Blacklight Blue (26 page)

Chapter Fifty-Three

Sleet spattered softly on his windscreen, caught in his headlights like stars at warp speed, driven on the edge of an icy wind that gusted off the mountains. The temperature had dropped by more than twenty degrees during his six-and-a-half hour drive from the south. But it was warm in the cocoon of his car, and his eyes were heavy after a night with little sleep.

He had managed to stay awake until after 5 am, before slipping off to float through shallow seas awash with vivid dreams that carried him into the dawn, and the first light cracking around the curtains. He had wakened with a start shortly after eight and checked his route north on Mappy. With stops, it would take him more than six hours to get to Le Lioran, but he wasn’t due to meet Kirsty until nine, and so he had not checked out of the hotel until noon, waiting until the last possible moment before venturing back out into a world where somewhere, he knew, Yves Labrousse was waiting for him.

But there had been no sign of the killer, or his black Renault Scenic, and Enzo had found a restaurant near the Palais des Congrès. He had eaten there in silence, alone with the thoughts that had disturbed him through all his waking hours and the dreams that followed.

That Kirsty had overheard his exchange with Simon in London had shaken him to the core. But it had, at least, explained her mood at Stansted Airport when they’d said their strained goodbyes. He had no idea how to feel about it now, but all his instincts told him it was better out in the open than festering in the dark where there was every chance it could turn toxic. He knew it would never change how he felt about Kirsty. What he didn’t know was how it had changed the way she felt about him. The one thing he held on to was the way she had signed off her e-mail.
I love you
. Three small words that, in the circumstances, seemed to him to say so much more. It was that thought which had sustained him throughout the long drive.

Now, as he turned into the tiny ski resort at the base of the Plomb du Cantal, all his fears and doubts returned. And the confidence he had so carefully constructed during nearly five hundred kilometres travelled, evaporated in a moment.

The resort car park was spread over three levels, but there were only a handful of cars beneath its sodium lamps, sleet slashing through haloes of pale yellow light. A mere handful of lit windows pricked the dark squares and triangles of apartment blocks and chalets, and through glass doors Enzo saw that the dimly lit foyer of the hotel was empty. In just a few days the resort would be transformed as the season opened on the first weekend of December. By then, what was falling as sleet down here, would have covered the upper slopes in thick ski-able snow. The hotel and most of the apartments would be full, the car park jammed with winter holidaymakers. But for now it was like a ghost town.

Although he had watched the outside temperature drop on the digital display in his hire car, he was unprepared for the blast of ice cold wind that cut through him as he opened the car door. The wind chill factor was dragging the temperature down well below zero. He took his jacket from the back seat and buttoned it against the driving sleet, turning up his collar and thrusting hands deep into his pockets. He put his head down and ploughed off into the night, cleaving his way through the sleet, up a grilled metal stairway to the next level.

The
téléphérique
building was huddled in the dark on the edge of the resort, and he thought what a crazy place this was to meet. Why not in the bar of the hotel? They would almost certainly have had the place to themselves.

Pine trees rising up on all sides pressed around him as he followed the tarmac round the side of the building, to where five flights of red-painted metal staircase doubled back and forth up to the docking area where the two cablecars sat snugly side by side.

Enzo climbed the lower steps and leapt over the barrier at the first landing. The staircase rattled and shook beneath him, clattering above the noise of the wind. His face was wet and stinging with the cold. His hands and feet had already lost all their warmth. His jacket was soaked through, and he could feel the chill seeping into his bones. This was madness.

He hurried up the remaining stairs to the E-shaped concrete docking platform and saw that the nearer of the two cablecars stood with its lights on and its doors open. He looked around for Kirsty but there was no sign of her. He called her name, and the wind seemed to whip it from his mouth and throw it away into the dark. It brought no response. He checked his watch. It was just after nine, and for the first time he wondered how she might have got here. Perhaps Anna had loaned her the car. If he had thought, he would have checked for it in the car park.

