Pyromancist (6 page)

“Brendan called. He wasn’t supposed to warn
me, but he said the Paris police are asking questions about me. I’m
suspected of arson. They have forensic evidence, and the only
reason they don’t yet have a warrant for my arrest is because
they’re missing a motive.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. “No. No.
It can’t be true. You’re innocent! I’ll go to them and explain
everything.”

“And what will you explain? What will you
tell them? There’s nothing to explain. I’ve been to every burnt
site, looking for clues, for evidence, for anything, but there’s
nothing.”

“But why do they suspect you? What evidence
do they have?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t intend on lying
around on my old sodden bones to find out.”

“No, please, the police will understand.
Surely, they’ll see reason. It couldn’t have been you. Don’t make
me leave you. Don’t worry about the police. We’ll handle them.
We’ll get a lawyer.”

Erwan rested his hands on the table, his
shoulders hunched. “It’s not just them I’m worried about.”

Dread made her feel heavy. “I don’t
understand.”

“There’s another part of the story about your
mother that I haven’t told you.” He searched her eyes with a plea
for redemption. “It’s about your father.”

“You said my mother had a holiday romance
with an Italian tourist and fell pregnant, but he left her when the
summer was over.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly, “but that
isn’t entirely true. He was a tourist, and he was Italian, but they
didn’t exactly have a holiday romance.”

She shook her head in confusion. “What then?
A one night stand?”

“No.” He averted his eyes. “He violated
her.”

“What?” Clelia said softly. She felt the
strength leave her body and sat down again.

“Katik went for a swim at the cove and spent
the afternoon on the deserted beach. When she walked home early
that evening, she was assaulted in the woods. The man waited for
her and surprised her.”

It took her a few seconds to find her voice
again. “Did the police catch him?”

Erwan picked his chair up from the floor and
sat down laboriously. “We didn’t know. She didn’t tell us. Not at
first. She only confessed what happened to her when she found out
she was pregnant. She begged us not to tell anyone because she
couldn’t stand the shame. She said the man promised he would kill
her if she told the truth, and she believed him. She said he was
the devil himself and she never doubted for a second that he’d know
if she broke her silence. I tried to track down that bastard. I
could never find a trace of him. He had long gone by then.”

Clelia felt nauseous. She was the product of
rape, the violation of her mother’s body, an unwanted baby, and the
cause of her mother’s death.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t want you to grow up feeling like
your mother–abandoned. I wanted you to know you were loved.
Are
loved.” He looked at her with a new intensity burning in
his tired eyes. “When Katik was three months pregnant I came home
one afternoon and found a man standing on the beach. I had never
seen him before, so I thought he was just another foreigner, a
holidaymaker. But he watched me as I anchored my boat, and by the
time I had my nets on land, I knew he wasn’t an accidental
traveler, but that he was waiting for me.

“Ay, he was waiting all right. The devil of a
man told me he was your father, and that one day he would be back
for you. He came to tell me if we harmed his baby in any way or
gave it up for adoption, he’d kill us all. He said he came to tell
me to take care of his child, to raise it, until the day he’d come
for it. There was this thing in his eyes, this darkness. You just
knew he meant every word. Katik was right. He was pure evil. I
could feel it in my bones. I wanted to kill him, and God is my
witness, I tried,” he said, his hands trembling, “but he was too
strong for me. He just laughed, and as he walked away, he turned
and told me to be waiting. He said he’d be back to claim you when
the fires started. I didn’t believe it. I pushed it out of my mind.
Ay, I wrote it off to madness. I looked for him for days, high and
low, but it was as if he had simply vanished. And God forgive me
for not having enough strength to keep my vengeance alive, but I
was glad. I wanted him to disappear, for the whole thing to vanish
from my memory. I never told Katik or Tella about that day on the
beach. Not a soul. Never thought of it again, until...”

Clelia felt like fainting. Life drained from
her body like the blood from her face. She stared at Erwan, but her
mind refused to call up any words. Her lips felt like wood. She
couldn’t move them to shape any sound.

