Peter May - Freeze Frames

“I have no idea. But we’re going to find out, Jane. I know we are.” He took her hand again. “Come and look at the others.” And they crossed the study to Killian’s desk.

Jane unstuck the Post-it from the desk lamp and read it out. “P, one day you will have to oil my bicycles. Don’t forget.” She turned puzzled eyes on Enzo. “Boil my icicles?”

He made a face that conveyed his own lack of comprehension and pulled the desk diary toward him. This time he read out the transposed message himself. “P, I was fighting a liar, but now there’s no more time, and all I’m left with is a half-formed wish in the roaring pain.”

Concentration furrowed Jane’s brow. “Fighting a liar?” She paused. “Kerjean?”

Enzo shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, if not him, who?”

“I don’t know. Yet.”

“And what is a half-formed wish?”

“I guess it was something he was in the process of doing, but unable to finish. Something that would help him to defeat, or unmask, the liar he was fighting.”

“And the roaring pain must have been the suffering of his illness.” The tide of emotion that had risen in Jane was visible in eyes that brimmed with tears. “Oh, God… Poor Papa.”

Enzo cast his own eyes over the open volumes on the desktop. The Post-its and highlighted entries. And he wondered what any of it had to do with Wiesenthal and Agadir and Ronald Ross. Killian had not made it easy. But, then, he must have been paranoid his killer would find and destroy the evidence after he was dead. He had been relying on his son to see the wordplay at once, and then be inside his mind to unravel the puzzle. Somehow, Enzo had to get himself inside Killian’s head, too.

Dressed now and warmed by the full English breakfast that Jane had prepared for him, Enzo retraced his footsteps of yesterday along the beach at Port Melite: footsteps erased by the tide. But the tracks Killian had laid down were not lost. Just obscured. And one, by one, Enzo was uncovering them, like an archaeologist brushing away the dust of time. He still had no idea where they would lead.

How to get inside Killian’s head. That was the problem. He was missing something, he knew, and that one key would probably unlock the secret. He ran through all the clues again. Ronald Ross and his mosquitoes, Agadir and the man who had not died, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris. And the notes. What could he have meant by boiling the icicles? Who was the liar he had been fighting? Was it the same man who had not died in Agadir? He thought back to the phone call Killian had made to Jane the night of the murder. Might there have been something he said that night that Enzo had missed?

He turned and looked back along the beach. Tall chestnut trees were shedding the last of their leaves around the stone benches that overlooked it. The houses sharing the rise sat square and solid, cheek by jowl, facing the sunrise like old friends greeting the day. Across the shining waters, the Breton coast smudged the horizon. It was a magical spot. Sheltered and private. There was an intimacy about it, spoiled only by the stain of a man’s murder. The thought jarred, like a discordant note in a dreamy symphony. Enzo turned and walked briskly back to the house.

When he got to the annex, he sat once again behind Killian’s desk and surveyed the clues laid out before him. He had brought through the Post-it and message pad from the fridge and laid them out alongside the diary and the Post-it from the desk lamp. The encyclopaedias were all open at the relevant pages. And against the desk lamp itself he had propped Ronald Ross’ framed poem about mosquitoes. His eyes were drawn to a line of it which made sense now in the context of Ross’ discovery. But somewhere, far away in the back of his brain, sparking neurons were making almost subliminal connections. I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering death. The plasmodium found in the mosquito’s stomach, of course. But with Killian’s fondness for wordplay, might there be some hidden meaning here? O death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave?

Whatever connections he was making deep in his sub-conscious, they were, for the moment, eluding his conscious mind. As a distraction, he went online to check his email and saw that there was one waiting for him. It was from someone called Gerard Cohen. He opened it up.

Professor Macleod,

Your email was forwarded to me by the Wiesenthal Center first thing this morning. Although retired now, I worked there as an investigator in the late eighties and most of the nineties. I can confirm that I did, indeed, have correspondence with a certain Adam Killian in the spring of 1990. I am very sorry to hear that he was murdered. This must have occurred not long after I met him in Paris in July of that year. I am intrigued to know more.

Gerard Cohen

Enzo felt his excitement mounting. He immediately composed his response.

My Dear Monsieur Cohen,

Thank you for your prompt response. I will, of course, be only to happy to share with you everything I know about Monsieur Killian’s murder. However, I would be most grateful if first you could tell me what it was that you and Monsieur Killian were discussing?

Thanking you in advance,

Enzo Macleod

Within a matter of minutes his laptop alerted him to Gerard Cohen’s response. He must have been sitting at his computer waiting for a reply.

Professor Macleod,

The subject of my correspondence with Monsieur Killian, and our subsequent meeting is, as far as I am concerned, confidential. I do not feel at liberty to discuss the details by email with an unseen, unverified correspondent. If, however, you are prepared to come to Paris to meet me face to face, I will make a judgment then on the question of how much, if anything, to reveal.

With best wishes,

Gerard Cohen.

Enzo sat thoughtfully tapping his right index finger on the edge of the desk before reaching a decision. He hit the reply key again, suggesting a meeting the following afternoon. Cohen’s response was, again, almost immediate. He would meet Enzo, he said, at the door of the Wiesenthal Center at four.

Enzo immediately pulled up the SNCF website to book a rail ticket from Lorient to Paris the following morning, then sat staring at the screen. Vague thoughts were beginning to take form and coagulate in his stream of consciousness. Any correspondence between Killian and Cohen would have been by conventional mail in 1990. So where was Killian’s end of that correspondence? Jane had made no mention of any such letters being found among his belongings. And surely they would have been significant enough to mention.

His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of his cellphone. He fished in his pocket to find it.

“Hello?”

“Enzo, hi. It’s Elisabeth Servat. How are you recovering from your ordeal the other night?”

In truth, Enzo had almost forgotten about it. He laughed. “Fine. Thanks to you and Alain.”

“Good.” She paused. “I got up this morning and saw the sun shining and thought this would be a good day to take Enzo to Port Lay. You said wanted to see it in the sunshine.”

Enzo hesitated for only a moment. “I would like that very much.”

“Great. I’ve just packed the girls off to school, and Alain has a surgery this morning, so I’m free any time you are. Shall I come and pick you up at Port Melite?”

“Sure.”

“And afterwards we can go into Port Tudy and hook up with Alain. We quite often meet for lunch at the Cafe de la Jetee when the girls are lunching at school. Would that be okay?”

“Sounds perfect, Elisabeth.”

He could hear the pleasure in her voice. “ Geniale. I’ll see you in about half an hour, then.”