The Last Witness

hair intermittently strobe-lit silver, translucent. Lorena bit lightly at her bottom lip, pausing for a second.

‘I was nervous in the interviews, yes… thinking about what he’d say or do afterwards. But that wasn’t why I said nothing then.’ She shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t remember being awake when anything happened… not for sure at least.’

‘It’s okay… you don’t need to explain.’ Watching Lorena’s small face tense, grapple for images that were either out of reach or pushed there by her psyche for her own protection, Elena wished she hadn’t asked. But Lorena simply shook her head again; she appeared too wrapped-up in her own thoughts to take heed.

‘It seemed so real, him touching me, his voice in my ear… I imagined I could almost feel his breath against my cheek. But then when I awoke in the morning, I just couldn’t remember another time that I was awake in the night. And the dreams too had seemed so real… you remember?’ Lorena looked directly at Elena.

‘Yes… I remember.’ Elena’s throat tightened. How could she forget? Lorena’s recurring nightmare was that she was back in the sewers and the waters were rapidly rising. When she couldn’t raise the manhole cover to get free and was fast drowning, she’d awake screaming, her body bathed in sweat. Elena recalled two such nights at the Cerneit orphanage during Lorena’s ten months there after her sewer days, hugging Lorena tight and re- assuring her that she was no longer in the sewers, she was safe. And there were apparently many more nights with similar nightmares when Elena wasn’t present. One of the Cerneit wardens had voiced concerns about Lorena’s state of mind when after a nightmare Lorena had pressed whether the warden was sure that she hadn’t sneaked off in the night back to the sewers ‘…Maybe to look for Patrika.’ Patrika was her closest friend from the sewers who’d drowned one night when the waters rose: the main event which they suspected had triggered the nightmares. The line between the dreams and reality had often been thin in Lorena’s mind, and perhaps Lorena was flagging that now because she was worried that with all the trouble Elena was going to, it might all end up as nothing: any suspicions of Ryall unfounded, all of it just in her dreams. Elena felt suddenly guilty: that wasn’t why she’d asked.

She reached out a hand to touch Lorena’s shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter…that’s what the psychiatrist is meant to sort out. If nothing is happening, at least then you’ll know for sure, one way or the other.’ Elena pushed a smile that hopefully rose above her uncertainty as she looked across. ‘And hopefully be able to sleep easy.’

‘Okay. I understand.’ But from the faint shadows that lingered in Lorena’s face as she took her eyes from Elena to look stolidly at the road ahead, Elena wondered if she did.

A couple of songs later ‘All Saints’ ‘Never, ever’ came on the radio, and Elena turned it up a notch, noticing after a moment Lorena hum along at intervals, the shadows receding. But Elena’s guilt and uncertainty remained. She’d brought up the subject because between their lightweight, inconsequential conversation and the awkward lulls, it felt almost as if they were purposefully tip-toeing around the issue: it was starting to rise as an awkward barrier between them.

But she wondered if part of her had pressed for her own ends. She’d been tongue-tied with nerves practically throughout the Euro-Shuttle crossing and Lorena had done most of the talking. Then with the relief of getting clear on the open road in France, in contrast she’d been more animated, taking over the conversation — until they passed a police car travelling in the opposite direction. A reminder that they were still far from home and dry. An alert could be out with the French police at any moment.

They’d passed only one more police car since, but again it made her pulse race triple-time and put her stomach in knots — and perhaps she was hoping for a quick admission from Lorena so that the nightmare could end here and now. She wasn’t sure she could face many more hours of this assault on her nervous system, a light trembling constantly with her that rose spasmodically to an intense hot rush, her hands at times shaking so hard on the steering wheel that the muscles in her arms ached. But even if there had been a sudden admission and she’d stopped the car and put it on tape, it probably wouldn’t have helped: she’d no doubt have still needed it taped under the guidance of a psychiatrist for it to hold up with social services.

