Enzo had a sense of Killian almost everywhere he went on the island, as if the man was following him, haunting him. Knuckles tapping his forehead, urging him to focus, begging him to think. As if somehow it should be obvious. And there was a tiny voice nagging somewhere at the back of his head, telling him he was looking in the wrong place.
Come back
, it said.
The answer’s in my study
.
That’s where I left my message. Not here.
But Enzo was nothing if not methodical. “What other evidence was found at the scene?” he said, and walked with Guéguen toward the cars.
“Very little. The annex, and the house itself, had been searched. Not very carefully. The killer was clearly anxious and in a hurry. The place was a mess.”
“Do you know if anything was taken?”
“No. Killian lived on his own. His daughter-in-law went through the place for us, of course, but said she wasn’t aware of anything obvious that had gone.” The gendarme opened the door of his Renault. “We found prints everywhere. Killian’s. His son, the son’s wife, the
femme de m
é
nage
. Others that didn’t match anything on the database.”
“But not Kerjean’s?”
“Apart from those lifted from the gate, no. We recovered three shell casings from Killian’s study. No prints on those, of course. Even if there had been, they’d have been vaporised when the gun was fired. But ballistics was able to determine that the weapon used was a Walther P38. A very common semiautomatic handgun. Standard issue to German soldiers during the war. So it’s quite possible that a number of those weapons found their way into circulation on the island after the Occupation. You know, as trophies.”
Enzo nodded. He said, “Adjudant, I have a couple of very big favours to ask.”
Guéguen turned inquisitive eyes on the big Scotsman. Enzo had said very little during the gendarme’s exposition. Quietly listening, asking the occasional question. Whatever favours he wanted now, would surely provide some kind of indication of the way his thoughts were moving. “Go ahead.”
“I’d like, if possible, to get my hands on two items of evidence.”
“Which are?”
“The autopsy report. I take it there was an autopsy?”
“Of course. But that’s a tall order, Monsieur. That report would have been submitted as evidence and would be held with everything else at the
greffe
in Vannes.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it, that there is a copy on file at the hospital where it was carried out?”
Guéguen exhaled deeply. “It’s possible.” And he shook his head. “But I’m not at all sure how easy it would be to get ahold of it.” He paused. “And the other item?”
“I’d like one of those shell casings recovered from the crime scene.”
Guéguen looked at him in amazement. “Well, even if it was possible to lay hands on one, why? I told you there were no prints on them. What could you possibly learn from a shell casing?”
“Possibly everything,” Enzo said. “Indulge me.”
The gendarme frowned again. “I’d love to, Monsieur Macleod, I really would. But I’m not at all sure I can. The autopsy report, maybe. But a shell casing…” He blew air through pouting lips and gave an exaggerated Gallic shrug.
“Well, maybe you have a favour or two you can call in. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.”
Guéguen stood staring at him for a long moment before setting his jaw. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The Maison de la Presse was set back off the road, opposite the
boulangerie
. It was the biggest bookstore and newsagent in Le Bourg. Enzo found a parking place in the market square and wandered across the street. He wore Killian’s scarf around his neck, to keep out the chill of the morning. It was another stunning fall day, white sparkling frost still lying in the shadows where the sun had not yet fallen.
Enzo found the sharp, cold air clearing the fog from a head that was still fuzzy from too much wine the previous evening. Jane Killian had poured with a generous hand during the casseroled meal they had shared at the dining table in the main house. Gently tipsy and mellowed by the wine, she had been disappointed when he took his leave just after ten, pleading fatigue and the need of an early night.
And then he had stood in the dark of the chill bedroom above Killian’s study and watched her undress beyond the unshuttered window across the lawn, knowing that she knew he would be watching. And he had found that he was very nearly aroused by the thought.
All the newspapers and sports rags were lined up in two revolving racks opposite the counter. It took Enzo only a moment to find a copy of
Ouest-France.
He lifted it out and took it to the counter. A thin-faced, middle-aged woman with short, silvered curls cut close to her head smiled at him. “Seventy centîmes, monsieur.” He handed her a five-euro bill, and she searched out his change in the till. “You’re even better-looking in the flesh.” She almost giggled. “So to speak.” And blushed.
