Freeze Frames

Part Two
Chapter Eleven

The bar adjoined the Auberge du Pecheur along the north gable, with windows looking out over the harbour. It was dark when Enzo climbed the steps to its door in search of a digestif after his bowl of pasta in the Thon Bleu, just a couple of hundred meters up the road.

He had no real desire to return to his cold bedroom above Killian’s study, to sit on his own, haunted by the man and the mystery he had left behind him. He felt the need of something to warm him from the inside on this frosty night at the end of a frustrating day.

The search for Killian’s physician had brought no real enlightenment, and he had spent the rest of the day acquainting himself with the island, driving out to its northwest tip and the lighthouse at Pen Men. There, an inhospitable sea devoured the coastline, eating into its hard, black gneiss, creating sheer cliffs and treacherous inlets where it vented its frustration in wave after wave of foaming spume. Then he had driven south-west, through the small coastal town of Locmaria, to the rocky outcrop of the Pointe des Chats, where he had stood warming himself in the late fall sunshine, gazing out over calmer seas.

There were perhaps a dozen customers in the bar when he entered. Heads turned out of habit to register the newcomer, and a spontaneous silence fell across the tables. A strange, self-conscious silence that no one seemed to know how to break.

Enzo was almost amused by it. He smiled and nodded. “ Bonsoir,” he said, and walked the length of the room to the bar, aware of all the eyes upon him. He heard a murmur of bonsoir s in return, and someone cleared his throat noisily. But not a single conversation resumed. The barman was a man in his thirties, with shoulder-length hair and steel-rimmed glasses, tall and thin. He wore a polo-neck sweater, and jeans that hung loose from skinny hips. He seemed quite unfazed.

He nodded. “Monsieur Macleod,” he said, as if Enzo was a regular. “What can I get you tonight?” Enzo looked beyond him to the crowded shelves above the counter, and saw to his surprise that they were well-stocked with good Scotch and Irish whisky.

“I’ll have a Glenlivet.”

“Would that be the twelve- or the fifteen-year-old, monsieur?”

“Let’s live dangerously and go for the fifteen.”

As the barman lifted down the bottle, Enzo glanced around the bar. Dark varnished beams supported its sloping ceiling, and framed pictures, mostly of boats or the sea, crowded every available wall space. A gathering of curtains framed the windows and doors. The faces at darkwood tables were still turned in his direction.

“Well,” he said, startling them, as if they had thought they were invisible. They had not, he was certain, expected that he would speak to them. “Since I seem to have your undivided attention, I wonder if there is anyone here who might be able to tell me something about Thibaud Kerjean.”

Silence.

The barman banged Enzo’s whisky down on the bar top. “You’ll not find anyone here with a good word to say about Kerjean.”

Enzo poured a little water in his whisky and lifted his glass. “Why’s that?”

“Cos he’s a murderous, drunken bastard, and treats his women like shit!” This came from a big man sitting with two others at a table in the far corner.”

“Murderous?”

“Everyone knows he murdered the Englishman. We don’t need you to come here and tell us that.”

“Well, I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to,” Enzo said. “Because I don’t know who murdered Adam Killian.” He took a sip of his whisky and enjoyed the aromatic flavour of it that filled his mouth and the warmth of it slipping over his throat. Then he added, “Yet.” He gazed around the eyes all turned in his direction. “How do you know he treats his women like shit?”

A thin man with a cloth cap pulled at an angle over his forehead said, “Everyone knows he beats up his women.”

“Does he? They tell you that, these women, do they?”

“It’s common knowledge,” another man said.

Enzo nodded. “I notice you say women, plural. So there have obviously been more than one of them. Why do you think that is, if he beats them up?”

The barman leaned forward on his elbows. “Because they can’t resist him, monsieur. God knows what it is he’s got, but he’s never without one. Even after the murder. In a strange way that seemed to make him even more exotic. But he’s a violent man, make no mistake about that. Feral, I would call him. And unpredictable with a drink in him.”

“And why would he want to murder Killian?” He knew the answer to that. Raffin had dealt with the arrest and trial of Kerjean in the book. But he wanted to hear what the islanders thought.

“Because he ratted on him.” This from the big man in the corner again.

And someone else piped up. “And over a woman, too. You might have known it would be. The man’s little head rules his big one every time.” Which raised a laugh around the bar.

