Past Imperfect (48 page)

Marinella shook her head. 'I don't know, it's a possibility, I suppose.' She felt her emotions tugged sharply. An image of a young inexperienced gendarme on the edge of an investigation, unable to wield any real influence yet harbouring a strong doubt nevertheless. A doubt carefully tended through the years, intensified and brought uncomfortably close to home by his marrying the dead boy's mother. Like Javert in 'Les Miserables', never entirely giving up on the investigation - until finally, a generation later, the opportunity arises to uncover the truth.
Second chance?
Wasn't that how she felt about the case: a chance to prove herself after the Cincinnati case and the other failures?

Then reality hit. Simple and unequivocal. David Lambourne would never go for it. Let alone Stuart Capel. Unless she could build a strong case to convince them. Intrigue and her desire to help started to bite back. But apart from Fornier's thumbnail account the day before, to her the murder was just a chain of breathless, disjointed words sifted through the decades via Eyran Capel. 'Tell me more about the investigation. All I know so far is from the newspaper coverage and what you told us the other day: the wheat field, sexual assault, blunt instrument, and that Christian was in a coma for five days before dying. The man convicted - what makes you doubt his guilt?'

'Too circumstantial. He was just a local casual farm labourer and poacher who happened to be there at the time. No history of sexual assault or incidents with young boys. No violence. But the prosecution nevertheless built a convincing case out of that circumstance.'

'But I understand from the newspaper coverage that he wasn't convicted of murder. In the end he got off with manslaughter.'

‘“Got off with”, I'm afraid, is not the most appropriate phrase given what finally happened to Machanaud.' Dominic related the sorry tale of Perrimond playing favours with hospital governors and state psychiatrists. 'Machanaud ended up spending a total of fourteen years imprisoned.'

Between sips of coffee, Marinella intook breath sharply. 'God. That's ludicrous. I'm sorry. Sounds almost like a personal vendetta.' And immediately wondered why she was saying sorry to Fornier, except that he seemed to care what had happened to Machanaud.

'It practically was.' Dominic explained how it had quickly developed into an establishment protection case. That the person he suspected was a young assistant prosecutor staying with one of the area's largest landowners. 'A personal friend of the mayor. It was unthinkable that such a person could possibly commit such an atrocity. Whereas Machanaud was a low-life poacher and village drunkard. He was seen as a far easier target, less troublesome - and the weight of circumstantial evidence built up strongly against him.'

'What happened with the assistant prosecutor?'

'He was questioned only once. The timing of his car being seen in a restaurant appeared to give him an alibi. He went on to become a leading politician, RPR candidate for Limoges.' Dominic raised his coffee cup as if saying
salut,
and smiled. 'Now he's one of France's illustrious representatives in Brussels. An MEP. He's done very well has our dear
Monsieur
Alain Duclos.'

Images of Javert were back. Relentlessly pursuing through the decades. And now a name had been attached:
Alain Duclos
. But Marinella felt uncomfortable with Dominic's suddenly maudlin tone. A lifetime of battling the odds against the police
and
the establishment, and now she might let him down yet again. What was she hoping for, what niche to prise open the barricades she knew would confront her if she requested more sessions? 'And Machanaud. What happened to him after he was finally let out.'

'He died eight years ago. Had only six years of freedom in between.'

Marinella grimaced, her eyes flickering down slightly. But she began to worry that, like Javert, Fornier's pursuit of Duclos might be equally unfounded. 'If this Duclos' car was seen somewhere that supposedly gave him an alibi, then what makes you suspect him?'

Dominic ran one finger absently down the side of his coffee cup. How could he explain? A look, a glimmer in the eye from thirty-two years ago? Something that told him Duclos was nervous, had something to hide. Or his supercilious, pretty-boy appearance. That he
looked
like the type who might molest young boys. Calvan would just laugh at him in the same way Poullain had all those years back. In the end all he said was: 'There were discrepancies with the car sightings. Some of the details I wasn't happy with.'
Discrepancies
again. His standard trench when shots fired. Stumbling through an account of the car sighting cover up - even if Marinella Calvan might find sympathy with his motive of his ailing mother - he was sure overall wouldn't aid his cause.