Enzo looked at her blankly. “I’m sorry?”
“The photograph they had of you in the paper didn’t do you justice.”
“Oh, yes.” He forced a smile. “I’ve been known to crack a few lenses in my time.” It was her turn to look blank. But he pressed on. “Can you tell me, madame, where I might be able to find back copies of
Ouest-France
?”
She frowned. “Mmm. How far back do you want to go?”
“About twenty years.”
And her face uncreased as enlightenment dawned. “Ah. You want to look at coverage of the Killian murder.”
“The trial, actually.”
“Oh, well, that would be about eighteen years ago now. At Vannes.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head solemnly. “I’m not sure where you’d find editions that old. The
biblioth
è
que
in town here usually has the current edition for patrons of the library. But whether or not they keep back copies, I wouldn’t know.” She barely paused for breath. “I hear that man’s been threatening you already.”
Enzo raised his brows in surprise. “What man?”
“Thibaud Kerjean.” Even although there was no one else in the store, she lowered her voice and leaned confidentially toward Enzo. “He’s a bad lot. And done nothing but give this island a bad name. No one likes him, monsieur. They never have.”
“Except a whole procession of female admirers, apparently.”
She folded her arms beneath mean little breasts pressed flat by a blouse two sizes too small. “Tramps. Every last one of them.”
“Arzhela Montin, too?”
“Hah!” The woman tossed back her head in disdain. “Worst of the lot. Everyone knew what was going on between her and Kerjean.”
“Did they? I heard it was a pretty well-kept secret until Killian stumbled across them out at Fort de Grognon.”
“No, monsieur. It was the talk of the island.”
But Enzo was more inclined toward Guéguen’s version of events, that nobody had known about it before the incident at the fort. After all, it was almost twenty years ago now, and people’s memories of when they knew or didn’t know about something would inevitably be suspect. He had no doubt that it had, indeed, been the talk of the island once the story was out. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to her, after the divorce.”
“Oh, she’s married again now. Calls in here most mornings for the paper.”
Enzo was taken aback. “She’s still on the island?”
“Never left, monsieur. Found herself another incomer who didn’t know any better and went to live out at Quelhuit.” She grunted. “Almost within sight of the very place that poor Adam Killian found her having sexual relations with the
cantonnier
. And her married to the mayor’s
adjoint
, too! She had no shame, monsieur. Then or now.” She leaned forward again, in conspiratorial mode once more. “Personally, I can’t for the life of me understand what any of these women saw in the man. He’s creepy and rude. In here every afternoon for his racing paper and tobacco. I’ve always tried to be civil to him, but he’s done nothing but bite my nose off with every polite enquiry about his health or innocent comment about the weather.”
Enzo suspected there was probably nothing either innocent or polite that ever rolled off the tongue of the
libraire
. But as he lifted his paper he saw that she had suddenly flushed, and seemed flustered and self-conscious. He turned, following her eyeline, to see Kerjean entering the store. He was wearing the same donkey jacket as two nights previously. The same worn and oil-soiled jeans. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, his head pulled down into his collar. His face betrayed evidence of a rough evening the night before, deep shadows beneath bloodshot eyes, a complexion that was pasty pale and bloodless. He flicked a sullen glance in Enzo’s direction, then ignored him as he went to pick a couple of journals from the rack.
Enzo turned back to the
libraire
. “So where can I find the library?” he asked.
She took a moment or two to recover her composure. “Head on down the street toward the port, monsieur. It’s on your left. In a converted house. It’s also a
m
é
diath
è
que
these days. Which just means, I think, that they have computers.”
***
The librarian shook her head and scratched it. A young woman, who could only have been a child when Killian was murdered. “I’m sorry, monsieur. We don’t keep back copies here. Certainly not that far back. You’ll have to go to Lorient for that.”
“The library?”
