Past Imperfect

Montpelier. He would be staying overnight in Montpelier and would see them about midday the next day. 'A couple of hours work on the computer and then I'm off.'

Computer. Dominic thought again of Lepoille. Three hours before he was in his office.

Dominic finally got into Guidier's file: motorbike mugging spree. Two youths on a bike averaging twelve muggings a week over seven months had caused practically a mini crime wave. When they were finally apprehended, reported drive-by muggings dropped to no more than five a month.

When the phone rang at 1.10pm, he was fully immersed in the report, it broke his attention abruptly. It was Lepoille. His enthusiasm was infectious, but Dominic found it hard to take it all in just over the phone: several cases in America tracked down through psychics, many of them notable: 'Son of Sam' killings, the Boston Strangler, the case of Mona Tinsley, Manson/Bugliosi: proving psychic influence over others to commit a murder. Some departments even had regulars they went to when everything else failed: Gerard Croiset and Peter Hurkos were the names that came up the most. But very little so far in France — 'Except relatives in the Petit Gregoire case contacting a psychic early on to discover if the boy was dead or just missing. The police here hardly ever seem to involve psychics, just relatives or sometimes the press. And rarely does it feature in official police filing or trial evidence. I'm tracking down a couple of leads in Paris, I'll know more on Monday. There's a stack of Interpol print-outs and e-mails on my desk. Some arrived late yesterday, but most of it came through this morning. I'll bike it over to you Monday.'

'Great. I'll look forward to going through it.' Hopefully in the reading something would leap out; nothing immediately had from Lepoille's quick fire descriptions. 'And thanks for the help, Pierre.'

Though six hours later, when there was still no call from Marinella Calvan, Dominic's excitement had dissipated, doubt set in again. Though this time, unlike before, it was set in concrete. Midday now in Virginia, his urgent messages left with Lambourne. She wasn't going to call. Perhaps she'd even been by the phone when he'd called Lambourne, signalling to make an excuse. When the package arrived from Lepoille, he'd probably just throw it straight in the bin. He'd been foolish to build up his hopes.

Marinella Calvan was on a United Airlines 19.50 flight back to Virginia. In the next seat was an overweight and over-friendly sales manager named Bob returning to Richmond, who she’d finally managed to extricate herself from with a few curt smiles to get back into the file on her lap.

She made notes on a fresh sheet of paper as she scanned back through the transcripts. Depth of detail had been remarkable. They effectively knew everything about Christian Rosselot's life: where he lived, went to school, daily and weekly habits, and a variety of rich recollections, some of which only the boy himself could have possibly known.

The last session she’d used mostly to fill in any gaps. But at one point she’d sat up sharply, her skin bristling as Christian talked about his best friend Stephan. ‘He also went to my school, but he lived on the far side of the village. It was Stephan I was going to see the day I became lost in the wheat field… I never made it to his house.'

'And did you ever see Stephan again?'

'No… no.'

Marinella was about to tap out: 'Tell me more about that day. Did you meet someone else? What stopped you from reaching Stephan's house?' But Lambourne was looking across sharply, and even Eyran's simple 'No' had been nervous and hesitant, his breathing more rapid. She could almost feel Fornier at her shoulder, pushing, urging. But even if she got past the first question without Lambourne cutting in, any upset to Eyran's mood and she might get nothing more the rest of the session. Her last opportunity. She moved Eyran away, back to earlier, happier times when he'd played with Stephan.

Now she wrote: The wheat field is not just a symbol for Christian's separation from his parents, but also perhaps his best friend. Christian might see Eyran as a replacement for that best friend — the friend he never got to see that fateful day.

She'd tried to broach the subject of Fornier's quest at first gently, mentioning only that there might be a few more questions. But Lambourne looked immediately dismayed, mentioned that on the last tape Stuart Capel had complained about the pointed, angled questions making Eyran hesitant, almost defensive. 'I'd assured him that this last session would be far more open, allow Eyran freer range. What questions?' And she'd fluffed that they were nothing important: 'They'll wait.' With Lambourne and Stuart Capel concerned about even a few pointed questions, hoping to de-rail into a full murder investigation was hoplessly out of reach. At least she'd tried.

Shortly after the last session she'd been struck with another link: There was a river running close to where Christian Rosselot's body was found, and in one of Eyran's dreams the brook by Broadhurst Farm featured, expanding into a large lake. Perhaps Christian believed somehow that if he'd have been able to cross that river, he would have escaped his attacker and avoided his fate. And in Eyran's dream the lake symbolized separation from his parents. But it is obviously Christian's separation which has the strongest connection with water.

The debate with Lambourne over whose sense of separation was stronger — Christian's or Eyran's, past or present — was irrelevant. The links were all there. The Freud-devotees and conventionalists were going to love it. Object loss symbols were classic.

And if they started to wriggle and defend, she had more than enough information with which to bury them: Dr Torrens initial recommendation to therapy, his earlier EEGs recording brain wave disturbance, Lambourne's sessions — his concern about dominance of the secondary character and schizophrenia — then finally Eyran speaking in French under hypnosis and her being called in. Over sixty pages of notes and files even before the three tapes and forty-six pages of transcript from her own sessions — now fully corroborated by a French Chief Inspector and his wife. Not some fringe new-wave religion nutcases who name their children Rainbow or Stardust.

It was going to be a good paper, one of her strongest yet. Correction, it was going to be a great paper.

Marinella put on the headphones and flicked through the pop and comedy channels until she found some classical music: Offenbach's Barcarolle was playing.

When she got back to Lambourne's from shopping, she'd heard that Dominic Fornier had called. She felt guilty about not phoning him back. The image of him walking away from their meeting, the die-hard detective shouldering the doubt through all those years, now clinging to one last hope, had stuck in her mind. She reached tentatively for the phone just before leaving her hotel for the airport — then decided against it. She'd call him tomorrow. Not sure immediately if she was just delaying facing his disappointment, or hoping for better words of explanation to settle in the meantime.

Grieg's 'Morning'. Soothing, relaxing. Hopefully she'd doze off soon. To her side, Bob was flicking through the in-flight magazine. But the next tunes — Brahm's Hungarian Dance and Tchaikovsky's March Slav — broke her slightly out of her half slumber, roused her spirits. She found herself tapping the armrest to the rhythm of March Slav as she imagined the key points of her final paper being pounded home to the army of sceptics who had plagued her through the years.

Only when Mozart's Andante came on could she feel waves of calm and relaxation again descending, sleep once more in sight.

But at the start of the third stanza, the thought hit: Politician.

The man Fornier had suspected was now a prominent politician! An MEP. Murder case. Re-opened after thirty years. Implicating one of the country's leading politicians! If Fornier's suspicions were right, then it was going to be a big case. Enormous case! And one of the first ever proved through a past-life regression. The thoughts hit her in such quick-fire succession that it took her breath away.

She could see it all rolling out ahead: Oprah Winfrey was a given, she was already reading clippings from the New York Times and Washington Post in between make up for Maury Povich and Larry King: 'I understand that in France this case is as big as O.J. Simpson. But the added factor of core evidence coming from a past life regression has literally split the French legal establishment in two.'

The case was already great, but now within her grasp was the opportunity to make it phenomenal. If