Blacklight Blue (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Late afternoon sunlight slanted yellow across a landscape that lay somewhere between fall and winter. Trees clinging to the hillsides that rose up around them had retained much of their foliage, late autumn colours of russet and ochre smeared on green.

As the sun sank lower, the valleys fell into deep shadow, while the rocky volcanic outcrops that broke a reddening skyline glowed orange in the last of the sun. The streams and rivers that cut and wound their way through them lay like silvered pink ribbons. Everything magnified into pin-sharp focus by the cold, clear mountain air.

The motor of Bertrand’s van strained as they continued to climb, leaving below them the lush pastures of southwest France for the rocky wastes of the country’s central plateau. Enzo could almost feel Raffin’s impatience in the car behind. The road was climbing more steeply now, and their progress had slowed since leaving Aurillac. As night approached, the temperature was dropping fast. Even in the blast of hot air from the van’s heating system, they could feel the cold creeping into their feet.

Nicole sat in the front, between Sophie and Bertrand, the map on her knee. Enzo and Kirsty sat in the back watching the changing landscape unfold, lit from behind them by a dramatic sunset. Nicole peered through an increasing gloom, into which their headlights now barely penetrated. ‘There should be a left turn just up ahead. I guess it’ll be signposted.’ Conifers scaled the slopes around them, and night seemed to fall suddenly, like a cloak of darkness settling on the land. ‘There it is!’

The signpost caught their lights.
Miramont 4
. Bertrand dropped to second gear and swung them into the narrow, single-track road. There would be a problem if they met another vehicle in the next four kilometres.

They continued to climb through the trees for several minutes, before suddenly the road took a sharp turn and they emerged on to a high plateau bathed in unexpected moonlight. Away to the west, the sky still glowed the deepest red. Above them it was already crusted with stars sparkling like frost. The road followed a straight line then, for two kilometres or more before beginning a slow descent through folds of rock and stubbled pasture into a shallow, tree-filled valley, and they saw the lights of Miramont twinkling their welcome in the gathering night.

Although the school and the church were floodlit, there was no sign of life in the village. Granite cottages huddled together under steeply pitched Auvergnat roofs of hand-chiselled stone
lauzes
, shutters closed already against the cold and the night. The water in the fountain in front of the church would be frozen by morning.

‘She said it was a right turn at the head of the village.’ Enzo leaned forward from the back, then pointed. ‘There, I think that’s it.’ And across a barren winter field, surrounded by tall trees, stood a big, square house, lights blazing into the night from its tall, arched windows. They passed a swimming pool covered over for the winter, and a
pigeonnier
with a double-tiered roof, before drawing up in front of stone steps climbing to the front door from either side of it. Raffin pulled in behind them, and they all got out stiffly on to the pebbled drive. Gardens dipped away below to a wall, and the field beyond. And the lights of the distant village spilled towards them across its fallow, furrowed rows.

The front door opened, throwing light on to a slabbed terrace, and Anna stepped out to lean her hands on the wrought iron rail. She smiled down at the upturned faces and found Enzo’s.

‘Glad you could make it,’ she said. She cocked an eyebrow. ‘I hope I have enough rooms.’

***

Her breath billowed in the chill night air. ‘I have to confess, I didn’t really expect to see you again.’ She glanced at him by the yellow of the streetlights in the deserted main street of this ghost village. The only sign of life came from behind the steamed up windows of the Bar Tabac Restaurant,
Chez Milou
. They could hear voices raised in laughter inside.

Enzo had known that they needed to talk and suggested they take a walk somewhere away from the house. She had wrapped up in a winter coat and scarf, and slipped her arm through his for added warmth. He glanced at her now and saw the lights in her coal dark eyes, and remembered how attractive she was. He remembered, too, the touch of her skin, the firm, fit body of an athlete. He had made love to her, a dying man in desperate need of comfort. Now that his death sentence was lifted, he found himself wanting to make love to her again. This time slow and sure and gentle, in the knowledge that tomorrow could always wait. He smiled. ‘I was convinced of it.’

