Blacklight Blue (2 page)

Chapter Two

Strasbourg, November 2008

Sleet gently slapped the window like the soft touch of tapping fingertips, then turned instantly wet to run like tears spilled by the coming winter.

Kirsty watched anxiously from the top floor of the old house. She had been there six months now, the accumulated possessions of her gypsy existence finding more than enough space in the single room and kitchen. It was one of twelve studio apartments in this early twentieth century mansion, built reputedly by some wealthy German industrialist.

Strasbourg was a city unsure of itself. Neither French, nor German. Disputed for centuries by old enemies, it had opted finally to be European, a decidedly amorphous notion lacking any sense of common culture or identity. While its citizens spoke French, the German influence was pervasive, and the establishment of the European Parliament on its northern flank had brought a flood of politicians and civil servants speaking everything from Polish to Portuguese, Estonian to Italian.

Which, Kirsty reflected, was just as well. Since without them, she would be without a job. She glanced at her watch and felt a stab of apprehension. If her taxi did not arrive in the next few minutes, she would soon be looking for new employment.

She cursed the weather. And she cursed the fact that she had decided not to take her bike. Usually she cycled to the parliament, a twenty-minute daily ride through the Orangerie and the leafy suburban back streets that stretched along the river. But in the translation booths that overlooked the semicircular debating chamber, it didn’t matter what she wore. Today it did. Today she would be in the full glare of the press corps, with their cameras and microphones and questions. She would be sitting at the right hand of a man whose financial muscle and political pull were almost unsurpassed in the European Union. She would be his ears, and his voice, and needed to look her best.

A horn sounding from below quickened her pulse. At last! She grabbed her coat and her bag and ran down the stairs. As she opened the door on to the Rue Bernegger she paused, raising her umbrella to protect expensively coiffed hair and carefully applied make-up. Then she slid into the rear seat of the taxi and shook the sleet back into the street.

‘You’re late.’ She couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice.

The driver shrugged. ‘Traffic’s a bitch. When do you have to be there?’

‘Nine.’ She heard him suck in his breath.

‘Not much chance of that,
mademoiselle
. There’s nothing moving over either bridge.’

She began to feel sick. This was turning into a nightmare. ‘Well, can’t you go downtown, and back out on the Avenue de la Paix?’

‘The
centre ville
isn’t any better. Only things still moving are the trams.’

She sighed her frustration. ‘It’s really important I get there by nine.’ If she had been going to the parliament they could simply have driven down the Quai de l’Orangerie. But the press conference was in the Palais des Congrès, the huge convention centre on the north side of the Place de Bordeaux. And to get there, they needed to cross two of the myriad waterways that divided and subdivided the city.

She sat in the back, almost rigid with tension, and watched as the sleet-streaked windows smeared city streets thick with fallen leaves. They moved freely at first, and she began to relax. But as they approached the
pont
that bridged the river between the Boulevard de la Dordogne and the Boulevard Jacques Preiss, the traffic ground to a standstill. She saw that the sleet was turning to snow.

She took a deep breath and felt it tremble in her throat. There was no way they were going to make it. She had taken the one-week engagement in the hope that it might lead to better things. It had slotted in nicely between the end of her one-year probationary contract with the European Parliament and the start of a new two-year term on full pay. Very shortly she would sit The Test, and if she passed it she would become a career interpreter for the European Union. The prospect of which seemed to stretch ahead of her, like a prison sentence. If life was going to offer more, then she wanted to find out now what that might be.

Which was why she had jumped at the chance to work for the Italian. He was the chief executive officer of a major motor car manufacturer. But his company made most of its money from guided missile systems and air defence batteries, and the parliament was threatening to vote down approval given by the Council of Ministers for the production of antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs. However, unlike the Council of Ministers, whose majority vote had carried the approval, the Parliament required a unanimous vote to overturn it. A rare occurrence. But on the vexed and controversial question of landmines and cluster bombs, for once it looked like the MEPs might actually vote with one voice.

The Italian was in town to lobby against such a vote and to pressurise Italian members of the European Parliament whose constituents back home could lose jobs if the contract fell. He had employed Kirsty as his interpreter, and to be the attractive and acceptable face of his campaign. She had not fully appreciated that until the briefing at his hotel the day before, when no amount of oily charm had been able to disguise his naked intent. But she had already signed a contract and was committed to the job. After all, she told herself, she was just the messenger. She had no control over the message.

But neither had she any control over the traffic. Her eyes closed in despair. She had blown it. She should have ordered the taxi half-an-hour earlier. She fumbled in her purse for her cellphone and hit the speeddial key.

‘Hi, Kirst. What’s up?’

‘Sylvie, I’m in trouble. I’m stuck in traffic in the Boulevard Tauler. There’s no way I’m going to make it to the Palais des Congrès on time.’

‘Is this the Italian job?’

‘Yeh.’

‘
Merde
! Is there anything I can do?’

‘You can stand in for me.’

‘Kirsty, I can’t. I haven’t been briefed.’

