Background
Charles and Helen return to Paris after their visit to England, during which Charles's cottage was burned to the ground. They are now tidying up loose ends before their assignment in Pakistan.
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Chapter 72
Catching up with Kayla was our priority when we reached Paris. We were both concerned about her spiral into drug addiction. I also hoped she'd be able to tell me where Alain Gaudin was, so I could return the painting of his great-grandmother to him. Trusting the matter to Bisto was a backstop solution at best.
Several attempts to phone her were unsuccessful. Fearing the worst, we made our way up to Montmartre. The last time I had seen Kayla was shortly after André's arrest by the anti-terrorist squad. She had been in a bad way, not only riding high on the Big C but knocking back absinthe as well.
When we reached her apartment, Helen grasped the door knocker, a curiously wrought brass dragon, and rapped loudly. There was no answer.
She knocked again, with renewed vigour. Still no response. The reverberations echoed away into silence.
"Dear God, I hope she's all right." She took two or three steps back into the steep, cobbled lane and called out, "Kayla! It's me - Helen."
"Perhaps she's out," I offered, without much conviction. "We could try again later."
"No, I'm sure she's there." She continued to hammer away. By this time, we had attracted an audience of gawking bystanders, tourists making their way down the hill from Claude Charpentier Square to the Montmartre Museum.
Eventually, an upstairs window was flung open. "Who's down there, making that god-awful racket? Go away and leave us in peace."
"Alain? Is that you?" Helen shielded her eyes against the sun. "We've come to see Kayla. Let us in."
Alain's gruff voice lost some of its vitriol. "Oh, it's you, is it? Wait a minute."
He appeared in the doorway unshaven and bleary-eyed, scowled at me, and gave Helen what could either have been a smile or a grimace, I wasn't sure which. Then he beckoned to us. As we followed him upstairs, Helen bombarded him with questions. "What are you doing here? Is Kayla all right? Doesn't she answer her phone anymore?"
"No, she's not all right. She's been in a dreadful state since André's arrest. See for yourself." He flung the door open. The room was in a shambles. Kayla was spreadeagled across the bed, spaced out, her hair in tangles, mascara running, a half-finished bottle of absinthe on the floor by the bed. She looked up at us and tried to focus.
Helen knelt beside her and reached out with her hand to touch her cheek, but Kayla backed away like a cornered animal and buried her head beneath a pillow. Helen turned to Alain with an anguished look. "For pity's sake. What's happened to her?"
Alain grunted. "Withdrawal symptoms mainly." He reached down and picked up the bottle. "I still let her have a little of this from time to time, to steady her nerves."
"That's not a good idea," I said. "She'll already be depressed, possibly even suicidal. Alcohol will only make the symptoms worse."
Alain sneered, "Alors, une vraie je-sais-tout! A real know-it-all. Do you think I'm a fool? I know the symptoms all right. My sister..." He stopped short, having obviously said more than he intended. I didn't press the point.
"Sorry, old man. No offense meant. Come on, let's sit down. Can I pour you a drink?"
"I don't."
Helen raised her eyebrows and glanced in my direction with a covert half-smile. We both remembered how he had gulped down nearly half a carafe of wine when we bought him lunch at Giverny.
"A cup of tea, then?" He made no answer but adjusted his position to give me the cold shoulder.
Helen took up the running. "So, you're here looking after my sister, are you? That's very sweet of you."
"She's been good to me. She's helped me a few times when things were tough at the Moulin Rouge." He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I'm not good with people. Without her, I'd probably have lost my job." Drawing himself up straight, he said, "A man doesn't forget these things. Yes, I'm looking after her."
Helen sidled up to him, gave him a hug, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "...and I love you for it."
Poor Alain blushed. He didn't know where to put himself. I came to his rescue with a tray, thrusting it into his hands. "Put this on the table, could you? I'll bring the tea across in a few minutes, when it's had a chance to brew."
He sat next to Helen and looked at her with puppy eyes. "That's just the sort of thing your sister would have done. Always so kind. I won't stand by while she does this to herself. I won't."
I listened with admiration as Helen drew him out and got him talking about himself. It seemed clear that he had become infatuated with Kayla when she took him under her wing. His voice became more animated whenever he mentioned her and had an edge of anger when he talked about André, whom he regarded both as a rival and as the cause of her downfall.
I recalled the last time I'd been here in Kayla's apartment. She had mentioned how she had been introduced to André. He had been a friend of Thaksin, her Muay Thai instructor in Phuket. Muay Thai, I thought ruefully as I glanced across at her. She no longer looked much like an exponent of the Noble Art of the Eight Limbs.
Both Madame Durand and Group Captain Bamforth had mentioned the dangerous friends she had made in Phuket. They had intimated connections with drugs and with terrorism. They had even made the laughable suggestion that Kayla might have been radicalised in Thailand. Whilst I didn't believe a word of that, it was plausible that the nexus between Thaksin and Andre involved drug trafficking.
Nonetheless, someone obviously thought there was more to it than that. Why else would André have been dragged away by a SWAT team from RAID, the elite tactical unit of the French National Police? I found it hard to believe he was the same man we had met at the stage door of the Moulin Rouge, a flamboyant dilettante masquerading as Scaramouche. What an unlikely villain. A confidence trickster perhaps, but an international terrorist? I doubted it.
While I mused, the kettle came to the boil. I filled the teapot and was about to take it across to the table when I became aware that the conversation had taken a different directon. Alain was now talking about his sister. Fearing he might clam up in my presence, I held back and listened in the background.
His version of her history was very different from the account given us by Father Lacroix.
Author Notes
List of characters
Charles Brandon - the narrator, a well-known travel writer.
Group Captain Bamforth (alias Sir David Brockenhurst) - an intelligence officer with MI6 and Air Attache in Paris
Helen Culverson - Also a travel writer, whose relationship with Charles is complicated by her relationship with Jeanne Durand.
Kayla Culverson - her older sister, who disappeared somewhere in Bangkok and has surfaced again in Paris.
Madame Jeanne Durand - a French magazine editor and undercover agent with the French Drug Squad.
Madame Madeleine Bisset - Helen's landlady in Paris
Mr Bukhari - a Pakistani businessman (now deceased)
Ian 'Bisto' Kidman - an ex-RAF friend of Charles's.
Monsieur Bellini - a denizen of the French Underworld.
Andre (aka Scaramouche) - an actor in Montmartre and friend of Kayla's
Dr. Laurent - a veterinary surgeon in Versailles.
Father Pierre Lacroix - vicar of the Versailles Notre Dame church.
Madame Lefauvre - an old woman living in Versailles - the town gossip.
Alain Gaudin - brother of Francoise, a gardener at Monet's house in Giverney
Francoise Gaudin - Alain's an intellectually disabled sister.
Estelle Gaudin [deceased] - mother of Francoise and Alain, a prostitute
Mademoiselle Suzanne Gaudin [deceased] - Alain's grandmother, to whom the mysterious letter of 1903 was addressed.
Jack and Nancy Wilkins - a Wiltshire dairy farmer and his wife.
Colonel Neville Arnoux [deceased] - of whom we may hear more later.
Gaston Arnoux - Owner of an art gallery in Paris, recently assassinated by Charles Asserted to be leader of an ISIS network
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