Mark Mills - Amagansett

Joe had prepared a small feast to set them up for the return journey, and when he shuffled off to church in his Sunday best, they too went on their way, following the boggy, twisting shoreline of Accabonac Harbor, emerging on to the shimmering sweep of Gardiner’s Bay.

They headed south along the beach, beneath the bluffs, chatting idly as they strolled barefoot across the sand. It was a windless day, and they screwed up their eyes against the sun glancing off the mirrored surface of the bay. At first he resisted the sensation, wary and mistrustful, but he soon gave in to it, recognizing it for what it was: contentment, the simple yet complete pleasure of just being with Mary.

They cut inland, working their way up on to Stony Hill, just north of Amagansett. The narrow trail rose and fell, snaking through the dense woods. It was a rare glimpse of the ancient Appalachian forest that had once blanketed much of the East End, Mary explained. He knew he was meant to appreciate this virgin patch of untamed nature, but he didn’t; it unsettled him, with its gloomy aspects, its rustlings of unseen creatures, and its chorus of amplified birdsong echoing off the canopy of leaves. He was relieved when they finally emerged once more into the sunlight, stepping out through the open pastures that lay to the west, and that led them eventually to the post-and-rail fence of Mary’s home pasture.

They shared a bath then ate a late lunch, which left Hollis plenty of time to return home and get ready for his first of two night shifts. The next day, he had dropped by the LVIS offices on some false pretext to do with the summer fair. With five days to go till the big event, the place was in the grip of a barely contained panic, but Mary still found time to whisper what she intended to do to him the following evening.

She hadn’t waited, summoning him to her house that same night with the call to police headquarters, and he had gone, unquestioningly. And now he was standing at the town dump, hurling away the last tangible remnants of his marriage, wondering what in the hell he was getting himself into: a divorced woman with a difficult son, a violent goose and an unnatural attachment to a place he’d had every intention of leaving before the summer was out.

His confusion hadn’t faded by the time he showed up for work at midday, but it was quickly replaced by another.

Tuesday was Milligan’s day off, the day he set aside for fishing with his cronies, when they wouldn’t have to do battle with the crush of weekend anglers for the best casting spots out at the Point. Yet there the Chief was, sitting at his desk, going over some files. The squad room was deserted.

‘You got a moment?’ called Milligan, far too reasonably. Hollis entered the office.

‘Take a seat.’

‘Not fishing today, Chief?’

‘Doesn’t look that way, does it?’ He nodded at the chair, and Hollis sat himself down. ‘You’ve been asking questions about Lillian Wallace.’

It was bad, worse than he thought.

‘I spoke to the maid, yes.’ Did Milligan also know about his conversation with Justin Penrose?

‘Rosa Cossedu,’ said Milligan, reading off a name from the notes in front of him.

‘Yes. Routine stuff.’

‘Anyone else?’

Shit, thought Hollis, he knows.

‘Her ex-fiancé. Julian…something.’

‘Penrose. And it’s Justin.’

‘Right.’

Milligan had bought it. If Hollis couldn’t even recall the name, then that conversation must also have been routine.

‘And the purpose of these discussions?’

‘I was just trying to establish Miss Wallace’s state of mind, eliminate the possibility of suicide.’

‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ said Milligan, ‘but hasn’t the coroner’s inquest already returned its verdict?’

‘Yes.’

‘Accidental drowning.’

‘Like I say, sir, it was just routine.’

‘By the book.’

‘Right.’

‘Well, sometimes you got to put that book of yours aside.’ Milligan was quite calm, his self-importance leaving no place for anger. ‘You missed something, Hollis. Labarde was seeing Lillian

Wallace.’

‘Seeing…?’

‘Seeing. Screwing. The maid knew all along.’

‘I don’t understand.’

But he did, he just needed time to assimilate the news. It explained Rosa’s nervousness when he’d pushed her on the matter of her mistress’s bed, which hadn’t been slept in. He had read her right, she’d been holding out on him, but this realization gave him little satisfaction, for he’d utterly failed to grasp the true nature of the Basque’s involvement.

‘What’s there to understand?’ asked Milligan.

What had he thought, that the big fisherman was playing at the amateur sleuth, doing his bit for local law enforcement? Christ, had he grown so blind in the last year?

‘Hollis?’

‘Is it relevant? I mean…to the question of her death?’

‘It’s relevant, Hollis, to the fact that Labarde has been harassing the Wallaces. The girl’s brother, Manfred, he was round here earlier raising a stink.’

‘Harassing?’

‘Hartwell’s bringing him in.’

‘Bringing him in?’

‘What is it with the goddamn echo in here?’ said Milligan. ‘Yes, bringing him in. The Wallaces are worried. So would you be if you’d read these.’

He tossed a couple of files across the desk.

‘They’re Labarde’s military records. The guy’s a fucking fruitcake.’

Hollis read the files in the privacy of his office. He felt bad, soiled. No one had the right to peer into the depths of a man’s soul uninvited.

The Basque clearly felt the same way. The reports by the English psychiatrist were peppered with references to the patient’s stubborn resistance to discussion. The doctor’s building frustration leapt off the page. At least he seemed to care. There were several mentions in the handwritten notes of the brother, Antton, and his death some years before the war; but again, it was a line of discussion Labarde had refused to co-operate with.

Statements by fellow soldiers pointed to a marked deterioration in his state of mind following the First Special Service Force’s assignment to southern France. There was a detailed account of an assault by the 2nd Regiment on a German position on the Île du Levant, wherever that was. Ironically, in the light of what happened next, Labarde’s growing recklessness and disregard for his own life had only won him more accolades.

Labarde claimed to recall nothing of the incident near the Italian border that had ended his war and almost his life, but there were enough other testimonials to piece together the sequence of events. Labarde had been out scouting German positions in the mountains just back from the coast when some kind of fire-fight had erupted and he’d called in an artillery barrage. When the rest of his squad arrived on the scene, they found him badly wounded by shrapnel, barely alive. The Germans were all dead—from gunshot wounds. It was possible that other Germans had retreated before the barrage hit, but there was a chilling statement from a lieutenant that suggested otherwise. He had been watching from across the valley through his field glasses, and he described how he’d seen Labarde climb to the top of a large rock on the spur and just stand there in the open, facing the incoming shells. Everything pointed to Labarde killing the Germans then calling in the barrage—right on top of himself.

Hollis closed the files and lit a cigarette. He had heard of men losing it in combat—shell-shock, battle fatigue—catchphrases known to all. But this seemed different, more like a gradual heaping up of war, pressing down on a man, buckling him slowly. He reached for parallels in his own life, but there were none. What had he ever really seen that came close, what had he ever really done?