Freeze Frames ef-4

by Peter May

  Enzo felt the warmth of the sunshine on the back of his neck as he took his seat at the Servats’ table. “Suddenly we have an Indian summer,” he said.

  Alain nodded. “Sometimes it happens that way. Just to lull us into a false sense of security before winter comes to force us back indoors.”

  “Pity I won’t be staying to enjoy it.”

  Elisabeth raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re leaving us?”

  “I’m going to Paris tomorrow. Not quite sure when I’ll be back.”

  “To do with your investigation?” Alain asked.

  “Yes.” He could see that he had piqued their interest, but was not going to volunteer any further information. Instead he changed tack completely. “Tell me, doctor, do you have any idea when it was that Doctor Gassman first came to the island?”

  Alain shrugged. “I would just have been a kid. Sometime in the early sixties I would guess.”

  “You couldn’t tell me any more specifically than that?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Alain tilted his head a little, a slight frown of puzzlement about his eyes.

  Elisabeth said, “You can find out, of course, from the mairie. They are bound to have a record of when he first arrived in the commune.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll do that.”

  Their drinks arrived, and they chinked glasses and wished each other good health before sipping on soft red wine, rich with fruit and tannins.

  “So…” the doctor said. “What about Kerjean? Is he still in your sights?”

  Enzo shook his head. “No. Not at all. If there’s one person on this island who I know for sure didn’t murder Killian, it’s Thibaud Kerjean.” He took another sip of his wine.

  “You have another suspect, then?” The doctor was looking at him, wide-eyed with curiosity.

  “Perhaps. I’m not sure yet. I’m still looking for a motive. But I’m hoping that’s what I’m going to find in Paris.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The mairie stood in the corner of the Place Joseph Yvon, in an old two-storey house opposite the church. On Groix, the town hall had been given the more elevated status of Hotel de Ville, which was emblazoned black, on white, above a small, semicircular balcony from which the tricolour furled and unfurled in the afternoon breeze.

  Enzo climbed a short flight of steps to an arched doorway and pushed dark blue doors into a tiled foyer. Through frosted glass he saw a staircase wind its way up to the second floor. The accueil was through an opening to his left.

  A young woman behind the counter raised her eyes and smiled. There was clear recognition in her smile, giving way almost immediately to a quizzical curiosity. “Can I help you, monsieur?”

  “Yes.” Enzo beamed at her and thought what an attractive woman she was. Something of that assessment must have transmitted itself to her, for she beamed back. Flattered, and not uninterested. Enzo leaned on the counter, lowering his head confidentially. He saw her eyes widen, sensing that he was about to admit her to some inner circle where secrets might be shared. “I was wondering if you might be able to to tell me when certain individuals first came to the island.”

  She nodded slowly, realising that to answer in the positive would lead to the sharing of a confidence that would indeed make her a part of that inner circle. “I’m sure I can.”

  Enzo’s smile faded suddenly, and he lowered his voice. “But I need to be certain that I can rely on your absolute discretion.”

  She lowered her voice to match his. “Of that, Monsieur Macleod, you can be quite certain. Any information that passes between us will do so in the strictest confidence.”

  Enzo smiled.

  The breeze had stiffened again during the afternoon, but was still soft on the skin. Enzo looked south, out across the coruscating waters of the Bay of Biscay, and saw smoke being whipped away on the edge of the wind as soon as it rose from Jacques Gassman’s chimney. The whitewashed stone cottage was probably somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred years old, and had survived every assault the winter sou’ westerlies had thrown at it over nearly two centuries. It seemed to stand braced, once more, for the winter to come. Weary but resolute. It was nothing new.

  Enzo abandoned his jeep and walked around to the front of the house, clutching the manila envelope that Gueguen had left for him at Port Melite. To his disappointment, he saw that the old doctor’s Range Rover was not parked in the lean-to. Either he had not yet returned from town, or he had come and gone again. Enzo decided to wait.

