Peter May - Cast Iron

But Guillaume Martin wasn’t about to let him rest. He wanted to know exactly what Michel Bétaille had said to him, and listened attentively as Enzo related their conversation. It clearly didn’t please him, and he threw his napkin on the table in disgust.

‘Two years, we paid that man,’ he said. ‘And he came up with absolutely nothing.’

At least nothing, Enzo thought, that any of the parents wanted to hear. But he didn’t say so, and decided to change the direction of their conversation. ‘I’m assuming there was an autopsy, Monsieur Martin. On Lucie’s body.’ He immediately corrected himself. ‘Bones.’ And then glanced self-consciously towards Madame Martin, aware that she found talk of Lucie’s murder difficult to deal with, even after all this time. The old lady kept her eyes on the table.

Martin seemed distracted, even annoyed by Enzo’s switch of subject. ‘There was,’ he said.

Enzo knew that it wouldn’t have been much of an autopsy. The collection of bones that they had recovered from the lake would have been very little for the pathologist to go on. But his years spent working as a forensic scientist had taught him that every last detail counted, no matter how small. He said, ‘I wonder where I might be able to get a copy of it?’

Martin placed his hands flat on the table in front of him. ‘Well, that’s easy. I have one.’ He inclined his head a little. ‘One of the perks of being a judge. One has a certain amount of influence. Or used to.’

‘Could you make me a copy?’

‘Of course.’ He stood up, then paused. ‘Who was it you went to see in Duras?’

Enzo was not at all sure he wanted to get into this right now, particularly in the presence of Lucie’s mother, but he didn’t see how he could avoid it. ‘Richard Tavel,’ he said, and both Martin and his wife looked at him in surprise.

‘Why would you bother with that waster?’ Martin said. ‘I rue the day my daughter ever met him. He would never have been good enough for her, monsieur. That’s the trouble with sending your children to state school. They mix with all the wrong people. We could have sent her to the private Catholic collège in Bergerac. But that would have meant her boarding out, and neither of us wanted that.’

‘He was interviewed by the police at the time,’ Enzo said.

‘Yes, but he was in Paris the weekend she disappeared, so he couldn’t have had anything to do with it.’

‘Perhaps. But you told me yourself, experience has taught you that alibis are not to be trusted.’

Which stopped the old judge in his tracks. ‘You mean he wasn’t in Paris?’

‘I didn’t say that. According to the police, his story checked out. But he wasn’t entirely honest with them in other ways.’

Martin sat down again, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

‘About why Lucie had dumped him.’

The Martins exchanged puzzled glances. ‘I don’t understand,’ Madame Martin said. ‘Dumped him?’

And for the first time it became clear to Enzo that no one, other than Lucie and Tavel, knew that their relationship had ended. He said, ‘Lucie had met someone else. But it wasn’t until Tavel followed her one night that he saw her with him.’

‘Who?’ Colour flushed high on Lucie’s mother’s cheeks.

‘He didn’t know him immediately. Not until after his arrest.’ He paused. ‘It was Régis Blanc.’

Enzo was unprepared for the ferocity with which the old man hammered his clenched fists down on the table, making plates and crockery jump. ‘Rubbish!’ Spittle gathered immediately on his lips, and his face flushed red. He stood up suddenly and his chair fell over behind him, clattering on the tiles. ‘There is not the slightest possibility that my daughter was having a relationship with that man! Not a chance in hell, monsieur!’

‘Guillaume...’ Madame Martin reached a calming hand towards him, but if he saw it he ignored it.

‘That boy, Tavel, is a waster and a liar—’ he stabbed a finger at Enzo — ‘and if you go spreading scurrilous rumours like that to sully the memory of my poor dead daughter I can assure you, monsieur, you will get not one iota of cooperation from me.’

All of Enzo’s fatigue was banished in an instant. He stood up, taken aback by Martin’s outburst. ‘I’m only telling you what Tavel told me.’

‘So why didn’t he tell anyone at the time? It’s just lies. Lies!’

Madame Martin had rounded the table and placed both hands on her husband’s arm, crooking her elbow around his and looking up with great concern into the old man’s face. ‘Calm yourself, Guillaume. Monsieur Macleod’s just doing his job. I’m sure that nothing said between us will go any further than this room.’ She glanced at Enzo for confirmation, and he shrugged noncommittally, hoping that Martin might interpret that as an affirmative. There was no way he could guarantee keeping any of his findings private. ‘Now, you go and make that copy of the autopsy report for Monsieur Macleod, and I’ll pour you a small cognac.’

Martin took a moment to control himself, breathing stertorously through his nose. And then he swivelled and strode out of the kitchen.

His wife took a deep breath and turned towards Enzo. ‘I am so sorry, monsieur. Guillaume has always been inclined to a quick temper, and when it comes to anything to do with Lucie he’ll not hear a word against her.’ She righted Martin’s chair and sat down where he had been sitting, gazing off into space. ‘Personally, I always thought Richard was a rather nice young man.’ She turned worried eyes on Enzo. ‘Did he really say he’d seen Lucie with that man?’

Enzo nodded, and she lowered her eyes to stare at her hands in front of her. ‘Oh dear,’ was all she said.

Enzo sat down and reached for the bottle of Saint-Emilion, pouring another glass with slightly trembling hands. Martin’s reaction, at the end of a long and difficult day, had caught him off balance and a little more alcohol seemed like a good idea.

‘I’ll pour us all a cognac,’ Madame Martin said, and she stood and went off to get glasses and a bottle. When she returned, she poured generous measures into the glasses, and she and Enzo sat in awkward silence, waiting for her husband to return.

It was nearly fifteen minutes before Martin came back into the kitchen clutching a photocopy of his daughter’s autopsy — a meagre document, which led Enzo to wonder what had taken him so long to copy it. All trace of his temper tantrum had vanished, and he handed Enzo the document as if nothing had happened. ‘It’s not very long,’ he said. ‘The médecin légiste had, in truth, very little to work on. And I’m not sure you’ll find much illumination from it. I have read it many times. I keep imagining I’ll see something I’ve missed. But I never do.’

‘I’ve poured us a brandy,’ Madame Martin said, holding out a glass towards him.

But he waved it aside. ‘I’ve had enough tonight, Mireille. It’s time for bed, I think. Don’t you agree, Monsieur Macleod?’ And no matter how much Enzo might have enjoyed a glass or two of cognac, his host was making it clear that their evening was over.

For the second night running Enzo sat up in his bed at Château Gandolfo, unable to sleep. An hour ago he would have drifted away the moment his eyes closed, but Martin’s outburst had brought the events of the day back into sharp focus, and he couldn’t stop it all going round and round in his mind. Bétaille’s cool assertion that none of the Bordeaux Six, including Lucie, could be linked to Régis Blanc’s short, lethal and completely inexplicable killing spree. Richard Tavel’s revelation that Lucie had dropped him for a relationship with Blanc — something that chimed very much with Enzo’s reading of intimacy in Blanc’s letter. His adventure, or misadventure, at Château Duras. Who had left him that note, and why had they wanted to meet him? And then Martin’s extraordinary display of temper at the merest suggestion of a romantic link between Lucie and Blanc. What concerned Enzo most was that everything he had learned in the course of today had brought no greater clarity. If anything, he had simply stirred up more mud in the water.