by Peter May
‘So what were you planning to do?’
‘To keep her safe. Play a long game and hope that I’ll never be called to answer for it. And in the meantime do everything I can to keep her out of the hands of Karlheinz Wolff. Because make no mistake, Göring’s obsession with La Joconde far exceeds that of Hitler. At least Hitler wants to make her available to everyone. While Göring’s desire is to shut her away in the dark, a part of his private collection. For his eyes only.’
He drained his glass and stepped towards her. His words and his passion had stolen away all her anger, and all her doubt. He took her by the shoulders and looked earnestly into her eyes.
‘I’m here to help, George. To be around when Wolff makes his move. As he will. A week from now, a month from now. A year. Who knows? But you can bet it will come when we least expect it. Especially if the war is going badly and all eyes are elsewhere. He won’t do anything precipitous, because he won’t want to alert Hitler to Göring’s designs on her. But don’t be in any doubt. One day he’ll come for her, and we need to be there to stop him.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The waiting room was small and overlit. Unforgivingly hard plastic chairs and an ancient coffee machine whose hum filled the silence. Distant, muffled sounds from the maternity wing seemed to come from a very long way off. The pervasive perfumes of disinfectant and floor polish hung in the air.
Enzo sat next to Dominique and could barely meet the gaze of his son-in-law. Bertrand was perched on the chair opposite, despair apparent in the eyes above his mask. From time to time he stood up and paced the length of the room, then back again to resume his seat.
Enzo’s eyes stung with fear and fatigue. It had taken him a little over six hours to drive down from Paris, stopping only twice. Once for a coffee to keep his eyes from shutting as he drove. And once to call Dominique for an update. The only news had been no news, which was good news in the absence of bad.
He had arrived at the hospital a little after five and watched darkness fall through the windows of a waiting room witness to both the tears and the joy of all those who had passed through it over the years. It was now nearly midnight. A stream of coffees from the machine had kept hunger at bay but set him even more on edge.
The doctors believed that Sophie was suffering from what they called placenta praevia, in which the placenta that the baby required for nourishment had detached itself from the womb. She was several weeks premature and they were attempting to prevent her from going into labour. Both were at serious risk.
None of them had spoken for what seemed like hours.
And then swing doors pushed suddenly open and a lady doctor, still in gown and mask and shower cap, breezed into the room. Enzo and the others were on their feet immediately, fearing the worst, hoping for the best.
She said, ‘We’ve carried out a caesarean section.’ And raised a quick hand to pre-empt questions. ‘Successfully. Mother and son are both doing well.’
Enzo’s legs nearly buckled under him.
The recovery ward was somewhere at the far end of the corridor. Bertrand had been in with Sophie for nearly fifteen minutes. They had let him into the recovery room shortly after she came out of the anaesthetic.
At this end of the corridor, light flooded through a large window that gave on to the incubation room. Enzo and Dominique stood gazing through it at a row of six incubators. Three were occupied. Sophie and Bertrand’s little boy was in the middle. A tiny, crusty newborn baby, kicking and waving his arms energetically inside the plastic bubble that fed oxygen to lungs breathing prematurely. He had a fine head of dark hair, and Enzo had every expectation that one day there would be a silver streak running through it, and that his classmates would nickname him badger or magpie, as they had done with him. He only hoped that other less pleasant symptoms would not accompany it.
Dominique hooked her arm through his and gave it a tiny squeeze. ‘Just like his grandfather,’ she said. ‘Causing trouble already.’
Enzo’s smile was pale and barely extended beyond his lips. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak just yet.
‘I should probably get back to the apartment to check on Laurent,’ Dominique said. Nicole had driven over from Gaillac to sit with him. ‘And I should make us all something to eat. Bring Bertrand with you, Enzo. We can’t have him going back to an empty house on his own after all this.’
Enzo nodded distractedly and she kissed his cheek before uncoupling her arm and slipping softly away. Enzo stood staring at his grandson and knew that a little bit of Pascale lived on in him. And it broke his heart that she had not lived to see it.
He had no idea how long he’d been standing gazing past his own reflection in the glass when he became aware of Bertrand tugging gently on his arm. ‘She wants to see you,’ he said. ‘The doctor says it’s okay. Just for a few minutes.’
Her face was chalk white, brown hair lacking its usual lustre and sprayed out across the pillow. Her eyes followed him from the door to the bedside, where he sat down and took the hand that was outside the covers. There was still an intravenous cannula taped to the back of it. The thought of the surgeon’s knife cutting open his baby girl almost brought tears to his eyes. Hers, by contrast, were clear and smiling, and all he could see in them was her mother. The effects of the anaesthetic were more apparent in her voice, which was faint and husky.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked. Which made him laugh, almost out loud.
‘Me?’ He held her hand in both of his and squeezed it. ‘I was so scared for you, Soph, after what happened to your mum.’
Somehow she managed to free her other hand and clutched both of his with both of hers. ‘I knew you would be. But Papa, I was never ever going to die on you. Never. No way I could let that happen to you twice.’
