Blacklight Blue (25 page)

Chapter Forty-Nine

The car park was floodlit, white buildings on the hill stark against a black sky. He had only ever spent three weeks here, but it felt to him like he was back on home ground. Day had departed with the final setting of the sun, and Yves’ sunglasses now sat on the dash. His face was stinging from shock and anger. If he had looked at himself in his rearview mirror he would have seen how his skin had darkened. He slipped his cellphone back in his pocket. He had wanted to finish it here. Tonight. Back in the place where, in many ways, it had all started. He could not understand the instruction to wait. But like the good soldier he was, he always followed orders.

He saw Macleod, accompanied by a legionnaire, coming back down the steps and into the museum. A few moments later the Scot emerged on his own to walk through the trees to the parking lot. He stopped by his car and glanced across the asphalt towards Yves. He looked weary. Yves had no idea why he had bought himself a suit, but it seemed oddly out of character. Their eyes met, and Yves saw the indecision, before suddenly Macleod began walking towards him.

Yves was startled. Perhaps the Scotsman felt safe here in the full glare of the floodlights, several hundred armed soldiers working, eating, sleeping in the garrison behind him. Not that it would have mattered to Yves. A single shot and he’d have been gone. Soldiers would have run out to find a man dead by his car, lying in a pool of his own blood. And if they’d seen Yves at all, it would have been the merest glimpse of a dark car vanishing into the night.

He leaned forward to start the engine. Still Macleod was striding purposefully towards him. He slipped the car into gear, revved the motor and accelerated hard from a standing start, to the accompaniment of squealing tyres. His Ray-bans flew off the dashboard. Macleod stopped, frozen like an old stag caught in the headlights. How easy it would be simply to run him down. To spin him through the air, then reverse over the body just to be sure. He could see fear, and the certainty of death in Macleod’s eyes, before he pulled the wheel hard to his right. He missed him by centimetres, leaving tracks of rubber on the tarmac, then accelerated out through the gate and off into the darkness.

***

Enzo stood breathing hard, the revving of Yves car fading into the night. He knew just how close he had come to dying right there and then in the car park of the
Légion étrangère
. It had been madness. Trying to beard the lion in his own den. Enzo was not sure what had possessed him. Why had he ever thought he might be safe anywhere from a man like Yves Labrousse? A professional killer desperate to keep his identity to himself. And yet he had just given the man every opportunity to kill him, and he hadn’t taken it. Why not? Was he toying with Enzo? Playing some kind of game? Procrastinating for pleasure? Somehow Enzo doubted it. This man was a professional. He killed for money, not pleasure. And he was desperate to stop Enzo in his tracks. So why hadn’t he?

Enzo walked slowly back to his car and slipped into the driver’s seat. He was shaking from head to foot, trembling as if from the cold. But the night was warm, almost balmy. The worst thing was the unpredictability of it all. Not knowing. Not understanding. He would have to find a hotel room now, and he saw a long, sleepless night ahead of him.

Chapter Fifty

Kirsty sat staring at herself in the mirror. The soft glow of the bedside lamp barely reached across the room to the dressing table. She looked terrible. Perhaps it was just the light, or the lack of it. But her eyes were lost in dark smudges, her cheeks seemed hollow. Her hair had somehow lost its lustre, and she had drawn it back to tie in a loose ponytail, just like her father. Except that he wasn’t her father. No matter what had happened, the thought still haunted her.

She rose suddenly from the dressing table, cursing herself. How many times was she going to replay it? Like the words of a song you can’t get out of your head, it just kept going round and round and round.

She left the room, and the old floorboards on the upstairs landing creaked beneath her feet. As she wound her way down the spiral stairs, she heard the murmur of the television from the
séjour
. Voices, laughter. It seemed like such a long time since she had laughed. The laughter subsided as she walked into the room. Sophie and Bertrand and Nicole looked almost guilty. Nicole said, ‘How’s Roger?’

‘Out of intensive care. They say it’ll take time, but they expect him to make a full recovery.’

‘So cheer up, for God’s sake!’ That Sophie had lost patience with her was clear. And she probably harboured resentment towards her for the way she had treated Enzo. He was her father, after all. Her real father. And Kirsty knew that she loved him unconditionally.

It seemed that everyone loved Enzo, including her. But she was the only one who didn’t know how to express it.

‘You’ve been moping around for days. You’re not the only one affected by this, you know. We’re all in it together.’

‘I think, perhaps, that Kirsty’s had more to deal with than the rest of you.’ Everyone turned at the sound of Anna’s voice as she emerged from the computer room. She gave Kirsty’s arm a tiny squeeze, a silent acknowledgement of a secret shared, an implicit understanding. ‘I’ll get dinner on.’ And she headed on through to the kitchen.

‘I’ll give you a hand.’ Nicole leapt up from her armchair and hurried through after her. If there was going to be a scene, she didn’t want to be any part of it.

