Trespass (32 page)

Jeanne stopped again. She was about to turn round and make her way back up the pasture when she saw that what she’d taken for nettles weren’t in fact nettles, but those plumed dark weeds that hugged the shingle banks of the Gardon in a few shady corners, where snakes sometimes made their nests, in places the fishermen avoided.

And then she saw that, at one spot, a clump of these weeds had been flattened. Perhaps she’d chosen the right path after all? She followed where the tracks led, imagining the child’s little feet treading all this down, careless of snakes in her misery, just rushing on, away from the bullying Jo-Jo and the sneering girls, fighting her way through the rank weeds . . .

Jeanne arrived on a shingle bank and saw the river trying to rush steadfastly on, but slowing, slowing almost as she watched it, the way it did every summer when no rain fell after the month of April. But her gaze didn’t linger on the water. She began searching for footprints in the shingle. The stones were coarse and slippery, but nearer the water’s edge there was a grey beach and she walked down to this and thought she saw tracks going left, towards the river bend.

‘Mélodie . . . Mélodie . . .’ she began calling again, knowing her voice wasn’t loud any more. She felt exhausted, as though she’d walked from Ruasse to La Callune, uphill all the way, with cars rushing by her and the road edge scarred with fallen rocks. ‘Oh please, please let me find her,’ she said. ‘Please let her be alive . . .’

Jeanne rounded the bend. Immediately, she saw the child, naked except for a little pair of red-and-white briefs, lying on a boulder in the middle of the river. She lay on her back, with her legs overhanging the boulder, gravity threatening to pull her body down at any moment into the water. Strewn about on the shingle beach were the clothes she’d been wearing for the outing.

Cold now. Jeanne was suddenly cold. And the thought of wading into the icy water was unbearable.
Oh God
 . . . if only Luc were here to gather the child into his arms, to frighten away the stranger who might be hiding anywhere along the river line . . . But sometimes, Jeanne knew, there is no one, no Luc, no Marianne, no one. You’re alone and what you have to do is to go on. And whatever is going to happen, is going to happen . . .

Jeanne kicked off her canvas shoes, remembered her mobile phone in the pocket of her jeans and stuck it inside one of the shoes. She walked into the river and felt the chill eddy round her calves. She clung to rocks to steady her progress on the slimy, stony river-bed. ‘I’m here now,’ she kept repeating out loud. ‘I’m here now. I’m here now . . .’

And she was almost there. She reached out. She said the child’s name again: Mélodie. She touched one of the little smooth legs, the toe dangling almost into the water. She held it tight. Then she pressed herself against the boulder and gathered the child to her. Mélodie still lay across the stone, but she was held now, held in Jeanne Viala’s arms. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth open. But Jeanne could feel her heartbeat and her breathing.

She shook her and cried out to her, told her she was safe now. And to her ecstatic relief Mélodie opened her eyes. And Jeanne felt the child’s thin arms go round her neck and cling to her.

Jeanne cradled her and rocked her, letting the boulder still take the weight but holding her as close as she could while she readied herself to carry the child back across the water.

‘What happened?’ she said softly. ‘Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?’

But the little girl couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth, but the sounds that came out weren’t words, only a low melodic moaning.

Make her warm, Jeanne instructed herself. Carry her to the bank. Get her clothes on. Get help. Call Luc. Tell him to send an ambulance. Call Maman to come and be with the children.

Now, she had to lift Mélodie, take the whole weight of her and somehow turn and, without slipping and falling, make her way to the shingle strand. Without letting go of the child, Jeanne looked all around her, to determine the safest pathway through the water.

Beyond the boulder was a deep pool. Jeanne Viala had a flicker of memory about pools like this, where she’d once paddled and swum with her father when he was alive and he would try to tickle a trout for supper from under the overhanging stones.

She stared at the green pool. There were fish in this one, she suddenly saw. But dead: the white bellies of two dead fish floating on the surface of the water. But, strangely, not borne away by the current . . . as though they were still attached to something below the water line . . .
not fish at all . . .

Jeanne gagged. She looked away. Shivering, clutching the girl, she felt her stomach keep rising. She tried with all her will to keep the sickness down, but she couldn’t. Her body convulsed and she vomited up her sandwich. Flecks of this regurgitated food spattered Mélodie’s arm. Then the water bore it away, towards the green pool, towards the white soles of the feet of the drowned body and the thin funnel of tissue, like scarlet smoke, drifting up from the depths, where the head must lie.

So now it arrived.

Audrun knew it was the last storm of her life and when it was over, if she survived it, everything would be altered, and she would be free. It came flying in to La Callune on a late afternoon, when the sun was still hot and the sky empty and blue.

First, Audrun heard the wailing of an ambulance, then she saw a posse of police cars gathering on the road. She began to count the police officers: five, six, seven . . . and she thought, I may have to say it seven times or more, over and over again, the same thing, the same statement.

She went to her bedroom and changed her clothes, putting on a clean cotton dress and brown sandals she’d bought at the market in Ruasse.

She tidied her hair. She could hear the police radios coughing and shrieking like zoo animals. It was all exactly as she’d imagined it would be, as though she’d seen it in a film – in hundreds of films, as she sat alone in her chair on winter afternoons, with her crocheted rug over her knees and the light from the television the only light in the room – and these films had also shown her something else: they’d taught her how she, the innocent witness, should behave.

She half expected Aramon to come running down to her bungalow, blubbing with terror, but he didn’t appear. So she knew what he was doing: he was hiding. Anywhere he thought was safe: in a wardrobe with his old clothes and his shotgun; in the attics; in the spinney of holm oaks behind the dog pound. As though he believed, if he curled up like a hedgehog, he’d become invisible . . .

