I LEFT SIMONE IN OUR HOTEL room in Paris and when I returned she was no longer there.
I put the hotel key against the pad and opened the door on the Thursday afternoon, expecting to find her watching TV, or perhaps reading or doing something on the old work laptop I had left with her.
‘Simone, where are you?’ When there was no reply, I still hadn’t been unduly worried. I’d already decided in my mind that she’d disobeyed me and gone out alone to get something to eat at the all-hours corner supermarket that had an amazing selection of breads and fresh meats and cheeses. I went downstairs to see if anyone had seen her go out and knew what time she’d gone, but no one had seen the blonde South African girl go out. The chambermaid had talked to the young guest that morning, but she had still been in the room, watching a music show on the television, when she had finished cleaning and let herself out. The on-duty hotel desk clerks were certain that Simone had not walked through the front lobby or one of them would have seen her.
‘It is possible that she took the lift to the basement garage and left that way,’ Madame Musso suggested uneasily, her eyes on the revolving front door. ‘Did Mademoiselle de Luc know anybody in Paris? Perhaps she went to meet this person?’ That was when the first fluttering of fear hit me. Why would Simone go out from the basement? It didn’t make sense.
Detective Olmi arrived with a team of detectives soon after I called him, perhaps not even two hours later. We looked at each other in shock. He had aged considerably, and I think he found me greatly changed since we last met, with my wan complexion and my dark hair now cut so short. Madame Musso brought me some tea in the lounge while the police were busy checking our room for clues to where Simone might have gone. I could see the people standing around, staring at me, and every now and then the word ‘disparition’ reached me. There was a doctor on call; would I like them to contact him? Perhaps he could prescribe a sedative to help me sleep? I snapped at Madame that I did not need a sedative, what I needed was to find out where my daughter was! She hurried off to attend to other guests and I was glad to see her go. It was after nine that night when Olmi joined me in the downstairs lounge and summarised what they knew.
‘Alors, Madame de Luc. I am very sorry to have to tell you that there is no new information. There are many fingerprints in a hotel room, but there is nothing to link any of them to your daughter, for instance on the water glass or on the computer keyboard. There is no sign of a struggle, nobody has seen her leave, and nobody has seen anybody go up to your room. In addition, nothing has been taken, not her mobile phone and not a toothbrush.’ Olmi watched me for a reaction, waiting for me to say something.
‘And you do not have a single idea of where she might have gone.’
He hesitated and then came out with it. ‘Madame, we are looking at all possibilities. We cannot discount the possibility that your daughter has come to harm.’
I had forgotten his bombastic manner, but it seemed appropriate, because I knew that if anybody could bring my daughter back, it was Olmi, the man who had given up a settled family life and a promotion to Executive Director for Interpol in Lyon, so that he could pursue the truth behind the suspicious deaths of a number of Parisian women.
‘It is fortunate that you yourself have a watertight alibi. It will save us time. I have sent my people out to the arrondissement. We will speak to every shopkeeper and metro officer and bus driver, and check with the taxi companies. Somebody will have seen her. And then we will find her.’
Olmi had never carried out his threat to force me to testify in a French court. I guessed that he only had circumstantial evidence implicating Daniel in the murders and that no South African court would support his application to force me to testify based on such flimsy grounds. The tape of my dalliance with Jack, which proved that RMI existed, must have also worked in my favour. Ever since receiving that tape, Olmi must have had his detectives busy finding links between men like Jack, who worked for RMI, and the unsolved deaths that had become an obsession. What could I have told a French court that Olmi didn’t already know? Besides, he must have known that Daniel was too smart to have told me anything that would have incriminated him.
But he is annoyed with me for withholding information about Daniel that I have kept hidden in the study for almost three years. In his eyes, it is even possible that Daniel is somehow involved with Simone’s disappearance. To Olmi, Simone is simply a piece of the puzzle.
‘Your hosband, Madame. Can you tell me where he is?’
‘I have not seen or heard from my husband, Detective Olmi.’
‘Yes, but do you know where he is? That is something different, is it not?’
‘If you are referring to the fact that my husband writes under the pseudonym Gabriel Kaas and that his books are published in Canada, then, as you know, yes, I am aware of that. But I am sure you are also aware that his publisher and agent have stated that they have no idea of his whereabouts. I am no more privileged in that respect than you are, Detective – in fact I am less so, because they do not feel obliged to return calls from a wife, whereas I am certain that they return your calls.’
