A Grave Waiting (27 page)

It was Chief Officer Hanley who answered. “Mr. Meraldo, how do you want to go about this? You think there may be a risk for your daughter if we just — rush in?”

Meraldo shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know, but given Goldstein's crazy behaviour, perhaps.” He turned to Moretti. “You seem to know the situation. You have met Sandy Goldstein?”

“I have.” Inadequate would suffice for the moment.

“Or your aunt perhaps? Could she help us?”

Moretti pushed back his chair and stood up. “Not Miss Ferbrache,” he said. “I wouldn't want to involve her in this. I'll do it. If they see me, they'll not — well, they'll not fly off the handle. Or Sandy won't.”

From the other side of the desk, Sam Meraldo looked up at Moretti. He was smiling and shaking his head.

“Isn't she something?” he said. “She and I were involved, which is how I met Julia. We fell in love, got married, had Ellie. Sandy never forgave me. She and Julia were professionally associated, but I never grasped the complexity of the relationship.”

Svengali and Trilby. The hypnotic controller and the dominated follower. If Sandy split from Julia and stayed, would he become her new lapdog? Moretti knew what his answer to that would be.

It was an easy drive up to Verte Rue in the spring sunshine, for which Moretti was grateful. He was driving his Triumph, and he winced as the suspension grazed over the ruts and bumps in the lane. Ahead of him he saw an upstairs window was open, heard Ellie laughing, caught a brief glimpse of Julia King through the window.

If luck was on his side, Sandy was downstairs. He knew she had taken a little room at the back of the house as her workroom, and he supposed, hoped, she was there. He decided to sound his horn as he approached. If Julia and Ellie came out, he'd put them in the car. If Sandy came out, he'd cut off her retreat back into the house. He came to a halt, sounded his horn, and Sandy came running out. Moretti got out of the car to meet her, and she flung herself into his arms.

Just at that moment, an over-eager PC Brouard bounced up the lane, with Sam Meraldo sitting by him in the front seat. Moretti felt Sandy freeze, and he held on to her before she could break loose.

“Sandy, this is not a social call.”

“Fuck you, Ed.”

As she struggled to break free, PC Brouard brought the police car to a shrieking halt, skidding on the stones and gravel, leaping out with complete disregard for what they had planned at the station. At least Sam Meraldo stayed in his seat, as agreed.

“Stay!” Moretti shouted, and Brouard thundered to a halt like a well-trained canine.

“It's over, Sandy,” he said.

“It already was.” The fight had gone out of her. She turned and gestured at the little house, the watchpost in the middle of nowhere, where she had secreted the three of them. “I've had enough of this place. I'm bored out of my skull, I can't write here, and you are useless as a lover. Great in bed and lousy at being there, if you get my drift.”

He did.

Sandy turned toward the police car where Sam Meraldo sat. “He can have them both. Julia's getting antsy, says she wants a life. I thought we had one.”

On your terms,
thought Moretti. “Julia even started suspecting me,” she had said. Maybe Trilby was beginning to think for herself.

Sandy pushed him away. “She phoned him,” she said. “Julia phoned him, betrayed us on my own cellphone. And I thought we were safe here, out of sight and out of mind. But nowhere is, is it, Ed? Not any longer.”

Moretti did not feel the need to reply.

Paris

C
harles
de Gaulle Airport was chaotic, but the sun was shining, she had only her carry-on, and was quickly out of the terminal, walking along passages and tunnels to the train station. The queue for tickets for the RER train service into the city seemed particularly long, considering it was not the height of the tourist season, but time was not an issue. Around her the cacophony of languages calmed rather than assaulted her senses. Liz thought of Ludo and Coralie and the task ahead of her with anticipation now, not anxiety. Past loves, past lives.
Plaisir d'amour, chagrin d'amour
. Both belong here.

Besides, she had her instructions. It was like an old TV program she had seen in reruns — “Your mission, should you choose to accept it.” She had accepted it, chosen to be Ludo's messenger.
Let's hope
the messenger does not get shot for her pains,
she thought
.
Metaphorically, hopefully, in this case.

Finding the right train was not easy, and she had dragged her suitcase up and down various escalators before locating it close to where she had bought her ticket. The clerks at the guichets seemed overwhelmed by the crush of humanity, her French was not that fluent, and, even after she had boarded the train, she was not entirely sure it was the right one.

“A Châtelet?”
she asked two beautiful black girls sitting in the seat opposite, dressed in long, flowing robes of many colours, and they assured her,
“Oui.”
Liz thought of Dwight and what a rarity he was in Guernsey. Here the opposite was true. She looked at those around her. She was the one in the minority.

Outside the train window the graffiti-covered walls of the banlieues flashed by, depressing in their monotone ugliness, the hellish circles that surround so many cities. Inside the long carriage a golden-earringed Gypsy plied her trade, holding out what looked like horoscopes printed on little cards. A young woman brought around pieces of handmade jewellery, held them out to her, discreetly. Liz shook her head, and they smiled and moved on. They did not push or persist, so presumably this carriage commerce was tolerated up to a point, as long as passengers were not pestered.

