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Автор Джон Мэтьюз
John Matthews
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE
John Matthews
Past Imperfect
PROLOGUE
Provence, June, 1995
The three figures walked along the rough track alongside the wheat field. Two men and a boy of eleven.
The older of the men, Dominic Fornier, was in his late fifties. A stocky figure just short of six foot with dark brown hair cropped short and almost totally grey at the sides. Another twenty metres ahead would be the best vantage point, he thought, his eyes scanning the broad expanse of the wheat field. Soft brown eyes with a faint slant at the corner. A slant that somehow made them sharper: knowing eyes, perceptive eyes. Eyes that had seen too much.
The younger man, Stuart Capel, was an inch shorter and slim with light brown almost blonde hair. Mid-thirties, the first faint worry lines showed more prominently as he squinted against the sun and the glare of the bleached white field. Dominic could see the slight resemblance between Stuart and the young boy; though the boy's hair was a shade lighter and a few freckles showed across his nose and cheeks. Fresh faced, happy, but Dominic could still sense the slight barrier, a distance and detachment in the boy's eyes that betrayed the pain and scars of the past months.
As they shuffled to a stop, Stuart asked: 'So is this where it happened?'
'Yes, more or less. ' Dominic pointed. 'About five metres ahead on the left. '
Stuart looked at the area of wheat, and it told him nothing. Barely a foot high after being cut down to stubble in the early summer, it was silent, eerie.
No hint of the events which now brought them to this spot. What had he expected? He looked across, at young eyes and a distant look that now he knew so well; but there was no glimmer of recognition. As usual, little or nothing while the boy was awake. Probably now even the ghostly shadows finally faded from the edges of his dreams. Acceptance. Stuart wondered.Six months? It seemed far longer as Stuart's mind flicked through the nightmare odyssey which had finally led them here today. And now the with the trial, so much would hinge on the events of the next days and weeks. Is that what he'd hoped for by asking Dominic Fornier to bring them out here: a final closing of the book, a laying to rest of the ghosts in both their minds?
To the right of the lane were pine trees and thick bushes clinging to an embankment which dipped down towards the small river tributary thirty yards away. Stuart could hear its faint babbling above the gentle wind that played across the field.
He reminded himself that whatever pain and anguish he'd felt, for Dominic Fornier it must have been much worse. The case had plagued Fornier for over thirty years. From a young gendarme to a Chief Inspector, from a provincial case to now one of the largest and most intriguing in French legal history.
