Freeze Frame

by Peter May

  But the feeling of being watched returned once more as he stepped up on to the jetty. Fishermen on the rusted green fishing boat, the Banco, turned curious eyes upon him as they docked at the wharf, and he was aware of yet more heads turning in his direction as he hurried along the pier. He could see the lifeboat station away to his right, a white building with blue shutters. The Societé Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer. Ahead, beyond a small circle at the end of the jetty, stood a couple of hotels, bars with covered terraces looking out across the harbour. He was tempted by the prospect of a chance to escape the cold and rain, and a couple of whiskies to warm him. But he spotted the garish yellow frontage of Coconut’s car rental and supposed he really ought to pick up his rental car and drive out to the house before it got dark.

  He was about to cross the street, when he felt a firm tugging on his arm. He turned to find himself looking into the face of a man almost as tall as himself, but perhaps ten years younger. A broad-built man with dark hair rain-smeared across his forehead and straggling over his upturned collar. His jacket was soaked through, and his blue eyes fixed Enzo with a disconcertingly unblinking gaze. Enzo smelled the rancid stink of stale alcohol on his breath.

  “You think you’re so smart, monsieur.”

  “What?”

  “You think you’ll come after me and prove what no one else could. Well, you’re wrong.”

  And it dawned on Enzo who he was. “You’re Thibaud Kerjean.”

  “They still think I did it.”

  “Who?

  “Everyone. Twenty years on. Even after the court acquitted me. Well, fuck them, monsieur. And fuck you. I wasn’t guilty then, and I’m not guilty now. So if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll stay well away from me. And if you don’t, you’ll regret it.”

  Enzo was aware for the first time that Kerjean was still holding his arm. He pulled it free, and stared back directly into the islander’s hostility. “How the hell do you know who I am?”

  Kerjean’s lip curled into something halfway between a sneer and a smile, and he turned away, walking briskly toward the bar at the Café de la Jetée. Enzo stood watching him go, angry, confused, before becoming aware once more of faces turned in his direction: passengers from the ferry, customers in the bars standing in doorways and at windows. A car, newly disembarked from the ferry, turned through a puddle on the circle, and Enzo felt the splash of it soak the legs of his trousers with muddy rainwater. He cursed and stooped to wipe at his trousers legs with the back of his hand, then turned to glare after the driver. Which is when saw the newspaper billboard wired to an Île de Groix welcome sign. It promo-ed a headline in that day’s edition of Ouest-France. SCOTS EXPERT TO SOLVE GROIX MURDER. Beneath was a black and white photograph of Enzo. Taken a few years previously, but unmistakable, with the dark ponytail and white stripe that had earned him his nickname of Magpie.

  “Your reputation goes before you, Monsieur Macleod.”

  Enzo looked up to see a tall, solemn-faced gendarme regarding him with speculative interest. He wore a peaked kepi and a waterproof cape over his uniform, which looked a great deal dryer than Enzo felt. His arms were folded across his chest.

  “And I see you have already met Monsieur Kerjean. I think he’s afraid that someone is finally going to prove that he did it.”

  Enzo cocked an eyebrow. “And did he?” There seemed no point now in hurrying for cover.

  “That’s for him to know, and you to find out.” The gendarme extended a warm, dry hand to shake Enzo’s cold, wet one. “I’m Adjudant Richard Guéguen. Top cop around here. Big fish in a very small pool. And I’d like a word, if you can spare me a few minutes.” But it sounded more like an order than a request.

  Enzo glanced anxiously toward Coconut’s. He had no idea what time they closed. “I’ve got to pick up my rental car.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. It won’t be going anywhere without you. Besides, they’ve been told to expect you’ll be a little late.” The hint of a smile flitted across full lips.

  ***

  The gendarmerie stood in a commanding position on the hill above the customs offices overlooking the port, a yellow-painted three-story villa with a steeply pitched slate roof. Guéguen took Enzo in through a side entrance. He called into to a small general office, where three gendarmes sat idling behind desks. He didn’t want to be disturbed, he said, and led Enzo through to his own office at the rear of the house. Enzo felt eyes on his back as he followed the adjudant down the hall.

