Cast Iron

Chapter forty

They walked for some way in silence in the rain after leaving Franck in the Place de la Sorbonne. They were several streets away before Dominique slipped her arm through Enzo’s and posed the question that had gone unasked in the café. A question that all three of them had assiduously avoided. Franck had been compromised enough as it was. ‘Why would the Mayor of Paris be paying for the medical care of Alice Blanc?’

Enzo shook his head grimly. ‘I don’t know.’ His mind was swimming and filled with the recollection of Charlotte telling him that Devez had begun his political career in Bordeaux. ‘But I do know this. He was an adjoint to the Mayor of Bordeaux at the time Blanc was murdering those prostitutes there.’ He thought some more about that conversation he’d had with Charlotte on the drive to Lannemezan. ‘And Raffin and Devez are old friends. Charlotte told me that Raffin and Marie used to socialise with Devez and his wife.’

Dominique tightened her grip on his arm. ‘And now that Devez is on the brink of entering the race for the presidency, he’s offering Raffin a job as his press secretary.’ Her frustration billowed, like smoke, in condensed breath around her head. ‘I don’t understand it, Enzo. The more pieces of the picture we assemble, the more obscure the picture itself becomes.’

Enzo pulled her close. ‘That’s because we’re missing something, Dominique. Something big. Something important. Something that’s going to connect all the pieces and suddenly make the whole picture blindingly clear.’

‘Which is exactly what they’re trying to stop you from doing.’

He nodded, and thought once more with anger and pain about Sophie.

‘So what is it?’ Dominique said. ‘This thing we’re missing?’

‘I haven’t the least idea.’

Light from all the apartments around the interior square fell from countless windows to reflect on black cobbles. Raffin’s apartment on the first floor was no exception. Evidently, someone was home.

The piano player had given up as Enzo and Dominique climbed the stairs to the landing, and so they were accompanied only by the sound of their own feet on the stone steps, and the exhalation of their breath in the chill air of the stairwell. Enzo rang the doorbell and after some moments it was Raffin himself who opened the door. He was in shirtsleeves and stockinged feet, his hair a little dishevelled, and he looked wild-eyed. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, and headed back into the apartment, leaving them to follow and close the door behind them.

Dominique tugged on Enzo’s sleeve as they crossed the hall and cast him a warning look. The revelation that somehow Jean-Jacques Devez was involved in all this had ratcheted everything up to a new and more potent level of danger. They had decided not to confront Raffin just yet. The razor head had gone off to Cahors, and Sophie’s life might just depend on how things would unravel over the next twenty-four hours. But Enzo was containing himself with difficulty.

In the séjour Raffin had spread his files on the Bordeaux Six all over the table, and he returned to them now in a state of apparent excitement. ‘It’s a real development, Enzo,’ he said. ‘Blanc’s running a prostitution racket in Bordeaux. Then, out of the blue, he ups and murders three of his girls. And, who knows, maybe Lucie Martin, as well. But one of his other girls vanishes just before the killings. Sally Linol. Who then turns up in Paris, where she becomes best friends with Pierre Lambert. Then, when he gets murdered, she vanishes again.’ He picked up his photocopied image of Sally Linol, the tattoo on her neck blurred and darkened by the process of copying it, and he waved it at Enzo. ‘She’s the key. She’s got to be the key.’

And Enzo realised, quite suddenly, that that’s exactly what she was. The one common factor. The ‘something big’ they were missing that he had discussed with Dominique. And here was Raffin waving her under his nose, telling him that she was the missing piece of the puzzle. Almost flaunting her, as if he knew that it really didn’t matter. And the only reason he could have such confidence in that was his knowledge that Enzo would never find her. Because she was dead. Buried long ago in some dark wood somewhere, or lying in the bottom of a lake, a bagful of bones like poor Lucie Martin.

‘Don’t you see?’ Raffin was saying. He dropped the picture back on to the table. ‘There’s a connection we had no idea ever existed.’

Enzo said, ‘Which doesn’t help us much with the Lucie Martin case.’

Raffin’s eyes were still shining, and Enzo couldn’t remember seeing him this animated in a long time. ‘Maybe not. But it throws new light on the killing of Pierre Lambert. We always knew who did the deed, but not who paid him or why.’

‘So,’ Dominique said, ‘all we have to do is find Sally Linol?’

Raffin smiled. ‘Exactly.’

They all turned at the sound of the door opening into the hall, and Kirsty manoeuvred Alexis’s pram in from the landing, bringing the chill damp air in with her. She was soaked, in spite of her waterproof, hair hanging in wet rats’ tails about her head, and Enzo realised she must have been out walking the streets all this time.

She divested herself of her coat and lifted Alexis from his pram. The baby boy was fast asleep, and Enzo stepped towards his daughter, concerned, as she carried him into the séjour. ‘Are you alright? You’re soaked.’

‘I’m fine. I just needed to think, that’s all. It’s a lot to take in.’

‘What is?’ Raffin crossed the room to take Alexis from her. And Kirsty told him about the phone call from Doctor Demoulin. Enzo saw disquiet flit across his face. ‘If he’s not deaf, and the hearing aids are going to help...’

Kirsty nodded. ‘I know, I know. I’ve just been trying to come to terms with that. As Dad says, the technology is so advanced you don’t even see them nowadays.’

But no matter how hard she had been trying, Enzo thought, she was still a long way from coming to any kind of terms with it.

She changed the subject, self-consciously. ‘How did you get on with Jean-Jacques?’

Raffin’s face lit up. ‘He’s got the nomination. And my job offer’s official.’

‘And?’

He grinned. ‘I said yes. The party’s going to announce his nomination in the next two weeks, and I’ll be the one up front doing it.’

‘Oh, darling, that’s wonderful.’ Kirsty leaned in past their baby to kiss him, and yet Enzo couldn’t help feeling that her delight was a little less than enthusiastic. But if Raffin was aware of it, he gave no indication.

Kirsty took Alexis again. ‘I’ll just put him down.’

‘Congratulations,’ Enzo said. His voice laden with all the insincerity he felt. But again, Raffin seemed oblivious. And a stab of anger at the man’s apparent indifference to almost everything around him pushed Enzo to cross a line. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Kirsty asked me to fetch a coat for her earlier, and I couldn’t help noticing one of your jackets in the wardrobe has had its breast pocket torn off.’ He almost heard Dominique’s intake of breath beside him.

Raffin frowned. ‘Breast pocket?’ He pushed out his lower lip and shrugged. Then recollection dawned. ‘Oh, that’s the green linen. Part of a suit, actually. Came back from the dry cleaners like that. Always meant to take it back and complain, but somehow never managed to get around to it.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Kirsty’s exclamation startled them all, and started Alexis crying. She had stopped by the table on the way to the bedroom, and was standing holding the photograph of Sally Linol in her hand. She turned, still holding it, and looked at her father. ‘I told you I recognised her.’ She waved the photograph towards him, just as Raffin had done minutes earlier. ‘That’s the housekeeper at Biarritz. Madame Brusque. Twenty years younger, but it’s her alright.’

‘That woman didn’t have a tattoo,’ Enzo said, raising his hand to touch his neck without thinking. And he could feel the blood pulsing in it.

‘She was wearing a high collar. And, anyway, you get make-up for masking tattoos these days. I’m telling you, Dad. It’s her.’

Raffin’s face was a mask of confusion. ‘Madame Brusque?’ He turned bewildered eyes towards Enzo. ‘Marie appointed her after the death of her parents. I never saw any reason not to keep her on. How can she possibly be Sally Linol?’