Flight (29 page)

But it was going to be all right now.

He dared to look at the luminous face of his watch. Christ. Half past eleven – could that be right? Of course, French time was an hour ahead of British time, so he had started at a disadvantage. There had still been some light in the western sky when he was in the taxi. But it was midsummer; tomorrow, which was nearly today, was the longest day of the year.

Just then, as he attempted to slacken his speed because of a truck pulling out in front of him to overtake another truck, he realized that something was going wrong with the Opel's brakes. They were not responding properly. His armpits prickled, red alerts flashed in his tired mind. He tried the brake pedal again. This time, nothing at all. With his hand on the handbrake, he veered right, into the slow lane, and proceeded in low gear at thirty kilometres an hour, praying for an exit, any exit, from the autoroute.

Finally there was one. He took a turning at random where the access road forked, and struggled on for half a kilometre, praying for a village. Then, finding himself about to ram the back of a van going even more slowly than himself around a bend, he obeyed an impulse and shot off the road to the right, through an open gate, and into a field of maize – where he turned off the engine, jerked up the handbrake, juddered to a halt, and thanked his lucky stars that he was still alive.

He just had time, before he was overwhelmed by sleepiness, to think: I should have telephoned Marina again. Then, oblivion.

*   *   *

Martagon opened his eyes to morning sunlight, and to the sound of thud-thud, thud-thud, on the window of the car. He thought he was awake; but he must be still asleep and having the dream again. He steeled himself to turn his head. The arms had little fists on the ends of them, and the fists belonged to a small boy with a terrified face. Martagon opened the car door.

The child spoke with such a strong Provençal accent that Martagon understood almost nothing – except that he had thought Martagon was dead. A dead man. No, no, said Martagon, it's all right, I was asleep. He tried to explain about the car and the brakes. The boy pointed across the field to a house half hidden by trees. That was where he and his parents lived. Martagon shouldered his computer case, grasped the painting, left the key in the car, and stumbled after the boy through the maize.

The parents insisted on giving him coffee, and they let him use their telephone. Marina's number was engaged, as before. Perhaps your friend's telephone is out of order, they surmised, taking an interest. The boy's mother, who was pretty and seemingly did not have much to do, offered to drive him to his friend's house. It was not all that far, and she needed to go to the
tabac
anyway. It would be a privilege.

He went into the
tabac
with her. While she chatted to the man behind the counter, he picked up the
Herald Tribune
and started to read it idly. The man looked at him with disapproval. Martagon found coins in his pocket and paid for the paper, which he hadn't wanted. His rescuer was a voluble woman and his conversational French was sorely tested during the remainder of the drive. He asked her to drop him where the track to the farmhouse turned off from the road, and they parted with mutual expressions of pleasure. He knew that she was a little disappointed not to be making the acquaintance of his friend.

When Martagon crossed the bridge over the stream and started up the track towards the farmhouse he stretched his eyes wide, not believing what he saw.

There were two police cars parked in the garden. There were three men walking around, their hands in their pockets. He heard the incoherent crackle of radio communication.

Two of the men detached themselves from the scene when they saw him coming, and walked purposefully towards the spot where he would reach the paved yard, where he and Marina always parked their cars.

Marina's Alfa Romeo was not where it ought to be. It wasn't anywhere.

Martagon's first thought, as he approached the policemen, was: Jean-Louis. Bloody Jean-Louis.

I should have taken all those threats from her crazy brother more seriously. What in hell has been going on?

And then: Where
is
Marina?

A dog came lolloping round the side of the house and started jumping up on him, whining with joy.

‘He appears to know you,' said one of the policemen.

‘Yes, he knows me,' replied Martagon, pushing George away. ‘His name is George.'

I don't understand anything.

‘The name of the dog is George,' said the policeman, ironically, taking a note. ‘And your name, Monsieur?'

He told them his name. He asked them where Madame was.

Madame is not here. At this moment we do not know where Madame is.

Martagon looked around. Everything looked normal, except that the door to the bicycle shed was hanging open.

Yes, Monsieur, we have already ascertained. There is a gun missing from the shed. But we have found it already.

The policemen spoke to Martagon in a mixture of French and bad English. Martagon spoke to them in a mixture of English and bad French. There were some misunderstandings.

Had Marina been shot? Was she lying wounded, or dead, somewhere in the garden? He would find her, he could make her well, he could bring her alive again. Of course he could.

At that moment Martagon saw a patch of blood, still wet and red, on the paving of the terrace. Beside it, Marina's great chair lay on its side, one arm broken clean off. He picked up the broken arm, and passed his fingers over the sphinx head without touching it.

Please – no fingerprints. Do not distress yourself. Let us go into the house, there are some questions.

George began licking at the patch of blood. Martagon grasped him by the collar and dragged him into the house too, shutting the kitchen door. George went to the dog-bowl and began drinking noisily.

The policemen wrote down everything that Martagon said in their notebooks. When did he last see Marina de Cabrières? When did he last speak to her? What was his relationship with her? What was in that big package he was carrying? Where had he been between dawn and nine o'clock this morning? Could he provide witnesses for that? Did he have a key to the farmhouse? Why had he come? Was he expected?

He answered all their questions truthfully to the best of his ability.

They told him that the old man who leased the vine-fields overlooking the house had seen Madame get into her car with a bag and drive off, very fast, shortly after he came to work, at dawn. The dog chased her car down the avenue, barking, then gave up and wandered back towards the house.

A couple of hours later another car had driven up. It was a taxi. The person who got out of it was Madame's brother. The farmer knew all the family from way back, he used to work for them in the old days.

