Blacklight Blue

by Peter May

  BLACKLIGHT

  BLUE

  PETER MAY

  First published in the USA in 2008 by Poisoned Pen Press

  This ebook edition published in 2013 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2008 by Peter May

  The moral right of Peter May to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78206 887 7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Books by Peter May

  The Enzo Files

  Extraordinary People

  The Critic

  Blacklight Blue

  Freeze Frame

  Blowback

  The China Thrillers

  The Firemaker

  The Fourth Sacrifice

  The Killing Room

  Snakehead

  The Runner

  Chinese Whispers

  The Lewis Trilogy

  The Blackhouse

  The Lewis Man

  The Chessmen

  Standalone Novels

  Virtually Dead

  The Noble Path

  Hidden Faces

  Fallen Hero

  The Reporter

  For John, Iain and Suzanne

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I received enthusiastic help and support during my researches for Blacklight Blue from the following people, to whom I would like to offer my grateful thanks: Dr. Steven C. Campman, Medical Examiner, San Diego, California; Professor Joe Cummins, Emeritus of Genetics, University of Western Ontario, Canada; Alexander Tadevossian, consultant interpreter, Geneva, Switzerland; Philippe Boula de Mareüil, researcher in linguistics, Paris, France; Jean-Claude Morera, writer, poet, and Secretary General of Paris Tech, for his advice on the Catalan language; and Rufus and Jilly Dawson, for allowing me to use their wonderful house in the Auvergne.

  We are linked by blood,

  and blood is memory without language.

  – Joyce Carol Oates

  Prologue

  Spain, July 1970

  She had caught the young woman’s eye the day before. By the swimming pool. The little boy was in a foul mood, still unsteady on his feet and determined to defy his mother. But it didn’t matter. She had already decided. He was the one.

  His mother’s smile was strained. ‘He’s hungry. He’s always bad tempered when he’s hungry. His brother’s just the same.’

  ‘We can all be a bit grumpy when we need to eat.’ It was almost a defence, as if she was empathising with him already. His mother would remember the conversation for the rest of her life. And always wonder.

  It was midday then, and across a sun-burnished bay the jumble of white, red-roofed buildings that clustered around the church was reflected in deepest turquoise.

  Now, just two hours after sunset, it was moonlight that spilled across its mirrored surface, seen in a backward glance from where the dark hills folded one upon the other, before the Mediterranean disappeared from view. Yesterday’s calm anticipation had been replaced by fear verging on panic. The blood, sticky and dark, was everywhere. On her hands, on the steering wheel. A careless moment, the razor-sharp edge of a freshly cut fingernail. A sleepy hand that grazed her cheek as it reached out to grasp her neck.

  From the darkened terrace she had seen his parents in the light of the restaurant on the far side of the pool. Wine and laughter. Her whispered words of reassurance to the boy were superfluous. He was asleep already, his bloody panda left lying on the bedroom floor where it had fallen.

  The road wound down in hairpin turns into the dark of the pine forest, gnarled roots searching among the stones of ancient terraces for a hold on the world, their parasol canopies like clouds shading them from a startling moon.

  With the lights of Llança receding in her rearview mirror, the route north made its tortuous way around successive headlands, affording only occasional glimpses of the sea. Then, below, the floodlit railway junction at Portbou, massive lifting gear straddling a confluence of tracks. A change of gauge before crossing an invisible line beyond which everything would change. Language. Culture. The future. The past.

  The French frontier stood at the end of a long climb out of the town. It was the moment she had feared most. There was no one on the Spanish side. A light burned in the customs post, but there was no sign of life. The barrier was down at the French douane. A sleepy immigration officer looked up from his desk behind sliding glass as she drew to a halt. She fumbled for her passport with bloody fingers. What would she tell him? If she showed him her card then he would remember her for sure when the alarm was raised. But he didn’t even look. He lifted the barrier and waved her through. He would never see the blood or her card or register her face or see the baby boy asleep in a cot on the back seat.

  She was through. It was done. Only the future lay ahead.

  Ninety minutes later she drove past the entrance to the commando training fort on the hill, a narrow road beneath twisting vines in brilliant flower, mired still in the shadow of night, and parked her car next to the little stone cottage that sat on the edge of the cliffs. She was home. And with child. And would spend the next sixteen years raising a killer.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Paris, February 1992

  Yves watched the traffic in the boulevard below come to a standstill in the frigid Paris morning. The bouchon stretched as far as he could see, to the next traffic lights and beyond. He could almost feel the frustration of the drivers trapped in their cars rise to meet him like the pollution that spewed from smoky exhausts. The city air was not good for him. It was time for a change.

  The long, repeating monotone in his ear was broken by a man’s voice. ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Salut. It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ The voice seemed tense.

  Yves was cool, relaxed. Each word delivered with the easy assurance of a soldier with an automatic weapon pumping bullets into an unarmed man. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday. I was out of the country.’ He wasn’t quite sure why he felt the need to elaborate. It just seemed more casual. Conversational. ‘Portsmouth. In England. A business trip.’

  ‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’ Clear irritation in the other man’s voice now.

  ‘I just thought you’d wonder why I hadn’t called.’

  ‘Well, you’re calling me now.’

  ‘I was going to suggest tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock. If that’s okay with you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Your place.’

  He sensed the other’s reticence in his hesitation. ‘I prefer somewhere public, you know that.’

  ‘Listen, friend, we need to talk.’ If there was a threat in the forced intimacy of the word, ‘friend,’ it went unnoticed. He heard a sigh at the other end of the line.

  ‘You know where to find me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Three o’clock, then.’

  �
�Fine.’ He retracted his cellphone aerial and saw that the traffic had not moved.

  Lambert’s apartment was on the second floor of a recently renovated building in the thirteenth arrondissement. A newly installed electronic entry system was designed to cut costs by doing away with the need for a concierge. Which meant that no one but Lambert would witness his arrival. And no one, not even Lambert, would know when he left.

  ‘Yeh?’ The speaker in the wall issued a scratched rendition of Lambert’s voice.

  ‘It’s me.’ Yves never used his name if he didn’t have to.

  The buzzer sounded, and he pushed the door open.

  Lambert was waiting on the landing. A gaping door opened into the apartment behind him. He was a strange young man, abnormally pale, sparse blond hair shaved to a cropped fuzz. Penumbrous shadows beneath darker eyes punctuated a skeletal face, and bony fingers clasped Yves’ gloved hand in a perfunctory greeting. ‘Come in.’ He glanced towards the stairs as if concerned that someone might be watching.

  The bay windows in the salon looked out towards the park, bearing out Yves’ assumption that the room was not overlooked. A well-worn sofa and armchairs had seen better days, hiding their tawdriness beneath colourful, fringed throws. Yves smelled old garlic and stewed coffee coming from the open kitchen door. And the whole apartment was suffused with the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Yves felt it catching his throat, and as Lambert took out a fresh cigarette, he said, ‘Don’t do that.’

  Lambert paused with the cigarette halfway to his mouth, and cast wary eyes towards his visitor. Then, reluctantly, he tapped the cigarette back into its packet. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lambert disappeared into the kitchen. Yves perched on the edge of the sofa and saw motes of dust hanging still in the slabs of weak winter sunlight that fell at angles through the window. He heard his own breath as he forced it in and out of contracting lungs. His blue eyes felt gritty at first, then watery. His tension was palpable.

  Lambert reappeared with small cups of black coffee and placed them on the table. Yves leaned forward to drop in a sugar lump and poke it with a coffee spoon until it dissolved.

  ‘Aren’t you going to take off your coat?’ Lambert sat opposite, in the armchair, keeping his eyes on his visitor as he raised his coffee cup to his lips.

  ‘I’m not staying.’

  Lambert’s eyes dropped to his guest’s hands. ‘You can take off your gloves, surely?’

  ‘I have a form of psoriasis,’ Yves said. ‘It affects my hands. When I have a flare-up I have to rub them with cream. I keep the gloves on to protect them.’ He took a sip of his coffee. It was bitter and unpleasant, and he wished he had declined the offer. It was only putting off the moment.

  ‘So what is it we need to talk about?’ Lambert seemed anxious to get this over with.

  But Yves wasn’t listening. The tightness across his chest had become vice-like, and his lungs were reluctant to give up spent air. His throat was swelling, and he felt the rapid pulse of blood in his carotid arteries. Tears spilled from reddening eyes as did his coffee as he tried to replace the cup on the table. The sneezing and coughing began almost simultaneously. His mouth gaped, his eyes stared, and panic gripped him. His hand shot to his face, a politeness dinned into him during childhood years by a smothering mother. Cover your mouth when you cough! Coughs and sneezes spread diseases! For a moment, he thought that Lambert knew why he had come, and that there had been something in the coffee. But the symptoms were only too familiar.

  It was nearly impossible to breathe now. In a world blurred by tears he saw Lambert get to his feet, and heard the alarm in his voice. ‘Are you alright? What the hell’s wrong with you?’

  He sucked in a breath and forced it out again. ‘Do you … do you keep pets?’

  Lambert shook his head in consternation. ‘Of course not. In God’s name, man, what’s wrong?’

  As Yves struggled to his feet, Lambert rounded the table to stop him from falling. It was now or never. Yves clutched the outstretched bony arms and threw his weight forward. He heard Lambert’s gasp of surprise, and then the air exploding from his lungs as both men toppled over the coffee table and crashed to the floor. Yves was on top of him, but could barely see, mucus and saliva exploding from his mouth and nose as his body fought against the toxins with which his own immune system was attacking his airways.