'Do you think the people who saw Duclos' car were lying?'

'No. But Machanaud said that he saw it passing on the lane while he was poaching - just minutes before he left himself.'

'But he could have been lying to save his own neck.'

'Yes. That's what the prosecution said.'

Marinella forced a wan smile. 'I see. Sorry.' She sensed there was more, but Dominic looked away awkwardly after a second. They were silent, the clatter of the café imposing. Whatever it was, he obviously found it still worth keeping to himself after thirty-two years. If Dominic Fornier truly believed that more information could be gained by avoiding the murder and keeping to when Christian Rosselot first met his attacker - then when and where? All Fornier had mentioned so far was
'forty minutes to an hour beforehand.'
'Where do you think Christian first met his attacker: by the lane and the wheat field, or somewhere else?'

'Probably close by, at least. The supposition was that whoever he met, they probably hid down by the river bank for most of the time. A few cars passed on the lane. If they'd stayed for any length of time in the wheat field, they'd have been seen.'

'Is that where the sexual assault also took place - down by the river bank?'

'Yes. There were two assaults, with a gap of anything from thirty to fifty minutes in between. Certainly the second took place by the lane, and possibly the first close by.'

'If it was Duclos, not Machanaud - is that where you think Christian met him?'

'I don't know. That's one of the details I hoped further sessions might uncover.' Faint shadows from a ceiling fan moved across the floor. Dominic glanced down, memories of the reconstruction drifting. Stormclouds across the shifting white wheat. 'Machanaud admitted poaching in that same position for almost two hours. That became one of the prosecution's strongest arguments. If Christian met someone else there, Machanaud would have seen them.'

Two assaults? Thirty to fifty minutes gap in between
. Marinella was trying to assimilate the rest of the sequence of events, get a clearer picture. 'You realize that details regarding either of the sexual assaults would probably be equally as vague. As with the murder, Christian has very likely blotted it out.'

'Yes.'

'Apart from the fact that they would have been deeply disturbing in their own right, Christian might have already suspected that his attacker would later kill him.'

'I understand.'

'Probably the only clear detail we'll get, as you have suggested, is from when Christian first met his attacker. Before he realized that anything might happen. But that might only be a few minutes at most.'

'Then you'll help?'

'I don't know. As I say, it's difficult.' Marinella bit at her lip. The possible obstacles came back full force: Lambourne's and Stuart Capel's reaction to the sessions suddenly becoming an appendage to a murder investigation. She would be lucky to get to first base. 'If it was just up to me, fine. I'd help. But it's not. My colleague David Lambourne has been given charge to cure Eyran Capel's current condition. And Eyran's stepfather Stuart probably wouldn't be too pleased knowing that Eyran's course of therapy has been suddenly hi-jacked to head somewhere else. But I'll do what I can.'

She could have added, 'Don't hold your breath,' but Dominic's shoulders had already slumped, the eagerness in his eyes suddenly dulled. She studied his face for a moment. The dark hair, greying heavily at the sides, the enticing, almost imperceptible slant at the corner of his eyes. Laughter lines as he'd first greeted her now etching the pain of those long years. It couldn't have been easy, she thought: marrying the dead boy's mother and still harbouring the doubt through all those years. 'I'll do my best. I promise.'

'Thank you.'

Marinella flinched slightly as Dominic touched her hand fleetingly in thanks. It wasn't the touch itself, but something she wasn't able to define until they'd parted and she watched him walk away - shoulders still slumped, or perhaps buoyed by her parting promise? But it hit her then how much Dominic was depending on her, and again the worry came that she might end up letting him down.

There was only one session left to fill in some of the remaining details of Christian Rosselot's life before her flight back to Virginia and Sebastian. But even armed with this incredible story - the quest of a man still searching for the truth in a murder from thirty years ago - with both Lambourne and Stuart Capel already railing against continued probing in the past, she feared their reaction was a foregone conclusion.

