Peter May - Cast Iron

He felt a constriction of all the muscles across his chest, like a great weight bearing down on him. ‘What did you do to Sophie?’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘She’s dead, of course. You never did learn to do what you were told.’

And almost everything that Enzo was or had ever been died in that moment. He closed his eyes, remembering the white stag he had encountered in the woods at Château Gandolfo, and willed Charlotte just to pull the trigger. There was no way, he knew, that he even wanted to go on living. When he opened them again, he saw Charlotte smiling, and he knew, finally, that she was quite insane.

She said, ‘And now it seems like such a shame to deprive an old man of his little piece of skirt, when I have already taken away everything else.’

The roar of her gun in the still of the morning was deafening as she fired a single shot into Dominique’s chest. Enzo heard the bullet strike her. A soft, sickening thud that sent her spinning away and falling to the ground. His cry of anguish pierced the damp air as he dropped to his knees beside her, to turn her over in the wet. Blood oozed from her mouth, and spread quickly into the fabric of the T-shirt beneath her jacket. The pain and hurt and anger that filled him was unbearable, and he cried again, like some wild animal howling for the dead. He half turned in time to see Charlotte lowering her gun to level it at him.

‘Seems wrong, somehow, to kill the father of my child. I told you once about keeping my enemies close.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes it’s the only way to stay in control. I got involved with Roger when we discovered that Marie Raffin was sniffing around Jean-Jacques’ affairs, asking questions in the wrong places, trying to access his accounts. And you...?’ And now he saw affection in her smile. ‘I kept you too close, Enzo. Much too close.’ Then affection gave way to something much colder. ‘But Laurent... Well, that really was a mistake. Though I suppose I’ll just have to live with it. At least he’ll always be a reminder of you.’

He could see her finger tightening on the trigger and he braced himself for death. But the slightest scrape of a shoe on wet gravel made her turn as a dark figure rose up behind her in the rain, and struck her down.

Charlotte’s gun went clattering away across the drive as her legs folded beneath her and she fell to the ground, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead. And Sophie stood over her, dripping wet in the pouring rain, a wheel brace dangling from her hand.

‘Fucking bitch!’ she said, looking down at the prone form of her father’s would-be killer, her lower lip trembling with raw emotion. And Enzo was struck by the strength of her Scottish accent as she said, ‘Never actually did get round to killing me, did you?’ Despairing eyes found Enzo’s. ‘You’d have thought by now she’d have learned that you don’t fuck with a Macleod.’ And her face crumpled to dissolve in a mess of tears.

He had been waiting for hours, and it seemed like a lifetime. Overhead lights dazzled off polished hospital floors. The sound of voices, always hushed, permeated the corridors. Porters passed with patients on trolleys, on their way to or from theatre. Nurses gave him sympathetic smiles as they walked by, plimsolls squeaking on shiny linoleum.

For the longest time possible he had focused on simply not thinking. About anything. For every time he did he was unable to stop the tears. Tears for the woman he had once loved, a woman who had given him a son and who would spend the rest of her life in prison. Tears for the horrors poor Sophie had suffered because of him. And Bertrand, with his broken leg and battered face, still lying in a hospital bed in Montpellier. And, most of all, tears for the young woman who had taken a bullet in her chest for the singular crime of being his lover.

The only glimmer of light in the whole foul business was that Kirsty had not, after all, borne a murderer’s son. Raffin, whatever else he might be, was neither corrupt nor a killer. He was as much a victim as the rest of them. And Enzo felt guilt for the hatred he had harboured for him in his heart.

‘Monsieur Macleod?’

Enzo jumped to his feet as the young surgeon approached. He wore a long white coat over jeans and white tennis shoes, his hands and nails scrubbed almost painfully clean. Skin scarified by the scouring demanded before entry to the operating theatre. But it was nearly twenty-four hours since he had operated on Dominique. Enzo searched his face for light or hope.

‘She’s awake, finally,’ he said. ‘To put it crudely, we sewed up the lung and put in a tube to drain the blood. There is a broken rib, but fortunately no tracheobronchial damage. The bullet missed the heart and, by some miracle, all of the arteries. If it hadn’t lodged in the rib it might well have entered her spine. Best prognosis... She’s a strong young woman. She should be on her feet in four to six weeks. Full recovery, four to six months.’

Enzo’s legs nearly folded under him. The young doctor put a hand on his arm to steady him as he staggered slightly.

He said, ‘She’s still heavily sedated. But you can have a few minutes with her. It’ll be good for her morale.’

Sunlight bled in around the blinds that darkened her room, and the sense of something shining bright out there in the world beyond them offered hope and optimism for the future.

There was a hush in here, broken only by the beeping of the equipment that monitored all her vital signs. The air was sickly warm and smelled powerfully of disinfectant. She turned her head a little as he came in, and the tiniest smile stretched dry, cracked lips. She was deathly pale, eyes red-rimmed and distant. Her right hand reached tentatively for his as he pulled up a chair at the bedside. He took it, feeling how small it was, and squeezed it gently.

Her voice was pared thin and clotted by the mucus in her throat. ‘When I was lying there,’ she said, ‘with the blood bubbling into my mouth, I thought I was going to die... and my only regret was that I would never see you again.’

‘Well,’ Enzo said, and he grinned in spite of the hurt he felt inside, ‘twenty years from now, when you’re wiping my arse and heaving me into a bath chair, maybe you’ll regret that you did.’

‘Oh, stop it!’ She laughed and winced from the pain. Slowly the smile faded, and she put all her effort into concentrating on his face. ‘I love you, Enzo Macleod.’

It was all he could do to stop the tears from coming again. ‘I love you, too, Dominique Chazal,’ he said. He blinked furiously and reached for his back pocket, pulling out the copy of today’s Libération that he had folded into it. He opened it up to show her the front page. ‘Look.’ There were photographs of both Charlotte and Jean-Jacques Devez, and smaller inset pictures of the three murdered prostitutes from Bordeaux. The story, beneath the headline, DEATH OF A DREAM , told of the arrest of the secret twins. An explosive story threatening a political earthquake that would shake the country to its foundations. Raffin had been busy since Enzo’s call to him yesterday morning.

She forced another smile. ‘You’ll win your bet now, then.’

But he shook his head. ‘Not quite.’ He paused. ‘There’s still the question of who murdered Lucie Martin.’

She blinked clarity into her eyes and frowned a little as she focused them on him. ‘And do you know who that was?’

He sighed. ‘I have an idea. But no proof.’ Then he thought about it. ‘Yet.’

Enzo had driven behind the ambulance all the way from Biarritz to the Centre Hospitalier de Cahors , to see Dominique safely installed in her own room where he could visit her every day to help her through the long and difficult process of recovery. Or re-education as the French called it.