GRENOBLE

 

7.1

The train leaned into the curve of a slate-blue lake, a bank of mountains surrounded them, and as they glided almost without sound into a tunnel the view snapped to Ford’s reflection. He looked, he thought, too thin. Weight gone from his face, his hair, grown back with more grey. A young couple in matching anoraks sat across the aisle, legs splayed, both wearing shorts, a fact that didn’t make sense, this being February, there being snow outside. They looked foolish, a little plump, thick ruddy thighs as round as ham hocks. The girl wore an iron brace on her leg, and her suitcase was too heavy for her to lift. While boarding the train a long line of people had bottlenecked behind her, when Ford offered help she had thanked him in German, making a point of her partner’s uselessness.

Out of the tunnel the carriage became brighter. The falling snow obliterated the mountain that rose directly from the tracks in simple white plates, fields sloping up, broken with black outcrops. The train’s slick motion, more serpentine than mechanical, unsettled him. Anxious about his decision to come to Grenoble, he consoled himself that this was for one day only. By the weekend he would return to Koblenz and explain his absence to Rolf. On Monday he would transfer the money from the junk account. He imagined two scenarios: one in which he stayed for a period and continued delivering cars until he was certain that everything was OK; in the other he was immediately elsewhere, gone, although he could not specify where this elsewhere might be. Before any of this he would have to explain to Nathalie why he had not contacted Colson Burns, but could not figure a suitable excuse.

The young couple opened a pack of sandwiches and the stink of vinegar hit his stomach, and he wished that the journey was over, wished that he was in his hotel, asleep, with everything done.

*   *   *

Despite the snowstorm the train arrived on time. As arranged, Nathalie’s brother Stéphane met Ford at the station; polite, he bowed and swept back his hair as he straightened up, then offered to take the backpack. Confused by this formality Ford held on to the pack and made the mistake of answering in French. Full of apologies Stéphane explained that Nathalie would not arrive until the following afternoon. The snow had caused problems with trains and flights out of Paris, but it was only a matter of a short delay. He would take him to the university instead, tomorrow, as arranged. Hopefully Nathalie would be able to meet them later in the day. Eric’s belongings were in an office on campus, and Ford would be able to spend a little time with them. The man spoke quietly, as if this were all underhand. The university, he said, knew nothing of his visit, but Nathalie had many friends who were guaranteed to be discreet.

Tired, Ford asked to be taken directly to his hotel.

‘But you’re staying with me? Nathalie arranged this.’

‘I have a hotel booked. I’m afraid I’ve paid.’ Ford looked as apologetic as he could manage. He wanted to keep this brief, in and out, everything done quickly.

*   *   *

Nathalie’s brother wouldn’t leave after he’d dropped him at the hotel. The man was too attentive, and while Ford made excuses for his tiredness, Stéphane paid no attention to his yawning, his reminder of the time.

Happy to be finally alone, Ford lay on his bed. The blue floral wallpaper extended up the wall and onto the ceiling. The fidgety pattern matched perfectly so he could not find the seam. The bed was too soft and the room too warm, and it reeked of perfume, old-fashioned, rose geranium. He recalled other hotel rooms, times when he didn’t have to mind the expense.

He checked the street, and half-expected to find Stéphane outside, still dithering, but the street was empty, silenced by the snow, the bulk of the view taken up by an office building.

As he undressed, Ford settled his mind over the small changes to the following day: Nathalie’s delay was no inconvenience, he didn’t know what he would say to her in any case. After he had seen the notebooks he would leave as quickly as he could. Most of what needed to be done would be managed ad hoc, on the spot. The circumstances themselves were so foreign – in every sense – that it disturbed him, although he could not explain why. Closer now to success than failure he decided he needed a drink, more than that, tonight he would rather drink than sleep.

*   *   *

Ford sat at the bar in his hotel on a smooth leatherette stool. The bar was nothing more than a padded banquette and a small shuttered counter, a row of optics bolted to the wall, not a bar so much as a rec-room, the same room used for breakfast. He drank the only malt they had, drank half the bottle, taking it in steady measures, using the whisky to work through the expectations for the following day, a certain anti-climax to find himself close to what he wanted. While he liked the idea that no one would join him, he regretted not going out to a bar. Although he didn’t want company, he wouldn’t have minded the presence of others, a distraction from his own thoughts. He reconsidered the idea when a young man in a business suit came into the room. The man also appeared unhappy at the coincidence, took the seat beside him with a small apology and waited for the desk clerk to come through from the lobby to serve him.

Ford bought the man a whisky, which they talked about, both admired, stated their preferences. An American with a name of two first names, Mark Mathews or Mathew Marks, said that he was in town for business, and after an appreciable silence Mark Mathews / Mathew Marks asked Ford if he was also in town for business.

