Freeze Frame

by Peter May

  Wearily he got to his feet and lifted his case. The bastards were relentless. And if they ever caught him, his life would be over.

  ***

  At 11:38 he pulled the door of his apartment softly shut behind him. The old stone staircase was in darkness, the bulb on the landing burned-out or stolen. He would leave by the side exit in the corridor next to the caretaker’s apartment on the ground floor, just in case they were watching the street. Once out into the maze of alleyways that riddled the kasbah, he could melt undetected into the night.

  But the dark in the stairwell was profound, wrapping itself around him like a cloak, very nearly tangible. His outstretched free hand followed the line of the wall downwards as he searched ahead with each foot for the next step. His own breath resonated loudly in the silence that resided behind the thick, stone walls of the old riad.

  It was when he reached the landing below his that he first heard the voices. Whispers in the dark. Foreign tongues that he could barely discern and could not understand. But there was an urgency in the voices that conveyed itself without barrier of language. A tension in them. And he became aware that the men who owned them were on the next landing down, and on their way up.

  Panic rose like bile to choke him. It was them! They were coming for him. Now. And there was nowhere he could go. He stopped, standing stock still, mid-flight. The only course open to him was to retreat to his studio, and attempt an escape across the rooftops. But the very thought paralysed him with fear. He had felt safe to always leave his windows open, because no thief in his right mind would clamber over these roofs at night. And, besides, he had absolutely no head for heights.

  They were getting closer. He heard his name, and blood turned to ice in his veins. No doubt about it. It was him they had come for. And still he stood rooted to the stairs, held there by a debilitating inertia. His only other course would be to charge down through them, taking them by surprise. But what if they had flashlights, and guns? There were several of them, he could tell. He would be totally exposed.

  There was no advance warning. So he was taken wholly by surprise when the world came apart around him. Suddenly, and completely. What had seemed like solid matter supporting him turned to dust, and masonry, and timber, the air filled with the screeching and rending of metal and stone. A roar that rose up out of the very bowels of the earth, the hot, rancid breath of the devil himself exploding into the night. Yves was falling, flying, turning. Interminably. Fifteen seconds that felt like fifteen hours, before something struck him on the head, and the world turned black.

  He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. But the first thing that struck him, as awareness returned, was the silence. An extraordinary, deafening silence, all the more striking for the contrast with the roar of destruction still echoing in his memory. Dust was settling all around him like the finest snow, and he choked on it, before looking up to see stars where once had been his apartment. He could make no sense of the confusion of masonry and brick all around him, had no conception at all of where he was. But to his surprise he found he was still clutching his suitcase, battered and scored, but intact.

  He was lying at a peculiar angle over a chunk of what appeared to be the staircase, and he manoeuvred himself with difficulty into a sitting position. Miraculously, nothing seemed broken, but he could feel blood trickling down the side of his head.

  Now he could hear distant voices calling in the night. And someone screaming. Closer to hand, something that sounded like moaning. But in his confusion he was unable to identify which direction it came from. He had no idea what had just happened. An explosion?

  He tried to get to his feet and, as he turned, saw an arm protruding from a jagged chunk of masonry, frozen fingers clutching at nothing. He scrambled over the rubble, and with an enormous effort managed to pull the stonework to one side, exposing the hopelessly crushed body of a bald-headed man with with a round face, white now with plaster dust, and streaked crimson with blood. The Citröen driver. There were others here, too. He saw a foot. A hand. A leg. No sound. No movement. His pursuers were dead. All of them. Just three of the sixteen thousand who died that night during fifteen seconds of hell, in what he would soon discover had been the worst earthquake in Moroccan history.

  Yet Yves had survived it, and who would know? How many bodies would never be recovered? His included.

  Which was the moment he realised that, with his own death, he was being given a second chance at life. No one would be looking for him ever again.

