Significance (38 page)

He broke into a light jog. Ten minutes and he'd be there, snag a fistful of Euros, go to Emile's for the best
filet de boeuf
the butcher had. He could imagine the cool weight of it, bloody in a plastic bag. Eggs, oil, lemons, whipped up by hand.

Did Suzette have a hand whisk?

She'd better have.

And cheese. Because ‘A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.'

A beautiful late morning. Sky a blue ache. Clouds stately.

Suzette. Best steak. It was enough to give him a hard on.

He turned the corner onto the old familiar street. Twenty proud houses, some grown shabby at the edges. The ten on the right hand side seemed to crouch in their own shadows; the others puffed up their chests in a blaze of light. His home with the glass
-
fronted niche cut into the wall, shrine of the painted plaster
-
cast Madonna, faded now.

In through the side door. Ma at the ironing board. She is startled by him.

‘Oh Florian, love.'

Her left hand fluttered to her chest. Colour high on her cheeks. Steam rising from the iron in a hiss. Limp pale orange Y
-
fronts vulnerable and exposed on the silver cover of the ironing board.

‘Just popping in, don't mind me,' Florian said.

‘Are you hungry?' she asked, predictably.

‘No, Ma.'

He kisses her. Her cheek is soft and powdery.

‘Sorry,' he says. He meant he was sorry he couldn't stay longer, to eat with her, be a better son. And in the word ‘sorry' there was also, in his mind, the intention to not only acknowledge his failings on that day and many others, but to change himself, to make more effort, get steady work, make her proud.

She turned sharply to look at him.

‘Oh, what have you done now?'

‘Nothing!' he said and his voice went up in pitch as it had always done when he was accused of wrongdoing by his mother.

She clucked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, shook her head as if she didn't believe him. Resumed her ironing.

Upstairs in his room he slipped his arm under the mattress and drew out an envelope containing around seven hundred and fifty Euros. He took out five twenties, stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans and replaced the envelope.

At the bottom of the stairs he called goodbye to his mother then left by the front door. He shut it just as he heard his mother say his name.

‘Florian?'

But he was gone. Stepping lightly down the path and through the open gate where he once more broke into an easy loping run.

If he had ten Euros for every time he'd run up or down this street he'd be a millionaire. Which he wasn't and never would be, but at that moment it didn't matter; there would be steak, lightly charred on the outside, red in the centre, and the magic of the emulsified eggs and oil, his wrist aching pleasantly after its labour with the whisk, and most of all, there would be Suzette, warm in bed and smiling so happily to see him.

Consent

‘This is interesting,' Sabine Pelat said.

She was standing behind Paul Vivier holding the transcript of the investigation into the alleged rape in 2003 of Genevieve Quinet.

Vivier looked up from the papers he was working on, and craned his neck to see her.

‘The suspect asked that DNA samples be taken. Indeed, at every stage during the interview he demanded that DNA be taken,' Sabine said.

‘Who is this?'

‘Florian Lebrun.'

‘Ah.'

Vivier was distracted, only half listening to what she was saying.

‘It wasn't a matter of consent. He wanted the DNA test.'

‘And?'

‘Well, he got his way. DNA was taken and it didn't match. He was innocent.'

‘But he has a record.'

‘Yes, but nothing sexual, nothing violent. Only this rape charge and he was acquitted.'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘No?'

There was a beat of time. The detective inspector and his assistant detective regarded one another warily.

‘His semen on the cardigan?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's pretty cut and dried, isn't it?'

‘Seems that way.'

‘So?'

‘It's a conundrum.'

‘By which you mean…?'

‘The only reason we have his DNA on file is because he was falsely accused of rape.'

‘He has a record as long as your arm, Sabine. He's a chancer. Anything he can get away with.'

‘Petty stuff. Shoplifting. Cannabis. Drunk and disorderly. Fraud. Public disorder. Theft from a building site. It's all just stupid, messy stuff. And by the way, the woman who accused him?'

‘What about her?'

‘Genevieve Quinet.
Quinet
.' She emphasised the girl's last name.

‘Quinet?' Vivier repeated, as if the penny had finally dropped.

‘She's the sister of François Quinet,' she said, meaningfully.

‘She was from that family?'

‘Yes.'

‘Alright, I see what you're saying, but that doesn't mean…' Vivier hesitated, Sabine had come around the desk and was looking at him intensely. Her eyes were very clear, the whites glossy and bright, making the rich brown iris all the more distinct. Her eyebrows were perfectly shaped and the eyelashes thick, dark and silky with no obvious mascara on them. He reordered his thoughts, ‘…that doesn't mean that her claim was false.'

‘ You're saying that even girls from villainous families like the Quinets might be raped?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, of course that's true. But it's a shame Mademoiselle Quinet didn't go to the trouble of actually seducing Lebrun before she accused him. Shame no one explained to her about DNA.' Sabine looked angry.

‘But the cardigan,' Vivier said wearily.

‘I know. I know. But if it's not our guy?'

‘Okay, point taken.'
Vivier stood up and drew back his cuff to look at his watch. He did not speak, but with a circular motion of his head he indicated the door.
They walked towards it together and after he had opened it, he waited for her to pass through first. Once again she felt his hand graze her back. The lightest of touches, a guiding protective warmth – innocent and yet charged with meaning. She would have liked to stop in her tracks and fall back against that hand. For the hand and its partner to encircle her body. For…

She forced herself to snap out of this way of thinking. It was distracting. It made her usually sharp brain feel as if it were enfeebled somehow. Besides which it was never going to happen.

