Peter May - Freeze Frames

Kerjean was stunned, pulling himself first to his knees, then steadying himself with a hand on the table as he swayed from side to side, blood trickling from a split cheek and a gash on the opposite temple. He shook his head and growled. A deep, feral growl that rose up from his diaphragm, and Enzo was reminded of Michel Locqueneux’s description of him as an animal. Kerjean dragged himself to his feet and turned murderous eyes on Enzo.

Enzo faced him down, breathing hard, heart pounding, fist aching, but clenched once more, ready to strike again in spite of the pain. Perhaps it was something he saw in Enzo’s eyes, a determination to stand his ground no matter the consequences, that extinguished the fire in Kerjean. He was ten years younger than Enzo, and still fit despite his drinking. Had he chosen to make a brawl of it, he would almost certainly have come out on top. Instead, he went almost limp, all the tension draining from him, and he stooped to pick up his cigarette from where it had fallen on the floor.

“I suppose maybe I deserved that,” he said, and he drew a deep lungful of smoke, touching his fingertips to his cheek, feeling the blood and then looking at it on them.

Enzo saw the change of body language and relaxed a little. But he was still tense, and still hurting. “For God’s sake, man, why don’t you just tell me where you were the night of the murder?”

Kerjean flicked him a surly glance. “You must know the story by now.”

“Only the one you told at the trial. But your car was running perfectly, Kerjean, and you’re no mechanic. So why wasn’t it sitting out there the night that Killian was murdered.” He tipped his head toward the door, and the courtyard beyond.

Kerjean stared at the stone flags, taking several long drags at his cigarette, before crossing to a cupboard and lifting out a bottle of Islay malt and two glasses. He banged the glasses on the table and filled them both. Then he lifted one and held it out to Enzo.

Enzo hesitated. Much as he enjoyed a glass of good Islay whisky, it was only just after ten in the morning, and this much whisky could ruin the rest of the day. But it felt that he was on the point of a breakthrough here, and he didn’t want to let it slip through his fingers. He lifted the glass. “ Slainthe.”

“ Yec’hed mat.”

Both men sipped at the pale liquid in silence.

Kerjean ran his tongue over dried lips, savouring the taste of it. “I love that smoky, peaty taste of the island whiskies. It’s like drinking the earth itself. It connects you to the ground that feeds you.”

Enzo nodded, saying nothing, waiting for Kerjean to speak. And even as he looked at him he saw, for the first time, beyond the image that the world had of him. There was a strangely attractive quality about his eyes, and the line of the jaw. Even the way he held himself. A kind of dignity, not yet entirely excoriated by the drink.

“I was with someone who shouldn’t have been with me.” His voice sounded slightly hoarse, as if reluctant to give up the secret it had held for so long.

“A woman?”

Kerjean pursed his lips and cast Enzo a look. “What do you think?”

“But you’d only just broken up with Arzhela Montin.”

Kerjean took another mouthful of whisky, and swilled it around his gums. “I can’t help it, monsieur, that women find me attractive. Or, at least, used to. When I was younger. And sober.” He paused. “Arzhela was gone.”

“Why didn’t you tell that to the police?”

Kerjean sucked in more whisky, followed by more smoke, and turned dead eyes on his visitor. “I might be many things, monsieur, but I would never betray a woman’s trust.”

“Even if it meant going to prison?”

“Even if it had meant that.” He held Enzo steady in his gaze, almost as if challenging the Scotsman to contradict him.

“Then it’s a pity the women in your life didn’t show the same loyalty to you.”

Kerjean frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You always believed that it was Killian who told Montin about you and his wife. It wasn’t.”

In the nearly sixty seconds of silence that followed, Enzo became aware for the first time of the slow tick, tock of an old grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Because I know who told him.”

“Who?”

Enzo took another sip of his whisky. “Tell you what, Monsieur Kerjean. You tell me who you were with that night, and I’ll tell you who told Montin about you and Arzhela.”

Kerjean drained his glass and put it on the table to refill it. He waved the bottle toward Enzo. “Another?”

Enzo had barely drunk half of his. He shook his head.

Kerjean raised his own to his lips and took another large mouthful. Then he turned his gaze back toward Enzo. “No,” he said. It was a simple, and very final, statement.

Enzo placed his glass carefully on the table. “In that case, as far as I’m concerned you stay right in the frame for Killian’s murder, Kerjean. Until, or unless, I find out different.”

Doctor Jacques Gassman’s cottage stood at the end of a long, narrow, pot-holed road that cut through the banks of gorse and broom that smothered the moor between Quehello and the sea. Its freshly whitewashed walls contrasted sharply against the crisp, clean blue of the ocean beyond. The shadows of clouds passed across the moor like riderless horses, and Enzo saw smoke whipped away from Gassman’s chimney top by the stiff sea breeze.

As he parked at the side of the house and stepped out into the freshening sou’westerly, he smelled the wood smoke. The bitter sweet smell of oak, not dissimilar to the smell of the peat they burned in the Scottish northwest.

He went around to the front garden, pushing open a rickety green gate, and knocked on the door. They was no response. He knocked again, and saw the doctor’s Range Rover parked in the shelter of a lean-to on the far side of the house. So the old boy was at home. He tried the door handle and found that the door was not locked. He pushed it open, and leaned in to a gloomy living room with a staircase at the far side. Several doors led off from it. The only one that was open revealed a tiny kitchen, sunlight streaming into it from a south-facing window.

“Hello?” His voice sounded dully in the silence of the house. He heard the tick of a clock, saw oak embers glowing in the cheminee, smelled wet dog hair, and from the kitchen something simmering on the cooker. Soup or a stew. “Hello?” Still nothing.

He pulled the door closed, and walked back up the path to the gate. The tiny patch of lawn was bald in places, overgrown in others, flowerbeds choked with weeds. He supposed that when you were in your nineties, caring for your garden slipped down the list of priorities.

Then, in the distance, his eye was caught by a flash of red scarf, and the sound of a dog barking carried on the wind. He saw the familiar blue peaked hat of the old doctor just above the line of the thicket and realised he must be out walking his dog. Enzo set off along the still frozen mud track to greet him. They met a few hundred meters from the house.

“How are you, Monsieur Macleod?” Gassman grinned to show off his too white, too even dentures and grasped Enzo’s hand firmly in his. His golden Labrador was old, too, and walked stiffly like his master. He looked up at Enzo with sad, world-weary eyes and sat down to wait patiently until the two men would finish talking. “What on earth have you done to your face?”

Enzo’s hand went instinctively to the bruising below his eye. “A nasty fall.”

Gassman regarded him thoughtfully for some moments. “It’s a fine morning.”

“It is.”

“Old Oscar likes nothing better than to take me out for a walk on a morning like this.” He ruffled the dog’s head. “That right, boy?” He grinned. “It’s thanks to Oscar I’m still alive.”