Cast Iron

Chapter thirty-eight

The late-afternoon fever of Parisians dressed in winter black was building towards rush hour on the packed concourse of the Gare d’Austerlitz. People stood gazing upwards in impatient, ever-shifting crowds, at the electronic arrivals and departures display. Others gathered around tables outside cafés and in the stuffy, packed waiting room with its unyielding seats. Trains came and went from an endless line of platforms, engines revving and resounding along the quays, uniformed SNCF staff checking tickets and issuing refund vouchers to passengers spilling off late arrivals.

Enzo found Dominique in the crowd and the two stood locked in embrace, the rest of the world eddying around them, before reluctantly they let go to kiss with a short, desperate intensity. They hurried to grab a recently vacated table outside the café at the north end of the concourse. A harassed waiter swept away the crumbs and lifted empty, stained coffee cups before taking their order. It was cold, and their breath condensed in clouds, rising with the noise into the cavernous glass-roofed station.

Dominique had abandoned the car at Orléans and taken the train the rest of the way. Quicker, she had told Enzo on the phone, than driving into Paris in the rush hour. She listened in silence now, sipping her coffee, as Enzo told her about his visit to Mathilde de Vernal, and the confirmation that Pierre Lambert’s great friend and confidant was, indeed, Sally Linol. The prostitute from Bordeaux with the feather tattoo on her neck.

‘And she never resurfaced?’ Dominique said.

Enzo shook his head grimly. ‘Never.’

‘So what does it mean?’

‘I wish I knew.’ It was the question that had been exercising his mind ever since dropping old Jean-Marie Martinot back at his apartment with the promise of keeping him up to date with any developments. He glanced at Dominique and saw the concern on her face. ‘How did you get on with Anne-Laure Blanc?’

And she told him. All about Alice, and the clinic, and the secret funding of her treatment. Enzo’s consternation grew as she spoke.

‘But who would pay that kind of upkeep for the daughter of a serial killer?’

Dominique glanced at her watch. ‘Hopefully we’ll find that out in an hour or so.’

Enzo frowned. ‘How?’

She smiled. A rare moment of sunshine on a dark afternoon, Enzo thought.

‘An old colleague of mine,’ she said. ‘An ex-gendarme who turned out to be a genius with figures. We always knew he had a special talent. He could make the most extraordinary calculations before you even had time to take in the figures. We used to try and catch him out, throwing him impossible sums, like a curveball at an unsuspecting kid. Additions and subtractions and multiplications that we didn’t even know the answers to. But he never failed. Every one of them rattled off his tongue. And it would take us the next ten minutes to work it out on paper to see if he was right. And he always was.’

‘Ex-gendarme?’

She nodded. ‘He got headhunted by Tracfin.’

Enzo pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No idea what that is.’

‘It’s a government organisation set up five years ago to track and prevent money laundering, and to cut off the flow of finance to terrorists. They have absolute power to access financial records and bank accounts.’

Enzo sat back and raised an eyebrow. ‘And you asked your friend to find out who’s been paying for Alice Blanc’s care?’

Dominique’s smile was faintly smug. ‘He owed me a favour.’

‘That’s some favour.’

She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, smile fading. ‘I don’t know why, Enzo. I just get the feeling that it could be the key to everything.’

Enzo noticed the car idling in the street outside Raffin’s apartment. A large, black government car with a uniformed chauffeur behind the wheel. Any other car that stopped here, just two hundred metres from the Senat building at the top of the Rue de Tournon, would have been moved on by traffic cops within minutes. But it looked as if it might have been there for some time, belching fumes into the rain and the gathering gloom, a rectangle of dry tarmac beneath it.

It wasn’t until Enzo and Dominique reached the first-floor landing of Raffin’s apartment block that he realised just whose vehicle it was.

Raffin was emerging from the apartment, pulling on his coat, accompanied by a tall, good-looking man who might have been in his early forties. The man wore a long black coat and a crisp white shirt with a red tie, and he had the unmistakable dyed and manicured coiffure of a typical homme politique. Enzo realised that he knew him, but couldn’t immediately place him.

Raffin was startled to see Enzo. ‘Oh.’ His voice echoed down the narrow stairwell. ‘Are you here to see Kirsty?’

