Nicole flicked her long hair back off her shoulder and did a flirty thing that Enzo had never seen her do before. He wouldn’t have believed her capable of it. Her father would have been mortified. ‘We’ve come a long way.’ She made big eyes at the man in uniform. ‘You couldn’t open up just for us, could you?’
The man let his eyes wander lasciviously down to her quivering breasts. And then he looked up. ‘Sorry.’ Apparently the pleasure of exercising his power outweighed the allure of the girl from the farm.
‘Come on.’ Enzo led a disappointed Nicole back through the gate. Someday, he was sure, her charms would work on someone.
They decided to walk back to the Capitole, and turned left across the Pont Neuf. Over the river they could see the roofs of the ancient city centre rising above apartment blocks and government buildings, a jumble of turrets and bell-towers, an odd blend of European and North African architecture that sat somehow comfortably together in this cosmopolitan old town. On the far river bank, tourist cruise boats were berthed at the quayside, and a Rastafarian in a black tee-shirt and sweat pants practised karate on a strip of grass, watched indifferently by his old Alsatian dog. Joggers trundled laboriously along the towpath before the heat of the day set in.
The Hôtel-Dieu St-Jacques was below them now, on their left. The garden at its centre was ringed by carefully pruned lime trees. The lawn was divided into classical patterns by a low, manicured hedge, and two columns of bushes in the shape of egg cozies created a grassy avenue running from front to back. Enzo barely glanced at it. His mind was stewing over their misfortune. To have come so far in decoding the clues, to be within touching distance of a solution, and yet be denied by a quirk of opening times, was infuriating. He had no idea how he was going to fill the next forty-eight hours. He wasn’t even listening to Nicole. She had begun a diatribe on how he needed to take better care of himself. He still hadn’t had breakfast, she pointed out. He drank too much. He was too old to be getting into fights with her father. It wasn’t easy to shut out the voice. God help the poor soul who married her! There would, of course, be a couple of consolations. Although he doubted if that would be quite enough to make up for the rest. Then he felt her tugging on his sleeve. ‘What?’ he said tetchily, pulling his arm away.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed down to the gardens.
Enzo glanced with irritation towards the expanse of meticulous greenery. Some anal gardener’s raison d’être. ‘It’s a bloody garden!’
‘No, at the far end, beyond the line of bushes.’
Enzo peered in the direction she was pointing and saw what looked like a giant white saucer at the very apex of the lawn. He felt in his pockets for his glasses, but in their hurry to leave he had left them lying on the table in the
séjour
. ‘I’ve no idea. Why?’
‘Well, it looks to me very much like a giant scallop shell.’
‘What?’ Enzo struggled to try to bring the thing into focus. ‘Let’s go and see.’
And they turned around and went back down to the gate. The man in uniform watched them approach and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘It’s still not open.’
They walked straight past.
‘Hey, where are you going?’
‘A walk in the garden. Any objections?’
Rose bushes in full bloom lined the gravel path which led them around the perimeter of the lawn, and as they approached the far end, it became apparent that Nicole’s eyes had not deceived her. A huge concrete scallop shell, around two meters across, was set in a circle of lawn, and half filled with brackish green water. A rusting pipe poked up through the slime.
‘It’s a fountain!’ Nicole said. ‘A fountain in the shape of a
coquille St. Jacques
.’ Although it appeared that the fountain had not been in working order for some time.
Enzo stared at it. A perfect scallop shell, ribbed and cupped to hold water, the function for which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims over the centuries had used it ‘That’s it.’ His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, and he had to clear his throat.
‘That’s what?’
‘He’s got to be here. Under the shell.’
Nicole screwed up her nose. ‘You really think so?’
‘He must be. Everything has led us to this spot, Nicole. Every one of those clues. Why else are we standing here? The killer must have had access to the renovation plans. They were probably available to the public at the planning office. He’d have known where the scallop shell fountain was to be sited, and he buried the body right underneath it. The place was a building site at the time. The whole area around here had probably already been dug up.’
She surveyed the shell thoughtfully. ‘Well, how are we going to find out?’
‘The police will have to excavate it.’
