The Stranger on the Train (17 page)

The library was dark. It was getting to that time of day just before the lights came on. The sky outside the windows was pale gray, silhouetting the woman's shoulder-length hair and slim figure. She had her back to Emma, but Emma had the strangest sense of how like her mother this woman was. She stood there, staring in the aisle, between the high shelves filled with encyclopedia. The way the woman stood. The way she moved her hands when she spoke. The feeling became very strong: that if this woman turned around it would be Emma's mother, and when she saw Emma and Ritchie she would smile with pleasure.

What are you
doing
here?
she would say.
It's so wonderful to see you.

She would leave the people she was with, and come to take Emma's hand.

This is my daughter and grandson,
she would say, her voice filled with pride.
What are you doing now, Emma? Will we go somewhere, just the three of us, and have lunch together?

Emma squeezed the handles of the buggy. The gray from the windows was getting very bright. And then the woman turned, and it was a different face, and the gray light went dark.

Emma's mum would never have been chatting and smiling in a group like that anyway. Emma's mum was always alone.

• • •

Ritchie got temperatures; he spat up his food; his poo went a funny color. Emma worried constantly that she was doing something wrong, missing something, and there was no one to tell her.

“All new mothers worry,” her new GP, Dr. Stanford, reassured her. “He's growing very nicely. Putting on plenty of weight.”

Yes, he was. He was putting on weight. He could see. He could hear. He was starting to crawl now. But there were all the things that Emma could not ask.

Is he happy? Does he smile enough? Are we alone too much? Should he see more people?

Do I love him enough?

Because sometimes, just lately, the thought had been coming into her mind.

What if Ritchie just . . . wasn't there?

Sunday, September 24th

Day Eight

The blue and white sign leaning into the hedge read: ­“Bien­­venue à St.-Bourdain.”

Rafe pulled the car over to the side of the road. Stones crackled under the tires. He turned the key and the engine went dead.

“There it is,” he said. “The directions said to look for the first set of gates after the sign. I'm pretty sure that's the place.”

Emma pulled herself forward in her seat to stare.

Long shadows lay over the fields. Across the road and up a little way stood a pair of yellow stone pillars with high iron gates. Through the gates, a driveway curved up a hill. At the top of the hill, the reddish roof of a house was just visible through heavy branches. The grass on the sloping front lawn was uneven and ankle-high; some weeds, not many but a few, poked through the center of the driveway.

“Garden's a mess,” Rafe observed. “Looks like they've been away for a while.”

The garden might have been a mess, but it was still beautiful. The grounds were rich with trees, swaying in the faint breeze. Piles of chopped logs glowed against a wall. Just inside the gates, a cat lay on its side in the sun. Geese ran and ducked under the trees. Emma made her breath come slow and steady. She had to be calm now.

She opened her door and climbed out of the car. Summery, croaky sounds came from the fields. Rafe got out as well, and made a sign for Emma to close her door as quietly as possible. He came around the front of the car to stand beside her.

“What do you want to do?” he asked in a low voice.

“I don't know.”

“Let's just take our time,” he said. “Let's just think about this for a minute. We don't know what they might—”

Then he took a quick, backwards step.

“People,” he hissed, ducking and putting out his hand. Emma ducked too, automatically, before looking up again towards the house to see.

On the driveway, several people had appeared, walking down to the gate.

“Careful,” Rafe warned as Emma took a step forward. “Come back a bit.”

“We're too far away. They won't look this way.”

Now she could make the people out. First came an older couple, tanned and gray-haired. Then a younger man, and a woman in a cream-colored top and trousers. Halfway down the drive, they all stopped. They gathered in a circle around the cream-colored woman.

The woman was Antonia all right. No doubt about it. Her hair was darker than Emma remembered from Mr. Bap's, but of course she'd dyed it for the airport. The rest of her was the same. The beige clothes; the brisk, straight-backed walk.

And in her arms, the little boy, his ears sticking out, his hair a light halo in the sun. The roundness of his head made Emma still with longing. Briefly, Antonia tilted her head to let the older woman kiss the child, then she pulled him back to her, closer than before. The love and tenderness were hard to witness. The child, dressed in a white T-shirt and red shorts, held his finger in his mouth and gazed at the geese under the trees.

“Is it him?” Rafe asked.

“Yes.”

