Cenotaph for the Living: The French Collection, #2

By Graham Hamer

In France, since 2013, the authorities will no longer search for adults who have been reported missing by family members. Approximately 15,000 people disappear each year without trace. Tristan Gautier has just become one of them and, when his mother receives a kidnap demand, it has come from someone in the commissariat de police near to the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris. Having paid the ransom demand, Tristan is still help captive and the kidnappers make it clear they will kill their hostage unless they are paid even more money.

The threat is real and Tristan’s father plans to find where he is being held. But the plan falls apart when shots are fired. The only clues the family have now to Tristan’s whereabouts come from a man who has been dead for 150 years. To discover where Tristan is, they must try to unravel the secrets of the man’s identity from just a handful of cryptic clues. Can Tristan last out that long or will the kidnappers dispose of him first?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Hamer
• Release date: Dec 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386225294

Book preview

CENOTAPH FOR THE LIVING

Copyright © 2017 Graham Hamer

Graham Hamer has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

Book cover design by Bruno Cavellec, Copyright © Bruno Cavellec 2017. Image used and published according to the licence granted by the artist.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Except in the case of commonly accepted historical or geographical facts, any resemblance to events, localities, actual persons - living or dead - or history of any person is entirely coincidental.

Find out more about the author and his other books at

http://www.graham-hamer.com

This book is dedicated to my parents

Frank and Emily Hamer

They will never read what I write, both having departed this world some years ago. Neither, I suspect, would the language used by some my characters have pleased them. And I know for a fact that they would not share my views on sexual freedoms. They came from a different generation. But they would still have been happy to know that one of their sons was expressing himself as best he knew how and, hopefully, giving other people pleasure in the process.

Love you both and miss you both.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As I do so often, I find myself acknowledging the debt I owe to Bruno Cavellec for his inspirational covers. Bruno never ceases to amaze me with his abilities and I value his friendship more than he knows.

And to Nadine Sgoura for putting her sharpened pencil to such good use. Thanks Nadine. Your patience with this old gentleman knows no bounds and your smile always puts a smile on my face too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graham Hamer was born a few years before Queen Elizabeth came to the British throne (the second Queen Elizabeth, that is). One event was televised, one wasn’t. His own event happened somewhere between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales on a funny little island where the cats have no tails and the occasional witch still gets rolled down a steep hill in a spiked barrel. He left the Isle of Man to get a life. He got one. He went back to his island. You’ll find him there now if you know where to look.

Accountant, pig-herder (briefly), businessman, business analyst, web site builder – hell, writing’s more fun.

Find out more about the author and his other books at:

http://www.graham-hamer.com/

or make friends and interact at:

https://www.facebook.com/fgrahamhamer/

CENOTAPH FOR THE LIVING is the second book in the ‘French Collection’ series.

The following books by Graham Hamer are also available or will be published shortly

Chasing Paper

Walking on Water

THE ISLAND CONNECTION

Under the Rock - Island Connection 1

Out of the Window - Island Connection 2

On Whom the Axe Falls - Island Connection 3

China in Her Hand - Island Connection 4

Devil’s Helmet - Island Connection 5

The Vicar’s Lot - Island Connection 6

Chicken Rock - Island Connection 7

The Platinum Pirate - Island Connection 8

Picasso's Secret – Island Connection 9

Travellers – Island Connection 10

THE FRENCH COLLECTION

Web of Tangled Blood – French Collection 1

Cenotaph for the Living - French Collection 2

Jasmine's Journey - French Collection 3

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You can find out more about the author and his books at

http://www.graham-hamer.com

CHAPTER ONE

Say a young man disappears on his twentieth birthday. And say he is in the centre of Paris with all his friends when it happens. Where’s the beginning of that? You might think that’s easy and that the moment had its beginning that morning when the young man set off from his home on Avenue Marceau to start his day’s studies at Paris-Sorbonne University in the Latin Quarter of the city. But does it though? Maybe it started years before when his mother had an affair with a Frenchman she had known years earlier? That error of judgement might have had later repercussions. Or was it more recently when his mother’s wealth grew beyond even her expectations?

Maybe his mother’s millions don’t matter. Perhaps we should go right back to that long, calm September night twenty years ago today when a little baby is born, staring and new, with tiny hands that grip his father’s thumb. And to the moment the Englishman who thinks he is his father bonds with him in an instant and says in wonder, ‘Look, Florence. Look what we made. He’s perfect’. And she loves her husband for loving the child, even though she suspects that it wasn’t he who had made him.

