Blowback

by Peter May

  It was clearly a well-rehearsed opening gambit, and it probably impressed actors and politicians. Enzo was more cautious, allowing himself only the most perfunctory of smiles. Which did not go unnoticed. The amusement faded from Ransou’s eyes.

  “I’m only going to tell you this one time, Monsieur Macleod. Repeat anything I tell you today to anyone in the police or the judiciary, and I’ll be sending my condolences to your family.”

  “Why did you agree to see me, then?”

  “Because I want to see the bastard that murdered Marc Fraysse caught and hung up by his testicles till he drops off.” The smile returned to his face and he slapped Enzo’s back, guiding him through the turnstile toward the main entrance. “Come on, let’s eat. I don’t want to miss any of the racing.”

  Escalators zig-zagged them up from floor to floor through the vast echoing hallway of the main stand, a mammoth edifice of steel and glass. They climbed the last few steps to the open doorway of Le Prestige restaurant at the top of the building. A dinner-jacketed flunky almost bowed in deference to the man in black, ushering him and Enzo to a private table in a booth that looked out through panoramic windows across the racetrack below.

  The oval circuit consisted of what looked like black gravel or ash. Tractors dragged giant rakes around it to drain a surface turned to sludge by the rain. The area contained by the track was grassy and peppered by parked cars and horse boxes. A huge screen conveyed flickering images of a live race in progress at Deauville.

  A waiter in a white jacket brought them menus.

  Enzo said, “Why are you so interested in finding Marc’s murderer.”

  “Because I liked him, monsieur. He was one of the most famous men in France, but he had no airs or graces. He came from poor peasant stock in la France profonde, in the same way that I grew up in the banlieus of Paris, the son of a road sweeper and a Hungarian immigrant. He treated me with the same respect he treated all men, he made me laugh, and he cooked the most wonderful food I have ever tasted.”

  “He also owed you a lot of money, I think.” Enzo watched carefully for a reaction. But there was none.

  Ransou said simply, “He did.”

  Down on the track, several jockeys were out with their horses and sulkies, warming up for the competition ahead. It was to be a day of harness racing in the rain.

  “He was a lost soul, monsieur. Eaten up by the urge to gamble, destroyed by his recklessness and his unfailing ability to lose.”

  “Exactly the sort of people you make your living from, I would have thought.”

  The grey eyes turned to steel. “Be careful, monsieur.” He drew a long, slow breath, as if controlling some violent internal urge. “Marc Fraysse owed me more than a million. But I’d never have called it in.”

  “A million?” Enzo had realized that the debt probably ran to several hundred thousand, but the figure of a million plus was breathtaking. Men had killed for much less. “Why wouldn’t you have called it in?”

  “Because I regarded him as my friend. We met often when he came up to Paris. And the money he owed me…? Well, it wasn’t real, was it? I mean, I didn’t lend it to him. It was notional money. Winnings on a bet. I wasn’t actually out of pocket.” He laughed. “Besides, I had the restaurant as security. There was no way I was ever going to lose.”

  Enzo frowned. “Chez Fraysse? You had the auberge as security against his losses?”

  “Yes. In a way I owned the best restaurant in France, even if only by proxy.”

  Enzo was stunned by the revelation.

  On the far side of the track the first race was underway, riders manoeuvring their horses to achieve a prime position for their sulkies coming off the first bend. Ransou was momentarily distracted, raising binoculars to his eyes to see for himself how the order was shaking out. Enzo watched the TV coverage on the big screen. Black muck from the track was thrown up by the hooves of horses into the faces of the riders in their little buggies behind them. The jockeys’ eyes were protected by goggles, but nothing could protect them from the horses’ tails that slapped wet in their faces, along with whatever else might be involuntarily expelled from the animals’ rears. There was nothing very glamorous about their profession.

  “You like a flutter yourself, Monsieur Macleod?”

  Enzo turned to find Ransou smiling at the disgust on his face. “No, Monsieur Ransou. I’m not a betting man.”

