Blacklight Blue

Chapter One

Yves watched the traffic in the boulevard below come to a standstill in the frigid Paris morning. The bouchon stretched as far as he could see, to the next traffic lights and beyond. He could almost feel the frustration of the drivers trapped in their cars rise to meet him like the pollution that spewed from smoky exhausts. The city air was not good for him. It was time for a change.

The long, repeating monotone in his ear was broken by a man’s voice. ‘Yes, hello?’

‘Salut. It’s me.’

‘Oh, okay.’ The voice seemed tense.

Yves was cool, relaxed. Each word delivered with the easy assurance of a soldier with an automatic weapon pumping bullets into an unarmed man. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call yesterday. I was out of the country.’ He wasn’t quite sure why he felt the need to elaborate. It just seemed more casual. Conversational. ‘Portsmouth. In England. A business trip.’

‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’ Clear irritation in the other man’s voice now.

‘I just thought you’d wonder why I hadn’t called.’

‘Well, you’re calling me now.’

‘I was going to suggest tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock. If that’s okay with you.’

‘Where?’

‘Your place.’

He sensed the other’s reticence in his hesitation. ‘I prefer somewhere public, you know that.’

‘Listen, friend, we need to talk.’ If there was a threat in the forced intimacy of the word, ‘friend,’ it went unnoticed. He heard a sigh at the other end of the line.

‘You know where to find me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Three o’clock, then.’

‘Fine.’ He retracted his cellphone aerial and saw that the traffic had not moved.

Lambert’s apartment was on the second floor of a recently renovated building in the thirteenth arrondissement. A newly installed electronic entry system was designed to cut costs by doing away with the need for a concierge. Which meant that no one but Lambert would witness his arrival. And no one, not even Lambert, would know when he left.

‘Yeh?’ The speaker in the wall issued a scratched rendition of Lambert’s voice.

‘It’s me.’ Yves never used his name if he didn’t have to.

The buzzer sounded, and he pushed the door open.

Lambert was waiting on the landing. A gaping door opened into the apartment behind him. He was a strange young man, abnormally pale, sparse blond hair shaved to a cropped fuzz. Penumbrous shadows beneath darker eyes punctuated a skeletal face, and bony fingers clasped Yves’ gloved hand in a perfunctory greeting. ‘Come in.’ He glanced towards the stairs as if concerned that someone might be watching.

The bay windows in the salon looked out towards the park, bearing out Yves’ assumption that the room was not overlooked. A well-worn sofa and armchairs had seen better days, hiding their tawdriness beneath colourful, fringed throws. Yves smelled old garlic and stewed coffee coming from the open kitchen door. And the whole apartment was suffused with the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Yves felt it catching his throat, and as Lambert took out a fresh cigarette, he said, ‘Don’t do that.’

Lambert paused with the cigarette halfway to his mouth, and cast wary eyes towards his visitor. Then, reluctantly, he tapped the cigarette back into its packet. ‘Coffee?’

‘Why not?’

Lambert disappeared into the kitchen. Yves perched on the edge of the sofa and saw motes of dust hanging still in the slabs of weak winter sunlight that fell at angles through the window. He heard his own breath as he forced it in and out of contracting lungs. His blue eyes felt gritty at first, then watery. His tension was palpable.

Lambert reappeared with small cups of black coffee and placed them on the table. Yves leaned forward to drop in a sugar lump and poke it with a coffee spoon until it dissolved.

‘Aren’t you going to take off your coat?’ Lambert sat opposite, in the armchair, keeping his eyes on his visitor as he raised his coffee cup to his lips.

‘I’m not staying.’

Lambert’s eyes dropped to his guest’s hands. ‘You can take off your gloves, surely?’

‘I have a form of psoriasis,’ Yves said. ‘It affects my hands. When I have a flare-up I have to rub them with cream. I keep the gloves on to protect them.’ He took a sip of his coffee. It was bitter and unpleasant, and he wished he had declined the offer. It was only putting off the moment.

‘So what it is we need to talk about?’ Lambert seemed anxious to get this over with.

But Yves wasn’t listening. The tightness across his chest had become vice-like, and his lungs were reluctant to give up spent air. His throat was swelling, and he felt the rapid pulse of blood in his carotid arteries. Tears spilled from reddening eyes as did his coffee as he tried to replace the cup on the table. The sneezing and coughing began almost simultaneously. His mouth gaped, his eyes stared, and panic gripped him. His hand shot to his face, a politeness dinned into him during childhood years by a smothering mother. Cover your mouth when you cough! Coughs and sneezes spread diseases! For a moment, he thought that Lambert knew why he had come, and that there had been something in the coffee. But the symptoms were only too familiar.

It was nearly impossible to breathe now. In a world blurred by tears he saw Lambert get to his feet, and heard the alarm in his voice. ‘Are you alright? What the hell’s wrong with you?’

He sucked in a breath and forced it out again. ‘Do you…do you keep pets?’

Lambert shook his head in consternation. ‘Of course not. In God’s name, man, what’s wrong?’

As Yves struggled to his feet, Lambert rounded the table to stop him from falling. It was now or never. Yves clutched the outstretched bony arms and threw his weight forward. He heard Lambert’s gasp of surprise, and then the air exploding from his lungs as both men toppled over the coffee table and crashed to the floor. Yves was on top of him, but could barely see, mucus and saliva exploding from his mouth and nose as his body fought against the toxins with which his own immune system was attacking his airways.

Lambert was screaming and flailing beneath him. Yves’ gloved hands found the younger man’s face, then his neck, and he squeezed. But his physical powers were failing, and he released his hold on the neck to seek out the head. He felt Lambert’s barking breath in his face, before his hands found that familiar grip, one hand spread across the face, the other at the back of the head. And then it was easy, in spite of everything. A quick twist. He heard the pop of the disarticulated vertebrae, and almost felt the sharp edge of the bone, released from its cartilage, slice through the spinal cord. Lambert went limp. Yves rolled off him and lay fighting for breath. If he blacked out now, there was a good chance he would never wake up. This was as bad as he had ever known it.

It took a superhuman effort to force himself to his knees. He fumbled in his coat pocket to find the bottle of pills and closed desperate fingers around it.

He had no idea how he managed to reach the kitchen, or how it was even possible to force the pills over a throat that was swollen nearly closed. He heard the sound of breaking glass as the tumbler fell into the sink, and the rattle of pills as they spilled across the floor. But none of that mattered. If he didn’t get out of here now, he would be as dead as the man he had come to kill.

Chapter Two

Sleet gently slapped the window like the soft touch of tapping fingertips, then turned instantly wet to run like tears spilled by the coming winter.

Kirsty watched anxiously from the top floor of the old house. She had been there six months now, the accumulated possessions of her gypsy existence finding more than enough space in the single room and kitchen. It was one of twelve studio apartments in this early twentieth century mansion, built reputedly by some wealthy German industrialist.

Strasbourg was a city unsure of itself. Neither French, nor German. Disputed for centuries by old enemies, it had opted finally to be European, a decidedly amorphous notion lacking any sense of common culture or identity. While its citizens spoke French, the German influence was pervasive, and the establishment of the European Parliament on its northern flank had brought a flood of politicians and civil servants speaking everything from Polish to Portuguese, Estonian to Italian.

Which, Kirsty reflected, was just as well. Since without them, she would be without a job. She glanced at her watch and felt a stab of apprehension. If her taxi did not arrive in the next few minutes, she would soon be looking for new employment.

She cursed the weather. And she cursed the fact that she had decided not to take her bike. Usually she cycled to the parliament, a twenty-minute daily ride through the Orangerie and the leafy suburban back streets that stretched along the river. But in the translation booths that overlooked the semicircular debating chamber, it didn’t matter what she wore. Today it did. Today she would be in the full glare of the press corps, with their cameras and microphones and questions. She would be sitting at the right hand of a man whose financial muscle and political pull were almost unsurpassed in the European Union. She would be his ears, and his voice, and needed to look her best.

A horn sounding from below quickened her pulse. At last! She grabbed her coat and her bag and ran down the stairs. As she opened the door on to the Rue Bernegger she paused, raising her umbrella to protect expensively coiffed hair and carefully applied make-up. Then she slid into the rear seat of the taxi and shook the sleet back into the street.

‘You’re late.’ She couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice.

The driver shrugged. ‘Traffic’s a bitch. When do you have to be there?’

‘Nine.’ She heard him suck in his breath.

‘Not much chance of that, mademoiselle. There’s nothing moving over either bridge.’

She began to feel sick. This was turning into a nightmare. ‘Well, can’t you go downtown, and back out on the Avenue de la Paix?’

‘The centre ville isn’t any better. Only things still moving are the trams.’

She sighed her frustration. ‘It’s really important I get there by nine.’ If she had been going to the parliament they could simply have driven down the Quai de l’Orangerie. But the press conference was in the Palais des Congrès, the huge convention centre on the north side of the Place de Bordeaux. And to get there, they needed to cross two of the myriad waterways that divided and subdivided the city.

She sat in the back, almost rigid with tension, and watched as the sleet-streaked windows smeared city streets thick with fallen leaves. They moved freely at first, and she began to relax. But as they approached the pont that bridged the river between the Boulevard de la Dordogne and the Boulevard Jacques Preiss, the traffic ground to a standstill. She saw that the sleet was turning to snow.

She took a deep breath and felt it tremble in her throat. There was no way they were going to make it. She had taken the one-week engagement in the hope that it might lead to better things. It had slotted in nicely between the end of her one-year probationary contract with the European Parliament and the start of a new two-year term on full pay. Very shortly she would sit The Test, and if she passed it she would become a career interpreter for the European Union. The prospect of which seemed to stretch ahead of her, like a prison sentence. If life was going to offer more, then she wanted to find out now what that might be.

Which was why she had jumped at the chance to work for the Italian. He was the chief executive officer of a major motor car manufacturer. But his company made most of its money from guided missile systems and air defence batteries, and the parliament was threatening to vote down approval given by the Council of Ministers for the production of antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs. However, unlike the Council of Ministers, whose majority vote had carried the approval, the Parliament required a unanimous vote to overturn it. A rare occurrence. But on the vexed and controversial question of landmines and cluster bombs, for once it looked like the MEPs might actually vote with one voice.

The Italian was in town to lobby against such a vote and to pressurise Italian members of the European Parliament whose constituents back home could lose jobs if the contract fell. He had employed Kirsty as his interpreter, and to be the attractive and acceptable face of his campaign. She had not fully appreciated that until the briefing at his hotel the day before, when no amount of oily charm had been able to disguise his naked intent. But she had already signed a contract and was committed to the job. After all, she told herself, she was just the messenger. She had no control over the message.

But neither had she any control over the traffic. Her eyes closed in despair. She had blown it. She should have ordered the taxi half-an-hour earlier. She fumbled in her purse for her cellphone and hit the speeddial key.

‘Hi, Kirst. What’s up?’

‘Sylvie, I’m in trouble. I’m stuck in traffic in the Boulevard Tauler. There’s no way I’m going to make it to the Palais des Congrès on time.’

‘Is this the Italian job?’

‘Yeh.’

‘Merde! Is there anything I can do?’

