The Prisoner of Castillac

Chapter 2

Chapter TwoBenjamin Dufort, late of the gendarmerie, was up at five in the morning for a run before heading off to his temporary job at a nearby farm. Another man might have been satisfied with the physically demanding work and not pushed himself to run in addition to it, but running was a habit Ben was unwilling to give up, no matter how inconvenient and unnecessary it was.

He allowed himself one cup of coffee before heading out, then laced up his tattered sneakers, put on a wind jacket, and hit the road.

It had been no small thing, giving up his work at the gendarmerie. Years of police training and experience tossed away in one impulsive moment. But he didn’t regret it. No, there was no regret—and yet his mind was still not at ease.

The story he was telling himself was that he was really not good at delving into the minds of criminals. He didn’t understand what made them tick. He believed that made him a poor detective, because no matter how diligent a person was about following procedure, a great detective or even just an adequate one has got to be able to put himself in the perpetrator’s shoes, to take the imaginative leap so that he can anticipate what the criminal will do next, and have insight into where the bad guy might have tripped up.

But Dufort was made of sunnier stuff; he naturally avoided darkness, and when he had been in charge of cases where slipping into the dismal and dangerous state of mind of a potential criminal was necessary, he had not been able to do it. At least, this was the reason he assigned to his failures.

And he did not see how he could continue living a life doing a mediocre job when people were depending on him, and more than that, desperate for him to succeed.

The farmer he was working for was Rémy, an old friend. He depended on Dufort’s help, and it was a real pleasure to Dufort to show up every day on time or early, ready to exert himself fully in the bracing spring air, and then go home pleasurably exhausted. It was strenuous work but he could handle it easily. At the end of the day, he felt, for the first time in years, as though the workday had been a complete success. No loose threads, no one disappointed.

No missing girls.

After his run, he changed clothes without showering since he would be sweating the minute he started work—and Rémy wouldn’t give sweat a second thought. Then he drove over in his battered Renault, leaving the tiny apartment which was all he could afford after quitting the gendarmerie and being out of work for several months.

“Salut!” he called to Rémy, who was taking some heavy bags of chicken feed out of the back of his truck.

“Get over here, you lazy sod!” shouted Rémy.

Dufort grabbed two of the bags and the two men walked towards the chicken house. “So tell me,” said Rémy, “what’s next for you? I’m happy to have your help for as long as you want, but let’s be honest my friend: farming is not the life for you.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Dufort, surprised.

Rémy shrugged. “I know you like the physical labor because it calms your mind. Right?”

Dufort nodded.

“But if that is what farming is to you, a way to lower stress, and a workout—like going to a gym but in a prettier place? Then you’re not…See, I enjoy the labor too, most of it. But I also get a genuine thrill when I see the lettuce sprout. It’s a chore to collect eggs but I notice how warm they are in my hands—and I think nothing is funnier than a chicken. And beyond that, it matters to me to grow the highest quality food I possibly can. It’s like I have a calling in a way, you understand?

“But you, Dufort—this is not your mission.” Rémy pulled on a straw hat, the sun already bright.

“What if I don’t have a calling,” answered Dufort.

“Sure you do. Everybody does. It’s just that some people fight against it.”

“You and your New Age hippie talk,” laughed Dufort.

“Bon,” said Rémy, “let’s get to work. I’m putting you in the asparagus bed today. I want you to apply a bit of compost, and then a thick layer of mulch.”

Rémy got his friend organized with a large fork and a wheelbarrow, and showed him where the compost and mulch were before taking off in his truck.

My calling, thought Dufort, rolling his eyes. And then he got to work, shoveling a load of compost into the wheelbarrow with a wide shovel, and then making another trip to fork in a load of mulch. He managed to apply the compost and mulch as Rémy had directed him, but his mind was somewhere far away. He did not notice the lovely asparagus shoots, poking their purple heads up through the dark crumbly soil, or the clouds that rolled in, threatening rain.

Instead he was thinking about Valerie Boutillier and Elizabeth Martin, two young women who went missing right after he first came to the gendarmerie of Castillac. Their files were always open on the desk in his mind, and as he worked, he leafed through the pages, becoming so absorbed that by accident he completely covered the spinach with mulch too.