But Kirsty had no intention of staying around to trade accusations with Sophie. ‘I’m going to get some air.’ She lifted her coat and scarf from the coatstand on the way out. But once she had closed the door behind her, she had no desire to go walking off into the night on her own. So instead she stayed on the
terrasse
at the front of the house, leaning on the wrought-iron railing, and gazing out across the frosted field to the floodlit church and school. She lowered her head to rest on her clasped hands, and closed her eyes.

There was nothing she could do to change the past, to alter the events that had so transformed her life. But as Anna had said, she could still play a major role in shaping its future. She still had that power within her gift. Anna was right. There was no future in secrecy. If there was love between people there should be no secrets. She thought about her mother, and the truth she had kept from Enzo all those years. And Simon, and how he had shared in that secret with Linda. An ugly, deceitful secret that, in the end, could only ever destroy them. He might be her blood father, but in truth she didn’t think she really liked him very much.

She stood up straight, pressing her hands into the cold metal rail. She breathed deeply and made a decision. She couldn’t continue to live the lie with Enzo. She had to come clean and tell him that she knew.

Chapter Fifty-One

The hotel was in a commercial park on the east side of Aubagne, a vast, sprawling suburban shopping mall ringed by hills on the edge of town. By the time Enzo had eaten and driven out there, it was completely deserted. Acres of empty parking lots shimmered under yellow street lamps. The hills cut dark shapes against a starry sky, and the air was filled with the smell of pine from the Mediterranean
pins parasols
that lined the streets.

He drove past fast food restaurants closed up for the night, brooding, boxy, corrugated stores with flashing neon and dimly lit windows. A motor mall, rows of shiny cars gleaming under floodlights. Citröen, Renault, Peugeot, Mercedes. There was not a living soul in evidence, not another vehicle on the streets.

He saw a sign for the Palais des Congrès, and his mind drifted back to Strasbourg, where the nightmare had begun. But Aubagne could hardly be further removed from the sleet and snow of a frigid Alsace, and it was simply a reminder of how far he had come in only a few days, and of how much everything on which he had built his life had shifted seismically beneath his feet.

He had found the man who murdered Pierre Lambert in Paris all those years ago. But the killer was still free, and still intent, it seemed, on despatching Enzo to the same fate. The only thing Enzo didn’t know was where and when. Yves Labrousse, aka Richard Bright, aka Richard Archangel had spurned the opportunity just a few hours earlier, but Enzo was certain that it wasn’t the last he would see of him.

He turned right at the end of a long, straight avenue, and saw a sign for the Etap hotel where he had booked a room by telephone earlier in the evening. The car park, behind a high wire fence and locked gate, was nearly full. Moths battered about under tall lamps that washed it with light. Enzo drew up at the gate and got out of his car. An empty street ran past the hotel into a smudged, dark distance. Lights glowed in the hotel entrance, but there was no one at reception. They had told him on the phone that it was self check-in. They had taken his credit card number and all he had to do was slip his card into the machine at the door. It would issue him with a code, giving him access to the parking, the hotel, and his room. The charge would be lifted automatically.

He stopped at the door and turned to look back the way he had come, straining for the sound of a motor, watching for the flicker of a car’s headlamps. But there was nothing, except for the endless croaking of frogs in some nearby pond.

He turned back to the self check-in machine as the door opened and a dark figure emerged suddenly and unexpectedly, silhouetted against the backdrop of light in reception. Enzo stepped back, an exclamation escaping involuntarily from his lips. The figure raised a hand, and a sudden flame illuminated his face. He puffed smoke into the night. ‘Sorry mate. Didn’t mean to startle you.’ He wandered off across the paving stones towards the deserted terrace of a café opposite, still sucking on his cigarette.

Enzo waited until he had his breathing under control, before slipping his credit card into the slot and being issued with his six-digit code. He tapped it into the pad beside the gate, then drove his car into the parking lot. He retrieved his laptop from the trunk, and let himself into the hotel, walking the length of a long, featureless corridor until he found his room right at the very end.

It was a small, basic room with a toilet barely big enough to turn around in. A metal table was pushed into one corner opposite an unyielding double bed. But it didn’t matter. He had no intention of sleeping.

He took the room’s only chair and inserted the back of it under the door handle so that it angled to the floor and jammed it shut. He made sure the window was securely locked and drew the curtain. The room was in complete darkness now. He fumbled for the TV remote on the bedside table and turned on the television, immediately muting it. The screen provided him with just enough flickering light to see by.

For a long time he sat on the edge of the bed trying hard to relax, to let the tension of a traumatic day seep slowly from every straining muscle. And as his breathing slowed and his body unwound he was almost felled by a sudden wave of fatigue, and he immediately tensed again. He mustn’t let himself sleep. If Yves Labrousse was going to come for him tonight, then he wanted to be ready.