Although maybe this story began when the young man was just three. Because that was the first time the boy disappeared. Three is no age to be stolen from your home in England by a Frenchman, who turned out to be the boy’s biological father. Nobody knew it was he who had taken the boy, but two years later they found the Frenchman’s body in a rural Pushtun village in north-eastern Afghanistan. He was army. There was a war. It wasn’t unusual. And that was when the Frenchman’s childless sister adopted the boy and changed his name from Tristan Stafford to Tristan Gautier. Maybe that was why he disappeared in the centre of Paris on his twentieth birthday.

Of course, none of this may be relevant and maybe the real story only began four months ago when the young man’s mother and her former husband - the Englishman who had once believed he was the boy’s natural father - traced the young man who had disappeared at the age of three. And how all three, mother, father and son, wept in a restaurant garden for the sixteen years of togetherness that they had lost. Because even though he wasn’t the boy’s biological father, the Englishman had loved him as a child and loved him still now. Was that when the story began? Trying to make up for lost time in a restaurant garden?

But why should a story begin anywhere? Does it not simply begin this very afternoon as Tristan Gautier and a group of fellow modern languages students step out of the Sorbonne University into the weak late September sunshine of rue Cujas?

From your vantage point, you can see the small crowd jostle and push and call out to each other. It’s an amiable mêlée that spills onto the road as they turn the corner onto rue Saint-Jacques. Tristan is starting his final year at the Sorbonne and he is happy to share the amiable hustle and shove as the group makes its way in the direction of the sidewalk cafe, where they will share a glass of beer and a laugh and joke. But Tristan knows that, once they get there, he won’t stay long this afternoon. His mother is hosting some business friends to dinner and Tristan and the woman he loves are invited.

Harry - or Harriet if she is annoyed with you - is a computer geek with an extraordinary memory. But her amazing ability to recall anything and everything is countered by her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And to compound her OCD, she also suffers from social anxiety disorder, a form of autism. With strangers in the room, Tristan will need to sit next to Harry to reassure her so that her anxiety levels don’t overflow. He doesn’t mind or see it as a burden. The two are so in tune that, even at the age of just twenty, he can’t imagine life without her.

Tristan allows a smile to pass across his thoughts. He knows that his mother will announce his birthday to her business friends this evening, but he doesn’t mind that either. This is the first birthday they have shared together since he was three years old. It is as special for him as it is for her. So today, Tristan will only spend a short time with his student friends over a beer before making an excuse to leave for home. Or at least that’s what he thinks until a blue Dacia Duster from the gendarmerie pulls across the road and stops alongside him.

His mind flashes to a silly titbit of information that Harry once told him. It seems that the computer hex code for the blue used on all gendarme vehicles is 4A7D95. Tristan had to ask her what a hex code was. So she smacked his arm and called him ‘gimp boy’, a nickname that has stuck. He’d wrestled her onto the bed, which wasn’t easy, her being muscular and competitive. Then he’d wrestled her out of her clothes, which was much easier because she liked it when she and Tristan got naked. Then they had laughed and loved their way through a lazy afternoon, and Tristan had never forgotten the hex code 4A7D95. Now, whenever either of them felt like a little loving, they simply said ‘4A7D95’. All couples have secret codes, but there probably aren’t many who use a hexadecimal colour code to suggest a private moment together.

Keep watching as the driver of the gendarme car, a bald man with an elongated head, winds down the window and calls out, Monsieur Gautier, a moment please.

Tristan nods a cautious acknowledgment to the officer and steps to the side of the vehicle. The rest of his group stop and wait, some out of idle curiosity, some because it seems right to wait for their friend. What is it? Tristan asks. What’s the problem?

Come with us please, Monsieur Gautier. We’re going to take you home. There’s been an accident.

Tristan pales. What sort of accident? Is it Harry or my mother? Or Dad?

I don’t have the details, sir. I’ve just been radioed to pick you up and take you home.

But how did you know me?

The gendarme holds up his mobile. Your photo. We were sent your photo. You are easy to spot.

