The Returned (23 page)

The Helping Hand was also part of that select group. This thought gave him immense satisfaction. He could hear their generator purring; they had their own source of water, too, with the borehole
under the building. Everything was ready, for whatever challenges were coming.

Finally the lights came up again, spreading rapidly across the vista in front of him.

He lingered for a moment, enjoying the solitude, then heard Sandrine call his name. It was the police on the phone, asking if he could take in a nine-year-old boy while they tracked down his
parents.

It was proving to be a busy night at the shelter. There was already a homeless woman staying with them, sour-faced and stubbornly silent, and as Pierre waited for the police to arrive, he had
another unexpected visitor: Simon, a little out of breath, dishevelled and strangely excited.

‘I wondered if I could take up your offer again,’ said Simon. ‘I hope I’m still welcome?’

‘Absolutely,’ Pierre reassured him. ‘You’re free to come and go, but I knew you’d be back. Follow me. Are the police still looking for you?’

Simon grew visibly agitated. He nodded, silent.

‘Then you’ll have to stay out of sight. They’ll be here soon with another lost sheep. Just keep your head down, and there won’t be a problem.’ Pierre led him
through to one of the rooms at the back, somewhere quiet to wait until the coast was clear.

When the police rang again, he was half-expecting their overzealous captain to pester him about whether he’d seen Simon. Instead it was Michael, the officer he’d spoken to at the
roadblock earlier.

‘You asked about Jérôme Séguret,’ said Michael. He was keeping his voice low, and Pierre knew that whatever was coming was confidential. ‘I found out a few
things, but they go no further, OK?’

‘Of course,’ Pierre assured him. A minor lie, he thought; telling Claire hardly counted.

‘He was questioned about the attack on a barmaid from the Lake Pub, Lucy Clarsen.’

‘Really?’ said Pierre, shocked. ‘Wasn’t that why you had the roadblocks?’ He’d heard more about the attack since then – the local media had played it
down, but for those with an ear to the ground there were plenty of rumours that made for grim listening.

‘Yes, but he’s been ruled out. There were two things that cropped up as a result, though. First, he’d been visiting Lucy Clarsen regularly for quite some time. I couldn’t
find out the details, but he was paying her for
favours
, if you get me.’

Pierre understood at once; there were plenty of people in town eager to tell him about those they felt were of loose morals, and he’d heard about a barmaid at the Lake Pub whose virtue was
for hire. The idea that Jérôme had been a customer didn’t surprise him a great deal. ‘And the second?’

‘Something happened with his daughter Léna last year. The girl was brought to hospital with a back injury and the doctors reported it as possible parental abuse. They think he hit
her. With no prior concerns it was put on file, and no further action was taken.’

‘Thank you, Michael,’ said Pierre. He took a long, satisfied breath. Jérôme Séguret had been an inconvenience for long enough. He considered for just a moment
whether passing on the information was the right thing to do. After all, it had been Pierre who’d encouraged Claire to take her husband back for Camille’s sake; that, too, had been the
right thing to do, and he certainly hadn’t found it easy, but now Jérôme had sealed his own fate.

It seemed only fair. He called Claire and told her everything. She sounded tired, having just got home from the hospital where she’d left Léna for the night.

‘I had to tell you, Claire,’ he said, sounding almost pained by the task. ‘I had no choice. This kind of thing just festers if left alone. Now, you have to forgive
him.’

‘I don’t think I can do that,’ Claire said. ‘I have to go. Jérôme’s just got back.’

Wonderful timing, he thought. Satisfied, Pierre could hear the rage in her voice. ‘I’m here for you, Claire,’ he said. ‘Always.’

He hung up, pleased with the way things had gone – Claire would be furious with Jérôme, and the shambles of their relationship would go down in flames. Pierre, having done all
he could to help them salvage things, was blameless.

And now Simon was back, needing Pierre’s help. It had been a good day, all round.

Shortly after he’d spoken to Claire, the little boy was dropped off at the Helping Hand by a female officer he recognized as the captain’s second-in-command, Pierre and Sandrine both
there as welcoming party. The officer seemed oddly reticent about leaving the boy with them.

‘Don’t worry, Laure,’ he said to her, and the look she gave him made him regret being so informal. ‘Inspector Valère,’ he said, switching tack.
‘He’ll be fine.’

