by Peter May
A knock at the door on the far side of the room interrupted morbid thoughts. It opened to admit a big man, only a little shrunken by age, a thick shock of wiry white hair above a deeply lined but fleshy face full of character and humour.
“Salut, salut,” he said. And shut the door behind him to approach them across the room, supported by a gnarled old walking stick with a brass tip, his walk stiff-gaited but steady. He wore a dark suit, tightly buttoned across a patterned pullover, and an open-necked shirt that was grubby and frayed around the collar. If Enzo had been asked to guess, he would have said that the old man was around eighty. His dark eyes twinkled with mischief and humour. “How is the old boy today?”
Alain smiled patiently, and explained to Enzo. “Jacques has a couple of years on my father, and always likes to refer to him as the old boy.” It was a joke that had clearly worn thin.
But Enzo was astonished and looked at the old man anew.
“Ninety-four,” Jacques said, answering the unasked question, fiercely proud of his achievement. He held out a hand to shake Enzo’s. “Jacques Gassman at your service, monsieur.” And Enzo detected the faintest hint of an accent that he couldn’t quite place.
There was still power in the grip of the big, bony old hand.
Alain said, “Jacques and my father each had their own practice on the island until they set up the medical centre together.”
“Oh,” Enzo said. “So it’s Doctor Gassman?”
“It is,” the old man said proudly. “I come to see the old boy every other day, just to keep an eye on him. And he always asked me to keep an eye on that son of his, too.” He winked at Alain. “So I do that as well.”
“You do,” Alain said. “This is Monsieur Enzo Macleod, Jacques.”
“Yes, I know. I do still read the papers, young man.” He turned toward Enzo. “Even if it takes a little longer than it used to.” He paused. “You’ve come to solve our little island mystery.”
Enzo shrugged acknowledgment. “If I can. I had been hoping to discuss Monsieur Killian’s medical condition with his physician.” He glanced at old Emile. “But clearly that’s not going to be possible.”
“Well, you can still look at his medical records.” He turned toward the younger doctor. “Can’t he Alain? I thought you had all Émile’s old paper records brought here to the house when the centre was computerised.”
“Yes, we did. They’re all in boxes up in the attic. I never thought of that. I suppose Adam Killian’s records could be up there among them.” He looked at Enzo. “Would you like me to check?”
Enzo nodded. “That would be very helpful.”
***
The dust of decades covered every surface in this large, draughty attic. Cobwebs hung in theatrical drifts from skylight windows, and daylight leaked in all around the edges of the slates. Enzo followed Alain carefully over loose floorboards laid across open beams to where stacks of cardboard boxes were lined up against the far gable. The tape that had been used to seal them had long since lost its stick, and the flaps that closed them off were easily prised apart, raising clouds of choking dust into the cold air.
The files had been arranged in alphabetical order, so Enzo and Alain had to move A to J back into the centre of the attic to gain access to K. Alain then tore open the lid and started riffling through the files inside bulging folders of handwritten notes.
“Here it is.” He drew out a file in a faded purple folder that was thinner than the rest.
For a moment Enzo wondered why, but then reflected that Killian had only been an occasional visitor to the island until his retirement. Alain flicked through charts, and yellowing pages of hand-written notes, ink fading now on brittle paper. Enzo squinted at them, trying to read. But the hand-writing was almost indecipherable. “Doctors!” he muttered. “Do they take classes in bad handwriting?”
Alain laughed. “Yes. I think my father got an A-plus.” He tilted his head a little to one side. “But then I’m used to reading it.” He turned over several more sheets. “Ah, here we are. Yes… Killian came to him in March, 1990, complaining of night sweats and chronic fatigue, and a cough that had lingered long after the spring cold that kicked it off. In the end Papa sent him for an x-ray at the radiography centre in Lorient.” He went to the back of the file and pulled out a large green envelope. Inside was Killian’s chest x-ray that the radiographer had forwarded to his doctor. Alain held it up toward the sunshine streaming in through the small rectangle of skylight, and Enzo saw a slow moving cloud of dust drifting through the light beyond it. “There.” He ran his finger along the bottom edge. “The date it was taken. April 15, 1990.” He slipped the transparency back into its envelope and consulted his father’s notes once more. “Inoperable tumour. Terminal. Three to six months, the radiographer thought.”