She cried softly, putting her fingers to her nose, trying to sniff as quietly as she could.

She wasn't aware she'd moved forward again until she felt Rafe touch her arm.

“Don't,” he warned. “Don't let them see you.”

“What, then?” she said through her teeth. “What do I do?”

“Hang on.” Rafe had his mobile in his hand. He squinted at the screen, tapping a number with his thumb.

“Hello?” he said into the phone. “Hello?”

The older couple were walking again, down the driveway to the gates. Antonia, however, was turning back towards the top of the hill. In another minute, Ritchie would be out of sight. The swaying trees would surround him and he'd be gone.

“Ritchie,” Emma cried.

Rafe's hand tightened on her arm.

“Let me go.” She pulled against him. And then, in sudden panic, not caring who heard, she began to scream: “Ritchie! Ritchie!”

Rafe's hand was slipping but still he tried to pull her back. Up till then he'd been calm, but Emma's anguish was clearly unnerving him. His phone clattered to the road. Swearing, he bent to retrieve it, and Emma freed herself from his grip.

“Emma!” Rafe called, as she dashed across the road.

She heard his footsteps as he started after her; but then someone must have answered his phone because he stopped again to speak into it.

“Police,” he said desperately. “Please. Help us.”

Chapter Twelve

Dusk had turned everything from green and gold to blue by the time the car turned into a stony courtyard set back from the road. The buildings in the courtyard looked older and darker than the other buildings in the town. Long windows gleamed in the headlights.

“What's this?” Agitated, Emma sat up in the back of the car. “Why are we stopping?”

“This must be the consulate.” Rafe peered up at the gray walls. “This is where that British bloke said he'd meet us.”

“But,” Emma was confused. “I thought we were going back to the house. I thought we were going back to get Ritchie.”

Rafe said gently: “We can't, Emma. Not right now. Those people called the police at the same time we did. Remember? They wouldn't let us stay there.”

Emma did remember. Bits of it, anyway. Ritchie in his shorts, with his finger in his mouth. That part was very clear. Much of the rest of it was a blur. She remembered pulling away from Rafe, running across the road and through the gates, pounding up the driveway towards Ritchie. The people ahead of her were running as well. In a second, they were around the trees and out of sight. Emma followed them grimly. She rounded the trees, and came to a large house. The people from the driveway were all piling in the front door. Emma reached it just as the last person was about to enter. He was the man who had been with Antonia on the drive, a tallish person, with curly brown hair. It struck Emma that he seemed to be moving slower than the others on purpose, glancing behind him, as if waiting for her. She flung herself at the door, trying to push her way through, but the man held it and wouldn't let her past.

“Get out of my way!” Emma yelled at him.

She looked into his face, and saw that he was looking back at her. Emma held his gaze.

“Please,” she said. “Please. You have my little boy.”

The man hesitated.

“I'm sorry,” he said, and closed the door.

Emma kicked at the door, and banged it with her fists. She didn't need to remember that part now to know it had happened. The sides of her hands were swollen and sore. Her throat was sore as well, and rough; she must have been shouting. You would shout, if you were banging on a door. At some point, she remembered, she had spotted a rock in a flower bed, and stopped banging to go and pick it up. She flung the rock at a window. It went through with a smash. The broken pane was too high to reach, but she'd got the idea now. She started looking around for more rocks. Then there came the sound of car engines, and skidding tires. Doors slammed. Men in round hats surrounded her, all shouting in French.

At first, Emma thought the men were on her side. These were the police, surely, and Rafe had called them; they'd come here to help. But the men did not look or sound in any way friendly. They shouted again, pointing at the house, then at their dark cars under the trees. If they spoke English, they made no attempt to make themselves understood. Then Emma saw the guns—huge, heavy pistols in holsters at their belts, and her insides shrank.

Rafe and one of the men were arguing. They looked exactly alike, fierce and lean, standing over each other, gesticulating and stabbing at the air. They were speaking in different languages, but Rafe must have managed to get his point across because after a minute the other man put his hands up. He stood back, watching, as Rafe came and spoke to Emma.

“They want us to come to the station,” he said. “They won't arrest us if we leave now.”

“Arrest us?” Emma was incredulous. “Why would they want to arrest us?”

“The Hunts could have us charged with trespassing,” Rafe said. “Or even breaking and entering, since you tried to force your way into their house.”

