Peter May: Cast Iron

He had not called in advance, because he did not want to give her the opportunity to tell him she was busy, or had company, or was simply somewhere else. And so he was taking a chance on catching her at home, alone and off guard.

He pressed the button on the door-entry system and waited to hear her voice.

‘ Oui? ’

‘It’s Enzo,’ is all he said. There was a long silence, and he could almost hear her thinking, before the buzzer sounded and the lock on the door disengaged.

It was cold in the little downstairs entry hall. A door off to the left, he knew, led to the indoor garden, with its tiny stream and paths and trees and bushes, a glass roof thirty feet overhead that let light flood in during the day. It was where she practised her skills as a psychologist, conducting séances with her patients in an incongruous and wholly unexpected environment.

He felt the cold retreating as he climbed the staircase to her apartment, and then the rush of warm air as she opened the door to let him in. To his relief, Janine, Laurent’s nanny, had left for the day and Charlotte was on her own. He looked around for some sign of Laurent, and Charlotte said, ‘I’ve already put him down for the night.’ Which Enzo took as being her way of telling him he couldn’t see his son.

‘I’ll just go and take a look,’ he said, mounting the steps from the tiny kitchen to the living room, then down on to the grilled metal gallery that ran beneath the glass roof to the bedrooms at the far end.

He heard her hurrying along behind him. ‘It’s really not convenient,’ she said.

He kept walking, his footsteps clattering on the grille. ‘It never is.’

A light glowed beyond the glass walls of Charlotte’s bedroom, where Laurent still slept in his cot.

‘Enzo...’ Her voice was shrill.

He turned and put a finger to his lips, softly shushing her, and pushed open the door to the bedroom. The sight of her bed, still unmade, made his stomach flip over. How often had he made love to her between those sheets? How often had they lain talking in the dark, overheard only by the imagined ghosts of the Italian soldiers killed and buried in the cellar by the previous owners on the liberation of Paris? It was the bed where Laurent had been conceived, and a bed Enzo had not slept in for more than two years.

He quickly turned his attentions towards the cot and the sleeping child. Laurent was twisted up in his woollen blanket, lying on his side, his thumb in his mouth. The gentle rasp of his breathing seemed to fill the room.

Enzo gazed down with unglazed love at the son he hardly ever saw, luxuriant black hair curling around the boy’s ear, and he leaned over to brush his head very lightly with soft lips.

When he stood up and turned around, Charlotte was standing almost silhouetted in the doorway. Tall and willowy. Long curling black locks, shot through now faintly with silver, tumbled over square shoulders. She was dressed simply in a long-sleeved black T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. And, even without a trace of make-up, he still thought her beautiful, black eyes like polished coals reflecting light in the dark.

A flick of her head towards the gallery made it clear she wanted him out. He pushed past her into the light, and she pulled the door shut, following him then back along the walkway to the steps that took them up to the living room. Computer screens set on a work desk displayed video of the garden below from cameras mounted on the walls. She recorded all her sessions for later review. She closed the door. ‘What the hell—?’

‘I have a right to see my son.’

She controlled her anger and her voice by clenching her teeth. ‘You call me first.’

‘Oh, sure. To be told that, well, you’re busy. Or you’re just about to go out. Or you’re not at home. You’re at a conference somewhere with Janine along to look after Laurent. Or — and I’ve had this a few times — it’s just not convenient.’

‘Well, given how rarely you’re in Paris, it’s hardly surprising that I can’t just drop everything at a moment’s notice simply because you’re in town. If you really were interested in seeing your son, you might have thought about moving to the capital.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘Oh, no, of course. I forgot.’ Her words oozed sarcasm. ‘They can’t do without you at Toulouse. A big fish at a silly little university.’

Enzo was stung. ‘The forensics department at Paul Sabatier is the biggest in the south-west.’

‘Like I said, big fish, small pool. How was it they described you in their brochure? Scotland’s leading forensics expert? Specialist in blood pattern and crime-scene analysis?’ She laughed. ‘Scotland? Well, now, the pools don’t come much smaller, do they? And when was the last time you practised any of these dark arts? As far as I’m aware, you’ve been teaching biology to giggling girlies for the last twenty-five years.’

Enzo kept his voice low and steady. ‘I’ve resolved five out of Roger’s seven cold cases. The best efforts of the French police failed to crack one of them.’

‘Yes, well, you know what I think about the French police.’ She swanned past him and dropped into an armchair by the huge window that overlooked the street below. ‘But don’t flatter yourself, Enzo. You’ve had Roger, and me, and several others to help you on more than one. And you still have two to go before you win your silly bet.’

There must have been something in his expression, and he saw realisation dawn suddenly on her face. ‘ That’s why you’re in Paris. Roger’s been briefing you on the Lucie Martin case.’

It irked him that he should be so transparent. But then, Charlotte and Raffin had been lovers at the time Raffin was writing his book, and so she was intimately acquainted with each of the seven cold cases, and had followed the resolution of every one with more than a passing interest. For some reason that Enzo had never quite understood, Charlotte and Raffin had remained confidants, even after the fractious break-up of their affair, and it was probably true that, these days, she was closer to Roger than to Enzo. Something that seemed to Enzo even more extraordinary in light of the warning she had once given him: There is something dark about Roger. Something beyond touching. Something you wouldn’t want to touch, even if you could.

Enzo was defensive. ‘I have other reasons for being here, too.’

But she wasn’t interested in those, at least not for the moment. ‘So what do you think?’

He frowned. ‘About what?’

‘The Lucie Martin case, of course.’

And he recalled what he had said to Raffin. ‘There’s not much to go on.’

‘No.’ She ran long, elegant fingers back through her hair to take the fringe out of her eyes. ‘A skeleton stripped clean by fish. Death by strangulation. A broken hyoid. The signature of a serial killer who was nowhere near the scene of her disappearance at the time. And not a single suspect. Is that about right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So where will you begin?’

He was annoyed by this digression. They were in danger of straying well away from the purpose of his visit. ‘With the family.’

‘You’ll go to see the Martins?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then?’

He shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

She smiled. ‘Well, that sounds like a promising start.’

He decided to take back the initiative. ‘I want you to come to Cahors next week. And bring Laurent.’

The sudden change of tack caught her off balance. ‘Why?’ Perhaps if she’d had more warning, she might have been able to lie about a previous engagement, or a trip to Angoulême to see her parents, or some other such concoction.

‘Sophie’s organising a birthday party for me. Originally it was supposed to be a surprise. But — you know Sophie — she can never keep a secret. She’s trying to get the whole family together.’