‘It is okay. Do not speak,’ Claude replies. As I get used to my tear-stained vision, I can start to see the look on his face. It looks pained, emotional. But I don’t know him enough to know what this means. I can only assume it means that Jess didn’t make it out of the barn.
Behind me, I can hear the barn crackling as the sounds begin to permeate my consciousness, and I roll my head sideways to look at it. The flames are lapping out through gaps in the wooden cladding, which they’ve pushed wider apart, reaching up to the freedom of the skies. What’s left of the barn is completely blackened, much of the roof caved in as the exposed rafters begin to peek through into the night sky, lit up by the orange glow of the flames. Unless Jess managed to escape before I got out – and I’m fairly sure she didn’t – I can’t see any way that anyone could have survived this.
I’m not sure how that makes me feel. My first instinct is sadness, sorrow and regret. That doesn’t last for long, though, as I begin to come to terms with the fact that Jess killed Lisa and then tried to kill me. I knew from the beginning that she was disturbed somehow, but I’d always managed to view her as the victim. Perhaps she still is, in some way. Perhaps she’s the victim of her own disturbed mind.
A thought, a realisation, bursts into my mind like a lightning bolt. I hear myself gasp and I snap my head round as quickly as it’ll turn – which isn’t very quickly at all – to look at Claude.
‘Jess’s parents. The fire. The holiday home,’ I say. I can see by the look in his eyes that he doesn’t need any more explanation to know what I’m talking about.
He looks up at his barn, the flames licking around it, and swallows, a tear falling from his eye.
‘She did that, too, didn’t she?’ I whisper, forcing Claude to admit the truth.
He nods, silently, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
‘She told me it was you,’ I say, bending the truth slightly.
He looks at me, no sign of emotion on his face. He doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest. ‘I tried to help her. I protected her. I always tried to protect her. What she did not know is that I was protecting her from herself.’
‘From herself?’ I ask. They’re the only two words my mouth can form, the bitter smoke constricting my throat and making my voice rasp. I have a million questions for him, and I can see that he knows that.
‘Sometimes . . . sometimes I think Jessica is toxic,’ he says, looking deep into my eyes, a seriousness burning through the painful sorrow etched on his face. His English is even better than I realised. I wonder if he was holding back on that before so I wouldn’t ask him more questions.
‘What do you mean, toxic?’ I ask.
Claude is silent for a few moments. ‘Do you ever believe that people are born bad?’
I find myself shaking my head. ‘You can’t just write it off as being born bad. There has to be a reason. There has to be. There’s a reason for everything.’
‘She would have told you herself she was evil,’ Claude says. ‘Her parents. Her stepfather. He—’
‘I know,’ I say, not wanting to put Claude through the pain of having to tell me. He looks surprised.
‘She never forgave herself for what they did to her.’
‘Forgave herself?’ I say. ‘What did she need to forgive herself for? She didn’t do anything.’
‘She saw it differently,’ Claude replies. ‘She thought she had evil blood. The bad things she did, she blamed it on them. She said she was born evil to evil parents.’
‘Christ.’
‘Before she went to England,’ Claude says, stopping to swallow and compose his thoughts, ‘she asked me to do something.’ I can see the pained look on his face as his brow furrows. He raises his head and looks me in the eye. ‘She was scared, Daniel. She was petrified. Petrified of that evil spreading further. She wanted me to help her be sterilised.’
I don’t know what to say to this. ‘Sterilised?’ I ask. ‘How old was she?’
‘Far too young,’ Claude replies, shaking his head. ‘Far too young. But I could see it in her eyes. The evil she spoke about. We found a doctor in a local village who agreed to carry out the operation. It cost a lot of money, but afterwards she seemed . . . more at peace.’
‘Happier?’ I ask, thinking back to the faint scar I noticed below her belly button.
‘No. Just more at peace.’
‘Why did you help her?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if you thought she was born tainted or had bad blood or whatever. Why didn’t you just get as far away from her as you could?’
Claude makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. ‘You can’t get away from that girl. You’ll never get away from her.’ Better the devil you know, I think to myself. ‘And I thought it might help. A young girl burns down a house and murders her parents. And she was just so calm. It was like she had just got back from taking the dog for a walk.’
‘Believe me, I know exactly what you mean,’ I say. ‘What happened after the fire?’ I ask, tasting the acrid smoke and blood in my throat.
‘She went to England.’
‘With her new passport?’
Claude looks momentarily guilty. ‘Yes.’
‘Jess isn’t her real name, is it?’ I ask.
Claude shakes his head.
‘What’s her real name?’
Claude looks up at the road as he hears the sirens of the ambulance approaching.
‘Come. The ambulance is here.’
66
It feels strange being in my house. The sights, the smells, the familiar sound of the radiators knocking and humming – it all takes me back to a time when things were very different. I keep expecting Lisa to walk out of the kitchen at any minute and ask me if I want a cup of tea. It feels like years since I’ve been here. It’s difficult to believe we’re still in the same month.
The living room is darker than usual, mainly due to the curtains’ having been pulled shut. Some daylight seeps around the edges, bleeding across the wallpaper, but at least I’m sheltered from the flashbulbs of the press photographers who are being kept at bay at the end of the driveway by the police. Percy, the stuffed bear, sits solemnly on the wall unit, wedged gracefully between two shelves. I look at him for a moment, and smile.
DCI Kelman, a man who can barely be pushing fifty but who’s sporting a cropped head of grey hair and an athletic look that’d make most men twenty years younger than him jealous, moves his lower jaw around in circles. I can hear the occasional click and crunch.
‘Best thing to do is keep away from the front of the house, if you can. They’ll get bored pretty quickly. I’m going to give them a statement in a moment. Anything you’d like me to say?’
I think for a couple of seconds.
‘I dunno. Just that I didn’t do it.’
Kelman smiles. ‘I think I’ll probably remember to mention that at some point, don’t worry. I meant more about your own personal feelings. For your wife.’