“The thing is, monsieur…” The barman straightened up and placed his palms flat on the bar in front of him. “Most people here depend on tourism for their living these days. Either directly, or indirectly.” He adjusted his glasses, as if refocusing on Enzo. “There was a 15 percent fall in visitors to the island the year after the murder. People who want to come and lie on the beach, or walk the tourist trails around the island don’t want to think that there’s a murderer on the loose. But over time, it was all forgotten.”

“Until Raffin’s book came out, and suddenly it was in all the papers again.” The man with the cloth cap was casting an unpleasant look in Enzo’s direction.

The barman said, “We took another hit then, too.”

“And now you’ve come to rake it all up again.” This was an older man, bearded, sitting by one of the windows, his leg up on the adjoining chair.

Enzo felt the hostility in the bar directed at him. “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. And there will always be a next time, and a next. Until Kerjean either leaves or dies. Or someone solves the mystery and puts an end to it once and for all.”

“And that would be you, would it, monsieur?” The big man who had first spoken glowered across the room at the Scotsman, and for the first time Enzo felt real pressure to solve this case. His very presence was raising both hostility and expectations. If he didn’t meet the latter, he could only expect more of the former.

“I can’t guarantee that.”

“You people never do.”

The outside door opened, and cold air flooded in with a man wearing a donkey jacket buttoned up to the neck. Oil smears stained jeans worn thin at the knee, and mud and scuff-marks took the shine off thick-soled leather boots. Greasy dark hair was swept back from a broad forehead and hung limply over his upturned collar. Big hands were thrust deep in his jacket pockets, and the hubbub of conversation that had struck up once again fell away as sharply as it had on Enzo’s entrance.

For a moment, Enzo wondered where he knew this man from, before he realised with a shock that it was the same man who had confronted him as he disembarked from the ferry. It was Kerjean, blue Celtic eyes glaring darkly from a face scarred by time and fighting, but which was, nonetheless, still handsome in a brutal sort of way. Enzo had formed no clear impression of him in the rain at the jetty, except for his sense of menace. Now he felt the man’s presence, which was something more than just physical. There was an aura about him, a dark charisma. And there wasn’t a man in that bar who didn’t feel it and perhaps fear it, maybe even envy it.

Kerjean paused momentarily, to cast an appraising glance around the room, then advanced to the bar. Enzo thought he detected a slight unsteadiness in the man’s gait, and immediately smelled the drink on his breath as he arrived next to him, ignoring him, keeping his focus on the barman. “Guinness,” he said.

The barman nodded, lifting a tall glass from the shelf, and slipping it beneath the tap to pour a pint of draught.

“Still here, Macleod?” Kerjean’s gaze was fixed now on his pint glass, as the fine, creamy stout tumbled into it, settling to black as the glass filled.

“No, I took the first ferry back to the mainland after you warned me off.”

There was a murmur of laughter in the bar.

Kerjean’s head came round sharply, and he turned dangerous eyes on Enzo. “You think you’re smart, monsieur.”

Enzo shrugged. “Smart enough, maybe, to figure out who killed Adam Killian.”

“Oh? And who was that, then?”

“I’ve no idea. I thought perhaps you could tell me.”

“How could I do that?”

“It seems you knew him.”

“I came across him once. He was breathing when we met, and he was breathing when we parted.” The barman slid the islander’s pint across the counter, and Kerjean took a long pull at it, before using the back of his hand to wipe away the creamy froth it deposited on his upper lip. “You can read all about it in the transcript of the trial.”

“I will.”

Kerjean placed his pint carefully on the bar and turned to face Enzo directly. Although he was a big man, Enzo was taller. And while Enzo was churning inside, he was determined not to let it show on the outside. So he met the islander’s eyes with an equally steady gaze and stood his ground. The tension in the bar was palpable, its patrons playing audience to a piece of pure theatre. “I was tried, I was acquitted. And if you, or anyone else, wants to suggest otherwise, I’ll punch his fucking lights out.”

“The only light I will be shining, Monsieur Kerjean, is on the truth. But if that’s something you want to keep in the dark, then maybe you have something to hide.”

Kerjean’s gaze was unwavering. “I could take you down with a single strike, you arrogant big bastard.”

Enzo didn’t doubt if for a moment. But the last thing he could afford to do was show that. “You could try,” he said, and detected the anticipation in the bar that came with an almost collective intake of breath.

