WINTER HAS COME. The roiling sea sends waves of chaos and destruction to break on the shore, obliterating old shorelines and flooding buildings along the city ramparts. Near drownings and almost fatalities happen. The sound of trickling water can be heard everywhere.
When the rain lets up the crow people return to stand on the corner, their black capes parting and lifting in the strong wind to reveal demure white cassocks as their hands reach out to motorists through open windows or intercept passers-by, their motions synchronised and fluid as they move in time to a remote unseen call. We are connected to them by history.
The words Daniel cannot speak to my face he can type up using a keyboard and then print on A4 sheets, turning his fraught boyhood into something that is part fabrication, part confabulation. I sit there on the balcony crouched in the chair, facing a grey winter sea and opaque sky, my legs twitching under a blanket, the latest few pages gripped in my hand, wondering if I have the strength to break this hold they have over my husband’s soul. Isn’t that what he intended? That I should confront them? The naked boy on the table shivered uncontrollably, his limbs still kicking spasmodically as the effects of the electric current that had coursed through his body wore off. He was vaguely aware of the circle of adults in the background of his agony waiting silently, patiently, for the man controlling the machine to set off the pain that ran through his nerves like knives slicing off his bare skin. He shut his eyes tightly and directed the pure fire of his rage against them all … What had they done with his mother? He had to help her … Teeth bared like his friend the wild wolf in the forest he threw himself upwards and sideways, fighting the restraints that held his ankles and wrists with superhuman strength for a puny, skinny boy … Come Holy Spirit … Come Holy Spirit … Possess his soul … Possess his soul … Take him for Jesus …
I return the sheets to the envelope, and place it with the others under the stamp albums in the dented suitcase that had avoided the pogrom of my father’s effects by living under my bed. The false bottom hid his savings on the boat to Africa. It is a place Simone will never look.
Only Enid knows if my husband is the boy on the table.
Detective Olmi contacted me to say I was required to appear in court for a case in which Daniel would be tried in absentia. Although the crime novel Lady Limbo was being sold widely in France, he could not tell me how he had discovered that my hosband, Daniel de Luc, employed un nom de plume. Olmi’s poor English told me what I already suspected: somebody had betrayed Daniel.
‘Can’t tell me or won’t?’ I asked abrasively. ‘I’m not coming to France. You can’t make me testify to anything.’
‘Madame de Luc, I am afraid you are wrong. I can make you testify. All I have to do is subpoena you and a legal process will commence. I can assure you I will not stop until you have appeared in a French court to answer certain questions that only you can answer. For the rest, I have witnesses in a witness protection programme that will testify to your husband’s involvement.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, trying to keep the breathless panic out of my voice. ‘It’s too dangerous. They’ll never be safe again.’
‘Believe me,’ Olmi said crisply, aware he finally had my attention. ‘They have chosen protection from the state versus threats from petty hoodlums.’
‘I bet you’re bluffing and that there’s no evidence. Even if they find him, without concrete evidence linking him to the murders, Canada will never extradite him.’
‘Le bloffing it is for amateurs. It is for a French court to look at the evidence,’ Olmi retorted. ‘The subpoena process starts tomorrow. Bonsoir, Madame.’
Before testifying in France became a real possibility, there were certain things that had to be done.
I made an appointment to see our lawyer and told him I wanted to make a will leaving everything to our daughter and making him the trustee in case anything should ever happen to me.
‘What’s going to happen to you?’ Hans Merensky asked carefully.
‘I need you to make an oath that you will keep whatever I tell you now between these four walls and no one else will ever know about it.’
‘I swear it on my mother’s grave. Is that good enough?’ Hans Merensky smiled, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.
After he’d read the birth notice I slid a document in a plastic sheath across his desk.
‘That’s a copy of the original birth certificate.’
He sat back as if he was in a rocket car hurtling down the straight at breakneck speed.
‘Simone is a Van den Bogen? Is this authentic?’
‘There’s no reason it shouldn’t be. A woman who knew Simone’s mother had the presence of mind to rescue that document from a burning building. I also have a witness to the fact that Jan Van den Bogen sold his granddaughter to the Sarrazins. I was never sure what I should do about it.’
‘Would she sign an affidavit?’
‘I doubt it. She’s an old, sick woman now and she has her own code of honour.’
I told him about Olmi’s call and he listened, but in a distracted fashion, his eyes still on Simone’s birth certificate.
‘Olmi is a very determined man,’ I explained. ‘He has made finding this murderer a point of principle. I can’t be sure what will come out at the trial. I have to protect Simone.’
Hans Merensky drummed his fingers on the table, and then spoke.
