Blacklight Blue (14 page)

‘Even after all this time?’ Raffin said.

‘It would have been more certain had the clothes been refrigerated. But it’s relatively cool down here in the
greffe
. A steady temperature. I think the chances are good.’

Martinot whistled softly in admiration. ‘Man, I wish you’d been around sixteen years ago.’

But Enzo shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference, monsieur. Back then, we might have found the cells on his clothing, but we’d never have been able to extract the DNA.’

He turned to Raffin. ‘I think our man knew that. I think he knew that if we revisited this crime we were almost certain to find those cells and recover his DNA. And he could only be afraid of that for one reason. His DNA is in a database somewhere.’

Even as he spoke the words, Enzo felt their effect. He shivered, as if someone had stepped on his grave. He had taken a huge stride towards the possible identification of his nemesis. It could only be a matter of time before the killer would know that, and try to stop him from going any further. Any way he could. The stakes had just been ratcheted up to breaking point, and it seemed there was no way Enzo could avoid going head to head with him.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Cadaquès, Spain, September 1986

Outside the church, on the slate-paved terrace, two Mediterranean conifers offered a pool of shade, a momentary escape from the dusty blast of the sun. Below, across the Roman tiled roofs, boats bobbed gently at moorings in a bay like glass. The reflection of sunlight on whitewash was blinding.

Richard hesitated in the shadow of the trees. He felt strangely choked. He had watched her leave the house just minutes earlier. A woman of fifty, whom the years had not treated kindly. Once lustrous blond hair now gone grey, pulled back severely from a thin face, pinched and turned mean by time and disappointment. A woman who passed him on the steps without a second glance.

His mother.

He was not quite sure why he had come. Curiosity, he supposed. A need to connect with his past. A tiny Spanish fishing port from where he had been snatched sixteen years and two months ago. A place which had become a prison for the woman who had loved him then. And if she still did, it wasn’t really him she loved. It was the memory of the child she had lost all those years before.

There was something shocking in seeing her. In knowing that she was going to church to pray for him. He had stood on the steps, caught by surprise. And if she had met his eye he might have said, ‘Hello, mother,’ and released her from her misery. Instead, he had frozen, unable to move, unable to speak, and she had passed, preoccupied, within a few inches of her missing boy.

Now that he was here, he didn’t know quite what to do. But the cool of the Església de Santa Maria drew him, like an inhalation of breath. An escape from the furnace. And he walked in through an opening in the tall, studded door, only to see a reflection of himself in glass behind wrought iron gates. Dark glasses and baseball cap, shorts and a tee-shirt. Not exactly the respectful attire expected of those who came to worship.

He turned into the church and removed his cap and shades, blinking in the dark as his eyes adjusted to the change of light. And then suddenly the apse at the far end of the nave was bathed in soft yellow, as a tourist dropped a coin in a metre, and an altar of extraordinary extravagance, fashioned from pure gold, rose up into the vaulted dome. Angels and cherubs adorning columns and arches rising in tiers to a winged figure in flight almost at the confluence of the dome’s ribs.

For a moment Richard gazed at it in awe. He had never seen anything quite like it. At least, not on this scale. Then his eyes drifted among the rows of pews searching for his mother. But she wasn’t to be seen. He walked carefully through the echoing vastness, almost afraid to breathe, until he saw a red, net curtain hung in the entrance to the transversal chapel. A sign in the doorway read,
A Place of Prayer
. And through the curtain he could see a more modest altar presided over by a figure of Christ washed in sunlight from windows high up in the walls. A solitary soul knelt before it in silhouette.

Angela Bright was quite still, head bowed, her hands clasped in front of her. Richard stood watching her for some minutes, safe in the knowledge that even if she rose unexpectedly he would not be immediately visible to her. If she was praying for his return, then her prayers had been answered. But he had already decided that she would never know it.