‘Please Sylvie. You’re five minutes away, and I know you’re not on shift till this afternoon. Just hold down the fort for me. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

***

It was after nine-thirty when her taxi swung in off the Avenue Herrenschmidt. The car park was filled with press vehicles and satellite vans. The flags of the European Union’s twenty-seven member states hung limp in the grey morning light, and wet snow lay like a crust along the curves of an impenetrable bronze sculpture on the lawn beyond. She fumbled to find money in her purse as her driver pulled up below the
Strasbourg Evenements
sign. Then she flew across the paving stones towards the glass, her coat billowing behind her, concern for hair and make-up long forgotten.

Her voice echoed across the vast, shining concourse, and heads swung in her direction. ‘The press conference! What room?’

A young woman looked up from behind a long reception counter, her face a mask of indifference. ‘Tivoli One. First floor.’

Kirsty ran across pale marble set in dizzying patterns, the click of her heels echoing back from glass and concrete. Occasional standing groups of two and three broke from idle conversation to cast curious glances in her direction. Through open doors, beneath a strange ceiling like rows of silk pillows, she saw caterers laying out food, a young man setting up the bar. If you wanted the press to come, you had to feed and water them. At the foot of a flight of stairs, below a sign that read,
1er Etage
, she quickly scanned the list of names.
Salle Oberlin, Salle Schuman, Salle Schweitzer C-D
. Then there it was,
Salles Tivoli 1-2
.

She took the stairs two at a time, emerging onto a wide, carpeted concourse with floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side. The carpet absorbed the sound of her heels, and only her breath filled the huge space overhead, breath that came in short, gasping bursts. Away to her left hung a strange tapestry of warlocks and witches. A sign above a doorway read,
Salle Oberlin
. High above her, more silk cushions. She ran past a glass balustrade looking down on a sprawling maze of cloakrooms. A triangular overhead sign told her she was still on track for
Tivoli 1
. Up steps, through open glass doors, and she heard the voice of the Italian coming from the faraway room. Then Sylvie’s clear, confident translation into English then French. The meeting room was full. Cameras ranged along the back wall, TV lights throwing everything into sharp focus. Sylvie sat a little to the Italian’s right behind a desk on the podium, a sales chart projected on the screen behind them.

Kirsty pushed past bodies in the doorway and felt the heat of the explosion almost before the blast knocked her from her feet. Blinded by the flash of it, deafened by its noise, it seemed like an eternity before hearing and sight returned to reveal a smoke-filled world of jumbled confusion. Screaming, shouting, crying. As she struggled to get to her knees, a hand caught her arm, strong and gentle, pulling her back to her feet. She swept long, chestnut hair from her face and looked up into the eyes of the man who still held her. Blue eyes, filled with a strange serenity. He seemed untroubled by the chaos around him. Was he smiling? Someone was shouting from the podium. The man turned his head, and she saw that his right earlobe was missing.

‘Signor Capaldi! Where’s Signor Capaldi?’ The voice was hysterical.

Another voice. ‘He’s alive! Jesus, he’s still alive.’

A woman shouting, ‘The interpreter…?’

‘Man, she’s gone. There’s hardly anything left of her.’

The sound of someone vomiting.

Kirsty felt her knees buckling beneath her, and only the grip of the hand on her arm kept her on her feet. The man turned back towards her. ‘You’re a lucky girl.’

And Kirsty knew that but for the weather and a taxi that was late, it would have been her in pieces up there.

Chapter Three

The gardens below St. Etienne Cathedral were deserted behind grey railings in the cold November light. Dead flowers had been removed from their beds, and a layer of frost carpeted the lawns. Beyond the Place Champollion at the foot of the Rue Maréchal Foch, a chill mist still hung above the river. Enzo had heard it was snowing in the north. But here, in southwest France, it was just cold. A deep, penetrating cold.

Thursday was training day at the hairdresser’s. Twenty percent off
sur la technique
. So it was natural that a Scot of parsimonious persuasion would choose a Thursday for his monthly trim. Xavier, his hairdresser, only ever took half an inch off the end of his long locks. Just enough to stop them from tangling when Enzo tied back his hair in its habitual ponytail.

The trainee had shampooed and conditioned his hair when he first arrived and now, under Xavier’s supervision, was dragging a comb back through it before trapping it along the length of her index and middle fingers to snip off the ends. Enzo looked with mild concern at the hair that came away in the comb. Once black hair, now rapidly greying.

‘Am I losing it?’ he asked Xavier.

Xavier shrugged theatrically. He was exaggeratedly gay, somewhere in his middle forties, perhaps five or six years younger than Enzo. ‘We’re always shedding hair. It’s natural. You’ve still got a good thick head on you.’ He paused. ‘I could give you a rinse, though. Something to take away the grey. Good practice for the trainee.’

But Enzo just shook his head. ‘We are what we are.’ He turned to gaze out towards the cathedral gardens across the street, a little knot of fear tightening in his gut.

Zavier cocked his head. ‘You don’t seem quite your usual self today, monsieur.’

