Extraordinary People

I

At the foot of the stairs, Enzo and Raffin stepped out into an inner courtyard. Lights from windows lay in geometric patterns across its cobbles. A police car stood idling, its diesel purr reverberating around the cloistered inner sanctum of the Brigade Criminelle, just one part of this sprawling complex on the ële de la Cité which made up the Palais de Justice. They followed their shadows down a long passageway, footsteps echoing back from scarred walls. Ahead of them, one half of the huge wooden gates stood open. And beyond it they could see across the Seine to the lights of the Left Bank. They passed through it into the Parisian night with an enormous sense of relief. A black, uniformed policewoman watched them without curiosity.

The street was jammed with police vehicles, marked and unmarked. Enzo glanced up towards the second top floor and wondered where exactly it was he’d spent the last few hours.

‘Hey!’ They turned at the sound of Charlotte’s voice, and she came running along the riverside pavement to meet them, soft curls streaming out behind her. She stopped and looked at them breathlessly. ‘I couldn’t get parked any closer. My car’s on the other side of the river.’

‘Was it you who phoned Libé?’ Raffin asked.

She nodded. ‘After you called I kept phoning the desk at La Crime asking what had happened to you. Eventually I think the duty officer got fed up with me and told me you were being held for questioning. The only thing I could think of was to phone the paper.’

‘Good girl.’ Raffin embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. She responded and hugged him back. Enzo watched awkwardly, and was annoyed by the tiny worm of jealousy he felt stirring inside. They broke apart and Raffin said, ‘I’ve got to go to the office and update my story. Two dead now. Three if you include Gaillard.’

‘Four, if you include the boyfriend,’ Enzo said.

‘Was Roques really murdered?’ Charlotte asked.

‘He was murdered all right,’ Raffin told her. ‘If not by his lover, then by someone else.’ He looked at Enzo. ‘Makes you wonder about Hugues. Either someone is prepared to kill again and again to cover up the original murder. Or fate has conspired to take three lives by pure coincidence.’

‘I don’t believe in fate or coincidence,’ Enzo said.

‘No, neither do I.’ Raffin tugged at Enzo’s lapels to straighten his ill-fitting jacket, and he looked at it ruefully. ‘I’ll get the jacket another time.’ And he kissed Charlotte on the cheek again. ‘Catch you later.’ He went running off towards the Pont St. Michel, waving and shouting at a taxi which had appeared from the Boulevard du Palais.

Charlotte and Enzo stood looking at each other. ‘You’re a little underdressed,’ she said.

But Enzo couldn’t even bring himself to smile. ‘Jesus, Charlotte, this is getting scary.’ And he took her in his arms, and held her for a very long time. She moulded herself into all his contours and held him just as tightly, and he felt a huge rush of fatigue and relief and affection.

‘Come on,’ she said finally, dark eyes looking intensely into his. ‘Let’s get you home.’

As they walked along the quay, past the Préfecture de Police, and towards the floodlit Notre Dame, she slipped her hand into his, and he squeezed it, grateful for the comfort. They crossed the Pont St. Michel and turned down past the oldest tree in Paris, a grizzled acacia which stood at the centre of a garden brooding darkly behind spiked railings. Charlotte’s car was parked beyond the Église St. Julien-le-Pauvre. A down-and-out slept opposite the church in the doorway of a tea shop.

At her car, Charlotte turned and reached up to hold Enzo’s face in both her hands. She gazed at him for a moment, a fleeting infusion of mixed emotions, then reached up on tiptoe to kiss him softly on the lips. He was caught off-guard by her sudden tenderness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘What for?’

She shook her head, smiling sadly. ‘Just…everything.’

II

Hot water beat down on his head and shoulders, streaming over his chest, and hanging in droplets from a million hairs. He wanted to stand there forever, just letting it wash over him, taking with it the taint of a dead man’s blood, the awful image of his gaping, lifeless face. The shower door opened and Charlotte stood naked before him, a slight, quizzical smile on her lips. She stepped up to share his water, and her dark curls unfurled into long, black ribbons over her shoulders. She stared at him through the steam. ‘I love your eyes,’ she said. And she touched his face and pushed his wet hair back behind his ears. Then she dropped both hands to find and hold the softness of his penis, and he immediately felt the blood rushing to it. Her breasts pressed against his belly, and as his passion flowered, she slid her hands behind him to hold his buttocks and pull him towards her. She turned her head to one side and pushed her face into his chest.

