Malla Nunn - Let the Dead Lie

Let the Dead Lie

Malla Nunn

Firstpublished 2010 by Macmillan an imprint of Pan Macmillan

AustraliaPty Limited, Sydney

Firstpublished in Great Britain 2010 by Mantle

animprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

PanMacmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

Basingstokeand Oxford

Associatedcompanies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

Copyright Malla Nunn 2010

Formy parents,

Courtneyand Patricia Nunn

Table of Contents

Paris,France; April 1945

Aflashing neon 'Hotel' sign lit the narrow cobble-stoned lane. There was aspring chill from the showers that had fallen that afternoon across theTuileries and the Boulevard Saint Germain, but heat emanated from the GI bars.The smell of sweating bodies, spilled liquor, cigarette smoke and perfumepermeated the night air. Emmanuel was glad to be free of the crush inside. Agroup of Negro soldiers entered a subterranean club on the corner of Rue Veronand a jazz trumpet blared into the night. He strolled the slick lane with threegiggling stenographers and Hugh Langton, a BBC war correspondent withimpeccable black-market connections.

'That'sit up ahead,' Langton said. 'Two double rooms on the fourth floor. You don'tmind a few stairs, do you, girls?'

Fivedays of R&R, then back to bully beef in a tin and the parade of demolishedtowns. Emmanuel had five days to forget. Five days to build new memories overthe visions of broken churches and people. The brunette nuzzled closer andpressed a hot kiss on the nape of his neck. He picked up the pace, greedy forthe sensation of skin on skin. The hotel sign flashed light into a doorway afew feet ahead. Bare legs, pale and dimpled with rain, jutted into the street.The torn edges of a skirt and an open change purse were visible in the dimrecess.

'Mon dieu ...' The brunette pressed slimfingers to her mouth. 'Regardez! Regardez ...'

Emmanuelunhooked his arm from around her shoulder and moved closer. Another flash ofneon illuminated the thickset body of a woman slumped against a door. Abloodied hole was torn into the lapel of her grubby jacket, evidence Emmanuelsuspected of a small-calibre entry wound. The blank eyes and slack jawsuggested a passenger who'd missed the last train and would now have to spendthe night in the open. Emmanuel checked for a pulse, more a formality than anecessity.

'She'sdead.'

'Thenwe're too late to be of help.' Langton herded the stenographers towards theHotel Oasis. This little hiccup could seriously extinguish the mood. 'I'll getthe concierge to call the police.'

'Goahead,' Emmanuel said. 'I'll find a gendarme and catch up.'

Langtontook Emmanuel aside. 'Let me point out the obvious in case you missed it,Cooper. Dead woman. Live women .. . plural. Let's get the hell outof here.'

Emmanuelstayed put. A kitbag stuffed with spare ration packs and a warm hotel room withsoap and fresh towels meant the stenographers would wait. Such was the coldpragmatism of war.

'Okay,okay.' The Englishman ushered the women towards the flickering neon. 'Don'tstay out here all night. There'll be plenty of dead back in the field.'

Thatwas true, but it was an insult to abandon a body in a city where law and orderhad been restored. Emmanuel found a stocky policeman enjoying a cigarette undera cherry blossom tree, and an hour later a balding detective with an impressiveeagle-beak nose and sad brown eyes arrived on the scene. He peered into thedoorway.

'SimoneBetancourt.' The identification, in heavily accented English, was for thebenefit of the foreign soldier. Most cases involving the Allied forces wereshifted to the handful of bilingual police. 'Fifty-two years old. Listed occupation,washerwoman.'

'Youknew her?' Emmanuel said.

'Shetook in the police-station washing and that of many small pensions.' A hand was thrust in Emmanuel's direction. 'Inspecteur principal Luc Moreau.You discovered the body?'

'Yes.'

'Yourname, please.'

'MajorEmmanuel Cooper.'

'Andyou were on your way to...'

'Thehotel up there,' Emmanuel said, certain the French detective had alreadyfigured that out.

'Thelast rain was ...' Moreau checked his gold wrist-watch, '... about two hoursago. So, Simone has been here longer than that. Others, no doubt, saw the body.And did nothing. Why did you alert the police and wait here for so long at thecrime scene?'

Emmanuelshrugged. 'I'm not sure.' The dead were another part of the war's landscape.Soldiers and civilians, the young and the old were left unattended and withoutceremony in the fields and the rubble. But this washerwoman had resurrectedmemories of another defenceless female abandoned a long time ago. 'It feltwrong to leave her, that's all.'

Moreausmiled and unwrapped a stick of chewing gum, a habit acquired from the Americanmilitary police. 'Even in war, a murder is offensive, no?'

'Maybeso.' Emmanuel glanced towards the hotel. Stopping to mark the death of SimoneBetancourt would neither rebalance the scales of justice nor dull the memory offallen friends. And yet he'd remained. The night had grown colder. Jesus. Hecould be in bed with a stenographer right now.

'Dome this favour.' Moreau scribbled on a page and tore it loose. 'Go to yourwoman. Drink. Eat. Make love. Sleep. If tomorrow Simone Betancourt is still onyour mind, call me.'

'Whatfor?' Emmanuel pocketed the crumpled paper.

'Whenyou call, I will give an explanation.'

Distantchurch bells chimed 11 a.m. Emmanuel awoke dry-mouthed and loose-limbed amid atangle of sheets. The brunette, Justine from Cergy, stood naked by the window,devouring a block of ration-pack chocolate. Her body was perfect in the springsunshine that dazzled through the glass. A pot of black-market coffee and adish of butter pastries were set on the table. Justine climbed back into thebed, and Emmanuel forgot about war and injustice and fear.

Whenhe awoke a second time, Justine was asleep. He looked at her peaceful face,like a child's. Every element of happiness was right here in this room. Butstill he felt sadness creep in. He slipped from under the sheets and went tothe window. Directly below the hotel's precarious wrought-iron balcony was thecobblestoned lane where Simone Betancourt had died in the rain. That a lifecould be so easily taken without justice or recognition was a lesson he'dlearned in childhood. Leading a company of soldiers through war had confirmedthat nothing was sacred. It was strange how, after four years of training andfighting, the memory of his mother's death still lurked in the shadows, readyto ambush the present.

Emmanuelretrieved the detective's telephone number and smoothed the paper flat. Hewould phone Inspector Luc Moreau, but he had the unsettling sensation that thereverse was happening: he was the one being called.

Durban, South Africa; 28 May 1953

Theentrance to the freight yards was a dark mouth crowded with rows of dirtyboxcars and threads of silver track. A few white prostitutes orbited a weakstreetlight. Indian and coloured working girls were tucked into the shadows,away from the passing trade and the police.

EmmanuelCooper crossed Point Road and moved towards the yards. The prostitutes staredat him and the boldest of them, a fat redhead with a moulting fox fur slungaround her shoulders, lifted a skirt to expose a thigh encased in blackfishnet.

'Sweetheart,'she bellowed, 'are you buying or just window shopping?'

Emmanuelslipped into the industrial maze. Did he look that desperate? Brine and coaldust blew off Durban Harbour and the lights of a docked cruise ship shoneacross the water. Stationary gantry cranes loomed over the avenue of boxcarsand a bright half moon lit the rocky ground. He moved towards the centre of theyards, tracing a now familiar path. He was tired and not from the late hour.