Lost (15 page)

Stuart descended the concrete steps to the basement. The place was cool and smelled pleasantly of damp. He went to Raymond’s cell, which was at the end of the L-shaped corridor next to the rest room.

Raymond was clutching his head. Stuart could see he was far gone. He opened the cell door and stepped inside. Raymond was shaking. He grabbed him by the collar.

‘No. Fuck off. You’re hurting me. I want a lawyer. Don’t touch me.’ His voice was hoarse.

Stuart took him into his office and sat him down, cuffing one hand to a metal ring in the wall beside his desk.

‘Give me something, you fucking bastard,’ Raymond said. His nose and eyes were streaming. Stuart just stared at him. ‘Please.’

‘What can you tell me?’

Raymond sat in the chair, clutching himself with his free arm. He wore a shiny red tracksuit top with the hood pulled up. His handsome face looked as though it was rotting from the inside. His dark skin was liver-grey; he had purple bruises beneath his eyes and he was sweating.

Stuart put his hand in his pocket and held out the heroin on his palm. Raymond looked down at the tiny white envelope. He reached out for it. Stuart closed his hand. Raymond cried out and passed his hand over his face. He had scabs on his knuckles.

‘This is better than what Coco can give you. What’s he up to?’

Raymond thrust his hands further into his pockets.

‘Please. Give me something. I can’t think.’ He leaned forward, gripped his thighs with his free arm and buried his face in his lap. ‘Please. My head.’

Stuart turned his back on Raymond and went and closed the shutters; then he took his chair from behind his desk and carried it over to Raymond. He sat down two metres away from him in the dark and asked again, ‘What can you tell me?’

Raymond sat up. His voice trembled.

‘Please. Can’t you give me something? I’m dying.’

‘What is there of interest in the market streets behind the Fritz Bar? Who hangs out there?’

‘No one. It’s dead.’ Raymond clutched his stomach and moaned.

‘We’ve got a black Mercedes 500 with doubled plates. Who took it? Come on. I’ve got it here,’ Stuart said. ‘It’s good. What do you know about the Mercedes?’

Raymond watched Stuart’s closed fist resting on the desk.

‘Come on,’ Stuart said.

‘I don’t know anything,’ Raymond whined.

‘What would Coco have to discuss with Jean Filippi?’

Raymond retched.

‘He doesn’t trust me any more. Please.’

There was a discreet knock and Annie entered the room. Raymond began to shout. ‘Let me out! You can’t keep me any longer.’

‘I can,’ Stuart said. ‘Possession,’ he said, opening his hand. He glanced up at Annie. ‘What is it?’

She came forward, undisturbed by Raymond’s screams
and the darkness and put a Ministry envelope on the desk.

‘They picked it up on the scanner,’ she said.

‘Anything interesting?’

‘They didn’t say. Zanetecci called. He asked why your direct line wasn’t answering.’ Stuart did not answer. ‘He wants you to call him,’ she said.

Stuart picked up the envelope and looked inside.

‘Prosecutor Van Ruytens wants you to call him as well,’ she said gently. ‘Soon as possible. And Lopez.’

‘Thank you,’ Stuart said.

‘He’s like a dog with a rag,’ she said.

‘Yes. I’ll call him. Thanks.’ He could feel her hesitating but he did not look up. When she had left the room he went and fetched the envelope from his desk. ‘Think, Raymond. I’m leaving this on the desk. To jog your memory. Jean Filippi. Think.’

Raymond began to sob. Stuart left him, closing the door gently behind him.

Annie looked up and smiled at him as he walked past. He attempted a smile in return, reneged, then felt ashamed. He made for the recording room but the thought of having to talk to the technician made him change his mind. He took the stairs to the first floor and went and shut himself into Gérard and Paul’s office. The room was cramped and hot. Paul’s side was covered in posters of sites of great natural beauty, all places he claimed to have been. Gérard’s side was bare. The shelf behind his desk was empty but for one large book: an encyclopaedia of mushrooms. On his desk was a tape recorder.

As he listened Stuart looked out of the window on to the flower beds neatly planted by Gérard with red, white and blue flowers, in three neat rows.

Coco’s voice made him turn and look at the machine. He stopped the tape and rewound.

There was something in her tone: ‘I can’t get it in time. I have to ask you. Can you lend me the money?’

It was intimacy.

Then Coco gave his answer and Stuart held his breath. The inevitable pause came and he hung up.

‘Too late,’ Stuart said, snatching the tape from the machine. He ran down the narrow stairs. ‘We might have them’ – it was incriminating enough. Annie looked up as he passed her and said, ‘Lopez.’

