me to draw you a picture? Power tools. Nail guns. Hammers and chisels.’
‘I get the idea,’ Ben said, repelled. ‘Go on.’
‘Claudine was found with … Jesus, it’s too awful. With her lungs full of expanding foam, the kind builders use to fill wall cavities and things. She suffocated.’
Ben had seen a good number of people die in a good many unpleasant ways, but this was almost too gruesome to imagine, even for him. He felt disgusted.
‘It happened three days ago,’ Roberta said. ‘I only found out this morning. I’d just flown in from Ottawa to see her.’ She paused to wipe away the tears of grief and rage that had clouded her eyes.
‘I’m very sorry. All I can say is that they’re sure to catch this guy. If there was anything I could do …’
Roberta shook her head vehemently. ‘You’re not understanding me. Let me finish. There’s more to it, a lot more. I—’
At that moment the living room door swung open again and Jude stepped in, interrupting Roberta’s flow. ‘Ben?’ he said. ‘Brooke just called. Says a lorry shed its load on the motorway. Be here as soon as she can.’
‘Fine,’ Ben said, not taking his eyes off Roberta.
‘So, you here for the wedding?’ Jude asked her cheerily, appearing not to have noticed the tense mood in the room.
‘Wedding?’ she said, arching an eyebrow.
‘Listen,’ Ben said quickly. ‘Why don’t we go for a drive? There’s a quiet park on the other side of the village. We can talk in peace there,’ he added, throwing an icy look at Jude, whose face dropped.
Outside, Roberta looked around her. ‘Can we go in your car? My ass aches from driving.’
‘I don’t have one,’ Ben said. ‘I came on the bus.’
‘What about that there?’ she said, pointing at the rusted heap that Jude somehow managed to get about in.
‘We’ll be lucky if we get it out of the gate,’ he said.
‘So you dress like a priest and you travel around by bus,’ she snorted. ‘That doesn’t sound like the Ben Hope I used to know.’
‘Vicar,’ he corrected her. ‘And you’re right. I’m not the same man you used to know.’
Ben and Roberta left her blue Vauxhall and followed the footpath that skirted the edge of the sunlit park. They’d spoken little during the short drive through the village. Ben could feel the tension emanating from her. Whatever was scaring her, it seemed genuine, but he didn’t know what to say. He waited for her to speak first.
Perhaps because of the unseasonal heat, or perhaps because the new generation of British kids preferred to sit stuffing their mouths at the computer rather than play outdoors any longer, the park was almost deserted. In the distance, a petite young mother was lifting her son of four or five onto one of the swings. An elderly, fragile-looking couple were making their slow way arm-in-arm along the footpath towards Ben and Roberta. As they passed, they both smiled at Ben and greeted him with a reverential ‘Good day to you, Vicar’. Taken aback for an instant, Ben managed to mumble a reply that seemed to please the old folks before they hobbled on.
‘Sure fooled them,’ Roberta said drily. After a pause she added, ‘So if you’re not an ordained minister—’
‘I’m not.’
‘—isn’t it against their rules to wear that outfit? Kind of like impersonating an officer or something?’
‘It was only meant to be … oh, never mind. Just don’t look at me.’
‘That’s hard to do. You have no idea how weird it is for me to see you dressed like that.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Ben replied. ‘But it’s a sight we may all have to get used to.’
‘You’re not kidding, are you?’
‘This is the future I’m set on now, Roberta. It always was, I think. Just took me a long time getting there.’
‘I had no idea there was this side to you.’
‘There are a few things you don’t know about me.’
‘Pretty major life change,’ she said. ‘Especially for you, of all people.’
‘I just want a life of peace,’ he said. ‘I made a vow to Brooke that that’s how things would be from now on. Settle down, try to do something better with my life. No more crazy stuff.’
‘You doing it for yourself, or for her?’ Roberta asked a little too sharply, then immediately made an apologetic gesture. ‘I take that back. None of my business, I guess.’
Ben didn’t reply. The footpath ran alongside an old stone wall, through the trees on the other side of which could be seen the heavy machinery and distant half-erected buildings where a construction company were putting up the new housing estate after the villagers’ protracted protests against expansion had been overruled by the local council. The workmen seemed to be packing up early for the day, vehicles rumbling out of the site’s mesh gates.
‘Let’s sit,’ Ben said a few yards further on, motioning towards a green park bench under the shade of the trees.
Roberta nodded. She sat on the bench beside him and gazed across the park in the direction of the kiddies’ roundabout and swings in the distance. They could hear the child’s gurgling laughter as his mother began to swing him gently back and forth.
Ben said, ‘Start from the beginning.’
‘Claudine and I went back a long way. When I was teaching in Paris years ago, she used to lecture at the Sorbonne. We met through some mutual acquaintance I don’t even remember now. We hit it off, became friends, stayed that way ever since. After I went to live in Canada she used to call me every so often, birthdays, Christmas, and emailed me now and then to keep me updated about her work projects. Some of them were real fascinating. I hadn’t heard from her in a little while, just assumed she must be busy at work or something. Then yesterday, I get this letter from her by registered mail.’ Roberta glanced anxiously at Ben. ‘I thought it was strange that she’d write me that way, instead of the usual email. When I opened it I saw it was more like a note, real short, and you could see it was written in a hurry. She said she was in deep trouble, that she was certain she was being followed and that something bad was going to happen to her. Said not to contact her by email or phone because they’d know. They were watching every move she made.’
‘Who was?’ Ben asked.
‘If she knew, she didn’t say.’
‘Have you got the letter with you? Can I see it?’
She shook her head. ‘The Paris cops have it now.’
‘Did
