by Peter May
She showered and dressed and slipped out into the hallway, filled with trepidation. Light from the windows in the stairwell reflected off dark, polished floorboards, and the spiral wooden staircase curled up and down from the landing, supported by nothing that Kirsty could see. It was attached to the wall on one side, and its bannister spiralled around fresh air on the other. A fairytale staircase in Kirsty’s personal nightmare. It creaked ominously at each step, as she made her way down to the hall below.
Even as she reached the foot of the stairs, she could hear raised voices in the kitchen. Roger and her father. Curtains half-drawn across the hall obscured the kitchen doorway, and she stood listening, transfixed.
‘Oh, piss off, Enzo. You’re just jealous.’
Enzo’s voice was steady, controlled, but Kirsty could hear the tension in it, and was shocked by his words. ‘Even if I didn’t know that Anna thought you were a prick, Raffin, I’d have no cause to be jealous.’
‘True enough. Why would you go getting jealous over some whore you picked up in a bar.’
There was a very long, dangerous silence, in which the imminent threat of violence had time to recede. Enzo’s voice was stretched to breaking point. ‘Anna and I owe each other nothing. Neither loyalty, nor fidelity. We’re enjoying each other in the moment. No history, no future. And none of that has any relevance here.’
‘Oh, and what has?’
‘Kirsty.’
‘I think she’s made it more than abundantly clear to you that she and I are none of your business. Alright?’
‘Yes, she has. And that’s her choice. Her right. Like it or not, I’ve got to respect that. But I’ll not stand by and see her hurt.’
Raffin said, ‘You’re full of shit, you know that?’
‘Just stay away from Anna.’
There was the sound of something banging onto a worktop, and then a heavy footfall. Kirsty quickly ran down the first few steps of the stairway leading to the cellar, the curve of it hiding her from view as Raffin emerged from the kitchen, pale-faced with anger. He headed upstairs two at a time. Kirsty remained hidden, listening for her father, in case he might follow. But after a long silence she heard him moving through to the dining room, and the sound of the French windows opening on to the terrasse.
She took several tentative steps back up to the hall and stood in the semigloom nursing mixed feelings. Not so long ago she would have been furious with Enzo. She would have stormed into the kitchen and told him he had no business and no right interfering in her life. But somehow in these last days, her perception of him had changed.
‘You’re up late this morning.’
The voice startled her, and she turned to find Anna standing in the half-open door of the computer room. ‘Oh, hi. I guess I slept in.’
Anna tilted her head, giving her a curious look, a tiny empathetic smile curling the corners of her mouth. ‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Why don’t we go for a walk, then? It’s a beautiful morning. Who knows, you might work up an appetite.’
‘I don’t think so.’
But Anna wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘What else are you going to do?’ And when Kirsty couldn’t think of a quick reply Anna took her arm and led her towards the door, stopping only to lift their jackets from the coat stand.
The frost was beginning to melt now on roofs and across the fields where the sunlight lay. The garden was spread out before them, sparkling and wet, a tiny fountain set in a circular flowerbed gurgling through the ice. They walked across the grass, leaving trails through the frost, past the swimming pool and down on to the path that led to the road.
‘Where is everyone?’ Kirsty said.
‘Sophie and Bertrand have driven down to Aurillac for the day. Nicole’s got her face stuck in a computer screen, as usual.’ She glanced back towards the house and saw Raffin watching them from the balcony outside his bedroom. On the terrasse at the side of the house, Enzo was leaning on the rail following their progress. Neither man could see the other. Anna slipped her arm through Kirsty’s. ‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’
Kirsty drew away. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Some woman your father picked up in a bar. A one-night stand. What sort of woman could that be? Certainly not good enough for him.’
Kirsty said, ‘It takes two to make a one-night stand. And from all accounts, it wouldn’t be atypical of my father.’ No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than she immediately regretted them. That was the old Kirsty talking. Her father had believed he was dying. She had no right to judge him.