‘I’m here to see you,’ Enzo said. ‘There have been developments.’

Raffin looked uncomfortable. He glanced at his companion. ‘Jean-Jacques, this is Enzo Macleod, and...’ His eyes flickered towards Dominique.

‘Dominique Chazal.’ Enzo filled in the blank for him.

Raffin nodded and turned to introduce the other man. ‘Jean-Jacques Devez.’

And Enzo realised now that they were in the presence of the Mayor of Paris. He had seen photographs of him many times in the press, and in television debates and news items. The would-be future president. But he had not recognised him out of context. And yet there was something about him that seemed more familiar than a face seen on television. Something oddly, indefinably personal. In the smile. Or the impenetrable darkness of his eyes. The two men shook hands, and Devez nodded a dismissive acknowledgement towards Dominique. He was more interested in Enzo, and cast appraising eyes over him, his smile faintly sardonic. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The great Enzo Macleod. One hears so much about you these days. You’re quite the celebrity.’

Enzo inclined his head a little. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’

Devez widened his smile. ‘None of us ever do. A man like you would be a welcome addition to any government department dealing with crime. In an advisory capacity, of course. If I ever get elected, we must talk.’ He turned to Raffin. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’ And glanced at his watch. ‘Don’t be long. We’re a little pushed.’

‘I’ll be right down,’ Raffin said. And as the scrape of Devez’s leather soles on the steps receded down the stairwell Raffin lowered his voice and turned to Enzo. ‘What is it? I’ve got a really important meeting.’

Not even an enquiry about Sophie. Enzo bit back his annoyance. ‘One of the Bordeaux Six, the girl with the feather tattoo on her neck... She was the best friend of Pierre Lambert.’

Which finally got Raffin’s full attention. He stared at Enzo. ‘You’re kidding?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘There’s a link, Roger. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s important. And someone’s been paying a fortune to keep Régis Blanc’s daughter in a specialised care clinic for the last twenty-three years.’

Raffin frowned. ‘Who?’

‘We don’t know yet. But we hope to very soon.’

‘Well, what’s the connection?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’

Raffin glanced at his watch. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this when I get back in a couple of hours. I’ve really got to go.’ He hesitated a moment, as if replaying what Enzo had just told him. Then repeated himself. ‘Got to go.’ And he hurried off down the stairs.

Dominique looked at Enzo. ‘Any word on Sophie?’ She mimicked Raffin’s voice. The question he had failed to ask. Then she shook her head. ‘So that was the great Roger Raffin. What a charmer.’

It was the first thing Kirsty asked when she let them in, anxious eyes searching her father’s face. And when he shook his head, his disappointment was reflected in hers. She hugged him before turning with moist eyes to kiss Dominique on each cheek.

‘Come through,’ she said. ‘Can I make you coffee? Or maybe you need something stronger?’

‘Coffee would be good,’ Enzo said.

Alexis was crawling around the floor amid a colourful clutter of plastic toys contained within a baby frame designed to limit the extent of his wanderings. He didn’t appear to hear them come in, but as soon as he saw Enzo his face lit up, and Enzo stooped to lift him high into his arms and rub the child’s nose with his. A chortle of delight burst from the baby’s lips, and he grabbed his grandfather’s ears and held on tight.

Kirsty had just brought a cafetière of freshly made coffee through from the kitchen on a tray with cups and sugar cubes when the phone rang. ‘I’ll take that in the study,’ she said, and left them to pour their own.

The gloom from the courtyard outside seemed to permeate the whole apartment, the dying of the light at the end of the day casting the corners of the séjour into darkness. Enzo found a switch for one of the uplighters and it threw light across the table as Dominique poured their coffee. The pianist upstairs was back to practising scales. Chromatic. Endlessly repeating semitone steps up and down. Stiff fingers still hesitant, even after all these years. And Enzo wondered what the point of it was. He felt depression settle on him like dust.

Somewhere Sophie was being held hostage to his investigation. Wherever she was the light would be dying, too. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it was she must be feeling. Only to unlock the horrors of his own imagination. He quickly opened his eyes again, and wanted to cry out. To throw his fists wildly about him, to hit anything and everything in his way. In his head he heard his scream, but the room remained silent. Invaded only by the distant sound of the piano.