  He tried the door, and found that, as before, it was not locked. Gassman’s old labrador was stretched out in front of the dying embers of the fire, and raised a lazy head to cast a glance in Enzo’s direction as he came in. A few sniffs in the air was enough to satisfy him that Enzo was someone he knew, a scent matched as accurately as a fingerprint to the catalogue of smells filed away in some compartment of his memory dedicated to that purpose.

  Enzo crossed the room and crouched down in front of the fire to ruffle the dog’s head and ears, further reassurance if any were needed. But Oscar had already closed his eyes again, and issued only the merest whimper of acknowledgement. Enzo stood and looked around the room, checking his watch impatiently.

  The place smelled of old age. Of stale cooking and body odour. And the ever-present perfume of dog hair. Enzo perched for some minutes on the edge of the armchair nearest the fire, watching as glowing logs slowly crumbled to ash. But he couldn’t contain his impatience for long. Or his curiosity, and he stood and began to wander around the room, touching things. Ornaments, books, a discarded pair of reading glasses, a framed photograph of an attractive young woman. Black and white, dated to early or mid-twentieth century by hairstyle and make-up. It was strange, he thought, how photographs from an era when the world was at war and millions had died seemed somehow innocent. It was, he imagined, Doctor Gassman’s dead wife, taken when she was still barely more than a girl.

  The kitchen door stood ajar. The door next to it was closed. Enzo paused, listening, certain he would hear the Range Rover from a distance if it approached. He opened the door next to the kitchen and found himself in a tiny room cluttered with filing cabinets and bookcases, an antique writing bureau, and a small work table strewn with books and magazines. Gassman’s study. On the wall hung another framed picture of the woman out in the living room. A little older, but still attractive, with bright, smiling eyes, blond hair catching the light that slanted at an angle across her face.

  Enzo wandered around the cramped little bureau, running eyes over everything, and felt uncomfortable, prying as he was into another man’s private world. The top of the writing bureau was rolled back, revealing shelves and dockets stuffed with papers and stationery, paperclips and pens. And Enzo found his eye drawn to an open compartment on the upper left side of the desk where a stack of what at first sight appeared to be thin maroon notebooks was held together by a thick elastic band. But they weren’t notebooks. He saw the gold crest of the Republique francaise, and the word Passeport embossed beneath it.

  Why would Gassman have so many passports? He reached for the pile and removed the elastic band. And as he riffled through them, realised that Gassman had kept all his old passports dating right back to the nineteen-fifties. A glance through the photographs in each took him on a journey back into the old man’s youth. Like rewinding time. But it was the passport that covered the period of the early sixties that interested him most. He stopped and flicked through its pages, looking at the visas and immigration stamps of a man who had done quite a bit of travelling in his younger years. And what he saw confirmed both the records at the mairie, and his worst fears.

  He heard the sound of a vehicle, and glancing up saw Gassman’s Range Rover bumping along the narrow track toward the house. He quickly reassembled the passports into their stack and snapped the elastic around them, replacing them exactly as he had found them. Then he hurried through to the living room and opened the front door. He would be in the front garden by the t
ime the vehicle rounded the house.

  His face was flushed, and he breathed deeply to try to slow his heart-rate. He was certain he knew now who had murdered Killian. All he needed was the proof, and an understanding of why.

  When he got back to the annex, Enzo sat in the dead man’s seat and booted up his laptop. From his Google homepage he made a search for the website of the University of Leicester in the English midlands, and from there to the page dedicated to his old friend Doctor John Bond. He clicked on a contact link that opened up a fresh mail in his emailer and tapped in a title. Shell casing. Then he moved his cursor into the text box.

  Hi John,

  It’s been a long time, but I’ve seen you a lot in the news this last year. I was wondering if I could trouble you to do a big favour for an old friend…

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As on the day he arrived, the weather had closed in again. Low, bruising cloud scraping the hilltops, blown in on a wind from the south-west that was mild but wet. The rain fell in a fine, wetting mist that was sucked in under the umbrella that Jane had lent him. Enzo lowered his head, squinting through the rain searching for the name of the boat that the gendarme had given him on the phone.

