Impact Read online

  Fresh tears ran down her face. I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder. She seemed to appreciate it.

  ‘How about you?’ asked the other girl.

  ‘A friend of the family,’ I said. Didn't want to make the lie too grounded in facts. ‘My mother just heard. She's devastated.’

  Both girls nodded in unison.

  ‘Poor Marie,’ said the first girl. ‘I can't imagine what she's going through. Losing a sister so soon after... well, it must be hard for her.’

  I looked down at my feet.

  ‘Poor Marie,’ I sighed. Then I looked back up at the women. ‘You wouldn't know where she lives, would you? Mother has a card she wanted to send. She wanted to get out herself, but at her age, it gets harder every day.’

  The first lady nodded and rummaged in her bag, pulling out a phone. After a couple of minutes tapping away, she held the screen up to me.

  ‘That's her address,’ she said.

  With no phone or paper to write it down, I had to memorise it. The second lady took pity on me and pulled out a notepad and jotted it down for me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as she handed it over. ‘Take care, both of you.’

  They managed a mournful smile, and headed away, leaving me alone with the memorial. I looked down at it. Bunches of flowers lined the low brick wall. A life snatched away too soon by men lurking behind the veil of suicide. Her sister deserved to know the truth. I just hoped my evidence would help.

  Finding the address on the slip of paper was easier said than done. The woman had given me a street name and a postcode, which would be great for someone who had even a vague understanding of French geography, but for me, it came down to guesswork. My stomach growled in protest as I continued my search. The clouds gave way to a dazzling afternoon sun, that steadily crept towards the horizon with every passing minute.

  After a couple of hours, I gave it a break. I needed food, and ideally, a map. I found a supermarket, and bought a baguette loaf, a small notepad and a pen. The baguette was warm to the touch and, once paid and outside, I ate the thing whole. With a mass of gluten ballooning my stomach, I began to write a message on the notepad.

  Dear Marie, I don't know you, and you don't know me, but I believe I may have some information regarding your sister. First and foremost, I want to offer my sincerest apologies for your loss, and I hope that the information I have to give can guide you towards seeking a resolution.

  I went on to describe the events of the night before, and my findings for the day. I tried to write as clearly and succinctly as I could, lest I forget or cloud my own judgments. By the time I had finished, I reread what I had put to paper, and tried to think if there was anything I had missed. When nothing sprung to mind, I tried to think what I was doing. Not literally, but mentally, to a woman I had never met, who didn’t know anything about me. Well, anything real about me. Someone who was about to drop a bomb on her already fissured life. To upheave the already upheaved. And to leave her with the uncertainty that would undoubtably entail.

  Was it the right call? Was I doing the right thing?

  If it were me, I would want to know. I would want to search for the truth.

  Would she want the same?

  In the end, I conceded and tried a taxi. I had no idea if I had one mile or one hundred to Marie’s house, and I didn’t want to waste more time walking about. I found a cab parked up close to the supermarket I’d used earlier and tried in vain to read out the address correctly. The blank look on the driver’s face was all I needed to just give up and hand him the slip of paper, and twenty minutes later, I arrived at my destination.

  I climbed out into a darkening street, my pockets a lot lighter for the expenditure. More living like this, and I was going to need a part-time job to fuel my tumultuous life on the run. That’d be the day. Being a fugitive ain’t cheap.

  I looked up at the house before me. Unlike the house of her deceased sister, hers was not a modest abode. The double-fronted detached property looked remarkably Edwardian in its design, with an impressively large garden out front that looked like each blade had been cut with a pair of scissors and a measuring tape so that each was within a millimetre of the others. An array of gnomes stretched along either side of the property, each immortalised in a different pose or stance, with different tools and hats and facial expressions. Not modest. Not by a long shot.

  I swung open the wrought-iron gate and walked the small cobbled path from the street to the front door. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but they say nothing of judging homes by their front door, which had to be the same philosophy, surely. And what I could garner from this one was that the family tucked up inside were, if nothing else, comfortably rich.

  Maybe they’d have the money to do the research. To go the whole nine yards and crack this case.

  A small, bright light over the front door flicked on as I approached. Not ideal, but I’d be gone within a minute. I knelt down on the step and took out my bundle of research. I folded it up and pushed open the letterbox. I got the letter halfway through.

  Then the door opened.

  Eleven

  Crouched down on the doorstep, the first thing I saw was the autumnal warmth of a table lamp illuminating a capacious hall space. But it wasn’t that I focused on. It was the person standing directly in front of it.

  My eyes landed upon a silk-clad midriff, charcoal grey in colour, before quickly scarpering upward. The figure was a woman, the very same I’d seen just a few hours ago broken and distraught on the side of the street. Her eyes were red raw and puffed up. The wrinkles on her forehead looked well defined like chasms developed in the land over thousands of years. She looked at me like I was little more than an apparition or a gnat. Like I was barely even there.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked groggily.

