by Peter May
He rubbed his face with both hands, in some distress at the recollection.
‘I hung about for some minutes. I didn’t know what to do. Should I go and bang on the door and confront them? Should I wait until eight? But I knew I couldn’t, so I was about to go knocking on her front door, when the side door suddenly opened. I saw Madame Lavigne hurry out into the moonlight and down the steps to the alley. I thought for certain she would see me, and I froze on the spot. But I was still deep in shadow, and she went straight past me. Heading off along a path that appeared to lead back up to the main Alvignac road.’
From his eyes Enzo knew that he saw nothing now but the scene being replayed in his mind by memory.
‘For several minutes I just stood there. I knew that Narcisse had not left the house, and I couldn’t understand why. And where was Madame Lavigne going when she was supposed to be meeting me at eight? Finally I decided to go into the house and confront Narcisse. I went up the steps to the side terrace and into the house. It was very dark, and I couldn’t find a light switch that worked. I called out, but there was no reply. I kind of felt my way through from the big room into the kitchen. There was a little light there, coming through the windows from the street. But I didn’t see Narcisse on the floor until I fell over him. And yes, I panicked. There was blood everywhere, and all over me. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And even as I ran off down the street, covered in his blood, I knew exactly how it was going to look.’
‘Just as Madame Lavigne had hoped it would,’ Enzo said. ‘Though she could never have imagined that you’d manage to get yourself covered in the man’s blood. That was a piece of luck she hadn’t counted on.’
Bauer nodded, still reliving the moment. ‘I got up to my room without anyone seeing me, and showered myself clean. I had one change of clothes with me, so I changed and packed and got out of there. I took a leaflet I’d been looking at earlier in the day. A house for let at the Gouffre de Padirac. I knew it would be empty, and that I could probably reach it by foot in a couple of hours. Country roads in the dark. I could do it without being seen.’
‘Then you saw a bike in a barn as you got to the top of the hill.’
Bauer nodded, and looked at Enzo curiously. It seemed as if this man knew everything about him, everything that had happened that night, without having to be told. ‘That made it a lot easier. The Gouffre de Padirac is deserted at this time of year. No one lives here, so it was easy to break into the gîte. The last renters had left some food in the fridge, and the owners hadn’t cleared the place out for the winter yet. So I was safe there, and could survive. At least for a few days.’
Enzo shook his head. ‘But why? What was the point? You were going to have to give yourself up sometime, surely?’
‘Not until they’d figured out that I didn’t kill Narcisse. I was sure they would have to. Because I didn’t. But all the reports on the internet said they were still looking for me. Then you showed up, and I got spooked.’
Enzo gathered his strength to pull himself back to his feet, holding on to the railing for dear life, and offered a hand to help Bauer to his. ‘Well, I know you didn’t do it. And between us we can prove it.’
Bauer nodded and reached for Enzo’s hand as he stood. But on the slick rock his feet slipped suddenly from under him and he grabbed at Enzo in desperation. Their fingers touched, but then he retracted his hand involuntarily, windmilling his arms to try to keep his balance. He glanced over his shoulder at the drop. Which was fatal. And before he fell he looked back at Enzo, eyes black with fear, projecting a hopeless appeal for help. But Enzo was powerless to respond and could only watch in dismay as the young German tipped backwards over the edge to fall in the strangest silence, broken only by the sound of his body shattering on the floor of the cave when he reached it nearly a hundred feet below. The echo of his death reverberated around this ancient underground chamber, transformed in the blink of an eye into Hans Bauer’s gateway to eternity.
It was a long time before Enzo found the strength to clamber over the rail again and on to the walkway. It took nearly half an hour for him to make his way back through the tunnels and along the underground river, emerging finally into the moonlight streaming down from the blue moon that had risen to a point in the sky almost directly overhead. It filled the gouffre with light by which he was able to begin his weary climb back to the top. With only a handful of flights remaining, on legs that would barely support him, he became aware suddenly of a commotion above. He glanced up to see blue flashing lights, and dark figures leaning over the rail around the hole. And then the beams of several torches picking him out on the stairs.
