Peter May: Cast Iron

‘That’ll cost a bit.’

She nodded. ‘Unfortunately the doctor is based in Biarritz. So it’s a bit of a trek.’

‘Roger owns property down that way, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, just south of the town. It was his wife’s family home. She inherited it when her parents were drowned in a boating accident. She and Roger couldn’t live there, but she couldn’t bear to sell it. So she turned it into a kind of exclusive chambres d’hôtes , converting it into several apartments, one of which she kept for their own personal use. Obviously, Roger inherited it when Marie was... well, when she died.’

‘Her family were pretty wealthy, weren’t they?’

‘Filthy bloody rich, from all accounts. I mean, they bought this apartment for their daughter. Imagine how much that must have cost. Two hundred metres from the Sénat. One of the most prestigious addresses in Paris. Who knows what it’s worth now?’

‘And I suppose Roger inherited everything from Marie?’ Kirsty didn’t respond. ‘Makes you wonder why he even bothers working.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t have to. He just wants to. Money’s not everything.’

Enzo smiled. ‘Say people who have lots of it.’

But Kirsty didn’t return the smile. ‘Anyway, Alexis and I will stay over at the apartment in the Biarritz house when we go down for the appointment. I’ve never been before.’ She clouded a little. ‘It’s just a shame Roger can’t go with us.’ She pulled a face. ‘Work.’

Enzo frowned. ‘When is it?’

‘Sometime next week. I’m waiting for them to confirm a day and time.’

‘Well, why don’t I go with you? Moral support. I suppose there’ll be more than one bedroom.’

Kirsty’s spirits lifted visibly. ‘Oh, would you, Papa? That would be a great relief. I was kind of dreading going on my own.’

‘Well, Sophie’s planning a birthday party for me in Cahors next week. If the timing works out, we could go down to Biarritz afterwards.’

Kirsty nodded. ‘Yes, I know about the party. Sophie’s been in touch. Trying to get the whole family together, she said.’ She hesitated. ‘She wanted me to ask Charlotte to come, and bring Laurent.’

Enzo stiffened a little. ‘Oh, did she?’

‘But I’m not going to.’ She seemed determined, and Enzo feigned indifference.

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘You should do it.’

He flashed her a look.

‘Papa, Laurent’s your son. And Charlotte... well, I don’t know what she is to you anymore. But you must have done something together to make a baby.’

He made a face at her. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to his daughter about his sex life with Charlotte. And he was rescued from the embarrassment of it by the return of her fiancé.

Raffin emerged from his study with a purpose of step and what, to anyone else, might have seemed like a smile on his face. To Enzo, it was a smirk of self-satisfaction. He barely acknowledged Kirsty, stooping momentarily as he passed to plant a perfunctory kiss on her head, and completely ignoring his son. The bottle of Puligny-Montrachet was in his hand even before he had sunk into his chair, and he refilled his glass. He sat back and raised it to his lips, sipping appreciatively before smiling at father and daughter. ‘That was Jean-Jacques Devez on the phone,’ he said, adding, quite unnecessarily, ‘the Mayor of Paris.’

‘Yes, we know who he is, Roger,’ Kirsty said. ‘The question is, what was he after?’ And Enzo got the immediate impression that his daughter was not altogether fond of the Mayor of Paris. Raffin seemed oblivious.

‘It looks like he’s almost certain to win the UMP nomination for next year’s presidential election.’

Enzo knew that Raffin, and presumably now Kirsty, saw Devez socially. A friendship between the Raffins and the Devez family that dated back to when the young politician was just embarking on his meteoric rise to political stardom. Marie, apparently, had been friends with Devez’s wife from some private school they had both attended.

Kirsty said, ‘The papers have been predicting that for months.’

Raffin sipped a little more of his Chardonnay. ‘Yes, but I think he must have had the nod from the powers that be. There’s to be an announcement within the next two weeks. And when it’s made public, he wants me to be his press secretary.’

Neither Kirsty nor Enzo knew quite how to respond. If he accepted, and Devez were to become president, it would put Raffin at the very heart of power and influence in France. And there was no doubt that his family, along with Enzo’s mission to solve the cold cases in his book, would take second or even third place.

‘And?’ Kirsty said.

But Raffin just shrugged, as if it were a matter of indifference to him. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

Enzo said, ‘Well, I hope it’s a decision you’ll take in consultation with Kirsty. After all, it’s going to affect you both.’

‘Of course!’ Raffin flicked Enzo a look of irritation, and everything about his tone said, It’s none of your damn business! He pulled his open book towards him. ‘Now, where were we?’

‘The lack of any real link between Blanc and Lucie,’ Enzo prompted him.

‘Ah, yes...’ Raffin sifted through some of the papers in front of him until he found what he was looking for. ‘But here’s the strange thing.’ He ran fingertips over a colour photograph of the spot in the lake bed where Lucie’s skeleton had been found. ‘The girl’s body would have been reduced to bones very quickly, all flesh and soft tissue almost certainly eaten by the fish in the lake. Apparently there are carp, roach, rudd and catfish in those waters. They would have made pretty short work of her. Her skeleton would have disintegrated quite early on, and you would expect there to be some missing pieces. Not least those three tiny bones that make up the U-shaped hyoid in the neck. At twenty, they would not yet have fused into one single piece. We are usually thirty-five or older before that happens. The likelihood of recovering them after fourteen years in the water would have been very remote. Only, for some reason, her killer had tied a blue bin bag over her head, and the hyoid bones were caught up in the plastic.’

He pulled another photograph towards him. The three pieces of the hyoid bone were laid out separately on a sheet of grey paper. The main body of it at the base of the U, and the two horns on either side. One of the horns was broken. Raffin stabbed at it with his forefinger.

‘This one was fractured.’ He dropped the photograph back on the table. ‘Blanc’s modus operandi was strangulation. So violent that the hyoid bones were separated in all three victims, and actually broken in one. So it would appear that Lucie Martin was murdered in exactly the same fashion.’

Kirsty said, ‘So why wasn’t Blanc charged with her murder as well?’

Raffin sat back and quaffed more wine. ‘Because there was no evidence at all to connect him to it.’

‘Apart from the letter,’ Enzo said.

‘Apart from the letter,’ Raffin conceded. ‘But he was nowhere near Duras or the Martin family estate the day she went missing. He had a cast-iron alibi. And he was arrested for the other killings within thirty-six hours of her disappearance. The authorities never took the idea very seriously.’ He washed the Puligny-Montrachet around his gums, and drew it back over his tongue with an intake of air through pursed lips. ‘So what do you think, Enzo?’

Enzo sighed. ‘I think, of all the cases we’ve addressed so far, we’ve never had quite as little as this to go on.’

It was almost dark by the time Enzo got to the Rue des Tanneries. The narrow street was deserted. This was a commercial and industrial rather than residential area, in a corner of Paris once famous for its Gobelin tapestries and the tanneries that polluted the River Bièvre. The nearby market, ‘La Mouff’, in the Rue Mouffetard, derived its name from the word mouffettes , a slang term describing the putrid exhalations of the river. But the smells and dyes and the pollutants from the tanneries were long gone, and it was here, in a former coal merchant’s, that Charlotte had made her home and set up her cabinet , dispensing wisdom to those wrestling with their inner demons.