thought. 'The first thing to find out is who in the village might have seen your boy between midday and three pm. Because we will then at least know if he walked through the village or was transported through by someone he met at the roadside.'
Monique and Jean-Luc looked at each other for a second. Something troubled them about this comment. Jean-Luc was the first to speak. 'If he was on foot, the problem is he could have cut through the fields behind the village. On his bike it's not possible, but on foot there's only a few stone walls and small fences to negotiate.'
'Is it likely he cut across?' asked Poullain.
Jean-Luc shrugged. 'It's a possibility. It's something he's done before. In any case, he would probably cut down and walk the last hundred metres of the village heading for Stephan's house. There's another track there.'
A hundred metres at the end of the village, Poullain considered. It was quiet, the main village establishments petering out. If the one or two shopkeepers there hadn't seen the boy, it proved nothing. Yet if the boy had walked through the entire village, past boulangeries, patisseries, the main square and cafes, without being seen — it would have been a different matter. He'd already assigned three men to call on village shops from early that morning, and had been hopeful of their findings. Now he wasn't so sure. Poullain couldn't even remember what shops there were in those last hundred metres. The disappointment showed on his face.
On a fresh page Dominic had been making a small diagram of Taragnon: the path from the Rosselots to the main road, the Maillots’ farm, and the track by the river. It was a simple triangular drawing, with distances in metres between Xs marking where the bike was left and the boy was found. While his pen hovered for Poullain to speak again, he took a quick scan of the kitchen: dried flowers, ornaments, flour and spice jars, a plate wall clock with Portofino in scrawly black loops below a background harbour scene, no photos. Little in the kitchen said anything about the Rosselot's lives. Though the kitchen was where the coffee was, Dominic couldn't help wondering if they hadn't been asked into the sitting room for another reason. The Rosselots didn't want too deep an intrusion into their lives.
'So finally you made the call to the police station just before 5pm, when it was clear that your son had not turned up the Maillots' farm and you had found the bike abandoned.' Monique muttered yes, and Jean-Luc merely nodded. Poullain glanced briefly at Dominic's crude diagram, as if for inspiration. He voiced his thoughts in staccato fashion as they came to him, as if he was at the same time refreshing his own memory. 'Your son was originally discovered at about three-fifteen by a neighbouring farmer, just half a kilometre from the Maillots farm. We arrived on the crime scene within forty minutes and received your call almost an hour later. We subsequently made some confirmations of identity, to be sure the boy was yours — and two officers were sent to you an hour and quarter after you called. We suspect — although we cannot be totally sure until all the medic reports are in — that your son was attacked within an hour of being discovered.' Poullain looked keenly between Monique and Jean-Luc as he related the sequence of events. This was the first time they were hearing this information, and he wanted to see their reactions.