Freeze Frame (14 page)
“Congratulations, Mademoiselle Roux, you’ve just won a set of steak knives and a holiday for two in sunny Warsaw.”
Which made her smile. But it was a fleeting smile, lost as her focus returned to the room. She crossed to Killian’s work bench, touching nothing, but staring at it for a long time. Then she opened the filing cabinet and let her eyes wander along the rows of tabs on the suspension files. A, B, C…. She slid the top drawer shut and opened the one below it, fingering the files, as if something might communicate itself by touch. Then she crossed to his desk, and went through the drawers one by one, touching nothing this time. Just looking. After which she stood for a long time, arms folded, her scarf hanging down almost to her knees, eyes drifting around the room, taking in the pictures and display cases so neatly lined up on the opposite wall, one above the other.
Enzo watched her. He had been attracted to her physically from the first moment he met her. But it was her mind that had seduced him. When they were good together it was wonderful, but that was only too rare. The distance she kept between them frustrated him to distraction. While he would have given himself to her completely, she prized her independence above all else, and had made it only too apparent that she would not give it up for him. He dragged his eyes away from her to look around the room again. “Killian had a very ordered mind,” he said.
Charlotte looked thoughtful. “More than ordered, Enzo. Obsessive. This was a man fixated. Everything had to be in its place. A place he created for it.” She pointed. “And those display cases on the wall. Look at them. He must have measured from the ceiling. And between the frames. I bet there’s not a centimetre difference between them. I can visualise him as a man consumed by the need for routine, of doing the same things in the same way every day. Bringing order to the chaos of life.” She wandered over to look more closely at the display cases. The rows of insects neatly pinned to pristine backboards. “A man drawn to insects. Creatures that live short, unfettered lives, but lives which also revolve around rite and routine. Think of the bee, the ritual dances, the order of the hive. The organisational qualities of the ant. The apparent randomness of the butterfly. Such a short life, but compelled to spend it flying from one flower to the next—one of nature’s pollinators. The lives of insects must have seemed extraordinary to him. Compelling, but contradictory. Free but ordered. Short but intense.”
“So what does all this tell you about him?”
She turned pensive eyes in his direction. “It would be my guess that this man spent time in prison.”
Of all the conclusions she might have reached, this was not one that Enzo could ever have foreseen. “Why?”
“People who lose their freedom cling to things that give their lives meaning, Enzo, a reason to exist. Order, routine, ritual, something that marks the passing of time, gives it shape and form.” She raised an eyebrow. “Am I right?”
“I have no idea. If he was in prison in Britain, or in Poland, Jane either doesn’t know or hasn’t told me.”
“Better ask her, then. Over one of your dinners together.” And with a dismissive wave of her hand, she banished Adam Killian back to the grave, as if he were of no importance. She was done with him. “And now you can show me where I’m going to be spending the night.”
He lifted her overnight bag from where he had laid it on a chair, and led her into the hall and up the stairs to the tiny attic bedroom. She looked from the window across a lawn where the last light of the day lay in long, autumn yellow strips, divided and subdivided by the trees along the west side of the garden. The dew was already settling on the grass and would soon turn white as it froze in the tumbling temperatures. She turned her back to the light and cast curious eyes around the room, settling finally on the unmade bed.
Enzo missed the cold that clouded them suddenly. He was distracted. It was almost seven, and he knew it would take him nearly thirty minutes to drive south to the
Trou de l’enfer
, and his rendezvous with the writer of the note. “I’m going to have to leave you for a while,” he said. “I have a meeting in half an hour.”
“How long have you been sleeping with her?”
The question came straight out of left field and caught him completely off-guard. “What?”
“You’ve only been here four nights. So either you’re a very fast worker, or you knew her already.”
Enzo felt his face flush and wondered why he should feel any guilt. She had no right to make him feel guilty. “What are you talking about, Charlotte?”
She nodded toward the bed. “Two people slept here last night. A quite separate imprint left by heads on each pillow.”
Enzo glanced toward the rumpled sheets, and saw where Jane’s head had left a deep depression on the left-hand pillow. He had spent the night curled up alone on the right side of the bed. He was damned if he was going to defend himself, but he did. “We’ve never been mutually exclusive you and I, Charlotte. You were the one who made that the rule, right from the start.”
