A Fine Night for Dying

CHAPTER 5

Brittany

St. Denise was twenty or thirty granite cottages amongst pine trees fringing a horseshoe cove that was a natural harbor. There was a wooden jetty of sorts, with an old thirty-foot launch moored to it that looked as if it had seen better days. The tide was turning, and four clinker-built fishing cobles moved out to sea, line astern. A similar boat lay stranded on the beach above the high-water mark and two men worked on her hull.

Chavasse took it all in as the van moved out of the trees along the narrow road that merged into the main street of the village. The only sign of life was a stray dog sitting mournfully in the rain outside a cottage door.

The van left the village behind, and almost stalled as Jacaud dropped two gears to negotiate a steep hill. The Running Man was at the top, a two-storied granite house sheltering behind high walls. Jacaud turned through an archway and halted in the cobbled courtyard inside. Chavasse got out and looked around with interest. The whole place had a strangely forlorn look about it and badly needed a coat of paint. A shutter banged to and fro in the wind, and when he glanced up, a curtain moved slightly at a window, as if it had been pulled to one side while someone glanced out.

The Renault entered the courtyard and pulled up just behind the van. Famia got out and stood there, looking uncertain. Rossiter came round from the other side, picked up her suitcase and took her elbow. She looked tired, ready to drop at any moment. He leaned over her solicitously, murmured something and took her inside.

Chavasse turned to Jacaud. “What about me?”

“If I had my way, you could sleep in the pigsty.”

“Careful,” Chavasse said. “You’ll be making sounds like a man next. Now let’s try again.”

Jacaud went inside without a word and Chavasse picked up his suitcase and followed him. He paused to glance up at the painted sign above the door. It was obviously very old and showed a man running, apparently some kind of fugitive, a pack of hounds at his heels. A pleasant sight indeed, the terror in the poor wretch’s eyes frozen into place for all eternity.

Inside was a large square room with a low-beamed ceiling and a tiled floor. There was a scattering of chairs and tables, a large open hearth in which a fire burned and a marble-topped bar.

Jacaud had gone behind it and was pouring himself a large cognac. He rammed the cork into the bottle and Chavasse dropped his case. “I’ll join you.”

“Like hell you will. Let’s see the color of your money.”

“Rossiter’s got it all, you know that.”

“Then you can go thirsty.” He replaced the bottle on the shelf and raised his voice. “Hey, Mercier, where are you?”

A door at the back of the bar opened and a small, worried-looking man of forty or so came in. He wore a fisherman’s patched trousers and was wiping his hands on a grimy towel.

“Yes, monsieur, what is it?”

“Another passenger for the Leopard. Take him upstairs. He can share with Jones.”

Jacaud glared at Chavasse like some wild animal, turned and, kicking open the door, vanished into the kitchen.

“Quite a show,” Chavasse said. “Is he always like this or is today something special?”

Mercier picked up the suitcase. “This way, monsieur.”

They mounted some stairs to the first floor and moved along a narrow whitewashed corridor past several doors. Mercier knocked on the one at the far end. There was no reply and he opened it.

The room was small and bare, with whitewashed walls, two narrow truckle beds standing side by side. There was a crucifix on one wall, a cheap color reproduction of St. Francis on the other. It was clean-but only just.

Mercier put down the case. “Monsieur Jones will probably be back shortly. He is, by the way, Jamaican. A meal will be served at twelve-thirty. If there is anything else you wish to know, you must see Monsieur Rossiter.”

“And who does Monsieur Rossiter have to see?”

Mercier frowned, looking genuinely bewildered. “I don’t understand, monsieur.”

“Let it go,” Chavasse told him.

Mercier shrugged and went out. Chavasse put his suitcase on one of the beds, moved to the window and looked out. So this was the Running Man? Not a very prepossessing sight.

Behind him, someone said, “Welcome to Liberty Hall, man.”

A gull cried high in the sky and skimmed the sand dunes. Down by the water’s edge, he threw stones into the sea. He turned and moved back toward Chavasse, tall, handsome, the strong angular face and startling blue eyes evidence of that mixture of blood so common in the West Indies. Jack Jones? Well, that was as reasonable a name as any. He had the shoulders of a prizefighter and looked good for ten rounds any day of the week, or Chavasse was no judge.

He flung himself down on the sand, produced a packet of Gauloise and lit one. “So you’re from Australia?”

“That’s it-Sydney.”

“They tell me that’s quite a town.”

“The best. You should try it some time.”

The Jamaican stared at him blankly. “You must be joking. They wouldn’t even let me off the boat. They like their immigrants to be the pale variety, or hadn’t you noticed?”

It was a plain statement of fact, without any kind of rancor in it, and Chavasse shrugged. “I don’t make the laws, sport. Too busy breaking them.”

The Jamaican was immediately interested. “Now that explains a lot. I was wondering why a free, white, upstanding Protestant like you was having to use the back door into the old country like the rest of us.”

“Catholic,” Chavasse said. “Free, white, upstanding Catholic-just for the record.”

Jones grinned, produced his packet of Gauloises for the second time and offered him one. “And just how badly does the law back home want you?”

“About ten years’ worth. That’s if I’m lucky and the judge isn’t feeling too liverish on the great day.”

