The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones (21 page)

“Yes.”

“How wil she guide you there?”

“Presumably she wil give us directions. Won’t you, Alice?”

Yes.

“Can you hear her?”

“Yes.”

“Oh yes, I can hear her perfectly,” adds the Earl.

“Can you hear her now?”

“A second or two ago, yes.”

“She speaks very clearly,” observes the Earl. “She doesn’t swal ow her words at al , as many young French people do nowadays.” I wonder how many young French people the Earl knows.

“I can’t hear a thing.”

“So Fiona knows that you talk to Alice?” Mike continues.

“Yes.”

“And Sarah?”

“Not as far as I know. I am trying to keep a lid on people knowing that I communicate with ghosts. For the record, it is His Lordship here who is receiving the instructions from Alice. We are just here for the ride although Capitaine Herbert knows the truth.”

“Good idea,” Mike responds, whatever that means.

Alice is virtual y silent throughout the whole trip, so Mike is not missing much. It must be traumatic to have to relive your own death, or at least I assume that is why she is so silent. Maybe she simply has nothing to say, or does not wish to unnerve Mike. However, once we reach Montauban, Alice becomes agitated to begin the search and is audibly frustrated that it has been decided that we enjoy a ful four course lunch before getting our spades out, wel not our spades exactly -

they wil be arriving with their operators at two o’clock.

The nine of us have been greeted by another two commissaires, four National Police officers and three local gendarmes outside the Préfecture. Passing locals cast us inquisitive looks assuming, I would guess, that this is some sort of mini police convention. For the moment, al mentions of this initiative are being kept out of the press for fear of humiliation should we not succeed in discovering Alice’s body. The local commissaires intermittently eye the Earl as if he were a benignly dotty alien visitor and, of course, cannot detect Alice who is caging around among us (and through us), pul ing ‘moues’ and grizzling expletively about the delay.

“And where is the ghost?” one of the local commissaires demands.

“Right next to you,” the Earl replies, provoking a satisfyingly shocked reaction. “In fact, I think you are standing on her toes.” This is entirely untrue. Alice is actual y positioned between the Earl and myself. Nonetheless a space opens up al around the commissaire in question and he appears distinctly nervous. “Lunch, then,” he declares, unsure as to which way to turn to avoid flattening Alice who slaps her imaginary forehead in amused despair.

The grown-ups go off around the corner to La Cave ô Délices, while Mike and I decide to do the touristy thing instead, accompanied by Alice, and end up in a colonnaded square before finding a crêperie.

We meet back at the Préfecture at 14:00. The police gravediggers have now joined us alongside, I assume, several forensic experts, and we head for the cars.

We are in the lead. Alice gives precise directions as we head out towards Gail ac. I get the impression that she has rehearsed this route because there is none of the 'I think it is in this direction' that I was expecting. She knows exactly where she is going.

About eight kilometres out, just after Saint-Nauphary, she says “We are coming up to it now, on the right here. Here!”

Natural y, M. Picard did not choose an ideal parking location for eight police cars when he decided to dump his daughter’s body here, so we sit in the car and wait for everyone to pul in as best they can along the road and to join us by foot.

The Earl and I enter the wooded ground first. We clamber down into a dip, skating on the treacherous scree, the Earl clutching my shoulder, reminding me that he is not so young as I am presuming. I can hear scuttling and scraping behind us and expect somebody to sweep our legs from under us in a bowling bal of clumsiness, but we are spared this and we manage to break our own descent by jamming our feet hard against the more substantial stones near the bottom, bruising the soles of our feet with the unnatural impact. Having reached what would be a stream in Belgium but certainly not here, we are forced to climb again, picking out the more anchored stones which are embedded into the earth wherever possible. The Earl is beginning to wheeze. We continue this sauntering progress for about ten minutes before Alice cal s us to a halt. “Here,” she says.

Here?

There is nothing obviously ‘here’, only more rock, stones and dust which appear to have lain largely undisturbed for decades.

“Under here,” she repeats.

“Where exactly?” asks the Earl. “Tel me when I am standing precisely on the spot.”

