Simon Beckett - Stone Bruises

‘It’s not for me, it’s for Michel. Please! ’

I understood then. In everything she’d done, her first priority had always been her children. It would be hard enough for her son to grow up with his mother and grandfather branded as murderers, without having to endure an even worse stigma. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to spare him that. And I thought there might also be another reason for her reticence. If the truth about Gretchen’s parentage were to come out, it might easily raise questions about Michel’s. Mathilde had told me he was Louis’s son, but I wasn’t sure she’d want that claim put to the test.

Some stones are better left unturned.

So I kept my silence, and Mathilde’s secret. The only other person who might have thrown more light on the farm’s murky history was Georges, and for a while I wondered how much the old pig handler might really know. But not even the police could breach his indifference. He maintained that in all the years he’d worked at the farm he’d seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. The only emotion he displayed came when the interview was over.

‘What about the sanglochons?’ he asked.

He’d broken down and wept when he learned they’d been destroyed.

After all that had happened I thought the farm could hold no more revelations, that it had exhausted its capacity to surprise. It hadn’t. Arnaud made no attempt to deny any of the charges levelled against him, and his account matched Mathilde’s in every detail. Except one.

He claimed he’d killed Louis himself.

According to Arnaud, the younger man had only been stunned by Mathilde’s blow. Once in the cinderblock hut he’d started to revive, so her father had finished the job himself before dismembering Louis’s body and feeding it to the sanglochons. When the police asked why he hadn’t tried to save him, the reply was typically blunt:

‘One pig’s throat is the same as another.’

It’s possible he was lying, trying to take the blame to protect Mathilde. But I find that hard to believe. Given the sort of man he was, it’s more likely that he was simply content to let his eldest daughter believe she’d killed her own lover. It would tie her to him even more, and that sort of casual cruelty is more in keeping with the Arnaud I knew. As for why he should confess now, I think there was no longer any reason not to. He’d already lost everything.

Mathilde saw to that when she asked Jean-Claude and his wife to adopt Michel.

I was shocked when I first heard, but then it made a certain kind of sense. Although I can’t imagine what it must have cost her to give up her son, even if the court was lenient she knew Michel would barely know her by the time she was released. So, as ever, she put his interests before her own. Jean-Claude will give Michel a good home, and just as important a fresh start. And for Arnaud, having his beloved grandson brought up by Louis’s brother will hurt far more than any prison sentence.

Like everything else about her, Mathilde’s revenge was subtle.

I barely recognized the old and broken man who was led into court. The flesh hung from his bones like an ill-fitting suit, a wattle of loose skin sagging between chin and throat. But it was the eyes where the depth of the change was most evident. The steely gaze was gone, dulled by doubt and loss.

Only once was there a flash of the Arnaud I remembered. When the verdict was announced, his head came up to glare around the courtroom with something like his old contempt. Then his eyes met his daughter’s. She stared back at him, implacable and calm, until he lowered his head.

If the condemnation heaped on Arnaud was inevitable, what I’d not anticipated was that Mathilde would be vilified almost as much. Even if she didn’t deliver the fatal blow herself, she’d still helped conceal a murder. And without the background of a lifetime’s abuse to provide a context, her role in Louis’s death emerged in a cruelly harsh light. When her own verdict was announced she remained as outwardly controlled as ever, though I could see her hand trembling as it tucked her hair behind her ear. I watched, feeling helpless, as she was led out. As she reached the door, for a brief moment she looked directly at me.

Then the door closed and shut her from sight.

Brushing the sand off the package, I go back out of the storeroom. The drizzle has turned to rain as I head across the courtyard towards the barn. Water drips from its entrance as I prop my rucksack against the wall inside. The dark interior is as cold and damp as if it’s never known a summer. I can make out the dull glint of wine bottles in the wooden rack on the back wall, too sour for anyone to want. The patch of concrete on the floor looks smaller than I recall, the crack in it still unrepaired. I’d intended to go up to the loft one last time, but there doesn’t seem any point. Instead, leaving my rucksack in the dry of the barn, I follow the track down to the lake.

The ground is muddy and churned, the leafless grapevines resembling rows of tangled wire. Even the wood is hardly recognizable as the green-canopied place I remember. The chestnut trees are bare, and underneath their dripping branches is a mat of dead leaves and bristling shells.

There’ll be no harvest this year.

I walk straight past the fork leading to the sanglochon pens without slowing. I’ve no desire or reason to go there again. It’s only when I come to the statues that I stop. I thought they might have been taken away, but they’re still here. Unchanged and apparently unmissed. I try to recall how I felt hiding from Arnaud that night, to summon up something of the uncertainty and fear. I can’t. In the grey daylight the statues are just mundane stone carvings. Turning away, I continue down to the lake.

The water is wind-shivered and grey. At the top of the bluff the ground is scarred and gouged with heavy tyre tracks. I stand under the empty branches of the old chestnut tree, staring down at the rain-pocked lake. I can’t see below its surface, but there’s nothing there any more. Louis’s truck has long since been winched out and taken away.

The polythene package in my hand feels solid and heavy. My feelings towards it remain as ambiguous as when I first saw it hidden in the car boot. I had ample opportunities to dispose of it during the summer, yet I didn’t. I could tell myself it was simple cowardice, insurance in case Lenny or any other of Jules’s associates wanted it back, but that isn’t entirely true. Like turning over a rock to see what lies underneath, now I’m here I finally acknowledge the real reason why I’ve kept it all this time.

I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.

I’ve no idea how much it’s worth, but it’s more money than I’ve ever had. Enough to start a new life. And with Jules dead and Lenny in prison, there’s no one else to claim it. I was in London long enough for them to have found me if there were. I weigh the package in my palm, feeling the possibilities beneath the crinkle of plastic. Then, drawing back my arm, I throw it out over the lake as far as I can.

It arcs against the grey sky before landing in the water with a small, unemphatic splash.

I jam my hands in my pockets and watch the ripples flatten out until there’s nothing left. Chloe didn’t get a second chance, and neither did Gretchen. I’m not going to waste mine. Turning away, I retrace my steps through the woods. After stopping off at the barn for my rucksack, I head back to the house. I’ve done what I came here for, but there’s one more thing I want to do before I go.

The kitchen garden is unrecognizable. The goats and chickens have gone, and the ordered rows of vegetables have either died or run amok. The tiny flowerbed has grown wild and straggled, but even this late in the year there are still a few splashes of colour. I stand looking down at it, thinking about the sadness I saw on Mathilde’s face when she was tending this small patch of earth. As if she were tending a shrine.