Freeze Frame

by Peter May

  Enzo looked at her, unsure whether or not to take her seriously, till he saw the twinkle in her eye. Then he grinned. “Thank you for the lift, Elisabeth. And I’ll look forward to seeing Port Lay in the sunshine.” He paused as he opened the passenger door. “I didn’t dream that, did I?”

  She laughed out loud. “No, Enzo. You didn’t dream it. Goodnight.”

  He stood watching as she turned the SUV and gunned the engine, accelerating fast up the hill, back to the waiting arms of the man who loved her. And for the second time that night, he had to extinguish the little flame of envy that sprang up inside him.

  He crossed the sandy parking area to the track that led to the house, and as he opened the gate, the front door swung open to flood the front garden with yellow light. Jane Killian came out on to the doorstep. “What happened? Did your car break down?” Her voice sounded shrill, oddly strained.

  “No. Too much to drink. Doctor Servat’s wife drove me home.”

  “Elisabeth Servat?”

  He heard a tone in her voice that suggested not only surprise. “I was at their house. The doctor had too much to drink as well.” Why did he feel the need to explain this to her? He climbed the steps to the door.

  “She’s an attractive woman.”

  “She is.” For a moment they stood very close to one another.

  Jane held the door open for him, and he transitioned gratefully from the freezing cold of the night to the smoky warmth of the cottage. He crouched by the fire, rubbing his hands together in front of its glowing embers, and noticed the empty glass at Jane’s chair. He was aware of her crossing the room behind him, and looked up as she handed him a glass of whisky.

  “I think maybe I’ve had enough already tonight.”

  “One more won’t hurt. I hate drinking on my own. And, in any case, I could do with another.” She refilled her own glass and sank into her chair, lifting it to her lips and watching him as he perched on the edge of the armchair opposite. “We had a visitor tonight?”

  Enzo frowned. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Someone who parked a little further up the road and walked the rest of the way so I wouldn’t hear the car.”

  The whisky fog in Enzo’s head seemed suddenly to clear, and he found himself focusing. “Tell me.”

  “It’s so quiet here at nights, Enzo. I heard the squeak of the gate. At first I thought it was you, and couldn’t understand why you hadn’t driven right down to the shore. I went to the window, but there was nobody there. At least, no one I could see.” She took a mouthful of whisky, and he noticed for the first time how pale she looked. “Then I went through to the kitchen, but left the light off. And out of the window I saw someone crossing the lawn. Just a shadow among the trees, heading for the annex. So I thought then it must be you, and I opened the door and called your name.”

  “It wasn’t me, Jane.

  “I know that now.”

  “Did you see who it was?” Her hand was trembling slightly as she took another drink.

  “I couldn’t see anyone. And whoever it was wasn’t responding to my call. So I turned on the outside light. It floods the whole of the back garden with light.”

  “And did you see someone?”

  “A figure darting through the trees, running away from the annex, and then climbing over the bamboo fence at the back.”

  “Someone trying to break in, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But I closed the shutters and locked up at the back, and sat here with all the lights on waiting for you to get back. I didn’t think you’d be so late.”

  He drained his glass and stood up. “I don’t suppose you went over to check if there was any sign of a break-in?”

  She laughed, a shrill laugh without humour. “No, I didn’t.”

  “I’d better take a look, then.”

  She stood up. “I’ll come with you.” And she went to lift a coat from the stand in the hall and followed him into the kitchen. She turned on the outside light before unlocking the door and lifting a flashlight from the kitchen worktop.

  The garden lay still and quiet, frost settling white on the grass. Enzo took the flashlight from Jane and shone it across the lawn. A trail of footprints in the frost led from the side of the house across to the door of the annex, and then away again toward the back fence, the second set spaced further apart, indicating flight and haste. Enzo crouched to examine them, but they were scuffed and indistinct, rapidly disappearing now as the frost hardened.