‘That’s right.’ Ford straightened his back and sipped his whisky.

The man looked hard at Ford, a weakness to his posture, he shook his head as if to shift an idea.

Ford raised the glass to his lips, and spoke softly over the rim. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You spend all day driving, or flying, or flying and driving, or sitting on some train, and you find yourself in a town you don’t know and you want a quiet drink with company, but not small talk.’

The man shrugged and ducked his head. ‘I won’t disturb you, but small talk is fine with me.’

Ford set his glass at the bar, and pushed it back with two fingers. ‘There’s a parasite, a very common parasite – I don’t know how I know this – in every situation it becomes something different. First, it starts as something that resembles an egg, and it gets eaten by a snail, but there’s something about this parasite that makes the snail sick, so it regurgitates the parasite along with this fluid which, as it happens, is highly attractive to ants. So these ants eat whatever it is that the snail has left, and with it the parasite. The parasite then changes into something different inside the ant, only instead of making the host sick, this time, it does something to the ant’s brain, and remember, this is a simple single-cell organism which can’t survive on its own. But what it does is it makes the ant behave differently, and when it becomes night instead of returning to the nest as it would ordinarily want to, instead of going down, looking for safety, instead of looking for its nest, underground, it has this urge to go up. Up. As high as it can go. In most cases this is only going to be a blade of grass, because most of these ants, in this instance, live in fields. So these ants, in the evening, have this urge to climb instead of hide. This is where the ant gets eaten by a sheep, because sheep prefer to graze in the evening, and the ant is right on top of that blade of grass. And this is where the parasite comes into its own because the sheep is the parasite’s preferred host, sheep are the target, and once it’s inside the sheep it begins to thrive, and it changes again. It becomes something new and it begins to divide and for a while there is a kind of equilibrium: the parasite helps with the sheep’s digestion, and the sheep provides a happy home, until, inevitably, the parasite over-populates the intestine, which prevents digestion, stops everything from working, and is just a bad, bad, situation. When there are too many of them the sheep gets sick, and the parasite, sensing this, changes again, but this time, it becomes exactly what it was at the beginning, so that when the host dies or otherwise evacuates the parasite, and snails come to feast on the sheep, or on the sheep’s waste, the whole process can start over.’ Ford paused, and looked directly at the businessman. ‘I know. You have to ask yourself if this is true. You have to ask, how is it that something without a brain can be so cunning, so in control, that’s what you have to ask. Because most things with a brain just, somehow, don’t have that wherewithal. Unless you understand that intelligence isn’t what matters here, that behaviour, not intellect, is what commands this little parasite, and behaviour, in this instance, is entirely reactive. So all that this parasite is doing is reacting to a situation. That’s all.’

He stood up, feeling the whisky in his legs and stomach, and the room to be a little too warm. ‘The man who told me this story works for a man who is fat. He’s just fat. He’s big. And he works for this company, which is successful beyond belief, and it was built out of a whole bunch of smaller businesses which were brought together, over many years, to become the top of their field. But. Rather than settle with being in the middle of something big, what he did was he, the man who worked for this fat man, broke this company into pieces, or, maybe he just knocked off one piece – but he hid some money, a lot of money – to do this, and then, once everything had blown over, once that company was in pieces, or once he got the piece he wanted, he found that money, and everyone liked him so much that instead of being one man lost among other men, rather than settling in the middle, he became the only man at the top. You see this? You see how this works? That’s proactive, that’s being proactive.’

As he walked to the door he heard the businessman ask his name, and for one moment, before dismissing the idea, he thought to answer Stephen Lawrence Sutler, just for the hell of it. After so much caution, what harm could it do?

‘What are you doing in Grenoble?’

Ford shrugged. ‘Someone is missing. They think I have information about where he is, they think I know what has happened to him but I don’t. I honestly wish I did. I’m here to collect some information for myself and then I’m leaving.’ He ran his hand through the air, sawing up, free.

7.2

Stéphane arrived early and sat with Ford as he finished his breakfast. The hotel’s comfort was increased by knowledge of the snow outside. Stéphane sat without speaking in a thick coat that seemed to hold cold about it. Ford thought that he was wrong about the man, he wasn’t inept at all but shy, he stuttered slightly, blinked, shut his eyes when he spoke, and found English uncomfortable, as if his thoughts did not quite lend themselves to this language. He passed Ford a leaflet and suggested that they both go. Martin’s exhibition was open, and it was very close. They could visit Magazin before the university. It would be on their way.

*   *   *

The exhibition centre, a refurbished factory with a large glass roof, a flat front, and broad hangar doors, was located at the edge of the city in an old industrial estate. Ford came into the building through a small metal door. The word ‘Magazin’ ran in a signature pale blue across the entire front. Inside, incongruous with the arcane industrial iron and glass building, sat an immense white cube, bigger than a house, with one curtained wall. Through this – and it took Ford’s eyes a moment to adjust – was what he took to be a cinema, although there were no seats and one wall, being larger than any screen he had seen before, held a massive, pulsing and shifting digital image. An image so immense that the people standing inside the cube appeared irrelevant, diminished; mites in an upturned box.

