John Matthews - Past Imperfect

Dominic looked down and bit his lip. He could hardly bear it. He didn't realize that sitting in on the session would have such a profound affect on him. Christian's voice, all these years later, telling them what a good boy he'd been. As if it was still somehow important to him.

Dominic was staying at the Meridien Waldorf, half a mile from David Lambourne's office in Holborn. He'd stayed over the previous night, but hoped to leave without spending a second night. He was therefore in hotel limbo: bags packed and in a store room, though still using their facilities. Particularly their fax.

It had taken Philippe almost two hours to put the transcript back in its original French from the on-screen English, and another fifty minutes for it to arrive by messenger at his hotel. He scanned it through for any obvious errors and faxed it straight to Monique in Lyon. He'd already phoned her to expect its arrival, could imagine her standing by the fax machine in his office at home, practically ripping the pages out as they hummed through.

Beep . Dominic waited a few minutes by the machine for a reply. Then, telling the clerk where he would be if one came through, he went to the bar downstairs and ordered an armagnac.

As the drink hit his stomach, warming it, soothing his nerves, he started thinking about the transcript he'd just read through. The depth of detail came through even more than in the session itself. The contrast to the fractured, garbled descriptions around the murder itself was absolute. He took another quick slug, feeling it cut a warm path. Just his luck: marvellous detail about games of boules, pan chocolat and trips to Alassio — but little or nothing of use about the murder itself.

Almost twenty minutes had passed when the office clerk came down with a fax. Dominic was on his second armagnac. Hand-written, it read simply:

I'm convinced it's Christian's voice. Nobody else could possibly know those personal details. I don't know how or why — but it's his voice.

Twenty minutes? Reading through the transcript would have taken only five minutes. Had Monique cried, caught up in a wave of emotions that stopped her putting pen to paper immediately? Or had she sat and laboured over the brief message she was going to send back, eager not to show sentimentality or the mixture of suspicion and outrage she'd voiced immediately after playing the tape. That had now been boiled down to simply, 'I don't know how or why' . When she'd initially prepared the questions, she'd commented in a subdued, almost acid tone. 'I don't profess to understand the tape that has been sent. But if these questions are answered correctly, Dominic, for God's sake don't expect me to believe that this strange English boy is Christian reborn. Some vague, unexplained psychic link perhaps. But that's as far as I'll go.'

Dominic checked his watch, timing: phone through to Marinella Calvan and give her the news, arrange a meeting, forty minutes or so for the meeting itself, then back to the hotel to collect his luggage and out to Heathrow airport for 6.35 pm. It was going to be tight, particularly if traffic was bad.

Dominic wondered whether to forget the meeting with Calvan. Just fax through Monique's message, a brief follow up phone call, and head out to the airport. When he'd originally thought of a meeting, it had been inspired by the foolhardy idea that he might be able to use the information to re-open the case. Now it was just his own curiosity. But Calvan would probably still insist that details surrounding the murder were too scant. Even that last vestige he'd clung to — salving whether all those years of doubt and guilt had been misplaced — wouldn't be satisfied. The meeting would have no purpose.

The decision made, in a way Dominic felt relieved. He knocked back the last of his armagnac. Fine. No meeting. Perhaps as well. Even if Marinella Calvan had complied, he'd have had to face Monique and explain. Explain everything he'd kept hidden the past thirty years. He'd been dreading that part, and at least that would now also remain buried.

'I don't understand. A suspect was found, charged and sentenced — at least that's what came out of the few newspaper articles Philippe translated for me. I thought the case was closed all those years back.'

'You're right. It was. But there were discrepancies with the case that I was never happy with.' Marinella was staring sharply at him, still getting to grips with his suggestion of using information from the session to re-open the murder investigation. Discrepancies? What could he say to this woman he hardly knew? That he'd been press-ganged into joining a cover-up so that he could stay with his dying mother, the resultant years of guilt, re-doubling when he'd learned how long a possibly innocent man had spent imprisoned. Yet proving Machanaud's innocence would only heighten that guilt, and then his wife would know his part in the cover-up and that her last husband's suicide had been in vain. Marinella Calvan's eyebrow would merely arch more acutely. What did he want out of it all? Perhaps proving Machanaud's guilt: closing the door once and for all on that chink of doubt. In the end, the only other useful thing he could find to say was: 'I was very young then, merely assisting in the investigation. I had very little influence on the way it was conducted. To me, this is like a second chance. How many of us really get a second chance?'

Second chance? The poignancy of the phrase stung Marinella for a second. 'I can appreciate how much you would like to get to the truth, even after all these years. If I can, I would love to help. But you've listened to the tape of that first session when we stumbled on those final moments of the murder. Eyran's almost catatonic. Apart from the obvious risk of dragging him back through recall of the murder — I just don't think we'll gain anything of any help. Most of it has been pushed away. He doesn't want to think about it.'

Clatter of cutlery from two tables away, a waitress with an Australian accent talking to one of her colleagues. Dominic was distracted briefly. When he'd phoned at four o’clock and spoken to Marinella, David Lambourne had just started a fresh session. He'd mentioned how tight he was for time with his flight out, and they arranged to meet twenty minutes later at Cafe Opera in Covent Garden.

Detail? The contrast between the depth of detail in the transcript and the vague garbled accounts surrounding the murder was what first gave Dominic the clue. What made him suddenly phone Marinella Calvan and arrange the meeting: Christian expanded, detail was stronger relating stories where he felt more relaxed, at ease. This in turn explained why the murder account was so vague and fractured. But forty minutes to an hour earlier, when Christian first met his murderer, before either of the sexual attacks, before Christian even realized he might be in danger — he would have been more relaxed, at ease. Now, explaining these thoughts to Marinella Calvan, words he had already spun over in his mind on the way to the cafe — he watched her expression closely. 'If nothing else, he would hopefully be able to give a clear, accurate account of those moments. The moments when he first met his murderer.' A chink of acceptance halfway through, then something else: doubt or intrigue, Dominic wasn't sure.

Marinella shook her head. 'I don't know, it's a possibility, I suppose.' She felt her emotions tugged sharply. An image of a young inexperienced gendarme on the edge of an investigation, unable to wield any real influence yet harbouring a strong doubt nevertheless. A doubt carefully tended through the years, intensified and brought uncomfortably close to home by his marrying the dead boy's mother. Like Javert in 'Les Miserables', never entirely giving up on the investigation — until finally, a generation later, the opportunity arises to uncover the truth. Second chance? Wasn't that how she felt about the case: a chance to prove herself after the Cincinnati case and the other failures?