“No, no. The offices of
Ouest-France
itself, in the Rue du Port. I know that they keep an archive of the Lorient edition there. And that’s the edition that would carry any story relating to Groix.” She checked the time. “If you’re planning to go over there today, the next ferry doesn’t leave till one-thirty.”
Time enough, Enzo thought, to browse through the paper’s coverage of the trial and get the return ferry late afternoon. He thanked the young librarian and stepped out again into the morning sunshine.
A man stood directly across the road, leaning against the wall lighting a cigarette, a newspaper tucked under his arm. When he looked up from his cupped hands, Enzo saw that it was Thibaud Kerjean. Enzo stopped and the two men made eye contact. Was Kerjean following him, watching him? The
libraire
had said that he came in to the Maison de la Presse every afternoon for his paper and tobacco. Was it just a coincidence, then, he had come in earlier today while Enzo was there?
Enzo had, as he sometimes did, a foolish rush of blood to the head, and he started across the road toward the islander. But Kerjean just pushed himself lazily off the wall and began walking away up the hill, shoving his hands in his pockets, turning his back as if to signal his contempt. Enzo stood watching him go, wondering what might have happened had Kerjean stood his ground. Enzo’s intemperate behaviour in similar situations had got him into trouble in the past, and a confrontation with Kerjean in the middle of the street would not have been wise. Kerjean himself, a man acquitted but still suspected of murder, had probably had the same thought.
So Enzo stood for a minute, letting his heart-rate subside before going in search of his jeep and a parking place near the ferry.
The Café de la Jetée was owned by one of the hotels that overlooked the harbour. Tables and chairs were set out on the terrace, and it was warm enough to sit in the fresh air and enjoy the late October sun. Potted plants lined one end of it, and Enzo settled himself at a table there, by the door, giving him a commanding view across the bay, and providing him with plenty of warning of the ferry’s arrival.
There were some late season tourists at another table, and inside a group of regulars stood drinking at the bar. Enzo ran his eyes down the lunch menu until they came to rest on a smoked fish salad which, he thought, would go nicely with a glass of crisp white wine while he killed time before the crossing.
As a shadow fell across his table, he looked up expecting to see a waiter, and was surprised to find old Jacques Gassman standing there. The nonagenarian grinned, wrinkling a ruddy complexion. “Monsieur Macleod. May I join you?”
“Of course.” Enzo stood to hold the old man’s elbow as he eased himself into a chair.
Gassman was wrapped up warm, in a coat and scarf, a dark blue peaked cap pulled down over his shock of white hair. He still gave the impression of a big man, undiminished by age. He had large-knuckled hands, brown-spotted by the years, and his grin revealed a row of shiny, white, even teeth that could not have been his own. “This is my day for doing the shopping,” he said. “And I always have my lunch here. Are you going to eat?”
“Yes.”
Gassman raised an arm and waved to someone inside, and a waitress duly appeared to take their order. “The usual,” Gassman said.
Enzo ordered his smoked fish salad, and they agreed to share a
carafe
of white.
“How’s the investigation going?”
“Slowly. I’m going to Lorient this afternoon to look at newspaper archives of the coverage of the trial.”
“Ah. Yes. Thibaud Kerjean. An unpleasant character.”
“You know him?”
“I do. Not well, of course. I don’t think anyone knows him well. But well enough to know that I don’t like him much.” He drew a long breath. “So what do you think of our little island, monsieur?”
“I prefer it when the sun shines.”
Gassman guffawed. “Ah, yes. Everywhere looks better when the sun shines. I love it. It’s an unremarkable sort of place, I suppose. No dramatic features, apart from some stretches of the northwest coastline, and the beaches to the south and west, of course. But it has a perfect climate and a hidden beauty.”
“Hidden?”
“Beneath the soil. This is a rare rock we are sitting on, Monsieur Macleod. Geologically quite different from the mainland. The government declared it a mineral nature reserve nearly thirty years ago. More than sixty minerals to be found. Some of them quite rare. Blue glaucophane and garnet.”
“You seem to know a lot about the place for an incomer.”
Gassman smiled ruefully. “And how did you know I was an incomer, monsieur? The accent?”
“Well, it’s not local, I can tell that.”