Cold air brushed the side of his face and swirled around his legs, and he heard the outside door opening once more. But whoever had opened it wasn’t shutting it behind him. Enzo reluctantly tore his eyes away from Kerjean’s and turned his head to see Adjudant Richard Gueguen standing in the open doorway. The gendarme was out of uniform, wearing a brown leather airman’s jacket above jeans that contertinad over heavy brogues, the long peak of a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His hands pushed themselves into his pockets for warmth. It took no more than a glance for him to appraise the situation. “Go home, Kerjean,” he said.

Kerjean kept his eyes on Enzo. “I just ordered a drink.”

“You’ve had enough already, unless you’re angling to spend the night in one of our guest rooms.”

Enzo saw Kerjean’s jaw tightening. Clearly a night in one of Gueguen’s freezing police cells was less than appealing. Finally, reluctantly, he dragged his eyes away from Enzo to look at Gueguen. “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not even on duty.”

“A gendarme’s always on duty.” Gueguen stepped aside to clear a path for Kerjean to make his exit. “Goodnight.”

Kerjean’s fury simmered silently inside him. He half turned his head toward Enzo, but this time didn’t meet his eye. “We’ll talk again.”

“I’m sure we will.”

Kerjean turned and walked briskly past the gendarme and out into the dark. Gueguen closed the door behind him and approached the bar.

“He never paid for that pint,” the barman said.

Gueguen dug into his pocket and pulled out a five-euro bill, dropping it on the counter.

Enzo said, “Can I get you a drink?”

The gendarme shook his head. “No, thank you. And I would suggest, monsieur, that you drink up and go home yourself.”

Enzo wasn’t about to argue. “Perhaps you’re right.” He drained his glass and settled up with the barman. “ Bonsoir.” He nodded at all the faces turned toward him and headed out into the night. At the foot of the steps he saw Kerjean disappearing in the direction of the harbourside bars, whose lights still reflected on the dark waters of the bay. He heard the door closing behind him and turned to see Gueguen following him out. He waited until the gendarme got down to the sidewalk. “It wouldn’t have hurt. One drink. Would it?”

“Monsieur, if I had accepted a drink from you, it would have been all over the island before morning.”

“So what were you doing in the bar, then? Out solo drinking or here to meet friends?”

“A gendarme has no friends. I was keeping an eye on you.”

“Oh?” Enzo raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Following me, were you?”

“I saw your rental Jeep up the road. A good thing I stopped by. Kerjean would have murdered you.”

“Like he murdered Killian?”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

Enzo grinned. “I know. And you’re right. He would have. But I have my own personal guardian angel.” He craned to peer over Gueguen’s shoulder. “How the hell do you get your wings tucked in there?”

“I had them clipped. I don’t work for the big man any more, you see. The pay was better downstairs.”

“I didn’t think gendarmes earned that much.”

“They don’t. The reward is that you get to be part of one of the most feared and hated institutions in France.” He laughed ruefully. “That’s why we have no friends, monsieur. Only colleagues.”

Enzo smiled. There was something likeable about this man. A fine, dry humour, and a sense of resolve and fair play that made you feel he was someone you could depend on in a crisis. “The other day, you said to me you would help me in any way you could. Unofficially.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I’d like to know a bit more about Thibaud Kerjean, adjudant. The circumstances surrounding his arrest, exactly why investigating officers at the time thought he was their man. You were here. Uniquely placed to see it all first-hand. I’d appreciate your insights.”

For the first time Gueguen seemed uneasy. He glanced up the road and then down toward the harbour. “Not here. I don’t really want to be seen talking to you, Monsieur Macleod. You can bet there are eyes on us right now.”

“Where, then?”

“I’ll meet you tomorrow. Two o’clock, at the Fort de Grognon. Do you know where that is?”

“I saw it signposted this afternoon when I was driving out to Pen Men.”

“You’ll find it on any of the tourist maps. We’re not likely to be disturbed there. And it’s a place with an important bearing on the telling of the story.” His breath billowed around his head like smoke in the light of the streetlamps. He flexed frozen cheeks to bare his teeth in a grin. “It’s an interesting tale.”

Lights fell out from the house across the dirt track leading along the coast to Les Grands Sables, and the gate squeaked on its hinges as Enzo pushed it open. He felt obliged to call in to say goodnight before heading across the lawn to the cold of the annex.

As he closed the gate again, he turned and looked out across the strait toward the mainland. An almost full moon hung low in a clear, black sky, reflecting in coruscating shards across the silvered surface of the ocean. The coastline between Lorient and Vannes was delineated by a line of lights like tiny glowing beads on a taut thread stretched along the horizon.

