Peter May - Blowback

As he rounded the corner of the building, he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Sophie standing unhappily on the steps outside the main entrance, her suitcase at her feet.

He frowned his consternation. “Where are you going? I thought you didn’t finish till the end of the week.”

She could hardly meet his eye. “That was the plan. Until that little shit, Philippe, went and told Guy that I was your daughter.”

Enzo sighed. With her cover blown it was likely his access to Guy and Elisabeth, and anyone or anything else, would be cut off. “Why did he do that?”

“We had a row.”

“I thought I told you to keep away from him.”

“I tried. But he seemed to think that knowing about you gave him some kind of leverage over me. I made it plain to him it didn’t.”

“So what happened?”

“Guy sacked me.”

“Damn, Sophie!”

“I’m sorry, papa, but it’s not my fault!” He saw a quiver in her lower lip. “Bertrand can’t come and get me till the end of the week, and I’ve nowhere to stay.”

He raised his eyes to the heavens. There was a good chance that all his work of the last week had been wasted. “We’ll get a hotel room somewhere. I guess they’ll want me out of mine, too.”

“There aren’t any hotel rooms, papa. All the hotels up here close down at this time of year, and the ski stations won’t be open for another month yet. The nearest hotels are in Clermont Ferrand.”

Enzo thought about it for a moment, then took out his cellphone.

“Who are you calling?”

“A friend.”

Dominique arrived outside her apartment at almost the same moment as Enzo and Sophie. She drew her blue gendarmerie van into the kerbside and stepped out, still in uniform, to meet them. Both she and Enzo were restrained in their urge to be intimate in their greeting, and shook hands formally.

“This is my daughter,” he said. “Sophie.”

Dominique smiled and shook her hand warmly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Sophie flicked a curious look toward her father. “Have you?”

“I would never have guessed you were father and daughter. You don’t look at all like him.”

“She gets her good looks from her mother.”

Sophie pulled a face. “Actually, if my hair wasn’t dyed, you’d see that I do look quite like him. Same dark hair, same white stripe.”

“Ah, so you inherited the Waardenburg.”

Sophie cocked her eyebrow and threw her father another glance. “He has been telling you a lot.”

Enzo shuffled uncomfortably. Dominique unlocked the front door and led them upstairs to her apartment on the third floor.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be short of somewhere to stay, too,” Enzo said as Dominique opened the door to let them in. Tasha began barking immediately, bounding around the hallway with excitement, paws up on Enzo, almost knocking him over. He greeted her like a long lost friend, ruffling her neck and ears and dodging her tongue.

“I’ve only got one spare room, I’m afraid,” Dominique said and she and Enzo exchanged looks.

He said quickly, “Maybe I could share with Sophie, then.”

“Well, it is a double bed, and I suppose you two aren’t exactly strangers.”

Sophie pulled a face.

“Go on through to the sitting room, and I’ll look out some clean sheets.”

Tasha followed Enzo and Sophie into the front room. The log fire that had warmed Enzo and Dominique on their first night together was long dead. He looked from the window at the conurbation in the valley below, almost lost in the flatness of the cold, grey light. Sophie tugged on his arm and brought her face close to his.

“Papa!” she said in a stage whisper. “You’re sleeping with her!”

He wasn’t quite sure what to say, but denial didn’t seem like an option. Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

“You are impossible, papa!”

“I’m human, Sophie.”

She glared at him for a moment, but couldn’t stop a half smile from sneaking around her lips. “Well, it’s crazy for you to share with me, then.” She paused. “And I don’t want some big hairy man in my bed, anyway. Even if he is my father.”

Dominique appeared in the doorway. “The room’s through here, Sophie.” And Sophie dragged her suitcase off after her, throwing the merest backward glance at Enzo. He sighed. His life, it seemed, was one long succession of women giving him grief.

Dominique reappeared after a few moments. She lowered her voice. “I suppose she’s guessed, then?”

He nodded.

She smiled, half in regret. “Women have an instinct for these things.”

“Yes. I know.”

Dominique pushed the door closed and turned back to him, keeping her voice low. “I got word back this morning from the phone company. About the owner of that cellphone number. I was just about to head off to make an arrest when you called.”

Enzo felt all his focus return suddenly to the murder of Marc Fraysse. “Whose was it?”

“Anne Crozes.”

Anne and Georges Crozes lived in a converted stone farmhouse on the back road south out of Saint-Pierre, in a fold of the valley with hills rising all around it, dark evergreen and bleak winter brown. It was an impressive building, beautifully pointed, its roof recently remade with traditional lauzes tiles. It spoke of money and the share that the Crozes had enjoyed in the success of Chez Fraysse. There was only one vehicle sitting outside the house when they arrived. A black BMW. There was no sign of Anne’s Scenic.

“Doesn’t look like she’s here,” Enzo said.

Dominique pulled her van in behind the BMW. “We’ll see. She’s not at the hotel, I know that. Her contract for the season finished yesterday.”

They stepped out into the chill air and heard the valley echo to the cawing of distant crows, the only sound to break the silence. Blue smoke rose straight up from the chimney and hung in strands like mist above the house. Away down in the valley, Enzo saw a hawk drop from the sky like a stone and knew that some unsuspecting creature was about to die.

Georges Crozes opened the door before they got to it. Enzo barely recognised him out of his chef’s whites. He seemed less imposing somehow. A god in the kitchen, but an ordinary mortal in the real world. He wore torn old jeans that hung loose from narrow hips, and a grey sweatshirt that seemed to drown him. He looked older, too, glancing from Dominique to Enzo, and glaring at the Scotsman. “What do you want?”

“Is Anne at home?” Dominique said.

“What do you want her for?”

“I’d like to speak to her.”

“What’s it got to do with him?” He flicked his head toward Enzo.

“He’s helping with our inquiries.”

He turned penetrating green eyes on Enzo. “Not get enough information from your little spy, then?”

So everyone knew about it. Enzo chose to ignore the barb. “Where is she, Georges?”

“I haven’t the first idea. She doesn’t tell me anything these days.” And he thrust out his jaw as if challenging them to question his veracity.

Dominique said, “Okay, well tell her, when you see her, that I need to speak to her as a matter of urgency. And if she does not come to me, I will come back for her with a warrant.”

Crozes’ face darkened. “What’s she done?”

“Just tell her, Georges.”

He watched them all the way back to the van before closing the door. Enzo wondered what was going through his mind on the other side of it.

“What do you think?” Dominique said when they got back in the vehicle.

“I think he was very hostile.”

She nodded. “Attack being the best form of defence. What do you reckon he knows?”