‘I’ll call him from the car.’

Raymond was sitting in the dark, panting like a dog.

‘You’re free,’ he told him. ‘You can make a call. One call. So you’ll have to choose between Nathalie Santini and your dealer.’ He took his keys from his desk drawer and unlocked Raymond’s handcuffs. He helped Raymond to his desk. ‘Here, sign this. It’s the end of your custody.’ The youth leaned on him and Stuart got a whiff of his acid smell. When he had signed, Stuart closed the file and took it with him.

As they left the room Raymond said, ‘You’re a sick fuck, Stuart.’

But Stuart did not stop to answer because his anger was driving him again, pushing him forward, and he was glad to give in to it.

Liliane sat quietly beside Babette as she drove into Massaccio for the demonstration. It was due to begin at six. Babette always marched: for the fun of it more than from any deep conviction. When Liliane had told her she would come, Babette could hardly contain her excitement. She now kept glancing sideways at her as though she were afraid Liliane might change her mind and jump out of the car.

Liliane knew that what she was about to do would make her life lastingly difficult. But she was deeply affected by the disappearance of the woman’s child. She believed it might be what was making her sick and she felt the need to do something, make some gesture that would take her, if only for a moment, out of her marriage. Walking through Massaccio with the Women’s Peace Movement would be seen by everyone as an act of rebellion against Coco. He referred to them, even in public, as ‘the harpies’.

They were behind a tractor that was moving, high-haunched and imperious, down the steep stretch of road that led to the main drag into town. Babette sounded her horn twice. When he passed the lay-by she gave him a long blast.

‘Bastard,’ she said under her breath.

At last the road straightened out and she overtook him in the wrong gear, making the engine scream, but she sat facing straight ahead of her, her enormous breasts resting on the steering wheel. Liliane glanced up as they passed. A young man with black curly hair and an imbecile’s grin bounced behind the wheel.

Liliane looked at Babette’s hands on the steering wheel. The fingers were swollen and chapped from washing-up.

As she pulled out on to the main road Babette smiled at
Liliane, her big tattered smile. She was wearing the lovely headscarf with sunflowers on it and she had put on some lipstick.

‘You all right?’

‘I’m sick. It won’t let up.’

‘It’s the violence. Women have a sixth sense. When things get this bad we feel it physically. I can’t sleep; you feel sick.’

In Massaccio they drove straight into a traffic jam at the port. The sound of horns mingled with the sound of sirens. Babette crossed herself.

‘Can you smell burning?’

Liliane nodded, too nauseous to speak. Babette leaned out of her window and hailed a policewoman in a short-sleeved shirt and white gloves who was standing on the pavement surveying the chaos with expert detachment.

‘What’s happening?’ Babette’s voice was shrill above the noise. The policewoman stepped towards her, cupping her ear with her hand. ‘What’s going on? Why all the traffic?’

‘There’s a demonstration.’

‘I know. We’re trying to get there. Why the sirens?’

The policewoman turned her head away and squinted into the sun for a moment. She was wearing a pair of inappropriately large gold hoops in her ears.

‘There’s been another bomb.’

She stepped back as Babette prepared to ask her next question and began gesticulating aggressively at the stationary cars in a sudden galvanic fit. Babette edged forward.

‘What is all the fuss about?’ she complained. ‘I mean, it’s not as if it’s rare, is it? You would have thought they’d be used to it by now. If they’re not going to arrest the bombers they could at least direct the traffic properly so we can get on with our lives. Wouldn’t you think?’

‘This island is like a prison with no warders.’

Babettte looked at Liliane.

‘Who said that?’

‘No one. Me.’

Perhaps it was Rémy. It was the kind of thing he would say. Liliane often prayed that he would come back before Coco died. She also prayed that Coco would die before she did, which she knew was tantamount to praying for his death.

‘I’m going to park,’ Babette said. ‘We can walk to the Palais.’

Babette made for the pavement, craning above the wheel, her eyes carefully avoiding the indignation of the other drivers. At last she drove on to the pavement and parked between two palm trees. It was a relief to Liliane to get out of the car. She squinted at the light in town, which always seemed more blinding than in Santarosa.

‘Ready?’ Babette was smiling at her over the roof of the car. ‘Off we go then.’

Babette took her arm. There were only three years between them, but she allowed Babette the illusion that she was much younger. They turned into the long avenue that led up to the Palais. The street was empty of traffic and people were walking in the road, all in one direction. Perhaps it was the white light, or the absence of cars, but there was a strange atmosphere in town, like an absence of purpose.