Jones whistled softly. “Man, you must be a real tiger when you get going.”

“A weakness for other people’s money, that’s my trouble.” Chavasse looked across the sand dunes to the small harbor and the sea beyond. “This is all right; about the nicest beach I’ve touched since Bondi.”

“That’s what I thought five days ago-now it’s just a drag. I want to get moving.”

“What are you going to do when you get over the Channel?”

Jones shrugged. “I’ve got friends. They’ll fix me up with something.”

“But for how long?”

“As long as I need. Once I hit London, I can’t go wrong. I’ll just merge into the scenery. After all, one black face is the same as another, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Chavasse refused to be drawn. “What about the rest of the clientele?”

“If you turn your head a couple of points to starboard, you’ll see them now.”

The old man who appeared over a sand dune a few yards away wore a blue overcoat two sizes too large, which gave him a strangely shrunken look, and his brown, wrinkled skin was drawn tightly over the bones of his face. He wasn’t too steady on his feet, either. Chavasse got the distinct impression that if it hadn’t been for the woman who supported him with a hand under his left elbow and an arm around his shoulders, he might well have fallen down.

“Old Hamid is seventy-two,” Jones said. “A Pakistani. He’s hoping to join his son in Bradford.”

“And the woman?”

“Mrs. Campbell? Anglo-Indian-a half-and-half. What they used to call chi-chi in the good old days of Empire. A fine Scots name, but she can no more get away from the color of her skin than I can. Her husband died last year and her only relative is a sister who married an English doctor years ago and went to live in Harrogate, of all places. Mrs. Campbell tried to get an entry permit to join her, but they turned her down.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t qualify as a dependent under the Immigration Act, she’s an Indian national and she’s got tuberculosis. She was born in India, never been to England in her life and yet she talks about it as if going home. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly.”

Mrs. Campbell was about fifty, with sad dark eyes and skin that was darker than usually found amongst Eurasians. She seemed cold and wore a shabby fur coat, a heavy woolen scarf wrapped about her neck and head.

They paused, the old man gasping for breath. “A cold day, Mr. Jones, don’t you agree?”

Jones and Chavasse stood up and Jones nodded. “This is Mr. Chavasse, a new arrival. He’ll be going with us.”

The old man showed no surprise. “Ah, yes, Miss Nadeem spoke of you.”

“You’ve met her?” Chavasse said.

“Just before we left for our walk,” Mrs. Campbell put in.

Hamid held out a soft, boneless hand, which Chavasse touched briefly before it slipped from his grasp as easily as life would slip from the frail old body before very much longer.

Mrs. Campbell seemed curiously embarrassed and tugged at the old man’s sleeve. “Come now, Mr. Hamid, we mustn’t dawdle. Lunch soon. So nice, Mr. Chavasse.” Her English was quaint in its preciseness, and the way in which she spoke was an echo of a bygone age. Chavasse watched them stumble away across the sand dunes, strange, shadowy creatures with no substance to them, adrift in an alien world, and was conscious of an indescribable feeling of bitterness. Men made laws to protect themselves, but someone always suffered-always.

He turned and found Jones watching him enigmatically. “You look sorry for them, too sorry for any Sydney duck with the law on his tail.”

There was a curious stillness between them. Chavasse said, in a harsh, unemotional voice, “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I, man.” Jones grinned, and the moment passed. “You want to eat, we’d better move.”

They made their way through the sand dunes and started across the beach above the wooden jetty. Chavasse pointed toward the motor launch moored beside it. “Is that the boat?”

Jones nodded. “It kind of fits in with Jacaud, wouldn’t you say?”

“What do you make of him?”

Jones shrugged. “He’d sell his sister or his grandmother for a bottle of rum at the right time. He’s on two a day at the moment and escalating.”

“And the man who works for him-Mercier?”

“Frightened of his own shadow. Lives in a cottage on the other side of the village. Just him and his wife. She’s some kind of an invalid. A walking vegetable. He jumps when Jacaud roars.”

“And Rossiter?”

Jones smiled softly. “You like the question bit, don’t you?”

Chavasse shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Okay, I will. You know what a zombie is?”

Chavasse frowned. “Something to do with voodoo, isn’t it?”

“To be precise, a dead man brought out of his grave before corruption’s had a chance to set in.”

“And given life, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“A kind of life, to walk the night and do his master’s bidding-a creature of pure, mindless evil.”

“And that’s Rossiter.”

“That’s Rossiter.” The Jamaican laughed harshly. “The funny thing is, he used to be a priest-a Jesuit priest.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Ran out of matches one night, so I knocked on his door. He didn’t seem to be around.”

“And your natural curiosity got the better of you?”

“What else, man? There were a couple of interesting photographs in the bottom right-hand drawer of his dressing table. He hasn’t changed much. There’s a nice one dated 1949 of about twenty of them in a group-looks like graduation day at the seminary. The other was taken in 1951 in Korea. Shows him with a half dozen kids at the gate of some mission or other.”

Nineteen-fifty-one. The year the Korean war had started. Was that where Rossiter had lost his faith? Chavasse frowned, remembering that tortured, aesthetic face. The priest he could see, but the murderer…It just didn’t seem possible.

He was still thinking about it as they turned into the courtyard of the Running Man.