‘Van den Bogen is a very wealthy man. I remember reading he made his money in shipping but he was smart enough to get into alternative energy sources like gas from fracking right from the beginning. You realise this makes her the heiress to an incalculable fortune?’
I nodded. Shock made people state the obvious.
‘I considered burning the original but it didn’t seem right. It’s not my decision to make. Some day − and it may be sooner than I thought − I’ll have to tell her everything.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I need to know you’ll be there to help Simone make the right decisions if I’m not there. In case Van den Bogen ever changes his mind and comes looking for her.’
‘The problem may come from those who stand to lose their inheritance,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘The last I heard, the new Mrs Van den Bogen was struggling to conceive. Nicky van den Bogen, Simone’s father, had two stepsisters. I don’t know if they’re still alive, but if they are, then they stand to inherit everything if Van den Bogen has no other heirs. I’m not certain where Nicky’s mother, the ex Mrs Van den Bogen stands, but I imagine the divorce settlement cuts her out of any future will.’
Merensky fired questions at me. ‘What are your instructions? Am I to claim on her behalf if Van den Bogen were to pass away? I know you have made your mother Simone’s legal guardian in the event of your death, but is she the right person to handle the stress of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit?’
‘If anything should happen to me, my bank has written instructions to release an envelope in my bank security box to you, and to you only. You will find the original birth certificate in the envelope. My mother knows nothing about Simone’s connection to the Van den Bogens. I don’t want her involved more than she has to be when the time comes. Can we draw up something that makes you the executor of my will and Simone your legal ward for her finances?’
‘It can be done. Guardianship can be split between a guardian of the person and a guardian of any money and property. Of course it works best where the guardians agree jointly on actions that are in the best interests of the child,’ he said cautiously.
‘I’ll talk to her.’
He seemed satisfied. ‘I’ll draw something up. And I’ll get one of my juniors to have a look at the Van den Bogen setup, to see what kind of resistance we can expect. I understand,’ he said hastily, putting a hand up to stop me speaking. ‘They will have no idea why they are doing the research. Simone’s part in the matter will remain confidential; you do not need to concern yourself. In a case of this nature it’s best to be prepared. I’ll keep you informed. If anything comes up, I’ll revert to you for further instructions.’
Merensky was a man of integrity. This was how we’d always done our business. He cleared his throat now.
‘It’s time for another visit to the boy.’
‘Already?’
‘It’s almost a year. Are my instructions the same?’
I’ve promised myself never to ask questions about the boy Sasha, who has been given a new identity and has been translocated, together with his maternal grandparents, to a quiet French village where nobody knows them. The authorities that operate across international borders have arranged this in exchange for Nada Sarrazin’s testimony, implicating her husband as the crime boss of a syndicate that specialised in providing underage boys and girls for the insatiable international sex industry. The Sarrazin’s son is part of a promise I was coerced into and I have only half kept. Instead of going myself, as I’d agreed with Nada Sarrazin, I send Merensky, and when he returns I receive a one-page report with a physical and psychological assessment and the annual school photograph. This goes into an envelope that I courier to the prison and consider my part of the deal done.
The report describes him as a physically robust twelve-year-old who has settled into his new identity and new school well and has a good relationship with his maternal grandparents. He is mature for his age and scores highly on IQ tests but less highly on EQ tests. He passes his free hours fishing or on his computer. No problems detected.
Sometimes it was safer to trust an enemy than one’s own goons. The Black Queen needed me to do this because she wanted to keep the boy’s new identity a secret from all the other criminals out there who would use it to slit her vulnerable underbelly open. I agreed to the deal because it gave me access to a part of her life that few people knew about and because there was always the possibility that I might need some kind of leverage with her. Her murky connection to Daniel made me uneasy, and as Simone’s first adoptive mother, she knew things about my daughter’s early life that I didn’t.
‘The grandparents are getting old,’ I said. ‘What happens if circumstances change? Who will take him then?’
Merensky hesitated as if he was going to say something and then changed his mind. He’d never said anything, and the reports were always scrupulously factual, but I had the impression that something about the boy troubled him. ‘I will make enquiries,’ he said, making a note in his diary. I guessed what he was thinking. The boy might not need guardians for much longer.
‘What about his mother? Any news?’
I’d made it a policy not to drive myself crazy asking for information about what the Black Queen was up to. I had to control the constant feeling of impending horror or it would control me. But there was a more sinister aspect to the deal I’d struck with Nada Sarrazin: an implicit threat, tit for tat. So long as the boy remained safe, no harm would come to Simone from her side.