She tipped her head and looked at him quizzically. ‘There’s something different about you, Enzo. Hard to define. When we met in Strasbourg you seemed like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. But now you seem…I don’t know…less burdened.’

‘When we met in Strasbourg, I had three months to live, Anna. Now, I’ve got as long as the next man. However long that might be.’

She frowned, and he laughed.

‘Some day, maybe, I’ll tell you about it. But right now, I owe you an explanation about why we’re here. It wasn’t something I could tell you on the phone. And if you want us to go, then we’ll leave first thing in the morning.’

She tightened her grip on his arm. ‘Why would I want you to go? Even if I don’t have you to myself, I’m not going to turn you away. It was starting to get pretty lonely up here. This is almost like having a family again.’

They passed the
mairie
with its French and European flags and tattered notice board, and he told her everything. About his history in forensic science in Scotland before coming to France to teach biology in Toulouse. About cracking the cold cases in Raffin’s book of unsolved murders. About how one of the murderers was out to stop him any way he could. The attempt on his daughter’s life, the burning of Bertrand’s gym, the killing of an innocent woman to set up Enzo as the prime suspect.

She listened in thoughtful silence, and as he glanced at her it seemed to him that she had paled just a little. They needed a place, he said, where they would be safe from the killer. From where they could figure out who he was and how they could catch him.

When he had finished, they walked on for some way in silence. Past the three storeys of the floodlit school to the end of the village, where finally she stopped and gazed across the ploughed field to the lights of the house. They could see Bertrand heaving Nicole’s case up the steps to the door. She turned suddenly towards Enzo. ‘That’s pretty scary stuff.’

‘If you want us to go, I’ll understand. But if we stay, we’ll pay for our keep. And the kids’ll do what needs to be done around the house.’

She pursed her lips, lost in momentary thought. ‘And if you didn’t have here, where else would you go?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We’d find a hotel somewhere, I guess.’

She looked very directly into his eyes. ‘I don’t know anything about you, Enzo. Not really.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘But you’ll let us stay tonight, at least?’

She hesitated for a long moment. ‘You can stay as long as you like. That night in Strasbourg, I knew nothing about you then. We were complete strangers. But you made me feel…I don’t know…safe somehow. You still do. And if I can offer you safety in return…’ She reached out and took his face in her hands, and he put his on her waist and leaned forward to kiss her. A soft, gentle kiss on cool lips. Then he took her in his arms and held her there. ‘Thank you, Anna.’

He felt her soft breath at his ear. ‘Are you sure your daughter won’t be jealous of me? She didn’t seem very pleased to find me in your room in Strasbourg.’

‘Daughters, plural,’ Enzo said. ‘And since I have no say in their love lives, I don’t see why they should have any in mine.’

***

‘A one-night stand?’ Sophie looked at Kirsty incredulously.

‘Well, that’s just typical,’ Nicole said, and the sisters turned to look at her. She flushed with embarrassment and back-tracked. ‘Well, I mean, when your father’s around, there never seems to be a woman very far away.’

Sophie turned back to Kirsty. ‘Someone had just tried to kill you, and he was picking up a woman in a bar?’

They were in a wood-panelled sitting room with double doors opening off a long stone-flagged hallway. Immediately opposite, the doors of an enormous kitchen stood wide, and good smells issued from a Raeburn stove set in the original
cheminée
. In the
séjour
a log fire burned in a marble hearth laden with ornaments and candlesticks. The room was filled with big, comfortable sofas and armchairs, its walls hung with myriad paintings of washed-out, watercolour countryscapes of an alien land.

Kirsty slouched in an armchair, relaxing for the first time in days, and felt guilty for having betrayed her father’s secret. ‘I guess he had other things on his mind. He thought he was dying, after all.’

