Blacklight Blue ef-3

by Peter May

  He turned right at the end of a long, straight avenue, and saw a sign for the Etap hotel where he had booked a room by telephone earlier in the evening. The car park, behind a high wire fence and locked gate, was nearly full. Moths battered about under tall lamps that washed it with light. Enzo drew up at the gate and got out of his car. An empty street ran past the hotel into a smudged, dark distance. Lights glowed in the hotel entrance, but there was no one at reception. They had told him on the phone that it was self check-in. They had taken his credit card number and all he had to do was slip his card into the machine at the door. It would issue him with a code, giving him access to the parking, the hotel, and his room. The charge would be lifted automatically.

  He stopped at the door and turned to look back the way he had come, straining for the sound of a motor, watching for the flicker of a car’s headlamps. But there was nothing, except for the endless croaking of frogs in some nearby pond.

  He turned back to the self check-in machine as the door opened and a dark figure emerged suddenly and unexpectedly, silhouetted against the backdrop of light in reception. Enzo stepped back, an exclamation escaping involuntarily from his lips. The figure raised a hand, and a sudden flame illuminated his face. He puffed smoke into the night. ‘Sorry mate. Didn’t mean to startle you.’ He wandered off across the paving stones towards the deserted terrace of a café opposite, still sucking on his cigarette.

  Enzo waited until he had his breathing under control, before slipping his credit card into the slot and being issued with his six-digit code. He tapped it into the pad beside the gate, then drove his car into the parking lot. He retrieved his laptop from the trunk, and let himself into the hotel, walking the length of a long, featureless corridor until he found his room right at the very end.

  It was a small, basic room with a toilet barely big enough to turn around in. A metal table was pushed into one corner opposite an unyielding double bed. But it didn’t matter. He had no intention of sleeping.

  He took the room’s only chair and inserted the back of it under the door handle so that it angled to the floor and jammed it shut. He made sure the window was securely locked and drew the curtain. The room was in complete darkness now. He fumbled for the TV remote on the bedside table and turned on the television, immediately muting it. The screen provided him with just enough flickering light to see by.

  For a long time he sat on the edge of the bed trying hard to relax, to let the tension of a traumatic day seep slowly from every straining muscle. And as his breathing slowed and his body unwound he was almost felled by a sudden wave of fatigue, and he immediately tensed again. He mustn’t let himself sleep. If Yves Labrousse was going to come for him tonight, then he wanted to be ready.

  He opened up his computer bag and removed his laptop. It took around sixty seconds for it to load its system and log into the hotel’s wi-fi. He typed in his cellphone number and service provider, hit the return key and ten seconds later received a text on his cellphone with the password for the wi-fi. Now he was connected to the internet, and almost immediately his computer issued an alert to tell him he had mail. He clicked on his mailer, and with an unexpected jolt saw that there was an e-mail from Kirsty.

  He hesitated for a long time before finally finding the courage to open it.

  Dad…

  The very word made winged creatures flutter in his chest

  …I call you that, even though I know you aren’t…

  Now they were everywhere, in his chest, his stomach, his head. Panicking wings beating in frenetic flight.

  …I can’t speak about it in an e-mail. But I overheard you that night at Uncle Simon’s. I know he’s my blood father. And I have to talk to you. I can’t carry the secret around any longer. But not here. Somewhere we won’t be interrupted. Somewhere private. There’s a place that Anna took me to at Le Lioran. You know, the ski resort. It’s not far from here. I know it’ll take you most of the day to drive back tomorrow. So meet me at nine. Where the cablecars dock. There’s a stairway at the side of the téléphérique building.

  He could almost feel her pause.

  I love you.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Kirsty sat looking at the desktop on her screen. The computer room was in semidarkness, glowing in the light of all the monitors that Nicole had left running. She had just wakened her own laptop from sleep and knew immediately that someone had been using it.

  She felt anger spike out of nowhere. Her computer was private. A place where she kept her life, her secrets. For someone else to use it without permission made her feel violated. She pushed back her chair and strode through to the séjour. ‘Were you using my computer, Nicole?’