“But don't they know?” Emma cried. “Don't they know why I'm trying to get in there? My son is there. I'm not leaving without him.”

She tried to run back to the house, but the fierce-eyed policeman blocked her way. Rafe took her hand.

“You don't have a choice here,” he said urgently. “If you don't leave voluntarily, they'll drag you off.”

Emma looked at the guns again. Black and oily in their belts. She'd never seen a real one, and here they were, all around her. Guns! With Ritchie only a few feet away. These policemen made her afraid. They didn't look anything like the British street bobbies you saw in London, polite men and women in checked hats and bright yellow jackets. These men looked like soldiers, tough and angry, as if they were used to living in the mountains, hunting animals for food, with knives between their teeth.

“These aren't people to mess with,” Rafe agreed. “The quicker we go with them, the quicker we can find someone who speaks English. Get the British consulate involved. They'll help us sort this out.”

The next thing Emma remembered was being in a car, twisting and turning on the darkening roads. In a cream-colored building, a man in a checked shirt approached them and said in English to come with him in another car—Emma thought, back to the Hunts' house.

But instead, here they were at this consulate place.

She climbed out of the car. The gray buildings surrounded them in a threatening U. Rafe was on the cobbles, talking to the check-shirted driver. Emma had a strong sense of unease.

What was she doing here? Why had she let those men take her away from the place where Ritchie was?

She followed Rafe and the driver up some steps and through an arched door. In a high hall, their heels echoed on the tiles:
plunk-plink-plunk
, like drops falling into a well.

“Wait, please,” the check-shirted man said, and disappeared.

The hall was cold. A bare, too-bright bulb hung from the ceiling, driving stark, black shadows into the corners. Heavy pictures hung on the walls, of elderly men with beards and sneering eyes. And what was that thing, over there in the alcove? Emma stared up at it. A life-sized statue, a robed marble woman with hollow eyes, crouching over a baby in her lap. The marble woman's face was shadowed, the bones sharp above sunken cheeks. The jutting brow emphasized the expression of malice. The baby stared up at her in fear. The woman's hand was lifted as if to strike it.

“Hello!”

Emma spun around.

“Brian Hodgkiss,” the breathless, red-cheeked young man said, coming forward from the back of the hall. He had a hand raised in salute. “Duty officer. I cover the consulate out of hours, for emergencies. I believe you're in a bit of a situation.”

“Yes.” Emma stepped to meet him. “Yes, I am. I want my son back, and I want him tonight.”

“I understand,” Mr. Hodgkiss said. He looked worried. “I'm aware of your story, and I sympathize. The trouble is, the family says that this isn't your child.”

“Yes, he is.” Emma made her voice sound as hard as possible.

Mr. Hodgkiss gave a cough.

“I've just been talking to a Detective Inspector Hill, in London,” he said. “I believe the identification of the child—”

“The identification is not in question,” Emma snapped. “I saw him myself less than an hour ago.”

“I'm not disputing that.” Mr. Hodgkiss lifted his hands, then lowered them through the air, as though smoothing a duvet. “Not disputing it at all. However, according to the police, you shouldn't have been there in the first place. The family would be within their rights to charge you with trespassing.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Emma whimpered.

Beside her, Rafe touched her arm.

“Isn't there some way we can sort this out?” he asked. “You can see this problem isn't going to just go away.”

Mr. Hodgkiss turned to him, plainly happy to have someone rational to talk to.

“You have to understand,” he said. “We're seeing both sides of the story here. The child's family has also contacted us for assistance. Incidentally”—he glanced again at Emma—“they are very sympathetic to your plight. Mrs. Hunt, especially, would like it passed on to you how much she feels for you, missing your child, but—”

“She's lying!” Emma shouted. How could any woman be so brazen? “She knows perfectly well why my child is missing. She took him, the lying cow.”

“Excuse me,” Rafe said. “What about a DNA test?”

There was a silence.

Rafe said: “It seems to me that that would sort the problem out once and for all.”

Emma was too wound-up to speak. A DNA test! Why hadn't she thought of that herself? It was by far and away the most obvious way to sort out this whole mess. She looked at Brian. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

“So how do we organize one, then?” Emma demanded.

“I'm not a lawyer,” Brian Hodgkiss said. “So I can't say for definite. But I'd imagine it would depend on whether or not the Hunts agreed.”