Erwan got up and placed his hand on her
shoulder. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. I tried hard to forget
about that day, and for all the years of your life that you’ve made
Tella and me the happiest grandparents alive, I did. I forgot about
it the minute you were born and I laid my eyes on you. You’ve made
our lives worth living. And I haven’t raised you for a jail, an
asylum, or your crazy father. You have to go away.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “And you,
Erwan?”

“I know how to take care of myself. I’m too
old to go with you. I’ll only slow you down. Get to the box. Then
leave. It’ll break my heart if you stay.”

“But when will I see you again?”

When he just stared at her, his silence his
answer, she started shaking her head in denial.

“Give me a date, Erwan. Give me something
concrete. I won’t leave unless you give me that much.”

“I can’t give you a date,” he said
softly.

“We won’t see each other again, will we?
You’re not asking me to hide. You’re asking me to run, to...” A
soft sob choked the rest of her words.

“You’re a strong woman. You’ll be all right.
Now, get some sleep. You have to leave at first light, before
Josselin’s woman comes back.”

She grabbed his hand. “What will you do?”

“You know what they say. There are as many
islands in the Gulf as days in the year. How many of those are
inhabited?”

Clelia blinked at him. “Forty.” This was no
time for a geography lesson.

“And I know how to feed myself with
fish.”

She suddenly understood his plan. “No, I
won’t watch you become a fugitive because of me. Someone must be
able to help us.”

“No one can help us but ourselves.”

She grasped at straws, anything to change his
mind. “It won’t work. We can’t just disappear. People will wonder
what happened to us.”

“I’ve already told Tristan that you wanted to
go to Paris for the summer and that I bought you a train ticket.
And I’ve told the men that I’m going to work on a fish trawler for
a few months. A lot of them do it.”

“But not at your age.”

“I’m not your average fisherman.” He tried to
smile bravely.

“But the animals...”

“Call Rigual in the morning. Tell him to take
care of them. He’s a good man. He’ll see to them.”

Clelia had exhausted all her arguments. “I
can’t leave you,” she said, crying quietly.

Erwan had always been a man of few words and
didn’t often show his emotion. He only laid his hand on her
shoulder again and said, “Ken ar wech all, may we meet again,”
before he shuffled through the door in the direction of the
beach.

Chapter
Four

It rained that night
.
By early morning, there was no light, only the
drizzle that washed over the panels of Clelia’s roof window.
Looking out, she couldn’t distinguish between the clouds and the
sea. The two entities flowed into each other like an old married
couple.

This morning she went through her ritual with
a heavy heart. She pulled on her denim shorts, a yellow T-shirt and
her blue rain jacket. She brushed her teeth and did her hair in two
braids. As per Erwan’s instruction, she didn’t pack. She only took
her mobile phone, charger, a cap, sunscreen and her purse.
Josselin’s revolver was still in her backpack. She had thought
about it all night and decided to get rid of it. She could hardly
look Josselin up and return it, knowing that his girlfriend was
asking questions around town. Those questions were enough to make
her seem guilty. By now, she understood how the townspeople’s minds
worked.

She prayed that Josselin was all right, but
she’d probably never know. That thought alone was a knife in her
heart. She had turned the events of the last few hours around and
around in her head, thinking about Josselin’s desire to end his
life, his agony, his kiss, and about Erwan’s revelations. Her body
was a coiled spring, her heart pumping, as she swiftly got ready to
abandon the cottage.

Descending the stairs, she found that Erwan
wasn’t in the house. His boat was gone. Only the dinghy drifted in
the shallow water. Today she wouldn’t prepare his tea, or lay the
table for his breakfast. It was just like Erwan to have left in the
night. Facing each other this morning, saying goodbye, would have
been too difficult.