‘You can stand in for me.’

‘Kirsty, I can’t. I haven’t been briefed.’

‘Please Sylvie. You’re five minutes away, and I know you’re not on shift till this afternoon. Just hold down the fort for me. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

It was after nine-thirty when her taxi swung in off the Avenue Herrenschmidt. The car park was filled with press vehicles and satellite vans. The flags of the European Union’s twenty-seven member states hung limp in the grey morning light, and wet snow lay like a crust along the curves of an impenetrable bronze sculpture on the lawn beyond. She fumbled to find money in her purse as her driver pulled up below the Strasbourg Evenements sign. Then she flew across the paving stones towards the glass, her coat billowing behind her, concern for hair and make-up long forgotten.

Her voice echoed across the vast, shining concourse, and heads swung in her direction. ‘The press conference! What room?’

A young woman looked up from behind a long reception counter, her face a mask of indifference. ‘Tivoli One. First floor.’

Kirsty ran across pale marble set in dizzying patterns, the click of her heels echoing back from glass and concrete. Occasional standing groups of two and three broke from idle conversation to cast curious glances in her direction. Through open doors, beneath a strange ceiling like rows of silk pillows, she saw caterers laying out food, a young man setting up the bar. If you wanted the press to come, you had to feed and water them. At the foot of a flight of stairs, below a sign that read, 1er Etage, she quickly scanned the list of names. Salle Oberlin, Salle Schuman, Salle Schweitzer C-D. Then there it was, Salles Tivoli 1–2.

She took the stairs two at a time, emerging onto a wide, carpeted concourse with floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side. The carpet absorbed the sound of her heels, and only her breath filled the huge space overhead, breath that came in short, gasping bursts. Away to her left hung a strange tapestry of warlocks and witches. A sign above a doorway read, Salle Oberlin. High above her, more silk cushions. She ran past a glass balustrade looking down on a sprawling maze of cloakrooms. A triangular overhead sign told her she was still on track for Tivoli 1. Up steps, through open glass doors, and she heard the voice of the Italian coming from the faraway room. Then Sylvie’s clear, confident translation into English then French. The meeting room was full. Cameras ranged along the back wall, TV lights throwing everything into sharp focus. Sylvie sat a little to the Italian’s right behind a desk on the podium, a sales chart projected on the screen behind them.

Kirsty pushed past bodies in the doorway and felt the heat of the explosion almost before the blast knocked her from her feet. Blinded by the flash of it, deafened by its noise, it seemed like an eternity before hearing and sight returned to reveal a smoke-filled world of jumbled confusion. Screaming, shouting, crying. As she struggled to get to her knees, a hand caught her arm, strong and gentle, pulling her back to her feet. She swept long, chestnut hair from her face and looked up into the eyes of the man who still held her. Blue eyes, filled with a strange serenity. He seemed untroubled by the chaos around him. Was he smiling? Someone was shouting from the podium. The man turned his head, and she saw that his right earlobe was missing.

‘Signor Capaldi! Where’s Signor Capaldi?’ The voice was hysterical.

Another voice. ‘He’s alive! Jesus, he’s still alive.’

A woman shouting, ‘The interpreter…?’

‘Man, she’s gone. There’s hardly anything left of her.’

The sound of someone vomiting.

Kirsty felt her knees buckling beneath her, and only the grip of the hand on her arm kept her on her feet. The man turned back towards her. ‘You’re a lucky girl.’

And Kirsty knew that but for the weather and a taxi that was late, it would have been her in pieces up there.

Chapter Three

The gardens below St. Etienne Cathedral were deserted behind grey railings in the cold November light. Dead flowers had been removed from their beds, and a layer of frost carpeted the lawns. Beyond the Place Champollion at the foot of the Rue Maréchal Foch, a chill mist still hung above the river. Enzo had heard it was snowing in the north. But here, in southwest France, it was just cold. A deep, penetrating cold.

Thursday was training day at the hairdresser’s. Twenty percent off sur la technique. So it was natural that a Scot of parsimonious persuasion would choose a Thursday for his monthly trim. Xavier, his hairdresser, only ever took half an inch off the end of his long locks. Just enough to stop them from tangling when Enzo tied back his hair in its habitual ponytail.

The trainee had shampooed and conditioned his hair when he first arrived and now, under Xavier’s supervision, was dragging a comb back through it before trapping it along the length of her index and middle fingers to snip off the ends. Enzo looked with mild concern at the hair that came away in the comb. Once black hair, now rapidly greying.

‘Am I losing it?’ he asked Xavier.

Xavier shrugged theatrically. He was exaggeratedly gay, somewhere in his middle forties, perhaps five or six years younger than Enzo. ‘We’re always shedding hair. It’s natural. You’ve still got a good thick head on you.’ He paused. ‘I could give you a rinse, though. Something to take away the grey. Good practice for the trainee.’

But Enzo just shook his head. ‘We are what we are.’ He turned to gaze out towards the cathedral gardens across the street, a little knot of fear tightening in his gut.

Zavier cocked his head. ‘You don’t seem quite your usual self today, monsieur.’

‘Then maybe I’m somebody else.’

The hairdresser chuckled. ‘Oh, you are a comic, Monsieur Macleod.’ But Enzo wasn’t smiling.

Neither was he smiling when he emerged ten minutes later, his hair full and sleek after its blow-dry, and held at the nape of his neck by a ruffled grey band. His farewell was a distracted one as he turned away from the river towards the Place Clement Marot, past the internet café on the corner. Waiters in the crêperie, Le Baladin, and Le RendezVous next door, were already setting tables for lunch. In the Place de la Libération, there was the oddest sense of life as usual. Folks queuing at the boulangerie for bread, an old man outside the Maison de la Presse standing with a nicotine-stained cigarette in the corner of his mouth reading La Dépêche. But for Enzo, none of it seemed quite real.

He took the letter from his inside jacket pocket to check the address again. He had been trying not to think about it for days, but there was no longer any avoiding it. He had searched the map in the annuaire to find the Rue des Trois Baudus, and been surprised to discover that it was almost opposite the music shop in the Rue du Château du Rois. It was the shop where he habitually bought his guitar strings. The rue was little more than an alleyway, and he had never given it a second glance. A little further up the street was the old prison in the Château du Roi itself. The Tour des Pendus at the top of the hill was where they had once hanged prisoners in full public view. But the Rue des Trois Baudus had always escaped him.

His visit to the doctor had been routine. An annual check-up, which had never given him cause for concern. In fact, his doctor only ever got in touch to fix a date for the following year’s rendezvous. So the letter had come like an arrow from the dark, a harbinger of what could only be bad news. An appointment made with a specialist to discuss his results.

Enzo breathed deeply as he walked up the hill past the pharmacy on the corner, past the comforting familiarity of Alain Pugnet’s music shop, and turned into the Rue des Trois Baudus. He had searched his dictionary to find out what a baudu might be, but disconcertingly it was not to be found. Perhaps it was a name. Graffiti scarred the wall and the Toutounet dispenser which issued plastic bags for the disposal of dog shit. Not that anyone in the town of Cahors seemed to use them.

The alleyway was narrow and deserted. Windows were shuttered, and only a narrow slice of cold winter light from above pierced the damp and the dark below. Number 24 bis was on the right, beyond a brick-arched doorway. The door was pale, studded oak, and the window to its right was barred. A shiny plaque fixed to the wall made Enzo’s stomach flip over.

Below the bellpush was a small sign: Ring and Enter. Enzo did as requested and opened the door into a narrow waiting room with four plastic chairs and a tiny table littered with old magazines. It smelled of damp cellars in here, and there was no natural light. Just a single, naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. He sat down on the chair nearest the door, as if it might offer some hope of escape, and waited.

By the time the door to the doctor’s surgery opened, Enzo knew every stain and scuff on the faded linoleum, had read and reread every poster on the wall. Exhortations to regularly self test for testicular cancer and cancer of the breast. Dire warnings about the melanomic consequences for the skin of failing to apply protection against the sun. None of it did anything to ameliorate Enzo’s deepening sense of foreboding.

Doctor Dussuet was younger than he had expected. Late thirties or early forties. He was possessed of certain rugged good looks and had a charming smile. He held out his hand to shake Enzo’s and ushered him into his inner sanctum. The office was sparsely furnished. A couple of filing cabinets, a desk, some chairs. There were a handful of posters on the walls, and the blinds were down, although there was hardly any daylight in the street outside. A desk lamp focused a dazzling circle of electric light on to the burnished surface of the desk, and the two men sat down on either side of it. There was a file open on the blotting paper, and Enzo could see his name at the top of it.

The doctor didn’t look at it. Instead he clasped his hands in front of him and leaned his elbows on the desk. He looked at Enzo earnestly, a well-practised look of sympathy and sadness in his eyes.

‘Do you know why you’re here?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘For bad news, I guess.’

The doctor allowed himself a moment of reflection, then refocused on his patient. ‘You have a very rare form of leukemia, Monsieur Macleod.’ He paused. ‘You know what leukemia is?’

‘Cancer of the blood.’ Enzo heard his own voice, but it didn’t seem to belong to him.

‘Cancer of the blood. Or bone marrow. Characterised by an abnormal proliferation of white blood cells. These cells are involved in fighting pathogens and are usually suppressed, or dysfunctional. Leading to the patient’s immune system attacking other body cells.’

Enzo stared at him. His face, in the intensity of the desk lamp, seemed to burn out before his eyes. ‘Is it treatable?’

The doctor sat back suddenly and pressed his lips together. ‘I’m afraid your disease is terminal, Monsieur Macleod. Of course, we’ll put you on an immediate course of chemotherapy.’

But Enzo didn’t want to hear any more. ‘How long have I got?’

‘With treatment…perhaps six months.’

‘Without?’

Doctor Dussuet tipped his head apologetically. ‘Three. At the most.’

Chapter Four

She was, perhaps, forty-five years old. Her hair was cut short into the back of her head, and was curled on top. She’d had it streaked blond, and she looked younger than her years. She had borne two children in her twenties, but still kept her figure. She was slim, attractive, and divorced, and her children were adults now. Which meant she was never short on male suitors. She worked afternoons at La Poste in the Rue du President Wilson, so was at home when her doorbell rang.

Her apartment was one of two in a converted suburban villa near the hospital in the southwest corner of Cahors. Her neighbour worked at an agence immobilière in the Boulevard Léon Gambetta, so she knew it wasn’t her. It was gloomy on the landing when she opened her door, but she saw immediately that her caller wore a strange white mask over his nose and mouth. She barely had time to register surprise before he struck her with an iron fist. Light and pain exploded in her head and she fell backwards, unconscious even before she hit the floor. The man with the mask stepped over her, moving her with his foot so that he could close the door. He knelt over her prone form, pausing for a moment to consider that, really, she was quite a handsome woman. Which was a waste.

He cupped one hand behind her head, placed the other across her face, and felt an instant gratification with the pop that came as he pulled them in opposing directions. The hardest part of life was living. Death was easy.

With his gloved hands he carefully felt for the opening of her blouse, then ripped it apart. Buttons rattled across the floor. Her bra was black with small, frilly loops along the upper edges. He slipped two fingers between the flimsy half cups and tore it off. She had soft, round breasts with dark pink areolae. But that was not what he had come for.

