Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I’m confused by the persistent gunfire until I realise I’m awake, the dream has dispersed, and the banging is not that of a gun but a fist upon my front door.
I drag myself from my bed, pull on a sweatshirt I’d discarded on the floor, and rub the sleep from my eyes as I make my way down the hallway.
The banging gets louder and is now accompanied by a voice.
“Evangeline! Evangeline, are you in there?”
I flip the lock, then swing the door open to find Una with her arm raised, ready to pummel my face in the absence of the door. Pierre hovers behind her, embarrassment mixed with relief on his face.
“Evangeline, thank fuck for that.” Una pushes into the apartment, almost knocking me down as she throws her arms around me. “We’ve been so worried.”
“She’s been worried. I’ve been marginally concerned,” Pierre says.
“I was worried when you didn’t show up for work yesterday. Then Captain said you’d taken some leave, but you haven’t answered any of my texts or calls.”
Una releases me, and we trail into the kitchen. Their eyes immediately zero in on my dead laptop and the scattered notes and reports on the kitchen table.
“I am allowed to take a holiday,” I tell Una.
“Or are you working from home?” Pierre raises an eyebrow.
“This is nothing,” I lie.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.” Pierre tilts his head to try and read one of the loose papers, but I snatch it up.
Una leans against the worktop. “Of course you’re allowed to take a holiday. We just thought it a bit suspicious with what happened on Monday, and then when I couldn’t reach you all day yesterday, I started to worry.”
“I appreciate your concern, guys, but I’m fine. Just thought it would be a good week to take some time off and not be around the headlines for a bit.”
“See, I told you.” Pierre flashes Una a frustrated look.
The pair regard me with uncertainty before Una speaks. “There was something else.”
Pierre rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. She is fine. We should just leave.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s nothing.” Pierre stares at me as if trying to convey that this really is nothing, but Una will not be deterred.
“It might be nothing. Or it might be something.” She folds her arms.
“Does it require a chair and coffee?” I ask, already pulling out the chairs, then head over to the kettle.
They sit as I busy myself with maid duties.
“I told you we should have just shown up with a Costa and checked in on her,” Pierre whispers to Una.
“I am here, you know. I can hear you,” I say with my back to them both.
“Pierre doesn’t agree with me on the importance of telling you what we know,” Una says.
“I just don’t think now is the time. It can wait,” he argues.
“Sometimes, I question your character as a reporter, Pierre. Remind me again why you became a journalist?” Una says, that infernal tongue of hers unleashing again, but Pierre is used to her by now.
“Very funny,” he says, batting her comment away with his hand.
“I’m serious. You don’t have your tail in the air when there’s a whiff of a story,” she pushes.
“This isn’t a story. This is our friend and her life,” Pierre points out.
With an unintentional thud, I set their coffees on the table and join them.
“Okay, what’s the story?” I ask, glad of the distraction from my own affairs.
Pierre eyes Una as if giving her one more chance to back out of telling me whatever it is they’ve come all this way to say, but she ignores him.
“Yesterday, Dupin and I went to interview some of the witnesses who were at the casino when your brother was shot,” Una says carefully, as if her words are landing on the thin layer of a frozen lake.
“Okay.” I wonder where she’s going with this and why they were talking to old witnesses after Valdemar’s release and not before.
“We spoke to Sergeant Psyche, the first officer on the scene,” Una replies, clearly testing the ice, watching for a tiny crack. “He’s very old now, retired for some years.”
She’s stalling, which makes me nervous. She’d been so eager to get here, to speak to me, dragging Pierre against his will, but now that the words are forming, she seems to be having doubts.
“We were going for a piece on how the people who witnessed the shooting felt about the release of Valdemar Montresor,” Una goes on.
“I get why you were there,” I say, now understanding how impactful this story would be. The headline flashes before me: Cop’s Trauma Relived as Monster Montresor Released . It would have made a great companion piece.
“We started with the obvious stuff. How was he feeling about it all? Did he believe that he’d served his time? Did he think there was something wrong with the justice system? You know the drill.” She twirls her hand as she recites the questions as if she’s thrown a fishing line out and is reeling it in with the answers hooked on the end. “I know I said he was retired, and when some people retire, they can tend to lose their marbles a bit, their minds not as fresh as they used to be, but I think something like that would stay with you. You would picture it in your head every day for the rest of your life.”
The dream is still fresh on the fringes of my mind. It’s clear Valdemar hasn’t forgotten any of that day.
“I get what you’re saying, but can you please just tell me what this is about?” I ask.
Una glances at Pierre, who purses his lips as if to tell her she got herself into this, so now she needs to be the one to get herself out of it.
“It was his answers. They weren’t what Dupin and I were expecting,” Una says.
“What do you mean?” I fold my arms.
“Dupin was asking him the questions, and I was packing away my camera, as we’d done the photos first, the sun having been in the perfect position through his front window. He kept fidgeting with his hands like he had worry beads in them and glancing over his shoulder.
“When Dupin asked him how he felt about Montresor’s release, he started out saying the obvious, that he’d done his time and the public had to have faith in the justice system, but then he went on to say it was a relief.” Una’s eyes narrow, a quizzical look overtaking her.
“Dupin had also noted the oddness in the answer but ploughed on, maybe thinking the same as I was, that the guy wasn’t as sharp as he used to be. But then Dupin asked him if he felt safe with Montresor walking around, and he said he hasn’t felt safe for the past ten years, so some things never change. Again, not the most obvious answer, but for the sake of trying to rescue the interview, Dupin pushed on and asked him if he thought ten years was long enough to atone for taking a man’s life.
“The silence that followed felt never-ending, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but eventually, he said that he hadn’t atoned in ten years, so he wouldn’t expect anyone else to. He hadn’t atoned. Not Montresor. Him .”
Normally, I would be hot on the trail of what Una has told me, my journalist nose to the ground to pick up the scent, but my brain is mush, overloaded by recent revelations. I almost feel like laughing. I’m not sure I can carry anything else right now; my head is full to the brim, and I don’t quite feel like myself anymore. It’s not unlike how I felt after Ed had died, like the world was carrying on around me and I was just floating, letting the world unravel.
Pierre breaks the silence, disrupting my thoughts. “I told her it was nothing. Just the ramblings of a retired cop who probably has early-onset dementia or something.”
“No, it didn’t feel like that,” Una argues. “Dupin then changed tack and asked him what he could remember about the shooting. He was evasive, told us he couldn’t remember the details, and when Dupin pushed him, he shut down, claiming he didn’t have long before he needed to get ready for an appointment.”
“So, what are you saying?” I ask.
Una looks me dead in the eye as if she’s holding a camera and lining up the lens. “I’m saying I think something about that shoot-out isn’t ringing true.”
“Like what?” But I already have my suspicions. I can still feel the dream, Valdemar’s arms wrapped around my waist as the gun was taken from my hand.
“I don’t know. All I know is that there’s something here, something worth looking at,” she says.
Pierre attempts to ease the tension. “I’ve told her this is a waste of time. It’s just an old guy losing his memory. It was ten years ago, after all.”
“If there was just someone else we could talk to, someone who was there who might be able to shed some light on what actually happened, but there’s no one.” Una shakes her head.
“There is someone,” I say.
“There is?” Una’s eyes light up as Pierre rolls his. “Who?”
I just stare at her, no words needed as her face drops.
“You can’t be serious.”