Fornier's quest had touched her deeply, but how was she even going to start to convince them?

Genoa, January 1983

Marc Jaumard looked at the brief entry in the newspaper personal column. He'd already read it twice and now read it through again, trying to measure each word, judge any hidden intent. He only had the single page with the personals, ripped out from
La Provençal
and sent by a friend in Marseille.

Jaumard had been with the same Genoa-based company now for over four years. Away at sea when his brother died, he hadn't even known until six weeks later when he returned to Genoa. Folded clippings in an envelope from the same friend in Marseille:
'Café Slaying'; '
Milieu
war hots up'; 'Café au Sanguin'
. The main report in
La Provençal
described his brother as a
'known milieu associate.'
Quite flattering considering that he had mainly killed people for money.

And now this new clipping almost four years later. Jaumard wondered if it really was what it appeared on face value: connected somehow with his brother's death? He'd left Marseille in something of a rush: rent un-paid for three months, a bank loan on a car he'd taken with him left hanging, and his ex-wife screaming for maintenance. The advert could be just a ruse by the bank or his wife's lawyer to flush him out. Create the illusion that it was somehow connected with his brother's death, a small inheritance from blood money stashed away perhaps. Then slap an injunction on him.

A bit extreme for the bank, playing on sympathies with his long-buried brother - but he'd put nothing past his ex-wife. He wondered. He contemplated the nearby phone briefly before his eyes fell back to the advert. Dissecting sentences and then individual words, silently mouthing, trying to imagine his ex-wife across a lawyer's desk as it was worded.

THIRTY-ONE

Shallow breathing. Half light from the hallway spilling across Eyran's profile as he slept. Stuart Capel stood over the bed, contemplating. In some lights, at some angles, he could see Jeremy's features in Eyran's face. Remember Jeremy as he was as a child, the two of them playing together. Eyran was the last link with those memories.

Lost now, all so distant - and pushed away even further by the confusion and nightmares running riot in Eyran's mind. Still, the Eyran he remembered - the carefree smiling boy from their trip to California before the accident - was out of reach.

Seven sessions in five weeks. Had Eyran's state of mind improved? Certainly, the frequency of dreams had diminished. Two a week had been the average before the sessions, now they were at least a week or ten days apart and less violent and upsetting. Of the four dreams over those five weeks, two dreams had been with Gigio, two without.

The latest development Stuart found hardest to accept: Past life regressions? Gigio no longer an invented, protective character from the part of Eyran's psyche refusing to accept the loss of his parents - but a real life in its own right. A life that Eyran had supposedly lived in France from 1953 to 1963. Christian Rosselot. He shook his head. It was unreal, ludicrous, another turn-off along the nightmarish road they'd been led down since Jeremy's death. Yet this one had no familiar landmarks, no signposts, dragged him abruptly away from the only tangible element with Eyran's condition he'd clung to: Eyran's non-acceptance of his parents death. He could relate to that. He had felt the emotion strongly himself, had spent the last long weeks struggling to come to terms with Jeremy's death and had barely succeeded. A friendly face in his dreams taking him to see Jeremy, he imagined could be quite reassuring, soothing. Make him feel somehow that Jeremy hadn't completely gone.

But his reservations about entering Eyran into therapy had lingered until the second session when David Lambourne brought up the possible danger of a predominant character pushing Eyran over the edge into schizophrenia. Only then did he feel assured he'd made the right decision. His earlier fears were allayed.

Now with that premise thrown out of the window, Stuart's doubts were back. Before the final session with Marinella Calvan, he'd voiced his concerns to Lambourne of continued probing into Eyran's past. Lambourne had defended that because the past real character of Gigio/Christian had also experienced sudden separation from his parents, secondary influence was still significant. How even apart from that core shared experienced of loss, there were other elements linking the two lives: a period of coma in both boys, Eyran's brief death, the wheat field in Eyran's dreams which was also the last place to feature in Christian's life. By knowing more about Christian Rosselot, they would be better armed to tackle Eyran's current condition.