The old man shook his head. “No, it’s not. And even after all these years, it still marks me out as a ‘foreigner.’ But even if I had managed to shake it off, I’d always have been an outsider to the locals. You have to be born here to belong here. To be a true
Grek
.”
“
Grek
?”
He grinned. “It’s the nickname for a native of the island. Called after those big Greek coffee pots that used to sit on every fire to warm up the fishermen when they came back from the boats.” He rubbed big hands one around the other, as if he were cold or were washing them. “But anyway, we incomers often know a lot more about the place than the folk who were born here.”
“How long since you first came to the island?”
“Ohh…” Old Gassman stuck out his chin and scratched it thoughtfully. “A long time. Must be, what, nearly fifty years? I arrived in the early sixties, Monsieur Macleod, looking for a place to hide me away after the death of my wife. I didn’t feel much like facing the world then, and this seemed as good a place as any to lose myself.”
“What happened to to your wife?”
“Breast cancer. She was still a young woman. So much of her life ahead of her. And yet…” he shook his head sadly, and Enzo thought he detected a moist, glassy quality in his eyes, “… it’s unlikely she’d have lived this long anyway, so I’d still have lost her at some time. I just wish it had been later, rather than sooner.”
The waitress brought their wine and a jug of water, along with a basket of bread. Then the food arrived, and Enzo saw that Gassman had ordered a tuna steak with potatoes and salad. He filled both their glasses as they began to eat.
“So you never remarried?” He watched as Gassman cut awkwardly into his steak, holding his cutlery in a strange, childish grip.
“No. When I first arrived, I bought myself a cottage out on the moor near the village of Quéhello on the south side of the island. I was still hurting then, from my loss, and I kept myself pretty much to myself. I had my surgery of course, but the only people I ever really saw were my patients. I never got involved in the social scene. And never met a woman that could take the place of my wife. Not that I was looking.” He turned shining eyes on Enzo. “Lots of things in life are disposable, Monsieur Macleod. Chuck ’em away and get another. But you can’t replace people.”
“No.” Enzo looked down at his salad to charge his fork with more fish, hiding an emotional moment. He knew only too well how irreplaceable the people in your life really were. Then he glanced over and watched the old incomer’s cumbersome cutting action as he attempted to dissect his tuna. “You hold your cutlery in the most peculiar way, Monsieur Gassman, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Gassman looked up, amused. “I do. And I don’t mind. You can blame my mother for it. I’m a left-hander, monsieur, and for some reason, when I was a boy, there was some stigma attached to that. As if it were an aberration of some kind. So my mother made me hold my cutlery like a right-handed person would.”
Enzo smiled. “Corrie-fisted we would have called it in Scotland.”
“It never felt right to me. But by the time I was grown up, it didn’t feel good the other way either.” He laughed. “So all my life, I’ve eaten like I have a handicap.” He breathed in and puffed himself up. “But as you can see, it never stopped me getting the food to my mouth.”
The deep, piercing sound of a ship’s horn rang out across the bay, and they looked up to see the ferry easing its way into the harbour, its wash setting all the small boats at berth rising and falling in turn.
Enzo finished his salad and drained his glass before leaving a couple of notes on the table and getting to his feet. “I’m afraid I have to go and get my jeep into the queue,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Monsieur Gassman.” They shook hands.
“Well, don’t be a stranger, young man. Come out and see me any time. I have only my dog for company these days, and it can get a little lonely sometimes.”
“I’ll do that,” Enzo said, and he set off along the cobbled jetty to retrieve his vehicle from its parking place and get in line. It took him nearly ten minutes, and by the time he was sitting idling on the quayside, and glanced back along the jetty, the old man was gone. It wasn’t until he had driven his jeep onboard and made his way up to the passenger deck, that he saw, in the distance, Jacques Gassman making his way slowly up the hill, past Coconut’s and the bicycle shop. A difficult, shuffling gait. There was something oddly sad about the old man. He had lost his wife more than half a lifetime ago, and all these years later was still alone and lonely. With nothing to look forward to but the certainty of death, just a heartbeat away.