I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  Martinez looked fleetingly uncomfortable. He was still holding out his hand. “Madame?” Niamh took her passport from her bag and placed it in his hand. He jerked his head towards the corridor behind him. “Along the hall and down the stairs.” And she was glad of Dimitri’s support as he led her towards the staircase.

  Outside, the early morning had leached all warmth from the preceding day and there was a penetrating chill in the air. The lights of the city reflected on the dark flow of the Seine, and at the far end of the Île de la Cité the floodlit Notre-Dame infused the night sky with light, obliterating the stars. Police vehicles were lined up all along the Quai des Orfèvres. Traffic still criss-crossed the Pont Saint-Michel. Niamh found something painful in the prosaic sense of life continuing as usual. Other people’s lives. Not hers. Not Ruairidh’s. And she was overwhelmed by a sense of desolation. What on earth to do now? About anything. Nothing mattered any more. Without Ruairidh, what point was there in even putting one foot in front of the other? And yet here she was, tipped out by police into the city in the middle of the night. Thoughts to be gathered, decisions to be made. Dimitri saved her from having to address either for the moment. “I need a drink,” he said. He buttoned his shirt at the neck and turned up the collar of his jacket. “What about you?”

  She nodded, unable to find her voice, and became aware that she was shivering.

  “You’re cold,” he said. “It’s not too far to the Rue Coquillière. The bars there are open all night. The walk will warm us up.” He crooked an arm through hers, and she drew in against him as they set off north across the Île de la Cité to the Pont Neuf. She was grateful for the comfort of his warmth, and the closeness of another human being. Grief was such a solitary affliction.

  It took them fifteen minutes, walking briskly and in silence, to get there. Self-consciousness had caused her finally to slip her arm from his. After all, he was a man she barely knew. But she was still cold, wearing only a thin white T-shirt beneath her jacket, white sneakers without socks below her jeans.

  Amazingly, the Rue Coquillière was alight with restaurants, bars and tables filled with all-night revellers. The Au Pied de Cochon was crowded. The only seats available were on the cold of the terrasse among the smokers. So they continued, past a domed and floodlit building away to their left, to the Taverne Kalisbrau on the corner. Inside, stained-glass ceilings threw coloured light on to tiled oak tables, and a hand-painted bar pumped Alsatian beers on draft. Voices raised in laughter seemed obscenely inappropriate, people whose lives had not been touched by death that night.

  They found a quiet corner and Dimitri ordered two beers. But Niamh shook her head. “Coffee. Black.” At least it was warm in here, and although a beer fizzing cold around her lips might have offered the possibility of escape she was not ready to lose her pain. He watched her as she sipped on her espresso. Then without preamble said, “They told you that you were a suspect?”

  She replaced her cup in its saucer and nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew that Ruairidh and Irina were having an affair.”

  “He told you?”

  Niamh shook her head. “I received an anonymous email.”

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You confronted him with it?”

  “Yes. Just before he left the hotel.”

  “And?”

  “He denied it.”

  “You believed him?”

  She shrugged, unwilling still to fully accept that it was true. “He told me he had a meeting at Yves Saint Laurent. But actually he was meeting Irina.”

  Dimitri appeared to digest this. Then, “They told me that the bomb was almost certainly triggered by someone using a remote control. Probably a phone. Someone who was in the square and who picked his, or her, moment.”

  Niamh remembered how they had made her empty her pockets when she first arrived at police headquarters, and searched her bag. And then later taken her phone away for several hours. Was that why they’d let her go? Because she was carrying nothing that could have remotely detonated the bomb? Even had she wanted to, how could she ever have contrived such a thing?

  As if he were able to read her thoughts, Dimitri said, “Georgy spent five years in the Russian army. He fought in Chechnya. I guess he would know how to do something like that.”

  Niamh looked at him, pricked by curiosity for the first time. “What brought you here? To Paris, I mean. You and Irina.”

