Cast Iron

Chapter thirty

‘The ear is a very complex construction of multiple parts. The outer and inner ears, the middle ear, the acoustic nerve, the auditory system that processes sound as it travels from the ear to the brain.’ Doctor Demoulin sat back, dispensing his expertise with the dispassionate disinterest of a man who has made the same speech many times. His consulting rooms were in an eighteenth-century provincial townhouse that sat up on the cliffs above the Boulevard du Prince de Galles, looking out across the bay beneath the town of Biarritz, once the playground of European royalty. The doctor himself sat at a large mahogany desk with his back to a double window, and, beyond yellowing vertical blinds, Enzo could see sunlight coruscating away across a crystal-blue sea.

The furniture in the doctor’s consulting rooms appeared to be of the same vintage as the house. His office smelled of time and disinfectant, and entering it felt like stepping back a century.

Doctor Demoulin might also have come from the same era. He was a big man, his great balding cranium ringed by a tangle of silver hair, like wire bursting from its sheath. The same wiry growth sprouted in abundance from his ears and nostrils. He wore a grey tweed suit and heavy brown brogues. His hands, Enzo noticed, were enormous, with more hair growing between the knuckles. He looked at the notes in front of him. Then raised his eyes towards Enzo. He gestured a hand back across the top of his head and nodded towards the Scotsman. ‘Waardenburg syndrome?’

Enzo’s own hand went instinctively to the white stripe in his hair. ‘Yes.’

Demoulin looked at Kirsty. ‘And have you inherited?’

Enzo and Kirsty exchanged embarrassed glances, and Enzo said, ‘Kirsty is not my blood daughter.’

Demoulin cocked an eyebrow, then scratched his chin and closed the folder in front of him. ‘Okay, so the fact that baby Alexis failed his newborn hearing test would not, in itself, have signalled a problem. Anything up to ten per cent of babies fail that test. Vernix in the ear canal, fluid in the middle ear... It’s the follow-up confirmatory test which is the most important. And the fact that he failed that is the cause for concern.’ He leaned over to smile at Alexis in his carrycot, and elicited a happy chortle from the baby. ‘Nothing wrong with his sight anyway.’

Enzo could feel Kirsty’s tension as, during the next hour, Doctor Demoulin donned a white coat and conducted a series of tests in a clinical room next door to his office. Miniature earphones were inserted into Alexis’ ears and electrodes placed on his head to detect brain response to the various sounds played. Then a microscopic microphone was placed in the ear next to a tiny ear bud to measure auditory echo.

A test that the doctor described as a ‘brain audiometry evaluation’ was a straightforward visual determination of changes in Alexis’ behaviour in response to what sounds were fed into his earphones.

When he had completed his tests Doctor Demoulin stood thoughtfully, his lips pursed. ‘That he has a hearing problem, there is no doubt. He is not deaf, but is what I would describe as hearing-impaired. It’s not serious, but still a cause for concern.’ He looked at them both, then focused on Kirsty. ‘There’s no history of deafness in your family?’

Kirsty shook her head. ‘Not that I know of.’

The doctor nodded and stood up. ‘Well, I’m going to have to take a little bit of blood from Alexis to send to the lab for testing. Then, perhaps, we’ll be in a better position to make both diagnosis and prognosis.’

They stepped out into the street and the rumble of traffic, and Enzo sensed his daughter’s disappointment. He said gently, ‘It never was going to be settled here and now, Kirst. These things never are. But I think you came to the right man. I had a good feeling about him.’

Kirsty turned her face up towards him, concerned. ‘Did you? I wasn’t sure.’

Enzo nodded. ‘He had a good way with Alexis, and you don’t get to be the number one specialist in your field without knowing what you’re about.’

‘It’s just...’ She shrugged. ‘He gave so little away.’

‘I’m sure he’ll have plenty to say when he knows how things stand.’ He put an arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him gratefully.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He had silenced the ringtone and ignored it while they were in with the consultant. Now he took it out and saw that there were several messages, all from Nicole. He hit the dial icon and waited. It barely rang once.

‘Monsieur Macleod, where on earth have you been?’

‘It doesn’t matter where I’ve been, Nicole, I’m here now. What’s the problem?’

Kirsty watched her father’s face lose all its colour in the blink of an eye. He staggered, and for a moment she thought he was going to fall down. She clutched his arm. ‘Papa? Are you okay? What’s wrong?’

