Mister Memory

  Petit runs, turning back once. By the light of the street lamps, he sees the first man getting to his feet. There and then, Petit changes his mind: the Gare de Lyon is across the river but he is right outside the Gare d’Orléans. He will have to make a connection, but maybe that’s for the best. He does not know who attacked him, but he can guess. And he can guess why. Perhaps it would be better to throw anyone else off the trail a little.

  He sprints through the entrance and buys a ticket on the next train south, the night train to Clermont-Ferrand.

  He finds his berth and throws himself into his seat, breathing heavily from the running, from the fear, from the fight. The evening is done, and now, more than ever, the feeling that he is finally aware of his life overtakes him. He knows he has lived hours that will prove to be among the most significant of his life; that ten years’ worth of importance was played out between seven and eleven o’clock.

  Anxiously, he peers through the curtain of the carriage, expecting at any moment to see the two thugs appear again, but they do not. He must have given them the slip before they had the chance to see him duck into the station. With an enormous sense of relief he hears the engine let out a shriek of a whistle, and he feels the first jerks as the wheels slip and then grip on the iron rails. The train moves; he can sense its weight as it gradually picks up a little speed, and he knows now what that momentum must feel like, for he feels it himself.

  Within minutes, Paris is behind him.

  HISTORY

  NIGHT TRAIN TO CLERMONT–FERRAND

  The facts of the matter were these:

  At a little before seven o’clock on the evening of the first Saturday in July 1899, Lucie Rey passed under the fine arch from the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts that leads into the Cour du Commerce. It was a typically busy evening in the alley, and the quarter in general was humming and banging; the life of the city rushing along, people in the streets like blood in the veins of an anxious person. Deep in conversation with one of the locals, the concierge at Ondine and Marcel’s building noticed Lucie, and shrugged. She used to come around a lot, that girl. Not so much recently. If at all. But so what? Who really cares about anyone else’s story until it collides with your own?

  Lucie made her way up the stairs, her small suitcase in her hand, her ticket to Lyon safely tucked in her purse, ready to take her away from Paris. It had surprised her when Ondine invited her to supper, and of course intrigued her a little too.

  ‘Marcel is working,’ Ondine had said. ‘I’m going to pull a night off. I want to make it up to you, Lucie, before you go. Just us girls, like old times. Please say yes.’

  And Lucie, after a great deal of thought, had indeed said yes. She had wondered whether it was too much to do on the night she was taking the train south, but then again, why not? She was packed and ready to go. She had been packed for almost a week, in fact. She had no other friends with whom she wanted to spend time, her trunk was already stowed in the cellar at her landlady’s house. Why not?

  Nonetheless, she was nervous as she climbed to the final landing and as she knocked on the door she suddenly had second thoughts. And did she hear Marcel’s voice, after all, from behind the door? A moment later, she knew she’d been wrong, because Ondine opened the door and was quite alone.

  It was a warm evening, that Saturday in July. One of the big windows that overlooked the cour was open, as well as the smaller one that looked east across the rooftops of the Latin Quarter. The noise of the streets below contrasted with the silence of life on the rooftops. Across the way, the seamstresses’ studio was dark and empty. Saturday evening had come and they were out in the world, trying to find someone to love, and to love them back.

  ‘We get a nice breeze up here,’ Ondine said, taking Lucie’s bag and coat from her and setting them on a chair at the table. ‘Makes the climb up the stairs worthwhile . . . Lucie! How are you? I . . . I am so sorry.’

  And Ondine was sorry. She came forward and before Lucie had time to think she found her old friend with her arms around her and even a tear coming down her cheek.

  Lucie stepped back.

  ‘Ondine . . .’ She didn’t know what to say, so she said what she thought might be expected. ‘Forgive me?’

  Ondine waved her worry away. ‘There’s nothing to forgive. It was Marcel I should have been angry with. For not telling me. How could he keep something like that to himself? Have a drink, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ said Lucie, and took the hefty tumbler of red that Ondine poured for her, followed by one for herself.

