Seen and Not Heard (25 page)

The hand on her arm tightened almost painfully. “When did he come back?”

“Last night. I … thought … you …” She gave up the struggle for a moment, leaning against him and shuddering in remembered distaste.

Tom began to swear, a low string of obscenities that was curiously comforting. “I should never have left you.”

“It … would have … made things worse.”

“I should have brought you home with me, then.”

She lifted her head. “We’ve got to get Nicole. I couldn’t … move her. She was too heavy. He’s given her something, and I don’t think it’s the first time. I didn’t dare stay, but I was afraid if he woke up and found her …”

“We’ll get her.” He’d already put her aside and was pulling on a jacket. He was dressed as she was, in jeans and sweater and running shoes, and even with his superior height Claire had to wonder whether he’d be a match for Marc. She couldn’t imagine it would come to that, but so much had happened already that was beyond her wildest nightmares. Something was very, very wrong in that apartment, with her lover of the last four months, and that wrongness was so evil, so permeating, that it defeated even her overblown fantasies.

“Should we call the police?” She didn’t even flinch as she headed toward the door, prepared to retrace her mad dash of only minutes before.

“After we get Nicole out of there. The French do everything at their own speed, and I don’t think they’re going to like taking the word of a couple of Americans against that of a fellow Parisian. Bonnard is a fairly well-known figure in certain circles—it will only make it more difficult.”

There was no reply she could make to that, only swallow the groan of despair that threatened to overwhelm her. She was halfway out the door, ahead of him, when the phone
rang. She stopped dead still at the top of the stairs, and Tom careened into her, almost knocking her down the steep flight.

“Answer it,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We have to get back as quickly as …”

“Answer it,” she said again, her voice dull and resigned.

He didn’t argue, simply turned and went back into the apartment, picking up the serviceable black phone and barking a French greeting into it.

She could tell by the sudden whiteness of his face that her instincts had been right. He held out the receiver to her. “It’s Bonnard.”

She didn’t ask how he knew where to find her. Tom wouldn’t know any more than she did. All that mattered was that Marc knew.

She took the receiver from him, holding it gingerly, as if it were a cobra about to bite her. She held it to her ear. “Marc?” she said, and her voice was surprisingly calm.

There was no answer. Just the same thick, impenetrable silence she’d heard on those other occasions. She could see him at the other end, the exaggerated expressions, the perfect command of his trained body, but God only knew what he was telling her in his silence.

And then she heard Nicole scream.

The call came in just before three in the afternoon. Malgreave had assigned one of the newer detectives to manning the phone. Over the last two years there’d been so many false leads and crazies calling in with messages from God that Malgreave no longer bothered to deal with them directly. He left it up to Pierre Gauge, a not very bright transfer from the police department in Rouen. What he lacked in brains he more than made up for in doggedness, and Malgreave knew he could count on having a complete transcript of every call concerning the old women that came in, be they from concerned citizens or Saint Joan herself.

Gauge even taped them all, keeping the tapes for a week at a time, long enough for Malgreave or Josef to review them to see whether Gauge might have missed something. He seldom did. Even with his limited command of languages other than French, he managed to do a creditable job, and his nighttime replacement, a weary old veteran on the edge of retirement, did the same.

Gauge knew enough to recognize Vidal’s voice when he heard it, patching the call directly through to the Chief Inspector. “Summer’s still talking with the mayor,” Vidal said. “But he thought this couldn’t wait any longer. You were right—Yvon Alpert, Rocco Guillère, and Gilles Sahut were all inmates at the Marie-le-Croix orphanage at the
time it burned down. Two people were killed in the blaze—an elderly gardener and the matron of the house, an old woman named Estelle Marti. There was a question of arson at the time, but nothing could be proven. Besides, the boys were only about ten or twelve years old. Not old enough to be criminals.”

“You’d be surprised,” Malgreave said, tapping his pencil thoughtfully. “Anybody remember the old people? Were they locals?”