He called again. ‘Kirsty!’ And followed the spine of the E past the second cablecar. There was no one here. He retraced his steps and looked inside the nearer one. Empty. He stepped inside, a brief respite from the wind outside, and saw that the door to the control panel on the opposite wall was lying open. Beneath a square of illuminated buttons, a telephone receiver hung from a cradle, and a sheet of white paper taped to its handle was flapping in the draft. Enzo crossed the car and pulled the sheet free. There were two words written on it.
Call me
. He didn’t recognise the handwriting, but the letters had been printed, and so he couldn’t say if it was Kirsty’s or not.

He held the piece of paper in his hand, staring at it blindly. Something was wrong. Why would Kirsty want to meet him in a place like this? Why would she leave him such a cryptic note taped to a telephone receiver in an empty cablecar? And yet there was no doubt in his mind that it was Kirsty who had written to him. Who else could possibly have known the awful secret which had been aired that night at Simon’s flat in London?

He lifted the telephone and put it to his ear, listening intently. It clicked several times and then began to ring. He waited, almost rigid with tension. On the third ring, someone lifted the receiver at the other end. Silence. Filled only by ambient sound. But there was someone there. Enzo was certain he could hear breathing. He said, ‘Hello?’ And immediately the doors slid shut.

He dropped the receiver and in two quick strides crossed the cablecar to try to stop the nearest door from closing. But he was too late, and he spun around to stand in the middle of the floor, breathing hard, looking about him in a panic, like a wild animal trapped in a cage.

The car jerked, and he grabbed for the handrail as it scraped and bumped its way out of its dock, before swinging free into the night. Enzo had a strange, awful sense of floating away in the dark. From its lit interior, everything beyond the windows of the cablecar seemed black. But he could see the lights of the car park, dropping away steeply below him. He felt the cablecar shudder, battered by the wind. The sleet melted and ran down the windows like tears.

He knew now that he had been tricked. And trapped. If Kirsty had written that e-mail she had been forced to do it. By someone who somehow knew their secret. But who? There was no way he could make sense of it. And he didn’t dare imagine in what circumstance she might have been made to do it.

But it had to have something to do with Labrousse and the murder of Pierre Lambert.

The car dipped suddenly in the dark as it passed the first support pylon, and rose yet more steeply. Enzo began to panic. There was absolutely nothing he could do. He went back to the control panel and pressed every button. Nothing happened. Somehow the cablecar’s independent controls had been disabled and it was being manipulated remotely. He felt quickly in all his pockets, before remembering that he’d let the battery in his cellphone run flat, and left it charging in the car. He couldn’t even call for help. He was trapped in this damned box, being winched up a mountainside in the dark to meet God knew what fate at the top.

His breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts, and he moved to the far window, pressing his back against it and grasping the handrail, preparing to meet head on whatever might be waiting for him up there.

The sleet had turned now to snow, coating the windows at the front, as they rose higher into the night. The car dipped again. The second pylon. Enzo glanced out of the side window, and saw village lights twinkling through the snow in a valley far, far below, somewhere away to the west. Light from the windows of the cablecar reflected darkly on the mountainside as they slid up through cut rock. Ahead Enzo saw the dark shape of the mountain-top terminal loom suddenly out of the night, and then the snow ceased as the cablecar bumped and rattled into the shelter of its dock. It jerked to a standstill and the doors slid open.

Enzo stood stock still. He could hear the wind howling through the cavernous concrete space around him. Cables and corrugated sheeting rattled and flapped and vibrated, the noise of it echoing all about him. The only light came from the cablecar. He could see a metal staircase leading up to an overhead access gallery for maintenance high up in the roof, where the cables turned around huge yellow wheels.

More steps climbed up to a metal platform, and a vast sliding door that opened on to a dark concourse.
Sortie
signs pointed towards a cafeteria and doors to the outside. He could see no one, nor detect any movement among the shadows.

He stood for a long time without moving. His instinct was to stay in the light, to remain within the protective shell of the cablecar. But he knew that any sense of safety here was illusory. He was in the full glare of the very light that comforted him, clearly visible to whoever was out there. The dark would be a better friend.

