by Peter May
The others stood around Raffin’s séjour watching in silence. Their tension was tangible. It was time to go, and no one wanted to acknowledge it. Enzo looked at his watch. It was nearly one-fifteen. ‘Be back in a few hours.’ He followed Samu out into the hall and on to the landing.
They were crossing the courtyard when Sophie came running after him. ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Enzo told Samu, then turned to his daughter. ‘Go back inside, pet, you’ll get soaked.’
‘I don’t care!’ Sophie stood defiantly in the rain, looking up into her father’s face with her mother’s eyes. ‘If anything happens to you I’ll never forgive her.’ And Enzo couldn’t tell if she was crying, or if it was just the rain.
‘Kirsty?’
‘She’s got no right to take you away from me.’
Enzo shook his head gently. ‘Sophie, none of this is Kirsty’s fault. The only person to blame is me.’
Her lower lip quivered. ‘I love you, Papa.’
She fell into his arms and he held her, the rain crashing all around them, rising off the cobbles in the courtyard in a mist like smoke. ‘I love you, too, Sophie.’ He cupped her face in his hands. ‘I want you to promise me something.’
‘No, I’m not promising anything. You’re the one that’s got to promise — that you’re going to come back. Okay?’ He closed his eyes. ‘Papa!’
He opened his eyes again. ‘I promise.’
She held his gaze for a long, sceptical moment. ‘I hate her.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘I do.’
‘Sophie, there’s too much of me in her. You can’t love me and hate her.’
Her face turned sulky. ‘I’ll hate you both if you don’t come back.’
‘I promised you I would, didn’t I?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’d better.’
Samu was revving the motor of his car in the street outside, blowers working overtime to stop the windscreen from misting. His wipers were thrashing back and forth at double speed. Enzo slipped in beside him, dripping wet. ‘Okay, let’s go.’ And as the car pulled away, heading through the rain towards the floodlit edifice of the Sénat at the top of the street, neither of them noticed the dark figure of a woman flitting through the downpour beneath the sheltering cover of a black umbrella to punch in the entry code to Raffin’s apartment building.
IV
The sound of Raffin’s bell ringing shattered the tense silence in the apartment. Had Enzo and Samu forgotten something? Sophie was towelling her hair dry. She cast a quick glance towards Raffin. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said quickly. And she padded through to the hall and opened the door. Charlotte stood on the landing, her raincoat and umbrella dripping on the floorboards. Her hair was lank and damp, her curls had lost their lustre. She was ghostly pale. She seemed surprised to find Sophie there. Sophie looked at her suspiciously. She had found it hard to believe that Charlotte could be Madeleine, but she knew that her father had been tortured by doubts. Raffin appeared behind her. ‘Charlotte….’
‘Is Enzo here?’
Sophie said, ‘Someone’s kidnapped his daughter.’ She paused. ‘His other daughter. He’s gone down into the catacombes to try to get her back.’
Charlotte closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I should have phoned.’
‘You’d better come in,’ Raffin said.
She left her umbrella leaning against the outside wall and followed him through to the séjour. Sophie came in behind them.
‘I know who the last killer is,’ Charlotte said.
‘So do we,’ Sophie told her. ‘Madeleine Boucher.’ And she watched for Charlotte’s reaction.
‘You found the last set of clues then?’
‘In Auxerre,’ Sophie said. ‘How do you know who she is?’
‘Because I went back five months through my uncle’s diaries. They never meant anything before. But now that I knew I was looking for references to students at ENA, there they were. Right under our noses the whole time. His little coterie of favourites. His little geniuses, he called them. Roques, and d’Hautvillers, and Diop. And Madeleine Boucher.’ She looked around the blank faces. ‘You don’t know who she is, do you? Who she really is?’ She turned to Raffin. ‘Roger, if she has his daughter, and Enzo’s gone to meet her, then she’ll kill them both.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Rue Rotrou was just two streets away from Raffin’s apartment. Samu parked on a carpet of light laid down in the road by the large, overlit window of an art gallery on the east side of the street. The two men abandoned the car and splashed across the pavement to the shelter of an adjoining doorway. Samu rapped sharply on the glazed door with the back of his hand, and his signet ring almost cracked the glass. Through the condensation, they saw a silhouette loom against the light, and the door opened to reveal a much smaller man than his shadow would have had them believe. He wore a suit, his tie loosened at the neck and the top button of his shirt undone. He was bald, with a sallow complexion, and darting, frightened eyes.