“Men find love so easily,” she said. “Or, at least, sex. They always seem to confuse the two. I don’t think I want to sleep in a bed where you made love to another woman the night before.”
He sighed his exasperation. “I didn’t. I might have. But your call put a stop to that. You want to hear it?” He crossed to the answering machine on the bedside table. “Your message will still be on the tape. A real passion killer. What was it Jane said as she left…? Oh, yes. We’d better not soil the bed. Because I really don’t feel like changing the sheets.” His finger hovered over the replay button.
“Don’t!”
He swung around to face her. “What do you want, Charlotte? Jane Killian doesn’t mean a damned thing to me. But I’m not made of stone. And you’re never there.” His voice stopped abruptly, cut off by the shock of seeing the silent tears that ran down Charlotte’s cheeks. Her fine, brown eyes were blurred and lost behind them. “What’s wrong?” His question sounded feeble, hopelessly inadequate in the face of her obvious distress. He stepped toward her to lay a hand of concern on her cheek.
But she brushed him aside, crossing to the bed to sit on the very edge of it, her hands folded together in her lap. She seemed oddly crushed, and fragile in a way that belied the strength he knew she possessed. “I’m pregnant.”
Two simple words, almost whispered, that would change his life forever. The shock of them left him bereft of something to say, and holding his breath. He stood in the silence of the room, hearing the blood pulse through his head. Finally he found his voice. “How?” And no sooner had he uttered the question than he realised how absurd it was. A thought not lost on Charlotte.
“Law of nature, Enzo. You fuck a woman without protection, there’s a good chance your sperm will find her eggs.”
He felt a stab of anger that wasn’t entirely without justification. “I thought you took precautions.” It’s what she had always told him.
“Accidents happen.” She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and ran a fingertip beneath each eye to remove the smudged mascara. She was regaining control of herself. But it was clear she was hanging on to it by the merest thread.
“When?”
“Oh, about three months ago. Remember, you were up in Paris for that conference? We had dinner. You bought that bottle of Saint Julien. What was it…?”
“Château Laland-Borie, 2004.”
“Yes. And then we went back to my place. Drank Armagnac and made love.”
Enzo remembered it well. It had been a long and passionate night. Charlotte had been warm and affectionate during that visit, anxious to spend time with him, almost frenetic in her lovemaking. “You’re sure it’s mine?”
Her head came round sharply. A look that might have turned him to stone. “I’m not like you, Enzo.”
He felt both reprimanded and angry, and fought back. “I haven’t seen you in three months, Charlotte. You haven’t returned a single one of my calls. And suddenly you show up out of the blue and tell me you’re pregnant—with
my
child.”
Her voice was tight with tension. “There is no other man in my life.”
“There would be no other woman in mine if you had been prepared to commit to me.” His anger subsided as quickly as it had spiked, and whatever else might have flooded his mind, he believed she was telling him the truth. She was carrying his child.
“I’ve had a sonogram,” she said. “It’s a boy.”
Enzo closed his eyes. He had two beautiful daughters. And could never have wanted for anything more. And yet somehow, in some way that he had never allowed himself even to think about, a son would have made his life complete.
“I wanted to tell you in Paris. But not in a café, when you were rushing for a train.”
Even as she spoke he remembered his rendezvous, and cursed inside. “Charlotte… can we talk about this later?”
She looked up, eyes wide in disbelief. “What’s wrong with now?”
“I told you I have to go. I have a rendezvous in about twenty minutes. I’m late already.”
“Then cancel it.”
“I can’t.” He recalled the words of the note that had been pushed under the door.
I have held my tongue for long enough, monsieur. I will tell you what I know as long as you promise to keep my name out of it. Meet me tomorrow evening at the Trou de l’enfer. I’ll wait for you there
.
“What can possibly be more important than this?” The accusation in her eyes was almost more than he could bear. He looked away.
“Nothing, Charlotte. Believe me. But if I miss this chance, there might never be another to learn about Killian’s murder.” He drew a deep breath. “We have the rest of our lives to talk about our child.”