He opened up his computer bag and removed his laptop. It took around sixty seconds for it to load its system and log into the hotel’s wi-fi. He typed in his cellphone number and service provider, hit the return key and ten seconds later received a text on his cellphone with the password for the wi-fi. Now he was connected to the internet, and almost immediately his computer issued an alert to tell him he had mail. He clicked on his mailer, and with an unexpected jolt saw that there was an e-mail from Kirsty.

He hesitated for a long time before finally finding the courage to open it.

Dad
…

The very word made winged creatures flutter in his chest

…I call you that, even though I know you aren’t…

Now they were everywhere, in his chest, his stomach, his head. Panicking wings beating in frenetic flight.

…I can’t speak about it in an e-mail. But I overheard you that night at Uncle Simon’s. I know he’s my blood father. And I have to talk to you. I can’t carry the secret around any longer. But not here. Somewhere we won’t be interrupted. Somewhere private. There’s a place that Anna took me to at Le Lioran. You know, the ski resort. It’s not far from here. I know it’ll take you most of the day to drive back tomorrow. So meet me at nine. Where the cablecars dock. There’s a stairway at the side of the
téléphérique
building.

He could almost feel her pause.

I love you.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Kirsty sat looking at the desktop on her screen. The computer room was in semidarkness, glowing in the light of all the monitors that Nicole had left running. She had just wakened her own laptop from sleep and knew immediately that someone had been using it.

She felt anger spike out of nowhere. Her computer was private. A place where she kept her life, her secrets. For someone else to use it without permission made her feel violated. She pushed back her chair and strode through to the
séjour
. ‘Were you using my computer, Nicole?’

The eight o’clock evening news had just started, and three faces turned towards her from the television.

‘No.’ Nicole was indignant. ‘Why would I use your computer?’

‘I don’t know, but someone did.’

Sophie said, ‘How do you know?’

‘Because the
Finder
was missing from the desktop. I
never
close the
Finder
.’

Bertrand shrugged. ‘Maybe it was Anna. She was in the computer room last night.’

Kirsty glanced across the hall towards the kitchen. ‘Where is she?’ Usually, at this time of night, she would be preparing dinner. But the kitchen was empty.

‘She went out somewhere this afternoon,’ Sophie said. ‘I didn’t hear her come back.’ She looked towards the others for confirmation.

Bertrand said, ‘I was out getting wood ten minutes ago, and the car’s not there.’

Kirsty glanced at the clock on the mantel. ‘She’s late.’

And Nicole said, ‘I suppose we’d better think about fixing something to eat ourselves, then.’ As she got out of her seat, they heard the crunch of gravel in the drive, and the lights of a car raked past the windows. ‘That’ll be her now.’

She went out into the hall to switch on the outside light, and opened the door. A car was idling at the foot of the steps, but it wasn’t Anna’s. A middle-aged couple stood with their car doors open staring hesitantly up at the house. They seemed alarmed when Nicole stepped out on to the
terrasse
. And there was something both frightened and aggressive in the man’s tone. He spoke in English. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Nicole was taken aback, and as the others filed out from the house behind her, it was Kirsty who responded. ‘Who are
you
?’

The woman’s voice was shrill as she turned to her husband across the roof of the car. ‘John, let’s just go and get the police now.’

But he was determined to stand his ground. ‘This is our house,’ he said, his voice filled with indignation. ‘We own it.’

Sophie’s face broke into a smile of relief. ‘Well, that’s alright then. We’re friends of Anna’s.’

‘Jo-ohn,’ the woman wailed.

Still he wasn’t giving up. ‘Anna who?’

Sophie and Kirsty, Bertrand and Nicole looked at him in astonishment. Kirsty said, ‘Anna Cattiaux. The former Olympic skier.’

The man glanced at his wife. Some unspoken communication passed between them and she immediately got back into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. He turned his face up towards the
terrasse
again. ‘I’m going for the police. If you’re still here when we get back, you can explain yourselves to them.’

He got hurriedly behind the wheel and slipped the car into reverse. They saw him twist in his seat as he reversed at speed back along the drive.

Nicole turned towards the others, bewilderment all over her face. ‘What was all that about?’

But Kirsty’s mind was racing, cogs and counters in her brain clicking backwards and forwards searching for a combination that would unlock understanding. ‘Shit!’ she said suddenly. ‘We don’t know anything about Anna, except what she’s told us. And I never really thought about it before. But some of that just doesn’t add up.’

‘What do you mean?’ Nicole was becoming alarmed.

‘She told my dad that she was in Strasbourg to see her parents. Plural. But she told me her father was dead. She also told me she’d been in Strasbourg for the funeral of a friend.’

