Blacklight Blue

by Peter May

  Enzo noticed how easily she referred to herself as his mother, as if almost from the start she had believed it to be true. Some enormous capacity for self-deception. He doubted if she had even followed the story in the British press. British newspapers would have been available here, even then. But she wouldn’t have wanted to read about how she had devastated a family, ruined a mother’s life. That would have made the self-deception so much harder to maintain. ‘So what made him leave?’

  ‘I came home one day to find him in a state of extreme agitation. I had left him studying for his baccalauréat. He wasn’t particularly gifted academically, but he could have done better. He lacked concentration, motivation. Which is, I suppose, why he abandoned his studies that day and went exploring in the attic. That’s how he found all my old papers. The photographs I had taken in Cadaquès, birth certificates, marriage certificate. Reginald’s death certificate.’ She paused. ‘My Richard’s death certificate. Which, as far as he was concerned, was his own.’

  Enzo could only imagine what kind of shock it must have been to stumble across your own death certificate. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He demanded answers I couldn’t give him. I wasn’t prepared, you see. There was no convincing way I could lie to him. So I simply stonewalled. Accused him of prying, of meddling in things he didn’t understand, of jumping to all the wrong conclusions. He said in that case I should explain it to him so he would understand. But I refused to discuss it any further and sent him to his room.’ Her face lapsed into a set of weary resignation. ‘I didn’t dare try to speak to him again that night. And when I went to rouse him in the morning he was gone. Taken hardly anything with him. Just a few items of clothing. The window was open, so I assume he’d jumped down to the garden.’

  ‘And you didn’t report him missing to the police?’

  ‘How could I? Any kind of investigation would only have uncovered the truth, especially if they’d found him. No, Mister Macleod, he was gone and I just had to accept it. Alone again, like it seems I was always destined to be. I told his school he’d gone back to England, and that was an end to it.’ She looked at Enzo with sad, pale eyes. ‘I suppose you’ll be reporting me to the authorities.’

  ‘You committed a crime, Mrs. Archangel. A long time ago, perhaps, but you still have a debt to repay, particularly to his mother. She’s still there, you know. In Cadaquès. All these years later, waiting for her son to return.’

  He saw the old lady draw in her lips to contain her emotion. These were things she had never wanted to hear, never dared to imagine. ‘And Richard? What’s become of him?’

  His voice was empty, emotionless. ‘He murders people for a living, Mrs. Archangel. He’s a professional killer.’

  The shock that flitted across her face was, for a moment extraordinarily vivid, a reflection of an inner emotional turmoil. Horror, fear, revulsion. And then it passed, to be replaced by a kind of acceptance, a silent acknowledgement that she had raised a monster, and that maybe she had known it all along.

  ‘It’s possible that he might be using the name of William Bright.’

  Her eyes lifted sharply. ‘His family name.’

  ‘William is his brother.’

  ‘So he found them, then?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘And do they … do they know?’

  ‘They do now.’

  She closed her eyes. The lie that she had lived nearly all of her adult life was over. God only knew what the future would hold. When she opened then again, they were filled with tears. Of self pity.

  ‘Did you ever hear from him, after he left?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never.’ Then some distant memory forced a revision. ‘Well, once. Just once. I’m certain it was him, though he didn’t say so.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Wait.’ She eased herself stiffly out of the armchair and crossed to the Welsh dresser. She rummaged in a drawer for several minutes, shuffling through a folder of papers, before turning with a postcard in her hand. Enzo could see that it was a vividly coloured sunset scene, red light on blue hills. ‘This came a few months after he’d gone.’ She lifted reading glasses and peered at the card. ‘Dated December 26th, 1986.’ She raised one hand in a small gesture of exasperation. ‘All it says is Au revoir. But it’s his handwriting. I’d have known it anywhere.’ She peered at it again. ‘Strangest thing, though.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘He signed it, Yves.’ She looked up. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Maybe, Mrs. Archangel, by December 26th, 1986, that was his name.’ He held out his hand for the card and she gave it to him. And he saw quite clearly from its postmark that it had been sent from a place called Aubagne.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Yves watched from the Rue St. Sébastien as Macleod left the house. The tall, ponytailed Scotsman crossed the small car park and disappeared down the steps to the Rue du Mirador. But Yves lingered. He knew there was no danger of losing him, and so he was prepared to allow himself the luxury of a little bittersweet nostalgia.

  He stepped out from the shadow of the trees and walked slowly across the tarmac to the house where he had grown up. Nothing much had changed. Everything had grown. The shutters had been repainted. At the top of the steps, he looked down at the little arched gateway through which he had made his escape all those years ago. He could see his bedroom window, and felt a pang of something unfamiliar. It might have been regret. The sea beyond was as it always had been. Like him. Moody, changeable. He listened to it breathing, the sound of his childhood. He smelled its salty fragrance. Breathed it in.

  There was a new sign at the entrance to the cottages. Rue Sans Issue. Dead end. It had always been a dead end street, where he had lived a dead end life. On the wall next to it was a framed print of a painting someone had done of the cottages. Bright Mediterranean colours, sunlight lying in patches across the hills on the headland beyond.

