Free Past Imperfect by John Matthews Page B

kilometres away on the other side of Taragnon.'
    'What route does he normally take to Stephan's house?' Poullain asked.
    'About six hundred metres down the road, a track cuts between our neighbour and the next farm. It goes between two more farms for half a kilometre, then comes out on the main Taragnon-Bauriac road. He goes along the main road through Taragnon village, and the farm is just over a kilometre past.'
    ‘Which side of the road?'
    'On the left as you come out of Taragnon. It's set back a few hundred metres from the road. From the roadside you can see mainly vines, though they also have some fields for grazing.'
    'What is the family name?'
    'Maillots.'
    'And your son never arrived there.'
    Monique looked down and bit her lip. Dominic noticed that she looked at them directly only at intervals, the rest of the time she looked down at the table or at the notepad as he recorded the interview in shorthand. 'We didn't know straightaway. We're not on the phone, nor are they. I finally called Jean-Luc in from the fields at just past 4 pm. We had expected Christian back by 3 pm, and normally he's very good with coming back on time. Jean-Luc went over to Stephan's house and checked. They hadn't seen Christian. That was when Jean-Luc checked back along the route Christian normally took and found the bike. At first we thought that with the bike broken down he'd decided to walk the rest, which would have taken him far longer - then perhaps he'd got distracted and stopped off in the village.'
    'How far away was the bike?'
    Monique looked at Jean-Luc. Jean Luc answered. 'Almost towards the end of the track down the road. Not far from where it joins the Taragnon road - a few hundred metres at most.'
    'So it looked to you as if Christian had walked the rest of the distance to the main road, then the two kilometres to Taragnon village.'
    Jean-Luc nodded. Poullain paused for a moment, looking over at Dominic's notes and taking stock of the information so far. Christian was found on a farm track little more than half a kilometre from the Maillots' farm, but on the other side of the road bordering the river. But somehow the boy had made it through the village. Poullain voiced the thought. 'The first thing to find out is who in the village might have seen your boy between midday and three pm. Because we will then at least know if he walked through the village or was transported through by someone he met at the roadside.'
    Monique and Jean-Luc looked at each other for a second. Something troubled them about this comment. Jean-Luc was the first to speak. 'If he was on foot, the problem is he could have cut through the fields behind the village. On his bike it's not possible, but on foot there's only a few stone walls and small fences to negotiate.'
    'Is it likely he cut across?' asked Poullain.
    Jean-Luc shrugged. 'It's a possibility. It's something he's done before. In any case, he would probably cut down and walk the last hundred metres of the village heading for Stephan's house. There's another track there.'
    A hundred metres at the end of the village, Poullain considered. It was quiet, the main village establishments petering out. If the one or two shopkeepers there hadn't seen the boy, it proved nothing. Yet if the boy had walked through the entire village, past boulangeries, patisseries, the main square and cafés, without being seen - it would have been a different matter. He'd already assigned three men to call on village shops from early that morning, and had been hopeful of their findings. Now he wasn't so sure. Poullain couldn't even remember what shops there were in those last hundred metres. The disappointment showed on his face.
    On a fresh page Dominic had been making a small diagram of Taragnon: the path from the Rosselots to the main road, the Maillots’ farm, and the track by the river. It was a simple triangular drawing, with distances in metres between Xs marking where the bike was left and the boy was found. While