  “Oh? That’s not what I heard.”

  Enzo tilted his head and cast a quizzical look at the ex-boxer. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard that you bet you could solve the seven best known cold cases in France by applying new science to old evidence.”

  “Well, let’s just say I only bet on a sure thing.”

  Ransou grinned. “Me too.” He paused. “I’d have given you good odds on that.”

  Enzo was forced this time to smile. “I bet you would.”

  “Hah!” Ransou jabbed a finger in Enzo’s direction. “There, you see? You’re more of a betting man than you knew.”

  Enzo’s reluctant smile developed into a grin. Ransou was a dangerous man, he knew. Certainly not one to cross. But there was, nonetheless, something irresistibly likeable about him. “So… when Marc died, you just wrote off the debt?”

  Ransou wrinkled his face in mirthful amusement. “Good God, no. I called it in and it was paid off in full.”

  Enzo stared at him in amazement. “But… who? Who paid you?”

  “His brother, Guy, of course. I had no qualms at all about taking the money off him.” The first race came to an end, jockeys lashing sweating horses across the finish line below them. Ransou looked satisfied with the result, and picked up his menu. “Let’s order, shall we? I’m starving. And I just earned lunch.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was always with a sense of dread these days that Enzo pushed open the heavy green door that led to the inner courtyard behind Raffin’s apartment. And, as always, as it shut behind him, the sounds of the city’s bustling sixth arrondissement grew hushed and distant. His own footsteps echoed back at him from the apartments that loomed on all sides, cobbles made slippery by the wet leaves shed from the old chestnut tree that provided such delicious summer shade.

  He was haunted still by the memory of the shooting that had so nearly taken Raffin’s life. He remembered the journalist lying bleeding in the hall outside his apartment, his blood on Enzo’s hands, in more ways than one.

  Now, as then, and almost every time he came, someone somewhere was practising the piano. A distant, clumsy rendition of Rachmaninoff. Daylight was fading fast, to be replaced by the cold yellow of electric light falling in squares and rectangles from apartment windows. He pushed open the door to the stairwell and began the weary climb to the first floor. He resented the fact that if he wanted to see his daughter nowadays, it meant an encounter with Raffin, too.

  He and Raffin had never hit it off since the first moment they met. Only their collaboration on the resolution of the seven cold cases that Raffin had so carefully documented in his book, Assassins Cachés, kept relations between them civil. But now that Kirsty was living with him, even that was in danger of breaking down.

  Raffin’s greeting as he opened the door to him was cool, but polite. The two men shook hands, and Enzo stepped in out of the cold. He remembered entering this apartment for the first time, and his totally unexpected encounter with Charlotte, a serendipitous meeting that had changed his life.

  Kirsty rose from the table as he followed Raffin into the sitting room, although sitting room was something of a misnomer. It contained only two uncomfortable leather armchairs, set so low that Enzo found great difficulty getting himself in and out of them. Neither Kirsty nor Raffin, it seemed, ever bothered. They appeared to spend their lives perched on even more uncomfortable chairs at the table, eating, reading, writing, drinking. Tall windows at one end of it looked down into the courtyard below.

  “Papa.” Kirsty threw her arms around his neck and gave him a
long, lingering hug. Then he held her for a moment at arm’s length, looking at her.

  “Papa? What happened to ‘dad’?”

  She grinned. “Guess I must be turning into a vrai française.”

  “You look well,” he told her. And she did. Gone was the pallor and the smudged shadows beneath her eyes that he had noticed at their last meeting. Her face seemed fuller somehow, slightly flushed, and her eyes shone.

  Raffin watched them in brooding silence, and Enzo wondered briefly if he was jealous of their relationship. After years of estrangement, Enzo and Kirsty had rediscovered the affinity of father and daughter. Something, strangely, that had not suffered from the revelation that she had actually been fathered by his best friend. He had always been her father, and she his little girl. And nothing could change that.

