Peter May: Blowback

Enzo looked at it, intensely curious. He immediately recognised Marc’s distinctive curlicued handwriting. The note was written on a flimsy sheet of stationery. The ink had already begun to fade, and the top third of the sheet was so badly stained by blood and rainwater that the words had been completely obliterated. The very bottom portion of it was equally disfigured.

Two words remained from the damaged portion at the top of the note

…things differently.

It went on, I have so many regrets. I just wish I could wipe out the past. I can offer apologies, but I know that forgiveness is more than I have the right to ask for. And in the end, apologies are only words, and words can’t change anything. They can’t take away the hurt. They can’t wipe out the mistakes. And that’s what I want to do. Just wipe it all out. I am so sorry.

His signature was lost in the water and blood damage.

“May I see it?” Enzo held out his hand, a distant echo somewhere at the back of his mind of the perfume-stained suicide note left for Jack by Rita.

Elisabeth nodded, and Enzo took the note carefully between his fingers, turning it over, before holding it against the light of the lamp. He had half-hoped there might be some way to recover the lost words by holding them to the brightest source of light. But the lamp provided no illumination.

“I’d like to keep this for the moment if I may.” And he stilled her objections before she could voice them by raising his hand. “I promise to return it to you.”

“I doubt if you’ll be allowed to, Monsieur Macleod. I am sure that the police will want to keep it as evidence.”

He nodded grimly. “I’d also like a sample of one of Marc’s handwritten menus, if I may?”

Her eyes searched his face, full of unasked questions, then she turned silently to the filing cabinet and drew out a menu to hand to him. She looked at him very directly, and he saw fear now in her eyes. “What will happen to us?”

“I imagine you’ll be charged with defrauding the insurance company, and probably also obstruction of a police investigation, tampering with evidence, giving false statements.” He shrugged helplessly. “Just as you understood why Marc killed himself, I understand why you covered it up, Madame Fraysse. But I’m afraid the law will not.”

Dominique looked at the suicide note that Enzo had spread out on her desk in front of her. The blood that stained it was rust brown, the paper distorted by pools of blistered blue where the ink had run in the rainwater. She read it in silence then looked up at Enzo with searching eyes. “And she just confessed to everything?”

“She thought that Guy already had. It was like a damn had burst inside her, Dominique. Guilt and grief and fear given vent in a moment of absolute relief after seven years of deception. She wanted to tell me.” He laid out the menu next to the note so that she could make the comparison herself. “He hand-wrote the menus every day, so we are not short of examples of his handwriting.”

Dominique studied the two documents. “They certainly look identical. But I guess we’ll need a handwriting expert to verify it.” She shook her head then, perching on the edge of her desk and allowing herself a rueful smile. “So that’s it. Not a murder at all. A suicide covered up to defraud the insurance company. How could we ever have guessed that?” She folded her arms. “There’ll be charges, of course. Fraud. Obstruction. Tampering. Providing false statements to the authorities.” She glanced at Enzo and immediately saw the doubt in his eyes. She was almost startled. “What?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She stood up again. “Yes, you do. You’re not convinced, are you?”

He thought for a long moment before finally responding. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“For one thing…” he picked up the suicide note and rubbed it gently between his thumb and fingertips, “…the quality of this paper.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Elisabeth told me that after Marc got his third star nothing was too good for him. He had high quality stationery specially watermarked with the logo of the auberge.” He held up the note to the flickering fluorescent strip in the ceiling. “This is bog standard writing paper, not particularly good quality. And there’s no watermark. Would it not be reasonable to assume that he would have used his best writing paper to record his last words?”

But he didn’t give the gendarme too much time to dwell on that thought.

“He also habitually used a fountain pen. A very expensive fountain pen with which he wrote out his daily menus. Why didn’t he use it to write his suicide note?”

“Didn’t he?”

“Look at these together.” Enzo laid the note out on the desk again, next to the menu. “See how the nib of the fountain pen used to write the menu creates a variation in the thickness of the up and down strokes? But the pen used to write the note doesn’t. And it couldn’t have been a ballpoint. Ballpoints use oil-based inks, which wouldn’t have run when exposed to water. This was more likely to have been a rollerball pen, which uses water-based ink and wouldn’t have produced any variation in the up and down strokes.” He looked at Dominique. “He would almost certainly have written this note sitting at his roll-top desk in his private study. Why didn’t he use his beloved fountain pen and his watermarked writing paper?”

Confusion had written itself all over Dominique’s face. “You think it’s a forgery, then?” She glanced once more the two sheets of paper lying side by side on her desk. “If it is, someone’s done an amazing job.”

But Enzo shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Marc Fraysse’s own handwriting.”

Dominique’s frown deepened. “Then what on earth are you thinking?”

Enzo scratched his head. “Have the autopsy pics that the pathologist took of the dead man’s hands arrived yet?”

“No. Are they that important?”

“I’d really like to look at them.”

“Then I’ll call him personally, and get him to fax them as soon as possible.”

Enzo nodded. “And I have a big favor to ask.”

She sighed. “What now?”

“Hold off on reporting any of this until I get back from Paris.”

She seemed shocked. “You’re going to Paris again?”

“I’ll catch the night train from Clermont Ferrand and be back by tomorrow night.” He hesitated, then lifted up the suicide note. “But I’ll need to take this with me.”

She gasped her frustration. “Enzo, I could be in so much trouble over this already.”

He grinned. “I thought you told me you could look after yourself.”

A smile spread reluctantly across her lips. “Don’t you just hate it when someone uses your own words to back you into a corner?”

“That’s why you should always choose your words very carefully in the first place.”

She glared at him. “Bastard!”

“Is that a yes?”

Paris, France, November 2010

Paris gave the impression of a flickering, monochrome movie from another age when he stepped off the train at the Gare de Lyon shortly after seven. A bitter north-easterly had driven the inhabitants of the city into winter coats, and hats, and scarves, and the Parisian penchant for blacks and greys seemed to have leeched all color from the seething mass of commuters that thronged the platforms. Summer was both a distant memory, and a far off prospect, and the winter months that loomed ahead had subdued the usually passionate populace. The dull murmur of voices was barely discernible over the constant announcements of departures and arrivals.

Enzo shouldered his way silently through the crowds, head lowered, and ran down the steps to the metro. His compartment was packed and uncomfortable, a human cattle truck filled with the warm, sour smell of body odour and cigarette breath. The twenty minute ride to the Gare du Nord seemed like an eternity.