“People old enough to remember have been pretty close-mouthed about the whole thing. As far as we can tell, the victims weren’t well liked, either of them. It sounds as if the investigation into the fire was dropped for lack of interest, not evidence.”

“Interesting. What about Bonnard?”

“No one by the name of Marc Bonnard was in residence here at the time of the fire.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Vidal laughed on the other end. “I should mention that a young boy named Marc de Salles arrived about a year before the fire. A very handsome boy, younger than the others, with a talent for theatrics and a particularly winning way with the locals.”

“It should be easy enough to check. The boys would have been sent to other institutions, farmed out to foster homes. Probably our young friend de Salles was taken in by a family named Bonnard.”

“Chief Inspector, the boy was ten years old when the place burned. Surely you don’t think he could have been involved?”

“I’m convinced they all were involved, and they may have had a damned good motive. When you finish up there see what you can find about the gardener and Estelle Marti. Whether they had any criminal record, any history of child abuse, of sexual deviations. It would explain a great deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

Malgreave replaced the phone, a faint expression of amusement momentarily lightening his features. Josef would have to watch himself with that one. Vidal was an
eager beaver if ever there was one. It must have killed Josef to let him make that call, but Josef was ever conscientious, putting a case ahead of his wife’s ambitions. Malgreave would have to make sure Josef felt appreciated.

He heard the phone ring in the outer office. He reached for the receiver again, but Gauge was ahead of him, his broad face creased in concentration as he took studious notes, and Malgreave pulled his hand back, reaching for a cigarette instead. He could hear the voice on the other end through a lull in the office noise, some hysterical woman babbling in what sounded like English. Another crazy, Malgreave thought, lighting the cigarette and taking a deep, appreciative pull on it. Thank God he could count on Gauge to deal with it.

It all came together in an instant of pure, disbelieving horror. She knew, the moment she heard Nicole scream, she knew. She didn’t need Marc’s voice, the sudden, rasping, giggly sound of Marc’s voice breaking in, speaking to her at last, to confirm what she’d never wanted to face.

“I am going to kill her,
chérie
,” he said, his voice high, breathless. “I only like to kill old women, grandmothers like Harriette, but in Nicole’s case I’ll make an exception. She saw me last night with her grandmother, and she’s always suspected about her mother. If it weren’t for Nicole you would have loved me.”

“Marc …”

“She’s trying to hide from me, Claire. She’s running, but she’s so drugged that she won’t be able to get far. I won’t kill her right away once I catch her. I like little girls. I like to touch them. I’ll make it last,
chérie
. I’ll make it last a long, long time.”

There was no background noise beyond Marc’s eerie voice. Maybe she had gotten away, maybe if she could just keep him on the phone long enough Nicole could run for help. Claire took a deep, struggling breath, only dimly aware of Tom’s arm around her hunched shoulders. “Marc,” she said, and stopped, momentarily astonished at how calm her
voice was. “Marc,” she said again. “You don’t want to hurt anyone …”

“
Au contraire, chérie
, I do. I want to hurt Nicole, I want to hurt you, I want to hurt the old women that watch me, that tease and torture me, I want to hurt them all. I want …” His ranting changed swiftly from English to French, his voice rising to an almost incomprehensible shriek. Tom jerked the phone away from her, listening with growing horror, and Claire thanked God she couldn’t understand French.

And then the line went dead. Silence once more, but not the listening, waiting silence. A few seconds later an impartial buzz informed them that Marc had hung up the phone. That now he could search for Nicole.

Nicole sat huddled against the wall in the hallway, the scream of terror still caught in her throat as she stared at Marc. Nothing seemed to be working, not her legs, not her arms, not her voice, certainly not her brain. She’d felt like this before, the time she’d fallen into a swimming pool, going down, down, deep under the water, fighting through the heaviness that pulled and tugged at her, drowning her. Her mother had saved her, jumped in and pulled her to the surface, where she could struggle and breathe again, scream and cry in terror and life.

But her mother was dead, killed by the monster in front of her, and there was no one to save her. No way she could struggle out of the heavy folds of death that were wrapping around her. Claire had deserted her. Claire who had promised to take care of her, Claire had left her to Marc.

