Extraordinary People ef-4

by Peter May

  ‘It’s the same date that the 1990 Dom Perignon vintage was released, and there didn’t seem to be any other point to that.’ The lights behind were dazzling now. Headlamps on full beam. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’d think this idiot was trying to blind me!’

  Charlotte glanced back into the full glare of the lights. ‘My God, he’s far too close!’

  Enzo felt a sudden jolt of fear, as if he had touched the naked copper of a live wire. ‘And he’s going far too fast!’

  The bang as it hit their rear bumper seemed inordinately loud, and both their heads jerked back against the headrests before they pitched forward again, straining against the seat belts. Enzo struggled to keep control of the steering as his car began serpentining across the white line. He stood on the brakes, but the vehicle at their back was propelling them forward. There was a sickening screaming of tyres. Smoke billowed up in the headlamps, and the car was filled with the smell of burning rubber. Enzo immediately took his foot off the brake pedal and accelerated hard. They pulled away from the following vehicle and the car stopped swerving.

  Charlotte had turned in her seat and was staring out through the back windscreen. ‘It’s a truck.’ Enzo could hear the fear in her voice.

  ‘What the hell is he trying to do?’

  She faced front again. ‘You cut up a truck coming out of the parking at that last stop.’

  ‘I did not,’ Enzo protested. ‘He was on my right. The road was unmarked. I had right of way.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t think so, did he? He honked loud enough.’

  Enzo looked at the lights in the mirror and screwed up his eyes. They were getting closer again. ‘Do you think it’s him?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems a pretty extreme reaction if it is.’

  As the truck bore down on them once more, Enzo moved into the outside lane. The truck followed. He swerved back to the inside, and his tyres shrieked in protest. The truck stayed out as if it was going to overtake. The cab drew level with the back of Enzo’s car, and just as Enzo was about to hit the brakes again, it nudged his rear wing. That was all it took to send the car into an uncontrollable spin. The world seemed to be revolving hopelessly around them. Smoke and light and burning rubber. And more smoke, and more light. Enzo pulled the steering wheel one way, then the other. And miraculously they stopped spinning. But they were sliding side-on, now, and a large green drum with a white arrow was flying towards them at speed. Criss-crossed white lines passed beneath them before they hit the drum and spun off again on to a steeply curving exit ramp, coming to a sudden and unexpected stop halfway up it, facing back the way they had come. The truck flew past on the autoroute, and as its lights and the roar of its engine receded, a dreadful silence settled on them, like dust after an explosion.

  Enzo clutched the wheel to stop his hands from shaking. He glanced across at Charlotte. Her face was an almost luminous white. Her hands were pressed against the dashboard, arms at full stretch. ‘He was trying to kill us,’ she whispered. And her voice seemed to thunder inside Enzo’s head.

  All he could do was nod in acknowledgement. It felt as if he had left his voice somewhere back there on the autoroute. Twice in one day he had been within seconds of death. The first time, there was no doubt that someone had premeditatedly tried to murder him. Whether this time he was a victim of road rage, or another deliberate attempt at murder, he had no way of knowing.

  The road was still empty, the countryside around them lost in blackness. There were no lights visible anywhere, except for Enzo’s headlamps pointing back down the ramp. The engine had stalled. He collected himself to try to restart it. It was not until the third attempt that he managed to coax it back to life.

  ‘We’re not going back on the autoroute, are we?’ There was something like panic in Charlotte’s voice.

  Enzo finally found his. ‘No. There’s a map in the glove box.’ With legs like jelly, he manipulated the pedals to put the car in reverse and take them through a three-point turn so that they were facing the correct way. Then he pulled gently away and followed the road to a junction where a road sign reflected brightly in their headlights. TULLE 27km.

  Charlotte turned on the courtesy light and squinted at the map. ‘This must take us to the N120. If we get to Tulle, I know the way from there. We should be at the house in just over an hour.’