  He shone the flashlight on the handle and lock of the door to the annex. But there was no sign of any attempt at forced entry. He heard Jane’s erratic breathing at his side and wasn’t sure whether it was fear or cold. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. Immediately his eye was drawn to a folded slip of paper on the hall floor. Evidently slipped beneath the door by their visitor. He turned on the light and stooped to pick it up as Jane closed the door behind them. “What is it?” She peered over his shoulder to read it with him as he opened it up. The note was brief and cryptic.

  YOU KNOW WHO I AM. WE SAW KERJEAN TOGETHER THIS MORNING. 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. I WON’T BE SEEN WITH YOU. MEET ME TOMORROW EVENING, 19:30, AT THE TROU DE L’ENFER. THERE IS A BUNKER BENEATH THE OLD GERMAN GUN EMPLACEMENT. I’LL WAIT FOR YOU THERE.

  “Who were you with this morning when you saw Kerjean?” Jane looked up at him, eyes filled with curiosity now.

  “The woman who serves at the Maison de la Presse. A skinny woman with short, curly white hair.”

  “Madame Blanc? Was it her who pushed the note under the door?”

  Enzo raised a skeptical eyesbrow. “Well, someone wants me to think so. What’s the Trou de l’enfer?”

  “Just about the most dangerous place on the island. Bad enough in the daylight. But you certainly don’t want to be going out there in the dark.”

  “Why is it dangerous?”

  “Well, obviously you understand the meaning of Trou de l’enfer.”

  He nodded. “Literally, “hole of hell’. Or “hellhole’.”

  “It’s an enormous crack in the cliffs on the south side of the island, Enzo. Whether it was broken open by the sea, or by some geological upheaval, I don’t know. But it’s maybe seventy or eighty feet deep, and crumbling all along the edges. At high tide, during stormy weather, the sea rushes into it, throwing spray hundreds of feet into the air. And they say you can hear the roar of it for miles around. The devil himself calling out from hell.”

  He saw that she was shivering now, in spite of her coat. The temperature in the annex had plunged, even since the night before. “You’re freezing,” he said, and he put his arms around her as much for comfort as for warmth. She responded, slipping her arms beneath his jacket, and around his waist to hold him tight. He felt her body trembling.

  “Don’t go out there,” she said. “I’d feel terrible if anything happened to you?

  “Why would anything happen to me?”

  “A lot of people have died at the trou in recent years, Enzo. Strayed too close to the edge and had the ground give way beneath them. They’ve roped off all around it now.”

  “So if I stay inside the ropes I’ll be fine. And I’m sure you’ll lend me your flashlight.”

  She looked up at him, and her face seemed very close to his. He felt her breath on his neck, and smelled the whisky on it. “Of course. But I’d still rather you didn’t go.”

  “Nothing ventured, Jane. That’s why I’m here. You do still want to find out who killed your father-in-law?”

  “Not at the expense of another life. No risks, Enzo, please. I don’t like the sound of it at all.”

  And in truth, neither did Enzo. Everything about the scribbled message in his hand struck discordant notes. He knew perfectly well that it was not Madame Blanc who had put pen to paper to write these words. If she’d had something to say to him she c
ould have said it anywhere, anytime. But someone clearly wanted to get him alone in an isolated and dangerous place, and although it seemed like an obvious trap, he knew that the only way he was likely to find out who had set it was to take the bait.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I put a heater in your room this afternoon,” Jane said. “I’m sorry, I should have done it before. But I didn’t realise it was going to be so cold. I’d better show you how to work it.” And she disengaged from his arms and started up the stairs to the bedroom.

  Enzo followed her with a strange sense of apprehension in the pit of his stomach. He was perfectly certain that he didn’t need Jane Killian to show him how to turn a heater off and on. But he saw the sway of her hips on the stairs ahead of him. Smelled the faint, lingering scent of perfume that she left in her wake. And, bizarrely, he was reminded of the Ouest-France journalist’s description of the former Arzhela Montin as fragrant. It was a long time since he had been with a woman, and his track-record for choosing badly was only likely to be enhanced by a whisky-lowered resistance to temptation.

