Freeze Frame (7 page)
“You must have been over thirty, then, when you met your French lady,” Jane said suddenly out of the blue.
“Yes. Just past my thirtieth birthday. We met at an international convention on forensic science at Nice.”
“And you’d been single up until then?”
“No. I was married when I met Pascale.”
“Oh. So you left your wife for her.”
“Yes.” Enzo half turned to catch her expression out of the corner of his eye, wondering if she disapproved. But if she did, there was nothing in her face, or her voice, to betray it.
“A good thing there were no children, then.”
Enzo hesitated almost imperceptibly. “I had a seven-year-old daughter. Kirsty.” Without taking his eyes from the street ahead, he was aware of her head turning to look at him.”
“And?”
“She spent most of the next twenty years of her life hating me for it.”
“Still?”
“No. In the end we managed to put it behind us.” And he deftly changed the focus of their conversation. “How about you? Did you and Peter not have any children.”
“We were too busy.” And he heard that bitterness creeping once again into her voice. “He with his charity work. Me with my career. We were still young. Had our whole lives ahead of us, after all. Plenty of time for children.” He turned his head to meet her gaze directly as they reached her car. “It’s the biggest regret of my life, Enzo. I could have had children with someone else, of course. But I didn’t want to. I wanted Peter’s children.” She pressed the remote on her key ring and unlocked the car. “You’re a lucky man.” And she opened the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel.
***
The annex felt even colder than when Jane had shown him around earlier. The light thrown out by the naked bulb in the stairwell seemed more depressing that he remembered it, devoid of any warmth. He lifted one weary leg after the other to climb the stairs. They had sat talking for nearly an hour in the house when they got back, and two large whiskies later Enzo could barely keep his eyes open. And so he had said goodnight and walked across the sodden lawn, feeling the ground squelch beneath his weight, wetting his shoes and chilling his feet.
Moonlight fell at an angle through the dormer, lying in a bright slab across the floor and the bed, and he resisted the temptation to put on the electric light. The room glowed in the light of the moon. He took a moment to set up his laptop computer on the dressing table, plugging in the 3G USB stick that would connect him to the Internet and allow him to check his email. Then he undressed himself hurriedly in the cold, anxious to slip beneath the blankets, even although he knew that the sheets would be frigid, possibly damp, and that sleep could be a long time coming, in spite of his fatigue.
As he tossed the last of his clothes onto a chair and prepared himself for the icy plunge, he saw a light come on in an upstairs window of the house opposite. He could see a washed-out patterned paper on the far wall of the room it exposed, then after a moment, Jane moved through his field of vision, disappearing momentarily, before returning to stand within the frame of the window, pulling her shirt up and over her head to reveal pale skin and a black bra. She bent over now to slide her jeans down over slender thighs, stepping out of them, and straightening up to expose the skimpy black string she wore beneath them.
She half turned, and he saw the curve of her buttocks, and felt guilty suddenly, like a voyeur, or a peeping Tom. He turned away from the window to throw back the covers on his bed, trying to keep his eyes averted. But he couldn’t resist a final glance, only to see her silhouette filling the frame as she advanced to swing the internal shutters closed, to keep in the light and shut out the night. And Enzo. Almost as if she knew he was watching. Almost as if she hoped he might be.
Enzo woke on full alert, heart pounding, blood pulsing through his head. He sat upright in the dark listening to the silence of the night. The moonlight which had washed his room silver when he climbed into bed was long gone. The dark seemed profound. Thick, almost tangible.
Something had wakened him. Something from the real world that had penetrated his dream world and triggered instinctive alarms. But he had no idea what, unable to recall or replay any sound in his head. He listened for a long time, trying to control breathing that seemed inordinately loud, before slipping from between the now warm covers of his bed to push his feet into cold slippers. He wore only boxers, and reached for the dressing gown he had draped over the chair. Black silk, embroidered with red and gold dragons. And he wondered why he had brought something so impractical for the late fall Breton climate. Shivering, he wrapped it around himself, and tightened the belt. His hair, loosened from its band, tumbled over his shoulders in ropes and curls.