She fixed him with an unblinking focus that was very nearly painful. “Well. No mistaking where your priorities lie, then. You’d better go.” He returned her gaze, filled with conflicting emotions, before finally turning toward the door. “But take this thought with you.” He turned back. “This is
my
child, Enzo. Not
ours
. And any decision about his future will be mine, not yours.”
Enzo drove through the tiny settlements of Créhal and Kerigant, heading directly south into the deepening gloom, descending at last into a copse of tall Scots pines where a parking area had been hacked out of the mud and stone. When he turned out his lights, everything around him seemed plunged into darkness. He decided to wait for a moment until his eyes had grown accustomed to it. So he sat clutching the wheel in front of him, his thoughts still dominated by Charlotte’s news and her parting remark. If she had meant it to haunt him, it had.
Now, for the first time, his focus shifted, and he began to feel apprehensive. He reached into the glove compartment to take out Jane’s flashlight and flick it on as he stepped from the Jeep. The bitter cold caused the skin on his face to tighten as it made contact. The stink of damp, rotting vegetation assailed his olfactory senses, and in the far distance he heard the roar of the sea, driven against the cliffs by the tide. Killian’s scarf was tied around his neck, his jacket buttoned over it, and he wore a thick pair of woollen gloves.
Even so, the cold was already penetrating his outer layers, and he could feel his body temperature dipping. He aimed his flashlight around the car park to pick out a track leading up through a tangle of gorse and bramble to the coastal footpath that led toward the clifftops.
There was no other vehicle visible, and he knew with unerring certainty now that he was allowing himself to be lured into a trap with eyes wide open. If he were to be sensible about it he would get into his car and drive back to resume his conversation with Charlotte. But he knew that to date he had made no progress at all toward knowing who had murdered Killian, and that this might provide the only fingerhold he had on the case.
He pulled up his collar and headed quickly up the footpath, following it around to his right until the trees opened out into a wide area of rock and grass. It joined a gravel road leading to a wooden gate which was closed but not locked. A sign warned that no vehicles were allowed beyond this point.
There was more light here, the last of it dying in the west as the moon began its steady ascent into the November sky, and he found he could see without his flashlight. He passed through the gate and strode purposefully along the mud track toward the top of the cliffs. He could see light shimmering on the ruffled surface of the ocean beyond, and he heard the growl of it as it beat itself against the rocks a hundred feet below. The southern elevation of the island opened out all around him, and he could see, off to his right, a black slash where the ground fell sharply away into a deep cleft.
Now he heard a sound like wind blowing through trees, and a deep sigh, as of phlegm crackling in a constricted throat. Strangely human, and yet oddly unnatural out here on the clifftops. He saw a sign, and turned his flashlight on it. A warning to take extreme care. Here, a father and two children had recently lost their lives, it said. Incongruously, there were three holes in the metal
panneau,
made by what looked like pellets from a shotgun. It wasn’t only the cliffs that posed a danger, then.
Rope was pegged along the line of the
trou,
about six inches off the ground, creating a safe passage toward the distant gun emplacement out on the point. But it looked more to Enzo like a tripwire than a safety measure. Signs everywhere warned not step beyond it.
Enzo edged closer to the innermost edge of the
trou
, and saw that the fissure in the cliffs ran a good hundred yards back from the sea. In the dark, it was impossible to see how deep it went, but the roar of in-rushing water was almost deafening, amplified by the widening of the chasm toward its topmost edge, which created a megaphone effect.
He turned then, criss-crossing the ground ahead of him with the beam from his flashlight, and steered a safe course between the ropes out toward the distant point.
As he approached the one-time German gun emplacement, he saw that it was little more than a concrete platform surrounded by a low, broken-down wall. Beyond it lay a slab of concrete at ground level, the roof of the bunker where soldiers on duty must have spent their days and nights sheltering from the elements. The ground around it was strewn with rock and smashed-up pieces of the gun mounting. He picked his way carefully through them until he reached the steps leading down to the door of the bunker. They, too, were broken, and overgrown. He trained his flashlight into the dark below, picking out empty beer cans and the detritus of tourist picnics and teenage misadventures. The acrid smell of stale urine rose to greet him.