‘That’s funny,’ Sophie said. ‘We were just talking about that the other day. Well, not exactly
that
. But she told me she’d never had kids, and Bertrand said she’d told him her son was killed in a road accident. We figured one or other of us must have misunderstood.’

Nicole said, ‘Well, there’s one easy way to find out the truth.’ She pushed past them into the house and hurried through to the computer room. The others followed and gathered around the back of her chair as she brought up the Google homepage on her laptop and typed in “
Anna Cattiaux” skier
. There were more than sixty thousand hits. At the top of the first page of ten was the entry in French Wikipedia. Nicole clicked to open it. ‘There. Anna Cattiaux. French champion skier. Represented her country at two winter Olympics, narrowly missing out on the medals both times.’ She stopped, and her hand froze on the mouse. ‘Oh, my God!’

‘What?’ Bertrand leaned over to try to read what she was looking at.

Nicole’s voice was hushed. ‘Anna Cattiaux died in a freak skiing accident twelve years ago.’

There was a long silence as they absorbed this.

‘So who is she? I mean Anna, or whatever her name is.’ It was Sophie who voiced their common thought.

Kirsty said, ‘Nicole, put the name into Google Images.’

Nicole’s fingers rattled across the keyboard, and up came a screenful of images. A pretty, blond-haired girl, sometimes in ski gear, sometimes in jeans, occasionally in a cocktail dress at a function or dinner. Always smiling. And nothing like the Anna who had shared in their lives for the last ten days.

‘Jesus!’ Kirsty whispered. All the things she had confided in her, secrets shared, stories told. She felt tricked and cheated, and a single word kept bouncing around inside her head. Why? Why? Why the deception, why the lies? And what was it all about? Who was she, and where was she now? Then a thought returned to her. ‘So if it wasn’t any of you, it
must
have been Anna who was using my computer.’

Nicole said, ‘Well, let’s have a look and see. People always leave a trail.’ She turned her seat towards Kirsty’s laptop and hit the space bar to wipe off the screensaver. ‘May I?’

‘Go ahead.’

Nicole went to the
Apple
menu and scrolled down to
Recent Items
. Up came a long list of the applications and documents which had been most recently used. ‘Anything you see that you haven’t been using recently? Or any unfamiliar documents?’

Kirsty scanned the screen. Nothing stood out from the list of documents, and she raised her eyes to the applications. She saw her diary and calendar software. Word processing, her internet browser, her iTunes collection of music and videos.’ Suddenly her heart was beating more rapidly. ‘My mailer. I haven’t sent an e-mail since before the bombing in Strasbourg.’

Nicole opened up the mailer. ‘Your inbox is a mess,’ she said. ‘Don’t you file stuff?’

Kirsty ran down the long list of e-mails which had been received and read but remained in her inbox. ‘I always mean to. I just never seem to get around to it.’ There were several unread mails which must have been received during the last week to ten days, but never picked up from the server until whoever it was had used the computer and opened up her mailer. ‘Why would she want to look at my e-mails?’

Bertrand said, ‘Maybe it wasn’t
your
e-mails she was interested in. Look in the
Sent
box.’

Nicole clicked on the
Sent
folder, and up came a fresh screen, empty except for a single e-mail. Under
Date Sent
it said
Yesterday
. Kirsty said, ‘I never sent an e-mail yesterday!’ She ran her eye along the line. ‘Oh, God, it’s addressed to Dad! He’ll think I’ve sent it. What does it say?’ Nicole opened it up.

Only the hum of the computers broke the silence in the room as they crowded round to read it. Kirsty’s face burned, almost as if from a fever, and she felt sick to her stomach, hollowed out, betrayed.

Sophie’s head swung round to look at her, a strange light in her eyes. ‘Is that true? Uncle Sy’s really your papa?’

Kirsty nodded, unable to prevent the tears that welled in her eyes from spilling silently down her face. ‘I told her about it. There was no one else. Roger had gone, and I needed to share it with someone. And I was going to tell Dad I knew, I really was.’

‘Only she beat you to it,’ Bertrand said.

‘You can’t call him papa anymore.’ There was a hint of resentment in Sophie’s voice. Since Kirsty had come on the scene she’d had to share him with her. But not any longer.

Kirsty wiped the tears from her face. ‘Yes I can. Because that’s what he is. The biology doesn’t matter. He’s my dad, and he always will be.’

Suddenly Nicole said, ‘What time is it?’

Bertrand checked his watch. ‘Half past eight.’

‘Call him! Call his cellphone.’

Bertrand flipped open his cellphone and selected Enzo from its memory. He listened intently as it rang several times before a message told him that the number he was calling was not online. He left a message anyway, more in hope than expectation that Enzo would pick it up in the next thirty minutes.

Sophie was starting to panic. ‘Oh, my God, can we get to Le Lioran in half an hour? He thinks he’s meeting Kirsty at nine. But it’s some kind of a trap. It has to be.’