They stood like that for a long time, under the running water, before stepping out to towel each other dry, skin glowing pink, wet hair hanging in damp ropes. She peppered him with kisses, and ran her fingers gently through the wiry hair on his chest, then took his hand and led him back through to the bedroom. Beyond the walls of glass which looked down on the garden courtyard below, the dark seemed very intense. Enzo felt strangely exposed. Anyone out there on the gallery opposite could see right in, just as he had the previous evening. Now he was lying among the lilac sheets that he had seen earlier, Charlotte on top of him, something frantic in the ferocity with which she bit his lip and pushed her tongue in his mouth. She reached down to find his erection and guide him inside her and thrust her hips at him with an energy he found hard to match.

He came quickly, almost overcome by fatigue and a strange melancholy, and she immediately lay down beside him to curl into his hip. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. His turn to apologise.

‘Why?’ She seemed surprised. ‘You were lovely.’ She reached over and turned out the light, and they lay in the dark for ten or fifteen minutes without stirring. Moonlight spilling across the rooftops washed down through the angled glass roof of the warehouse, into the garden below, and through the tall windows of the bedroom. Enzo lay with his eyes open, and they adjusted to the light, so that he could follow every shape and contour. His brain refused to stop. He caught the slightest movement in his peripheral vision and turned his head to find himself looking into two luminous, saucer-like green eyes. Zeke sat on the bedside cabinet staring at him, and Enzo wondered if the cat had watched them making love. Wondered if it was jealous.

His thoughts were broken by Charlotte’s voice, small and hoarse in the dark. ‘You know, I bought this place ten years ago from an old couple who’d lived here in the war. They were just newly married when the city was occupied by the Nazis. They ran a coal merchant’s business, and the Germans forced them to supply them with coal. They told me that the street was known as Little Italy, because of the number of Italian soldiers billeted here. They had been made to provide food and lodgings for two of them.’ She reached across his chest to twirl the long strands of his hair idly in her fingers. ‘Then after the allies landed, and the liberation of Paris was close, Parisians all over the city rose up against the occupiers. The couple who owned the coal merchant’s shot and killed their two Italian lodgers. They told me this, because when I was buying the property, I asked them why the cellar below the warehouse had been bricked up and cemented over. And they said that’s where they had buried the Italians. They were in their seventies by then, and they said I was the first person they had ever told.’

‘And did you believe them?’

She laughed a little. ‘I don’t know. But I’d like to. I’ve come to think of the bodies in the cellar as my Italians. Buried for eternity. And that I’ll always have their ghosts for company on cold winter nights.’

Enzo thought about the sense he’d had earlier of vulnerability, of exposure to anyone who might have been watching from out there in the dark. And he thought about the ghosts of the two Italian soldiers who had never, after all, made it back to the olive groves in the southern sun. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of adding a third Italian to the collection,’ he said.

He heard the rustling of sheets, and then her lips, soft and cool, on his cheek. ‘I’d like to think that maybe my real-life Italian would stay voluntarily.’

He closed his eyes and felt himself drift off into confusion. She had a powerful effect on him. There was no doubting that. And yet the signals she gave him were mixed and conflicting. She didn’t want a relationship, she said. And yet she was happy to make love to him. Her relationship with Raffin was over, but she didn’t want to make him jealous. And now she wanted her real-life Italian to stay voluntarily. What did she mean? I love your eyes, she had told him. Had she changed her mind about not wanting a relationship? He was nearly fifty years old, and he still had no greater understanding of women than when he was fifteen.

He began drifting backwards in space, falling softly through the dark, as tiredness overwhelmed him and sleep started wrapping him in its embrace. And then her voice drew him back to the surface, coming, it seemed, from a very long way off.

‘Do you really think Jacques Gaillard was killed by a group of his own students at ENA?’

He broke the surface of consciousness with his heart pounding. ‘Yes,’ he said, with a sudden, frightening clarity. ‘I do.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’

‘There’s another set of clues to decipher.’

‘Will you stay in Paris?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

He hesitated. ‘No. I have to go back to Cahors.’ Her disappointment was almost palpable, even in the dark. ‘But first I’m going to go to ENA to see if I can’t get a photograph of the Schoelcher Promotion, and a list of the names of all the students.’

‘Then you’ll have a long way to go.’