*   *   *

Overawed by the scale, Ford looked up. Hands crossed the screen, red fingers of spangled light, before the blur clarified to a close shot of scrubland, or rocks and sand: a rock face. The image twisted in and out of focus, showing a sinew, white then pink, the sky, the rock face, a strange beat to the pace, slowed down and almost soundless: the entire space brightened and plunged into darkness as light swelled from the screen. When the picture came into focus it showed the wide bowl of a dusty valley, and Ford felt a pang of recognition. The shot held for a brief moment, and Ford could recognize Mehmet’s van, and stopped some distance before it two figures: Nathalie, himself. Breathing filled the space, intimate, laboured, drawing down the air and calling upon the people watching to breathe in time. Not one word spoken, but Eric’s breath, husky, edged with tone, just about to speak, a hesitation between thoughts. And there, bright for one moment, the camera turned to show the boy himself, his hand wedged into the rock face, hanging by one arm and smiling – dark eyes, jet black; a generous mouth – another hesitation, a half-smile held and lost.

His first sense that he was running to a plan outside of any agreement he might have made came as they returned to Stéphane’s car, and Stéphane mentioned that Eric’s mother, Anne Powell, was in Grenoble collecting her son’s belongings from the university. The statement, which was supposed to sound casual, came out of Stéphane’s mouth as a brittle and predetermined fact. Nothing casual about it.

‘She would like to meet you.’

And how interesting would that be? How dangerous? Already seated and belted, Ford could see the trap, and guessed that they had no idea what they had set up. Anne Powell would recognize him from Malta, without doubt, and there would be no rational way to explain this coincidence. For a mother missing her son she would see only plots and intrigue. This simply couldn’t happen.

‘Will she be at the university? Now?’

Stéphane half-turned. He didn’t think so, but his explanation sounded untruthful. ‘I heard from her yesterday, she’s staying at Nathalie’s in Lyon. She has a car to collect. I think she’s in town tonight, but I can organize something for you.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes. Tonight.’ The man nodded to himself. ‘I think so?’

They discussed times and suitable restaurants, Ford knew he would be long gone. As soon as he had the information from the notebooks he would leave.

*   *   *

It wasn’t until he came into the room that he realized he’d been tricked. Stéphane’s slowness that morning, his suggestion that they visit Magazin, was calculated to bring him to the university at a specific time.

On the table, set deliberately in view, laid side by side, were six of Eric’s small black notebooks. Behind the table sat two investigators from Colson Burns who rose immediately, hands offered in introduction, beside them two vacant seats. One of the men was the man from the bar, Mark Mathews, and he offered his hand a little apologetically, admitting that yes, it was quite a coincidence that they were staying at the same hotel.

‘I didn’t see you at breakfast.’

The man flushed and admitted it was a long night. Ford doubted that any of this was coincidental.

Once the men had introduced themselves they suggested that they wait. They were hoping that someone else would join them.

After an awkward wait they started. Whoever else was coming would arrive later, if Ford didn’t mind the interruption. The men apologized, and seemed a little uneasy, fidgeting with their jackets and hands. First, there was the question of his name: in Eric’s notebook he was first referred to as Michael, not Tom? It is Tom?

Ford nodded, ‘Tom Michael.’ He held Mark Mathews’ eye then smiled.

Mark Mathews said, ‘Oh,’ simply, and returned Ford’s smile, ‘I see,’ and drew a pen across something he’d written. ‘Do you have any form of identification?’

Ford titled his head and said that his passport was back at the hotel.

‘A driver’s licence?’

‘Hotel.’

A poor performer under stress, Ford was surprised to find that he had the situation in hand. As a man who actively disliked the pressure of small negotiations and interviews, he decided upon presenting the facts, and presented them in their simplicity, starting with the coach station at Kopeckale. These people wanted answers, he told himself, plain statements, they did not want questions or doubts.

He gave a brief description of his first encounter with the boy, and allowed the investigators to interrupt. When he answered questions he made sure that he appeared thoughtful, and made allowances for interpretation. Between them the group explored the inconsistencies that rose between the three versions: Nathalie, Martin, and Ford.

‘He stayed on the coach, and said nothing about where he’d been. I later saw bruises and scratches down his side when he was changing, and he asked me to keep quiet because Nathalie wasn’t comfortable with him climbing on his own. He said he’d made a promise to her.’

