Peter May - Freeze Frames

He dropped it into the sink and unplugged the hair drier, and stooped to peer into the darkness of the icebox. It was still partially obscured by ice. There was something there, but he couldn’t see what it was. Carefully, he slid his right hand beyond the remaining ice until his fingers made contact with cold, wet plastic. It crinkled at his touch. After several attempts, he managed to catch a corner of it between his index and middle fingers, and slowly eased it out.

Jane peered over his shoulder at the opaque plastic bag in his hands. “What is it?”

“Looks like one of those Ziploc food bags.” He grabbed a dish towel and wiped it dry, then pinched the plastic tab and unzipped it before reaching in to lift out the missing Life of the Mosquito, Part 4. It was icy cold to the touch, but perfectly dry. Taking great care not to damage it in any way, Enzo laid it on the worktop and let it fall open where it would. Between pages 57 and 58 lay the perfectly preserved squashed corpse of a mosquito, its last blood meal rust brown now, staining the page in a small irregular patch the size of the nail on his little finger.

Jane looked at it, utterly mystified. “I don’t understand.”

But Enzo was smiling. “A clever man, your father-in-law,” he said. “Ingenious. He must have wondered how on earth to get a DNA sample from him.”

“From who?”

“Erik Fleischer. A Nazi war criminal hiding here on the Ile de Groix. Killian must have recognised him from his time in Majdanek concentration camp. Or at least, thought he did. He hadn’t seen the man for forty-seven, forty-eight years. He needed to be sure. A DNA sample would do it, something to match with the lock of Fleischer’s hair that the German authorities still possessed.”

“How would a mosquito help him do that?”

“Because the last thing it must have done on this earth was feed on the blood of Erik Fleischer. Not a big enough sample in 1990 to extract sufficient DNA. But Killian would have known that the PCR process of amplification was just months away. And that if he kept it cool for long enough, it would provide the damning evidence to prove Fleischer’s identity. Even if Killian died in the meantime, the evidence would still be there. Dammit, it’s still here twenty years later.” He closed the book and slipped it back into its Ziploc bag. “We need to continue to keep it cool. It’s now evidence in a murder case.”

He plugged the fridge back into its wall socket, closed up the freezer compartment and took away the bucket of melt water. Then he placed the plastic bag containing the book on the middle shelf and closed the door.

He turned to find himself trapped in Jane Killian’s penetrating gaze. She said, “Do you know who he is? This Erik Fleischer. Or, at least, who he’s been pretending to be all this time?”

Enzo’s face clouded, and the lights dimmed in his eyes. “Yes, Jane. I’m pretty sure I do.”

Gueguen’s blue Citroen van with its red and white flashes on the hood and blue light on the roof rocked in the strength of the unrestrained wind that lashed the south coast. It was the only vehicle in the gravel parking area at the foot of the hill as Enzo drove down, peering through his rain-streaked windscreen to see the breakers smashing over the rocky outcrops at the point.

The rendezvous at the Pointe des Chats had been the gendarme’s idea. Since acquiring the autopsy report and the shell casing, he had been paranoid about being seen with Enzo. Hence his choice of meeting place. No one was likely to stumble upon them by accident on a stormy November afternoon by the unmanned lighthouse on this exposed south-west point of the island.

White spume rose high into the air, whipped away on the edge of a wind approaching gale force, obscuring for a moment the orange cowling of the lighthouse that poked up above bowed trees. Enzo drew his Jeep in beside the police van and transferred quickly through the rain from one vehicle to the other. Even in the time it took him to cover the few feet between them, he got soaked, and he sat breathing hard in the passenger seat, rain streaming down his face. He turned to see the gendarme watching him carefully. He wore his dark blue peaked kepi and a waterproof jacket with a single white horizontal stripe over his gendarme-issue blue pullover and pants. There was a large white envelope laid across his knees. The windows of the Citroen were already steamed up to opacity. He said, “Your friend in England responded very quickly.”

Enzo glanced at the envelope. “What did he find?”

Gueguen shook his head in pensive admiration. “You’re an amazing man, Monsieur Macleod.” He passed the envelope to Enzo, and as the big Scotsman opened it up to remove several printed sheets, added, “He emailed me a PDF of his findings.”

Enzo scrutinised the printouts of the PDF. Photographic images of digital fingerprints, brief comparison text, and a short note for Enzo.

“As you can see, he did indeed find a print on the shell casing. And, as you suspected, there were several sets of prints on the wine glass you asked me to send him. But one of them was a perfect match.”

Enzo nodded. The very final piece of this long lost puzzle finally snapped into place. But it gave him no satisfaction. His heart weighed like lead in his chest.

Gueguen could not contain his curiosity any longer. “Whose are they?”

But before Enzo could respond, a burst of white noise issued from the gendarme’s police radio. The voice of the duty officer back at Port Tudy crackled across the airwaves.

“We’ve got a suspicious death, Adjudant. Out at Quehello. Dubois and Bonnet are already on their way. And Doctor Servat has been notified.”

“Who’s dead?”

“Old Doctor Gassman. The postman found him earlier this afternoon. Looks like suicide.”

“Damn! I’m on my way.” Gueguen turned sad eyes toward Enzo. “I have to go. We’ll need to continue this another time.”

“Would you mind if I came with you, Adjudant Gueguen?” Enzo’s voice was hushed, and barely audible above the roar of the wind and the sea outside. He had a sick feeling in his stomach.

The gendarme frowned. “Why?”

“Because I think there is a good chance that Jacques Gassman’s death is related to the murder of Adam Killian.”

By the time they got to Gassman’s cottage out on the moor beyond Quehello, several vehicles had already pulled up on the patch of gravel next to the west gable: a van from the gendarmerie, Alain Servat’s dark green SUV, an ambulance from Le Bourg, and the the facteur ’s yellow La Poste van, the postman himself slumped in the driver’s seat, his pale face visible through the rain-distorted side window.

Enzo ducked his head into the rain and followed Gueguen inside. He recognised the smell of the place instantly. Old age and dogs and stale cooking. But there was something new that hung in the air now. A distant whiff of gunshot and the sharp rust-like smell of dried blood. The living room seemed smaller, crowded as it was with people. Two gendarmes, Alain Servat, two ambulance men, and now Enzo and Gueguen. The air in the room was cold, the fire long dead. From upstairs came the pitiful, hoarse yelping of old Gassman’s dog, howling for the dead.

Gueguen raised his eyes toward the ceiling. “What in God’s name is that?”

“His dog,” one of the gendarmes said.

“Oscar,” Enzo said, and everyone turned to look at him. There was a momentary hiatus when it was clear that everyone else was wondering why he was there.

“Yes. Oscar.” The gendarme acknowledged the name. “It was Oscar’s barking that alerted the postman to something being wrong. He came in and, well…” He moved to one side. The others followed his lead, clearing a space to reveal the body of the old man slumped over the table at the far side of the room, the table where he had taken his solitary meals and where he had ended up, it seemed, taking his own life. It did not take the presence of a doctor to tell that he was dead.