There was no point thinking further ahead than that.
And so I stepped back into the husk of my old life. I even returned to my old job at the Zed, after a contrite conversation with Sergei. I needed the money, but it was a bizarre feeling, as though the events of that summer had never happened. That was brought home to me when I bumped into Callum one day.
‘Hey, Sean,’ he said. ‘Not seen you around lately. What’ve you been doing with yourself?’
It dawned on me that he’d no idea I’d even been away. People have their own lives, and it’s vanity to think we play anything other than a bit-part in them.
‘Got your tickets yet for the New Wave season at the Barbican?’ Callum asked.
He looked surprised when I told him I hadn’t even known about it. At one time I would have rushed to book, but now the news left me unmoved. Thinking about it, I realized I’d not been to the cinema or watched a film since my return. It wasn’t even a conscious decision; I’d just had more important things to do.
Chloe would have appreciated that.
My trial was held in a busy courtroom, just one in a long line of proceedings held that day. After all my anxiety it was almost an anticlimax. For a while there was talk of charging me with involuntary manslaughter, but that had been quietly dropped. Jules’s own history of drug dealing and violence, as well as his treatment of Chloe, weighed in my favour. Even the fact that I’d technically stolen his car was considered too much of a grey area to bother with. While it counted against me that I’d fled the country, my lawyer argued that I’d been acting in self-defence and justifiably scared for my life. And if it had taken me longer than it should have to turn myself in … Well, there were extenuating circumstances.
I was found guilty of failing to report an accident and of leaving the scene. The sentence was six months in prison, suspended for two years.
I was a free man.
I stayed in London long enough to hand in my notice and say a few goodbyes, then I left. There was nothing to keep me there, and I still had unfinished business to attend to.
And now here I am.
Slipping a little on the wet cobbles, I go over to the house. The storeroom door is closed. Water drips onto me from the scaffold as I stand outside, suddenly certain that it’ll be locked. But it isn’t: there’s nothing in there anyone would want to steal. The warped door creaks open reluctantly. Inside seems darker than ever, the grey daylight from the courtyard barely illuminating the windowless room. The red overalls are missing, but everything else looks untouched since I left it. I go over to where the bags of sand are stacked. One of them is set a little apart from the others, though not so much that anyone would notice. Putting down my rucksack, I roll up my sleeve and push my hand and arm up to the elbow into the damp sand. I dig around slowly at first, then more urgently when I can’t find anything. I plunge my arm deeper, spilling sand onto the floor. Just when I’m convinced there’s nothing there my fingers encounter something hard. I pull it out.
The plastic-wrapped package looks just as it did when I hid it here, on the afternoon after the gendarmes’ visit. I’d made no mention of it when I’d recounted my story to either the French or UK police, an omission of which I’m not particularly proud. But given everything else I had to tell them it would have been an unnecessary complication. Even if they’d believed I was unaware of what was in the boot of Jules’s car, I’d be hard pressed to explain why I’d kept it.
I’m not sure I know myself.
The storeroom seemed a good hiding place at the time, but I’d not anticipated the package would be left for so long. Since then barely a day has gone by that I haven’t fretted it would be found, that the storeroom would be searched or cleared out. But I needn’t have worried.
Mathilde kept my secret, just as I kept hers.
News of Louis’s murder and Gretchen’s death was met with predictable outrage in the town. But while the facts surrounding the tragedy were soon widely known, the truth behind them was another matter. Before I left the farm to call for the police and an ambulance on the night of the shooting, Mathilde had begged me not to reveal that she was Gretchen’s mother.
‘Promise me!’ she’d insisted, her face etched with grief. ‘Promise me you won’t tell them!’
I hadn’t wanted to listen. I couldn’t see what could be gained by further silence, and the idea of protecting Arnaud was repugnant. But Mathilde clutched my arm, grey eyes burning with intensity.
‘It’s not for me, it’s for Michel. Please!’
I understood then. In everything she’d done, her first priority had always been her children. It would be hard enough for her son to grow up with his mother and grandfather branded as murderers, without having to endure an even worse stigma. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to spare him that. And I thought there might also be another reason for her reticence. If the truth about Gretchen’s parentage were to come out, it might easily raise questions about Michel’s. Mathilde had told me he was Louis’s son, but I wasn’t sure she’d want that claim put to the test.
Some stones are better left unturned.
So I kept my silence, and Mathilde’s secret. The only other person who might have thrown more light on the farm’s murky history was Georges, and for a while I wondered how much the old pig handler might really know. But not even the police could breach his indifference. He maintained that in all the years he’d worked at the farm he’d seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. The only emotion he displayed came when the interview was over.
‘What about the sanglochons?’ he asked.
He’d broken down and wept when he learned they’d been destroyed.
After all that had happened I thought the farm could hold no more revelations, that it had exhausted its capacity to surprise. It hadn’t. Arnaud made no attempt to deny any of the charges levelled against him, and his account matched Mathilde’s in every detail. Except one.
He claimed he’d killed Louis himself.
According to Arnaud, the younger man had only been stunned by Mathilde’s blow. Once in the cinderblock hut he’d started to revive, so her father had finished the job himself before dismembering Louis’s body and feeding it to the sanglochons. When the police asked why he hadn’t tried to save him, the reply was typically blunt:
‘One pig’s throat is the same as another.’
It’s possible he was lying, trying to take the blame to protect Mathilde. But I find that hard to believe. Given the sort of man he was, it’s more likely that he was simply content to let his eldest daughter believe she’d killed her own lover. It would tie her to him even more, and that sort of casual cruelty is more in keeping with the Arnaud I knew. As for why he should confess now, I think there was no longer any reason not to. He’d already lost everything.
Mathilde saw to that when she asked Jean-Claude and his wife to adopt Michel.
I was shocked when I first heard, but then it made a certain kind of sense. Although I can’t imagine what it must have cost her to give up her son, even if the court was lenient she knew Michel would barely know her by the time she was released. So, as ever, she put his interests before her own. Jean-Claude will give Michel a good home, and just as important a fresh start. And for Arnaud, having his beloved grandson brought up by Louis’s brother will hurt far more than any prison sentence.