“You already are,” Alice replies, surprising me yet again with her confidence.

“But there is nothing here but a large rock,” the Earl protests.

“Precisely,” Alice comments bluntly.

“You are lying under this rock?”

“Yes.”

“It looks extremely wel stuck in.”

“It wil lift.”

“Your father rol ed this rock on top of you?”

“Yes. There is a natural hol ow underneath, like a stone bowl. My father wanted to make sure that no wild animal would dig me up again.”

“And the arms and legs and things we kept finding in Inspector John’s garden?”

“That was a joke – to get your attention.”

The Earl raises his eyebrows. “Wel it certainly did that.”

The Earl turns to the assembled commissaires, lower order National Police and grave diggers. “The body is under here, apparently.”

The ‘apparently’ does not inspire confidence. The gravediggers are muttering. This is going to be hot work.

Nevertheless, their Capitaine orders them in while we stand around and slurp water. You can tel the hierarchy of a party from what type of water they drink. The higher echelons al prefer plain water. The younger ones take fizzy, except Mike who likes plain. I don’t claim that the theory is infal ible.

The gravediggers are swinging away with picks first to clear away the periphery of the boulder. They make slow progress and silently resent every swing. Once the edge is clean, they discuss how to move the boulder itself. They al stand above it and attempt to push it away. It does not move a centimetre. It does not even shiver. How could one man have manoeuvred it into place? I am sure that I am not alone in questioning this. The gravediggers produce neatly trimmed wooden wedges, but there is stil no movement.

An hour later they are stil at it, despairingly.

One gravedigger suggests, half mockingly, that they use explosives to blast the rock away. He eyes the commissaires as he says it, hoping against hope that they wil say “Yes”. They ignore him.

Each commissaire tosses in sporadic strategic advice as to how the rock can be addressed. Not one of them rol s up his sleeves.

After two and a half hours of sweat and strategising, one of the commissaries mutters, “It’s like the rock sealing Christ’s grave. Maybe if we leave for the day, by tomorrow it wil have rol ed away of its own accord.”

I can tel that everyone is questioning whether the Earl isn’t just completely loopy, turning the gravediggers into some inverse chain gang for his own amusement. Several of the commissaires take their leave, claiming to have urgent matters to attend to, and promising to return.

The Earl and I periodical y glance at Alice who is insistent. “My body is under there,” she states matter-of-factly. “I can see it.”

Can you suggest how to move the rock?

“A helicopter?” she replies at the moment when a helicopter arrives to hover over our heads. It is Mihail Romanov who has been necessarily occupied with business cal s most of the day, as he warned us, but who is now arriving no doubt to take control of the operation. He is winched down into the thicket by rope and harness, which he removes as he lands.

“Where have we got to?” he inquires.

“The body is under here,” replies the Earl, “but we cannot lift off the boulder.”

“That’s easy,” Romanov snorts.

Those commissaires who understand English snort back. “It is easy, he says.”

Romanov wanders away from the rest of the group, speaking Russian (I assume) urgently down his mobile phone.

About five minutes later a large package is lowered down to him. Romanov meticulously unwraps the contents and pul s out what looks like a huge bulky gun.

“What on earth is that?” Capitaine Herbert demands.

“A spike gun,” Romanov replies. “A prototype. One of my companies has recently developed it.”

“Is it licensed?”

“There is no requirement for it to be,” Romanov responds dismissively. “It is classified as a large mechanical stapler –

at least, it wil be.”

“And you carry it around in your helicopter?”

“You never know when it might come in useful – like now.”

Romanov unsheathes a thirty centimetre or so metal spike from the package. It is rifled on the outside and looks exceedingly menacing. Capitaine Herbert winces involuntarily and the posse of commissaires mutters.

“This should be about the right size for the job,” Romanov comments. He slides the spike into a chamber of the gun, and with some difficulty, raises the barrel to point at the rock. He braces al his limbs in a weightlifter’s crouching position and fires. There is a sharp retort, a whoosh, and the sight of Romanov staggering back as the spike penetrates half its length into the rock. Romanov careful y lowers the gun to the floor and approaches the spike, declaring himself more than satisfied with his inspection. He returns to the package and selects two more spikes of the same length and repeats the exercise twice more so that he ends up with three metal pitons, in effect, sticking out of the rock.

