Peter May - Extraordinary People

There was a huge radio mast here, clustered with antennae and satellite dishes, a telescope for daytime tourists to view Cahors more closely from on high. Enzo perched on a bench below the balustrade, and Mont St. Cyr fell away sheer beneath him. He had come here the night she died. There had seemed no reason, then, to go on living. He had been consumed by grief and self-pity, drawn to the precipice. He had given up everything for her, and now she was gone. But almost as if she knew he would need a reason, she had left him one. A tiny part of herself. A little pink-faced, crusty-eyed screaming bundle wrapped in swaddling blankets that he had hardly been able to bring himself to hold. And as he sat here that night, wrestling with his darkest demons, she had been the only light in a very black place. A light drawing him back to sanity, to responsibility, to life.

He had come here often since then. It was a place that symbolised hope, a place where he knew that however lonely he might feel, he was not alone.

Tonight he had drunk too much at Le Forum, and then eaten alone in a tiny bistro off the Place de la Libération. He had not wanted to go back to the apartment, to face an evening alone with Nicole, the conversation of a nineteen-year-old, the awful temptation of those cantaloupe breasts. Alcohol had a habit of weakening the resolve. And that was not something he would have been able to live with in the cold light of day. And, so, here he was, on this hot summer’s night, in the same place he had been almost twenty years before. Nothing much had changed, except that he was almost twenty years older, the pink-faced bundle was on the verge of womanhood, and he was still alone.

Tonight, though, he was wrestling with different demons. A man’s murder. His killer, or killers. He had a sense that there must have been more than one of them. To have carried the dismembered corpse of a pig into the church and then taken away Gaillard’s body on his own seemed a monumental task for one man. And if there were more than one, then this was not just murder, but conspiracy to murder. For which there had to be some compelling reason. Something, perhaps, which Gaillard knew, that his killers did not want him to reveal. They had successfully made him disappear, concealing for ten years the fact that he had been murdered, so nobody had ever looked for a reason. Until now.

The most puzzling things were the clues left with the skull. For Enzo had no doubt that that’s what they were. But what possible reason could they have had for leaving them in the trunk — a trunk which, clearly, they had hoped would never be found? And where on earth would they lead, if indeed Enzo was capable of ever deciphering their meaning?

He heard a car coming up the drive through the trees behind him and sighed. He was no longer alone. In recent years the viewpoint had become a popular place for young men to bring their copines . A romantic spot for back seat seduction. Reluctantly, Enzo rose from the bench and took the footpath back through the trees to where he had left his car by the basketball courts. He did not want to be accused of spying on courting couples. He saw the headlights of the car rake past the radio mast and draw to a stop at the balustrade. The engine was cut and the lights went out, and looking back Enzo could see the silhouettes of the young couple through the rear windscreen as their heads came together in a kiss. And he wondered if Sophie had ever been up here. Which led his thoughts to Bertrand, and he felt a stab of anger that his daughter should be taken from him by such a wastrel. Surely to God she deserved better?

He got into his car and started the engine, turning in the moonlight and driving several hundred meters downhill before putting on his lights. There was no point in spooking the young lovers.

The apartment was in darkness when he got back. It was after midnight. Sophie was not yet home. Her bedroom door stood ajar, and he could see moonlight slanting across the crumpled sheets of her empty bed. Nicole’s door was closed. He listened outside it for a moment and could hear her gentle breathing, almost a purr. She was asleep. He went quietly to his own room and eased the door shut. He undressed quickly in the moonlight which washed across the rooftops and through his open window, and slipped into bed.

For a long time he lay thinking of French medals and gold bees and stethoscopes. Of Napoléon and doctors. Before slipping into a shallow, restless sleep. He surfaced again, when he heard Sophie come in, and he glanced at the digital bedside clock. It was a quarter past two. He could never really sleep until he knew she was home. She went into her room, closing the door softly, and he heard her moving about, undressing, and then the creak of her bed as she climbed into it. What did she see in Bertrand?

And then he was dreaming of blood on a darkened altar. Great pools of it, blackened by the dark. He looked up and saw that it was dripping from the cross overhead, which toppled suddenly forward, landing with a crash on the altar. And he sat up with a start. His heart was pounding. He had heard something. Not the falling cross in his dream. Something real. Something that had wakened him. He looked at the clock. Nearly an hour had passed since he heard Sophie come in. Then there it was again. It sounded like something falling to the floor. And it was in the apartment.

Enzo slipped out of bed and crossed to the door, very slowly easing it open. He could see across the landing that Sophie’s door was shut. As was Nicole’s. And then a floorboard creaked in the front room, and Enzo saw a shadow cross the door frame. There was someone moving about in the séjour .

Enzo looked around his room for something that he might use as a weapon. But there was nothing immediately apparent. He thought of Raffin and his History of the World , and would have been grateful even for that. In the end he settled for one of his heavy winter brogues which he snatched from the bottom of the wardrobe. He clutched it in his right hand, level with his head, and made his way cautiously into the hall, dressed only in his boxer shorts.

He never bothered to lock the front door, and had been meaning for some time to fix the door-entry system downstairs. Now he cursed himself silently on both counts. The moon was at the back of the apartment, and so it was the light of the streetlamps from the square that fell in wedges through the French windows. They lay unevenly across the book-littered floor of the séjour , reaching towards the open double doors leading to the hall.

Enzo could hear the blood rushing in his ears. It was so loud he was convinced the intruder would be able to hear it too. He saw a shadow move across his line of vision, and he knew he had to strike while he still had surprise on his side. He moved swiftly through the hall and caught his shin on something hard and sharp, and called out in pain as he pitched forward, headlong into the séjour . His head sank into something soft and giving, and he heard a loud grunt. Both he and the intruder went sprawling across the floor. Enzo found himself lying on top of a large man breathing stertorously into his face. The smell of garlic and stale alcohol was almost overpowering.

Enzo was a big man himself, fit from years of cycling, but bigger hands grabbed his shoulders and lifted him bodily aside. The intruder roared, and before Enzo could move was on top of him. A huge, crushing weight. Now Enzo smelled body odour, the rank stink of stale sweat, and he had no choice but to breath it in as he gasped for breath. He felt hands at his throat, coarse digits like rusted steel, and he reached up in desperation to dig fingers into the man’s face, searching for his eyes, and finding a great thatch of wiry hair. He grasped two handfuls and pulled with all his might. His attacker howled and released his stranglehold on Enzo’s neck and tried to free himself from the grip on his hair.