He stopped to listen, but could only hear the wind and the sea. “Hello!” he called, and his voice was immediately whipped away in the breeze and lost in the ether. His earlier apprehension was hardening into fear. He should never have come.
He looked back in the direction of the car park. He had a clear view in the moonlight now toward the distant trees. There was no one to be seen. Nothing to be heard. He could simply head back to his car and drive off. Back to Port Mélite and Charlotte. To ask her what she had meant about the child being hers and not theirs. To hell with Adam Killian and his damned secret messages! What did any of it matter anyway?
But he didn’t move, the beam of his flashlight still directed into the darkness below. He cursed his own stubborn stupidity as he touched his fingertips to the wall and began making his way down to the opening where once a steel door had shut out the wind and rain. The door was long gone, as was the glass and even the frame in the window opening beside it. His foot struck an empty beer can that clattered away into the dark, and he stood still again, listening once more, before swinging his flashlight through the doorway and directing its beam into the bunker. A shadow passed through it. He heard a rush of air, and something flew into his face. Something soft, flapping in panic. He thought he heard a distant scream, before realising it was in his head, and he called out involuntarily. The flashlight almost fell from his hand as he raised his arms to protect himself—and then it was gone, whatever it was. Into the night. And all that he could feel was the pumping of his heart, and all he could hear was the rasping of his breath. A bat? A bird? He had no idea. But his legs were like jelly. He saw now that the bunker was empty. Graffitied walls, a floor strewn with litter. The stink of human waste.
He turned and ran quickly back up the steps. And as he emerged onto the open sweep of the clifftops, he felt how the wind had got up. Stronger than before, and softer in his face. A change of weather. Milder air from the southwest, and with it, large swathes of dark cloud scudding overhead. For a moment, the moon was obscured. Just as if someone had flicked a switch, the landscape around him was plunged into darkness. And then light washed again across the cliffs, racing in from the sea and off across the rise of the land toward the northeast.
Enzo stepped up onto the broken cement plinth of the gun emplacement and looked around. There was no one to be seen anywhere. This had all been a wild goose chase. Someone’s idea of a joke, perhaps. Damn them, whoever they were!
The moon vanished again behind a bank of cloud. He felt, more than heard, the movement behind him. Some sixth sense caused him to turn, just in time to see a shadow rise up above him. Then his head was filled with light and pain, and he felt his legs buckle beneath him. The concrete beneath his feet was hard and unforgiving as he hit it with the full force of his body weight, his flashlight clattering away. He heard the air escape his lungs in a rush, and he panicked as, for a moment, he couldn’t seem to draw another breath. Then he heard his own voice in his throat, a long, painful gasp, as he finally refilled his lungs.
Half-turning at the scrape of leather soles, Enzo rolled himself over to look up and see a figure looming over him, arms raised to strike again.
From somewhere he found the strength to scramble to his feet, and stagger toward the perimeter wall of the platform, fuelled by pure adrenalin. He tumbled over it, and on to the frost-hardened ground below. He gasped involuntarily as the force of it emptied his lungs once more. But one single, sharp intake of breath, and he was on his feet again. Shaky legs somehow carried him forward, half running, half staggering. He glanced back to see his attacker coming after him, silhouetted against the horizon, moving quickly and easily in his wake.
The moon emerged from behind the clouds, their shadows chasing him back the way he had come, toward the dark line of the trees at the car park. He didn’t look back. Just ran. His breath tearing at his lungs now, his body crying out for oxygen to power this sudden, unexpected, and painful burning of energy.
He could hear the footfalls behind him. Closer now. Also running. He felt panic rise inside him. And then the sky carpeted the land below it with darkness again. He was running blind now, back toward the gate and the warning sign peppered with buckshot. He could no longer see it, or anything else.
Something cut into his leg, just above the ankle, and he found himself flying headlong into space. The damned rope pegged around the
trou
to keep people away. And he remembered thinking how it had seemed more like a tripwire than a deterrent. Again he hit the ground, spreadeagled across grass and rock. And as he tried to get to his feet, felt a jarring pain in his right knee. It almost buckled beneath him as he hobbled forwards, uncertain now of his direction.