“Admiring the view?”

He turned, surprised, to see Jane Killian standing in the open doorway, light tumbling out around her and into the garden. He hadn’t heard her open the door.

“It’s a stunning night.”

“In the summer, on a night like this, you can light a fire on the beach and sit out with a bottle of wine, talking into the small hours. You can even go in bathing if you feel like it. We get the full benefit of the gulf stream here. The water’s always warm.”

“Not right now, I’ll bet.”

She laughed. “No.” Then her smile faded. “I was expecting you back earlier. I prepared a meal. But I guess you’ve probably eaten by now.”

“Oh.” Enzo felt suddenly guilty. And at the same time annoyed. He didn’t want to feel obliged to spend his evenings with her. He wasn’t a house guest, after all. But perhaps he should have called to say he was eating in town. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”

“It’s okay. It was a casserole. It’ll keep till tomorrow.”

Which trapped him into eating with her then. Enzo succumbed to a sudden sense of claustrophobia. For all that the Ile de Groix was a flat stretch of rock set in an open sea, he felt cornered by its insularity, by his ability to escape it only when the ferry timetable allowed, and by the social obligations to his hostess that it seemed were impossible to avoid.

“Come in and have a drink,” she said. And he didn’t see how he could politely refuse.

They went into the house, and she poured him a large whisky, and refilled a glass sitting on a small table beside her chair. Enzo wondered how many times she’d filled it already this evening. It was clear that she had been drinking. She was not drunk, or even mellow in the way that a few whiskies can sometimes affect you, but she held herself stiffly, with a kind of brittle self-control. She sat down, her legs folded up beneath her on the chair, and turned a penetrating gaze in Enzo’s direction. “You’d think,” she said, “that after twenty years you’d get used to being lonely.”

Enzo sipped on his whisky and looked reflectively into the dying embers of the fire. “I don’t think you ever get used to it. You get to tolerate it after a while. It becomes a way of life.”

“You’ve had other lovers, though?”

“Oh, yes. There have been a few. Nothing that ever stuck. In a strange way, being with other women just served to remind me of what I was missing, without ever satisfying the need.” He glanced toward her, suddenly self-conscious, and wondered why he was telling her this. The whisky, perhaps. Or maybe it was simply that sharing your loneliness in some way helped to reduce it. At least for a while.

“Yes,” she said. “Your needs never go away. Just the means of fulfilling them. Funny, isn’t it, how you fill your life with other things? Work becomes a passion. Hobbies become addictions. But at the end of the day, it’s still just you. And an empty glass.”

“And an obsession with keeping a promise to a dead man?”

She turned her eyes down toward her glass, as if she might find a suitable response somewhere in its gentle amber. But “yes” was all she said. She raised it to her lips and took a small sip. “So what did you find out today?”

“Not much. Your father-in-law’s doctor is still alive. But only just, and lost in a world beyond our reach. I did see his medical records, though, but all they did was confirm what we already knew. That he was terminally ill and not long for this world.”

“Not much return for a day’s work, then.”

Enzo was stung. “Nothing comes fast in this job, Jane. The whole point of forensic science is the examination of everything in minute detail. Conclusions are only arrived at after careful analysis of all the evidence.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as a criticism. You’d think I would have learned patience after all these years. The truth is, the more time passes the more impatient I become. It’s a kind of desperation, I guess, a loss of self-control. And in the end, I suppose what it really means is that I’ve lost hope.” And then, as if she had somehow accessed and replayed his thoughts of the previous evening, she added, “So relax, Enzo, you’re not my last hope. That’s long gone.” She smiled, but it was an unconvincing smile.

Enzo recalled the vision of her in the window the previous night, undressing to her bra and panties, almost as if she had been putting on a show for him. She was a good-looking woman, signalling a sublimated sexuality. And he wondered why he didn’t feel more attracted to her. Perhaps, he thought, the bitterness he perceived in her was muting his usually healthy appetite. He decided to change the focus of their conversation. “I’m meeting someone tomorrow at the Ford de Grognon. Do you have a map I could take with me, so I don’t get lost?”

She laughed. “It’s not easy to get lost on this island, Enzo. There are only a handful of roads.” She got up and crossed to the bureau where she found a creased and dog-eared trifold tourist plan of the island. She came and crouched by his chair and watched as he opened it up on his thighs. “There.” She stabbed a finger at the northwest corner of the island. A small, white square marked the position of the fort. “Just follow the main road out toward the lighthouse at Pen Men, then take the turn-off for Quelhuit and follow the road toward Beg Melen. There’s a military signalling station out there. But there’s a turn-off to the fort on the right before you reach it.”