But Anna just grinned. ‘The young are such prudes. One set of values for themselves, another for their parents. But actually, it was me that did the picking up. If I hadn’t, I doubt your father would even have noticed me. He was pretty preoccupied. I was in Strasbourg for the funeral of a friend and feeling a bit low. It was more about comfort than sex. For both of us.’
‘And now?’
Anna twinkled. ‘Oh, now, it’s definitely the sex.’
Which made Kirsty laugh for the first time in days.
They walked on in silence, until they reached the road that ran through the village. A monument in front of the church listed the dead of the Great War. Even in a tiny village like this, the death toll had reached nearly forty, wiping out a whole generation of its young men. Brousse, Chanut, Claviere. Taurand, Vaurs, Verdier.
‘So what’s the story, Kirsty?’
‘What story?’
‘Between you and your father.’
‘He hasn’t told you?’
‘We’re still strangers in the night, Kirsty. We make love, not conversation.’
And Kirsty felt overshadowed again by the older woman’s easy wit and sophistication. It made her behaviour through all the years of rejecting her father seem childish and inconsequential, and she glossed over it. ‘Oh, he left my mother for another woman when I was just a kid. He set up home here in France with his French lover. And then she went and died in childbirth, leaving him to bring up Sophie on his own.’
‘And you resented him for it?’
‘I didn’t understand why he’d gone. It was like it wasn’t my mother he was leaving, it was me. At first I thought it was my fault. Me and mum used to row all the time. I thought I’d driven him away. Then my mum made me see it wasn’t my fault, or hers. It was just my dad. That’s how he was. He didn’t care about anything or anyone but himself.’
There were tables and chairs on the terrasse outside Chez Milou, and they sat down to soak up what little warmth there was in the sun. An old man came out and took their order for coffee.
Kirsty examined the backs of her hands, avoiding Anna’s eye. ‘It took me nearly twenty years to understand that it wasn’t that simple. That dads suffer, too. And that you can’t choose who you love and who you don’t.’ Which made her wonder about Roger, the feelings she had for him, and why, in spite of everything, she still had. She lifted her eyes to meet Anna’s. ‘Anyway, we’ve had a kind of father-daughter rapprochement of late. I think I understand him better now. Which makes it easier to forgive. And I suppose I never really realised how much I loved him until I first met Sophie and saw how she doted on him.’ She smiled. ‘He’s difficult, and cranky, and brilliant, and after all the years I had to do without him, I don’t know how I’d survive without him now.’
Anna gazed off towards some distant, unseen horizon, then snapped back to the moment as their coffees arrived. ‘We never can imagine how we’ll survive without the ones we love,’ she said. ‘Until we have to.’ She turned her gaze directly on the younger woman. ‘And then we just do.’ And there was something cold in her tone, like the touch of icy fingers.
* * *
When they finished their coffees, they walked on to the far end of the village before turning back. It took nearly fifteen minutes to get back to the house. They heard the phone as they were passing the swimming pool, and when the ringing stopped,
they heard Nicole calling for Enzo. They had reached the foot of the steps by the time they heard him return her call. He was coming down the stairs when they came through the front door. Nicole was waiting for him in the hall, and handed him the phone. ‘It’s Monsieur Martinot.’
Enzo took the phone as Raffin appeared on the curve of the staircase above him.
‘Allo? Oui, bonjour, monsieur. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.’ He listened intently for a few moments, and Kirsty saw his expression change. ‘Well, that’s wonderful. When do you think we can expect some kind of feedback?’ His expression changed again, and she saw his skin flush dark. ‘The British? Well, who is he?’ As he listened his expression altered once more, this time to one of incredulity. ‘Monsieur, that is simply not possible….Well, do we have a name and address…?’ He waved his hand at Nicole who grabbed a pen and notepad from the hall table. He cradled the phone between neck and shoulder and scribbled on the top leaf. ‘There has to be some mistake. Will you check it out?’ His face lapsed into resignation. ‘Okay, well thank you, Monsieur Martinot. I’ll see what I can find out myself.’