About Martin: ‘Nathalie told me about the project, and Eric let me know some of the tensions. I think his interest in the project was sincere. Martin was clearly his tutor, and Eric worked for him, as you’d expect. I didn’t see anything that looked otherwise. In private, I think he wasn’t impressed by Martin, he didn’t have much respect for him. I think he found Martin hard work. They bickered in the way that people bicker when they’ve spent too much time together.’

About Eric’s interest in him: ‘I didn’t have any idea. The last time we spoke, as I’ve said, I was waiting for a bus and I wasn’t paying much attention, and he was annoyed with me. I really didn’t catch what he was talking about. He was looking forward to leaving, but it didn’t sound like he had an immediate plan. I think he was going to meet his mother. We had a couple of drinks, just tea, then he left, he seemed frustrated, but nothing out of the ordinary. When I paid the bill he came back, and that’s when he approached me. It wasn’t much, but I wasn’t expecting it. I think it was obvious that I was surprised and that I wasn’t interested.’

‘This is when he kissed you?’

‘That’s a misunderstanding. He didn’t kiss me. I’m not sure what it was, but he stepped close. He had one hand on my hand. It wasn’t like a formal goodbye. It was intimate. I was surprised. It was strange, he just quickly stepped up to me. I think it was just a moment where he forgot himself. I don’t know what it was, but we were both embarrassed. It happened out in the open, in the market. The misunderstanding came when I was speaking with Nathalie.’

About the notebooks: ‘He told me that he had a code for writing in his diary. I’m not sure what it was, but he showed me how the code worked, and took down some numbers of mine from an account number. My luggage was interfered with on the way to Istanbul, I had some things stolen and I lost those numbers. Which is why I contacted Nathalie. I assumed he’d turn up. That his disappearance wasn’t anything significant.’

Ford managed to keep his attention away from the notebooks.

When the conversation turned to his own affairs he tried to maintain his command, but immediately began to feel uncomfortable.

Mathews was curious about what he’d said last night, about a friend? A business?

‘I deliver cars for a company based in Koblenz. I used to have my own company, but that ended a while ago. It ended badly – business debts.’

‘You were specific about a company breaking up.’

Ford sighed, a little manufactured perhaps, but not ingenuous. ‘I don’t like to go over this. I lost my business. I was made bankrupt, which caused – do I have to go over this? My partner took control. It was a long time ago – and sometimes, when I drink, it doesn’t seem so distant.’

The men’s expressions remained fixed, and Ford could not tell if they saw through him, or saw instead a man disappointed in business, in life. Someone so used to failure that he wore it with resignation.

7.3

Before collecting Eric’s belongings, Anne met with the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. He appreciated her visit, he said. He appreciated how difficult this must be. The man spoke in a clearly prepared monologue: the tutor that her son was travelling with has been disciplined, he is no longer teaching, and his companion would also not be invited to return to the faculty to teach. The announcement of this decision lay in the hands of the disciplinary board, and these things usually took their time: but they would not return. It was hard to understand how such a thing could happen, and he felt deep regret that this had occurred.

‘Eric is old enough to make his decisions. I know that. When he asked about the trip, it wasn’t to ask permission. It was something he wanted to do.’

The dean appeared uncomfortable. ‘So you will visit the project? You will go to Magazin?’

Anne shook her head and lightly whispered, ‘No.’

The dean looked to the door and held a question to himself. ‘I’m glad,’ he said, beginning to rise, ‘that we were able to meet.’

*   *   *

She wasn’t sure that she wanted to take the boxes. Now, more than before, it seemed pointless. Who would wear these clothes? Who would listen to this music?

His bedroom looked out at the mountains, the tiny detail of so many trees foregrounded by snow, the chair lift, the stanchions, and the long bunker-like restaurant at the top. She had seen photographs of this view, perhaps from a postcard he’d sent her, when in the summer it was greener, or greyer. Had he even seen it with snow? She imagined he would have kept his room similar to his room at home: ordered, smart, the poster of a climber on the wall, the course books lined in alphabetical order. She imagined that having to share a room would have been an agony. The boy whose room it was now stood beside the door and looked down at the carpet, and she was grateful that he looked nothing like her son. She found it hard not to look at the bed, unmade, the quilt drawn over the mess of sheets. Eric would have kept everything in place. The room had a shiftless disorder, although it was not untidy; something hurried about its appearance. He would have kept it in better order.

Uncertain how to leave the room she wished the boy well with his studies, and the boy, breathless, nodded as she spoke. ‘This is strange,’ she apologized. ‘I don’t mean this to be so strange. I’m so sorry.’

Four students walked with her to load up the car, and she felt ridiculous following after them, redundant.

*   *   *

After clearing the dormitory Anne drove to Lyon. The two men from Colson Burns would be completing their interview, and she agreed to wait at Nathalie’s apartment on the understanding that they would call her as soon as they had any information.

