by Peter May
She had been alone in the room since first light had cast the feeble shadow of barred windows on the opposite wall, and she didn’t know if she could ever contemplate life outside of it again.
She had no idea how long it was before the door opened and her young interrogator returned. The silent, older woman followed him into the room and sat down without a word. Kirsty raised glowering, sleep-starved eyes briefly to meet hers. She couldn’t have said why, but every emotion she felt seemed concentrated in a powerful hatred of the woman. The young detective dropped a file on the desk between them and looked at Kirsty with an odd expression of puzzled curiosity.
‘The police scientifique have made an initial assessment of the scene,’ he said. ‘Your employer was extremely fortunate to survive.’ He looked up and seemed to be gazing at the grey light seeping in around the small windows high up on the wall. ‘But that’s probably because he wasn’t the intended target.’ He fixed Kirsty once more with quizzical eyes. ‘It was a small explosive device, Mademoiselle Macleod. Limited. Targeted. It was placed under the podium, directly beneath the interpreter’s seat. And since the seating arrangements had been fixed in advance, that can only mean one thing. The bomb wasn’t meant for the Italian. It was meant for you.’
Chapter Six
Enzo walked through the town in a trance. A dead man walking. The streets and the buildings were painted with a sense of unreality, as if he were already one step removed from them. As if he had already embarked on the journey to that other place.
In his mind he had.
The streets were populated with ghosts. Some of them seemed familiar. Some even said bonjour, as if they knew him. But no one knew him any more. No one would know him ever again. He passed the Cathedral at the top of the square, and felt its cold air breathe out through the open door. He was not tempted to enter, to fall on his knees and offer prayers to someone else’s God.
His mother had been a good Italian Catholic, but had raised him in a Protestant land, in a city where sectarian hatred had found focus in football. He had rejected it all, and wondered now if faith might have brought comfort. Somehow, he doubted it.
As he passed La Halle, and the Café Forum on the corner, he heard someone call out his name. A familiar voice. But he kept on walking.
He had no idea if Sophie would be at home or working out at the gym. But if she was still at the apartment, he couldn’t face her. Not yet. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be ready for that. How could he tell her that the life she had spent without a mother was soon to have the father taken, too? Her grief would be too painful. Greater even than his own self-pity. After all, she would have to live with it. In three short months his life would be over.
He retrieved his car from the lock-up, his beloved restored 2CV with its roll-back roof and soft suspension, and drove south out of town, over the Pont Louis Philippe, before turning left after the statue of the vierge and beginning the long ascent.
The Mont St. Cyr was ill-named. It wasn’t really a mountain. Just a very high hill. But it had commanding views over the town below, contained in a long loop of the River Lot, and beyond the Pont Valentré to the viaduct that carried the RN20 over the deep gash of the river valley south towards Toulouse. Tourists were attracted here in the summer, to take in the spectacular aerial view, to gaze through the pay-binoculars, and take photographs. But it was deserted on this misty cold November day, as it had been when Enzo first came here more than twenty years ago, the night that Pascale died and left him to bring up their newborn daughter on his own.
He climbed the few steps down to the bench where he had sat that night wondering where he would find the courage to carry on living. Now he wondered how he would find the courage to die. It wasn’t the dying itself. We were all going to die, and we knew it. We just didn’t know when. And that was the hardest thing. He remembered when he was still a kid in Glasgow, just four or five years old. Someone had died. It might have been his grandfather. And he had come face to face for the first time with the realisation that he, too, would die some day. He had sat on the edge of his bed and thought about it for some time, before deciding that it was a long way in the future, and that he wouldn’t worry about it until the day came. A convenient compartmentalisation of death that had served him well for most of his fifty-one years. Only now, someone had broken the seals and opened the compartment, and he found himself staring in the face the moment he had so conveniently dispatched to a far-off place. Dammit, his destiny might have been to die in a traffic accident tomorrow. But he wouldn’t have known it until the last moment, if at all. To watch the last precious weeks and days slip through his fingers like sand, seemed like such cruel torture.
