Extraordinary People

I

A large white swan left a gentle V-shaped ripple in its wake as it glided effortlessly up to their window and peered in jealously at the food on the table. Beyond, the shimmering red-tiled roofs of the old town rose up from Port Bullier to the imposing stone tower of the mediaeval prison and the painfully blue Lotois sky behind it.

Enzo was pleased to be back in Cahors, an escape from the noise and pollution of Paris, oppressive high buildings crowding narrow streets. Here, he could breathe again. He had missed the tree-covered hills rising all around from the banks of the river, the purity of the air, the simple sound of a church bell pealing out across ancient rooftops, calling the faithful to prayer. Life seemed so much less complicated here.

He was pleased, too, by the discomfort of Préfet Verne and his chief of police, Madame Taillard, who were sitting opposite. A copy of Libération lay on the table between them. The headline the sub-editors had given Raffin’s story was, GAILLARD ASSASSINÉ. A subheading read, La Verité Après Dix Ans. There was a large reproduction of Bellin’s digitally treated forensic facial approximation of Gaillard’s head, full-face and profile.

The police chief was fixing Enzo with a hard stare, colour high on her cheeks. Enzo reminded himself that Hélène Taillard had once been attracted to him. There was a time when he might have felt something reciprocal, but that had long since passed. He suspected that she sensed this, and that it was fuelling her hostility now — a woman scorned. ‘It proves nothing,’ she said dismissively.

‘It proves that he was murdered,’ Enzo said.

‘Which is no more than everyone suspected,’ said the Préfet. He tore off a piece of bread and mopped some Roquefort sauce from his plate. He was handling the situation with more dignity than his chief of police.

Enzo liked Jean-Luc Verne. He was one of more than a hundred regional administrators, state-appointed and hugely powerful. A man several years Enzo’s senior, he had been running the Département du Lot for the past two years. They had met at a party and found they shared the same ironic sense of humour.

‘Suspected perhaps,’ Enzo said. ‘But in ten years the Paris police failed to find a single piece of evidence to prove it.’

Madame Taillard said, ‘Policing techniques have changed radically in ten years.’

‘Which, I think, was Monsieur Macleod’s point in the first place,’ the Préfet said. ‘And he is to be congratulated on his achievement. The political repercussions of Gaillard’s murder are, as we speak, reverberating around the corridors of power in Paris.’ He sipped appreciatively on a Château Lagrézette, which he had selected himself from the Carte des Vins, and turned back towards Enzo. ‘However, proving that he was murdered is one thing. To win our little wager you’ll need to determine who murdered him, and why. And that is quite another.’

There had been four of them at the dinner table the night they made the bet. Enzo, Simon on one of his unannounced visits from London, Préfet Verne, and police chief Taillard.

‘Which, I think, was my point,’ she said now, clearly piqued. ‘The trail is ten years old, as cold as the stone upon which Monsieur Gaillard was apparently murdered.’

‘But not as cold as it was,’ Enzo pointed out.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Préfet Verne. ‘The items in the trunk.’

They were all startled by a sharp rap at the window, and turned to see the swan glaring at them. It was not pleased at being ignored.

The Préfet said, ‘I think perhaps diners on the top deck are in the habit of throwing it titbits. It’s probably wondering why we’re not doing the same.’ Which would have been impossible, since the air-conditioned lower salon of the Bateau au Fil Douceurs restaurant was almost at river level, its windows sealed against the summer heat. And the water. The boat was berthed on the east side of the river, beyond the Pont de Cabessut, a chunky, white-painted vessel which looked as if it might topple over if ever it were to set sail. It had been Préfet Verne’s suggestion that they lunch there. He had expensive tastes. He turned his attention away again from the swan. ‘Where were we? Ah, yes, the items in the trunk. What on earth do they mean?’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ Enzo said. ‘They must mean something.’

‘Why?’ asked chief Taillard.

‘Because you wouldn’t cut off a man’s head and bury it in a trunk with five seemingly unrelated items unless you had a reason. And if there’s a reason, then there must be a way of working out what it was.’

‘And you intend to use forensic science to find out?’ said the Préfet.