The day was sliding towards sunset when the first policeman knocked at Audrun’s door. Another man was with him, dressed in plain clothes, the kind of man who, in the TV movies, is the one to piece everything together.

This man – unlike the mere
flics
– is always given a tainted private life: a failing marriage or a drink problem or an incurable sadness of heart; the things that make film-characters human and real.

So Audrun knew that it was to him that she should address everything – in a voice that faltered just a little (because of the shock of it all), but in a sequence that was logical. And this man would be kind to her and patient and would listen while the
flic
took notes . . .

His name was Inspecteur Travier. His age was about forty and he was good-looking. He sat down in Audrun’s kitchen, which was tidy and clean.

‘The body of a man has been found in the river,’ he announced gravely.

Audrun gasped. Her wait to hear these words now felt unbearably long, as if it had lasted years and years. She clutched at the bodice of her cotton dress.

‘Drowned?’ she forced herself to ask in a breathless voice. ‘Not one of the fishermen from our village?’

‘No. We’re ninety per cent certain the body is that of the missing English tourist, Anthony Verey.’

‘
Pardi!
’ exclaimed Audrun. ‘I read about that in the papers. So he was in the river! Did he slip and fall? The river can be so treacherous, unless you know it . . .’

‘The cause of death has yet to be determined,’ said Travier, ‘but we have reason to believe, from a wound found in the gut, that a crime was committed.’

‘
Pardi
!’ said Audrun again, and she got up to snatch a glass from beside the sink and filled the glass and began gulping the water.

Travier waited. Out of the corner of her eye, Audrun saw the
flic
watching her closely, but Travier just waited patiently, looking quietly round the room. When Audrun sat down again, Travier cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s on record that on the 27th of April, Monsieur Verey came up here, to look round the house known as the Mas Lunel—’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Audrun. ‘Oh I’m sorry but I can’t talk at the moment. I can’t catch my breath. This news is so shocking. Who found the body?’

‘A young woman, Madame. With a party of schoolchildren. In fact, one of the children was the first on the scene.’

‘
Ah non!
’ Audrun burst out. ‘
Mon dieu
, the things that happen . . .’

‘I know,’ said Travier, as if replying to Audrun’s hidden thoughts. ‘Terrible.’

Audrun kneaded her bony chest with her hand, as though massaging her heart. When she’d allowed her breathing to calm a little, Inspecteur Travier said: ‘Are you all right? May I ask you just a few questions?’

‘
Mon dieu, mon dieu
,’ said Audrun. ‘You know, I met that poor man. I saw him living . . .’

‘You met him when he came up here to look round the Mas Lunel?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Mas Lunel is your family home?’

‘It
was
our family home. Aramon – my brother – inherited it when our father died. But now it’s got too much for him – keeping the house ship-shape, and all the land . . . He’s older than me. His health isn’t good . . .’

‘So he decided to sell it?’

‘He hoped for money, Inspecteur. Lots of money. It’s the scourge of our modern world, everybody wanting to be rich. We were never rich in this family, we just got by. I don’t know what’s got into Aramon’s head.’

Inspecteur Travier paused. He rested his chin on his hand. Audrun sipped more water as Travier asked, ‘It was on that day, was it, that Monsieur Verey came with agents from Ruasse, to look round the house?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Audrun. ‘Days and dates. I don’t know . . . Oh God, I keep thinking about that poor child who found the corpse! A thing like that could disturb you for life, couldn’t it? It could haunt your dreams.’

‘She’ll be given counselling. She will be helped to forget. Now, could you confirm to me when you first saw Monsieur Verey?’

‘It probably was at the end of April. But I can’t remember the date. I don’t keep a calendar. I haven’t got very much to write on it.’

‘I understand. But you think that you did definitely see him on that occasion?’

‘Yes.’

‘And can you tell us, was he alone, except for the estate agent?’

‘No. On that occasion, he was with his sister, I think, and another friend and the agent. And then the second time—’

Audrun cut herself off, put a hand to her mouth. Silence descended on the small room. Travier, who had those same intelligent blue eyes that characterised so many of his movie counterparts, exchanged a glance with his constable, and then these captivating blue eyes of his narrowed and gazed at Audrun with thrilling attention.

‘Tell me about that “second time”,’ he said.

Audrun shook her head. ‘I can’t be sure,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t say things I can’t be sure about . . .’

She hung her head. Both men watched her closely. She laid her hands one beside the other on the patterned oilcloth, on the little space where she ate her countless solitary meals and took her pills and sometimes just sat motionless, waiting for her life – her real life, in which she would feel safe – to begin. Then she drew in a deep breath and it came to her attention how sweetly the air of her tiny kitchen was scented by the presence of these two men still in the prime of their lives.

‘The second time,’ said Travier. ‘You say you can’t be sure about it, but you thought you saw Verey again, didn’t you?’

‘I think it was him,’ said Audrun hesitantly. ‘I couldn’t swear to it. I saw a man walking up to the mas,’ she said.

‘By himself?’

‘Yes. I looked out of my window and saw him – his back view. I didn’t think anything about it, except that Monsieur Verey had decided to come back. I didn’t come out to talk to him. I just saw him walking towards the house on his own. Then, a bit later on, I was looking out of my other window, in my sitting room, and I saw him – the man I saw – crossing the road with Aramon . . .’

‘Aramon, your brother?’

‘Yes.’

The constable wrote and wrote. Travier’s face was now very near to Audrun’s. Despite the blue eyes, there was something about him which reminded her of Raoul Molezon, long ago. She found herself wondering whether Travier had ever bought
sirop de pêche
in a café in Ruasse, for a girl dear to his heart.