“I told you we should have used explosives,” mutters the gravedigger who made the suggestion earlier. He has a sly, awed, expression on his face. The others laugh, sharing his excitement.

Romanov confides further instructions to his mobile phone and the rope is lowered again from the helicopter with a pyramid-shaped frame dangling from the end. Romanov guides the frame to the rock and tel s the helicopter to hold its position. The frame has four cords attached to it, and Romanov ties three of these to the spikes.

“OK.”

The helicopter takes up the tension and the rock lifts gently, swivel ing in the air.

The commissaires are clearly impressed as they cluck among themselves. There is another gasp as the forensic people move forward and confirm that there has indeed been a skeleton wedged underneath the rock. Actual y, it doesn’t seem to be the skeleton itself which impresses them, but rather something about it. It is lying there curled up upon itself, to fit it into the hole, presumably. It is a foetus fashioned in bone – poignant, defenceless. There is something in particular that the team is examining and commenting agitatedly upon, but I can neither see nor hear what it is.

The Earl looks relieved. Alice is watching impassively.

What is it like to see your own body like that? It must be horrible? I would like to be able to hug her.

“It is not my body.”

What?

“It is the body of another unfortunate girl who was murdered.”

By your father?

“No, not by my father.”

But you were murdered by your father!

“Yes, but my father did not do this.”

Why did you tel us that it was your body that was lying here?

“To persuade you to come.”

You could have told us the truth.

“You might not have come.”

“She needed the local connection,” the Earl mutters. “Clever girl!”

Alice bows coquettishly.

“Who is she?” asks the Earl.

“Cathy Desforges.”

“Cathy Desforges?”

That gets the interest of the commissaires. “What about Cathy Desforges?” one of them demands sharply.

“This is the body of Cathy Desforges, apparently,” the Earl elucidates.

“Of Cathy Desforges – not of Alice Picard?”

“Correct.”

The commissaire turns to his col eagues. “Now this could be something, if it is true.”

“It is true,” Alice insists.

“It is true,” the Earl confirms.

“Wel , this exercise real y has been worthwhile then.”

“Better than finding only me,” Alice observes sardonical y.

“Whose is the body?” Romanov enquires, catching on that it is not what they were expecting.

“It is the body of a Cathy Desforges, apparently, whoever she is, or was.”

“And who was she?”

“She has been missing for seven years,” explains one of the commissaires. “She and a number of other girls.” He addresses the Earl. “Does your informant happen to know where the other bodies are to be found?”

“Yes,” Alice replies.

“Yes,” the Earl replies.

“Al of them?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Excel ent,” enthuses the commissaire. “Let us get back to Montauban and discuss it there.”

“What is happening?” Romanov asks.

“It appears that this is the body of one victim among many,” explains the Earl.

“A serial kil er?” Romanov suggests.

“Apparently.”

“There are six girls missing altogether,” says the commissaire in English. “This is a major find – a major breakthrough.”

“Thanks to me,” Romanov adds.

“Thanks, indeed, to you, Monsieur,” the commissaire concedes wil ingly.

“And thanks to Alice,” I add.

“Indeed,” says the Earl.

The commissaire inclines his head. “And thanks to Ml e. Picard. Maybe we wil also find out where she is buried one day.”

The Earl and I look at Alice.

“Maybe,” she replies. “My body is not that important.” She turns to me. “You are right, Paul. I have no need to avenge myself on my father. It would not make me feel any better. The shock he has had over the last few days is quite enough.

Maybe he wil treat my mother better in the future.”

* * *

We are asked to stay the night. The police were going to book us into the local Crowne Plaza, but Romanov happens to have some friends who are already renting a private hil top vil age near Lectoure, and we are invited there instead, disconcerting le Capitaine Moreau, our al ocated Montauban police liaison official, who recognises that he is dealing with people way outside his league. I know how he feels, except for the moment that I am an insider.