And what now if those sessions revealed nothing conclusive either way? Or, worse still, they leaned towards the likelihood that Ryall was molesting Lorena, but without enough to support that claim with social services. Despite her frayed nerves, at least getting Lorena away was an adventure, a hopeful escape to freedom. How on earth would she be able to return her to the Ryalls if she knew with all certainty what fate awaited her?

The first real break in the case came through just after 7.30 p.m.

Within an hour of returning from interviewing Gordon Waldren, Crowley had a team of five working on and off tracking down Elena Waldren and Lorena. In addition to an all-points police and customs alert, they’d traced all cash-cards and credit-cards in her name, and news finally came in that one of her cash cards had been used fifty minutes beforehand, 19.38 in France. Crowley went through immediately to Inspector Turton’s office.

‘Where?’ Turton asked breathlessly.

‘At a Credite Lyonnaise branch in Bonneval, about fifty miles south-west of Paris.’

‘Where does it look like she’s headed?’

‘At present she’s on a direct line for the south-west coast: Bordeaux or Biarritz.’ Crowley shrugged. ‘But she could easily veer off sharp and head to Brittany, or direct south to Provence or even Spain.’

‘Okay.’ Turton brooded only for a second. ‘Contact Interpol and ask them to put out an alert for her and her car, with special emphasis on the areas you think she might now be travelling through.’

‘Will do.’ Crowley nodded summarily and headed back into the harried activity of the squad room. Hectic at the best of times, the Waldren case had added an edge of urgency: it wasn’t often they got a child abduction, particularly not one that started to blaze a trail across Europe.

He had to look up the Interpol number; the last time he’d contacted them had been over eight months ago. As it started ringing, Crowley glanced at his watch: forty minutes or so to process everything through Interpol, and then Elena Waldren would be hunted down in earnest. A British-plated car off-season, it probably wouldn’t take that long. The bonus would come if she used her credit card to pay for a meal or a hotel that night. Either way, Crowley was confident that within hours Elena Waldren would be apprehended.

EIGHTEEN

Jean-Paul swam with more vigour than in his regular pre-breakfast sessions; not faster, but with more determined, cutting strokes, as if he might somehow thrash away the lethargy and pent-up frustration tying-up his muscles and joints.

Roman had interrupted his normal time for a swim, was hot on his doorstep at first light with news on Donatiens, eagerly waving a brown envelope in his right hand. They spent a sober half hour over breakfast while Roman went through the details and laid out the photos in the envelope before him: Last night Donatiens had slid himself away in a private corner with this club girl, Viana, for quite some time. Roman used the opportunity to get his guy into Donatiens’ apartment to place some bugs and, while there, he did a search. ‘And look what he found tucked away in a drawer…’ While Jean-Paul was still frantically making some semblance of the tangle of naked bodies, Roman went on to tell him that Donatiens gave the same girl a lift home: ‘Didn’t leave her place for over two hours.’

Jean-Paul picked sparsely at his breakfast: the body-blow of the photos and the news on Georges had suddenly taken his appetite. Their meeting ended soon after with him begging a few hours in which to make his final decision; though he could see from the keenness in Roman’s eyes that only one decision was expected now: there was little room to manoeuvre. He would have taken his swim then — immerse and hopefully swill away all his problems, ease some of the sudden aching burden from his shoulders. But his meeting with Simone was only twenty-five minutes away, and he needed every second of that time, if not more, to get clear in his mind how on earth he would present all of this to her.

He paced agitatedly fuelled by two more fresh coffees for most of that time, spinning possible scenarios around. But when she arrived, most of it went straight out the window: he’d planned to broach the subject immediately, but she’d clearly arrived on some sort of mission with something pressing to get off her chest, so he let her speak first and meanwhile continued gathering his thoughts.

He hadn’t intended to actually show her the photos, his initial plan was just to say that he had strong, reliable information that Georges was seeing another girl; and combined with their problem with him over