Nathalie had set aside a bottle of wine with a few of Eric’s belongings, a book, some photographs and DVDs, along with a note saying that Anne should make herself comfortable, and that the DVDs contained small videos of Eric taken from the trip. Most of the photographs were of Nathalie and Eric, pictures from restaurants, a photo of Eric standing with bags, distracted; Nathalie featured in each photo, hugging him in some, or sitting beside him and leaning into him so that their company looked easy and companionable. Anne felt a pang at how beautiful Nathalie appeared in these photographs, and felt a great sense of waste. She imagined scenarios, situations of how Eric might be living, of where he might be spending his days, but could not believe them.

She settled in front of the TV with a glass of wine and played through the DVDs one by one, pausing and freezing the image, replaying to catch his voice. She returned to one specific sequence of Eric setting up a camera, a bright blur of sunlight then darkness while his hand twisted the lens, and suddenly his face as he stared directly into the camera. So serious, so focused. Anne caught the image and sat close to the screen to assess his expression, scanning back and forward and back to measure how happy he was. This was important. She wanted the film to tell her that he was happy, and she examined the footage until she found a smile. He was talking with someone off camera, a conversation lost to the wind, when his expression suddenly brightened – and there, at that moment, she could see that he was happy, and she imagined that he was talking with Nathalie, but along with the smile came one word, spoiled by the wind, but clearly one short word. Tom. She replayed the moment. The smile, then one word: Tom. It was Tom. Without doubt. He was smiling at Tom. She replayed the image, frame by frame, and watched how this smile burst from him, how he couldn’t help himself. She recognized him in these images, not only though the simple surfaces and sounds, but as someone who was deeply familiar to her, known and loved, as if this was something she had forgotten. She recognized his complicated expressions, his swift shifts of mood, how his mind always, just always, seemed busy, so that worlds of thought could be operating all in one instant, you would never know – and she realized, while watching his reaction to this man, that after finding the computer files she had thought of him as someone different, and she had allowed this knowledge to change him into someone she did not understand. In this footage, she found the same person she had always known, that smile, so instant, so given, and so familiar, wasn’t that just like him? It was always funny how seriously he took himself, how you could ask him a question and see him think, how you could watch him consider the possible answers. And didn’t he always break away with a smile? She could recall this trait from his childhood, how he could never make a choice, how he always pondered as if the idea of making any choice was just too difficult, and then, decision made, he would laugh.

She replayed the footage in real time and reacquainted herself with her son.

She exhausted herself examining the DVDs and decided to return to Grenoble that night. Although the weather remained foul with a storm pushing from the mountains into the plains, she was determined to make the journey.

*   *   *

In the car she could smell Eric’s clothes, musty, unaired; the cardboard boxes gave off an odour of something long forgotten, ignored. The stink of stored clothes soured her stomach. Her first husband had left the house with the clothes he was wearing, money, and nothing else. A year later she had cleared away his belongings, a task which took almost no time, as there were no photographs, few keepsakes, only bundles of clothes, as if he had deliberately lived provisionally, spent his life waiting to disengage. This, she understood, was different: despite Eric’s love for order, he’d left too much behind, too many pieces – she drove carefully, a little hesitant, intimidated by the traffic, and realized that she wanted this over. She wanted the investigation to stop. She wanted an end, some kind of mercy. The entire enquiry was built on an idea about her son that she no longer wanted to consider.

At nine thirty the promised storm broke and snow began to fall, wet and heavy, mesmerizing as it zipped over the windscreen, the wind picking white whorls in a black sky. Anne drew off the motorway and waited for the call from Colson Burns. She waited on the hard shoulder, hazard lights blinking, the snow quickly thickening and limiting her view. The car shuddered as traffic passed on the motorway. When the call came it brought only disappointment.

‘There’s nothing,’ they said. ‘He admits to being in Narapi, but his information adds nothing new. He delivers cars for a dealership in Koblenz. He was helpful but this gives us nothing. We showed him the notebooks, and he apologized for not being able to meet you; he’s leaving early tomorrow morning. We’re checking his information now, but much of what he says tallies with what we already know.’

Anne had trouble starting the car. The engine turned, slow and cold, resistant, and when it finally started it gave a feeble tremble. As the traffic passed the wind seemed to batter harder, rocking the car, and she could not see clearly enough to turn back onto the motorway. She drove along the hard shoulder at a timid pace, but the traffic would neither slow nor make room for her to merge into the lane. Where the hard shoulder ended at roadworks and a bridge she stopped the car, alarmed that she was trapped, she could not now move forward, and was locked into place by the passing traffic. She spoke out loud, leaned her head against the steering wheel, hands gripped either side, whispering, I-don’t-know-what-to-do, I-don’t-know-what-to-do. Somebody, tell me what to do. She thought to abandon the car, thinking it better to brave the weather than wait to be hit.