He retreated to the back of the church to sit beneath the huge circle of stained glass and stare at the altar, until the time purchased by the coin expired, and it retreated suddenly into its habitual obscurity. He was backlit through the glass at the door, a silhouette like his mother, cut in sharp contrast against the rectangular halo of sunlight beyond. When she emerged, finally, from her chapel, she walked past him without even looking. She had an odd, shuffling gait, like an old woman.

He rose and followed her out, slipping on his dark glasses and pulling the peak of his cap down to shadow his face. She turned into the narrow, slate-cobbled street below the church that led to her house, a white-washed, three-storey building with rust-red shutters and arched brick lintels. He wondered what she did all day in this rambling old house with its walled garden, bougainvillea climbing the whitewash and weeping its purple tears. Did his brother and sister still live here, too? He looked up and saw patterned ceramic tiles beneath the eaves. Who paid for it all? His father?

His mother pushed open a mahogany red door and was swallowed by darkness. Richard stood staring after her for some minutes. The street descended at an acute angle below him into the old town, narrow and shaded by tall houses and more bougainvillea. A few paces down, on the other side of the street, was a small restaurant, a chalkboard sign outside with the menu of the day. Just a handful of
pesetas
would get him lunch and a carafe of wine.

He was served by an attractive young waitress who clearly found him interesting. She hovered attentively at his table, happy to talk. She had just left school to work in the family business, and after a busy season things were quieter now, she said. Her French was good. And her English passable. He ordered gaspacho, which came with soft chunks of rough, Spanish bread, and then catch of the day, which was dorado, or sea bream, soft white flesh moist and delicious, reminding him of home. Although now that he knew who he was, it no longer felt like a place he could call home. It was where he had grown up, with a stranger pretending to be his mother.

He asked if there were a lot of foreigners buying property in the town these days, and she told him there were more and more. There was an old English lady living across the street. But she’d been there for years. Señora Bright. And she was no holidaymaker. Hers was a sad story.

‘Oh?’ Richard gave her his most charming smile. ‘Tell me?’

She glanced back towards the kitchen before running an eye over the other tables, and decided she had time. She told him about the abduction of Señora Bright’s child, although she was too young to remember it herself. The old lady had lived opposite ever since she could remember. She’d had two children with her. But she hardly knew them. Her parents had sent her to a convent school, so she didn’t know a lot of the other kids in town. But she’d seen them occasionally in the street. She looked at Richard. ‘The boy looked a little like you.’ She tried to picture him without the baseball cap and sunglasses. ‘But he had much longer hair.’

Richard said, ‘You speak about them as if they weren’t around any more.’

‘They’re not. They went back to England a couple of years ago. To live with their father, my mother said. And good riddance. She doesn’t like the English.’

Richard lingered over his meal, smoking several cigarettes, thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Who he was going to be. After all, he was free now to be whoever he wanted. But his money wasn’t going to last forever, and that was a problem.

Through the open door of the restaurant, he saw his mother passing. Dressed all in black, like a widow in mourning. He paid up quickly and said a hurried farewell to the disappointed waitress. Emboldened by a half-litre of rough, red Rioja, he set off after the old lady.

She was carrying a woven shopping basket and had a black headscarf tied loosely around her hair. He followed her, recklessly close, all the way down through the town, past the Carretera del Dr. Callis and a tiny art gallery on the corner to the Casa de la Vila at the bottom of the hill. He leaned on the rail and looked down into the clear, green water of the bay below and watched his mother climb stiffly down the steps to the curve of the harbour road.

He wondered again what point there was in this. Perhaps he was simply delaying the moment when he would have to decide what to do next, but still he felt strangely compelled to go after her.