  * * *

  It was after midnight, and Enzo’s car strained up a narrow road through a tunnel of trees and lush, green foliage. On the main road from Tulle they had passed through village after village swaddled in darkness. Houses shuttered, street lamps extinguished. It was hard to believe that anyone inhabited these grim stone dwellings huddled along the roadside. Everywhere seemed abandoned to the night. The only life they had seen since leaving Tulle were occasional sets of furtive eyes caught in the headlamps, unseen creatures skulking at the roadside.

  Now the road rose steeply through the wood-cladded hillside, twisting and turning, headlights picking out creepers dangling from overhanging oaks. An owl swooped through their lights, intent on some invisible prey, and shrieked with alarm before veering off sharply and disappearing into the forest.

  Suddenly they emerged from the claustrophobia of the trees, on to an open ridge. The moon had risen, and cast its colourless light across the valley below. They could see distant twinkling pockets of streetlights, a church floodlit on the far horizon, the river Cère a thin, meandering band of silver far below. The land rose and fell dramatically all around them, smeared black with trees, and punctuated by shimmering silver-green pasture. The road curled up, then, through a tiny stone village with a huge, crumbling church, and began its descent on the other side. A white ironwork cross at the side of the road reflected the lights of the car, and Charlotte told Enzo to turn left into a tiny metalled road which took them down a steep incline. They passed a holiday home, all closed up behind high hedges, and carried on to the treeline and beyond. The road reached an unexpected dead end, and Charlotte told him to take another left, down a rough, cobbled path. Enzo nursed his car gently down the track, wondering where on earth Charlotte was taking them.

  ‘You can stop here,’ she said suddenly.

  Enzo jerked to a halt and looked around. They were surrounded by trees, and tangling briar amongst thick undergrowth. ‘Here?’ He was incredulous. ‘Where on earth are we?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ She reached into the back to retrieve her overnight bag and her laptop, and she got out of the car.

  Enzo cut the engine and the lights and followed her out into the night. It took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, and for the world to take shape again in the moonlight that filtered down through the trees. She plunged off into what seemed like thickly wooded hillside, and he scrambled along behind her, afraid of losing her in the dark. But in just a few short steps, they emerged again into bright moonshine, a clearing cut into the slope, and Enzo could see, about four meters below them, the dark shape of an old house nestling in a natural fold of rock. Primitive steps had been cut into the hill and reinforced by old railway ties. Charlotte followed them down to a covered patio at the front of the house, and snapped on her penlight to track down the lock on the door. She fumbled with a set of huge old keys, and in a moment pushed the heavy front door inwards into the house.

  ‘Wait here a minute,’ she said, and disappeared inside. Enzo turned to take in the moonlit view that dropped away almost sheer below the house. The air was shimmering in the night heat. He could still see occasional snatches of the silvered Cère through the trees. And then it was all wiped out, the terrasse washed with sudden light as Charlotte switched on the electrics somewhere inside the house.

  He turned to see her through the doorway standing at the far side of an old farmhouse kitchen with tiled floors and pointed stone walls. She was pale, and tired, and still shocked by their brush with death, but he remembered again, in that moment, how beautiful he’d thought her tha
t first time he’d seen her. Then she had been defiant and self-confident. Now she seemed vulnerable, defeated. He walked into the kitchen, and immediately felt the chill contained within its thick stone walls. A stark contrast with the warm air outside. He put his bag on the table and took her in his arms, and held her tightly. One way or another, he knew, she was going to have a huge impact on his life. And he didn’t want to let her go. Ever.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.

  ‘The only thing we can do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Find them before they find us.’

  II

  There was a renewed urgency now about the need to make sense of the clues found at Hautvillers. In the barn adjoining the house, Charlotte dug out the white cardboard wrapping from a dishwasher installed the previous summer, and Enzo opened it out and taped it to a wall in the kitchen. A makeshift whiteboard. In the huge open fireplace, the flames of a log fire licked up blackened stone, dry oak crackling in the grate, taking the chill off air undisturbed since the house was closed up for the winter at Christmas. The comforting smell of woodsmoke filled the kitchen.

  Charlotte heated soup on the stove while Enzo set up her laptop at one end of the kitchen table, connected it to a printer she kept at the house, and downloaded the photographs he had taken at the dog cemetery above Château Hautvillers. One by one he printed them out and stuck them up around the edges of his whiteboard. Beneath the salamander and the sports trophy he marked up the dates that were engraved on them. He wrote 19/3 below the referee’s whistle.