  She flicked long, dark hair out of her face, and folded her willowy figure back into the dining chair. “Sit down. Roger will crack open a bottle of something nice.” She flicked a glance at Roger, and the journalist responded with a tiny nod of acquiescence and went in search of that something nice. “So how have you been?”

  “Apart from being beaten up by one of Sophie’s jealous suitors, and someone trying to blow my head off up on the Massif, everything’s hunky dory.” He grinned, and Kirsty was unsure if he was being serious or not. He heard Raffin laughing in the next room.

  “Still in the wars, then?” His raised voice came through the open door.

  “‘Fraid so.”

  “How’s it going? The Fraysse enquiry, I mean.”

  “It’s slow, Roger. Hardly anything to go on. But I recovered his missing cellphone and the number of someone who arranged to meet him up at the old buron the day he was murdered.”

  Raffin appeared in the doorway, eyes wide with interest. “Really? Whose number?”

  “I’m still working on that. But I did find out that he owed a Parisian bookie more than a million euros, and that he’d put up the restaurant as collateral.”

  Raffin whistled softly.

  “And that’s not to mention the affair he’d been having with the wife of his second.”

  “Jesus, Enzo! That’s hardly what I would call slow.” Raffin approached the table clutching a bottle and two glasses.

  Enzo smiled. “Maybe it just feels like it up there on the plateau in the mist and rain.” As Raffin put the bottle on the table, he noticed for the first time what it was. “Dom Pérignon 1995! What’s the celebration?”

  “A visit from my dad is always cause to celebrate,” Kirsty said, a touch ingenuously. She seemed tense as Raffin popped the cork with a flourish, her smile a little strained.

  Raffin raised the bottle, along with an eyebrow, in Kirsty’s direction. But she shook her head.

  “I’ll stick with what I’ve got.”

  Raffin filled the two glasses with foaming champagne and handed one to Enzo before lifting his own. Kirsty refilled her glass from a bottle of Badoit sitting on the table beside her and raised it in a toast.

  “Here’s tae us, wha’s like us? Damn few, and they’re a’ deid.” A classic Scottish toast.

  But Enzo didn’t lift his glass. He glanced from one to the other. “What’s going on?”

  Kirsty’s face colored slightly, and she cast a look at Raffin.

  “We’re getting married,” Raffin said.

  And Enzo’s heart went still, as if someone had touched a button and put it on pause. He looked at Kirsty, who could hardly meet his eye. She had known, as had Raffin, that Enzo would not approve. Enzo made a huge mental effort to press the play button and get his heart beating again. He raised his glass and forced a smile. “Well, congratulations.” And he and Raffin sipped their champagne, and Kirsty her water, in embarrassed silence. “Why?” he said, when he took the glass from his lips. “I mean, these days why bother? Lots of people just live together without ever getting married.”

  “Because I’m pregnant.” Kirsty’s words dropped like stones into the silence of the room. Enzo was not sure why he was quite so shocked. But he was. He stared at his daughter in disbelief. “It’s a boy,” she said. “So I’ll be giving you a grandson.” She made herself laugh. “Bet that makes you feel old.”

  Finally, he found his voice. “Yes,” was all he could say. He raised his glass to his lips again and took a mouthful of foaming fizzy, giving himself a moment to recover his presence of mind. “Well, then, double congratulations are in order.” In spite of everything he felt about him, he reached over to shake Raffin’s hand, resisting the temptation to crush limp fingers in his stronger grip. And he leaned across the table to kiss his daughter’s forehead. He slipped a hand through her hair to cradle the back of her head and draw her toward him until their foreheads touched. And he felt her hand close around his wrist and gently squeeze it.

  Then he sat back in his chair to sip again on his champagne, his mind and his heart racing, memories crowding consciousness. How was it possible? His little girl. She said, “So, anyway, it’s made me think a bit. Being a mother, I mean.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Family. Parenthood.” She took a sip of her water and fixed him now in her gaze. “I missed you, dad. All those years when I was growing up.”

  And he felt tears of guilt and regret prick his eyes.