She stepped a little away from the boy, and lowered her voice. ‘His name’s Victor,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t spoken, not to anyone. It doesn’t seem to be a
hearing problem, though.’

Pierre nodded, his expression suitably serious. ‘Trauma, maybe,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get him to open up, but the best thing will be to make him feel safe
here.’ He looked Victor over. The boy was dressed in oddly outdated clothes, possibly indicating a poor home, but the coat he wore seemed new; he was gripping it tightly like a security
blanket, looking around with a gaze entirely free from emotion, staying unnervingly silent.

Pierre let Sandrine show the officer out. He took Victor’s hand and brought him inside the dormitory. Beds lined both sides of the room, radiators giving off some pleasing warmth. The boy
certainly needed some heat – his hand was like ice.

‘You can sleep in here,’ he said. ‘See? It’s a bit like a summer camp. Pick whichever bed you want.’ Pierre smiled, but the boy seemed troubled, and entirely
uninterested in what he was saying. Pierre kept his smile going all the same. ‘OK then, how about I choose for you? Here we are.’

The boy sat on the edge of the bed and stared straight ahead of him. Pierre wondered if there might be deeper issues at play – autism perhaps? Still, the boy would be Social
Services’ problem soon enough. There was little he could do except make him feel secure.

‘I’ll be next door,’ he said. ‘Sandrine will look after you. So there’s no need to be worried – just come and talk to us, OK?’

Silence.

Pierre still had that smile plastered on his face, and it was in danger of cracking. He could see the upset grow in Victor’s expression and felt a sudden concern for him. He had no idea
what kind of ordeal the boy had gone through. ‘You’re not going to cry, are you?’ Pierre asked. Victor just looked past him, anxious. Pierre knelt down and took the boy’s
freezing hands in his. ‘There’s no need to be scared. You might not think it to look at me, but I was a little boy once. Just like you. And when I was scared, do you know what my
grandmother would say?’ The boy shook his head. ‘She would say, imagine yourself somewhere else, somewhere you’ve been happy. Imagine yourself there, and sing your favourite song.
Sing it in your head.’

The boy’s expression changed suddenly, and at last Pierre’s smile faltered and died away.

With a mixture of recognition and fury, Victor was staring straight at him.

After dropping Victor off at the Helping Hand, Laure went back to the station. The boy had given her the creeps, silent the whole time but watching everything with such
intensity that it put her on edge.

She was glad to pass the responsibility on. Taking him from Julie had been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done, whatever the rights and wrongs; but of course, seeing Julie at
all had been hard, old wounds reopened.

Taking the boy from her had felt like a transgression Julie would probably never forgive, no matter how irrational her desire to keep him with her seemed. Before Julie had been assaulted, Laure
had never given the idea of children much thought; Julie hadn’t either, as far as Laure knew. But the brutality of the attack had left Julie without any chance of conceiving, and in the weeks
afterwards it had become clear how devastating this was for her.

In her clumsy attempts to console and reassure, Laure had just made things worse. Julie had read everything Laure said as contempt for the very idea of them ever having children, for the idea of
two women becoming parents. Then Laure had mentioned her career and Julie launched a barrage at her, calling every part of their relationship into question before shutting down. Within a few days
Julie had made it known to the hospital staff that Laure was no longer welcome.

Laure had hoped that giving her time might allow things to heal, and in the weeks and months after Julie left hospital she sent cards, hopeful and tentative, terrified that she was sending too
many, fearful that she was sending too few. Julie never replied to any of them.

It had come as a shock to Laure just how quickly the most important relationship she’d ever had – and one she’d believed would go the distance – could unravel. Whether
the outcome would have been different if she’d handled it better she couldn’t know, but the self-recrimination that followed was long and bitter. Laure didn’t need the cold look
in Julie’s eyes to punish her. She could manage that very well on her own.

When she got back to the station after leaving Victor at the shelter, the pathologist’s report on Nathalie Payet was waiting for her. She read it over. At the scene, the
pathologist’s opinion had been tentative, but the post-mortem was conclusive; here it was, in black and white.

She sought out Bruno, taking the report with her. When she found him and held it up for him to see, he just nodded. ‘I already heard,’ he said.

