Peter May - Freeze Frames

But although the rain had gone, the air was cold. A sharp, biting cold, laden with the portent of overnight frost and icy roads. Enzo was surprised to feel Jane slide her arm through his, and wondered at how natural it felt. Two people sharing warmth on a cold night, tragic lives that had led them to this place and time, and a mystery that had already begun to wrap its icy fingers around him after haunting her for half a lifetime.

He felt a sense of destiny in this, that he had not experienced in previous cases. And he wondered if, perhaps, it was his destiny this time to fail.

“You must have been over thirty, then, when you met your French lady,” Jane said suddenly out of the blue.

“Yes. Just past my thirtieth birthday. We met at an international convention on forensic science at Nice.”

“And you’d been single up until then?”

“No. I was married when I met Pascale.”

“Oh. So you left your wife for her.”

“Yes.” Enzo half turned to catch her expression out of the corner of his eye, wondering if she disapproved. But if she did, there was nothing in her face, or her voice, to betray it.

“A good thing there were no children, then.”

Enzo hesitated almost imperceptibly. “I had a seven-year-old daughter. Kirsty.” Without taking his eyes from the street ahead, he was aware of her head turning to look at him.”

“And?”

“She spent most of the next twenty years of her life hating me for it.”

“Still?”

“No. In the end we managed to put it behind us.” And he deftly changed the focus of their conversation. “How about you? Did you and Peter not have any children.”

“We were too busy.” And he heard that bitterness creeping once again into her voice. “He with his charity work. Me with my career. We were still young. Had our whole lives ahead of us, after all. Plenty of time for children.” He turned his head to meet her gaze directly as they reached her car. “It’s the biggest regret of my life, Enzo. I could have had children with someone else, of course. But I didn’t want to. I wanted Peter’s children.” She pressed the remote on her key ring and unlocked the car. “You’re a lucky man.” And she opened the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel.

The annex felt even colder than when Jane had shown him around earlier. The light thrown out by the naked bulb in the stairwell seemed more depressing that he remembered it, devoid of any warmth. He lifted one weary leg after the other to climb the stairs. They had sat talking for nearly an hour in the house when they got back, and two large whiskies later Enzo could barely keep his eyes open. And so he had said goodnight and walked across the sodden lawn, feeling the ground squelch beneath his weight, wetting his shoes and chilling his feet.

Moonlight fell at an angle through the dormer, lying in a bright slab across the floor and the bed, and he resisted the temptation to put on the electric light. The room glowed in the light of the moon. He took a moment to set up his laptop computer on the dressing table, plugging in the 3G USB stick that would connect him to the Internet and allow him to check his email. Then he undressed himself hurriedly in the cold, anxious to slip beneath the blankets, even although he knew that the sheets would be frigid, possibly damp, and that sleep could be a long time coming, in spite of his fatigue.

As he tossed the last of his clothes onto a chair and prepared himself for the icy plunge, he saw a light come on in an upstairs window of the house opposite. He could see a washed-out patterned paper on the far wall of the room it exposed, then after a moment, Jane moved through his field of vision, disappearing momentarily, before returning to stand within the frame of the window, pulling her shirt up and over her head to reveal pale skin and a black bra. She bent over now to slide her jeans down over slender thighs, stepping out of them, and straightening up to expose the skimpy black string she wore beneath them.

She half turned, and he saw the curve of her buttocks, and felt guilty suddenly, like a voyeur, or a peeping Tom. He turned away from the window to throw back the covers on his bed, trying to keep his eyes averted. But he couldn’t resist a final glance, only to see her silhouette filling the frame as she advanced to swing the internal shutters closed, to keep in the light and shut out the night. And Enzo. Almost as if she knew he was watching. Almost as if she hoped he might be.

Enzo woke on full alert, heart pounding, blood pulsing through his head. He sat upright in the dark listening to the silence of the night. The moonlight which had washed his room silver when he climbed into bed was long gone. The dark seemed profound. Thick, almost tangible.

Something had wakened him. Something from the real world that had penetrated his dream world and triggered instinctive alarms. But he had no idea what, unable to recall or replay any sound in his head. He listened for a long time, trying to control breathing that seemed inordinately loud, before slipping from between the now warm covers of his bed to push his feet into cold slippers. He wore only boxers, and reached for the dressing gown he had draped over the chair. Black silk, embroidered with red and gold dragons. And he wondered why he had brought something so impractical for the late fall Breton climate. Shivering, he wrapped it around himself, and tightened the belt. His hair, loosened from its band, tumbled over his shoulders in ropes and curls.

He looked around for something he might use as a weapon, and spotted Killian’s walking stick with the owl’s head, which he had left leaning against the wall. It felt stout and comforting in his hand, lending him a degree of reassurance with the sense of protection it provided. His sense of vulnerability, wearing only a dressing gown and slippers, was acute.

He opened the door of the bedroom and peered down through the inky blackness of the stairwell, reluctant to turn on the light, knowing that it would make him only too visible to any intruder. With one hand against the wall, he inched his way down the wooden stairs, wincing with each creak that tore holes in the silence of the night, feeling always for the next step with an outstretched foot, until finally he was standing in the small, pocket handkerchief square of entrance hall. Listening. Hearing nothing.

He reached out a hand and gently pushed open the door of the tiny bathroom, then reached in to find the light switch.

The sudden glare of unforgiving, harsh, electric light blinded and startled him. He stood blinking, listening to the rush of blood in his ears. The bathroom was empty. Nowhere to hide. He turned toward the study. The door stood slightly ajar, and light spilled across the floor from the hall toward the far wall and the rows of books that lined it. He took two cautious steps forward, placing outstretched fingertips on the door to push it inwards, raising the walking stick in his left hand.

He heard, more than saw, the dark shape that fell from above, and released an involuntary yell of fear and pain as something like needles sunk into his forehead and his scalp, the weight of something warm and soft pressing down on his head.

His own voice was joined by the screech of another. A high-pitched, wailing scream that filled the room, and he stumbled forward, flailing at his head, until he felt the needles withdraw and the weight suddenly lift. He turned, gasping for breath, in time to see a dark shape darting up the stairs to the bedroom, and he fumbled for the light switch in the hall.

A pure black cat stood on the top step glaring down at him, back arched, hackles raised, a quivering tail pointing straight up behind it.

“Damn cat!” Enzo shouted at the night, both relieved and annoyed. Where in hell had it come from? He could only imagine it had slipped in unnoticed when Jane opened up earlier in the evening. An escape from the rain. But from its demeanour, it seemed to regard Enzo as the intruder. He waved his stick at it and hissed and called, but it stood staring implacably back at him as if he were mad. If he could have seen himself in his black silk dressing gown and tangle of hair waving a walking stick around in the stairwell, shouting names at a dumb animal in the middle of the night, he might have been forced to agree.