“But in fact he was still alive after five and must have been pretty close to the end by then.” Enzo was staring at the file in Alain’s hands. But not seeing it. Gazing through it, beyond it. Lost in thought. “If his killer had waited a week or two longer, maybe less, the cancer would have done the job for him.”
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
The bar adjoined the Auberge du Pêcheur along the north gable, with windows looking out over the harbour. It was dark when Enzo climbed the steps to its door in search of a digestif after his bowl of pasta in the Thon Bleu, just a couple of hundred meters up the road.
He had no real desire to return to his cold bedroom above Killian’s study, to sit on his own, haunted by the man and the mystery he had left behind him. He felt the need of something to warm him from the inside on this frosty night at the end of a frustrating day.
The search for Killian’s physician had brought no real enlightenment, and he had spent the rest of the day acquainting himself with the island, driving out to its northwest tip and the lighthouse at Pen Men. There, an inhospitable sea devoured the coastline, eating into its hard, black gneiss, creating sheer cliffs and treacherous inlets where it vented its frustration in wave after wave of foaming spume. Then he had driven south-west, through the small coastal town of Locmaria, to the rocky outcrop of the Pointe des Chats, where he had stood warming himself in the late fall sunshine, gazing out over calmer seas.
There were perhaps a dozen customers in the bar when he entered. Heads turned out of habit to register the newcomer, and a spontaneous silence fell across the tables. A strange, self-conscious silence that no one seemed to know how to break.
Enzo was almost amused by it. He smiled and nodded. “Bonsoir,” he said, and walked the length of the room to the bar, aware of all the eyes upon him. He heard a murmur of bonsoirs in return, and someone cleared his throat noisily. But not a single conversation resumed. The barman was a man in his thirties, with shoulder-length hair and steel-rimmed glasses, tall and thin. He wore a polo-neck sweater, and jeans that hung loose from skinny hips. He seemed quite unfazed.
He nodded. “Monsieur Macleod,” he said, as if Enzo was a regular. “What can I get you tonight?” Enzo looked beyond him to the crowded shelves above the counter, and saw to his surprise that they were well-stocked with good Scotch and Irish whisky.
“I’ll have a Glenlivet.”
“Would that be the twelve- or the fifteen-year-old, monsieur?”
“Let’s live dangerously and go for the fifteen.”
As the barman lifted down the bottle, Enzo glanced around the bar. Dark varnished beams supported its sloping ceiling, and framed pictures, mostly of boats or the sea, crowded every available wall space. A gathering of curtains framed the windows and doors. The faces at darkwood tables were still turned in his direction.
“Well,” he said, startling them, as if they had thought they were invisible. They had not, he was certain, expected that he would speak to them. “Since I seem to have your undivided attention, I wonder if there is anyone here who might be able to tell me something about Thibaud Kerjean.”
Silence.
> The barman banged Enzo’s whisky down on the bar top. “You’ll not find anyone here with a good word to say about Kerjean.”
Enzo poured a little water in his whisky and lifted his glass. “Why’s that?”
“Cos he’s a murderous, drunken bastard, and treats his women like shit!” This came from a big man sitting with two others at a table in the far corner.”
“Murderous?”
“Everyone knows he murdered the Englishman. We don’t need you to come here and tell us that.”
“Well, I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to,” Enzo said. “Because I don’t know who murdered Adam Killian.” He took a sip of his whisky and enjoyed the aromatic flavour of it that filled his mouth and the warmth of it slipping over his throat. Then he added, “Yet.” He gazed around the eyes all turned in his direction. “How do you know he treats his women like shit?”
