Blacklight Blue

by Peter May

  He had to raise his own voice above the echo of the others that rang among the pillars and vaults, and the constant announcements that blared from the speaker system. ‘What happened?’

  And she told him. About her one-week contract interpreting for the Italian. Her disappointment when she discovered why he was in town. How the weather had brought traffic to a standstill on the morning of the press conference, and how she had called Sylvie from her cab to ask her to stand in.

  ‘It’s hard to believe that you were the target and not the Italian. He must have plenty of enemies.’

  ‘The police were certain. The bomb had been placed beneath the interpreter’s seat. The one I should have been in. Not Sylvie.’

  She choked on the words, and he put a reassuring hand over hers. ‘It’s not your fault, Kirsty.’

  ‘That bomb was meant for me. It should have been me at that press conference.’

  It was almost as if she wished herself dead. Death would have been easier than the guilt. Enzo thought about how he would be feeling right now if Kirsty had got there on time. And he knew that no matter what horrors he might face himself, his job right now was to protect his child. With his life if necessary.

  He glanced at her. She was still distracted, eyes flickering nervously towards the passing crowds in the arcade. ‘Are you still seeing Roger?’

  The eyes darted quickly in his direction, and fixed him with a look of hurt and disappointment. ‘Does it matter? I know you don’t like him, but he’s got nothing to do with this.’

  He wanted to say that it didn’t matter a damn whether he liked Raffin or not. The point was he didn’t like him being with Kirsty. But he kept his own counsel. ‘Does he know what’s happened?’

  She shook her head, and he felt some tiny crumb of comfort in the knowledge that the first person she had turned to was him.

  He dropped some coins on the table and stood up. ‘Come on. We’ll go to your apartment and pack a bag, and you’ll come back with me to Cahors. You’ll be safe there, and we’ll figure out what to do.’

  But she made no move to get up. ‘I haven’t been to the apartment since … since it happened. I stayed with a friend last night.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m frightened to go back.’

  He nodded and took her hand. ‘We’ll get the cab to wait for us. I’ve booked us a hotel, and we’ll get the first train to Paris in the morning.’

  But still she wouldn’t stand. ‘There’s something else …’

  He frowned. ‘What?’ He sat down again.

  ‘When I got there, you know, just as the bomb exploded, the blast knocked me from my feet.’ He could see the consternation in her eyes. ‘This man picked me up. Just kind of lifted me to my feet. It almost seemed like he was smiling. You know, completely unaffected by what had just happened. There was panic, people were screaming. Smoke everywhere. And he just looked at me and said, “You’re a lucky girl.”’

  Enzo had no idea where this was going. He searched her face for some understanding. ‘You were.’

  ‘But it was like he knew I should have been up there. How would he know that?’

  ‘You ever heard of dog acting?’

  Her face creased in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In TV and movies, when they cut away to a shot of the dog, the dog has no expression on its face. We, the viewer, read into it whatever expression is appropriate. Good actors know that. They can make a blank face say a thousand different things.’

  ‘Dad, I don’t understand.’

  ‘You were right. How would he know that you should have been up there? You were the only one who knew that. So you were the one who transferred that interpretation to him.’

  But she took no comfort in his words and simply shook her head. ‘No.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You see, the thing is, I just saw him again.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. In the station. Just before your train got in.’

  And he felt the same shiver of fear that she had experienced just fifteen minutes before.

  Chapter Nine

  It was dark when they got there. The snow was wet, falling through the light of the streetlamps in drifts, like down, and thickly enough that it was starting to lie again. Enzo told their driver to wait for them and glanced around as Kirsty unlocked the front door. There was a boulangerie and an agence immobilière on the ground floor. Some of the windows on the upper floors had small balconies closed in by cast-iron railings. There was a modern apartment block next door, and a row of upmarket villas on the far side of the main road.

  So this was where his little girl lived. The names on the doorplate all looked foreign. Bozovic, Marinelli, Boukara. He wondered if they were all interpreters like Kirsty. An electrician’s van parked in the Rue Bernegger bore the name Droeller-Scheer. Nothing about this place seemed French. He might have been in another country.

  He followed her up a dark stone staircase to a long landing with doors leading off to left and right. She hit the light switch and nothing happened. She said, ‘It’s an energy saver. Goes off by itself. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.’

  He held her arm to stop her going any further, and took out his keyring. There was a small pencil torch attached to it, about three inches long, that he used to find keyholes in the dark. ‘I’ll go first.’ The thin beam of light pierced the darkness ahead of them.

  ‘It’s the one at the end. On the left.’

  He stopped outside the door and shone his torch at the lock. He felt himself tense. ‘Have you had a break-in recently? Forgotten your key, had to break in yourself?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘This lock’s been tampered with. See the scratches?’

  She peered into the burned-out circle of light around the lock and saw tiny scratches shining in dull brass.

  ‘Give me your key.’

  She handed him her key and watched as he unlocked the door and pushed it gently inwards. If it were just himself, the knowledge of his impending death might have made him reckless. But responsibility for Kirsty made Enzo careful.

