“Brigitte at MondeFocus gave me your address.”
“Excuse my rudeness,” he said, his voice low. “I’m expecting the AGFA film shipment. They’re late. As usual.”
“Do you have a moment?” She’d seize this opportunity before his delivery arrived. “I’m writing an expose of violence at the MondeFocus anti–oil agreement vigil. Brigitte said you shot some great videotape.”
Stretching the truth never hurt.
Silence except for the rain. She tried again. “I realize it’s a bad time,” she apologized.
“You’re shaking,” he said, taking her arm. “Why your pants are soaked! Come in.”
The studio was lined with a bank of high-tech equipment: videotape recorders, monitors, camcorders. In contrast, old film-splicing machines and reel-to-reel spools sat atop high cabinets. An inner door led to a small room bathed in red light, emitting the acrid smell of film developer.
“Excuse the mess,” he said, shoving cardboard cartons aside with his boot. “But I’m glad to take a break. I’m editing my Rwanda documentary. The Hutus and the Tutsis: genocide, ghost villages, and no one cares.”
Pain and determination layered his voice. For a moment he looked lost and then he turned away.
“I’ll make it brief,” she said. She edged toward a strobe light, feeling awkward. “Here’s my card. Again I apologize.”
He glanced at it. “
She nodded, reaching into her backpack for a notebook.
He gave her a crooked smile, a nice smile, then took off his jacket and pulled a cell phone from his faded gray corduroy shirt pocket. Suddenly businesslike, he went to the red-lit darkroom to speak into the phone.
On the studio walls hung black-and-white blowups of barefoot African child soldiers in tattered uniforms, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. None looked more than ten years old. A shantytown—skyscrapers in the distance—a cluster of huts with cardboard and metal siding, dogs, garbage strewn on the dirt street. She looked closer, horrified to see that the dogs were sniffing at bodies. A baby, flies on its open mouth, lay next to a metal gasoline jerrican, ESSO printed on it. Her insides wrenched.
No wonder oil protesters like Krzysztof were passionate. Another photo titled
“Quite a body of work.” She didn’t know how to express her feelings . . . her horror at these views of evil.
He pulled up a stool for her in front of another deck of video machines and monitors. He straddled another, turned down the stereo’s volume.
“Why film, if you don’t mind my asking?” Aimee said.
He sat back, reflective. “Because I don’t have the words like you journalists do to express this. He gestured to the wall. “Suffering, injustice.” He shrugged. “I’m bankrupt in that department. I envy you lot, if you must know. So I film, searching for the essence—the look, the gesture, a glimpse into a window that speaks volumes.”
Some underlying pain drove him. She sensed it. And she felt even guiltier for impersonating a journalist.
She put that aside; she had to keep her goal in mind. A woman had been murdered, and Nelie was in hiding. And there was Stella.
He leaned forward, leaving a sandalwood scent in his wake. The warmth in the studio crept up her legs.
“
A dead woman. Talk about rewinding a ghost. A glimpse of the mother with her baby. Something.
She pulled out the photo she’d taken from Krzysztof’s flat and set it on the smooth aluminum counter. His knuckles clenched so hard they turned white.
“Do you know them?” she asked. “Friends of yours?”
“What happened makes me sick,” he said. “I’ve documented this movement from its inception.”
“Do you know either of these women?”
He nodded. “Demonstrations, sit-ins. . . . I’m sure I’ve seen them.” He pointed. “
Nelie.
“I’d like to talk with her.”
“Me, too,” he said. “She borrowed my old Super 8. Promised to give it back a few days ago. But I’m still waiting. Why do you want to interview her?”
“Were they both at the demonstration?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I think so. Bedlam, chaos—that’s what I saw.”
“Wasn’t she involved with the roadblock at La Hague?” Aimee hoped this would draw him out.
Silence, except for the rain beating on the skylight.
Keyed up, she said. “I know she’s in trouble. Hiding.”
He studied her, the scent of sandalwood stronger, his teeth just visible between his half-parted lips.
“Journalists protect their sources, right?”
“Always.” At least that’s what Martine had told her.
“I have connections to the network.”
“Network?”
“The network that helps people who have to lie low. Know what I mean? I can help Nelie.”
She was about to tell him about the baby, but something prevented her. She just nodded.
“But you need to keep this confidential; it’s a clandestine highway,” he said. “If you should make contact with Nelie, let me know.”
First she’d have to find her. “Did you see any bottle bombs at the march?” she said.
“In every struggle, there are power shifts within organizations. Right now,” he said, pointing his finger at the photo, “the MondeFocus people think this
Krzysztof. That fit with what Brigitte said.
“He planted the bottle bombs, right?” she said.
She figured he’d shown up at the morgue to see for himself if Orla’s body had been the outcome.
“Who knows?” Claude said with a shrug. “I just document and record the moment.”
The videotape clicked to a stop. He hit
“That’s it,” Claude said. “Water damage, I think. Residue and condensation corrode magnetic tape.”
Disappointed, she slumped back. Rain drummed on the roof harder now, the rhythm of the Clash bassist throbbing in juxtaposition.
“Can you slow the tape down?”
He nodded. Ran it again.
“Any way you could enhance this, magnify it, or go frame by frame?”
“Video’s not like film, with twenty-four frames a second.”
“Sorry, but does that mean you can’t isolate images?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said. “Unlike film, video’s written on magnetic tape in interlacing lines of resolution, converted into an electronic signal like a wave written in odd and even stripes on the mag tape. Much faster than film, too, at sixty images per second. So it can’t be isolated without capturing part or half of the preceding or following image as well.”
He hit
