Blacklight Blue

by Peter May

  ‘So what other tests did you run?’

  ‘Blood type, of course. I did a complete cell count. And a blood chemistry profile. Fascinating results.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for a start, the person who spilled blood on the little boy’s panda is a hemophiliac.’

  Enzo was unaccountably disappointed.

  ‘You don’t seem very pleased.’

  ‘I’d rather hoped that it was going to be a woman, Maude.’

  She patted him on the arm. ‘Now don’t go jumping to conclusions, Enzo. Contrary to popular opinion not all hemophiliacs are men. I know that woman are normally just carriers. But if a female carrier marries a male sufferer, then any children will be sufferers, too. Male or female.’

  ‘So it is a woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Raffin leaned his elbows on the table. ‘How can you tell?’

  Maude puckered her lips and blew air through them, as if she were dealing with an idiot. ‘Because the sex marker in her DNA was female, dear.’

  Enzo took a moment to digest this. ‘So she probably never had a child then, Maude.’

  ‘Unlikely. The risk of bleeding would make it ve-ery dangerous. In fact, women with bleeding disorders are fortunate just to make it through puberty.’ She turned doe eyes on Enzo. ‘Just having sex could be fatal. Which would be a terrible affliction, don’t you think?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But what a way to go!’ She winked at Raffin then turned back to Enzo. ‘Tell me, darling. Does this woman live in France?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Then you should be able to find her. Hemophiliacs are always well known to their local health authorities. They have to be. Their lives depend on it.’

  It was dark by the time Enzo and Raffin got off the métro at Odéon and walked the short distance up the Rue de Tournon to Raffin’s apartment. The gold-domed Sénat building at the top of the street was floodlit, painted in light against a bruised black sky. Intermittent spots of rain blew down the street on the edge of a blustery wind. Green canvas screening flapped against rattling tubular scaffolding erected by stone-cleaners on the building opposite the apartment.

  Raffin punched in his code, and pushed open one half of the heavy green doors to let them into the gloomy passageway that led to the courtyard beyond. Cobbles glistened wet in the rain from the lights of windows rising up all around, and the old chestnut tree above the garage, stripped bare of leaves, creaked and groaned in the wind. As there always seemed to be when Enzo visited Raffin, someone in one of the other apartments was playing a piano. Tonight the piano player was practising scales. Monotonous, repetitive, and hesitant. A child perhaps.

  Both Enzo and Raffin were grateful to escape into the dry warmth of the stairwell, and they climbed up through bright yellow electric light to the first floor. ‘I’m going to open a bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin,’ Raffin said. ‘To celebrate.’

  ‘We haven’t got him yet,’ Enzo warned.

  But Raffin just grinned. ‘We can’t be far away now. How many female English hemophiliacs can there be in a single département?’

  ‘Finding the woman who abducted Rickie Bright, won’t necessarily lead us to him.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Enzo, stop being such a pessimist! He’s just a breath away. I can feel it.’ He unlocked his door and pushed it open for Enzo to go in ahead of him. The apartment was in darkness, but the doors to the séjour, and Raffin’s study beyond, stood open, and the light of the floodlit building opposite reached through the window in a long rectangle across the floor towards them. It was in that light that Enzo saw the folded white sheet of paper lying on the floor where it had been slipped under the door.

  As he stooped to pick it up he heard the glass in the window shatter, a sound like someone being punched, and Raffin grunted. In his startled confusion, Enzo looked up to see Raffin stagger back into the landing, slamming into the door of the tiny elevator, before tipping forward to fall heavily on his face in the doorway. Enzo stood up, bewildered, still slow to understand what had happened. The wooden architrave two inches to the right of his head split open. A large splinter of wood speared his cheek. And suddenly he realised they were being shot at. He dropped like a stone, pressing himself into the floor beside Raffin before daring to look up. He felt the rush of wind blowing through the broken window. There was someone up in the scaffolding on the building opposite. A figure obscured by the flapping green canvas.

