‘Yes,’ Enzo said.
‘Well, this is where they used to make it. Right beneath your feet.’ She moved along the shelf. ‘Ah. Here we are.’ And she drew a box file out from among the others. ‘Schoelcher.’ She took the file to a table and opened it up, and began riffling through wads of documentation. Finally, a gasp of satisfaction. ‘Ah-ha.’ She pulled out a photograph. ‘I knew there would be one somewhere.’ Enzo peered at it in the poor light. It was a black and white group photograph, like any school photograph. Something more than a hundred pupils and professors, arranged in five ascending rows in front of a long building, all smiling for the camera. It was captioned,
Promotion Victor Schoelcherë
1994-1996
Straight away, he spotted Gaillard sitting near the middle of the front row, hands folded in his lap, legs crossed, looking faintly bored. Neither Hugues nor Roques were immediately apparent. ‘I can have a copy of this made upstairs,’ Madame Henry said. Then from deep in the box she pulled out a VHS video tape marked
1994-96.
She waggled it triumphantly. ‘Each
promotion
makes its own video record of the year. A pretty amateur hotchpotch. But I’m sure Hugues will be on it somewhere. If you want to wait about twenty minutes, I can have a copy made of that, too.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ Enzo said. ‘You wouldn’t have a list of all the students from the Schoelcher Promotion, would you? It may be that the family will want to contact some of them.’
‘Yes, there’ll be a list in the
annuaire
. I can photocopy that for you in the blink of an eye.’
***
Enzo sat in the still of the courtyard, sunlight sloping in across the rooftops. Through glass doors leading to the entrance lobby, he could see delegates coming and going from a conference in the amphitheatre. He had been staring for some time at the copy of the photograph that Madame Henry had made for him. By now he had identified both Hugues d’Hautvillers and Philippe Roques among the rows of faces. He looked at all the others, and wondered how many more of them had been responsible for the murder of their
maître
. Most of them seemed so young, such innocence in all their open, smiling faces. He turned to the photocopied list of names and ran his eye down them. And there they were.
D’HAUTVILLERS
Hugues, and
ROQUES
Philippe, and one hundred and twelve other names. In his hand he held the faces and the names of Gaillard’s killers. He had identified two of them. Both were dead. He had no way of knowing if he would ever unmask the others. And if he did, how long they would live.
Madame Henry bustled into the courtyard and he stood up. ‘There.’ She handed him a large manila envelope containing the video tape. ‘All done.’
Enzo slipped the photograph and the list of names in beside it. ‘Thank you very much, madame.’
‘Oh, it was the least I could do.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘Please pass on my condolences to the family.’
IV.
It was less than five minutes’ walk from the Rue de l’Observatoire to the underground parking in the Rue St. Jacques. Enzo’s overnight bag was still in his car, along with a change of clothes. He had felt uncomfortable all day wearing a forgotten shirt and slacks left at Charlotte’s place by Raffin. It was a constant reminder of a history Enzo cared not to know about. There had been nearly half a wardrobe of Raffin’s things in her bedroom. Enzo didn’t like to think of Charlotte expending the same sexual energy and passion on Raffin that she had on him. But he knew they’d had a long relationship.
The car park was on three levels in the basement of an apartment building between the Rue des Feuillantines and the Rue des Ursalines. Raffin’s lockup was two down. Raffin had been unable to give Enzo a key for the elevator, but told him he could get access by walking down the ramp. Enzo left the late afternoon sunshine behind him as he slowly descended the steeply curving concrete. The first level was deserted. Night-lights cast a faint gloom among the shadows of the cars. Ten lockups along either side of a central lane. Each with its own up-and-over door, each parking space separated from the other by a metal grille. Raffin had left the door of his lockup open so that Enzo could pick up his car any time he liked.
He carried on down the next ramp, and noticed that the overhead lamps were not working. A feeble, flickering yellow light followed him down from above, but as he approached the second level he seemed to be descending into absolute darkness. By the time he reached the foot of the ramp, he could not see his hands in front of his face. He knew that somewhere there was a light switch. But he had no idea where. This was infuriating. It was his intention to drive back to Cahors tonight, a good six hours by car. He was anxious to get on the road as soon as possible.
