Chapter 60

Susan and Varinka had been missing for fifty seven hours now and I was certain they had been murdered. Sasha had informed the villagers of the girls' disappearance and they'd increased their guard patrols, the number of men at the road entrances doubled. Cars were being searched as they left Martinè as well as those entering. We had informed the Gendarmerie and Elastic's inspector had come out to us. He would inform the patrols, but apart from that, nothing could be done. We would have to wait.

Sasha's birthday celebrations were much quieter than planned. We couldn't cancel the celebrations either; too many influential people had already accepted our invitations. So, smiling through our pain, we welcomed our guests into the Chateau and entertained them. Gerald didn't perform, nor was this a suitable audience for Paula's version of entertainment. Though, from the briefing papers Elastic provided, I was aware that some of our guests would have found Paula's young girls a little tame for their tastes.

The evening progressed as I expected it to, dull, dull, dull. A number of the guests believed that they had been invited purely to allow me to invest in their, mostly rather dubious, business ventures. Most seemed quite aggrieved when I passed up these wonderful opportunities; though only one needed to be reminded by one of Elastic's girls that this was a birthday party not an opportunity to meet prospective investors.

Sasha and Cecy saw the last of the guests to the door, Elastic's team made sure that everyone left the grounds. Within fifteen minutes the local guards were reporting the cars leaving Martinè.

Sasha and I gratefully showered and then lay down in our bed. Too tired for fun we held each other and rested in our lover's arms. I watched Sasha's eyes close as she drifted into sleep. I too closed my eyes and gave myself to the sensations of my lover sleeping in my arms.

"Boss!" Gerry's voice broke into my sleep. "Boss, wake up we need you now."

I woke and stumbled out of bed, "Have you found them?" I asked impatiently. Gerry's face was an expressionless mask.

"I'm so sorry Boss, we've found them, but they're..." her voice cracked with emotion.

"Dead." I finished for her.

"Yes Boss, but that's not all. Some bastard's tortured them." Now a tear broke loose. "They were tortured to death."

I held her tightly to me, comforting her as best I could. My first duty was always to the living; the dead usually took care of themselves.

Sasha's hand rested gently on my shoulder, "You need to go and see them. What do you need me to do?"

I thought while Alison and Julia dressed me, "Sasha dearest, please will you call Ross or Helen, ask them who's the best pathologist they know of, someone skilled in murder enquiries if possible. Get the jet to pick him up, Ross and Helen too if they want to come."

Sasha kissed my cheek, "Go and look after your girls my love, they need you now." She smiled at me and waved me out of the bedroom.

A car was waiting for me at the front door. Harold and Cecy were waiting by the door in their gowns. "Oh Paul dearest, we're so, so sorry. We know that you need to go and see them, but don't forget that you have people here who love you and who hurt too. See your girls and then come back and look after your living girls." She too kissed me and waved me on my way.

The drive into the village was brief. Huge screens had been erected on the Boules ground, the lights and shadows of people moving round within them ample evidence of the crime scene.

I walked through the small opening in the screens and was met by a nightmare. Both girls had been hung from the branches of the small tree, naked and abused. Their small, broken, cut and torn bodies clearly showed the violence that man can do to man, or in this case two small girls.

A gendarme retching in the corner disturbed me. Though he was young and inexperienced, he probably couldn't believe that someone could hurt two small bodies so badly.

I went over and stood examining the scene. Obviously they had not been killed here. The amount of damage to each girl showed that some time had been taken in their torment. They had been brought here for us to find, to find and to know that they'd suffered. I walked round them noting that the abuse was as extensive on their backs as it had been on the front.

"Can I touch them?" I asked the Inspector. He looked a little green, things like this didn't usually happen in this quiet corner of the Loire.

"Can I ask why?" he replied.

"I want to look at their fingernails and toenails, I have a little experience in this sort of thing." I gestured to the bodies.

"Investigating deaths?" he asked almost hopefully.

I shook my head. "No," I replied sadly, "causing them."

"Dr Le Mesurier will have to agree." The Inspector said. I nodded.

"Boss, call from Dr. Ross." Elastic handed me a mobile phone.

