Peter May - Extraordinary People

Enzo was confused, uncertain of what he was supposed to be seeing. ‘Where’s the head?’

Bellin smiled. ‘You’re looking at it. Digital photographs of it manipulated by software, hair and whiskers superimposed and morphed on to the image.’ He hit a key, and an extraordinarily lifelike 3D image of the head began slowly revolving on the screen.

Enzo heard Charlotte gasp and glanced at her across the room. Her eyes were fixed on the image. ‘It’s him,’ she whispered.

Enzo looked back to the screen. ‘It certainly looks like him. But it’s not proof.’

‘How can you prove it, then?’ she asked.

‘DNA,’ Bellin said.

Enzo asked him, ‘Do you still have the skull?’

‘Of course.’ Bellin stooped to open a cupboard door. A row of seven or eight skulls sat side by side on the bottom shelf. He checked the labels, and then lifted one of them out and placed it on the table. The repair work around the lower mandible, where it had been smashed, was evident.

Enzo gazed at it curiously and felt the hairs lift up on the back of his neck. He had no doubt he was looking at Jacques Gaillard’s skull. He said to Charlotte, ‘When the Americans sent forensic pathologists to Bosnia in the nineties to try to identify bodies found in mass graves, they employed a new technique which allowed them to extract a DNA profile from old bones by, literally, grinding them down. It’s a technique more recently employed in Iraq.’ He looked at Bellin. ‘Your people can do this by grinding down a piece of the skull, can’t they?’

Bellin inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘We can have a result in twenty-four hours.’

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.’

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.’