‘Are you not curious how I found out? Since you did not think it necessary to share this important piece of information with an officer of the law.’
‘I am sure you are going to tell me.’
‘Simone Sarrazin, for whom the whole of Paris is now searching, sent me the book.’
He has no way of knowing I already know this.
‘It is my daughter Simone de Luc who is missing,’ I say, as firmly as I can, determined not to crack. ‘She has not been Simone Sarrazin for a long time, Detective Olmi.’ I am close to tears of sorrow and terror, my grief uncontainable, but need him to understand. By a great effort of will I manage to control my voice and meet his direct gaze. ‘There was sensitive material in the book that I did not want my daughter to read until she was older and able to understand the choices her father made.’
He gives me a little bow with his head. ‘Je m’excuse, Madame. It is her name on our files. She was Simone Sarrazin when I instructed Detective Knappman to prevent the SUV from leaving the Sarrazin house.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say.
‘So … there is nothing you have to tell me that could have some bearing on your daughter’s disappearance?’
‘I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: you are wasting your time if you think Daniel has something to do with Simone’s disappearance.’
‘Perhaps,’ Olmi says, his eyes piercing under the thick greying eyebrows. ‘I heard what happened in South Africa. Your hosband is a man who gets around, Madame. But we must explore all avenues, non?’
‘Certainement,’ I agree.
The police investigation reveals nothing. The Simone Sarrazin case folder is updated by Interpol to reflect the abduction of Simone de Luc. It is as if Simone has been transported out of our hotel room and now exists on another planet in another galaxy, leaving no trace behind to comfort me. I keep myself occupied by passing on my unofficial version of what little information there is − the minutiae of no progress − to Klaus, and pestering him to get more information on the cult. What if she has gone with them? I ask him. Ag nee, Paola, he says, you must not hold onto straws. But he promises to keep looking into the cult affairs. I contact Merensky and ask him to inform himself on South African law with regard to minors leaving the parental home to live with a cult. Heidi tells me that I must follow my gut. She also mentions that Klaus suspects her of being implicated in Volkov’s death. ‘He’s clutching at straws,’ I say.
Unable to eat or sleep or even shower and brush my teeth, I wait for Simone to return, but she does not.
Somebody reports seeing a blonde girl walking down to the river in the next arrondissement. Somebody else reports seeing a blonde girl having an argument with a man in the same area. Olmi has the river dredged for a kilometre each way but no human bodies are found. He comes personally to give me the news. I am in my dressing gown and there are trays of uneaten food all around me. I can smell the odour of my unwashed body and hair but I cannot get up the energy to do anything about it.
Before Olmi leaves, he opens the blinds a little, and slashes of sunlight enter the room.
‘Alors, if you will pardon my rudeness Madame, it is necessary that you have a clear head so I will ask Madame Musso to send a chambermaid up and also to arrange for a doctor. A mild sedative will allow you to get some rest and tomorrow we will talk again. Perhaps you will think of something. You are the person closest to her.’
Too exhausted and too sad to argue with him, I meekly do what I am told. Senior Detective Olmi is a wise man. I sleep the dreamless sleep of the dead. The nightmare of the faceless chauffeur driving our daughter further and further into hell does not taunt me as it has for the last year. In the morning I have some coffee and English toast in the breakfast room that overlooks a quaint Paris street, and when Olmi joins me, my brain is clear. The small voice that once chittered away, warning me about the crows on the corner, the voice that I muffled, is now loud as a pealing bell.
‘I know where she is,’ I say without preamble. ‘She’s gone with the cult.’ It was decided the day Simone offered herself in the place of Roxy, I see that now. Georgie felt something that day, a tear in the fabric of the world, something that had been rent apart that was whole before, but she could not put a name to it, could not properly interpret what she was seeing. ‘You need to get a warrant and search the cult buildings. They are hiding her there.’
‘Hiding?’ Olmi asks. ‘What makes you say this?’
Olmi is a dedicated detective who has gone through many disappointments in his obsessive quest to find the Paris murderer. But his eyes are bright with curiosity and he is still hopeful. There is a long history of conflict between the French organs of state and les sectes, as Olmi calls them. This business of la secte interests him; he does not yet know how it all hangs together but this abduction of a French-born schoolgirl on holiday with her South African mother may prove useful to him. Madame de Luc herself has provided valuable information, even though she is not prepared to offer information on her husband, the fugitive with many names. Olmi uses this sobriquet often, as if he has developed a fondness for his primary suspect.
