Cupid's Arrow (21 page)

'I suppose not,' I said, slowly.

'Maybe it's still there, in my desk. Maybe that's where we should start.'

'But Remy – that means –'

'That means we have to go back to my house,' he said, very pale.

'But we can't – I mean, it's a crime scene – there'll be police everywhere – we can't just –' I swallowed. 'Anyway, I don't think it's there. I think whoever did this to your mother also took the dream book. I think that's what they were really after. That's what they wanted. They must somehow have discovered that I'd found it, that I'd given it to you. They came looking for it. Your mother – she – she just got in the way. It was nothing to do with – with what she'd said to you, what happened.'

'You mean, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,' he said, his eyes fixed on my face.

I nodded.

He said, explosively, 'No. I don't believe, I can't believe – not again. She – it's not fair. What happened to my father, my uncle – she was in the wrong place then. It was something to do with their job – an enemy they'd made in their police work – that killed them. And she just happened to get in the way too. It couldn't happen again.'

'Things like that do happen,' I said, through the lump in my throat.

He closed his eyes. 'No. Fleur, I can't believe that. I'm sure – sure now there was something in that dream book that set her off. Something that frightened and angered her. That made her tip into one of her moods. We've got to get hold of it, Fleur. We've got to go back to my house and check if it's still there.'

'It won't be,' I said, shaking my head.

'How do you know?'

'Because whoever killed your mother took it. That's what they were after. And they killed her because she knew who they were. She'd seen them.' I swallowed. My voice trembled as I went on. 'You know how I told you about how they'd defaced the tarot – the one your mother was working on? And how that card was missing? What if – what if it was a portrait of the person who killed her, the person who took the dream book? And that's why they took that card, too.'

There was a long silence. Then Remy said, 'She was making the Bellerive Tarot. The
Bellerive
Tarot, Fleur. So that means –'

'It means that whoever that card portrayed, it was someone from Bellerive. From the manor. Or the village. Not a stranger. Someone she knew.'

'But, my God, Fleur!' He looked at me in horror. 'That can't be right. I mean, people here were a bit wary of her, I think –' I remembered what Marie Clary had said, and kept quiet – 'because she was different, but I'm sure no-one hated her. No-one was her enemy. Not like that.'

'Maybe they didn't hate her. Not personally. They just wanted what she had, and she got in the way.'

'But why would anyone in Bellerive – I mean, finding a coin that proves King Arthur's existence – well, it's exciting, but people don't kill for that. They can't. It's too weird.' He broke off, suddenly. There was a strange expression in his eyes 'Unless –'

'Unless what?'

'Unless it wasn't proof of the coin they were after,' he said, slowly, 'but something else.'

'What do you mean? What something else?'

'Something else in the dream book,' he said, his eyes alight. 'Something we've missed – that we haven't understood the significance of.'

'But what? The drawings?'

'No. Remember, there was that other piece of paper. The Hotel du Lys, Terrebonne. Remember, I told you that the only Terrebonne I knew
was in Montreal, where we came from.
What if – what if that's right, and there is no Terrebonne in France, and it has nothing to do with King Arthur – but with something else. Something back in Canada. Something my mother recognised – but that somebody else recognised, too.'

'Oh my God,' I breathed. 'The police asked us if we'd been in Canada. I thought it was strange, and that's why I asked Nicolas Boron, afterwards. What if – what if the Bellerive Tarot thing was just a blind alley – what if your mother's enemy wasn't from Bellerive at all – not from now, from the present – but someone from the past? From Canada? Someone – someone who'd tracked her down?' Suddenly, I thought of Laurie, the 'film producer', who'd appeared out of nowhere. Who'd vanished without a trace the day Valerie's body was found. Who'd said he was American. But a Canadian accent, at least to non-Canadians, can sound like an American accent. Canadians often complain about being taken for Americans.

I said as much to Remy. We stared at each other. I could feel his heart beating as fast as mine. He said, 'But that's – that's impossible. How would this Laurie – or whoever – how would they know . . . how would they have found – And why? Why? I mean, she'd done nothing wrong. She was a victim.'

'You don't know the whole story of what happened,' I said. 'You said. What if there was more to it than you thought?'

