Gift of the Gab (7 page)

I thought about the mystery for ages, which wasn't easy with jet-lag.

If Dad had wanted to, he could have got Mr Bernard and the other local police to check every car in the district for hit-and-run dents.

They could have done it standing on their heads.

Why didn't they?

I didn't know, so I went downstairs to look for clues.

Dad and Mr and Mrs Bernard were in the kitchen. As I came along the passage I heard Dad saying, ‘I want to tell her myself.' Then Mrs Bernard said something in French, which was probably her translating for Mr Bernard.

I went into the kitchen and they all stopped talking.

Dad went down on one knee and sang me a quick verse of that haunting Carla Tamworth classic ‘I Love You More Than Pickled Onions'.

When he'd finished I was about to ask him what it was he wanted to tell me himself, but Mrs Bernard spoke first and what she said took my breath away, and not just because of her voice.

‘We go now to your mother's grave,' she said. ‘Yes?'

My guts gave their biggest lurch since our plane hit an air pocket over Afghanistan.

I nodded.

We piled into another police car with Mr Bernard driving this time and soon we were speeding through the narrow streets.

My chest was thumping so hard from fear and excitement that I didn't think about flowers till we were almost out of town.

I prodded Dad and told him.

‘Bit late for flowers now,' he said. ‘Sorry, Tonto.'

I was stunned. Normally Dad would crawl through wet cement to get flowers for Mum's grave.

Mrs Bernard turned and gave me one of her sad smiles. ‘It's not too late,' she said. ‘Ro must have flowers.'

She said something to Mr Bernard in French and he slammed on the brakes and did a squealing U-turn through a petrol station. He zoomed back into town and parked on the footpath outside a flower shop.

Inside, Mrs Bernard said lots of things in French to the two young women shop assistants. While she spoke they stared at me, their eyes getting bigger and bigger.

It didn't worry me, I get stared at quite a lot.

I just wanted to buy some flowers and get to my mum's grave.

The assistants must have understood my hand-movements because suddenly they jumped into action and gave me a beautiful bunch.

Then something weird happened.

They wouldn't take any money. Even when Dad took the senior assistant's hand and put some French money into it she just gave it back.

He tried again with Australian money, but she didn't want that either.

I realised what was going on.

They probably hadn't seen a kid before with bits missing from her throat.

‘They're being charitable,' I said to Dad.

Dad frowned and turned to Mrs Bernard, who was smiling and nodding. He opened his mouth to explain how Australians don't usually accept charity unless it's absolutely essential because we're used to battling a harsh land with droughts and bushfires and floods and unreliable tractors and pushy TV presenters.

Then I saw him decide it was too complicated to try and explain all this through a translator, even a top one like Mrs Bernard.

Instead he gave me an apologetic shrug.

It was OK, I understood.

Well, I thought I did.

‘Ta muchly,' Dad said to the assistants. ‘Very nice of you.'

That's what I thought too, at the time.

Mr Bernard got us to the cemetery in about three minutes.

Mum's French cemetery is very different from her Australian one. It's got a wall round it with a gate, probably to keep out local boons and their dog poo.

I was shaking so much as I followed Mrs Bernard through the gate that I could hardly hold the flowers.

She took me to Mum's grave.

Most of the graveyard is gravel, and most of the graves are grey stone.

Mum's isn't, but.

Mum's is the most beautiful grave I've ever seen.

Her headstone is marble and her grave is covered with really soft dark-green grass, perfectly clipped and edged with more marble.

But it wasn't just the neatness of the grass that made my mouth fall open.

It was the four other bunches of flowers lying on it.

All fresh.

I stared, gobsmacked.

I'd imagined Mum's French grave would be wild and unkempt and I'd be the first person tidying it up and putting flowers on it for twelve years.

Instead it's the best-cared-for grave in the whole cemetery.

I was about to ask Dad what was going on when something else happened. An elderly couple standing at another grave with a poodle looked over and saw us and gave a shout. They hurried over and started shaking Dad's hand and beaming. Dad looked a bit alarmed, probably because the poodle was trying to have sex with his leg. Even though I couldn't understand a word the French people were saying, I could see they were delighted.

Why?

Was Dad being mistaken for a local footy star? Surely not with his crook knees.

