Significance (16 page)

How did this child become that woman?

Most people knew her not as Marianne Sigot, but as Mazzy.

But Mazzy was no more.

Two women dead within the space of a month? It could easily be a coincidence. One, the victim of a pimp, dealer or client. The other, perhaps the victim of an accident, possibly domestic violence. The answers were all around them, on the women's skin, in their hair and clothes, under the fingernails, on the earth, amongst the weeds, on the path that led here and in the murky silt at the bottom of the ditch.

And there might be witnesses too. Even without the benefit of seeing her face (which was turned away and concealed by a curtain of hair) there was something about her slim frame, the dress with its nipped
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in waist and wide skirt, her (almost certainly) bleached blonde hair which would make her stand out from other women, whether natives or tourists. And whatever had happened to her, however she had died, identification was going to be vital; the sooner they knew who she was, the sooner each part of the puzzle would fall into place.

Star Gazer

Michelle Brandieu lived in the top
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floor apartment above the Café de Trois. The apartment had at some time in the last seventy or so years been the residence of an artist and either they, or the house's owner, had made alterations by taking out the small gabled windows and putting in floor
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to
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ceiling glass. However this was not the gigantic single pane of sleek modernist design; it bore less of a resemblance to a Frank Lloyd Wright picture window than to a dilapidated greenhouse, with a rusted lattice of ironwork holding in place a multitude of smaller panes of glass, some of which were cracked, all of which were smeared and mildewed.

But despite this Michelle Brandieu loved her small apartment as it afforded her a wonderful view of the sky and, on clear nights, the multitude of stars, which she viewed with the affection of a proud mother. She had a mild interest in astronomy with a passing knowledge of black holes, nebulae, comets and asteroids, but her real passion was for astrology, the movements of the constellations and their effect on every human being on earth. No science or religion could compete with the power of the stars.

Michelle spent many nights staring out at the sky. Because of the canopies over the cafés beneath her the view of the pavement tables was obstructed. On warm nights when she had the windows open, she heard laughter, music and the odd strand of conversation, but could not see who created it.

She could see the traffic, both pedestrian and automotive, that streamed to and fro on the wide pavement and the narrow road beyond. Such a busy pointless commotion. While up above, sometimes visible, sometimes not, hung the great canopy of stars.

‘Stars do not go away, they are always there, still affect us, even when we can't see them.'

Michelle had typed out these words on a small index card twenty, no, nearly thirty years ago. She had blue
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tacked the card to her fridge, though the card showed signs of having been displayed by other means – in each of its top two corners were the tiny puncture wounds made by drawing pins, and all four corners had yellow diagonal bands which revealed that it was once taped to another surface. And the card itself was grubby with age, the black typewritten words now grey and pale. Perhaps it was actually more than thirty years since Michelle typed it out. Time has become a little vague for Michelle, but the stars and her passion for them endures.

And because of this Michelle happened to be standing at her window the night before the body of the young woman was found, and as she stood there, dreaming of fate and eternity, something caught her eye down below where the row of potted geraniums marked the café's boundaries. There was an airy movement of something white. Her eyesight was failing and it took her a little time to adjust from the long
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distance gaze that took in the night sky with its pinpricks of light. At first the white object seemed to have a life of its own, but then she saw that someone was holding it.

Yes, very clearly she saw a young man standing facing the café. He wore a track suit that she thought might have been red, not bright red, but a greyish red bleached of light, which absorbed the blackness of the night. And his skin was black.

The sight of him had frightened Michelle. A few years ago the café's owner had moved out of the apartment below hers, going instead to live in a house ten minutes' drive away with his wife and three almost grown
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up children. He'd had a plan to rent the old flat to holiday
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makers, but had somehow never got around to refurbishing it, and so once the café closed for the night, Michelle was the only person in residence.

At first she had relished the quiet, as her landlord's family had been very noisy, always shouting at one another or playing music too loud (the son had an electric guitar) and the daughter was given to histrionics, and the volume on their TV was set too high. She quickly realised that their noise had at least been a comforting sign that she was not alone. These days, while she never suffered from loneliness, she did at times feel terribly vulnerable.

So she had stared at this young black man, certain that he must be about to break into the café. That the white object which, for a few seconds he seemed to deliberately flap through the air, must be some sort of flag, a signal to the rest of his gang that the coast was clear, and very soon they would be picking the locks on the café door and creeping onto the premises, then irrevocably up the stairs to her small flat, her frail defenceless body.

She watched horrified as he fluttered the white cloth, and then, in a way that she would later describe as ‘ritualistic', he draped it over the low
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growing plants. Once it had been placed there she saw that it was not a simple rectangle of fabric, but had a sort of human shape, a wide central part with two narrower arms beside it. She could not see the far edge of this shape as it fell on the other side of the hedge, but she imagined the continuation of this human form, with the central part being finished by two spectral legs.

Voodoo. The ancient religion of primitive evil. Worse even than burglary.

When the young man had finished his act of ritual he stepped away from the hedge and Michelle was sure that he smiled. Yes, she saw the flash of his white teeth.

Wicked. Terrifying to see the pleasure his evil act had given him. Then he set off again, walking briskly for a few minutes as he scanned the street as if looking for someone, until he eventually broke into a run.

