Peter May - Freeze Frames

Enzo turned back to the libraire. “So where can I find the library?” he asked.

She took a moment or two to recover her composure. “Head on down the street toward the port, monsieur. It’s on your left. In a converted house. It’s also a m e diath e que these days. Which just means, I think, that they have computers.”

The librarian shook her head and scratched it. A young woman, who could only have been a child when Killian was murdered. “I’m sorry, monsieur. We don’t keep back copies here. Certainly not that far back. You’ll have to go to Lorient for that.”

“The library?”

“No, no. The offices of Ouest-France itself, in the Rue du Port. I know that they keep an archive of the Lorient edition there. And that’s the edition that would carry any story relating to Groix.” She checked the time. “If you’re planning to go over there today, the next ferry doesn’t leave till one-thirty.”

Time enough, Enzo thought, to browse through the paper’s coverage of the trial and get the return ferry late afternoon. He thanked the young librarian and stepped out again into the morning sunshine.

A man stood directly across the road, leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette, a newspaper tucked under his arm. When he looked up from his cupped hands, Enzo saw that it was Thibaud Kerjean. Enzo stopped and the two men made eye contact. Was Kerjean following him, watching him? The libraire had said that he came in to the Maison de la Presse every afternoon for his paper and tobacco. Was it just a coincidence, then, he had come in earlier today while Enzo was there?

Enzo had, as he sometimes did, a foolish rush of blood to the head, and he started across the road toward the islander. But Kerjean just pushed himself lazily off the wall and began walking away up the hill, shoving his hands in his pockets, turning his back as if to signal his contempt. Enzo stood watching him go, wondering what might have happened had Kerjean stood his ground. Enzo’s intemperate behaviour in similar situations had got him into trouble in the past, and a confrontation with Kerjean in the middle of the street would not have been wise. Kerjean himself, a man acquitted but still suspected of murder, had probably had the same thought.

So Enzo stood for a minute, letting his heart-rate subside before going in search of his jeep and a parking place near the ferry.

The Cafe de la Jetee was owned by one of the hotels that overlooked the harbour. Tables and chairs were set out on the terrace, and it was warm enough to sit in the fresh air and enjoy the late October sun. Potted plants lined one end of it, and Enzo settled himself at a table there, by the door, giving him a commanding view across the bay, and providing him with plenty of warning of the ferry’s arrival.

There were some late season tourists at another table, and inside a group of regulars stood drinking at the bar. Enzo ran his eyes down the lunch menu until they came to rest on a smoked fish salad which, he thought, would go nicely with a glass of crisp white wine while he killed time before the crossing.

As a shadow fell across his table, he looked up expecting to see a waiter, and was surprised to find old Jacques Gassman standing there. The nonagenarian grinned, wrinkling a ruddy complexion. “Monsieur Macleod. May I join you?”

“Of course.” Enzo stood to hold the old man’s elbow as he eased himself into a chair.

Gassman was wrapped up warm, in a coat and scarf, a dark blue peaked cap pulled down over his shock of white hair. He still gave the impression of a big man, undiminished by age. He had large-knuckled hands, brown-spotted by the years, and his grin revealed a row of shiny, white, even teeth that could not have been his own. “This is my day for doing the shopping,” he said. “And I always have my lunch here. Are you going to eat?”

“Yes.”

Gassman raised an arm and waved to someone inside, and a waitress duly appeared to take their order. “The usual,” Gassman said.

Enzo ordered his smoked fish salad, and they agreed to share a carafe of white.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“Slowly. I’m going to Lorient this afternoon to look at newspaper archives of the coverage of the trial.”

“Ah. Yes. Thibaud Kerjean. An unpleasant character.”

“You know him?”

“I do. Not well, of course. I don’t think anyone knows him well. But well enough to know that I don’t like him much.” He drew a long breath. “So what do you think of our little island, monsieur?”

“I prefer it when the sun shines.”

Gassman guffawed. “Ah, yes. Everywhere looks better when the sun shines. I love it. It’s an unremarkable sort of place, I suppose. No dramatic features, apart from some stretches of the northwest coastline, and the beaches to the south and west, of course. But it has a perfect climate and a hidden beauty.”

“Hidden?”

“Beneath the soil. This is a rare rock we are sitting on, Monsieur Macleod. Geologically quite different from the mainland. The government declared it a mineral nature reserve nearly thirty years ago. More than sixty minerals to be found. Some of them quite rare. Blue glaucophane and garnet.”

“You seem to know a lot about the place for an incomer.”

Gassman smiled ruefully. “And how did you know I was an incomer, monsieur? The accent?”

“Well, it’s not local, I can tell that.”

The old man shook his head. “No, it’s not. And even after all these years, it still marks me out as a ‘foreigner.’ But even if I had managed to shake it off, I’d always have been an outsider to the locals. You have to be born here to belong here. To be a true Grek.”

“ Grek?”

He grinned. “It’s the nickname for a native of the island. Called after those big Greek coffee pots that used to sit on every fire to warm up the fishermen when they came back from the boats.” He rubbed big hands one around the other, as if he were cold or were washing them. “But anyway, we incomers often know a lot more about the place than the folk who were born here.”

“How long since you first came to the island?”

“Ohh…” Old Gassman stuck out his chin and scratched it thoughtfully. “A long time. Must be, what, nearly fifty years? I arrived in the early sixties, Monsieur Macleod, looking for a place to hide me away after the death of my wife. I didn’t feel much like facing the world then, and this seemed as good a place as any to lose myself.”

“What happened to to your wife?”

“Breast cancer. She was still a young woman. So much of her life ahead of her. And yet…” he shook his head sadly, and Enzo thought he detected a moist, glassy quality in his eyes, “… it’s unlikely she’d have lived this long anyway, so I’d still have lost her at some time. I just wish it had been later, rather than sooner.”

The waitress brought their wine and a jug of water, along with a basket of bread. Then the food arrived, and Enzo saw that Gassman had ordered a tuna steak with potatoes and salad. He filled both their glasses as they began to eat.

“So you never remarried?” He watched as Gassman cut awkwardly into his steak, holding his cutlery in a strange, childish grip.

“No. When I first arrived, I bought myself a cottage out on the moor near the village of Quehello on the south side of the island. I was still hurting then, from my loss, and I kept myself pretty much to myself. I had my surgery of course, but the only people I ever really saw were my patients. I never got involved in the social scene. And never met a woman that could take the place of my wife. Not that I was looking.” He turned shining eyes on Enzo. “Lots of things in life are disposable, Monsieur Macleod. Chuck ’em away and get another. But you can’t replace people.”