  The eight o’clock evening news had just started, and three faces turned towards her from the television.

  ‘No.’ Nicole was indignant. ‘Why would I use your computer?’

  ‘I don’t know, but someone did.’

  Sophie said, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because the Finder was missing from the desktop. I never close the Finder.’

  Bertrand shrugged. ‘Maybe it was Anna. She was in the computer room last night.’

  Kirsty glanced across the hall towards the kitchen. ‘Where is she?’ Usually, at this time of night, she would be preparing dinner. But the kitchen was empty.

  ‘She went out somewhere this afternoon,’ Sophie said. ‘I didn’t hear her come back.’ She looked towards the others for confirmation.

  Bertrand said, ‘I was out getting wood ten minutes ago, and the car’s not there.’

  Kirsty glanced at the clock on the mantel. ‘She’s late.’

  And Nicole said, ‘I suppose we’d better think about fixing something to eat ourselves, then.’ As she got out of her seat, they heard the crunch of gravel in the drive, and the lights of a car raked past the windows. ‘That’ll be her now.’

  She went out into the hall to switch on the outside light, and opened the door. A car was idling at the foot of the steps, but it wasn’t Anna’s. A middle-aged couple stood with their car doors open staring hesitantly up at the house. They seemed alarmed when Nicole stepped out on to the terrasse. And there was something both frightened and aggressive in the man’s tone. He spoke in English. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Nicole was taken aback, and as the others filed out from the house behind her, it was Kirsty who responded. ‘Who are you?’

  The woman’s voice was shrill as she turned to her husband across the roof of the car. ‘John, let’s just go and get the police now.’

  But he was determined to stand his ground. ‘This is our house,’ he said, his voice filled with indignation. ‘We own it.’

  Sophie’s face broke into a smile of relief. ‘Well, that’s alright then. We’re friends of Anna’s.’

  ‘Jo-ohn,’ the woman wailed.

  Still he wasn’t giving up. ‘Anna who?’

  Sophie and Kirsty, Bertrand and Nicole looked at him in astonishment. Kirsty said, ‘Anna Cattiaux. The former Olympic skier.’

  The man glanced at his wife. Some unspoken communication passed between them and she immediately got back into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. He turned his face up towards the terrasse again. ‘I’m going for the police. If you’re still here when we get back, you can explain yourselves to them.’

  He got hurriedly behind the wheel and slipped the car into reverse. They saw him twist in his seat as he reversed at speed back along the drive.

  Nicole turned towards the others, bewilderment all over her face. ‘What was all that about?’

  But Kirsty’s mind was racing, cogs and counters in her brain clicking backwards and forwards searching for a combination that would unlock understanding. ‘Shit!’ she said suddenly. ‘We don’t know anything about Anna, except what she’s told us. And I never really thought about it before. But some of that just doesn’t add up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nicole was becoming alarmed.

  ‘She told my dad that she was in Str
asbourg to see her parents. Plural. But she told me her father was dead. She also told me she’d been in Strasbourg for the funeral of a friend.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Sophie said. ‘We were just talking about that the other day. Well, not exactly that. But she told me she’d never had kids, and Bertrand said she’d told him her son was killed in a road accident. We figured one or other of us must have misunderstood.’

  Nicole said, ‘Well, there’s one easy way to find out the truth.’ She pushed past them into the house and hurried through to the computer room. The others followed and gathered around the back of her chair as she brought up the Google homepage on her laptop and typed in “Anna Cattiaux” skier. There were more than sixty thousand hits. At the top of the first page of ten was the entry in French Wikipedia. Nicole clicked to open it. ‘There. Anna Cattiaux. French champion skier. Represented her country at two winter Olympics, narrowly missing out on the medals both times.’ She stopped, and her hand froze on the mouse. ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘What?’ Bertrand leaned over to try to read what she was looking at.