Liliane enjoyed Babette’s supporting arm, the sound of her quick step and her narrow heels on the stone pavement. She could hear a woman’s voice shouting into a loud hailer and she recognised what it was that was so different. It was the presence of so many women on these streets usually filled with men: idle or purposeful but always lordly; for the street was their domain and women and girls were tolerated as passers-by, not as occupants. She squeezed Babette’s arm and returned her smile. Up ahead was the Palais with its seven arched doors. Liliane looked out for television cameras. Her secret hope was that Rémy might see her on the news. It was unlikely but she still hoped.

Babette took her by the hand and led her through the crowd to the steps of the Palais, where most of the committee had gathered. The leader was a lawyer called Suzanne Vico,
a woman in her thirties who had returned to the island after studying in France and America. She was clever and tough and shrill as a vixen. The men hated her.

She was calling on them to break the immemorial silence, handmaiden of violence. Only the women, she believed, could do this.

Someone was taking photographs beside her. It was the journalist, Angel Lopez. Liliane tried to move away, but he lowered his camera and smiled at her.

‘She has nice imagery and the ideas are beautiful but she has a flaw: the big unspoken enemy.’ He paused, nodding encouragingly at them. ‘If you break the silence, who do you talk to? The police, of course. But she can’t call on islanders to do that, can she?’ He waited good-naturedly for them to agree. ‘The police. Come on,’ he said, with exaggerated incredulity. ‘So what can she suggest? Taking the law into your own hands? A posse of vengeful women? That would be perpetuating the old codes. Am I right? Babette. You look very glamorous today,’ he said, nodding at her headscarf. ‘Am I right?’

‘I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.’ Babette gave him a coy smile and turned back to Suzanne Vico.

‘I am surprised to see you here, Madame Santini. Glad, but surprised.’

Liliane did not believe he was glad. As far as she knew, he had never once said anything in his paper to indicate that the violence wasn’t nourishment to him. But she kept silent.

‘This movement, whatever its weaknesses, might just be the thing that saves this place,’ he said, raising his camera to his eye. He took several photographs of Suzanne Vico and then turned back to her. ‘Will you march then?’

Liliane nodded.

‘Why now?’

‘Don’t answer,’ Babette said, taking Liliane by the arm. ‘Come on, they’re moving. Do you want to be a few rows back?’

‘No, no. It’s all right,’ she said. ‘We’ll walk in front.’

‘You’re brave, madame,’ Lopez said.

‘She’s just had enough,’ Babette said.

Lopez followed them as they moved towards the foot of the steps where Suzanne Vico and the other committee members had gathered. Liliane felt his hand on her arm, gently but firmly restraining her. She turned and looked into his face.

‘Please,’ she said.

‘I just want to give you my card. In case you ever want to break the silence.’

She looked down at the card in his hand, then took it and put it in the pocket of her skirt.

‘They’ve gone too far this time. No?’ He looked sincere for a moment, then grinned with disconcerting suddenness. ‘Good luck, Madame Santini.’ And he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Babette took her left arm. A young woman with a pink T-shirt, a black bra showing through and a swinging ponytail smiled at her and took her other arm. Through the eerie hollowness of the microphone, one woman’s voice called out a slogan and the crowd echoed with a deep, rich sound that rained down on them. Liliane was filled with an unfamiliar happiness as she stepped forward into the street.

Alice and Dan were playing a game of Pelmanism on the floor. While Alice gave in to waves of sleep, Dan concentrated hard on the game. One pair of shutters was open, just enough to let in a slab of light that heated the rug and revived locked-in smells. Dan had marvelled at the golden dust motes, disturbing them with his splayed hand. He was now frowning at the game, resting his truculent chin on his hand. He glanced up at her occasionally as if he mistrusted this new mood of hers. She smiled at him.

‘Have you had enough?’

He didn’t bother to answer but went back to the game. He was on a roll, turning the matching pairs over, one by one – banana, cherries, bus, canary, grapes – putting them calmly and efficiently in a pile between his knees. Dan always finished. He did not have Sam’s rampaging boredom. He could put his mind to anything provided winning was involved. He cleared the floor and looked up at her triumphantly.

‘Well done,’ she said.

‘Is Sam coming back?’

Behind his laughing eyes, his hard little chin, she could see his fragility. She reached out and took hold of his hand.

‘Your brother’s coming back.’

He swallowed, keeping his eyes on her, waiting for more.

‘Mummy loves you very much, Dan. We’re going to get Sam back. But we have to be brave and patient. We’ll help each other. All right?’