  For several minutes he simply stood listening. He was surprised to discover that he was afraid. Afraid he might see her, meet her, hear her voice. The woman who had stolen his life. But the house was silent. No voices, no footfall in the hall. He moved on to the terrasse and saw the wrought iron sewing table where she used to make him sit and read his schoolbooks. The fold-up chair he had sat in so often. The metalwork was painted blue to match the shutters. In his day it had all been green.

  She was there, somewhere just on the other side of the door. He knew she was at home. He had seen Macleod going in, and he had been there for more than an hour. No doubt he knew even more now about the young Richard Archangel, his history in both Cadaquès and Collioure. Yves had failed completely to stop him. He should have been dead by now. Only a fluke in Paris had saved his life. And here he was, still digging up the past, pawing through the shit.

  Yves tried to control his breathing, to calm himself. Anger was not the answer. Success in killing the Scotsman would depend on cool calculation. And kill him he would. Of that he was certain.

  From somewhere inside the house came the sound of breaking glass. He tensed and listened intently. But heard nothing more. He was breathing rapidly again, his heart punching against his ribs like a boxer in training. Stab, jab-jab, stab, jab. Gloved fists pounding the punchbag.

  He had no idea what moved him to do it. Some morbid fascination, a strange sense of returning to the safety of the womb, no matter how unhappy his time there had been. He reached for the handle and opened the door, pushing it gently into the darkness of the hall. All his senses were assailed by a smell that somersaulted him back through time, momentarily robbing him of his composure. He reached out to touch the wall and steady himself. He felt like a ghost haunting his own past, and expected any moment to see himself emerge from his bedroom, to climb down the stairs to the sea-facing terrace where he had spent so much of his time reading, thinking, dreaming, crying.

  There was not a sound. The living room seemed empty. Then, as he stepped into the room, he was shocked to
see his image on every surface, on every wall. Like a place of worship, an altar where she prayed for the boy he had once been. Or, perhaps, the boy she had wanted him to be. He moved to the window and peered down on to the terrace. No one there. Then to his bedroom door. He hesitated for a moment, a sense of dread building inside him. Did he really want to open this door to his past? He pushed the handle down and let the door swing open, and found himself transported back through twenty-two years. All his posters were still on the wall, faded now, and curling around the edges. His guitar was leaned up in the corner. One of its strings had broken. The bed was made. The same bedspread that had covered it the night he left.

  It was almost more than he could bear, and he pulled the door quickly closed again.

  Where was she? She couldn’t have gone out. Unless she had somehow managed to slip through the arched gate into the lane below without him seeing her.

  The tiniest sound caught his attention. At first he was unable to identify it. Then there it was again. A drip. The sound of water on water. It was coming from the bathroom. He moved with the silent steps of the ghost that he was, down the hall to the bathroom door. It was not quite shut. With a hand that he could not hold steady, he pushed it open.

  She was lying naked in the bath. A strange, shrunken, white-haired old lady. Almost floating. Her arms at her sides, palms face up, blood issuing in bright red pulses from the dark gashes in her wrists. He glanced down and saw the bloody pieces of broken mirror on the floor.

  She was still alive. Her eyes wide open, watching him with that same pale blue intent. For just a second he saw some fleeting emotion flare like the flame of a match before dying again as the phosphor burned out. He stood in the doorway and watched as slowly the eyes glazed over and the light went out. He knew she was dead when her heart stopped pumping blood into the water.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  From his seat in the window of the Café Sola, Enzo could see across the street to the market square, and the repair truck from the garage parked next to his car. The mechanic, in his blue overalls, was pumping the handle of a pneumatic jack to lift up the far corner of the vehicle. Enzo had found that the trunk contained only an emergency spare, so there had been no point in changing the punctured wheel himself. The garage had sent a mechanic to come and remove the wheel. Now he had returned with a new tyre.

  Enzo refocused on his laptop, and heard it ringing as he waited for Nicole to respond. His own image from its built-in webcam looked back at him from an open window on the desktop. Then the ringing stopped, and his head shrunk to a postage stamp in the top corner, to be superseded by Nicole’s smiling face.

  ‘Monsieur Macleod. Where are you?’

  ‘Still in Collioure.’

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it later, Nicole. Right now, there’s something I need you to do for me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  It was something he could have done himself. But he had other reasons for making the iChat call. ‘How’s Kirsty doing?’

  Nicole shrugged. If she was embarrassed, she was masking it well. ‘Okay. At least she’s talking to us all again. Apparently Roger’s off the critical list, so it looks like he’s going to pull through.’

  Enzo found himself entertaining uncharitably mixed feelings. But all he said was, ‘Good.’ Then, ‘Nicole, I need you to find out anything and everything you can for me about a place called Aubagne. Have you heard of it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Okay. Let me have a look on the net. I’ll call you back.’

  As he disconnected, the café door opened and the blue overalled mechanic came in. He sat in the seat opposite. ‘All done, Monsieur Macleod.’ And with scarred, oily fingers, broken nails delineated in black, he wrote out an invoice and tore off the top copy. ‘One hundred and twenty euros.’

