Siren (23 page)

‘Help me!’ she shouted, beginning to feel woozy. ‘A man swapped the vials! This is no joke…’ Her voice trailed off and she sank to her knees.

Arslan sat in a perfectly motionless panic, his arms and legs folded tightly into the standard position of an enterologist.

Honte…honte…Shame…shame…

From his hidden vantage point in the old stage box, Arslan watched as the
gendarmes
grilled Bijou about the dramatic incident that had taken place during the performance of
The Final Kiss
. There had been a shocked audience of witnesses in the theatre, and the French police had been tipped off that Arslan himself had swapped the stage vial of harmless coloured water for one containing real sulphuric acid. The woman who had leaped onstage was a private detective who had seen him make the switch before the show. He still did not know how she had ended up there, backstage that night. How had she known what he would do?

‘
Non…c’est terrible!
’ Bijou was crying, highly dramatic when emotional. She trembled and wept, one hand to her pale forehead, her distress genuine even though her demeanour inevitably brought to mind her persona of Grand Guignol scream queen.

She knows. My mother knows.

Finally, the Australian boy was gone. He had been questioned by police and then fled France, back to his own mother’s arms in Sydney, and he would not be coming back and getting between Arslan and Bijou and their enduring bond. This was what Arslan had prayed for, though it had not eventuated at all as he had hoped. With Jean-Baptiste, his last real rival for Bijou’s affection five years earlier, the troupe had remained undivided. His mother had been stoic in her resolve that none of them were responsible for the acid attack in the alley after their show, and it must have been a psychotic audience member who had wrought the terrible violence in homage to their play. She had been saddened by the fate of her severely scarred and maimed young lover, and they had soon after separated. But all was changed now. Bijou and the troupe were estranged from him, and from each other. Fractured. The
gendarmes
were suspicious of Arslan. He was
wanted
, and would have to remain on the run for who knew how long. Worst of all, his mother was not protecting him this time. She was not trying to dissuade them from making their harsh judgements against him.

She knows.

The two officers questioning Bijou stood in her living room, looming over her diminutive figure while she alternately wept and pouted, perched delicately on her floral, gilt-edged sofa. He could catch glimpses of them, and hear their every word, from his hiding place in Bijou’s bedroom. For her part she was not confirming the gendarmes’ suspicions that Arslan had wanted her to throw acid on her younger lover, disfiguring that beautiful face of his, and tearing him from her forever. But she was not denying it.

‘Where is your son?’ the shorter officer persisted.

Bijou winced. She hated being labelled a mother, and certainly
his
mother. Few people knew their true relationship.

‘
Je ne sais pas.
I don’t know,’ she said with conviction. And she was telling the truth. She did not know. As she had never known about his hiding in her bedroom, his watching her, his watching her between the sheets with her other lovers, his eternal watching…

‘Madame, we found sulphuric acid in his apartment,’ the officer explained. ‘His fingerprints were on the vial, along with yours. Can you think of any reason he would want to have this man injured? What was his motivation? Was it professional jealousy?’

Bijou began to cry hysterically, her mascara running.

‘Where is he?’ the other one demanded once more.

‘If you are protecting him we may have to assume that you planned this with him—’

‘I would never hurt Adam! Never!
Jamais
!’

Arslan peered through his spy-hole at the woman he had always loved, flanked by the police, talking about him as if he was a monster, his love worthless. Never had he felt more alone than at this moment.

‘Not professional jealousy…’ she said, and the police leaned forward. ‘There is no finer contortionist than my darling Arslan.’

He felt his chest swell slightly in the confines of the box.

Je t’aime, Bijou.

His mother turned her back from Arslan’s viewpoint, and he watched her shoulders rise and fall in jerking movements. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Rarely had he seen her lose composure at all, but now she seemed to go to water.

‘No, he loved me. He wanted to hurt him because he loved me!’ she cried.

‘Jealousy?’ one of them said.

She continued to shake, sobbing. Arslan wanted to comfort her. ‘We were lovers. Oh, God help me. God help me…’

He could feel the shock ripple through them. ‘Your…son?’

They know.

She cried even harder.

‘Madame, try to remain calm,’ one of the officers said.

‘Do you have any recent photographs of him?’ the taller officer asked, offering Bijou a tissue.

She dabbed delicately at her eyes, sniffling. ‘
Oui.
In my photo album. The photograph is perhaps twelve months old.’

