Past Imperfect (73 page)

Telling herself that the trips away had just been business, nothing more. That his rarely touching her had been in respect of her past problem, her frigidity. But part of her had always suspected. The first thought had been that he was having an affair. He wouldn't be the first politician to keep a mistress. And perhaps given her past problem, she'd in part brought it on herself. Not acceptable, but at least understandable.

Betina walked towards the stairs, started her way up. But even that chink of realization she'd in the end pushed away. Hid behind her love, her absorption with Joel. The day that Alain told her that he was leaving her and wanted a divorce, she would worry about it.

Then with the first newspaper reports, she'd pushed it even stronger away. Young boys? Alain.
Ridiculous!

Betina reached the top of the stairs. But now she knew: Alain had done it! He
had
killed the boy...
and now he was sending a hit man to remove the key witnesses
. All the past denial came suddenly crashing back in: the trips away, him cringing at her touch...

She shuddered at the thought of the monster she'd lived with for eighteen years - under the same roof with her and Joel!
Joel
. She'd read the papers.
My God
, that poor boy had hardly been older than Joel was now.

Her heart pounded as she reached for the bedroom door handle. Her mouth was dry. With a final swallow of resolve, she turned it and opened the door.

It took a second for Duclos to notice her standing there. He was still wondering about the click on the line.

He heard her say: 'It's true, isn't it? All true. You
did
kill that boy.'

She was ashen faced, and Duclos saw that she was trembling. It had been Betina on the line! She'd overheard his conversation with Brossard.

His mind spun. Judging from her expression, the stock lines of defence and denial that had tripped of his tongue since the first newspaper reports, just wouldn't wash this time. If she'd overheard him with Brossard, she
knew
. She knew everything.

He looked down at the floor, blinked slowly, in the end said nothing. His panic waned. He owed her no explanation.

'All a lie, wasn't it? The boy, our marriage. All the weekends away, the nights when you shrinked at my touch.' She moved closer, but stopped a metre away. As if bridging that last distance between them would somehow contaminate her. Her voice was raising. 'A pathetic sham, a lie! And I thought at one time that you loved me... if only for those first few years.' She shook her head, her face contorted.

Duclos looked up at her. Pitiable. Clinging to the hope that he might have once loved her. A few measly years among their lifetime together. As if reconciling that might make the rest not so bad. Acceptable. He didn't feel like giving her even that satisfaction. He sneered: 'Of course I never loved you. You just looked good at all the dinner parties and functions. And your ridiculous problem with frigidity from a date rape was ideal - the last thing I wanted was you touching me!'

She moved closer, then. Her eyes darted.

'You're pathetic,' he taunted, and felt the stinging slap strike his face a second later. If he'd said nothing, she'd have probably just stared a second longer, eyes searching for an explanation that wasn't there, then turned away. But perversely a part of him wanted the confrontation, a catharsis for his own anger and frustration. Take it all out on poor, pathetic Betina. She was such an easy target. 'My skin crawled at every single touch through the years. I'd rather have fucked Mitterrand!' But this time he caught her arm in mid-flight, wrenched it hard and levered himself up. He lashed at her face with the back of his free hand.

Betina flew back, crumpled quickly to the floor. She glared back, eyes wild. Raw hatred. A red welt and speck of blood showed high on her left cheekbone.

'What about Joel?' Her voice trembled. 'It took a woman to give you him. Not out buggering young boys!'

'Exactly.' Duclos smiled crookedly. A decade too late she'd finally got the message. 'He was the last thing I wanted!'

The images crashed in on him unwarranted:
her scream as the car crashed, Joel in an incubator...
The intensity of her stare unnerved him. He looked away.

He felt suddenly claustrophobic, stifled. He had to get away from her, away from her clinging eyes; as if she was searching deep for something that had never been there. Some remnant of fondness for her and Joel so that she didn't have to believe that her whole life had been wasted.
Pathetic
. He headed for the door.

Some movement behind him, rustling in a drawer. He was in a half daze, hardly paid any attention to it until he heard her call: 'Alain!' A harsh, chill whisper that made him turn.