  As he climbed the stairs, he tried to persuade himself that he was misreading the signals. But no, the three previous evenings she had undressed in the fully lit bedroom beyond the unshuttered window opposite. His apprehension began to give way to the first stirrings of desire.

  The room was already warm when he entered it. Jane said, “Close the door behind you and keep the warmth in. The heater’s been on for a few hours now.”

  He saw that the drapes had been drawn on the window. To keep the heat in? Or because she knew that there would be no show tonight. She took her coat off and dropped it on the bed.

  “I put it here, under the slope of the ceiling, so that it would help circulate the heat around the room. You should have told me before that it was so cold in here. I’d have done it sooner.” She crouched in front of the heater. “The controls are at the side here. Two switches, and a thermostat. I’ve set it to full, with the thermostat at seventy. You can adjust it as you like.” She stood up again and turned to face him. Her face was flushed now, her amber brown eyes wide. They seemed to shine, and Enzo saw a hunger in them, an intent that made his stomach flip over.

  She was wearing a tight, v-necked sweater with a neckline that plunged to her cleavage. The light from the lamp on the bedside table seemed to pick out the highlights on her short, brown curls. Enzo found his eyes involuntarily drawn to the contour of her breasts, then back to fine, full lips that bore just a hint of red. His mouth was dry.

  “You were watching, weren’t you?” she said.

  It seemed like a long time before he found a voice to reply. “Yes.” It was barely a whisper in the still of the room.

  “I want you.” Her eyes never left his, as she approached him, slowly, carefully. She stopped in front of him and ran her hands up beneath his jacket to slip it from his shoulders. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I set eyes on you.”

  Her hands came down again over his chest, unbuttoning his shirt, and then he felt her skin on his. Her palms brushing across his nipples. And he knew he was lost.

  ***

  Only the light of the digital clock on the beside table lit the room, a faint red glow deepening shadows as they moved in slow unison beneath the sheets. Her skin felt soft and warm against his, and she seemed small and delicate beneath his hands. Her passion had an urgency about it that he calmed with gentle kisses on her neck and shoulders, feeling her rise beneath him, hips pushing hard up against him. Her fingers dug into his back, legs wrapping themselves around him, surprisingly strong. A hand slid past his waist to find him, and hold him, and guide him toward her. His mouth found her nipples, and he felt his own control slipping away.

  Then the telephone rang.

  “Ignore it.” Her voice whispered breathlessly in the dark.

  But it was hard to maintain focus as one long, single ring followed another, penetrating, insistent. He slid his mouth across her breasts, feeling her fingers tighten around him, as the answering machine kicked in, and the voice of a man long dead filled the room.

  “This is Adam Killian. Please leave a message after the tone.”

  “Shit!” he heard her say, as the long tone sounded. “I never did change the message.”

  A woman’s voice followed Killian’s. A voice bizarrely familiar to Enzo. But it was a moment before he recognised it.

  “Hello, Enzo? I hope this is the right number. Roger gave me it. He said he had no idea when you’d be back. And I can’t wait any longer. So if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…”

  Jane had stopped moving beneath him, her grip on him slackening. “Who is it?”

  “I’ll be arriving on the lunchtime ferry tomorrow. It would be nice if you could pick me up. I take it you’ve got somewhere I can stay. If not, you can book me a hotel room. I’ll see you then.” And she hung up.

  Jane and Enzo lay perfectly still in the bed, as if someone had pressed a pause button. The silence between them seemed to last an eternity. Finally, Enzo said, “That was Charlotte.”

  She slid out from under him and rolled away to lie next to him, staring blindly at the ceiling. “And Charlotte is?”

  “A friend.”

  “A lover?”

  He wasn’t sure quite how to respond, and thought about how to frame his reply.

  “Too long. Your hesitation tells all.”

  “I haven’t slept with her for a long time.”