He looked around for something he might use as a weapon, and spotted Killian’s walking stick with the owl’s head, which he had left leaning against the wall. It felt stout and comforting in his hand, lending him a degree of reassurance with the sense of protection it provided. His sense of vulnerability, wearing only a dressing gown and slippers, was acute.
He opened the door of the bedroom and peered down through the inky blackness of the stairwell, reluctant to turn on the light, knowing that it would make him only too visible to any intruder. With one hand against the wall, he inched his way down the wooden stairs, wincing with each creak that tore holes in the silence of the night, feeling always for the next step with an outstretched foot, until finally he was standing in the small, pocket handkerchief square of entrance hall. Listening. Hearing nothing.
He reached out a hand and gently pushed open the door of the tiny bathroom, then reached in to find the light switch.
The sudden glare of unforgiving, harsh, electric light blinded and startled him. He stood blinking, listening to the rush of blood in his ears. The bathroom was empty. Nowhere to hide. He turned toward the study. The door stood slightly ajar, and light spilled across the floor from the hall toward the far wall and the rows of books that lined it. He took two cautious steps forward, placing outstretched fingertips on the door to push it inwards, raising the walking stick in his left hand.
He heard, more than saw, the dark shape that fell from above, and released an involuntary yell of fear and pain as something like needles sunk into his forehead and his scalp, the weight of something warm and soft pressing down on his head.
His own voice was joined by the screech of another. A high-pitched, wailing scream that filled the room, and he stumbled forward, flailing at his head, until he felt the needles withdraw and the weight suddenly lift. He turned, gasping for breath, in time to see a dark shape darting up the stairs to the bedroom, and he fumbled for the light switch in the hall.
A pure black cat stood on the top step glaring down at him, back arched, hackles raised, a quivering tail pointing straight up behind it.
“Damn cat!” Enzo shouted at the night, both relieved and annoyed. Where in hell had it come from? He could only imagine it had slipped in unnoticed when Jane opened up earlier in the evening. An escape from the rain. But from its demeanour, it seemed to regard Enzo as the intruder. He waved his stick at it and hissed and called, but it stood staring implacably back at him as if he were mad. If he could have seen himself in his black silk dressing gown and tangle of hair waving a walking stick around in the stairwell, shouting names at a dumb animal in the middle of the night, he might have been forced to agree.
It was, perhaps, some fleeting, out-of-body image of himself that made him stop to consider his tactics. And it took him only a moment to decide on a course of action. He shut both the study and bathroom doors and opened the entrance door wide, feeling the rush of cold air from the outside. Then he began up the stairs, holding the stick in front of him.
The cat watched his approach, first wary, then alarmed, but waiting until almost the last moment, before turning and sprinting into the bedroom. Enzo followed it in, chasing it around the room until finally it escaped back down the stairwell, and he arrived at the top step in time to see it vanishing out into the night. He hurried down the stairs and slammed the door shut.
He stood, breathing hard, leaning with his back against the door, glad that there had been no one around to witness the debacle. But there was no point, he knew, in going back to bed now. He was wide awake, with a slight headache from too much whisky and wine, and his exertions of the last few minutes. He opened the study door and turned on the light, and was struck again by the room’s almost suffocating atmosphere. It seemed filled, somehow, by the personality of the man who had lived and died there. Even all these years later. And he allowed himself a fleeting, fanciful moment to wonder whether the black cat had come like the spirit of the deceased man to draw him down into this room in the reflective small hours of the morning. Or maybe it had been some demon sent to scare him off, Death’s messenger bearing a warning, a harbinger of inevitable failure.
Enzo went through to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of cold water, and as he drank it in small sips, wandered back through the study. The account of the murder in Raffin’s book suggested that there had been no break-in. The intruder had simply entered through an unlocked door and lain in wait for his victim.