At the far end of the aisle he could see now the faint glow of an exit light above the door leading to the elevator. Raffin’s lockup, he knew, was right next to it. With his hands held out in front of him, he walked forwards, very gingerly, until his fingers touched cold metal. The door of a lockup. It rattled beneath his touch, and he moved cautiously along, from one door to the next. He was beginning to be able to see by the light of the exit sign, and for the first time vague shapes were taking form. His hands disappeared into space. Raffin’s lockup. The door was somewhere up above his head. He searched for his car keys and felt the notched rubber on the remote controller. He pressed it, and heard the doors of his car unlock. His sidelights flashed twice. And in that moment, a piece of darkness detached itself from the shadows, warm and heavy, and enveloped him completely. Enzo toppled backwards. He heard the crack of his head as it hit the concrete, and some inner explosion of light filled it. The darkness was on top of him, forcing the breath from his lungs, and Enzo realised it had hands. Hands made soft by woollen gloves. One of them was around his neck.
Enzo panicked, bucking and kicking, but the darkness was stubbornly strong, pinning him to the floor. And then he saw the merest flash of light reflected from the exit sign as a blade rose above him, and he realised that his attacker was about to plunge a knife into his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ he heard a breathless voice whisper in the dark.
‘What!’ Enzo gasped in disbelief. He grabbed his attacker’s wrist before it could begin its deadly descent. But he immediately felt the strength in the man’s arm, and knew that it was stronger than his. He would not be able to resist its power. With his other hand, he clutched at the face above him, and felt hot breath through a woollen mask. Desperate fingers found the eye holes, and he clawed at them with all his strength. The man’s scream reverberated around the car park, and immediately the pressure of the knife arm was released. Enzo heard the blade go clattering away across the concrete in the dark, and both of his attacker’s hands flew to his face to prise Enzo’s fingers away. Which gave Enzo the chance to ball his fist and throw it hard in the direction of the man’s head. It made contact with a sharp crack, and he only barely heard the man’s cry above his own. Bone on bone was a painful experience.
Sudden light flooded their conflict. Hard, yellow light, that fell from a gaping crack in the wall. Enzo turned his head and saw a young couple framed in the exit door, the stairway illuminated behind them. The girl screamed. Enzo looked up to see his attacker’s black, masked head turn towards her, and he grabbed the mask with both hands and tore it away. For a confusing moment, it seemed as if there was another mask beneath it. And then Enzo realised that his attacker was black. He saw frightened rabbit eyes turn briefly towards him in the dark, and then the man was up and running in the direction of the ramp. Soft footsteps slapping concrete, all shape and form quickly consumed by shadow.
The young couple seemed frozen by fear as Enzo staggered to his feet, shocked and groggy, and still reeling from the dawning realisation of just how close he had come to being murdered. These young people could easily have opened the door to find his body lying bleeding on the car park floor. He swallowed hard to stop himself from being sick and stooped to pick up his manila envelope.
‘Are you all right?’ the young man asked tentatively.
‘I’m fine,’ Enzo said. As fine, he thought, as anyone could be who had just fought off an attempted murder. And he remembered his attacker’s whispered apology.
I’m sorry
. Sorry! It filled Enzo as much with anger as confusion.
***
Enzo winced as Charlotte dabbed the back of his head with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic. She shook her head. ‘Enzo, this is getting to be a habit.’
‘It’s not funny, Charlotte. That guy really was trying to kill me.’ A lump the size of an egg had come up on the back of his head. Blood had coagulated and stuck to his hair. ‘Ow!’ He jerked away from her hand. ‘I hope you take better care of your patients’ minds.’
She grabbed his ponytail. ‘Hold still. Why are men such babies over a little pain?’ And she dabbed him with more antiseptic. ‘You can’t go back to Cahors now.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if they knew where you’d parked your car, do you not think they’ll know where you live?’
‘Well, if they do, then they’ll probably know where you live, too.’ Enzo had driven like a maniac through the fifth
arrondissement
into the thirteenth and abandoned his car half on the pavement outside Charlotte’s warehouse.
Charlotte paused, and acknowledged the thought with a grave nod of her head. ‘So they might come looking for you here.’
‘Jesus, Charlotte, I’m not cut out for this sort of thing. My strengths are cerebral, not physical. Maybe I should go to the police.’
‘And tell them what? That someone’s trying to murder you for pursuing an investigation they’ve twice asked you to stop?’