  Enzo wrote him a cheque which the mechanic took and examined briefly before standing up. He hesitated, scratching his head through a thatch of thick, wiry hair. ‘It wasn’t no accident, monsieur.’

  Enzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your puncture. Someone put a blade through the wall of the tyre.’

  Enzo felt his face tingle as if he had been slapped, and fear stabbed him suddenly in the chest like the blade which had pierced his tyre. All he could do was nod.

  The mechanic gave him a peculiar look, then folded the cheque and slipped it in his pocket. ‘Bonne journée, monsieur.’ And he was gone. For the second time, Raffin’s words rang in Enzo’s recollection. He’s just a breath away. I can feel it. He looked up through the window and let his eyes wander across the square opposite, searching for a familiar face amongst the residents of Collioure going about their daily business. But he saw no one he recognised. The huge stone edifice of the Château Royal rose dark against the grey sky, and in the bay beyond, a sail boat was banked steeply in the wind, tacking out past the harbour wall. He was startled by the ringing of his computer.

  Nicole’s face reappeared. ‘Aubagne is in Provence,’ she said. ‘Somewhere between Aix and Marseilles. In the département of Bouches-du-Rhone. It’s not very big. About forty thousand people. Nothing much to distinguish it. The only thing it’s really known for is being the home of the Foreign Legion.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Enzo said, as the full impact of what she had just told him sank in. ‘He must have joined the Legion.’

  ‘Do you think? Hang on …’ He could hear her tapping away at her keyboard. Then she was silent for more than a minute, and he could see her scanning something onscreen. ‘Well, that would make sense, Monsieur Macleod. Apparently joining the Légion étrangère is a well-travelled route for foreigners wanting to change their identities. Frenchmen aren’t allowed to join. If they do they have to take on the persona of someone foreign, like French Canadian or French Swiss. Then everyone’s given a new identity as soon as they’ve enlisted.’

  But Enzo knew that Bright had already acquired a custom-made foreign persona. That of his brother, William. An Englishman.

  More tapping on Nicole’s keyboard. ‘It seems they have to sign up for a minimum of five years, but they’re allowed to take French citizenship after three.’

  Enzo sat back in his seat as full realisation washed over him. ‘Bright had effectively laundered his identity. Stolen his brother’s, then traded it in for a new one in the French Foreign Legion. Five years later, at the age of just twenty-three, he would have rejoined the real world as someone else altogether, with no ties to the past. Fit, experienced, and trained to kill.

  ‘Thanks, Nicole. I’ll get back to you.’ He disconnected, and felt fear and excitement welling in his chest. Rickie Bright’s carefully managed trail of obfuscation was rapidly unravelling. Enzo already knew the Christian name of his new identity. Yves. All he needed now was the surname.

  He went into his wallet and found a slightly dog-eared business card. He straightened its corners between thumb and forefinger and looked at it with a renewed sense of betrayal. Perhaps now Simon could do something useful for his old friend. He slipped the card into his pocket, and brought Google up on his computer screen. He searched for, and found, Mappy, the online French route planner, and plumbed in Collioure and Aubagne. The map and directions it presented were straightforward enough. It was autoroute nearly all the way, east across the southern fringes of France. A drive of less than four hours. He checked his watch. If he left now he could be there by late afternoon.

  He closed down his computer and shut the lid, dropping a few coins by his empty coffee cup. As he got up he glanced through the window. Rickie Bright was standing in front of the Hôtel Frégate across the street, watching him.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  By the time he had packed his computer into its bag and stepped out on to the street, Bright was gone. Enzo stood for several minutes with the blood pounding in his head,
looking up and down the Rue de la République and across the square. The traffic filed past, belching its bile into the cool November air, but there was no sign of Bright. Enzo had taken his eyes off him for only a moment, but in that time he had somehow contrived to disappear.

  His legs were like jelly as he crossed the road and placed his computer in the trunk of his car, all the while glancing around him, afraid that at any moment Bright was going to lunge at him from some unsuspected place of concealment. But nothing. No Bright. No attack. Just the old Mediterranean fishing port of Collioure going about its unhurried, out-of-season business.

  Enzo sat in his car and gripped the steering wheel, made tense by a mixture of fear, anger and uncertainty. For a brief few seconds, he considered abandoning his plan to drive to Aubagne. But he had no other options open to him. What else could he do? He had embarked on a course and had no choice but to see it through.

  He drove out of the square and up through the town, past the anchovy processing factory, and on to the road that wound up the hill to the dual carriageway that would take him to Perpignan. In his rearview mirror, he saw the town disappearing below, the sea levelling out towards a hazy, distant horizon. There were several vehicles on the road behind him. A solitary driver with dark hair, a car containing a family of four. He couldn’t see the others, and almost drove into the car in front as it slowed to take the exit to Argelès sur Mer.

  It took nearly half-an-hour to get to Perpignan, and he spotted what he was looking for in a strip mall on the outskirts. He pulled into the parking lot and stood watching the other cars that turned in after him. Still no sign of Bright. He waited for several minutes before deciding that if the killer was anywhere around he wasn’t going to show himself. Which made the thought that he was still out there, unseen, all the more unnerving.