He could hear the roar of the sea deep in the folds of the
Trou de l’enfer,
a hundred feet below. But the noise seemed to be all around him. He was stunned, confused, but scared to stop. With no idea now where his pursuer was, he turned toward where he thought the gate might be. Light cascaded over the cliffs once more as the wind tugged at his jacket, and he saw the deep, dark slash of the
trou
immediately ahead. Almost at the same moment, the ground beneath his feet slipped away. Frozen mud and rock crumbling and tumbling into darkness, and Enzo felt himself falling through space, down into this crack in the earth that led straight to hell. The call of the devil below filled his ears. And in that moment he knew that his life was over, that whatever Charlotte might have meant by her parting words, it no longer made any difference. His unborn son would never know his father.
For the third time, a hammer blow knocked all the wind from his lungs, and pain filled his world. Arms, legs, head, chest, back. But he was no long falling. He was lying prostrate, in an odd, twisted position, the wind whipping around him, his ears filled with the sound of the sea venting its anger on unyielding gneiss. By the light of the moon he could see it far below, frothing, phosphorescent, furious that it had failed to claim him.
He lay perfectly still, breathing hard, screwing up his eyes against the pain, frightened to move in case he couldn’t. Finally he removed a glove and lifted a hand to his head. He felt warm blood on his temple, then raised himself on to one elbow and bent each leg at the knee. Miraculously, it seemed that there was nothing broken. He tilted his head to look up toward the sky. The lip of the gorge hung ten to fifteen feet above, a wedge of black that cut hard across the sky. He couldn’t see any way of getting back up there, and knew that none of the ground around him could be trusted to take his weight.
He seemed to be on a narrow ledge of some sort that ran across the sheer wall of the rock. He let his head fall back, and lay breathing in short, stertorous bursts. If he lay here for long enough he would die of exposure. If he tried to climb back up, the chances are he would fall to his death.
The line of black above him was broken, suddenly, by a shadow leaning over to peer down into the chasm. Enzo must have been plainly visible, lying twisted on this shelf of rock, and he wondered why his attacker would risk coming so close to the edge. Perhaps to be certain that Enzo was dead and to finish him off if he wasn’t. He lay perfectly still, looking up at the silhouette looking down, and both remained like that for some minutes, until finally Enzo could stand it no longer. “Help!” he shouted. “Help me!” Though he had no expectation whatsoever that any help would be forthcoming.
Almost immediately, the figure above withdrew from sight, and Enzo was left staring at an unbroken sky, the moon flitting in and out of the clouds, its light switching off and on, like the flickering filament of a dying light bulb. He closed his eyes and listened to the roar of the sea, aware of the light and dark that washed over him, breathing slower now, and feeling his bruised and bleeding body stiffen with the cold.
Finally, he decided that he would risk the exposure rather than the fall, hoping to survive till daybreak and the chance of someone coming by, someone who might hear him calling for help. But even as he thought it, he realised how unlikely it was that anyone would be out along the cliffs in the early morning light. In the season, there was every chance he would be discovered by the dozens of
randonneurs
who trekked around the coastal footpaths. But they were into November now, and tourists to the island were few and far between. He felt the mantle of despair settle on him, like the darkness that fell as the moon vanished yet again.
He was not sure how long he lay, shivering, semicomatose, before becoming aware of a sound like someone hammering. The repeated smack of metal on metal. Regular strikes, sharp enough to be heard above the constant commotion of the sea. It came from above, and did not sound that far away.
“Hello!” he shouted into the night. “Is there anyone there?”
And the hammering stopped.
He held his breath. Nothing. No response. The hammering did not restart, as if he had chased it away with his calls. He felt despair settle on him like dust. Maybe he had simply imagined it. He lay listening intently for several minutes, but there was no further sound.
Then suddenly something fell on him, tumbling over him, heavy and rough, and he yelled out in fear and surprise. He sat up, supporting himself on one arm, trying to make sense of it. His fingers closed around something coarse and thick, and he realised it was a rope. Someone had thrown a rope over the edge of the cliff. Long enough that it had coiled around him on the ledge, the end of it falling away from his grasp now and dropping into the darkness below.