The farmer said that Jean-Louis paid off the taxi and then walked all round the house, banging at the doors and windows. The dog followed after him, barking. After a while the farmer stopped watching and moved away from his vantage-point to get on with his spraying. He thought of going down to tell Monsieur Jean-Louis that Madame his sister was not there, but it was none of his business. A family matter. One would not wish to intrude.

Half an hour later the farmer heard a gunshot, and then another, and more barking. The sound of guns is not uncommon: hunters from the village taking birds or wild boar, perhaps. But the shots had not come from the woods. He walked back over his field to where he had a good view of the farmhouse and garden. There were two men there now – Madame's brother and another, on the terrace. Madame's brother had fallen on the ground.

‘Did he say which one had the gun?'

The other man. The farmer could not or would not say whether he recognized the second man. He was very cautious. But he got on to his tractor immediately, and went home and telephoned the police. He was, quite naturally, afraid, said the policeman.

Afraid – and probably protecting someone he knew, thought Martagon. A neighbour, or a friend or relative.

They showed Martagon a gun, wrapped in transparent plastic. Did he recognize it? Had he ever used it?

Martagon shook his head.

The police had broken into the house and found the telephone off the hook, the receiver lying beside the cradle. Did he know anything about that?

He shook his head.

They found a sealed envelope with his name on it on the kitchen table. Would he recognize Madame's handwriting?

Yes.

The envelope was produced. This, too, was wrapped in transparent plastic.

Yes, that is her handwriting.

The two policemen turned discreetly away as Martagon tore open the envelope. They looked out of the window, both with their hands behind their backs, rocking on their heels.

Martagon stepped outside the door on to the terrace to read Marina's letter.

*   *   *

Afterwards they took the letter back, in its envelope. It would be needed for evidence, if there had been a serious felony. It was his property and would be returned to him, when their investigations were completed and the case closed. They smoothed the ragged top of the envelope and replaced it in the plastic covering. They took down his address and his various contact numbers.

He waited while the answers he had given, and the little that he had said of his own volition, were typed out and printed from a police notebook-computer. He read what constituted a statement, and signed it. He would be recalled, they told him, for further questioning. He should keep himself available.

Of course, he said.

The third policeman was testing the broken chair for fingerprints with powder and brush. When he was satisfied, and had packed up his equipment, he moved away towards the cars. Martagon set the great chair upright and sat down in it, resting his right elbow on the one good arm, nursing the broken one on his knee, his fingers tracing the worn, gilded carving of the sphinx-head. George lay at his feet, his nose on his paws. The two of them watched the police slowly moving off, taking the gun with them. When the sound of their motors had faded away down the track, Martagon went back inside, opened his laptop on the kitchen table, and e-mailed Giles: ‘Not coming. Something terrible has happened. Martagon.'

He went back into the garden and stretched out on his back under the olive tree, on the still-flattened patch of grass where Marina had lain during that difficult night.

She had said, in the restaurant in Marseille: ‘Pierre would kill Jean-Louis for me.'

Pierre probably did kill Jean-Louis, when he arrived and found Jean-Louis banging about and attempting to carry off Marina's great chair. Then Pierre took the body away in his jeep to dump it in some ditch or thicket. He would know where to hide it. Or maybe Pierre had just wounded Jean-Louis, and had taken him to hospital. If Jean-Louis were lying wounded somewhere on the property, the police – or George – would have found him.

No, not necessarily. Jean-Louis might have been dumped between the two doors in the cavity in the garden wall. The policemen wouldn't have known the space existed.

How had Jean-Louis planned to leave, taking the chair with him, had he not been interrupted? I suppose he had a plan. So many questions. It'll all come out, in time. This story isn't finished yet by any means. But I don't care, actually. I don't give a fuck what happens to either Jean-Louis or Pierre now.

*   *   *

‘We are becoming the same person,' she had said. ‘Only together are we each complete.'

He tried to recall precisely what she had said in her letter, and couldn't. He had only read it the once. He had been in shock, and shaking. He remembered exactly how it was set out, on a single A4 page, with wide margins, the lines of her familiar handwriting straight and even. She had begun with ‘M', and ended with ‘M', as she always did. As both of them always did. He remembered, more or less, her first sentences: ‘M – just in case you turn up. I don't suppose you will. I waited and waited, and you didn't come and you didn't come and you didn't even call. So I knew you weren't coming. Then the telephone rang and I thought it was you but it was Jean-Louis.'

Jean-Louis had told her he would be over first thing in the morning to take possession of the chair. Martagon couldn't remember what she wrote next, but it must have been then that she contacted Pierre. He remembered the worst part all too well. Her telephone had rung again, very late. Again she thought it must be Martagon. But this time it was Lin.

She thought I had decided to stay with Julie.

I've just been hanging on by a thread, with Marina, all this time. The thread has snapped. It's final.

He remembered more from further down the page, but not word for word. He recalled the gist. Letters putting an end to love affairs have a terrible sameness about them. At the end she said she was getting the first plane to Paris, and was joining Lin. He had been asking her to go and live with him for a long time. For months, she said.

And there was a PS: ‘Pierre will come over a little later and take George home with him. George will be OK with Pierre for the moment.'

Pierre had left George behind, though.

It didn't matter that he couldn't remember everything Marina wrote. She had gone away. She had taken herself away. She was not going to be with him ever any more. It was over.

Martagon lay in the grass where she had lain, for hours, going over and over everything that had happened.

*   *   *

Some time in the late afternoon he thought how all the people would even now be arriving at Bonplaisir. The new structure would be filling up with voices and movement, fulfilling at last its function as a busy, complex working environment.

He opened his eyes and sat up. He should have run over to the airport following Tim Murtagh's call. What if his judgement had been wrong? What if the arrivals hall flooring drifted or cracked or shattered?