Peter May - Extraordinary People

He laid them out side by side on the inside of the lid. The only thing he had not yet worked out was the name of the last surviving killer.

‘Give me my camera,’ he said to Sophie, just as Bertrand’s flashlight delivered its final flicker and plunged them into blackness.

Almost at the same instant, they were dazzled by a blinding white light, and the sound of revving motors soared above the storm. As Sophie and Nicole spun around to see what was happening, Enzo saw lightning flash through the tent flap, and the silhouettes of half a dozen vehicles behind a phalanx of lights were thrown into momentary sharp relief as they came hurtling towards them across the football pitch. Then blackness swallowed the sky, and their eyes were filled again only with the light. The vehicles pulled up abruptly, engines still revving, and a dozen or more figures streamed out into the rain-filled glare, automatic rifles clutched across their chests. A voice crackled through a megaphone.

‘Step out into the light. Keep your hands above your heads.’

Enzo and Bertrand pulled themselves from the hole and crawled out of the tent into the rain and the light. The girls had abandoned their shared raincoat and stood with their hands high above their heads. The rain streamed down Sophie’s frightened face. Before either man could get to his feet, boots came splashing through the wet, and strong hands forced all four of them face first into the mud. Enzo felt the cold bite of handcuffs around his wrists as they snapped shut.

Sophie was furious. She paced restlessly around the cell. ‘It’s ridiculous. A complete overreaction. We were digging a hole in a football field, for God’s sake. And they send men with guns?’ She waved her arms in the air. ‘And look at me. Look!’

They all looked. The mud was drying on her now, cracking and flaking. It was stuck in her hair like glue, smeared across her face, and caked on her tee-shirt and jeans. But she was just a mirror image of the rest of them.

‘It’s assault!’ she railed. ‘I bet I’m covered in bruises. I’m going to sue them!’ She hammered on the steel door with her fists. ‘I demand to see a doctor! It’s my right to see a doctor!’

She was answered by a resounding silence. Digging a hole in a football field, it seemed, had been enough to deprive them of their rights.

They had been denied their right to a telephone call. They had no means of exercising their right to a thirty-minute private interview with an avocat , since no one knew they were there. And now, Sophie claimed, she was being denied her right to be examined by a doctor. Enzo supposed they had been granted their right to silence, since nobody had asked them anything.

They had been bundled into a police van and driven, under armed guard, to the Hôtel de Police in the Boulevard Vaulabelle, less than a kilometer from the Stade Abbé Deschamps. Through a barred window at the back of the van, Enzo had seen the painted dragons and white lions of the Golden Pagoda Chinese restaurant, before they turned into the Rue de Preuilly and through a sliding blue gate into a walled yard. There they had been hustled out through the rain and along a dark corridor before being pushed unceremoniously into this holding cell, its stout steel door slamming resoundingly behind them.

Since then, Enzo supposed, more than two hours must have passed. He had no idea what time it was, since they had taken his watch, along with everything else. Sophie’s fury was intermittent, punctuated by long periods of sullen silence during which indignation simmered and gathered momentum before exploding again in another outburst.

Bertrand had not said a word, sitting silently on the floor, his back to the wall, legs pulled up to his chest. They had made him remove his nose and lip studs, and the shards of metal from his eyebrow. Strangely, Enzo thought, he seemed almost naked without them. Nicole, too, had been unusually quiet, tearstains dried now on her cheeks. Their clothes were still damp beneath the drying mud, and in the chill of their cell, it was all Enzo could do to stop his teeth from chattering. Sophie threw herself down on the single bunk bed and lapsed into another period of brooding silence.

It was Bertrand who broke it. He raised his head suddenly and said to Enzo, ‘You knew what they meant, didn’t you?’

‘What?’ Enzo dragged himself back from a gathering of dark thoughts.

‘The things we found in the trunk. You weren’t surprised by anything.’

Enzo shrugged. ‘They complete the circle, that’s all. They lead us back to the place we started — with the skull under the Place d’Italie.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The first body part, the skull, and the first five clues were found by accident in a collapsed tunnel beneath the thirteenth arrondissement in Paris,’ Enzo explained patiently. ‘Each set of clues led us to the next body part. The ones we found tonight lead us back to the skull.’

‘How?’

‘The Eiffel Tower… What does it symbolise?’

‘Paris,’ Nicole said, emerging suddenly from her cocoon of depression.

Enzo nodded. ‘That’s the first clue to the location. The key ring was made in China. That’s the second. The leaning tower of Pisa. Well, that’s Italy, isn’t it? So now we have Paris, Place d’Italie, and a Chinese connection. We already know that the skull was found beneath the Avenue de Choisy, just off Place d’Italie, right in the heart of Chinatown.’

‘I’ll bet there were thirteen chopsticks,’ Nicole said.

Enzo managed a pale smile. ‘You’re right. Thirteen chopsticks, representing the thirteenth arrondissement and Chinatown.’

‘So the rock hammer must symbolise the quarriers.’ Nicole’s interest was fully engaged now.

Enzo nodded again. ‘Who dug out the catacombes that run right under the Avenue de Choisy. Had we got that far, I’m sure we would have found some sign down there that would have led us to the trunk. As it was, fate beat us to it.’

‘What about the cleaver and the baking tray?’ Bertrand asked.

Enzo shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Each set of clues provided us with a location, and the name of one of the murderers. Presumably the cleaver and the baking tray will lead us to the name of the final killer. But I haven’t really given it any thought yet.’

‘You don’t have to. It’s easy.’

Enzo, Bertrand and Nicole all turned towards Sophie,who had hoisted herself up on one elbow on the bunk bed. She looked back at them, wide-eyed.

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ asked Bertrand.

‘Of course. I mean, who uses a meat cleaver like that?’

‘A Chinese chef,’ Nicole said. ‘And I suppose that would also be another Chinese clue.’

Sophie shook her head in irritation. ‘Who else uses a meat cleaver?’

‘A butcher.’ This from Bertrand.

‘Exactly.’ Sophie looked at her father triumphantly. ‘Butcher in English, boucher in French. It doesn’t matter which, it’s a surname in both languages.’

Enzo looked doubtful. ‘You can’t jump to quick conclusions with these clues, Sophie. We’d need something else to confirm it.’

‘What about the baking tray?’ Bertrand said.

‘Well, that doesn’t need any confirmation.’ Sophie was piqued by her father’s lack of enthusiasm.

Enzo and Bertrand looked at her expectantly, and Nicole said, ‘Of course, being men, they wouldn’t know.’

Sophie hesitated then, and Enzo saw that her eyes were beginning to fill up. ‘Every young girl makes them with her mum,’ she said. ‘Except me, of course. I made them at school.’ She quickly brushed away a tear with the back of her hand and made a brave attempt at a smile.