Peter May - Extraordinary People

But she shook her head. ‘I have an early client. Another time.’

‘There might not be another time. I have to go to Toulouse tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘The Président of my university has requested an audience. I think he’s going to sack me.’ He tried a smile, but it was a poor attempt at masking his disappointment.

The Université Paul Sabatier was smudged across a great, sprawling campus on the southern outskirts of Toulouse. Sabatier had been the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Toulouse University in the early part of the twentieth century, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1912. Enzo had often thought how the great man would have been horrified to see the crumbling collection of faculty buildings thrown up in his name thirty years after his death. The science-based university consisted of disparate, ugly concrete blocks separated by vast car parks and scrubby patches of sun-scorched grass which turned to mud in winter.

From the dilapidated administration building, an avenue of trees flanked a long rectangle of green, stagnant water leading to a series of lawns providing a perspective to the distant, classical Lycée Bellevue on the other side of the Route de Narbonne.

Enzo parked in front of the administration block and climbed broken steps, past graffitied pillars, to the main entrance hall. The office of the Président was one floor up on the mezzanine level. His secretary ushered Enzo into his office and told him that the Président would be with him shortly. Huge glass windows gave out on to the view towards the Lycée Bellevue whose belle vue the university was spoiling. Students attending summer courses ambled across the concourse below, unhurried in the striking heat of the southern sun. The office was airless and hot. There was no air conditioning, and Enzo took a handkerchief from his satchel to mop his forehead. He sat down in front of the Président’s vast desk and let his eyes wander across the shambles of paperwork which littered it. The Président’s glasses lay, half open, on top of a pile of exam papers. Designer tortoiseshell frames, lenses divided in two for distance and close work. On an impulse, Enzo reached over to pick them up. They were handsome spectacles, and he wondered if they might suit him. He put them on and stood up to try to catch his reflection in the window. As he did, he heard the door opening behind him, and he snatched the glasses from his face. He turned, slipping his hands behind his back to hide them.

‘Macleod,’ the Président said, and he held out his hand.

Enzo swapped the Président’s glasses from one hand to the other, and firmly shook the one being proffered. When he returned his right hand to its place behind his back, it was only to discover that somehow the index finger of his left had become jammed in the bridge between the two lenses. He pulled discreetly, but it wouldn’t budge.

The Président dropped into his chair and regarded Enzo thoughtfully. ‘You’re a damned nuisance, Macleod.’

‘Yes, Monsieur le Président.’

‘Well, sit down.’ He waved a hand at the chair opposite.

But Enzo knew he could not very well sit down with his hands behind his back. He yanked again at the glasses. ‘I’d rather stand.’ He felt awkward and foolish.

‘As you wish.’ The Président began searching about his desk, lifting and laying papers, a frown forming itself in deep lines between his eyes. ‘I spent an unpleasant fifteen minutes on the phone with the Chief of Police yesterday. I suppose you can imagine the topic of conversation?’

‘I suppose I can.’

The Président flicked him a fleeting glance, suspecting sarcasm, then returned to his search. ‘He was adamant that the place for a Professor of Biology is in the classroom. And I have to tell you, I agreed with him.’

‘Yes, Monsieur le Président.’

Finally, the frustrations of his fruitless search boiled over. ‘Where the hell are my glasses! I’m sure I left them on the desk. Damned things cost an arm and a leg.’ He looked up at Enzo. ‘You didn’t see them, did you?’

‘No, Monsieur le Président.’ Enzo wedged the glasses in his right hand and pulled hard with his left. There was a loud crack as the frame broke in two across the bridge.

The Président looked up. Enzo moved his head around as if his neck was troubling him. ‘Good God, man, I’d get that seen to,’ the Président said. He opened a drawer and pulled out that morning’s edition of Libération , and Enzo slipped the broken halves of the glasses into his pocket. ‘And then this appears in the paper this morning.’ He held it up. But Enzo didn’t need to look. He had read Raffin’s account of the find in Toulouse during his flight down from Paris. ‘I know your background is in forensic science, Macleod, but that is not the capacity in which you are employed by this university. Your antics are attracting unwelcome publicity. We require state as well as private funding, and we cannot afford to offend our political masters. There could be financial implications. You understand?’

‘Yes, Monsieur le Président.’ Enzo was wondering what to do with the broken pieces of the Président’s glasses, which were burning a hole now in his pocket.

‘I’ve always thought you were a maverick, Macleod. You’re too chummy with the students. I hear that you’ve been known to go drinking with them, and that they even invite you to parties. Is that true?’

‘Yes, Monsieur le Président.’

The Président shook his head. He was feeling about in his pockets. ‘Doesn’t do. Doesn’t do at all. Not good for discipline.’

‘Is there a problem with my student pass rates?’

‘No.’ The Président gave a little defensive shrug of each shoulder. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘What is the point, Monsieur le Président?’

‘The point is, Macleod, that I want you to lay off this amateur detective nonsense.’

‘I’m on holiday, Monsieur le Président.’

The Président stood up. ‘Yes, you are, Macleod. And I can arrange for it to be permanent if that’s how you’d prefer it.’

‘No, Monsieur le Président.’

‘Good, then we understand one another.’ He stretched out a hand to indicate that the interview was at an end.

Enzo shook it. ‘Yes, Monsieur le Président.’

And as he walked through the outer office he heard the Président shout to his secretary, ‘Amélie! Have you seen my glasses?’

‘No, Monsieur le Président.’ Amélie hurried through to help him look for them.

Enzo took the pieces from his pocket and dropped them in the wastepaper bin. He didn’t feel so bad now about breaking them.

It was early afternoon by the time he stepped off the Toulouse train in Cahors. He was depressed and disheartened. Warned off the Gaillard case twice. Once by the government, once by his employer. And he had spent most of the previous night dwelling on what might have been with Charlotte. He had known from their first meeting at Raffin’s apartment that she was special. She was affecting him in a way no woman had since Pascale. Dry mouth, palpitations, loss of self-confidence. It was uncomfortably like being a teenager again. He hardly knew her, and yet he knew that what he felt was more than just attraction. And last night, when they kissed, he had wanted simply to possess her. Entirely. It had been hard for him to accept her rejection, and he had lain awake most of the night thinking about it. There was no knowing when he would next be in Paris. And so he had no idea when he might see her again. The only redeeming thought in which he found comfort was that last night it was she who had come to see him.