by Peter May
He held the piece of paper in his hand, staring at it blindly. Something was wrong. Why would Kirsty want to meet him in a place like this? Why would she leave him such a cryptic note taped to a telephone receiver in an empty cablecar? And yet there was no doubt in his mind that it was Kirsty who had written to him. Who else could possibly have known the awful secret which had been aired that night at Simon’s flat in London?
He lifted the telephone and put it to his ear, listening intently. It clicked several times and then began to ring. He waited, almost rigid with tension. On the third ring, someone lifted the receiver at the other end. Silence. Filled only by ambient sound. But there was someone there. Enzo was certain he could hear breathing. He said, ‘Hello?’ And immediately the doors slid shut.
He dropped the receiver and in two quick strides crossed the cablecar to try to stop the nearest door from closing. But he was too late, and he spun around to stand in the middle of the floor, breathing hard, looking about him in a panic, like a wild animal trapped in a cage.
The car jerked, and he grabbed for the handrail as it scraped and bumped its way out of its dock, before swinging free into the night. Enzo had a strange, awful sense of floating away in the dark. From its lit interior, everything beyond the windows of the cablecar seemed black. But he could see the lights of the car park, dropping away steeply below him. He felt the cablecar shudder, battered by the wind. The sleet melted and ran down the windows like tears.
He knew now that he had been tricked. And trapped. If Kirsty had written that e-mail she had been forced to do it. By someone who somehow knew their secret. But who? There was no way he could make sense of it. And he didn’t dare imagine in what circumstance she might have been made to do it.
But it had to have something to do with Labrousse and the murder of Pierre Lambert.
The car dipped suddenly in the dark as it passed the first support pylon, and rose yet more steeply. Enzo began to panic. There was absolutely nothing he could do. He went back to the control panel and pressed every button. Nothing happened. Somehow the cablecar’s independent controls had been disabled and it was being manipulated remotely. He felt quickly in all his pockets, before remembering that he’d let the battery in his cellphone run flat, and left it charging in the car. He couldn’t even call for help. He was trapped in this damned box, being winched up a mountainside in the dark to meet God knew what fate at the top.
His breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts, and he moved to the far window, pressing his back against it and grasping the handrail, preparing to meet head on whatever might be waiting for him up there.
The sleet had turned now to snow, coating the windows at the front, as they rose higher into the night. The car dipped again. The second pylon. Enzo glanced out of the side window, and saw village lights twinkling through the snow in a valley far, far below, somewhere away to the west. Light from the windows of the cablecar reflected darkly on the mountainside as they slid up through cut rock. Ahead Enzo saw the dark shape of the mountain-top terminal loom suddenly out of the night, and then the snow ceased as the cablecar bumped and rattled into the shelter of its dock. It jerked to a standstill and the doors slid open.
Enzo stood stock still. He could hear the wind howling through the cavernous concrete space around him. Cables and corrugated sheeting rattled and flapped and vibrated, the noise of it echoing all about him. The only light came from the cablecar. He could see a metal staircase leading up to an overhead access gallery for maintenance high up in the roof, where the cables turned around huge yellow wheels.
More steps climbed up to a metal platform, and a vast sliding door that opened on to a dark concourse. Sortie signs pointed towards a cafeteria and doors to the outside. He could see no one, nor detect any movement among the shadows.
He stood for a long time without moving. His instinct was to stay in the light, to remain within the protective shell of the cablecar. But he knew that any sense of safety here was illusory. He was in the full glare of the very light that comforted him, clearly visible to whoever was out there. The dark would be a better friend.
Almost on an impulse, he ran out of the door, clattering over the metal grille beneath his feet, the mountain falling away below him, and made a dash for the shadows. All the time he braced himself for the bullets or the blows that he was sure would come his way. He scrambled up the stairs, through the open door, and plunged into the darkness of the adjoining concourse. He found a wall and hunkered down against it, fingers pressed into the floor to keep him balanced. It was more fear than exertion that robbed him of his breath. He could hear it rasping above the roar of the wind that squeezed and whined through every space and crack.
