Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

Niamh examined her phone, switching it on and checking her mailer. ‘ Something you should know ’ was still there in her in-box. She noticed that the battery was almost exhausted, and was sure that it had been around 80 per cent when Martinez took it. She had recharged it on the stand at Première Vision late that afternoon. What, she wondered, had they been doing with it? The home screen looked exactly the same as it always did. But she noticed with something of a shock that the time was now 2.17 am. Had she really been here all these hours? She double-checked with her watch. Ruairidh had been dead for more than five hours. Forty-two years snuffed out in a moment. And time, the healer, just kept moving on, until one day he would be just a distant recollection, residing only in the memories of those who had known him. And when they were gone, too, what traces would any of them have left on this earth? What point would there have been to these lives they deemed so precious? She closed her eyes to let the moment pass, then slipped the phone back into her bag.

Yet more time drifted by. How much of it she didn’t even want to know. There was a comfort to be found in this state of limbo, requiring no thought, no decision, no action. She would have liked, there and then, simply to close her eyes and never need to open them again.

Then the sound of the hinges on the door once more brought her head around. Another uniformed officer held it wide for a tall man wearing a dark suit and white shirt open at the collar. A man somewhere in his forties, Niamh thought. Black hair thinning a little, unshaven, sallow skin pale from lack of sun. And yet he had a certain style about him. In the cut of his suit, and in his carefully plucked eyebrows and manicured nails. The police officer nodded towards the row of seats where Niamh sat and retreated once more, closing the door behind him. The man glanced at Niamh, unsure whether to acknowledge her or not, then sat down in a seat at the end of the row. He clasped his hands between his thighs and leaned forward on his forearms.

They sat in silence for a long time then, Niamh listening to his breathing. A distraction from the hum of the light overhead. She felt his discomfort, and although she stared straight ahead at the wall, was aware of his head turning several times in her direction. Finally he cleared his throat and said something in French that she didn’t catch. She turned awkwardly and said, ‘I’m sorry, my French isn’t very good.’

He looked at her a little more closely and nodded. This time he spoke in a softly accented English that Niamh took to be Russian, or at least Eastern European. ‘Are you here in connection with the explosion in the square?’

‘Yes.’

A long pause. ‘You are a witness?’

‘My husband was killed in the blast.’

He seemed startled and sat upright. ‘He was in the car?’

‘Yes.’

Another long pause. ‘Did you know Irina?’

Her mouth seemed very dry then, and bitter words came with a bad taste. ‘My husband did.’

He appeared oblivious to the implication implicit in her tone. He said, ‘Irina is my sister.’ Then corrected himself. ‘ Was my sister.’

Niamh looked at him afresh, and this time saw him very differently. The whites of very black eyes were bloodshot, and he might well have been crying. Whatever Irina’s sins, they were not his. Like her he had lost someone close and was probably still in shock. For the first time she felt pity for someone other than herself and gave voice to it. ‘I’m sorry.’

He nodded again and returned to his previous position, leaning forward on his thighs, hands clasped between them as if in prayer. Suddenly he said, still staring at the floor, ‘You never imagine your little sister will go before you. You always think you will be there to protect her.’ There was a crack in his voice as he added, ‘I should have been there to protect her.’

And Niamh wondered if it should have been her job to protect Ruairidh. Death, it seemed, was always accompanied by guilt. Irina’s brother turned to stretch an arm across the space between them, a hand offered in empathy. ‘Dimitri,’ he said.

Niamh took it and felt how cold it was. ‘Niamh.’

Then they returned to their respective positions, several seats apart, and silence fell between them again. But it only lasted a few moments. And it was Dimitri who broke it. ‘Apparently they think it was Georgy who did it.’

Niamh sat bolt upright. ‘Georgy? Who’s Georgy?’

‘Irina’s husband. He is from the Caucasus.’ As if that explained everything.

‘Why would he kill his own wife?’

Dimitri turned to look at her, and she saw in his eyes the hatred he harboured for his brother-in-law. ‘Georgy is a brute of a man. I never knew what she saw in him. But he was like an addiction. The more he was bad for her the more she wanted him. And to him? Irina was his possession. He owned her. I have never known a man so jealous. God help her if she ever tried to leave him, or anyone tried to take her from him.’ He hesitated before adding awkwardly, ‘It seems he might have thought she was having an affair with the man in the car.’

Niamh’s carefully contrived calm was suddenly flooded with emotions that very nearly overpowered her. Anger, hate, sorrow, revenge. ‘Is he in custody? Do they have him?’

Dimitri shook his head. ‘He’s gone missing since the explosion. The police are very anxious to find him.’

Irina and Georgy’s apartment was in the Rue Houdon, above her workshop and the boutique on the corner below it. This was a narrow cobbled street near the top of the hill in Montmartre. It fell steeply away from the Rue des Abbesses and the little Jehan Rictus garden square just above that, famous for its Wall of Love. Forty square metres of blue tile on which the words I love you are written 311 times in 250 languages. Words that Georgy Vetrov had perhaps taken just a little too seriously.

It was still pitch dark when Sylvie Braque arrived to meet up with a van full of officers from the police scientifique , two uniformed policemen and a colleague from the brigade criminelle . The streets were deserted, too early yet for the municipal water wagons that would sluice down the gutters and spray the sidewalks. But lights shone from the odd boulangerie , and the occasional delivery truck climbed its weary way up the hill.

Vehicles lined one side of the Rue Houdon, vans and private cars, and a tall square trailer covered in graffiti and old torn posters that looked like it might have been abandoned. So they all had to park around the corner in front of the Café L’Aristide and walk down.

Philippe Cabrel was younger than Braque, but held the same rank. He was short and cocky and losing his hair, but for some reason that Braque could never fathom was popular with the ladies. Dishevelled and bleary, he looked as if he might have been dragged from the bed of one of them within the last hour. He cast an incredulous eye over Braque. ‘What the hell, Sylvie? You didn’t get all dressed up like that just to search an apartment.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘So where were you?’

‘I wasn’t anywhere.’

‘Oh come on. Sexy skirt, high heels, low-cut blouse. You must have been somewhere. Got a secret lover you haven’t been telling us about?’

To Braque’s annoyance her heels clicked loudly on the pavement, echoing off the buildings that rose all around them. ‘If you must know I had a date.’

‘Ohhh.’ Cabrel grinned. ‘Anyone we know?’

‘No.’

The police scientifique and the uniformed officers were waiting for them by the door to the stairs of the Vetrov apartment. ‘No reply,’ said one of the uniforms. Braque had already tried calling several times.