  Then he sat down at the long wooden table and tried to clear his mind. At first he closed his eyes, and then he opened them again and let them wander around the kitchen. It was a large room. For living in, as well as cooking and eating. It was the centre of the house. Great blackened beams supported the floorboards of an attic room above. Pots and pans and keys and rusted chains hung from ancient nails hammered into them long ago. Behind a curtain next to the fireplace, an old staircase led up to the attic. Crooked wooden doors opposite led to a bathroom and a double bedroom. The original stone souillarde, set in an arched alcove, was still used as a sink. There were bookcases and an old walnut buffet, an antique grandfather clock whose pendulum hung still and silent. Every surface was covered with dust, and framed family photographs.

  Enzo got up to take a look. Most of them were old. Cheap prints, garish colours. There were several taken on the patio outside. A middle-aged couple with a skinny young girl posing coyly between them. Long, curling black hair. A summer dress, a dark tan. Charlotte aged ten, or twelve. Enzo let his eyes linger on her for a moment, and he smiled fondly. There were several black and white photographs, faded and discoloured with age. Memories of another era, another generation. A young couple on a beach, in strangely dated swim wear, grinning gauchely at the camera. He had a moustache curling around either cheek and wore heavy-rimmed, round glasses. Her hair was a nest of flyaway curls. They both had bad teeth.

  ‘My grandparents,’ Charlotte said, glancing across from the stove.

  Enzo picked up one of the photographs taken on the patio. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘Yes. I think I was about eleven when that was taken.’

  ‘Are they still alive?’

  She nodded. ‘They live in Angoulême.’

  Enzo looked at them. Oddly unremarkable people. He was losing his hair. She was overweight. Enzo could not see Charlotte in either of them. He said, ‘Hard to tell which of them you take after.’

  ‘Neither,’ Charlotte said. Enzo looked across, but she was focused on her soup. ‘I was adopted.’

  ‘That explains it, then.’

  ‘But I couldn’t have loved them more if they’d been my real parents,’ she said unnecessarily, as if in response to some unspoken criticism. ‘They’d have done anything for me.’ She was lost for a moment in some other world. ‘And still would.’ She started ladling soup out into deep bowls. ‘I used to love coming here when I was a kid. Playing in the woods, making up my own games. I’m glad I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I liked being on my own.’ She hesitated. ‘Still do.’

  Enzo wondered if that was her way of telling him not to get too close. Yet more mixed messages?

  ‘They were devastated when I tried to track down my blood parents.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I’d just gone to university. I was starting to try to figure out who I was. Or, at least, who the adult me was. It’s funny. There’s always this thing inside you that needs to know where you came from. No matter how happy, or how settled you are.’ She shook her head and took the bowls to the table. ‘Hardly ever works out well.’

  ‘How did it work out for you?’

  ‘It didn’t. All I managed to do was hurt my parents. Stupid, thoughtless, selfish….’ Enzo saw, with a slight shock, that she had tears in her eyes, and she turned quickly to get cutlery and wipe them discreetly away.

  He didn’t want to embarrass her and focused his attention, then, on the contents of the bookcase. The top shelf was lined with children’s editions of famous books. Reading for the young Charlotte. La Petite Dorrit, Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours, Les Misérables (Tome II). Enzo picked out a book he remembered buying for Sophie when she was young. Le Père Tranquille. He opened it up and read the handwritten inscription on the title page. It was a gift for Madeleine on the occasion of her seventh birthday, from Mama and Papa. ‘Who’s Madeleine?’

  She sat at the table and put a spoon beside each bowl. ‘Come and get your soup.’

  He slipped the book back on the shelf and went to sit opposite her. The soup was a thick vegetable and lentil mix. Comfort food in an uncertain world. He took several mouthfuls, and Charlotte opened a bottle of red wine and poured them each a glass. Enzo took a sip. ‘So who is she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Madeleine.’

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘No one special.’