‘Come in, quick.’ He glanced into the street and closed the door behind them. ‘It’s one thing when we’re open for business, Samu. But it looks pretty damned strange to have all my lights on at this time of the morning.’
‘Turn the fucking things off, then.’ Samu took a white envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to him. ‘You’ll get the rest when Monsieur Macleod gets back.’
The gallery owner glanced nervously at Enzo. ‘How long will you be?’
‘As long as it takes,’ Samu said. ‘Come on, take us down. And turn out the lights when you come back up.’
The cream-painted walls of the gallery were hung with movie poster originals by Alain Lynch. There was an exhibition of Ellen Shire abstracts, and several of Gilbert Raffin’s stylised Paris-scapes. Enzo wondered briefly if the artist was related in some way to Roger.
‘This way.’ The little man led them down a steep, narrow staircase to the basement of his shop. It was dry and cool down here. Dozens of paintings were stacked against the walls and draped with cloth. He took out a bunch of keys and unlocked a door beneath the staircase. It opened into blackness. He reached into it to find a light switch, and a single yellow bulb brought sudden hard light to a narrow passage with brick walls and an earthen floor. There was a smell of damp and the sound of small creatures scuttling into the shadows. Old cobwebs hung in folds, draped from the ceiling like fine-spun gossamer curtains. ‘You know your way from here.’
‘I do,’ Samu said, and he stepped into the passageway, stooping to avoid a rusting steel beam. Enzo followed and shivered. It felt cold here in the dark and damp. The basement door slammed shut behind them, and he heard the key turning in the lock. Samu said, ‘Mostly these cellars are used to access the sewer system, but if you know where to look you can get right down into the catacombes. Come on.’ And he set off briskly along the passage. They hurried past locked doors leading to the basements of shops and apartment blocks. And as the light faded behind them, they switched on their helmet lamps, sharp beams cutting through damp air, swinging left and right with the turn of their heads.
Samu seemed to know his way by heart, taking right turns, or left, without hesitation. To Enzo, one turn looked like any other. Brick walls and steps and narrow openings. Rusting steel doors. Samu delivered a breathless commentary as they moved through the dark. ‘We just crossed under the Rue de Médicis. If we turned right we’d come up against the wall of the car park beneath the Sénat.’ He opened a door and they went down a short flight of steps into a huge tunnel that arched above their heads and roared with the sound of rushing water. Drips fell like rain from the brickwork overhead. The beam of Enzo’s lamp flashed across the black streaked surface of what looked like an underground river in spate. A narrow walkway with a rusted iron rail ran along the side of it. It was slippery like ice underfoot. ‘Jesus!’ he heard Samu’s voice rise above the roar of the water. ‘I’ve never seen it like this before!’
‘Where the hell are we?�
�� Enzo shouted back.
‘We’re in the sewers! But don’t worry, the shit’s all in the pipes. This is just rainwater draining down from the streets.’ They slithered along the walkway for twenty or thirty meters. ‘We’re under the Jardins du Luxembourg now.’
‘Maybe it would have been easier climbing the fence,’ Enzo shouted.
Samu grinned and turned off into a feeder tunnel. The water was calf deep, and the power of it was almost strong enough to take Enzo’s feet from under him. They waded against the flow of it to a flight of steps leading up to a metal door set into the wall. Samu heaved it open and they climbed into a dry, circular, concrete chamber. Metal rungs set into the wall ascended into blackness. Even with his head tipped back and the beam of his lamp pointed straight up, Enzo could not see where they went. The darkness above them seemed to snuff out the light. When Samu slammed the door shut, the roar of water in the sewers became a distant rumble. He produced from somewhere beneath his waterproofs an iron crossbar with metal lugs at one end, and knelt on the floor. Enzo tilted his head to direct the beam of his lamp downwards, and saw that there was a circular IDC metal plaque set into the concrete. Samu slipped the lugged end of his crossbar into a slot beneath the letters and turned it like a key to lock it in place, and then he braced himself to pull the lid aside. He strained and grunted as the cast iron slipped out of its circular groove and dragged across the concrete. The darkness it uncovered was profound.
