Peter May - Freeze Frames

The kitchen door stood ajar. The door next to it was closed. Enzo paused, listening, certain he would hear the Range Rover from a distance if it approached. He opened the door next to the kitchen and found himself in a tiny room cluttered with filing cabinets and bookcases, an antique writing bureau, and a small work table strewn with books and magazines. Gassman’s study. On the wall hung another framed picture of the woman out in the living room. A little older, but still attractive, with bright, smiling eyes, blond hair catching the light that slanted at an angle across her face.

Enzo wandered around the cramped little bureau, running eyes over everything, and felt uncomfortable, prying as he was into another man’s private world. The top of the writing bureau was rolled back, revealing shelves and dockets stuffed with papers and stationery, paperclips and pens. And Enzo found his eye drawn to an open compartment on the upper left side of the desk where a stack of what at first sight appeared to be thin maroon notebooks was held together by a thick elastic band. But they weren’t notebooks. He saw the gold crest of the Republique francaise, and the word Passeport embossed beneath it.

Why would Gassman have so many passports? He reached for the pile and removed the elastic band. And as he riffled through them, realised that Gassman had kept all his old passports dating right back to the nineteen-fifties. A glance through the photographs in each took him on a journey back into the old man’s youth. Like rewinding time. But it was the passport that covered the period of the early sixties that interested him most. He stopped and flicked through its pages, looking at the visas and immigration stamps of a man who had done quite a bit of travelling in his younger years. And what he saw confirmed both the records at the mairie, and his worst fears.

He heard the sound of a vehicle, and glancing up saw Gassman’s Range Rover bumping along the narrow track toward the house. He quickly reassembled the passports into their stack and snapped the elastic around them, replacing them exactly as he had found them. Then he hurried through to the living room and opened the front door. He would be in the front garden by the time the vehicle rounded the house.

His face was flushed, and he breathed deeply to try to slow his heart-rate. He was certain he knew now who had murdered Killian. All he needed was the proof, and an understanding of why.

When he got back to the annex, Enzo sat in the dead man’s seat and booted up his laptop. From his Google homepage he made a search for the website of the University of Leicester in the English midlands, and from there to the page dedicated to his old friend Doctor John Bond. He clicked on a contact link that opened up a fresh mail in his emailer and tapped in a title. Shell casing. Then he moved his cursor into the text box.

Hi John,

It’s been a long time, but I’ve seen you a lot in the news this last year. I was wondering if I could trouble you to do a big favour for an old friend…

As on the day he arrived, the weather had closed in again. Low, bruising cloud scraping the hilltops, blown in on a wind from the south-west that was mild but wet. The rain fell in a fine, wetting mist that was sucked in under the umbrella that Jane had lent him. Enzo lowered his head, squinting through the rain searching for the name of the boat that the gendarme had given him on the phone.

The pontoon that ran between the line of boats in the tiny marina rose and fell with the swell of the water in the harbour, making him feel a little drunk. He glanced up and saw that the line of houses and hotels that lined the Port Tudy quayside had almost vanished in the smirr. The rattle of cables and the cries of seagulls filled his ears.

And then there it was. White, painted on a blue plaque. La Boheme. Metal hawsers running up the mast fibrillated in the wind, whining, metal vibrating against metal. Enzo stepped on to the shiny wooden boards at the stern of the little yacht, clutching a cable to steady himself, then pushed open the door that led down to the shelter of the cabin. A few steps took him out of the rain to where Adjudant Richard Gueguen sat on an upholstered bench seat along the starboard side. There was a table between facing benches, and a small galley at the far end. Curtains were drawn on the side windows. Enzo slipped into the bench opposite Gueguen, propping his folded umbrella against the wall, rivulets of rainwater streaming from the point of it across the floor.

The air was stale and damp in here, and it was almost dark, cracks of grey light around the curtains providing the only illumination. The two men sat in silence for some minutes. Then Gueguen said, “Anyone see you get on board?”

Enzo shrugged. “There aren’t many people around in this weather. And it’s early yet.”

The gendarme nodded. “Was the autopsy report any good to you?”

“It was.”

Gueguen raised an eyebrow. “What did you find?”

“It’s what I didn’t find that made it interesting.”

Gueguen frowned, dark eyes laden with curiosity. But Enzo did not elucidate. “Did you manage to get the shell casing?”

“I did.” The younger man pushed a hand into the pocket of his dark blue waterproof jacket and pulled out a clear plastic zip-lock evidence bag. He dropped it on the table, and Enzo heard the clunk of the brass shell casing on its wooden surface. He picked it up and held it toward the light creeping in around the window. The casing of the 9mm Parabellum bullet felt surprisingly heavy.

“You know how it gets its name?” he said. “Parabellum?”

Gueguen shook his head.

“It’s from a Latin phrase, si vis pacem, para bellum.”

“Meaning?”

“If you seek peace, prepare for war.”

“There will be a war break out if anyone upstairs finds out I gave you this.”

“They won’t hear it from me.”

“I still don’t understand what you want with it. There were no fingerprints found on it.”

“I know.” Enzo laid the shell casing in its bag on the table and pushed it back toward Gueguen. “I need you to do me another favour.”

Gueguen leaned back and shoved out his jaw. “You’re pushing your luck, monsieur.”

Enzo delved into his shoulder bag, and brought out a green plastic Tupperware food box. He prised off the lid to reveal a dirty wine glass with polystyrene granules packed around it. “There are probably two or three sets of prints on this glass. I think one of them may belong to our murderer. I need you to pack it up securely and send it along with the shell casing to a colleague of mine in England. If there’s a match, then we’ve got our man.” He pushed a slip of paper with a name and address on it across the table. And then a sealed white envelope. “And put this in with it.”

Gueguen leaned forward and peered at the glass, then looked up at Enzo, eyes wide, intrigued. “Who do you suspect?”

“I don’t want to say anything until I am sure. I’d send it myself, but I don’t have time. I have to catch the train to Paris from Lorient in just under two hours. So I need to be on the next ferry.”

The gendarme frowned and shook his head again. “I still don’t understand. If there’s no fingerprint on the shell casing, how can it match with anything on the glass?”

“Because,” Enzo said, “there’s a chance that there is a fingerprint on the casing. Just not one that’s visible with conventional techniques. You see,…” he leaned forward, miming to illustrate his words as he spoke, “…the killer would have had to load the magazine with bullets, pushing each one in with his thumb against the pressure of the spring. And if he did that, then he will have left an invisible print.”