Killian had ended his call to Jane abruptly. Had he heard something? Enzo still held the dead man’s walking stick in his hand, the stick that had been found on the floor beside the body. Had he hung up on Jane and lifted his walking stick to come downstairs and investigate? If so, his assailant hadn’t hidden himself for long. Killian’s body was found against the window wall, just to the right of the door as you came into the room. The position of the body, and the trajectory of the bullets, suggested that his killer had fired on him from the direction of the kitchen. Is that where he had been hiding?
The bloodstained floorboards were evocative somehow. Enzo could visualise the body lying there, twisted and broken, blood seeping from the exit wounds in his back, drained from his body by the force of gravity. The heart would no longer have been pumping. He looked around the study. If you were searching for something, where would you look? The desk drawers, the filing cabinet, the kitchen cupboard. You would barely notice a scribbled shopping list, or a post-it, or a hurried diary entry that made no sense. Did Killian’s murderer even speak English?
The best place to hide something, Enzo knew, was in plain view. How often people failed to see what was right in front of them.
What else might his killer have failed to see? Enzo ran his eyes around the room again. Over the rows of books on their shelves, Killian’s workbench, his desk, and through the open door to the fridge in the kitchen Of course, it would depend on what he was looking for. Something, Enzo was sure, that Killian had hidden, leaving clues that would lead his son to its hiding place.
What could possibly have so spooked Killian that he feared for his life? For it was fear and a sense of desperation that had been conveyed by Jane’s account of his phone call. Killian had believed that something was going to happen to him, that he was in danger. And was afraid that some course of action upon which he had embarked would remain unfinished. What was it he had said to Jane?
It’s ironic that it is Peter who will finish the job
. What job?
And what it is that a dying man fears?
Enzo wandered back through to the kitchen and rinsed his glass in the sink, then turned to the fridge door.
The cooks have the blues
, Killian had written on his shopping list. And on the post-it,
A bit of the flood will boil the feast
. A Post-it that jumped out at Enzo for the simple reason that it did not line up with anything else that Killian had placed on the door.
Killian must have had no doubts that Peter would instantly understand. Some code, perhaps, that they had contrived or shared during Peter’s childhood, the significance of which only they would understand. Father and son. Jane had spoken of how close they were.
Enzo shivered and went back through to the study. The cold was creeping into his bones now. He crossed the room and sat once more in Killian’s chair, surveying the desk in front of him. His eye fell upon the Post-it stuck to the desk lamp.
P, One day you will have to oil my bicycles. Don’t forget!
Addressing himself directly to his son. And again in the diary.
P, I was lighting a fire, but now there’s no more time, and all I’m left with is a half-warmed fish in the pouring rain
. Enzo closed his eyes and turned the phrases over and over again in his mind, as if the simple act of repetition might bring revelation, or clarity. Neither came, and he opened his eyes again to flip back a page of the diary to the previous week. Dr. S, 2:30 pm, Tuesday. And again at the same time on Thursday. He flipped back several more pages. Twice a week from the early summer.
Enzo knew he had to start somewhere, and this seemed as good a place as any. Tomorrow he would seek a consultation with Killian’s physician. Dead men don’t talk. But sometimes their doctors know more than they could ever tell while their patients were still alive.
The Maison Médicale stood at the end of a long, straight road heading east out of Le Bourg, surrounded by modern suburban houses and lush, tree-filled gardens. It was an angular building of cream-painted concrete and steeply sloping slate roofs, a relic of the utilitarian architecture of the 1970s. As Enzo pulled into the gravel parking area in front of it, he saw from the
panneau
that there were three general practitioners, a dentist, and two nurses based in the centre.
A middle-aged receptionist looked up at him from behind her desk, and indifference immediately gave way to smiles. “
Ah. C’est Monsieur Macleod, n’est-ce pas? Vous êtes malade
?”
Enzo produced a patient smile. He was not yet sure if it would be a help or a hindrance that everyone on the island seemed to know who he was. “No, madame. I’m not ill. I wondered if I might make an appointment to see whichever of the doctors at the clinic was treating Adam Killian before his death.”