She frowned. ‘Christ, that got around quickly. I’ve only just read it.’

‘Well, good news travels fast.’

Laure raised an eyebrow. Bad news travelled faster, in her experience. ‘Good news for us maybe,’ she said. ‘Not so much for Nathalie Payet. Has there been anything on Simon
Delaître?’

‘Nothing since he was spotted earlier. But we have three cars searching now.’

‘And Lucy Clarsen?’

Bruno raised an eyebrow. ‘You haven’t heard?’

She shook her head. ‘Too busy on the Payet case.’

‘Well, the
first
news on Lucy Clarsen is that she’s still hanging on,’ said Bruno. ‘She might even make it.’

‘They think she could pull through?’ Laure was amazed. Given the injuries, even the possibility was astonishing.

‘It’ll be touch and go,’ said Bruno. ‘But yes, she might. As for the investigation, well . . . we found a diary in Clarsen’s apartment. Turned out to be a client
appointment book. A dozen men admitted to having sexual relations with her. Some even admitted to paying, but they all denied she was a prostitute.’

Laure was exasperated. ‘How do they work that one?’

Bruno smirked. ‘They say it wasn’t the sex that they were paying for.’

Laure laughed. ‘What, they went for a massage and got carried away?’

‘No. They all say she was some sort of clairvoyant. Getting them to talk about it was like pulling teeth, but they all said the same thing. She contacted the dead.’

‘Sure she did,’ mocked Laure. ‘And was that before or after they slept together?’

Bruno’s eyes widened. ‘During.’

Laure whistled, impressed. ‘That’s a new one.’

Leaving Bruno to his paperwork, she went back to her desk and readied herself to call Julie. When Laure had first heard about the Payet death, like everyone else she’d assumed Lucy’s
attacker – and almost certainly Julie’s – had struck again. Most of the officers there hadn’t known of the link with Julie, hadn’t known that a previous victim of the
attacker was living right next door to another possible victim. Laure had found it deeply concerning that the person who had been attacked was Julie’s neighbour. Too big a coincidence, it
would have been a significant move on the killer’s part.

However, even the initial examinations at the scene had undermined this theory. There were too many disparities – in each of the three previous attacks, similar knife blades had been used,
on women walking alone in isolated areas; and of course, there was the cannibalism.

None of that featured in the Payet case, and the weapon had been a pair of scissors found beside the body. Now that she’d read the pathologist’s report, Laure found that the truth
was even more unexpected.

And it was something Julie deserved to know, immediately. Laure took a breath and dialled her number.

‘Hello,’ answered Julie.

‘It’s me,’ said Laure. She carried on speaking quickly before Julie had the chance to hang up: ‘I wanted to tell you, I took Victor to the Helping Hand. He’s safe
there. He’ll be well looked after. And I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then Julie sighed heavily. ‘Will I be able to see him?’

‘Maybe,’ said Laure. ‘I’ll try and find out. But there’s something else. We found your neighbour’s cause of death. It wasn’t him, Julie. It wasn’t
the man who attacked you.’

There was another pause. ‘Who was it, then?’

‘She did it to herself,’ said Laure. ‘It looks like a suicide. I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but I just wanted to let you know.’ Julie was silent.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Laure.

‘Yeah,’ said Julie. She sounded relieved.

‘Will you be OK?’ said Laure. ‘Shall I come over? I finish soon. If you want some company, I can—’

‘No,’ said Julie quietly. ‘Goodbye.’ She hung up.

Laure stared at the phone in her hand. The offer to come over had surprised her as much as it had – presumably – surprised Julie, but Laure still cared. However much she tried to
forget it.

Goodbye
, she thought, and put the phone down.

After his interrogation, Jérôme found himself sitting in the police station for almost an hour, waiting on a vague promise of a patrol car to give him a lift home
– a promise that didn’t seem likely to materialize any time soon. He finally gave up and told them he would get the bus. The desk officer shrugged.

On the journey he decided to confess to Claire that he’d been seeing Lucy. He could have made up something to cover his tracks, but she would probably find out sooner or later. In a small
town, he supposed there was a good chance Claire had already heard rumours about Lucy being a prostitute, and he was sure that Léna suspected.