  Nicole’s voice was hushed. ‘Anna Cattiaux died in a freak skiing accident twelve years ago.’

  There was a long silence as they absorbed this.

  ‘So who is she? I mean Anna, or whatever her name is.’ It was Sophie who voiced their common thought.

  Kirsty said, ‘Nicole, put the name into Google Images.’

  Nicole’s fingers rattled across the keyboard, and up came a screenful of images. A pretty, blond-haired girl, sometimes in ski gear, sometimes in jeans, occasionally in a cocktail dress at a function or dinner. Always smiling. And nothing like the Anna who had shared in their lives for the last ten days.

  ‘Jesus!’ Kirsty whispered. All the things she had confided in her, secrets shared, stories told. She felt tricked and cheated, and a single word kept bouncing around inside her head. Why? Why? Why the deception, why the lies? And what was it all about? Who was she, and where was she now? Then a thought returned to her. ‘So if it wasn’t any of you, it must have been Anna who was using my computer.’

  Nicole said, ‘Well, let’s have a look and see. People always leave a trail.’ She turned her seat towards Kirsty’s laptop and hit the space bar to wipe off the screensaver. ‘May I?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Nicole went to the Apple menu and scrolled down to Recent Items. Up came a long list of the applications and documents which had been most recently used. ‘Anything you see that you haven’t been using recently? Or any unfamiliar documents?’

  Kirsty scanned the screen. Nothing stood out from the list of documents, and she raised her eyes to the applications. She saw her diary and calendar software. Word processing, her internet browser, her iTunes collection of music and videos.’ Suddenly her heart was beating more rapidly. ‘My mailer. I haven’t sent an e-mail since before the bombing in Strasbourg.’

  Nicole opened up the mailer. ‘Your inbox is a mess,’ she said. ‘Don’t you file stuff?’

  Kirsty ran down the long list of e-mails which had been received and read but remained in her inbox. ‘I always mean to. I just never seem to get around to it.’ There were several unread mails which must have been received during the last week to ten days, but never picked up from the server until whoever it was had used the computer and opened up her mailer. ‘Why would she want to look at my e-mails?’

  Bertrand said, ‘Maybe it wasn’t your e-mails she was interested in. Look in the Sent box.’

  Nicole clicked on the Sent folder, and up came a fresh screen, empty except for a single e-mail. Under Date Sent it said Yesterday. Kirsty said, ‘I never sent an e-mail yesterday!’ She ran her eye along the line. ‘Oh, God, it’s addressed to Dad! He’ll think I’ve sent it. What does it say?’ Nicole opened it up.

  Only the hum of the computers broke the silence in the room as they crowded round to read it. Kirsty’s face burned, almost as if from a fever, and she felt sick to her stomach, hollowed out, betrayed.

  Sophie’s head swung round to look at her, a strange light in her eyes. ‘Is that true? Uncle Sy’s really your papa?’

  Kirsty nodded, unable to prevent the tears that welled in her eyes from spilling silently down her face. ‘I told her about it. There was no one else. Roger had gone, and I needed to share it with someone. And I was going to tell Dad I knew, I really was.’

  ‘Only she beat you to it,’ Bertrand said.

  ‘You can’t call him papa anymore.’ There was a hint of resentment in Sophie’s voice. Since Kirsty had come on the scene she’d had to share him with her. But not any longer.

  Kirsty wiped the tears from her face. ‘Yes I can. Because that’s what he is. The biology doesn’t matter. He’s my dad, and he always will be.’

  Suddenly Nicole said, ‘What time is it?’

  Bertrand checked his watch. ‘Half past eight.’

  ‘Call him! Call his cellphone.’

  Bertrand flipped open his cellphone and selected Enzo from its memory. He listened intently as it rang several times before a message told him that the number he was calling was not online. He left a message anyway, more in hope than expectation that Enzo would pick it up in the next thirty minutes.