Erwan had already gotten rid of all the fresh
produce and taken out the trash. After feeding first the dogs and
then the rest of the animals, she spent an extra long time with
each of them. Tripod, as if sensing something, wouldn’t leave her
side. He followed her until she was forced to take a stern tone and
order him to the stay. It broke her heart. She cuddled him one last
time and made sure that none of the cats were in the house before
closing the door. She’d call Rigual and ask him to take care of
them. Rigual wouldn’t ask questions if she didn’t offer
explanations. It wasn’t in his nature.

Because of the rain, she didn’t take the
dinghy. Navigating through the thick mist would be too difficult
and hazardous. Instead, she pulled on her red rubber boots, took
the bicycle and pulled the hood of her rain jacket deep over her
face before taking the road that led to the harbor of Larmor-Baden.
Snow ran out ahead of her, while Rain, Thunder, and Cloud followed.
They often accompanied her to the mainland, but today she would
have to make them turn around before she got to the harbor. She
tried not to think of it as she shielded her eyes against the drops
of water that pricked her face. The wind picked up and it started
to rain heavier. She pedaled her bike into the onslaught of the
weather, into the harsh direction she couldn’t help feel her life
had suddenly taken.

By the time she had crossed the sleeping town
and taken the path through the woods along the coast to the jetty,
she was shivering. There was too much mud to continue on the bike,
so she left it inside the small abandoned boathouse on the way, and
continued on foot. The wolfdogs ran excitedly around her,
undisturbed by the wet weather. Only Snow was on edge. She could
tell that by the way he kept his ears drawn back and his head low
to the ground. Maybe he picked up on her own anxiety, her own
uncertainty.

Clelia only paused on a low cliff to throw
Josselin’s revolver into the sea, praying that no one would ever
find it, that no fishing rod or net would ever hook it. She also
prayed that Erwan would be all right and that some logical reason
for the fires would surface so that she could return to the only
life she knew.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts, her eyes
shielded from the drops of rain and focused on the ground in front
of her, that she didn’t notice the stranger obstructing her path
until Snow came to a halt. Snow’s gums pulled back from his teeth
in a threatening growl. The man stood a little way ahead of them, a
leg on either side of the narrow path, effectively blocking her
way. His head was uncovered and the rivulets of water that ran
through his short brown hair and down his face didn’t seem to
bother him. His eyes were wide and open, the same chestnut color as
his hair, and his skin was tanned, his face shaven. His hands were
shoved into the pockets of a brown leather jacket, the type with
wool in the collar that pilots wore, and his jeans were tugged into
brown boots.

Snow growled again, inching forward, while
the other three dogs instantly took their pack attack positions,
Rain and Cloud flanking Clelia with Thunder at her back. The man
looked at the four wolf hybrids and laughed nervously.

“Quite a pack of wolves you’ve got there,” he
called to her in English. When she didn’t say anything, he said,
“Under normal circumstances I would have shaken hands and
introduced myself, but...” He motioned with his head at Snow.

“What do you want?” she said, raising her
voice to be heard above the rain.

“Are all you locals so friendly?” he said
with a grin.

Clelia remained quiet.

“I’m staying at a hotel at the harbor. I’m on
my way to the village,” he offered. “I was hoping to speak to some
people in town about the fires. I’m a journalist from Paris.” He
extended a hand but Snow took two menacing paces toward the
stranger, who immediately dropped it again. “I would have given you
a business card, but...” He shrugged. “You wouldn’t perhaps be
willing to answer a few questions, would you?” He bared his teeth
in what looked more like a grimace than a smile.

“I’m in a hurry,” Clelia said, averting her
eyes as the man shamelessly studied her like an interesting science
project.

“What’s your name?” he said.

Thunder growled behind her and Rain and Cloud
widened their circle to surround the man from the sides.

“Um,” he cleared his throat, “do you mind
calling your dogs off?”

Clelia didn’t whistle or speak their names.
She knew they wouldn’t attack, not without a word or a gesture from
her. Normally she wouldn’t allow them to scare a stranger like
this, but there was something about the man that had her scalp
prickling in an uneasy way. The last thing she needed was media
exposure.