  ‘Where’s the light switch?’

  ‘On the left.’

  He felt for it with his left hand and found it. There was an audible click, but it brought no light to their world. ‘Fuse box?’ He spoke in little more than a whisper, although he was not sure why. If there was someone waiting for them inside, then he would know they were there by now.

  ‘On the wall, on the right.’

  He pushed the door wide and swung the pencil-thin rod of light up and right. He saw the square door of the box set into the wall. Then he flashed the light quickly around the room. It looked shambolic, and he heard Kirsty gasp. But there didn’t seem to be anyone there. He stepped smartly inside, reached up to flip open the box and shone his torch into it. The disjoncteur switch was up. It should have been down. He flicked it down and the tiny studio apartment where his daughter lived was flooded with sudden harsh light.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Kirsty gazed, horrified, around the studio. It was a mess. Furniture overturned, drawers emptied, clothes and papers strewn across the floor. She crossed quickly to her workdesk below the window. The drawers had all been pulled open. She checked the top one and saw that her passport, and a foldout wallet of credit and bank cards, were still there. ‘He doesn’t seem to have taken anything.’

  Enzo swung open the door to the bathroom and turned on the light. There was no one there. But the contents of the wall cabinet had been thrown into the shower, and clean towels lay in untidy piles on the floor. He turned back towards Kirsty and saw that all the blood had drained from an already pale face. She looked shockingly white. He said, ‘Looks like maybe he was just leaving a calling card. A message to say he’d been here.’ He saw her bite her lower lip and crossed the room in three strides to take her in his arms. He rested his face on the top of her head and smelled the distant, familiar smell of her. ‘Come on, pet. Throw some stuff in a bag and let’s get out of here.’

  He stood
by the window waiting, watching the snow outside drift through the headlamps of the taxi. There were circular, dark, wet patches in the shadows cast by the trees across the street, and he saw a man emerge from one of them to leave a trail of black footprints as he crossed the road. He pulled up the collar of his long overcoat as he walked, then stooped at the open window where their driver was smoking a cigarette. They talked for half a minute before the man reached under his coat to bring out a wallet. Money changed hands, and he opened the taxi’s rear passenger door and slipped inside.

  ‘Hey!’ Enzo shouted and banged on the window, then searched feverishly for the catch. Kirsty hurried through from the bathroom as he slid it up.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some guy’s taking our taxi.’ He leaned out into the night and bellowed. ‘Hey! Stop!’

  If he heard him, the taxi driver took no notice. He swung the car across the street, then reversed into a three-point turn. Enzo and Kirsty watched helplessly as their taxi began to accelerate away in the opposite direction. And, as it did, they saw the upturned face of the man who had taken it, caught for just a moment in the streetlight.

  Enzo heard his daughter catch her breath, and felt her fingers close around his arm. ‘That’s him!’

  He turned towards her. ‘Who?’

  ‘The man at the press conference. The one I saw again at the station.’

  Enzo turned to watch the taxi disappearing into the night. He felt himself succumbing to fear and confusion. This man was playing some kind of game. First he had tried to murder his daughter, and now he was toying with them. Almost laughing at them. Who in God’s name was he? Why was he doing this? And for the first time, he had a strange sense of foreboding. Of something more than met the eye. Of something personal and pervasive. He turned back to Kirsty. ‘Finish packing. I’ll phone for another cab.’

  It was a further ten minutes, working his way through the Strasbourg annuaire, before Enzo finally got a taxi firm to answer his call. Only to be told that it would be up to an hour before a car would become available.

  ‘I’m not waiting here.’ Kirsty stood by her fold-down bed, like a child, clutching a sports bag stuffed with toiletries and underwear and a change of clothes. ‘We can take a short-cut through the park, and maybe pick up a cab on the Avenue de l’Europe.’

  There was a traffic circle two hundred metres to the west of the apartment, and beyond that the brooding darkness of the Parc de l’Orangerie. They left foot-trails in the snow all along the sidewalk. There was precious little traffic on the roads. Temperatures were forecast to plummet, and all this wet snow would soon turn to ice. No one wanted to be out on a night like this. And those who were had taken every available cab.

  They rounded the circle and crossed the street, and Enzo hesitated at the edge of the park. The path leading into it was half-obscured by leaves and snow, and vanished very quickly among the trees. ‘I don’t like this. Let’s just walk around it.’

  ‘It’s okay, Dad. I’ve cycled and jogged through here a hundred times.’

  ‘In the dark?’

  She made a face. ‘No one’s going to be out in weather like this. And, anyway, it opens up once you get through the trees. Honestly, it’ll take us twice as long to go around it.’

  She took his arm with her free hand as they plunged off into the dark making virgin tracks in the snow. The path dipped a little before rising again through the trees. Across a stretch of open parkland to their right, Enzo could see the streelights along the Quai de l’Orangerie, and the headlamps of the occasional passing car. They had covered, perhaps, half a kilometre before he heard what sounded like footsteps following in their wake. He stopped and put a finger to his lips and listened. Nothing. Only the dead sound of the night, muffled by the snow.

