Street vendors were hawking pyramids of tangerines arrayed on wicker baskets. Barefoot men slept on rushes in the shade of papaya trees. The mighty Mekong River slid past unnoticed, like a great and famous actor, forgotten in his dotage.
“Here,” said Chemda.
The hotel was indeed discreet, beyond the royal palace and the tall scruffy stupa: so discreet the road gave up before it reached the building.
They climbed out of the tuk-tuk and paced the last hundred meters of dirt. The hotel door was closed. Le Gauguin, said a sign. Chemda pushed open a large door and they slipped into the coolness of a wooden lobby scented with teak and cedar and incense — expensive, private, tranquil. Jake yearned immediately for a shower. Sleep. Then escape.
“Chemda! Chérie! Bonjour!”
A late-middle-aged French woman strode into Reception. She was introduced: Madame Agnès Marconnet. She hugged Chemda and smiled warily at Jake. The two women spoke quickly in French, too fast for Jake to begin to understand; before he could say please or merci they were escorted by a girl in a silk cheongsam to two guest rooms, and Jake struggled through a couple of merci beaucoups and kharb jais and Chemda said she would see him later, and then he fell straight into his bed without even showering and slept immediately, hungrily, like a starveling famished of sleep for a century. He slept so hard he didn’t dream, at first, but then something in the darkness of his subconscious disturbed him and he woke with a vague but ungraspable sense of panic.
For a few moments he lay there, perplexed, collating his wits. He didn’t know what time it was. Dawn, maybe. The thin filter of blue light, through the slats of the shutters, pierced the darkness of the room.
Then he stared. Hard.
Something was hanging from the door. Three meters away.
He wished he were dreaming, but he was awake. Wide awake.
This was something truly and purely terrible, something beyond hellish.
Jake’s mind swarmed with the horror.
Please. No.
10
The French policemen arrived at Annika’s cottage an hour later. The sleek Peugeot oiled into the drive with an authoritative scrunch; red-and-blue police lights flashed exotically across the dark and drizzly wastes of the Cham.
The Belgian woman was needed to identify the body; Julia immediately offered to accompany her friend for this grisly task — though Annika’s composure was so superb, Julia wondered if any help was truly required.
The same red-and-blue lights shone briefly on Annika’s impassive face as she climbed into the back of the police car, and sat, almost rigid, staring ahead. Julia followed; the car started; they drove the moorland miles up onto the Causse, heading for Mende.
Ghislaine Quoinelles had lived in a large, isolated villa near Marvejols — but his body had already been moved.
Annika shared a few words in French with the fifty-something officer, his hair brindled gray. Officer Rouvier had arrived with a suitably dignified demeanor, and a junior officer behind the steering wheel, for the somber task of escorting them to the morgue at the hospital in Mende. After a few minutes, Julia added her own halting comment to the conversation.
Her interruption silenced the car. The officer turned in the front passenger seat and briefly smiled at Julia. And then he said in perfect and very educated English, his words punctuated by the melancholy percussion of the windshield wipers, “You are from Québec?”
Julia groaned inwardly. She answered in English: “I talk like a lumberjack from Chicoutimi, don’t I?”
“Please. Your French is…” The smile persisted. “Charming. But I speak very good English. So it is not remotely necessary. But thank you.”
Julia sat back and was quiet, trying not to feel insulted, trying not to feel anything selfish: she was in the middle of Annika’s shock and horror. But that was the problem of being an only child: the selfish reaction was conditioned and immediate, and Julia was always on the watch for it, in herself.
She gazed at the metronomic smearing of the rain on the windshield, and the brief glimpses of other cars shooting past them on the narrow country roads. It was only fifty kilometers to Mende but the drive would take an hour in this weather, on these circuitous roads.
A memory returned, importunate, like a meek child knocking timidly at the door: a memory of her infant self and her father and mother, driving in the rain, the snow and rain of eastern Michigan, watching lonely snowflakes settling on the car window, trusting her father’s driving, absorbed by the way the flakes were beaten and crushed by the wipers, dissolved.
Julia recalled the way she felt safe and privileged, yet sad: the only child, alone in the too-big backseat of her parents’ SUV; it was a family vehicle, all the seats were meant to be filled, but she had no brother to argue with, no sister to play with. So she sat upright in the middle of the empty space. Importantly. Talking to the adults. Precocious and garrulous and selfish, like so many only children.
And also lonely.
The Peugeot was quiet now; this was truly a morbid business. Yet Julia felt the urge to converse. She found silence — when she was on her own — quite soothing and enriching; but silence between people she could not bear. It made her feel lonely again.
A question recurred. Why was Annika going to identify the body? She and Ghislaine were not married, they were just friends — and ex lovers. Surely he had someone else, someone related? Hadn’t there been a mention of children, or siblings? Nephews, maybe?
Julia knew it might be an insensitive inquiry, but she couldn’t help it: she was intrigued as well as horrified by the whole scenario.
“Annika?”
The Belgian woman didn’t even turn to face her questioner. But she answered coldly, “Oui?”
“Ghislaine has no other family?”
“No.” Annika’s reply was curt, and barely softened by her continuance: “There is a sister but she lives in Tahiti. Retired. No one else.”
“But I thought… I thought he had kids from a—”
“No children!” Annika’s composure had fractured, momentarily; and now she turned: “Nothing like that. He was alone.”
Then the studied calmness returned, like the older woman had neatly zipped her unwanted emotions into a bag and dropped this bag disdainfully into a bin. Julia noted that Rouvier had turned to observe this female exchange. His frown was not unhappy, it was the frown of curiosity. Professional and clever.
Julia guessed he was very senior in the Lozère police force, because she likewise surmised that there weren’t many murders, out here in France’s loneliest departement. So any such crime would attract the most senior policemen.
The lights of suburban Mende glowed fizzy-drink orange on the rain-blurred horizon. Rouvier spoke quickly and quietly with Annika. Julia tried to listen in, even as she tried to pretend she was not, out of politeness; she definitely caught the phrase prepare yourself.
For what? How had he died? Who had murdered him?
The shock of the situation kicked in, once again, or maybe for the first time properly. Julia felt a shiver of fear run through her. Murdered.
Now they were in Mende, the car was actually speeding up, emancipated by these empty urban highways, which were virtually deserted at this time of night — and in this type of weather. They slashed through rainy Mende, jumping amber lights, their police siren howling in a satisfying way.