The Returned (10 page)

‘Yes,’ he replied.

Léna nodded. ‘It’s not going to be easy.’

‘Of course it’s not,’ he said.

Léna slowly went up to Camille’s room and pushed the door ajar. Camille was sitting on her bed, her mum beside her, holding her. They both looked up at Léna.

‘Can I have a minute?’ said Léna. ‘Alone?’

‘Who with?’ asked her mum, defensive.

‘With my sister.’

Claire’s tired face broke into a cautious smile. She stood from the bed and gave Léna a brief hug before she left.

Camille looked at Léna warily. ‘I’m your sister now?’

Léna sighed and sat down beside her. ‘I’m trying. It’s not easy for any of us. But I’m sorry. I let you down.’

Camille sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘I guess that’s a start.’

Léna looked at her, uncertain whether she should tell Camille what she’d seen at the pub. But if it could help her sister, she supposed she had no choice. ‘There was something
else,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘At the Lake Pub, I saw someone. I think he’s like you.’

‘Like me, how?’ said Camille.

‘Dead,’ said Léna. ‘I think he’s dead.’

Adèle was tidying part of the children’s section in the library when she had another vision of Simon. The area was quiet, deserted; she had a window of opportunity
to clear up before another group of children was due to arrive. There was only the young man wearing his crumpled wedding suit, looking, turning, seeing her. She watched him for a while before
walking towards him, mindful of what Father Jean-François had said.

Make peace with your ghosts.

God, he looked so real. So
solid
. In the years since his death, whenever she’d thought she’d seen him it had been fleeting, or late and in the darkness of her bedroom. Never
so much detail, not before. He looked exactly as he had the last time she’d seen him alive. Her vision blurred as the tears came.

‘You were always so handsome,’ she said gently. ‘Just because I’m marrying Thomas, it doesn’t mean I’ll forget you. I won’t. You’re part of my
life, then and always.’ He was watching her with the half-smile she had loved. She hadn’t always known what he was thinking, what mood he was in. Hadn’t always been sure which
Simon she was with. But that smile, like a shy little boy’s, was a sign.

She was with the Simon who loved her unconditionally. Not the dark, angry man he sometimes became.

‘I won’t forget you,’ she said. ‘For a time, I tried. I was falling apart, and I had no choice. I wanted it to be like I’d never met you. But I couldn’t do
it.’ Her eyes roamed over his face and she smiled, joyful at how rich her memories must still be to conjure such a vision. ‘I know you’re a ghost. I know you don’t really
exist. It doesn’t scare me to see you. Not any more. I won’t ask you to leave again. It’s wonderful for you to be back.’ She reached up with her hand, up to his face, his
hair, her mind allowing her to feel the touch of him. She closed her eyes, and smiled. ‘Even if it’s only in my head.’

A group of kids charged in through the far stairwell, the noise startling her. Her hand was suddenly just touching air. She opened her eyes.

Simon was gone.

Laure came through to the captain’s office, knowing she wasn’t bringing the news he would have wanted.

‘The assailant from the diner has turned up, sir,’ she told him. ‘CCTV spotted him leaving the library building. A patrol was sent and he was apprehended a few minutes
ago.’

Thomas’s face lit up with expectation. ‘And? Anything linking him to the Clarsen assault?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He’s a little dishevelled, looks like he spent all night in what he’s wearing. They’re checking his jacket at the moment, but I don’t
get the feeling he’s our man.’

‘Don’t discount him so quickly, Inspector,’ said Thomas. ‘Any idea who he is?’

‘Well, there’s the thing. He didn’t tell us, but we checked his fingerprints. Those prints are on our files from an affray charge a dozen years back, but for a man who died ten
years ago. The dead man’s name is Simon Delaître.’

For a moment Thomas stared at her, his face turning pale under the fluorescent lighting. ‘Simon Delaître?’

‘Yes,’ said Laure. ‘You know the name?’ The captain said nothing, just kept staring. ‘Have you seen anything like this before?’

Thomas seemed to focus again. ‘Anything like what?’

‘He must have given a false name,’ said Laure. ‘But tricking the system shouldn’t be that easy. Someone must have slipped up.’