He stood up and strode down the hall into the séjour. This was a woman who had enjoyed order in her life. Everything had a place and, apparently, was in it. His mother had been like that. Anally tidy. So it gave him some pleasure to introduce some chaos. Drawers emptied on to the floor, vases smashed, a display cabinet full of crockery and wine glasses overturned. In her bedroom he yanked clothes from the wardrobe and threw them across the bed. There was a drawer full of black lingerie, suspenders, a red garter. Either she enjoyed her sex, or was just an allumeuse. Whatever, she had no further use for these. He chucked them in handfuls out into the hall.

In the kitchen he swept everything from the worktops, opened the fridge and pulled meat and cheese and half-empty jars onto the floor. Then he spotted the clock on the face of the oven. A clock with revolving counters. He smashed the glass with the side of his hand then stooped to put his ear next to it. He could hear the electronic mechanism behind it trying to turn, but the counters were broken and locked in place. Eleven, twenty-nine.

He went back into the séjour where he had left her laptop computer untouched on the table. Now he opened the lid and booted it up, waiting patiently until its desktop filled the screen. He selected and opened its iCal software and watched as her agenda for the month displayed itself. As quickly as his gloved fingers would allow, he tapped in a new entry and saved it. Job done. Almost.

In the hall he bent over his victim and looked again at her pretty face. He removed a glove and felt her skin with the back of his hand. She was going cold already. He searched for and found a small, clear, ziplock bag in one of his inside pockets, and took it out.

Chapter Five

Kirsty sat motionless, hunched forward, her hands clasped between her thighs. Her eyes were burning, but incapable of spilling more tears. Her head was pounding, her throat swollen. They had questioned her for most of the night, until she had almost no voice left.

What was her relationship with Sylvie? How long had she known her? Why had she failed to turn up at the Palais des Congrès? How long had she been working for the Italian? They seemed not to believe her when she said she had only met him for the first time the day before the press conference.

The young detective had asked all the questions. The woman, who was older, sat in silence, just watching, never taking her eyes off her. She had made Kirsty feel like a criminal.

They had made her go over her daily schedule at the parliament. She had no idea why. She explained that they worked in teams of two during morning and afternoon, or morning and evening sessions. A typical session would be three hours, but each interpreter worked only one half hour at a time, then the other would take over. It was draining work that demanded extraordinary concentration. Between sessions you would eat, recharge your batteries, then take five or ten minutes to refocus and get the adrenaline going again. Just like an athlete. When you finished for the day, you were done. Spent. And it could take several hours to decompress.

Generally, you only socialised with other interpreters. People who understood the process and the toll it took. When you struck up a friendship with a fellow interpreter, it was a bond for life. Kirsty had only known Sylvie for a year, but in the hothouse that was the interpreter’s booth, they had become the closest of friends. They did everything together, told each other their darkest secrets. They had been going to share an apartment when Kirsty began her second year contract on full pay. Which was why, after the initial shock of the explosion receded, Kirsty had found the empty space it left filled by a numbing grief. And then guilt. A dreadful, debilitating, invasive guilt. She had killed her friend, as surely as if she had triggered that explosion herself.

If she hadn’t been late for the press conference, if she hadn’t made that phone call, Sylvie would still be alive.

She had been alone in the room since first light had cast the feeble shadow of barred windows on the opposite wall, and she didn’t know if she could ever contemplate life outside of it again.

She had no idea how long it was before the door opened and her young interrogator returned. The silent, older woman followed him into the room and sat down without a word. Kirsty raised glowering, sleep-starved eyes briefly to meet hers. She couldn’t have said why, but every emotion she felt seemed concentrated in a powerful hatred of the woman. The young detective dropped a file on the desk between them and looked at Kirsty with an odd expression of puzzled curiosity.

‘The police scientifique have made an initial assessment of the scene,’ he said. ‘Your employer was extremely fortunate to survive.’ He looked up and seemed to be gazing at the grey light seeping in around the small windows high up on the wall. ‘But that’s probably because he wasn’t the intended target.’ He fixed Kirsty once more with quizzical eyes. ‘It was a small explosive device, Madamoiselle Macleod. Limited. Targeted. It was placed under the podium, directly beneath the interpreter’s seat. And since the seating arrangements had been fixed in advance, that can only mean one thing. The bomb wasn’t meant for the Italian. It was meant for you.’

Chapter Six

Enzo walked through the town in a trance. A dead man walking. The streets and the buildings were painted with a sense of unreality, as if he were already one step removed from them. As if he had already embarked on the journey to that other place.

In his mind he had.

The streets were populated with ghosts. Some of them seemed familiar. Some even said bonjour, as if they knew him. But no one knew him any more. No one would know him ever again. He passed the Cathedral at the top of the square, and felt its cold air breathe out through the open door. He was not tempted to enter, to fall on his knees and offer prayers to someone else’s God.

His mother had been a good Italian Catholic, but had raised him in a Protestant land, in a city where sectarian hatred had found focus in football. He had rejected it all, and wondered now if faith might have brought comfort. Somehow, he doubted it.

As he passed La Halle, and the Café Forum on the corner. He heard someone call out his name. A familiar voice. But he kept on walking.

He had no idea if Sophie would be at home or working out at the gym. But if she was still at the apartment, he couldn’t face her. Not yet. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be ready for that. How could he tell her that the life she had spent without a mother was soon to have the father taken, too? Her grief would be too painful. Greater even than his own self-pity. After all, she would have to live with it. In three short months his life would be over.

He retrieved his car from the lock-up, his beloved restored 2CV with its roll-back roof and soft suspension, and drove south out of town, over the Pont Louis Philippe, before turning left after the statue of the vierge and beginning the long ascent.

The Mont St. Cyr was ill-named. It wasn’t really a mountain. Just a very high hill. But it had commanding views over the town below, contained in a long loop of the River Lot, and beyond the Pont Valentré to the viaduct that carried the RN20 over the deep gash of the river valley south towards Toulouse. Tourists were attracted here in the summer, to take in the spectacular aerial view, to gaze through the pay-binoculars, and take photographs. But it was deserted on this misty cold November day, as it had been when Enzo first came here more than twenty years ago, the night that Pascale died and left him to bring up their newborn daughter on his own.

He climbed the few steps down to the bench where he had sat that night wondering where he would find the courage to carry on living. Now he wondered how he would find the courage to die. It wasn’t the dying itself. We were all going to die, and we knew it. We just didn’t know when. And that was the hardest thing. He remembered when he was still a kid in Glasgow, just four or five years old. Someone had died. It might have been his grandfather. And he had come face to face for the first time with the realisation that he, too, would die some day. He had sat on the edge of his bed and thought about it for some time, before deciding that it was a long way in the future, and that he wouldn’t worry about it until the day came. A convenient compartmentalisation of death that had served him well for most of his fifty-one years. Only now, someone had broken the seals and opened the compartment, and he found himself staring in the face the moment he had so conveniently dispatched to a far-off place. Dammit, his destiny might have been to die in a traffic accident tomorrow. But he wouldn’t have known it until the last moment, if at all. To watch the last precious weeks and days slip through his fingers like sand, seemed like such cruel torture.

And then he thought about Kirsty, the fruit of a relationship back in Scotland that had withered and died when she was still a child. He thought about all the lost moments, the things they might have shared and didn’t through all the years of estrangement. He had always thought that somehow there might still be time. To catch up. To make up. There had been a rapprochement of sorts, but she was still tender and touchy and kept him at arm’s length. And now the time he thought they still had was being taken away, and all the regrets seemed to weigh so much more heavily.

He let his eyes wander over the jumble of roofs below until they came to rest on the twin roofs of the cathedral. They were perfectly round, like a woman’s breasts, and topped by short, moulded lightning rods like two erect nipples. He thought of all the women he had known, those he had loved, those he had failed, those who had frustrated him to distraction. He shook his head and allowed himself a tiny smile of sad regret. It was all behind him now. The game was almost over. All that remained was to wait for the referee’s whistle at the end of extra time.

He weaved through the empty tables on the terrasse outside the Lampara restaurant and pushed open the door to the stairwell beyond. He climbed the steps with heavy legs and hoped that Sophie would not be there.

He called her name when he opened the door, and was relieved to be answered by silence. In the séjour he threw open the French windows and let in the cold air from the square below. The trees had shed most of their leaves, and lay thick and still brittle with frost among the cars in the car park. It wasn’t until he turned back into the room than he noticed the red light winking on his DECT phone. Someone had called and left a message. He was tempted to ignore it. After all, whatever it was, it would no longer have any importance for him. But even as he shuffled idly through the papers on his desk, it kept on blinking in his peripheral vision, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He lifted the phone, pressed the replay button, and put the receiver to his ear. It was with something like shock that he heard Kirsty’s voice.

‘Dad…? Where are you? You’re never there. Please, you’ve got to come to Strasbourg. I don’t know what to do. Someone’s trying to kill me.’

He replayed it twice before hanging up. If ever he needed a reason to live, he had just found one.

Chapter Seven

Commissaire Hélène Taillard enjoyed the distinction of being only the sixth woman in the history of the République to be appointed Director of Public Security to one of the country’s one hundred départements. She had been promoted from the rank of inspecteur to the title of commissaire in the Département du Lot three years earlier, inheriting a large, comfortable office in the caserne of the Police Nationale in the Place Bessières at the north end of Cahors.

Following a call from the crime scene early that afternoon, her driver had taken her downtown to the west end of the long Rue Victor Hugo, which transected the town east to west at the southern end of the loop. Now, as she stepped out of the car, she tugged at her blue uniform jacket where it had ridden up over her ample bosom. She was an attractive woman, still in her forties, but if her male colleagues had thought that her female touch might be a soft one, they had quickly learned their mistake. Hélène Taillard was a good cop, as tough as any man who had filled her shoes, and maybe tougher. She was fiercely loyal to those who were loyal to her, but God help you if you crossed her. She had separated from her husband when it became clear to them both that her career was more important than her marriage.

There were several police vehicles in the street outside the house, lights flashing. Two white, unmarked vans belonging to the forensic police scientifique were drawn up on the sidewalk opposite. Blue-and-white striped crime scene tape fluttered in the icy breeze that blew in off the slate-grey waters of the river.

The house had been subdivided into two apartments, one on the ground floor, one on the upper floor. The victim had been found upstairs. Commissaire Taillard climbed the internal staircase to a poorly lit landing where a number of her officers were gathered outside the apartment. They spoke in hushed voices and watched keenly for the commissaire’s reaction. Murder in Cahors was a rare event.

Inspecteur David Truquet shook her hand. ‘She’s just inside, commissaire. The other side of the door.’ And he handed her a pair of latex gloves and a couple of plastic shoe covers.

The police photographer had erected lights in the hall, and the body was thrown into sharp relief. Forensics officers in white tyvek suits moved aside to let the commissaire through. She looked down at the dead woman. Her skin seemed pale and waxy, all animation long gone from a once pretty face. Her head lay at a peculiar angle, her blouse ripped open and bra torn away to reveal her breasts. There was deep purple bruising down one side of her face.

‘A sexual attack?’

