Peter May: Cast Iron

‘So you didn’t know anything about it?’ Enzo said.

She shook her head. ‘All I knew was that suddenly Pierre had money. Lots of it. And he was generous, you know. Splashed it around. Spent a lot of it on me.’

Dominique folded her arms across her chest. ‘And you never thought to ask him where it came from?’

‘He said it was a wealthy client who’d fallen for him big time, liked to indulge him.’

‘And you believed that?’

‘Well, maybe not. But, you know, some things you don’t ask.’ She sucked in a long, slow breath then expelled it quickly, as if summoning her courage for the final revelation. ‘Then, one night, he told me. He was drunk. And scared. Something had spooked him. I was... incandescent. I can’t begin to tell you. I’d have killed him myself if I could. But, you know, he’d a way of wrapping me around his little finger. Calmed me down. Told me he was setting up one last payment, and then that would be it. He and I would get out of Paris. Set ourselves up somewhere else, enjoy the fruits of the payouts Devez had already made.’ She stopped, eyes staring into the abyss. ‘And then he was dead. Murdered in his apartment. And I knew they’d be coming for me.’ She looked up, reliving the horror of it. ‘I had no idea what to do, where to go. I was sure they would find me. No loose ends. These people never leave loose ends.’

Dominique drew up a chair and joined them at the table, curiosity written large all over her face. ‘So what did you do?’

A sad smile flickered across her face. ‘I was rescued by an angel.’

Enzo said, ‘Marie Raffin.’

Sally looked up, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

‘Educated guess.’ He paused. ‘What was Marie’s involvement in all this?’

‘She was a journalist, you know? I’d never met her before, had no idea who she was. Only she turns up at my door within twenty-four hours of Pierre getting murdered and says that if I’m prepared to help her, she can keep me safe.’ She gasped. ‘Jesus, I nearly bit her hand off. Seems she was working on some kind of story about Devez. An exposé. Something she’d been at for months, something linking him to the murders in Bordeaux. I don’t know what her source was, or how she knew, and I didn’t ask. She was just there, offering me an escape. And I jumped at the chance. She brought me down here, set me up as housekeeper under an assumed name. Showed me how to use make-up to cover my tattoo. She said it would only be for a short time and that as soon as the story had broken I would give a statement to the police, and they would put me in protective custody. Devez would go to jail and I’d be safe.’

She breathed her exasperation, irony turning her mouth down at both corners. ‘But, then, as you know, Marie herself was murdered. I can’t tell you how scared I was then. Absolutely certain they would come for me. But they never did. And here I am, twenty years on, a middle-aged spinster living on her own in the tower of an upmarket chambres d’hôtes , changing the sheets of wealthy fucking guests and cleaning their shit out the pan when they’re gone. My whole fucking life wasted.’

A life, Enzo thought, configured by fear and mired in regret.

She looked at him almost defiantly. ‘So what now? A statement to the police and protective custody? Just like Marie Raffin promised all those years ago?’

Enzo nodded. ‘Something like that.’

Sally snorted. ‘And what makes you think you’ll be any more able to deliver it than she was?’

Enzo slipped his phone back in his pocket. ‘We get you away from this place, I can pretty much guarantee it.’

Dominique stood up. ‘You need to get dressed fast, Sally. And put whatever you need in an overnight bag.’ She glanced at Enzo, then back at the older woman. ‘We’ll wait for you downstairs.’

There was a chill pervading the darkness of the house, and a smell of damp that Enzo had not been aware of on his previous visit. They wandered through into the main hall, where the double doors to the large sitting room stood open. Light leaked in around the edges of all the shutters, casting deep shadows in the gloom. Enzo found the rocker switch for an electric roller blind on the French windows and half raised it to bring some real light in from the outside. But it was a grey light, suffused with rain and pessimism. In the distance, yet more rain pitted the surface of the rectangular water feature set into the lawn, but the fountains had been switched off. There was enough water falling from the sky.

Enzo’s thoughts were full of Sophie. There had been no news of her for days. But as soon as they had got Sally Linol safely away from this place he could begin to open negotiations. He glanced at his watch, anxious now to be gone.

Dominique said, ‘So Raffin must have killed his own wife to protect Devez.’

Which dragged Enzo back from gloomy thoughts. ‘I suppose he must have. Although I can’t figure out why. We know by now what it was that Devez offered Régis by way of inducement to murder those girls. Blanc sacrificed them, and himself, for his daughter. But what kind of hold must Devez have had over Raffin to make him do something like that?’

Dominique shrugged. ‘Who knows? But maybe the offer to take him on as his press secretary is some kind of sop, now, to keep him sweet.’

Enzo kicked a footstool and sent it clattering away across the floor, the sound of it resounding around the house. ‘To think I trusted that bastard. That my own daughter gave him a child!’

Dominique crossed to the door and listened for Sally on the stairs. ‘He won’t come himself, will he? Raffin, I mean. He must know by now that we’ve figured out his part in all this.’

‘Whoever comes,’ Enzo said ominously, ‘it’s not just Sally Linol they’ll be wanting to silence.’

Dominique flashed him a look of apprehension. And she, too, glanced at her watch, as if it might tell her when Raffin’s unwelcome emissaries would arrive. Under her breath she muttered, ‘Come on, Sally. Hurry up!’

The ringing of Enzo’s mobile phone in the deep silence of the house made them both jump. Enzo fished it out of his pocket and looked at the display. ‘Hélène Taillard,’ he said and set it to speaker. Dominique crossed the room to listen in.

Hélène’s voice was tinny, and seemed inordinately loud in the hush of this grand salon. ‘Enzo, I got the sample you sent first thing this morning. Raffin’s razor. I had it couriered immediately by motorbike to the lab in Toulouse with instructions to give it priority over everything else. They just faxed me the results.’

Enzo was aware that he had actually stopped breathing. ‘And?’

‘There’s no match, Enzo. The blood on the torn jacket pocket is not Raffin’s.’

For a moment it felt as if not only his breathing, but his heart, too, had stopped, along with a world which had ceased to turn. He was drowning in a sea of confusion. ‘But... it must be. If it’s not Raffin’s blood, whose is it?’

There was a laden silence at the other end of the line that lasted perhaps a second, maybe two. To Enzo it seemed like an eternity. Then Hélène said, ‘Let me put it this way, Enzo, there’s good news and bad.’ Another pause. ‘There was some kind of mix-up at the lab. A misunderstanding about what samples were to be run against the database. I’d already sent them that sample of Laurent’s hair that you gave me to check for paternity.’

Enzo frowned. His confusion was deepening with every word of Commissaire Taillard’s that his mobile brought to him across the ether. He glanced up to find Dominique’s brown eyes open wide and watching him closely. She shrugged.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, and he heard Hélène sighing softly.