"Ross who can you send me?" I asked.

"Professor Richard Pilkington, from the Belfast Central Hospital. He's a world authority on physical trauma and he's in Paris at a conference. I've already called him and the police are going to fly him out to you. Helen and I are coming over as soon as we can, is your jet still at Luton?"

"I think so. You just get to the check in at Luton and there will be something there to fly you over." The phone clicked off without another word being said.

I turned back to the Inspector, "Please could you tell Dr Le Mesurier that..."

"I speak English quite well, Baron," the doctor interrupted. Had the situation not been so serious I'd have laughed at his deep, deep Birmingham accent. "You have another doctor coming?" he asked.

"Professor Pilkington from..." I started.

"From Belfast. It will be good to see him again. I cannot think of a better choice." He looked me in the eye, "We do not usually get this type of crime here in Martinè, I doubt that they get it very often in Paris or Marseilles. The Professor has seen wounds like this before. When he was the Consultant Trauma Specialist he developed treatments that saved many lives. His decision to become a pathologist was both a great blow and a great boon to the people of that troubled island."

He looked up as the sound of a helicopter grew steadily louder.

"Perhaps that is him now," said the doctor.

The helicopter slowly sank down to on to the improvised landing pad. As it settled I couldn't help but notice the dark green streaks that adorned the landing skids and underbelly of the fuselage. This helicopter had spent a lot of time racing at treetop, and sometimes a little bit below treetop height. And it had been seconded to fly a pathologist from Paris to Martinè. Someone was taking these murders very seriously indeed. That was another puzzle for me to solve.

Two men stepped out of the helicopter, the larger man with more practiced grace than the smaller. The smaller man walked toward me, the larger went straight to the screened area. The smaller man held out his hand to me. A little puzzled I shook hands with him.

"Aggie," he said the name with a rising accent as though he didn't really believe what he'd been told to say, "told me to say 'hello Frosty, and thank you for the two inches of soap'."

I didn't know who this man was, but I now knew what he was; a special operations officer, and a top man if his contacts included Aggie.

"That explains the helicopter then," I said.

He looked at it and nodded. The pilot and co-pilot were walking round the aircraft doing their post-flight and pre-flight checks. They would be ready to take off in moments.

He nodded. "The Commodore thinks highly of you. He informed us of your visit and asked if we could render any assistance." He smiled up at me, his five foot height not seeming to disadvantage him in any way at all.

"The Commodore is being very good to me." I answered. I was fed up with the double talk and dissemination that went with the life of a spook.

"The Commodore is always good to his friends," he replied. "And he told me that he counts you as a good, no, a very good friend."

I just nodded.

"You have worried people in our government," he added.

I looked at him puzzled.

"When a person with your wealth and business acumen enters the country for an extended stay, people start asking 'why'." He shrugged, "Some of them invent the most fanciful answers to their own questions."

We watched the scene around Susan and Varinka for a moment. Both doctors were now dressed in white anti-contamination suits and facemasks. Dr Le Mesurier was following Professor Pilkington around like a puppy. From the Professor's body language I could tell that there was something about the girls he didn't like. There was something, not quite 'wrong', but definitely not right.

"I came for a holiday," I said simply.

"The Commodore told me that when I asked him." He turned to me, "My name is Bayard."

"Of course, you know mine," I said with a smile. Bayard smiled too.

"Of course, Baron."

Two adult sized trolleys were brought to the girls and I imagined their pale, white-skinned bodies lying under a white sheet. Then I realised what had been nagging at my subconscious ever since I'd first seen their bodies, their skin wasn't stained by enough blood. It was obvious that the girls hadn't been washed after their death, but the wounds that they'd both received should have resulted in them being covered in their own blood. Only Susan showed any blood staining at all and only then from her two neck wounds.

"Professor!" I called. Both doctors turned and looked at me. "There isn't enough blood staining on their bodies."

The Professor turned and looked at them, then slowly turned back to me. "I know. That's been puzzling me. You and I must have a little chat when I've finished here." He turned to continue his examination of the girls.

