by Peter May
Raffin had brought his laptop to the table. The book he had been examining earlier was his own. Assassins Cachés. Hidden Killers. He had reread the chapter on Lambert, and consulted his computer notes for further detail. He eyed Enzo down the length of the table. ‘You’re absolutely convinced it’s the Lambert case?’
Enzo folded his hands on the table in front of him. ‘It was sealed for me by what the pathologist who autopsied Audeline Pommereau said. Hélène Taillard told me he’d described the occipital disarticulation of the third and fourth vertebrae as a real pro job.’
Raffin nodded. ‘The same words used by the pathologist on the Lambert case.’
‘It’s too big a coincidence, Roger. And too specific a skill to be a copycat killing designed to put us off the scent. So let us assume that we are dealing with whoever killed Lambert.’ He unfolded his hands and waved one towards Raffin. ‘Maybe you should start by telling everyone the facts of the case?’
Raffin glanced around the curious faces all turned in his direction, and Enzo sensed how he enjoyed the limelight. The journalist took a sip of his brandy. ‘Pierre Lambert was a homosexual. A rent boy, operating out of an apartment in Paris. But he wasn’t someone you would pick up on the street. He made his appointments by telephone. According to his friends, he kept a diary of his engagements and an address book full of phone numbers. Neither of those was ever found.’
He paused as he scrolled through a document on his computer.
‘Lambert was rumoured to have had an affair with someone high up in government. But that rumour was courant only among his friends and derived from his own boasting. Boasting that never included a name, or any other details. He had been known to embroider his life with fanciful exaggerations. So no one really knows how much truth there was in it. If any. The police wasted a lot of time pursuing that line of enquiry to no avail.’
An extraordinary silence had settled over the table, curiosity morphing into fascination.
‘He advertised his services in the classified columns of various Parisian newspapers and magazines, and while by all accounts he was never out of work, his income could never have been enough to explain the very large amounts of money being paid on a regular basis into one of his bank accounts.’
Nicole leaned into the light. ‘What kind of sums?’
Raffin consulted his notes. ‘Various. Ranging from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand francs.’ It was amazing how, in only eight years, the value of the franc had retreated into the mists of history. Everyone around the table did the calculation, turning francs into euros. But Raffin voiced it for them. ‘That’s around fifteen thousand to seventy-five thousand euros. Payments were made, on average, every two months, amounting over a period of eighteen months to nearly half a million.’
‘Blackmail?’ Kirsty said.
Raffin gave a tiny shrug. ‘Perhaps. But there is no evidence of that. If it was blackmail, we don’t know who or why. The money was always paid in cash, into an offshore account on the Isle of Jersey in the Channel Isles. And it was never declared for tax purposes.’
He opened his book at a place he had marked earlier with a slip of paper, and ran the heel of his hand between the pages, breaking the spine to keep it open. ‘We really don’t know that much more about him. I did some research into his family background, which was entirely unremarkable. He came from a working class family in a Paris banlieue. His father died when he was very young and he grew up in a household that consisted of his mother, his sister, and an aunt. So his role models were all women. He played with dolls, and indulged in girls’ games with his older sister. Make-believe games like hospital. He was a low achiever at school and left early to train as a waiter. He worked for a couple of years at a restaurant on the Left Bank, which is where he met his first pimp, and discovered that there was more money to be made by exploiting his sexuality. He knew a lot of people, but didn’t have many friends. From all accounts he was not a very likeable young man. He was twenty-three when he was murdered.’
He flipped through a few pages to his next marker.
‘Now this is where it gets interesting.’ He looked up, a slight smile widening the corners of his mouth. He had his audience in the palm of his hand. ‘He had just taken on the rental of a pretty expensive furnished apartment south of Chinatown, in the thirteenth arrondissement. The apartment building was in the Rue Max Jacob. It had been recently renovated, and his apartment was one up, overlooking the Parc Kellerman. He was found murdered in his séjour by his cleaner on the morning of Thursday, February 20th, 1992. As best the pathologist could tell, he’d been dead for around fifteen to sixteen hours. Which puts his time of death at sometime the previous afternoon.’