She stood up, straightened her dress and walked into her bedroom, right towards Arslan. His eyes grew wide, his heart in his throat. Did she sense he was there? Could she know?

No.

Bijou searched through her stacks of things, oblivious to his presence, and finding her large leather-bound albums of photographs and news clippings piled under a heavy trunk, pulled at the corner of one of the albums with an ineffectual tug.

‘It is here,’ she called, and turned to the officers. ‘Oh can you help me?’ she asked, adopting a look of feminine powerlessness.

‘Of course,’ the taller officer said, and entered the bedroom.

Arslan felt his panic rise, sure that he would be discovered. If they found him they would drag him off to prison.

Arslan could not see what was happening, and he dared not try to change position. There was the sound of books
being moved then something heavy being shifted. The man grunted slightly with the effort, and placed the trunk directly on top of Arslan’s box.

Immediately, as the trunk was placed on top of him, Arslan realised what had happened.

Emprisonné!

His fingers flexed. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but remained silent. He could do nothing.

Trapped. I am trapped.

An hour later, and in no danger of immediate discovery, Arslan tried to push his way out of the box as he usually did. But he could not get out. He put his muscles into it, but the thing on top—whatever it was—was too heavy. He tried to shift it with rocking movements, but it barely rocked a millimetre.

He attempted to rock the stage box off its shelf, but he hadn’t enough freedom of movement to build momentum.

Slowly, his extremities were becoming numb.

Arslan brooded silently, trapped within the box, imprisoned by a circumstance of his own making.

Maman.

Makedde waited in Charles de Gaulle airport with Adam Hart on her arm, feeling strangely like a stern schoolteacher. She was determined to watch him board the Air China flight, just to be sure, and after two painful hours of waiting the first boarding call had sounded.

It was 9.45 a.m. and she hadn’t had much sleep. Most of the night had been spent in hospital and with the police.

‘I’m curious about something,’ she said. ‘Why are some of the pages of your diary ripped out?’

The young man hung his head and spoke to the airport tile, looking younger than his nineteen years. ‘I’m so embarrassed. I didn’t think…’ He trailed off, reddening. ‘I guess if anyone
did
find the diaries, I wanted to protect Bijou.’ His jaw quivered as he spoke her name. Even with all that had happened and all that he had learned—even with the now public knowledge that Bijou had once had an affair with her own son Arslan—Adam still loved her.

Of course he ripped out the pages himself.

His mother had blamed Patrice for his running away, and
he wanted to make sure that no one blamed Bijou, or knew where he could be found. It seemed that Adam really had believed in a happy-ever-after with his new lover. It would no doubt take him some time to come to terms with the shocking turn of events.

‘Again, I really am so sorry about your hand,’ Adam told her.

‘It’s okay,’ she managed, but barely meant it. The burn, though only the size of a twenty-cent piece, was exceedingly painful. The damage felt
alive
somehow, moving in her skin. It covered her left hand from the base of her pinky finger to the edge of her palm, and the skin beneath her bandage tingled and ached like terrible sunburn. According to the doctor, it might never heal properly. She would have a scar to remind her of this case forever.

Imagine if
all
of the acid had spilled across your hand, instead of a drop?

She had been very lucky. And Adam had certainly been lucky as well. What if she had not acted so impetuously? He was seconds away from having his lover, Bijou, unknowingly disfigure him for life. If Mak had not seen the man—the contortionist Arslan as it turned out—acting suspiciously near the props before the show, she would not have figured it out in time, and the acid would have covered Adam’s face. Nothing could have stopped it once it made contact with his skin. No more handsome face. No more chance for normality. His mother, Glenise, would have welcomed home quite a different son.

‘Makedde?’

‘Yes, Adam?’

‘Thank you,’ he said, and embraced her childishly.

‘Go on,’ she said, dismissing him, and waving him towards the gate. ‘
Bon voyage
. Fly safely.’

Adam waved as he disappeared down the gangway to his plane. She stepped away, ready for the trip back to her hotel, feeling sorry for the young man. Though it was Mak who had been burned, he had learned a painful lesson. She hoped his reunion with his mother was a good one. They had both been through a tough couple of years. After all that suffering, they deserved to find some happiness.

With a fresh dose of caffeine pumping through her and a stomach happily digesting one of the best croissants she had ever eaten, Mak slipped into the elevator at the Hotel des Grandes Écoles with the satisfaction of a job complete.

Done. You did it.