And just as he had spilled tears for Charlotte at the start of the day, he spilled them again for Sophie and her mother at the end of it.
The lights of Cahors reflected in the loop of the River Lot that contained it. A town built by the Romans two thousand years ago. Once the financial crossroads of Europe. And now a sleepy departmental capital that had been Enzo’s home for nearly forty years. From where he sat now in the dark, at the top of Mont Saint-Cyr, he could see it stretching north, past the tower where the public hangings once took place, and beyond that to the rocky uplands they called the causses. Rocky scrubland washed by moonlight. Away to his left, he saw the lights of traffic crossing the viaduct on the RN20, and the sound of it carried faintly to him on the night.
By day this was a spectacular viewpoint that attracted crowds of tourists. By night a quiet spot for young lovers to bring their cars. But on this cold early morning in late October, Enzo was quite alone. As he had been that night thirty-five years ago when Pascale died giving birth to Sophie. The place to which he had retreated, like a wounded animal, to spill his tears and try to come to terms with his loss. From here it was possible to achieve a different perspective on the world, but he had never quite found a context in which he could place the tragedy that had marred his young life.
Raising his daughter on his own had never been easy. They’d had their moments. Quite a few of them. But he could hardly be more proud of her than he was now. Or of his new grandson. If only Pascale had lived to share in it.
He heard the tyres of a vehicle on gravel, and headlights raked the night air. He stood up. But from here, where the bench was set just below the lip of the hill, he could see nothing. A car door slammed shut and there were footsteps, crisp in the chill night air.
‘Who’s there?’ he called, and was relieved when Dominique came into view at the railing above him. Moonlight picked her out sharply against the black of the sky behind her.
‘When Bertrand came back to the apartment on his own he said he thought I might find you here.’ She skirted the railing and climbed down the steps to the viewpoint below. She ran her hand gently down the
side of his pale moonlit face, then put her arms around him to pull him close. ‘I know what you are feeling right now, darling. And I don’t want to take the moment away from you. I want to share it with you.’
He slipped his arms around her and held her tight. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. Then drew back and touched her face and gazed into her eyes. ‘You would have liked Pascale.’ A sad smile. ‘And I’m quite sure she would have approved of you.’
He released her to turn and gaze out over the town below.
‘It all feels so long ago now. Like other people in another life.’
‘You still miss her?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that. I accepted losing her a very long time ago. But I’ve never stopped feeling her loss. Everything she’s missed out on. Watching her daughter grow.’ He chuckled. ‘Coming to terms with her son-in-law. As I had to. Looking through the glass tonight at her grandson. And just . . .’ He shrugged hopelessly. ‘Just . . . life. The whole life that lay ahead of her. I think of her every time the trees push out fresh leaves and another year passes that she never got to see. It’s so unfair, Dom.’
‘I know.’ She took his arm and moulded her body to his. ‘Her death took away your life, too. But you have another life now. With me. And you need to live every moment of it. And know that whatever happens, I’m not going to leave you, Enzo. Ever.’
He turned his face to hers and they kissed. Then he sighed and said, ‘Sadly, it’s me who’s going to have to leave you.’ And when he saw the alarm in her face, laughed and added, ‘Though not for long. But I’m going to have to go back up to Carennac tomorrow and try to bring this whole damned case to an end, once and for all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
South-west France,
the day of the murder
Bauer’s train arrived in Brive-la-Gaillarde from Paris shortly after midday. The conductor had explained to him that he should only exit the train on the left if he was leaving the station. Otherwise he should step out on the right and the connecting local train would be waiting on the next platform.
He found himself a seat in it, a single-carriage bullet-shaped blue train whose final destination was Aurillac, one of the coldest towns in France. But he was not going anywhere near that far.
It pulled out of the bourgeois Corrèzienne town, with its grey slate roofs and tall narrow houses, and gathered speed into the bleak October landscape of the Département du Lot. A landscape characterised by forests of oak and chestnut and lime, and rolling hills cut through by tiny meandering streams.
He was both excited and apprehensive. All of this would have been so much easier if only Narcisse had been prepared to accept his proposition. It never, for one moment, occurred to him that his train might be speeding him towards an encounter with the man himself. And ultimately with death.
He climbed down from the train at Biars-sur-Cère and waited until it pulled out again before crossing the line to exit through the station into a deserted car park. To his relief, a taxi sat outside a café opposite the station and he went in to enquire if someone could take him to Carennac.
His first impression as they turned off the Alvignac road into Carennac village was that they had just driven into a medieval fairy tale. Steeply pitched red roofs, and slated turrets, the bell in the abbey chiming the hour. Streets barely wide enough for his taxi to negotiate. It was here, he was almost certain, that his grandfather’s life had been cut short. Here that a story never previously told had played out among the Carennac stone. A story whose ending, he felt, had yet to be written. Quite possibly by him.
His taxi pulled up outside the Hostellerie Fenelon, and he carried his overnight bag across the paved terrace, through glass doors and into reception. A young man confirmed his reservation, took his details and handed him a key. ‘Upstairs and to the right,’ he said.