  “I don’t want that for my son. I want him to have his parents around him. And his grampa. His whole family.” She hesitated, momentarily breaking eye contact until she summoned courage to meet his eye again. “And your son shouldn’t have to suffer that, either.”

  “Kirsty…”

  But she talked down his protest. “No, dad, listen to me. We’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, right?”

  Enzo refrained from correcting her. If the mistake was being repeated, it wasn’t through any choice of his.

  “You’ve got to speak to Charlotte, dad. You do.” She looked at him earnestly, reaching out to wrap long, elegant fingers around his hand. “Call her. Please.”

  He squeezed her hand in his, staring at the table for a long moment, before looking up. “I already did. I’m meeting her tonight.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Café aux Deux Magots was the classic Parisian tourist café in the heart of Saint Germain des Près. It stood right on the boulevard, and had been made famous by its most celebrated client, the writer Ernest Hemingway. The American had spent his impoverished youth in the 1920s making a single coffee, or a beer, or a glass of wine last him all morning while he scribbled in his notebook in a corner of the café, penning the stories that would make him the most revered writer of his generation.

  Enzo had supposed that Charlotte had chosen it because it would be full of tourists, busy and anonymous. It was easier, perhaps, to exchange angry words in such a place than in some less frequented establishment where their words would draw curious looks.

  Enzo ordered a glass of red wine from a waiter in a long black apron who balanced his huge circular tray just above his left shoulder. The café was packed. Enzo never ceased to be amazed at how easy it was to be lonely in a crowd.

  Charlotte was nearly twenty minutes late. Whatever his feelings about her might have been, the sight of her pushing through the crowds to join him at his table, still made his heart beat faster. She wore a long, black coat open over a woollen polo neck sweater and jeans. The rain glistened in sparkling droplets all over the black curls that tumbled about her shoulders.

  She looked well as she leaned over to kiss him on each cheek, then drop into the chair opposite. Her face was flushed with the cold, her eyes dark and shining, the darkest eyes Enzo had ever known. Unfathomable pools that bewitched and hypnotised him. A smile split her face and she seemed genuinely happy to see him.

  “How are you, Enzo? Still catching killers?”

  “Trying to. How about you?”

  “Oh, I don’t try to catch them. Just talk them out of it. You know that.”

  But Enzo knew that wasn’t strictly true. Her practise as a therap
ist was successful enough in its own right, but she had also trained in the States in forensic psychology, and still received the occasional call from the Quai des Orfèvres to help the police with some impenetrable crime. “What will you have to drink?”

  “Kir.”

  He caught the waiter’s attention and ordered a Kir and another glass of red.

  “So what are you doing in Paris this time?”

  Enzo shrugged, reluctant now to get to the point. “This and that.”

  She smiled at him knowingly. “That must be keeping you fully occupied.”

  He grinned, then sat back as the waiter delivered their glasses to the table. “Roger and Kirsty are getting married.”

  “I know.”

  He shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew, after all, that Roger and Charlotte still had occasional contact, a relationship he had never understood. Former lovers who had broken up in acrimony, but still kept in touch. “And she’s pregnant.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I suppose Roger told you.”

  “No, Kirsty did.”

  Now he really was surprised. “You’ve seen her?”

  “We had lunch the other day.” She smiled. “Close your mouth, Enzo. Your jaw hanging open like that makes you look like an idiot.”

  “I didn’t know you saw one another.”

  “We don’t. She called me out of the blue.” She sipped her Kir.

  “Why?”

  “To tell me what a heartless, selfish bitch I am.” And she laughed out loud at the look on his face. “Oh, not for the way I’ve been treating you.” She paused now, and her smile faded. “For the way I’m treating my son.” She caught and corrected herself. “Our son.” She gazed sightlessly into her drink as she toyed with the glass on the table in front of her. “She told me things. About how she felt when you left. About how she hated and resented you. And how she never stopped loving you, or needing you. And how she had never felt complete until the day you held her again and told her you loved her, and she admitted that she loved you, too.”