John Matthews - Past Imperfect

'Or Fornier, Warrant Officer Fornier, is he here? He would do.'

'No, I'm afraid that he's with Captain Poullain in Aix en Provence.' Briant noticed Machanaud sway for a moment uncertainly as he took in this information. He'd obviously been drinking and mixing this now with deep thought didn't go well together. 'Is there anything I can help with?'

A slow blink through bleary eyes, then finally, 'Yes, you can take a note for them.' Machanaud shuffled closer and leant on the counter. 'You can tell them I've now remembered the car that passed. You might want to write it down.' Machanaud waited for Briant to grab a pad and pen from the side, then said the words very slowly, the last part in pronounced syllables. 'It was very low, dark green, a sports coupe. Probably an Alfa Romeo. An AL-FA RO-ME-O COU-PE. Have you got that?'

'Yes, okay. But you realize that this is only a note. If you want to make this part of any official statement, you'll have to return and speak with Captain Poullain.'

'Okay, okay, I understand. You have your procedures.' Machanaud held up one hand defensively as he stepped back from the counter. 'I just thought it important that they have that note while I remember.'

'Yes, certainly. I'll make sure they get it.' Briant watched thoughtfully as Machanaud shuffled back out, probably back to the same bar where he'd found inspiration to suddenly remember the car.

They'd walked for almost a minute in virtual silence through Parc du Pharo before the package was handed over, waiting for the groups of tourists to thin out. It was a large manila envelope. Chapeau looked briefly inside and saw the small bundles of cash.

'It went well,' he commented. 'Your friend should be pleased.'

'Yes, he was.' Duclos looked back at Chapeau directly for the first time. It had been his main worry: that Chapeau would have read the papers and discovered his lie. It had been quite prominent in 'La Provencal' , but still easily missed for someone only paying half attention, wedged in at the bottom of the front page with no pictures accompanying. He breathed an inner sigh of relief; obviously Chapeau hadn't seen it. Probably was illiterate or only read comics and gun manuals, Duclos thought cynically. 'I think you'll find it's all there.'

Chapeau walked to the nearest bench, sat down and, partly shielding with the envelope, counted one of the bundles. Then he measured its depth against the others: three bundles each of 2,000 Francs, one half size. Chapeau shut the envelope, folded it over by the flap and stood up with the closest he'd come to a smile in all of their meetings. 'Hopefully your friend can rest easy now.' And with a curt nod, he headed back the way they'd come, leaving Duclos on the bench.

Chapeau's car, a Peugeot 403, was parked fifty metres back from the main entrance to the park. He'd arrived ten minutes early so that he could see Duclos arrive, get the registration number of his car. It arrived punctually, just two minutes before six: dark green Alfa coupe. A neat compact car for a neat, compact man. Everything in his life was probably neatly compartmentalized, thought Chapeau. He watched Duclos get out and enter the park and then waited a minute before following.

Chapeau flipped over the newspaper on his passenger seat and glanced again at the report at the bottom of the front page. He'd already read it twice earlier that day, pondering what to do. The last person to cross him so blatantly he'd left with his throat cut in a Marseille back alley.

But with this Alain he wanted to bide his time, learn a bit more about him before taking any action. At one point earlier, he'd laughed out loud at the double dupe; in return getting payment for nothing somehow seemed divine justice. But he couldn't get out of his mind the bad intent that had been there, the possible repercussions if he had killed the boy: a high profile murder case with a whole station of rural gendarmes with little else to do but catch the murderer, he'd have probably had to move to Paris for a few years until things had quietened down.

Ahead, he could now see Duclos getting back into his car. He decided to follow.

'… And in that dream, did you recognize it immediately?'

'Yes. It was the pond at Broadhurst Farm. It only turned into a lake later.'

'And you said that Jojo was already there. Could you see him clearly? What did he look like?'

Stuart Capel tensed as the tape rolled, leaning forward. Lambourne had told him one of the key objectives had been to get a clearer picture of Jojo. Lambourne's notes were in his hand. Headed:

Session 4. 28th February, 1995.

He knew how the notes and the tape slotted together from the last tape sent.

'I couldn't see clearly… it was too misty, and he was too far away.' Then, after a second: 'I only saw him clearly when I was closer… looking up through the water…'

Silence. Background drone of London traffic. Brief cough from Lambourne.

Stuart could imagine Eyran struggling for a clearer image. Finally: 'His hair was dark, slightly curly, and his eyes were bright — blue or dark green. I wasn't sure.'

'Does he remind you of someone you know perhaps? An old friend or someone from school.'

Longer pause this time. Eyran's low, regular breathing came over clearly for a second. 'No. But there's something familiar about him — yet I don't know why.'

'Note One.' Lambourne's voice came across in a deeper timbre. Stuart dutifully followed the instruction and read the note: An initial assumption was that Jojo might be modelled on an old friend, someone from Eyran's past. If that's now to be discounted — why the familiarity? After the 'Note One' announcement, an eight second silence, then: 'Continues.' In transferring to cassette, Lambourne had put in the break points. It reminded Stuart of linguaphone tapes with gaps left for student repetition.

'Did Jojo tell you where you'd met before.'

'No. I told him I was looking for my parents, and that was when he first offered to help.'

'And you went back because in the previous dream, you'd seen them there.'

'Only my father.' Another long silence. Faint rustling of papers. 'That was when Jojo wanted me to cross over… told me that he'd lost his parents as well and hadn't been able to find them until he crossed over?'

'Did he tell you what happened with them?'

'Nothing then…' Eyran swallowing, clearing his throat. 'Only in another dream… later. But he said it was years ago — he could hardly remember it.'

'Note two:' Shared grief, yet Jojo conveniently has no memory of his loss. Eyran's loss is the main focus. Crossing over could symbolize to Jojo that Eyran trusts him, is siding with him. Yet we know from a later dream that they are together in their search — the barrier has by then been crossed.

Lambourne's voice on tape reminded Stuart. Reminded him of their first meeting: 'When did you first realize there was a problem?'

And he'd told Lambourne everything. The nineteen day coma. The hospital. The nightmares . Everything except how much he'd resisted finally bringing Eyran to see him. Clinging to the Eyran he remembered.

Eyran had awoken finally from his coma four days before Christmas.

When did you first realize…? Had it been when he'd first told Eyran his parents were dead? The hospital staff had been briefed just to say his parents were ill, in another ward — until Stuart arrived. But then Stuart remembered seeing that same look in that first moment of greeting Eyran: something distant and lost in Eyran's eyes, almost as if Stuart was someone he knew only vaguely and couldn't be placed for a moment.

Yet it remained through those first hours, that split second delay in recognition and response. At first, the explanation in Stuart's mind had been the shock and grief and Eyran struggling to come to terms with the unbelievable, the unacceptable. But by the late evening, as Eyran prepared to sleep, Stuart was keen to know Torrens' assessment. How much of Eyran's slowness of reaction was due to the coma, how much could be attributed to shock and grief, was he under any drugs or medication that might cause such an effect, how long might the condition prevail and, most importantly, might it be permanent?