Peter May - Cast Iron

‘Who’s this?’

Charlotte said, ‘We had to indulge in a little subterfuge, Régis, to get him in. As far as the prison’s concerned Enzo is my assistant.’

‘And who is he really?’

‘Enzo Macleod,’ Enzo said, holding out his hand. Blanc made no attempt to shake it and kept his eyes fixed on Enzo.

‘He’s a former forensic scientist from Scotland,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s looking into the murder of Lucie Martin.’

Blanc was on his feet so quickly that Enzo was startled into taking a step back. Blanc’s seat overturned and crashed to the floor behind him, and Enzo saw the prison officers beyond the glass pushing themselves off the wall, suddenly tense and ready to move.

There was a moment when it seemed that almost anything was possible, and Enzo calculated that Blanc could quite easily kill him before the guards had even unlocked the door.

Blanc snarled, ‘You think I’m going to sit here and let you pin Lucie Martin’s murder on me?’

‘Cool it, Régis.’ Charlotte’s tone was calm, but there was an underlying sense of menace in it that drew his eyes towards her for the most fleeting of moments before they returned to Enzo.

With a surface calm that in no way reflected the way he felt inside, Enzo said, ‘I’m not even going to try to do that, Régis. Because I don’t believe you did. I think you were in love with Lucie. And that, very probably, she was in love with you. Or, at least, thought she was.’ He saw consternation gather in the creases around Blanc’s eyes.

Charlotte stood up and walked around the table to right Blanc’s chair. ‘Sit down, Régis,’ she said. And like some schoolboy admonished by his teacher, he pulled his chair towards him and perched, sullen-faced, on the edge of it, still without taking his eyes from Enzo.

‘What makes you think that?’ His whole tone and demeanour was defensive.

‘Your letter.’ Enzo sat down so that they were all facing each other on the same level, and he was aware in his peripheral vision of the guards outside relaxing again.

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve written love letters in my time, Régis. The first one, all full of declaration. Love and intent. And the last one... Well...’ And he smiled. ‘That would depend on which of us was breaking it off.’ He placed his forearms on the desk in front of him and leaned forward. ‘But here’s the thing. Yours doesn’t fit either category. I don’t believe that was the first, or only letter. And it certainly wasn’t intended to be your last. So I can only assume there had been others. Before, maybe after.’

Blanc sat back and folded his arms, and Enzo noticed for the first time the crude tattoos on his left forearm.

‘That’s quite an assumption, Monsieur... whatever your name is.’

‘Macleod. But I know some people have trouble pronouncing that, so you can call me Enzo.’ Enzo knew that he couldn’t let his gaze wander left or right. He had to meet Blanc’s eye with the same unwavering stare with which Blanc was fixing him. ‘Anyway, maybe I’m cheating a little. Because I also know that you and Lucie were seeing each other.’

Blanc’s whole expression changed. Incomprehension clouded the clarity of his eyes. ‘How can you know that? Nobody knew that.’

‘It’s true, then?’ Charlotte’s voice broke like an intruder into their conversation, but neither of them paid it the least attention.

Enzo said, ‘She’d been going out with a boy all through school.’

‘Tavel!’ Blanc spat out his name, and Enzo was amazed that Blanc both knew it and remembered it.

He nodded. ‘When she threw him over he got jealous. Figured there was someone else. So he followed her one night. And guess who she met?’

This was clearly news to Blanc, and he took some moments to process it. Enzo could almost see the thought machinery working behind eyes that were gazing into the past, making calculations and reaching conclusions. For once Enzo was not their focus. And then it was as if he had returned from some other place, and he looked at Enzo again. His eyes wild now.

‘ He killed her. It must have been him.’ And he looked around the room as if searching for a way out. ‘I’ll fucking kill him. Even if I have to break out of here to do it.’ He slammed the palms of his hands down flat on the table in front of him.

Enzo said calmly, ‘There’s no proof whatsoever that Tavel was involved. He was in Paris the weekend she went missing.’ He paused. ‘But, then again, what’s an alibi, except someone else lying to protect you? You should know all about that, Régis. You always seemed to have an alibi when the police came looking for you.’ Another pause. ‘Except when it came to murdering those three girls.’ And he thought about what he had written up on his whiteboard. Did he want to be caught?

For the first time, Blanc’s unwavering gaze flickered away from Enzo, and when his eyes returned to him it was almost as if he accepted that Enzo knew the truth, whatever that might be.

‘Tell me about your relationship with Lucie, Régis.’

Blanc sat back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest, and deliberately avoided a meeting of eyes. He glanced self-consciously towards Charlotte, and Enzo would have sworn that he blushed. Blood rose high on his cheeks to bring colour to his prison-pale complexion. He let his eyes fall, fixing his gaze on his own feet, stretched out under the table in front of him. ‘Hard to explain,’ he said, ‘what it was about her.’ Even the tone of his voice had changed now, hushed, as if he were speaking in a church. ‘When I first met her at the offices of Rentrée...’ He laughed. ‘I suppose I’d gone along to scoff. To be difficult. Rude and crude. Fucking Christian do-gooders! And then she came in the room and sat down opposite me, and I suddenly felt like a little boy. Tongue-tied and awkward. Didn’t know where to look. But wherever I turned my eyes I couldn’t seem to avoid meeting hers in the end. I’d never been in the presence of—’ he fought for a way to describe it — ‘such innocence. Ever in my life. It was so pure, and real. Like the first time you shoot up heroin. It feels so fucking amazing, you never want to be in any other state.’ He shook his head. ‘I never got addicted to heroin, but I got addicted to Lucie. Couldn’t get enough of her.’

Now he sat forward, leaning on his thighs, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him and staring at the floor. But he wasn’t looking at it. Sightless eyes were transporting him back to another place and time. A place where the radiance of a young woman, real or imagined, had changed his life.

‘My whole life I was surrounded by filth and evil. Lies and deceit. But something about Lucie shone a light into that life and made me realise things didn’t have to be that way. That I didn’t have to be that way.’ He glanced up for a moment, as if searching for their understanding. ‘And she saw it, too. She told me she did. That there was a better person inside me. Someone I didn’t know was there. Someone I wouldn’t recognise, even if I did. She said she could help release him. The real me. The person trapped inside. That’s what she said.’

Then he was overcome by self-consciousness and looked down at the floor again.

‘I’ve thought about it often. That’s the thing about prison, there’s not much else to do but think. I wondered, looking back, if maybe she just saw me as some kind of a challenge. The triumph of good over evil. But that’s not what she said in her letters.’

Enzo felt a tiny jolt run through him, like an electric shock. ‘Lucie wrote to you?’

‘We exchanged half a dozen letters or more over as many weeks. I could feel her in every word. Beautiful words. Words that made me realise how stupid and illiterate I was. Words that made me want to change. To be that other person she saw in me. She said...’ He broke off, and Enzo was shocked to see the hint of tears in his eyes, tears that he lowered his head to conceal from them. But you could hear them in the tremble of his voice. ‘She said that she had seen beyond the outer shell, to the soft, sensitive person within. And that she loved that person, and wanted to release him.’