‘No, I intend to use my brain.’

II

Madame Taillard drove back on her own to the Caserne Bessières at the north end of town. Enzo walked across the Pont de Cabessut with Préfet Verne, who was puffing gently on his post prandial cigar. Bright southern sunlight spilled across the rooftops to the old city wall and the Tour des Pendus, where lawbreakers were once hanged in full public view. They turned south towards the Place Champollion. ‘I know we all believed that something awful had happened to him,’ the Préfet said, ‘but one is never really prepared for the truth. Somehow it’s always worse than you could possibly have imagined. Poor Jacques.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Yes, but not well. We were at ENA together. There were nearly a hundred and thirty of us in our promotion, but everyone knew Jacques Gaillard. He was a character. Not necessarily a likeable one — he was somewhat full of himself. But he certainly brought a little colour into our dull academic lives. Ironic that he should have spent his last year back there teaching.’

‘It must have been something of a comedown for him. From Prime Ministerial advisor to teacher.’

‘No, not really. He wasn’t a teacher, exactly. There are no full-time professors at ENA — except for sport. The brightest pupils are taught only by the best brains. Top fonctionnaires, captains of industry, former cabinet ministers, all invited to take time out of busy lives to pass on their experience to the next generation. It was George Bernard Shaw, wasn’t it, who said that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach? Well, it was de Gaulle’s vision that those who do exceptionally well should teach their successors how to do likewise. Which is why he created ENA.’ They turned west and began the climb up the narrow Rue Maréchal Foch at the back of the cathedral towards the Hôtel du Département, and the offices of the Préfet. ‘So it wasn’t really a demotion, as such,’ he added. ‘More a sideways shuffle to move his celebrity spotlight away from the Prime Minister.’

They stopped at the gate of the Conseil Général and shook hands, and Préfet Verne pushed through wrought-iron into the cobbled courtyard beyond, to vanish into his own administrative empire. Enzo crossed the square opposite the cathedral with a lightness in his step. The Saturday market was over, and a truck with large rotating brushes was cleaning away the débris. He reached the brick arches of La Halle at the foot of the Place Jean-Jacques Chapou and strolled in through the back entrance of the covered market with his hands in his pockets. Past the poissonerie, with all its fresh fish laid out on crushed ice; Le Chai the wine seller, where you could fill your own container from huge stainless steel vats; Monsieur Chevaline, the butcher; the charcuterie where Enzo sometimes bought pre-cooked plats Asiatique to carry out. The wine seller waved and shouted salut. The butcher called that he had some very tender filet mignon just in. But Enzo wasn’t buying. He was just revelling in being back. Where everything was a known quantity and everyone was familiar. Such a contrast with the hostile anonymity of Paris.

His good mood lasted for as long as it took him to open the door of his apartment and trip over something lurking in the shadows of the hall. It was hard and unyielding and caught him squarely on the shin. He cursed, and saw that it was Bertrand’s metal detector.

It had been there since before his trip to Paris, arriving unexpectedly one night as Enzo was heading down for a nightcap at the Café Le Forum. He had been confronted by Bertrand out on the landing, cradling the long-necked creature with its disc-like head in strong, muscular arms.

Enzo had never made any attempt to disguise his disapproval of this young man with his spiky, blond-tipped brown hair, and pointless pieces of metal piercing eyebrow, nose and lip. ‘What the hell…!’

‘Hi, Papa.’ Sophie’s bright, smiling face, appearing at Bertrand’s shoulder, had made Enzo momentarily forget his irritation. It happened almost every time. Whenever he wasn’t expecting to see her, and she caught him unawares, he always saw her mother in her. Those bright, dark eyes, her elfin face, long blue-black hair fanning out across her shoulders. And the memory of Pascale would wash over him, powerful and melancholic. The only part of Sophie which was identifiably him was the pale streak in her hair which ran back through it from her left temple, not as pronounced as his own, although there was no mistaking the stubborn streak they both shared with equal vigour. ‘You don’t mind if we leave it here for a couple of days?’ she’d said. ‘There’s no room at Bertrand’s mum’s, and the health and safety people would object if he left it lying around the gym.’

