Freeze Frame

by Peter May

  “Not good.” Some days were better than others. But lately there were more days when he felt worse. He supposed it was only to be expected. He tried to listen for the high-pitched whine of the culex, but his tinnitus was so bad now it was impossible to detect.

  The other man leaned forward suddenly, half-turning his head to squint across the desk. He was looking at the open book that lay upon it, and for a moment Killian thought he had seen right through him. “What are you reading these days?” he asked. But didn’t wait for an answer, reading instead from the page heading. The Life of the Mosquito, Part 4. He looked up at Killian, and his incomprehension was patent, etched in the lines that wrinkled his nose and radiated from around his eyes. “Of course. You’re interested in insects, aren’t you?”

  “It’s been a passion of mine for years.”

  “Can’t say I have anything other than a healthy dislike for them myself. Noisy, stinging, biting little bastards!” And he chuckled as if he had said something amusing.

  Killian smiled indulgently.

  “Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it.” The visitor leaned over to lift his bag from the floor and suddenly slapped at his forearm with his free hand. When he lifted his palm away, there was the tiniest smear of blood there, and for one dreadful moment Killian thought he had actually killed the culex. “Damn! Missed him.”

  Killian lowered his eyes and saw it just as it lighted on the pages of the open book. Such a fragile, delicate creature, with its dark-scaled proboscis and golden head, abdomen swollen now from its last meal. “There she is.”

  His visitor frowned. “She?”

  “It’s only the female of the species that bites.”

  “Hah! Like most women, not to be trusted.” The visitor peered with annoyance at the tiny creature that had just fed on him.

  “She needs the blood to feed her babies. Or, to be more accurate, to develop fertile eggs. Mosquitoes of both sexes actually feed on sugar. Plant nectar. Blood meals are reserved for egg production only.”

  The other man raised his eyebrow again, this time in concert with a curl of his lip to demonstrate his distaste. “As far as I’m concerned, the only good mosquito’s a dead one.”

  “Yes,” Killian agreed. And very carefully he slipped two fingers beneath one half of the book, and quickly, deftly flipped it shut. His visitor watched, with something like fascination, as Killian opened it again to reveal the creature perfectly squashed, its final meal now staining the paper of the facing pages. A small, crimson stain in The Life of the Mosquito, Part 4.

  Killian smiled with satisfaction and looked up to meet the eye of his visitor. “Gotcha!” he said.

  ***

  Six weeks later

  Killian closed the door of his study and climbed the narrow staircase in the dark. When he reached the little attic bedroom, he turned on the light and saw a stooped and putty-faced old man staring back at him from the mirror of the dressing table opposite. It was with something of a shock that he realised that the old man was himself. Most of the thick, silver hair that had so characterised his later years, was gone. There were deep, penumbrous shadows beneath his eyes, skin hanging grey and loose around his neck and jowls. He walked with the stooped gait of the elderly, and he wondered what had happened to the young man who had arrived with so much hope in his heart all those years before on the shores of England’s green and pleasant land.

  All that filled his heart now was fear. Not fear of death, for that was inevitable. But fear of not finishing what he had begun. That, in the end, his tormentor would get away with it. He had misplaced his trust in another and realised too late the mistake. He glanced from the window toward the house, across a lawn mired in shadow. There were no lights beyond the pale, colourless, illumination of the moon. And for a moment, he wondered if he saw movement among the trees. A figure flitting from shadow to shadow. He stood straining to see for nearly a minute before deciding it was just his imagination.

  Turning away from the window he hobbled across the room, supported on his walking stick, a stout piece of hazel with an owl’s head carved as a handle, the curve of it fitting neatly now in the palm of his hand. The bed gave beneath him as he sat on its edge, and he laid the stick beside him before picking up the phone. If only Peter had been at home, he would have told him everything. He cursed himself for not doing so sooner.

  The phone, ringing shrill and metallic in a distant land, sounded in his ear, until he heard the familiar cadences of a young woman’s voice. “Hello?” And he wished he could lay his head on her breast and weep, curling up like a fetus, returning to the safety of the womb.