Even Tristan has to admit that he would find it difficult to blend into a crowd. The young man’s appearance is stern, even a little melancholy, but his features transform when he smiles. And Tristan usually never goes more than 60 seconds without smiling. His is a fine-boned face, tapering to a chiselled chin. Eyes spaced wide either side of a slightly upturned nose. A steady gaze with just a hint of irony. Tristan also has a mouth that is precise with small, firm lips. And what sets him apart are the long dimples in his cheeks; a feature that he shares with his mother. He is far too good-looking for a man who works in close proximity to impressionable young women.

Tristan turns back to his friends. Got to go. Something about an accident at home. See you all tomorrow. He steps into the back of the blue Dacia Duster to find a chubby, pear-shaped man sitting there. This man isn’t in uniform. This man wears a cheap shiny suit, and a sheen of sweat across his top lip. He is not a man who wears suits or perspiration well. Tristan would be willing to bet that he tucks his shirt into his underpants. He’s that sort of a man – repulsive and unclean. The Duster speeds away with its roof light flashing and its two-tone siren echoing round the streets of the Latin Quarter.

What’s the problem at home? Tristan asks.

We don’t have any details, the man next to him replies, reaching a hand into his jacket pocket. We’ve just received instructions to take you straight home to Avenue Marceau. I’m sure our people will bring you up to speed.

Tristan glances at the driver as the car turns right onto rue des Écoles. Which way are you going? Avenue Marceau leads off Place de l'Étoile. You need to head up the Champs-Élysées, or get on Quai d’Orsay and cross the river at Tour Eiffel. You’re going the wrong way.

I don’t think so, the driver says.

Tristan opens his mouth to answer the driver, but the man next to him holds his arm. A sharp prick turns Tristan’s next words into, Ayye. What the hell was that?

The man next to him smiles as he withdraws the syringe. He releases Tristan and begins talking in a normal voice, but Tristan can’t understand him. He hears all the words but nothing makes sense. And when he tries to orientate himself by bracing his hands against the seat in front, the whole world inside the car begins to spin.

It’s just something to help you sleep, Monsieur.

Tristan’s brain struggles to understand something before it shuts down completely and fades into black oblivion. He will only be unconscious for about one hour, but when he wakes, his world will have changed in ways he can’t imagine. And that is the moment when a young man disappears on his twentieth birthday in the centre of Paris.

CHAPTER TWO

Ken Stafford strode through a living room that was large enough to accommodate several small villages. His shoes tapped out a rhythmic step as he passed the foot of a wide, unsupported, curving stone staircase that probably went to heaven. It launched itself from polished parquet, and sustained a graceful polished oak banister with a deep rich patina. It looked like the shining flow of a meandering river, curving up towards the gallery above. From there, the family accessed the multitude of rooms on the upper floor.

No bargain-basement prints of fine red-coated gentlemen riding to hounds decorated the walls of the lounge. Just a couple of gilt framed mirrors and an original Jackson Pollock that Florence had picked up a few years earlier. It was now insured for more than the whole building was worth. And the building contained five luxury Parisian apartments.

To the front, overlooking the wide boulevard below, there were tall floor-to-ceiling windows. Each of them had a narrow Juliet balcony - false railings outside, reaching to the floor. When the windows were open they gave the appearance of a real balcony. Similar tall windows overlooked the interior courtyard behind. The room was not only wide, it also occupied the full depth of the building. Velvet curtains framed the windows. Between the curtains and the glass, startling white voile curtains in sheer net functioned as a privacy veil. Not that their privacy wasn’t assured. The apartment occupied the first and second floors of the building and the apartment blocks on the other side of the Avenue were over forty metres away with two rows of trees in between. Even so, the lace inner curtains remained drawn, allowing daylight to enter while rendering the view over the city a blur. In the evenings, halogen lamps washed the windows in a strong incandescent glow that lit the whole room.

Everything was comfortable and tasteful, as if the apartment were for lounging, and nights by the fire. The owner was smart, educated, and cultured, if the knickknacks were any indication. There were small priceless treasures from across the world, as if she'd picked up a little something exquisite everywhere she went. The room was a map of the adventures, of a person who had lived, and seen and done things.

Ken passed through a pair of glazed double doors pushed back against the wall of the dining room. His attention was drawn to the long Louis XIV table that was laid for guests. A quick count of the plates told him that Florence was expecting ten people to dine here this evening.