Inspecteur Truquet raised an uncertain eyebrow. ‘You might think so at first glance, commissaire. But she was still wearing her panties, and the médecin légiste says she hasn’t been interfered with…you know, down there.’ He was uncomfortable at having to discuss a woman’s private parts with his female boss. ‘And the place has been turned over. It’s possible he was looking for something.’

‘He?’ Commissaire Taillard disliked sexual stereotypes of either variety.

‘Whoever hit her took her down with a single blow, then broke her neck. A quick, clean break. A real pro job, the pathologist says. I think it might be fair to assume it was a man.’

‘So why did he rip open her blouse?’

Truquet shrugged and shook his head.

The commissaire looked along the hall towards the mess in the séjour. ‘Did he take anything?’

‘Impossible to say. She lived alone, so it’s going to be difficult trying to establish if there’s anything missing. He really trashed the place, though. Like maybe he was getting something out of his system.’

‘A grudge killing?’

‘Possible.’

‘How about time of death?’

‘Just before eleven-thirty this morning.’

She turned a look of surprise towards her investigating inspecteur. ‘How can you know so precisely?’

He started towards the kitchen and indicated that she should follow. They picked their way carefully through the debris on the floor, and the stink of ripening goat’s cheese, and he showed her the broken clock on the oven.

‘Eleven twenty-nine. Assuming he broke it when he was trashing the kitchen, and that he’d already killed her, that would put time of death sometime shortly before then. Just over three hours ago, and rigor mortis is only just beginning to set in. So it all fits.’

‘How convenient.’ She looked around the kitchen. It was in the American style, with wall cupboards and worktops and a central island. ‘Who discovered her?’

‘The postman. He had a colis for her and needed a signature. The door wasn’t properly shut, and when he pushed it open…’

‘So who is she, or rather, who was she?’

‘Audeline Pommereau. Forty-six. Divorced. Mother of two. Kids are grown up. She worked afternoons at La Poste in the Rue du Président Wilson.’

She detected his hesitation. ‘What?’

He lifted Audeline Pommereau’s purse from the worktop and took out a dog-eared business card from one of its inside pockets. He handed it to his boss. ‘We found this.’ And he watched for her reaction.

Commissaire Taillard held it carefully between latexed fingers and felt her professional detachment suddenly depart. But her face remained expressionless, concealing the confusion behind it. She was holding the business card of Enzo Macleod, Professor of Biology, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse. She turned it over and saw, in a familiar scrawl, his home telephone number and the words Call me. She heard herself saying, ‘So she knew Enzo Macleod. That doesn’t mean anything.’ But the colour was rising now on her cheeks, betraying a history of failed emotional involvement that seemed somehow to be common knowledge among her junior officers.

‘That’s not all, commissaire.’

She followed Truquet through the hall to the séjour. The officers of the police scientifique had returned to the task of examining the body of the victim in the minutest detail before removing it to the morgue. Amid the mess, a laptop computer sat open on the table, a slide selection of family photographs, installed as a screensaver, illuminating its monitor.

Truquet leaned over the keyboard and banished the screensaver, to reveal a monthly agenda. He stood up. ‘This is what was showing on the screen when we got here.’

Commissaire Taillard peered at it, flicking her eyes across four weeks of entries until they settled on today’s date. And her heart seemed to push up into her throat to try to stop her breathing. Enzo—11am, it said.

‘Commissaire.’ A voice from the hallway.

She looked up, but was distracted, and it took a second call before she reacted. She went out into the hall. The senior forensics officer was standing astride the body in his shower cap and white plastic suit. In one latexed hand he was holding a pair of tweezers, which he held out for her to see. ‘Hair recovered from the victim’s clothes, ma’am. Not hers. Definitely not hers.’

She took a step closer and saw several long, black hairs held between the legs of the tweezers.

‘Long, like a woman’s,’ said the forensics officer.

‘Or a man with a ponytail.’ David Truquet’s voice came from behind. She turned to see him watching her closely, and a sick feeling of dread descended, like a shroud on a murder victim.

Chapter Eight

Kirsty pushed through the crowds in the Place de la Gare towards the huge glass bubble they had built, unaccountably, to mask the station’s historical façade. An architectural aberration to be endured by generations of Strasbourgers to come. Work to renovate the station and link it into the city’s growing tram network had only recently been completed, along with this glass monstrosity.

Earlier sleet had turned to rain, blowing in on an east wind all the way from Siberia, and travellers hurried, heads bowed beneath battered umbrellas, on pathways that converged like the spokes of a wheel on the hub that was the Gare de Strasbourg.

The huge clock in the departure hall showed nearly four-thirty. Her father’s train was due in very shortly. Kirsty glanced nervously at the faces of passengers who seemed to press around her on all sides. If someone was trying to kill her, she thought not unreasonably, it could be any one of them. How could she know?

Kirsty had been unable to sleep since Sylvie’s death. She had lain, tossing and turning in a friend’s apartment the previous night, torn between guilt and confusion. She had no idea why someone might want her dead. It was inexplicable to her. And yet there was, it seemed, no doubt that she had been the target. No doubt, too, that since her would-be killer had failed the first time, he might very well try again. She felt vulnerable, exposed, and powerless to do anything about it.

The call to her father had been a reflex response. A return to childhood. A little girl reaching out towards safe and comforting arms. Someone who would never let her down, no matter what. And, yet, hadn’t he done just that for all those years?

A Jewish cleric with a long white beard and black hat was staring at her, and she turned away self-consciously, hurrying through a series of stone arches towards the arrivals hall.

Which was when she saw him.

Just a glimpse. An oddly familiar face beyond the dozens of people queuing at the Alsace grocery store. She stopped, catching her breath. Where was he? And then she saw him again. He was looking at her, a strange serenity in piercing blue eyes. And then he was gone, and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t recatch sight of him. Who was he? She knew she knew him. Then it came to her. Like a moment replayed. A strong hand helping her to her feet. You’re a lucky girl, he’d said. And a shiver of fear shook her rigid.

She saw her father almost as soon as he stepped off the TGV. He was nearly a head higher than the other passengers, and although his hair was greying, the trademark white stripe that ran back through it from his left temple still stood out. Her resolve to remain strong immediately dissolved, and she pushed through the oncoming tide to throw herself into his arms. He dropped his overnight bag and held her as if there might be no tomorrow — which, for him, was only too close to being true.

He felt her sobs pulsing against his chest, and he held her until they began to subside. When, finally, she drew away, brushing the tears from her eyes, platform four was almost deserted. She ran a hand back through her long hair, clearing it away from a strong, handsome face. She had dark eyes, and full lips like her mother. But she was tall, with square set shoulders and long legs, like her father. When she spoke, her usually strong, confident, Scottish voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.

‘I’m so scared.’

He held her by the shoulders. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you, Kirsty. Ever.’ And it was with a jolt that he was reminded that, for him, ‘ever’ was just a few months. After that, she would be on her own.

He took her hand and they went down the steps to the long marbled corridor that led to the front of the station. Her grip on his hand tightened every time she saw a man approach, and he glanced at her to see the pale tension etched in her face. He put an arm around her shoulder and guided her through the shopping arcade towards the station buffet. It was packed here, and he thought she might feel safer in a crowd. A girl behind glass in the ticket office glanced at them as they passed, as if their insecurity were visible. They sank into tubular metal chairs at a table in the corner, from where they had a view of anyone approaching, and an impossibly thin oriental girl served them coffee. A huge wallposter of a croque-monsieur reminded him that he was hungry. He had not eaten since overnighting in Paris and killing time till the first available seat in a TGV. But there were more pressing things to deal with.

He had to raise his own voice above the echo of the others that rang among the pillars and vaults, and the constant announcements that blared from the speaker system. ‘What happened?’

And she told him. About her one-week contract interpreting for the Italian. Her disappointment when she discovered why he was in town. How the weather had brought traffic to a standstill on the morning of the press conference, and how she had called Sylvie from her cab to ask her to stand in.

‘It’s hard to believe that you were the target and not the Italian. He must have plenty of enemies.’

‘The police were certain. The bomb had been placed beneath the interpreter’s seat. The one I should have been in. Not Sylvie.’

She choked on the words, and he put a reassuring hand over hers. ‘It’s not your fault, Kirsty.’

‘That bomb was meant for me. It should have been me at that press conference.’

It was almost as if she wished herself dead. Death would have been easier than the guilt. Enzo thought about how he would be feeling right now if Kirsty had got there on time. And he knew that no matter what horrors he might face himself, his job right now was to protect his child. With his life if necessary.

He glanced at her. She was still distracted, eyes flickering nervously towards the passing crowds in the arcade. ‘Are you still seeing Roger?’

The eyes darted quickly in his direction, and fixed him with a look of hurt and disappointment. ‘Does it matter? I know you don’t like him, but he’s got nothing to do with this.’

He wanted to say that it didn’t matter a damn whether he liked Raffin or not. The point was he didn’t like him being with Kirsty. But he kept his own counsel. ‘Does he know what’s happened?’

She shook her head, and he felt some tiny crumb of comfort in the knowledge that the first person she had turned to was him.

He dropped some coins on the table and stood up. ‘Come on. We’ll go to your apartment and pack a bag, and you’ll come back with me to Cahors. You’ll be safe there, and we’ll figure out what to do.’

But she made no move to get up. ‘I haven’t been to the apartment since…since it happened. I stayed with a friend last night.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m frightened to go back.’

He nodded and took her hand. ‘We’ll get the cab to wait for us. I’ve booked us a hotel, and we’ll get the first train to Paris in the morning.’

But still she wouldn’t stand. ‘There’s something else…’

He frowned. ‘What?’ He sat down again.

‘When I got there, you know, just as the bomb exploded, the blast knocked me from my feet.’ He could see the consternation in her eyes. ‘This man picked me up. Just kind of lifted me to my feet. It almost seemed like he was smiling. You know, completely unaffected by what had just happened. There was panic, people were screaming. Smoke everywhere. And he just looked at me and said, “You’re a lucky girl.”’

Enzo had no idea where this was going. He searched her face for some understanding. ‘You were.’

‘But it was like he knew I should have been up there. How would he know that?’

‘You ever heard of dog acting?’

Her face creased in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’

‘In TV and movies, when they cut away to a shot of the dog, the dog has no expression on its face. We, the viewer, read into it whatever expression is appropriate. Good actors know that. They can make a blank face say a thousand different things.’

‘Dad, I don’t understand.’

‘You were right. How would he know that you should have been up there? You were the only one who knew that. So you were the one who transferred that interpretation to him.’

But she took no comfort in his words and simply shook her head. ‘No.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You see, the thing is, I just saw him again.’

‘Where?’

‘Here. In the station. Just before your train got in.’

And he felt the same shiver of fear that she had experienced just fifteen minutes before.

Chapter Nine

It was dark when they got there. The snow was wet, falling through the light of the streetlamps in drifts, like down, and thickly enough that it was starting to lie again. Enzo told their driver to wait for them and glanced around as Kirsty unlocked the front door. There was a boulangerie and an agence immobilière on the ground floor. Some of the windows on the upper floors had small balconies closed in by cast-iron railings. There was a modern apartment block next door, and a row of upmarket villas on the far side of the main road.