Then it hit me.

The reason everyone here is so friendly to Dad.

The reason nobody's bothered to catch the hit-and-run driver.

The thing Dad wanted to tell me himself.

The full story Claire reckoned I should know.

It's this.

Dad must have been offered a deal when Mum was killed.

The local council must have offered Dad a top grave for Mum, serviced regularly, if he agreed not to make them hunt down the hit-and-run driver.

And he accepted.

That's why all the locals are so grateful to him. He's saved them the shame and embarrassment of admitting they've got a ruthless killer in their municipality.

Of course. That's why Dad wanted to sneak into town without anyone knowing we were here.

He was scared a local would blab to me.

He was scared I'd lose all respect for him.

Which is exactly what I'm doing.

Dad, how could you?

How could you let a killer get away with it for a bit of lawn and a few flowers?

That's what I asked myself at the cemetery as I laid my flowers on Mum's grave and it's what I'm still asking back here in Mrs Bernard's attic bedroom.

I haven't asked Dad in person.

I don't want him to know I've twigged.

He might guess what I'm planning to do and try to stop me.

Not that I'd let him.

I'm going to avenge Mum even if it means the local council won't look after her grave any more and I'll have to live here for the rest of my life and mow it myself.

It was morning and Mum was stroking my forehead and talking to me softly in her warm gentle voice with its warm gentle French accent.

French accent?

I opened my eyes.

It wasn't morning, it was night and it wasn't Mum smiling down at me, it was Mrs Bernard.

‘Sweet little Rowena,' she whispered.

I wish she wouldn't keep saying that. I'm not little and when I get my hands on a certain local driver I don't plan to be sweet.

‘You slept for five hours,' said Mrs Bernard. ‘Now you need food.'

It was a kind thought but she was only partly right.

I also needed clues.

‘We go to the cafe,' said Mrs Bernard.

My heart gave a skip of excitement.

I jumped out of bed and splashed water on my face from the bowl so Mrs Bernard wouldn't see my mind racing.

Cafes are good for clues, I was thinking. People gossip in cafes. It's the milkshakes. Sugar loosens tongues as well as teeth, that's what Dad always reckons. In cafes down our way people are always mentioning the names of other people who've been mean to pets or overdressed at the bowling club or driving carelessly.

Hope it's the same here, I thought as I brushed my hair. Hope French cafes are good for clues.

This one was.

Sort of.

Mr Bernard drove us there in about ninety seconds, which was pretty scary because it was round at least twelve corners.

The trip was nowhere near as scary as the cafe itself.

Inside there wasn't a single milkshake.

Just smoke and noise and music.

And people.

About a hundred people, all raising their glasses of wine and beer to us and cheering as we walked in.

I glanced at Dad. He looked as stunned as I felt. But he soon started to relax as people shook his hand and slapped him on the back and yelled at him in excited and happy French.

Probably thanking him for sticking to the deal.

Boy, I thought bitterly as people shook my hand too, and patted my head, and gave me glasses of mint cordial. Do French people a favour and they never forget it.

Dad hasn't been in this town for twelve years and people were falling over themselves to buy him a drink. We were only away from our town for five years while I was at the special school and when we got back people didn't even remember us.

I wished Sergeant Cleary was in the cafe tonight. He'd soon change his opinion of Dad if he saw how popular Dad is in France. I even thought of ringing him and telling him. Then I remembered I've lost respect for Dad, so I didn't.

Mr and Mrs Bernard steered us through the crowd to a table at the back. We sat down and almost immediately someone put big plates of meat stew in front of us.

I was starving and even though it's not easy eating a meal while about fifty people are staring at you and grinning and your guts are knotted with lack of respect for your father, I gobbled it down.

Right up until I had a thought.

I looked around at the faces and suddenly I wasn't hungry any more.

Any one of those men, I realised, could be the hit-and-run driver.

The men carried on grinning and saying friendly-sounding things.

The meat stuck in my throat.

Mrs Bernard slapped me on the back and anxiously lifted my glass of mint cordial to my lips.

She's a very kind woman, but if she really wanted to help my digestion she would have given me a name, not cordial.

Then, as soon as Dad finished eating, everybody started shouting at him.

Mrs Bernard whispered something to him and he stood up and cleared his throat and did his neck exercises.

