Significance (28 page)

Defending a woman's honour was hardly the stuff of anti
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establishment politics. Feminism had killed chivalry. Or rather it had killed it for men like himself. Good men who, ironically, by paying attention to what women said and thought, had channelled their chivalry into something that carried a different label, but was much the same. Respect.

If Michael hadn't liked overhearing what the American said to the young woman, he was equally sickened by the fact that it didn't seem to bother her. She had seemed thoroughly unshaken by it.

If the man had done something; tried to drag her off perhaps or threatened her more directly then there was the case for direct action. Or if the young woman had looked about her in appeal, wide
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eyed and fearful. If she had cried, or stood up and left with the man following (as he had promised to do) then Michael was certain he would have acted.

He pictured himself standing up and bellowing ‘leave her alone!' then striding deliberately towards them. Sometimes it was a matter of the authority one put in one's voice, the expression on one's face, which was enough to imply that you had an equivalent degree of physical strength and fighting skills to back up your intent.

He pictured a struggle between the younger, taller man and himself, felt his own weakness, but knew that such an event could have potentially changed the young woman's eventual fate. If only he'd acted.

He also imagined the same scene but with a different denouement, one in which he tried to challenge the American, but was transfigured into a weak, shambolic, humble, rather dusty man. Like Charlie Chaplin's little tramp, a figure of fun, only to be mocked and pitied.

The young woman might have told him to mind his own business; she might have laughed in his face. Laughed, as those young people had done in the cathedral earlier today.

The world was rotten. Maybe it deserved its fate.

The car pulled into a small parking area around the back of a severely functional
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looking building and came to a sudden standstill as the driver braked without warning. Michael and Hilda both lurched forward in their seats then fell backwards again and, in that moment, each tightened the hold they had on the other's hand. It was as if one of them had stumbled while walking and the danger was transmitted directly, palm to palm.

Save me, catch me, help me.

Stay with me even if I'm beyond all hope.

Hilda and Michael turned to look at one another. Each read fear in the other's eyes. Fear and also love. They would get through this. Together.

Sancta Camisia

The cardigan came from a chain of English stores. At the back of the neck was a label with the word Monsoon woven in deep fuchsia on a pale pink background. Sewn below the large tag was a smaller one that gave the size, UK 10. On the inside left seam there was a white satin label with extensive text in English that gave the material's mix, the washing and care instructions, and on the verso the same text appeared in French. Fabrique en Hong Kong.

Sabine Pelat had checked online for information about the company. It had been established in London in the early seventies selling dresses and coats from India and Afghanistan. Sabine vaguely remembered one of her mother's sisters wearing those sorts of clothes, how they smelled of musky perfumes. Also the overpowering whiff of something like wet dog when the richly embroidered shaggy sheepskin coat Aunt Beatrice habitually wore had been out in the rain. She remembered too, a visit to the same aunt's flat in Paris, her boyfriend's long beard and hair, the low table and chairs in the centre of the room. They had sawn off the furniture's legs and painted the resulting squat and slightly wobbly articles an azure colour. Her aunt wore no bra and Sabine had been shocked to notice how her nipples brazenly displayed themselves behind the thin fabric of the gauzy cheesecloth top she was wearing.

But this cardigan bore no relation to the ethnic purity of those early imports. In style it was thoroughly European. Beautifully made and chic enough to be French, but actually English, though there were several branches of Monsoon in France. Which was a pity as it might have helped to identify the young woman who had owned it. The cardigan had been fairly expensive, not couture prices of course – nowhere near, but neither was it as cheap as C&A for example. And the same was true of the dress and sandals the girl wore, and also her underwear. So she had money. But then a prostitute, if she wasn't also an addict or a drunk, would have money. An escort, a kept woman, all might invest in expensive clothing. As would any woman who earned a decent wage.

The cardigan was slightly creased and dusty. Wearing disposable gloves Sabine turned it over, inspecting it in a general way. It would be sent to forensics the following morning and tested for traces of fibre, blood, hair, saliva and semen. There was a cream
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coloured stain on the inside back of the cardigan that Sabine thought could possibly be semen, though the position of the discolouration was unusual in terms of normal sex if the woman had been wearing the garment. But vaginal swabs had not revealed any semen. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that the killer had masturbated either into the cardigan or had used it to clean himself up after he had finished.

Semen offered two possibilities for identification; blood typing and DNA profiling. But neither were any good if they didn't have a match on file, unless of course they did DNA sampling on the entire male population of the town and managed to net anyone travelling through the region whether tourist or itinerant – which of course, the law did not allow. On the other hand Sabine Pelat knew that some serial killers stuck to particular areas close to either their homes or workplaces, and that many of them might have minor convictions for sexual assault, for exposing themselves or trespass with intent. So there was a chance that the semen, if indeed it was semen, would score a hit.

Sabine handled the cardigan as delicately as if it were a religious relic. She was wearing disposable gloves, which she absolutely knew were necessary, but she wished she could take them off in order to feel the fabric of the garment under the sensitive skin on the pads of her fingers. To touch was to absorb something of the young woman who had met this terrible fate. It was to imagine the victim standing in a quiet shop, laying this cardigan on the counter in front of the sales assistant, then watching as it was carefully folded in tissue paper before it was handed over in a shop carrier bag. Objects of desire. What complexities of ritual and commerce we make of our lives – the young woman had desired the cardigan for its softness, but also for how it flattered her body and displayed her sense of style. This in its turn transformed or added to the effect of the woman's own desirability. So that, just as the woman had wanted the cardigan, by containing her body within it she herself became a thing to be desired and possessed. The idea was oblique, but there was something both vivid and ironic about it.