The elevator door shut with a squeak, and the cramped, rattling lift ascended to her floor. She stepped out into the narrow hallway and flattened herself against the wall to let a maid in a traditional black-and-white uniform, carrying a feather duster, pass her. The corridors smelled of scented cleaning products.

‘
Bonjour
,’ she offered as the woman brushed past her chest.

Mak could not understand the smiling woman’s rapid-fire reply.

She opened the door to her room with a large, old-fashioned key, stepped inside and locked the deadbolt behind her out of habit. She threw herself on the hard bed, grinning wildly, her arms and legs flung out in her preferred starfish pose. It was not just the café au lait that was buzzing pleasantly around her system, but the excitement of having completed her case, and completed it well. Adam would soon be home
safe in Australia, unharmed, apologetic and reunited with his grateful mother, Glenise. And he would return with her pearls, too. Mak was relieved. She had felt an increasing foreboding, fearing something terrible would happen to him. Thankfully, this was one case that would not end in the kind of violence and tragedy that seemed always to plague her.

She rolled over and grabbed her phone. It would be evening in Australia.

It rang four times.
Don’t get too giddy.

A warm voice came on the line, full of concern about her injury. Bogey. She’d just managed a thirty-second call to him the night before to let him know the case was wrapped up and she was okay.

‘Hi there.’ She laughed nervously, hating that she was so girlishly enlivened by the idea of talking to him. She hoped he couldn’t tell over the phone. The case was over and the first thing her mind had seized upon was romance.

There was silence for a few seconds. ‘You sound so far away, Mak,’ he said.

‘I am!’

‘What’s the hotel like?’

‘It’s not bad. The room’s tiny, but I think all rooms in Paris are the size of a closet. But why would anyone spend time in their room when there’s Paris to explore?’

As soon as she said the words, Mak regretted them. Her mind immediately went to one very compelling reason to stay indoors. She imagined Bogey in her bed, perhaps lying across the crisp white sheets with his tattoos spread on his naked skin like fascinating constellations to be explored in minute detail. Every centimetre of skin, every tiny hair, every pore…

‘Are you boarding soon?’ she asked excitedly.

‘Yes. I’ll be in London in about twenty-four hours. I can come across on the Eurostar as soon as you’re ready for me.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘You are? Great! Congratulations, by the way, on another case solved.’

Mak smiled. ‘Well, it is nice to get a happy resolution.’

‘You know, your work on the Murphy–Wallace case was pretty impressive too.’ He had followed her progress carefully on that one. When they had first met.

She had been feeling elated, but at the mention of the troublesome Cavanagh case, her mood darkened. ‘Don’t…really, don’t get me started about all that,’ she said, perhaps a bit too sharply. ‘Tobias didn’t end up doing time for a crime he didn’t commit, but other than that, there’s not too much positive I can say about that case.’

Just like that, the Cavanaghs were back in her head. When she got back to Sydney she intended seeing what she could do about tracking down that incriminating video. The police had it, and she wanted to see it again. She even had wild ideas about leaking it to the press, or maybe onto YouTube. Perhaps the only way to circumvent those who were holding back the investigation was to go public. If the Cavanaghs really were innocent of her every accusation, if there was some other explanation for what happened…well, they would have no trouble clearing themselves and they certainly had the money to secure top legal representation. They should at least be put under scrutiny. If they weren’t, it made a mockery of the justice system.

‘Mak, I’m glad you’re over there right now. You’re probably safer.’ A touch of concern had entered Bogey’s voice. ‘There was an article in the paper yesterday about the
Cavanaghs. Apparently the name “Cavanagh” and some employees of theirs came up on a database in some raid on an international organised crime ring. It’s a big scandal, as you can imagine.’

An edgy electric current slipped up her spine and she shivered. ‘An international crime ring?’

‘Apparently. There wasn’t a lot of detail. Something about a crime ring with some connection in Queensland. That’s all the article said. And everything was prefaced with “allegedly”, of course.’

Andy.
He’d said the feds were onto them.

Mak wanted to call Karen and find out if she knew anything about it. ‘How is it that you read this in the paper, but no one told me?’

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’m sorry,’ Bogey said. ‘You really don’t need to be thinking about those issues right now. You’re in
Paris
. Are you going out sightseeing today?’

‘Naturally,’ she answered, her mind only half on the conversation. ‘Eiffel Tower, Champs Élysées…the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe…’ She reeled off the destinations, feeling far away, her thoughts in Sydney, not Paris.