That could only mean one thing.

They wanted him to sing.

I was speechless.

Dad's sung to big groups of people heaps of times but tonight was the first time I'd ever seen a group ask him to.

He climbed onto a table in the middle of the cafe and sang the Carla Tamworth song about the bloke with ninety-seven cousins who loves them all dearly even though he can't remember any of their names.

The crowd went wild, even though Dad didn't get many of the notes right.

Then he sang Mum's song.

I realised I was probably in the actual place where Dad had taped Mum singing it all those years ago.

Suddenly my eyes were full of tears.

Which is how I came to turn away, so people wouldn't see.

Which is how I came to spot the man with the black curly hair.

I noticed him at first because he was the only person not standing gazing up at Dad. He was putting his coat on and heading for the door.

Either he's late for something else, I thought, or he's got musical taste.

Then I recognised him.

I'd seen him before, in Australia.

He was the bloke driving down our driveway when I got back home from being locked up at the police station.

What's he doing here?

I yelled at him to wait, but he wasn't looking in my direction so he couldn't see my hands.

As he opened the door several of the people in the cafe waved goodbye.

I struggled through the crowd, but by the time I got to the door and peered up and down the street, he'd gone.

My head spun in the cold night air.

If he's a local, what was he doing at our place in Australia?

I asked Dad on the way back to Mr and Mrs Bernard's.

Dad reckoned I was mistaken.

He reckoned it must have been someone else.

It wasn't, but.

I've been lying here in bed for ages testing my memory and I know I wasn't mistaken.

He's the same bloke I saw in our driveway.

He even had the same suit on tonight.

What's going on?

When I woke up and realised it was really early, I had a listen to Mum's tape. Just a few times so I didn't wear it out.

I'm glad I did. I reckon Mum's voice inspired me. In less than twenty minutes I'd thought up a complete two-part investigation plan.

Part One. Start at the beginning and find the exact spot in town where Mum was knocked down.

Part Two. Try and find a passer-by with a really good memory who'd been walking a pet nearby at the time of Mum's death and could remember the number plate of the car.

OK, Part Two was a bit hopeful, but I'm still glad I thought of it, given what's happened since.

‘Dad,' I said at breakfast. ‘Where exactly was Mum killed?'

Dad sighed and looked unhappy, though that might have been because Mrs Bernard had left a dried goat's cheese on the table and Dad had just put the whole thing in his mouth thinking it was a muffin.

‘Tonto,' he said, using his hands, ‘don't torture yourself.'

I thought that was pretty rich coming from a bloke who was choking to death on his own breakfast.

I poured him a glass of water.

‘Rowena,' he continued, ‘I want you to stop thinking about Mum's accident, OK?'

I gave him a look I hoped would curdle cheese.

He looked at his hands, which I could see were struggling for the right words.

‘She didn't suffer,' he said at last.

There was pain on his face and it wasn't just from the cheese and suddenly I felt sorry for him.

‘She heard the car,' continued Dad with trembling hands, ‘and tried to get out of the way. She slipped. The car whacked her on the back of the neck. It broke her spinal cord. The doctors said she died instantly. There, now you know.'

I fought back tears.

I had more important things to do than get sad.

‘Did you see the car?' I asked.

Dad shook his head. ‘It was dark and raining and I was busy with you,' he said.

The tears wouldn't go away. Not now I was thinking that if I hadn't been there, Dad might have been able to save her.

‘We've got to stop this,' said Dad. ‘We both need a good cheer up. Tomorrow we'll say goodbye to this dud place and I'll take you to Euro Disney.' He took a deep breath through his nose and gave me a cheesy grin. ‘Couple of weeks there and we'll be doing cartwheels back to Australia.'

I didn't argue.

When Dad gets an idea in his head it's like couch grass. Takes weeks to shift.

I haven't got time.

After Dad had gone back to his room for a lie down to finish swallowing the cheese, I tried Mrs Bernard.

‘Mrs Bernard,' I wrote, ‘do you know which street my mother was killed in?'

Mrs Bernard studied my notebook.

She gave a huge sigh.

For a sec I thought it was because I'd ended a sentence with ‘in'. Then Mrs Bernard hugged me to her chest so tight I was worried her bra strap was going to make one of my eyes pop out.