  Instead he said, “Jane, it’s Papa. Don’t speak, just listen.”

  The alarm in her voice was clear. “Papa, what’s wrong?”

  “You’re not listening to me, Jane.” He was trying to stay calm. “I need you to do something for me, and I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.” He paused and was greeted by silence from the other end. Almost. He could hear her short, shallow breathing. “Good.” He had her attention. “I know that Peter won’t be back from Africa until next month. If I’m still around, I’ll speak to him myself. But if I’m not—if something has happened to me—then I want you to tell him to come straight here.”

  “For God’s sake, Papa, what could happen to you? Have you taken a turn for the worse?”

  “Jane!” His admonition was almost brutal, and he heard her stop midbreath. “If for any reason I am not around any longer, he’s to come to the house. I’ve left a message for him. He’ll find it in my study. But, Jane… if he’s still not back, I need you to make sure that no one moves or removes anything in the room. I need you to promise me that.”

  “But, Papa—”

  “Promise me, Jane!”

  He heard the frustration now in her voice. “I promise. But, Papa, what kind of message?”

  “Nothing that anyone else will make sense of, Jane. But Peter will know straight away.” He had absolute confidence that his son would understand. And with understanding would come illumination. “It’s just ironic that it’s the son who will finish the job.”

  “Why can’t you tell me?”

  How could he tell her that it was too great a responsibility for a mere daughter-in-law? That he couldn’t trust her with something so important. He tried to soften it. “It’s too much to place on the shoulders of a young woman, Jane. Peter will know what to do.”

  “Papa…”

  But he wasn’t listening any more. A dull thud from somewhere deep in the building reverberated faintly through the bed. He felt it more than heard it. And as he got do his feet, he let the receiver fall back in its cradle. He lifted his walking stick, this time to use as a weapon rather than as an aid to walking, and shuffled toward the door.

  The light from the bedroom spilled down the stairs to the tiny hall below, casting his shadow before him as he made his way slowly, step by step, down to the door of his study. It stood slightly ajar, but he remembered that he had closed it. Fear tightened around his heart like a clenched fist. Using his stick, he pushed it wide and saw the light that pooled on the green leather below his desk lamp, throwing his desk diary into sharp, clear focus. Beyond its ring of light, the rest of the room lay shadowed in semidarkness. The door to the little kitchen stood fully open. He knew, too, that he had left it closed. He tried to listen, but the ringing in his ears obliterated all else.

  He stepped into the room, and almost immediately was aware of a movement in his peripheral vision. He swivelled around as the intruder stepped into the light, the pistol in his hand raised and pointed at Killian’s chest. His face was set and grim, and Killian thought he saw fear in his eyes. “I figured it would be you,” Killian said. “I knew it was a mistake to tell you. I could see it in your eyes.”

  “Could you?”

  “I saw all this, probably before you did.”

  “Then you’ll know how it ends.”

  �
��Yes.” He was resigned to it now.

  “I couldn’t let you tell anyone.” It was almost as if he were pleading for understanding.

  “No. You couldn’t.”

  The three shots from the pistol reverberated with deafening intensity in the stillness of the night. Propelled by the first of them back against the wall, Killian was dead before the other bullets left the gun.

  The distant echo of gunshot was followed by the sound of a phone ringing in the bedroom upstairs. Frozen momentarily by the act of murder, the killer seemed startled by it and then moved to sudden action. He had no idea how much time he might have. But it was imperative that he find and destroy the evidence.

  Chapter Five

  Paris, France, October 28, 2009

  Enzo pulled up the collar of his baggy linen jacket and buttoned it against the bite of the wind. Beneath it, his light cotton shirt billowed around the hips of his cargo pants, and he wished he had dressed more appropriately for the weather. It had been sultry when he left his home in the southwest the day before. Cahors had been enjoying something of an Indian summer, and the cold winds blowing along the streets of Paris had come as a shock. Only the smokers sat out on the sidewalks along the Boulevard Saint-Germain. A hardy, if dying, breed.