And then he thought about Kirsty, the fruit of a relationship back in Scotland that had withered and died when she was still a child. He thought about all the lost moments, the things they might have shared and didn’t through all the years of estrangement. He had always thought that somehow there might still be time. To catch up. To make up. There had been a rapprochement of sorts, but she was still tender and touchy and kept him at arm’s length. And now the time he thought they still had was being taken away, and all the regrets seemed to weigh so much more heavily.
He let his eyes wander over the jumble of roofs below until they came to rest on the twin roofs of the cathedral. They were perfectly round, like a woman’s breasts, and topped by short, moulded lightning rods like two erect nipples. He thought of all the women he had known, those he had loved, those he had failed, those who had frustrated him to distraction. He shook his head and allowed himself a tiny smile of sad regret. It was all behind him now. The game was almost over. All that remained was to wait for the referee’s whistle at the end of extra time.
He weaved through the empty tables on the terrasse outside the Lampara restaurant and pushed open the door to the stairwell beyond. He climbed the steps with heavy legs and hoped that Sophie would not be there.
He called her name when he opened the door, and was relieved to be answered by silence. In the séjour he threw open the French windows and let in the cold air from the square below. The trees had shed most of their leaves, and lay thick and still brittle with frost among the cars in the car park. It wasn’t until he turned back into the room than he noticed the red light winking on his DECT phone. Someone had called and left a message. He was tempted to ignore it. After all, whatever it was, it would no longer have any importance for him. But even as he shuffled idly through the papers on his desk, it kept on blinking in his peripheral vision, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He lifted the phone, pressed the replay button, and put the receiver to his ear. It was with something like shock that he heard Kirsty’s voice.
‘Dad … ? Where are you? You’re never there. Please, you’ve got to come to Strasbourg. I don’t know what to do. Someone’s trying to kill me.’
He replayed it twice before hanging up. If ever he needed a reason to live, he had just found one.
Chapter Seven
Commissaire Hélène Taillard enjoyed the distinction of being only the sixth woman in the history of the République to be appointed Director of Public Security to one of the country’s one hundred départements. She had been promoted from the rank of inspecteur to the title of commissaire in the Département du Lot three years earlier, inheriting a large, comfortable office in the caserne of the Police Nationale in the Place Bessières at the north end of Cahors.
Following a call from the crime scene early that afternoon, her driver had taken her downtown to the west end of the long Rue Victor Hugo, which transected the town east to west at the southern end of the loop. Now, as she stepped out of the car, she tugged at her blue uniform jacket where it had ridden up over her ample bosom. She was an attractive woman, still in her forties, but if her male colleagues had thought that her female touch might be a soft one, they had quickly learned their mistake. Hélène Taillard was a good cop, as tough as any man who had filled her shoes, and maybe tougher. She was fiercely lo
yal to those who were loyal to her, but God help you if you crossed her. She had separated from her husband when it became clear to them both that her career was more important than her marriage.
There were several police vehicles in the street outside the house, lights flashing. Two white, unmarked vans belonging to the forensic police scientifique were drawn up on the sidewalk opposite. Blue-and-white striped crime scene tape fluttered in the icy breeze that blew in off the slate-grey waters of the river.
The house had been subdivided into two apartments, one on the ground floor, one on the upper floor. The victim had been found upstairs. Commissaire Taillard climbed the internal staircase to a poorly lit landing where a number of her officers were gathered outside the apartment. They spoke in hushed voices and watched keenly for the commissaire’s reaction. Murder in Cahors was a rare event.
Inspecteur David Truquet shook her hand. ‘She’s just inside, commissaire. The other side of the door.’ And he handed her a pair of latex gloves and a couple of plastic shoe covers.
The police photographer had erected lights in the hall, and the body was thrown into sharp relief. Forensics officers in white tyvek suits moved aside to let the commissaire through. She looked down at the dead woman. Her skin seemed pale and waxy, all animation long gone from a once pretty face. Her head lay at a peculiar angle, her blouse ripped open and bra torn away to reveal her breasts. There was deep purple bruising down one side of her face.