  Chapter Three

  Paris, France, October 28, 2009

  It was nearly a year since the bullet had punched through Raffin’s chest and almost ended his life. As far as Enzo could see he had never been the same man since.

  He climbed the circular stairs to Raffin’s apartment and heard clumsy fingers practising scales on a distant piano. The same fingers, he thought, which had been playing eleven months earlier when the shots were fired. They seemed to have made little progress since.

  He hesitated by the door, remembering how the journalist had lain bleeding here in the hall as Enzo tried desperately to staunch the blood. There was no trace of it left on the tiles.

  Raffin looked tired when he opened the door. His usual pallor was tinged with grey, and his pale green eyes, usually so sharp and perceptive, seemed dull. He smiled wanly and shook Enzo’s hand. “Come in.” Enzo followed him through to the sitting room, noticing how he no longer moved with the fluidity of youth. Still only in his middle thirties, he had the demeanour of a man ten years older. His brown, collar-length hair seemed thinner, lank and lacking lustre.

  He ushered Enzo to a seat at the table. It was strewn with documents and photographs and scribbled notes. A well-thumbed copy of his book, Assassins Cachés, lay open at the chapter about Killian. A half-full bottle of 1998 Pouilly Loché, Les Franières, stood beside an empty glass at Raffin’s place, condensation trickling down the misted bottle. “I’ll get you a glass.”

  “No, thanks.” Enzo could not resist a glance at his watch. It was not yet ten in the morning. Too early, even for him. And he watched with some concern as Raffin re-filled his glass. He had never considered this fashionable young Parisian a suitable match for his daughter. Less so now. “How’s Kirsty?” She had not been in touch for several weeks.

  “Fine, last time I saw her. She’s still in Strasbourg.” But he wasn’t going to be drawn on the subject. He sat down and sipped at his wine. “I’ve been going through my research notes. I’d almost forgotten how much more there was about the Killian case than ever went into the book.”

  “Why was that?”

  “His son’s widow, Jane Killian… she’s still haunted by the call he made to her the night of his murder. He made her promise that nothing in his study would be touched, moved or removed, until such time as his son, Peter, could get to see it. He told her he’d left Peter a message there, something only his son would understand. Sadly, the son was killed in a road accident in Addis Ababa and never got to see it.”

  “So what never made it into the book?”

  “Any detailed description of what was in the room. She’s had psychics, and journalists, and private investigators go over it with a fine-toothed comb but has always refused to allow publication of the details.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s afraid that whoever the message was about might read and interpret those details.”

  Enzo shook his head. “But it’s nearly twenty years since Killian was murdered, Roger. Can it still matter?”

  “It might, if it gives a clue as to who killed him.”

  “She still owns the house?”

  Raffin took another sip of his wine. “Yes. By law it went from father to son, but since the son was dead within a week of the father, it passed to his widow. No children involved, you see.”

  “And she’s still keeping her promise to the old man?”

  “Scrupulously. His study remains untouched, just as
it was the day of his murder.”

  Enzo felt the first rush of adrenaline. It was like a crime scene preserved in a time capsule. “Tell me a little more about Killian himself.”

  “There’s not much more to tell than appeared in my book. He was sixty-eight years old. English. He’d owned the house on the Ile de Groix for almost twenty years, using it mainly for family holidays until he retired there full time in ’87, one year after the death of his wife.”

  Enzo consulted his own notes. “A professor of tropical medical genetics at London University.”

  “Yes, he worked for the university’s tropical medicine group. But insects were what really turned him on. According to his daughter-in-law, it was an obsession. He’d been a member of the Amateur Entomologists’ Society in the UK for years, and couldn’t wait to retire to devote himself to it full time.”

  “Time wasn’t on his side, though, was it? I mean, even if he hadn’t been murdered, he didn’t have long to live.”

  Raffin shook his head. “No. The lung cancer was diagnosed in the spring of 1990, and he wasn’t expected to see out the year.”