‘Why did they steal Sam?’

She wondered what he had overheard.

‘They want money,’ she said. ‘They took Sam and said
they’ll give him back when we give them the money.’

‘Blackmail,’ said Dan. He knew the subject well.

‘Yes.’

‘Will they hurt him?’

‘No.’

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘I want Sam.’ His chin began to tremble.

‘I know you do.’ She pulled him towards her and clutched him. ‘Listen. Can you hear? They’ve put the sprinklers on. Let’s go outside.’

She picked him up and they went out into the garden. The air was still hot but the afternoon had slipped; there was a sense that things had come unsewn in the heat, that Nature had let herself go. They stood on the stone step and watched three standing sprinklers, scattering rainbows. Alice put Dan down. He was barefoot and he jumped off the hot stone on to the damp lawn.

‘Come, Mummy.’

‘I’ll watch you.’

Dan never insisted. He ran off into the mist and began to play, as he and Sam had played only three days before, opening his mouth to the water and holding up his arms in a gesture of worship.

Stuart was standing beside her.

‘You were smiling,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the child. She went back to watching Dan. ‘Any news?’ he asked.

She looked at him. His smile was strained.

‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

‘You tell me,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

He shook his head and smiled again briefly. She turned away from him to watch Dan. The man beside her was all over the place. She had been right to go to Santini.

‘Dan!’ she called. Dan stopped and looked at her. ‘I’m going in now, Dan! Come on, please!’

Dan dropped his arms and trotted across the engorged lawn and she wished she hadn’t stopped his game. She and Stuart watched him approach.

‘What was the bomb?’

Stuart shrugged, his hands in his pockets.

‘It’s as unlikely a bomb attack for this island as a kidnapping is.’

She looked at him, expecting more, but his face was hard. Inwardly she turned against him, shifting the last of her faith over to Santini.

‘I have to go and change him.’ She cupped the back of Dan’s head with her hand. ‘His clothes are wet.’

Stuart just drove his hands deeper into his pockets. She picked Dan up and put his wet body on her hip, but Stuart did not stand aside.

‘I don’t know yet how Santini’s involved …’ He looked beyond her at the sprinklers. ‘But these lunatics couldn’t make a move without him knowing about it.’

She saw the shadows under his eyes, his ravaged face. Now that Sam was found, Stuart was in her past. She felt a remote affection for the face, as though it were some piece of archeology.

A phone was ringing in his pocket. She put Dan down.

‘Go and ask Babette for some tea,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’

Dan ran round the side of the house to the back door. She followed Stuart into the sitting room. He was talking on the phone, his back to her.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you screwed up badly today. You put Mesguish’s man on to him.’ His voice was quiet and calm. ‘The report’s incomplete. There’s a big hole between two and four. After the meeting with Jean Filippi he returns to his villa. They pick him up again in Santarosa two hours later. Two hours.’ There was a pause. ‘So where is he? Is anyone with him?’

Alice sat down on the sofa. He stood with his back to her, hunched over the phone, his left hand hanging from his
sleeve, his feet apart on the elaborate rug. He looked ungainly and yet strongly rooted.

‘Can you hear anything with the laser?’ he went on. ‘What about Georges?’

He hung up and paused for a moment, looking at the phone. Then he turned and faced her. His anger seemed to have drained away.

‘You spoke to Santini,’ he said, staring down at her. His eyes did not seem to be focusing on her properly.

‘I rang him to ask him for money. I can’t get it fast enough.’ Her voice failed; she tried again. ‘They’ve given so little time. He said he’d help me.’

‘He told you he had located your son.’

She looked up at him, feeling disadvantaged suddenly.

‘Yes.’

‘You trust him,’ he said gently.

‘I don’t trust anybody.’

His eyes seemed to come into focus.

‘More than you trust me.’

She shouted at him. ‘He said he’d found Sam!’ She clenched her teeth, determined not to cry. ‘I sit here in this house, waiting. Imagining my son.’ She looked down at the rug. She found herself invoking Mathieu again, felt the rush of anger towards him. ‘Santini is the only person who has given me any sense that he has any control. You don’t seem to have any.’

‘I don’t pretend to.’

She looked up.

‘Santini knows who took him,’ she said.

‘Of course he does. He’s involved.’

‘I don’t care. If he was, he can get Sam back.’ Stuart was silent. ‘Can’t he?’ But he was staring beyond her. ‘Santini can get him back, can’t he? Stuart.’