It took several minutes for his eyes to adjust to the tiny amount of light that bled through from the now distant cablecar. It was reflected faintly in pools of water gathered on the concrete floor. The corrugated roof above his head thundered like a drum in the wind, and he saw, beyond a sign for Stella Artois, the passage that led out to the mountain. He had no idea why, but all his instincts pushed him in that direction. Out of here, out into the night, escape from this concrete prison into which he’d been lured.
‘What do you want with me?’ he bellowed at the top of his voice, all his fear and anger fuelling a vocal outburst of pure frustration. But only the wind replied, and he got to his feet and ran for the doors, punching the release bar and plunging through them out into the night.
The wind struck him a physical blow, snow swirling around him like the spirits of demented dervishes. A light came on, triggered by a movement sensor, flooding a snow-covered rise that led off towards the peak. He saw a radio mast disappearing into the white-streaked darkness, and realised what folly this was. He wouldn’t survive ten minutes out here.
He turned and stopped dead. A figure stood in the doorway, blocking his return. A tall figure in a dark parka with the hood up. One hand rose to pull back the hood, and Enzo saw that it was Yves Labrousse. The younger man smiled. ‘She said you’d come,’ he shouted above the wind, and Enzo wondered what he meant. Was he talking about Kirsty?
‘What have you done with her?’
Labrousse looked faintly bemused. ‘I haven’t done anything with her.’ He raised his right hand and pointed a gun directly at Enzo’s chest. ‘You have been such a pain in the ass. You have no idea.’
‘I know everything about you,’ Enzo shouted at him. ‘Your whole history. Your abduction from Cadaquès. Stealing your brother’s identity. Joining the Légion Étrangère. And I know about Philippe Ransou and how you met.’
‘And all that knowledge will die with you. But just a little sooner than Ransou predicted.’
‘No.’ Enzo shook his head vigorously. ‘You’re rumbled, Labrousse. Or Archangel. Or Bright. Or whatever it is you call yourself. Do you think I’d come here without passing on what I know? Do you think I didn’t know you’d be coming after me? I spent last night writing up the whole damned story, and this morning I uploaded it to my blog. It’s all out there on the internet. Whatever you do to me now can’t change that.’
Labrousse glared at him, hate and anger burning in blue eyes. ‘You fucker!’ He took a step towards Enzo and his foot skidded from under him. Loose gravel beneath wet snow. He stumbled and almost fell. Enzo turned and ran just as the light on the terminal building was suddenly extinguished. The mountain top was plunged into blackness.
Enzo felt the snow in his face, his feet slipping and slithering as he ran blindly into the night. He heard Labrousse shouting his name, a voice whipped away on the edge of the wind. The incline grew steeper as he climbed. He felt his legs becoming leaden, the sound of his own voice gasping, almost roaring, as he tried to gulp in more air. But everything was against him. The weather, the lack of oxygen, his age, and he felt himself wading as if through treacle, or like a man fighting in slow motion against the blast of a hurricane.
Until, finally, his legs folded beneath him and he dropped to his knees, utterly exhausted. He
fell forward into the snow and rolled over on to his back, and saw the shadow of his pursuer loom over him. Labrousse was gasping, too, fitter and stronger than Enzo, but still disabled by six thousand feet of oxygen deprivation. ‘I never knew a man harder to kill,’ he said. He raised his gun and fired three times.
Enzo braced himself for the bullets and grunted in pain as the dead weight of Labrousse fell on top of him. He felt the warmth of the other man’s blood oozing through his clothes, compounding his confusion. He struggled to push Labrousse to one side, but couldn’t move him.
Then suddenly the weight was lifted, and Labrousse rolled off and into the dark. Another figure leaned over him, and he felt a warm hand on his face. The snow seemed to have stopped.
‘Are you hit?’
