Let the Dead Lie
Let the Dead Lie
Malla Nunn
First
published 2010 by Macmillan an imprint of Pan Macmillan
Australia
Pty Limited, Sydney
First
published in Great Britain 2010 by Mantle
an
imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan
Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke
and Oxford
Associated
companies throughout the world
Copyright
© Malla Nunn 2010
For
my parents,
Courtney
and Patricia Nunn
Table of Contents
A
flashing neon 'Hotel' sign lit the narrow cobble-stoned lane. There was a
spring chill from the showers that had fallen that afternoon across the
Tuileries and the Boulevard Saint Germain, but heat emanated from the GI bars.
The smell of sweating bodies, spilled liquor, cigarette smoke and perfume
permeated the night air. Emmanuel was glad to be free of the crush inside. A
group of Negro soldiers entered a subterranean club on the corner of Rue Veron
and a jazz trumpet blared into the night. He strolled the slick lane with three
giggling stenographers and Hugh Langton, a BBC war correspondent with
impeccable black-market connections.
'That's
it up ahead,' Langton said. 'Two double rooms on the fourth floor. You don't
mind a few stairs, do you, girls?'
Five
days of R&R, then back to bully beef in a tin and the parade of demolished
towns. Emmanuel had five days to forget. Five days to build new memories over
the visions of broken churches and people. The brunette nuzzled closer and
pressed a hot kiss on the nape of his neck. He picked up the pace, greedy for
the sensation of skin on skin. The hotel sign flashed light into a doorway a
few feet ahead. Bare legs, pale and dimpled with rain, jutted into the street.
The torn edges of a skirt and an open change purse were visible in the dim
recess.
'Mon dieu ...'
The brunette pressed slim
fingers to her mouth.
'Regardez! Regardez ...'
Emmanuel
unhooked his arm from around her shoulder and moved closer. Another flash of
neon illuminated the thickset body of a woman slumped against a door. A
bloodied hole was torn into the lapel of her grubby jacket, evidence Emmanuel
suspected of a small-calibre entry wound. The blank eyes and slack jaw
suggested a passenger who'd missed the last train and would now have to spend
the night in the open. Emmanuel checked for a pulse, more a formality than a
necessity.
'She's
dead.'
'Then
we're too late to be of help.' Langton herded the stenographers towards the
Hotel Oasis. This little hiccup could seriously extinguish the mood. 'I'll get
the concierge to call the police.'
'Go
ahead,' Emmanuel said. 'I'll find a
gendarme
and catch up.'
Langton
took Emmanuel aside. 'Let me point out the obvious in case you missed it,
Cooper. Dead woman. Live
women . .
. plural. Let's get the hell out
of here.'
Emmanuel
stayed put. A kitbag stuffed with spare ration packs and a warm hotel room with
soap and fresh towels meant the stenographers would wait. Such was the cold
pragmatism of war.
'Okay,
okay.' The Englishman ushered the women towards the flickering neon. 'Don't
stay out here all night. There'll be plenty of dead back in the field.'
That
was true, but it was an insult to abandon a body in a city where law and order
had been restored. Emmanuel found a stocky policeman enjoying a cigarette under
a cherry blossom tree, and an hour later a balding detective with an impressive
eagle-beak nose and sad brown eyes arrived on the scene. He peered into the
doorway.
'Simone
Betancourt.' The identification, in heavily accented English, was for the
benefit of the foreign soldier. Most cases involving the Allied forces were
shifted to the handful of bilingual police. 'Fifty-two years old. Listed occupation,
washerwoman.'
'You
knew her?' Emmanuel said.
'She
took in the police-station washing and that of many small
pensions.'
A hand was thrust in Emmanuel's direction. 'Inspecteur principal Luc Moreau.
You discovered the body?'
'Yes.'
'Your
name, please.'
'Major
Emmanuel Cooper.'
'And
you were on your way to . . .'
'The
hotel up there,' Emmanuel said, certain the French detective had already
figured that out.
'The
last rain was ...' Moreau checked his gold wrist-watch, '... about two hours
ago. So, Simone has been here longer than that. Others, no doubt, saw the body.
And did nothing. Why did you alert the police and wait here for so long at the
crime scene?'
Emmanuel
shrugged. 'I'm not sure.' The dead were another part of the war's landscape.
Soldiers and civilians, the young and the old were left unattended and without
ceremony in the fields and the rubble. But this washerwoman had resurrected
memories of another defenceless female abandoned a long time ago. 'It felt
wrong to leave her, that's all.'
Moreau
smiled and unwrapped a stick of chewing gum, a habit acquired from the American
military police. 'Even in war, a murder is offensive, no?'
'Maybe
so.' Emmanuel glanced towards the hotel. Stopping to mark the death of Simone
Betancourt would neither rebalance the scales of justice nor dull the memory of
fallen friends. And yet he'd remained. The night had grown colder. Jesus. He
could be in bed with a stenographer right now.
'Do
me this favour.' Moreau scribbled on a page and tore it loose. 'Go to your
woman. Drink. Eat. Make love. Sleep. If tomorrow Simone Betancourt is still on
your mind, call me.'
'What
for?' Emmanuel pocketed the crumpled paper.
'When
you call, I will give an explanation.'
Distant
church bells chimed 11 a.m. Emmanuel awoke dry-mouthed and loose-limbed amid a
tangle of sheets. The brunette, Justine from Cergy, stood naked by the window,
devouring a block of ration-pack chocolate. Her body was perfect in the spring
sunshine that dazzled through the glass. A pot of black-market coffee and a
dish of butter pastries were set on the table. Justine climbed back into the
bed, and Emmanuel forgot about war and injustice and fear.
When
he awoke a second time, Justine was asleep. He looked at her peaceful face,
like a child's. Every element of happiness was right here in this room. But
still he felt sadness creep in. He slipped from under the sheets and went to
the window. Directly below the hotel's precarious wrought-iron balcony was the
cobblestoned lane where Simone Betancourt had died in the rain. That a life
could be so easily taken without justice or recognition was a lesson he'd
learned in childhood. Leading a company of soldiers through war had confirmed
that nothing was sacred. It was strange how, after four years of training and
fighting, the memory of his mother's death still lurked in the shadows, ready
to ambush the present.
Emmanuel
retrieved the detective's telephone number and smoothed the paper flat. He
would phone Inspector Luc Moreau, but he had the unsettling sensation that the
reverse was happening: he was the one being called.
ONE
Durban, South Africa; 28 May 1953
The
entrance to the freight yards was a dark mouth crowded with rows of dirty
boxcars and threads of silver track. A few white prostitutes orbited a weak
streetlight. Indian and coloured working girls were tucked into the shadows,
away from the passing trade and the police.
Emmanuel
Cooper crossed Point Road and moved towards the yards. The prostitutes stared
at him and the boldest of them, a fat redhead with a moulting fox fur slung
around her shoulders, lifted a skirt to expose a thigh encased in black
fishnet.
'Sweetheart,'
she bellowed, 'are you buying or just window shopping?'
Emmanuel
slipped into the industrial maze. Did he look that desperate? Brine and coal
dust blew off Durban Harbour and the lights of a docked cruise ship shone
across the water. Stationary gantry cranes loomed over the avenue of boxcars
and a bright half moon lit the rocky ground. He moved towards the centre of the
yards, tracing a now familiar path. He was tired and not from the late hour.
Trawling
the docks after midnight was worse than being a foot policeman. They at least
had a clearly defined mission: to enforce the law. His job was to witness a
mind-numbing parade of petty violence, prostitution and thievery, and do
nothing.