A thin man with a cloth cap pulled at an angle over his forehead said, “Everyone knows he beats up his women.”
“Does he? They tell you that, these women, do they?”
“It’s common knowledge,” another man said.
Enzo nodded. “I notice you say women, plural. So there have obviously been more than one of them. Why do you think that is, if he beats them up?”
The barman leaned forward on his elbows. “Because they can’t resist him, monsieur. God knows what it is he’s got, but he’s never without one. Even after the murder. In a strange way that seemed to make him even more exotic. But he’s a violent man, make no mistake about that. Feral, I would call him. And unpredictable with a drink in him.”
“And why would he want to murder Killian?” He knew the answer to that. Raffin had dealt with the arrest and trial of Kerjean in the book. But he wanted to hear what the islanders thought.
“Because he ratted on him.” This from the big man in the corner again.
And someone else piped up. “And over a woman, too. You might have known it would be. The man’s little head rules his big one every time.” Which raised a laugh around the bar.
“The thing is, monsieur…” The barman straightened up and placed his palms flat on the bar in front of him. “Most people here depend on tourism for their living these days. Either directly, or indirectly.” He adjusted his glasses, as if refocusing on Enzo. “There was a 15 percent fall in visitors to the island the year after the murder. People who want to come and lie on the beach, or walk the tourist trails around the island don’t want to think that there’s a murderer on the loose. But over time, it was all forgotten.”
“Until Raffin’s book came out, and suddenly it was in all the papers again.” The man with the cloth cap was casting an unpleasant look in Enzo’s direction.
The barman said, “We took another hit then, too.”
“And now you’ve come to rake it all up again.” This was an older man, bearded, sitting by one of the windows, his leg up on the adjoining chair.
Enzo felt the hostility in the bar directed at him. “If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. And there will always be a next time, and a next. Until Kerjean either leaves or dies. Or someone solves the mystery and puts an end to it once and for all.”
“And that would be you, would it, monsieur?” The big man who had first spoken glowered across the room at the Scotsman, and for the first time Enzo felt real pressure to solve this case. His very presence was raising both hostility and expectations. If he didn’t meet the latter, he could only expect more of the former.
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“You people never do.”
The outside door opened, and cold air flooded in with a man wearing a donkey jacket buttoned up to the neck. Oil smears stained jeans worn thin at the knee, and mud and scuff-marks took the shine off thick-soled leather boots. Greasy dark hair was swept back from a broad forehead and hung limply over his upturned collar. Big hands were thrust deep in his jacket pockets, and the hubbub of conversation that had struck up once again fell away as sharply as it had on Enzo’s entrance.
For a moment, Enzo wondered where he knew this man from, before he realised with a shock that it was the same man who had confronted him as he disembarked from the ferry. It was Kerjean, blue Celtic eyes glaring darkly from a face scarred by time and fighting, but which was, nonetheless, still handsome in a brutal sort of way. Enzo had formed no clear impression of him in the rain at the jetty, except for his sense of menace. Now he felt the man’s presence, which was something more than just physical. There was an aura about him, a dark charisma. And there wasn’t a man in that bar who didn’t feel it and perhaps fear it, maybe even envy it.
Kerjean paused momentarily, to cast an appraising glance around the room, then advanced to the bar. Enzo thought he detected a slight unsteadiness in the man’s gait, and immediately smelled the drink on his breath as he arrived next to him, ignoring him, keeping his focus on the barman. “Guinness,” he said.
The barman nodded, lifting a tall glass from the shelf, and slipping it beneath the tap to pour a pint of draught.
“Still here, Macleod?” Kerjean’s gaze was fixed now on his pint glass, as the fine, creamy stout tumbled into it, settling to black as the glass filled.
“No, I took the first ferry back to the mainland after you warned me off.”
