Peter May - Cast Iron

Martinot rapped on the door and said, ‘You leave this to me.’

A shadow darkened the other side of the spy hole at eye level. And a woman’s voice called from inside the apartment, ‘Who is it?’

‘Police, madame. Open up.’ The old man turned and half-winked at Enzo. He had shaved and put on his best and shiniest shoes, and a long, dark winter coat. Enzo had persuaded him that he should take a moment before they left to clean the food stain off the lapel.

Mathilde was a handsome woman, close to fifty Enzo thought. Recently coiffed hair shone almost blue-black, immaculately cut and cascading from a centre parting to very nearly touch her collar. The years had treated her kindly, and she had worn well, a strong jawline defining a well-structured face above an elegant neck that was only now beginning to show signs of age. She wore a cream blouse with a frilled lapel, and a pale blue pencil skirt that fell just below the knee. It would have been impossible to guess that she had once sold her body on street corners.

She looked out at them with concern, casting an appraising glance first towards Enzo, before turning it without apparent recognition in the direction of Martinot.

‘Commissaire Jean-Marie Martinot,’ the old man said, ignoring the fact that he had been retired for more than ten years. He half turned, but without looking at Enzo. ‘My colleague, Monsieur Macleod.’

She glanced again at Enzo and frowned. Whatever else he looked like, it wasn’t a policeman. But Martinot didn’t give her time to dwell on it.

‘We met in February 1992, you may recall, when I was investigating the murder of one Pierre Lambert, a rent boy working out of an apartment in the thirteenth.’

Colour immediately rose high on her cheeks, and she glanced quickly along the hall. ‘Please, come in,’ she said, and held the door wide, clearly in a hurry for them to step out of public view, and the possible earshot of prying neighbours.

She led them into a sumptuous living room, expensive leather furniture set around a deep, white, shagpile carpet. French windows looked out beyond a balcony and the trees below, to the still waters of distant lakes reflecting the pewter of a wintery sky. There were no lights on, and the room seemed gloomy and faded somehow. She turned towards them, clearly agitated. ‘I have two teenage children due home from school in ten minutes. I would appreciate it if you were gone before then.’

‘That’ll depend on how cooperative you are, madame,’ Martinot said. He looked pointedly around the room. ‘Seems like you married well. What is it your husband does?’

‘Look...’ She was almost ringing her hands. ‘My husband knows nothing about... about my life back then. And I’d very much like it to stay that way.’ She paused. ‘What can you possibly want to talk to me about after all this time?’

‘Your friend Sally,’ Enzo said.

Mathilde frowned. ‘Sally?’ Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, you mean Sal?’

And Enzo remembered that ‘Sal’ was what Lulu had called Sally Linol.

‘She disappeared,’ Martinot prompted her. ‘Immediately after Lambert was murdered.’

‘Yes...’ She seemed lost for a moment in recollection. ‘They were a weird pair, those two.’

‘And yet you and Sal were friends,’ Enzo said.

‘We used to work the same patch. Shared a pimp.’ Somehow the memory of it was distasteful to her now. ‘Even shared a studio for a time. Then she got herself some money and moved out. A place of her own. Though she still spent most of her time at Pierre’s.’

‘Where’d the money come from?’ Martinot asked.

She shrugged and folded her arms defensively below her breasts. ‘Who knows? She certainly never told me. Some of the girls said she’d caught herself a nice wealthy client who treated her well, but, if she did, I didn’t know anything about it. It was just gossip.’ She couldn’t resist a glance at her watch, and she sighed theatrically. ‘Look, what is this all about? Has she turned up, or what?’ And then she was struck by a sudden thought. ‘She’s not dead, is she?’

‘I hope not,’ Enzo said. ‘Did she ever tell you where she was from?’

She gave him a withering look. ‘The girls don’t talk about stuff like that. You don’t tell, you don’t ask.’ But she paused then, realising this was not the answer they wanted. She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know why, maybe it slipped out sometime. Bordeaux?’ Then she shrugged. ‘Could be wrong.’ She glanced from one to the other. ‘Listen, I’d really like you to go.’

Martinot said, ‘She never got in touch again after Lambert’s murder?’

A vigorous shake of the head. ‘Never. And good riddance. Didn’t even say goodbye.’

Enzo retrieved his laptop from his shoulder bag and kneeled down to open it up on a low coffee table by the window. He woke it from sleep and brought up, full screen, the jpeg image of Sally Linol that Nicole had sent him. The feather tattoo was clearly visible on the side of her neck.

Mathilde’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God! Where did you get that?’

‘Is it her?’ Enzo said.

Mathilde leaned over to trace the line of the feather with the tips of her fingers. ‘God, yes. Even without that tattoo, I’d have known her anywhere.’

Sophie had spent nearly an hour scraping the handle end of the spoon on the concrete floor to wear it thin enough to slip beneath the domed head of the bolt. Even then, it had not been easy. The bolt was rusted solid, and who knew how many years it might have been since these bars had last been un-padlocked and swung open on their hinges?

At first she had been afraid they might hear the scrape, scrape of metal on concrete, but the door was thick, and she could hear very distantly the sound of their television. They would never hear her above it.

Later she had watched with apprehension as one of them came to take away the tray from which she had removed the spoon. But it elicited no comment. And when the man returned several hours later with her next meal, there was another spoon in her coffee mug. She could only imagine that there must be several, and that one missing had gone, mercifully, unnoticed.

Now she stood on tiptoe, working assiduously at the head of the bolt, scouring away the rust which had almost welded it to the hoop of the top hinge. Intermittently she used the lip of the spoon end to try to lever it up, but only succeeded in bending the spoon. Several times she very nearly gave up. But the thought of sitting doing nothing while meekly awaiting her fate was worse than the frustration of making no apparent progress with the bolt. At least that gave her a focus, and concentration relieved her fear.

It had been some time before it dawned on her that the small rectangle of pre-packed butter that they provided with each tray of food could be used as a lubricant.

With trembling fingers she had unwrapped the first of them and smeared it all over both hinges, around the tops of the bolts and the inset holes at the foot of each. Then she worked the spoon furiously into every tight space before squeezing in more butter.

The next tray had brought another pat of butter, and as she rubbed that into the hinges she began to fear that they would see how it was staining them dark. They seemed to scream out at her from the wall, Look, look, look at me! Look what she’s doing! But when the short man with the gravelly voice came a little while later to take her down to the toilet, his eyes did not even wander in that direction.

She had lost track of how long she had been working on the top hinge when she got the first hint of movement from the bolt. With the spoon handle inserted between the top of the bolt and the hinge itself, she finally got it to turn a little. And that tiny movement was enough to set her off on a frenzy of activity, working the spoon in and out, getting the head of the bolt to turn a little more each time.