Enzo said, ‘I haven’t studied the case in any great detail yet, but as I recall from my original reading of it, it was a very curious crime scene.’
Raffin inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘It was. In various respects. The murder itself, for a start. Lambert appears to have been half-strangled, before his killer finally decided to break his neck. A manoeuvre performed, apparently, with well-practised precision. A real pro job, as the médecin légiste said.’
‘Which,’ Enzo interjected, ‘makes you wonder why his killer was trying to strangle him in the first place. It seems very untidy.’
‘It wasn’t the only untidy aspect of the crime scene. A coffee table had been shattered, apparently by the combined weight of the two men falling on it. So it seems there was a struggle. Bruises on Lambert’s back and skull led the pathologist to conclude that the killer had been on top of him when they fell. There were coffee stains on the carpet, a broken cup and two broken saucers. A second was still intact. There was a smashed sugar bowl, and lumps of sugar were scattered across the floor. It appeared that the men had been drinking coffee together before the attack, leading to an assumption by the police that the victim had known his killer.’
‘That’s quite an assumption to make on the basis of two broken coffee cups.’ It was Bertrand’s observation that broke the flow of Raffin’s narrative.’
Raffin raised a finger and waggled it. ‘No, there was more. But I’ll come to that in a moment. The next interesting piece, or should I say pieces, of evidence were in the kitchen. On the kitchen counter, next to the sink, investigators found a small, empty bottle. A brown medicine bottle which had contained pills, most of which were scattered across the kitchen floor, along with its plastic cap. The pills were short-acting prescription antihistamines known as terfenadine, sold under the brand name of Seldane. Although these were prescription drugs, this was not the bottle they had come in, so there was no label. And more curiously, no fingerprints. None at all.
‘In the sink there was a broken glass tumbler. One of a set of six. The remaining five were found in a kitchen cupboard. The only prints recovered from it were Lambert’s. Now here’s the thing…’ He looked around the rapt faces fixed upon his. ‘Antihistamines like terfenadine were taken to counteract the effects of severe allergic reactions, like hay fever or animal allergies. But Lambert had no history of allergy. None. His GP had never prescribed him an antihistamine.’
‘So they belonged to the killer,’ Sophie said. ‘He was having an allergic reaction.’
Raffin inclined his head in such a way as to cast doubt on her theory. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. The murder took place in February, so he couldn’t have been suffering from hayfever. Lambert didn’t keep cats or dogs, so it wasn’t an animal allergy. There was nothing obvious in the apartment that he would have reacted to.’
‘So why would he have spilled pills all over the place and left the bottle on the counter?’
‘If we knew that, Sophie, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.’
Bertrand said, ‘You said there was some other reason the police thought that Lambert knew his killer.’
Raffin nodded. ‘Yes. Probably the most enigmatic, and tantalising piece of evidence in the whole case. Sixteen years ago, people still used telephone
answering machines that recorded messages on cassettes. On the cassette on Lambert’s answering machine, police found what appears to have been an accidentally recorded conversation. The machine was set to answer after four rings. Lambert must have picked up the receiver at the same moment the machine kicked in, unaware that it had done so. The whole conversation was recorded.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, it was a very short conversation. No names were used. The caller was male, and made a rendezvous to meet Lambert at his apartment at three o’clock the following afternoon. The day of the murder. Coinciding pretty closely with the time of death estimated by the pathologist.’
‘In other words, whoever made that phone call was the killer,’ Bertrand said.
‘That’s what the police figured. The trouble is, it didn’t lead them anywhere. There was nothing in the conversation that gave the least clue as to the identity of the caller. The entire conversation only lasted about forty seconds. Very frustrating. They could listen to the killer’s voice, but they had no idea who he was.’
