The Dark Side of the Sun Read online

  Pè fa la venditta

  Morte al nemico

  1.

  INDULGENCE

  lussu

  2.

  VENGEANCE

  venditta

  3.

  RESISTANCE

  Cunfilittu

  4.

  REMEMBRANCE

  mimoria

  © Copyright Iain Wodehouse-Easton 2014

  ISBN: 9781098356606

  THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

  1. INDULGENCE

  lussu

  i

  It takes less than thirty seconds for a man and a woman, whose eyes meet across a crowded room, to make an unspoken pledge to come together at another time and another place, to discover the unknown. It was so with Nicole and I, on a Corsican landscape that moved from light to dark, from sun-blazed days to the shadows of moonlit nights, when muffled footsteps passed by my wine-soaked brain undetected. From understood to unconscious. From filling the senses to numbing disaster.

  On that stage I was a witness to the whisper of waves lapping on the shoreline of the bay, the braying of reluctant mules under burden up the steep mountain path to her house, and always in the background the bright clang of bells around the neck of the leading ewe, as it steered the flock among the maquis, spread across the landscape, with its ever-fragrant

  pot-pourri of herbs and aromatic plants. This was the tapestry upon which Nicole spent three summer months each year on weaving her medicinal remedies. The same carpet which brought death to this haven.

  As for the man roped to the marker buoy at the entrance to the harbour, his corpse was the threshold I had to cross to gain access to Nicole’s summer home in this landlocked sanctuary. It was to be two years from first meeting her before I found myself at this isolated corner of Corsica, with permission to stay for the summer.

  Only then could I experience the blanket of warm air suffused with the scents of the thousands of flowers, herbs, plants, shrubs and trees of the maquis. Arburi, arbre, fiori, piante. It seemed idyllic but death struck soon and more than once.

  The rays of the hot summer sun bleach this dense maquis. But its intense heat does not reach Nicole and I, exhausted from the rush of passion that overwhelmed good sense. We lie behind the filter of the linen curtains, in a warm embrace, Nicole’s arm still coiled round my neck to hold me as if for keeps. What more could I wish for?

  It seemed impossible that death could enter this isolated haven. And if the mechanism was murder, by what motive could it arise? There were no signs of vengeance or vendetta here, though we were on a corner of Corsica. L’Ile de Beauté maybe, though also renowned at times as of darkness.

  If murder, were matters more obscure, even outside our sight? Shadows that hid the reasons our peace was to be shattered? Could Inspector Girard, that keen investigator, do any better in exposing the criminals? In this mémoire should I focus on the murders and neglect the mountain of subtle clues to conjure an impractical solution? Or give emphasis to the passionate lovemaking that was the real platform on which this idyllic time was built, and let the riddles emerge in due course, as happened in real life? Because it was our passion, dominant in my mind – and Nicole’s body, which influenced the course of events. In the final analysis it was the essential thread that resolved the dangers imposed on the tiny community locked away here.

  Antoine and his wife Angelique ran the taverne, which constituted the only enterprise, a calling point for passing yachts with professional skippers, who had the necessary charts to avoid rocks at the entrance and safely anchor in the deep water of the small bay. But even

  these visitors never explored ashore beyond the hospitality of the taverne, because the steep mountainsides rejected all but the hardiest of climbers. The only person to clamber up the hill was Nicole, who had rashly purchased the lone house some years ago. Without Antoine’s mules she would have no supplies. The landscape was her reward, the maquis smothering the slopes with its overgrowth of scrub and trees, and that all-pervasive perfume of a million plants and herbs. Above all, the sun burnt our bodies and the landscape in unison, but it was the shadows and moonlight in which much darker events were to play themselves out.

  ii

  Inspector Girard was suspicious of everyone. Disgruntled and demoted from his position in Marseille, he resented his appointment to this outpost of the French empire. Its history of crime down the centuries, its resistance to authority, to Paris, to all its occcupiers, had been nurtured in rebellion against rulers. Its mountain inhabitants had remained in their isolated communities, self-ruling, until modern times and resentment simmered just below the surface. Resentful of those distributing justice. Girard was not used to being disobeyed, to being messed about. His suspicions fell on me from the start. A visitor, an unexplained journey, an outsider with some hidden interest, was how he viewed me. Nothing I could say would change his mind. Until shadows from another source took some of the light from me.

  Corsica, island of stunning sunlight in summer, but storms in the winter. Snow on the mountain tops, on the great range that was the backbone of the wild granite interior. Places to hide, a stage where all was not as it seems. To my innocent eyes and to those of the investigation. There was no obvious cause for murder, for bringing down the tiny community to a final elimination. Sunlight. Moonlight. Shadows.

  iii

  I was the first to spot the man clinging to the navigational buoy that marked the harbour entrance, tucked behind the headland on which the Genoese fort stood abandoned.

  This time I had hitched a lift on a patrol-boat of the Gendarmerie Maritime, based in Calvi, being the only option other than a fishing or supply boat of getting to this landlocked bay, and the house that was my destination. Nicole had agreed I could stay for three summer months to finish my articles of literary criticism, suggesting this isolated spot would ensure I concentrated fully on the task in hand.

