Past Imperfect (10 page)

She tried to push from her mind what had been done to him, the cold hard details from the two visting gendarmes: the sexual assault... the repeated blows which had left him for dead. Her tears had mostly been in private - but then that had reflected how she'd felt almost throughout her vigil. Alone. Jean-Luc had merely absorbed himself more in his farmwork to cope. He'd only visited the hospital once with her.

Now, gripping Christian's small hand in hers, she wouldn't have wanted it any other way. She probably wouldn't have grabbed this moment of intimacy if Jean-Luc had been with her. She'd only done this once before - and then too had felt like a thief sneaking in and stealing something she shouldn't. Stealing a few minutes of intimacy with her son. Perhaps their last...

She shook her head.
No!
That wasn't going to happen! She would see Christian smile again...
feel the warmth of his embrace.
She gripped the small hand tighter, willing the message home. Willing Christian to awake.

The candle burning reminded her of birthdays, and she remembered then that it would be Christian's birthday soon - her mind flashing back to past birthdays with him smiling in the glow of the candles. Unwrapping presents expectantly. The Topo Gigio doll. A model car racetrack. His bicycle only last birthday. The house filled with joy and laughter. And suddenly she felt more assured:
his coming birthday!
Something close and real on which she could focus, could actually picture Christian's presence. 'It's your birthday soon, Christian,' she muttered. 'There'll be some great presents for you. I'll bake a cake. Bigger and better than you've ever seen before.' In her mind's eye, she could imagine Christian looking on with wide eyes and smiling at the oversized cake. And in that brief moment, she felt sure that Christian would awaken, was able to ignore the coldness of the small hand in her grasp. 'We'll all be there...'

'Now let us see what we have here.' Dr Besnard, the Chief Medical Examiner, had a manila folder already opened in front of him, as if he'd been studying it before they entered. A duty nurse ushered Dominic and Poullain to upright seats opposite his large mahogany desk. Poullain knew Besnard from four previous cases, mostly car accidents.

'...Young boy, Christian Yves Rosselot. Ten years old. Eleven on the 4
^th
September - just over two weeks from now. Admitted on 18
^th
August at 4.38 pm.' Besnard flicked forward a page and then back again. In his early fifties, he was bald except for some long wisps of greying brown hair. He cradled his head for a moment, smoothing the wisps across as he looked up again. 'So. The medics recorded arriving on the scene at 4.03 pm. The boy was wearing shorts but no shirt, and he was laying face down, his back exposed. There was blood visible on his head and shoulder, quite thick, obviously from a wound to the head. Some smaller blood spots were noted on the boy's back - from the same wound - and also a blood trail, mostly coagulated, on the boy's inside thigh. This was obviously from a separate wound. The shorts were therefore cut with surgical scissors, and the blood flow was discovered to have come from the rectal passage. The wound was not active, there was no fresh blood, so their efforts were concentrated on the head wound.' Besnard looked up at Poullain periodically, marking off his position in the file with one finger as he glanced at Dominic, as if waiting for his notes to keep pace.

X-rays, complex fractures, haemotomas, somatosensory cortex
. The pages of Dominic's notepad were already filled with notes from the surgeon who'd operated on Christian the night before. Medical notes in shorthand were a nightmare. Effectively only the conjoining words could be shortened. Poullain had arranged that Dominic take the notes, then wait on Poullain for the meeting with Besnard. But there had been a spare thirty minutes for Dominic in between.

Pale green tiling and cream emulsion walls. The clatter of heels and voices along bare and stark corridors. Dominic found the atmosphere unsettling. He'd spent far too much of the past year in hospitals.
Images of the doctor approaching, footsteps echoing ominously, telling him the results of his mother's biopsy. A year, two years if she was lucky. No, unfortunately there wasn't much they could do except administer morphine in the closing stages to ease the pain. Check ups every three months, but let us know if the pain becomes too much in between...

