Peter May - Cast Iron

Enzo and Dominique pulled on dressing gowns and drew up chairs in front of the computer. Enzo tapped the trackpad then entered his password. Almost immediately his FaceTime video-conferencing software began ringing. He clicked on the bouncing icon and Nicole appeared, full screen, a miniature screen in the bottom corner displaying the pale, bleary faces of Enzo and Dominique, illuminated only by the light of the computer. Nicole looked flushed with excitement, her hair all about her head in a tangle.

She said, ‘I’ve been going through those files, Monsieur Macleod.’

‘Which files?’

‘The Bordeaux Six. And I’ve found something.’

Enzo almost held his breath. ‘What?’

‘It goes back to the murder of Pierre Lambert in Paris.’

Enzo frowned, and Dominique said, ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘It was the third case in Raffin’s book,’ Enzo told her, though he couldn’t for the life of him see the relevance. ‘Lambert was a rent boy in Paris, a homosexual prostitute found murdered in his apartment. I tracked down the killer, a professional hitman. But not who paid him. Why anyone would have hired a professional to kill someone like Lambert was always a mystery. And I’ve never got to the bottom of it. He was salting away a lot of money in offshore accounts, and the suspicion was that he’d been blackmailing someone. But who...?’ He shrugged.

‘Yes, yes,’ Nicole said impatiently. ‘You can fill her in on all that later. The thing is, I’ve found a link between Lambert and one of the Bordeaux Six.’

Enzo felt his face stinging. ‘What sort of link?’

‘It was there in the book, but we never paid much attention to it at the time. You remember, you gave me Monsieur Raffin’s notes to look over, and there was a little more detail in there. So it sticks in my mind.’

‘Nicole...’ Enzo prompted her, frustration creeping into his voice.

‘I’m coming to it, I’m coming to it.’ She breathed deeply and then it all poured out of her. ‘The police interviewed all of Lambert’s friends and known associates at the time. But there was a girl. Someone everyone said was his best friend. She’d just gone missing. Simply vanished. A prostitute. Lambert’s fag hag. She spent more time at his apartment than her own. Like they were lovers. They even slept in the same bed together.’ She paused. ‘And they never did track her down.’

‘And?’ Enzo was still struggling to see the connection.

‘Her name was Sally, and she had the tattoo of a feather on her neck.’

And all the hairs stood up on the back of Enzo’s.

When Dominique woke, it was to see Enzo standing fully dressed at the window, staring gloomily out across the street as the first light of dawn painted the city grey. His hands were pushed deep into his pockets, and she could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he was hurting. She felt a surge of both pity and love, and slipped silently from the bed to cross the room and put her arms around him from behind.

He folded his arms around hers, still gazing from the window, and she said, ‘Did you sleep at all?’

‘Maybe. If I did, I wasn’t aware of it. But you know how that can be.’

She nodded. ‘What’s the plan?’ For she knew there would be one. He wouldn’t have spent all these hours awake without planning some kind of schedule for the day ahead.

He untangled himself from her and sat down in front of the laptop. The first image on screen when he woke it from the sleep he had been unable to find himself, was the face of the girl with the feather tattoo. Nicole had scanned it and sent a jpeg by email. He paused for a moment, staring at it, as perplexed now as he had been when Nicole first told them about the link. It seemed inconceivable to him that it could simply be coincidence. But he had no other way of explaining it. Or even beginning to understand it.

He banished her image with a sweep of his fingers on the trackpad, and brought up a one-way e-ticket on the TGV to Paris. ‘You’re going to have to go and see Anne-Laure on your own. Take the car. I’m going to Paris.’

Dominique was disappointed. She didn’t want to be separated from him. ‘What will you do there?’

‘I need to confirm that Lambert’s girlfriend — fag hag, whatever... I need to know that she really was Sally Linol.’

Dominique said, ‘Even if she was, Enzo. What does it mean?’

He closed the lid of his laptop abruptly. ‘I don’t know.’ He stood up, frustrated and angry with himself. ‘I really don’t. But it must mean something. It has to. It’s the only chink of light in all this darkness.’ He turned towards her, letting his hands fall helplessly to his sides. ‘What else can I do?’

She slipped her arms around him and pressed the side of her face to his chest. ‘Where there’s light there’s hope.’ And she looked up at him. ‘When’s your train?’

‘In an hour.’

‘Then let’s get breakfast. You need to fuel up for the day ahead.’

The Café du Levant, opposite the Gare Saint-Jean, owed its origins to the Arabic countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, with an extravagant facade of coloured mosaic beneath a domed representation of a rising sun. The brasserie below, more prosaically, offered choucroute and oysters. And this early, Enzo and Dominique found themselves the only customers.

Staff were still cleaning up from the night before, and a bleary-eyed girl brought them coffee and croissants. The place was poorly lit, mirrors and brass rails and red velvet soaking up the light from globed chandeliers. Somehow it reflected Enzo’s mood, and he toyed with his croissant rather than eating it, sipping only desultorily at his coffee.

Dominique watched him in silence, feeling his pain but not knowing how to assuage it.

Eventually he raised his eyes to hers and said, ‘I have no idea if I am doing the right thing, Dominique. And Sophie’s life depends on me doing the right thing.’

‘Whatever we are doing,’ Dominique said, ‘right or wrong, is better than doing nothing. Think how much worse that would feel.’ She put her hands over his on the table. ‘What these people are scared of is that you’re going to find something that will be a danger to them, whatever that might be. But if you can find that thing they’re scared of, then at least you’ll have some kind of bargaining power. And the only way we’re going to find it is by looking.’

She sat back and drained the coffee from her cup.

‘I’ll see you off on the train. And when I’ve spoken to Anne-Laure I’ll drive to Paris and meet you there. You’re not alone, Enzo. We’ll do this together.’

He looked at her and had to fight to stop tears springing to his eyes. Instead, he stood up and lifted her to her feet and put his arms around her, enveloping her almost completely. They stood, swaying a little together, turning gently from side to side. And he whispered, ‘I love you, Dominique.’

He felt her stiffen at his words, then relax again and hold him even more tightly. And he realised that the only reason he had said it was that he meant it. That it was what he felt. Words that had come spontaneously in a moment of need, from his heart, from his very soul. And he wished that everything else would just fade away, leaving him this moment with her. A moment he could never have imagined all those years ago when Pascale was taken from him.

He heard her whisper back, ‘I love you, too, my darling man.’

Sophie had been through many phases. At first her overwhelming emotion had been fear. And then she had felt sorry for herself. But it was impossible to maintain such high-octane emotions for an extended period, and gradually, through despair and hopelessness, she had descended into an almost catatonic state of nothingness. She was completely numb.