‘A sexual attack?’
Inspecteur Truquet raised an uncertain eyebrow. ‘You might think so at first glance, commissaire. But she was still wearing her panties, and the médecin légiste says she hasn’t been interfered with … you know, down there.’ He was uncomfortable at having to discuss a woman’s private parts with his female boss. ‘And the place has been turned over. It’s possible he was looking for something.’
‘He?’ Commissaire Taillard disliked sexual stereotypes of either variety.
‘Whoever hit her took her down with a single blow, then broke her neck. A quick, clean break. A real pro job, the pathologist says. I think it might be fair to assume it was a man.’
‘So why did he rip open her blouse?’
Truquet shrugged and shook his head.
The commissaire looked along the hall towards the mess in the séjour. ‘Did he take anything?’
‘Impossible to say. She lived alone, so it’s going to be difficult trying to establish if there’s anything missing. He really trashed the place, though. Like maybe he was getting something out of his system.’
‘A grudge killing?’
‘Possible.’
‘How about time of death?’
‘Just before eleven-thirty this morning.’
She turned a look of surprise towards her investigating inspecteur. ‘How can you know so precisely?’
He started towards the kitchen and indicated that she should follow. They picked their way carefully through the debris on the floor, and the stink of ripening goat’s cheese, and he showed her the broken clock on the oven.
‘Eleven twenty-nine. Assuming he broke it when he was trashing the kitchen, and that he’d already killed her, that would put time of death sometime shortly before then. Just over three hours ago, and rigor mortis is only just beginning to set in. So it all fits.’
‘How convenient.’ She looked around the kitchen. It was in the American style, with wall cupboards and worktops and a central island. ‘Who discovered her?’
‘The postman. He had a colis for her and needed a signature. The door wasn’t properly shut, and when he pushed it open …’
‘So who is she, or rather, who was she?’
‘Audeline Pommereau. Forty-six. Divorced. Mother of two. Kids are grown up. She worked afternoons at La Poste in the Rue du Président Wilson.’
She detected his hesitation. ‘What?’
He lifted Audeline Pommereau’s purse from the worktop and took out a dog-eared business card from one of its inside pockets. He handed it to his boss. ‘We found this.’ And he watched for her reaction.
Commissaire Taillard held it carefully between latexed fingers and felt her professional detachment suddenly depart. But her face remained expressionless, concealing the confusion behind it. She was holding the business card of Enzo Macleod, Professor of Biology, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse. She turned it over and saw, in a familiar scrawl, his home telephone number and the words Call me. She heard herself saying, ‘So she knew Enzo Macleod. That doesn’t mean anything.’ But the colour was rising now on her cheeks, betraying a history of failed emotional involvement that seemed somehow to be common knowledge among her junior officers.
‘That’s not all, commissaire.’
She followed Truquet through the hall to the séjour. The officers of the police scientifique had returned to the task of examining the body of the victim in the minutest detail before removing it to the morgue. Amid the mess, a laptop computer sat open on the table, a slide selection of family photographs, installed as a screensaver, illuminating its monitor.
Truquet leaned over the keyboard and banished the screensaver, to reveal a monthly agenda. He stood up. ‘This is what was showing on the screen when we got here.’
Commissaire Taillard peered at it, flicking her eyes across four weeks of entries until they settled on today’s date. And her heart seemed to push up into her throat to try to stop her breathing. Enzo – 11am, it said.
‘Commissaire.’ A voice from the hallway.
She looked up, but was distracted, and it took a second call before she reacted. She went out into the hall. The senior forensics officer was standing astride the body in his shower cap and white plastic suit. In one latexed hand he was holding a pair of tweezers, which he held out for her to see. ‘Hair recovered from the victim’s clothes, ma’am. Not hers. Definitely not hers.’