He saw the half open bedside drawer at the same time as the gun: a Beretta .25 automatic they kept in case of burglars. Betina pointed it at him shakily.

Betina's eyes were stinging and bleary as she looked at her husband above the gun. She fought to control her trembling.
Her husband?
He was a monster! A murderer of young boys. She'd be doing everyone a favour if she pumped him full of bullets. Her finger tensed on the trigger.

Would feel good,
so good.
Repayment for the years of betrayal of her and Joel. Revenge for the little boy in Taragnon. But she should see him squirm a bit first. 'So do you still claim you don't love me? Or is begging for your life more appropriate? Perhaps they're one and the same.' But instead of moving away, he took a step closer. She shook her head, the trembling biting deeper in her arms. It was all somehow wrong! She'd seen it in the films: this was when they started backing away, holding one hand up and pleading.

Duclos smiled as he stepped closer. Perhaps she would be doing him a favour. The end to all his problems. 'Why don't you. I'm sick of it all. You can face it all then: public humiliation, the police at your door, a trial, a murder conviction hanging over your head! Yes, go on,' he taunted. 'Pull the trigger. You sit in my seat!'

Betina's finger trembled on the trigger.
A monster!
He deserved to die. But he was smiling, almost as if he welcomed it. And what would happen to Joel while she was in prison?

Duclos saw the hesitation and leapt in, took the last two steps quickly, jolted her gun arm away. The gun flew free, fell a few yards to one side. He cocked back his arm and smashed it hard into her face.

Betina fell back heavily on the floor. Her eyes were startled, a gout of blood spreading from her nose.

Duclos dived on top of her, straddling her thighs. Anger coursed red hot through his veins. She'd pulled a gun. The stupid bitch actually had the guts, the audacity!
She was going to kill me!
He cocked his arm to punch her again in the face, then decided against it at the last minute - shifted down and hit her in the stomach.

She screamed and groaned. He hit her again, her screams only driving on his frenzy. The long years of pent up anger and frustration washing away as he struck out: for all the times he'd cringed at her touch, for the boring predictability and monotony of her conversation, for the son he'd never wanted... for the little clique of her and Joel excluding him through the years. He hit and hit at her stomach until...

Footsteps pounding up the stairs
.

Barely broke through his consciousness, his frenzy. Then it struck him how loud Betina's groans and screams had been.
The gendarme.
He'd heard the screams and run around to the open back door.

Duclos scanned frantically around. The gun was not far from his fight foot. He kicked it further away, just out of sight under the bed. He straightened up as the gendarme burst into the room.

The gendarme's eyes darted between him and Betina. His hand was poised by his gun holster, but it wasn't drawn.

'She became hysterical,' Duclos spluttered. 'I was trying to calm her. She fell and hit herself badly on the bedside drawer. Give me a hand to lift her up on the bed.'

The gendarme's gun arm relaxed. He came over, half stooped to lift Betina. Betina's eyes were clearing from her daze, settling on the gendarme. She was about to speak.

Duclos saw his only split-second chance, lunged for the gun under the bed. He turned and trained it on the gendarme. 'Now give me your gun. Left hand... ever so slowly. Just two fingers on the butt.'

The gendarme reached across and lifted the gun out awkwardly, held it out. Duclos grabbed it. 'Now turn around!'

The gendarme turned uneasily, trying to keep one eye on Duclos. Duclos raised the gun and smashed the butt against the base of the gendarme's head - but the first didn't connect properly, and it took a second to fell him, knock him out.

Duclos rustled in the top drawer of the dressing table for car keys and his wallet, then bolted for the door.

Joel was standing in the doorway, taking in the scene with his mother and the gendarme.
Those same searching, knowing eyes which had haunted him through the years
. The boy moved as if to block Duclos' exit.

Duclos sneered at how ridiculous and pathetic the boy looked, just like his mother - and barged brusquely past him, almost knocking the boy over.