  His leather overnight bag bulged with the clothes he had crammed in to last him a week. He had told himself that a week really ought to be enough. In fact, he seriously wondered how he was going to occupy himself for that long. A look at the map had revealed that the tiny Ile de Groix was only eight kilometers long and three wide. With a population of just over two thousand, there were only a handful of villages, in addition to the small town above the main harbour at Port Tudy. It did not offer the prospect of very sophisticated living. And being out of season, his guide book had warned him, many of the restaurants would be shut.

  He found a seat at a table in the Café Boneparte and glanced anxiously at his watch. His train left Montparnasse at one, connecting with the ferry from Lorient late afternoon. There would be no time for lunch. He would have to grab a sandwich at the station to eat on the train. The waiter brought him a glass of the house red, and he sat sipping it impatiently, watching the faces drift by in the place. He should have known that Charlotte would be late. She was always late.

  It was nearly three months since he had last seen her. An encounter consummated by a bout of frenetic lovemaking at her eccentric home in an area of the thirteenth arrondissement, where once tanneries and tapestry-makers had lined the river. In the weeks that followed she had failed to return a single one of his calls, and he had finally determined to put his relationship with her behind him. A decision he had taken with some regret, for she was an attractive women, intellectually challenging, sexually stimulating. But she had made it clear, on more than one occasion, that while she enjoyed his company, they would never be more than friends, and occasional lovers.

  She was more than fifteen years his junior, and he could see her point. He would be past retirement age when she was still in her forties. But after more than twenty years of widowhood, and with both daughters reaching their twenties, Enzo was looking for more now as he drifted toward the troisième age.

  “Still the old hippie, I see.”

  He looked up to see her standing over him, dark curls tumbling luxuriantly over fine, angular shoulders, even darker eyes fixing him with their slightly quizzical smile. She wore a long, black coat over black jeans and high-heeled boots. A colourful knitted scarf was thrown carelessly around her neck. He immediately felt his heart leap and butterflies stir. She had always had that effect on him, and all his resolve to put an end to it immediately dispersed like a dawn mist as the morning breeze gets up.

  “Hippie?”

  “Last time we spoke you were talking of cutting off the ponytail. I’m glad you didn’t.” She sat down and waved to the waiter. “A Perrier,” she said when he arrived at the table, then turned to Enzo. “Another of those?”

  “No, I won’t. I don’t have much time.”

  “Oh.”

  He saw her disappointment immediately. The meeting had been at her suggestion. Roger, she said, had told her he would be in town. Enzo couldn’t understand why she maintained contact with the journalist. They had been lovers for eighteen months, then broken up in acrimony. She had subsequently made it clear that she disliked him intensely. Yet for some reason they still exchanged calls, and met for the occasional drink.

  “What’s so pressing?”

  “I have a train to catch in just under an hour.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “An island off the coast of Brittany. One of Roger’s cold cases. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No, he didn’t.” She seemed put out that he hadn’t. “So how long will you be?”

  “I don’t know. A week anyway. Maybe longer.”

  “Will you come back to Paris afterward?”

  “I hadn’t been planning to.” He noticed for the first time the dark smudges staining ivory skin beneath saucer eyes. And he wondered if she had lost weight. “Are you all right?”

  Her Perrier arrived and she took a long, slow sip, bubbles effervescing around her lips. “I haven’t been very well.” But she added quickly, “Nothing serious.”

  He reached out a hand to brush tumbling curls from her eyes, and held his fingertips to her cheek. He looked at her fondly, filled with concern. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

  “How would you know if I did or not? You’re never around.”

  Her rebuke stung him. It was so unfair. He took his hand away quickly, as if he had received an electric shock. “Your choice, not mine.” He paused. “Why did you want to meet me today?”

  “I need to talk to you, Enzo. There’s stuff we have to discuss.” There was a coldness now, in her tone.