  Not for the first time, Enzo turned this information over in his mind and found it puzzling. “Okay. And what about Kerjean? Is he still around?”

  “He was when I was there. A thoroughly unpleasant character, from all accounts. Of course, he wouldn’t talk to me. Hasn’t given a single interview since the trial.”

  “You don’t give much of an account of the trial in the book.”

  “It didn’t merit it, Enzo. Sure, the guy had motive and opportunity, but the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial. It should never have gone to court.” He drained his glass and refilled it. “Anyway, I had a long talk with Jane Killian on the phone last night. You can cancel your hotel booking. She’s agreed to let you stay at the house, in the little attic room above the study.” He chuckled, but there was no humour in it. “I think she sees you as the last hope of ever solving this case. I got the very firm impression that if you can’t figure it out, she’s going to give up and sell up.”

  Enzo nodded slowly. “So, no pressure, then.”

  Raffin grinned. “I’d have thought it was right up your street, Enzo, given that your specialty was crime scene analysis.”

  Enzo canted his head in acknowledgement. “I have to confess, it’s an intriguing challenge. But I hate to be anyone’s last hope.” He looked up to see Raffin pursing pale lips in faint amusement. “Tell me…What was it you saw in that room that Jane Killian wouldn’t let you write about?”

  “Oh, I think I should leave you to see that for yourself.” Raffin looked at his watch, and Enzo noticed how his hands trembled. “Shall we lunch at midi? I can call and book a table at the Marco Polo.”

  Enzo felt the colour rising slightly on his cheeks. “I can’t today. I’m meeting someone.”

  Raffin looked at him speculatively and nodded without comment. He took another sip of his wine, then after a moment, “Have you seen Charlotte, lately?”

  “No. Not lately.” Which was the truth. But he wondered why he was reluctant to confirm Raffin’s obvious suspicion that it was the journalist’s former lover that Enzo was meeting at midi. He wanted to leave right there and then, but it would have been churlish to do so. And he wasn’t due to meet Charlotte for over an hour. “Maybe I’ll take that glass of wine now,” he said. As Raffin crossed to fetch a glass from the cabinet, Enzo glanced from the window into the courtyard below. Drifts of leaves from the big old chestnut blew across the cobbles on a chill fall breeze, and he wondered why anyone would want to kill a dying man.

  Chapter Four

  Île de Groix, Brittany, France, August 12, 1990

  At the far side of the garden, beneath the shade of a gnarled oak, stood the shed that Killian used as a workshop. He had spent many hours here, pursuing his passion. Collecting and breeding, killing and preserving. He had constructed a rough workbench and lined the walls with shelves that were crowded with specimen jars and light traps, an insect tray, and a tullgren funnel for trapping apterygotes.

  In the corner stood a rack where he kept his nets. Several large ones for capturing flying creatures. A strong sweep net for sampling insects on vegetation. A pond dipping net for catching those that lived and bred on water.

  He had just constructed a new pooter, two lengths of 3mm clear plastic tubing protruding from either end of a transparent plastic film canister. A small square of fine-meshed cotton was taped over the end of the mouthpiece which was inside the canister. Thus he would avoid the danger of sucking one of the insects into his mouth. Carefully he inserted the other length of tube into the glass breeding jar where gossamer-winged creatures, trapped, demented, and hungry, whined and darted through the light that slanted from the window. He put the mouthpiece between his lips. A short, sharp intake of breath drew a single insect through the tube and into the canister.

  Killian took a large magnifying glass from the drawer and lifted the canister to the light, peering at it through the lens with some satisfaction. This was what he had wanted. A female of the culex pipiens species, the world’s most common mosquito. Unlike its malaria-carrying cousin, the culex fed mainly on birds, although was not averse to feeding on man to spread such delights as Saint Louis encephalitis and West Nile virus. It could be found on every continent on earth, except Antarctica, and was a common irritant here on this tiny, rocky island in the unpredictable Bay of Biscay.