  The pontoon that ran between the line of boats in the tiny marina rose and fell with the swell of the water in the harbour, making him feel a little drunk. He glanced up and saw that the line of houses and hotels that lined the Port Tudy quayside had almost vanished in the smirr. The rattle of cables and the cries of seagulls filled his ears.

  And then there it was. White, painted on a blue plaque. La Boheme. Metal hawsers running up the mast fibrillated in the wind, whining, metal vibrating against metal. Enzo stepped on to the shiny wooden boards at the stern of the little yacht, clutching a cable to steady himself, then pushed open the door that led down to the shelter of the cabin. A few steps took him out of the rain to where Adjudant Richard Gueguen sat on an upholstered bench seat along the starboard side. There was a table between facing benches, and a small galley at the far end. Curtains were drawn on the side windows. Enzo slipped into the bench opposite Gueguen, propping his folded umbrella against the wall, rivulets of rainwater streaming from the point of it across the floor.

  The air was stale and damp in here, and it was almost dark, cracks of grey light around the curtains providing the only illumination. The two men sat in silence for some minutes. Then Gueguen said, “Anyone see you get on board?”

  Enzo shrugged. “There aren’t many people around in this weather. And it’s early yet.”

  The gendarme nodded. “Was the autopsy report any good to you?”

  “It was.”

  Gueguen raised an eyebrow. “What did you find?”

  “It’s what I didn’t find that made it interesting.”

  Gueguen frowned, dark eyes laden with curiosity. But Enzo did not elucidate. “Did you manage to get the shell casing?”

  “I did.” The younger man pushed a hand into the pocket of his dark blue waterproof jacket and pulled out a clear plastic zip-lock evidence bag. He dropped it on the table, and Enzo heard the clunk of the brass shell casing on its wooden surface. He picked it up and held it toward the light creeping in around the window. The casing of the 9mm Parabellum bullet felt surprisingly heavy.

  “You know how it gets its name?” he said. “Parabellum?”

  Gueguen shook his head.

  “It’s from a Latin phrase, si vis pacem, para bellum.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If you seek peace, prepare for war.”

  “There will be a war break out if anyone upstairs finds out I gave you this.”

  “They won’t hear it from me.”

  “I still don’t understand what you want with it. There were no fingerprints found on it.”

  “I know.” Enzo laid the shell casing in its bag on the table and pushed it back toward Gueguen. “I need you to do me another favour.”

  Gueguen leaned back and shoved out his jaw. “You’re pushing your luck, monsieur.”

  Enzo delved into his shoulder bag, and brought out a green plastic Tupperware food box. He prised off the lid to reveal a dirty wine glass with polystyrene granules packed around it. “There are probably two or three sets of prints on this glass. I think one of them may belong to our murderer. I need you to pack it up securely and send it along with the shell casing to a colleague of mine in England. If there’s a match, then we’ve got our man.” He pushed a slip of paper with a name and address on it across the table. And then a sealed white envelope. “And put this in with it.”

  Gueguen leaned forward and peered at the glass, then looked up at Enzo, eyes wide, intrigued. “Who do you suspect?”

  “I don’t want to say anything until I am sure. I’d send it myself, but I don’t have time. I have to catch the train to Paris from Lorient in just under two hours. So I need to be on the next ferry.”

  The gendarme frowned and shook his head again. “I still don’t understand. If there’s no fingerprint on the shell casing, how can it match with anything on the glass?”

  “Because,” Enzo said, “there’s a chance that there is a fingerprint on the casing. Just not one that’s visible with conventional techniques. You see,…” he leaned forward, miming to illustrate his words as he spoke, “…the killer would have had to load the magazine with bullets, pushing each one in with his thumb against the pressure of the spring. And if he did that, then he will have left an invisible print.”

  The skin around Gueguen’s eyes crinkled with consternation. “How?”