Michelle stood by the window rigid with fear and uncertain what to do. She was certain that he or his comrades would return. She was equally afraid of the evil magic he had performed.

And remembering a charm to ward off evil a pagan friend had once recommended to her, she fetched salt from the kitchen and sprinkled a line of it along the bottom of her window and another at the door to her flat.

Then she went to bed and lay in the darkness willing herself to sleep and imagining terrible things. After hours of tossing and turning and being petrified by every sound; the old building's creaks, the noise of a motorbike, the scratching of mice beneath the floorboards, she made the rational decision that if something was coming to get her, it would get her no matter what, she was entirely helpless. So she sat up, switched on the small lamp next to her, opened the drawer of her bedside cabinet, pulled out two balls of cotton wool and stuffed them into her ears. Then at last she fell into fitful nightmare
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filled sleep.

Thus, muffled against all sound and worn out, she slept through all the early morning commotion of the rattling shutters being lifted, of the chairs being set out in the cafés, of wailing sirens and all the rest of the hullabaloo. She did not wake until almost twelve o'clock. Something she had not done for years which in itself made her suspect enchantment.

It was at the hairdressers, when she turned up for her appointment at three o'clock that afternoon that she heard of the young girl's murder. Everyone was talking about it and making the connection with the previous murder.

Michelle sat quietly in her chair as Julianne painted the bluish
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white dye onto the roots of her hair and talked to the other customers and stylists. Michelle tended to be silent amongst large groups of people preferring the intimacy of a one
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on
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one conversation. She was unable to relax and talk with the same ease as the women around her, but consoled herself with the idea that she learned much more by listening.

Now she discovered that the body of a young girl who had been brutally murdered had been found early that morning. Michelle was also shocked to realise that another murdered woman – a prostitute – had been a regular at this very salon, or at least she had been until perhaps two, maybe three years ago when she started to go rapidly downhill and no longer troubled to groom herself very much.

‘Well, I'm not going out after dark on my own,' Julianne said. ‘Neither is Sophie.'

‘How old is Sophie now?' the woman in the chair next to Michelle said, looking at Julianne in the large mirror that faced them.

‘Fifteen and thinks she knows it all.'

‘Oh you mustn't let her out of your sight, not until he's caught.'

Julianne expertly inserted the metal tip of the steel comb she was wielding under a strand of Michelle's hair and flicked it over, before proceeding to paint more dye along the new parting.

‘Do they think it's the same man? I mean is it a serial killer?' Julianne said.

‘Oh, they won't say, will they? That's why we have to protect ourselves,' the other hair stylist said, then as if to show her strength in this regard – her unassailable resolve – she picked up a large silver hairdryer with a long nozzle like a gun and switched it on, making such a noise that it stopped the conversation until she'd dried her customer's hair.

When the hairdryer was switched off and it was quiet again, Michelle suddenly found herself speaking. She watched herself in the mirror as she did so, and it therefore seemed that it was her reflection that had made the decision to talk and had put the words she said in her mouth. ‘I think I saw something,' she said.

Because of the sudden silence after the drone of the hairdryer, because it was the strangely timid Michelle Brandieu who had spoken and because of the words themselves, all eyes turned to the older woman and there was a moment of wordless surprise before all of the women began to talk at once.

‘What?'

‘Oh, my God!'

‘What did you see?'

‘You must tell the police!'

The babble of voices came at Michelle like so many shooting stars as she sat – a bright sun – at their centre.

‘What was it, Madame Brandieu?'

‘Do you want to use the phone? I could find the number for the local station.'

Michelle began to feel uncomfortable as the focus of so much attention. Besides which her hair was nowhere near finished and the white roots of her dyed black hair made her self
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conscious about her age and dignity.

‘I will contact the police as soon as I leave here,' she said, gazing resolutely at her reflection. ‘I do not think I should say any more, it may affect the investigation.'

Her formal words, spoken so primly, produced a sour atmosphere in the salon. The other women caught one another's eyes, imparting sharp signals of frustration and annoyance.

As soon as Michelle left the remaining women began to talk about what she had said.

‘I wish she had told us what she saw.'

‘It was wrong of her not to tell us, we need to know – to protect ourselves, our daughters.'

Julianne pursed her lips and lifted a strand of her own long blonde hair in her left hand, studying it for signs of split ends. ‘I've been thinking,' she said, ‘when the old sow said she saw something, she might mean, you know, she saw it in the stars or the cards. Or dreamt it. Otherwise wouldn't she go straight to the cops?'

There was a silence as they absorbed this.

Then one woman spoke up, her voice quivering with indignation, ‘Well, I still think she could have told us what she saw, whatever it was, however she saw it,' and all of them nodded in agreement.

Lexicon

Marilyn had woken up with words tumbling around her head as if she had been dreaming poetry. She kept a notebook next to the bed in which she recorded dreams, ideas, or as now, word sequences.

‘Late in the evening we cut through the graveyard,

laughing at nothing and stumbling over roots,

bones, branches, columbine.'

Columbine. Columbine, just a flower. Mentioned by Shakespeare. But now no longer simply a flower. Impossible to use the word without the other association obliterating its simple meaning. But nonetheless it was duly recorded.

Scott stirred beside her, so she turned to look at him.

Love, she thought, and wrote that down underneath the other words.