Trespass (33 page)

‘After that,’ he said, ‘did you see this man again?’

‘No,’ said Audrun.

‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? You didn’t catch a glimpse of them both, coming back from the river?’

‘No. That was the last time I saw him.’

‘And your brother? When was the next time you saw him?’

Audrun took another gulp of her water. ‘I can’t remember,’ she said.

‘So you didn’t see
him
coming back from the river?’

‘No.’

‘When d’you think you saw him again – Aramon?’

‘I don’t know. I told you, my memory’s not good for dates and times. It’d be a few days after that. I think it might have been when he found a dead dog in the pound.’

‘A dead dog?’

‘Yes. He was upset. He’s fond of the dogs – his hunting dogs. But he went out one morning and there was a dead animal. He was very upset.’

‘He hunts wild boar with dogs?’

‘Yes. There’s a syndicate in La Callune.’

‘So he keeps a shotgun?’

‘Oh yes. Don’t worry, he’s got a licence. We don’t know why the dog died. But it was very upsetting for Aramon. And . . . I think it was on that day that I showed Aramon the picture of Monsieur Verey in the papers. I said to him, “Wasn’t that the man who came here?” And he got very agitated. But I think he was mainly still concerned about the dog and how to bury it in the hard ground.’

The constable stopped writing and he and Travier looked at each other. Audrun knew there were
words
in this look. In films, looks were often substituted for words, because movies tried to be true to life, to how things actually unfolded – in patches of silence, in wordless darkness . . .

Travier stood up now. He walked back and forth the length of the small kitchen. Back and forth with his hands in his pockets. Then he stopped and said: ‘Mademoiselle Lunel, did your brother reach any agreement with Monsieur Verey about the sale of the house?’

‘No,’ said Audrun. ‘He thought Monsieur Verey was going to buy it – for quite a large sum – but then he changed his mind.’

‘Who changed whose mind?’

‘Monsieur Verey. He changed his mind – that’s what my brother told me. Maybe he’d found another house. And Aramon was—’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I think he was very disappointed. It was a large sum. He’d thought he was going to be rich.’

Travier sat down again and he reached out to Audrun, as though to take one of her hands in his, but she held herself apart, folded her hands in her lap. She imagined the film director saying to her: ‘No, no. Don’t let him take your hand, Audrun. Remember you’re innocent.
Innocent.
The innocent don’t betray weakness. On the contrary, they demonstrate that they’ve got no need of special kindness.’

But Travier nevertheless spoke in a kind voice when he said: ‘Let me ask you, Mademoiselle Lunel, do you think your brother bore any animosity towards Verey?’

Audrun stared at Travier, held his gaze. ‘Are you asking me,’ she said, ‘if I think he could have harmed him?’

‘Yes. I’m asking you if you think your brother has anything to do with the death of Anthony Verey.’

Now, she began to cry. It wasn’t difficult.

It never had been difficult. To summon tears, she only had to think about Bernadette. It wasn’t even acting. It was just Bernadette calling to her from her chair in the sunlight, where she sat stringing beans, with a colander in her lap.

Audrun put her head in her hands and let her head shake from side to side and she felt the gentle touch of Inspecteur Travier’s hand come gently to rest on her shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘to ask you such a terrible question. You don’t have to answer it. You don’t have to—’

‘I’m afraid for him!’ Audrun burst out. ‘He has blackouts. He does things and then can’t remember them. Poor Aramon! His memory’s all gone. I’m so frightened for him!’

She sobbed for a long time and her own crying sounded beautiful to her and full of harmony.

The policemen didn’t stay long after that, as she knew they wouldn’t.

They walked back to one of the cars on the road and the radios roared with staccato sound all down the valley. Audrun stayed out of sight, in the shadow behind the window, watching and waiting, and the sun went down and the light became grey and flat.

In this grey light, she saw them come past her door: twenty or thirty armed officers.

Far too many, she thought. Far too many for what’s needed.

She opened her door a crack and stood watching, without moving.

The armed men moved slowly and quietly, fanning out onto the grass in front of the Mas Lunel. Travier was with them. A police van waited.

As the dogs caught the scent of them – of so many human bodies all at once – they began braying and howling and Audrun wondered whether Aramon wouldn’t – in one last act of defiance – let the dogs loose on the policemen. She could hear their claws scrabbling against the wire of the pound.

She craned her neck to see. Three of the officers had broken off from the group and were going towards the barn, as the others crept silently onwards towards the mas. Audrun’s mind stayed for a moment with those headed for the barn. She could hear them breaking the new padlock Aramon had fitted, tugging open the doors . . .

And she thought that at first, even with the flashlights they carried, they might not see it, because the vaulted dark space of the barn was so huge and because she’d succeeded so well with her camouflage . . . but then, in a matter of moments, they’d find it . . .

Driving it in there – a car so much larger and more powerful than her own little machine – had caused her anguish. It had been the worst moment of all. Her heart had fluttered pathetically, like a bantam’s heart. Her hands had begun to sweat, inside her rubber gloves. She’d stalled the Renault on the driveway, had had to rev the engine loudly when it re-started, all the while petrified that Aramon would see or hear what she was doing and then everything –
everything
– would be lost. But nobody came. No other car had gone by on the road.

And once the Renault was in place – with the horrible sandwich locked away inside – and Audrun had begun the task of draping the car with sacking and laying on the sacking a wild collection of objects broken and abandoned by Aramon over time, she’d exalted in her own cunning. People thought she was stupid. Just because she hadn’t been able to have a proper life with a husband she loved, they thought she had no idea how the world worked. But now she asked herself: how many of them could have done what she’d done? How many could have done this and felt such exaltation in their hearts?