‘Hmmm.’ Enzo paused to think about it. ‘You might have a point.’
Charlotte handed him a clean wad of gauze. ‘Here, press that against the back of your head until the bleeding stops.’ She tidied away the bits and pieces of her first aid kit from the kitchen worktop. ‘Give me fifteen minutes to change and pack a bag.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘My parents have a holiday home in the Corrèze. It’s an old farmhouse. A little primitive. Very remote. We used to go there for our holidays every year when I was a kid. I still use it when I want to escape from everything. My little hidey-hole away from the world. I think we’ll be pretty safe there.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s after six already. We’ll be lucky if we get there by midnight.’
I.
Although the sky was clear the night was dark. There was no moon, and the
autoroute
was virtually deserted. They had stopped at services just past Limoges for something to eat, and now Enzo was feeling the onset of fatigue. He needed to occupy his brain in order to resist the temptation to shut his eyes, and he had forced himself to recall, one by one, the items found with the legs in the trunk at Château Hautvillers. The salamander brooch, the lion’s head pendant, the lapel pin flag, the sporting trophy, the referee’s whistle with the numbers scratched into the plating.
‘Is there anything that occurs to you about any of them?’ he asked Charlotte.
‘Well, the lion’s head is an interesting pointer. The lion is pretty much symbolic of Africa. So I’d say there was a good chance that the flag on the lapel pin is probably the national flag of some African country.’
‘A lot of countries in Africa.’
‘Given that most of these clues relate to France, it’s probably a former French colony.’
‘Good thought.’ Enzo watched the broken white lines coming at him in a never-ending stream. ‘And the salamander?’
‘The salamander was the emblem of the French king, François Premier. I don’t know if that’s relevant or not. There were dates engraved on the back of the brooch, weren’t there?’
‘1927 to 1960.’
‘Hmmm.’ Charlotte sounded doubtful. ‘François Premier was early sixteenth century. The dates don’t really connect, do they?’
‘Only about three hundred years out.’ Enzo saw headlights in his rear mirror approaching at speed. He had never developed the French penchant for fast driving and had been sitting at a steady one hundred and ten
KPH
. The vehicle coming up behind was going considerably faster.
‘What about the sports trophy and the referee’s whistle?’ Charlotte asked.
‘What about them?’
‘I don’t know, I’m looking for a sporting connection. It’s hard to see one with François Premier and an African flag. The trophy had a date on it, too, didn’t it?
Enzo nodded and glanced at the approaching car. It was taking its time pulling out to overtake. ‘1996 again. The year Gaillard disappeared.’
‘And you think that’s the only point of it?’
‘It’s the same date that the 1990 Dom Perignon vintage was released, and there didn’t seem to be any other point to that.’ The lights behind were dazzling now. Headlamps on full beam. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘What is it?’
‘You’d think this idiot was trying to blind me!’
Charlotte glanced back into the full glare of the lights. ‘My God, he’s far too close!’
Enzo felt a sudden jolt of fear, as if he had touched the naked copper of a live wire. ‘And he’s going far too fast!’
The bang as it hit their rear bumper seemed inordinately loud, and both their heads jerked back against the headrests before they pitched forward again, straining against the seat belts. Enzo struggled to keep control of the steering as his car began serpentining across the white line. He stood on the brakes, but the vehicle at their back was propelling them forward. There was a sickening screaming of tyres. Smoke billowed up in the headlamps, and the car was filled with the smell of burning rubber. Enzo immediately took his foot off the brake pedal and accelerated hard. They pulled away from the following vehicle and the car stopped swerving.
Charlotte had turned in her seat and was staring out through the back windscreen. ‘It’s a truck.’ Enzo could hear the fear in her voice.
‘What the hell is he trying to do?’
She faced front again. ‘You cut up a truck coming out of the parking at that last stop.’
‘I did not,’ Enzo protested. ‘He was on my right. The road was unmarked. I had right of way.’
‘Well, he didn’t think so, did he? He honked loud enough.’
Enzo looked at the lights in the mirror and screwed up his eyes. They were getting closer again. ‘Do you think it’s him?’
‘I don’t know. It seems a pretty extreme reaction if it is.’