‘What do you mean?’ Enzo raised himself up on one elbow and made out the pale shape of her face looking up at him from the bed. ‘I checked. ENA’s based here in the Rue de l’Université, about ten minutes’ walk from the studio in St. Germain.’

‘Not any more, it’s not. They quit that building earlier this year, and moved everything, lock, stock and barrel, to Strasbourg.’

III

The building at No. 2 Rue de l’Observatoire stood cheek by jowl with the huge Lycée Montaigne opposite the south end of the Luxembourg Gardens. Even from the outside, it was apparent that its architecture was influenced by a history of North African colonialism. Arabic arched windows and doors, intricate mosaic and ceramic decoration. It had taken Enzo most of the day to discover that this place even existed.

Madame Francine Henry was close to retirement. Which, Enzo reflected, was probably why ENA had left her behind when the school moved to Strasbourg. She had worked as a publicity officer for the École National d’Administration for nearly thirty years, she told him. And now she was based here, in this oddly arabesque building, originally built to train administrators from the French colonies in Africa and Indochina. It had been taken over by ENA in recent years to house its international school, and was the only part of the institution to remain in Paris.

She led him through an inner courtyard which more resembled a Moroccan riad than a Parisian school. Windows rose in peaked arches through three tiers on all sides. A square of lawn was gently shaded by two tall silver birches. A patterned frieze of moulded green ceramic separated the first and second floors.

‘It’s beautifully tranquil, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Hard to believe that Paris is just out there.’ She turned and pointed up into a corner of the main building. ‘You can’t see it because of the lower roof on this side. But there’s a painted panel just below the gable which bears the name Schoelcher. Quite a coincidence, really.’

‘Yes,’ Enzo agreed.

‘I suppose they must have chosen to dedicate the building in his name because of his fight against colonial injustice.’

‘That would make sense.’

‘You know, you’re very fortunate,’ Madame Henry told him. ‘Almost all of the archival material went to Strasbourg with the school. But I suppose when they realised they were going to be tight for space, it made a kind of poetic sense to store the archives from the Schoelcher Promotion here.’

‘It’s very good of you to help’

‘It’s the least we can do. ’ Madame Henry composed a solemn expression. ‘I remember him, you know. The young Hugues d’Hautvillers. He was a character. A stunning intellect. It must be a terrible blow for the family.’

Madame Henry was an attractive woman for her age. Gently old-fashioned. But her soft, brown eyes were filled with a warmth and sympathy which only increased Enzo’s sense of guilt at his deception. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘They’ll be very pleased to receive any mementos you might have of his time here.’

He followed her through a wide arch, and she pushed open glass doors into a lobby at the far end of a long, narrow corridor lined with paintings. Down steps, then, into a gloomy stairwell. Madame Henry indicated the door at the foot of the stairs. ‘It opens on to the street. It used to be the private entrance for overseas students when they lived here in rooms on the upper floors.’ She opened a door to their left. Enzo could see a staircase descending into darkness. She flicked a light switch, and they went down into the cellars.

It was a rabbit warren of brick walls supporting the building above. They were lined with shelves, piled with papers and box files and books, and Madame Henry pointed up to a row of levers high along the facing wall. Ceramic panels beneath them were labelled Séjour, Salle à Manger, Cuisine…‘The original mechanisms,’ she said, ‘for opening up the heating vents around the building.’

He followed her along a dimly lit passage.

‘So much history, just shut away in the dark. Sometimes I wonder what purpose there is in keeping it all. And then someone like you comes along, and you realise why.’ She stopped, and started searching through files along upper shelves which were labelled alphabetically. ‘Fascinating thing, history. You wouldn’t know it now, but this place was built on the site of a former monastery, established by the monks of the Order of Chartreux in 1257. They dug the stone to build it out of the ground underneath, and created a network of tunnels and salles down there in the process. Somewhere right below where we’re standing now. They used them for the brewing of beer and the distillation of liqueur. I’m sure you’ve heard of Green Chartreuse.’

‘Yes,’ Enzo said.