'...Clearing the airway of any residual blood was a priority, so a tracheal tube was inserted.' Besnard's finger ran quickly down the page. 'Fortunately, the boy was face down, otherwise he would have probably choked on his own blood before they arrived. The wound was cleaned and the source of the blood flow as a ruptured blood vessel was discovered, as was a likely skull fracture - though not immediately the extent of the fracture. That showed up later on X-ray. Badly bruised and broken skin also on the right cheekbone, blood by then coagulated, possible fracture beneath. The patient was therefore bandaged both to stem the blood flow and support the skull, oxygen was administered once the airway was cleared, then he was transported here to the hospital - from which point on Verthuy in emergency attended. Conclusions from the medics report and Dr Verthuy? First of all, time of the attack.' Besnard looked up pointedly. 'From the extent of blood coagulation around the main wound and rate of new blood seepage, their estimate was that the attack took place any time between an hour and an hour and a half before they arrived. As for the other injury - to the boy's rectal passage - this was more or less the same time, possibly only minutes beforehand. But probably the most interesting factor was from Verthuy's note on the boy's sexual assault. He discovered varying degrees of rectal inflammation and damage - suggesting that in fact
two
attacks had taken place at entirely separate intervals.'

Besnard's pause for emphasis had the desired effect on Poullain. Poullain sat forward keenly. 'Two attacks? How far apart?'

'Thirty minutes, forty minutes - one hour at most. But definitely two separate assaults. One area at the neck of the rectal canal which had been bleeding had almost completely coagulated by the time the second attack was made.'

Dominic could sense that Poullain was still grappling with the timing of the attack when he was hit with this new information. Dominic had already written on his pad:
Attack, 1-1½ hours before medics arrive: 2.33 - 3.03 pm. Anything from 12 - 42 minutes before discovery. Sexual assault minutes beforehand.
Now Dominic wrote:
Separate sexual attack, 30 - 60 minutes prior to final assault.
That meant that at the outside estimate the attacker had stayed close to the path up to an hour and half, resting a full hour in between; and at the least, he had stayed there almost forty-five minutes, resting for half an hour. Surely someone else would have come along the path in the time. Where had he hidden?

'Any semen detected on either attack?' asked Poullain.

'No, none. Verthuy found nothing in the rectal passage apart from blood and inflamed tissue. All the blood is also of one type, B positive, the boy's blood group. Our attacker obviously was careful and pulled out to ejaculate. Did forensics find anything?'

Poullain pictured the succession of polythene bagged samples taken from the wheat field by the Marseille team. Their report was due the next day. But they didn't know till now that the attacker had probably ejaculated on the ground. Would they have looked for that as a matter or course? A few droplets of semen among the wheat, probably by then hopelessly dried and crystallised by the heat of the sun. If not, by now it had probably been washed away with last night's rain. 'I'm not sure yet,' Poullain commented. 'I'll know tomorrow.'

'Other points of interest in Verthuy's report...' Besnard's finger skipped a few paragraphs. 'Instrument of attack, a rock or large stone, determined from rock particles found in the boy's hair and embedded in skull tissue. Four blows in total, one breaking the skull and rupturing a blood vessel. Another blow tore heavily through the skin and shattered the right cheekbone. Bone fragments were removed, though constructive surgery will later be required for the cheekbone. Eleven sutures were required for the skull wound, eighteen for the cheek. Suspecting internal cranial haematomas, Verthuy ordered a series of X-rays at 5.32 pm - 54 minutes after the boy's entry into emergency. The boy was comatose throughout - and still remains so - with the only break from intensive care for surgery last night, at the hands of Dr Trichot... notes of which you already have.' Besnard nodded towards Dominic. 'Trichot's full report is expected sometime tomorrow. But I can let you have a copy of Verthuy's report now. You might find something small that I haven't covered in summary.' He passed across a carbon copy.

While Poullain flicked through, Dominic asked, 'Any estimates for how long for each sexual assault?'

Besnard looked forward, then back a page. 'No longer than a few minutes for each one, though Verthuy suggests the second was perhaps shorter purely because it was less forceful.'

They were silent for a second as Poullain continued looking through the folder. Finally he looked up. 'Possibly there'll be some questions when I read it in more detail back at the gendarmerie, but that's fine for now. Thank you. You've been most helpful.'

