Peter May - Freeze Frames

The girls were sent out of the kitchen as Enzo removed his trousers with difficulty. Then he sat with eyes closed while Alain cleaned the wound and injected anaesthetic into the knee, before taking needle and thread and closing it up with four neat stitches. The doctor smeared his handiwork with disinfectant cream then placed a dressing over it.

When Enzo opened his eyes again, he found Elisabeth there holding out a glass. He smelled the whisky immediately.

She smiled. “Something for the pain.”

He took the glass with still trembling fingers and sipped a mouthful of amber heaven, letting it trickle slowly back over his tongue, burning down his throat and into his chest. “I don’t know how to thank you both,” he said. “During all the walk back across the island, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of getting here. I’d never have made it back to Port Melite.”

“Well, I’m glad it was us you came to. Here.” Elisabeth passed him his trousers. “I’ve sewn up the knee.” She grinned at her husband. “A little more neatly than Alain did yours.”

“I made a wonderful job of it,” Alain said. He smiled at Enzo. “Don’t listen to her. You’ll be left with barely a scar. But you’ll probably need a new pair of pants.”

They each supported an arm as Enzo stood up to pull his trousers back on, and then slump into his chair again to finish his whisky.

“Now,” Alain said, “we’d better call the police.”

“No,” Enzo said quickly.

Elisabeth looked at him, perplexed. “But, Enzo, someone just tried to kill you.”

Enzo shook his head. “I don’t think so. If he’d meant to kill me, I’d have been dead by now, or still lying on that ledge. The irony of it is, he actually saved my life. Whatever his intentions, killing me wasn’t one of them.”

Alain said, “But he attacked you, assaulted you, slashed your tyres. These things are all matters for the police.”

But again, Enzo simply shook his head. “No. They’re between him and me.” He looked up to see their shared disapproval. “But I’d very much appreciate it if one of you could run me home.”

Alain took the SUV right up to the gate of the Killian cottage and came around to the passenger side to help Enzo out. All of Enzo’s muscles had stiffened up, and he was finding it hard to move. The anaesthetic had also worn off, and his knee was hurting like hell.

“Do you need a hand into the house?”

“No I’ll be alright from here, thanks.” Enzo shook his hand. “I owe you, doctor.

“You owe me nothing. Just take care that none of those wounds becomes infected. Come and see me if things aren’t healing properly.”

“I will.”

By the time Enzo had reached the door of the cottage, Alain had reversed back to the parking area and turned the SUV. Enzo watched as the headlights dwindled into the distance, and turned as the door opened.

Jane’s initially cold expression dissolved immediately to shock, and then concern. “Oh, my God! What’s happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

She took Enzo’s arm as he hobbled into the warmth of the living room to find Charlotte curled up in one of the armchairs. Discarded dinner plates lay on the floor, and glasses of red wine stood on the tables beside each chair. “We were hungry and couldn’t wait for you,” she said. And then saw the state that he was in. She stood up, immediately anxious. “My God, Enzo! Are you alright?”

“Not really. Turned out it wasn’t so much a rendezvous as a trap.”

Charlotte said, “What happened?”

He slumped into the settee and let his head fall back. “If you put a drink in my hand I might think about telling you.”

“I’d better open another bottle, then,” Jane said. “And I’ll heat up something for you to eat.”

It was almost an hour before Charlotte helped Enzo across the lawn in the dark to the annex. They heard the cat before they saw it. It emerged meowing, and running from the shadows, to press itself up against Charlotte’s legs as it had done earlier. Enzo hissed at it and it ran, startled, back into the darkness.

“Poor thing,” Charlotte said.

He unlocked the door, and they immediately felt the chill as they stepped inside. When they got to the bedroom, Enzo turned on the heater and glanced from the window. The shutters on Jane Killian’s windows were firmly closed tonight and would, he imagined, remain so for the rest of his stay. Which, in many ways, was a relief. He turned to find Charlotte watching him. She was slightly flushed from too much wine, her eyes almost glassy.

“You shouldn’t be drinking,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You’re pregnant.”

“I’m not sure what gives you the right to care. It’s me who’s carrying him, not you. Though maybe not for much longer.”

He stood stock still, staring at her. “What do you mean?”

“I haven’t decided yet whether to go ahead with it or not.”

The shock of her words stung him, like a slap in the face. “You wouldn’t… ’

“The child deserves better than us, Enzo. And what kind of father would you make? Think about it. Are you someone your son could look up to? Twice married, old enough to be his grandfather. Climbing into bed with every other woman he meets, drinking too much.” She paused for emphasis. “Putting your work ahead of family and friends.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Isn’t it? Take a good look at yourself, Enzo.”

And the words of the Scots bard, Robert Burns, came back to him. Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursel’s as others see us. He closed his eyes. After all the years of estrangement from Kirsty, they had in the end reached a kind of rapprochement. Sophie, he knew, adored him. His career in forensic science had been replaced by a new one teaching biology and forensics at a top university. He hadn’t done so badly. But after Pascale’s death he had searched, and failed, to find love. Her life-and death-had shaped his.

“And then, what kind of mother would I make? A singular woman. Idiosyncratic, eccentric, way too independent. I’m just as brutal in my own self-analysis, Enzo. Would I be prepared to give up my work, my independence, my life? I’ve never done it for any man. If I were to do it for a child, my life as I know it would be over. By the time I got it back, you’d be seventy. And what would I have to look forward to then? Caring for you into old age?”

“If that’s how you feel… I mean, if you’re really serious about terminating the pregnancy, why did you even tell me about it? What did you come here for?”

She turned dark eyes on him, and he felt their intensity. “I was hoping you might give me a reason not to.” There was a long silence, then. “And what do I find? The night before I get here you’ve been drinking too much and end up in bed with another woman. You’d have slept with her if I hadn’t phoned when I did. And now you’re out getting into fights in the dark and falling off cliffs. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”

He held her gaze. His voice was low and steady. “I’ll give you one perfectly good reason why you shouldn’t have an abortion.”

“Yes?”

“We created a life together, Charlotte. But we have no right to end it.”

She gasped in frustration and turned away. “I didn’t know you’d found religion in your old age.”

“I haven’t. But I’ve spent a lifetime catching people who take lives. I’m not about to sanction the taking of one myself, just because it might not be convenient to you.”

She turned back. Eyes blazing. “He’s not growing inside of you, Enzo. You don’t have to give birth to him. And where are you going to be when he’s growing up?”