'But why would Raymond – I mean, that piece of paper, it was hidden in the dream book – hidden in his house. Maman didn't know about it. Not till I showed her the book ... Why would Raymond have known about it, and not her? Why had he hidden that paper?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I have no idea. But we've got to find out. And we've got to start with what really happened to your family, back in Quebec. We've got to get to an internet café or a library or something like that and look it up. Right away.'

We walked away from Mary's Well and back to the crossroads. After some discussion, we'd decided the quickest and most discreet way to get to any town was by hitching a ride. Remy reckoned we were too late for any buses going anywhere, anyway. And I didn't want to go back to the village and run the gauntlet of all those eyes again.

We waited and waited. No-one came. We were beginning to think we'd have to walk back to the village and try our luck there when a red Renault pulled up and a cheerful voice called out to us, over the throb of a car stereo system, 'Are you okay?'

He was a well-dressed middle-aged black guy with bright eyes and a quick smile, who said he was on his way to Quarré-les-Tombes if that was any good to us, though he expected we'd want to go to Vezelay or Avallon, as those were bigger towns, and closer, too. Remy hesitated and said we were really after an internet café – a 'cyber café' as they call it in French – and the guy said that though there was none as such in Quarré, one of the shops did have a computer terminal out the back that local people often used as an internet point. We might want to wait for a car going to one of the other towns, though, he added. There'd be a lot more possibilities there. But we didn't really want to go to Avallon – where the police might pick Remy up before we had a chance to prove anything – and we'd waited long enough here. Perhaps there'd never be a car going to Vezelay. We'd be stuck here forever. So we said that if he didn't mind, we'd like to go with him.

Much of the way to Quarré – and it was a fair way – the driver, whose name was Claude Diallo, talked and talked, about how he was a representative for a company that made 'superior' blankets and duvets and how he crisscrossed Burgundy visiting his customers and taking orders, and how he'd been married but now his wife had gone back to Senegal, where she originally came from, but that though his own parents had come from Senegal, he was born in France, and this was his home. He talked about how his son and daughter were grown up, and the daughter lived in Paris and the son in Vezelay, and how proud he was of them, the son was now a doctor, the daughter worked for an IT firm. It was strangely restful and cosy listening to him, as if with him we were in a bubble of safety where bad things didn't happen and life chugged happily along in its ordinary and pleasant way. What was more, after the first quick question or two (Remy told him we were visitors from Paris), he didn't seem very curious about us, which suited us just fine. He was quite keen on Patou though, and told us several times how cute she was. He wished he could have a dog, he said, but with his job, it just wasn't possible.

After a while, he seemed to run out of things to say and instead hummed along to the CD that had kept playing all the time he talked. It was really good music, a powerful mixture of African and Latin stuff, and when I asked what it was, he smiled and said, 'Orchestra Baobab. From Senegal. The best, yes?'

And so it was that we drove into Quarré to the haunting tune of a Senegalese love song called
Ndeleng Ndeleng,
which, for me, will always be associated with that day, and that town.

Our new friend dropped us off in front of the shop where he said we might consult the internet. We went in, leaving Patou to wait for us outside, and sure enough the shopkeeper said he did have a terminal, that we could just go on and he'd charge us later for the time we'd used.

The computer was in a kind of little cubicle in a storeroom at the back. The rest of the room was filled with boxes and stuff; there was only one hard plastic chair to sit on, and it wasn't exactly the most comfy place I'd ever been in, but the connection was broadband, and fast. Remy perched on a box next to me – he said I'd be quicker, as he wasn't much used to looking up the internet as of course they didn't have it at home, though he had tried it out a few times in Avallon. As I typed in the search words, I was strongly aware of his presence, the feel of being with him, of being in this together, and nobody else knowing where we were. It was exciting, that feeling, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't once think of Mum and how she might be feeling when she'd discovered I'd gone.