He’d forgotten her for the moment. He was laughing into the telephone, and his eyes were bright with joy and malice. He was telling Claire what he would do to her, what he could do to both of them. Summoning her last ounce of strength, Nicole began to scuttle backward like a crab, along the side of the wall.

Marc stood between her and the front door. She could make it to the back door, but he might catch her, and there
were knives in the kitchen, too many long, sharp knives. There was a chance, one chance that he might not know about. Claire would come. Claire had abandoned her, but Claire would come. If she could just find a place to hide, long enough for Claire to get there, she’d be safe.

She must have banged against the wall. Marc turned, looking at her, and his mouth curved in cheerful anticipation before turning his attention back to the phone. He knew she was too weak to walk. She wouldn’t have the strength to go far enough to get away from him.

But pray God he didn’t know about the old heating duct in her closet. She’d pulled the grate off years ago, and sometimes she used to crawl in there and hide, curled up in her own misery, missing her father, hating the interloper who smiled too much and watched her in her bath. She was bigger now, and it might be a tight squeeze, but she could pull the grate after her, hide back there, and he might not find her.

She could hear his voice, getting higher, louder, saying things she couldn’t understand and didn’t want to. Her legs were getting stronger, finally beginning to respond to her brain’s orders, and she scrambled into her bedroom, across the rug, and into the closet.

For a moment the grate stuck, and she panicked. Someone must have found it was loose, must have put new screws in. But then it moved, and she yanked it open, crawling into the narrow chute.

Her numb fingers could barely lift the heavy grate. It made a loud, clanging noise as she pulled it into place, and the silence from the hallway told her Marc had finished with Claire. Had he seen where she went? Had he heard the sound and recognized it? Was he just behind her, watching her, about to reach for her with those long, cruel fingers?

She let go of the grate and tried to scramble backward into the narrow tunnel, but the heavy iron began to fall forward, and she caught it just in time. She had no choice. She would have to sit at the end of the tunnel, holding the grate in place, hoping Marc wouldn’t be able to see her pale fingers through the hatches, wouldn’t yank the grate open
and grab her before she could edge away into the narrow ductwork.

And if she was able to get away, into the maze of tunnels, what would happen? What if she got stuck, and no one ever found her? She’d starve to death, stuck in the heating vent, trapped, unable to break free.

She heard a whimper of terror, and knew it was her own. And then, in her room, close, too close, came the almost imperceptible sound of footsteps. The footsteps of a man used to silence.

She stopped breathing. He made no sound, the madly cheerful voice stilled. She heard the rustle of bedclothes, the creak of an old floorboard. He was looking beneath her bed, in the corner, behind the curtains. She could sense him moving closer, toward the closet, and she knew if he opened the door he would see her pale white fingers against the gray iron of the grate. She had no choice, she would have to release the grate and scuttle back into the tunnel.

Light flooded the end of the duct just as she released her death grip. She held still, waiting for the heavy iron to fall, exposing her hiding place. She held still, waiting for death.

The hangers rattled overhead. The neatly polished shoes in front of the grate were kicked by a slippered foot. And the grate, held by an uncertain gravity and her terrified prayers, stayed in place.

The closet door remained open, but the footsteps edged away. She leaned forward, watching his shadowed figure as it moved toward the hallway, and as she did so her forehead brushed the iron grate, sending it tumbling toward the wooden floor.

She caught it, inches from the floor, clenching the heavy piece of iron in impossibly weak hands, half in, half out of the vent, not daring to move, waiting, waiting for Marc to come back and find her.

But he’d already gone, moving into the hallway, intent on his own hunt, dismissing her room as a possible haven.

Slowly, silently, she sat back, pulling the heavy grate with her. Her fingers were clutched so tightly around the iron that she found she couldn’t release them. She no longer
cared. She leaned back against the cold metal sides of the vent and shut her eyes. She would wait until someone found her. If it was Marc, so be it.