I risked opening one eye a crack. The light was dim and I could taste blood on my teeth. I opened my other eye. Not a good move. Pain turned into blinding light inside my head. I closed my eyes, waited till I could catch hold of a few ricocheting thoughts and attach them together, then opened my eyes again.
A sense of grief sat heavy on my chest, crushing my ribs, but I didn’t know why. It took me a full minute to work out that I was in my own bed in my own bedroom and that the grunting noise I could hear was my own breathing. I tried to pull together the images spinning through my mind but they kept splintering apart again and again until the only one I was left with was Mademoiselle Madeleine Caron on her knees, blood darkening her blouse and seeping from her mouth. Her eyes huge with rage. And hate.
I raised a hand to my face and found a bandage on my forehead, a dressing on my nose, and as I touched it with cautious fingertips I swore under my breath.
Léon? Where was Léon? Was he hurt? An image of him lying bleeding on the ground tore through my mind, but surely he’d been too far back with the colonel. Dimly I dragged forward the memory of him in conversation. He must be safe. But . . . I could still see a blurred image . . . of a dark uniform shredded.
‘Please.’ I whispered the word out loud to give it strength. ‘Please let him be safe.’
‘Who do you mean, Eloïse?’
My head rolled to the side. A man’s face broke into a thousand pieces and slowly re-formed. Amber eyes. Sandy hair. A look of concern softening his features.
‘André,’ I murmured.
André was seated in a chair beside my bed. He was smoking a cigarette and had a book open on his lap. Even though I couldn’t see its cover, I knew by the extreme thickness of it that it was Les Misérables. He reached out, slotted my hand in his and closed his fingers around mine. His were warm, mine were cold.
‘That was close, little sister.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Too close.’ He leaned forward and kissed my head.
That was all. But I could feel a jumpiness in his fingers that had not been there before.
‘What happened? After she threw the grenade. Who was hurt?’
‘Two guests died.’
My heart stopped. ‘Who?’
‘Two men from the bank. No one you know.’
No one you know. Four words that pieced my world back together.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘For their families.’ Guilt soured my stomach. ‘If I hadn’t suggested this open day on the base, they would still be alive.’
‘No, that’s nonsense. It would have happened eventually. When the USAF got round to inviting locals over in an attempt to build bridges, Mademoiselle Caron would have done exactly the same. It seems she was hell-bent on causing mayhem from what I heard.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Was the mayor hurt?’
‘No, unfortunately.’
‘And Léon?’
There. The question was out.
‘Don’t look so worried. You can’t get rid of Léon so easily.’
‘He’s okay?’
‘He took a hit but not serious.’
I pushed myself to sit up straight and wanted to seize the words from his tongue. ‘How bad? Where is he? What happened to him?’
‘Calm down, you’ll only start bleeding again. Lie back. He’s doing okay, that’s what the ambulance men said when they brought you home. He’s in the military hospital at the air base. His back got a bit cut up, but he’ll survive.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and smiled at me. ‘Léon is made of solid steel, you should know that.’
I nodded, just once. Lights darted across my eyes, making André’s face sparkle. ‘Tell me what happened at the end.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I was hit from behind. Was it the blast from the grenade? It felt like a truck.’
The truck in Paris slammed into her mind . . . the strings of blood hurling themselves across the car.
‘No, no truck. It was Léon. It seems he threw himself over you to protect you, but the blast hit him so hard that he smacked you into the ground. Concussion and a broken nose, but you’ll live.’
The silence grew loud in the room while we both considered whether that last statement was true or not.
‘A hero,’ André muttered softly.
Was he happy for Léon? Proud of his friend? Or jealous? I couldn’t tell. He released my hand, folded his arms and looked serious.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘down to business. Let’s hear everything that occurred at the air base.’
I lay back against the pillow and talked him through it, step by step. When I say ‘talked him through it’, that’s not quite true. There were several times when I found my eyes shut and my talking was all inside my head, so I had to backtrack. But he was patient. Gentle. Kinder than he’d been since the crash. We talked about Madeleine Caron. Deceased. Shot dead. ‘She was a raving Communist,’ he said, ‘and she certainly made her point. That will be millions of dollars worth of damage she caused to the planes and the runway. I don’t think Colonel Masson will be inviting locals around again in a hurry.’
I told him about my conversation with Mayor Durand. I left it till last because I knew he would be angry.
‘You told him you knew about the copied documents in his desk? Are you crazy, Eloïse? Why the hell did you do that?’
‘Because I am sick to death of having my life threatened. Can’t you see that? I am sick of having people hiding in shadows, stalking my movements and making my mind spiral down into black holes. I want to drag them out of the shadows. To hold them up to the light where I can get a good look at the bastards.’
I was shaking. Not with fear this time. Not with shock. I was shaking with gut-wrenching rage. ‘I’m not like you, André,’ I said fiercely. ‘I thought I was. But too many people are getting hurt. Including you. I can’t accept it as a necessary part of the job, I can’t live with them hovering round my bed at night. I thought I could but I was wrong.’
‘Eloïse, hush, let it go.’ He stroked my arm where the blisters from the stable fire had left their mark. ‘Rest now. It’s almost morning, it will be light soon and then the shadows will melt away and you’ll feel like my brave Eloïse again.’
But it wasn’t true, I knew that. I would never feel like that Eloïse again. I’d lost something in that blast yesterday that I wouldn’t be getting back.
‘I told Mayor Durand that I knew about the top-secret documents in his desk because I wanted to frighten him, to panic him into making a mistake. It’s the only way he’ll ever reveal his source of Intelligence at the air base.’
‘They are scared of you, Eloïse.’
‘That’s good. Because I’m scared of them.’