  Guéguen indicated a chair facing his desk. “Coffee?”

  “I’d love one.”

  “Two coffees in here please.” The adjudant called his order back down the hall and pointedly left the door open, apparently so that they could be overheard. He hung up his cape and cap and sat down behind his desk, then leaned forward, his forearms flat in front of him, interlocking his fingers as if in prayer. “You’re an interesting character, Monsieur Macleod.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “But I have to confess I’d never heard of you before I was instructed by brigade headquarters to lend you absolutely no assistance whatsoever.”

  “And why would they instruct you to do that?”

  “You mean apart from the fact that cops never like outsiders showing them how to do their job?”

  Enzo grinned. “Yes, apart from that.”

  “Well, Monsieur Macleod, you have to realise that the economy of this little island of ours is almost entirely dependent upon tourism these days. The era of the tuna fleets and the fish processing are long gone. And to be perfectly frank, murder is not a great tourist attraction.”

  “Even one that’s twenty years old?”

  “It’s the only one in living memory, Monsieur Macleod. However, the fact that it was never solved makes it a little like a wound that has never healed. And we really don’t want folk coming picking at the scabs.”

  “Even if a resolution of the case would finally heal the scar?”

  Guéguen sat back in his chair and chuckled, turning a pencil over and over again between his fingers. “And what makes you think you can succeed where no one else has?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good track record.”

  “That you have, Monsieur Macleod. I was amazed at just how much there was about you on the Internet when I looked. This would be the… fourth in Raffin’s catalogue of cold cases, yes?” He opened a folder in front of him. “And I see that before you came to France you specialised in crime scene analysis. No doubt Madame Killian will have high expectations.”

  “I never make any promises.”

  “Very wise. You know, a succession of people have come to study this case over the years, and none of them has exactly enhanced his reputation.”

  “And I’m not here to enhance mine, Adjudant Guéguen. The publicity these cases attracts helps us raise funds for the Forensic Science Department at my university. So it’s only the French police scientifique that’ll be enhanced.”

  Guéguen inclined his head and smiled in acquiescence. “True, but nonetheless, I have to tell you that should you feel inclined to bend the law in any way during the course of your investigation, you can expect no quarter from me or any of my officers. And you will have no access to official records, or evidence.”

  Enzo nodded. “I take it you don’t keep any of that kind of stuff here in any case.”

  “No. All documentation and evidence is held at Vannes, a few kilometers along the coast from Lorient.”

  “Which is where the trial was held, right?”

  “Right.”

  A young gendarme coughed and entered, a polystyrene cup of coffee in each hand. He placed them on the desk, along with sachets of sugar and plastic stirrers, and left. Enzo stirred in his sugar and cradled the cup in his hands to warm them, sipping on the strong, hot, black liquid. “Thank you,” he said. “I needed this.” He looked up and saw what looked like amusement in the younger man’s eyes. G
uéguen, he reckoned could only be in his early forties. Dark hair cut short, with some brushed steel showing now around the temples. He had dark eyebrows, and friendly liquid brown eyes. A good-looking man who seemed not at all to fit the stereotype of the humourless, intimidating gendarme. “And thank you, too, for warning me off so gently.”

  The adjudant grinned. “All part of the service, Monsieur Macleod.” He lifted the phone. “I’ll give Coconut’s a call and ask them to drop your car off here. Save you walking back down the hill in the rain.”

  When he finished the call Enzo said, “Thank you. Again.” He glanced back along the hall. “How many of you are there here?”

  “Six. Myself, a chef, two gendarmes, and two trainees. During the summer months when the population of the island literally explodes, the brigade sends us another six.”

  “And I guess any serious crimes, like murder, would be handled by investigators from the mainland?”

  Guéguen laughed heartily. “Monsieur Macleod, if you want to know how the investigation into Killian’s murder was conducted, you only have to ask.”