He nodded in reply, his face stern. ‘Leave to Appeal has been granted. According to the papers filed, there were a couple of aggression incidents in the first few months, but she claimed self-defence and then turned over a new leaf and became an exemplary prisoner, even running a hairdresser course for the inmates. Judges like that kind of thing. Her lawyers are pushing for the case to be reassessed because of undue influence. They claim her husband bullied her and physically assaulted her, so she did what Albert Sarrazin wanted out of fear for her safety and the safety of her son. They’re asking the court to find that there is no proof connecting her to any of the major decisions related to the financial affairs of the porn production company. Furthermore, they are arguing that emotions were high after Simone was taken from the SUV and the media attention was prejudicial to Mrs Sarrazin’s case.’
‘What about Simone’s abduction? And the online auction?’
Merensky fixed me with his penetrating eyes that had probed into all types of human misdemeanours.
‘Mrs Sarrazin is still arguing that Sarrazin told her he wanted the child moved to another house because of her delinquent behaviour and the unwelcome police attention she was attracting to the house. According to her statement, the filming was being interrupted and that was affecting their supply line and their income stream. She claims she did not know anything about Sarrazin’s intention to move the child out of the country using his private plane, or to sell her, as the prosecution claimed. Her defence is that he didn’t trust anybody, so he frequently made plans without telling her beforehand. Her lawyers are going to have to convince the court that Sarrazin handled the online auction side of the business and that she wasn’t involved. In my opinion, they’ll succeed. Now that public sentiment has shifted, there’ll be a feeling that her sentence was too harsh.’
‘So the prosecutor is not going to be able to stop her coming out early?’
Merensky considered my question. ‘If she sticks to her story and they have no hard evidence to disprove what she is saying, the judge has no choice but to release her on the balance of evidence. If Mrs Sarrazin keeps her head down and does nothing foolish, I can’t see that the appeals court will have grounds to deny her application.’
‘You’re the lawyer, there must be something we can do,’ I objected. ‘Can’t we lodge our own objection to give more weight to the prosecution’s arguments?’
‘We’ve been over this before,’ Merensky reminded me, his voice kind. ‘The only thing that might have substantial influence on the court’s decision is if Simone was called to the stand.’
‘No. It would be the last straw. She couldn’t take it.’
‘It could be done in camera. Because of her age, the judge would allow it, I’m certain. As your lawyer I must urge you to reconsider. It would strengthen the prosecution’s case considerably.’
‘It wouldn’t work. Simone refuses to see that Nada was implicated in what was done to her. Otherwise she has to face the fact that Nada didn’t care about her. I won’t do that to her.’
Merensky’s shelves were filled with beautifully bound volumes that appeared to belong to another age. Somewhere in those volumes was all the knowledge in his head but it was not enough. The court wanted proof that Nada Sarrazin was a bad person in her own right and did not just do what her husband told her to do. Had they not seen the shocking videotape material and read the investigation reports?
‘What about the two teen runaways that they tracked down from the porn videos? Couldn’t they testify?’
‘Indeed,’ Merensky said. ‘I believe that is the path the prosecutor is considering. But it’s a risky tactic that could backfire. The girls were sex workers happy to get an extra income. The judge might decide that Mrs Sarrazin participated but she lacked the intention, and suspend the whole five-year sentence. If the witnesses do a credible job for the prosecution, then even if the judge rules she was an accessory to the criminal offence of child pornography, he might commute her prison sentence to house arrest for a couple of years with a rehabilitation element thrown in.’
‘You mean let her do community work with underage girls? This is berserk.’ My hands were fists in my lap. ‘What about the porn videos showing Simone, and the investigator’s reports about the abduction? Does all of that count for nothing?’
‘Her lawyers are experienced and competent. All they have to do is instil doubt. I’m afraid that without Simone’s testimony there is every possibility that the Appeals Court will revoke the earlier conviction for Abduction of a Minor for Child Trafficking Purposes. The way they explain it in law school is that a court in South Africa would rather let one hundred guilty men go free than jail one innocent man.’
‘You’re saying there’s no hope at all of keeping that evil woman behind bars?’
‘I’ve never found hope very useful,’ Merensky said with a dry smile. ‘I prefer the complexity of faith. Every so often, the law surprises even me. You believe in that girl of yours. Get her to open up to you. If your daughter testifies, there’s a good chance the judge will keep Mrs Sarrazin locked up. In the meanwhile, I’m going to do everything in my power to delay this case. And I mean everything,’ he said, and then looked up. ‘Within the ambit of the law, of course.’
At the door we shook hands as we always did at the end of our meetings. ‘We need a miracle,’ he said. ‘But I’ve seen it happen before.’
How odd, I thought on the way to the car, that my shrewd lawyer, a man practiced in the ways of the wicked world, believed in miracles.