Peter May - Extraordinary People

At Argelès railway station on the Mediterranean coast, almost within sight of Spain, he was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Perpignan. Outside the Gestapo headquarters he attempted to escape and was shot twice.

Enzo looked again at the photograph of Roques. A man who had loved his country and done everything in his power to secure its freedom, shot down in the street by brutish occupiers who shared neither his intelligence nor his culture. His smile seemed sad now. He had not lived to see his country freed from Nazi tyranny.

Enzo’s eyes drifted back to the final paragraphs of Roques’ story and he felt a wave of pins and needles prickle across his scalp.

A loud thump made him turn, and his excitement was momentarily interrupted by the sight of Nicole, fully dressed, standing in the doorway with her large suitcase beside her. She was very pale and avoided meeting his eye. ‘I’ll need a hand down the stairs with my case.’

Enzo was nonplussed. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Home, of course. I can hardly stay after what happened last night.’

Enzo waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, forget about that. Your dad and I sorted everything out. He’s a nice guy.’

Nicole gazed at him in astonishment. ‘He was beating you up.’

‘Yeah, well, understandable. I’d probably have done the same thing.’ Nicole was shaking her head in disbelief, and Enzo said, ‘Look at it this way. It shows how much he loves you.’

Nicole blushed. ‘Well, I wish he would show it some other way.’ She tilted her head and looked at Enzo as if for the first time. ‘Oh, your poor face. You need a cold compress on those bruises.’

‘It’s too late for that.’

But she was already heading for the kitchen, and spotted the empty whisky bottle and the two glasses. ‘Were you two drinking?’

‘We had a couple.’

‘A couple? The bottle’s empty!’

‘Well, it wasn’t exactly full to begin with.’ Enzo wondered why he felt the need to defend himself.

Nicole returned with ice cubes wrapped in a dish towel. ‘Here.’ She pressed it on to his bruised cheek.

He winced. ‘Ow! That’s sore!’ Her large, trembling breasts were on a level with his eyes, and he was momentarily distracted from his pain.

‘I can still smell the alcohol off you,’ she said. ‘You need a coffee and something to eat.’ And then a thought occurred to her. ‘Have you even been back to bed?’

‘Look….’ Enzo pushed the ice from his face. ‘Never mind all that.’ He nodded towards the computer. ‘I’ve made a breakthrough here.’ The Roques biography and his photograph were still up on the screen.

Nicole glanced at it, her interest piqued. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Philippe Roques. Awarded the Ordre de la Libération on May 12th, 1943. He was working for the Resistance until the Gestapo caught him on the south coast. He was shot trying to escape outside the Gestapo building in Perpignan.’

Nicole shrugged and pushed the ice back into Enzo’s face. ‘So what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Well, the thing is, he didn’t die immediately. They rushed him to hospital, where he died in the early hours of the morning.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Guess what the hospital was called?’

She frowned, and thought. And then her face lit up. ‘St. Jacques?’

Enzo grinned. ‘I knew you were smart.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Philippe Roques died in the Hospital St. Jacques in Perpignan. And apart from the connection with our scallop shell, do you know why else that’s important?’

She shook her head and shrugged. ‘I don’t know…Is there a hospital called St. Jacques in Toulouse?’

‘ Et voilà !’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘I’m not. And I bet you know it, even if you don’t know you do. The Hôtel-Dieu St-Jacques. It’s the large, pink-brick building on the west side of the Pont Neuf, right on the river. Only it’s not a hospital any more. Parts of it are open to the public now, and I think there’s a museum there. But originally it was the first big hospital in Toulouse, built sometime in the middle ages, and used as a shelter for centuries by pilgrims on their way to Compostelle.’ In spite of being assaulted by Nicole’s father, his excess of whisky, and his lack of sleep, Enzo’s eyes were shining.

He stood up and hobbled across the room to the whiteboard. All his muscles from the night’s exertions were beginning to stiffen up. He lifted an eraser, wiped out Édouard Méric and wrote Philippe Roques in his place, next to the photograph of the medal. Then he drew an arrow directly to the circle he had made around Toulouse and wrote Hôtel-Dieu St-Jacques underneath it.

‘Everything leads here,’ he said. ‘Everything. Either directly, or indirectly.’ He turned around to see Nicole in his seat at the computer, concentratedly tapping at the keyboard and staring at the screen.

‘Here we are.’ She was triumphant. ‘You were right, there is a museum there now. La Musée d’Histoire de la Médicine de Toulouse. And that makes absolute sense of the antique stethoscope, too. There’s some background about the place on the website.’ She scanned through it. ‘Ah-ha!’ She looked up, her face glowing, all memories of the night before long forgotten. ‘On the 1st of May, 1806, the hospital became the Imperial School of Medicine. And it’s first director?’ She didn’t wait for Enzo to guess. ‘Alexis Larrey — Dominique Larrey’s uncle — who was also appointed professor of anatomy.’ She nodded knowingly. ‘The femur. There’s even a painting of Dominique Larrey here…sorry, Baron Dominique Larrey.’ She pulled a face. ‘Weird-looking guy.’ She tapped some more. ‘And this is interesting. One of the exhibition rooms in the museum has got lots of stuff about him in it.’

‘Then it’s got to be there,’ Enzo said.

‘What has?’

He waved his hand vaguely. ‘I don’t know…A clue. Something that’s going to lead us to Gaillard’s remains.’

Nicole looked horrified. ‘You mean, you think the rest of his body’s there?’

‘Maybe.’

‘How? I mean, how would they get it into the place? Where would they put it? It wouldn’t exactly be easy to hide a body in a museum.’

But Enzo had an inspiration. ‘Wait a minute. The whole place was closed down for several years during the nineties, while it was being renovated. I can remember passing it. It was just like a building site. What better place to hide a body?’ He dropped his ice pack on the table and lifted his satchel. ‘Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Toulouse.’

‘Now?’

‘Right now.’

‘How?’

‘In my car.’

‘You’re in no condition to drive.’

‘Neither was your father.’

‘He never is. I won’t get in the car with you, Monsieur Macleod.’

Enzo sighed. ‘Well, do you drive?’

‘Of course.’

‘Okay, then I’ll get in the car with you.’

It was not yet ten when Enzo and Nicole stepped off the métro at St. Cyprien and began back along the Rue de la République towards the river. They had parked two levels below the Place du Capitole, emerging into the vast paved, pedestrian square, with its magnificent Hôtel de Ville at the east side facing a long gallery of arcaded shops on the west. Even though the universities were on summer break, Toulouse was still a young person’s town, brimful of life. There were bistros and cafés and boutiques on every corner. Kids on bikes and roller blades. La Ville Rose , it was called, because of its distinctive pink brick. The roofs of the buildings were shallow-pitched and Roman-tiled in the Mediterranean style. The Mediterranean itself was less than two hours away. Enzo disliked cities. But if he was forced to live in one, he would probably pick Toulouse.