Peter May - Extraordinary People

And then Nicole appeared from behind the east stand. As she approached them Enzo saw that she was frowning. ‘Why are we here, Monsieur Macleod?’

Enzo sighed. Facts were easier to explain than instinct. ‘Because Metz won the League Cup in 1996. A replica trophy was one of the clues we found at Hautvillers. And because the club’s emblem is a salamander. That was another of them.’

‘Do you have photographs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s have a look at them, then,’ Sophie said, and they all crowded around Enzo at the open back door as he took the prints out of his bag and laid them along the floor of the van.

Bertrand craned his neck to see. ‘Is that the trophy?’ He stabbed a finger at the picture of the cup.

‘Yes.’

‘Then that’s not the League Cup. Not even the old one. The League Cup’s a unique design. Unmistakeable.’

‘So what it is, then?’ Nicole asked.

Bertrand lifted the photograph. ‘This is the Coupe de France .’

‘What’s the difference?’ Sophie said.

‘The difference is that in 1996, the Coupe de France was won by Auxerre. Not Metz.’

The mediaeval city of Auxerre stood on a hill on the banks of the river Yonne, one hundred and seventy kilometers south-east of Paris, in the heart of the Bourgogne. It was early afternoon by the time they reached it, and ominous, dark clouds had already begun rolling in from the west. The air was humid, hot, filled with the promise of summer rain. As they crossed the Pont Paul Bert, daylight darkness settled like a shroud on the towers and buttresses of St. Étienne Cathedral, which dominated the skyline on the west bank. Cruise boats lined up along the quays opposite, rising and falling as if in slow motion on the gentle slate grey swell of the river.

The Stade Abbé Deschamps stood along the banks of the Yonne at the south end of town, surrounded by playing fields and running tracks. Bertrand turned left off the main road into the car park in front of the main stand, and Enzo got out of the van stretching and flexing limbs that had stiffened up during the three-and-a-half hour drive.

Kids were playing football on the far side of a fence, aspiring future stars, shouting and chasing, attracted to the ball like metal filings to a magnet. Enzo left Sophie and Bertrand and Nicole in the van and walked along the length of the stand, past the boutique and the ticket office and the administration block. He had a sickening sense of déjà vu . One football stadium was much like another. Metz had been a wild goose chase. Auxerre might well be the same. He had no idea what he was looking for.

Behind the Leclerc stand, which backed on to the river, youngsters were chasing one another up and down the concrete steps, their catcalls and laughter echoing between rows of grey plastic seats. In the dark beneath the overhang, he saw two young lovers backed up against a wall, oblivious to the kids playing on the staircases and landings above them, driven by adolescent hormones to fulfil some desperate fantasy amongst the broken bottles and discarded beer cans. Beyond the trees, two teams of rowers cut through choppy waters, the blades of their oars rising and falling in perfect unison, throwing cool spray into warm air.

Even as he found his way between the stands to the very edge of the pitch, secure behind its moat and fences, he knew that there would be nothing for him here. Cut grass and advertising hoardings, rows of empty seats rising into the stands.

When he got back to the van Nicole looked at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m wasting my time here. And yours. We should go back to Cahors.’

‘It’s a long drive,’ Bertrand said.

Enzo looked at him. The young man was exhausted. He had driven through the night to Metz, and then again all morning to Auxerre. It would be six or seven hours back to Cahors. ‘Why don’t we stay overnight?’ Enzo said. ‘I’ll pay for a hotel. We can head back in the morning.’ After all, what was there to hurry back for?

The Hôtel l’Aquarius was at the end of the Avenue Gambetta, east of the river, in the new part of town. The rooms were small, windows looking out over a shambles of red-tiled rooftops and seedy back yards. Nicole went off with Sophie and Bertrand to explore the old city, and Enzo lay down on his bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling. He thought again about all the clues which had brought him here. There were too many anomalies. The referee’s whistle with the numbers 19/3 scratched into the plating. They didn’t seem to fit with anything else. The salamander which had sent him on a fool’s errand to Metz. How certain he had been that he would find the answers he was looking for at Metz football club. A certainty so easily punctured by Bertrand’s revelation about the Coupe de France and Auxerre. Perhaps Enzo had misread the clues completely. Perhaps there was no football connection at all. When conviction is fractured, doubt creeps in through all the cracks.

The silence in Enzo’s room pressed in around him. He wondered what awaited him in Cahors. Was he still in danger? He wished he had never heard of Raffin and his seven most celebrated unsolved murders. It was one thing to make an argument in the abstract during the course of a dinner, to deliver bold statements and accept wagers, it was quite another to come face to face with reality. Real life. Real death. Murder. Personal tragedy. He thought of Charlotte, and of how things had been between them, and he remembered an old Chinese proverb. It is not an easy thing to mend a broken mirror .

He reached for the remote control and turned on the television. The melodramatic orchestral overtures of some dubbed American soap filled the room. But anything was better than the silence which accompanied regret. He closed his eyes and let the sounds of it wash over him without listening.

He was not certain how long he had been asleep, but something in the voice that wakened him penetrated deep into his subconscious to bring him bubbling back to the surface. The national television news was playing on France 3, and he realised with something of a shock that it was after seven. His thoughts were quickly focused on the commentary of the reporter. He squinted at the picture to see helicopter footage of long traffic tailbacks on the périphérique ring road around Paris. His heart was pounding, but he wasn’t quite sure why. It took firemen more than half an hour to cut through the wreckage to recover the body , the voice-over told him. An investigation has already begun into what caused the vehicle to swerve across three lanes of traffic and into the containing wall before bursting into flames . A still photograph filled the screen, and Enzo sat abruptly upright. It was the same photograph he had seen on the internet yesterday. A stock shot, apparently in use by all the media. Diop’s unmistakable lopsided smile. François Diop was being tipped for high office at the United Nations before today’s tragedy. He is survived by a wife and two young children .

Enzo sat with the blood pulsing at his temples. Diop was dead. The man who had tried to kill him just two days ago. The man whose footballing past had led Enzo to this provincial hotel room in the ancient city of Auxerre. Dead because of Enzo. He was sure of that.

An urgent knocking at the door startled him. Sophie’s voice called from the hall. ‘Papa? Papa, are you there?’ He slid off the bed, and as he stood the blood rushed to his head. He steadied himself against the door jamb and unlocked the door. Sophie and Bertrand and Nicole stood in the darkness. Sophie seemed shocked by his appearance. ‘Papa, are you feeling all right?’