Significance (23 page)

Labyrinths

Michael Eszterhas, atheist, anarchist, agitator, ex
-
secretary of the International Socialist Students' Association and ex
-
jailbird was following the path of the labyrinth set into the tiled floor of Chartres cathedral. His wife, Hilda, was stepping uncomfortably behind him. Since breakfast their conversation had been stilted.

This was not how they had pictured the future. An elderly couple, taking holidays in France, visiting cathedrals. Not that either of them had developed a taste for spirituality or organised religion. Nearer to death, but no nearer to God. Maybe that would come in their dotage, but they doubted it.

And yet it seemed that lately the abstract entity which they believed in, which was in some ways very like that other abstract entity, God, had lost its powerful gleam. This entity, this thing, this belief had shone like the most powerful beacon in their youth. It had been out there on the horizon, almost visible, almost palpable. They knew the journey towards it was hard, there would be sacrifice, physical discomfort and pain, bloodshed even, but the light was so strong. Once they had called this thing revolution. The word had tripped off their tongues with absolute certainty.

It was a case of when the revolution comes, not if. But this was before the word became vulgarised, became a Beatles song. Before the name of Cuba's hero, Che Guevara became a chain of shops that sold jeans and t
-
shirts. Before everything got mixed up with slogans. ‘Make love not war' and ‘be sure to wear some flowers in your hair' and drugs and hedonism, the whole amnesic mess. Now instead of revolution Hilda and Michael spoke of ‘change', a quieter word, but one spoken with dignity.

Hilda followed a few paces behind Michael, her eyes watching her own feet as well as his on the worn coffee
-
coloured tiles. They had been set into the floor as a tool for meditation. Monks' and pilgrims' feet had walked here before them.

Michael was wearing sandals and khaki
-
coloured shorts that seemed to suddenly no longer fit him. Hilda looked at his calves. Knotted with twists of bulging varicose veins, but tanned and shapely, though the skin in other parts of his body had grown loose. After years of being slightly overweight, of carrying a modest paunch, he had at last lost weight. Hilda however, no matter how careful she was about her diet, continued to slowly gain weight. Her breasts in particular seemed determined to swell regardless of their non
-
functionality. She and Michael, once brave and beautiful revolutionaries – not that she had ever thought herself beautiful or even remotely attractive – were turning into Jack Spratt and his wife. Old people, invisible, safe and probably boring as hell. Who would want to hear now of the things they'd done, the people they'd met, what they had seen? All of it now history without even the chance of being written on a gravestone. To be buried was, after all, politically incorrect, though they had of course been to Highgate cemetery on numerous occasions to visit the grave of Karl Marx.

They had seen Ginsberg at the Albert Hall in '65. They'd met (and given donations for the cause to) Daniel Cohn
-
Bendit at the University of Nanterre in early March of '68. Had been arrested separately, but within minutes of one another in Grosvenor Square later that same month when Michael was charged with assaulting a police officer, Hilda with disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace? When peace was what they wanted? They had gone to the Bogside in Derry in '69 to show their solidarity with the Catholic civil rights movement. They had marched in Southall in 1979 and witnessed fellow protester Blair Peach being bundled into an ambulance. Later they heard he had died.

Something had indeed died, kept dying or at least mutating. There in the cool space of the vast cathedral, walking the labyrinth, still together after all these years as friends, comrades and more lately, lovers, they were true believers who had yet to get to heaven.

Hilda, feeling not so much in a state of blissful meditation as one of stupefaction, did not notice (though she had been watching his feet the whole time) that Michael had come to a halt and so she blundered into him, her shoes catching the back of his heel and scraping the skin where it was most vulnerable. He stumbled and she, trying to arrest his fall, but herself off balance, staggered sideways half dragging him with her. Neither fell, but a group of teenagers witnessed their clumsy hop
-
a
-
foot; their pained, surprised expressions as they staggered comically about, and sniggered cruelly.

Thus was ended the sojourn in the cathedral; with two old folks limping out, one with a wound that bled copiously and extravagantly (helped, Michael supposed, by movement and gravity), the other with a pulled muscle in either her shoulder or her neck (always a vulnerable place with those unwieldy breasts to heft around), hissing blame at one another.

Afterwards, sitting in bitter recriminating silence on a bench outside in the sunshine again, as Michael fastened a wad of tissues around his ankle with a camera cord, they might never have spoken to one another again, had not Hilda said, ‘Well, He did say “vengeance is mine” didn't He?' And Michael, laughing, had taken her hand and pressed it thankfully between both of his.

‘Little sods,' he said after a few moments. ‘Laughing at us.'

‘Oh, it must have looked funny.'

‘It wouldn't have been funny if we'd actually fallen.'

‘But we didn't.'

Michael gazed off across the broad square.. Hilda noticed how his cheek had begun to look a little sunken, giving him a gaunt aspect. The weight loss; had they been wrong to celebrate it? Was it not the outcome of a healthy diet (last year they had both given up anything containing wheat as well as whisky and other spirits) but the portent of something much more sinister and troubling; the beginning of disease and the slide towards death?

As this thought entered her mind, the sudden vivid reality of it, Hilda could not help but gasp.

‘Alright, darling?' Michael said. ‘Where does it hurt?'

‘All over,' she said, uncertain really as to just what she meant by that, but unable to utter another word as she found herself weeping suddenly and noisily.

‘Time to go back, I think,' he said, when at last her tears had subsided (he had never known her to cry in this fashion before, or at least not for many, many years) and he gently tapped her knee.

