Peter May - Extraordinary People

But the echo seemed odd, unsynchronised, and he realised that they were not his footsteps. There was someone else in the street. He stopped, turning to look behind him, but he could see no one. The dislocated echo had stopped, too. A trick of acoustics, perhaps. He continued towards the end of the street and heard the sound of following footsteps again, some way back. He swivelled and caught a fleeting movement in the shadows of a gateway leading to a courtyard. Again the echoing footsteps had ceased abruptly. Was there someone lurking there? His mouth felt dry, and he became aware for the first time that his pulse rate had increased. He realised he was afraid, and was not sure quite why. Except that someone seemed to be following him, and didn’t want to be seen.

He picked up pace towards the Brasserie St. Louis. And there it was again. An echo that wasn’t quite an echo. He glanced over his shoulder and this time saw a man following in his wake, about twenty meters back. He was making no attempt to conceal himself. His pace had picked up to match Enzo’s. As he neared the end of the street, Enzo started to run. Scaffolding forced him off the pavement. He thought he could hear the other man running behind him. He stole another glance over his shoulder, but the scaffolding obscured his view. He turned left at La Chaumière en l’ële, emerging from the darkness of the narrow Rue St. Louis into the brightly lit expanse of the Pont St. Louis leading over to the ële de la Cité and the floodlit towers of Notre Dame.

If he had hoped to find people here, he was disappointed. The bridge was deserted, and he could still hear footsteps in the street he had just left.

He was half way across the bridge when he saw the second man. A thickset figure in a dark suit standing on the far side, silhouetted against the lights of the cathedral behind him. Something about the way he stood, legs slightly apart, hands at his sides, gave Enzo the immediate impression that this man was there to bar his way. He stopped running, and stood staring breathlessly at the man, uncertain of what to do. Behind him, footsteps emerged from the Rue St. Louis and came to an abrupt halt. Enzo looked back. His pursuer stood at the other end of the bridge, and Enzo could hear him breathing hard in the night air. He was trapped. There was no way off the bridge. Enzo looked around in a panic, willing a taxi to appear, or a group of revellers to spill out from a bar somewhere. But there was no one. No traffic. No redemption. No escape. The man behind him began moving forward. In the distance Enzo could see the lights of traffic drifting past on the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville. But they might as well have been a million miles away.

The sharp blast of a horn startled him. He turned to see the lights of a péniche approaching on the river below. In fact, there were two barges, end to end, being shunted down river by a small tug. They sat dangerously low in the water, weighed down by their cargo of sand. Enzo could see the figure of the helmsman in the window of the wheelhouse. The first of the barges was already passing under the bridge immediately beneath him. The sand looked soft and inviting. A drop of four or five meters. He turned and clutched the rail. It would be a desperate thing to do. If he jumped and misjudged it he could break his legs and God knows what else on the crossbars, or even end up in the water.

Almost as if they realised what was in his mind, the two men started moving towards him. Enzo no longer had any choice. He hoisted himself on to the rail, balancing precariously for a moment. He heard one of the men shouting, and he jumped. Even as he fell through the air, it occurred to him how absurd this was. What on earth was he doing?

He hit the sand with more force than he had been expecting. His legs folded under him, and he landed on his back. The sand was not as giving as he had hoped, and all the air was knocked from his lungs. He found himself looking up at the underside of the bridge passing overhead, unable to breathe, unable to move. If either of these men had a gun, he would be an easy target when he emerged on the far side.

He lay helplessly, face up, as the star-studded sky emerged once more, and he saw the two men peering down at him from the parapet. One of them seemed to be laughing, the other serious and unsmiling. What if the danger had only been imagined, and the two men on the Pont St. Louis were simply on their way home after a night out. Here he was, leaping off the bridge like a madman. Enzo tried to imagine how he would have reacted, had he encountered a man who had suddenly, and for no apparent reason, thrown himself off a bridge on to a passing barge.

With something between a cough and a retch, his lungs were suddenly released from their paralysis, and they filled painfully and rapidly with air. His first few breaths were difficult. He seemed to have to fight to empty and then refill them. He inclined his head to see the two men still standing on the bridge watching as the barge took its course around the north side of the ële de la Cité. He saw the flare of a match as one of them lit a cigarette. He let his head fall back, and lay for several minutes waiting for his breathing and his heartbeat to stabilise.

Apparently the helmsman had not noticed him drop from the bridge. Enzo could still see him in the wheelhouse. He was smoking a cigarette and occasionally lifting a mug of coffee to his lips. They passed under four bridges and were clearing the tip of the ële de la Cité, emerging again into the full flow of the Seine. Enzo scrambled unsteadily to his feet and began shouting and waving his arms. If he didn’t get off this thing now he could end up in Rouen.

He saw the helmsman’s expression of incredulity in the light of the wheelhouse, and the man’s mouth began working. Enzo could only imagine the stream of imprecations which issued from it. He couldn’t hear him above the thrum of the tug’s motor. A group of young people passing across the pedestrian Pont des Arts looked down in astonishment. Enzo heard the motor slip into reverse. And as it roared and revved, the péniche slowed, turning in towards the quay at the Port des Saint-Pères. Enzo clambered up out of the hold and on to the near side skirting. As the barge drew alongside the quay, he took his life in his hands and leaped across the narrowing gap, slipping on the cobbles and landing on his hands and knees. He felt his trousers tear at the right knee, and when he staggered to his feet saw blood smearing white flesh revealed by the tear. The palms of his hands were grazed and stinging.

The helmsman was out of his wheelhouse shouting at Enzo, who could hear him now. He reflected briefly on how colourful and expressive the French language could be. The crowd on the bridge had doubled in size and a dozen people or more gathered along the rail watching with interest. Enzo wondered why there couldn’t have been more people around when he needed them. Across the river, he could see the long, south-facing elevation of the Louvre, huddled in muted lighting down the length of the quay. Above him, the floodlit dome of the Institute de France was stark against the night sky. He realised he was only minutes away from his studio.

Still the helmsman was shouting. What on earth could Enzo tell him? How could he explain? He decided not to even try, and he turned and ran, fleeing from the scene of the crime like a schoolboy playing truant, up the ramp to the Quai Malaquais, slithering in his haste, shedding sand in his wake.

The Rue Mazarine skirted the Institute de France, and he ran up it without stopping until he reached the Café Le Balto on the corner of the Rue Guénégaud. There, he stood gasping for several minutes, leaning against the wall beside the door to his apartment block, until he was collected enough to tap in the entry code and step into the safety of the hall.