The train slowed again, as it had done before, but this time one of the girls pointed out the window.
“Châtelet.”

Liz thanked them, said
“Au revoir,”
and got out on to the platform.

Her instructions were to take the Métro next, toward Porte d'Orléans, getting out at Saint Sulpice station, but she decided to disobey, just a little. She would take a cab, stay above ground and watch Paris pass by in the sunlight.

Outside the station she stood in the street, and waited for a cab to pass by. None did. An elderly woman sitting on a bench watched her with interest. Liz went over and asked her where she could find a taxi, or a taxi rank. The woman said, with a note of triumph,
“Pas de taxis,”
and something else in which Liz caught the word
Grève.

Strike. No wonder the trains had been so busy. Liz got out her street map, and pointed to the rue Cassette, where her hotel was. The woman consulted it, then pointed across the road.

“Jardin du Luxembourg,”
she said.
“Vous pouvez marcher.”
She pointed to Liz's case.
“Ca roule.”
You can walk, that thing has wheels.

The taxi strike was a blessing. Sunshine and roses, long tree-lined allées, children lining up for donkey rides, the fine gravel crunching beneath her feet. Near the Fontaine de Médicis a woman and child were feeding pigeons. On an imposing set of steps close to the Palais du Luxembourg, a bride was posing for photos, laughing at her new husband as he ran along the terrace, talking to anyone and everyone who stopped to watch. Liz Falla and her rolling suitcase were of little interest, nothing out of the ordinary, part of the Paris landscape.

From the exit near the orangerie it was only a short distance to the hotel that Ludo had chosen for her. What he had said about it in his letter to her ran through her head. “This place has memories for me, and I will enjoy thinking of you there. It was a convent in the eighteenth century, and there is something piquant about putting you and that voice of yours into an ex-nunnery.”

Apprehension filled her as she turned into the Rue Cassette. What should she expect — sackcloth and ashes and straw mattresses? Charm was only one of Ludo's qualities; he could be cruel. Very cruel. She trundled herself and her suitcase along the narrow pavement of the twisting street past a wall that was tall enough to hide what lay behind it, and turned in to an entrance screened with a wrought-iron gate, into a hidden courtyard.

A delightful courtyard, with cobblestones and statuary, flowers and ornamental trees blooming in giant urns, a feeling of serenity protected from the bustling street behind the convent walls. Inside, soft lighting and a soft-spoken receptionist, the lobby open to an elegantly furnished salon and, beyond, a lounge and dining area, its wall of glass leading to a secret, bird-filled garden behind high, ivy-covered walls.

No sackcloth and ashes, no straw mattress in her tastefully decorated bedroom, looking over the courtyard.
Just as well Ludo is paying for all this,
was Liz Falla's reaction, as she tipped the porter. It'd be sackcloth and bread and water for me for the unforeseeable future, otherwise. The porter handed her the key to the door — an impressive piece of heavy brass with an elaborately tasselled handle, more bordello-like than convent — and departed.

She tidied up in the well-appointed ensuite bathroom, went down the curving staircase to the dining room, ate a giant
croque monsieur
outside in the walled garden, fortified herself with a coffee and a glass of wine, asked for directions at the desk, and set out beyond the convent walls on her mission for Ludovic Ross.

The meridian line crosses Paris where Liz Falla walked, past the church of St. Sulpice, with its enigmatic gnomon outside. Liz was not that much of a history buff — she believed in living in the present — but she had read
The Da Vinci Code
. The past was with her as she walked, but it was Ludo's past, and Coralie's past, and she was curious to meet the reason for her pilgrimage. A few steps from the church, in a side street off the Rue de Canettes, with the four ducklings for which it was named still in place over one of the seventeenth-century houses, she reached her destination, rang the bell, identified herself, and was admitted.

He was expecting her, she had made sure of that, but he was not what she had expected. She had wondered which parent he would look like, but he did not remind her very much of either Ludo or Coralie. He had the slender build of both, but there the resemblance ended. He was, she knew, about sixty years old — surreal thought that Ludo had been a teenage father — and his wary eyes surveyed her from behind spectacles perched on a strong beak of a nose. His thinning hair was grey, neatly trimmed, at odds with his clothing, which was well-worn, almost threadbare, as if he were making a statement about the insignificance of her visit.

Liz looked around her. Décor and design were obviously not important to him, but the place was comfortably furnished, overflowing with books, magazines, newspapers.

“Mr. Renaudie, you know who I am and why I am here.”

Ludo's son gestured to a chair, relatively free of paper and periodicals. “Please sit down, madame. I know who you are, you are a detective sergeant from Guernsey, but I don't understand the need for this visit. I was happy enough with my adoptive parents, and I was not happy when my father came back into my life, although I appreciated the financial support. It set me free to do what I wanted. But our contacts are few and far between, and we have only met twice.”

His English was fluent, just a trace of an accent.

“What is it that you do?”