‘Where?’ she heard him say, and his voice sounded oddly hoarse. ‘I’m on my way.’

He hung up, and she saw tears trembling on the lower lids of his eyes, a strange, wild look in them as he stared off into some unseen distance. Now she was scared.

‘Papa! For God’s sake, what’s happened?’

He turned his head, as if in slow motion, and though his eyes were on her he didn’t appear to see her. The first tears spilled on to his cheeks. ‘Sophie’s been abducted,’ he said.

During the five and a half hours it took them to drive to Montpellier, Enzo barely spoke, and Kirsty knew better than to ask more than he had already told her. ‘The bastards have taken her,’ is all he’d say. And beyond briefing her that they were going to see Betrand in Lapeyronie Hospital, in Montpellier, he’d told her very little.

‘Is he okay?’

He’d nodded mutely. Then, ‘He’d be dead if they hadn’t found him when they did.’

Kirsty had fretted about Bertrand the whole way. She was concerned for her half-sister, yes, though the two had never been the best of friends. But Bertrand had saved her life. Stopped her from drowning in the catacombs below Paris, and there had been a special rapport between them ever since. He had once told her that saving her life made it his responsibility for the rest of his life. And now she felt responsible for him. But she also knew that if anything were to happen to Sophie it would destroy her father. There would be no way back for him, no future, no life.

The Département de Médecine d’Urgence of Lapeyronie Hospital was in the north-east of the city, in the Avenue du Doyen Gaston Giraud. Parking was in a sprawling, tree-shaded area to the east of the hospital complex, off the Route de Ganges.

Enzo had insisted on driving, but now he abandoned both the car and his daughter and ran, following the red Urgences signs. By the time he had been directed to Bertrand’s room, he could barely catch his breath. There were several uniformed officers of the Police Nationale standing in the corridor outside, talking. The most senior of them put a hand out to stop him. ‘Monsieur...?’

‘Macleod. It’s my daughter they’ve taken.’ He leaned over, supporting his weight with his hands on his knees, then stood up. ‘I’ve got to talk to Bertrand.’

‘All in good time, monsieur. He gave us a statement, and a description of the house they were taken to. It wasn’t that far from where the dog walker found him.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing there. They’ve left traces, of course. The police scientifique are going through the place right now. We might get lucky with fingerprints, or DNA, but from everything the boy’s told us, these were professionals. So I wouldn’t go holding your breath.’

Enzo said, ‘I’d have to catch it first to hold it. Where’s my daughter?’

‘I’m sorry, monsieur, we’ve no idea. According to the young man, they drove off with her in a van three nights ago.’

‘Jesus Christ, what’s Bertrand been doing all this time?’

‘He has a badly broken leg, monsieur, and was suffering from severe exposure. Another few hours and he’d have been dead. And we would have been none the wiser about any of this.’

Enzo heard footsteps hurrying up behind him and turned to see Kirsty arriving, pink-faced and breathing hard, with Alexis in her arms. ‘Is he going to be alright?’ she said.

Enzo turned back to the police officer. ‘Can we go in and see him?’

He nodded.

Bertrand turned his head as the door opened. He had been aware of voices on the other side of it and now, as he saw Enzo step into the room, he almost choked on his guilt. He tried to sit up.

‘Stay where you are, son,’ Enzo said. He pulled up a chair at the bedside and sat down. Bertrand saw Kirsty standing beside him, her baby in her arms, her face rigid with concern. She leaned over to take his hand and squeeze it.

Then he forced himself, no matter how painful it would be, to meet Enzo’s gaze. ‘I’m so sorry, Monsieur Macleod. I tried everything I could to protect her.’ And tears gathered to blur his clear, dark irises.

Had Enzo been prone to uncharitable thoughts he might have felt that perhaps Bertrand could have done more. But he knew this young man. Knew that he loved his daughter. And that if Bertrand couldn’t protect her, then no one could. His face was swollen and bruised, his nose broken and set in high-grip tape. Enzo nodded. ‘I know. There’s no blame in this, Bertrand. I just want to find her and get her back. Did they say anything — anything at all — that might give me something to work on?’