The receptionist could barely conceal her excitement. “Well, of course, I don’t have to ask why it is you want to see him.” She got her smile under control. “But I’m afraid Doctor Servat senior retired a good many years ago now.”
“Oh.” Enzo wondered why he should be surprised. Many things would have changed in the passing of twenty years. “Doctor Servat senior… Does that mean there is a Doctor Servat junior?”
“Yes, of course. His son, Alain.”
“And he consults here?”
“He does.”
“Then do you think I might be able to talk to him?”
She raised an index finger, pointing it toward the ceiling. “One moment please.” And she picked up the phone to punch in two digits. “Doctor Servat, there’s a Monsieur Macleod here to see you in relation to the murder of Adam Killian.” She raised an eyebrow in Enzo’s direction as if to seek confirmation. Enzo released a long breath and nodded, resigned to the fact that everyone on this island would either know or want to know his business. She hung up. “You can go in as soon as he’s finished with his patient.” She pointed toward a row of plastic chairs in the waiting area, and he took a seat to wait.
Although he avoided her eye, he was aware that she was looking at him. He could feel her impatience, and with a sinking heart heard the deep intake of breath that preceded the question she could contain no longer. “Did you enjoy your meal?”
He looked up, surprised. “My meal?”
“At the Auberge du Pêcheur. I heard that you dined there last night with Madame Killian.”
“Did you?”
“They do the most wonderful seafood’
“They do.”
“During the season you always have to reserve.”
“I’m sure you do.” After a moment, Enzo decided to exploit her eagerness to talk. “When did Doctor Servat senior retire?”
“Oh, I’m not sure, exactly. It was before my time. Seventeen, eighteen years, perhaps.”
“And his son took over then?”
“Oh, no, Doctor Servat junior was already established in the practice by then. A lovely man. Never heard him utter an angry word in my life. His wife was a nurse here at one time. They have such beautiful girls, too. The son’s a little older. I don’t really know him. He’s away at university, you know. But they’re one of the nicest families on the island.”
Enzo was beginning to wish he hadn’t asked, but was rescued from rudeness by the opening of the door to Doctor Servat’s surgery. An elderly lady with a hat, a long coat, and a stout stick, was shown out into the hall by a man in his middle forties who held her elbow as she steadied herself to leave. He shook her hand.
“Thank you so much, doctor.”
“Just take it easy, Madame Pouard. No horse riding or mountain climbing for the next few weeks.”
Madame Pouard laughed. “Chance would be a fine thing, doctor.”
Doctor Servat looked toward Enzo as the big Scot got to his feet, and he came forward. His handshake was warm and dry and firm. “Monsieur Macleod. Please come in.”
He ushered Enzo into his surgery. “Take a seat, take seat.” Enzo sat on the business side of the doctor’s desk and looked at the rows of medical books on the shelves behind it. The room was L-shaped, and the longer leg of the L contained an examination table, a sink and draining board, and a tall glass-doored cabinet full of bottles and boxes. Servat sat down opposite Enzo and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He regarded the Scotsman with warm, brown eyes that crinkled slightly in a look of mild amusement. He was a man of medium height, inclining now to portliness, with a thatch of thick, sandy hair, greying just very slightly at the temples. “So… you’re here to find out who killed Adam Killian.” It wasn’t a question.
Enzo said, “I think if you were to conduct a straw poll in the street, nine out of ten people would probably tell you I was.”
The doctor laughed. “Oh, I think you’re wrong, Monsieur Macleod. I doubt if there’s anyone on the island who wouldn’t tell me that.”
It was Enzo’s turn to laugh. “Not an easy place to keep a secret.”
“Almost impossible.”
“All the more extraordinary, then, that a man’s murder should go unsolved all these years.”
The doctor inhaled deeply. “Well, if you were to conduct that same straw poll of yours, Monsieur Macleod, I think that nine out of ten people would tell you that Thibaud Kerjean did it.”
“And did he?”
“I have absolutely no idea. But according to the courts he didn’t. So who am I to argue with the considered opinion of the French justice system?”