“I have a bookshop near the Place de l'Odéon.”

“The visit is necessary because your father's circumstances have changed. Not financially, far from it. In fact, he is turning over his property and most of his assets to you.”

“Why?”

“He will be going on trial, and will almost certainly spend whatever is left of his life in prison.”

Charles Renaudie sat down, abruptly. It was the only emotional reaction Liz saw as she told him what had happened on the
Just Desserts
on two nights in April. He did not interrupt until Liz had finished. Then he asked two questions. “Why? I thought spies, even ex-spies, got away with murder.”

“You were wrong. He is no longer in the intelligence service, and he took the law into his own hands.”

“He and my birth mother together planned and executed the first murder — why?”

“The man they killed had cheated your mother's husband, Sir Ronald Fellowes.”

“So they sought justice on behalf of the man for whom my birth mother deserted me.”

There was no denying that. From her backpack, Liz got out the packet of papers Ludo had left for her in his bathroom safe, and put them on the table in front of her.

“This is what your father asked me to bring to you. Some of the papers are about legal matters, and there is a personal account as well.”

“You can keep the personal account.”

Liz looked across the table at Charles Renaudie. “Take it or leave it,” she said, “I've done what I said I would do.” She stood up, and Charles Renaudie stood up also.

“You know what?” she said. “Ludo didn't desert you. He looked until he found you. Enough of the self-pity. Get over it, Mr. Renaudie.” Liz picked up her backpack from the table. “I'll see myself out,” she said.

Back behind the convent wall, Liz lay on the bed in her hotel room for a while. The passive hostility of Charles Renaudie had left her feeling drained. She wondered if Ludo had asked her to do this in the hopes that his son might react more warmly, with some show of feeling.

“Wrong, Ludo,” she said out loud to her reflection in the mirror across the room. She needed to talk to someone, anyone. She pulled out her phone.

“Moretti.”

She felt suddenly warmer, more optimistic, the blood circling again in her veins.

“Guv, it's Falla. I'm in Paris.”

“Ah. So tell me.”

When she had finished, there was silence at the other end for a moment. Then Moretti said, “I wondered. Remember when I went to Italy after our first case together?”

“Yes. Was it something like this?”

“In a way. War casts a long shadow.” But he didn't elaborate. “How did he take the fact that his father killed his mother?”

“I didn't tell him.”

“You spared him.”

“Oh no, not spared him, Guv.” Liz shook her head vehemently, as if Moretti was in the room with her. “I think he would have enjoyed it.”

“You'll have to get a new stereo, Guv. Ludo left you his music collection. And his wine cellar, actually.”

When he met her at the airport, she looked tired, and she sat in the Triumph with her head resting against the back of the seat, her eyes closed.

“Nice of him. What about you? Or did he consider this pilgrimage on his behalf a gift?”

“No. He left me La Chancho's Poirets and Delaunays. Spooky. I'm going to sell them on eBay.”

Moretti could think of nothing else to say, so he changed the subject. “PC Mauger says thanks, but it really should have been your collar. You told him to take a look at someone called DeBiase? Gord Collenette's maître d'? Dealing cocaine, I believe, as a side order with
coquilles St. Jacques
.”

“Wicked!” The news seemed to have revived her. A minute or two later, he heard her humming under her breath, and after a while he said, “What's that? I don't recognize it.”

She turned her head toward him, and he could hear amusement in her voice. “You wouldn't, Guv, it's not your kind of music.”

“Try me.”

So she sang to him and, no, it was not his kind of music, but the emotional impact of her voice was everything Ludo Ross had described. He had been critical of her lousy choice of lovers but, in that respect, were they really that different?

“It was written by a Celtic singer from New Zealand. I like it. I'll be singing it next week at — but you'd not be interested.”

“I'm interested,” Moretti heard himself saying. “I'm interested.”

Herm

“I am surprised you brought her here.”

“I am surprised she agreed to be brought here,” said Peter Walker. “She is not at all a country girl, or a beach girl. A creature of big cities, Janice is.”

“So why here?” Moretti pulled off his loafers and felt the warm sand beneath the soles of his feet, the sun on his upturned face. “This place is so tiny you could hold it in the palm of your hand. Could be scary for a creature of big cities.”

“Because this is where it all started. Coming here, meeting you again, you asking for my help. Janice knew the policeman and the musician. The policeman is long gone, and I needed her to see a part of me she never knew, this old fart with binoculars and a song in his heart, watching the fulmars on their nests. How long this will last, I don't know, I can only hope, but I needed to be here with her.”

“And she came with you. A good start, I'd say. Here she comes.”

Walking toward them over the curve of the beach from the hotel, Jan Melville called out, “I'd forgotten what a savage game croquet can be. I won! Here —”

She handed over two of the three cans of beer she was holding, took a hearty swig from hers, and sat down close to Peter.

“What a competitive person you are.”

Peter Walker touched her cheek with the chilled can, then his own, and Jan Melville's slanting black eyes gleamed, and she laughed as if he had said the wittiest thing in the world.