A voice he knew called, ‘Monsieur Macleod! In the name of God, what has happened?’ It was Capitaine Arnaud.
Enzo almost collapsed with relief. With difficulty he found his voice and called back, ‘It’s a long story, capitaine. Just get me out of here.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was nearly eleven by the time Enzo found himself standing on the covered landing outside Anny’s door, raising the wrought-iron knocker to rap three times. The sound of it rang out across the small square and the park, where the moon cast deep shadows over what had been intended as the last resting place of Karlheinz Wolff. Enzo glanced back down the stairs at the sound of feet shuffling in the darkness of the alley that ran back to the night gate from where Bauer had seen Anny emerge on to the terrace the night of the murder.
The door opened and the old lady stood wraithlike in the moonlight. Fully dressed, but shrunken somehow.
He said, ‘I hope you weren’t in bed.’
She gave him a weary smile. ‘Of course not. I’ve been expecting you.’ She turned and walked back through the kitchen towards the grand salon, and Enzo followed, shutting the door behind him.
Anny eased herself down into her habitual rocker by the dying embers of the fire and watched as he sat in the armchair from where he had listened to the story of her mother, and Paul Lange, and Wolff. And the Mona Lisa. She gave him a curious look. Her pupils were dilated, and her eyes seemed black.
‘You’ve been in the wars, monsieur.’ Her voice was slurred.
Enzo raised fingers to his bruised and battered face. A reflex response. He’d had time to wash and change. But his face, he knew, was still a mess. ‘You should see the other guy,’ he said grimly. But neither of them smiled. He took his phone from his pocket and set it to record, then reached across to place it on a side table. ‘I’m going to record our conversation. Unless you have any objection?’
She shrugged, but said nothing.
‘You killed him, Anny, didn’t you? Narcisse.’
But still she held her peace. Fixing him with those unnaturally dark eyes.
‘You made an appointment for him to come at seven-thirty. You threw the switch on the déjoncteur so that the house would be in darkness. You slashed his throat with a kitchen knife and left him lying on your kitchen floor. You knew that Bauer would arrive half an hour later. The door was unlocked. You figured there was a very good chance that he would come in, and in the dark stumble across Narcisse. You probably didn’t imagine he would slip and fall in the blood, but that only helped to serve your narrative. The fact that he then ran just embedded police suspicions that it was he who had killed Narcisse.’
She closed her eyes and said in a small voice, ‘That was very calculating of me.’
‘It was.’
She opened them again, but they seemed glazed now. ‘I have an alibi.’
He shook his head. ‘Bauer suspected you were doing some kind of deal with Narcisse, and came up the back way from the hotel. He was in the alley outside when you emerged from the side entrance and took the path up to the main road.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t expect your friend will hold out for very much longer. Unless, of course, she was in on it.’
Anny snorted. ‘Of course not! Stupid woman. When we set off in h
er car, I “remembered” at the top of the road that I had left my phone in the house. I got Marie-Christine to stop by the Auberge du Vieux Quercy rather than drive the whole way round again, and took the path from there back to the house. Told her I would only be a minute. Which is all it took.’
‘You could very easily have bumped into Bauer on your return to the house. He must already have been halfway up the hill by then.’
‘On such slender threads do the fate of all things hang, Monsieur Macleod. Timing is everything.’
‘So you killed Narcisse and went off for a nice dinner with your friend in Vayrac.’
‘That makes me sound very cold.’
Enzo nodded. ‘Yes, it does. A little like your father, perhaps?’ She flinched, and he sat staring at her for a long moment. ‘Do I have to do all the work here?’
‘It’s your job, isn’t it?’