The line was silent for a moment as Mak gripped the phone too hard, and stared blankly towards the hotel window, not seeing the charming drapery or the Paris sky beyond.

An international crime ring. Corruption. This could be it. They might actually get their just deserts.

‘I’m glad you told me,’ she went on. ‘I want to know more.’

‘I’m sure the police are onto it,’ Bogey replied, trying to reassure her. ‘Tell me about what’s happening over there. Have the police found the contortionist? How is what’s-her-name
…Bijou? How’s she coping?’ Bogey was clearly trying to get her off the topic of the Cavanaghs.

He was right—there was nothing she could do about the Cavanaghs over here in Europe. Still, the idea would stay with her until she knew more.

‘Arslan is still missing, and wanted for assault. I’ll tell you more about it when I see you.’

Mak felt a little thrill of desire, thinking about seeing Bogey in only another day or so. How wonderful.

‘I wonder where he’ll turn up?’ Bogey mused.

‘I think I mentioned before that one of Bijou’s lovers was attacked under similar circumstances about five years ago. That assault is still unsolved, but the police now believe that it might have been Arslan. The victim was only twenty at the time, around the same age as Adam Hart.’

‘And they say Arslan is her son? Weird.’

‘You’re telling me,’ she said. ‘It seems that Arslan must have been overcome with jealousy of these young lovers, and I think that the only way he could get his mother’s attention back was to maim the competition, or even try to murder them. Who knows if Adam would have even lived?’

There was such a strange dynamic amongst the troupe. It seemed they lived out of each others’ pockets twenty-four/seven, and had done so for years. Anyone could be driven crazy living like that.

‘It’s hard to understand exactly how it works, but from all I’ve seen the loyalty within the troupe is fierce. When the first kid was attacked they probably swung into action to cover up what had happened and make sure none of them was implicated, guilty or not. Keeping the troupe together was a matter of survival for them, and loyalty. It does seem Bijou was
devastated. But the theatre is all she knows. And with her Grand Guignol performances she’s become a bit typecast—she isn’t offered other roles. This is it for her. Her life is that troupe.’

Mak wondered once more what Bijou would do now. She probably wouldn’t be charged with any crime. But surely this would be the tragic end to the strange nomadic lifestyle of the Théâtre des Horreurs? What would she do without her children? Would she find a new toyboy to replace Adam? Would she support her son if he was found?

‘I think one of the strangest things is that all seven of the performers are blood relatives, half-siblings and such, but they were never billed that way because of Bijou’s vanity. She didn’t want to be seen as the mother of the other performers, but as more of a queen. An ageless queen. Even now that her history with her son Arslan has been found out, it is not technically a crime in France. Did you know that? Socially it is totally unacceptable here, definitely, but not a crime.’

‘You mean the incest?’ Bogey asked, puzzled. ‘Incest is a crime.’

‘Not in France. Napoleon made incest legal a couple of hundred years ago, for uncertain reasons, and the law was never changed back. Once Arslan was old enough, Bijou could take him as her lover without fear of legal repercussions. And she did.’

‘Incest is legal? Are you kidding me?’ There was notable shock in his voice, and Mak was not surprised.

‘In France it is legal. Probably in some other countries too, I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘Well, they hid their relationship for good reason. It isn’t exactly the done thing.’

Mak wondered if Bijou denied her maternity of the troupe more for the sake of her professional image, her vanity
regarding her age, or to protect her on-and-off sexual liaisons with her son Arslan? Probably it would be for all three reasons.

‘Anyway, enough rabbiting on about work. You’re coming to Paris, and that’s much more exciting right now.’

‘I was wondering…have you ever wanted to go to the Moulin Rouge?’ Bogey asked.

‘My whole life,’ she answered.

‘Would you like to go with me?’

She grinned broadly. ‘Yes, I would,’ she exclaimed, a little uncomfortable with just how much joy the thought of seeing him gave her. ‘I’d love to go to the Moulin Rouge with you. Actually, there are some beautiful places I’d like to show you. Have you been to Paris before?’

By the time Mak hung up her heart was pounding with excitement. He was more than just an excuse to enjoy Paris for a few more days. A romantic week with Bogey Mortimer was a destination in itself.

What a splendid reward for a case solved.

Mak slipped on a coat and a pair of gloves to brave the winter cold, and before long she was able to forget all about the bandaged wound on her hand, and the close call that had caused it.

Today is a great day to be in Paris
, she thought and, with optimism lacking in recent years, set out for some sightseeing in the city of love.