Past the café-bar in the Casino, she turned off the Place Frederic Rahola into the main street opposite the town’s long, shingle beach and climbed steps into a small supermarket. Richard lingered for several minutes out on the sidewalk before following her in. He hovered, pretending to look at the wine, as she chose a selection of fresh vegetables from tiered racks, then felt his heart seize suddenly solid as she turned in his direction. She, too, wore dark glasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But she stopped, for all the world as if time had simply decided to stand still. She was looking right at him. Right through him. What were maybe only a few seconds seemed to stretch into eternity, but he felt naked, bathed in the spotlight of her confusion and uncertainty. And he turned and hurried from the shop without looking back. His heart was hammering against his ribs so hard he felt sure that people in the street could hear it above the noise of the traffic. He daren’t stop. He kept on walking until he knew there was no way she could still see him, then he pressed himself against a wall and tried to control his breathing.

He had been foolish, careless, and wondered if she had realised. If there was any way she could have recognised him. And, of course, he knew that there was.

It was time to go. Time to get on with the rest of his life. And it had occurred to him now exactly where to start.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Miramont, November 2008

Returning to Miramont, tucked away in its mountain valley high up in the Cantal, was an anticlimax after Paris. Enzo was not quite certain why Raffin had opted to come with him, but suspected that the journalist was being drawn back by an interest in Anna. There was no doubt that she was an attractive woman, and Raffin had so clearly been fascinated by her that first night. Enzo was uncomfortable with the thought but had no evidence with which to back it up. And so he held his peace.

When they got there, it seemed colder than before, although the sky, if anything, was a clearer, deeper blue. The winter sun cut the sharpest of shadows among the folds of the hills that rose up around the house, and the frost stayed white all day in those shaded places that the sunlight never reached.

Enzo had spent a restless few days at Raffin’s apartment in the Rue Tournon, just a stone’s throw away from the
Sénat
, and the wide-open spaces of the Luxembourg Gardens. The weather had been grey, and misty, and cold, and he had passed the time walking in the park, wading through the drifts of leaves, drinking coffee and reading the papers behind the steamed-up windows of the crowded café-restaurant near the north gate.

It was not until the fourth day that he received word from the laboratory of the
police scientifique
. Cells had been recovered from the dried mucus on Lambert’s
pull
, and a DNA profile successfully obtained. Enzo felt a sense of triumph. They had the killer’s code. All they needed now was to find a match. But that was likely to take time and to be a complex and labyrinthine process.

‘Why?’ Nicole demanded to know on his return.

And Enzo explained that it was because they had no idea what databases to search. There were twenty-seven countries in the European Union, each with its own DNA database. And while they had all signed up the previous year to the Prum Agreement, allowing national law enforcement agencies automatic access to the DNA and fingerprint databases of other member states, Enzo did not constitute a national law enforcement agency.

‘So how are you going to get access to them?’ Nicole said.

‘I’m not. Jean-Marie Martinot, the cop who handled the original investigation, has to persuade his former colleagues to re-open the case. Even then, they’ll still have to sell the idea to the Police Nationale. And you know how quickly French bureaucracy moves, Nicole. It could be a while.’

‘Well, if he’s on anyone’s database, it’ll probably be ours.’

Enzo shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. The French database it pretty limited. The British have got the biggest in Europe. In fact, the biggest in the world. But there’s nothing to say he’s on any of the European computers. There are dozens of databases around the world now. And then, of course, there are the Americans, who have the second biggest. Getting access to that will generate a blizzard of paperwork all on its own.’

They were in the computer room at the back of the house. Nicole had several screens up and running. Enzo ran his eyes across them. ‘So how’s the search for the good doctor going?’

She made a face. ‘It’s not. There are loads of agencies and directories. It’s hard to believe, but a lot of them don’t even have photographs. Then there are all these sites with so-called actors advertising their services.’ She blushed. ‘Mostly it’s about sex. You know, exotic dancers, escorts. That sort of thing. But I think you might find it easier to identify your doctor with his clothes on.’

Enzo smiled. ‘I think I’d know the face, no matter what.’

‘Well, I’ve got a few for you to look at. I’m not too confident, though.’