Later, the police van passed her door, with its lights a burning yellow in the darkness. And Audrun knew Aramon was inside it. She imagined the police cell where he’d be taken and his old scarecrow head tumbling down on some comfortless bed and his face, cross-eyed with confusion, staring out at the unfamiliar room.

Veronica was driven to the hospital morgue in Ruasse.

She’d been told on the telephone that forensic identification had already been done conclusively from DNA samples; she wouldn’t be forced to identify her brother; those days of putting relatives through this agony were – in very many cases, such as this one – past.

But Veronica knew that until she’d seen Anthony, until she was sure that the world wasn’t lying to her, she’d never believe that he was dead. And then she’d probably go mad. She’d sit at her window, listening for his car. She’d grow old sitting and listening there. She’d keep his room dusted, the sheets aired. She’d never rest in her delusion that, one day, he’d walk in through the door.

Now, she was looking down at a grey and bloated corpse, an assemblage of decayed and stinking flesh, its features gone, half-zippered into a waterproof bag.

It could be anyone . . . she wanted to say. It’s certainly not Anthony. He was a lean man. His hair was strong and springy. His hands were delicate . . .

But she saw that it was him.

Pity for him swelled in her like the long slow movement of a symphony, pity boundless and deep.

There was a little room where she was taken to recover. She sat on a hard sofa. A mortuary assistant brought her water. In England, she thought, it wouldn’t have been water, it would have been tea, but she didn’t care.

None of these small details mattered one jot – and never would again.

She didn’t know where to go then or what to do. Above her, all around her, she thought about the life of the hospital going on. Doctors and nurses rushing from ward to operating theatre, to recovery room, to ward again, trying to overcome suffering, trying to save lives. And the patients so touching in their belief that suffering would be overcome, their lives saved! Forgetting that in the end, every battle is lost. Every single one.

The young mortuary assistant, a student in his twenties, had stayed with Veronica. He knelt beside her, holding her hand. Over his green overalls, he wore a green plastic apron, scrubbed violently clean.

‘I know,’ said Veronica to this young man, ‘that there are things I should be doing. Lots and lots of things. But I just can’t imagine what they are.’

He shook his head, encased in a soft gauzy cap. ‘You will remember these things later, Madame,’ he said gently.

‘I don’t know if I will,’ said Veronica. ‘I feel my mind has . . . just . . . more or less melted away.’

‘This is normal,’ said the mortuary assistant. ‘Absolutely normal. It’s the shock. Now, can you get to your feet? I’ll take you to the police car and they will drive you home.’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Veronica in a tender, motherly voice.

‘Paul,’ said the boy.

‘Paul,’ repeated Veronica. ‘That’s a very nice name. Easy to remember. I like it when that is the case.’

So many things to do . . .

But she did nothing. She knew this was lamentable.

She sat on the terrace, watching leaves fall. She sat so still that she lost almost all the feeling in her feet. Then she got up and limped to her room and lay down, unable to hold herself upright any more. She covered herself with the sheet and the blue-and-white bed cover and closed her eyes.

She knew that crying was one of the things she should be doing, but this felt like an impossible demand, the kind of stupid, insensitive demand Lal might have made – Lal, or some stranger who didn’t know her properly and who would never know her, would
never ever
know how it felt to be Veronica Verey, alive in the world . . .

She wondered whether, in fact, she’d never do anything again, except lie there in her room at Les Glaniques. Just lie there unable to move, like someone in a ghastly play by Samuel Beckett, in which nothing ever happened. It seemed very likely.

She tried to think of all the things she
might
do, but none of them attracted her. She remembered that when the vet had had to be summoned to put Susan down, she’d run into the spinney behind Bartle House and taken a stick and charged round and round and round, whacking the trees. She’d kept on running until the stick broke, then she’d found another stick and kept hitting and hitting until she had no more breath in her lungs and had to fall over and let her face come to rest on a pillow of moss.

Now, she admired from a distance the girl who had done all this charging about. She could imagine the high colour it had brought to her cheeks.

She thought it all admirable and right, for that adorable little pony. But as she lay on her bed, the idea of any bodily movement made Veronica feel so tired that she seemed to sink right down into the mattress, as if it were as deep and soft as a quicksand. Breathing felt exhausting.

Perhaps she slept. She wasn’t sure.

She could see now that the room was dark and she could hear something going on, a sound she was meant to recognise, but she couldn’t recognise it.

It belonged in a different life.

After some time, she decided the sound might have been the telephone ringing, but she couldn’t think of anybody she wanted to talk to. She was glad of one thing: that she was alone. She thought that in this loneliness there was a kind of dignity and peace.

Her memories came tumbling towards her, like sprites, like characters escaping from a story, holding hands and running fast.
‘Look at us! Look at us! We’re alive!’

An evening when . . .

. . . she and Anthony sat alone in the kitchen at Bartle House, eating cereal. Lal had gone out to dinner. She, Veronica, would have been fifteen and Anthony twelve or thirteen. All they had to eat for supper was the cereal. Anthony went to the fridge and opened it and saw that it was filled with bottles of champagne and with dishes of dressed game and fish, waiting to be cooked for a party Lal was giving for her smart Hampshire friends the following night.

‘Nothing’s ever for us,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Yes you do,’ said Veronica.