True Crime Story(82)

And that was it, the way I looked at his hand.

When we looked at each other, I could see he knew me. His whole face went red, then beetroot, then dickhead purple. Then all the skin I could see, his ears and neck and forearms. I’d have thought he was having a heart attack if I’d thought he had a heart. He broke eye contact. Turned around and muttered something about the drink being on him. I thought about the building site, he and his brothers pouring piss and vodka in my eyes. I said, “Yeah, thanks. I think the last one was on me.” After that, he disappeared while I sat there and drank the whole pint. Over the next half hour, one or two of the others tried to get his attention. They came up to the bar and called for him, but he didn’t come back. Once they’d all sacré bleu’d and stormed out, I went behind the bar and made myself another drink, something expensive this time, from the brandies, then I followed Gary into the back. He was sitting on a stool staring into space like some little boy whose mum had just bollocked him. I don’t know if he was upset for me or for himself or for his brothers or his bar. To be fair, he looked like he was sorry for his whole stupid, shit life. I said, “What did you do with Zoe?” and he looked up for a second. He didn’t say anything, so I said, “What did you do with my sister?” He just shook his head and wiped his face with a rag. He said, “Dunno what you’re on about.” Then he said, “Get out. We’re closed.”

RICKY PAYNE:

Right, yeah, then just the same way, I walked by one night and the lights were off again. I never knew what happened, whether he lost the business or lost his balls or what. I didn’t see him for a long while after, so I couldn’t ask. I heard he’d left the area, though. There were sightings here and there of a man who looked like our Gary sleeping rough, begging on bad streets. He’d have done better in a mile radius of his bar—he’d stood enough of us drinks on our bad days—but I suppose he was ashamed or something. I still see him now from time to time, and I usually give him what change I’ve got on me.

Course, I don’t condone anything he might have had a hand in. But then I’m not sure he remembers me or what he did. He’s been drunk and outdoors for a good five years, so his freedom never did much for him. Funny thing, though, and I only noticed because it’s the one he puts out for change, but he’s burned the skin off the back of his right hand, that smiling face what used to be there. [Laughs] Probably no use for it anymore.

Gary Matthews could not be reached for comment for this publication. His brothers, Michael and Kevin, declined to comment through their legal counsel. They are each serving life sentences in separate French correctional facilities for the murders that took place in Jean Boivin’s home on December 24, 2011.

KIMBERLY NOLAN:

I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast as far away from the Green-Eyed Monster as I could afford. I’d be surprised if I even rolled in my sleep I went down so heavy. The next day, I woke up clearheaded, had a croissant for breakfast and went to the nearest police station. I told them everything that had happened to me. It was the first time I’d ever said a lot of it out loud, and they listened. They cared, they offered me cigarettes. I didn’t smoke, but I took them. I thought, when else will you be sitting in an interview room in Paris telling the police the story of your life? I spoke to a beautiful man called Victor Bisset. He had narrow policeman’s eyes that went wider and wider the longer I talked. I think he couldn’t believe that this crazy story, this wild case that had been going on over there, could possibly get stranger.

But there I was.

By then, they’d identified two of the bodies from inside the house fire. The man who’d replaced Boivin was a Parisian vagrant, and they’d snatched some poor kid from Belgium to replace his son. The police thought the Matthews brothers had taken people from different places to try and leave less of a pattern, to make it less likely they’d be traced.

The one body they couldn’t identify was the young woman’s, the person who’d replaced Boivin’s daughter, Lucille. When I’d finished speaking, once I’d showed them pictures of Zoe and told them what had happened to me, they asked for a DNA sample, which I gave. After that, Victor drove me back to the airport and suggested I call my parents. When I looked at him, his eyes had gone narrow again. It sounded like an order, so I did it. I called Mum from France, and we spoke for the first time in something like six months. It was just a few minutes but enough time to say how much I loved her and how much I missed her. That call meant a lot to both of us. I didn’t say where I was or what I was doing, but I hung up the phone thinking it was over. I remember breaking down in tears, happy tears, because I thought, I remember thinking, I’d done it, y’know? I’d solved all our problems. I’d saved us.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL VICTOR BISSET:

Unfortunately, the DNA sample from Kimberly Nolan proved inconclusive. The young woman who had been used to replace Lucille Boivin was later identified as Elise Pelletier, a girl, a foster care runaway from Brittany in France. Michael and Kevin both confessed to her kidnapping and to her murder. Neither man has ever acknowledged a role in the attempted kidnapping of Kimberly Nolan, but we know several things with certainty. The first, that the brothers made a fortnightly drive from Paris to Calais, from there to England and to Manchester, a “booze cruise” to a family pub in a town called Prestwich. The second, that they made such a drive on November 7, returning one day after the attempt was made upon Kimberly. The third, that Boivin hired the Matthews brothers to find a suitable girl on November 5. And the fourth, that Kevin, the youngest brother, had worked on the building site near to Canal Street. It seems highly likely that the brothers happened to be in this nightclub, noticed a resemblance between Kimberly and Lucille, and made an unplanned, unsuccessful attempt to take her.