He turned to find Dominique looking at him. She didn’t ask. She didn’t have to.

The door from the study opened and Kirsty emerged, as if in slow motion. Her eyes were lost in a focus somewhere far beyond the room they were in. Enzo saw how pale she was. All the blood had drained from her face, and she looked almost ghostlike in the gloom. ‘What is it?’ he said.

It took some moments for his words to cross the distance to that place her thoughts had taken her. Her delayed reaction to his words was startled, and she responded as if he had just spoken. ‘What?’ She seemed confused.

‘Who was on the phone?’

‘Doctor Demoulin. From Biarritz.’

Enzo stood up, immediately. Something was wrong. ‘What did he say?’

Again his words appeared to travel a long way before they reached her. She looked at him. ‘Alexis has a congenital condition. There’s no treatment. Nothing that can be done.’ She glanced at her son in his playpen. But he was oblivious, focused on trying to fit plastic shapes into the correct holes in a yellow board, before giving up in frustration to throw them on to the floor. Hand — eye — brain coordination not yet developed enough to fulfil the desire. ‘He’ll have to wear hearing aids all his life.’

Enzo said. ‘The technology’s amazing these days, Kirst. You won’t even see them.’

Her eyes flickered back to her father. ‘That’s what Doctor Demoulin said.’

‘See?’ Enzo tried to force a smile. ‘I told you he was a good guy.’

She suddenly took two steps towards him, bursting into tears and throwing her arms around him, just as she might have done as a child. She buried her face in his chest and he cradled her head in his hand and remembered all the times he had held her like this. Before a loveless marriage and a new-found love had torn them apart. The greatest regret of his life. She drew her head back and looked up at him, eyes filled with tears and a strange intensity. ‘I love you, Dad,’ she said.

No longer Papa, he was Dad again. And he felt tears running down his own cheeks, strangely hot in the cold of the apartment.

‘I love you, too, pet,’ he said, and held her all the tighter.

‘He said he would put it all in a letter.’ Her voice came muffled from his chest. ‘A detailed explanation, along with a prescription for the hearing aids.’ She drew away from him now. Wiping the tears from her cheeks with the flat of her hands. ‘I’ve got to get out. Take Alexis with me and get some air. Time to think.’

‘It’s raining, Kirst.’

‘Doesn’t matter. He’ll be fine in his pram.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No,’ she said, almost too quickly. ‘I need time to myself. Besides, you have other things to think about.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But you could get my coat from the wardrobe in the bedroom while I get Alexis ready. The fawn one with the belt.’ And she went to lift her son from his playpen.

Enzo exchanged a glance with Dominique and saw the sympathy in her eyes. He wiped away his own tears, embarrassed, and went into the bedroom through glass-panelled double doors that led straight off the séjour.

The wardrobe was a big, antique garde-robe in polished walnut. A family heirloom, perhaps, from Raffin’s family or Marie’s. He opened both doors and searched among all the coats and jackets hanging there for Kirsty’s fawn raincoat with the belt at the waist. People have their own distinctive scent, whether from the traces of perfume, or soap or aftershave, or from the oils secreted through the skin, earthy, musky, unmistakable. He could smell his daughter among these clothes, a scent as familiar to him as fresh air on a Scottish winter’s day. And he could smell Raffin, too. Some aftershave or hair oil that he must always have been in the habit of using. Just behind Kirsty’s coat he saw a pale green linen jacket with the breast pocket torn away, threads still hanging from it where the material had been violently ripped. The remnants of some crest or emblem embroidered into it were still visible along the inside edge.

Enzo stopped dead, and for a moment thought his heart might have stopped, too. In his head he tumbled back through time to an open gallery running around the roof of the château at Gaillac, where a shadowy figure had lured him in the dark and tried to drive a knife into his heart. Someone who had cut himself in the attempt, and fled in panic at the arrival of Bertrand, leaving Enzo dazed on the floor, and clutching the bloodstained, torn pocket of a pale green linen jacket with a maker’s emblem embroidered on it.

His breath was coming to him with difficulty now. It was Raffin! Raffin who had lured him up a stone staircase on that dark night and tried to kill him. And here was the jacket he had worn. Freshly laundered to get rid of the blood, but still missing its breast pocket.