Besnard came out from behind his desk to show them out, making small talk about the continuing August heat and how it slowed work. Doctors and gendarmes were probably the only city officials not to disappear for the month en masse to the coast. 'Call of duty or foolhardiness, you tell me?'

The corridor was quiet as they made their way along and down the stairway. Activity increased as they approached the first floor.

'What arrangements for Machanaud's interview tomorrow?' Dominic enquired. Poullain had decided earlier they would interview Machanaud the next day, but the time and place hadn't been fixed.

'I think we should go out to visit him initially, try not to make it look too official and serious. If a second interview is necessary, we'll ask him in. Apparently he's working at Raulin's farm most of tomorrow, but we should try and get to him by eleven-thirty, before he has a chance to hit the bars.'

'And the other leads that came in today?'

Poullain looked at Dominic pointedly. 'Let's not lose sight of the fact that at present Machanaud is our main suspect.'

A curt reminder that earlier that afternoon they'd had words for the first time on the investigation. Machanaud was a drunkard, a part-time poacher and vagabond, and with his wild stories and bar room antics when drunk, was viewed as odd by at least half of Taragnon...
but a murderer?
It was ridiculous, and Dominic had made the mistake of voicing that thought. But what was the alternative? The enquiries had centred on anything out of place. In Taragnon, imbued strongly with the belief that nobody local could do anything so atrocious, this had translated into
people
out of place. The only other leads were a van with Lyon markings and a traveller passing through.

As if appeasing for his previous sharp tone, Poullain commented, 'You'll probably be pleased to hear that another lead came up late this afternoon. Cafe Font-du-Roux, just over a kilometre from where the boy was found. Barman saw a green Alfa Romeo coupe he hadn't seen before, its driver had lunch there.'

But Dominic wasn't particularly pleased. It was too simplistic:
misfits.
Machanaud because of his oddball nature at times, and now three others purely because they were strangers. Village thinking was one track, and Poullain and his merry men lacked the imagination to push it that one stage further.

Ahead a crowd at the reception caused a small bottle jam for people entering and exiting the hospital. Doctors and nurses criss-crossed the passage from the main admittance hall and emergency. A face among the crowd stared at them briefly, startled and concerned. But among the milling confusion of people it hardly registered, and the figure turned and was lost again in the crowd as it made its way swiftly out of the hospital.

Alain Duclos headed for the coast. At first, he had decided on Cannes and Juan-les-Pins, but then he realized he just couldn't face the people and frenetic activity. He headed instead for St Tropez. The village was quiet and the beach wasn't too crowded; because of its expanse, there were wide open areas where Duclos could walk and think or sit in solitude away from the groups of sunbathers.

He wondered if the gendarmes had noticed him at the hospital. He kicked himself now for taking such a risk. But he'd found it difficult to think clearly or function since reading the newspaper and phoning the hospital. Leaving the bar that morning, he'd headed out of Brignoles towards Castellane and the mountains. He stopped close to the Point Sublime and looked out over the Canyon du Verdon. The view was breathtaking, the wind sweeping up sharply from the valley floor, ruffling his hair. He closed his eyes and let the refreshing coolness play over his skin. But it did little to clear his thoughts:
the wind playing through the treetops in his final moment of pleasure, the rustle of wheat sheaves as he brought the rock down repeatedly on the boy's skull. Shifting wheat, rising and falling on the wind... white noise merging with the sound of waves gently breaking.

He opened his eyes. Slowly he scanned the horizon of St Tropez bay: two distant yachts and a fisherman's boat showed as white flecks against a deep blue canvass. Children played in the shallows. The view was different now, but the images in his mind remained the same. Perhaps he hoped the grandeur of the vistas would override the images in his mind, or was he simply seeking solitude? Space to think clearly. In the end, none of it touched his soul. He still felt desperately empty inside and confused.

After the mountains he'd headed back to the Vallon estate for lunch. Claude and his father had hardly seen him in the past twenty-four hours. He'd picked at his food through lunch, struggling even to make small talk, and he was sure they'd noticed his pre-occupation. The obsession haunted every spare moment when his thoughts were free; respites through outside distractions were brief.