Samu stood up, breathing hard and grinning triumphantly. ‘Et voilà. You’re in.’ Enzo could see the first rungs gleaming dully in the light of their helmets. ‘It’ll take you straight down into a little antechamber right off the main drag. There’s a short stretch of tunnel. It’ll take you west about fifteen meters. When you get to the end you turn left. That’s south. You’ll be right below the Grande Avenue du Luxembourg, and then you’re following the map.’ He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a wristwatch with a velcro strap fastening. He held it out. ‘Put that on your right wrist.’ Enzo took it and realised that it was a compass. ‘You’ll find that you get pretty disorientated down there. That should keep you straight.’ He went into an inside pocket and brought out a tarnished silver cigarette case. He opened it to retrieve a pre-rolled cigarette and lit it, his lighter bringing fleeting colour to a bloodless face. ‘What are you going down there for, man?’
But Enzo just shook his head. ‘You don’t want to know.’
Samu shrugged. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just after one-thirty. How long are you going to be?’
‘I don’t know. Two, maybe three hours.’
‘I’ll be back here at three-thirty. I’ll wait till five. If you haven’t shown by then, you’re on your own.’
Enzo nodded.
‘Bon courage.’ Samu extended a hand. It was cold and limp when Enzo shook it.
Enzo crouched on all fours and dropped a leg into the hole to find the first rung. He tested his weight on it before lowering himself carefully to reach the next. It was a tight squeeze. By the time he was a dozen rungs down, the hole had swallowed him entirely. The sound of metal dragging across concrete forced him to crane his head back and look up. He saw the light of Samu’s helmet extinguished as the iron plaque slid back into place above him. For a moment, he panicked, crushed by darkness and claustrophobia. He wanted to shout, like a child at bedtime whose parents have turned out the light. He was breathing too rapidly and knew that he was in danger of hyperventilating. He fought to control it, holding down the acid in his stomach until the first flush of panic passed. He had to get to the bottom as fast as possible.
With arms and legs trembling, he climbed down as quickly as he could, and found himself standing in a small space crudely hacked out of the rock and shored up with brick. A narrow tunnel stretched ahead of him. It looked as if it had been bored out of the rock by a giant drill. Bent almost double, and bracing himself with hands and feet against its curving walls, he made slow forward progress until he reached a barrier crudely constructed from rough-cut blocks of masonry. Some of them had been knocked out. He peered through the hole to see that he would have to climb backwards through it to get down into the wide, square tunnel which crossed at right-angles beyond. He heard his cagoule tear as he eased himself through the gap, its hood catching on a jagged edge of rock. He cursed and yanked himself free, jumping, almost falling backwards into the tunnel. He steadied himself against the brick, legs quivering from the effort, and found himself looking at a street sign painted on a smooth stone slab set into the opposite wall. G.DE AVENUE DU LUXEMBOURG CôTé DU COUCHANT. It was covered in graffiti, red and blue and silver arrows, the letter A inside a circle. Already he seemed to have lost his bearings.
Turn left, Samu had said. South. Enzo double-checked with his compass. Of course, now he was facing the other way, and had to turn right. He steadied himself for a moment, then began south along the tunnel. The roof and floor seemed smooth, hacked out of solid bedrock. The walls were made from roughly cut stone bricks. It was narrow, little more than his own width again, and he had to stoop to avoid scraping his helmet on the roof. His breath condensed in white clouds in the lamplight as he pushed on as quickly as he dared. He passed several junctions branching off to east and west. In places the walls had collapsed, and he had to clamber over fallen masonry. Occasionally the tunnel widened, and crude brick columns had been constructed to support the roof. In other places the walls bulged, narrowing to the point where he could barely squeeze himself through.