Enzo’s world was collapsing about him like a house of cards. If it was Raffin, then Raffin must have killed Marie. And somehow it was Raffin who was implicated in the murder of Pierre Lambert. Raffin who had kidnapped one of his daughters and was intent on marrying the other. Raffin, the father of Enzo’s grandchild!

He had accepted Enzo’s offer to use new science to resolve the cold cases he had assembled in his book. Because how could he refuse? But he could never have imagined just how successful Enzo would be. And it must have become apparent to him at a very early stage that sooner or later Enzo was going reveal Raffin himself to be the killer of his wife.

The implications were igniting in Enzo’s mind like firecrackers on Guy Fawkes night, though there was still too much missing for him to make all the connections and see the whole display. He felt weak, and sick, and angry, but he knew that somehow he had to stay in control.

‘Dad?’ Kirsty’s voice crashed into his thoughts from the other room.

‘Coming.’ He grabbed her coat, his mind still a mess of confusion, and hurried through to the séjour.

Alexis was wrapped up warm in her arms, his pram sitting out in the hall, ready to go. She passed him to her father while she pulled on her coat. And, as Enzo handed her the baby back, she looked at him quizzically. ‘What’s wrong?’

He had no idea how to be natural in this situation, and just shook his head. A forced smile, he was sure, appearing more like a grimace on his face. ‘Nothing. Don’t get cold out there.’

Still she looked at him oddly, before shrugging it off and heading out to the hall. ‘Will you wait till Roger gets back?’

Just the mention of his name caused Enzo to quite involuntarily clench his fists. He would never tire of punching that bastard’s duplicitous fucking face!

Dominique said, ‘Actually, we have a rendezvous very shortly. But we’ll come back.’

‘Okay. See you later.’ And Kirsty was gone.

Dominique stood up immediately. Their coffee had gone cold, untouched in their cups. And all her instincts told her that something was very wrong. ‘What is it?’

Enzo turned and strode back into the bedroom, ripping the linen jacket from its hanger. ‘This!’ he hissed. And he could hardly find his voice to speak, his face dark now with anger and hatred.

Dominique looked at him, utterly bewildered. And he fought to control his breathing so that he could explain. Painting a picture for her of that night, high up in the roof of the château, vivid and clear, when Raffin had tried to murder him in cold blood. ‘I’m going to fucking kill him!’

The colour had risen high on her cheeks. But she put a hand on his arm and gripped it tightly. ‘Enzo, you can’t afford to do anything silly. We have the advantage of knowing what he has tried so very hard to stop you from finding out. But he still has Sophie, and we have no idea how any of this ties together. We have to play it smart.’

All Enzo wanted to do was inflict violence on the man who had done this to him. But he knew that Dominique was right, and was glad that she was there to moderate his more intemperate instincts. The quick emotions inherited from his Italian mother, and the even quicker resort to violence and swearing born of a tough Glasgow upbringing.

‘Where is the bloodstained pocket now?’

‘The police have it. Hélène had it run through the DNA database at the time, but of course it came up blank.’

‘Good. So now we need a sample of Raffin’s DNA for comparison and we’ve got him. At least for attempted murder. But I’m pretty sure the rest of it is just going to unravel from there.’

Enzo took a deep breath and nodded, and he turned and marched purposefully into the bathroom. His eyes scanned the sink and the bath, the shower cubicle. Then he opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink. ‘There.’ He reached in and retrieved Raffin’s razor. A triple-bladed head that he detached from its handle. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger. ‘More than enough bristle and skin, maybe even some blood, to provide the bastard’s DNA.’ He was getting some of his control back now. He laid it carefully on the rim of the sink, took a fresh razor head from a dispenser in the cabinet, and snapped it on to the handle, replacing the one he had removed. ‘He’ll never know.’

Dominique followed him back to the séjour where he retrieved a small plastic evidence bag from the pocket of his shoulder bag and dropped the razor head into it. She said, ‘If we FedEx that to Cahors tonight, Hélène will get it first thing in the morning. We can do that on our way to meet Franck.’

Enzo frowned. ‘Franck?’

‘The Tracfin guy. And you can call Commissaire Taillard to let her know it’s on its way.’