But Sophie wasn’t about to be so forgiving. ‘So his answer was to go off and spend the night with someone he doesn’t know.’

‘Leave him alone.’ Bertrand perched on the sofa beside Sophie. ‘The only reason we’ve got somewhere to stay is because he met this woman in Strasbourg.’

‘And we don’t know any more about her than he does!’ Sophie was incensed. ‘What do you think, Monsieur Raffin?’

They all turned towards Raffin, who was sitting at a small table by the window with his laptop running and a book open beside him. He looked up when he heard his name. ‘What?’

‘Never mind, Roger, it’s not important.’ Kirsty waved a dismissive hand and turned towards her sister. ‘Let it go, Sophie, please. We’re here now. Like her or not, she’s given us a roof over our heads when we had nowhere else to go.’

‘How much to do you think she knows?’ Bertrand said.

‘As much as Dad’s telling her right now, I imagine.’ Kirsty ran long fingers back through silky hair. ‘Though how much that is, who knows? It’s a lot to dump on someone out of the blue. Particularly someone you’ve only known for one night.’

They heard the sound of the front door opening and turned expectantly towards the hall. Enzo and Anna brought the cold in with them, chilled faces flushing pink in the warm air. Anna smiled uneasily. The awkward silence made it clear that she and Enzo had almost certainly been the topic of conversation.

She said, ‘I’ve got a stew keeping warm on the stove. Should be enough to feed us all. But we’d better sort out the sleeping arrangements first. There are only five bedrooms.’

A further few moments of awkward silence were broken by Sophie. ‘Bertrand and I will share,’ she said boldly, daring her father to contradict her. Enzo held his tongue. ‘And Kirsty and Roger.’

Roger looked up from his computer and caught the glare that Enzo turned in his direction.

‘Good,’ Anna said. ‘That solves any problems, then. Enzo and…’ she turned towards Nicole, ‘…the young lady, can have a room each.’

Enzo was stung. He had imagined that he and Anna would be sharing, as had everyone else in the room. No one wanted to meet his eye. To cover his embarrassment, he said, ‘We’d better get settled in then, and have something to eat. I’d like Roger to brief everyone on the Pierre Lambert case tonight.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘The point is this,’ Enzo said. ‘If he is so keen to stop me investigating this crime, he must believe there is something in all the old evidence that could lead to him. And he thinks I’ll find it.’

The debris of the meal lay scattered across the long dining table. The
civet de sanglier
, wild boar stew, had been rich and delicious, served with steaming new potatoes, and
haricots verts
with garlic. They had got through three bottles of wine, and Enzo and Roger were sipping cognacs with their coffee.

Oak doors opened on to the kitchen, and French windows led onto what, in summer, would be a shaded terrace that looked out across the fields. An oil painting of an English hunt scene hung on the end wall. A retractable lamp had been drawn down from the ceiling so that the table was brightly illuminated, but the faces around it were half in shadow.

Anna had sat at the opposite end from Enzo, and he had watched from a distance as Raffin chatted easily to her, exerting the full force of his charm. He had noticed, too, how Raffin’s attentions had put Kirsty’s nose out of joint. He wondered what she had ever seen in him. He was a man obsessed by his own image, convinced of his own intelligence. And while he had a certain charisma, there was a sense that his charm was something he could turn off and on at will. That it was phony, a façade that failed to reflect the real Raffin. Whoever that might be. Enzo certainly had no idea, and wondered if his daughter had somehow managed to find something more substantial beneath the veneer. But he doubted it, and remembered someone once saying of a shallow acquaintance,
Scratch away that surface veneer and what do you find? More veneer.
Enzo suspected that something a little more sinister lay behind the image the journalist presented to the world. Something dark, as Charlotte had once said to him. Something you might find lurking under a stone. For all her twenty-eight years, Enzo feared that Kirsty’s experience of life was limited, and her interpretation of it naïve. He was afraid that her relationship with Raffin would only end in tears. Hers.

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 20
^th
, 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.’