  I stood up and took a step back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said hastily in English, before repeating it in French. ‘I didn’t think anyone was home. You’re Marie, right? I just wanted to offer my condolences.’

  I think I screwed up the last word, because her face manifested into a look of confusion. I took another step back.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Marie, absentmindedly.

  She looked down towards the open door and the letterbox. My bundle of evidence sticking halfway through as though trapped between worlds. She reached out to take it. I tried to stop her. To get there first. It was weird. It made me look suspicious, so I withdrew and contemplated running for the hills. I didn’t do that either. I just stood there. She gave me an odd look and took the bundle.

  Without an envelope to contain the bundle, I’d had to settle with tucking the camera pictures inside the printout from Armand. The handwritten note was in the middle. As Marie opened it up, the note slipped away and landed at her feet. I wanted to take it and stuff it in my mouth. I didn’t. I just stood there. Marie bent down and started to read it. Her eyes drifted back and forth across the page, taking in the contents line by line.

  Then she looked up at me.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked. There was more sustenance to her voice.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked again. ‘What are these?’

  She held up the photographs. I could see the American’s face looking right at me.

  I took another step back.

  ‘Don’t,’ she snapped. ‘If you do not tell me what this is, I will call the police.’

  There I was, standing on the doorstep of a recently bereaved woman, throwing a spanner into her tumultuous existence. She had a clear shot of my face, my fingerprints were all over the paperwork in her hands, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had CCTV of her own pointing down at me that very second. I didn’t have a lot of options.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I conceded.

  Marie Giroux sat at the marble breakfast bar with her hands wrapped around a tepid cup of coffee, staring at the opposite wa
ll like it held all the answers to her innermost questions. She had formerly introduced herself to me, offering me a cup of coffee that I declined. I told her my name was James Callahan. A Private Detective from England. Going up in the world from DI to private dick. If she believed the story, I couldn’t tell. She didn’t scream me out of the house at least.

  I ran her through the whole thing, hitting the same beats that I’d chronicled on the note she’d already read. But hearing it out in person seemed to do something to her. It solidified it. It made the whole thing real which, after the day she’d had, was probably too much to bear. It took half an hour from being invited in to finishing my story. Not a long time in total, but enough to change a person’s life forever.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ Marie said after several minutes of silence. ‘Amie… how could anyone do this?’

  Her English was better than Armand’s, so much so, I could almost believe it was her first language.

  ‘I’m not sure, but I don’t believe it is a coincidence. The men I saw, they were trying to get away from there. It can’t have been more than a mile from where your sister…’ I trailed off.

  ‘They’ve been here twice today,’ she said. ‘The police, I mean. First to let me know what had happened. Second to give me their verdict. They’re treating it as a suicide.’

  She got up from her chair and drifted over to gaze out of the window above the sink. It looked out onto her garden, or at least it would have done in the light of day. At night, all she got was her own ghostly reflection.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, because the silence was tearing me open like a knife. ‘After what I saw, and then hearing it was suicide, I wanted to intervene. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ She asked, not taking her eyes away from the window.

  I paused. Tried to come up with a suitable lie. I left it too long. She turned to look at me.

  ‘I’m on holiday,’ I said. ‘I used to come up around here with my family when I was a young boy. I’ve always wanted to come back.’

  ‘But what were you doing in the woods at night?’ she pressed.

  ‘I was out camping.’

  ‘Camping, at this time of the year?’

  I nodded. She wasn’t buying it.

  She pursed her lips.

  ‘The police told me it was suicide. They told me they had proof.’

  ‘Proof?’

  She nodded. Her face sank.

  ‘They gave me a copy of it. It was addressed to me, you see.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  She placed down her untouched coffee and drifted away through the kitchen door. Every movement she made was almost ethereal, as though she was the one who had died, not her sister. Maybe a part of her had. She was gone for a whole minute. Then she returned. In her hand was a small plastic wallet with a single white DVD slotted inside. On the wall beside a round oak table was a flat screen television. She picked up a remote off the table and pressed a button to eject a different DVD from the side. She swapped out the two and pushed the new disk into the television.

  The screen went blue for a moment. Marie took a step back, her back braced like she was preparing for a car crash.

  Then a woman appeared on the screen.

  Amie Giroux.

  The quality was less than ideal, but even so, I could tell it was her from the photographs I’d seen outside her house on the memorial. Her long blonde hair cascaded down over her shoulders, similar to that of her surviving sister. Her pale blue eyes pierced the lens of the camera as she let off a meek, forlorn smile.

  ‘Bonjour Marie,’ she said. Her voice was as light as a summer’s breeze. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I don’t expect you imagined this would be our next encounter, and I’m sorry this couldn’t have been said in person.’

  She spoke with an inward breathlessness capable only from the innately shy. Glistening eyes flicked down from the camera, and what came next sounded like a pre-written speech, all clear and concise.

