Significance (30 page)

He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the edge and just sat there for a moment gathering his thoughts. Last night he had left the door of his wardrobe open. It was unlike him to do so as he was particular about such things, which showed how tired he must have been.

The central door in the old
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fashioned walnut armoire was mirrored and now Paul Vivier saw himself reflected in it. A naked man, thin and sinewy, hunched on the bed, black hair on his legs, arms and chest, his lower face darkened by stubble, his attitude one of defeat. He stared at this image of himself distantly, as if surprised to see that he possessed a physical being, and such a naked ape
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like being too. His hair was a mess, one part at the top of his head standing up in a crazy tuft. He looked dangerous, like a man with no conscience. Like a Blakean vision of despair.

The phone rang while he was putting on his last pair of clean boxers and weighing up the chances he would have that day to either do the laundry or get to a shop and buy new ones.

‘Sir?'

The voice was Sabine Pelat's and the caller display told him she was already at the station.

‘Yes.'

‘We've just had a report about the discovery of what might be the girl's handbag. Looks like it was thrown into someone's garden.'

‘Any ID in it?'

‘From what they said, no, but there's a hotel room key and the description of the bag seems to match the one described by the English couple.'

‘Good. Where is it?'

‘House overlooking the Bais de Somme. Holiday rental, garden backs onto a lane.'

‘Okay, meet me there in twenty minutes and … Sabine?'

‘Coffee, sir?'

‘You read my mind.'

‘It was hardly challenging, sir.'

If he didn't know better he would have thought such a statement was insubordination, but her tone had been warm and teasing, and his appetite for strong coffee, especially in the morning, was hardly a secret.

He hung up the phone and continued dressing, his mind settling back on the banalities of his underwear situation. How much easier would life be if he had a wife? Not one iota perhaps, as he imagined this wife not only doing the laundry and shopping and preparing meals, but also crowding out the quiet spaces of his life, demanding holidays spent, not in the cool of a London museum, but on the beach in the south or perhaps Spain, or even further afield. This wife of his imagination sprang partly from the sort of ciphers of ordinary women one saw on popular TV soap operas (not that he watched television) and partly from recollections of his own mother who was extremely house
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proud and whose overzealous shopping and cleaning routines imposed unnecessary noise and disruption on his father and himself.

Vivier sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes, black lace
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ups with leather soles. Expensive shoes even for a police inspector, but they were made to last. He already wore his jacket, tie and watch. He put his left shoe on and laced it tight; he'd be on his way in a minute or so. He lifted his right shoe and discovered that on removing it the night before he hadn't properly untied it and that the bow was now a tight and impossible knot. The sort best unpicked by someone with smaller, more nimble fingers and longer nails.

Pressed for time and not really thinking too much about it, Vivier, wearing one shoe and carrying the other, left the flat and took the lift down to the basement car park.

He drove to the address Pelat had given him and pulled up as soon as he saw Lamy. He rolled down his car window.

‘Lamy, is Pelat here yet?'

Lamy nodded. His eyes were hooded as if he wasn't quite awake yet.

‘Can you ask her to come here immediately?'

Lamy turned into the path that led to the holiday home's open front door and disappeared. Sabine Pelat appeared seconds later looking as fresh and well
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groomed as ever.

She leaned over to talk to Vivier at the driver's window.

He jerked his head to the right.

‘Get in please.'

She nodded and walked around the front of the car watching his face quizzically through the windscreen. Got in the passenger seat and began to do up the seat belt.

‘No need for that, we're not going anywhere.'

Vivier reached for the shoe in the well of the car and handed it to her.

She took it, at first handling it as gingerly as if it were a new and puzzling piece of evidence.

He sighed, realising the absurdity of the moment.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I couldn't undo it. Could you?'

She looked at him, then her eye travelled down his legs to his feet; one in the matching shoe, the other in a finely knitted black sock. A smile crept over her face, but she avoided his eye, concentrating instead on undoing the knot in the lace. Her fingers worked at it with precision and delicacy, as her smile grew broader and broader. She sensed him watching her, but could not control her expression.

‘Yes, I know,' he said at last, ‘it's very amusing.'

She laughed.

Her laugh was lovely; musical and sweet and not unkind.

She composed herself, continuing to work on the knot in silence while she fought back a grin. Finally she untangled the knot.

‘There!' she said, but speaking had released her from the composure she had struggled to maintain, and she laughed again.

Handed him his shoe.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' she said, laughter bubbling through her words. Her eyes were dancing and glittering with merriment.

Straight
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faced, he put his shoe on and tied it up, then he turned away from her and spoke sternly.

‘A little respect, if you please.'

She was silent.

A beat of time passed, then he looked at her, she had a hand clamped over her mouth and her eyes looked anguished. Her shoulders were hunched and trembling spasmodically as she fought the urge to laugh.

She looked helpless and almost childlike.

Now he was the one to laugh and released from his solemn spell, she laughed easily and gaily with him.

Lamy came out of the gîte to smoke a cigarette and was surprised to see the Inspector and Pelat sitting side by side in Vivier's car laughing uncontrollably.

And when Pelat noticed Lamy watching them, she laughed even more.

