Peter May - Freeze Frames

“I’ve had a sonogram,” she said. “It’s a boy.”

Enzo closed his eyes. He had two beautiful daughters. And could never have wanted for anything more. And yet somehow, in some way that he had never allowed himself even to think about, a son would have made his life complete.

“I wanted to tell you in Paris. But not in a cafe, when you were rushing for a train.”

Even as she spoke he remembered his rendezvous, and cursed inside. “Charlotte… can we talk about this later?”

She looked up, eyes wide in disbelief. “What’s wrong with now?”

“I told you I have to go. I have a rendezvous in about twenty minutes. I’m late already.”

“Then cancel it.”

“I can’t.” He recalled the words of the note that had been pushed under the door. I have held my tongue for long enough, monsieur. I will tell you what I know as long as you promise to keep my name out of it. Meet me tomorrow evening at the Trou de l’enfer. I’ll wait for you there.

“What can possibly be more important than this?” The accusation in her eyes was almost more than he could bear. He looked away.

“Nothing, Charlotte. Believe me. But if I miss this chance, there might never be another to learn about Killian’s murder.” He drew a deep breath. “We have the rest of our lives to talk about our child.”

She fixed him with an unblinking focus that was very nearly painful. “Well. No mistaking where your priorities lie, then. You’d better go.” He returned her gaze, filled with conflicting emotions, before finally turning toward the door. “But take this thought with you.” He turned back. “This is my child, Enzo. Not ours. And any decision about his future will be mine, not yours.”

Enzo drove through the tiny settlements of Crehal and Kerigant, heading directly south into the deepening gloom, descending at last into a copse of tall Scots pines where a parking area had been hacked out of the mud and stone. When he turned out his lights, everything around him seemed plunged into darkness. He decided to wait for a moment until his eyes had grown accustomed to it. So he sat clutching the wheel in front of him, his thoughts still dominated by Charlotte’s news and her parting remark. If she had meant it to haunt him, it had.

Now, for the first time, his focus shifted, and he began to feel apprehensive. He reached into the glove compartment to take out Jane’s flashlight and flick it on as he stepped from the Jeep. The bitter cold caused the skin on his face to tighten as it made contact. The stink of damp, rotting vegetation assailed his olfactory senses, and in the far distance he heard the roar of the sea, driven against the cliffs by the tide. Killian’s scarf was tied around his neck, his jacket buttoned over it, and he wore a thick pair of woollen gloves.

Even so, the cold was already penetrating his outer layers, and he could feel his body temperature dipping. He aimed his flashlight around the car park to pick out a track leading up through a tangle of gorse and bramble to the coastal footpath that led toward the clifftops.

There was no other vehicle visible, and he knew with unerring certainty now that he was allowing himself to be lured into a trap with eyes wide open. If he were to be sensible about it he would get into his car and drive back to resume his conversation with Charlotte. But he knew that to date he had made no progress at all toward knowing who had murdered Killian, and that this might provide the only fingerhold he had on the case.

He pulled up his collar and headed quickly up the footpath, following it around to his right until the trees opened out into a wide area of rock and grass. It joined a gravel road leading to a wooden gate which was closed but not locked. A sign warned that no vehicles were allowed beyond this point.

There was more light here, the last of it dying in the west as the moon began its steady ascent into the November sky, and he found he could see without his flashlight. He passed through the gate and strode purposefully along the mud track toward the top of the cliffs. He could see light shimmering on the ruffled surface of the ocean beyond, and he heard the growl of it as it beat itself against the rocks a hundred feet below. The southern elevation of the island opened out all around him, and he could see, off to his right, a black slash where the ground fell sharply away into a deep cleft.

Now he heard a sound like wind blowing through trees, and a deep sigh, as of phlegm crackling in a constricted throat. Strangely human, and yet oddly unnatural out here on the clifftops. He saw a sign, and turned his flashlight on it. A warning to take extreme care. Here, a father and two children had recently lost their lives, it said. Incongruously, there were three holes in the metal panneau, made by what looked like pellets from a shotgun. It wasn’t only the cliffs that posed a danger, then.

Rope was pegged along the line of the trou, about six inches off the ground, creating a safe passage toward the distant gun emplacement out on the point. But it looked more to Enzo like a tripwire than a safety measure. Signs everywhere warned not step beyond it.

Enzo edged closer to the innermost edge of the trou, and saw that the fissure in the cliffs ran a good hundred yards back from the sea. In the dark, it was impossible to see how deep it went, but the roar of in-rushing water was almost deafening, amplified by the widening of the chasm toward its topmost edge, which created a megaphone effect.

He turned then, criss-crossing the ground ahead of him with the beam from his flashlight, and steered a safe course between the ropes out toward the distant point.

As he approached the one-time German gun emplacement, he saw that it was little more than a concrete platform surrounded by a low, broken-down wall. Beyond it lay a slab of concrete at ground level, the roof of the bunker where soldiers on duty must have spent their days and nights sheltering from the elements. The ground around it was strewn with rock and smashed-up pieces of the gun mounting. He picked his way carefully through them until he reached the steps leading down to the door of the bunker. They, too, were broken, and overgrown. He trained his flashlight into the dark below, picking out empty beer cans and the detritus of tourist picnics and teenage misadventures. The acrid smell of stale urine rose to greet him.

He stopped to listen, but could only hear the wind and the sea. “Hello!” he called, and his voice was immediately whipped away in the breeze and lost in the ether. His earlier apprehension was hardening into fear. He should never have come.

He looked back in the direction of the car park. He had a clear view in the moonlight now toward the distant trees. There was no one to be seen. Nothing to be heard. He could simply head back to his car and drive off. Back to Port Melite and Charlotte. To ask her what she had meant about the child being hers and not theirs. To hell with Adam Killian and his damned secret messages! What did any of it matter anyway?

But he didn’t move, the beam of his flashlight still directed into the darkness below. He cursed his own stubborn stupidity as he touched his fingertips to the wall and began making his way down to the opening where once a steel door had shut out the wind and rain. The door was long gone, as was the glass and even the frame in the window opening beside it. His foot struck an empty beer can that clattered away into the dark, and he stood still again, listening once more, before swinging his flashlight through the doorway and directing its beam into the bunker. A shadow passed through it. He heard a rush of air, and something flew into his face. Something soft, flapping in panic. He thought he heard a distant scream, before realising it was in his head, and he called out involuntarily. The flashlight almost fell from his hand as he raised his arms to protect himself-and then it was gone, whatever it was. Into the night. And all that he could feel was the pumping of his heart, and all he could hear was the rasping of his breath. A bat? A bird? He had no idea. But his legs were like jelly. He saw now that the bunker was empty. Graffitied walls, a floor strewn with litter. The stink of human waste.