‘My poor, poor little Ro,' she said. ‘Don't make yourself tortured.'

I realised she'd been talking to Dad. She sat me down and went to the fridge and made me a huge ice-cream sundae with peaches and frozen raspberries and mint syrup.

It was very kind, but I took it as a ‘no'.

I tried Mr Bernard.

He was in his workshop out the back, wearing a white singlet and braces, cleaning a rusty old pistol with a cloth. On the workbench were lots of other rusty old pistols and rifles. A few clean ones hung from the roof with some cheeses.

When Mr Bernard saw me he smiled and said something in French. Then he mimed digging.

For a sec I thought he was asking if I was feeling stressed. I was about to tell him I was, but that I didn't have time to dig a sandpit. Then I realised he was telling me the guns had been dug up. From battlefields, I guessed. There were heaps.

Before he could go into lengthy detail about the war, I showed him my notebook.

Mr Bernard looked at it blankly.

I hoped desperately French policemen were trained to read English even if they couldn't speak it.

Mr Bernard shrugged apologetically.

I wished I had a better phrase book. All the phrases in the one I've got are for talking to hairdressers and waiters. You'd think a decent phrase book could translate a simple sentence like, ‘Do you know in which street my mother was killed?'

Then I had an idea.

I beckoned to Mr Bernard and he followed me through the house to the front yard.

I pointed to the bush that had been clipped into the shape of a car. Then I pointed to another one that was shaped like a person. I couldn't tell if it was meant to be a man or a woman, but I hoped he'd twig I was talking about Mum.

Mr Bernard frowned, then his face lit up.

He dashed into the house.

Yes, I thought. He's gone to get a map of the accident location. Or maybe even a file with a list of suspects' names in it.

Mr Bernard reappeared, waving a pair of hedge clippers.

My insides sagged like an apple fritter in cold oil.

Then, while I was politely watching Mr Bernard clip a bush into the shape of a kangaroo, it hit me.

Of course. Clippings. Newspaper clippings.

Finally Mr Bernard finished and I thanked him and hurried up to my room. In the phrase book I looked up the French word for street.

Rue.

Then I pulled the old French newspaper clippings about Mum's death out of my rucksack. There, in the first one, I found them.
Rue Victor
and
Rue Amiens
, both in the same sentence.

I checked another one.
Rue Victor
and
Rue Amiens
again.

I could hardly breathe.

Mum must have been killed at the corner of those two streets.

I stuck my head and hands into Dad's room, trying not to look too excited. Dad was cleaning his teeth. I hoped he'd bought a new toothbrush.

‘I'm just going for a walk,' I said.

Dad gave me a doubtful look.

‘The tourist office might have Euro Disney brochures,' I said.

Dad thought about this, then nodded. ‘Don't be long,' he said.

On a notice board in front of the town hall I found a tourist map with a street index.

Rue Victor and Rue Amiens were only a few minutes away.

When I finally arrived here on the corner where they run into each other, possibly on the exact spot Mum was killed, I felt very sad.

And then, when I looked around, very angry.

Yes, Victor and Amiens are narrow streets, and yes it was night when Mum was killed, and yes it was raining.

But there's a street light right over the corner. Not a new one, it's at least fifty years old, so it would have been there on that night. And a pedestrian crossing. And stop signs.

That driver must be a maniac.

My eyes filled with angry tears. Through the blur I noticed a young woman in pink jeans on the opposite corner giving me a strange look. I turned away and found myself staring into the window of a deli.

That's when I saw the most amazing thing I've seen in my life.

The window was full of sausages and meatloaves and slices of devon and jars of meat sandwich spread. Except that in the middle of the display was a pile of dried dog poo.

The same type of dried dog poo that Dermot Figgis left on Mum's Australian grave.

It couldn't be.

I blinked and pressed my face against the window.

I've got really good eyes. When one bit of you doesn't work, the other bits get extra good, it's a known fact.

I've been staring at that stuff in the deli window for ages now.

It's definitely Dermot's dog poo.

Except sausage shops don't put dog poo in their window, that's also a known fact.

So it can't be dog poo, it must be a type of sausage.

Which is even more amazing.

Why would Dermot Figgis leave two French sausages on my mother's grave?