She called her husband. Woke him, and managed, until she heard his voice, to keep herself calm and then immediately began to cry. She heard him panic, tried to draw herself in, then quickly explained her situation. ‘I’m trapped on the hard shoulder. I can’t turn. I’m stuck. I don’t think they can see me. I don’t know what to do.’

She listened to his voice, how he came out of sleep, worried for her, advised her to stay with the car, to keep calm, to stay on the phone. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and the traffic will clear. Keep talking to me.’

Why had she come alone? Why had she insisted on this trip? What had seemed important, a necessary step, she understood to be completely beside the point. She had told strangers facts about her son, facts she had not spoken over with her husband. Facts which had seemed huge, transformative, which were now a small part of a larger picture.

‘I want this to stop,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t. I don’t want them to investigate him any more. It’s too soon. It’s all too soon. It’s too fast. I want them to stop. I want this to stop. I want you to call them. I want you to ask them to stop.’ Colson Burns were the wrong people, the wrong approach. What had they achieved? What had they discovered? What was their purpose except to regurgitate the same facts, strike the same bruise, insist day after day on her son’s absence? I want this over. I want this to stop. I want to talk with you about Eric.

7.4

Late in the evening, Anne received a second call from Mark Mathews telling her to come directly to the Hotel Lux. He gave directions, and told her the room number. She readied herself for the discussion.

Mark Mathews waited for her in the lobby. He stood as she came through the door, and with an air of intimate care he guided her through to the guest lounge. He had news, he said, she should sit down.

Anne took a chair at one of the small tables and asked if he had spoken with her husband. The man paused and said no.

‘Tell me what you have, but there is something we need to discuss,’ she said, collected now, determined that this was the right decision. Heat from a small radiator hit her legs and she changed her position so that she faced the man, appeared ready for news, although, in truth, she wanted to tell him that she’d had enough. She’d practised on the way in, refining the words: You’ve done excellent work. Thank you. I’m very grateful for everything that you’ve done. But I don’t feel that this is helping. I’m sorry, she would say, I think this is too soon. I want you to stop what you are doing. Immediately. I do not want this to continue.

Mathews passed over a small device and a pair of headphones and told her to listen, his voice low, but containing excitement.

‘Listen to this,’ he said, ‘we have a development. He’s speaking about himself.’

Anne took the earphones and looked at the investigator as she listened, uncertain about what she was hearing. Ford’s voice sounded as part of the texture of the room, coherent, calm, measured, not quite rambling, the alcohol unlocked stories which came not quite free enough, elliptic, busy with potential.

She took out the ear-buds, uncertain about what she had heard. ‘I don’t know what this means? Did he know he was being recorded? He sounds drunk.’

Mathews shook his head. ‘We have informed the police. My partner is with them now. The name he’s given us doesn’t check out. There is no Tom Michael or Thomas Michaels. He isn’t who he says he is. The numbers, his travelling in Turkey. We gave the police photographs and a copy of the interview earlier this evening—’ He drew a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘What do you know about this man?’

Anne found herself blinking. Uncomfortable. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with finding Eric. He said he didn’t know anything.’

Mark Mathews flattened the paper on the table. ‘There are other issues here. He isn’t the man he says he is. We can’t allow this to pass. We have an obligation to confirm what he has told us.’ He asked her to look at the photograph. ‘Do you know who this man is?’

Anne looked at the image, a printout of an ID, a man looking slightly stupid, a little lost.

‘I don’t know who this is. Is it him? I don’t know?’

Mathews sat upright, unable to suppress a smile. ‘We’re not entirely sure, but the scars on his face, his travelling close to the border in eastern Turkey, it’s suspicious. At the very least.’

Anne shook her head, caught up in his words. How easy it was to deliver. We can’t allow this to pass, as if she also agreed, as if this decision was something she would naturally follow. ‘I don’t know who this is. What does this have to do with my son? Is he responsible for what has happened to Eric? Does he know where my son is?’

Mark Mathews shook his head. ‘Mrs Powell? Anne—’

She pushed the photocopy away and struggled to remain calm. ‘Please. Explain to me what this has to do with my son. What does this change? Will this get us closer to finding my son?’

Mathews’ face began to redden.

‘You told me that he had no news, he knew nothing. You told me that he has nothing to do with Eric. He said this on your recording. Has this changed?’

‘We have to check, these are our procedures. He might not have been forthright. It’s taken three months to get an interview with him. The only reason he’s here is to look at your son’s notebooks. He might be exactly the kind of man we’re concerned about. He might have other information about Eric. He might not have told the truth.’

‘Might? So you doubt what he told you about my son? What are you saying? Are you saying he has or he has not told you the truth?’