  However, as the patrol-boat approached the buoy to rescue the man, it became evident that this was a corpse, a dead man’s frame somehow clasped to the ring of the float. Close up alongside, the gendarmes wrestled with the bedraggled body, which they found roped to the buoy. A rope that was caught around his neck. They cut him free and lifted his lifeless form onboard, dropping it out of my sight into the cabin, as the craft proceeded through the narrows into the cove and anchored.

  Whilst the gendarmes worked out what to do with the body and examined it closely, I was landed by dinghy at the wooden jetty of the lone taverne. By getting me ashore, they left themselves time to deal with this unexpected death, and I was relieved to escape the sinister mood that now prevailed over what should have been a warm welcome to this beautiful corner of Corsica.

  I left them to their grizzly task, for I did not want to be involved. Leaving my bags at the taverne with Antoine for his mules to bring up later, I slowly climbed the steep mountainside to the house. As I paused to catch my breath halfway and turned my back, I saw the gendarmes on the shore in earnest conversation with Antoine and Angelique. Had they seen anything, must be the obvious question.

  On reaching the house, I chose to say nothing of this to Nicole, who would not have heard the commotion beyond the headland. I wanted to share other things, more pleasurable times with her. No need to spoil the chance.

  iv

  The contract of understanding between Nicole and I had been agreed within that thirty seconds of first acquaintance. Sparked by glances across a crowded room, eyes meeting over the shoulders of others, the brush of our bodies against each other as the group broke up. The slightest touch of her hand on my arm that lingered a moment longer than necessary when everyone parted. No one else was involved, no
one noticed an exchange that took a fraction of time. The contract was for a further meeting at some better time in the future, and with it a confidence the moment could be awaited without loss. Only a few words passed our lips, no note was exchanged.

  I had been invited along with a dozen or so others to travel down from London and meet up at a provincial theatre in support of an actress of my host’s family who was performing the lead role in the production. I don’t remember what the play was, nor any detail of its plot. In the interval at the gloomy bar we all gathered and muttered our appreciation of the first half. I was on the fringe of the group, as was this slim woman with a thatch of corn hair, wild in contrast to the coiffured styles of the others. I was an outsider, when my glance met her’s, and for a moment she look questioningly at me before giving a brief smile. It flashed for a split second, its laser ray hitting only me, melting my fixed gaze.

  At the end of the performance we gathered once more as a bunch and waited for the actress to come out and receive our plaudits – genuine or otherwise – and there was a general commotion as we went separate ways to our cars. I just had time to catch this woman’s attention for one minute, discover her name – Nicole – that we shared a love of the Mediterranean, and that she had a summer house on Corsica. Her phone number I had to squeeze out of a friend much later.

  I spent a long time afterwards painting a picture in my mind of her house on the ‘Island of Beauty’, slotting it into my own experience of Mediterranean seascapes, even though I had only landed in Corsica a few times. I imagined Nicole walking through the maquis, lightly clad in a cotton shift, hair streaming behind her in the hot sunshine, as she traversed the mountain slopes. I was not to be wrong.

  I managed a telephone contact some weeks later, introducing myself without any good excuse, and dreading the possible response to my invasion of her privacy. But I was lucky. She had remembered the theatre occasion, and she had recalled our short conversation.

  “In the interval and briefly afterwards. I didn’t know who you were.”

  I felt comfortable enough at that moment to say I was joining a summer walking group – randonneurs – who were crossing the island of Corsica from Conca in the south east up to Calenzana and Calvi on the north west coast. I was fumbling for the chance to see her briefly when we had completed the walk. I asked if she was to be at her summer home at the same time.

  “The house is in a landlocked cove two hours by boat from Calvi. It is difficult to get there, but you could take a chance with a fisherman or our supply boat. It only makes the trip once a month, on the first Monday, so it is a longshot.”

  It seemed a far from easy arrangement, and I was not certain I would see her, but I told her my travel dates and the chance was there. In truth I made certain I would be in Calvi at the right time. That first year a brief encounter took place. The skipper of the converted trawler agreed to take me for a nominal payment and I found myself sitting on the bow of the old boat as it wove its way down the west coast of the island. It kept offshore to avoid the jagged rockfaces that slope into the clear aquamarine sea. The formations of red and grey granite rise dramatically sheer on much of this coast, making it impossible to approach land in rough weather.

  Why do I mention the forbidding character of this coast? Because its rocky formations create the barrier to entering the cove, giving an independence from the outside world. A sentiment that reflected the desires and heartbeat of an island people. Their traditional ambition, violently expressed and held down the centuries, to remain free. The isolation inspired my curiosity, just as many artists, writers and painters had escaped for the same purpose to such remote landscapes. Botanists were drawn here too by the rare flora, the unique plants of the maquis that carried the medicinal and curative properties, of which Nicole was in search. A raison d’être that, unbeknown to me, carried a particular motive. The towns, now touristy, were not of concern to her. Nature was the dominant base for her studies. There was a relationship between her summer house in its ‘invisible’ location and the thread of Corsica’s history, rejecting ownership and governance, whenever it could. She had been content to be on her own each year just for three months to concentrate on her work.