‘Well, this is where they used to make it. Right beneath your feet.’ She moved along the shelf. ‘Ah. Here we are.’ And she drew a box file out from among the others. ‘Schoelcher.’ She took the file to a table and opened it up, and began riffling through wads of documentation. Finally, a gasp of satisfaction. ‘Ah-ha.’ She pulled out a photograph. ‘I knew there would be one somewhere.’ Enzo peered at it in the poor light. It was a black and white group photograph, like any school photograph. Something more than a hundred pupils and professors, arranged in five ascending rows in front of a long building, all smiling for the camera. It was captioned,

Straight away, he spotted Gaillard sitting near the middle of the front row, hands folded in his lap, legs crossed, looking faintly bored. Neither Hugues nor Roques were immediately apparent. ‘I can have a copy of this made upstairs,’ Madame Henry said. Then from deep in the box she pulled out a VHS video tape marked 1994-96. She waggled it triumphantly. ‘Each promotion makes its own video record of the year. A pretty amateur hotchpotch. But I’m sure Hugues will be on it somewhere. If you want to wait about twenty minutes, I can have a copy made of that, too.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ Enzo said. ‘You wouldn’t have a list of all the students from the Schoelcher Promotion, would you? It may be that the family will want to contact some of them.’

‘Yes, there’ll be a list in the annuaire. I can photocopy that for you in the blink of an eye.’

Enzo sat in the still of the courtyard, sunlight sloping in across the rooftops. Through glass doors leading to the entrance lobby, he could see delegates coming and going from a conference in the amphitheatre. He had been staring for some time at the copy of the photograph that Madame Henry had made for him. By now he had identified both Hugues d’Hautvillers and Philippe Roques among the rows of faces. He looked at all the others, and wondered how many more of them had been responsible for the murder of their maître. Most of them seemed so young, such innocence in all their open, smiling faces. He turned to the photocopied list of names and ran his eye down them. And there they were. D’HAUTVILLERS Hugues, and ROQUES Philippe, and one hundred and twelve other names. In his hand he held the faces and the names of Gaillard’s killers. He had identified two of them. Both were dead. He had no way of knowing if he would ever unmask the others. And if he did, how long they would live.

Madame Henry bustled into the courtyard and he stood up. ‘There.’ She handed him a large manila envelope containing the video tape. ‘All done.’

Enzo slipped the photograph and the list of names in beside it. ‘Thank you very much, madame.’

‘Oh, it was the least I could do.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘Please pass on my condolences to the family.’

IV

It was less than five minutes’ walk from the Rue de l’Observatoire to the underground parking in the Rue St. Jacques. Enzo’s overnight bag was still in his car, along with a change of clothes. He had felt uncomfortable all day wearing a forgotten shirt and slacks left at Charlotte’s place by Raffin. It was a constant reminder of a history Enzo cared not to know about. There had been nearly half a wardrobe of Raffin’s things in her bedroom. Enzo didn’t like to think of Charlotte expending the same sexual energy and passion on Raffin that she had on him. But he knew they’d had a long relationship.

The car park was on three levels in the basement of an apartment building between the Rue des Feuillantines and the Rue des Ursalines. Raffin’s lockup was two down. Raffin had been unable to give Enzo a key for the elevator, but told him he could get access by walking down the ramp. Enzo left the late afternoon sunshine behind him as he slowly descended the steeply curving concrete. The first level was deserted. Night-lights cast a faint gloom among the shadows of the cars. Ten lockups along either side of a central lane. Each with its own up-and-over door, each parking space separated from the other by a metal grille. Raffin had left the door of his lockup open so that Enzo could pick up his car any time he liked.

He carried on down the next ramp, and noticed that the overhead lamps were not working. A feeble, flickering yellow light followed him down from above, but as he approached the second level he seemed to be descending into absolute darkness. By the time he reached the foot of the ramp, he could not see his hands in front of his face. He knew that somewhere there was a light switch. But he had no idea where. This was infuriating. It was his intention to drive back to Cahors tonight, a good six hours by car. He was anxious to get on the road as soon as possible.

At the far end of the aisle he could see now the faint glow of an exit light above the door leading to the elevator. Raffin’s lockup, he knew, was right next to it. With his hands held out in front of him, he walked forwards, very gingerly, until his fingers touched cold metal. The door of a lockup. It rattled beneath his touch, and he moved cautiously along, from one door to the next. He was beginning to be able to see by the light of the exit sign, and for the first time vague shapes were taking form. His hands disappeared into space. Raffin’s lockup. The door was somewhere up above his head. He searched for his car keys and felt the notched rubber on the remote controller. He pressed it, and heard the doors of his car unlock. His sidelights flashed twice. And in that moment, a piece of darkness detached itself from the shadows, warm and heavy, and enveloped him completely. Enzo toppled backwards. He heard the crack of his head as it hit the concrete, and some inner explosion of light filled it. The darkness was on top of him, forcing the breath from his lungs, and Enzo realised it had hands. Hands made soft by woollen gloves. One of them was around his neck.