Bauer was just about to head for the stairs when he caught a glimpse of a familiar figure sitting at a window table on the far side of the restaurant. And it was as though every joint in his body had suddenly seized. He couldn’t move.
Narcisse’s focus was on his lunch, and so he didn’t see the young German glaring at him across the tables. Beyond his initial shock, Bauer felt anger fizzing inside him, that old familiar feeling. His fists clenched at his sides. After insulting him, and feigning disbelief, Narcisse was flagrantly betraying his confidence. Evidently he did not, as he had claimed, believe Bauer’s story was so far-fetched. What was it he had called the German? A crank and a charlatan? And yet here he was. Bauer was having trouble controlling his breathing now. He moved quickly out of Narcisse’s line of sight and headed for the stairs, determined that the old bastard would not get away with this.
Bauer did not linger long in his room. He dropped his bag on the bed and crossed to the window to look out through a latticework of branches and dead leaves at the slow-moving water of the River Dordogne below. His thoughts were a confused jumble of uncertainty. What to do? Almost on an impulse he decided that the first thing would be to find the house. Then he could take it from there. A way of procrastinating. Avoiding the issue. And most of all, Narcisse. Since he knew that a confrontation at this point could lead him to violence. And that would ruin everything.
He drifted quietly downstairs, hesitating at the doors to the restaurant to establish that Narcisse was still lunching, before slipping unseen out into the street.
It was cold. Only the faintest warmth discernible in a sun that barely rose above the rooftops. Bauer smelled woodsmoke in the air. Medieval buildings crowded narrow streets and cut crystal-sharp outlines against the pale autumn blue above. He realised very quickly that he should have obtained a street plan. The village was far bigger than he had imagined. The village store and the post office were shut. A faded sign above a shuttered property on the edge of the tree-lined palisade read Café Calypso. But it didn’t look like a café. The palisade itself was deserted, apart from a solitary car parked up against the wall. It was a steep drop to a footpath that ran along the bank of the river below, where wooden rowing boats were moored in twos and threes, some half submerged in brackish green water. The walls of the château rose steeply on the other side of the road. At the far end, an archway led up a narrow cobbled street to the precincts of the abbey. Beyond that, a long bridge spanned a cleft in the rock, and a road led away from the village along the riverbank.
Bauer turned left and found himself walking unwittingly in the footsteps that Enzo and Dominique would leave in the same street less than twenty-four hours later. By which time Narcisse would be dead, and Bauer missing.
He followed the street along the basin of the village, aware that it climbed higher to both left and right, tiny alleyways branching off in either direction. At a crooked, cantilevered house at the end of the street, he turned left again, climbing a steep hill past a converted barn to the fenced playground of the village primary school. It too was deserted. A turn to the right led on to the main road to Alvignac and a bus shelter where an elderly lady sat leaning forward, both hands crooked over the top of her walking stick. Arthritic knuckles on age-spattered hands.
In his schoolboy French he asked if she could direct him to the home of Anny Lavigne, and she pointed him back along the road he had come, down past the school and a handful of houses. Where the road branched, she said, there were steps leading up to a tiny park and a war monument. Anny Lavigne lived in the big house that overlooked it from the far side.
He thanked her, hoping that he had understood, and followed the road back over the hill and down to where the road divided in two. Just as she had described, steps led up past a stone cross and into a small park where four stout tilia trees flanked a monument to the dead of both world wars. Beyond them, a dead tree had fallen over, pulling its root system free of the earth that had nourished it for who knew how many decades. A slight breeze stirred in the still of the afternoon, and red and white striped tape fluttered l
istlessly all around the area of disturbed ground.
He stopped and realised that this, almost certainly, was the place his grandfather had lain undiscovered for more than seventy years. Shot in the head by persons unknown and buried in haste. It was chilling to feel this close to the man who, all these years later, had brought him here. But Bauer knew that he was no longer at peace in the ground which had held him for so long. Every last trace of him had been removed and taken to Paris, and to Bauer it felt like desecration. He stood staring at the disinterred grave with an inexplicable mix of sorrow and anger.
He turned and found himself looking past an old chapel turned exhibition space, shuttered and closed for the season, towards the house that overlooked the park. Anny Lavigne’s house. The house described by Wolff in his diaries.
Steps climbed back down to the street beside it, a stone staircase doubling back and leading up to a small covered terrace at the front door.
He heard the scrape of footsteps echoing off cold stone in the chill of the afternoon. The first and only sign of life he had seen in this deserted place, except for the old lady at the bus stop. The shadows of trees that lined the railings were already long as the sun dipped away to the west, and Bauer moved into the cover they provided as the stooped figure of Emile Narcisse came into view, slowly climbing up from the main street below.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs to Anny Lavigne’s door and hesitated a moment, consulting a piece of paper before pushing it back into a pocket of his long winter coat. He wore leather gloves, and Bauer could see a white shirt and blue tie where the coat was open at his neck.