In spite of his antipathy towards Bertrand, Enzo could never bring himself to be angry with his daughter for long. ‘What on earth is it?’ he had asked.

‘A metal detector. Bertrand got it cheap at a brocante. Lots of the kids have got them now. Ever since they found those old Roman coins along the riverside above the Pont Louis-Philippe. They’re worth a fortune, you know.’

‘It wouldn’t be for long, Monsieur Macleod,’ Bertrand had promised. ‘Just until I can clear a space in my mother’s grenier.’

But as the pain on his shin testified, it was still there. Enzo glanced at his watch. It was well into the afternoon now, but Sophie’s bedroom door was shut tight, and he figured she was probably still asleep. Kids! They thought nothing of sleeping their lives away. It seemed criminal, somehow, when you had lived longer than you had left, to think of wasting a single moment of your youth. It was gone before you knew it. He thought of that most famous of verses from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

It seemed, too, particularly appropriate to Jacques Gaillard. Although not a young man, he’d had, from all accounts, an abundance of both piety and wit. And neither tears nor time had washed away his blood, spilled on the steps of the altar of St. Étienne du Mont. It made Enzo all the more determined to find his killer. He pushed open the door into the front room to see if the workmen had finished.

The séjour was in chaos. The ouvriers had removed the bookshelves along the far wall, and piled the hundreds of displaced books untidily on tables and chairs, and on most of the available floor space. Mounted in their place was a huge whiteboard, three meters by two. Enzo looked at it with satisfaction and began clearing a way to get to it. He would need to make some space on the table to set up his computer.

There was a knock at the open door from the landing, and a girl’s voice called, ‘Monsieur Macleod?’

‘Through here.’

A young girl, about Sophie’s age, appeared in the doorway. As soon as Enzo saw her he knew why she was there, and cursed inwardly at his forgetfulness. She was not an ugly girl, but physically awkward, big without being tall. She had what in Scotland would have been called good childbearing hips. She wore jeans stretched tightly across them, and a V-necked tee-shirt which strained to contain breasts which one of Enzo’s fellow lecturers had once lasciviously described as being like cantaloupe melons. They had a tendency to draw the eye, and to his shame Enzo had found his eyes drawn to them on more than one occasion. She had a pretty face, and very long, dark, wavy hair which she often tied back in a loose ponytail. Her cheeks burned with the pink bloom of embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Macleod…I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

‘Nicole.’ Enzo raised both hands in surrender. ‘I’m sorry, I completely forgot. You know, things have been…well….’ He gave up trying to find excuses. ‘I just forgot, that’s all.’

‘I know. I’ve been to the hospital. They didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t. Because I never got around to speaking to Docteur du Coq.’

‘They said that I was too late and they’d already taken their complement of students for the summer.’

‘Shit,’ Enzo muttered under his breath.

‘Only, I’d been kind of counting on it. You know, for the money.’ She dropped her eyes to the floor, too self-conscious to meet his. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do, or where else to go.’

‘Oh, God. Nicole, I’m sorry.’ He wanted to give her a hug and tell her everything would be all right. But he wasn’t sure how close those breasts would let him get, and in any case he knew that everything wouldn’t be all right. Student jobs everywhere had been filled by now. He had let her down badly. And then he had an inspiration and said impulsively, ‘Look…why don’t you come and work for me here?’ Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. How could he pay her? He supposed that if he won the bet — a thousand euros each from the Préfet and the chief of police — then he could afford to pay her handsomely. If not…well, that was something he would face up to later.

She looked up in astonishment, embarrassment replaced suddenly by a flush of slow-burning pleasure. ‘For you?’

‘I have a sort of project I’m working on this summer. I could do with an assistant. Someone smart. Someone good on computers, and the internet.’

‘Well, that’s me,’ she said eagerly.

‘I know.’

‘I’ve been online ever since I can remember. You know, “Nicole calling the world.”’

Enzo nodded, thinking that this was definitely a mistake. She might be his brightest student, and there was no doubting her academic brilliance. But there was no doubting, also, that she lacked certain social skills. Her upbringing as a single child on a remote hill farm in the Aveyron had not prepared her for sophisticated student life in France’s fourth-largest city. Her first year in Toulouse had been hard, not least because of the cruelty of some of her fellow students.

‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly downcast. ‘But where will I stay? It’s too far to travel.’

Perhaps, Enzo thought, this was a way out. ‘There’s a spare room here,’ he said, hardly believing he’d said it out loud. But, after all, he had let her down.

Her spirits lifted again. ‘I won’t disappoint you, Monsieur Macleod. I promise.’ And then she said, ‘What’s the project?’

Enzo sighed. ‘It’s difficult to explain, Nicole. Why don’t you go home and pack a suitcase tonight and come back tomorrow? I’ll explain in the morning.’

As he was seeing her out, a sleepy Sophie emerged from her bedroom wrapped in a towelling robe. She craned up to kiss Enzo on the cheek. ‘What’s happening?’ she said, looking at Nicole and blinking the sleep out of her eyes.

Enzo said, ‘Sophie, this is Nicole. She’s a student at Paul Sabatier.’ And to Nicole, ‘Sophie’s my daughter.’

Nicole put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. ‘Well that’s a relief.’ And then she thrust her hand out to shake Enzo’s. ‘See you tomorrow, Monsieur Macleod.’

When Nicole had gone, Enzo turned back to the séjour and caught his shin for a second time on Bertrand’s metal detector. ‘Jesus Christ, Sophie! Will you get rid of that damned thing?’

‘I’m sorry, Papa, I meant to put it in the spare room. I’ll do it now.’

‘No,’ Enzo said quickly. ‘Nicole’s going to be in there.’

Sophie looked at him as if he had two heads. ‘That girl?’ Enzo nodded uncomfortably. ‘Papa, what’s going on?’ She pursued him into the front room. The French windows were open and hot air wafted in from the square below.

‘It’s just for a few weeks.’

‘Weeks!’

‘I promised to get her a summer job at the hospital, and I forgot. Now she’s too late to get anything else.’

‘So she says.’ Sophie was highly sceptical. ‘Papa, I saw the way she was gazing up at you. She’s infatuated.’

‘Don’t be silly, Sophie. Of course she isn’t.’ Enzo was indignant. ‘She comes from a tiny hill farm in the Aveyron, and her folks have been struggling to put her through university. She needed that job. I owe her. So she’s going to help me with the Jacques Gaillard thing.’

Sophie relented and took his arm and squeezed it. ‘Papa, you’re too soft for your own good.’ She looked up at him with her mother’s eyes. ‘How are you going to pay her?’

‘I’m just going to have to win the bet, that’s all.’

Almost for the first time Sophie became aware of the chaos in the séjour. She untangled herself from her father and looked around. ‘What’s going on in here?’

Enzo cast his eyes over the piles of books and glanced across at the whiteboard. ‘This is my war room,’ he said. ‘It’s where I’m going to do battle with Gaillard’s killer.’

III

Sophie had gone to the gym, where Bertrand ran courses in everything from dance to weightlifting, and Enzo had the apartment to himself again. The computer was set up on the table, wires trailing everywhere — to the wall socket, the telephone, the printer. He had downloaded the photographs from his digital camera and printed them out one by one. All five items found in the trunk below the Place d’Italie with Gaillard’s skull. Now he was sticking them up on his newly mounted whiteboard. Bellin’s approximation, cut from the front page of Libération, was taped to the top left-hand corner. Top-centre he placed the thigh bone, top-right the bee. He taped the shell, the antique stethoscope and the Ordre de la Libération along the bottom of the board, cleared a space in his favourite recliner and sat back staring at them. A pack of marker pens sat on top of a pile of books below the board, ready for writing up his initial thoughts. But he didn’t want to rush it. He wanted to clear his mind first. He needed to wash away all preconceptions and let these five puzzling pieces find their own place in his thoughts. This was going to be a long road, and he wanted to make as few wrong turns as possible. He reached for his guitar and began picking out a slow, mournful twelve-bar blues, and closed his eyes to find Gaillard staring back at him from the haunted shadows of his dead skull.