  Enzo became aware that his hands were sticky wet, and he had the iron smell of blood in his nostrils. In a moment of panic he thought he had been hit. Before realisation dawned that it was Raffin’s blood. He wasn’t thinking clearly at all. But he knew he needed to. He rolled onto his side and turned the journalist on to his back. Raffin’s beige crewneck had turned scarlet, the colour of his scarf. Enzo heard the sound of blood gurgling in his chest and throat. His eyes were open wide, filled with the panic of a rabbit caught in headlights. His mouth opened, but there were no words.

  The light in the stairwell went out, its sixty seconds expired. Was it really only a minute ago that they had punched the switch at the foot of the stairs? Enzo got to his knees and scrambled out on to the landing. He grabbed Raffin’s legs and pulled him fully out of the apartment, then got to his feet and propped him against the wall, safely out of the line of fire. Raffin coughed and spattered blood all over him. The light was dying in his eyes.

  ‘Jesus Christ, man, hold on!’ Enzo reached up to hit the light switch, and with bloody, fumbling fingers, dialled the emergency number on his cellphone. When the operator responded it took a great effort of will to stay calm. He gave her their address, then heard his own voice rising in pitch. ‘There’s been a man shot. Critical. We need an ambulance fast!’

  By the time he looked back at Raffin, his eyes were closed. And somewhere, in the building above them, the pianist was still practising scales.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Enzo had no idea how much time had passed. He was still in shock. Raffin’s blood had dried rust brown on his hands and clothes. He sat on a dining chair, leaning forward on his knees, head bowed, staring blindly at the pattern on the floor.

  His eyes hurt and his head was pounding. The lights erected in the apartment by the police photographer were blinding. Forensics officers were everywhere, dusting for prints, collecting every tiny piece of evidence, bullets and hair and blood. He overheard someone expound the theory that the apartment might have been broken into ahead of the shooting.

  The street outside had been sealed off, and yet more officers swarmed over the scaffolding on the building opposite, searching for any traces that might have been left by the shooter.

  After Raffin was taken away, a medic had checked Enzo, cleaning the wound on his cheek, disinfecting it and taping it over with a wad of cotton. Then he had given the go-ahead for Enzo to be questioned by the investigating officer.

  It had been a long and confused interview. Enzo still wasn’t thinking clearly. But the officer knew who he was. The publicity surrounding his resolution of two of the unsolved cases in Raffin’s book had earned him a certain notoriety with the French police. He was regarded by them with a mixture of suspicion, awe, and downright dislike. When it became clear that Enzo and Raffin had been working on the Lambert case, he’d heard one of the other plain-clothed officers saying, ‘Get Martinot on the phone. See if we can’t get him over here.’

  He’d been aware for some time now of a low murmur of voices coming from the entrance hall, then looked up as he heard his name. ‘Monsieur Macleod.’ A familiar voice, speaking softly, an empathy in it that had been lacking in the others. ‘I never expected to be out at another crime scene.’ Jean-Marie Martinot was wearing his dark blue overcoat with the food stains, and Enzo noticed that his socks still didn’t match. His trademark wide-brimmed felt hat was pushed back a little on his head, and he brought in with him the reek of fresh tobacco smoke. He reached out to shake Enzo’s hand
, but Enzo just opened his to show him Raffin’s blood and shrugged an apology. Sometime soon, perhaps, they might let him go and shower and change his clothes. Though he doubted that any amount of showering could wash away the horror of Raffin’s shooting. ‘I guess it was you he was after.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘So how did he miss? After all, we both figured he was a pro.’

  Enzo nodded towards the slip of paper lying on the table. It had his bloody fingerprints on it, but he had not even thought to look at it. ‘Someone must have pushed that under the door. I bent to pick it up just as the shot was fired. Pure goddamn fluke that Raffin got hit and not me. He must have known he missed me first time, so the second shot was probably fired in haste.’ And Enzo remembered Raffin’s almost prophetic words from earlier in the day. It’s you he’s after, Enzo, not me. I’m probably in more danger when I’m with you than when I’m not. ‘Do we know how he’s doing?’

