Past Imperfect (44 page)

She hadn't mentioned the dream earlier, she explained, because at the time the joy of having Yves had consumed all else.

For the first few years, her absorption with Yves seemed natural: the love and affection of a doting mother to her new-born child. But as the years progressed, he began to notice how fearful and protective she was. It became an obsession: never letting Yves out of her sight, ensuring that there was never an unguarded moment in his life. Dominic railed against it. It wasn't a natural childhood, he argued: Yves was unable to have any freedom, could not play with his friends out of sight of her for any length of time.

Monique promised repeatedly that she would change, but any easing in her protectiveness was minimal. The only thing to help was the birth of Gerome a few years later - though mainly when Gerome was old enough to play with Yves, keep him company. They could partly watch and protect each other.

Her intense protectiveness became a recurring argument through their years together. She was well aware that it was a fault: 'But I could never again go through the trauma of losing a child.' She and Jean-Luc partly blamed themselves for Christian's death. Felt they'd allowed him too much freedom, he'd been let loose to play in the fields or with friends most days. Only natural, Dominic supported; he himself had enjoyed such a childhood in Louviers. She had stifled Yves terribly and now Gerome too was heavily under her protective wing.

In turn, Monique's advice with his career was equally as incisive. Drawing it out of him that he'd only stayed in Bauriac because of his ailing mother, she pushed him to take a transfer a year after they were married. Career-wise, he was stagnating in Bauriac. At heart, part of him had recognized that fact, but he'd become numbed into acceptance by routine. It had taken Monique to bring it to the surface.

It was also Monique's encouragement that led him to take his Inspectorate exams not long after, and she had advised on many of his career moves since. Her style was gentle, no more than a series of questions, so that in the end he felt he had all but arrived at the decision himself.

It was ironic, Dominic thought. She had such intuitive views about his career in the same way that he could see the errors she was making as a mother. A clear picture only gained by being detached from the problem, taking an overview. But in the case of Yves, he wished he'd been wrong.

In his teens came the backlash effect of Monique's protectiveness. At fifteen he left home and got in with the wrong crowd. He started off with sporadic promotional work for a chain of clubs and discotheques, handing out cards on street corners. He would turn up at the clubs late evening and started drinking heavily, peppered later with some drugs - marijuana at first, then cocaine. He started free-basing and took extra work as a drugs packet 'runner' to some of the clubs to pay for his habit. Often he was paid half in cash, half in cocaine. Dominic picked him up one night after one of the clubs had been raided.

Yves had been lost to them for almost two years. Throughout, Monique had been inconsolable. Where had she gone wrong? She'd done everything to shield him, to guide him on the right path, but still he'd drifted away. Not once did Dominic say, 'I told you so,' suggest that her obsessive protectiveness might have caused the problem, made Yves crave freedom and rebel.

Dominic kept Yves' name clear of any charge sheets, but added a condition: that he remain with them at least six months and attempt to dry out before deciding what he wanted to do with his life. In the end he stayed ten months - a painful period of adjustment and regular visits to a drugs counsellor - before embarking on his national service. He joined the French navy.

The two years of discipline combined with the frisson of travel broadened Yves outlook. He came back a changed person and enrolled for another year, taking a special course in maritime communications. When he returned, he joined the national police in Marseille as a sergeant. History was repeating itself.

Within two years, he was covering the Vieux Port area attached to narcotics. His maritime communications background and his knowledge of the drugs trade was invaluable in an area where most shipments came in by sea. Gerome was at Nice University, studying pure maths with a second in IT software architecture, hoping later for a career in computer programming. He had never been a problem.

Monique had long ago ceased to view either of them as any form of replacement for Christian, but she still worried about Yves, especially with his current work. That one day he might swing open the wrong warehouse door to face a
milieu
gun in the shadows.

Throughout the years of arguing against her unreasonable protectiveness, a recurring fear for Dominic had been that one day he might be wrong. That having urged her to loosen the reigns, told her not to worry, nothing would happen - against all odds it might. He'd often contemplated how he'd face her given such a circumstance. For it to happen twice and him feel that he was partly to blame: it was unthinkable.

When Marinella Calvan's call caught up with Dominic in Lyon, Yves was a DI still stationed in Marseille and Gerome was working for a computer company in Sophia Antipolis. Clarisse was married with three children - two girls and a boy - and lived with her husband, a sales manager for an agricultural feed company, near Alès.

Dominic maintained an apartment for himself and Monique in Lyon, but six years ago had bought a four bedroom farmhouse just north of Vidauban, only thirty-five kilometres from Taragnon. Gerome stayed there and commuted to work, and they came down at least every other weekend. Some weekends Yves would also join them and Clarisse and her family would visit every few months.

The words echoed in his mind.
'Yes, I do know someone who could verify Christian Rosselot's background.'
But apart from the ghosts that might be awoken in Monique's mind, he had also buried his own secrets through the years: he'd never told Monique that he had doubted Machanaud's guilt. Since the light sentence had been so controversial and Monique felt that it was partly at the root of Jean-Luc's suicide, it would have been insensitive and mocking. It would have hinted that Jean-Luc's suicide was completely in vain rather than just misguided. He couldn't do that to her.

For the same reason, when years later he discovered just how long Machanaud had been incarcerated - fourteen years between prison and mental institutions - he didn't tell Monique. The fact that Jean-Luc could have smiled from his grave because Machanaud had received just punishment would have been scant compensation. The overriding image would be that his suicide had been pointless.

Marinella Calvan said that she would send over a tape and accompanying transcript by messenger. It would be with him early tomorrow. His first reaction was that it was all nonsense, would probably all quickly evaporate to no avail. Though he wondered if his underlying curiosity was because of the terrible injustice he suspected might have been wielded against Machanaud, compounded by his own guilt at discovering later,
too late
, the severity of that injustice. But how many ghosts and secrets from the past would he need to trade to discover the truth?