They arrived back in the town at around five to see a uniformed gendarme trotting easily up the front steps of their hotel. An old fear gripped them both, that money they'd handed over years ago to the student leader, their names on certain lists, their faces circled in photographs of particular demonstrations, Michael with a motorcycle helmet on, Hilda with a Palestinian scarf being ripped from her surprised face, while her hand was raised in a clenched fist, their old passports criss
-
crossed with the sites of all their earnest involvement in the struggle. Perhaps they were not the only ones who had long memories, who had not forgotten.

Michael took her hand and bravely, together, they followed the gendarme into the dim lobby of the hotel.

Blood Ties

It was Lamy who told Vivier about the boy who had been seen covered in blood in the rue Félix. Not that any of the police had seen the boy, let alone spoken to him. By the time they arrived on the scene all the reports were secondhand – some were wildly exaggerated, others sympathetic. A wild boy, blood around his mouth and all over his hands, had been cornered by a mob and it was only this that prevented him from killing again.

Killing again?

There was no evidence he'd killed once. But there was a wildfire rumour, something about a small animal being torn apart and eaten; a rabbit, a kitten, a tame bird.

Several people had called the police, but by the time they arrived there was no sign of the wild boy. No sign that is, apart from splashes of dried blood on the pavement, a partial bloody handprint on a wall and a razor blade which was still lethally sharp.

A wild boy, a frightened boy, a boy who had hurt himself, who had hurt others. A foreigner. German. Or Dutch. English. American. Fingernails like claws.

A stranger in a strange land. A mad boy. A boy or young man who had been taken away by an older man and an unusual
-
looking, red
-
haired woman. Then there was also something about a postman?

And blood. A lot of detail about blood. Visceral. Dripping. Splashed. Smeared. Blood as evidence of violence done.

And not so far away, a dead woman. There might be a connection. Or not. But one thing was clear – there was no blood on the murdered woman's body or the dress she wore. No obvious wounds. No clear cause of death and they were awaiting the initial reports prior to the autopsy. At the crime scene there had been no bloodletting.

The Interpretation of Dreams

As Sabine Pelat made her way down the corridor to the front desk she caught her first glimpse of the woman she had been sent to collect. The woman looked odd, her face distorted by the glass in the office door. It was thick glass, reinforced by a grid of criss
-
crossed wires. Not bullet proof however; it was due to be replaced later in the year along with a few other vital improvements, such as the damp wall in the ladies loo. Money – that was the issue. It was always the issue with government, with people.

As she walked towards her, the woman's head seemed to distort and ripple as if she were underwater.

Nutter? Paul Vivier had been right to ask it.

Blue
-
black hair obviously dyed and heavy, badly applied make up. The painted face of a woman desperate to wear a mask that represented her younger self.

Sabine opened the door briskly and once through it did not look at the woman directly.

‘Jean
-
Luc?' she said to the young policeman on duty. She said it in an undertone. First names were not strictly to be used by the force when addressing one another in front of the public, but she had known the young policeman since he was a boy and old habits died hard.

‘This is the witness who claims to have information,' he said.

The room smelled odd; besides the usual blend of bleach, air freshener and wood polish, she detected a combination of curry spices, hairspray and stale, oversweet perfume.

‘I see,' Sabine said. ‘Would you come through, Madame.'

Jean
-
Luc lifted the wooden flap in the counter to allow the woman through.

The woman passed Sabine in the doorway; the combined smells of powdery talc and chemical hairspray and scent was overpowering once you got within a few feet of her. And the mess she had made of her make
-
up? The line along her jaw where she had applied thick orange foundation when compared with the unadorned pale papery skin of her neck below was almost comical. And the wonky black eyebrows, the sickly lipstick, the daubed rouge? All of it absurd. Beauty as interpreted by a drunken circus clown. Dust on the shoulders of the jacket, tarnished gold buttons, scuffed shoes, white stockings with a run at the back, twisting over her calf and then the sad nylon wrinkles around her bony ankles.

Sabine showed her into the interview room. Invited her to sit, offered her a drink, told her that someone would be in soon to take a statement.

The woman looked pleased with herself. A tiny woman, she perched on the edge of the chair, her handbag on the table before her, both hands clutching the handle as if someone might try to snatch it. Although she was sitting erect, Sabine noticed the beginning of a hump that seemed to make her neck loop forward and it reminded her of a vulture. Osteoporosis. Brittle bones.

Sabine went to fetch Vivier. He raised his eyebrows quizzically.

‘Bit of an odd bird. But then you never know. Could be our guy's wife or mother?' she said.

‘I doubt a mother would suspect a son of that, and if she did, well blood's thicker than water. Anyway, let's see what she has to say.'

The two detectives were well rehearsed in their respective roles, expert at listening, noticing not only what a witness or suspect might say or give away in their body language, but sensitive too, to what the other was doing. Not quite the oft quoted and clichéd good cop, bad cop, but something like it, except it was more subtle, more carefully modulated and specific to the subject being interviewed.

Vivier immediately took on the role of a charmer, enquiring if Madame was comfortable, offering a drink again. She said no the first time she was asked but now, fluttering her eyelashes, she accepted.

‘Ah, but of course, my assistant, Mademoiselle Pelat will get it, a coffee for me too, if you please?'

‘Yes, sir.' So Sabine was to play the female drudge then; to exemplify the negative space of the woman in order to magnify his masculine charm and power. It was enough to make you puke. But then a woman like that; she'd eat it up.

Sabine left the door open and heard Vivier say something banal about the weather. She poured three coffees, loaded them onto a tray with a saucer full of sugar cubes and a glass jug of milk, then added a few packets of biscuits the café owner down the road had given them. Out of date, but he'd assured them they would be fine.