  Martinot looked grim. ‘Not well, monsieur. One of his lungs collapsed, and he lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘I know, I have most of it on me.’

  The retired commissaire regarded him thoughtfully. ‘So why’s our man trying to kill you now? Do you know who he is?’

  ‘I know who he was.’ And Enzo told him about the trip to London, his meeting with the twin brother, the abduction from Cadaquès in the early seventies. ‘The fact that he has an identical twin means we know exactly what he looks like. If we can get a picture of William Bright, then it’ll pass for a picture of him. You can distribute it to police forces across France, put it out on the media. We also know he’s missing his right earlobe. So that should help.’

  Enzo’s presence of mind was returning, and along with it a reticence about telling Martinot too much. He didn’t trust the police to put all the information he had to best use. And so he kept the revelations about Bright’s upbringing in the Roussillon, and his hemophiliac abductress, to himself. After all, none of that was going to help Raffin now. That was in the lap of the gods.

  Martinot sighed. ‘I admire your skills, Monsieur Macleod. But, you know, you really should leave this kind of thing to the professionals.’

  Enzo looked up at him. ‘The only reason I’m involved is because the professionals failed first time around.’ And he immediately regretted his words. Martinot, in his day, had done what he could. He’d been a good cop, with a good heart. He just hadn’t had the technology at his disposal.

  The old man’s face darkened. ‘You’d better get yourself cleaned up,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’ And with that he turned and went back out into the hall.

  Enzo sat for a moment, shock and depression crushing down on him, a relentless weight. Then he reached for the slip of folded paper on the table. The note that had saved his life. He opened it up with trembling fingers. It was from Raffin’s maid, to say that she wouldn’t be able to come tomorrow.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Aubagne, South of France, 1986

  William Bright’s diary

  December 5

  We arrived by train this morning from Paris. Fifteen of us. EVs, they call us. Engagés Volontaires. This is the home of the 1 er Régiment étranger, the headquarters of the Foreign Legion. It’s a lot warmer in the South. More like I’m used to. We’re still a long way from the sea, but I like the sharp colour of the Provençal sun on the hills and that clear blue of the sky. It reminds me of home.

  They took everything I had. My clothes, everything, and put them in plastic bags and made an inventory. They said that if I fail selection, they will be returned to me. If I go on to take La Déclaration, I will never see them again.

  They gave us all track suits, and that marks us out as newcomers. Someone said we’d be up at five every morning, and that they’d have us loading trucks and cleaning the toilets and stuff like that. And that they’d be watching us to check for bad attitude.

  Mostly we are English. But there is also a Jap, and a French Canadian called Jacques – at least, he said that’s what his name was – and a guy from New Zealand. There are lots of nationalities here, but the common language of the new guys is English.

  The first officer who spoke to us said we would be paired with a French-speaker for the first week. When I said I spoke French, he laughed and asked me to say something. I reeled off the words of the Marseillaise, and it was all I could do not to laugh when I saw his jaw drop. I told him I spent all my childhood holidays in the south of France, and he said he would pair one of the other newcomers with me. I got the Jap.

  The corporal said that over the next three weeks we would be tested for physical and psychological health, security, intelligence, and physical fitness. Next week, he said, those of us who were still here would be issued with a set of combats, and given a green flash to wear on the shoulders. If we survived to the third week, we would wear red flashes on the epaulettes. But not to hold our breaths, because most of us would never get that far. If we did, then we would sign the oath, a commitment to put our lives in the hands of the Legion for the next five years. And we would be sent to Castelnaudary for basic training. I can’t wait.

  My first one-to-one interview was in the afternoon, with the major. He looked at my passport and said they would be checking that I had no criminal record. I figured my brother would turn up clean. Then he put my passport in a drawer and said that’s the last I’d be seeing of it – unless I didn’t pass muster.