‘Or why they were meeting?’ Enzo had read the text of the call several months previously but couldn’t remember the precise nature of it.
‘No. Just that they needed to talk.’
Enzo’s brain was working overtime. ‘Remind me. There were no fingerprints recovered, were there?’
‘None. At least none that were of any use. Lambert’s of course. His cleaner. Some partial prints that matched the previous renters. A few others of unknown origin, that didn’t match anything in the police database. It was pretty much assumed that the killer was wearing gloves. The lack of prints on the medicine bottle. Or on the broken glass in the sink. Only Lambert’s prints were recovered from the coffee cups, the saucers, the sugar bowl. And the pathologist, in his report, said that the shape of the finger bruising around Lambert’s neck was consistent with his attacker being gloved.
‘Very odd,’ Enzo said, ‘that you would sit drinking coffee in someone’s house with your gloves on. And then the medicine bottle, if it was his, no label, no prints.’
‘He was being very careful,’ Nicole said.
‘So careful, in fact, that he could only have come to Lambert’s apartment with one intention. To kill him. So careful that he would carry his medicine in an unmarked bottle. Then careless enough to leave it lying on the kitchen counter. Which makes me think that Sophie might have been right. That he was having an allergic reaction to something and losing control. Spilling the pills, breaking a glass.’
‘A reaction to what?’ Raffin said.
‘I don’t know. We’re going to have to go back over all the old evidence. Is there any way we can access that?’
‘Maybe. The original investigating officer is retired now. But when I spoke to him, I got the impression that it still niggled. Unfinished business. You know, one of those unresolved cases that mars an otherwise outstanding career. I think we could count on his help.’
Enzo thought about it. ‘1992. It’s a long time ago. The trail will be pretty cold by now. But there must be something there. Something the killer’s scared of. And we shouldn’t forget that he’s left a more recent trail. Kirsty’s description of the man at the press conference in Strasbourg and at the station two days later. We both saw him, if just for a moment, in the taxi outside Kirsty’s apartment. The same man who purchased strands of my hair in Cahors. He may or may not be the killer. But at least we have a face.’
‘Two,’ Nicole said, and Enzo smiled.
‘You’re quite right. We also have the phony doctor who told me I was dying of cancer. That man’s face will live in my memory for a very long time. And he was good. You know, convincing. Like a professional.’
‘Like a real doctor, you mean?’
‘No, Nicole. Like an actor. And if there’s one thing we know about actors, they put their faces out there. For hire. Someone found him to hire him, so maybe we can find him, too. But first of all, I think we have to go to Paris.’
Kirsty seemed surprised. ‘All of us?’
‘No, just me and Roger. The minute we step into the frame again, we become targets.’ He glanced at Raffin who looked less than pleased at the prospect of making himself a target. ‘Because I’m already pretty much convinced about one thing now.’
Raffin frowned. ‘What’s that?’
‘Lambert’s murder wasn’t some random act of revenge, or a crime passionnel. The man who killed him really was a professional.’
* * *
He stood outside on the terrasse, leaning on the wrought iron at the top of the steps for a long time, warmed still by his anger. That this man should so cold-bloodedly have murdered a woman whose only crime was that she knew Enzo, that he had tried and only just failed to kill Kirsty, was fuelling a sense of outrage and revenge — the like of which Enzo had never felt before.
He became aware of how tightly he was gripping the rail, and forced himself to relax. The nearly full November moon had risen high over the village, and a frost was settling like dust across the fields. It seemed wrong that such a beautiful night should be spoiled by such base feelings.
He took a deep breath and turned away, opening the door and stepping into the darkened hall. A night light at the far end cast a faint illumination on the spiral staircase the led up to the floor above. Everyone else had gone to bed. Anna had said nothing more to him than a cursory bonne nuit. Perhaps she was regretting allowing them to stay. And then he remembered how animated she had been with Raffin during dinner, and a seed of jealousy stirred deep inside of him.