***
Traffic thundered along the boulevards on either side of the Canal du Midi, shaded from the heat of the sun by lines of dusty-leafed trees. The
Hôtel de Police
, headquarters of the Police Nationale, stood on the corner of the Boulevard l’Embouchure and the Rue de Chaussas. Nicole had barely settled herself on the terrasse of the Café Les Zazous around the corner in the Avenue des Minimes, when she saw Enzo storming across the road towards her. His face was red. It would have been difficult to tell if it was from heat or exertion. But, in fact, it was anger. He threw himself into the seat beside her. ‘Bastards!’
‘What happened?’
‘They thought I was some kind of nutter. I never even got beyond the duty officer.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Have a drink.’ He waved the waiter over.
Nicole lowered her voice. ‘Do you not think you’ve had enough alcohol already, Monsieur Macleod. You’ll be dehydrated.’
The waiter stood over them. ‘Monsieur?’
‘Two Perriers
citron
,’ Nicole said firmly before Enzo could open his mouth.
Enzo glared at her. ‘What are you, my mother?’
‘Don’t take it out on me,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s not my fault they won’t take you seriously.’ She cast a critical eye over him. ‘Although it might help if you didn’t look like a tramp.’
Enzo stared sullenly at the ancient brickwork of the Église des Minimes opposite. The waiter arrived with their drinks, and left the bill under Enzo’s glass. He glanced at it and grunted. ‘Huh! Alcohol would have been cheaper.’
Nicole poured sparkling water into both of their glasses. ‘So what
are
you going to do?’
He took a drink of his Perrier
citron
, felt the bubbles tickling his nostrils and had a sudden inspiration. ‘I’m going to call on the old school tie.’
‘What do you mean?’
He took a long draft from his glass and stood up, dropping several coins on the table. ‘Come on, drink up. We’re going back to Cahors.’
III.
Enzo pushed open the heavy wrought iron gate and walked across the cobbled courtyard. The administrative buildings of the
Hotel du Département
rose up around him on three sides to steeply pitched, grey slate roofs. He went through an archway and followed the
accueil
sign to the reception desk.
‘I’d like to see the Préfet,’ he told the young woman behind the counter.
‘Do you have an appointment, Monsieur?’
‘Just tell him that Monsieur Enzo Macleod needs to see him as a matter of urgency.’
Préfet Verne’s office was on the first floor, a large room with three tall windows overlooking the courtyard. The wall behind his desk was draped with crossed Tricolours. There were photographs of him with the President, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Garde des Sceaux. His desk was enormous, and the Préfet himself seemed almost small behind it. Sunlight slanted golden across a floor of polished parquet, and draped itself over two Louis Quatorze armchairs and a
chaise longue
set around a low antique table.
The Préfet rose to shake Enzo’s hand. ‘My staff is not used to my receiving visits from such disreputable characters.’ He smiled. ‘What can possibly be so urgent?’ He waved a hand towards one of the Louis Quatorze
fauteuil
and sat in the other one himself, folding his hands in his lap. Enzo remained standing.
‘I know where the rest of Gaillard’s body is buried.’
Préfet Verne tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?
‘But I need your help to prove it.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
‘I need the police in Toulouse to excavate beneath a fountain at the old Hospital St. Jacques. But I can’t get them to take me seriously.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘But if the Préfet at Toulouse ordered them to, they’d have to, wouldn’t they?’
‘And why would he do that?’
‘Because you’d asked him to.’
The Préfet regarded him thoughtfully. ‘And why would he listen to me?’
‘Because he’s almost certainly another
énarque
, and you ENA old boys stick together, don’t you? A favour here reciprocated there. I take it you do know your counterpart in the Garonne?’
‘Naturally.’ His hands were still folded in his lap, and he began tapping his thumbs together. ‘I’m just wondering why I would ask him to do that?’
‘Because I’m asking you.’
‘And that would make me ask him, because?’
‘Because we have a bet,’ Enzo said, ‘that I can’t find out what happened to Jacques Gaillard and why. I imagine that’s probably pretty common knowledge by now.’
Préfet Verne gave a tiny shrug. ‘These things have a habit of getting around.’
‘So if you were to refuse to help me, that could be construed by some people, not to mention the press, as…well, not to put too fine a point on it, welching on a bet.’