TWENTY-EIGHT

Limoges, May 1982

Alain Duclos picked up the smoked salmon on a small octagonal wedge of bread and popped it in his mouth. The waiter paused to see if he'd choose another: caviar, prawns or paté with chives. Duclos just nodded and the waiter moved on.

RPR celebrations for victory at the local elections. The last bash two years ago had been held in a grand downtown civic hall, replete with marble columns, ornate chandeliers and filigreed plaster ceilings. But parking had been atrocious, so they'd opted for a modern hotel function room on the edge of town. The waiters with their liveried costumes and silver trays looked somehow out of place in this room with its low ceilings and suffused fluorescent lighting.

For the first forty minutes of the reception, Duclos had done little more but nod like a toy dog on a car's back shelf at the incessant chain of congratulations. 'Thank you. I'm so glad that you could make it. And thank you for your support during our campaign'. Once or twice, he'd even made the mistake of asking, 'And how's business?' to be caught up in endless tales of corporate woe that invariably ended: 'Perhaps there might be some influence you could bring to bear.'

Trite smiles in response. 'I'll see what I can do,' but thought:
assholes
. Even if he could affect entire industry sectors at the local level, invariably an opposing sector would start whinging and lobbying. Just smile, convince them they're your friends, look concerned, really,
really
concerned; and if pressed, tell them how theirs is an industry and an issue with the highest possible priority on your list. But in the end do fuck all. It was safer. Less friends and votes were lost keeping the status-quo as it was.

He was glad now of a moment alone at last. A chance to survey the room fully rather than just surreptitious sweeps between nods and smiles at some fawning local businessman or Chamber of Commerce representative. His wife was not far away, just visible beyond a small group towards the bar, talking to one of his main female PR aides - friends from before they were married when the two girls worked together in his offices. She'd made few friends since.

Eighteen months of marriage. No euphoria or bliss, that had certainly never even been expected by him; and, if he'd troubled to ask, possibly her too. Just convenient. Useful. Cut the right image for the electorate. They looked good together, and he had become increasingly aware that as he approached his mid-forties and still wasn't married, questions were beginning to get asked.

She'd been working in his offices almost fifteen months before he really noticed her and started asking about her; before he'd been too pre-occupied with his problems with Chapeau to think about anything else. Her application file also helped provide some background: Betina Canadet. Thirty-two years old. Single. Studied and gained a degree in social economics from the Sorbonne. Worked mainly in civic offices in Rouen where her family originally lived. Joined the RPR in 1976 and applied to the Limoges party offices in late 1979 when her family moved to the area.

The rest he discovered from one of his main aides, Thierry: 'What, the ice maiden?' Duclos was intrigued. Thierry was a mine of information on office gossip and politics. Two people in the office had already tried their luck and struck out. Thierry covered the obvious quickly: No, she wasn't a lesbian, and certainly one of the men she'd liked. 'Went out with him for three months before coming clean with her problem.' She just didn't like sex. Tragic case: victim of a date rape in her early twenties, it was many years afterwards before she could even bear to be in the company of men, let alone start feeling comfortable with them or, God forbid, actually touching them. Had to give her time; be gentle with her. The relationship only lasted another six weeks. 'Who has time to spend as an emotional counsellor in the hope that after a year or so she might, just
might
come in from the cold. Maybe she never will. Who knows?'

Duclos started dating her a month later. 'What is this, the ultimate challenge?' Thierry teased him. 'It's not enough just to swing the electorate, now the challenge is the ice maiden. See if you can succeed where all others have failed?'

Duclos' droll smile in return hinted that the North Pole had already been conquered. 'All it took was the right man to hit the defrost button. Some have it, some don't.'

In reality, it was a relationship built almost entirely on her veneration of his political stature and power and his patience with her sexual and emotional instability. She had never met anyone so patient and understanding.

He looked across at her now and she gave him a tight little smile. She'd hardly changed in the two years: somewhere between Twiggy and Piaf, with large blue eyes that pleaded ‘help me, save me, I'm frail’.

It was far from love. It had been like taking some frightened little deer in from the forest, making her feel comfortable and secure. He'd become her protection from the world outside, from all those nasty, grabbing men and their demands. Yet she carried guilt too, was worried that she wasn't pleasing him the way she should, despite his countless reassurances: he didn't see her like that. She shouldn't worry. He loved her for her soul, her character, her kindness and vulnerability - the sex was far less important. When she was ready, it was okay with him.

She would literally be tearful at his patience, his understanding. And between her summoning the effort, the work that made him tired or him pleading that he felt uncomfortable because he sensed she was forcing herself just for him - they made love at best once every other month. He could manage that, and from certain angles she even had a slight boyish quality. Perhaps that was what had made him first notice her. And, to cap it all, his work colleagues were slightly in awe at his sexual prowess in melting the 'ice maiden', succeeding where they had failed, bringing out the woman in her.

His only worry was that one day she would thaw out. She would look at him with those big eyes suddenly brimming with passion rather than vulnerability and uncertainty. That as she became more insistent and demanding and he was still reluctant, making excuses, she would finally guess his secret. The lie would be out.

He shook off a faint shiver. That wasn't now or even in the near future; hopefully never. And he'd had three years now out of the shadow of Chapeau. No calls or demands in the dead of night, the constant bleeding him dry, Chapeau's goading smile and sly humour.

Three years? It felt as if ankle chains and a yoke had suddenly been removed. He'd never known such freedom. Or happiness. He looked back towards his wife and smiled.