Thomas stood. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk to him.’

They both entered the room where the man sat in handcuffs. He looked up, his expression one every police officer knew well: surly indifference. Affray, twelve years back; the
diner assault this morning. Laure would be surprised if there hadn’t been a string of other offences, convicted or otherwise.

She caught the look in her captain’s eye when he first saw the man sitting there. Extremely wary, shocked almost; then he snapped out of it and nodded to Laure to throw the first
question.

‘We have a small problem,’ said Laure. ‘According to our files, you’re dead. How do you explain that?’

‘That’s your job,’ said the man.

‘Your name is Simon Delaître. Is that right?’ He nodded. Laure held up a print from the diner’s CCTV footage, the man clearly identifiable. ‘Do you deny that this
is you?’ The man shook his head.

Before she could ask her next question, Thomas cut in: ‘Do you know Adèle Werther?’

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘That means you must have known Simon Delaître. They used to live together.’ Thomas looked at Laure; she knew the surprise was written across her face. Laure’s house was
next door to Thomas’s. She knew Adèle a little, knew that her fiancé had died a decade ago. She hadn’t known the details, nor the man’s name, but it explained her
captain’s earlier reaction.

‘So,’ said Thomas, ‘you must know Simon Delaître is dead.’

The man’s expression of indifference didn’t change.

‘Simon Delaître is
dead
,’ said Thomas. ‘What happened? Did you pretend to be him when you had to give your fingerprints?’

The man glared at Thomas, ignoring the question. ‘Who is Adèle to
you
?’

The captain stood, tired of it. ‘Put him back in a cell, Inspector. We’re keeping him in custody until we work out who the hell he is.’

Julie went to the police station that afternoon, reluctant and wary. The nagging certainty that the boy’s parents would be going through hell made her do it, but she was
cautious. She left Victor alone in her apartment – she wanted to find out what she could, not simply hand him over, and bringing him along would have risked that decision being taken out of
her hands. Especially if Laure saw her with him.

But even without the boy, she didn’t want to bump into Laure.

Old wounds.

When she arrived, she felt conspicuous. The lights in the station were overly bright, as if they wanted to illuminate any dark recesses in the minds of those who came through the doors. Julie
always preferred to stay in the background, out of sight, but there was nowhere here that allowed that comfort. She felt eyes watching her.

She scoured the noticeboards in the reception area, just in case it was that simple; surely if Victor was a local child, something might be there. She found a missing-persons poster: there were
no children on it, but as she looked at the poster, at the array of lost faces, she felt a kind of kinship. It was why she felt such a connection with Victor, she supposed. They were both lost.

‘Hello, can I help you?’

She turned to the police officer, caught off guard. ‘I, uh, just wanted to know if you had a missing-persons report, for a young boy, brown eyes, brown hair, about nine, maybe
younger.’

‘Why?’

Julie thought quickly, stumbling over her words. ‘Well, because as I, uh, was going home yesterday, I saw a little boy. It was late, he looked lost . . . I just wondered.’

‘Didn’t you ask him if he was lost?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Not really?’

She paused, suddenly aware of what she was saying, scared of giving herself away. ‘No, because I was on a bus. He was by the side of the road. So all I did was see him as we passed. Look,
it doesn’t matter.’ This had been a mistake, she thought. Time to go.

‘Wait. You saw his eye colour from the bus?’

She nodded, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. ‘Yes.’

‘You could have reported it sooner,’ said the officer, with a sigh. ‘Come with me. I’ll take your statement.’

‘I have to give a statement?’

‘Of course.’

He led her off to a small room. It didn’t really take long, but it felt much longer; sitting there answering questions, trying to avoid too much detail that might contradict itself. She
kept it vague, but by the end she knew what she needed to know. They had no reports of a missing child locally; nationally, none fitted the description. It made her more certain that her fear for
Victor was justified, that he was running from something too difficult for him to talk about. What else could prevent parents from reporting a lost child?

A nagging voice was telling her that she should hand Victor over to the police anyway, and let them deal with it – that she’d done her part, and it was time for him to move on. But
the police failed people all the time, and until she knew Victor’s story, she wasn’t going to let that happen.