  He shrugged listlessly. “We’ve been here for years. Irina was ten, I think. I was thirteen. Our parents were dissidents in the old Soviet Union. It became too dangerous for them to stay. How were they to know that the USSR would collapse just a few years later? Irina wanted to go back after they died. It was me who persuaded her to stay. The future was here in the West, I told her.” A tiny puff of self-contempt exploded around his lips. “What future? If she had gone back when she wanted to she would still be alive today.” She saw him bite on his lip, hard enough to draw blood. He lowered his head to gaze at his hands cradling his beer glass in front of him. Niamh saw him blinking furiously and knew he was fighting back tears he did not want to shed in front of her.

  She said, “If you could go back and change one thing in your life, it might change everything else in your future, but not necessarily the thing you would want to change. All you can ever regret are the decisions you make in the full awareness of their consequences. And, God knows, there are enough of them.”

  He raised his eyes to look at her thoughtfully. “I wish . . .” He smiled wanly. “I wish I could have met you in other circumstances.”

  She examined his dark liquid eyes for a moment then drained her cup. “I should go.” She stood up. “Thank you for the coffee, Dimitri.” She glanced through the window towards the world outside. “Will there be taxis at this hour?”

  He nodded. “Of course.” He took out his phone. “I can call you one.”

  “No. I’d rather walk, at least part of the way. I need some air. And some time.”

  He shrugged. “Just keep heading north. You’re bound to find a rank on one of the boulevards when you want one.”

  The combination of the grief, her fatigue and the cold night air made her feel a little heady when she stepped outside. Through the glass she saw Dimitri catch a waiter’s eye to indicate that he wanted another beer. She wondered how long he would be sitting there, and how many beers it would take to wash away his guilt.

  The Rue du Louvre was dark and deserted, a slight breeze rustling already brittle leaves in trees that would, in a week or two, succumb to the onset of autumn. She walked for a long time, breathing deeply, trying not to cry. An urge that came in waves, with a moment recalled, or an unexpected memory. Things she seemed unable to prevent from seeping into conscious recollection. All she wanted was Ruairidh back. She would, right now, have forgiven him anything, if only she could feel his arms around her. It was still impossible to believe that he was gone. From childhood you know that life will end in death. But nothing prepares you for its finality. The irrevocable, irreversible nature of it.

  From somewhere not far behind, she heard what sounded like a cough. She turned to look. But the street was empty. Not a soul, not a vehicle in sight. She glanced up. Above the shops, apartments lined the street. A window left open, perhaps. Someone coughing in their sleep. But it made her feel suddenly vulnerable, and she hurried to cross the road, quickening her pace. Now she imagined she heard footsteps, and turned quickly to catch sight of whoever might be following her, but again there was no one. Nothing. She strained to see in the dark and wondered if she saw a movement in the shadows of a doorway some way further back.

  She decided not to hang around to find out, turning into the narrow Rue d’Argout, and regretting it at once, as tall buildings closed in around her. Shops and restaurants shuttered and simmering in silent obscurity. Too late to go back. She started to run. Past a clothes shop, a furniture store, a crêperie, the gaudily painted frontage of an African bar. The lig
hts of the Rue Montmartre ahead were still frustratingly far off.

  She glanced over her shoulder and fear stabbed her chest like a tiny, well-honed blade. There was a figure silhouetted against the lights of the street she had just left behind. She turned and sprinted now to the end of the street, and out into the Rue Montmartre. Up ahead lights shone along the Rue d’Aboukir, cars and the occasional bus drifting by. She forced herself to stop running and walked quickly towards them. To her relief a line of taxis stood on the corner, green lights on roofs. She slipped into the car at the head of the line and woke up a startled driver.

  “Crowne Plaza,” she said breathlessly. “Place de la République.” And she turned to look out of the rear windscreen, back along the street from which she had just come. It was quite empty. She could see the darker junction with the Rue d’Argout, but there was no one there, no movement among the shadows. She turned to breathe a sigh of relief, sinking into the seat as the taxi pulled away, and cursed her overactive imagination.

