Clarisse drove me home. She wouldn’t come into the house, so we sat in silence listening to the ticking of the engine of her cream Ford Vedette. One of the dogs wandered over and cocked a leg on the front wheel, but to my surprise she laughed.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for all you’ve done. It has meant a lot to have you here.’
I stretched across the seat and enfolded my fragrant friend in my arms, and she stayed there, her head against mine, far longer than I expected. ‘Go back to Paris,’ I said with an affectionate hug. ‘It’s safer there.’
She drew back with a wince. Her poor ribs had taken a bad knock in the general panic to escape the grenade yesterday. ‘I’ll go if you come with me,’ she said. ‘Come with me now. Right now. Before things get worse.’
She was smiling her usual sleek smile but I could see in her eyes how earnestly she meant it.
‘I can’t. Not until I’ve found the driver of the van. André will not be safe till I do.’
‘Oh Eloïse,’ she sighed. ‘And what will you do when you find him? Kill him?’
It wasn’t said as a joke. She was deadly serious.
‘Of course not,’ I said lightly. ‘That’s what the police are for.’
She stared at me, examining my battered face, completely unconvinced. ‘I worry about you,’ she muttered.
Four simple words that squeezed my heart. I was so touched, so tempted to shout, ‘Drive, Clarisse, drive. To Paris. To safety. To a life without bullets whistling through my hair or grenades hurtling at my face.’
To a life without Léon?
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I intend to come out of this in one piece. But thank you, I’m grateful, I truly am.’ I opened the car door. ‘Now go back to Paris.’ I climbed out.
‘Damn you,’ she laughed, and smacked the cream fascia with her palm, ‘you’ll be the death of me.’ She roared off in a cloud of dust.
I gave her half an hour head start and then I drove to Arles.
*
I took my time. On foot in the old part of town. Using window reflections to check behind me, dodging down shortcuts, twisting through alleyways only fit for cats. The ancient stone walls wrapped around me and I kept in their deep shadow as I doubled back on myself in the maze of tiny narrow streets where the sun rarely reached. The strips of sky overhead were thin and grey as the cobbles. I liked it that way. Trapped. No escape.
This time I would wait in his house till he came home. However long it took. Days. Weeks. I’d be there to greet him. I touched the canvas bag at my side, felt the weight of the gun and the weight of my decision. Both took me to the edge.
Clarisse’s words whispered in my ear. What will you do when you find him? Kill him?
*
To my surprise, the door of Bertin’s house was unlocked. I stood in the tiled entrance hall and listened. No sound, no movement except the movement of the thoughts in my head. They were crashing into each other until I drew out the gun and curled my hand around its metal grip. That silenced them.
I removed my shoes and edged my way on silent feet through the rooms. The place felt different. Less serene, more jumpy. Or was that me? The image of Léon in his dark police uniform and with a legal warrant in his pocket searching each room slid into my mind and loosened my breathing. I didn’t expect to find Gilles Bertin here this morning but I was willing to wait. And wait. But first I checked the downstairs rooms and the kitchen. No hint of him in the living room or dining room, but the kitchen bore his imprint.
A cup of coffee sat half-drunk on the table alongside the flaky remains of a croissant and a small glass dish of apricot jam. A jacket hung on the chair. The window at the back looked out on to a miniature courtyard with a slatted bench and a limp climbing rose. No sunlight, just the dirty lid of the grey sky. On the table lay an open newspaper and a pair of heavy-rimmed spectacles. The yard was empty.
I stepped back against the wall just inside the kitchen door and stood there immobile, my ears straining to catch the faintest scratch or whisper. After a further two minutes I shifted to the bottom of the stairs. Out in the open, I moved quickly, racing on tiptoe to the upper floor. I stopped, listened. With fingers cold as ice on the gun grip I edged to the first door and stepped inside.
No one. Nothing. An empty bedroom with no wardrobe to hide in. Musty and unused.
Yet I was convinced Gilles Bertin was here. Somewhere. Unless he’d left in such a hurry he’d had to abandon his coffee and spectacles. He didn’t strike me as a man that careless, so I made my way silently across the landing towards what I remembered to be the main bedroom. The door was part-open. With my foot I pushed it further, gun out in front of me.
I saw him at once, Gilles Bertin himself, and I resisted the urge to back away. Smart dark suit trousers, Ronald Colman moustache, hair slicked down. The distinctive shaded cleft in his chin. Stupidly it occurred to me that it must be hard to shave in there. Not that he’d be shaving anymore. Gilles Bertin was sprawled flat on his back and the front of his white shirt had been decorated with a scarlet sunburst.
Something shut down in my head. First Mickey. Now Bertin. My legs wanted to rush me to his side, but I clung on to my sense of caution and I entered slowly. Eyes and gun barrel darting over every corner of the room. Skin prickling. Finger itching to pull the trigger.
No one else was in the room. I stood at Bertin’s side, staring down at the dead body of the man who had struck such fear in me, and I hated the feel of tears on my cheeks. I turned away. He wasn’t worth my tears. Quickly I searched the rest of the house, creeping on tiptoe, jumping at the slightest shadow, but I forced myself into every room.
Reluctantly I returned to the main bedroom. Neat, tidy, dark furniture, damask bedcover. I recalled only too well what was hiding behind the bedhead, so I went over, located the photographs in the pouch and dropped it into my bag. I forced my gaze back to the bloody shirt on the body on the floor.
I must go and telephone the police. Léon won’t be there. But still. Go. Telephone.
Instead I dropped to my knees on the hard wooden floor that Léon had torn up. This close, Bertin’s face was slack and without menace, eyes closed, specks of blood glistening in his moustache.