‘Simone has known about this visit to Paris for months. All the pieces have fallen into place. She planned it so carefully. All the questions about how transport worked, buying the language tapes so she could learn French, the way she would pore over Paris maps for hours. Sometimes she would do strange things − once she stood in the middle of the road with a bus coming towards her − as if she wanted to die before we got to Paris, and other times she would be feverish with excitement, but I never understood what was going on. It was the same as driving a car with a windscreen full of mud and not switching the windscreen wipers on because you’re scared of what you might see. Do you understand?’
‘Mais oui, Madame. Do not distress yourself,’ Olmi says, his eyes sympathetic. ‘I am a parent of two girls. Sometimes there are errors of judgement. Nous sommes tous humains, n’est-ce pas?’
‘I just wanted it to be all right,’ I mumble.
‘But I must ask you, Madame … Why?’ Olmi asks. ‘Is there something between your daughter and these people?’
‘Her father, Daniel, he was brought up in the same cult. It was too much of a coincidence, them arriving in our neighbourhood like that. I begged Klaus to do something about them and he started making things uncomfortable for them, but they still didn’t go away.’
‘Detective Knappman put something in his report about this group, but in France it is common to see them, we are used to them in many villages, so there were no alarm bells. You think they have influenced her? They are always strong with troubled teenagers. But to go all the way to South Africa? So much trouble for one convert?’
I want to tell him that there were days when she was happy, really happy about seeing the city where she was born and that Daniel loved. I think on those days she thought she would not go to them, that she would remain with me and that he would come back and we’d be a proper family. But in the end she decided that the only way was to go to them, that it was not her fate to be an ordinary girl living an ordinary life.
‘They talked to her about things that nobody else did. Maybe she thinks Roxy is with them. Or maybe she thinks they can keep her safe and that I can’t.’
I don’t tell him anything about what Enid has told me, that in the eyes of the Prioress of the cult, Simone, as the granddaughter of Marie Montaigne and the daughter of Gabriel Montaigne, true successor to the Great Leader, has blue blood that goes all the way back to her grandmother’s status as second wife of the Great Leader himself. I had never quite believed Enid’s story, seeing it as a highly unlikely explanation for the cult’s interest in my adoptive daughter, but as I sit there opposite Olmi, I admit to myself that Enid has usually been right, and that this would be no stranger than the rest of Simone’s life.
‘Your hosband was once a boy in this secte?’ He repeats this for himself, as if he wants to try out how the words sound.
I nod in confirmation, and he cocks his head like a bird that can hear something, an interesting new sound in the trees.
‘We have to get Simone out of there,’ I say, to remind him why we’re both sitting here.
Olmi asks the young man helping in the breakfast room for a refill of coffee and then turns back to me. ‘If you are right, then we must act quickly,’ he says. ‘I have instructed my people not to communicate with the media on this one but soon something will leak. Once the media get hold of the story … They will move her to another location.’
Olmi looks worried. He says the cults have learnt from their frequent run-ins with the authorities and are now usually protected by respectable legal firms that successfully protect their clients from any unwarranted harassment. The best bet would be for me to pay the Prioress a visit and ask her permission to look around and that way make certain that Simone is not there. He says this will be quicker and more effective than his trying to get a search warrant.
‘I have something that might help you to convince a judge,’ I say. ‘Daniel sent me some material for the novel he’s working on. The new book is about his childhood in the cult. Will that be enough to convince a judge? I can have them couriered here.’
‘Peut-être,’ Olmi says doubtfully. ‘The trouble with such exposés is that they remain fiction. The judges are wary of cases that involve the sectes. In the past the politicians put pressure on the judges to control the financial assets because they feared that their power would grow too great, but the sectes fought back and some of the judge’s reputations suffered. Their fingers were burnt, as the English like to say. Now, they find every excuse to avoid issuing a warrant. Of course if your hosband was to turn himself in and agree to give evidence in court, then it would be different. We could even consider an arrangement to suit both parties.’
‘Daniel has his own code of conduct,’ I say. ‘So long as you believe he is a murderer, he will not do a deal with you.’
Olmi rubs his chin thoughtfully but makes no further comment about Daniel. Instead he continues talking about how I might gain access to the Prioress.
Usually it is not a matter of just ringing a doorbell, he says, one needs a go-between to set it up. But maybe she will see you, he says with a shrug. These people are curious, just like everybody else.