  Staff at the hotel were extremely agitated when she got back. A manager was called from an office somewhere behind reception, and with a Heepian ringing of hands and profuse apologies explained that the police had searched her room. The hotel had been obliged to grant them access, since they had arrived with a warrant issued by a juge d’instruction. If Niamh wished a change of room, they would be only too happy to upgrade her. But all that Niamh wanted was for them all to go away, to leave her alone to retreat to the final space she had shared with Ruairidh. To have his things around her, to touch them and smell them and believe, if only for a moment, that he was still there, a presence among all the traces he had left behind him.

  Whoever searched the room had left a mess behind, the contents of both suitcases tipped out on the bed, drawers and wardrobe emptied. They had even rifled through the laundry. The hotel must have provided a master key to let them into the safe, and they had left it lying open. For a moment Niamh thought they had taken her iPad, then remembered she had left it on the bed after showing Ruairidh the email. She looked around the room and spotted it lying now on the dressing table.

  She crossed to the window and looked down into the courtyard where she had last seen him sitting on his own at a table. Before Irina arrived. The beer he had left there was long gone.

  Wearily she began repacking both their suitcases, trying not to think. She was meticulous in folding and refolding everything, like someone suffering OCD. Anything to fill the emptiness of the room, the meaningless nature of time that she no longer knew how to spend.

  It was only as she closed the lid of her suitcase that she spotted Ruairidh’s briefcase leaning against the bedside table at his side of the bed. When she picked it up she saw that both straps had been unclasped. So they had been through that as well.

  She sat on the bed and opened it, sifting through papers and folders, until she came across his diary tucked into one of the sleeves. For some reason he always preferred to mark up his appointments in an old-fashioned hardback diary, while she had long since gone electronic, entering everything on her iPad or phone.

  She flipped through the pages until she came across his entries for the four days they were spending in Paris. There were three “RDV with I.V.”s on days and at times he had told her he had meetings with buyers or agents. I.V.—Irina Vetrov. She felt an enormous weight of anger and disappointment press down on her. Somewhere deep inside, she had still been harbouring the hope that somehow she had got it all wrong. That well wisher was just some malicious friend or colleague or customer who for some reason wished her ill. But here was the proof. And, anyway, hadn’t he met Irina downstairs, and got into the car with her last night, when he’d told Niamh he was going to YSL?

  Which is when she noticed an entry for the following Thursday. September 28th. Their tenth wedding anniversary. It was a reservation for two at Alain Passard’s three-star Michelin restaurant, Arpège, opposite the Musée Rodin in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Niamh remembered their Italian agent telling them he had eaten there, and insisting that they must try it. But you had to book weeks, sometimes months, in advance. Had Ruairidh been planning to take Irina there? But why would he choose their wedding anniversary to do it?

  She flipped to the back of the diary, where a couple of pieces of flimsy white card stuck out from the top of it. They were air tickets. One in Ruairidh’s name, one in Niamh’s. Flights with Flybe from Stornoway, via Inverness and Manchester, to Paris. The outward flight was on the 27th, the return on the 29th. With trembling fingers Niamh unfolded a sheet of paper wrapped around them. It was a printout of an email from the Crowne Plaza confirming reservations for Ruairidh and Niamh on the 27th and 28th.

  It wasn’t Irina he had been planning to take to Arpège, it was Niamh. She let the diary and the tickets and the printout fall on to the bed. Why would he bother with such an elaborate surprise for their tenth wedding anniversary if he was having an affair with Irina Vetrov? None of it made sense. She buried her face in her hands and felt her head ache. A deep, hollowing ache born of grief and confusion.

  Then she threw her head back and shouted at the ceiling, “For God’s sake, Ruairidh, what were you doing!?” The silence that followed said more eloquently than any words, that he would never be able to tell her.