As the truck bore down on them once more, Enzo moved into the outside lane. The truck followed. He swerved back to the inside, and his tyres shrieked in protest. The truck stayed out as if it was going to overtake. The cab drew level with the back of Enzo’s car, and just as Enzo was about to hit the brakes again, it nudged his rear wing. That was all it took to send the car into an uncontrollable spin. The world seemed to be revolving hopelessly around them. Smoke and light and burning rubber. And more smoke, and more light. Enzo pulled the steering wheel one way, then the other. And miraculously they stopped spinning. But they were sliding side-on, now, and a large green drum with a white arrow was flying towards them at speed. Criss-crossed white lines passed beneath them before they hit the drum and spun off again on to a steeply curving exit ramp, coming to a sudden and unexpected stop halfway up it, facing back the way they had come. The truck flew past on the
autoroute
, and as its lights and the roar of its engine receded, a dreadful silence settled on them, like dust after an explosion.
Enzo clutched the wheel to stop his hands from shaking. He glanced across at Charlotte. Her face was an almost luminous white. Her hands were pressed against the dashboard, arms at full stretch. ‘He was trying to kill us,’ she whispered. And her voice seemed to thunder inside Enzo’s head.
All he could do was nod in acknowledgement. It felt as if he had left his voice somewhere back there on the
autoroute
. Twice in one day he had been within seconds of death. The first time, there was no doubt that someone had premeditatedly tried to murder him. Whether this time he was a victim of road rage, or another deliberate attempt at murder, he had no way of knowing.
The road was still empty, the countryside around them lost in blackness. There were no lights visible anywhere, except for Enzo’s headlamps pointing back down the ramp. The engine had stalled. He collected himself to try to restart it. It was not until the third attempt that he managed to coax it back to life.
‘We’re not going back on the
autoroute
, are we?’ There was something like panic in Charlotte’s voice.
Enzo finally found his. ‘No. There’s a map in the glove box.’ With legs like jelly, he manipulated the pedals to put the car in reverse and take them through a three-point turn so that they were facing the correct way. Then he pulled gently away and followed the road to a junction where a road sign reflected brightly in their headlights.
TULLE
27km.
Charlotte turned on the courtesy light and squinted at the map. ‘This must take us to the N120. If we get to Tulle, I know the way from there. We should be at the house in just over an hour.’
***
It was after midnight, and Enzo’s car strained up a narrow road through a tunnel of trees and lush, green foliage. On the main road from Tulle they had passed through village after village swaddled in darkness. Houses shuttered, street lamps extinguished. It was hard to believe that anyone inhabited these grim stone dwellings huddled along the roadside. Everywhere seemed abandoned to the night. The only life they had seen since leaving Tulle were occasional sets of furtive eyes caught in the headlamps, unseen creatures skulking at the roadside.
Now the road rose steeply through the wood-cladded hillside, twisting and turning, headlights picking out creepers dangling from overhanging oaks. An owl swooped through their lights, intent on some invisible prey, and shrieked with alarm before veering off sharply and disappearing into the forest.
Suddenly they emerged from the claustrophobia of the trees, on to an open ridge. The moon had risen, and cast its colourless light across the valley below. They could see distant twinkling pockets of streetlights, a church floodlit on the far horizon, the river Cère a thin, meandering band of silver far below. The land rose and fell dramatically all around them, smeared black with trees, and punctuated by shimmering silver-green pasture. The road curled up, then, through a tiny stone village with a huge, crumbling church, and began its descent on the other side. A white ironwork cross at the side of the road reflected the lights of the car, and Charlotte told Enzo to turn left into a tiny metalled road which took them down a steep incline. They passed a holiday home, all closed up behind high hedges, and carried on to the treeline and beyond. The road reached an unexpected dead end, and Charlotte told him to take another left, down a rough, cobbled path. Enzo nursed his car gently down the track, wondering where on earth Charlotte was taking them.
‘You can stop here,’ she said suddenly.
Enzo jerked to a halt and looked around. They were surrounded by trees, and tangling briar amongst thick undergrowth. ‘Here?’ He was incredulous. ‘Where on earth are we?’
‘You’ll see.’ She reached into the back to retrieve her overnight bag and her laptop, and she got out of the car.