So this was where his little girl lived. The names on the doorplate all looked foreign. Bozovic, Marinelli, Boukara. He wondered if they were all interpreters like Kirsty. An electrician’s van parked in the Rue Bernegger bore the name Droeller-Scheer. Nothing about this place seemed French. He might have been in another country.

He followed her up a dark stone staircase to a long landing with doors leading off to left and right. She hit the light switch and nothing happened. She said, ‘It’s an energy saver. Goes off by itself. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.’

He held her arm to stop her going any further, and took out his keyring. There was a small pencil torch attached to it, about three inches long, that he used to find keyholes in the dark. ‘I’ll go first.’ The thin beam of light pierced the darkness ahead of them.

‘It’s the one at the end. On the left.’

He stopped outside the door and shone his torch at the lock. He felt himself tense. ‘Have you had a break-in recently? Forgotten your key, had to break in yourself?’

‘No. Why?’

‘This lock’s been tampered with. See the scratches?’

She peered into the burned-out circle of light around the lock and saw tiny scratches shining in dull brass.

‘Give me your key.’

She handed him her key and watched as he unlocked the door and pushed it gently inwards. If it were just himself, the knowledge of his impending death might have made him reckless. But responsibility for Kirsty made Enzo careful.

‘Where’s the light switch?’

‘On the left.’

He felt for it with his left hand and found it. There was an audible click, but it brought no light to their world. ‘Fuse box?’ He spoke in little more than a whisper, although he was not sure why. If there was someone waiting for them inside, then he would know they were there by now.

‘On the wall, on the right.’

He pushed the door wide and swung the pencil-thin rod of light up and right. He saw the square door of the box set into the wall. Then he flashed the light quickly around the room. It looked shambolic, and he heard Kirsty gasp. But there didn’t seem to be anyone there. He stepped smartly inside, reached up to flip open the box and shone his torch into it. The disjoncteur switch was up. It should have been down. He flicked it down and the tiny studio apartment where his daughter lived was flooded with sudden harsh light.

‘Oh, my God!’ Kirsty gazed, horrified, around the studio. It was a mess. Furniture overturned, drawers emptied, clothes and papers strewn across the floor. She crossed quickly to her workdesk below the window. The drawers had all been pulled open. She checked the top one and saw that her passport, and a foldout wallet of credit and bank cards, were still there. ‘He doesn’t seem to have taken anything.’

Enzo swung open the door to the bathroom and turned on the light. There was no one there. But the contents of the wall cabinet had been thrown into the shower, and clean towels lay in untidy piles on the floor. He turned back towards Kirsty and saw that all the blood had drained from an already pale face. She looked shockingly white. He said, ‘Looks like maybe he was just leaving a calling card. A message to say he’d been here.’ He saw her bite her lower lip and crossed the room in three strides to take her in his arms. He rested his face on the top of her head and smelled the distant, familiar smell of her. ‘Come on, pet. Throw some stuff in a bag and let’s get out of here.’

He stood by the window waiting, watching the snow outside drift through the headlamps of the taxi. There were circular, dark, wet patches in the shadows cast by the trees across the street, and he saw a man emerge from one of them to leave a trail of black footprints as he crossed the road. He pulled up the collar of his long overcoat as he walked, then stooped at the open window where their driver was smoking a cigarette. They talked for half a minute before the man reached under his coat to bring out a wallet. Money changed hands, and he opened the taxi’s rear passenger door and slipped inside.

‘Hey!’ Enzo shouted and banged on the window, then searched feverishly for the catch. Kirsty hurried through from the bathroom as he slid it up.

‘What is it?’

‘Some guy’s taking our taxi.’ He leaned out into the night and bellowed. ‘Hey! Stop!’

If he heard him, the taxi driver took no notice. He swung the car across the street, then reversed into a three-point turn. Enzo and Kirsty watched helplessly as their taxi began to accelerate away in the opposite direction. And, as it did, they saw the upturned face of the man who had taken it, caught for just a moment in the streetlight.

Enzo heard his daughter catch her breath, and felt her fingers close around his arm. ‘That’s him!’

He turned towards her. ‘Who?’

‘The man at the press conference. The one I saw again at the station.’

Enzo turned to watch the taxi disappearing into the night. He felt himself succumbing to fear and confusion. This man was playing some kind of game. First he had tried to murder his daughter, and now he was toying with them. Almost laughing at them. Who in God’s name was he? Why was he doing this? And for the first time, he had a strange sense of foreboding. Of something more than met the eye. Of something personal and pervasive. He turned back to Kirsty. ‘Finish packing.’ I’ll phone for another cab.’

It was a further ten minutes, working his way through the Strasbourg annuaire, before Enzo finally got a taxi firm to answer his call. Only to be told that it would be up to an hour before a car would become available.

‘I’m not waiting here.’ Kirsty stood by her fold-down bed, like a child, clutching a sports bag stuffed with toiletries and underwear and a change of clothes. ‘We can take a short-cut through the park, and maybe pick up a cab on the Avenue de l’Europe.’

There was a traffic circle two hundred metres to the west of the apartment, and beyond that the brooding darkness of the Parc de l’Orangerie. They left foot-trails in the snow all along the sidewalk. There was precious little traffic on the roads. Temperatures were forecast to plummet, and all this wet snow would soon turn to ice. No one wanted to be out on a night like this. And those who were had taken every available cab.

They rounded the circle and crossed the street, and Enzo hesitated at the edge of the park. The path leading into it was half-obscured by leaves and snow, and vanished very quickly among the trees. ‘I don’t like this. Let’s just walk around it.’

‘It’s okay, Dad. I’ve cycled and jogged through here a hundred times.’

‘In the dark?’

She made a face. ‘No one’s going to be out in weather like this. And, anyway, it opens up once you get through the trees. Honestly, it’ll take us twice as long to go around it.’

She took his arm with her free hand as they plunged off into the dark making virgin tracks in the snow. The path dipped a little before rising again through the trees. Across a stretch of open parkland to their right, Enzo could see the streelights along the Quai de l’Orangerie, and the headlamps of the occasional passing car. They had covered, perhaps, half a kilometre before he heard what sounded like footsteps following in their wake. He stopped and put a finger to his lips and listened. Nothing. Only the dead sound of the night, muffled by the snow.

‘What?’ Kirsty whispered. But he just shook his head and hurried them on. The park seemed to close in around them, suffocating and claustrophobic in the falling snow. He increased his pace, and Kirsty struggled to keep up.

And then there it was again. Only this time he didn’t stop. He took his daughter’s hand and started to run. At first she pulled back, but then she heard it too and glanced behind them to see shadows emerging from the dark. Now she needed no encouragement, and they ran as hard as they could towards the distant lights.

But suddenly the lights were not so distant. They were straight ahead of them, shining in their faces, blinding in their intensity, and they pulled up sharply, breathless and afraid. A flashlight came on behind them and, by its light, they could see four youths up ahead in hooded jackets. Two of them had flashlights, and Enzo saw a baseball bat hanging ominously from the hand of another. Two other youths approached from behind, their flashlight trained on Enzo, and he saw more bats. He put a protective arm across the front his daughter and steered her backwards to the side of the path.

‘What do you want?’ He let his bag drop to the ground.

‘A bit fun. What do you say?’ The face of the youth who spoke was hidden by the shadow of his hood. The young men had formed a half circle and were slowly closing in.

Enzo said, ‘I’ve got a six inch blade on my hip, and I know how to use it.’

‘I’m so scared.’

‘You should be. There are five of you. And you’ll take me down. I know that. But one of you, maybe two, are going with me. Count on it.’ He paused to let the thought sink in. ‘Who’s going to be first?’ There was an almost imperceptible hesitation in their forward movement.

‘Putain.’ It was one of the others. ‘Just give us your wallet.’

‘Why should I?’

The first one spoke up again. ‘Just think what’s going to happen to your daughter after we take you down.’

Enzo flinched. He reached beneath his coat and drew out his wallet, throwing it towards them so that it landed in the snow.

‘You, too.’ A flashlight swung into Kirsty’s face and she threw her bag at their feet.

One of them stooped to open it up. He riffled quickly through the contents until he found her billfold with credit cards and notes. He removed the notes and stuffed them in his pocket and let the billfold drop back into the snow. He tossed her bag away and went through Enzo’s wallet, removing the notes but leaving the plastic. He stood up, and flashlights that had been trained on the ground at his feet swung up again into the faces of their victims.

There was an odd hiatus, a momentary stand-off when it seemed that no one knew what would happen next. The one who had spoken first broke the silence.

‘You really got a blade?’

Enzo stared boldly back at him. ‘You want to find out?’

But the boy didn’t take long to think about it. He turned to the others. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Flashlights were extinguished, plunging them into sudden blindness, and the five hooded youths melted away into the falling snow.

Enzo and Kirsty stood for nearly a full minute before Enzo stooped to recover his wallet and Kirsty’s billfold. She looked at him curiously as he went to retrieve her bag. ‘Do you?’ she said.

‘Do I what?’

‘Have a blade?’

He almost laughed. ‘Of course not. But they didn’t know that.’ Then he shook his head and she saw the confusion in his eyes.

‘What?’

He met her gaze. ‘This wasn’t just some chance mugging, Kirsty. They knew who we were.’

She frowned. ‘How can you know that?’

‘How else would they know you were my daughter?’

Chapter Ten

It took them forty minutes, once they left the park, to walk to the Place de Bordeaux. Every taxi was taken, and there were few other vehicles on the road. By the time they got to the shelter of the tram stop at Lycée Kléber they were both soaked through and frozen numb. At the north end of the square was the Holiday Inn, and beyond that the Palais des Congrès. Kirsty was unable to bring herself even to look in that direction.

She was unable, either, to stop shivering, and Enzo stood holding her in the dark, miserable and bewildered and depressed. The digital display overhead told them that the next tram would in three minutes. With fingers that had lost all feeling, he fumbled to use a credit card to buy them a ticket from the machine. After the third rejection he tried another card. And still the machine wouldn’t accept it. Neither would it accept any of Kirsty’s cards. He cursed, and felt like kicking the damned thing. They had no cash, and so they would have to ride the tram without tickets. Maybe they’d be arrested and thrown in jail. At least it might be warm there.

They waited alone, in silence, until the lights of the tram emerged from the darkness, its bell ringing as it rattled across the junction.

There were only a handful of other passengers on it. They cast disinterested glances at the cold, unhappy couple who got on board at the Lycée Kléber and sat side by side without speaking. The tram creaked and strained and wound its way south along the Avenue de la Paix, around the Place de la République, and then east towards the Place de l’Homme-de-Fer — which translated, curiously, as Iron Man Square.

There they reluctantly stepped back into the icy blast, sheltering beneath a strange, circular construction of steel and glass. Then out into the snow again, huddled together, crossing the bridge on the Rue de Sebastopol to the Place des Halles where the Hôtel Ibis rose high into a snow-smudged sky, above the incongruously British C&A department store.

Enzo was already dreaming of a hot shower as they climbed the steps opposite the Lion d’Or Chinese restaurant, and glass doors slid aside to draw them into the warmth of the hotel reception.