She made one detour before she went home, to buy something for Victor.

Outside her door, she hunted in her bag for the keys. Her heart sank as she heard the sound of her neighbour’s door opening.

‘Hello, Julie!’ said Nathalie Payet. The woman’s voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Julie sighed inwardly and kept looking for her keys; she found them, and made a mental note always to have them in her hand in future by the time she reached her door. ‘Hello, Mademoiselle
Payet.’

The woman made a show of looking around. ‘Your young friend went back home?’

If she thought she could have got away with it, Julie would have lied. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s inside.’

Her neighbour looked scandalized. ‘Really? But you went out. Isn’t he a little young to be at home by himself?’

‘He’s a good boy,’ said Julie. ‘I had, um, an urgent appointment. I wasn’t long.’

‘Mmm. OK. So, is he family?’

Julie looked her steadily in the eye. ‘Yes.’

The woman raised an eyebrow but dropped the topic. A sudden gleeful eagerness spread across her face. ‘Have you heard about Michel Costa, the old teacher?’

‘No.’ Julie tensed.

‘You haven’t? This morning, he . . .’ She made a slitting motion across her throat, and Julie felt the floor shift under her.

‘What?’

‘He jumped from the top of the dam.’ The woman smiled, as if it was some crass titillation she was passing on, not the death of an old man. ‘Without a bungee rope!’ She
let her words settle for a moment, watching Julie’s reaction, then her smile suddenly vanished and she feigned sympathy. ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Julie. ‘A little.’ She felt sick. She could have been the last person to see the man alive. Worse, she might be partly to blame. She’d spotted
something wrong. Nothing urgent, nothing that would have indicated anything like
this
, but still. She knew that she had let the old man down.

She wondered if she should talk to the police about it; it was certainly possible that they would discover she was one of the last people to have seen him, and come to question her.
Well
, she thought,
if that happens, so be it
. But if not, she wanted nothing more to do with the police.

‘Poor Monsieur Costa,’ said her neighbour, turning on an air of melancholy. ‘He burned his house down before he did it, you know. He was nearly seventy-five, wasn’t he?
He didn’t have long to wait. Must have been desperate to end it all like that. He’s to be buried in the old chapel graveyard, by his wife’s grave. The funeral will be tomorrow, I
heard.’

‘So soon?’ said Julie.

The woman lowered her voice and looked around, as if she was imparting a great secret. ‘Isn’t it. I suppose there are no relatives to summon, and they’ll certainly not want an
open coffin . . .’ She pulled a face. ‘But they obviously want it out of the way as quickly as possible. I imagine burying a suicide victim in consecrated ground might stir up some
resentment, if they let it fester.’

‘Don’t people know what century we live in?’ said Julie, genuinely angry that anyone might take it on themselves to object.

The woman simply shrugged. ‘It’s the worst of sins, don’t they say?’

Julie felt her stomach clench and gave her neighbour a withering look.
Oh, I can think of worse
, she thought.

‘
Goodbye
, Mademoiselle Payet,’ she said, and went into her apartment.

Victor was in the kitchen, in what seemed to be his usual state: silent and eating. He gave her a gentle smile as she walked in.

Julie sighed. She needed answers from him. ‘Victor? You have to talk to me now. I went to the police station. No one is looking for you. You have to tell me where you got lost, or why you
ran away. Was it a different town?’ Victor took another bite of a biscuit and watched her, smiling. He always looked as though he knew something she didn’t, and it unnerved her.

‘I can’t keep you,’ she said. ‘Even if I wanted to, I can’t. And . . . I don’t have any toys. Nothing for children. You’ll be bored here.’ Not
even a flicker.
Shit
. It still felt like a staring contest, and the boy wasn’t going to blink any time soon.

A few more days then
, she thought.
But no more
. She would have to find a way to make some discreet enquiries, and in the meantime hope he would open up to her. Otherwise she
would have no choice: hand him over to the police and throw him to the mercy of fate. Even the
thought
of doing that made her feel ill. She had experience with how merciful fate could
be.