  Sophie was starting to panic. ‘Oh, my God, can we get to Le Lioran in half an hour? He thinks he’s meeting Kirsty at nine. But it’s some kind of a trap. It has to be.’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Sleet spattered softly on his windscreen, caught in his headlights like stars at warp speed, driven on the edge of an icy wind that gusted off the mountains. The temperature had dropped by more than twenty degrees during his six-and-a-half hour drive from the south. But it was warm in the cocoon of his car, and his eyes were heavy after a night with little sleep.

  He had managed to stay awake until after 5 am, before slipping off to float through shallow seas awash with vivid dreams that carried him into the dawn, and the first light cracking around the curtains. He had wakened with a start shortly after eight and checked his route north on Mappy. With stops, it would take him more than six hours to get to Le Lioran, but he wasn’t due to meet Kirsty until nine, and so he had not checked out of the hotel until noon, waiting until the last possible moment before venturing back out into a world where somewhere, he knew, Yves Labrousse was waiting for him.

  But there had been no sign of the killer, or his black Renault Scenic, and Enzo had found a restaurant near the Palais des Congrès. He had eaten there in silence, alone with the thoughts that had disturbed him through all his waking hours and the dreams that followed.

  That Kirsty had overheard his exchange with Simon in London had shaken him to the core. But it had, at least, explained her mood at Stansted Airport when they’d said their strained goodbyes. He had no idea how to feel about it now, but all his instincts told him it was better out in the open than festering in the dark where there was every chance it could turn toxic. He knew it would never change how he felt about Kirsty. What he didn’t know was how it had changed the way she felt about him. The one thing he held on to was the way she had signed off her e-mail. I love you. Three small words that, in the circumstances, seemed to him to say so much more. It was that thought which had sustained him throughout the long drive.

  Now, as he turned into the tiny ski resort at the base of the Plomb du Cantal, all his fears and doubts returned. And the confidence he had so carefully constructed during nearly five hundred kilometres travelled, evaporated in a moment.

  The resort car park was spread over three levels, but there were only a handful of cars beneath its sodium lamps, sleet slashing through haloes of pale yellow light. A mere handful of lit windows pricked the dark squares and triangles of apartment blocks and chalets, and through glass doors Enzo saw that the dimly lit foyer of the hotel was empty. In just a few days the resort would be transformed as the season opened on the first weekend of December. By then, what was falling as sleet down here, would have covered the upper slopes in thick ski-able snow. The hotel and m
ost of the apartments would be full, the car park jammed with winter holidaymakers. But for now it was like a ghost town.

  Although he had watched the outside temperature drop on the digital display in his hire car, he was unprepared for the blast of ice cold wind that cut through him as he opened the car door. The wind chill factor was dragging the temperature down well below zero. He took his jacket from the back seat and buttoned it against the driving sleet, turning up his collar and thrusting hands deep into his pockets. He put his head down and ploughed off into the night, cleaving his way through the sleet, up a grilled metal stairway to the next level.

  The téléphérique building was huddled in the dark on the edge of the resort, and he thought what a crazy place this was to meet. Why not in the bar of the hotel? They would almost certainly have had the place to themselves.

  Pine trees rising up on all sides pressed around him as he followed the tarmac round the side of the building, to where five flights of red-painted metal staircase doubled back and forth up to the docking area where the two cablecars sat snugly side by side.

  Enzo climbed the lower steps and leapt over the barrier at the first landing. The staircase rattled and shook beneath him, clattering above the noise of the wind. His face was wet and stinging with the cold. His hands and feet had already lost all their warmth. His jacket was soaked through, and he could feel the chill seeping into his bones. This was madness.

  He hurried up the remaining stairs to the E-shaped concrete docking platform and saw that the nearer of the two cablecars stood with its lights on and its doors open. He looked around for Kirsty but there was no sign of her. He called her name, and the wind seemed to whip it from his mouth and throw it away into the dark. It brought no response. He checked his watch. It was just after nine, and for the first time he wondered how she might have got here. Perhaps Anna had loaned her the car. If he had thought, he would have checked for it in the car park.