Clothes are so much the shells of ourselves, the sloughed
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off skins which, after we are gone, become indexical reminders of who we were.

Sabine thought of her father's woollen scarf which she kept in a plastic bag in a closet drawer and which still smelled faintly of him, though he had been dead for almost twenty years. She had his pocket watch too and the letters he had written her, but it was the scarf, with its must of hair oil, tobacco and soap that most heartbreakingly brought him back to life for her.

It was her father who had taken her to see Chartres cathedral and in particular the Sancta Camisia. It was the gown that the blessed Mary had worn while giving birth to the saviour Jesus. The gown which had miraculously survived the fire which destroyed the original cathedral at Chartres in 1194 and which had prompted the rebuilding of the church on such a huge and magnificent scale.

A sacred relic that supposedly bore the traces of a birth long ago, two thousand and seven years to be precise. Had anyone ever suggested DNA testing on such a holy object?

Sabine felt a sudden surge of shock at such a thought, as if a gulf had opened up beneath her feet. The old instinctual fear of God; of His eyes upon her, of His ears miraculously strained to hear the thoughts inside her head. Just as it had been when she was a young girl at the convent school and her mind, of its own accord, strayed in the most imaginative and sinful directions.

The battle between God and the Devil, goodness and evil had once seemed real and vivid to her and indeed it had directed her towards her current career. Her devotion might have led to her becoming a nun, but such passivity would have driven her mad. She had once had much more dynamic dreams of goodness, imagined herself a slayer of dragons. Well, no, not quite, but she had been young and idealistic. It had taken a little over two years for her to realise that evil as a concept, as a tangible force did not exist. Evil deeds were committed in the world, people did terrible things, but none of it was quite as simple as black and white.

Inspector Vivier often teased her about the books she read; all those (to his eyes) trashy novels with their almost pornographic murder and autopsy scenes. To him it was a kind of sickness, but for Sabine it was soothing. Yes, soothing for there was always a resolution of some sort or another, and it helped her to think imaginatively about crime, and to enter, albeit through the author's intervention, the psychopath's mind.

And yes, perhaps there was also a certain guilty pleasure to be had in these books. Similar perhaps to those pleasures obtained by readers of romantic novels, with their enactments of love strived for, then finally won, the heroine thwarted; misunderstood, invisible, unhappy until at last she finds her perfect mate. And then?

Bullshit.

Sabine pulled a face at this thought, tossed her head angrily.

The door opened behind her.

‘Sabine?'

Paul Vivier stood at the threshold, his left hand on the door handle, the other at his head with his thumb kneading his right temple.

‘Sir?'

‘Anything?'

‘There's a stain that might be semen, but no blood. Or none that I can see with the naked eye.'

Still frowning and nursing his head, Vivier came towards her. She laid the cardigan down on the paper sheet and with a gloved finger, pointed at the place where the slight discolouration was. An irregular centime
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sized blot, which was barely visible.

He leaned over to see it more clearly, but was careful not to touch it as he hadn't put on gloves.

Sabine, who had looked at the cardigan for quite some time, found herself looking at him instead. His skin was pale and slightly greasy looking; deep wrinkles were clearly visible at the corners of his eyes and one wild white hair stood out from his otherwise shapely black brows. A small silvery scar with a row of satellite pinpricks along its edges showed up clearly on his cheekbone. Vivier would never tell how he got the injury, but Sabine guessed it was probably from some innocuous childhood accident, like falling off his bicycle.

‘Alright,' he said at last, ‘get it off to the lab first thing. Make sure you bring that area to their attention.'

‘Of course.'

‘Good work, Detective.'

He straightened his back slowly, sighed.

‘Long day, sir?'

In response he nodded slowly and brought his hand up to thumb his temple again. He seemed lost in thought.

‘What time is it?' he asked.

Sabine looked up at the wall
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mounted clock. ‘Nine
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forty, sir.' She did not question why Vivier himself couldn't have looked.

‘This case…' he said, then stopped speaking.

‘Sir?'

‘There are too many loose ends. The black kid, the report about the young man covered in blood – has he been traced yet?'

‘No, sir, but…'

‘That crazy woman with her voodoo claims. A cardigan. Nothing fits.

‘No, sir.'

‘I keep trying to force everything to fit, but force doesn't do it, does it?'

‘No, sir.'

‘But even if they confirm it was the same girl they saw and that the cardigan belonged to her, that doesn't tell us who she is.'

‘No.'

‘But if you're right,' he nodded at the white cardigan on the table, ‘and if that is semen, then maybe we'll find our man.'

Sabine nodded solemnly. Both of them knew that the chances were slim that anything would be that easy. His words depended more on hope or faith or will, than anything more tangible. Sabine breathed in deeply through her nose, aware of the sound of her breathing in the silence.

‘Are you done here?' Vivier asked, after a few moments had passed.

‘Just about.'

‘I'd like to begin the debriefing … so if you could?'

‘Right, sir.'

He drifted away to stand at the entrance again, holding the door open, waiting for her while she carefully repacked the cardigan.

Taking off her disposable gloves and tossing them in the bin, she stole a glance at the inspector; his body seemed to have sagged in the seconds that had passed while she was repacking the evidence. It seemed he was now not so much holding the door ajar as using it to hold himself upright.