Glistening? Not dried to black flecks?
It had only just happened. Get out. Get out now. Run.
A noise behind me. I spun round still on my knees and found myself nose to nose with the wrong end of a gun.
*
‘Eloïse! Merde! I almost shot you.’
I looked up. My mother’s face stared back at me.
‘Isaac!’ He’d been behind the door. I jumped to my feet. ‘Isaac, what are you doing here?’ My words came to a halt as I took in the gun in his fist. The blood on his fingers. The smear of scarlet streaked across his shirt-front. My hand grasped at his arm and clenched it tight. ‘What have you done?’
My brother’s wide eyes clouded with panic. ‘No, Eloïse, no, no. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.’
He opened his fingers and released the gun as though it burned his skin. It clattered to the floor and both of us jumped back from it. I stared at its blued metal. I knew the weapon, a Smith & Wesson revolver, Chief’s Special. Small, compact, a five-round cylinder, American manufacture. Somewhere my brain registered these facts. As if they were more important than the fact of a man lying dead at my feet with a sticky hole blasted through his chest. That fact got pushed away to somewhere dark. Somewhere I didn’t want to touch.
‘What the hell happened to your face?’ Isaac demanded.
I swung back to him, suddenly angry. I didn’t know whether the anger was at my brother or at the man on the floor. ‘What the hell happened to your hands?’
Our gaze fixed on the blood on them. It was daubed over his palms in a spider’s web of scarlet runnels, but how do you get blood on your hands if you shoot someone with a gun? It doesn’t happen. Unless you put a hand on them. To check that they’re dead.
‘What happened here, Isaac?’
‘I didn’t shoot him. I swear I didn’t, Eloïse.’ He pushed his hands away from him as if he couldn’t bear to have them near. He was shaking his head back and forth, denying their existence.
I had to get him out of this room. I took hold of his arm and propelled him out the door. The bathroom was at the end of the landing and I swept him inside, turned on the washbasin taps and pushed his hands into the flow of water. The basin turned pink.
‘Tell me exactly why you are here,’ I said. ‘We have to be quick. The police will be on their way.’
In the mirror I could see his face as white as the wall tiles, his lips unsteady. I leaned my body against him to offer comfort.
‘Please, Isaac.’
He kept his eyes down, his pale lashes shutting out the world and me with it. ‘I was given instructions to come here,’ he said. ‘To come to this house. I was told the door would be unlocked and I must go upstairs to wait for a message from someone.’ His gaze flicked briefly to my face in the mirror. ‘It’s not you, is it?’
‘No, Isaac. It’s not.’
‘I came here and found . . .’ The words dried up.
‘Was anyone else here?’
‘No. I felt the man’s chest to see if he was breathing but . . .’ He shook his head.
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘No.’
‘What happened next?’
‘I heard the front door open. I snatched up the gun because I thought it was . . .’
I turned off the tap. ‘You thought it was the killer returning? For you?’
He nodded, one sharp terrified jerk of his head. I lifted my skirt, it was a full circular navy-blue one, and I dried his hands on the underside of it. I didn’t want any sign of him left on the towel.
‘So you saw no one?’
‘No.’
I wiped the taps and washbasin with my skirt. ‘Tell me who gave you the instructions to come here.’
For the first time he looked at me, blue eyes dark with confusion. ‘I can’t.’
‘Isaac,’ I raised my voice, ‘this is not the time to be secretive about your Communist affiliations. You’ve been set up. Someone wants you accused of murder. Can’t you see that? The police will be here any moment. You have to get out. But first,’ I buttoned up his jacket to hide the smear of blood on his shirt, ‘first, tell me who sent you here?’
‘I can’t.’ I opened my mouth to object but he stepped away. The initial shock was passing. He was gathering himself together, his limbs stiffening, his mouth firmer. ‘I can’t tell you, Eloïse, because I don’t know. The leader of our action group within the Parti Communiste Français contacts our controller by telephone. We have no idea who it is. It’s safer that way.’
‘So you do the bidding of someone you don’t know.’
‘It is not as blind as you make it sound.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Now was not the time to argue the point. I steered him out the door on to the landing.
‘Run,’ I said urgently.
He blinked hard. Realisation was dawning on him. ‘Eloïse, you must leave with me. Right now.’
‘Go, Isaac, go. After what happened at the air base, the police will be looking to show the Americans how they treat violent Communists.’
Abruptly he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. ‘Thank you.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘Come too.’
‘First I must deal with the gun.’
He’d forgotten the gun. His fingerprints all over it.
‘Go now,’ I urged. ‘I’ll follow.’ I pushed him to the stairs. ‘I promise.’
With a last nervous look back at me, my brother raced down the stairs and out the front door. I lifted my skirt, snatched off my waist-petticoat, wet it under the tap and wiped every surface either of us might have touched, including the gun. When I’d finished, I stood over Bertin. I wasn’t sorry. I couldn’t find it within myself to wish him back into his life. The cleft like the mark of Cain on his chin. But he held no power over me now.
Who was responsible?
I hurried down the stairs and out into the street, ears straining for the sound of police boots. When I turned the corner at the end I heard a car’s engine come roaring into the street behind me. We’d made it out only just in time. As I wove my way through the old streets of Arles back to my car, I thought about the gun lying on the floor back in the house. I hated the knowledge of what it had done. I hated the hand that had held it. When I said I knew the weapon, the Smith & Wesson revolver, I didn’t mean I knew the make of it. I meant I knew the gun. The actual gun. I knew it because I’d last seen it in the drawer of Mayor Durand’s desk.