She took a step closer and saw several long, black hairs held between the legs of the tweezers.
‘Long, like a woman’s,’ said the forensics officer.
‘Or a man with a ponytail.’ David Truquet’s voice came from behind. She turned to see him watching her closely, and a sick feeling of dread descended, like a shroud on a murder victim.
Chapter Eight
Kirsty pushed through the crowds in the Place de la Gare towards the huge glass bubble they had built, unaccountably, to mask the station’s historical façade. An architectural aberration to be endured by generations of Strasbourgers to come. Work to renovate the station and link it into the city’s growing tram network had only recently been completed, along with this glass monstrosity.
Earlier sleet had turned to rain, blowing in on an east wind all the way from Siberia, and travellers hurried, heads bowed beneath battered umbrellas, on pathways that converged like the spokes of a wheel on the hub that was the Gare de Strasbourg.
The huge clock in the departure hall showed nearly four-thirty. Her father’s train was due in very shortly. Kirsty glanced nervously at the faces of passengers who seemed to press around her on all sides. If someone was trying to kill her, she thought not unreasonably, it could be any one of them. How could she know?
Kirsty had been unable to sleep since Sylvie’s death. She had lain, tossing and turning in a friend’s apartment the previous night, torn between guilt and confusion. She had no idea why someone might want her dead. It was inexplicable to her. And yet there was, it seemed, no doubt that she had been the target. No doubt, too, that since her would-be killer had failed the first time, he might very well try again. She felt vulnerable, exposed, and powerless to do anything about it.
The call to her father had been a reflex response. A return to childhood. A little girl reaching out towards safe and comforting arms. Someone who would never let her down, no matter what. And, yet, hadn’t he done just that for all those years?
A Jewish cleric with a long white beard and black hat was staring at her, and she turned away self-consciously, hurrying through a series of stone arches towards the arrival
s hall.
Which was when she saw him.
Just a glimpse. An oddly familiar face beyond the dozens of people queuing at the Alsace grocery store. She stopped, catching her breath. Where was he? And then she saw him again. He was looking at her, a strange serenity in piercing blue eyes. And then he was gone, and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t recatch sight of him. Who was he? She knew she knew him. Then it came to her. Like a moment replayed. A strong hand helping her to her feet. You’re a lucky girl, he’d said. And a shiver of fear shook her rigid.
She saw her father almost as soon as he stepped off the TGV. He was nearly a head higher than the other passengers, and although his hair was greying, the trademark white stripe that ran back through it from his left temple still stood out. Her resolve to remain strong immediately dissolved, and she pushed through the oncoming tide to throw herself into his arms. He dropped his overnight bag and held her as if there might be no tomorrow – which, for him, was only too close to being true.
He felt her sobs pulsing against his chest, and he held her until they began to subside. When, finally, she drew away, brushing the tears from her eyes, platform four was almost deserted. She ran a hand back through her long hair, clearing it away from a strong, handsome face. She had dark eyes, and full lips like her mother. But she was tall, with square set shoulders and long legs, like her father. When she spoke, her usually strong, confident, Scottish voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.
‘I’m so scared.’
He held her by the shoulders. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you, Kirsty. Ever.’ And it was with a jolt that he was reminded that, for him, ‘ever’ was just a few months. After that, she would be on her own.
He took her hand and they went down the steps to the long marbled corridor that led to the front of the station. Her grip on his hand tightened every time she saw a man approach, and he glanced at her to see the pale tension etched in her face. He put an arm around her shoulder and guided her through the shopping arcade towards the station buffet. It was packed here, and he thought she might feel safer in a crowd. A girl behind glass in the ticket office glanced at them as they passed, as if their insecurity were visible. They sank into tubular metal chairs at a table in the corner, from where they had a view of anyone approaching, and an impossibly thin oriental girl served them coffee. A huge wallposter of a croque-monsieur reminded him that he was hungry. He had not eaten since overnighting in Paris and killing time till the first available seat in a TGV. But there were more pressing things to deal with.