Peter May - Extraordinary People

As he opened the door, Enzo called after him. ‘Roger…’ The journalist stopped and looked back. ‘Thanks.’

Raffin and Simon passed in the light of the open door, and Raffin closed it behind him, leaving Simon standing in the dark.

Without taking his eyes from the lady with the sword, Enzo said, ‘We’re closed. Didn’t you see the sign.’

‘Magpie, I don’t want you to do this.’ He started across the room.

‘We’ve already covered that ground.’

‘I don’t want to lose the two people I love most in this world.’

Enzo turned to look at his friend. Even in the faint reflecting light from the street he could see how pale he was.

‘You know that Linda and I always kept in touch. I saw a lot of Kirsty over the years. Whenever there was a problem, her mum would always call me.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘I guess, you know, because I never had any kids of my own…she became kind of like a daughter to me.’ He looked up and said quickly, ‘Not that I could ever take your place. She wouldn’t have had that. She always loved you, Magpie. That’s why she never found it possible to forgive you. It’s hard for a kid to take rejection.’

‘I didn’t—!’

‘I know.’ Simon held up quick hands to pre-empt his protest. ‘I’ve told her a thousand times. But you can’t rewrite the history she has in her head. However wrong she’s got it, it’s so ingrained it’s written in stone.’

‘That was her mother.’

Simon nodded. ‘Linda didn’t help. You hurt her, Magpie. Kirsty was the only way she could get back at you.’ He sighed deeply. ‘It’s an old story.’ He looked past Enzo towards the statue across the street. ‘I want to call the police.’

‘No.’

‘Enzo….’

‘No!’ Enzo faced up to his friend, two old stags prepared to lock horns to defend their territory. ‘It would be like signing her death warrant.’

‘Like you’re not signing your own?’

‘I’d rather die than know that I was responsible for her death.’

‘Jesus, Magpie,’ Simon’s voice whispered at him in the dark. And their foreheads came together in gentle acceptance that the fight was over, even before it had begun. Simon wrapped his arms around the boy he’d met on their first day at school together, and hugged him so hard Enzo could barely breathe. His beard scratched Enzo’s cheek. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered again.

Enzo slipped on his waterproof leggings, and pulled the lightweight plastic cagoule over his head. He folded his maps in two and zipped them into an inside pocket. He felt better now that the waiting was over. All the hours he had spent treading water felt like wasted time. Samu adjusted the webbing inside Enzo’s hard hat and got him to check the fit. Then he double-checked the lamp set above the peak. It shone bright and strong, powered by a brand-new battery. He handed Enzo a small, waterproof flashlight as backup. ‘Keep it safe,’ he said. ‘The last thing you want to be down there is in the dark.’

The others stood around Raffin’s séjour watching in silence. Their tension was tangible. It was time to go, and no one wanted to acknowledge it. Enzo looked at his watch. It was nearly one-fifteen. ‘Be back in a few hours.’ He followed Samu out into the hall and on to the landing.

They were crossing the courtyard when Sophie came running after him. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Enzo told Samu, then turned to his daughter. ‘Go back inside, pet, you’ll get soaked.’

‘I don’t care!’ Sophie stood defiantly in the rain, looking up into her father’s face with her mother’s eyes. ‘If anything happens to you I’ll never forgive her.’ And Enzo couldn’t tell if she was crying, or if it was just the rain.

‘Kirsty?’

‘She’s got no right to take you away from me.’

Enzo shook his head gently. ‘Sophie, none of this is Kirsty’s fault. The only person to blame is me.’

Her lower lip quivered. ‘I love you, Papa.’

She fell into his arms and he held her, the rain crashing all around them, rising off the cobbles in the courtyard in a mist like smoke. ‘I love you, too, Sophie.’ He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I want you to promise me something.’

‘No, I’m not promising anything. You’re the one that’s got to promise — that you’re going to come back. Okay?’ He closed his eyes. ‘Papa!’

He opened his eyes again. ‘I promise.’

She held his gaze for a long, sceptical moment. ‘I hate her.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘I do.’

‘Sophie, there’s too much of me in her. You can’t love me and hate her.’

Her face turned sulky. ‘I’ll hate you both if you don’t come back.’

‘I promised you I would, didn’t I?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’d better.’

Samu was revving the motor of his car in the street outside, blowers working overtime to stop the windscreen from misting. His wipers were thrashing back and forth at double speed. Enzo slipped in beside him, dripping wet. ‘Okay, let’s go.’ And as the car pulled away, heading through the rain towards the floodlit edifice of the Sénat at the top of the street, neither of them noticed the dark figure of a woman flitting through the downpour beneath the sheltering cover of a black umbrella to punch in the entry code to Raffin’s apartment building.

The sound of Raffin’s bell ringing shattered the tense silence in the apartment. Had Enzo and Samu forgotten something? Sophie was towelling her hair dry. She cast a quick glance towards Raffin. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said quickly. And she padded through to the hall and opened the door. Charlotte stood on the landing, her raincoat and umbrella dripping on the floorboards. Her hair was lank and damp, her curls had lost their lustre. She was ghostly pale. She seemed surprised to find Sophie there. Sophie looked at her suspiciously. She had found it hard to believe that Charlotte could be Madeleine, but she knew that her father had been tortured by doubts. Raffin appeared behind her. ‘Charlotte….’

‘Is Enzo here?’

Sophie said, ‘Someone’s kidnapped his daughter.’ She paused. ‘His other daughter. He’s gone down into the catacombes to try to get her back.’

Charlotte closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I should have phoned.’

‘You’d better come in,’ Raffin said.

She left her umbrella leaning against the outside wall and followed him through to the séjour . Sophie came in behind them.

‘I know who the last killer is,’ Charlotte said.

‘So do we,’ Sophie told her. ‘Madeleine Boucher.’ And she watched for Charlotte’s reaction.

‘You found the last set of clues then?’

‘In Auxerre,’ Sophie said. ‘How do you know who she is?’

‘Because I went back five months through my uncle’s diaries. They never meant anything before. But now that I knew I was looking for references to students at ENA, there they were. Right under our noses the whole time. His little coterie of favourites. His little geniuses, he called them. Roques, and d’Hautvillers, and Diop. And Madeleine Boucher.’ She looked around the blank faces. ‘You don’t know who she is, do you? Who she really is?’ She turned to Raffin. ‘Roger, if she has his daughter, and Enzo’s gone to meet her, then she’ll kill them both.’

The Rue Rotrou was just two streets away from Raffin’s apartment. Samu parked on a carpet of light laid down in the road by the large, overlit window of an art gallery on the east side of the street. The two men abandoned the car and splashed across the pavement to the shelter of an adjoining doorway. Samu rapped sharply on the glazed door with the back of his hand, and his signet ring almost cracked the glass. Through the condensation, they saw a silhouette loom against the light, and the door opened to reveal a much smaller man than his shadow would have had them believe. He wore a suit, his tie loosened at the neck and the top button of his shirt undone. He was bald, with a sallow complexion, and darting, frightened eyes.