“Of course, sometimes guilty men go free simply because the prosecution can’t prove it.”
“That’s true, monsieur.”
“In Scotland we have a third verdict. Guilty, not guilty, and not proven.”
The doctor sat back in his seat and nodded thoughtful approval. “Ah. Interesting idea. Perhaps that would have been the verdict in this case, had it been tried in a Scottish court.”
“Perhaps it would.” Enzo smiled. “I believe your father was Adam Killian’s physician at the time of his death.”
“Yes, he was. And retired not long afterwards. He was a good age, even then. He and a couple of other island practitioners were involved in setting up the Maison Médicale in the seventies. Prior to that he had his own
cabinet
in the family home in Le Bourg, where I live now with my own family.”
“And I don’t suppose you could cast any light on his medical dealings with Killian?”
“I’m afraid not. I had only been in the practice a short time then, and I never had any contact with Killian myself. My father’s really the only one who could have told you. But there wouldn’t be much point in asking him now. He’s over ninety.”
“He’s still alive?” Enzo couldn’t conceal his surprise.
“Oh, yes. Very much so. And still lives with us at home.”
“Do you think I might be able to talk to him anyway?”
“Well, yes, of course you could.” A momentary sadness seemed to flit across his face, so fleeting that Enzo almost missed it. “But I’m afraid it won’t do you any good.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, it’s almost
midi
. I won’t have any more patients now before lunch. Why don’t you come back with me to the house?” He lifted his cellphone and hit the speed dial. “I’ll just call my wife and let her know to set another place at the table.”
***
The Servat family lived in a big rambling house on the corner of the Place du Leurhé opposite Le Triskell, a pub that offered coffee and rooms. This was a small square behind the church, at the centre of a maze of tiny streets that fanned out from it like the spokes of a buckled bicycle wheel. The tiny
terrasse
in front of Le Triskell was deserted, parasols tied up for the winter, the sun melting frost on plastic tables and chairs.
Opposite a peach-painted cottage with green shutters that housed the Crédit Agricole bank stood the building that characterised and dominated the square. It was a crumbling, white two-story house with a square tower punctuated on three sides by rows of holes the size of cantaloupes. At first, Enzo thought it might be some elaborate sort of
pigeonnier
, but Alain Servat caught his curious glance in its direction and laughed. “A hard one to guess, isn’t it? It used to be the town’s fire station. They hung the hoses up in the tower after use. The holes were to ventilate it so they would dry quickly.”
He led Enzo through a gate into a narrow path between extravagantly towering shrubs that almost completely obscured the pale lemon and blue of the house: giant hydrangeas with pink and blue flowers fading now in the late autumn; tall, corn-coloured fronds, sprouting through a profusion of yellowing leaves; spiky green grasses that grew taller than a man.
The front door opened into a long, narrow hallway that stretched all the way to the back of the house, where a glass door spilled dazzling sunlight on to polished wooden floors.
“We’re home,
ch
é
rie
,” the doctor called, and steered Enzo off to their left, into a large, square dining room with a door leading through to a farmhouse-style kitchen. A slim woman with long chestnut curls appeared in the kitchen doorway. She wore a maroon apron over jeans and a white blouse, sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
“Hi, darling,” she said. “Lunch won’t be long.”
“Elisabeth, this is Monsieur Enzo Macleod. He’s a private
police scientifique
, come to reopen the investigation into the Killian murder.”
“Oh.” Elisabeth Servat wiped her hands on her apron and stepped into the room to shake Enzo’s hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Monsieur.” She smiled. “I’m never very sure whether it would be better to solve the Killian case or to bury it. It’s a little like Killian himself. Dead, but keeps coming back to haunt us.”
Enzo became aware that she was still holding his hand. Longer than he might have expected. But she was in no way self-conscious about it, and so he did not feel ill at ease. “Well, I hope I won’t be stirring up too many ghosts.”