He crossed the wood panelled dining room and stepped into the kitchen; big enough for an army of chefs. Even after four months living in this grandiose apartment, Ken still hadn’t become used to the scale of everything. He had seen many restaurant kitchens much smaller than this. And many that weren’t as well equipped either. At the far end of the room, a shaft of sunlight streamed through the window. It highlighted a lady’s shapely breasts, trim waist, and wide hips, all wrapped up in a white silk shirt and royal blue tailored skirt.

Florence had tied back her chestnut blonde hair in a ponytail. To Ken, it looked like liquid sunshine against a face so fair-skinned as to be striking. In the sixteen years since Tristan’s disappearance as a child, Ken and Florence had gone their separate ways. Ken had gone wherever the British Government had sent him as a sniper for Special Forces, and Florence had returned to her native France and reverted to her maiden name of de Nussac. Then, through shrewd buying and selling and a management style that built loyalty and trust among her employees, she had made several fortunes which continued to build and multiply.

Approaching forty, as she was, the gawky, timid young lady had transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Nowadays, with Ken around, she smiled without any reason. Like her son, it was one of her principal charms. Florence de Nussac carried herself with an ease and grace that surprised people when they discovered that she had created three successful and lucrative businesses. Tristan had inherited her wide, generous face, chiselled chin, and long dimples in both cheeks. Her smile was attractive, her laugh contagious, and she and Ken were as close again as they had been when they were love struck youngsters, twenty years earlier.

Hi chérie, Ken said. He strode to where she was laying out various serving dishes, clasped her close, and kissed her long and deep. The power of a young woman was in her beauty and charm. The power of a woman in her middle years was her experience of life and the sensuality that it bestowed. The power that Florence held over Ken was her ability to show him her love without saying a word. But her kisses spoke in words one thousand times more powerful.

Twenty two years before, Florence had been the spark Ken had been waiting for all his life. But the spark had dimmed when Ken found out about her infidelity with a childhood sweetheart. And the spark had extinguished completely when Tristan was snatched from them as a child. Now they had reignited the spark and it was burning as brightly as ever. Ken and Florence were back as a couple - where they always belonged.

What are you doing there? Ken asked when they eventually took a moment to breathe.

Florence looked up into his face and smiled. You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?

Since I don’t know what you’re talking about, the answer must be yes!

We’ve got three important wine buyers and their wives coming for dinner tonight. You’ve met them all before. The caterers will be here in a couple of hours. I’m just getting the dishes out so they don’t have to go hunting for them like they did last time.

Bugger, I forgot about tonight.

Is it a problem?

I’m pulling your leg, Florence. How could I forget our first birthday with Tristan in seventeen years? He paused, then added. Even if we do have to share the evening with some of your business associates.

Ken, you know the reason why. It was the only evening that Hubert Rousseau could make it. Anyway, I’m taking you, me, Harry and Tristan to Le Pré-Catelan at the end of next week. Frédéric said he will dream us something special for Tristan’s birthday.

Nice extra present, Ken said, Not too many people get a top Michelin chef creating dishes for them.

He appreciated how we handled the problem with the stolen wine. Both of us could have lost more than just money over that. She snuggled closer to Ken and slid her hands up his back. I appreciate what you and Harry did too, tracking down the stolen bottles.

Ken held her away from him, and looked down at the firm curves that were making his hormones swarm like killer bees. He made no effort to hide what his eyes were looking at. They were absorbing the contours of her body like dry sponges. He was unable and unwilling to detach his attention away from her body. It was more full and mature than when they had been together years earlier. A delicate gold chain holding a solitaire diamond protected her neck. Every time she wore it, the vision of Florence wearing just the diamond necklace and nothing else jumped into his head unbidden. He was happy to hold the thought though. Can’t we postpone dinner and have an hour locked in the bedroom?

You’ll never keep your strength up without food.

You mean I have to choose between eating you, and eating good food? That’s a hell of a choice, particularly since there are wines involved with the food option.

Florence beamed at him with tender appreciation. After dinner, I have a late night date with a good-looking guy with fair hair and electric blue eyes. Maybe he can have both food and me tonight.

Christ, don’t you two ever stop? came a voice from the doorway.

Ken didn’t even bother to turn round. And when will you stop lurking round the place like a creeping Jesus, Harry?

Florence chuckled. "He does have a point, Harry. You do have a habit of