‘Then maybe I’m somebody else.’

The hairdresser chuckled. ‘Oh, you are a comic, Monsieur Macleod.’ But Enzo wasn’t smiling.

Neither was he smiling when he emerged ten minutes later, his hair full and sleek after its blow-dry, and held at the nape of his neck by a ruffled grey band. His farewell was a distracted one as he turned away from the river towards the Place Clement Marot, past the internet café on the corner. Waiters in the
crêperie
, Le Baladin, and Le RendezVous next door, were already setting tables for lunch. In the Place de la Libération, there was the oddest sense of life as usual. Folks queuing at the
boulangerie
for bread, an old man outside the Maison de la Presse standing with a nicotine-stained cigarette in the corner of his mouth reading
La Dépêche
. But for Enzo, none of it seemed quite real.

He took the letter from his inside jacket pocket to check the address again. He had been trying not to think about it for days, but there was no longer any avoiding it. He had searched the map in the
annuaire
to find the Rue des Trois Baudus, and been surprised to discover that it was almost opposite the music shop in the Rue du Château du Rois. It was the shop where he habitually bought his guitar strings. The
rue
was little more than an alleyway, and he had never given it a second glance. A little further up the street was the old prison in the Château du Roi itself. The Tour des Pendus at the top of the hill was where they had once hanged prisoners in full public view. But the Rue des Trois Baudus had always escaped him.

His visit to the doctor had been routine. An annual check-up, which had never given him cause for concern. In fact, his doctor only ever got in touch to fix a date for the following year’s rendezvous. So the letter had come like an arrow from the dark, a harbinger of what could only be bad news. An appointment made with a specialist to discuss his results.

Enzo breathed deeply as he walked up the hill past the pharmacy on the corner, past the comforting familiarity of Alain Pugnet’s music shop, and turned into the Rue des Trois Baudus. He had searched his dictionary to find out what a
baudu
might be, but disconcertingly it was not to be found. Perhaps it was a name. Graffiti scarred the wall and the Toutounet dispenser which issued plastic bags for the disposal of dog shit. Not that anyone in the town of Cahors seemed to use them.

The alleyway was narrow and deserted. Windows were shuttered, and only a narrow slice of cold winter light from above pierced the damp and the dark below. Number 24
bis
was on the right, beyond a brick-arched doorway. The door was pale, studded oak, and the window to its right was barred. A shiny plaque fixed to the wall made Enzo’s stomach flip over.

Docteur Gilbert Dussuet
Oncologue

Below the bellpush was a small sign:
Ring and Enter
. Enzo did as requested and opened the door into a narrow waiting room with four plastic chairs and a tiny table littered with old magazines. It smelled of damp cellars in here, and there was no natural light. Just a single, naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. He sat down on the chair nearest the door, as if it might offer some hope of escape, and waited.

By the time the door to the doctor’s surgery opened, Enzo knew every stain and scuff on the faded linoleum, had read and reread every poster on the wall. Exhortations to regularly self test for testicular cancer and cancer of the breast. Dire warnings about the melanomic consequences for the skin of failing to apply protection against the sun. None of it did anything to ameliorate Enzo’s deepening sense of foreboding.

Doctor Dussuet was younger than he had expected. Late thirties or early forties. He was possessed of certain rugged good looks and had a charming smile. He held out his hand to shake Enzo’s and ushered him into his inner sanctum. The office was sparsely furnished. A couple of filing cabinets, a desk, some chairs. There were a handful of posters on the walls, and the blinds were down, although there was hardly any daylight in the street outside. A desk lamp focused a dazzling circle of electric light on to the burnished surface of the desk, and the two men sat down on either side of it. There was a file open on the blotting paper, and Enzo could see his name at the top of it.

The doctor didn’t look at it. Instead he clasped his hands in front of him and leaned his elbows on the desk. He looked at Enzo earnestly, a well-practised look of sympathy and sadness in his eyes.

‘Do you know why you’re here?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘For bad news, I guess.’

The doctor allowed himself a moment of reflection, then refocused on his patient. ‘You have a very rare form of leukemia, Monsieur Macleod.’ He paused. ‘You know what leukemia is?’

‘Cancer of the blood.’ Enzo heard his own voice, but it didn’t seem to belong to him.

‘Cancer of the blood. Or bone marrow. Characterised by an abnormal proliferation of white blood cells. These cells are involved in fighting pathogens and are usually suppressed, or dysfunctional. Leading to the patient’s immune system attacking other body cells.’

Enzo stared at him. His face, in the intensity of the desk lamp, seemed to burn out before his eyes. ‘Is it treatable?’

The doctor sat back suddenly and pressed his lips together. ‘I’m afraid your disease is terminal, Monsieur Macleod. Of course, we’ll put you on an immediate course of chemotherapy.’

But Enzo didn’t want to hear any more. ‘How long have I got?’

‘With treatment…perhaps six months.’

‘Without?’

Doctor Dussuet tipped his head apologetically. ‘Three. At the most.’