Peter May - Cast Iron

Enzo reckoned she had probably been on the business end of a few fists in her time.

‘Truth is, we all liked him. You couldn’t help but like Régis. He was a good laugh. Always wisecracking, and never sold you short. Took what he was owed and nothing else. And see if anyone messed with you. A client, or another pimp, Régis would pay him a visit. And you never had no more trouble.’ She shook her head, and her smile was one of fond recollection. ‘Word gets round, you know. You don’t fuck with Régis’s girls.’ She grinned. ‘Unless you’re paying. We felt safe. You know?’ She spat on the concrete. ‘Not like now.’

Dominique said, ‘Those three girls he murdered must have felt safe, too. Until he strangled them.’

Lulu folded her arms beneath her breasts and shook her head vigorously. ‘I still don’t understand it. None of us did. At first we thought he’d been set up. Régis would never have done something like that. Then, when he didn’t deny it...’ She turned dark eyes of consternation on them. ‘I’m still not quite sure I believe it.’

‘Did you know them?’ Enzo said. ‘The dead girls.’

She shrugged. ‘Everyone knew everyone back then. But I didn’t know them. I mean, they weren’t friends or anything.’

‘You’ve heard of the Bordeaux Six?’

‘Who hasn’t?’

‘You knew them, too, then?’

‘Same way as I knew the girls he strangled. Except for Sal. We used to hang out. Do the occasional double act.’

‘Sally Linol?’

‘Never knew her second name. She had a tattoo of a feather on the side of her neck. Bitch just up and disappeared on me. Not a damned word. One day she’s here. The next she’s gone. I remember Régis asking about her. Seemed very keen to find her. Someone said she’d gone to Paris, but no one knew for sure.’ She looked at Enzo and then at Dominique. ‘I can’t imagine what use to you any of my ramblings might be. But you’re running out of time. Unless you want to put more money in the machine.’

Enzo shook his head hopelessly. It was another dead end. Just confirmation of the enigma that was Régis Blanc. A man of impossible contradictions, who had murdered three prostitutes and fallen for an angel from Duras. But he hadn’t killed her, Enzo was pretty sure, and he was starting to doubt that Blanc was anything more than a time-consuming red herring. Despair was beginning to seep into his soul. ‘Thanks anyway,’ he said.

‘It’s poor Anne-Laure I feel the most sorry for,’ Lulu said suddenly. ‘Left on her own without any financial support to look after that little girl. I drop in sometimes for a coffee and a chat. She’s a poor soul. Must have been a terrible burden.’

‘What?’ Dominique frowned.

‘Looking after that kid. What was it they called it? Pump, or Pompe’s disease. Something like that. They said she wouldn’t live for more than a couple of years. I remember Régis was devastated. I mean, really devastated. He thought the world of that little girl. Then, when he got sent down for the murders, poor Anne-Laure got left to cope with it all on her own.’

Their hotel-room window looked out over a clutch of skeleton trees in a patch of scrubby grassland at a road junction. Opposite was a café, and further down the street, a Chinese restaurant. On the far side of the tram tracks, the Gare Saint-Jean stood in all its floodlit glory against a black sky, and the surrounding restaurants and bars were filled with people whose lives were untouched by Enzo’s pain. Their laughter and pleasure in life and living seemed to mock him as he stood looking down at them, cocooned in his own internal misery.

Why had Anne-Laure not told them about the child’s illness? It had loomed so large in their lives at the time. Only two years to live, Lulu had said. And yet Anne-Laure had spoken of Alice as if she were still alive. Now, it seemed to Enzo, the woman had been evasive when Dominique asked her about her daughter. Alice is lucky. She got away from all this . She was no longer in Bordeaux, she had told them. And then, enigmatically, She’s never set eyes on her father in all the years since they sent him to prison. And never will .

‘Found it.’ He turned at the sound of Dominique’s voice. She had been huddled over his laptop on the dresser opposite the bed for the last ten minutes.

Enzo crossed the room to stand at Dominique’s shoulder and look at the screen. She had found the American website of NORD, the National Organisation for Rare Disorders. Pompe Disease was emblazoned at the top of the page.

Dominique read aloud from the text: ‘Pompe disease is a rare genetic disorder characterised by the absence of the lysosomal enzyme, GAA. This enzyme is required to break down glycogen and convert it into the simple sugar, glucose. Failure to properly break down this thick and sticky substance results in a massive accumulation of it in cardiac and skeletal muscle cells. The infantile form is characterised by severe muscle weakness and diminished muscle tone, and usually manifests within the first few months of life. Additional abnormalities may include enlargement of the heart, the liver and the tongue. Without treatment, progressive cardiac failure can cause life-threatening complications between the ages of a year to a year and a half.’

Enzo straightened up. ‘That sounds horrible. No wonder her parents were devastated.’

Dominique scrolled down the page. She stopped and whistled softly. Then read, ‘Treatment requires the coordinated efforts of a team of experts specialising in neuromuscular disorders. Paediatricians, neurologists, orthopedists, cardiologists, dieticians...’ She sat back. ‘God, a whole army of specialists.’ She squinted again at the screen in the dark. ‘And more recently they seem to have developed some kind of enzyme-replacement therapy that has to be done every two weeks.’ She swivelled in her seat to look up at Enzo. ‘Régis could never have paid for treatment like that, Enzo. And Anne-Laure?’ She paused. ‘How can that child still be alive?’

Enzo lay awake, turning it over in his head again and again. It felt important, but he wasn’t sure why. He and Dominique had decided to go back to ask Anne-Laure about the child first thing in the morning, which for Enzo only meant more hours of passive waiting, treading water, while Sophie was being held somewhere under threat of her life. If she was still alive. But that was a thought he could not bring himself to contemplate.

He was aware of Dominique curled into his side, her skin on his, her arm thrown carelessly across his chest, holding him like a child clinging to her father. And he felt the comfort of her warmth and her touch. He tried to visualise how it would be for him right now if he were on his own, but it was simply unimaginable. Somehow he would have had to cope, but could not see how. In almost no time at all he had picked up where he had left off with Dominique nearly a year before. And very quickly she had become his rock, his anchor. He trusted and needed her, and could no longer picture his life without her in it. If he believed in God, he might even have thought that He had sent her to him in his hour of greatest need.

He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply, despairing of ever again finding the escape of sleep.

And then the ringing of his mobile phone startled him awake.

Both he and Dominique sat upright, hearts pounding, as Enzo fumbled to answer it. He saw that it wasn’t even midnight. And a glance at the screen told him it was Nicole calling. ‘What’s happened?’ He breathed fear into the phone.

‘Nothing bad, Monsieur Macleod. But go and wake up your laptop. I want to talk to you on FaceTime.’