Down the stairs, out the front door, feet on the gravel of the driveway. One of the reporters by the gate noticed him, was looking over curiously.

Duclos ran to the garage, past Betina's Renault parked to the side. He would have taken the Mercedes, but it was too distinctive. He'd bought a Peugeot 505 on leasing not long before leaving Strasbourg. The registration was probably still going through. Perfect.

Duclos jumped in, started her up and swung around.

He was shaking heavily, raw adrenalin surging, a dull pounding in his head. After-rush of Betina and the gendarme. He felt it powering him on: foot hard on the accelerator, out the driveway - a last sharp turn through the gate.

Cameras clicked and flashed as he sped past the gate onto the road, catching his crooked and desperate smile. But Duclos was past caring.
Freedom
.

FORTY-THREE

Dominic spread out a map of France. Where?
Where?
Two of them now to find. Vacharet
and
Duclos.

No registration. Two gendarmes taking it in turns to guard Duclos the past weeks, and neither had taken Duclos’ car numbers:
The garage door was always closed. Our Station Commander never asked us to. The only number we know is the car they used regularly when going out - the Renault.

Dominic shook his head. He'd put out a registration search through Lepoille and Interpol National over an hour ago. No answer yet.

Duclos could be halfway to Paris by now, or to the Swiss border, or heading due south. One of those sleepy Pyrenees border posts with Spain where guards just wave people through. Without a registration number, they couldn't conduct a national search or a border alert.

And Vacharet had been on the run almost two hours longer. No trace yet either on where he was headed.

Two
hits planned, Betina Duclos said she'd overheard. Vacharet was mentioned as one - explaining his sudden flight - but the other hadn't been named.

They'd put additional pressure on the only other person in hand: Aurillet. Two hits. What did he know? Aurillet said that Vacharet had voiced concern following the Eynard hit and about another planned, but no name; it was more in the vein of at least some good coming out of their plan.
'Now at least that hit won't be made. One life saved.'

But Vacharet obviously knew. It could be another child pimp like Vacharet or Eynard, but what if Duclos had sent a hit man after Roudele to bury the coin evidence, or to England after Eyran Capel?

Dominic clenched a fist tight. Twenty minutes passed with no return calls, and his impatience grew. He could have phoned his Lyon station, but he had no wish to hear the day's panics and emergencies. Only one thing now that he wanted to know.

He called Monique to ease his tension. She was at Vidauban, spent more time there now in the summer months. She'd travelled down by train the night before, Gerome had picked her up at the station.

'I'll be quite late tonight,' he said. 'Could be a long one.'

'Will you go back to Lyon or come here?'

'Probably Vidauban.' He was better off staying in Aix or Marseille for news on Vacharet. Vidauban was closer. 'But don't expect me much before ten or eleven.'

She started some small talk about Gerome, but he was only half listening - and cut her off early. Anxious in case calls were trying to get through.

Unsettling silence again. The phone inert. Dominic's thoughts fighting to move, but in the end equally inert. The clock on the wall provided an ominous, pulsing reminder that things elsewhere were in motion while he sat there: Duclos racing across the country, a hit man heading for his targets. Ghosts skittering across a map with no discernible form or direction.

But how far could Duclos get? No passport, assets frozen, money perhaps just for food, petrol and a few nights pension.

Seven minutes before the phone rang again, though it seemed far longer. It was Lepoille.

'We've found something on Vacharet. Air France flight to Corsica.'

'Can we get the Ajaccio airport police to stop him?'

'Too late. He landed over twenty minutes ago. He's in a taxi and away. Could be anywhere on the island.'

Momentary hope fading. Perhaps Bennacer could dig something up from the lead. 'Anything yet on Duclos and car registration?'

'Nothing yet. Could be a long haul. There's nothing in his name, and apparently he got the car recently on leasing through a company. We've got to find the company and hope that the registrations already through. Otherwise we'll find nothing.'

A quick good luck and 'keep hunting', and Dominic phoned Bennacer. 'Vacharet's in Corsica. Anything spring to mind?'