Mathews stood up. ‘I have to be honest. I don’t know. This is looking like something separate. As a witness he’s looking unreliable at this moment, but until we have more information it’s impossible to say. If he’s lying about who he is, then he might be lying about the information he has.’

Anne closed her eyes and asked carefully. ‘Does this change anything he told you earlier today?’

‘What he told us sounds about right. It confirms everything we already know.’

‘But you have suspicions?’

‘About his name. I think he was lying about his name, and he has refused to show us any identification.’

‘But in regard to Eric?’

Mathews’ phone began to ring and he stepped back to answer. While he spoke he looked to Anne. ‘Room nine,’ he nodded, ‘I’ll wait.’ When he cancelled the call he said that the police were coming. The matter was completely out of their hands.

*   *   *

Anne asked for the phone in the lobby, and called room nine. She spoke quickly and left no room for interruption. Done, she thanked the clerk, and turned to her purse to find a set of car keys. As she breathed out she felt a contraction of something more than breath, a keening sense that she was culpable for a mistake which she wanted to correct.

7.5

‘Please listen to me. My name is Anne Powell. I am Eric Powell’s mother. You spoke today with investigators from Colson Burns, a company I hired to help find my son. I have to warn you that your discussions with them have been recorded, and that they have approached the police. I’m sorry if this is going to cause you trouble. This isn’t what I wanted. I have a car, outside, I will take you wherever you need to go. I think the police are coming now. I think they are on their way.’

*   *   *

Ford took the notes he had taken during his meeting with the investigators. He checked the numbers on the paper, then thought to write the number elsewhere, on his hand, but realized he didn’t have time. He tucked the paper into his pocket determined not to lose them a second time. Passport. Wallet. Numbers.

Leaving his backpack in the room he came quickly down the stairs and out of the hotel to the street, numbers repeating in his head. His left hand thrust in his pocket on the slip of paper – everything else left behind. The snow had begun to fall in rougher bouts, and he drew a scarf over his mouth, pulled the hat lower, and squinted into the scurry. The storm brought snow and silence to the city. On a side street cut directly up from the hotel he caught a double flash, headlights from a stationary car, and made it across the road only moments before the first police car rounded the corner, soon joined by a second vehicle.

Anne hunched forward, hands braced on the steering wheel. She resisted flashing the headlights a second time as the man came toward the car, as the police were now directly in front of the hotel.

Ford sat quickly in the passenger seat, and she told him to hunch down and stay down. She slowly backed away, the headlights dim. The lights from the two police vehicles wheeled across the front of the hotel in bright loops of red and white. Anne spoke nervously, half-aware of what she was saying: they should leave, she wasn’t sure how, she didn’t know the city. Keep down, she said, keep down. Once they were out of the city she would take him to a railway station, an airport – anywhere he wanted – and then, when she realized that he had nothing with him, she stopped talking, startled that this was all he had, the clothes he was wearing, while the car was over-packed with her son’s belongings.

She drove slowly, an agony. Came to the river and needed to decide a direction. Ford asked if he could sit upright now, and Anne looked up and down the road for police cars, but said no. No. No traffic on the street now. The snow began to fall thicker, obliterated the distance, seeped colour from the night, so they seemed to be enclosed in a bright and intimate world. Simply a car, busy with packages and bundles. A man slumped forward, his hands gripped over the back of his head.

‘I have his clothes,’ she said. ‘Eric’s clothes. I don’t know if they will fit you. It might be worth looking through to see what you can use.’ How vulnerable this man seemed to her, crouched in a car, entirely dependent. ‘I feel that I owe you. I can’t say why exactly.’ And this was not true. She understood exactly what she wanted to express: gratitude that her son had met him, and that it did not matter whether these feelings were reciprocated. She was happy that Eric had felt, what, love? It didn’t have to be love. She suspected it was small, a wayward attachment, one of the intensities of travel, of being loose in the world. She would settle for something lesser, it just needed to be something akin to love. She wanted to explain this, because what matters, what counts, isn’t how well you are loved, but how able you are to give love. Wherever he is, whatever has happened, she can be certain of this.

There was one place she could think of to go. A small village, La Berarde, up in the mountains. A mountain hut above the village, she was not sure how far. La Berarde wasn’t much, just a hostel for climbers and student groups, closed in the winter. She was pretty certain about this.

‘I’ll take you to a place in the mountains.’ She heard herself speaking, and felt surprised at how orderly she sounded. Rational. ‘There is a climbing hut. They should have provisions. Beds. I’m sure. I’m sure there will be something. I can find you there in the morning. I can bring you clothes that will fit. Tomorrow, I can take you somewhere else. I think they will be watching the stations and the airport.’

According to Eric the Glacier du Chardon was a desolate place and one of his favourites. There were some climbs there, good ones, climbs that were complex and testing. She had a box of his climbing gear, and she had wanted to drive to La Berarde, to leave his things there, the CDs, the books, the climbing apparatus. She felt good about this decision. If he came back. If. He would understand the decision. This felt right. She would go there. Leave him. Later they would regroup, figure out what needed to be done. She would help this man out of trouble.