In fact, she had fifteen jpegs collected in a folder. Enzo leaned over the desk as she opened them one by one. These were photographs taken by professionals, always against a neutral backdrop, faces lit to show them off to best advantage. Those with few advantages had their deficiencies masked by soft focus. A catalogue of men in their forties showing teeth that were too white, pulling in paunches, smiling eyes trying hard to hide an optimism long lost to failure. None of them was his doctor.

Nicole grimaced an apology. ‘I’ll keep looking.’

Enzo had been disappointed by the coolness with which he had been greeted by Anna. He had hoped for the same warmth with which she had sent him off. The taste and scent of her remained vivid in his recollection. But she was still being discreet in front of his daughters.

Now, as he left the study, she was waiting for him at the foot of the spiral staircase and gave him a quick kiss and squeezed his hand. ‘I missed you,’ she whispered.

He ran his hand up through her hair to cup the back of her head in his hand and draw her to him to kiss her back. A much longer kiss, filled with the passion aroused by her very proximity. She drew away, smiling, and wagged a finger at him.

‘Not in front of the children.’

He grinned.

She took his hand. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’ And she led him into the
séjour
, where she had removed all the paintings from one wall to mount a large whiteboard at eye-level. He had told her at some point how he liked to think visually. How at home he always worked on a whiteboard, jotting down thoughts and observations, trying to find links between them and connecting them with arrows.

He looked at it in astonishment. ‘Where on earth did you manage to find that?’

She shrugged dismissively. ‘A few phone calls, and a
monsieur
from the village to install it.’

‘But won’t your friends object to you defacing their house like this?’

‘Oh, they won’t mind.’

Enzo thought, if it was his house, he would have minded. But all he said was, ‘Thank you.’ And kissed her again to demonstrate his gratitude. ‘How have things been?’

She tilted her head a little to one side. ‘Okay.’ But she didn’t sound convincing. ‘Sophie’s pretty restless. And Bertrand, too. I think he wants to get back and sort out his gym.’

Enzo sighed. ‘I feel bad about that. But it’s not safe yet. It really isn’t.’

‘Anyway, they go for long walks, and they lunch sometimes in the village. They’re out right now.’

‘What about Kirsty?’

Anna made a face. ‘I think she’s still in shock, Enzo. Someone tried to murder her, after all. And her best friend was killed. Roger didn’t call once, and she’s spent most of her time in her room. He’s up there with her now.’

Enzo didn’t even want to think about what they might be doing. He said, ‘I’ve got something I want everyone to listen to. But I’ll leave it until after we’ve eaten tonight.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Is anyone helping you with the cooking?’

She let him kiss her and laughed and said, ‘I’m enjoying it, Enzo. It’s such a long time since I had anyone to cook for but myself.’

***

He slipped the cassette into the stereo system and hit the play button.

All through the meal he had watched Raffin monopolising the conversation with Anna, flirting with her, exuding charm like oil. And he had seen Kirsty become more and more subdued. At one moment, he had caught Anna’s eye, and felt her embarrassment, her silent plea for rescue. And he had broken up the
tête à tête
by calling her into the kitchen on some pretext. He was itching to break his silence on the subject, but didn’t want to create a scene in front of Kirsty and the others. And so all his attention was focused on the tape.

Intent faces around the room strained to listen. Two voices distorted by time and telephone. A murderer speaking to his victim the day before he killed him:

The conversation ended abruptly. Enzo had listened to it over and over again. He had his own thoughts, but he wanted fresh input. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think they didn’t like one another very much,’ Sophie said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, because the killer’s being very polite, and the other guy can hardly conceal his irritation.’

Bertrand said, ‘I’m not sure he’s irritated so much as just tense. Wary.’

Nicole asked if they could listen to it again, and Enzo rewound the tape to replay it. When they finished listening for a second time Nicole said, ‘They don’t know one another very well, do they? I think maybe they’ve met only a handful of times before.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because he had to ask if the other guy knew his address.’