He pressed the End Call button but still held on to the phone, lost in thought. Raffin came down the rest of the stairs. ‘Well?’
Enzo came out of his trance. ‘It seems that the system put in place by the Prum Convention works better that I had hoped. Once it was cleared by the brass at the Quai des Orfèvres, they were able to run our man’s DNA through all twenty-seven European databases.’
‘And?’ Nicole could barely contain her excitement.
‘They found a match. In the NDNAD. That’s the UK national database.’
Raffin looked at him. ‘But?’
‘The man whose DNA profile matches our killer’s was serving a prison sentence in England at the time of Lambert’s murder.’
Nicole said, ‘That’s not possible,’ echoing Enzo’s own words of just a few moments earlier. ‘There must have been a mistake.’
‘Apparently not. They were an exact match. And here’s the thing. A DNA profile consists of twenty numbers and a gender indicator. The probability of the DNA profiles of two unrelated individuals matching is, on average, less than one in one billion.’
Chapter Thirty-One
London, October 1986
The apartment building was at the south end of Clapham High Street, not far from the green open spaces of the common. It was a six-storey block, with a pebbledash facing, built in the nineteen-thirties. During a recent renovation, rusted art deco windows had been replaced by double-glazed units that kept the heat in and the noise out. Unwelcome visitors were kept out, too, by a door-entry system that required a six-digit code. The nearest station was Clapham Common, and you could be in central London within thirty minutes.
Richard sat in a café across the street wondering what it must feel like to live in a place like that. To have a flat you could call your own, money in your pocket, parents you could telephone when you were in trouble.
He wondered what Christmases must have been like in his family. Very different, he imagined, from those he had spent alone with his mother in the house on the cliffs. She had done her best, with decorations and a Christmas stocking. She had showered him with presents he didn’t want, a vain attempt to win his affections. But it was always just them, and he got bored. If she had friends or relatives, they never came, never called. She never watched TV, preferring to sit and read, driving him to his bedroom where he spent solitary hours nursing his resentment of the good time he knew his friends from school would be having.
He couldn’t finish his coffee. It was weak and milky, and no amount of sugar would give it flavour. He liked his coffee strong and black. Real coffee. He couldn’t get used to the way the English served it, powder from a jar drowned in milk.
In the street outside, he was assaulted by the roar of the traffic and waited at the lights until he could cross. There was a red pillar box on the corner where people posted letters, and he lit a cigarette and leaned against it, pretending to read the copy of the Evening Standard that he had bought in the newsagent’s. From here, he had a clear view of the entrance to the apartments, and could make it in thirty seconds if he chose.
He watched a middle-aged couple emerge and head north along the High Street, and then a young man in a great hurry who took the steps to the door two at a time before Richard had time to intercept him.
It was nearly an hour before the perfect opportunity presented itself. A young woman, who could have been no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, hesitated at the foot of the steps, juggling several bags of shopping. She retrieved a slip of paper from her purse, and by the time she reached the door, Richard was right behind her. He could see the code written in a neat hand, as she fumbled to try to punch it in. She must have been new, the number not yet committed to memory. She dropped a bag, and onions spilled down the steps. Richard stooped quickly to retrieve them and pop them back in the bag. She flushed with embarrassment.
‘Thanks.’
He handed her the bag. ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ he said, as if he knew her. ‘Why don’t you let me do that?’ And he punched in the number he had just read over her shoulder.
‘I’m so clumsy,’ she said, and pushed the door open with her foot as the buzzer sounded. He held it open for her, so that she could go through into the lobby. There were post boxes all along one wall, and an elevator at the far end of the hall. ‘You’re on the fourth floor, aren’t you? I’ve seen you before, in the lift.’
‘That’s right,’ Richard said. ‘And I never forget a pretty face.’
She blushed, this time with pleasure, as they squeezed together into the intimate space of the elevator.