“The fort belongs to the military, too?”

“Not any longer. It’s nineteenth-century, I think, but abandoned now. And comes under the control of the mairie, I believe. You’ll see there’s a smaller fort right down on the coast below it. Predates it by a hundred years or so. They were built originally to protect the entry to the harbour at Lorient. Which is exactly what the Germans used them for during the Occupation. They had huge guns mounted up there to provide cover for the submarine base on the mainland. Didn’t do much to protect the town from the Allied bombing raids, though.”

“Is it open to the public?”

“No, it’s usually kept locked up. But I think the mairie uses it as a base for youth activities from to time.” She paused. “Who are you meeting there?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential, Jane.”

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed that he wasn’t prepared to share with her.

“But I understand it’s an important location in terms of your father-in-law’s relationship with Kerjean.”

“Yes.” She looked thoughtful. “They met there for the first time. And the last, according to Kerjean.”

“They had arranged to meet?”

“No. It was pure chance. Engineered by fate, perhaps.” And she laughed, a laugh soured by that ever-present edge of bitterness. “Fate again. But it was a meeting that might very well, in the end, have led to his death.”

Moonlight laid the dark shadows of trees across the lawn toward the annex. Enzo was almost at the door when a movement, caught in the corner of his eye, made him turn sharply to his right. He stood stock still for a moment, but saw nothing, straining in the dark to give shape to whatever had passed through his peripheral vision. He scanned the imposing form of the trees standing black against the night and saw leaves that fell like snowflakes through the light of the moon, detached by the slight breeze that stirred amongst the branches overhead. Frost-brittle leaves, lying now in drifts on the grass.

He was about to turn back toward the door when this time a sound made him stop dead in his tracks. A sound like footsteps among the leaves. Soft, cautious footfalls. And then suddenly, out of the shadows, a silhouette emerged, green eyes glowing in the night, to stop and stare at him, resentment or anger burning in their gaze.

Enzo breathed more easily again. “Damn cat!” he muttered under his breath. It was the second time the creature had startled him. He waved an arm at it. “Shoo!” But it stood, defiant and still, watching from what it clearly felt was a safe distance. Enzo unlocked the door and went into the annex, shutting it quickly behind him again, and stood in the silence of the hall, washed by the cold, harsh light in the stairwell.

The door of the study stood ajar, as he had left it, a finger of light from the hall reaching across the floorboards to touch the books on the shelves beyond. He was almost tempted to go in, to sit with Killian in his long empty chair, and try to find a way inside his head. But he was tired, and somehow Killian seemed to have made greater inroads into Enzo’s mind than the Scotsman had made into his. So he made a conscious effort to free his thoughts of both Killian and his killer, to empty his mind, and climb the stairs to a cold bed, and the oblivion of sleep.

As on the previous evening, the little bedroom was awash with moonlight, and he refrained from turning on the electric light. But as he turned to drape his jacket over the chair, he saw, once more, the light in the window opposite framed clearly by the black of the night. Jane Killian was again engaged in the process of undressing herself in full view.

She had already removed her top, and was wearing only her black bra and jeans. Reflexively, Enzo turned away. He could have stood and watched, in the certain knowledge that she could not possibly have seen him. But he was discomfited by the thought that she was undressing herself in the full glare of electric light to make him do just that. He felt manipulated, as if she were testing his male libido, sensing his lack of sexual interest in her from the start.

He stripped down to his boxers and threw back the bed covers. But, as before, he could not resist a final look. And this time saw her standing completely naked in the window, gazing out across the grass toward the annex. To his intense annoyance, he felt the first stirrings of sexual desire in his loins, and he slipped quickly between the cold sheets to douse them. He shivered and curled up on his side, pulling the blanket tight around his chin.

He closed his eyes and conjured up an image of Charlotte, with her shining, black eyes and her long, curling locks tumbling across square shoulders. Then recalled with dismay his last meeting with her at the Boneparte in Paris. Let me know when you’re in town again, and I’ll apply for an audience, she had said, as if he were the one who made it difficult for them to be together.

He flipped over on to his other side and screwed his eyes tight shut, trying to expunge the memory from him mind. As sleep descended like an angel of the night, the space it left was immediately filled by Killian’s ghost. He drifted off into restless dreams of half-warmed fish.