Cast Iron

Chapter sixteen

The trees in the Boulevard Léon Gambetta were finally beginning to shed. In just a few days, leaves had turned from yellow and green to orange and red, and a slight breeze rattling the branches sent them tumbling to gather in drifts along the pavements.

There was a chill in the breeze, too. Perhaps the first breath of winter to stir the air across the south-west. Enzo felt it when he stepped from his car in Cahors at the end of the second long drive in as many days. It was not the raw cold of a grey and humid Paris, but a crisper cold, like chilled wine on a summer’s day. He loved the south-west in all its seasons, except winter. For when it came, finally, it stole away the softness of the light, and the land felt harsh and lifeless. And all that lay ahead were the long months of waiting for spring.

Leaves gathered, too, in the car park outside La Halle, the indoor market where Enzo bought all his fresh produce for cooking — just two steps from the door of his apartment. They crunched under his feet as he crossed the road and climbed narrow wooden stairs to the first floor.

‘Hello?’ he called, as he opened the door into the hallway. But there was no response. He glanced into the spare bedroom and saw that Nicole had made herself at home. A huge suitcase lay open on the floor, clothes strewn all over the bed. And Enzo wondered who she had enlisted to carry it up the stairs for her. He was glad not to have been around when she moved in.

He threw his holdall into his own room and went through to the séjour. Nicole had been busy. Every chair in the house, it seemed, was crammed into the living room. Occasional tables, card tables and footstools were scattered among them — laying space for drinks and nibbles. Beer mats covered every surface likely to be damaged by wet-bottomed glasses. Nicole was nothing if not fastidious.

Enzo had almost forgotten that his birthday was tomorrow. It had crept up on him so quickly, as birthdays seemed to do more and more with every passing year. But there had been other things on his mind during the long drive south, and he wanted now to write down all the thoughts he had been keeping in that crowded place that was his head. He moved several of Nicole’s chairs and tables to clear a way to his whiteboard, which had long ago found a permanent place on the back wall of the living room. Sophie had objected, complaining that it ruined the room. But it was Enzo’s way of visualising his thoughts. A graphic representation of them that he could take in at a glance.

He lifted a blue felt-tip pen and wrote Régis Blanc in the centre of the board. And since Lucie was one of the Bordeaux Six, he wrote up each of their names around the whiteboard’s perimeter. Above Blanc, he penned in the names of the three prostitutes he had murdered, and, below him, the name of Lucie’s childhood sweetheart, Richard Tavel. These were the main players in the story so far, and he wanted to see what links there might be between them.

He drew an arrow between Blanc and Lucie, and then one back from her to him. Beside the first, he wrote LOVE LETTER. Beside the second, MET AT RENTRÉE. Then he drew arrows from Tavel to them both, noting his relationship to Lucie, and his claim to have seen Lucie with Blanc. There were plenty of other links, too. The most obvious of all between Blanc and the prostitutes he had strangled. The link between Blanc and the girl stabbed to death in the hotel room certainly existed, for he had once been her pimp. However, their connection was historical and therefore blurred, and so Enzo drew a squiggly arrow between them.

But the link that made the biggest impression on him was the one that led to the girl called Sally Linol, the one with the feather tattoo on her neck. She was connected not only to Blanc, but to the three dead prostitutes. Michel Bétaille didn’t believe that Blanc had killed her, because she had cleaned out her apartment and vanished before the others were murdered. After all, why, when Blanc had dumped the other three in almost plain view, leaving clues that led directly back to him, would he have gone to the trouble of clearing out Sally’s apartment and hiding her body so well that it hadn’t been found in more than twenty years?

But the big question was why had she run? Did she know or guess that something was about to happen to her friends? Was she scared that Blanc would have killed her too, and had simply gone to ground somewhere and never resurfaced?

Enzo guessed that, if he could find her, many of those questions would be answered. But, after all this time, he had no idea where to start looking. And, of course, there was no guarantee that she was even still alive.

Then he was struck for the first time by another question. Why had Blanc not made more of an effort to cover his tracks? He had murdered these three girls, dumping them on waste ground, where they were certain to be found. His fingerprints had been lifted from the necks of two of the girls, and were all over the purse of the third. He was known to be their pimp. He had no alibi. And police had found Rohypnol in his apartment, the same drug, Bétaille had told him, used to sedate the victims.

Enzo had always assumed that it was Blanc’s crass stupidity or ignorance that had led to him being tied so quickly and easily to the murders. But Blanc could hardly have been a stupid man. He ran a successful prostitution ring, in the face of fierce competition. He was uneducated, perhaps, but streetwise, certainly. Why would he have made it such a simple task for the police to pin the murders on him?

Michel Bétaille had been obsessed with another why. Why had he killed them, when it was so clearly out of character? He liked women, Bétaille had said. And yet he had never questioned the ease with which the evidence led straight back to Blanc, or why Blanc had never denied it in court.

Enzo gazed thoughtfully at his whiteboard and, in a circle next to Blanc’s name, he wrote DID HE WANT TO BE CAUGHT?

‘Coucou!’ The sound of Nicole’s voice crashed into his thoughts and dispersed them in random chaos to the four corners of his mind. Damn her! Just as he was coming close to some kind of epiphany.

‘I’m busy, Nicole,’ he called back, keen that she should hear the irritation in his tone.

But either she was oblivious, or chose to ignore it. She breezed cheerfully into the séjour. ‘You’re back.’ As if he didn’t know. ‘I saw your car downstairs. It’s got a parking ticket on it.’

Enzo closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, resisting the temptation, born of a Glasgow upbringing, to curse loudly.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Nicole’s tone was chiding now. ‘You’ve been moving things around in here. It took me ages to get this place set up.’ And she started pulling chairs and tables back to where they had been, trapping Enzo at his whiteboard.

‘Nicole, I’m trying to work.’ Each word was enunciated slowly, through clenched teeth.

‘And so am I. Your birthday’s tomorrow, remember. I’ve been organising the food and drink. The traiteurs will be here in the morning.’

‘Nicole, we really don’t need caterers to celebrate an unremarkable birthday. We could just go downstairs and have pizza.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Monsieur Macleod. You’re only fifty-seven once.’

‘Fifty-six.’

‘Whatever. A lot of people are coming.’ And, for the first time, she noticed his scribblings on the whiteboard, and stopped in her tracks. ‘You’ve started on it.’

‘I have.’ And immediately he saw a way of deflecting her from party mode. ‘And I could do with some help.’

Her eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, what? Anything.’

‘I need a detailed dossier on Régis Blanc. Personal history. Criminal record. Friends, family, known associates. Anything and everything you can get on him, Nicole.’

‘When for?’

‘As soon as you possibly can.’

‘You got it!’ And he could see that, straight away, she was just itching to sit down at a computer.

He said, ‘When is Sophie due back?’

Nicole was already distracted. ‘Tomorrow morning, I think. Just in time for the party.’

Enzo sighed fondly. ‘Ye-es — just in time for everyone else to have done all the hard work.’