Enzo cut the engine and the lights and followed her out into the night. It took several moments for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness, and for the world to take shape again in the moonlight that filtered down through the trees. She plunged off into what seemed like thickly wooded hillside, and he scrambled along behind her, afraid of losing her in the dark. But in just a few short steps, they emerged again into bright moonshine, a clearing cut into the slope, and Enzo could see, about four meters below them, the dark shape of an old house nestling in a natural fold of rock. Primitive steps had been cut into the hill and reinforced by old railway ties. Charlotte followed them down to a covered patio at the front of the house, and snapped on her penlight to track down the lock on the door. She fumbled with a set of huge old keys, and in a moment pushed the heavy front door inwards into the house.
‘Wait here a minute,’ she said, and disappeared inside. Enzo turned to take in the moonlit view that dropped away almost sheer below the house. The air was shimmering in the night heat. He could still see occasional snatches of the silvered Cère through the trees. And then it was all wiped out, the
terrasse
washed with sudden light as Charlotte switched on the electrics somewhere inside the house.
He turned to see her through the doorway standing at the far side of an old farmhouse kitchen with tiled floors and pointed stone walls. She was pale, and tired, and still shocked by their brush with death, but he remembered again, in that moment, how beautiful he’d thought her that first time he’d seen her. Then she had been defiant and self-confident. Now she seemed vulnerable, defeated. He walked into the kitchen, and immediately felt the chill contained within its thick stone walls. A stark contrast with the warm air outside. He put his bag on the table and took her in his arms, and held her tightly. One way or another, he knew, she was going to have a huge impact on his life. And he didn’t want to let her go. Ever.
‘What are we going to do?’ she whispered.
‘The only thing we can do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Find them before they find us.’
II.
There was a renewed urgency now about the need to make sense of the clues found at Hautvillers. In the barn adjoining the house, Charlotte dug out the white cardboard wrapping from a dishwasher installed the previous summer, and Enzo opened it out and taped it to a wall in the kitchen. A makeshift whiteboard. In the huge open fireplace, the flames of a log fire licked up blackened stone, dry oak crackling in the grate, taking the chill off air undisturbed since the house was closed up for the winter at Christmas. The comforting smell of woodsmoke filled the kitchen.
Charlotte heated soup on the stove while Enzo set up her laptop at one end of the kitchen table, connected it to a printer she kept at the house, and downloaded the photographs he had taken at the dog cemetery above Château Hautvillers. One by one he printed them out and stuck them up around the edges of his whiteboard. Beneath the salamander and the sports trophy he marked up the dates that were engraved on them. He wrote
19/3
below the referee’s whistle.
Then he sat down at the long wooden table and tried to clear his mind. At first he closed his eyes, and then he opened them again and let them wander around the kitchen. It was a large room. For living in, as well as cooking and eating. It was the centre of the house. Great blackened beams supported the floorboards of an attic room above. Pots and pans and keys and rusted chains hung from ancient nails hammered into them long ago. Behind a curtain next to the fireplace, an old staircase led up to the attic. Crooked wooden doors opposite led to a bathroom and a double bedroom. The original stone
souillarde
, set in an arched alcove, was still used as a sink. There were bookcases and an old walnut buffet, an antique grandfather clock whose pendulum hung still and silent. Every surface was covered with dust, and framed family photographs.
Enzo got up to take a look. Most of them were old. Cheap prints, garish colours. There were several taken on the patio outside. A middle-aged couple with a skinny young girl posing coyly between them. Long, curling black hair. A summer dress, a dark tan. Charlotte aged ten, or twelve. Enzo let his eyes linger on her for a moment, and he smiled fondly. There were several black and white photographs, faded and discoloured with age. Memories of another era, another generation. A young couple on a beach, in strangely dated swim wear, grinning gauchely at the camera. He had a moustache curling around either cheek and wore heavy-rimmed, round glasses. Her hair was a nest of flyaway curls. They both had bad teeth.
‘My grandparents,’ Charlotte said, glancing across from the stove.
Enzo picked up one of the photographs taken on the patio. ‘Your parents?’
‘Yes. I think I was about eleven when that was taken.’
‘Are they still alive?’
She nodded. ‘They live in Angoulême.’
Enzo looked at them. Oddly unremarkable people. He was losing his hair. She was overweight. Enzo could not see Charlotte in either of them. He said, ‘Hard to tell which of them you take after.’
‘Neither,’ Charlotte said. Enzo looked across, but she was focused on her soup. ‘I was adopted.’