This was a dream. It had to be. He was certain it was Anna who had spoken. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ He tried to catch his breath. ‘Anna?’
‘Poor Enzo.’ She ran the back of her hand lightly across his cheek. ‘You really don’t deserve this.’
‘What are you doing here, Anna?’ He forced himself up on to one elbow, and in that moment the sky parted and the light of the moon washed silver across the white peaks of the Cantal all around them. He saw the gun in her hand. ‘You shot him?’ He knew for certain now that he was either dead or dreaming.
She said, ‘The scenario where two people shoot one another is never very believable. But if you shot Labrousse and then somehow lost your way and slipped and fell, you’d die of exposure long before the night was out and anyone found you. That would work. I’m pretty sure they’d go for that.’
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
She sighed and sat down in the snow beside him. ‘The people who employed Labrousse to kill Lambert never did trust him to shut you up. They were scared that anything that led to him would lead ultimately to them. So I was their back-up. If you got too close to Lambert I was to take him out. And you.’
Enzo looked at her in disbelief. ‘You’re going to kill me?’
She looked at him and smiled sadly. ‘Oh, Enzo. I don’t want to. I really don’t. You and me … well, in another life we could have, you know, been good together. But if I don’t kill you, they’ll kill me. Because I could lead you to them, and they don’t like loose ends. You’re too Goddamned smart for your own good. And mine.’
She got to her feet and pointed her gun at him. ‘Come on, get up.’
Enzo got stiffly, painfully, to his feet. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’
‘No, I couldn’t do that to you, Enzo. I’m going to leave you to fall asleep here on the mountain. Only, you’ll never wake up, and you won’t feel a thing. Turn around.’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘Just turn around.’
He did as she asked and she hesitated for only a moment before felling him with a blow from the butt end of her pistol. He dropped to his knees and fell face-first into the snow. She turned him over and dragged him by his feet ten metres to a line of wooden fencing that ran along the edge of a steep drop. She kicked away the cross slats and stooped to press her gun carefully into Enzo’s right hand. She looked at him for a moment before bending over to kiss him lightly on the forehead. ‘I’m sorry, Enzo,’ she whispered. She stood up and pushed him with her foot through the gap she’d made in the fence. He slid over into darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Bertrand clutched the tyre-iron from his van in gloved hands. It was the nearest thing to a weapon he could find. Kirsty had been here before, and so the others followed her as she pointed her flashlight into the sleet ahead of them. Clattering up grilled metal stairs from the car park and slithering across the concourse, past the tourist office, towards the brooding dark of the téléphérique building. The sleet in their faces was nearly blinding as they ran around the side of it to the red staircase that climbed up into the night.
The landing stage was deserted, and only one cablecar was in its dock. It stood in darkness, its doors locked. ‘There’s no one here!’ Kirsty shouted above the wind.
Nicole bellowed, ‘Look!’ She pointed, and they all peered up through the storm of sleet to a distant light on the mountain top. Which was suddenly gone.
‘They’re up there. They must be up there!’ Sophie’s voice wailed among the metal struts and beams overhead. She ran along the dock. ‘Can’t we get this thing to go?’ With icy fingers she tried to pry open the nearest of the cablecar’s doors.
Bertrand said, ‘Hang on.’ He crossed to examine a large metal box bolted to the outside wall of the téléphérique building. Thick cables exited from the bottom end of it, trunking fixed to the wall every few centimetres until it disappeared into the concrete of the floor. A stout steel clasp on its door was fixed with a heavy padlock. He started hacking at it with his tyre-iron.
‘What are you doing?’ Sophie shouted.
‘Looks like this could be the power box. If I can get it open we might be able to start the cablecar. Kirsty, bring the flashlight over here.’
By its light they saw that the metal of the door was peppered now with small dents around the lock. But Bertrand was making little impression on it. He stopped and examined it for a moment, then slotted the straight end of the iron through the hoop of the padlock, and braced himself with his foot against the wall. He pulled with both hands, arm and shoulder muscles straining, veins standing out on his forehead. Years of pumping iron finding practical use beyond mere aesthetics. The metal of the box groaned loudly as the door buckled inwards. But still the padlock held.