‘You haven’t been here long,’ he said.
‘No. Just a couple of weeks.’
‘You’re really going to have to work at remembering that number.’
‘Oh, I know. I’ve just never made the effort. Stupid, isn’t it? I can never remember it when friends are coming round and they ask for the code.’
The elevator jerked to a halt on the fourth floor and Richard stepped out into the hallway. ‘See you around, I hope.’
‘Yeh, I hope so, too.’
The doors slid shut and Richard looked along the length of the corridor. He had no idea which door it was, and walked quickly along, checking each nameplate.
Bright was second from the end. He stopped outside the door and listened for a moment, although he was certain the apartment was empty. He drew out a long, stout screwdriver from inside his jacket, inserting it between the door and the architrave and levering it several times until the wood splintered and the lock gave way. He stood perfectly still, holding his breath, listening for any sign that he had been heard, before opening the door and slipping quickly inside.
He closed it behind him and leaned against it, taking deep, steady breaths to calm himself. He was standing in a short hallway. Two doors opened to the left. One to a bedroom, the other to a kitchen. There was a toilet at the far end. To the right, a door opened into a living-dining room with windows overlooking the High Street.
Richard had the oddest sense of familiarity. He had never been here, and yet felt strangely at home. A calm descended on him, and he went into the bedroom. The bed had not been made. The shape of a head was still pressed into the pillow. The stale smell of sleep, of spent air and sweat, made him think of the bedroom in which he had slept and dreamed and masturbated his whole life. He opened the wardrobe. Men’s shirts and jackets, overcoats and trousers, hung untidily from the rail. There were tee-shirts and sweats and hoodies folded on the shelves, shoes on the rack along the bottom. Leather shoes, and sports shoes, a pair of Doc Martens.
He dropped his bag on the bed and stripped to his underwear and tried on several shirts. They fit, as if he had bought them himself. A pair of jeans were slightly loose on him, but he found belts in a drawer, and tried on a couple of suits. Perfect.
There was a suitcase on top of the wa
rdrobe. He took it down and opened it on the bed, then turned to the wardrobe and began systematically lifting out clothes to pack. He wouldn’t need to buy any for quite some time.
In the kitchen he found cans of beer in the refrigerator, and opened one, taking large mouthfuls as he wandered through to the living room. The remains of a carry-out pizza were still in its box on the table, along with two empty cans of beer. The tabletop was stained with the countless rings left by cans and glasses and mugs. There was a huge TV set in one corner, a futon drawn up in front of it. There were more empty beer cans lined along the windowsills and on top of the television. The shag-pile carpet was littered with the debris of life, crumbs and clothes, and cigarette ash, and Richard wondered, fastidiously, if anyone had ever passed a vacuum cleaner over it.
A brand new Amstrad computer with green phosphor screen stood on a cluttered desk pushed against the far wall. Richard slid open the top drawer and smiled as his eyes fell on the gold-crested blue cover of a British passport. He hesitated, almost savouring the moment. It was who he would be from now on. He picked it up and felt its texture between his fingers, before opening it to look at himself smiling up from a photograph stamped with the official seal of the United Kingdom Passport Agency.
Chapter Thirty-Two
London, November 2008
Clapham High Street hadn’t changed much in the twenty-two years since Richard Bright had been there, although Enzo remembered it from earlier than that. He had stayed in a bedsit off Clapham Common for four months in 1978 during his four-month training attachment to the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Lab.
It felt strange being back, revisiting what had been little more than a fleeting moment in his life. He had been someone else then, and he found it hard to remember the gauche young Enzo, fresh from his one-year Masters in Forensic Science, a Scottish fish out of water in the great big London pond.
The café hadn’t changed much either, since the half hour Bright had spent in it in 1986, sipping at a milky coffee he would never finish. But Enzo wasn’t to know that. If the café had been there in Enzo’s day, he had no recollection of it. What remained true was that it still provided a perfect view of the apartment block across the street.