Peter May - Cast Iron

Enzo felt Dominique’s tiny tug at the sleeve of his jacket, and he half turned. Dominique tipped her head towards the door. She wanted them to go. Everything in her face and her eyes said they had no time.

But Enzo’s frown and the slightest shake of his head said, Not yet. This was a defining moment. Sally Linol, after years of silence, wanted to tell her story. To tell it to them. The last thing he wanted to do was break the spell. In other circumstances, away from here, when she felt safe, it was perfectly possible that she might decide to keep it to herself after all.

He stepped away from Dominique and sat in the chair opposite the woman who had once sold her services on the streets of Bordeaux and Paris, and shared a bed with the murdered rent boy, Pierre Lambert. He slipped his phone from his pocket, tapping its Record icon and setting it on the table between them. She was oblivious. Enzo said, ‘I’ve met your parents, Sally. They’re both still alive. And still hoping to find you alive, too.’

Those green-grey eyes flickered towards him, and he saw the pain behind them, before tears blurred their sharpness. ‘The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt them. You know? They were good people. I couldn’t have asked for a happier childhood. Only...’ Time and distance glazed her eyes now, and Enzo knew that she had left him, transported back to another place and time. Memories, regrets, all those fears and fantasies that we shut away in lockfast boxes in the darkest corners of our minds. ‘They didn’t have the money to put me through university in Bordeaux. Tuition fees, books, an apartment, food, transport. My dad was a farm worker. He barely made enough to cover their own living costs.’ Her breath trembled as she drew it in. ‘So I told them I had a job. And I did. But not the job they thought it was.’

The first of her tears splashed on to the shiny surface of the table.

‘In the beginning it was almost fun. Wealthy older men who liked young girls. Sugar daddies with wandering hands and generous wallets. A friend introduced me to it, and you know pretty quickly you get used to the money. You buy things. You move into a better apartment. You meet people. And then the money dries up. You’re a little older and the sugar daddies lose interest. You start to get desperate. You’ll do anything for cash. And that’s when you begin to lose control, when it all starts slipping away from you, and you find yourself mixing with pimps and junkies, getting yourself into hock and standing on street corners to pay your debts.’

‘How did you meet Régis Blanc?’

‘I was at a club with a client one night. He got really drunk, and he wasn’t nice with a drink in him. He started beating up on me, and this guy steps in and kicks the shit out of him. That was Régis. He was like that. Hated to see any of his girls treated badly. Not that I was one of his girls.’ A pale smile flitted across her face. ‘Not then. But it wasn’t long before I was. He was really good to me, especially after what I’d been through the previous six months. But he was good to us all.’ She raised her eyes to Enzo ‘We loved him, you know. Régis was special. All the girls felt really bad for him when his little girl was born with that... whatever it was. Some kind of congenital defect. And I suppose, in a way, it changed him. He adored that baby. Really adored her.’

Dominique said, ‘But he murdered three girls.’

Sally’s eyes darted towards her, then quickly away again, as if embarrassed. ‘Régis had some kind of a deal going with this rich guy. Well, I don’t know that he was rich, but he liked to have working girls in his bed, and certainly had the means to pay for it. He had this little apartment in west Bordeaux. His little love nest, he called it. There were four of us that Régis used to send there on a regular basis. Sometimes two at a time. The guy wasn’t violent or anything. But he was pretty weird. Young, too. Liked us to do some pretty strange things.’

She went silent for a moment, and the knuckles of her interlocked hands turned white with tension on the table in front of her. Enzo guessed that she was recalling some of those strange things.

‘Anyway, one of the girls found out that our weirdo was married, with a very young family, and was some kind of politico at the mairie . I mean, none of us ever read the papers, or watched TV, but apparently he was all over the news. Youngest ever adjoint to the mayor.’

Enzo sat back. ‘Jean-Jacques Devez.’

Rabbit eyes darted a frightened look in his direction and Sally nodded.

‘So you blackmailed him.’

Resentment flared briefly in the one-time prostitute. ‘ I didn’t, no! But the other three figured he would probably be willing to pay to keep our sordid little sessions permanently under wraps.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want anything to do with it. He was a weirdo, yes, but he paid good money. Why risk that?’

‘So what happened?’

‘They went to see him, all three together, and he went berserk. Smashed up the furniture, threatened to kill them if they breathed a word to anyone. They were pretty shaken up, and I thought, Shit! Time to get out of here. Packed up my stuff and left. Didn’t tell a soul. Just got the hell out of there as fast as I could. Seemed to me you don’t go messing with people like that. We’re little people, know what I mean? We don’t control much of anything in our lives. And people like him... Well, they have power and money. They control everything, and they’re dangerous. Get away with anything, too.’

‘Like murder,’ Dominique said.

Sally nodded and stared at her hands.

‘Only Devez didn’t kill anyone,’ Enzo said. ‘Régis did it.’

Sally swung her head slowly from side to side, and it was clear that she still found it difficult to believe. ‘When I heard the news, in Paris...’ Her face was a mask of consternation as she lifted it towards Enzo. ‘It just didn’t seem possible. Régis? He would never have laid a finger on his girls.’

Dominique said, ‘But he strangled your three friends.’

‘I can only think that Devez forced him to do it somehow. Had some kind of, I don’t know, power over him, or hold on him.’

Everything was falling into place for Enzo now. ‘Or made him an offer that he couldn’t refuse. An inducement.’

All the lines around Sally’s eyes gathered themselves in a frown. ‘What possible inducement could he have offered Régis to make him do a thing like that?’ But it wasn’t a question Enzo needed to ask. He knew the answer.

He said, ‘So you went to Paris.’

She shrugged. ‘Where else would I go?’

‘And resumed your—’ he searched for the right word — ‘career.’

She glowered at him. ‘It was never my intention to go back on the game. I wanted to make a clean start.’ Her indignation faded almost as quickly as it had fired itself up, and she sighed with sad despair at the memory. ‘Only it’s not that easy. In the end you do what you know, you do what you can do.’

‘And that’s when you met Pierre?’ Enzo saw in her eyes, then, a kind of acceptance that somehow they knew everything about her.

She nodded. ‘Best friend I ever had. I loved that man. You know? I mean, really loved him. Not in a sexual way. Cos, well, that wasn’t ever going to happen. Though I’d have slept with him in a heartbeat if he hadn’t been gay.’ She looked away self-consciously, staring into the empty void of recollection beyond the window. ‘We were, you know, total confidants. Told each other everything.’

‘Including the story of Devez and the three dead prostitutes?’ Dominique said.

Sally dragged her eyes away from the window and looked from one to the other. ‘I never in my wildest imagination thought he’d go blackmailing Devez. I mean, Jesus, the man was a fucking superstar by then. Followed me to Paris. Well, he didn’t, but that’s what it felt like. Rising star in the town hall. Tipped to be the next mayor. You just don’t fuck with people like that. Christ, he’d already had three girls killed. Why wouldn’t he do it again?’