Kirsty said, ‘They’d obviously met often enough for Lambert to have established that he only wanted them to meet in public.’

‘So why did he agree to let him come to his home?’ It was Raffin this time.

Enzo said, ‘Because the killer was threatening him. Very subtly, but unmistakeably. He was in complete command of the conversation. He was using the familiar
tu
, while Lambert was using the formal
vous
. Lambert was being spoken to like a child. His caller had failed to make some pre-arranged call the day before, but his apology was perfunctory. When Lambert expressed his preference for meeting in public, he was slapped right back down.
Ecoute-moi
. Listen, we need to talk. There’s more than a hint of a threat in that. We hear Lambert sigh. He doesn’t want the caller to come to his house. But he gives in straight away, because he’s lacking in confidence. He’s scared, intimidated.’ Enzo looked around at all the faces focused in his direction. ‘But there’s something else. A single word in that whole conversation that sticks out like a sore thumb.’

When the faces looking back at him remained blank, he turned to his elder daughter. ‘Come on, Kirsty. English is your native tongue. You must have heard it, surely?’

Kirsty stiffened, feeling the weight of her father’s expectation. She had never been quite sure that it was something she could live up to. She desperately wanted to please him, but she couldn’t think of anything.

‘He said he’d been out of the country. In England. The town of Portsmouth.’ He swung his attention towards Bertrand. ‘Say Portsmouth, Bertrand.’ Bertrand looked at him blankly. ‘Just as you would normally.’

‘Portsmouth,’ he said.

Enzo swivelled back towards Kirsty. ‘See? Hear how he said it? The way the French always say it.’ And he pronounced it phonetically, just the way that Bertrand had said it. ‘
Porsmoose
. The French just cannot get their brains around the concept of four consecutive consonants. RTSM. How do you pronounce that? They can’t. They say,
Porsmoose
. But his caller pronounced it just the way an Englishman would.
Portsmouth
.’

Kirsty nodded, understanding now what her father had meant. ‘Are you saying he was English?’

‘That’s just it. I don’t know. He doesn’t sound English to me.’ He turned to Anna. ‘Did he sound like a foreigner to you?’

She shook her head. ‘He sounded like a Frenchman to me.’

‘He had a southern accent,’ Sophie said. ‘He’s French. I’d put money on it.’

Enzo smiled and shook his head. He reached for a book he had placed on the shelf beside the stereo. He opened it at a page marked by a Post-it. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ he said. ‘By Edgar Allen Poe. Let me read you this paragraph.’

He slipped a pair of half-moon reading glasses on to the end of his nose and perched himself on the arm of Sophie’s
fauteuil
:

He looked up at the array of rueful smiles around him. ‘Not easy, is it? We all have our own perceptions, very often based on preconceptions which are false.’ He paused. ‘You know what a
shibboleth
is?’

Raffin said, ‘It’s a password.’

‘We use it in that sense, yes. But it’s the origin of the word that’s interesting in this context. It’s an old Hebrew word. And its present usage derives from a story told in the old Hebrew bible. A story of civil war between two Hebrew tribes, the Ephraimites who have settled on one side of the River Jordan, and the Gileadites who have settled on the other. If an Ephraimite who crossed the river tried to pass himself off as a friend, the Gileadites would make him pronounce the word
shibboleth
. It actually meant flooding stream. But in the Ephraimite dialect, initial
sh
sounds were always pronounced
s
. So the Ephraimite would say,
sibboleth
, and give himself away.’

Kirsty said, ‘So
Porsmoose
is like a
shibboleth
.’

‘Exactly. It tells us something very important about our killer. The trouble is, I don’t know what.’ He closed his book and took the cassette from the stereo. He held it up between thumb and forefinger. ‘But I know a man who might. I need to get this in the post first thing tomorrow.’