Blacklight Blue ef-3

by Peter May

  Sophie grabbed his arm and pointed beyond the ring of light. ‘There’s something on the track up ahead.’ Bertrand raised the beam and they saw the dark shape of a man lying in the snow, the scarlet glow of fresh blood glistening on virgin white.

  Kirsty ran past them and knelt by the body, and as Bertrand brought the light up close, she found herself looking at the face of the man who had picked her off the floor of the convention centre in Strasbourg. The man with the missing earlobe. His eyes were open, staring emptily into eternity. She almost cried out in relief. Sophie’s voice rose above the wind. ‘Where’s Papa?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Nicole grabbed the flashlight from Bertrand. Something or someone had been dragged away through the snow. Blood was smeared among the tracks. ‘Oh, God.’ She started running. The others chased after her, an awful inevitability somehow in what they expected to find at the end of it.

  The trail stopped abruptly by the broken fence, and Nicole leaned past it and shone the flashlight into darkness. Snow sliced through its beam as it scanned the slope beneath them, before picking out a huddled shape lying at the foot of a fifteen foot drop.

  Bertrand snatched the flashlight back and plunged over the edge, slithering down the slope to the body below. As he reached it and turned it over, the girls came sliding down after him, and they saw blood all over Enzo’s chest.

  ‘Oh, my God, she’s shot him!’ Sophie was nearly hysterical.

  But Bertrand was feeling the pulse in his neck. ‘He’s still alive.’ And he tore away Enzo’s bloody shirt. ‘It’s not his blood. There’s no wound.’

  Kirsty stripped off her coat and quickly wrapped it around him. She leaned over and kissed his forehead, just as Anna had done ten minutes before. ‘We’ve got to get help,’ she said.

  But Bertrand was already punching the emergency number into his cellphone.

  Perhaps it was her warm breath on his face, or the familiar scent of her perfume. But Enzo opened his eyes and saw her bent over him, and from somewhere found a smile that made her cry. ‘Hold on, Dad,’ she said. ‘Hold on.’ And he took her hand and held it. Blood or not, she was still his little girl.

  * * *

  Anna strode across the car park in a fury and slammed the door of her car shut behind her. She sat gripping the wheel, teeth clenched, glaring at the sleet on the windscreen. For the rest of the descent, after she had passed them in the cablecar, she had been trying to figure out how they had known. What it was that had led them here.

  And then it had come to her. Her own stupid fault. She hadn’t erased the e-mail after she sent it. She had meant to. But the sound of voices in the séjour had prompted her to close down the mailer prematurely. They must have found it, God knows how. They would find Enzo, she was sure, and the only way to be certain of putting an end to this, finally, would be to kill them all.

  But she couldn’t wait for them to come back down. All of the kids, she knew, had cellphones. They were probably phoning for help right now. She banged the steering wheel with the heel of her hand and cursed her carelessness. Now she was the loose end. The only thing left for her to do was to run. And run. And hide. Looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.

  ‘Damn you!’ she shouted at the night. And she slipped her key into the ignition.

  * * *

  They saw the explosion from the peak. A huge plume of fiery orange light that shot up into the night sky, before subsiding again almost as quickly. The sound of it came seconds later, like thunder following lighting.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  From his hospital room he had a view out across the rooftops of southwest Cahors to the wooded blue hills that rose steeply on the far side of the river.

  During the long transfer by ambulance, depression had settled on him like a winter fog. And now even the sunshine outside couldn’t lift it. He had found a killer, but not those who had hired him. He was no closer now than he had been before to knowing who had wanted Lambert dead or why. He had failed.

  And even although she had tried to kill him, he mourned for Anna. He knew that wasn’t her name, but he couldn’t think of her as anything else. Poor Anna. There had, somehow, been something immeasurably sad about her. Who knew what truth there had been in anything she had told them? But that her life had been blighted in some way by tragedy seemed to him beyond doubt.

  The only chink of light in his darkness had been the visits from Kirsty and Sophie. He had worked hard to put on a brave face for them. Strangely, the two seemed closer than they had before. Like real sisters. Blood sisters. Not even half sisters. And between Kirsty and Enzo there was a bond stronger now than blood. Unspoken, but shared nonetheless. The bond they had forged during those first seven years of her life, more durable than all the torment that had followed. Greater even than Simon’s revelations. Simon had never been her father and never could be.

  Bertrand expected to have his gym functioning again in its temporary home of the Maison de la Jeunesse within two weeks. The insurance cheque might take a little longer, but Enzo had told him he was in no hurry for it.

  Raffin had been moved from hospital in Paris to a recuperation unit in the suburbs, and was continuing to make a good recovery. But there was, Enzo knew, still unfinished business between them.

  He turned his head from the window as the door opened, and Commissaire Hélène Taillard stood in the doorway clutching a dark green folder. Her uniform jacket was buttoned tightly against the swell of her bosoms, and carefully contrived licks of hair hung down from either side of the blue hat pinned to the coiffure piled up beneath it. She smiled at him. ‘You just can’t keep out of trouble, Enzo, can you?’

  He forced a smile. ‘You always did look sexy in that uniform, Hélène.’

  She crossed the room and sat on the edge of his bed, smiling at him fondly. ‘I always thought I looked good out of it, too.’

  ‘What, you mean…naked?’

  She tilted her head and gave him a look. ‘You know what I mean.’

  He grinned, but her smile faded.

  ‘We arrested Philippe Ransou in Paris. As soon as you’re able, they’ll want you to identify him. He’s already been picked out by the manager of the agence immobilière as the man who took the lease on the building in the Rue des Trois Baudus. He’s admitting everything, except any involvement in the murders.’ She forced a rueful smile. ‘But at least it gives you your alibi. You’re no longer in the frame for the murder of Audeline Pommereau.’

  Enzo remembered poor Audeline with a stab of guilt, and grief. He knew that in the coming days and weeks her death was something he would dwell upon, feel responsible for.

  The commissaire opened her folder and glanced inside it. ‘Amazingly the police scientifique in the Cantal recovered DNA from the burned out car at Le Lioran. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in any database we have access to, so we’re none the wiser about the true identity of the woman who called herself Anna Cattiaux.’ She closed the folder and looked thoughtfully at Enzo. ‘These people really didn’t want you to find them, did they? And they don’t seem to care who they have to kill to stop you. And that includes you.’ She paused, and her sigh was filled with concern. ‘You know there’s every chance they’re still going to try?’

  Enzo nodded grimly. ‘I guess it all began with the attempt on my life at the château in Gaillac last year. That must have been Bright.’

  But the chief of police was slowly shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t, Enzo. We ran a DNA check with the blood sample recovered from the château. It wasn’t Bright who tried to kill you in Gaillac. So you can probably assume it wasn’t even related to the Lambert case.’ She drew a long breath. ‘Which means it’s likely that there are still two unrelated sets of people out there who want you dead.’

  Enzo glanced from the window to see the sunlight turning pink across the hills, the sky beyond them shading to a dusky blue. Then he turned back to the commissaire and contrived a pale smile. ‘I’m glad you dropped by to cheer me up.’<
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