  The cove is located on the outside of a divide that stretches from the top to bottom of Corsica, the mountain ranges that split west from east, hinterland from coastal strips. Yet the plains too were separated by the outer tips of mountains, which spread like the talons of a

  sea-eagle – aigle de mer - riding high above, down to the coastal shores. Isolating town from town, village from village. A wild topography that until recently allowed traditional customs, feudal in mindset, to last much longer than elsewhere because the island’s conquerors had settled for control of a few coastal fortresses. Bastia, Calvi, Ajaccio, Bonifacio. Their citadels stand proud into the twenty-first century. Genoese watch-towers dot the coast. In the mountainous centre stands Corte, ancient capital and caretaker of the briefly independent Corsica, as the focus of nationalistic history. In-between these bastions lies the whole hinterland, dotted with remote towns and villages, with lives and customs of their own, tucked into hidden valleys.

  I too wanted to capture the essence of this past, the true soul of the island. Whilst it can now be crossed by car, the tourist who does so will miss the beat of Corsica’s fierce heart. It was better to find this esprit in the mountains, crossing on foot by the high-altitude route, which my fellow randonneurs were tackling this year – and experience the rugged tracks laid down centuries ago, for the transhumance of livestock from pasture to seasonal pasture. On these tracks one battles against the high winds, passing peaks with late-lying snow in June; fights the dangers of steep, rocky traverses, like the Cirque de la Solitude, climbing with the help of chains and ladders, or diverting en route to the scree and boulder strewn ridges of Monte Cinto, its summit the highpoint of Corsica at over two thousand metres. These highlands reminded me that it could be cold and icy even in summer.

  My sun-drenched image of Corsica was tempered inland and in winter by a different climate than on the coast. Our group tested the striking rock tower of the Punta di l’Anima Damnata - the Point of the Damned Soul and the massive buttresses of the Aiguilles de Bavella, sights to behold and respect on three weeks of hiking. Only the mountain refuges

  gave us the rest we needed to keep going. Like many of the other hikers, I was glad to reach Calvi. Whilst they took two days rest, I sought out Nicole.

  That year my lift on the supply boat gave me the reward of only two hours in her company, down at the taverne, as the supplies were unloaded by dinghy. I wish I could record much of what we said, but the time went so fast that, after a few hesitant pleasantries, we found no time to develop our relationship. I was drawn to her as much as I had first been. I realised at once that it would need a much longer stay to close the gap that lay between our instinctive feelings. Nicole and I were talking in front of Antoine and Angelique, whilst the boatmen dropped off all the boxes and gas bottles at the taverne. It was not the ideal situation in which to express ourselves. I had wanted so much to be with her, and had imagined us alone at the house exchanging the warm words that would build a bridge towards the future contacts I was sure we could make. But the rest of the year her life in England was conducted at such a distance due to her work and my absence on projects, that I had put too much faith in the meeting here. A lengthy conversation was not to be, as she had to check goods she had ordered from Calvi as they were landed, and before I knew it the boatmen were hustling for payment and jumping back into their dinghy and rowing out to the craft. I had to join them, and all too soon found myself waving back to Nicole on the shore. I didn’t even said goodbye. We hadn’t agreed whether I could come back again to this idyllic cove.

  v

  In this second year I was lucky to have negotiated a better deal. My arrival seems long ago, yet it is only three months since my pen started describing events that have all too quickly absorbed me
into the idyll.

  Significantly, I discovered Nicole’s diaries too late. Had I known, before reading them, of the images she painted of me, I should have been appalled, but at the beginning I was blissfully unaware of their criticism, and all too soon mesmerised by her generous and passionate hospitality. How foolish I had been to assume that our free and easy lovemaking was the central plank of our new relationship. Yet it was the gift she happily bestowed on me, whenever the mood took her, which was often at first, once the heat of the Mediterranean afternoon had subsided and we refreshed each other with languorous kisses and lengthy caresses. I had quickly become a romantic, and never bothered to question the rise of these pleasures, gratefully accepted.

  Now, within range of the watchful eyes of gendarmes at the taverne, I am looking back on events. Sitting alone on the terrace of the empty house above the cove and choppy seas blown by a stiff breeze, I am trying to figure out how it came to such a frightful end.

  Once this isolated bay of Corsica had seemed the perfect setting for my escape from the real world. Quickly (too quickly?) I became intoxicated with the air, the scents of the maquis – and above all Nicole.

  There was nothing I lacked and I was to fill the days with freelance scribbling my latest articles of literary criticism, somewhat ineffectively, before publisher deadlines closed in on me. Occasional supplies from Antione and Angelique’s taverne, on the shoreline below, were sufficient to keep us alive, whilst Nicole in turn concentrated on her medicinal

  plants and their possible curative values. It seemed there was nothing to threaten our contented life. It was an idyllic location for our blissful existence.

  Indeed I had loved the Mediterranean ever since I had taken a gap year at Aix-en-Provence university to polish my French. Afterwards I had ventured by ferry from Marseille to Corsica in order to walk with other students across the middle of the island, across the mountainous - and the once bandit-ridden - central spine.