  Enzo was intrigued by her evasion. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  She sighed. ‘She’s me. All right? I’m Madeleine. Charlotte’s my middle name. There were two other Madeleines in my class at school, so they called me Charlotte to avoid confusion. The only people who still call me Madeleine are my parents, and….’ She stopped. ‘Well, just my parents.’

  ‘It’s a nice name,’ Enzo said. ‘Maybe I’ll call you Madeleine.’

  ‘No!’ she said sharply. Then, more softly, ‘I don’t want to be Madeleine. If you want to call me anything, call me Charly.’ She pronounced it Sharlee. ‘It’s what my friends call me.’

  ‘Is that what Roger calls you?’

  Charlotte laughed. ‘Oh, no. Not Roger. That was far too common for him. He always called me Charlotte.’

  Enzo liked the way she spoke of him in the past tense.

  * * *

  Charlotte cleared away the empty soup bowls and went in search of a cable to connect her laptop to the telephone line. Once connected she pulled the Google search page up on screen, and refilled both their wine glasses. She watched as Enzo wrote Africa in the centre of his makeshift whiteboard, circled it and drew an arrow to it from the lion’s head. Neither of them felt tired. There was still adrenaline flowing through their veins from the incident on the autoroute, and the soup and wine had infused flagging spirits with new energy.

  Enzo stared at the board for a long time. The previous clues had taken him to an uncomfortable place, inside the heads of Gaillard’s killers. He needed to get back there now. To think the way they thought, to follow the same processes. Make the same connections. He heard Charlotte tapping at the keyboard behind him, and he let his gaze drift to the lapel pin. ‘We need to figure out what flag that is,’ he said. ‘There must be something on the net that would make it easier for us to identify it.’

  ‘I’ll have a look.’

  Enzo’s eyes wandered back to the lion’s head. ‘What about Ethiopia? Haile Salassie was known as the Lion of Judah, and he was the last emperor of Ethiopia.�
��

  ‘Wasn’t a French colony,’ Charlotte said. ‘Wait a minute. Here’s what you wanted.’ She tapped some more, then read, ‘Ivan Sarajcic’s flag finder. This is amazing. You can select from a choice of flag types, colours, and what he calls devices—objects that appear on the flag.’

  Enzo came to stand behind her and look at the screen.

  ‘Flag type. Three stripes vertical.’ She selected a black and white flag with three vertical stripes. The image was highlighted in white. ‘Colours are green, yellow, and red.’ And she selected them from a choice of eleven colours. Again, they were highlighted in white. She moved the cursor to a pull-down menu listing devices that might appear on the flag and scrolled down the choices until she came to star. She selected it and moved to a choice of colours, picking green. Then she clicked on a button which read Find the Flag. Within seconds, a large scale image of the flag appeared. ‘Senegal,’ Charlotte read from the caption. ‘It’s the Senegalese flag.’

  ‘Was Senegal a French colony?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Charlotte entered Senegal into the search engine and came up with a World Factbook site. She read, ‘Senegal. West African state bordering the North Atlantic Ocean between Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania. Gained its independence from France in 1960.’

  ‘1960,’ Enzo said. ‘That’s the second of the two dates engraved on the salamander.’

  ‘What about the other date?’

  ‘1927.’

  ‘Maybe it’s significant in Senegalese history.’ Charlotte typed Senegal and 1927 into the search engine and then groaned. ‘Two hundred and six thousand results. We could be here for a month wading through these.’

  But Enzo was still excited. He went back to the board and wrote up Senegal, circled it and drew arrows to it from the flag and from Africa. ‘Let’s leave the dates for the moment,’ he said. ‘What about the salamander itself? You said it was the emblem of François Premier. Let’s see what we can find out about him.’

  Charlotte’s fingers rattled quickly across the keyboard. ‘There’s a mountain of stuff about François.’ She scanned yards of text as she scrolled down the screen. ‘A champion of the Renaissance. His motto was, I am nourished and I die in fire, which seems to be why he chose the salamander as his emblem. It’s supposed to be so cold, it will extinguish all fire on contact. Even his hat was fastened with a jewelled salamander.’ She looked up. ‘Just like the one in the trunk.’