‘I have a reservation. Two rooms under the name of Macleod.’

The girl behind the desk tapped on her keyboard and scrutinised her screen. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur, we’ve given those rooms away.’

Enzo stared at her in disbelief. ‘What? Why?’ His hot shower was suddenly fading into an uncertain future.

‘I’m afraid your credit card was rejected.’

Enzo snorted his frustration. He had given them the number over the phone. ‘That’s not possible. There must be a mistake.’ He fished in his wallet for his card. ‘Here try it with the actual card.’

‘I’m afraid it won’t make any difference. The hotel is full.’

‘Just try it, will you?’ Enzo snapped at her and she winced, but decided not to argue. She slipped the card into the machine. He tapped in his code. They waited, and then she shook her head, with an undisguised pleasure. ‘I’m sorry, monsieur. It’s still rejected.’

He sighed heavily and gave her another card. ‘Try with this one.’ The girl set her jaw in sullen acquiescence and they went through the same procedure again. The second card was also rejected.

Kirsty pushed a card at the girl. ‘Try one of mine.’

The same thing.

Enzo looked at his daughter. ‘So it wasn’t a faulty ticket machine at the tram stop. It was our cards.’ He waved his hands in frustration. ‘All of them. And that can’t be a coincidence. Like the mugging in the park that left us without any cash. We’re being shafted, Kirsty. Royally screwed.’

The girl behind the desk smiled at them with an infuriating smugness. ‘I’m sorry. Like I said, the hotel is full. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

Outside, Kirsty fought to hold back the tears. She was very close to the end of her tether, and Enzo wasn’t far behind. But crying about it wasn’t going to help. She went into her purse in search of her cellphone. ‘I’m going to call Roger.’

Enzo felt an irrational spear of anger jab at him through his misery. ‘Why? What can Roger do? He’s in Paris.’

‘He can use his credit card to book us into a hotel by phone. And maybe he can come and get us in the morning.’

Enzo cast her a surly look. To involve Raffin would be like admitting that somehow he had failed. Good old Enzo charging to the rescue and falling flat on his face. But right now, he couldn’t think of a viable alternative.

They sat in a bar nursing coffees paid for with the handful of coins they had managed to scrape together from pockets and purses. Enzo stared morosely out into the street, watching each passer-by on the sidewalk, wondering if any one of them might be the stranger who was so efficiently deconstructing their lives. He tried not to listen as Kirsty explained their predicament to Raffin. He could just imagine how the young Parisian journalist would interpret their circumstance as somehow being Enzo’s fault. He could picture the look of supercilious superiority on the face of his daughter’s lover.

And then they waited, for nearly half-an-hour, before Raffin phoned back with the news that he had found them rooms at the Hôtel Regent in La Petite France.

The River Ill divided in the centre of Strasbourg, sending a loop around the very heart of the old city, before it rejoined the main flow a couple of kilometres downstream. So the original mediaeval city centre, with its cathedral and six churches, was effectively an island. The east end of the island, with its wharves and waterways, and ancient narrow streets, was known as La Petite France. In the middle ages, it was home to the city’s merchants and burgeoning middle class. It was now a main tourist attraction, filled with restaurants and hotels and souvenir shops.

Enzo and Kirsty turned down through a deserted square, the last customers sitting in the window of a vegetarian restaurant. A seventeenth century house on three floors, white-painted wattle and daub transected by ancient oak beams, was in the process of renovation. Staff were washing out the kitchens in the Maison des Tanneurs restaurant, with its Alsacienne specialities of choucroute and tarte flambée. It exhaled tantalisingly warm air at them as they passed. A revolving bridge led them across the river to where the Hôtel Regent had established itself in an old mill which had once served tanneries lining the riverbank.

As they trailed across the foyer to the reception desk, wretched and cold, Enzo noted with some satisfaction that a room cost nearly three hundred euros a night, and petit-déjeuner another twenty. Raffin would be less than happy with a bill on his credit card of more than six hundred euros.

Their rooms were high up in the roof, with windows overlooking the water below cutting deep into steeply sloping walls washed by subtly concealed lighting. The original supporting beamwork was painted white. Enzo carried Kirsty’s bag into her room and they shed sodden coats. She went into the bathroom to fetch towels and threw him one to dry his hair.

He perched on the luggage rack at the end of her bed, weary and defeated, and loosened his hair from its band before rubbing it briskly with the towel. His skin was stinging in the warm air of the hotel room. He looked up and saw that Kirsty was flushed, and that her eyes were raw and puffy. He stood up. ‘Come here.’

And she dropped her towel and let him fold his arms around her.

‘We’re going to be alright.’ He wanted to say that they should make the most of their time together, because there was so very little of it left. But he didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was dying. ‘Have you finally forgiven me?’ he whispered. And she immediately drew away.

She looked at him with a strange, distant hurt in her eyes, like a pet dog that has just been kicked by its trusted master. ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I’m not sure I can ever do that. You stole half my childhood, and that’s not something I can ever get back.’

He wanted to tell her it wasn’t like that, but there didn’t seem any point. Linda had used her as a weapon against him and ended up poisoning her own child in the process. All he could think to say was, ‘I’m sorry.’ As he had said a thousand times before. ‘If I could do it all again…’

‘You’d what? You wouldn’t leave us for your French lover?’

‘I never left you. If I could have taken you with me I would.’ But in his heart of hearts he knew that even if he could have done it all again, he would still have left for Pascale. And as he looked his daughter in the eye, he knew that she knew it too.

She said, ‘When you came back into my life, you brought the pain back with you. And I had to confront the realisation then that the reason it hurt so much was because I loved you. And still do. Even if I can’t forgive you.’

They were both startled by the shrill ring of his cellphone. The emotion between them dissipated like smoke in the wind. He glanced at the display and saw that it was Sophie, and he realised the irony in that. She was jealous of Kirsty and the place that her half-sister had in her father’s heart. She might have taken some satisfaction from knowing that she had interrupted an intimate moment between them. But the thought quickly vanished when he heard the distress in her voice.

‘Papa, there’s been a disaster!’

‘What is it, Sophie? What’s happened?’ He glanced up to see Kirsty watching him with her mother’s dark eyes.

‘There was a fire tonight. Bertrand’s gym’s been burned to the ground.’

Enzo closed his eyes and felt Bertrand’s pain. At first, he had disapproved of his younger daughter’s boyfriend. He was seven years older than her, wore studs and earrings and gelled his hair. But time had revised first impressions, and Bertrand had earned his grudging respect. He knew how much the gym meant to the boy. How he had held down two jobs to pay off the loan he had taken to convert the old miroiterie into a successful gymnasium, how he had worked to graduate from the CREPS centre in Toulouse with his degree in musculation, all the while supporting his widowed mother.

‘Is he okay?’

‘He closed up about an hour before it happened. We heard the fire engines before we saw the light in the sky. Someone phoned to say it was the gym.’ He heard the catch in her voice. ‘We stood on the Pont de Cabessut and watched it burn.’

‘He’s insured, though, yes?’

‘Papa, you know how long that’ll take to pay out. Bertrand doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He’ll have to find the money to repay all the customers who’ve paid subscriptions.’ He could tell that she was on the verge of tears. ‘Papa, where are you?’

‘I’m still in Strasbourg.’

There was a strange moment of silence, and then her voice fell away to barely a whisper. ‘The police have been looking for you.’

‘What? Why?’

‘They wouldn’t say. They’ve been at the door twice. Several of them. Papa, it wasn’t a social call. I told them you’d gone to Strasbourg, but they didn’t look like they believed me when I said I didn’t have an address.’

Enzo was suddenly on full alert, his mind working overtime, slicing through the fatigue, making connections, drawing unpleasant conclusions. ‘Sophie, I want you to leave the apartment immediately. You and Bertrand pack a bag each. Get him to take you to Nicole’s father’s farm in the Aveyron. You know where it is, don’t you?’

‘Papa why?’

‘Just do it, Sophie. Trust me. It may be that the fire at the gym wasn’t an accident. It’s possible that there’s a connection with what’s been happening here in Strasbourg.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘You don’t need to. Just believe me when I tell you that you could be in danger. I’ll call Nicole’s papa to let him know you’re coming.’

When he hung up, Kirsty was looking at him perplexed. ‘How can a fire in Cahors be connected with someone trying to kill me here?’

Enzo met her gaze with a steady intensity. ‘I’m beginning to think that what’s happened in Strasbourg isn’t about you at all.’

‘I think someone trying to kill me is very much about me.’

He shook his head. ‘No. There’s too much else going on. The mugging in the park. The credit cards — yours and mine. Bertrand’s gym burning down, the police looking for me.’

‘What do the police want you for?’

‘I don’t know. But I think there’s a good chance that none of this has anything to do with you, or Bertrand, or Sophie. I think this might be about me.’

She looked at him long and hard, then picked up the towel she had dropped on the bed. She sighed wearily. ‘It’s always about you, Dad, isn’t it? Always has been, always will be.’ She turned towards the bathroom. ‘I’m going to have a shower. You can let yourself out.’

Chapter Eleven

Yellow light reflected darkly off polished wooden floors. Rusted cogs and wheels and screws dipped down into dark waters behind glass walls, the machinery that once powered this old mill. There was only one other person at the bar, a woman nursing a champagne flute of pale, sparkling Dom Perignon.

Enzo hoisted himself onto a stool at the far end next to a large glass bowl filled with champagne bottles cooling in ice. The room was illuminated by the upward glow of backlit sheets of wafer thin marble that dressed the bar. He ran his eye along glass shelves lined with bottles. Although the hotel promoted this as a champagne bar, it had a decent selection of whiskies. He ordered a Glenlivet from a bored-looking young barman who poured him a large measure and then retreated to polish glasses at a discreet distance.

Enzo slumped over his drink for some time, simply looking at it, trying to find solace in its pale amber. But it wasn’t the colour that would bring comfort, it was the alcohol. And if not comfort, then perhaps oblivion. A painful journey, on which he seemed reluctant to take the first step. And so he continued to stare at it, fighting to keep conflicting and unpleasant thoughts from his mind.

‘It’ll evaporate before you drink it.’

He looked up to see the only other customer regarding him with a quizzical smile. Until now he had paid her no attention. But looking for the first time, he saw that she was attractive. Not in a pretty way, but with a strong jawline and well-defined cheekbones. Her eyes were dark, almost black, and she had an unusually small mouth with full lips. Until she smiled. It was a smile that split her face.

Long, silky brown hair was pulled back from her face and piled up loosely, untidily, behind her head. She was a woman well past the first flush of youth. Enzo thought she could be around forty, tall and lean. But she dressed younger. A short, black leather jacket, jeans and sneakers, and not a trace of make-up. Which was unusual for a woman of her age. She was either supremely self-confident or simply didn’t care.

Her skin was tanned, as if she had just spent time somewhere in the sun, and examining her hands he saw that they were strong and elegant, with unpolished nails cut short.

‘Maybe that’s what I’m waiting for.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘If I drink it, I’ll only order another.’

He held her gaze for a moment, then returned it to his drink. He reached for the water jug, poured in a little water to release the flavour locked into it by the distiller, then filled his mouth to let it slip slowly over his throat. The aromatic flavour of it filled his nostrils, and its warmth burned all the way down into his chest. It felt good, but there was a long way to go before he would find the solace he sought.