  Lambert was screaming and flailing beneath him. Yves’ gloved hands found the younger man’s face, then his neck, and he squeezed. But his physical powers were failing, and he released his hold on the neck to seek out the head. He felt Lambert’s barking breath in his face, before his hands found that familiar grip, one hand spread across the face, the other at the back of the head. And then it was easy, in spite of everything. A quick twist. He heard the pop of the disarticulated vertebrae, and almost felt the sharp edge of the bone, released from its cartilage, slice through the spinal cord. Lambert went limp. Yves rolled off him and lay fighting for breath. If he blacked out now, there was a good chance he would never wake up. This was as bad as he had ever known it.

  It took a superhuman effort to force himself to his knees. He fumbled in his coat pocket to find the bottle of pills and closed desperate fingers around it.

  He had no idea how he managed to reach the kitchen, or how it was even possible to force the pills over a throat that was swollen nearly closed. He heard the sound of breaking glass as the tumbler fell into the sink, and the rattle of pills as they spilled across the floor. But none of that mattered. If he didn’t get out of here now, he would be as dead as the man he had come to kill.

  Chapter Two

  Strasbourg, November 2008

  Sleet gently slapped the window like the soft touch of tapping fingertips, then turned instantly wet to run like tears spilled by the coming winter.

  Kirsty watched anxiously from the top floor of the old house. She had been there six months now, the accumulated possessions of her gypsy existence finding more than enough space in the single room and kitchen. It was one of twelve studio apartments in this early twentieth century mansion, built reputedly by some wealthy German industrialist.

  Strasbourg was a city unsure of itself. Neither French, nor German. Disputed for centuries by old enemies, it had opted finally to be European, a decidedly amorphous notion lacking any sense of common culture or identity. While its citizens spoke French, the German influence was pervasive, and the establishment of the European Parliament on its northern flank had brought a flood of politicians and civil servants speaking everything from Polish to Portuguese, Estonian to Italian.

  Which, Kirsty reflected, was just as well. Since without them, she would be without a job. She glanced at her watch and felt a stab of apprehension. If her taxi did not arrive in the next few minutes, she would soon be looking for new employment.

  She cursed the weather. And she cursed the fact that she had decided not to take her bike. Usually she cycled to the parliament, a twenty-minute daily ride through the Orangerie and the leafy suburban back streets that stretched along the river. But in the translation booths that overlooked the semicircular debating chamber, it didn’t matter what she wore. Today it did. Today she would be in the full glare of the press corps, with their cameras and microphones and questions. She would be sitting at the right hand of a man whose financial muscle and political pull were almost unsurpassed in the European Union. She would be his ears, and his voice, and needed to look her best.

  A horn sounding from below quickened her pulse. At last! She grabbed her coat and her bag and ran down the stairs. As she opened the door on to the Rue Bernegger she paused, raising her umbrella to protect expensively coiffed hair and carefully applied make-up. Then she slid into the rear seat of the taxi and shook the sleet back into the street.

  ‘You’re late.’ She couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  The driver shrugged. ‘Traffic’s a bitch. When do you have to be there?’

  ‘Nine.’ She heard h
im suck in his breath.

  ‘Not much chance of that, mademoiselle. There’s nothing moving over either bridge.’

  She began to feel sick. This was turning into a nightmare. ‘Well, can’t you go downtown, and back out on the Avenue de la Paix?’

  ‘The centre ville isn’t any better. Only things still moving are the trams.’

  She sighed her frustration. ‘It’s really important I get there by nine.’ If she had been going to the parliament they could simply have driven down the Quai de l’Orangerie. But the press conference was in the Palais des Congrès, the huge convention centre on the north side of the Place de Bordeaux. And to get there, they needed to cross two of the myriad waterways that divided and subdivided the city.

  She sat in the back, almost rigid with tension, and watched as the sleet-streaked windows smeared city streets thick with fallen leaves. They moved freely at first, and she began to relax. But as they approached the pont that bridged the river between the Boulevard de la Dordogne and the Boulevard Jacques Preiss, the traffic ground to a standstill. She saw that the sleet was turning to snow.

  She took a deep breath and felt it tremble in her throat. There was no way they were going to make it. She had taken the one-week engagement in the hope that it might lead to better things. It had slotted in nicely between the end of her one-year probationary contract with the European Parliament and the start of a new two-year term on full pay. Very shortly she would sit The Test, and if she passed it she would become a career interpreter for the European Union. The prospect of which seemed to stretch ahead of her, like a prison sentence. If life was going to offer more, then she wanted to find out now what that might be.

  Which was why she had jumped at the chance to work for the Italian. He was the chief executive officer of a major motor car manufacturer. But his company made most of its money from guided missile systems and air defence batteries, and the parliament was threatening to vote down approval given by the Council of Ministers for the production of antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs. However, unlike the Council of Ministers, whose majority vote had carried the approval, the Parliament required a unanimous vote to overturn it. A rare occurrence. But on the vexed and controversial question of landmines and cluster bombs, for once it looked like the MEPs might actually vote with one voice.