Fatal Error (16 page)

Then, just before lunch, we heard a car draw up to the front of the house. Ingrid and I rushed round to see who it was. To our disappointment, it wasn’t Guy. It was Tony.

He led us into the house and to the drinks cabinet in the living room, and poured himself a large gin and tonic. ‘God, that tastes good,’ he said, taking a long swig. ‘The room service in that police station was lousy.’

There was the sound of rapid footsteps down the stairs as Mel appeared.

‘Any news?’ Ingrid asked.

‘No,’ said Tony. ‘They’re still holding him.’

‘Have they charged him?’ I asked.

‘Not yet. Patrick says they can hold him for up to four days before an arraignment in front of an examining magistrate. Don’t worry. We’ll get him out before then.’

‘But they’ve arrested him, haven’t they?’ Mel protested. ‘They must have some evidence against him.’

‘Some mix-up about a footprint. Patrick will get him off.’

Mel didn’t seem convinced. ‘What about you?’ she said.

‘Me? Looks like I’m in the clear.’ Tony smiled. Which was fair enough, I supposed. But I couldn’t help thinking that his exoneration had been won at the expense of Guy’s guilt. Not that I believed for a moment that Guy was guilty, myself. I just didn’t trust the French police to uncover the truth when they could nail the easy suspect.

Tony looked at the three of us. None of us appeared in the slightest bit pleased to see him. He sighed and poured himself another drink. ‘I’ll be in the study if anybody wants me,’ he said, and left us.

‘I wish they had let Guy go instead of him,’ Mel said.

‘I’m sure Hoyle will swing something,’ I said, with as much confidence I could muster. But I wasn’t sure at all.

At around two o’clock a detective came to fetch me. Sauville wanted to talk to me again. I wasn’t surprised.

I thought hard during the car journey down the hillside. Thought about what I had done. Where my loyalties lay.

I was led into a small interview room. Sauville was there with his sidekick. He looked even more tired and irritated. He lit up a cigarette and offered me one.

I shook my head.

‘Thank you for coming here, Monsieur Lane.’

‘Not at all.’ I hadn’t been aware that I’d had a choice.

‘I am glad to say that your version of your liaison with Madame Jourdan accords with the forensic evidence. You have been honest with me. This is good. Good for you, good for me. Now …’ He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I want you to continue to be honest with me.’

‘Of course.’

‘
Bon
. You remember Tuesday evening? The evening that Madame Jourdan was killed.’

‘I do.’ I was alert now.

‘This is very important. When you went to bed, did you go alone?’

‘No. I went with Guy.’

‘OK. Tell me what happened.’

‘I wasn’t in a good mood that evening. No one was, really, apart from Dominique. At about ten o’clock I said good night and went off to bed.’

‘And Guy came with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go straight to your bedroom.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure? You didn’t delay on the way?’

‘Um …’

‘Monsieur Lane?’

‘Let me think. It was a couple of days ago.’

And I thought. Rapidly. I knew the answer, of course. Guy and I had gone straight to the little guest cottage together. I could remember that clearly. But what should I tell the policeman?

My first instinct was to say just that. That Guy had been with me the whole time. That he couldn’t possibly have slipped away to murder Dominique.

But …

But they had found a footprint, that was clear. Guy’s footprint. I suddenly realized that that was what Sauville wanted an explanation for. I had to give him one, or at least the possibility of one.

‘I don’t think so. Or, at least, I didn’t. But, actually, I think I went first, and Guy followed me a couple of minutes later.’

‘A couple of minutes?’

‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure. But I can remember that he was brushing his teeth when I was getting into bed. So he can’t have been more than a couple of minutes longer than me.’ I wanted to give Guy enough time to leave a footprint but not enough time to murder Dominique.

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘No.’

‘Could he perhaps have gone into the bushes to er …’ Sauville was searching for the right word. ‘To piss?’

‘Possibly.’

‘That seems strange, don’t you think? To piss in the bushes when there is a toilet in the guest cottage?’

‘Not so strange,’ I said. ‘A bit drunk. A lovely night. The stars are out. It’s the kind of thing Guy might do.’

‘We found his footprint outside Madame Jourdan’s window. The soil there was watered during the afternoon,
so we know it must have been put there that evening. Or perhaps later that night.’