  ‘Life is a funny thing, don’t you think? No one asks for it, and how we experience it is largely down to those who force it upon us. We are like carpenters, each thrust upon a tree and told to make something beautiful. Some of us get large, fresh oaks, while some of us get withered, rotten husks. Yet we are all expected to complete our creations even though for some it is almost impossible.’

  Amie looked up from her notes and smiled again. Marie stared back, arms clasped around her fragile torso. I suddenly felt like an intruder, stuck on a boat purpose built for only two, ignoring the floods filling up inside.

  ‘There is no easy way to tell you this, Marie,’ continued Amie. ‘But I… cannot continue with this. I have struggled for so long, trying to pretend that the pain I feel inside is false, and the joy I feel outside is real, but it is the opposite. Every laugh, every smile, it is fake. A fallacy. I cannot keep it up because it breaks me apart to do so. And I cannot live my life with the hurt that burns inside me.’

  Amie stopped to wipe away the tears from her eyes before continuing.

  ‘My life isn’t something I value. Not like yours. Not like our parents. We have all suffered, but unlike you, I can’t keep holding it together. I don’t have the strength for it. I wish beyond belief that it was not the case. Every day I tell myself that I should be more like you. After everything, with mother and father, with Andrew, I just don’t know how you’ve managed it. I wish I had your strength, but I don’t, and I’m tired of fighting.’

  She took a long, deep breath and swallowed.

  ‘I am so sorry that it has to be this way, sister. This is not a decision I have come to easily, but… my mind is made up. I hope you can understand why. In the coming weeks, you will know for certain, and I hope it makes sense. But most importantly, I hope you can forgive me. I will love you forever, Marie, and I will see you on the other side.’

  Her eyes locked onto the camera lens.

  ‘Goodbye, sister.’

  Twelve

  Tears ran down Amie’s face. She gave a final, forlorn smile, then reached over the camera and ended the recording. The screen turned back to blue, then black as the DVD reached its end. I sat in stunned silence, unsure what the hell to do or say. I glanced over at Marie. Her shoulders bounced fractionally. She was crying. What the hell was I doing?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. My voice was tight. The lump in my throat nearly suffocating. ‘I was wrong. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come here and put this on you.’

  Marie turned away from the screen to look at me. Her face glistened with fresh tears.

  ‘Amie wouldn’t do this to me,’ she said, fighting for control of her voice. ‘She wouldn’t. I know that of her. We weren’t as close as we used to be, but I know she wouldn’t kill herself.’

  I looked from her to the blank screen. Pictured the woman I’d seen on there. The woman now dead. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Amie had so much to live for,’ Marie continued. ‘She was stronger than this. She wouldn’t just go off and… and…’

  Once more, she dropped to her knees and let the emotion take control of her. I knelt down beside her. She collapsed into me. I put my arms around her. Not how I expected my day to go.

  ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Are you a private detective?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied.

  ‘Good. I believe you, Mr Callahan,’ she gasped. ‘She wouldn’t do this. Not my Amie. I believe what you said is true. And I want to hire you. Please, help me find the men responsible.’

  She broke away from me and stared up into my eyes.

  ‘The police would be able to do a better job than me,’ I said.

  ‘The police are bullshit,’ she said, waving a hand up like she was swatting a fly. ‘They have already made up their minds. Now all they care about is cleaning up the mess. They will not take this seriously.’ Steadily, she got to her feet. ‘You will. You will take this seriously, won’t you, Mr Callahan? If money is the issue, I will p
ay whatever it takes. I just need to know the truth.’

  Were it the other way around, I’d want someone fighting my corner. But was I the man for the job? Of all the available candidates: the police, Marie’s family, even a genuine private detective, I was hardly in the position to throw my hat in the ring. The police could be anywhere. They could be watching me right now, ready and waiting to strike. Or they could be a million miles away looking under a rock. Hard to say.

  ‘Don’t do it, James.’

  But if it were me. If it was my sibling. If someone could help me shed light on what really happened.

  I bit my lip.

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll help you find them.’

  And for the first time that day, a genuine smile crept across her face. For a moment, I thought she might break down again, or hug me, or scream. It was hard to tell. In the end, she did none of those, but instead crossed to the kitchen.

  Sensing that perhaps the man standing in damp clothes in her kitchen was maybe down on his luck, Marie reached into her purse and passed me an advance of three hundred euros. With little more than change in my pocket, I took it and stared at the crisp notes.

  ‘Where do we start?’ She asked. ‘You were able to find these men once. How do we do that again?’

  ‘That man in the photographs, he was staying at a hotel not too far from here. He was booked in for another night.’

  Marie snatched up her keys off the counter.

  ‘Then that’s where we start,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t know anything about him,’ I pressed. ‘He might be armed, and we have no idea what kind of person he is. If he attacks us, I can’t promise your safety.’

  ‘Don’t worry about my safety, Mr Callahan. Just worry about bringing this man to justice.’

  This is normal, I told myself. Plenty of fugitives take up part-time jobs as private detectives all the time, right?