‘You know, it’s funny…’

He looked up, surprised to find her still watching him. He had almost forgotten her already. ‘What is?’

‘It’s not often that I find myself alone in a bar, and not being pestered by some man.’

‘You should make the most of it, then. Some man might come in at any moment and try to pick you up.’

She gave a small shrug of resignation. It seemed that Enzo was not going to be the one to try. ‘I guess maybe I’m getting to an age where men just stop noticing me.’

Enzo found a smile from somewhere. ‘They’d have to be pretty blind.’ He took another mouthful of whisky. ‘Don’t be offended. It’s not you. It’s me.’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Gay?’

Which made him laugh unexpectedly. ‘No. It’s just…I have other things on my mind.’

‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’

‘Two swallows don’t make a summer.’

For a moment, her forehead creased in a frown. And then she saw what the game was and a smiled snuck across her lips. ‘Two minds are better than one.’

‘An empty barrel makes the most noise.’

‘Wise men agree, and fools seldom differ.’

But now his smile was strained. The game was already losing its power to distract, puerile and pointless. He had come here to get drunk. He drained his glass and ordered another.

She watched in silence as the barman refilled his glass, then she ordered another glass of champagne for herself. When the barman had poured it, bubbling to the rim of her glass, she lifted it and moved along the bar, slipping on to the stool next to Enzo. On another day, in other circumstances, he might have felt a tiny frisson of sexual excitement. Instead he felt that she was encroaching on his space, and he might have resented that. Except that she didn’t give him the time.

‘Why don’t I buy you that one? I’ll do the talking, and maybe that’ll take your mind off whatever’s worrying you.’

He was surprised for the second time by the smile that found his lips. ‘Never fails.’

‘What?’

‘Every time I go into a bar on my own, I get pestered by some woman.’

It was her turn to laugh. ‘Then I should introduce myself. That way I won’t just be “some woman”.’ She held out her hand. ‘Anna.’

He hesitated for just a moment before taking it. ‘Enzo.’ Her handshake was firm and warm. ‘Women adore me.’

She grinned. ‘Oh, do they?’ She tilted her head and her look became appraising. ‘Maybe I can see why.’ She paused. ‘Different coloured eyes. Very unusual.’

‘Waardenburg Syndrome. Goes with the white stripe in the hair.’

‘Is it fatal?’

He flicked her a look. But, of course, there was no way she could have known. ‘Not the Waardenburg, no.’ He drained his glass and felt the alcohol going straight to his head. He had still not eaten since breakfast. He waved the barman to refill the glass.

‘Put them all on my room,’ she told the barman. She sipped her champagne and looked at Enzo speculatively. ‘Enzo. Short for Lorenzo, right? But you don’t sound Italian.’

‘Scottish.’

‘And what brings you to Strasbourg?’

‘I thought you were going to do the talking.’

‘Well, I’d tell you what brings me to Strasbourg, but you probably wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Try me.’

‘Parents,’ she said, and she pursed her lips in a smile of regret. ‘Elderly and failing, and full of recriminations about the daughter who doesn’t come to see them often enough.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because I’m never here.’

‘In Strasbourg or in France?’

‘Both. I’m a ski instructor. Based in Switzerland in the winter. I spend summers in the Caribbean teaching scuba diving. Which keeps me fit for the winter months.’

In spite of all the thoughts crowding an already overcrowded mind, Enzo finally found himself interested. Distracted. ‘How does someone become a ski instructor?’

‘There’s not much else to do when you can’t compete at the top level any more.’

‘You were a professional?’

‘Skied for France in two Olympics. Didn’t win any medals, but I made the top ten. Trouble is, the body starts to decline just as the brain starts to develop. The intrinsic contradiction faced by every athlete. When you’re young the flesh is willing, but you lack the experience. When you have the experience, the flesh is no longer willing. Et voilà. Those who can, do, and those can’t, teach.’

‘A bird in the hand’s worth two in the bush.’

Her smile was a patient one. ‘We’re not going to start that again, are we?’

‘Not if you don’t want to.’ He sucked down more whisky. ‘So where to now? Switzerland?’

‘Too early. The season’s not properly underway yet. And my contract doesn’t start for another month. I’m heading up into the Auvergne for a few weeks.’

‘Pretty bleak up there at this time of year.’

‘That’s how I like it. English friends are lending me their holiday house. It’s near a tiny village, lost in the hills somewhere to the east Aurillac. My sanity saver.’

‘You’re going up there all on your own?’

She shrugged. ‘No one else to share it with.’ She sipped at her champagne and stared into the endless stream of bubbles rising through her flute to break the surface. ‘Funny, I never imagined I’d make forty and still be on my own.’

Enzo said, ‘I’ve been on my own for twenty years. You get used to it.’

She looked at him curiously, then slipped her hand very gently over his. ‘No one should have to be on their own. Ever. Life’s too short for that.’

He turned towards her, to find a strange dark intensity in her eyes. Something almost sad. Compelling. And he felt a flutter in his stomach like startled butterflies. She had no idea just how short.

The lights of La Petite France reflected off the water below, projecting flickering, amorphous images through the arched window and on to the far wall of Enzo’s bedroom. By its monochrome light, he watched as Anna slipped off the tee-shirt she wore beneath her leather bomber, and shimmied out of her jeans. Until she stood in just black bra and panties, tall and elegant, with an almost boyish figure. Her skin was clear and tanned and smooth, and she moved with an innate grace towards the bed, the sure-footed balance of the skier in every step, dropping her bra on the floor to reveal the curve of small, firm breasts with dark, succulent areolae. She kicked off her pants and he saw the thin strip of her Brazilian-waxed pubis below the belly. Then she released the clasp behind her head to let her hair tumble freely across square shoulders.

In all his wildest imagination, he could never have foreseen this when he boarded the train in Cahors yesterday. And yet there was something about it that felt just right. To make love to a stranger on the eve of his death. No promises made, and none to keep. Perhaps the last time he would ever make love to a woman.

But it wasn’t the sex, although she had succeeded in arousing powerful sexual instincts within him. It was the human contact. Skin on skin, the warmth of another person wrapped around him, comforting, consoling. A moment without past or future.

She straddled his chest, leaning over him, her breasts inches from his face, to release his hair and fan it out across the pillow. Then she dipped to kiss his forehead, his nose, his lips. Gentle, intimate kisses as if they had known each other all their lives. She ran fingertips through the hair on his chest, and slid down until her lips brushed his belly, and he felt the rush of blood to his loins. He ran his hands down her back, feeling smooth, firm muscles beneath his palms, and cupped full buttocks before turning her over, taking her by surprise, driven by sudden lust. She gasped as she felt his erection press hard against her belly, and he found her lips and tongue with his mouth to silence her. His fingers sought the soft, wet place between her legs, and grazed her repeatedly until she arched against him, and he slid down to bite her nipples and tease them with a darting tongue.

He felt her fingers digging into his back, and through palpitating breath heard her whisper, ‘Now. Please, now.’

When it was over, he was spent in a way he had never known before. Fatigued beyond reason, in body and mind. He wanted to weep, to tell her everything. About Kirsty and Sophie and Pascale. And the sentence of death which had been passed on him just yesterday. But these were secrets best kept. Secrets that he would carry with him to the grave.

She lay beside him, curled into his hip, her breath on his shoulder, her hand on his belly, and he felt her take comfort in him. She too, had her secrets. Stories she would never share. A sadness behind dark eyes that she would never breach. He leaned over to kiss her forehead before closing his eyes to slip away into an unexpectedly deep sleep.

Chapter Twelve

It was raining, as it always seems to be. He was at a funeral. A Gaelic funeral, like they have in Scotland, the coffin resting on the backs of two chairs set out in the street. He was one of the bearers, dressed all in black. The women watched as the coffin was lifted, and the long walk to the cemetery began. They would not follow, for the women were not allowed at the graveside.

As they came over the top of the hill, the bells of the church ringing in their ears, they saw the gravestones like so many cropped stocks on the machair below, and he couldn’t stop himself repeating the lines of the poem by John Donne,

And therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Over and over, like a mantra, penetrating his soul.

The bearers were soaked through by now, and his hands had become wet and slippery. He found that he could no longer keep his grip. Again and again he moved his hands to try to secure a firmer hold on his corner of the coffin. But it was slipping away from him, heavy and awkward. He called for help, but it was too late. It slid from his shoulder and pitched forward to the hard earth. There was a loud crack, and the polished wooden box split open, spewing the dead man from its silk interior to a grotesque final resting place on the metalled surface of the road.

Enzo watched in horror as the corpse rolled in slow-motion towards him, a face like death itself, eyes wide and staring, a purple bruised tongue protruding from pale lips. And he realised that he was looking at himself.

He woke up, still gasping from the shock of it, bedsheets damp and twisted around his body. His hair was in his eyes and his mouth. He sat up and swept it from his face, breathing hard, unable to shake off the knocking sound in his head, loud and insistent.

A grey morning light filtered from the semicircular window that overlooked the millpond below, and he realised, finally, that someone was knocking at the door. And suddenly he remembered Anna, and making love to her the night before, and he turned towards her. But the bed was empty. Cold. She was long gone. Like a dream. Perhaps, after all, she had really only been a figment of his imagination.

He slipped from the bed, a painful consciousness slowly returning, and pulled on a towelling bathrobe. The rich, red carpet felt soft under his feet as he walked to the door and opened it.

Raffin had his hand raised, ready to knock again. Kirsty was at his shoulder.

‘For Heaven’s sake, Dad, why didn’t you answer? We thought something had happened to you.’ She pushed past the journalist and into the room. Raffin followed and closed the door behind him.

Enzo was still sleep-confused. ‘I…I was sleeping.’ He looked at Raffin. ‘When did you get here?’

‘I got the six o’clock TGV from Paris.’ He didn’t look as if he had risen early. As usual, he was immaculately groomed. Clean-shaven, his hair a shining brown, swept back to the fashionably upturned collar of his linen jacket. His pale green eyes regarded Enzo speculatively. ‘You sleep pretty soundly for a man whose daughter’s life is under threat.’

Enzo looked for his watch, but his wrist was naked. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly nine.’ Kirsty stooped to pick up Anna’s meagre black bra. She looked at her father in disbelief. ‘What’s this?’

There was something like a smirk on Raffin’s face. ‘Well, it doesn’t look like it would fit your father.’

Kirsty turned her consternation in Enzo’s direction.

But before he could think of anything to say, the bathroom door opened, and a startled Anna stood in the doorway, a bathrobe hanging loosely on her angular frame, a towel wrapped around wet hair. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise there was someone else here?’

Enzo glanced with embarrassment towards his daughter, and saw anger and humiliation blazing in her eyes. Raffin stepped in quickly. ‘We were just leaving.’ He took Kirsty’s arm and led her firmly out into the corridor. He cast Enzo a parting glance that seemed to carry the conflicting attributes of both admonition and admiration.

When the door shut, Enzo turned sheepishly towards Anna. ‘I thought you’d gone.’

‘Who were they?’