  ‘Santé!’ Ondine said, lifting her glass.

  They drank, catching each other’s eyes for a brief moment. For that moment, Lucie suddenly doubted what was going on, but she pushed that thought away. It was too late now, she was here. It would be a story to tell, at least. To her new friends in Lyon, when she made them, friends who would be better than this one ever was. So Lucie smiled.

  ‘What are we having?’ she asked. ‘I’m famished!’

  Ondine faltered slightly. ‘Well, not much,’ she said. ‘Times being what they are. Some cold things. But there’s plenty of wine.’

  Ondine realised then that it would have been a good idea to have put a pot on the stove, to make it look right. But she didn’t have to worry.

  ‘Come and look,’ she said to Lucie, and pulled her over to the big windows, where she did a strange thing. She shut them.

  ‘It’s still so hot, won’t you leave them open?’ Lucie asked.

  But Ondine didn’t answer. She pointed across the roofs at nothing, and Lucie, wondering, followed Ondine’s gaze, so she didn’t see Bishop climbing back in from the smaller window on the other side of the apartment, in stocking feet. He came up behind them both and for a moment felt a delicious thrill, that actually he could kill either of them. But then again, Ondine was proving, as before, to be most energetic in bed and there was also the fat packet of cash that had recently come into her possession. So he stuck to their plan and grabbed Lucie from behind, one hand over her mouth, the other arm around her arms and chest, and dragged her to the bed so fast that the poor girl never knew what was happening.

  Ondine skipped quickly to the drawer where the gun was kept, and wasted no time putting it to Lucie’s face. As Bishop pulled his hand away, she fired just once. Just before she did, she saw Lucie’s eyes open wide from fear, so wide, that she almost hesitated. But she did not. She pulled the trigger.

  The St Etienne was not a powerful gun, but at point-blank range it ruined Lucie’s face. After a little while, her body stopped moving. Bishop and Ondine sat back, breath heaving in and out of them, waiting for the sound of rushing feet or cries of alarm. None came: the cour was noisy and full of life and one shot, muffled by the face of the victim and the mattress underneath, made no impression at all.

  ‘Quick!’ said Ondine, though in reality they had all the time in the world to carry out the rest of their plan.

  They stripped Lucie of her clothes, and left her naked on the floor, winding the bed sheet around her head to try to contain the worst of the bleeding. Then Ondine changed the rest of the bedclothes, wrapping the mess up into a bundle, which Bishop took out across the rooftops and threw into an inaccessible valley between two mansards, along with Lucie’s suitcase and coat.

  Ondine undressed, and so as not to get blood on her, before she dressed again they wrestled Lucie into the clothes that Ondine had been wearing. Satisfied, they pushed her body under the bed, and then they began to drink.

  They had not intended to drink too much, but their nerves and the horror of what they’d done cried out to be silenced, and they took perhaps a glass or two too much. It didn’t matter: they had achieved the first part of their plan; the second act was yet to come. Bishop congratulated Ondine on her acting; the tear! How had she done that? And Ondine told him that she could have been a fine actress, if only she’d had the chance. Hadn’t her whole life been spent making men believe that she desired them? Wasn’t that acting,
real acting?

  Bishop nodded, sombrely. He took the remaining five cartridges out of the gun and put four of them under a cloth on the side, ready, for later. The fifth he threw across the hidden rooftops. Then he loaded the gun with the single blank round that Ondine had managed to filch on a visit to see her old friends at the Grand-Guignol, where such stage trickery was commonplace.

  The hours crawled by. Neither of them looked towards the bedroom; they did their best not to think about what was there. They had both nearly been sick when half of Lucie’s face vanished and so they forced their attention elsewhere, which was why they failed to see the blood edging out across the floorboards until it was too late to do anything about it.

  They drank, then they began to discuss Marcel’s money; the stash that Ondine once thought he had.