  Killian withdrew the collecting tube and sealed the hole in the lid with a square of tape. Fastidiously, he replaced the breeding jar in its heated container and cleared away his workbench. Everything had a place and had to be in it.

  Satisfied, finally, with his work, he stepped out into the garden and locked the door of the shed. The shadows of trees fell darkly across the lawn toward the whitewashed cottage, in sharp contrast to the sunlight that slanted between their branches. Beyond, the same light shimmered on the sparkling waters of the strait that separated the island from the mainland port of Lorient, just visible in the far distance. The white triangles of sailing boats flashed in the clear summer air, tacking back and forth in the breeze that breathed through the channel.

  The hum of myriad insects filled the hot air, music to Killian’s ears as he turned away from the house and headed across the grass to the little annex where he had his study. A separate building with a tiny guest bedroom in the attic, Killian spent more time in the annex than he did in the house. Sometimes, when he worked late into the night, he would sleep upstairs. He had passed many more nights there than any houseguest. Visitors were rare these days, and when Peter and Jane came they always took a room in the main house.

  The outside door of the annex opened into a tiny square of hall, from which narrow stairs led up to the bedroom. Straight ahead, a door opened into a small bathroom, while the door to the right led into his study. He knew he would have to take care not to leave it open for more than the few seconds it would take his visitor to enter. He closed it behind him now and crossed to his desk. He placed the film canister in his in-tray and went to the window. He opened it to lean out and pull the shutters closed, adjusting the slats to let in some light, before closing the window once more and turning the key in its lock. Only the fan turning lazily in the ceiling stirred the hot air of the room.

  Killian returned to his desk and eased himself into his captain’s chair. He took out a handkerchief to mop away the perspiration that formed like dewdrops on his forehead, and ran a hand back through his head of thick, white hair. He looked at the book lying on his desk. A thin, well-thumbed paperback. He opened it at random, somewhere around the halfway point, and ran the heel of his hand up between the pages, breaking the spine so that it would remain open, an act that caused him some distress. But necessary, he knew, to accomplish his goal.

  In the top, right-hand drawer, he found a small jar of clear liquid, and a clean wad of cotton wool. He smeared the cotton with a little of the liquid
, and dabbed it lightly across the pages of the open book, then leaned forward to blow it dry. The combination, he knew, of lactic acid and carbon dioxide would prove an irresistible attractant to the winged messenger in the film canister.

  Now he retrieved an aerosol of the repellent, N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide, from the bottom drawer and closed his eyes as he sprayed it around his face and hands. He held his breath for as long as it took the fine liquid particles to disperse in the downdraft from the fan, then took a deep gulp of air.

  He sat back in his seat and looked at the slats of light that zigzagged across the chair opposite and had a fleeting moment of doubt. But he forced it quickly from his mind and checked the time. His visitor would arrive any minute now. He reached for the film canister in his in-tray and hesitated only briefly before flipping the cap off with his thumb and releasing the culex pipiens into the room.

  ***

  The lines of sunlight that fell across the room from the shutters, now followed the contours of Killian’s visitor, striping arms and legs, as he sat in the chair which had been empty just a few minutes earlier. He was comfortable and relaxed, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, smiling a slightly patronising smile across the desk at the Englishman. “My goodness, it’s hot,” he said, and he took out a fresh white handkerchief to wipe away the sweat gathering in the folds of his neck. “Any chance we could open a window?” He was wearing a white, open-necked shirt, the sleeves carefully folded up to the elbows.

  Killian shrugged. “The air’s warmer outside than in.” He glanced up at the ceiling fan, and wondered with a stab of concern whether the downdraught might discourage the mosquito. He felt a trickle of perspiration run down the side of his face. “I’m sweating, too. But it’s not the heat that’s doing it.”

  “No, of course not.” His visitor paused, raising one eyebrow and tipping his head as a sign of concern. “How are you feeling?”