Bertrand stopped to take fresh breath and gather himself, then got himself back into position and pulled again, yelling finally with the sheer effort of it, as the whole front of the box ripped free of its fixings. He almost fell as it gave. Inside was a large power switch, and when he threw it, the control panel below it lit up, and the whole landing stage was flooded with light. He punched the button marked Portes and the doors of the cablecar slid open. Fluorescent lights flickered inside it then filled it with luminous bright light.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Someone’s going to have to stay here to operate the thing.’
But Kirsty shook her head. ‘No. The operator rides up with it. There are controls inside.’
They all bundled in, and Bertrand found the control panel beside the far door. He closed the doors and hit the green start button. They heard the whine of a distant motor, and the cablecar jerked forward, scraping its way out of the dock before swinging clear and rising steeply towards the first pylon.
Only now did young imaginations start working overtime. None of them had the least idea what, or who, they might find at the top. And they stood avoiding each other’s eyes, afraid almost to acknowledge the sudden fear that moved amongst them like a fifth presence. Their silence was laden with anxiety. Bertrand tightened his grip on the tyre-iron.
They reached the dipping point at the first pylon, then rose rapidly again into a darkness almost obscured by snow.
It was Sophie who broke the silence. ‘Look, there’s a light.’ She pressed her face against the window at the front of the car, peering up towards the peak. A faint glow was threading its way through the snow and the dark towards them, descending at speed. Kirsty shielded her eyes from the interior light and strained to see.
‘It’s the other cablecar. It’s coming down.’
‘Shit,’ Bertrand muttered, and he examined the control panel. But there didn’t seem to be any way to stop the car in mid-ascent. They all rushed to the side window, shadowing the glass to see out as the other cablecar approached. When the two converged, they almost seemed to pick up speed. The light of the other car arced out through the driving snow, and in the few seconds it took to pass, they saw Anna looking back at them, her face pale, angry, intense. Her lips moved in a curse they could read, and then she was gone, dipping away below them into the dark.
Silence returned to the ascending car. None of them knew what to say. Fear was replaced now by apprehension verg
ing on dread.
Bertrand turned to Kirsty. ‘How much longer does this take?’
‘Just another few minutes.’
But it seemed like an eternity before the cablecar was sucked into the darkness of its concrete berth and shuddered to a halt. Bertrand took the flashlight from Kirsty. ‘Stay close behind me. We don’t want to get separated up here.’ And he stepped out on to the grilled walkway and shone the flashlight around the cavernous arrivals hall. The wind was so much stronger at the peak and the noise of it reverberated around the stark planes and angles of the concrete construction. The beam of the flashlight pierced its emptiness, pausing for a moment on the open door of a wall-mounted control panel like the one Bertrand had broken into down below.
There appeared to be nobody here, and cautiously Bertrand moved forward, tyre-iron held ready. The girls followed him up the steps and through to the concourse that led to the cafeteria. Here, too, there was no sign of life. Just the mournful holler of the wind. Bertrand lowered the beam of the flashlight and they all saw the trail of wet footprints across the concrete. There was something almost reassuring about them. Something that said people had been here, but were gone. Bertrand broke into a run, following them to the exit doors.
The blast of snow in the wind took their breath away. And as soon as Bertrand stepped through the doors, the motion sensor triggered the exterior light. Immediately he saw the tracks in the snow, footprints not yet covered over. He kept the beam focused on them, and followed their trail up the incline towards the peak. They hadn’t gone far before the lights behind them went out, and it felt suddenly very dark and exposed up here.
Sophie grabbed his arm and pointed beyond the ring of light. ‘There’s something on the track up ahead.’ Bertrand raised the beam and they saw the dark shape of a man lying in the snow, the scarlet glow of fresh blood glistening on virgin white.
