Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

She looked up to find Faubert watching her intently. ‘Someone sent this email, Braque, intent on mischief, or malice, or both. Now perhaps it did provoke Vetrov into planting that car bomb and killing them both. But we have absolutely no proof of that. All we know is that he has vanished. He didn’t send this email to himself. Nor, it would be safe to assume, the one to Madame Macfarlane. So there is someone else out there who can most definitely help us with our enquiries.’ He opened another folder and lifted out an electronic airline ticket, before dropping it on the desk in front of her. ‘Which is why I want you to be at the funeral.’

Clarity dawned suddenly on Braque. ‘That’s why the remains were released so early.’

‘The only reason. We had to rush through bone and tissue matching. Damage was so extreme that DNA comparison wasn’t always possible. If we’d waited, the whole thing would have gone cold. Sometimes, a simple blood test was good enough to tell us which parts were male, which parts female. The rest, the slush, whatever, got washed down the pathologist’s drain, disposed of along with the bits that couldn’t be matched.’

‘Jesus, boss!’ Braque was shocked.

Faubert waved her shock aside with a dismissive hand. ‘This is a very high-profile case, Lieutenant. People upstairs want a high-profile resolution. And fast.’ He drew a deep breath, as if inhaling smoke, and looked at her critically. ‘And why you?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m asking myself the same question. But you are the only detective in the department with the level of English required for an assignment like this. So you get to go to sunny Stornoway.’

He rounded his desk, feeling in his jacket pocket for his cigarette packet. Evidently dealing with Braque had brought on nicotine cravings.

‘We’ve already been in touch with Police Scotland. They’ve been briefed, and a local officer on the island will be allocated to look after you. Find out everything you can about the couple. Friends, relationships. Enemies.’

‘She’ll recognize me.’

‘Well why shouldn’t she? You’re not going there undercover. You’ll need to talk to her, too.’ He brushed a hand across each shoulder and clouds of fine skin filled the air. Then he looked at his watch. ‘You’d better hurry. You’ve got less than three hours to get yourself out to Charles de Gaulle.’

Braque watched her fingers shaking as they punched out Madeleine’s number on her phone. The chatter of keyboards and voices filled the detectives’ office, along with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Braque’s panic shut it all out.

Madeleine’s voice sounded feeble. ‘ Oui, allô ? The reason she had been unable to pick up the twins that morning was what she claimed to be the onset of la grippe , although Braque was sure it was more likely to be a simple cold than the flu. Madeleine had a habit of dramatizing things.

‘Maddie, I’ve got a bit of an emergency. They’re sending me to Scotland for a few days and I need someone to take the girls.’

‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking.’ Madeleine’s tone suggested that she wasn’t being entirely flippant.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, my poor darling. How are you?’

‘Terrible, now that you ask.’

Even before she pressed the question, Braque knew what the answer would be. ‘I don’t suppose...’

‘Sylvie, it’s out of the question. I can’t even take care of Patsy, never mind the twins. Yves is having to pick her up from school. It’s going to be a few days before I’m up and about again.’

Braque exhausted all other possibilities before resorting, finally, to calling her ex. It simply wasn’t an option going back to Faubert to tell him she couldn’t go to Scotland because she was unable to find a babysitter.

Gilles answered the phone with a sigh, caller ID betraying her identity in advance. ‘What is it now, Sylvie?’

‘Gilles, I need a huge favour.’

‘You always do.’

She ignored his tone. ‘I’m being sent abroad on a case. Just for a few days. But I can’t get anyone to take the girls.’

There was a long silence.

‘Gilles?’

‘You know, we should never have had children. You’re not fit to be a mother.’

‘ We , Gilles. That’s the salient word here. We had children. It’s a shared responsibility.’

‘Except that you have custody and I only get to see them when it suits you.’

‘I have to work!’

‘Bloody hell, so do I! The difference is that I’ve got a partner, speaking of shared responsibility. You don’t. And you can’t cope, can you? It’s not even about money. It’s the job, the hours you work. The same things that made you a bad partner making you a bad mother.’

‘I love my girls. And they love me.’

‘They do. But they never get to see you. You’re never there. You’re always letting them down.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Not fair on them, no. Listen, girl, you were the one that fought for custody. You were the one that didn’t want them spending time with Lise. Scared that she was going to steal them away from you. Well, if you can’t live up to your obligations as a mother, then we really are going to have to revisit the whole question of custody.’

Braque contained her emotions with difficulty. ‘Are you going to take them or not?’

‘Of course I’ll bloody take them! But when you get back, Sylvie, we’re going to have to talk. This cannot go on. The girls need a mother, not a babysitter. A home, not a crêche.’

Balanish sat at the mouth of the river, overlooking the sea loch, and with easy passage from the harbour out to the ocean. Hills rose on three sides and it nestled in the valley where it was protected from the worst of the weather that the Atlantic could muster.

The Macfarlane croft was accessed from the turn-off just before the bridge, and sat halfway up the hill. It fell away on a long, gentle slope to the shore. Ruairidh’s father still kept a handful of sheep, but they had long ago stopped growing anything other than a few potatoes on a patch they cultivated at the side of the house.

The old croft house, now providing offices for Ranish Tweed, had been built next to the ruins of the original blackhouse halfway down the hill at the end of a steep pitted track. The new house sat just below the road at the top of the hill, commanding spectacular views over the loch, as well as the village below.

Niamh pulled her Jeep in alongside the Macfarlanes’ Audi A3. It was not a vehicle that could ever have negotiated the track across the moor to Taigh ’an Fiosaich. But beyond the initial tour of the house that Ruairidh had given them when he drove them out himself in the Jeep, the Macfarlanes had never been to visit.

As she walked around the granite-chipped walls of the house, Niamh felt the full fresh blast of a stiffening wind and noticed that Seonag’s red SUV was not outside the office further down the hill. She knocked on the back door and opened it into the kitchen.

Donald was sitting at the kitchen table eating toast and watching the news on a small TV set placed on top of the fridge. He seemed startled by her arrival, and then embarrassed.

‘Hi,’ he said, turning off the television and getting hurriedly to his feet. ‘Mum, Dad,’ he called through the open door into the hall, ‘that’s Niamh.’ Then he shuffled awkwardly. ‘Everything okay?’

Niamh shrugged. ‘As okay as anything can be in the circumstances.’

Mr Macfarlane came in first, wiping shaving foam from his neck with a towel that he then hung over the back of a chair. He looked gaunt, dark semicircles below his eyes. ‘Aw, Niamh,’ he said, and gave her the warmest of hugs. ‘I’m so sorry, my love. It’s the most awful thing to have happened. Donna’s been inconsolable.’