‘The girl’s my daughter. Kirsty. Raffin’s her boyfriend.’

Something in his tone made her cock an eyebrow. ‘You sound as if you don’t approve.’ She began gathering her clothes together.

‘I don’t.’

‘And does her mother share your view?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I divorced her more than twenty years ago. Kirsty’s never forgiven me.’

‘Ah.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Just…ah.’ She clutched her clothes to her chest. ‘I think I preferred it when we didn’t know too much about one another. And I certainly don’t want to get between a father and his daughter.’ She gave him one of her sad smiles. ‘I think I’d better go.’ She crossed the room to give him a tiny, soft kiss on the lips. ‘I loved making love with you last night.’ And then she hesitated. ‘Although you should know…I’m not in the habit of sleeping with strangers.’ She closed her eyes for a fleeting moment of introspection. ‘I was feeling pretty low, too. Maybe fate brought us together, just to take the pain away for one night.’

He nodded. ‘Maybe.’

She looked at him long and searchingly, and he thought that whatever pain it was that she was suffering, it brought a kind of tortured beauty to her face. She crossed to the dresser and laid her clothes in the chair and lifted a hotel pen from the desk. She turned a pad of letterheaded notepaper towards her and scribbled a quick address and phone number. She tore it off and held it out towards him. ‘That’s where I’m staying for the next few weeks. If you get lonely.’

He took it, almost absently, folding it and slipping it into the pocket of his robe. ‘Sure,’ he said, knowing that he would never see her again.

She lifted her clothes and headed for the door. A fleeting, backward glance and she was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

The dining room, behind long net drapes, doffed its cap to the colours and culture of the sixties. Red leather chairs and black steel tubing, faux woodgrain formica veneer, and shaggy grey carpet. Hotel guests dipped croissants in steaming black coffee and tried to give the impression that they couldn’t hear Kirsty railing at her father.

Her voice was shrill, and filled with accusation, despite Raffin’s best attempts to calm her down. He disliked scenes.

‘Someone tried to kill me a couple of days ago. I’m being stalked by the man who was almost certainly responsible for that. The same man who probably broke into my apartment, and set a bunch of kids to steal our money in the park. The same man who somehow fixed it that all our credit cards are out of credit…’ She drew a deep breath for the denouement. ‘And all you can think to do is pick up some woman in a bar. To follow your dick, just like always?’

Raffin was shocked. ‘For God’s sake, Kirsty!’ He glanced anxiously at the heads turning in their direction.

But she was past caring. This was betrayal. This was the man in whom she had put her trust. The man she had turned to for help when her world was crashing around her. And while she was crying herself to sleep in the room next door, her father was screwing some woman he’d just picked up in a bar. It was unforgivable.

Enzo saw the pain in his daughter’s eyes, the absolute belief that somehow he had let her down. And maybe he had. Maybe he always had. But with the selfishness of a child, she never made any allowance for the feelings of others. He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘No, I don’t. And I don’t want to.’

‘Well, maybe that’s part of the problem. You don’t know me. You’ve never wanted to know me.’

‘Oh, and you know me, do you? You weren’t around for most of my life, so how’s that possible?’ She was right on the edge, breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

Enzo stared at her, anger, frustration, guilt, all boiling together inside him. ‘You’ve spent twenty years blaming me. For all those little things that didn’t please you. For every unhappiness you ever felt. It was my fault. Never yours, never your mother’s. Always mine. You’ve defined your entire life by blaming me for everything that’s wrong with it. Well, you’re going to have to find someone else to blame pretty damned soon. And maybe that’s a good thing. Because when I’m not around any longer, you won’t have some convenient scapegoat to blame for your own shortcomings. And maybe, finally, you’ll start taking responsibility for yourself.’

He screwed up his napkin and threw it on the table. Almost on the verge of tears he stood up, turning abruptly through the net curtains and striding away across the marble foyer.

Kirsty was stunned to silence. She had never been on the receiving end of her father’s ire. Never felt the full force of his hurt and frustration. And it took a moment before the implications of what he had said fully sank in. She turned to search Raffin’s pale green eyes for reassurance, but found only embarrassed bewilderment. Colour had risen high on his cheeks. ‘What did he mean?’

Raffin shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea.’

Kirsty rose quickly, nearly upsetting the table, and went chasing through the columns after her father.

The elevator doors were closing by the time she reached them. She got a hand in just in time, and they slid open again to reveal Enzo standing alone under the harsh electric light. He looked tired, washed out, dark shadows beneath his eyes. Diminished somehow. And almost for the first time in her life she saw him as being old, failing, less than the image of tall, youthful strength she had carried with her since childhood. The doors slid shut and they rose slowly together through the old mill in an awkward silence that neither knew quite how to break.

Finally she said, ‘What did you mean, you wouldn’t be around any longer?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Nothing.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing to me.’

‘A turn of phrase.’

‘Bullshit.’

He looked at her and found himself speared by her dark, searching eyes. He might have resisted a little longer, kept his secret to himself, a little ball of poison screwed up inside of him. But there didn’t seem any point any more. She would find out soon enough. They all would. ‘I’m dying.’

Two simple words, dropped like toxic pearls into a young life that had never contemplated a world without him. He was right. She had used her anger at him to define everything about herself. When she had failed, it was his fault. When she had succeeded, it was to show him that she didn’t need him. But she did. She heard her own voice like a whisper in the dark. ‘How…?’

‘Leukemia. They say I’ve got six months if I take the chemo. But I’m not going to do that.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s been a checkered life, Kirsty. I’ve known pain and tragedy, sure. But I’ve loved some wonderful women. I have two beautiful daughters. And I’ve always had my health. I’m not going to spoil my last months by taking chemotherapy.’

The elevator jerked to a halt and the doors drew apart. He pushed past his daughter and strode down the hall towards his room, afraid that she might see his tears. He had almost reached his door when she caught up with him, grabbing his arm and forcing him to face her.

She was flushed, her face shining and wet. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.’ She drew a long, fibrillating breath. ‘You’re right. I was so obsessed with blaming you for everything, it never occurred to me there might be a time when you wouldn’t be there. And who would I have to blame then?’

He put his arms around her and pulled her tightly to him, and she was just his little girl again, tiny and vulnerable and dependent.

Her voice was muffled against his chest. ‘You asked me last night if I’d forgiven you. And I said no. Well, I was wrong. I just realised, for the first time in my life…there’s nothing to forgive.’ He felt her body racked by sobs. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

At the far end of the corridor, elevator doors opened and Raffin stood looking down the hallway at father and daughter in each other’s arms.

Chapter Fourteen

They headed north and west out of the city in the BMW that Raffin had rented. The slip road from the D263 took them on to the A4 for Paris. There were signposts to places like Hagenau, Karlsruhe, Saarbrücken. Ghost names from a German past, punctuating an Alsatian landscape where men had fought and died for the right to fly a flag, and pay their taxes to another master.

Enzo lounged in the back watching the dull November landscape slide past, grey and misty and damp. He would never see another spring, or ever again feel the warmth of the summer sun. If he could have chosen a time to die it would not have been in winter. Kirsty sat in a brittle silence in the passenger seat, hands clasped tightly between her legs. There didn’t seem anything left to say.

They were about two kilometres from the gare de péage, where tickets were dispensed for the toll portion of the autoroute, when they hit a tailback, vehicles backed up all the way from the rows of booths strung across the highway ahead. Raffin shifted down to second gear and they crawled slowly forward through the exhaust fumes.

It was Raffin, finally, who broke the silence. He half turned towards Enzo. ‘So why do you think you’re the target for all this merde?’

‘Because there’s too much going on with only one thing in common.’

‘And that’s you?’

Enzo nodded. ‘What else connects an attempt to kill Kirsty with the burning down of Bertrand’s gym? A robbery in a park, with the cutting-off of my credit?’

Kirsty turned in her seat, her face a mask of incomprehension. ‘But why? What’s the point?’

‘I can only think of one reason.’

Raffin was watching him in the rearview mirror. ‘Which is?’

‘Your book.’ He saw Raffin’s eyes crinkle incredulously.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You researched and wrote about seven unsolved murders, right?’

‘I don’t see the relevance.’

‘Given the media coverage we’ve had, there can’t be anyone in France who doesn’t know that I’m engaged in trying to solve those murders. Including the killers.’

Kirsty said, ‘You think it’s one of the murderers who’s done all this?’

‘Of Roger’s seven cases, I’ve cracked two in the last couple of years. If you were one of the remaining five, wouldn’t you be starting to feel a little insecure?’

Raffin said, ‘But why wouldn’t he just kill you?’

‘Someone already tried at Gaillac. But that was before I caught the killer there. If someone were to assassinate me now, it would seem pretty obvious that it was one of the remaining murderers. And someone else might start going after them. But if he just wrecks my life, takes it apart piece by piece, my investigations will simply stop. And it’s highly unlikely that anyone else is going to step in to fill my shoes.’

They lapsed again into silence, absorbing Enzo’s theory, picking at its flaws, unravelling its frayed edges to see if it would still hang together.

Then it was Enzo who broke the silence once more. ‘If only he’d known I was going to die anyway, he wouldn’t have had to bother.’

They were approaching the tollbooths now, and beyond the lines of traffic ahead, saw for the first time what was causing the tailback. There was a phalanx of blue gendarmerie vans parked off to one side, and twenty or more gendarmes checking papers before allowing anyone through the booths. They wore tall, kepi hats, and waterproof capes to protect them from the rain, nervous hands never far from holstered guns.

‘Must be a terrorist alert,’ Raffin said. It was unusual for every car to be stopped for a simple traffic check.

As they approached the head of their line it became clear that the gendarmes were carrying out identity checks on all the occupants of every car, driver and passengers alike. Raffin fumbled for his ID card, and Kirsty took out her passport. Enzo found his carte de séjour and flipped it absently between his fingers, brooding still on the man who had so nearly killed his daughter just to ruin his life. Whichever of the five remaining killers he might be, Enzo’s investigations to find him would no longer revolve around a professional re-examination of the evidence. This was personal. And he didn’t have much time.

Raffin drew up and three gendarmes peered in through wet glass. He rolled down the driver’s window and held out his ID card. But the gendarme was looking beyond him, towards the back seat. He flicked a quick glance at his colleagues, and one of them opened the rear passenger door and drew his gun in one swift movement.

‘Hey!’ Raffin turned in alarm to see Enzo being pulled from the car. He turned back to find a pistol pointed at his face.

‘Out of the car! Everyone out of the car!’ Suddenly all the gendarmes were shouting at once. There came the sound of feet running through the wet, men in dark blue crowding around their car, Raffin and Kirsty dragged roughly out into the rain.

Kirsty saw her father face down on the tarmac, five gendarmes around him. His arms were pulled behind his back and she heard the snap of handcuffs locking in place. It all happened so fast, there was no time even to think about it. But now she screamed as loud as she could, before being spun around and banged up against the car. All the breath was knocked from her lungs, and she couldn’t even find a voice to raise in protest. But she could hear Raffin’s angry admonitions.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m a journalist!’

And the voice that replied, tight with tension. ‘So maybe you’d like to tell us why you have a killer in the back of your car?’