  “She seems very keen to see you.”

  “We met in Paris before I left. She wanted to talk. But I didn’t have time.”

  “And she can’t wait.”

  “Apparently not.”

  He heard her slow, steady breathing in the dark. “I suppose you’ll be wanting her to stay here.”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t put her in a hotel, would you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “And the guest bedroom in the house is filled with boxes. So it’ll have to be here.”

  “I suppose it will.”

  He heard the sound of the covers being thrown back, and she stood up, the silhouette of her naked body just visible in the faint glow of the clock. “We’d better not soil the bed, then. Because I really don’t feel like changing the sheets.” She turned on a beside lamp and crossed the floor, picking up her clothes from where she had dropped them.

  “Jane…”

  She started to dress. “Yes?”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “I think I do.”

  He laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of her pulling on her clothes, then her coat being lifted from the bed. She said nothing as she opened the door, and he heard her footsteps on the stairs, then the front door shutting behind her as she slipped out into the night.

  “Damn!” His frustration echoed around the room. It seemed that even although Charlotte was unprepared to commit herself to him, she was still intent, even from a distance, on making sure that no one else could either.

  Chapter Twenty

  Enzo sat on the terrace of the Café de la Jetée, feeling the sun warm on his face. It had finally burned the chill out of the morning air. The port was quiet today. It was toussaint, All Saints’ Day, and most of the shops were shut. Only the bars and restaurants and cemetery remained open.

  As usual, however, a line of cars waited for the arrival of the ferry. Enzo had seen it emerging from the haze across the strait some fifteen minutes earlier, watching with an odd sense of dread as it slowly grew larger, cutting its way through water like glass. Triangles of white flashed around it, small sailboats out in the sunshine, circling like scavenging seagulls as it approached the harbour. He could see the faces of passengers on the upper deck, Port Tudy filling their eyes, that sense of excitement and adventure that always accompanied the arrival on an island. A place set apart, different, exotic somehow
.

  It wasn’t until they were disembarking and passengers were coming up the ramp to the jetty, that he finally saw Charlotte amongst them. In spite of himself, he felt his heart skip a beat. She was taller than most of the other passengers, her long, black curls flowing out behind her. Her black coat was open, billowing around her legs as she walked. Beneath it she wore a thick, knitted grey jumper above tight, flared jeans and white sneakers. A long, red scarf was wrapped around her neck, one end of it over her shoulder and hanging down her back. She carried a small overnight bag. So she didn’t, Enzo thought, intend to stay long. And he wondered why she had come.

  He left some coins on the table beside his empty Perrier glass, and crossed the cobbles toward the end of the jetty. His head had been a little delicate this morning as a silent Jane drove him into Le Bourg to collect his Jeep. She had made no reference to the night before, but the warmth she had shown him previously was gone, like frost replacing sunshine at the end of the day. A coffee and several glasses of carbonated water had banished his headache, and a mild hangover had given way to hunger.

  Charlotte kissed him chastely on both cheeks and handed him her overnight bag. Then stood back and ran appraising eyes over him. “You look tired.”

  “Thank you. You look good, too.”

  “You obviously got my message, then.”

  “Obviously.”

  “It was late when I called. I suppose you were out somewhere.”

  He didn’t want to describe to her the scene in his bedroom when she left her message. But he didn’t want to lie either. “I was at the house of a local doctor and his wife last night. He had some very good whisky.” He smiled. “Too good. His wife had to run me home.”

  She cocked an eyebrow and looked at him with a weary amusement that lacked affection. “Nothing changes, then.” And he felt reprimanded, like a naughty schoolboy caught smoking behind the bike shed. “I’m hungry. Can we eat somewhere?”

  ***

  He knew, as soon as they entered the restaurant, that it had been a mistake to bring her to the Auberge du Pecheur. The waitress beamed at him. “It’s Monsieur Macleod, isn’t it? You were in the other night with Madame Killian.” As if he hadn’t noticed.