‘Oh, I see. That explains it, then.’ So I was right. Fortunately I had managed to back up the story Guy had told.

‘Perhaps,’ Sauville said, considering the point. ‘Just one last question. Do you know the young gardener who works here? A North African?’

‘Yes. Abdulatif.’

Sauville frowned, as though surprised that I knew his name. ‘That is correct. When did you last see him?’

‘Hmm.’ I thought. ‘It was the morning before Mrs Jourdan was killed.’

‘And not since then?’

‘No. No, not since then.’

‘Did you see him doing anything suspicious?’

I remembered the smile he had given Guy, but didn’t mention it. It almost certainly didn’t mean anything, and even if it did, it was hardly suspicious. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He was just gardening.’

‘We are trying to locate him. It seems he has disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since the morning after Madame Jourdan was killed.’ Sauville stood up. The interview was over. ‘Thank you once again for your cooperation, Mr Lane. Now my colleague will take you back to the house.’

As the police car climbed up the hill, I watched the sun lowering itself towards the western horizon and for the first time since Dominique had died I felt good about myself. I had let Guy down by sleeping with Dominique. His contempt for me had been painful because it had been justified. And now I had helped him.

I had no idea how Guy’s footprint had turned up wherever the police had found it, but I knew it wasn’t because he had gone for a pee in the bushes on the way to bed. They didn’t
know that, though. I looked honest and I looked scared and I was sure Sauville had believed me.

At that point I was only concerned with covering for my friend, making amends for my betrayal. The possibility that Guy might have been involved in some way in Dominique’s death didn’t occur to me. I wasn’t at all worried about how or when Guy’s footprint had been placed outside Dominique’s window, if that was indeed where the police had found it.

Perhaps I should have been.

It was strange staying at Les Sarrasins without Guy. None of us felt we should be there, we were like guests who had long overstayed their welcome, but there was no chance that Sauville would let us leave. Guy’s plea for me to crawl back under my semi-detached stone rang in my ears. He was right, of course. I had no business being there; I should be in the caravan in Devon with my parents. I should never have come.

We all gathered for an awkward supper. There was little conversation; we were all wrapped up in our own thoughts. Tony made a half-hearted attempt at small talk, which received little response from any of us. But he did have some news. The search for Abdulatif had turned into a full-scale manhunt. Miguel had heard from the Arab gardener of a nearby property that the police had turned over Abdulatif’s house, and had been asking about him in all the Arab hangouts in the area, with no success.

For the first time in three days there was the glimmer of hope in Mel’s eyes.

I was doing lengths in the pool the next morning when I became aware of laughter on the terrace. Familiar laughter. I stopped swimming and looked up. There were Tony, Guy
and Hoyle, broad grins on their faces. Miguel was opening a bottle of champagne.

I pulled myself out of the water and grabbed a towel. Ingrid and Mel emerged from the house.

The cork popped. Tony poured.

‘I told you Patrick would get him off,’ Tony said, slapping Hoyle on the back. ‘Hey, where’s Owen? Guy, get him, will you? I won’t have him missing this.’

Guy went off to look for his brother.

‘Of course, it helps that they know who did kill her,’ Hoyle said.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

‘The gardener,’ he replied. ‘The police have been looking for him everywhere. But it’s hard to find one Arab boy on the Riviera, there are so many places he can disappear.’

‘How do they know it was him?’ I asked.

‘He ran away, didn’t he?’ Tony said. ‘And they found Dominique’s empty jewellery case in his room. I hope they catch the bastard.’

‘But they don’t have any conclusive proof?’ I persisted.

Tony frowned, unamused by my quibbling. ‘That’s conclusive enough for me. Ah, here he is!’ he said as he saw Owen approaching behind his brother. There was almost a spring in his step. He was as pleased as the rest of us to have Guy back. ‘Champagne, Owen?’

‘I’ll take a Coke.’

‘You’ll have champagne,’ his father said, thrusting the glass into his hands. ‘Here’s to liberty.’

We all drank. All of us but Dominique, I thought. She wouldn’t be joining in the celebration of her stepson’s newfound freedom.