If I have learnt anything from the past months it is that the boundary between the dreamscape and real life is precarious. The last thing I remember clearly is swallowing the tablet, prescribed by the Parisian doctor, with some water. But did I call Enid Lazarri, specialist in sleep disorders and hypnotherapy, at some point after the strong sedative kicked in?
In the vortex of this other world I have fallen asleep on Enid’s doorstep, huddled against a corner wall. As if I have made a long, arduous trip to get there. I open my startled eyes to see a very small shiny shoe with a hard pointed toe kicking me awake with force. Enid’s small head is coiffed in the familiar helmet of burnished red hair and her midget face is peering at me, contorted by exertion. She is in a business suit today and practically shoves me inside the eerie apartment that has been done up to look like the last emperor’s forbidden palace.
In the unreasonable way of dreams, we miss a beat or two and find ourselves seated at the black lacquered Chinese table with its four stiff-backed chairs. Her miniature form is now clothed in a peacock blue Chinese silk dressing gown with a dragon pattern, and her tiny feet are encased in embroidered slippers that dangle high above the ground. I do not know how she is doing this, or even if she is doing this. I am in Paris and she is in Cape Town.
‘I need your help,’ I tell Enid. ‘Simone’s gone. She went to join the cult, I know it.’
I hear the sharp intake of breath.
‘The second doorway was not closed,’ Enid chants. ‘She has passed through. You were warned.’
And in the fantastic dream this preposterous response requires that I show proper humility.
‘I was wrong, I’ve been wrong about many things. I thought it was over but it is not over, I see that now. I need your help to get Simone out of there.’
‘What makes you think she went to join the cult?’ Enid asks. ‘She could be anywhere in Paris. She has a long history with the city, as Gabriel does. Their fates are linked. He must not go to them, this time there will be no escape for him.’
‘Can you set it up? That’s all I need to know,’ I plead. The terror spills into inadequate words. ‘Do you think they will have physically harmed her?’
‘The Great Leader has been gone for a long time. The new matriarchal order has been kinder to its female members. But in such groups every member has a social and economic role to play. It will depend on the ranking she has been given.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘If a new girl is chosen by a higher-ranking male, even if she is shared with others, she will have more protection and extra privileges. The women who cannot bear children are automatically assigned the lowest rank.’
Terrible images cloud the dream world. Girls on beds bound and crying, girls on their knees in a swill of dirty water, girls screaming in pain as they give birth to baby after baby in the natural way …
‘Naturally, some females fare better in this system than others,’ Enid acknowledges.
‘Why did you never report the abuse to the authorities?’ I rage at her. ‘It’s guilt you feel about Daniel and his mother, that’s why you can’t leave him alone.’
‘Have you considered that she might refuse to leave?’ Enid asks me, ignoring my outburst. We are in a dream after all.
‘Simone is my problem.’
‘So, Paola Dante believes she has everything under control,’ she mocks.
‘Wait! I need the letter in French. You have no need of it. Marie would understand.’
‘Marie’s letter is already in Paris,’ Enid chants.
‘You knew what Simone was going to do?’
‘You ignored my warning,’ she says imperturbably. ‘It was inevitable.’
‘Just tell me where to find it,’ I growl. She gives me the safe box location and reels off the code I will need.
‘Will the letter be enough to get me in?’
‘The Prioress is not well,’ Enid says. ‘It is difficult to say how she will respond. The matter of the future leader weighs heavily on her. And the return of the group from South Africa has been unsettling.’
‘Tell the Prioress that I will show the letter to the media − and that I have a piece of information she will be interested in. And if she still does not agree, tell her that Senior Detective Olmi is a determined man, and that they are already under surveillance, so it is pointless to try and move Simone. You owe Daniel this much.’
Her sigh sounds like a hiss. ‘You still have much to learn. I will put the request through, but you should know that there is always a reckoning, Ms Dante.’
I want to tell Enid that I am tired of her cryptic warnings but I am already almost gone, only half in the dream world. Around my head, and in other faraway, high-ceilinged rooms, wind mobiles made up of cut pieces of glass in myriad colours swirl and tinkle …
When I open my eyes it is to diffuse daylight and the sound of knocking. The hotel chambermaid is apologetic; she has been despatched by Madame to ask if I want a breakfast tray in my room. On my way to the bathroom I am brought up short by a sheet of hotel stationery lying on the desk, with an address and a series of numbers in my handwriting.