Peter May - Freeze Frames

“So,” Gueguen said, “Fleischer realised that Killian knew who he was and murdered him.”

The gendarme with the identity wallet was getting excited. “And if Doctor Gassman was killed to make us think he was Fleischer, that must mean that the real Fleischer is still alive.”

“Oh, yes,” Enzo said. “Erik Fleischer is still very much alive.”

“Who is he?” Gueguen said.

Enzo turned toward him and gave him a long, hard look. Finally he said, “We won’t know that for sure until we match up the DNA sample that Killian obtained.”

“You mean you have it?”

“I mean that Killian hid it somewhere in his study, preserved somehow until such times as a comparison could be made. Proof positive of Fleischer’s identity.”

“Where in his study?”

“Well, that’ll be a job for your forensics people when they arrive from the mainland tomorrow to start the investigation into poor Doctor Gassman’s murder. They are going to have to take Killian’s room apart brick by brick, until they find it. And find it they will, of that I am absolutely certain.” He drew a deep breath. “Meantime, you had better seal off the crime scene here. And I’ll make sure that nobody tampers with anything at Killian’s place until the police scientifique arrive.”

Gueguen stared at him for a long time, and Enzo could almost see the thought processes passing before his eyes. Finally, the adjudant said, “You told us you came here to see Gassman about something else, the day you found his passports.”

“That’s right.”

“Related to the Killian case?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind telling us what that was?”

Enzo shrugged, and gave a little half smile. “It’s almost irrelevant now. I wanted to ask him about Killian’s autopsy report. About something that wasn’t in it that should have been.” And it was clear from the finality of his tone, that he was not, for the moment, going to tell them what that was.

Somewhere a shutter was banging in the wind. Several times Enzo had thought about getting up to find and secure it. But he knew that would be a mistake.

The sound of the rain pounding against the window was almost deafening, and the wind whistled and whined through every space in this old building. Even as he lay in bed, the covers pulled up tightly around his neck, Enzo could feel the draught on his face.

Sleep had never been an option. But as the hours passed, he had found his eyes growing heavy, and he blinked fiercely now to keep himself from slipping away. And then, suddenly, there was no need. He was wide awake, sitting bolt upright in the bed, fully dressed beneath the sheets. The bedside clock told him that it was a little after two. He listened intently. There was no doubt about it. Even above the din of the elements, and the banging of the shutter, he had heard the sound of breaking glass, a sound that cut through the night, slicing its way into his consciousness. His mouth was dry, and his heart beat faster than was good for him.

He swivelled in the bed and slipped his feet into his sneakers at the bedside, bending quickly to tie them before reaching for Killian’s old walking stick with the owl’s head handle. The same stick that Killian had taken with him the night he left this room and went downstairs to his death.

Enzo gripped it tightly not as an aid to walking, but once more as a weapon, hoping that he would not have occasion to use it as such. He stood up and crossed to the door, wincing at the squeal of the hinges as he pulled it slowly open. The stairwell was in darkness. The door to Killian’s study, he knew, was closed at the foot of the stairs. With one hand on the wall, he felt his way down the steps one at a time. He tensed each time the wood creaked beneath his weight, hoping that the sound of the storm would drown it out.

He had no idea how much the element of surprise might work in his favour. But it was preferable to being heard coming. Or seen. Which is why he did not switch on the light. In the tiny hall at the foot of the stairs he stopped, listening, and felt the cold air circling around his legs as it blew from under the outside door. Or was it coming from Killian’s study? Strangely, the sound of the wind and rain seemed louder from the other side of the study door.

Enzo closed trembling fingers around the door handle and pushed it open. He felt the rush of air in his face, and was startled by the pool of light on Killian’s desk. The old man’s Post-its, his long hidden messages to his son, blew around the floor. Enzo turned his head toward the window. Splintered glass was strewn across the floorboards beneath it where the stain of Killian’s blood was a constant reminder of his murder. The wind and rain blew through the broken window, and the outside shutter swung back and forth, beating out an erratic tattoo against the sill.

Enzo stepped into the room and felt spots of rain on his right cheek. A movement in his peripheral vision brought his head sharply around to the left as Alain Servat stepped out of the shadows. His brown eyes burned with a dark intensity. Gone was the wry amusement that normally crinkled them. His sallow skin looked bleached and stretched taut. His sandy hair seemed to have turned grey almost overnight.

He held a small pistol in a hand raised and pointed at Enzo’s chest. Enzo had a moment of paralysing fear. It would be easy for the man simply to pull the trigger, and Enzo would be gone in a heartbeat. He caught his breath and tried to stay calm.

“I was expecting you before now,” he said.

Alain blinked several times, clearly struggling to contain some inner turmoil. “Monsieur Killian wasn’t surprised to see me either. Put the stick on the desk.”

Slowly, so as not to spook him, Enzo laid Killian’s walking stick on the desktop. “Why did you kill him?”

“Because he was going to expose my father as a monster. The Butcher of Majdanek. One of the most notorious Nazis never to be brought to justice.” He paused, as if somehow that was explanation enough. But Enzo’s silence drew him on. “No one, and I mean no one, was more shocked than I was to discover my father’s true identity. When Killian first came to me, it seemed so monstrous, incredible. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it.”

“What made Killian come to you at all?”

A shadow crossed Alain’s face. Of pain, or misery, or hatred. A shadow like death. “Because my father was poisoning him.” He almost spat out the words. “During a consultation he caught a glimpse of a tattoo inside Killian’s left armpit. The identity number given him at Majdanek concentration camp. And he realised that Killian must have been an inmate there. That was when it dawned on him why Killian was seeking so many consultations when there was, apparently, little or nothing wrong with him. He had recognised my father from his time in the camp.”

“So your father invented an illness for him?”

“Yes.” Alain ran a tongue over dried lips and moved toward the centre of the room, keeping his weapon trained on Enzo. His hand was trembling slightly. “He sent him for x-ray at Lorient, then falsely diagnosed lung cancer.”

Enzo stepped slowly away from the window and the wind and rain at his back. He said. “I realised that when the pathologist made no reference in the autopsy report to a tumour in either lung. It’s why I went out to see Doctor Gassman that day. Just to confirm that if there was one, it would have been mentioned.”

Alain nodded. “It’s what I feared most at the time. Had there been a proper investigation the enqu e teurs would surely have noticed its absence. My father had been poisoning him with thallium, you see, claiming it as a treatment, but in fact inducing all the symptoms of a man in the final stages of terminal cancer. Of course, the pathologist had no reason to test for thallium in his blood or tissue. The cause of death was clear. Three bullets in his chest.”