  ‘What?’ Kirsty whispered. But he just shook his head and hurried them on. The park seemed to close in around them, suffocating and claustrophobic in the falling snow. He increased his pace, and Kirsty struggled to keep up.

  And then there it was again. Only this time he didn’t stop. He took his daughter’s hand and started to run. At first she pulled back, but then she heard it too and glanced behind them to see shadows emerging from the dark. Now she needed no encouragement, and they ran as hard as they could towards the distant lights.

  But suddenly the lights were not so distant. They were straight ahead of them, shining in their faces, blinding in their intensity, and they pulled up sharply, breathless and afraid. A flashlight came on behind them and, by its light, they could see four youths up ahead in hooded jackets. Two of them had flashlights, and Enzo saw a baseball bat hanging ominously from the hand of another. Two other youths approached from behind, their flashlight trained on Enzo, and he saw more bats. He put a protective arm across the front of his daughter and steered her backwards to the side of the path.

  ‘What do you want?’ He let his bag drop to the ground.

  ‘A bit of fun. What do you say?’ The face of the youth who spoke was hidden by the shadow of his hood. The young men had formed a half circle and were slowly closing in.

  Enzo said, ‘I’ve got a six inch blade on my hip, and I know how to use it.’

  ‘I’m so scared.’

  ‘You should be. There are five of you. And you’ll take me down. I know that. But one of you, maybe two, are going with me. Count on it.’ He paused to let the thought sink in. ‘Who’s going to be first?’ There was an almost imperceptible hesitation in their forward movement.

  ‘Putain.’ It was one of the others. ‘Just give us your wallet.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  The first one spoke up again. ‘Just think what’s going to happen to your daughter after we take you down.’

  Enzo flinched. He reached beneath his coat and drew out his wallet, throwing it towards them so that it landed in the snow.

  ‘You, too.’ A flashlight swung into Kirsty’s face and she threw her bag at their feet.

  One of them stooped to open it up. He riffled quickly through the contents until he found her billfold with credit cards and notes. He removed the notes and stuffed them in his pocket and let the billfold drop back into the snow. He tossed her bag away and went through Enzo’s wallet, removing the notes but leaving the plastic. He stood up, and flashlights that had been trained on the ground at his feet swung up again into the faces of their victims.

  There was an odd hiatus, a momentary stand-off when it seemed that no one knew what would happen next. The one who had spoken first broke the silence.

  ‘You really got a blade?’

  Enzo stared boldly back at him. ‘You want to find out?’

  But the boy didn’t take long to think about it. He turned to the others. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Flashlights were extinguished, plunging them into sudden blindness, and the five hooded youths melted away into the falling snow.

  Enzo and Kirsty stood for nearly a full minute before Enzo stooped to recover his wallet and Kirsty’s billfold. She looked at him curiously as he went to retrieve her bag. ‘Do you?’ she said.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Have a blade?’

  He almost laughed. ‘Of course not. But they didn’t know that.’ Then he shook his head and she saw the confusion in his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  He met her gaze. ‘This wasn’t just some chance mugging, Kirsty. They knew who we were.’

  She frowned. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘How else would they know you were my daughter?’

  Chapter Ten

  It took them forty minutes, once they left the park, to walk to the Place de Bordeaux. Every taxi was taken, and there were few other vehicles on the road. By the time they got to the shelter of the tram stop at Lycée Kléber they were both soaked through and frozen numb. At the north end of the square was the Holiday Inn, and beyond that the Palais des Congrès. Kirsty was unable to bring herself even to look in that direction.

  She was unable, either, to stop shivering
, and Enzo stood holding her in the dark, miserable and bewildered and depressed. The digital display overhead told them that the next tram would in three minutes. With fingers that had lost all feeling, he fumbled to use a credit card to buy them a ticket from the machine. After the third rejection he tried another card. And still the machine wouldn’t accept it. Neither would it accept any of Kirsty’s cards. He cursed, and felt like kicking the damned thing. They had no cash, and so they would have to ride the tram without tickets. Maybe they’d be arrested and thrown in jail. At least it might be warm there.

  They waited alone, in silence, until the lights of the tram emerged from the darkness, its bell ringing as it rattled across the junction.

  There were only a handful of other passengers on it. They cast disinterested glances at the cold, unhappy couple who got on board at the Lycée Kléber and sat side by side without speaking. The tram creaked and strained and wound its way south along the Avenue de la Paix, around the Place de la République, and then east towards the Place de l’Homme-de-Fer – which translated, curiously, as Iron Man Square.

  There they reluctantly stepped back into the icy blast, sheltering beneath a strange, circular construction of steel and glass. Then out into the snow again, huddled together, crossing the bridge on the Rue de Sebastopol to the Place des Halles where the Hôtel Ibis rose high into a snow-smudged sky, above the incongruously British C&A department store.