  “I thought you’d been instructed not to cooperate.”

  “Not to give you access to official police records or evidence,” Guéguen corrected him. “No one said we couldn’t discuss things that were a matter of public record.” And there was a hint of wickedness in the smile that creased his eyes.

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, in theory, we were supposed to secure the crime scene until senior investigators arrived from Lorient. In fact, we made a complete mess of it. No one had the least idea what securing a crime scene entailed, so I’m afraid we trampled all over it, touched things we shouldn’t, and failed to protect things we should.”

  “You were here then?” Enzo was incredulous. “Twenty years ago?”

  Guéguen grinned. “I was one of the trainees at that time. I have spent most of my career since serving with other brigades in various parts of Brittany. I returned just last year for the first time in nearly seventeen.”

  “As the boss.”

  “Yes. As the boss.” Guéguen’s eyes crinkled again in amusement. “A lot older and much wiser. If there were any serious crime committed on the island today, Monsieur Macleod, every one of my officers is trained in the treatment of a crime scene. There is a rota of island doctors who would be called out to determine whether or not a death was suspicious, although of course any autopsy would be carried out by the pathologist at the hospital in Lorient. We’ve had a few suicides and serious accidents to practise on.”

  “So it was a local doctor who determined that Killian’s death was suspicious?”

  This time Guéguen roared with laughter. “I would hardly describe three bullet holes in the chest as suspicious, Mr. Macleod. But, yes. It was.”

  Voices in the corridor interrupted their conversation. A young man from the car rental company knocked on the door and brought in paperwork for Enzo to sign. He seemed self-conscious, almost deferential in the presence of the senior gendarme, and was anxious to be away again as soon as possible.

  “The car’s round the back,” he said. “The Suzuki Jeep.” He handed Enzo the keys and was gone.

  Guéguen rose from his desk and reached for his cape and hat. “I’ll walk you round.”

  Enzo gulped down the last of his coffee and lifted his overnight bag, and the two men left by the same side entrance and walked around to the back of the gendarmerie. On the far side of a muddy parking area stood a concrete block with two heavy steel doors. Guéguen followed Enzo’s eyes.

  “The cells.” He walked toward the nearest door and pushed it open. “Take a look. This is where we brought Kerjean when it was decided to charge him.”

  Enzo walked into a dark cubicle. A hole in the floor at the back of the cell served as a toilet. High up in the wall above it was a window, allowing minimal light to penetrate thick cubes of unbreakable glass. A stone plinth was covered with a thin, unsanitary looking mattress. It was cold and damp, the walls scarred with the graffiti of drunks and petty crooks. Not a place you would want to spend any time.

  “Myself and one of the more senior gendarmes were dispatched to bring him in.” Guéguen seemed lost for a moment in his memory of the event. “We were pretty nervous about it. Kerjean was… still is… a big man. And he had something of a reputation for violence. He wasn’t any stranger to these cells. He’d spent a few nights here after getting into drunken brawls in town. And he never came quietly.”

  “You thought he might resist arrest?”

  “Who knows what a desperate man accused of murder might do? As it turned out, he came like a lamb.”

  “Do you think he did it?” Enzo watched carefully for his reaction, but the big gendarme just smiled.

  “Of course he didn’t. He was acquitted, wasn’t he?” He reached into an inside pocket and produced a dog-eared business card. He found a pen and scribbled some figures on the back of it, before handing it to Enzo. “Here.”

  Enzo turned it over. It was a telephone number

  “That’s my private cellphone. Officially, I can do nothing for you, Monsieur Macleod. Unofficially…” he glanced across the sodden car park toward the house, “… I’ll help you in any way I can. And I don’t just think Kerjean did it, I’m sure he did. Even if he can’t be tried again, I’d love to see him nailed.”

  Chapter Seven

  The brief rush of traffic following the arrival of the ferry had long since subsided. The sky had darkened, the last of its light squeezed out by the rainclouds. Le Bourg, the small town at the top of the hill above Port Tudy, was deserted. Lights shone in a few shop windows: Le Relais des Mousquetaires, the Bleu Thé, the Île et Elles hairdresser on the square opposite the war monument and the church.

