Blowback

Chapter Twenty-eight

Enzo stood by the window gazing out through the cold, damp air at the mist that lay in strands across the hillside, partially masking the houses that climbed its terraces to the volcanic crags that dominated the town. He could hear Dominique’s voice as she spoke on the phone, but he wasn’t really listening. He was picking through the complex web of relationships that Marc Fraysse had spun around his life, trying to determine which, if any of them, had led to his murder.

Dominique hung up on her call, and he heard her gasp of frustration. “Nothing is ever simple, is it?”

He turned from the window. “What did they say?”

“The number that he called, that he sent and received the texts from, is out of use. Has been for years. And the phone company that originally serviced it no longer exists. It was taken over by France Telecom and eventually subsumed into Orange. It’s going to take some time to track down who the original owner of that number was.”

Enzo nodded thoughtfully. “By ‘some time’, how long do you mean?”

“Two, three days… who knows?”

“In that case I think I’ll go to Paris for a couple of days.”

“Why?” The disappointment in her voice was patent.

“I have some personal things to attend to.”

“Charlotte?”

He shrugged. He was still undecided on that issue. “Maybe. I’ll see Raffin and my daughter. My other daughter, Kirsty.”

“And that’s the only reason you have for going to Paris?”

“No. There are some people I’d like to talk to about Fraysse.”

“Like?”

“Like someone at Michelin. I’d like to know if the rumor that Fraysse was about to lose his third star was true or not.” He turned to gaze out of the window again. “And Jean-Louis Graulet.”

“The food critic?”

He nodded. “Marc and a couple of other three-star chefs pulled a pretty humiliating stunt on him. If we’re looking for motive, then Graulet has plenty, even if Elisabeth did say he was in Paris at the time.” He turned around to find her looking at him intently. “Was that something you checked out during your investigation?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t even know there was bad feeling between Marc and Graulet.”

He nodded again. “Then there’s the whole gambling issue and his relationship with Jean Ransou. He’s a man I definitely need to talk to.”

Dominique frowned. “Be careful, Enzo. I did some checking on Ransou after you told me about him. A very dangerous man from all accounts. Well connected on both sides of the legal divide. He’s been suspected of complicity in several murders, but always manages to get himself off the hook.”

“All the more reason to speak to him, then.”

As he turned once more toward the window, he saw that the light was fading. Somehow the day had just vanished. The sim card had been a breakthrough, but the defunct cellphone number had stalled it again. One step forward, two frustrating steps back. It was time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on all the other threads of the investigation. Or was he just looking for an excuse to go to Paris? Dominique’s impassioned plea for Enzo to confront Charlotte over the issue of their son had forced back to the surface the deep sense of grievance he had been trying to keep buried.

He suddenly became aware of Dominique standing very close to him at the window. He could feel the heat of her body, hear her breathing. Beyond the door of her office, he was conscious of the chatter of keyboards, the voices of other gendarmes, phones ringing.

“Come and eat with me again tonight.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

He turned to find her face upturned toward his, and something in her dark eyes made his stomach flip over. He took her face in his hands and softly kissed her lips as her arms slid up under his jacket, around his back, pulling herself into his chest.

“I don’t want you to go to Paris. I just found you. I don’t want to lose you.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. And he knew that whatever turn of fate had made their paths cross, it was almost certain to bring them back to divergence, sooner rather than later. He said: “It’s not lasagne again, is it?” And she laughed.

“Tasha and I had the leftovers yesterday. I was thinking more… take-away pizza?”

He grinned. “Another fine Italian dish. How could I resist?”