Peter May - Cast Iron

Raffin smiled. ‘Exactly.’

They all turned at the sound of the door opening into the hall, and Kirsty manoeuvred Alexis’s pram in from the landing, bringing the chill damp air in with her. She was soaked, in spite of her waterproof, hair hanging in wet rats’ tails about her head, and Enzo realised she must have been out walking the streets all this time.

She divested herself of her coat and lifted Alexis from his pram. The baby boy was fast asleep, and Enzo stepped towards his daughter, concerned, as she carried him into the séjour . ‘Are you alright? You’re soaked.’

‘I’m fine. I just needed to think, that’s all. It’s a lot to take in.’

‘What is?’ Raffin crossed the room to take Alexis from her. And Kirsty told him about the phone call from Doctor Demoulin. Enzo saw disquiet flit across his face. ‘If he’s not deaf, and the hearing aids are going to help...’

Kirsty nodded. ‘I know, I know. I’ve just been trying to come to terms with that. As Dad says, the technology is so advanced you don’t even see them nowadays.’

But no matter how hard she had been trying, Enzo thought, she was still a long way from coming to any kind of terms with it.

She changed the subject, self-consciously. ‘How did you get on with Jean-Jacques?’

Raffin’s face lit up. ‘He’s got the nomination. And my job offer’s official.’

‘And?’

He grinned. ‘I said yes. The party’s going to announce his nomination in the next two weeks, and I’ll be the one up front doing it.’

‘Oh, darling, that’s wonderful.’ Kirsty leaned in past their baby to kiss him, and yet Enzo couldn’t help feeling that her delight was a little less than enthusiastic. But if Raffin was aware of it, he gave no indication.

Kirsty took Alexis again. ‘I’ll just put him down.’

‘Congratulations,’ Enzo said. His voice laden with all the insincerity he felt. But again, Raffin seemed oblivious. And a stab of anger at the man’s apparent indifference to almost everything around him pushed Enzo to cross a line. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Kirsty asked me to fetch a coat for her earlier, and I couldn’t help noticing one of your jackets in the wardrobe has had its breast pocket torn off.’ He almost heard Dominique’s intake of breath beside him.

Raffin frowned. ‘Breast pocket?’ He pushed out his lower lip and shrugged. Then recollection dawned. ‘Oh, that’s the green linen. Part of a suit, actually. Came back from the dry cleaners like that. Always meant to take it back and complain, but somehow never managed to get around to it.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Kirsty’s exclamation startled them all, and started Alexis crying. She had stopped by the table on the way to the bedroom, and was standing holding the photograph of Sally Linol in her hand. She turned, still holding it, and looked at her father. ‘I told you I recognised her.’ She waved the photograph towards him, just as Raffin had done minutes earlier. ‘That’s the housekeeper at Biarritz. Madame Brusque. Twenty years younger, but it’s her alright.’

‘That woman didn’t have a tattoo,’ Enzo said, raising his hand to touch his neck without thinking. And he could feel the blood pulsing in it.

‘She was wearing a high collar. And, anyway, you get make-up for masking tattoos these days. I’m telling you, Dad. It’s her.’

Raffin’s face was a mask of confusion. ‘Madame Brusque?’ He turned bewildered eyes towards Enzo. ‘Marie appointed her after the death of her parents. I never saw any reason not to keep her on. How can she possibly be Sally Linol?’

The rain, the light reflecting on the shiny black wet of the road, the white lines that passed below them with such monotonous regularity; the rapid beat of the wipers on the windscreen, smearing the glare of oncoming traffic across the glass. It had all become impossibly hypnotic after only an hour on the motorway, heading south-west out of Orléans.

Enzo ached with fatigue. Every muscle hurt with every movement of the wheel, and just the sheer effort of will required to stay awake was, in itself, exhausting.

Dominique sat in the passenger seat beside him. Tense. Anxious to relieve him from the stress of driving. But he had been insistent. And she had been brooding in silence for some time before, finally, all her exasperation came bubbling to the surface. ‘He was so fucking cool!’ she said. ‘One minute he’s waving her in your face like she’s the answer to everything. The next we find out she’s been right under his nose the whole time.’

Enzo said, ‘I don’t think he knew. In fact, I’m certain of it. Because, if she really is the key to it all, Raffin — or Devez, or someone else — would have got rid of her a long time ago. What I can’t figure out is how Raffin’s wife fits into all this. If she really is the one who employed Sally at the house, to work there under a false name, then it’s almost as if she was hiding her there.’

‘From what?’

‘I don’t know. Raffin himself, maybe.’

‘Well, he seemed pretty shaken up.’

‘He did.’

‘So what do you think he’s doing now?’

‘I think he’s organising someone to get to her before we do.’

‘Well, if he thinks we’re not leaving till tomorrow, he’ll figure he’s got time to fly someone down first thing.’ They had told him they would spend the night at the studio in Paris and drive down to Biarritz in the morning.

Enzo shook his head in the dark. ‘He knows we’re on our way. Raffin may be many things, but he’s not stupid. It’s quite possible he could already have someone else on the road. Whatever we do, we’ve got to get there before they do.’ He breathed deeply. ‘As long as I can stay awake long enough.’ The thrum of the tyres on the wet tarmac was adding to the soporific effect of driving weary in the dark and the rain.

Dominique glanced at his face, flitting between light and shadow, pale and washed out in the reflected headlights of other vehicles. They had taken the train to Orléans to retrieve the car, and now would be six hours on the autoroute , but Enzo’s absolute determination was clear. Dominique knew that he saw Sally Linol now as the best and only way of negotiating Sophie’s safe release. If he had Sally, even if she knew nothing, or wasn’t prepared to tell, he would still have bargaining power. Leverage over Raffin and Devez. Because, as Raffin himself had been only too keen to point out just a few hours earlier, Sally Linol was almost certainly the key to everything.

The sound of Enzo’s mobile phone ringing startled them in the dark, cutting above the roar of the engine and the endless vibration of the road beneath them. Enzo fumbled in his pocket to find it and handed it to Dominique. At 130 kph, in the dark and the wet, he didn’t want to take his eyes off the road for a second. She answered it and put it on speaker.

‘Monsieur Macleod?’ Nicole’s voice was razor-sharp, honed thin by the airwaves and the tiny speakers of the phone.

‘What is it, Nicole?’

‘Have you seen the news?’

‘Nicole, I’m in a car on a motorway in the pissing rain. I haven’t seen a television in days.’

If Nicole was perturbed by the tone of her irascible mentor, there was no hint of it in her voice. Perhaps, Dominique thought, she was just used to it. ‘It’s on the radio, too. All over the news.’

And Enzo was suddenly afraid for Sophie. ‘What is?!’

‘Régis Blanc. He’s dead. Killed in a fight with another prisoner in Lannemezan.’

All that Sophie could see in the window as she worked was her own reflection. Beyond it the darkness was profound. And still the rain fell, tears from heaven running in tracks through the dirt on the outside of the glass.