Peter May - Blowback

It was clearly a well-rehearsed opening gambit, and it probably impressed actors and politicians. Enzo was more cautious, allowing himself only the most perfunctory of smiles. Which did not go unnoticed. The amusement faded from Ransou’s eyes.

“I’m only going to tell you this one time, Monsieur Macleod. Repeat anything I tell you today to anyone in the police or the judiciary, and I’ll be sending my condolences to your family.”

“Why did you agree to see me, then?”

“Because I want to see the bastard that murdered Marc Fraysse caught and hung up by his testicles till he drops off.” The smile returned to his face and he slapped Enzo’s back, guiding him through the turnstile toward the main entrance. “Come on, let’s eat. I don’t want to miss any of the racing.”

Escalators zig-zagged them up from floor to floor through the vast echoing hallway of the main stand, a mammoth edifice of steel and glass. They climbed the last few steps to the open doorway of Le Prestige restaurant at the top of the building. A dinner-jacketed flunky almost bowed in deference to the man in black, ushering him and Enzo to a private table in a booth that looked out through panoramic windows across the racetrack below.

The oval circuit consisted of what looked like black gravel or ash. Tractors dragged giant rakes around it to drain a surface turned to sludge by the rain. The area contained by the track was grassy and peppered by parked cars and horse boxes. A huge screen conveyed flickering images of a live race in progress at Deauville.

A waiter in a white jacket brought them menus.

Enzo said, “Why are you so interested in finding Marc’s murderer.”

“Because I liked him, monsieur. He was one of the most famous men in France, but he had no airs or graces. He came from poor peasant stock in la France profonde, in the same way that I grew up in the banlieus of Paris, the son of a road sweeper and a Hungarian immigrant. He treated me with the same respect he treated all men, he made me laugh, and he cooked the most wonderful food I have ever tasted.”

“He also owed you a lot of money, I think.” Enzo watched carefully for a reaction. But there was none.

Ransou said simply, “He did.”

Down on the track, several jockeys were out with their horses and sulkies, warming up for the competition ahead. It was to be a day of harness racing in the rain.

“He was a lost soul, monsieur. Eaten up by the urge to gamble, destroyed by his recklessness and his unfailing ability to lose.”

“Exactly the sort of people you make your living from, I would have thought.”

The grey eyes turned to steel. “Be careful, monsieur.” He drew a long, slow breath, as if controlling some violent internal urge. “Marc Fraysse owed me more than a million. But I’d never have called it in.”

“A million?” Enzo had realized that the debt probably ran to several hundred thousand, but the figure of a million plus was breathtaking. Men had killed for much less. “Why wouldn’t you have called it in?”

“Because I regarded him as my friend. We met often when he came up to Paris. And the money he owed me…? Well, it wasn’t real, was it? I mean, I didn’t lend it to him. It was notional money. Winnings on a bet. I wasn’t actually out of pocket.” He laughed. “Besides, I had the restaurant as security. There was no way I was ever going to lose.”

Enzo frowned. “Chez Fraysse? You had the auberge as security against his losses?”

“Yes. In a way I owned the best restaurant in France, even if only by proxy.”

Enzo was stunned by the revelation.

On the far side of the track the first race was underway, riders manoeuvring their horses to achieve a prime position for their sulkies coming off the first bend. Ransou was momentarily distracted, raising binoculars to his eyes to see for himself how the order was shaking out. Enzo watched the TV coverage on the big screen. Black muck from the track was thrown up by the hooves of horses into the faces of the riders in their little buggies behind them. The jockeys’ eyes were protected by goggles, but nothing could protect them from the horses’ tails that slapped wet in their faces, along with whatever else might be involuntarily expelled from the animals’ rears. There was nothing very glamorous about their profession.

“You like a flutter yourself, Monsieur Macleod?”

Enzo turned to find Ransou smiling at the disgust on his face. “No, Monsieur Ransou. I’m not a betting man.”

“Oh? That’s not what I heard.”

Enzo tilted his head and cast a quizzical look at the ex-boxer. “What did you hear?”

“I heard that you bet you could solve the seven best known cold cases in France by applying new science to old evidence.”

“Well, let’s just say I only bet on a sure thing.”

Ransou grinned. “Me too.” He paused. “I’d have given you good odds on that.”

Enzo was forced this time to smile. “I bet you would.”

“Hah!” Ransou jabbed a finger in Enzo’s direction. “There, you see? You’re more of a betting man than you knew.”

Enzo’s reluctant smile developed into a grin. Ransou was a dangerous man, he knew. Certainly not one to cross. But there was, nonetheless, something irresistibly likeable about him. “So… when Marc died, you just wrote off the debt?”

Ransou wrinkled his face in mirthful amusement. “Good God, no. I called it in and it was paid off in full.”

Enzo stared at him in amazement. “But… who? Who paid you?”

“His brother, Guy, of course. I had no qualms at all about taking the money off him.” The first race came to an end, jockeys lashing sweating horses across the finish line below them. Ransou looked satisfied with the result, and picked up his menu. “Let’s order, shall we? I’m starving. And I just earned lunch.”

It was always with a sense of dread these days that Enzo pushed open the heavy green door that led to the inner courtyard behind Raffin’s apartment. And, as always, as it shut behind him, the sounds of the city’s bustling sixth arrondissement grew hushed and distant. His own footsteps echoed back at him from the apartments that loomed on all sides, cobbles made slippery by the wet leaves shed from the old chestnut tree that provided such delicious summer shade.

He was haunted still by the memory of the shooting that had so nearly taken Raffin’s life. He remembered the journalist lying bleeding in the hall outside his apartment, his blood on Enzo’s hands, in more ways than one.

Now, as then, and almost every time he came, someone somewhere was practising the piano. A distant, clumsy rendition of Rachmaninoff. Daylight was fading fast, to be replaced by the cold yellow of electric light falling in squares and rectangles from apartment windows. He pushed open the door to the stairwell and began the weary climb to the first floor. He resented the fact that if he wanted to see his daughter nowadays, it meant an encounter with Raffin, too.

He and Raffin had never hit it off since the first moment they met. Only their collaboration on the resolution of the seven cold cases that Raffin had so carefully documented in his book, Assassins Caches, kept relations between them civil. But now that Kirsty was living with him, even that was in danger of breaking down.

Raffin’s greeting as he opened the door to him was cool, but polite. The two men shook hands, and Enzo stepped in out of the cold. He remembered entering this apartment for the first time, and his totally unexpected encounter with Charlotte, a serendipitous meeting that had changed his life.

Kirsty rose from the table as he followed Raffin into the sitting room, although sitting room was something of a misnomer. It contained only two uncomfortable leather armchairs, set so low that Enzo found great difficulty getting himself in and out of them. Neither Kirsty nor Raffin, it seemed, ever bothered. They appeared to spend their lives perched on even more uncomfortable chairs at the table, eating, reading, writing, drinking. Tall windows at one end of it looked down into the courtyard below.