As he approached the stairs, he saw a line of light beneath doors leading to a study at the back of the house. Someone was still up. He nudged open the door, and Nicole turned from a desk pushed against the far wall, a bank of computer monitors flickering in the muted light of a desk lamp.
‘Oh, hi, Monsieur Macleod. I thought everyone had gone to bed.’
‘What are you doing, Nicole?’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked over to the desk.
‘It’s great, isn’t it? All this computer stuff. High speed internet, colour laser printer, fax, flatbed scanner. There’re four computers here, and about five hundred gigs worth of external hard drive.’
‘Yes, but what are you doing with it?’
‘Anna said it would be okay. I’ve plugged in my laptop, connected up to a thirty-inch cinema screen. I can drag files backwards and forwards between screens, backing up on to a firewire hard drive.’ She paused, eyes shining. An only child, a lonely girl raised on a remote farm in the Aveyron, Nicole had found her focus and her talent in an alternative, virtual world. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Who?’
‘The oncologist. The actor.’
Enzo closed his eyes and saw him as clearly as if he was right there in front of him. And he wondered if the man had the least idea of the hell he had put Enzo through. ‘He had short, dark hair. But it was flecked through with grey, receding from the temples. I remember thinking he was a good-looking man. He had blue eyes, dark blue, like deep ocean reflecting blue sky. A square sort of face. Tanned. Fleshy lips. I’d say he was early forties. Quite tall. Not as tall as me, but well-built. When I think about it now, he didn’t seem quite comfortable in his suit and tie. I guess I probably thought his uneasiness was because of me. Because of what he had to tell me. But looking back, the suit was probably not his natural habitat. If you were to cast him in a movie, he might well play a military man, or an action hero.’ He opened his eyes again and found Nicole staring at him.
‘If he can be found, Monsieur Macleod, I’ll find him.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll start with the internet. I already Googled acteurs and France. There are a lot of actors’ agencies and directories online, and most of them carry photographs. With a description like the one you gave me, I should be able to narrow them down pretty quickly.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. In fact, he wasn’t certain he had slept at a
ll. He was in a large room at the front of the house, with views towards the village. He’d left the shutters open, and tall windows laid elongated arches of moonlight across polished wooden floors scattered with Chinese rugs. The light kept his demons at bay but his mind in an unsettled state that hovered indeterminately somewhere between sleep and consciousness.
He had been aware of the noises of the night. The house, like all old houses, had its own characteristic sounds. Sounds, that with time, you would stop hearing. The cracking of the central heating pipes as they cooled. A deep creaking in the roof as the stone tiles contracted, applying pressure to the oak they were nailed to. The scurrying of field mice finding shelter from freezing temperatures among the rubble between thick stone walls. Outside, an owl in the trees was exchanging hoots with another somewhere across the valley.
He lay on his back trying not to think, eyes half-shut, semifocused on a crack in the ceiling, when a floorboard creaked outside his door. Like the sound of a footstep in wet snow. He pulled himself up onto one elbow, wide awake now and stared towards the door as it opened to let in a sliver of light from the hall. The shadow of a figure slipped into his room and drifted through the moonlight like a ghost, until he saw the curtain of dark hair tumbling across her shoulders as she let her dressing gown slip to the floor. A swish of silk on smooth skin.
Black eyes found his in the dark. He said, ‘I thought…’
‘Shhhh.’ She put a finger over his lips. ‘This way no one has to be embarrassed about our sleeping arrangements. Especially your girls.’
Something about her discretion, her concern for his daughters, touched him, and he felt a wave of affection for her. As she bent over him, he took her head in his hands and kissed her.
* * *
He had meant to make love to her slowly, surely. A slow hand, a steady beat. But in the end he had consumed her quickly, devouring her almost in a single bite. Now they lay breathless from the exertion, side by side, damp sheets twisted around spent bodies, cold air on burning skin.