Mel, Ingrid and I left as soon as we possibly could. Neither Guy nor his father was sad to see us go, although Tony was
polite and charming to us, even to me. But he called a taxi this time to take us to the airport.

I packed my stuff and went to look for Guy. I found him beneath the watchtower staring out at the sea. I sat next to him.

‘I know this was a horrible week, but thank you for inviting me,’ I said.

He didn’t answer. I waited. He wasn’t going to answer.

‘OK,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Goodbye, Guy.’

I turned to go. ‘Davo?’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. For what you said to Sauville.’

‘No problem.’ I considered trying to say more, but Guy was still looking away into the distance, his hunched back towards me. I was dismissed. I should leave.

Ingrid, Mel and I climbed into the taxi for the airport.

‘Thank God that’s over,’ Ingrid said as the car pulled out of the courtyard, through the electrically driven iron gates and on to the road down to the Corniche.

‘Yeah. And thank God Guy’s out of jail.’

‘That was all very convenient, wasn’t it?’ Ingrid said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’ She was looking at me closely.

I thought through Ingrid’s suggestion. It was indeed fortunate that the gardener had disappeared. I remembered hearing Hoyle repeat his name to Guy. I remembered the mysterious footprint from Guy’s shoe. And Owen’s reaction when he heard that his brother had been arrested, almost as if he knew something.

Then I stopped thinking.

‘You know what?’ I said. ‘I don’t care. I’m just glad to be out of here.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Mel, her voice stronger than it had been for the last four days.

Tony hadn’t come through with his earlier promise of the fare home and my meagre funds wouldn’t stretch to a one-way plane ticket, but Ingrid lent me two hundred francs which gave me enough for a bus fare. The taxi dropped me off at the bus station and I was sorry to say goodbye to her and Mel, but very pleased to get on the coach for the long trip back to England.

As the bus powered up the autoroute towards the lowering cloud of northern France, I pondered the one lesson I had learned from the previous week. I had finally glimpsed what the glamorous lives of people such as Guy were really like and I had discovered something.

They weren’t nearly as desirable as they seemed.

17

May 1999, Clerkenwell, London

It was Monday morning and we had the keys to the new office. The whole team showed up: Guy, myself, Owen, Gaz, Neil, Sanjay, Amy and Michelle. For most of them it was their first day in the job. Everyone was wearing jeans and ready for hard physical labour.

Britton Street was picturesque in its way, a narrow lane of modest Georgian houses and converted metalworking shops like ours, with the white spire and golden weathervane of St James’s Church, Clerkenwell, peeking out above the rooftops. There were signs of the dot-com invasion everywhere: young thin men in fleeces with wispy facial hair, flashier men and women in black on mobile phones, convenience shops full of convenience snacks, ‘Offices To Let’ signs where old jewellers’ or watchmakers’ premises were being refurbished. But our own office was nothing special: one side of the fourth floor of a brick building with white walls, blue-painted pipework, a light grey carpet and no furniture.

Workmen brought up second-hand desks, chairs, partitions and computer equipment, which everyone shifted around enthusiastically. We had thought of most things in advance, like the photocopier and the computer network, but we needed a coffee machine, a water cooler and a fridge. Michelle was despatched to find them. Gaz had arrived with his uncle’s van, in the back of which was a table-football table and a pinball machine. He said it was pointless keeping them at home if he was going to be at the office all the time.
He and Neil played a couple of games of table football; they were both astoundingly good.

Owen had planned the phone system and the computer network meticulously, but it was Sanjay, rather than he, who directed the engineers who came to install things. The characters of the new members soon became clear. Amy was an adept organizer with leanings towards bossiness, who spent most of the day wandering round with a cloth and a bucket of hot water wiping things. Neil was willing but useless, but Gaz turned out to be surprisingly practical, especially with wires. Owen could lift anything. Miraculously, by four o’clock, the office was functional.

Guy disappeared for ten minutes and came back with three bottles of champagne and some glasses.

‘To ninetyminutes.com,’ he said.

We all raised our glasses and drank. I looked around at the odd assortment of twentysomethings, dirty, sweaty but smiling, and thought how much happier I was to be there rather than surrounded by the humourless bankers of Gurney Kroheim.