Bertrand shook his head hopelessly. ‘They barely spoke to us, Monsieur Macleod. They grabbed us at Argelès. Two of them waiting in the apartment. But I think there were four in all. They took us straight to that house, and just kept us there till I got away.’ His lower lip was trembling. ‘I went back to try and get her. But they took her. A van and two cars. Just drove off.’ He closed his eyes, squeezing out tears. ‘And I went and broke my stupid bloody leg in the dark.’ He opened his eyes again, and Enzo saw the pain in them. ‘Get her back, Monsieur Macleod. You have to get her back.’ And Enzo knew that Bertrand was passing the baton of responsibility on to him.

Back out in the hall, the investigating officer of the Police Nationale said, ‘Have you the least idea why someone would want to kidnap your daughter, monsieur?’

Enzo said grimly, ‘Well, it’s not for financial gain, I can tell you that.’ He sucked in a deep breath to steady himself. ‘I’ve been investigating a group of cold cases.’

The policeman nodded. ‘I know, monsieur. We know all about you by now.’

‘Then you’ll know that there have been at least three attempts on my life. Someone really doesn’t want me continuing with my investigations. And it looks now like they think they’ve found a way to stop me.’

‘Then, with the greatest respect, monsieur, I suggest that’s exactly what you do.’

Kirsty struggled to keep up with her father as he strode through the hospital. His breathing, stertorous and full of anger, echoed back at them off all the shiny surfaces of the sterile corridors. By the time they got to the car she could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He stopped by the driver’s door and turned towards a litter bin raised on a concrete coping between lines of cars. He kicked it with the flat of his foot, all of his pent-up and impotent rage channelled into the violence that sent it spinning away across the asphalt, spilling its contents over the car park.

‘Bastards!’ he yelled at the sky.

Alexis began to cry.

‘Papa...’ Kirsty said. But Enzo wasn’t listening. His phone was issuing an alert. An incoming text. He grabbed it from his pocket and brought up the screen with fumbling fingers. As his eyes scanned the text he went very still, and Kirsty saw him suck in and bite his lower lip. ‘What is it, Papa?’

Without a word, he handed her the phone. The text had come, ostensibly, from Sophie. It was from her phone, at least.

Stop investigating the Raffin cold cases or you’ll never see me again.

Kirsty looked up with frightened eyes at her father. ‘What are you going to do?’

His voice was barely audible above the roar of traffic from the Route de Ganges. ‘I’m going to get these fucking people, that’s what I’m going to do.’ And he remembered all their attempts to stop him. At the château in Gaillac, in the mountains of the Auvergne, at Raffin’s apartment. He remembered their attempt to kill Kirsty in Strasbourg. And the note left on his windscreen, just the other day. Had that been yet another attempt to lure him to his death? But what could it possibly be about the apparently straightforward murder of a young woman twenty-two years ago that had driven them now to the desperate act of kidnapping his daughter?

‘What if they kill her?’

Enzo turned wild eyes in her direction. ‘They’re going to kill her anyway, Kirsty. If they haven’t already. I can only hope that somehow they believe keeping her alive gives them continued leverage.’

Kirsty looked at him helplessly, bouncing Alexis up and down to try to calm his crying. ‘Doesn’t it?’

‘No. If I wasn’t motivated before to solve the Lucie Martin murder, I damn well am now. Because only by finding her killer, or killers, am I going to find Sophie.’

‘But what if it’s not that murder they want to stop you looking at? What if it’s the murder of Marie Raffin?’

Enzo closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I can only think in a straight line, Kirsty. If it’s not Lucie, it’s Marie. One or other of them is going to lead me to Sophie’s kidnappers. Then there’ll be another murder. Only, I won’t be investigating it. I’ll be committing it.’

He took several long, slow breaths, trying to calm himself, before looking at his phone.

‘But first things first.’ He tapped a dial icon and lifted the phone to his ear. He heard it ring three times before it was answered. But whoever was on the other end was saying nothing. Enzo said, ‘If you want me to stop coming after you, I need to know that she’s still alive.’

Another long silence. He heard ambient sounds and a scraping noise, then what sounded like footsteps. A door opened, then a hand went over the phone to muffle voices. When it lifted away again, Sophie’s voice nearly broke his heart. ‘Papa?’

‘Baby, are you alright?’

‘Papa, they say they’ll kill me if you don’t stop chasing Roger’s cold cases.’

He heard her voice breaking. A stifled sob.

‘Don’t worry, baby, I’m going to get you out of this.’ Though he had no idea how.

‘Papa—’

He heard the phone being snatched from her before it went dead.

Kirsty watched as his phone hand fell away from his ear, and she thought she had never seen him look so old, or so defeated.