He looked at her. She considered pressing him, but his remoteness alarmed her and she held back. He stepped towards her and sat down beside her on the sofa, leaning
forward, resting his arms on his knees. Quietly he addressed his hands.

‘If he wants to, he can.’

She watched him rub his hands softly together, turning them over, inspecting them.

‘Who is he?’ she asked. ‘How did he make his money?’

Stuart sat back and locked his hands behind his head.

‘First drugs. In Marseilles. He spent ten years in prison in the sixties and seventies and came out a rich man. Then amusement arcades. Since he came back his trail’s got cleaner and cleaner. Now he has the best real estate on the island.’

He turned and looked at her, taking his hands from behind his head. His face had lost its savagery. She noticed his mouth, sharp and curved like a boy’s, and a tiny scar like a cleft on his chin.

‘He’s a dangerous person,’ he told her. ‘I really believe the only limits he ever had were the island’s. And they seem to have gone.’ He raised a hand and let it drop wearily into his lap.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know.’

He smiled fleetingly at her.

‘Even the FNL is his. They always act in accordance with his wishes. They never touch any of his real estate. They blow up beach complexes but never his. But now they’ve got their own financial interests. Maybe he showed them there was money to be made. Maybe that’s why things have changed.’

He leaned forward again. She looked at the back of his neck where the dark hair was cropped and grew to a point. She thought of Sam’s blond spiral.

Again he spoke to his hands. ‘Say he isn’t involved. It’s a new group with no connection. He finds out who it is and he decides to tell you. He wants to help a woman in distress. If Santini isn’t a kidnapper, he is a criminal. It’s not in his nature to do something for nothing. You know that.’ He sat up and looked at her. ‘You sensed you’d have to pay
somehow
.
He made you understand that, didn’t he?’ She stared back at him. ‘The temptation to take risks will be enormous for him.’

His reasoning was following some autistic pattern.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘What’s he going to do? Rush in there and shoot them all? Mount a rescue operation in the middle of town? If he wasn’t involved he’d try and negotiate, try and take a cut.’ He leaned back against the sofa. ‘You have to protect yourself. Go with Santini. But have us follow, a little way behind. It won’t cost you anything.’

His eyes were shining. In the yellow light of the room, in the old maid’s decor, he looked gentle suddenly and, in spite of the vertical lines in the hollows of his cheeks, almost youthful.

‘All right.’ She kept her voice cold.

He smiled at her.

She had the feeling that something was slipping away from her, that she had relinquished something important. She felt exhausted and confused.

‘Just don’t use this to get at Santini.’

He shook his head. He had become passive and remote, as though he had made some decision satisfactory to himself.

‘You don’t have any children,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘You’re not married.’

He hesitated.

‘Separated.’

‘You have no idea what it’s like, have you?’

‘No,’ he said. Then he took her hands and held them. ‘I won’t let you down,’ he said.

She pulled her hands away.

‘Don’t leave me in the dark any more. You’ve got to tell me everything. All the decisions you make, I want to know about,’ she said. He looked charged again.

‘Santini’s assuming that I overheard the conversation, so he’s not moving. He’s at home, in the village. Call him back
and say you’re on your own mobile. He thinks I bugged mine but I didn’t. I can’t. I scanned the call. I can pick up a call if it’s on the right frequency. It was pure chance but he doesn’t know that, so call him. Say you want to meet him.’

‘Why?’

He nodded at the phone on the table.

‘He knows who has him.’

She reached forward and picked up the phone. She punched out Santini’s number.

‘Hello? It’s me.’ There was a long pause. She could hear him breathing. ‘It’s Alice Aron.’

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘I can’t talk at the moment.’

‘It’s okay, it’s my phone,’ she told him.

‘I can’t talk to you now. I’ll call you in the morning.’

‘But you said –’

‘I said I can’t talk now.’

He hung up and she was left there, her heart beating too fast.

‘What did he say?’ Stuart asked.

‘He was tense and he sounded angry. He kept saying, “I can’t talk now”.’

‘He’s already made one mistake today,’ Stuart said. ‘Talking to you. He’s going to make another one. We just have to wait.’

Alice was feeling faint. She wanted to leave the room, to go and find Dan and Babette, but she could not move.

‘You should lie down for a while,’ he said. She shook her head. ‘Lie down, just for a moment.’

He touched her elbow briefly as if to test her. Then he held her arm and she let him help her to her feet and guide her to his bed in the corner of the room. She lay down on her side, drawing her knees up. For the first time in three days she was hungry. He covered her with an imitation fur rug that smelled of dust, lifting the cover over her shoulder. Then he went and stood on the other side of the room, near the fireplace.