Mark Mills - House of the Hanged

Tom approached just close enough to read the number on the door: 104. Everything told him this was the Italian’s room, and the urge to gain entry to it right now, to force some answers from the woman, was almost overwhelming. Cold common sense prevailed, though. He mustn’t do anything to link himself to the dead man. He knew the rules. He had to remain anonymous, faceless, nameless, at all times. Besides, an idea about the real nature of the woman’s role in this affair was beginning to take shape in his head, and he needed to test the hypothesis first.

Olivier, the hotel manager, was making conversation with an elderly couple at their table in the dining room, but the moment he saw Tom enter he made his excuses and hurried over, beaming.

‘Mr Nash . . .’

He pumped Tom’s hand.

‘After five years, I think you can call me Tom, don’t you?’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘You spend far too much time on duty, Olivier.’

‘What can I say?’ shrugged Olivier, an ironic twinkle in his eye. ‘I’m a consummate professional.’

‘Then find me a table on the terrace for breakfast.’

‘Find it yourself, connard ,’ Olivier fired back, and they both laughed.

They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of weeks, not since Tom had strolled down to the hotel with his book for a quick dinner, only to end up staggering home in the early hours of the morning after a marathon, and rather drunken, bout of Bezique. They would probably have played right through till daybreak if Olivier’s wife, Nadine, hadn’t searched them out in the bar in her nightdress and summoned her husband to bed.

Tom opted for the terrace because he suspected Olivier would come and sit with him, and he knew that the guests were obliged to pass across it when making for the beach below. He selected a table near the head of the wide steps which ran down the bluff to the sand, turning his chair to admire the view while waiting for Olivier to return with his coffee and the two fried eggs he didn’t really want.

He almost never dropped by for breakfast, and he’d thought it wise to play up the occasion: the final meal of the condemned man, condemned for the next few weeks to a string of house guests and other friends in need of near-continuous nourishment and entertainment. This was the still before the storm, and he couldn’t exactly mark it with a solitary café au lait , hence the eggs. He had passed up the offer of a fried slice of pork belly to go with them. The eggs were bad enough, the mere thought of them threatening to unravel the tight knot of nausea which had been sitting low down in his belly for the past few hours.

He felt bad lying to Olivier, but he could hardly tell him the truth: that he’d killed one of his hotel guests, the man in Room 104, and that the young Italian now lay trussed up in tarpaulin on the sea bed somewhere over there.

He squinted out to sea, trying to identify the spot. He realized, with a stab of self-reproach, that he should have thought twice before dumping the body where he had. The exact location might not be visible from where he was sitting, but it certainly would be from the villa, whose terracotta roof tiles he could see poking above the pines on the headland around to his left. As long as he lived in Villa Martel he would have a direct line of sight, a constant reminder of his actions.

He should have gone east towards Cavalaire, around the corner: out of sight, out of mind. He rarely sailed that way, whereas he was always beating to and from the islands. He saw himself as an elderly man sitting hunched at the helm, an arthritic hand on the tiller, still tensing and falling silent every time he passed over the watery grave.

This vision of his dotage was, he reflected miserably, the very best he could hope for. It assumed that he would still be around to see out his declining years in Le Rayol; it supposed that he would come through the current situation unscathed, and that having done so, Le Rayol and the simple life he’d carved out for himself here would not have been irredeemably tainted. It relied on a lot of things, none of which he could guarantee, or even reasonably hope for.

He was stirred from his maudlin trance by a voice behind him.

‘What are you thinking?’

It was Olivier with a tray.

‘How beautiful it is.’

There were any number of sandy bays to choose from along this stretch of coast, but none held a torch to Le Rayol. Some were too narrow, too enclosed, or too expansive and exposed, or the hills pressed in too tightly behind, or, as at Cavalaire, their slopes died too far back from the sea. There wasn’t one thing at Le Rayol he would have changed: the lazy arc of the white beach, the gin-clear water, and the proud thrust of its headlands which protected the bay from all but the most southerly winds.

‘Yes, and you own a nice big piece of it,’ said Olivier, settling himself down at the table. ‘I wish I could.’

‘You can.’

‘Not on my salary.’

Tom didn’t say anything, but he decided then that if he ever had to sell up and leave he would parcel off a bit of his land and gift it to Olivier and Nadine. He knew how much they loved this place. He knew that when they shut up shop in November and returned to their native Grenoble they spent the winter months dreaming of April and the new season on the Côte des Maures.

‘Why don’t you have children?’ Tom asked suddenly.

The question just slipped from his lips. It was as unexpected to him as it was to Olivier, who pushed his lank, dark fringe from his eyes before replying.

‘We tried. It didn’t happen.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why are you sorry? You don’t have children either, and at least I have a beautiful wife I love.’

‘Point taken,’ Tom conceded, reaching for his coffee.

‘Actually, we’re still trying. I think Nadine might be too old. Don’t tell her that, though, or she might want to stop trying.’

Tom laughed, and as he did so he caught sight of the woman from Room 312 stepping from the dining room into the glare of the terrace. She was now wearing a light summer frock along with the raffia sun hat he’d seen lying on the bed upstairs. A large beach bag swung from her hand.

He had only ever viewed her from behind, and he saw now that she was in her forties, but wearing the years extremely well.

‘Frau Wissmann,’ nodded Olivier as she passed. ‘Monsieur Perret.’

Tom waited for her to disappear down the steps before asking, ‘German?’

‘Swiss German. She’s a regular, comes every summer with her husband, although he’s running late this year, something to do with a business deal back in Zurich.’

‘She’s very attractive.’

Olivier lowered his voice. ‘You’re not the only one who thinks so.’

‘Oh?’

‘There’s an Italian here who’s taken a shine to her. Young fellow. Flash. Struts around like a cock on heat.’

Not any more , thought Tom.

‘Hardly her type, I imagine,’ he said.

‘You haven’t met Herr Wissmann. Any type would be better than that. He’s arrogant, and rude with it. Nadine despises him.’

‘I’ve never known you to be so indiscreet about your guests.’

‘Not just my guests. You should hear what I say about you.’

Tom laughed, cutting into the eggs.

The theory held: Frau Wissmann was an unwitting pawn in the Italian’s game, little more than a convenient alibi. This was the only logical explanation.

The Italian must have set out to seduce her, to spend the night with her, planning to slip from her room, taking her key with him, and returning after the deed was done. It was no more than a brisk five-minute walk to Tom’s villa along the coast path. All going well, he would have been back between the sheets within twenty minutes. Only, it hadn’t gone so well for him.