Almost on an impulse, he ran out of the door, clattering over the metal grille beneath his feet, the mountain falling away below him, and made a dash for the shadows. All the time he braced himself for the bullets or the blows that he was sure would come his way. He scrambled up the stairs, through the open door, and plunged into the darkness of the adjoining concourse. He found a wall and hunkered down against it, fingers pressed into the floor to keep him balanced. It was more fear than exertion that robbed him of his breath. He could hear it rasping above the roar of the wind that squeezed and whined through every space and crack.

It took several minutes for his eyes to adjust to the tiny amount of light that bled through from the now distant cablecar. It was reflected faintly in pools of water gathered on the concrete floor. The corrugated roof above his head thundered like a drum in the wind, and he saw, beyond a sign for Stella Artois, the passage that led out to the mountain. He had no idea why, but all his instincts pushed him in that direction. Out of here, out into the night, escape from this concrete prison into which he’d been lured.

‘What do you want with me?’ he bellowed at the top of his voice, all his fear and anger fuelling a vocal outburst of pure frustration. But only the wind replied, and he got to his feet and ran for the doors, punching the release bar and plunging through them out into the night.

The wind struck him a physical blow, snow swirling around him like the spirits of demented dervishes. A light came on, triggered by a movement sensor, flooding a snow-covered rise that led off towards the peak. He saw a radio mast disappearing into the white-streaked darkness, and realised what folly this was. He wouldn’t survive ten minutes out here.

He turned and stopped dead. A figure stood in the doorway, blocking his return. A tall figure in a dark parka with the hood up. One hand rose to pull back the hood, and Enzo saw that it was Yves Labrousse. The younger man smiled. ‘She said you’d come,’ he shouted above the wind, and Enzo wondered what he meant. Was he talking about Kirsty?

‘What have you done with her?’

Labrousse looked faintly bemused. ‘I haven’t done anything with her.’ He raised his right hand and pointed a gun directly at Enzo’s chest. ‘You have been such a pain in the ass. You have no idea.’

‘I know everything about you,’ Enzo shouted at him. ‘Your whole history. Your abduction from Cadaquès. Stealing your brother’s identity. Joining the Légion Étrangère. And I know about Philippe Ransou and how you met.’

‘And all that knowledge will die with you. But just a little sooner than Ransou predicted.’

‘No.’ Enzo shook his head vigorously. ‘You’re rumbled, Labrousse. Or Archangel. Or Bright. Or whatever it is you call yourself. Do you think I’d come here without passing on what I know? Do you think I didn’t know you’d be coming after me? I spent last night writing up the whole damned story, and this morning I uploaded it to my blog. It’s all out there on the internet. Whatever you do to me now can’t change that.’

Labrousse glared at him, hate and anger burning in blue eyes. ‘You fucker!’ He took a step towards Enzo and his foot skidded from under him. Loose gravel beneath wet snow. He stumbled and almost fell. Enzo turned and ran just as the light on the terminal building was suddenly extinguished. The mountain top was plunged into blackness.

Enzo felt the snow in his face, his feet slipping and slithering as he ran blindly into the night. He heard Labrousse shouting his name, a voice whipped away on the edge of the wind. The incline grew steeper as he climbed. He felt his legs becoming leaden, the sound of his own voice gasping, almost roaring, as he tried to gulp in more air. But everything was against him. The weather, the lack of oxygen, his age, and he felt himself wading as if through treacle, or like a man fighting in slow motion against the blast of a hurricane.

Until, finally, his legs folded beneath him and he dropped to his knees, utterly exhausted. He fell forward into the snow and rolled over on to his back, and saw the shadow of his pursuer loom over him. Labrousse was gasping, too, fitter and stronger than Enzo, but still disabled by six thousand feet of oxygen deprivation. ‘I never knew a man harder to kill,’ he said. He raised his gun and fired three times.

Enzo braced himself for the bullets and grunted in pain as the dead weight of Labrousse fell on top of him. He felt the warmth of the other man’s blood oozing through his clothes, compounding his confusion. He struggled to push Labrousse to one side, but couldn’t move him.