  ‘I still don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘He says he has nothing, but I don’t think he understands what he’s talking about.’

  So they hunted round the apartment.

  They didn’t find it. But they did see the blood seeping across the floor, which made them afraid. They rubbed at the blood and Bishop threw a bundle of bloodied towels across the roofs, after the suitcase and bedsheet. Then he grew angry, and they quarrelled, until they realised that they had to keep their voices low.

  ‘Maybe he keeps it in a bank,’ Bishop hissed. ‘Ever think of that?’

  Ondine sneered at him. ‘He doesn’t believe in banks. He’s from the countryside, you know the sort. Only he never told me where it is, so shut up and keep looking.’

  Still, Marcel’s money remained undiscovered. Bishop even tried lifting a floorboard or two, but they were all firmly nailed down. It was the right idea, and had there not been a dead body bleeding underneath the bed, he might have looked there, and found a loose board, hiding an oilcloth package containing thousands of francs. He did not.

  After a while, Bishop swore, straightening his back and waving a hand around the room.

  ‘So maybe he really doesn’t have any money. At least we have what you got from your fat cat.’

  The thought of that made them both feel a little better. Though she was pretty sure Prefect Paul Delorme had set those men on her all those weeks ago, the fact was he had responded twice to her blackmail threats, responded with almost as much cash as she’d demanded. Better yet, she had a packet of photographs to keep as insurance, despite the two she’d sent to Delorme. That must have put the wind up him, she thought. He’d claimed not to remember her when she first got in touch. So she’d sent him something to remember her by: an image that left nothing to the imagination, crude and blasphemous in equal parts. And still better than all of that was the fact that, now they had Delorme’s cash, she was about to disappear, she was about to die. If she could not have Marcel’s money, she would have Delorme’s, who, believing her to be dead, would send no more thugs to try to kill her. It was all so neat, Ondine thought. So perfect, it made her smile.

  They took to drinking again, and the hours wore on, and they even started to doze, and so were nearly caught out. Ondine woke with a start as they sat slumped across the table from each other.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  Bishop checked his pocket watch. ‘Nearly ten!’

  They scrambled, for they knew Marcel would be home at any moment, and began to get ready.

  Bishop, still in his stocking feet, dropped his trousers and waited for Ondine, who had crept to the door to the studio and out into the hall, to peer down the stairwell. Only seconds passed before she scampered back inside, closing the door silently behind her, and took her position. She pulled her skirts up and began to give out load moans of pleasure as Bishop started shoving his soft penis against her backside.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ondine hissed between moans. ‘Don’t feel like it?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Bishop muttered, and slapped her hard across her buttocks.

  She squealed, a real squeal, and Bishop felt the fear inside him. The first part had been easy; this part was much harder. He suddenly doubted Ondine. She had told him, convinced him, that she could make Marcel so mad that he would use the gun. There it was, on the side, just as they’d left it, with one round in the cylinder so he wouldn’t make too much noise, just enough. There was the big window on to the cour that they’d opened again, hoping now that sounds would be heard. Ondine had told Bishop that she had been working on Marcel, making him madder and madder every time, that he only needed a nudge to tip him over the edge, but Bishop had never been convinced.

  ‘What if he doesn’t buy it?’ he asked. ‘Why do this anyway? Why not just force him to tell us where the money is? Kill him and get out of here?’

  And so Ondine had explained, yet again, that she didn’t want Marcel to die. The money would be nice but it was not really what she wanted. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to believe he had killed the woman he loved, his own wife, and then she wanted him to be tortured by that knowledge for the rest of his life.

  ‘Which will only be until he goes to the guillotine.’

  But Ondine knew the law. That under French law the murder of a wife caught in the act of adultery in the marital home was an excusable crime. He would receive hard labour at worst, and all the while, that ridiculous mind of his would torture him with the memory of what he’d done.

  Bishop still protested, but Ondine wouldn’t give in.