He studied me by the dim light of the lamp. ‘But they don’t know you,’ he said softly, ‘like I know you.’ He patted my hand. ‘Now go to sleep. It won’t feel so bad when you wake up.’
I let myself believe him.
‘I’ll read you to sleep.’
When I was a child he always read me a bedtime story, always, in which good triumphed over evil. Books, I’ve learned since, do not tell the truth. He sat back in his chair with what came close to a contented sigh and opened the book.
‘I may not be here when you wake up,’ he told me as he turned to the first page.
‘Where will you be?’ I asked, anxious.
‘At church.’
I blinked with shock. Even that hurt.
André started to read aloud the story of man’s attempt to make amends in life for something he did wrong, his voice smooth and comforting. I closed my eyes.
*
I was woken by shouting. Somewhere downstairs in the house.
‘Get out of my way, you piece of pig-shit.’
‘Non.’
‘Don’t you point your rifle at me.’
‘Allez-vous en.’
‘I’m going nowhere, so get off the stairs.’
‘Clarisse!’ I called out.
‘There, you see?’ Clarisse’s voice spiralled up to me, triumphant. ‘She wants me to go up there.’
I heard Louis’ belligerent tone on the stairs and I realised André must have set him there to guard me, the way I’d done for him yesterday. I liked that. Not just the extra safety, but the fact that my brother cared enough to do so.
‘Louis,’ I yelled, ‘let her come up.’
I heard his grunt in response. And her delighted laugh.
Clarisse swept into my bedroom with all the ferocity of the mistral, except that the mistral is a cold wind whereas Clarisse was brimming with warmth and flowers.
‘Chérie,’ she said, throwing open the shutters, ‘ma pauvre chérie.’
The day was overcast, the sky a dirty white and the air cooler, which made my pounding head easier to ignore. ‘Clarisse, what are you doing here on a stinking farm? I never thought to see you step foot in a bull-yard.’ I grinned at her and felt my nose pop painfully.
‘Only for you, Eloïse, only for you.’ She rolled her eyes in disgust and dumped a vast bouquet of flowers on my bedcover.
‘Thank you. You are kind to me.’
‘I am. And don’t you forget it when you get back to work.’
I skipped over that thought. She bent close and kissed my cheek so lightly that I barely felt it. She smelled even better than the flowers.
‘You look a terrible mess,’ she declared bluntly.
‘Have you heard anything more? About Madeleine Caron, the woman who did the attack?’
‘I’ve been asking around and everyone says the same, just that she was a headmistress with strong anti-American views. One old gossip smacked her toothless gums with pleasure in telling me that Madeleine Caron had an affair with Mayor Durand in their younger days, but that might just be the old crone sticking the knife in. It seems that Colonel Masson wanted some people like her to come to the open day because he had the messianic belief he could convert them.’
‘Such hubris would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. What about the others who were killed in the blast?’
‘Unlucky bastards.’
She reached into her bag, pulled out a silver hip-flask and unscrewed the top. She tipped it to her lips and took a long swig, before offering it to me.
‘Breakfast,’ she said. ‘Good for sore heads.’
I took the flask, drank and felt a small fire spring into life in my gut. Cognac.
‘Thanks. Now, one more favour, please?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I can guess.’
*
The military hospital on Dumoulin Air Base was sterile. The building was newly constructed, white painted, perfectly clean and run with military precision. If I were sick, I mean really sick, I’d rather burrow into the warm straw in our barn next to Cosette and the rats than be pinned between pristine sheets in this soulless sterile USAF box. But I was grateful to them. When I saw Léon lying on his side swathed in bandages and bruises, I wanted to kneel down and kiss their shiny germ-free floor in thanks for taking good care of him.
‘Hello, Captain. How are you feeling?’
He opened his grey eyes. Bloodshot, I admit, but open and looking at me with the kind of expression that made me want to strip my clothes off and climb right in there with him. To wrap myself around him and hold him till his injuries were forgotten.
‘Oh, Eloïse,’ he said with an ache in his voice, ‘look at you.’
‘You’re not doing so good yourself,’ I said with a smile. It hurt to smile, so I kept it for when it was needed.
I kissed his unshaven cheek and then his lips, a gentle brush, but he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to him. I buried my battered face in his neck and we stayed like that, breathing each other in, letting our skin grow together again. When a nurse came to re-dress the wounds on his back, Léon said, ‘Not now,’ in a tone that sent her scurrying further down the ward. She was accustomed to obeying the voice of authority. I sat down on the chair next to his bed, a stiff military seat not designed for comfort. He continued to lie on his side to ease any pressure on his back, but he held my hand as if he might slide down somewhere dark if he let go.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me. Broken nose?’
I nodded. Carefully.
‘I’m sorry.’ He pulled a face. ‘Concussion?’
‘Better now.’
I had stripped the bandaging off my face and I thought I didn’t look too bad. Clearly I was wrong. My forehead was bruised from one side to the other, with a wide scrape of skin removed, nose swollen, cheekbones puffy, eyes blackened. I still wore a small dressing on my nose to keep it straight. Compared to the Paris crash, this was nothing.
‘And you?’ I asked.
‘Just a few holes in my back.’
‘Just?’
‘That’s it. Now let’s talk about what went on there yesterday.’ Even in bed he had his policeman’s face on. ‘There was more news that I wanted to tell you, not just about the bull’s horns we found at the burned cottage.’
‘What?’
‘It’s about Gilles Bertin.’
‘You’ve found him?’
‘No. But I found something of interest.’
I wrapped his fingers tight in mine. A snake of fear shifted position inside me. ‘Tell me.’
‘I finally got my hands on a search warrant. On suspicion of criminal activities.’
‘To search what place?’
‘Guess.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Gilles Bertin’s house. You’ve searched it?’
‘Bullseye.’