The first words I put into Google –
Terrebonne France
– just to be sure we weren't on the wrong track – brought up heaps of things not about a Terrebonne in France but about various buildings and businesses in Terrebonne Quebec that had 'France' in their name, like a church called St-Louis de France, stuff like that. There was not a single reference to a French settlement called Terrebonne. I put in
'Terrebonne Riothamus,'
to double-check, because you never know. Nothing. But when I put in
Terrebonne Quebec,
up popped heaps of things. History, streets, schools, businesses, photos, hotels. But no Hotel du Lys. So I tried entering
Hotel du Lys Terrebonne.
At first I thought we'd hit the jackpot because heaps of stuff came up, but we soon saw it had nothing to do with Terrebonne, just other Hotel du Lys' in random places – the internet can be annoying like that. I scrolled through the next page. No result, or at least none that was any use to us. At last I had to admit it. The Hotel du Lys Terrebonne was not online at all. According to the internet, there was no such place in Terrebonne, Quebec, which was the only Terrebonne in the world; at least the virtual world as mapped on the web.

'Damn,' I said. 'It's not going to be as easy as I thought.'

'Try my name,' said Remy quietly. 'Or at least, Maman's. Put it in. That – and Quebec – and – and policemen – fire.'

I looked at him quickly, but said nothing. I typed in the words swiftly. There was no result for Gomert, or Valerie Gomert and the other words together. For Quebec and police and fire there was. Mostly nothing to do with us. But on the third page of references, there it was:
Quebec policemen die in house fire,
it read. It was an article from a newspaper. But when I tried to click onto it, I just got one of those annoying messages saying we couldn't access the website, that Google had encountered problems opening it.

'Damn, damn, damn,' I hissed. 'You stupid thing.' I hate computers when they don't do what you want. I went back to check on the URL and typed it in again. Again the same. I tried all sorts of combinations but no go. I tried another lot of search words but still a dead end. I couldn't believe it. Our quest was going nowhere. There was only that elusive and annoying reference which we hadn't been able to access. And nothing under Valerie Gomert's name. And yet that case must have been famous. It must have hit several headlines. You'd think. But there was nothing else. It was strange. Almost as if some care had been taken to wipe the traces of what had happened, so that there should be no trail to follow.

'I'm sorry, Remy,' I said, at last. 'I don't know what to do now.'

'We need to get in touch with someone,' he said. He was pale, his eyes too bright. 'Someone in the Quebec police. Someone who might know. Who might tell us?'

'They won't tell you,' I said. 'There's some reason why there's nothing about it. I wonder –' and then it struck me what the reason might be, why there was no reference to them, or the case, or anything that might identify them. I'd seen enough films with that kind of a twist. 'You were probably protected witnesses,' I blurted out. 'Or your mother was, anyway. She must have changed her name. Gomert wasn't even probably her real surname.'

He stared at me. I went on, 'And they do that when there's still a risk to the witness – I mean, that the person who might harm them is still around. So it probably means that whoever set that fire, whoever killed your father and your uncle and injured your mother – it must mean they were never caught. They're still around, somewhere.'

'Not
somewhere,'
said Remy, in a strange, hollow voice. 'They're here. I mean, in France. And somehow, they tracked down my mother.'

I shivered. 'Maybe they weren't actually looking for her. If they thought they'd got away with it, maybe they wouldn't have gone looking. Maybe it just happened. Or maybe – maybe
she found them,
not the other way around.'

We looked at each other. Remy said faintly, 'The hotel – I'm sure that hotel is connected. We've got to find out. We've got to speak to someone.'

'I told you, the Quebec police won't say anything.' I looked at him. 'We could go to the police here though. The police in Quebec will tell
them.
They've got more ways of – Oh!'

'What's up?'

'I just thought of something. Wait a second. It might not work, but it's worth trying.' And rapidly, feverishly, I clicked onto a website.

'The Casebook of Dreaming Holmes
?' said Remy, reading over my shoulder. 'What on earth are you –'

I hit the Contact button. 'It says on the site that this Dreaming Holmes person used to be a police officer. In Quebec. Maybe they were there at the time it happened. And they're not in the police anymore. So they might talk to us.' I looked at my watch. 'I wonder what time it is over there? Maybe they might reply straightaway. You never know.' I opened up the email form and typed in rapidly,
Dear DH, I really, really need your help. Not with a dream but with a case that maybe you remember from your police days in Quebec. There were two policemen killed in a fire, which was purposely lit by someone, and a lady was also burnt. I think it had something to do with the Hotel du Lys in Quebec. I need information about it for a school assignment on unsolved crimes. This is really, really urgent and really genuine. Please, please answer as soon as you can. I am waiting anxiously
.' I hit send before I could think twice about it.