  Even as he moved imperceptibly away, he knew that she would pick up his body language, the psychologist’s eye detecting all his micro signes. It annoyed him that he should be so easily read. “I’m listening.”

  But she shook her head. “Not now. Not like this. What I have to say is far too important to squeeze in between a glass of wine and a dash for a train.” She abandoned her Perrier and stood up. “Let me know when you’re in town again, and I’ll apply for an audience.”

  And with a swirl of her coat she was gone, leaving Enzo to sigh in exasperation and pick up the check.

  Chapter Six

  Île de Groix, Brittany, France, October 28, 2009

  Enzo gazed from the window of the gare maritime across a grey expanse of water toward a dock where container ships were lined up in serried rows, tall cranes breaking low cloud. The rain was so fine it was almost a mist. In Scotland Enzo would have called it a smirr. The wet, the cold, the brooding and bruised skies, all were reminiscent of his native country. He should have felt at home. Instead, he felt miserable. And a little guilty. If only by association.

  Lorient was a dull town, characterised by the unimaginative postwar architecture of the 1950s. It had once been a thriving port on the Breton coast, a destination for the fleet of the French East India Company bringing goods from the Orient. But the Germans had commandeered it as a base for U-boats employed to attack allied convoys in the Atlantic. Over four hellish weeks in the winter of ’43, allied bombers had completely destroyed the town. Enzo had read somewhere that thousands of French civilians had been killed during the raids.

  The irony was that the heavily fortified submarine base had survived intact. It was now a tourist attraction.

  As he walked with the other passengers down the ramp to the jetty and the ferry beyond, the wind tugged at his jacket, blowing stinging rain into his face, and he hurried up studded metal stairs to the warmth of the passenger deck to find a seat. Rain smeared the view across to the distant Larmor-Plage, where the German commander, Karl Dönitz, had installed his headquarters. From there he had no doubt watched in awe as sixty thousand incendiary bombs fell on the cit
y, his own private fireworks display.

  The water in the bay was choppy, the colour of pewter, topped by occasional flashes of white. Demented seagulls wheeled and screeched overhead, like scraps of paper blowing in the wind. As the ferry sounded its horn and chugged slowly toward the defensive outer walls of the harbour, Enzo could see the formidable concrete construction at Keroman that had housed the U-boats, dark and sinister still on this most inhospitable of days.

  He glanced around him, at the faces of his fellow passengers. Pale Celtic faces, buried in books, or glowering under skipped hats and anorak hoods. Island faces, shaped by race and climate, indistinguishable from the inhabitants of the Scottish west coast, sharing a common heritage, and a kinship that transcended language and national borders.

  It was about halfway across the strait when he realised that each time he turned his head, other heads dipped into magazines, and faces swivelled to look from windows. And he was struck by the strange and uncomfortable sensation that people were looking at him. He was not unused to the curious stares of the French. A tall man, big built, with his dark hair and silver streak pulled back in a ponytail, he cut an unusual figure among the slighter-built, Mediterranean races of the south. But here, among fellow Celts, he had not expected to feel so conspicuous. And yet, no doubt about it, surreptitious eyes were upon him.

  When the first dark smudge that was the Île de Groix emerged from the gathering gloom, Enzo stood up and moved forward to the arc of large windows that looked out across the bow of the boat. Driving rain distorted his view of Port Tudy between the twin lighthouses that marked the opening to the harbour. Beyond a forest of masts, he could just make out the white, pink, and blue-painted cottages built along the low cliffs that ran up the hill toward Le Bourg.

  He turned around to find almost every face on the passenger deck looking at him. Almost expectantly. As if they anticipated that he might say something, utter some words of wisdom. They looked almost ready to applaud. He wanted to shout: what are you looking at! But an announcement over the loudspeakers welcoming them to the Île de Groix, saved him from the humiliation, and the moment passed. Passengers suddenly forgot about him in their haste to disembark, rising from their seats, gathering belongings, and hurrying for the stairs.