Peter May - Extraordinary People

Marie Aucoin let her gun fall to her side. She seemed smaller now, diminished by her defeat. But no more so than in her own eyes. ‘You came to kill me, didn’t you?’

Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes.’

Marie Aucoin took a deep breath and pulled herself up to her full height.

Enzo watched with horror as Charlotte’s finger tightened on the trigger. ‘Don’t!’ he said. She was trembling once more. The gun shook increasingly as she tried to hold her aim. And then suddenly her eyes cleared. She lowered Raffin’s gun. She had found her pity.

And that, Enzo realised, was probably the hardest pill of all for Marie Aucoin to swallow. She would probably never know, as they did, that she was not the extraordinary person she believed herself to be. She would never see herself through their eyes as the pathetic, deluded individual she really was.

‘That’s the trouble with you people.’ Her defiance was brittle. ‘You have no courage. To realise your vision you need the courage to carry it through.’ She raised her gun, bit down hard on the barrel and pulled the trigger.

Green turned to red.

‘Daddy!’ Kirsty’s scream echoed through the dark chambers of the catacombes .

‘Jesus…’ Enzo stepped over the prone figure of the Garde des Sceaux where she had fallen at the foot of the steps and leapt up the stairs. ‘Kirsty’s going to drown.’

‘Where is she?’ Enzo saw now that Samu was the shadow beyond Bertrand. His face was blanched, shocked.

‘Somewhere beneath the Rue d’Assas. In one of the transversals. It’s flooding.’

‘We’ll have to go back to the bunker, then,’ Charlotte said. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed it. ‘That’s how Samu brought us in. Bertrand made a chatière with a sledgehammer.’

‘No time,’ Enzo said. ‘Marie Aucoin must have had her own way of getting in. So there must be a way out to the Rue d’Assas from here.’

‘It used to be bricked up at the far side there,’ Samu said, and they followed him through the dark cavern, Bertrand hefting his sledgehammer on his shoulder. A tunnel led off from the north-west corner. Two meters along it they reached a dead end. It was sealed off. Red brick covered in graffiti, a cartoon image of a white pig with a curling tail, the names of countless visitors sprayed in red and black and green. There was a pile of loose rubble gathered against the foot of the wall. Enzo dropped to his knees and started pulling the stone away with desperate fingers.

‘There’s a hole behind this.’

They all joined in, and very quickly uncovered a hole hacked in the brick. It was wide enough for only a very slight person to crawl through.

‘Get out of the way,’ Bertrand said quietly. And when they had moved aside he swung his sledgehammer at the brick, sending sparks and splinters flying through the air. He let the heavy head of it fall to the floor before heaving it back above his shoulder and swinging it down again through an arc at the wall. Enzo saw the impact of it shudder through the young man’s body. There was sweat trickling down from his scalp. It took five swings before, finally, brick and mortar cracked, and the wall collapsed around the initial hole. Cold, damp air rushed through the opening.

They could hear Kirsty screaming now, desperate pleas for help. Enzo clambered over the shattered brickwork and into the east tunnel of the Rue d’Assas. ‘Which way?’ he shouted.

‘Turn right.’ Samu’s voice was right behind him.

Water fell like rain from the cold stone above their heads, making it slippery underfoot. The light of their flashlights barely penetrated the fog of humidity that filled the tunnel, and they very nearly ran into a second wall blocking their progress. It, too, had been holed, but this time the gap was big enough even for Enzo to get through.

Kirsty’s voice was closer now, but it had lost its fire, shredded and chopped by sobs and tears.

‘Kirsty, hold on!’ Enzo shouted.

‘Da-ad-y!’ she screamed back, and he felt tears of shock and fear fill his eyes, burning them like acid.

‘There, on your left,’ Samu called, and Enzo saw a narrow opening on the west side of the tunnel, just ahead of them. The ground sloped away steeply into the turn, and down into the transversal. Somewhere along the way, Enzo had lost his helmet. He shone the flashlight Samu had given him down into the tunnel and saw that it was full of water.

‘Oh, my god!’ He started wading into it, almost surprised at how warm it seemed, and very quickly he was up to his chest. He raised the flashlight above his head and kept going. The water was almost up to his neck before finally the ceiling levelled off, and he found himself looking along the gap between the water and the roof. It was maybe fifteen centimeters. He shone his flashlight along the surface and saw Kirsty’s head tipped back so that her mouth and nose were above the water level, only just still able to draw breath. She turned her head towards the light, and he saw the terror in her eyes.

‘Daddy!’

‘Hold on, baby, I’m coming.’ Enzo plunged under the water, kicking hard to propel himself forward. It was cloudy. The light of his flashlight barely penetrated it, and he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. He bumped into Kirsty before he saw her, and immediately surfaced to gasp for air. The water level was rising fast. There was hardly any gap left at all now. He ducked under again and grabbed his daughter’s arms, following them to find metal cuffs at the wrists attached to a chain. The chain was half a meter in length and looped through an iron ring set into the stone. The loop was padlocked. He took the chain in both hands, braced his feet against the wall and pulled with all his might. There was not even the hint of movement. The chances were the ring had been sunk in the stone years ago and was rusted solid into it.

His lungs were bursting now, and he surfaced again for air. This time he smacked his head against the roof. There was no longer any gap. There was no more air. He saw his own blood colour the water red. And he turned to see Kirsty looking at him through cloudy water, eyes wide, filled with resignation, bubbles streaming up from her nose and mouth. He knew he couldn’t hold his breath much longer, and so he grabbed her and hugged her to him, wondering if it were possible to make up for all those years of lost love in their last seconds together.

A hand grabbed him and pulled him roughly aside. He saw Bertrand’s piercings and his nose stud and the grim set of his mouth. He had strapped on Samu’s hard hat, and its lamp cut a sharp beam through the murk. The boy took the chain and, like Enzo, braced himself against the wall. Well-toned muscles, built during hours of patient exercise, bulged and strained. Enzo saw the veins stand out on his forehead. Still the ring did not move. Bertrand let go, then, and wound the chain around both elbows, bending his arms and placing his feet flat against the wall again. Enzo held on to Kirsty, air escaping now in great billowing bubbles from his lungs, and saw Bertrand strain every living fibre, jets of air exploding from his mouth and nostrils. He heard himself saying, I don’t want Sophie throwing her life away on a waster like you , and felt a dreadful surge of guilt. And then, suddenly, the ring gave, in a cloud of brown rust, and they were free. Bertrand grabbed Enzo by the collar and pulled him back along the transversal. The limp form of Kirsty trailing along behind them.

As soon as they hit the ramp, Bertrand hauled them both clear of the water, and Enzo felt air tearing at his lungs, choking and wretching and gasping for breath. Charlotte and Samu helped drag them up into the tunnel.

Enzo got himself on to his knees, tears streaming from his eyes. Kirsty lay on the floor, eyes shut, mouth gaping. She was no longer breathing. He was too late. He had always been too late.