  Enzo lost his way several times in the narrow streets, terraces of gabled houses with steeply pitched roofs and dormer windows, painted pink and white, and brick-red, and blue. Finally he saw a roadsign for Port Mélite.

  After he left the town, and the Ecomarché supermarket on its outskirts, place names and arrows painted on crumbling road surfaces replaced conventional roadsigns. His Jeep, with its canvas roof and brutal suspension, proved draughty and damp and noisy as he steered it east through the gathering gloom along the island’s north coast. This was flat, dull countryside, punctuated by the odd stand of trees and occasional clusters of isolated cottages. Finally the road turned into a long descent to the tiny village of Port Mélite, a small group of houses huddled around a short sweep of sandy beach. Through the rain and the gloom, Enzo could just see the lights of the mainland in the far distance across the strait.

  He parked next to a white car beside two concrete benches overlooking the beach. The name of the village was painted on a stone set into the grass. An arrow pointed east. Les Grands Sables 400m. He found the house about twenty meters along the dirt track leading to the big sands. It stood behind a wall and blue-painted fence, half obscured by tall, overgrown shrubs and bushes. It was a square, white bungalow with blue shutters, a light burned in one of the windows at the front, warm and welcoming in the cold and wet of the approaching night.

  He’d had no real sense of what to expect of Jane Killian, and yet Enzo found himself taken by surprise. She was petite, five-two or three, and slim built. Curling brown hair with blond highlights was cut short, tight into the nape of her neck, giving her an almost boyish appearance, an illusion aided by the way she dressed. Loose-fitting jeans, a pale blue, open-necked shirt out over narrow hips, well-worn high tops. But there was nothing masculine about her. She had full, almost sensuous lips, and below dark eyebrows large, bright eyes, brown flecked with orange, almost amber. She was, he knew from Raffin’s book, forty-five years old, but looked ten years younger and had an air of fragility about her. As if she might easily be broken. She held out a small, elegant hand to shake Enzo’s. “Come in. You must be frozen dressed like that.”

  Enzo followed her into the li
ving room, where split logs glowed on a grate in an open fire, throwing out their warmth, and filling the room with the smoky sweet smell of burning oak.

  “Here, let me take that jacket. It’s soaking.” She took his coat and draped it over the back of a chair in front of the fire. “You could probably do with a drink. Whisky?”

  “Perfect.” Enzo knew already that he liked her. Any woman who hung up his coat and offered him whisky went right to the head of the queue for his affections. He noticed the open book on the coffee table next to the armchair where the impression her body had left in the soft cushions still showed. Chocolat. So although she had never remarried, she hadn’t lost her sense of romance. Or perhaps her dreams of it.

  She handed him a whisky and refilled her own glass. “Sit down.” She curled herself up in the armchair she had occupied before his arrival. “It’s nice to be talking English. My French isn’t that great, I’m afraid.” Enzo had fallen back into his native language without even thinking about it, but realised now that there was a comfort in it. “I suppose your French must be pretty good.”

  Enzo shrugged modestly. “It’s okay. Although I think my Scottish accent sometimes bamboozles the French.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “About twenty-three years now.”

  “Almost a native, then.”

  “Well, my daughter is. One hundred percent French. Although she speaks English with my Scottish accent.”

  Jane smiled and tipped her head slightly, sipping her whisky, and looking at him over her glass with an appraising eye. “She had a French mother then, I guess.”

  “Yes.” Enzo wasn’t about to volunteer any more just yet. He looked around the small living room, made smaller by the clutter of soft furnishings. Pushed up against one wall stood a scarred French buffet, no doubt acquired at a local brocante. A gate-leg table was folded against the back wall. Mounted above it a dozen framed cases displayed preserved insects pinned to white backboards. Ageing brown and cream floral-patterned paper covered the walls and the door, and a scatter of rugs protected polished oak floorboards. “So… this is where it all happened?”