  From now on William Bright no longer exists. From now on I have a French name and a French identity. I am Yves Labrousse. I’ve always liked the name Yves. The English think it’s a girl’s name because it sounds like Eve. But it’s a good French name.

  The major said after three years, if I wanted French nationality I could have it.

  He didn’t know I was French already. But now they’ve given me a gift. I’m someone else altogether. Not even who they thought I was. If I can stick this out, I’ll be Yves Labrousse for the rest of my days. A man with no past. And a future only I’ll decide.

  December 26

  It was hot when they dropped us off in Aubagne today, in the Rue de la République. It didn’t feel at all like Christmas. We were all wearing red flashes on our combat fatigues. The corporal told us we had five minutes to write and post letters or cards. It was the last time we could write to anyone outside of the Legion, he said. It was the last time we would be allowed out on our own.

  I followed the others into the Maison de la Presse, but I don’t really know why. I had no one to write to, no one to share any last thoughts with before my life would change forever. Only a handful of the guys I arrived with in Aubagne three weeks ago have lasted the pace. Jacques, the French Canadian, who’s now Philippe, the Jap – it seems strange calling him Henri – and a few others. The New Zealander and several of the English were sent packing days ago.

  I watched Philippe scribbling on the back of a postcard and wondered what he was writing. What do you say to someone when it’s for the last time? It was on a pure impulse that I lifted a card from the rack – a sunset view of red light washing over the foothills of the Alpes Maritime. I turned it over and picked up a pen from the counter, and wrote her name, and the address I’ve known all my life. It’s funny, but I’ve never really thought about what she might be thinking, how she felt when she went to my room and found I’d gone. Is she any happier, or is she mourning for me just like my real mother did for all those years?

  After I’d written the address, I had no idea what to say.

  Philippe punched me on the shoulder. ‘Come on, pal. We’ll get shit if we’re late!’

  I still didn’t have a clue what to say to her, and I almost tore up the card.

  ‘Come on!’ he was shouting at me from the door. ‘The truck’s waiting.’

  And so I scribbled very quickly, and very simply, Au revoir. And signed it, Yves. I licked the stamp and thumped it with the heel of my hand and ran the ten metres down the street to the post box.

  It was
n’t until I was climbing into the back of the truck that I wondered what on earth she would make of it.

  I can see her face, picture her confusion. And the thought makes me laugh. Good riddance. I’m off to a new life, off to learn how to use a gun, how to fight. How to kill.

  PART FIVE

  Chapter Forty-Three

  There was an embarrassed silence in the room. No one knew quite where to look. Sophie’s instinct was to leap to her father’s defence, but she saw the warning look in Bertrand’s eye and held her peace. Their stay in this big, rambling “safe” house, hidden away in what others might have viewed as an idyllic mountain valley, was turning into a nightmare. Endless days of boredom and frustration, lives on hold while the world passed them by. It had become like a prison. And now this.

  Nicole, too, was tempted to speak up for her mentor, but she knew better than to interfere in another family’s conflict. And so it was with difficulty that she kept her own counsel, and sat staring at her hands, pink-faced with embarrassment.

  Anna, across the hall in the kitchen, could hear every word, but carried on with the preparations for lunch as if nothing was happening.

  ‘You’re unbelievable, you know that? Unbe-fucking-lievable!’ Kirsty’s face was pink too, but with anger verging on tears. She was still in shock. The shock of learning that Roger had been shot, and then anger that Enzo hadn’t even phoned. That it had happened forty-eight hours ago and she’d known nothing about it.

  She’d called Roger several times in the last few days, and couldn’t understand why he never answered, either his home number or his cellphone. Now she knew.

  ‘If I hadn’t been here to stop you, you’d have gone running off to Paris without even stopping to think.’ Enzo tried to reason with her.

  ‘Damned right I would.’

  ‘And put yourself straight into the firing line.’