Ford said thank you, and once they were in the suburbs she told him that he could sit upright.

*   *   *

They drove through empty villages. Houses of grey and black flint. The road two simple black tracks in a thread of white. She talked sporadically. Let ideas come to her. It was a shame not to have come here with Eric when it would have been busier. She knew that climbing was important to him, and wished she’d shared that with him a little more. Shown more interest. There isn’t much to La Berarde. One climbing hut. She was insistent about this. The climbing hut.

Anne drove in silence. The road followed the river, veered from one bank to the other across small iron and stone bridges poised above vast gullies. The sides of the gorge rose steeply beside them, banked with fir trees, thinning out to rock and snow, below them it fell to steep shorn rock, black chasms, and white rapids. She switched off the radio and said that she knew that her son was not coming back. Was it bad to say so? She was certain. Everything was against him being alive.

The next moment she was equally certain that he was alive. You hear these stories about people, who for no reason start a new life. Define an entirely new path. There’s no logic to it, but everything old has to be discarded. Some people can’t settle, it just isn’t in them. They just aren’t attached to the world. They can’t see the damage they cause. Some people. It isn’t deliberate. They just can’t see it.

‘I don’t mean you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I really don’t. I mean Eric. I think he can do that sometimes. Just drop everything and start from nothing. School. University. The move to New York. Each time it was a reinvention.’ She turned to Ford, who looked ahead, the dim light from the dashboard soft on his face, a scar under his eye. ‘I’m just not ready. You know. It’s too soon.’ She whispered to herself. ‘I think you understand?’

She wiped her face, her sweater curled over the heel of her hand. ‘I’ll go back,’ she decided. ‘I’ll find out what’s happening. I’ll come back in the morning. I’ll bring food and coffee. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

*   *   *

He found the climbing hut further up the road, beyond where the ploughs had stopped, so the path became deep and uncertain, hard to follow, and difficult to stride through. He saw the car idle, red lights blooming on the snow, the exhaust funnelling thin and low, before it slipped quietly out of view.

He pushed through the door, looked back down the path but could not see the road, and could not see any suggestion of the car. The night now entirely silent. Some people, she’d said, I think you understand. Despite her explanation, he knew that she was talking about him.

The building, a strong black stone house, similar to the houses in the village, stood as a block on a steep ridge below the stark walls of the gorge; the valley extending before it in a soft white swoop.

Some people.

The door wasn’t locked, but the building was cold, entirely without heat. There were five rooms upstairs, in the first three the beds were stripped down to the wire springs. In the last two he found mattresses and thin blankets. There was nothing to burn in the kitchen, and in the communal rooms the windows, jammed open, tipped snow over the slate lintel and onto the floors. A smaller drift had settled in the fire-place. He found no food, no water, only an old travelling alarm clock and a torch with one battery that clattered about inside when it was lifted up. There were blankets, thick, army grey, and rubber wellingtons stuck upside down on pegs on the walls.

He prepared to sleep. Took off his socks and laid them out beside him. He lay on the mattress, curled into himself. His feet, his hands, quickly lost sensation, and his thoughts began to run scattershot over the same ideas:

She isn’t coming back.

She’s changed her mind about helping.

She’s bringing the police.

She’s bringing the investigators.

She knows who I am.

She believes I am responsible for the disappearance of her son.

She has abandoned me.

This is a punishment.

She wants me to disappear.

*   *   *

The snow continued through the night, so that it did not become dark, and the room held a faint luminescence. He considered what he should do. The road would be lost now, buried. If he had climbing boots he would have better hopes of making his way forward. She wasn’t coming back. His only hope now would be to walk out of the mountains.

*   *   *

In the morning the storm had worsened, and the flakes thickened, so that the house appeared to crouch under the weight of the snow. His hands and feet remained numb and his thinking seemed disjointed, inarticulate.

*   *   *

Grey rock rose close and steep on either side of the path, and although it was cold Ford began to sweat. The path ascended through a narrow pass, over small bridges, packs of ice which spanned a rivulet so blue it appeared thick with dye. Ahead of him, perhaps four or five hundred feet from the house, the valley opened to a bowl, snow-covered and rutted in broken folds, and stained with dirt: a mammoth’s skin. Far below the skyline brightened along the horizon, and he imagined the streets of a vast city laid out in the plain, the dark curve of a river cutting through. In this city he would not be Sutler, he would not be Ford, but someone entirely new.

The cold, so bitter, sharpened everything to the present, and tempted him further into the snow. He shed his jacket and determined that he would walk for as long as he could manage, out and down from the mountain, into a field of white.