He stopped frequently to consult his map. He had crossed four junctions, and was certain that the next turn to his right was the one that Samu had marked in red. He must have passed beyond the Luxembourg Gardens by now, and be heading south beneath the Avenue de l’Observatoire. In spite of the cold, he was sweating profusely. His helmet felt hot and uncomfortable and chafed above his ears. His back ached from the constant stoop.
He arrived at the fifth junction. The wall on the east side was partially collapsed, and he had to scramble across the rubble to get into the tunnel heading west. He was certain that this was his turnoff. Almost. But that single, tiny, nagging grain of doubt was enough to completely undermine his confidence. What if it wasn’t? If he got lost, then Kirsty would be lost, too. He forced himself to try to think calmly. He had to trust his judgment, and Samu’s map. And, in any case, Samu had said that if he missed his turn he would come up against the new multi-story car park and know that he had made a mistake. He wondered if, perhaps, he should carry on to that dead-end, just to be sure, and then make his way back to the turnoff. But there wasn’t time. He looked at his watch. He had no idea how long any of this was going to take.
So he headed off west, checking constantly with his compass. The tunnel should start curving to the south-west. But if the compass was to be believed, he seemed to be heading north-west. It was impossible to tell if the tunnel was curving or not. He could not see far enough ahead to make that judgment, and he had to keep his eyes down to avoid tripping over debris or falling into holes.
After several minutes, to his great relief, the tunnel seemed to arc south, just as it did on the map. He passed another opening veering off to his right, turning north this time. He looked at the map. There it was, leading off into a parallel network. He did not want to go that way. According to the plan there should not be any turnoffs on his left. If he hugged the left wall all the way, it should lead him to what Samu had called the roundabout beneath the Rue Auguste Comte.
He had gone, perhaps, twenty or thirty meters when he heard the first bloodcurdling howl. It was almost feral, and it stopped him in his tracks. He could hear the faint thump, thump, thump of distant music. Another shriek. And then laughter. Several voices, whooping and hollering. The music was getting louder, finding form in the dark. He could distinguish now the monotonous rhythm of a repetitive rap track. The thumping of a bass drum, the vibration of a bass guitar. More shrieking. It was getting closer, coming towards him from the direction of th
e bunker.
Enzo stood rooted to the spot. He had no idea what to do. There was nowhere to go. Maybe they were just kids out for a good time. Maybe they would say hey man, and shake his hand, and go on their way. Now he could see the light of their flashlights beyond a curve in the tunnel. And if he could see theirs, then they could see his.
Suddenly the music went dead, and the lights went out. The silence was absolute. And terrifying. Much worse than the music and the shrieking. He heard the faintest rustling, and then dark shapes moved into the farthest reaches of the beam from his helmet. He saw its light reflected in their eyes as they inched around the curve of the tunnel towards him. Five, six sets of them. They stopped, and there was a short, tense period of assessment, and then they all switched on flashlights and Enzo was momentarily dazzled. Another standoff, before a repetition of the howl which had first alerted Enzo to their presence. Like a bugler trumpeting the command to attack. It sparked off a chorus of shrieks, and their lights came flying towards him like frenzied fireflies. There was clearly going to be no hey man, and shaking of hands. Enzo turned and ran as fast as he could, back the way he had come. But they were younger, faster. It would only be a matter of time before they caught him.
He saw the rubble gathered around the north turn he had passed moments earlier, and he slithered over it into the turnoff. He fumbled for the switch on his helmet and turned off the light. A wall of blackness smothered him before his eyes adjusted to the reflected lights of the youths streaming in his wake. They were just out of sight beyond the turnoff. Enzo scrambled forward, tripping and stumbling, and almost fell into another turnoff on his left. He groped his way around a support column and felt where the wall had collapsed to create a shallow recess. He climbed over the rock-fall and rolled into it. He felt around for a sharp piece of rock that would fit into his hand, and pressed himself against the stone, trying to stop his breath from grating in his throat.