Enzo panicked, bucking and kicking, but the darkness was stubbornly strong, pinning him to the floor. And then he saw the merest flash of light reflected from the exit sign as a blade rose above him, and he realised that his attacker was about to plunge a knife into his chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ he heard a breathless voice whisper in the dark.

‘What!’ Enzo gasped in disbelief. He grabbed his attacker’s wrist before it could begin its deadly descent. But he immediately felt the strength in the man’s arm, and knew that it was stronger than his. He would not be able to resist its power. With his other hand, he clutched at the face above him, and felt hot breath through a woollen mask. Desperate fingers found the eye holes, and he clawed at them with all his strength. The man’s scream reverberated around the car park, and immediately the pressure of the knife arm was released. Enzo heard the blade go clattering away across the concrete in the dark, and both of his attacker’s hands flew to his face to prise Enzo’s fingers away. Which gave Enzo the chance to ball his fist and throw it hard in the direction of the man’s head. It made contact with a sharp crack, and he only barely heard the man’s cry above his own. Bone on bone was a painful experience.

Sudden light flooded their conflict. Hard, yellow light, that fell from a gaping crack in the wall. Enzo turned his head and saw a young couple framed in the exit door, the stairway illuminated behind them. The girl screamed. Enzo looked up to see his attacker’s black, masked head turn towards her, and he grabbed the mask with both hands and tore it away. For a confusing moment, it seemed as if there was another mask beneath it. And then Enzo realised that his attacker was black. He saw frightened rabbit eyes turn briefly towards him in the dark, and then the man was up and running in the direction of the ramp. Soft footsteps slapping concrete, all shape and form quickly consumed by shadow.

The young couple seemed frozen by fear as Enzo staggered to his feet, shocked and groggy, and still reeling from the dawning realisation of just how close he had come to being murdered. These young people could easily have opened the door to find his body lying bleeding on the car park floor. He swallowed hard to stop himself from being sick and stooped to pick up his manila envelope.

‘Are you all right?’ the young man asked tentatively.

‘I’m fine,’ Enzo said. As fine, he thought, as anyone could be who had just fought off an attempted murder. And he remembered his attacker’s whispered apology. I’m sorry. Sorry! It filled Enzo as much with anger as confusion.

Enzo winced as Charlotte dabbed the back of his head with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic. She shook her head. ‘Enzo, this is getting to be a habit.’

‘It’s not funny, Charlotte. That guy really was trying to kill me.’ A lump the size of an egg had come up on the back of his head. Blood had coagulated and stuck to his hair. ‘Ow!’ He jerked away from her hand. ‘I hope you take better care of your patients’ minds.’

She grabbed his ponytail. ‘Hold still. Why are men such babies over a little pain?’ And she dabbed him with more antiseptic. ‘You can’t go back to Cahors now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if they knew where you’d parked your car, do you not think they’ll know where you live?’

‘Well, if they do, then they’ll probably know where you live, too.’ Enzo had driven like a maniac through the fifth arrondissement into the thirteenth and abandoned his car half on the pavement outside Charlotte’s warehouse.

Charlotte paused, and acknowledged the thought with a grave nod of her head. ‘So they might come looking for you here.’

‘Jesus, Charlotte, I’m not cut out for this sort of thing. My strengths are cerebral, not physical. Maybe I should go to the police.’

‘And tell them what? That someone’s trying to murder you for pursuing an investigation they’ve twice asked you to stop?’

‘Hmmm.’ Enzo paused to think about it. ‘You might have a point.’

Charlotte handed him a clean wad of gauze. ‘Here, press that against the back of your head until the bleeding stops.’ She tidied away the bits and pieces of her first aid kit from the kitchen worktop. ‘Give me fifteen minutes to change and pack a bag.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘My parents have a holiday home in the Corrèze. It’s an old farmhouse. A little primitive. Very remote. We used to go there for our holidays every year when I was a kid. I still use it when I want to escape from everything. My little hidey-hole away from the world. I think we’ll be pretty safe there.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s after six already. We’ll be lucky if we get there by midnight.’