  “Because the natural sweat present on the fingers reacts with the metal of the casing, in effect engraving the fingerprint invisibly into it. Sweat is a complex mix of water, inorganic salts like sodium chloride, and other oily compounds. These have a corrosive effect on the brass. And, in fact, while the heat generated by the process of firing the bullet will have obliterated any normal prints, it will actually have burned the sweat print more deeply into the metal. My colleague, Doctor Bond, has invented a technique for making those engraved prints visible.” Enzo smiled. “Deceptively simple, really. He applies a 2,500 volt electrostatic charge, then dusts the casing with a fine carbon powder which clings to the areas of metal corroded by the sweat. And, bingo! You have a fingerprint. Unfortunately the technique has not yet been granted a patent, so the only person in the world who can carry out this test is Doctor Bond himself. Which is why we have to send everything to him.”

  The gendarme stared at him, almost open-mouthed. “That’s amazing, monsieur. The number of cold cases that could solve…”

  Enzo nodded. “It’s a technique that can also be used for recovering fingerprints from exploded terrorist bombs. A conclusive way of catching the bomb makers. It’s going to revolutionise crime detection.” He stood up. “But for the moment, let’s just hope that it nets us Killian’s murderer.” He reached out a hand to shake Gueguen’s, then lifted his umbrella.

  As he stepped from the boat to the pontoon he saw, through the mist of rain, the lights of the ferry approaching the harbour. The wind whipped at his umbrella, making it difficult to hold. He tipped it in the direction from which the wind blew, and teetered unsteady back toward the quayside. He was climbing the steps to the quay just as the ferry slipped through the narrow harbour entrance, a blast of its horn ringing around the little enclosed bay.

  Fifteen minutes later, as he gazed from the rain-smeared window on the passenger deck, he saw Adjudant Gueguen emerging from La Boheme to make his way back to shore, Enzo’s Tupperware box tucked beneath his jacket.

  It was, Enzo supposed, a long shot. The killer might have worn gloves when he loaded the gun. Or the magazine could have been preloaded. In either of those circumstances, any print recovered from the shell casing would not belong to the man who murdered Adam Killian.

  He turned away from the window and found a seat, and when finally the boat had completed its turn in the relatively calm waters of the harbour and headed out again into the strait, he s
et his sights for the moment not on who murdered Killian, but why. The answer to that, he hoped, was waiting for him in Paris.

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Paris, France, November 2009

  The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in the Rue Laugier was located in a four-story brick building opposite the narrow Rue Galvani. A stone-faced ground floor was accessed through an arched doorway. An equally stone-faced Gerard Cohen met Enzo in the entrance as arranged. He was a small man, clutching a large leather briefcase, and was completely bald. He had a lined, almost wizened face and small, black, suspicious eyes. He wore a dark blue suit that had seen better days. Enzo noticed how under the jacket the cuffs of his white shirt were frayed. His collar was crumpled, and his tie too tightly tied. He had a small, neatly trimmed silver moustache above too-full lips that were purple and shiny wet. Enzo thought that he must be at least seventy-five.

  He shook Enzo’s hand with a firm but brief grip. Enzo reached for the door to hold it open for him. But he shook his head. “I no longer have an office here, monsieur.” He nodded along the street toward the Cafe Liberte on the far corner of the Rue Guillaume Tell. “But you can buy me a drink.”

  He walked with quick, shuffling steps along the street, almost running, and Enzo had to work at keeping up with him. It was still dry in Paris, and mild. But a leaden sky presaged the coming rain that Enzo’s train had earlier outrun. They passed the Shri Ganesh Indian restaurant with its maroon canopies and crossed the street diagonally to the opposite corner, provoking a flurry of car horns.

  Cohen took a seat by the window and Enzo slipped into a chair opposite. The cafe was also a tabac and sold lottery tickets, and so there was a constant stream of clients. It was noisy, customers barracking at the bar, the rumble of diesel engines out in the street, and the tinny, wasp-like buzz of motor-scooters whizzing past. Ideal for an exchange of confidential information. The place smelled of old alcohol and fried onions, but the smokers stood out on the sidewalks these days, so they were spared the fugg.