She laughed and released his hand, a handsome woman with wide, cupid-bow lips and lively dark eyes. “You never know, Monsieur Macleod, with Halloween just around the corner.” She glanced at her husband. “Why don’t you two sit in at the table. The girls will be back any minute.”
The table looked as if it might have been in the family for generations, its dense wooden surface scarred and burned and stained by countless meals. Who knew how many souls had sat around it, eating and drinking across the years, how many dramas and conversations it had witnessed. Enzo remembered his father telling him how he had been laid out on his kitchen table as a boy to have his tonsils removed by the family doctor. But it was not a thought conducive to sharpening the appetite, and he quickly banished it.
Mats and crockery now littered the Servat table, two sets of condiments, a large
grek
, and cloth napkins laid at each place. The smells coming from the kitchen were delicious.
Dressers were pushed up against blue walls beneath paintings and family photographs, and a large brass lamp hung low over the table from the ceiling. But its light was not required. Sunlight tumbled through the open kitchen door, and the room seemed to glow in its reflection.
“I suppose you must feel right at home here on the island,” Alain Servat said. “A Celt among Celts.”
Enzo was no longer surprised by how much people seemed to know about him. “I do. Groix feels like any west-coast Scottish island to me. Particularly yesterday, when I arrived in the rain.”
“Ah, yes. The famous Scottish rain. Is that why you went to live in the south of France, monsieur? To escape it?”
Enzo laughed. “Yes. I’d spent so many years in the rain I was starting to go rusty.” He took his napkin from its holder and unrolled it. “And what about you, doctor. A fellow Celt?”
“Near enough. My family came from the Paris area originally. But I’m island-born and bred. The only time I spent away from the place was at medical school, and earning my stripes as an intern at various hospitals.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “Elisabeth, on the other hand, can trace her island roots right back to the fifteenth century.”
Elisabeth emerged from the kitchen with steaming bowls of leek and potato soup which she placed in front of the two men as the door burst open and two teenage girls bustled into the room, dragging cold air behind them.
“All right, girls, calm down. Behave yourselves now. We have a guest for lunch. Monsieur Macleod, meet Oanez and Seve. Twelve and fourteen, monsieur, and both with far too much energy.”
An energy immediately subdued by teenage awkwardness, as the girls self-consciously presented themselves to Enzo to be kissed on either cheek. “Unusual names,” he said.
“Breton.” Alain waved the girls to their seats, putting a finger to his lips to quell their urge to chatter and giggle. “Our son’s called Primel. We wanted traditional Breton names for all of the children. He’s now studying at the Sorbonne. Philosophy rather than medicine, I’m afraid.”
“Which means he probably won’t be back,” Elisabeth said, bringing another two bowls to the table. There was the hint of regret in her voice. “The young ones can’t wait to get away from the island these days.” She returned to the kitchen to fetch a bowl for herself and then joined them at the table. Enzo noticed that there was no place set for Doctor Servat senior. He had expected the old man to join them for lunch, but decided not to ask about him just yet.
The soup was thick, and hearty, and delicious, great lumps of waxy potato breaking up in it as he ate. He looked up at Elisabeth. “So did you not feel inclined to leave the island yourself?”
“Oh, I did. I trained as a nurse on the mainland, Monsieur Macleod. But in the end, something drew me back.”
Alain Servat chuckled. “Yes. Me.”
Elisabeth grinned. “Yes, you, Alain. Damn you!” She turned a fading smile toward Enzo. “And an unfortunately ailing father.”
Alain said, “He was one of the last of generations of tuna fishermen. You know, that’s what Groix used to be famous for it. Its tuna fleet.”
“When I was a girl,” Elisabeth said, “we could see the boats from our house, as they sailed back into the harbour at Port Lay. Of course, they were motorised by then. But in the old days they used to come in under full sail. I have some pictures somewhere. A marvellous sight. All the more amazing when you see the harbour today. It seems so small. But in my memory it was huge, filled with boats, and the raised voices of men landing their catch, and the wagons that took them up the hill to the fish processing factory.” Her smile was tinged by sadness. “All gone now. Just like my papa.”