The smile faded just a little from the Préfet’s eyes and he pursed his lips in quiet contemplation. ‘There’s Italian blood in your family, Macleod, isn’t there?’
‘My mother was Italian.’
‘Hmmm. Any relation to the Machiavellis?’
IV.
Arc lamps flooded the garden with light, and the pink of the ancient hospital building stood bold against the black of the midnight sky. A crowd gathered on the bridge in the warm night air, idly exercising their curiosity. They had no idea why there were police cars filling the tiny car park below, or that the white vans they saw belonged to the
police scientifique
. And they could not see what was happening behind the canvas barrier erected around the fountain. But they knew that something was going on.
The caterpillar tracks of the crane had chewed up the once pristine lawn, and it swung high above the Toulouse skyline as its cable strained and pulled, lifting the great concrete
coquille St. Jacques
clear of the barrier. A municipal plumber had disconnected the pipes and turned off the water.
Men in white Tyvek suits drifted around the site like ghosts, directing a digger in its painfully slow process of excavation, ready to take over at the first hint of discovery, prepared if necessary to remove the dry, crumbling earth one grain at a time.
Behind the barrier, Raffin stood next to Enzo, the collar of his jacket turned up as if the evening were cold. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, and he was watching the proceedings with an odd sense of professional detachment. He had caught the first flight from Paris after Enzo’s phone call. All he had said was, ‘Are you certain?’ And when Enzo replied, ‘Ninety-nine percent,’ he’d said, ‘I’m on my way.’ He had cast a curious eye over Nicole when Enzo introduced them, but refrained from comment.
Enzo looked up at the concrete shell hanging overhead. It seemed almost surreal, caught in the arc lights, as if it were floating. He was tense with anticipation, and misgivings. What if he was wrong? What if there was nothing there? His disquiet was heightened by the approach of the city’s chief of police, a squat, tough-looking man, uniform stretched tightly across broad shoulders. He had long sideburns and was chewing a match in the corner of his mouth. His peaked hat cast a shadow across his eyes. He pulled Enzo to one side and lowered his voice. He moved close to his ear to be heard above the roar of the engines. ‘If this turns out to be a wild goose chase, Monsieur, I’ll have your fucking hide. Friends in high places or not.’ Evidently he had not taken kindly to receiving his orders from on high.
Enzo watched him saunter away again towards a group of officers who were standing watching. His mouth was dry, and he wished he had brought a bottle of water.
Then a shout cut across the revving of the digger. One of the ghosts raised an arm and the articulated claw stopped scooping. It jerked and twisted away from the hole, spilling sandy soil as it went. The other ghosts moved in, climbing carefully into a pit which was now more than two meters deep. Enzo, Raffin and Nicole moved closer as the forensic scientists began scraping away the earth, one trowel at a time, from the corner of a metal object lying at an angle in the ground. Lights were moved in so that they could better see what they were doing. The digger cut its motor, and a strange silence fell across the site. Only the sound of men breathing, and the scraping of trowels, could be heard in the night air.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to uncover the tin trunk. It was the same military green as the one Enzo and Raffin had seen at the
greffe
in Paris. Battered and scored, and more rusted than its twin. There was a sense of everyone around the hole holding their breath as one of the
police scientifique
carefully released the clips and opened the lid. He swung a light to shine inside the trunk to reveal the skeletal remains of two arms lying side by side. But there were other items, too, loose in the bottom of the trunk.
A forensic photographer was lowered carefully into the hole to make a photographic record of the trunk and its contents, before the head ghost crouched down to examine them more closely with delicate, latexed fingers. ‘Definitely looks like two arms,’ he called up. ‘The radius and the ulna of both forearms seem damaged. Scarred or scored in someway. Each of the arms appears to have been cleanly jointed from the shoulder at the head of the humerous, although there is also damage to the bone here, too.’ He turned his attention, then, to what looked like a rectangular wooden box. ‘It’s a Moët et Chandon presentation box.’ A quality in his voice reflected the bizarre nature of his words. He slid off the front cover to reveal that it was filled with wood wool, finely curled wood shavings packed around a Champagne bottle. ‘Dom Perignon, 1990. It’s never been opened.’ Now his voice carried a hint of disbelief.