“And if they don't?”

“In that case, I'm not sure you could make them.”

“What do you mean, we couldn't make them?” Emma said angrily. “Why
wouldn't
anyone make them? Why would you believe them and not us?”

“It really isn't up to me,” Brian said. “My advice to you would be to come back to the consulate first thing in the morning and we'll put you in touch with an English-speaking lawyer. In the meantime”—he felt in his pocket and pulled out a card—“if you need a bed for the night, here are a couple of numbers you can—”

“A bed for the night?” Emma exploded. “Are you mad? Do you think I'm just going to go to bed while Ritchie is still in that house with those people? You must be absolutely off your head.”

Brian Hodgkiss heard her out in polite silence. When she had finished, he said:

“That's up to you, Ms. Turner.” When she still didn't take the card he was offering, he added: “I would say to you, though, that if you go back to the Hunts' house, you could find yourself charged with trespassing or harassment. In that case, there would be nothing the consulate could do to help you.”

His coldness bewildered Emma.

“They've told you, haven't they?” she said.

“Who?”

“The police in England. They told you what Dr. Stanford said. That's why you won't help me.”

“Ms. Turner, I really have no idea what you're talking about.”

She stared at him, unsure whether to believe what he was saying.

“Now,” Brian said, “although I'd prefer not to have to get the police back here tonight, I really—”

Rafe had stepped forward. “I'll take the card,” he said, holding his hand out.

Brian, looking relieved, gave the card to him.

“Speak to the lawyer, all right?” he said in a confidential, man-to-man way. “Come back here in the morning. About nine should do it.”

“We will,” Rafe said shortly.

“Well, then. Good night.”

Brian held the door open. Emma was so stunned that she found herself walking back outside and down the steps into the courtyard. She couldn't believe it. They'd come here for help, and been thrown out, like a pair of drunks from a pub. This had to be a joke. Surely Brian Hodgkiss couldn't be their only contact with the British embassy in France? There had to be someone else there they could call, someone who'd have a better grasp of what to do.

“What now?” she asked Rafe. “What do we do?”

“I don't know.” He stood on the steps, holding Brian Hodgkiss's card, looking more uncertain than she'd seen him. “Maybe we should wait and speak to that lawyer in the morning?”

“In the
morning
?” What was the matter with him? “The Hunts will be gone in the morning. They'll take Ritchie and escape. They're probably leaving right now.” Emma began to panic again. “Why did we leave him there? I was right beside him. He was right there.
Right there
, and I
left
him. Jesus! We need to go back there. Right now.”

Rafe tried to say something but she swung away from him. She'd take the car and . . . but no, she couldn't. The hire car was still at the Hunts' house! Oh God, what was she going to do? Not a single car had passed on the road. The entire town was shut down, hardly a light to be seen. She didn't even know any French numbers to call on her mobile. Taxis. Directory inquiries. Nothing.

Somewhere nearby, a door closed. A soft click, but it echoed off the walls. Brian Hodgkiss appeared, zipping up the top of a brown leather bag. His shoes scraped on the cobbles. He walked past without seeing them. Emma watched him as he headed for the road, his jacket swinging on his arm, the brown bag bumping up and down on his shoulder.

Then she began to run.

“Wait.”

She couldn't let him go. Useless as he was, he was all they had.

“Wait,” she called again.

Brian turned, his posture wary. His elbows pointed stiffly outwards, as if for protection. The moonlight gleamed on his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, and on the stones. Emma reached him, wrenching her backpack from her shoulder.

“Look,” she said, pulling at the flap with trembling hands. “I've got pictures of Ritchie.” She rummaged in the backpack for the envelope she'd brought. “See?” She tore a photograph out of the envelope and shoved it towards Brian's face.

“You tell the French police to compare that child with these photos. You'll see if you look at them, it's my son. They have to do that DNA test. They
have
to. You have to make them.”

Brian tried to slide his eyes from the picture of Ritchie in his pajamas, his hair brushed to one side in the comical comb-over that made him look like a tiny mogul, but Emma kept after him, following his head with it until he was forced to look.

“I've told you,” he said. “I can't influence what the police do. I have no legal powers here.”

“Is that all you can say?” Enraged, Emma shook the photo at him. “Everything we say to you, your answer is: ‘I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer.'” Is that the only sentence you're able to—”