'Do you really think they'll answer you?'

I shrugged. 'I don't know.' I signed into my Gmail account. 'We'll see.'

'But you don't know who they are, really. They could have made everything up. They don't even use their real name.'

'People do that all the time, especially on the internet. Anyway, do you have any better ideas?' I said, impatiently.

'No,' he said, very low.

I could have kicked myself. Shock was piling on shock for him, his whole world collapsing, maybe even the name he'd grown up with was fake, and here I was burbling like an idiot, as if I knew everything. Or anything at all. He was right. What did I really know about that Dreaming Holmes person? Only what they chose to reveal. They might never really have been a police officer. They could be anyone. Anyone at all. 'I'm so sorry, Remy.'

'Don't be,' he said, and took my hand. 'Wherever would I be without you?' He drew me in towards him. 'Meeting you was the best thing that has ever happened to me. So don't ever, ever be sorry.' He tipped my face up, gently, and we kissed, softly at first, then more urgently. But just then the shopkeeper came into the back room, calling out, 'Have you finished in there? I have another customer waiting.'

We sprang apart. Breathless, my heart pounding, I took a hurried look at my inbox. Nothing from Dreaming Holmes. Nothing from anybody, in fact. We could be waiting for ages. I said to Remy, 'Let's come back later and check if there's an answer.' He nodded. I wondered if he felt as shaky as I did. I signed out of my account, we paid, and we went out.

Now we noticed what we hadn't really taken in before. The shop was on the main square – not really a square but an incomplete sort of triangle, with roads leading out from the central point, dominated by the church in the centre, set on a kind of little island with steps leading up to it. And all around the base of the church was a strange sight – rows and rows of ancient grey stone coffins, the sarcophagi that gave the little town its name and that had once been such an industry here, as Christine Foy had explained the day before yesterday. There must be hundreds of the stone coffins here. And they really did look strange – not exactly macabre, but kind of ominous, like a spooky setting in a vampire film. All in rows up there, waiting, unused, their tops slowly weathering so the worked grey stone was reverting to a kind of pitted look, like boulders in a rainy forest. Waiting for what? For Riothamus and all of his men – for King Arthur and all of his knights? Why would anyone make so many? They must have had a reason. They must have expected death to come marching in big time.

I shivered again. I said, 'Let's go somewhere more cheerful, Remy.' He nodded, and we headed to a little café just across the road. We told poor old Patou to wait for us again – she looked reproachful but resigned – and went in. We ordered hot chocolate and brioche, which we were just about to start eating when the door opened and Christine Foy came in.

It shouldn't have been a surprise. I knew she lived here. But somehow, though I'd remembered the things she'd said, about the coffin-making industry here, back in Roman days, I hadn't taken in the rest. Besides, she'd been at Bellerive when I'd left. Anyway, as soon as I saw her, I thought, damn, that's it, we've been sprung, she'll see me, she'll see Remy and guess who he is, and bang! There would go our opportunity to find anything out on our own. There would go the opportunity to prove things to the police, to show them that Remy was innocent. There would be hassles for Remy, painful interrogations, horrible stuff. He might even be arrested.

All these things flashed through my mind as I saw her come in. I hoped desperately that she wouldn't see us. But, of course, she did. Her eyes widened. 'Fleur! What on earth ...?' She was over at our table quicker than it takes me to say it, and before either of us could react, had pulled up a chair and joined us. She said, brightly, 'Everyone's looking for you.'

I saw Remy go white. I said, quickly, 'Please, Christine, we –'

'Your mother is sure you've been kidnapped,' she said, very matter-of-fact, with her Irish lilt very much in evidence. 'She's frantic. Thinks you're in great danger. She's gone to Avallon with Wayne and Oscar, to speak to the police and get them to start a search for you. I didn't join them because I was sure you were okay. I told them so. Said you'd seemed a very capable and sensible sort of girl. Oscar was cross with me, and very boring with it. So I took his car and off I went. Can't stand being lectured, even by my pompous fiancé. Correction,
especially
by my pompous fiancé.'