  ‘I can make him do it,’ she said, again and again, and even, ‘I need to do it.’ Finally, she came up with a fall-back plan, something that convinced Bishop they may as well try. ‘If he doesn’t use the gun, well, we’ll just set him up, won’t we? When he comes in and finds us, there’ll be a scene. If he doesn’t use the gun, you take it, fire it at him. You miss, of course, but make him run. Then, when he’s out in the street, we carry out the rest of the plan, and you tell everyone he killed me.’

  Bishop nodded at that, because it was easy, that plan. It could not go wrong. And either way, Ondine would vanish from the world, safely out of reach of Delorme’s roughnecks.

  As things fell out, however, Ondine was right. She did manage to make Marcel so mad with jealousy and rage that he took up the gun, and pulled the trigger, not just once, firing the blank round at her, but four more times, each met only with a click.

  Ondine threw herself down, landing on her front on the carpet, bursting the thin rubber packet of pig’s blood hidden under her blouse, another trick from her days at the Grand-Guignol.

  It was a moment that struck her powerfully. For the briefest possible length of time, she hesitated. She had seen the anger and the desire in Marcel’s eyes. In that moment, she had made him hate her, hate her so much that he fired the gun. He fired it five times. Ondine almost got up from her death throes on the floor. She almost confessed, yes, Marcel, it was all a game, all a joke on you. But then she remembered what Lucie had done, and how her stupid husband didn’t even know who she was from day to day, and she lay still, and died.

  Bishop ran to Marcel, ripping the gun from his hands, and screamed into his face to flee, for God’s sake. Run! You idiot, you madman! Run! And run Marcel did.

  In the time it took Marcel to get halfway down the stairs, Bishop and Ondine were in action again, no hesitation now. Bishop loaded the gun with the four live rounds left, while Ondine pulled Lucie’s body out from under the bed, and then Bishop put one bullet in her torso, the rest in her face, obliterating it totally, shot by shot. Then he dropped the gun where Marcel had stood, while Ondine climbed out of the smaller window and went to hide herself in a spot hidden from sight, where she would remain until the small hours of the night, until she could come down and disappear for ever.

  Bishop, meanwhile, began his part of the act, all this before Marcel burst into the street with a roar of horror and fell on his knees. People gathered round as Bishop came to the window and shouted out for the whole cour to hear: ‘Murder! Murder! He’s killed Ondine!’

  And this time, the shots had been heard. With the window open,
and the quieter air of ten o’clock, many people had heard.

  This was how it was done, Petit thought to himself as the night train rumbled south towards the hills of the Auvergne. More or less. He had pieced it all together now, every detail, even down to why Ondine had changed the sheets on the bed.

  Unable to sleep, Petit stared out of the window at the unseen landscape hurrying past outside. On to this black screen he projected his new history, a different history from the one that everyone believed, even Marcel, the supposed murderer. He didn’t get it right first time, of course. There was much backtracking and rewriting, but finally he found a version that made sense of everything, which he could barely fault, as elaborate and extraordinary as it seemed. It made sense of everything: of Delorme’s involvement, a powerful man who had been blackmailed, and feared there was worse to come. A man who wanted the whole thing closed down without an investigation. There was only one thing that puzzled Petit on that speeding night train: the presence of the Russians, and what connection they had to the affair.

  There was one way to find out, and one way to prove his whole theory, come to that: he must find Ondine. He was convinced she was alive, that Lucie’s faceless body was the one that had been measured and flung into a pauper’s grave outside the city walls. Lucie Rey, as far as his enquiries had shown, was the perfect victim: no family, few friends, no money, no one of consequence at all. The news of her intended departure to Lyon must have precipitated her death; triggered Ondine and the American into action, for this was too good a chance to waste.

  So it had been done, the truth disguised by lies, and history rewritten.

  THE DOG

  The dog knows how to be a dog.

  This piece of information was what Dr Morel told Inspector Petit during their short interview the evening before.