Peter May - Freeze Frames

She turned a look toward Enzo that pleaded for understanding.

“I can’t even begin to explain to you what the attraction was. I hardly know myself. People knew he was a womaniser. He had a terrible reputation. The first time I went to his house I was really quite nervous.” She breathed in deeply, eyes closed, reliving some distant memory. “But there was something about him. I… I never saw the side of him that other people talked about. I never saw the temper that woman described in court. He was gentle and sensitive. And unexpectedly intelligent. And…” She searched for the words. “He gave me something I needed then, Enzo. Something I wasn’t getting from Alain. I can’t even tell you what that was. Understanding, reassurance maybe.”

She was ringing her hands in nervous distress, watching herself doing it, unable to bring herself to look at him again.

“It didn’t last long. But it was very intense. Very passionate.”

“And the night of the murder?”

“He was with me. My mother was looking after the baby here at Port Lay, and I telephoned Alain to say I would stay over, too. As far as he ever knew, that’s where I was. But I was with Thibaud. A holiday cottage that he looked after for some Parisians. It’s where we always met. Right out on the point, near Kervedan. No neighbours.” She sighed deeply, shaking her head. “Then over the next few days, when suspicion began to fall on Thibaud for the Killian murder, I was in a panic. You have no idea. I was his only alibi.”

Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I knew that to speak up would mean the end of my marriage. I was prepared to do it, Enzo, I really was. But Thibaud wouldn’t let me. Point-blank refused. And in the end he was cleared, thank God. It restores a little of your faith in our system of justice.”

“And if he’d been convicted?”

She turned to face him now, brushing the tears from her face. “I wouldn’t have let him go to prison, Enzo. Even although he was prepared to do that. I couldn’t have lived with myself. I would have had to come forward then.”

Enzo thought about everything he had read and heard about Thibaud Kerjean. He was a drunk, a brawler, a womaniser who beat up his women. He had the temper of a madman. Not one person had a good word to say about him. It was hard to reconcile that with the picture Elisabeth painted. A man of honour and integrity, who had been prepared to sacrifice his own freedom to protect her reputation and her marriage. And yet, hadn’t Enzo himself experienced that other side of him, too? The human face behind the gorilla mask. Kerjean had attacked and assaulted him. But he had also saved his life. He was no more a murderer than Enzo or Elisabeth. Just a deeply flawed, deeply troubled man.

Almost as if reading his thoughts, Elisabeth said, “I see him sometimes in the street now, and it is shocking to see how drink has reduced him. He’s the merest shadow of the man he was. He doesn’t acknowledge me. Won’t even meet my eye. I think, in a way, he knows what he has become and is ashamed of it.”

“And now?” Enzo said. “How are things between you and Alain?”

She turned sad eyes on him, filled with regret. “They couldn’t be better, Enzo. I love him. I always have. What happened between Thibaud and me was… it was an aberration. I lost my way for a time, but I found my way back in the end. I never really wanted to be with anyone but Alain.” The regret in her eyes dissolved into apprehension. “Are you going to tell him?”

Enzo shook his head. “No. Your secret is in safe hands, Elisabeth. You have my word on that. I never really believed that Kerjean had done it.” He turned a thoughtful gaze out across the water. “But there have been developments now. And I’m looking in another direction altogether.”

Elisabeth dropped him off at Port Melite to pick up his Jeep. She had said little on the drive back from Port Lay, and Enzo guessed that she was now dreading the lunch with Alain at the Cafe de la Jetee. How could either of them behave naturally with her husband after the revelations that had passed between them? Enzo almost suggested calling it off, but it might have seemed unnatural to cancel.

“I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes, then,” she said, and he stood and watched as she accelerated her SUV up the hill, back toward Le Bourg. He was about to get into his Suzuki when he heard Jane calling him from the house. He turned to see her coming down the path to the gate.

“You just missed Adjudant Gueguen,” she said. And she waved a large, manila envelope at him. “He left this for you and asked you to call him.”

Enzo went to meet her at the gate and took the envelope.

“You seem very close with the doctor’s wife these days.” She watched him carefully.

“She’s a nice lady,” Enzo said. “And very happily married.”

Jane nodded, and he saw what looked like regret in her eyes. “When you get back from Paris, I’ll probably be gone. But keep your key. Feel free to use the place.” She paused. “Any further developments?”

Enzo hesitated for a long moment before he said, “I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. It wasn’t Thibaud Kerjean.”

Jane searched his face with inquisitive eyes. “And do you have someone else in mind?”

He nodded slowly. “Actually, I do. But I’m not quite sure yet just why.”

He didn’t open the envelope until he was sitting behind the wheel of his jeep. He waited until Jane had gone back into the house, watching for the door to shut, before he tore it open. Inside was a stapled document about nine pages long. He turned it over to look at the front page. It was a copy of the autopsy report on Adam Killian. There was a handwritten note paperclipped to it.

Here’s the autopsy report you asked for. Please don’t show it to anyone else. I hope to have a shell casing to give you by tomorrow.

RG

Enzo smiled. He wanted to punch the air, but restrained himself. Gueguen must have gone out on quite a limb to obtain these for him. But he knew that the shell casing, in particular, could prove crucial. He checked the time. He could take five minutes to look through the autopsy report, and only be a little late for his lunch with the doctor and his wife.

He flipped first to the pathologist’s conclusion. Nothing unexpected there. Killian had died from three bullet wounds to the chest, one of which had ruptured his heart before passing straight through him. Another had lodged in his spine, severing the spinal cord. Either one would have killed him. The third had punctured his right lung and exited through a wound in his back.

Enzo skim-read the initial examination, and leapfrogged through the opening of the chest cavity to the dissection of the organs. When he finished, he sat frowning for almost a full minute, thinking hard, before searching back through the paragraphs he had just read, looking for something that wasn’t there. Finally, he closed the report and sat staring out at the empty beach in front of him. He was filled with confusion, and consternation, and dread building in the pit of his stomach.

Enzo was full of apologies for being late when he arrived at the Cafe de la Jetee. Alain and Elisabeth were sitting on the terrasse with old Jacques Gassman. “I got held up at the house,” Enzo said. “There were messages for me.”

Alain shook his hand vigourously. “That was very inconsiderate of you, Monsieur Macleod. Dammit, man, we’ve had to sit here drinking while we waited for you.”

Enzo grinned and shook hands with the old doctor. “Good to see you again, Doctor Gassman.” He noticed that Elisabeth’s smile was a little frozen. Then cast his eyes over the empty glasses on the table. “Let me get you all another before we eat.”