Her and Vivier? Some joke.

Control

Marilyn said nothing after he told her what had happened with the policeman. She listened with her eyes wide and attentive, nodding occasionally to affirm that she understood. It was what she did at those poetry readings she (and sometimes Scott) attended.

His words were hardly poetry, but they had a calm logic. ‘It's just a misunderstanding,' he'd said. ‘I'll just go to the station, have a chat, sort things out. Give Aaron a sedative if you need to. I'll be back in an hour or so I guess. Okay?'

She nodded.

She'd come out of the house without any shoes on. He noticed how vulnerable her feet looked, how pale and slim. The skin covering the intricate bones, veins and muscle seemed particularly fine. Her toes were long and elegant and she'd painted the nails a dark opalescent blue so that they reminded him of mussel shells gleaming in a stew. Curious how things like that grab your attention, he thought, something which was completely irrelevant to the moment. Her toes got up like mussel shells and him accused of criminal damage and threatening behaviour. He was certain he hadn't damaged the other man's car. In Canada (he was certain) the police would have arrested the other guy for wasting their time and for illegal parking. It gave him a fleeting sense of self
-
satisfied pleasure when he thought of that, but it couldn't last. He wasn't in Canada, he was in France.

The policeman who accompanied him to the police station, despite being on the short side (he couldn't have been much more than five feet seven), was powerfully built and he gave off an air of barely suppressed anger. While he was driving, Scott noticed how the police officer clenched his jaw and how an occasional ripple passed through the musculature of his face. Scott got the distinct impression of an almost tangible rage combined with a probable desire to inflict pain. He'd seen this type of character on the ice hockey rinks at high school, time and again – knew to give them a wide berth.

Yet the matter would be easy to resolve. He had done no damage to the man's car, he'd hit it with the flat of his hand and yeah, it made a noise and his palm stung like hell, but that was it. And even if there were the slightest damage he could pay for the repairs; a bit of panel beating and possibly a re
-
spray wasn't going to cost much.

As long as he kept his cool, explained the matter calmly, told them about the flight they were due to take, the unreasonable way in which the other motorist had behaved, about his sick brother, then they would surely see it from his point of view. It was nothing.

The car followed the twists and turns of back streets heading east, then north, then east again. Finally they came to a halt outside an unprepossessing building that could have served any dull bureaucratic purpose. The policeman got out of the car. Scott tried to open his door, but found it locked. They called these child locks back home and whenever they hired a car to take Aaron anywhere they always specified child locks. Now Scott saw another side to their use and it shocked him to find himself locked in. It made him feel vulnerable and childlike, and conversely, dangerous like some wild and unpredictable animal.

The policeman was standing by the car and saw Scott's attempt to open the door. He wagged a finger at him. Obediently Scott withdrew his hand and sat submissively, his hands cupped limply between his legs as if he wore invisible cuffs while the cop wrote in a small notebook.

Then the door was opened and he followed the policeman across a concrete path and up some steps into the building.

As soon as they were inside the policeman's demeanor changed, his body seemed to relax and he became almost casual. He spoke in rapid French to the younger uniformed man behind the desk, laughing loudly at some comment he'd made, and the young cop smiled weakly.

Scott stood helplessly waiting, hearing only brief phrases and words that he recognised and feeling unusually tall and awkward. It was as if his centre of gravity had shifted somehow, displacing his normal physical confidence and, perversely, his ability to understand French.

The cop's laugh was cut short when, through a door behind the desk, a woman emerged. She was not in uniform, though her clothes were sedate and formal; and she possessed an air of quiet authority. Her gleaming dark hair was parted neatly down the centre of her scalp and pulled back in two wings to hug and define her skull.

Scott took her to be a secretary or someone involved in administration. She looked frowningly from one of the uniformed police to the other, then she looked at Scott. Her face registered ill
-
concealed surprise. Scott tried unsuccessfully to give her the sort of warm smile which would convey that he was just a regular guy.

She narrowed her eyes, then looked away. Well, who could blame her? His expression must have been more grimace, than smile. She said a few quiet words to the younger of the two men, then disappeared through the door again where she stood a little way off, as if waiting for someone or something. Through the glass Scott noticed how she nervously brought one hand up to her head. She seemed, by touch alone to be checking her hair. The hand brushed the surface of the cunningly swept
-
up knot of hair at the back, then with light patting gestures checked the rest of the hairdo.

Scott was so taken up with watching her unselfconscious preening that he did not notice the two cops speaking quietly to one another.

The policeman who had brought him in advanced, and taking him by the elbow, indicated wordlessly that he should sit on a wooden bench off to one side. Scott complied and the man went through a hatch in the counter and through the same door the woman had used.

From his new position on the bench, Scott could no longer see the dark
-
haired woman or anything beyond the door's glass window but a sliver of greenish light.

He sighed and thought about the flight they would miss – which was probably boarding about now. It had seemed a simple, though expensive, solution to an irrepressible urge. To go home. To get back to normality. To shed the burden of his brother and just be with Marilyn. And, he considered, half the time he wasn't even sure if his parents really wanted to be parted from Aaron at all and seemed to miss him and love him with increasing neediness as the years went by. It was as if they were anticipating losing their youngest son if only by virtue of their advancing old age and dwindling strength.