There was a murmur of laughter in the bar.
Kerjean’s head came round sharply, and he turned dangerous eyes on Enzo. “You think you’re smart, monsieur.”
Enzo shrugged. “Smart enough, maybe, to figure out who killed Adam Killian.”
“Oh? And who was that, then?”
“I’ve no idea. I thought perhaps you could tell me.”
“How could I do that?”
“It seems you knew him.”
“I came across him once. He was breathing when we met, and he was breathing when we parted.” The barman slid the islander’s pint across the counter, and Kerjean took a long pull at it, before using the back of his hand to wipe away the creamy froth it deposited on his upper lip. “You can read all about it in the transcript of the trial.”
“I will.”
Kerjean placed his pint carefully on the bar and turned to face Enzo directly. Although he was a big man, Enzo was taller. And while Enzo was churning inside, he was determined not to let it show on the outside. So he met the islander’s eyes with an equally steady gaze and stood his ground. The tension in the bar was palpable, its patrons playing audience to a piece of pure theatre. “I was tried, I was acquitted. And if you, or anyone else, wants to suggest otherwise, I’ll punch his fucking lights out.”
“The only light I will be shining, Monsieur Kerjean, is on the truth. But if that’s something you want to keep in the dark, then maybe you have something to hide.”
Kerjean’s gaze was unwavering. “I could take you down with a single strike, you arrogant big bastard.”
Enzo didn’t doubt if for a moment. But the last thing he could afford to do was show that. “You could try,” he said, and detected the anticipation in the bar that came with an almost collective intake of breath.
Cold air brushed the side of his face and swirled around his legs, and he heard the outside door opening once more. But whoever had opened it wasn’t shutting it behind him. Enzo reluctantly tore his eyes away from Kerjean’s and turned his head to see Adjudant Richard Guéguen standing in the open doorway. The gendarme was out of uniform, wearing a brown leather airman’s jacket above jeans that contertinad over heavy brogues, the long peak of a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His hands pushed themselves into his pockets for warmth. It took no more than a glance for him to appraise the situation. “Go home, Kerjean,” he said.
Kerjean kept his eyes on Enzo. “I just ordered a drink.”
“You’ve had enough already, unless you’re angling to spend the night in one of our guest rooms.”
Enzo saw Kerjean’s jaw tightening. Clearly a night in one of Guéguen’s freezing police cells was less t
han appealing. Finally, reluctantly, he dragged his eyes away from Enzo to look at Guéguen. “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not even on duty.”
“A gendarme’s always on duty.” Guéguen stepped aside to clear a path for Kerjean to make his exit. “Goodnight.”
Kerjean’s fury simmered silently inside him. He half turned his head toward Enzo, but this time didn’t meet his eye. “We’ll talk again.”
“I’m sure we will.”
Kerjean turned and walked briskly past the gendarme and out into the dark. Guéguen closed the door behind him and approached the bar.
“He never paid for that pint,” the barman said.
Guéguen dug into his pocket and pulled out a five-euro bill, dropping it on the counter.
Enzo said, “Can I get you a drink?”
The gendarme shook his head. “No, thank you. And I would suggest, monsieur, that you drink up and go home yourself.”
Enzo wasn’t about to argue. “Perhaps you’re right.” He drained his glass and settled up with the barman. “Bonsoir.” He nodded at all the faces turned toward him and headed out into the night. At the foot of the steps he saw Kerjean disappearing in the direction of the harbourside bars, whose lights still reflected on the dark waters of the bay. He heard the door closing behind him and turned to see Guéguen following him out. He waited until the gendarme got down to the sidewalk. “It wouldn’t have hurt. One drink. Would it?”
“Monsieur, if I had accepted a drink from you, it would have been all over the island before morning.”
“So what were you doing in the bar, then? Out solo drinking or here to meet friends?”
“A gendarme has no friends. I was keeping an eye on you.”