  She turned and lifted the shirt he had worn during the day yesterday. A soft cotton in his favourite pale green. And she held it to her face, breathing deeply. It smelled of him. Of his deodorant, and aftershave. But more than that, of the subtle, distinctive essence of the man himself, secreted through his skin in the oils that were unique to him.

  It felt like she was inhaling him. And as she lowered the shirt from her face, she cried for the first time. Tears torn from her reluctance to accept that he really was gone, and the knowledge that nothing could bring him back.

  Sobs ripped themselves from her throat and chest, until both they and her tears had exhausted themselves. She sat for a long time then, coming only very slowly to the realization that she had to think ahead. That there were things to be done. People to be told. Her parents. She closed her eyes and breathed out deeply. Ruairidh’s parents. But she knew she couldn’t bring herself to speak to them right now. She took her phone from her bag and opened her Contacts app. She needed someone to share this with. Ruairidh’s brother, Donald. She looked at the time. Nearly 6 a.m. An hour earlier in Aberdeen. But it didn’t matter. He needed to know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The alarm crashed into her dreams like the cacophonous chorus of a Peking Opera. Sylvie Braque opened her eyes only to shut them again, immediately blinded. Early-morning sunlight poured through her bedroom window, splashing gold all across her tortured duvet, illuminating the layers of dust long settled on almost every surface.

  She fumbled for her phone on the bedside table to silence the noise, then lay on her back breathing rapidly. In her dream someone was chasing her in the dark. Someone she couldn’t see. Someone so close she could feel their breath on her neck.

  She squinted to her right and lifted the phone to check the time. It was just after 10 a.m. Little more than two hours since she had finally got to bed. But she had very little time. She forced herself to swing her legs over the side of the bed, and brushed the hair and the sleep from her eyes. As she rose to make her way into the hall she caught sight of herself in the mirror and shuddered. A favourite baggy cotton nightgown hung to below her knees. She had several of them. Passion-killers, her ex had called them. Most of the lacy lingerie he had insisted on buying her for birthdays and anniversaries still languishing in the bottom drawer of the dresser. She had never felt comfortable dressing up for sex.

  Her hair was a tangle, and the make-up she had so carefully applied to her eyes the previous evening was smudged black around the shadows beneath them. Only a thin, broken line of lipstick remained, clinging stubbornly to her lower lip.

  In the hall she passed the open door to the twins’ room. They still shared a bed, and Braque posted a mental no
te to make it up before she left to collect them. She had been ignoring it for six days now. Toys and drawing books, and crayons and dollies lay about the floor where the girls had left them, taking only their favourite soft toys to their father’s apartment. Sunlight fell in strips between the blinds, tracing distorted lines of yellow across the chaos.

  She showered quickly, hoping to wash away the fatigue, stepping out to stand on a towel and briskly rubbing herself dry. Another glance in the mirror. Her face pale and unremarkable, the first signs of crow’s feet around her eyes. No time to do anything with her hair. She grabbed the drier and gave it a quick blow-dry then tied it, still damp, in a plain ponytail behind her head. One more glance. The face that looked back at her was severe and unflattering. No time for make-up.

  In the bedroom she hauled on the worn brown leather boots that tucked beneath her jeans and dragged on a fresh pull, flicking her ponytail out from the neck at the back. The phone rang as she was slipping into her faithful old leather bomber. She swore softly and grabbed it from the bed. “Oui?”

  “Hope I didn’t wake you.” The sarcasm was evident in his tone.

  “No, boss. I’m just on my way out to pick up the girls.”

  “Do it later.”

  “I can’t. My ex has had them all week. I have to get them this morning.”

  “I need you to go down to the Quai de l’Horloge. The guys at the police scientifique have recovered important evidence from bits of the bomb.”

  Braque sighed. “It’s my day off.”

  “If you want days off, and holidays, and a thirty-five-hour week, then get yourself another job, Braque. You want to be a detective, or a mother? Make a choice.” His impatience reverberated in her ear. “I need a report on my desk this afternoon. The Ministry want this publicly ruled out as terrorism asap.” He didn’t wait for a response.