‘It might be if someone was paying me.’ He paused. ‘So when you got back to the house and you and Marie-Christine “discovered” the body, you told her not to mention that you had gone back for your phone, in case the police thought you might have done it. But she must have had her doubts.’
‘I pay for her daughter’s education at university in Paris, monsieur. She wouldn’t have wanted to lose my patronage.’ She sighed then. ‘But, of course, she was always the weak link.’ She cast a resentful look at Enzo. ‘And then there was you. Sniffing around. Relentlessly. Forensically.’ The breath she drew seemed to tremble in her throat. ‘I’m too old to go to prison.’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you took a man’s life.’ Enzo was unable to find any sympathy for her. ‘Where is she?’ he said.
She looked surprised. ‘Who?’
‘The Mona Lisa. The copy.’
‘There is no copy.’
‘Then why did you kill Narcisse?’
She closed her eyes again, and her breathing seemed shallow. Feeble. And as if finally giving in she said, ‘My mother lost the man she loved, my father, to save the Mona Lisa. I could never have allowed her to fall into the hands of a trader in stolen Nazi art.’ Her head tipped forward, her chin settling on her breast and Enzo became suddenly alarmed. He leapt up and crossed to her chair.
‘Madame, are you alright?’ He knelt down and lifted her chin and her eyes flickered open for the briefest of moments.
‘A healthy overdose, monsieur, of those nice pink pills the doctor prescribed to help me sleep.’
Enzo stood up and hurried to the door. From the outside landing he shouted into the dark. ‘Capitaine, capitaine! Quickly.’
Arnaud and two of his men emerged from the shadows and ran up the steps to follow Enzo back into the house.
‘She’s taken an overdose,’ Enzo said. ‘We need an ambulance fast.’
Arnaud barked into his walkie-talkie and they tried to rouse her. But her eyes remained stubbornly shut, before she raised her head, and with her final breath whispered, ‘Too late, monsieur. Too late. For everything.’
By four in the morning, the moon was casting the shadows of the houses opposite across the tiny square below the park. Several police vehicles lined up in front of Anny’s house, casting blue flashing light on cold stone walls. When the ambulance had finally come, Anny was long dead, and they had removed her to languish in the mortuary of the hospital in Saint-Céré.
Enzo sat at the kitchen table, haunted by her tale of Georgette and the painting, and by the unfolding tragedy that had finally ended here tonight. He rubbed stinging eyes as masked gendarmes and forensics officers came and went, and turned as Arnaud came down from the upstairs bedrooms. ‘We’ve found it,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see?’
Enzo nodded and stood wearily to follow Arnaud back upstairs. At the door to Anny’s bedroom, a variety of Belgian Shepherd known as a Malinois was held on a short leash by his handler, a rubber ball in his mouth, the reward for success.
The bed had been moved and floorboards lifted to reveal a hiding place beneath them, a space between the rafters, around eighty centimetres by sixty. Lined by leatherette and fireproof paper, it was a perfect fit for concealing the Mona Lisa. But it was not a painting that the Malinois had sniffed out. Wrapped in a bin bag, it was the plastic apron Anny had worn to slash the throat of Narcisse, and the kitchen knife with which she had done it. Concealed there in haste before she hurried off to dinner with Marie-Christine in Vayrac.
Enzo was disappointed. ‘No sign of the painting?’
Arnaud appeared surprised. ‘Did you think there would be?’
Enzo shrugged. ‘Maybe not.’
‘And you still think it exists? This copy of the Mona Lisa?’
‘Yes.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘A lot of people have died because of it, capitaine. Lange, Wolff, Narcisse, Bauer. And now Anny herself.’
‘So where is it?’
‘I have no idea.’ He nodded towards the hiding place beneath the floorboards. ‘But I think it was probably here until the day that Narcisse and Bauer came knocking.’
Arnaud sighed and scratched his head. ‘And the person who chased you through the village the other night, and fished you out of the river? Are you any the wiser about who that might have been?’