It was getting light now and a small crowd was growing. There had been people standing watching all night since the discovery, but now the youngsters and the older folk came too. One person I half expected to be watching and jeering, the old woman whom Lynne had so publicly put in her place, wasn't present

Jeanine came out of the cafè carrying a tray loaded with cups of coffee. She served us all and then came to me. "Baron, we," she gestured to the small crowd, "the people of Martinè, are shamed that this has happened while you and your girls were under our protection. If there is anything that we can do to help and so lessen our shame please, I beg of you, allow us to redeem ourselves."

I opened my arms and she came to me. Holding her tightly to me I felt her shake as she sobbed. When she'd quietened a little I guided her to the crowd of her friends and neighbours.

"Please do not feel that you are responsible for what has happened here. There are powerful people, people who will use any means and who will subvert anyone, to cause me harm. They couldn't harm me directly so they took and tortured, and murdered, two small girls. These are people who will sell drugs to your children; people who will send your boys and girls out to prostitute themselves for the money to pay for those drugs. People who will burn your house down if you do not pay them money that they say you own them. These people have no shame and no morals. They are less than rabid animals. When I find them I will kill each and every one of them, kill them like the rabid dogs that they are." I paused and looked around to see if my words were having any effect. The crowd seemed a lot less tense than it had before. "You, I consider my friends. You have welcomed me and my girls, my slaves, and treated us fairly. You, the people of Martinè, have no need to feel any responsibility for the death of my girls. Not one of you could have prevented it, and standing in the way of these people would have led to your own deaths."

A large man, the one who'd spoken to Karen's guards in the lace workshop, stepped forward. "Monsieur Le Baron," he paused and looked round at his friends, hesitantly he continued, "my name is Yvon Le Clerk. I spoke with Madam Karen's guards in Marianne's workshop."

I smiled at him and held out my hand, "Yes, I remember, I'm pleased to meet you Yvon." I said.

Nervously he wiped his hand on his jeans and we shook.

"Monsieur Le Baron," he started sweating a little, "we promised the Chateau that we'd protect you," his head dropped. "We have failed the Chateau and we have failed you." Quietly now he continued, "How can we even begin to clean this shame from our souls?"

I thought for a moment, this was obviously a deep wound to their pride and sense of self-worth. "Ask everyone in the village what they were doing and where they were on Tuesday, that's the last day we know these girls were alive. If we can find out where everyone was and what they were doing I think we can discover who did this to them and then they can be avenged."

The crowd perked up and started nodding and muttering to each other. At the mention of my girls being avenged some even smiled. I could see the determination on their faces. These people will willingly question the whole village and help collate that information. Soon we could have an idea who the perpetrator of this outrage was.

I turned as the ambulance carrying Susan and Varinka passed slowly along the main road. When it passed out of sight I turned to the Professor. He stood by the tree closely examining the knots on the ropes from which the girls had been hung. He'd pushed back the hood of his anti-contamination suit and his face mask was on a small table behind him. Dr Le Mesurier was helping him take measurements and samples. Soon the doctors had completed their examination of the area and the gendarmes came to start a painstaking, inch by inch search, of the whole area.

The Professor came to me and Dr Le Mesurier introduced us.

"I think we'll call you the girls' 'Next of Kin' rather than 'Owner'. It looks better in the reports." His smiling face was lined with fatigue, he'd obviously not slept at all - he wasn't the only one. "I'm going to have to do a very invasive post mortem on these girls, you know that don't you?"

I swallowed. Intellectually I knew that post mortems would have to be carried out, but my intellect hadn't yet convinced my heart of that necessity. "Yes." I replied sadly.

"Ross said that you'd want a copy of my report as soon as possible."

I nodded, "The complete report." I added.

"OK," he replied. He turned and walked away, head down and obviously deep in thought.

Bayard stepped up to me, "Where do I send the Professor's bags?"

"The Chateau," said Sasha from behind me.

I turned and she kissed me, "You look awful my Darling."

"I love you too," I replied with a tired smile.

Sasha handed me a mobile phone, "Cecile wanted to discuss tonight's dinner menu with you." She turned and started talking to Bayard.