Some joke eh, Lamy thought, look at those two – so pleased with themselves, laughing at his expense. He stared at Sabine Pelat and scowled, screwing his eyes up as he sucked at his cigarette, then angrily tossed it onto the road.

Bitch!

Inside the car Vivier and Pelat began to subside into soberness by degrees. Sabine wiping tears from her eyes and exhaling breathy ‘oh's, while Paul Vivier cupped his face in one hand, pressing his fingers into his cheeks to inflict a little pain on his undisciplined mouth.

‘I'm sorry, sir,' Sabine managed to say.

‘That's alright, but can I ask that you keep this to yourself. At least for the time being.'

‘Of course.'

They simultaneously opened their respective doors, and climbed out of the car, slamming them shut within seconds of one another, producing a two beat sound that reverberated in the quiet street.

Lamy had disappeared inside the house again.

They entered and made their way to the back, where they found a woman with strawberry blonde hair tied back in a ponytail sitting in a straight
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backed chair, breast
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feeding a baby. A man, presumably the child's father, was standing at a kitchen counter putting a filter into a coffee maker. Lamy was standing near the large patio window staring, without an iota of discretion, at the woman's exposed breast.

The man in the kitchen area picked up the glass jug from the machine, filled it at the sink and then put it on the hot plate and flipped the switch.

‘No,' Sabine said. ‘That's not how you do it.'

He turned to look at her, surprised, then said by way of explanation, ‘We don't really drink coffee.'

Sabine crossed the room, switched the machine off, lifted the lid on the reservoir and poured the contents of the jug in.

She had brought the packet of coffee herself that morning, baffling the English couple when she took it from the large aluminum case she carried – the case whose other contents had briefly been glimpsed; white disposable gloves, clear plastic jars and paper bags.

‘I hope you don't mind – it's an early start for us and last night was a late one,' she said, casting the beam of a smile around the room to take in the man standing near her and Paul Vivier and the woman with the baby and lastly, Lamy. Lamy's look was hard and unresponding, almost a look of hatred.

Sabine was used to such looks. They came from those lower in rank and those above her in rank too. As if in any matter of dispute, she became not a colleague whose opinion and authority were respected, but a woman who had no business being there or saying the things she did. Not all of her male co
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workers were like this, and indeed, she would not have advanced in her career if they had been, but they still existed; those old
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school Neanderthals whose egos easily retreated into the cave of gender division.

She stared at Lamy, and her smile fell away in an instant. Her face wore no expression. He blinked and turned away to look out of the window.

They drank their coffee quickly, standing up, while the English couple sat amongst them looking brave, but bewildered. The baby was now asleep and her mother had rebuttoned her shirt.

Vivier drained his mug of coffee, throwing his head back to gulp the last of it.

‘We'll make a start then,' he said in English and put his cup down on the counter with a decisive click. ‘Now which of you found the bag?'

‘Me,' the woman said.

‘Then, if you would, can you show me where it is and talk me through how you came to find it.'

‘Yes, of course,' she said, but she did not get up from her chair, although everyone else was standing around expectantly. It was as if the baby was fixing her there, its weight like an anchor holding her down.

Her husband, seeing this, stepped nearer, bent and reached for the sleeping child.

‘I'll put her down, shall I?' he said, his voice gentle and full of consideration.

‘No,' the woman snapped and hugged the baby closer.

‘Alright,' he said, ‘I was only trying to…'

‘Well, don't,' she said. ‘She's fine where she is.'

To prove her point the woman quickly stood and after readjusting the position in which she held the child and fussing with the blanket, she stepped towards the patio doors.

She led them down the garden talking in a quiet, but calm voice to Vivier as she went.

‘It could have been there before, but I don't think it was, but then yesterday we didn't use the garden as we drove over to the beach at Belle Plage.'

She stopped a few yards away from the place where the bag lay and pointed at it quickly.

‘Did you touch it?' Vivier asked.

‘Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realise …'

‘That's fine, but we may have to take your prints to exclude you. So is this where it was or did you move it?'

‘No, I just lifted the edge, I think it's more or less in the same place.'

A flash bulb went off startling the woman.

Lamy had moved onto the lawn and begun taking photographs of the object in situ.

‘And did you see anything else?'

‘I saw the stuff that had been inside it, everything that had spilled out and that's when I knew I had to report it.'

‘Was that closed?' Vivier nodded at the gate.

‘Yes, closed and locked. Or at least, I think it's locked.' She looked at her husband for confirmation of this, but he merely shrugged.

‘And have you seen or heard anything else? For instance, the night before last, any unusual noises or voices?'

The woman shook her head ‘no' but the headshake turned into a shudder and her eyes seemed to glaze over.

Sabine stepped nearer and cupped the woman's elbow.

‘Are you alright? Do you want to sit down?'

The woman's eyes remained fixed and staring.

Vivier spoke, ‘Thank you. You've been very helpful. Go in now. You too, sir.'

The couple turned and made their way back to the house. After a few paces the man put his arm around the woman and she leaned heavily against him, stumbling slightly as she did so.

She gave a ragged sob as they neared the door and her husband responded with whispered hushing. Then he drew the glass door shut behind them and there was silence.