Enzo lifted a framed family photograph from Anny’s bedside table and regarded it grimly. ‘Yes, capitaine. I think I am.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The troughs at the cemetery gates were filled with dead flowers. Yet more still lay on the graves where they had been placed by relatives at Toussaint.
The burial had been delayed because of the need for a post-mortem, and Enzo had timed his drive up for the signing of his final statement at the Vayrac gendarmerie to coincide with Anny’s funeral. It was being held that morning at the tiny Cimitière Columbarium above the village of Bétaille, and it meant he would have permission to travel, in spite of the pandemic lockdown. He wanted to be there.
It was a stunning day, a clear blue sky stretching west above the river valley, the cliffs on either side of the flood plain glowing almost pink in the late morning sunshine. And it was warm. A welcome respite after the rain and cold of October. And at the very least, from here Anny would have a privileged view of the world for eternity.
Although Covid restrictions still allowed up to thirty people at a funeral, there were only a handful of vehicles next to the hearse in the car park. Enzo pulled in beside them and got stiffly out of the car. Injuries healed more slowly with age, and he still carried the scars and bore the pain of recent encounters.
He looked up the path from the gate and saw a tiny crowd of mourners assembled around the family tomb near the top of the hill. They stood socially distanced and wearing masks, and Enzo could barely hear the mumbled eulogy of a priest who, in all likelihood, had never even known Anny Lavigne. Tombs and headstones climbed in serried rows, one above the other, over the crest of the hill. A couple of tall pine trees stood sentinel at the gates opposite, and gazing over the village below, Enzo thought he could actually see the apartment above the double garage where Mona Lisa’s double had spent the final years of the war.
The priest and the mourners turned to make their way down the hill after the closing of the tomb, and Enzo moved back out into the car park. A few disinterested glances were directed his way before the family group from the photograph in Anny’s bedroom came through the gates.
Elodie, he thought, was in her late thirties or early forties. A handsome woman, and he wondered if there was any of Georgette in her. She had auburn hair pulled back in a sombre bun and wore a dark coat that fell below her knees. Her husband was tall and balding, and looked uncomfortable in his funeral suit. Their teenage son eyed Enzo cautiously from behind his mask.
Elodie stopped and looked at him, frowning. ‘You’re the man who caught my aunt.’
Enzo inclined his head. ‘I’m s
orry, madame.’
‘So am I.’
But if he had expected to feel the heat of her wrath, he was surprised when she looked at him with nothing but sadness in her eyes.
‘I can’t imagine what she was thinking. To have done such a thing.’
Enzo’s gaze strayed towards her son. A boy of seventeen or eighteen. Tall, like his father, with a thatch of thick black hair, cropped at either side and gelled back across the crown. He flushed and cast his eyes towards the ground.
His mother did not miss the moment. ‘What?’ she said, glancing from Enzo to her son and back again.
Enzo said, ‘Tell him to pull down the mask.’
‘Why?’
‘Just tell him.’
Elodie glared uncomprehendingly at Enzo then turned to the boy. ‘Do what he says.’
‘Mu-um . . .’ he protested.
‘Just do it, Franck.’
Reluctantly Franck pulled his blue surgical mask down below his chin and stared defiantly at Enzo.
Enzo said, ‘You damned near killed me!’
‘I saved your life.’
Enzo was incensed. ‘Only after you’d put it in danger.’
Elodie was alarmed now. ‘Wait! What’s all this about?’ And when neither of them responded she turned to the boy. ‘Franck? Tell me.’
Franck pursed petulant lips. ‘It was Great-Aunt Anny’s idea. It was supposed to be a joke.’
‘It was no joke,’ Enzo said. ‘It was supposed to scare me off. To make me think you were Bauer. And it very nearly got rid of me for good.’
‘I pulled you out of the river, didn’t I?’
Elodie looked to her husband for help, but saw only incomprehension in his face and she turned back to Enzo. ‘Will you please explain?’