Bertrand said, ‘Will you marry me?’
Sophie stopped dead in her tracks, and he had taken two further steps before he could stop himself and turn back. She was staring at him, open-mouthed, eyes wide with excitement. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘You want me to get down on one knee?’
She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly.’ Then composed herself. ‘You’ll have to ask my papa, though.’
Bertrand turned his head away, towards the sea, expelling air. ‘You’re not serious?’
She raised a coquettish eyebrow. ‘I am. What? Are you scared of him? He didn’t like you much at first.’
‘Of course I’m not scared of him. Enzo’s the finest man I ever met.’ He turned to look at her and she saw just how much he meant it. For some reason it brought tears to her eyes. Her father and her lover had got off to the worst of all possible starts. Then Bertrand had saved Kirsty’s life, and Enzo had financed the rebuilding of Bertrand’s gym after it had been burned down. There was such respect now between the young buck and the old stag that it filled Sophie’s heart to bursting with love for them both. ‘Okay, I’ll ask him,’ Bertrand said. ‘But what am I going to tell him your answer is?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll have to think about that.’
‘Sophie!’ Bertrand growled at her and she grinned.
‘Yes, of course. Yes, yes, yes!’
And they embraced and kissed in the moonlight, not caring who might see them. He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.’ And they ran the rest of the way back to their holiday let. Bertrand stood by the shuttered window of the bicycle shop, fumbling with his key to open the door to the stairwell. Then they rushed inside and up the stairs, barely able to contain their love and lust for each other. He struggled again, with trembling fingers, to get the key in the lock of the apartment door, but it simply swung open. A sudden stab of misgiving pierced his happiness.
‘Idiot!’ Sophie said. ‘You forgot to lock the door.’
But Bertrand was standing perfectly still. ‘I didn’t.’
‘You must have.’ She pushed past him before he could stop her and flicked the light switch. But the room remained in darkness, divided into slats by the moonlight that fell in through the shutters. And, for the first time, she became aware of an alien scent. Something that didn’t belong.
Two figures detached themselves from the dark. They were dressed all in black, ski masks drawn over their heads. And Bertrand saw the whites of their eyes catching the light. One of them grabbed Sophie from behind, a gloved hand immediately around her face to stifle her scream. The other came for Bertrand, but could never have imagined the strength or ferocity with which his attack would be met. All the hours spent pumping iron in the gym were concentrated in the fist that Bertrand smashed into his attacker’s face. He felt teeth and bone breaking, and heard the man’s pain in the cry that gurgled through the blood in his mouth as his legs buckled beneath him.
The second man hurled Sophie away across the room, and Bertrand heard the sound of her crashing into the kitchen table. The whole weight of his second attacker descended on him. And this was a big man. Bertrand went down, all the air exploding from his lungs as the man landed heavily on top of him. The first man was on his knees again now, cursing, and his fist caught Bertrand on the side of his head. Bertrand’s world became filled with pain and light. He tried to wriggle free, but a second punch almost crushed his larynx, and he found himself choking and unable to breathe.
A scream filled the air as a shadow flew through the darkness and knocked the big man off him. Sophie was all legs and clenched fists, striking out at anything and everything. The man whose nose and teeth Bertrand had broken swung around, and Bertrand saw his fist make an arc before connecting with Sophie’s face. Her dead weight hit the floor. Bertrand tried to get to his feet, but a heavy boot sank itself into his midriff, bringing bile bubbling into his mouth, and a second blow to the head brought darkness.
Chapter seven
They had all arrived within fifteen minutes of each other, in five cars parked out front, alongside Enzo’s, engines ticking as they cooled in the night. And now they sat around the big table in the Martins’ kitchen, all eyes turned expectantly towards the Scotsman.
Martin had introduced them in turn. Monsieur and Madame Linol; Monsieur Klarczyk and his daughter, Karolina; Madame Robert; Monsieur and Madame Bru; Monsieur Edward Veyssière. All were guests for dinner, and Enzo was the centre of attention. He was embarrassed and confused as Madame Martin served up a cold starter of foie gras and salad, with strips of smoked duck breast, while Martin poured chilled sweet Bergerac wine into all their glasses.
‘You must be wondering what all this is about, Monsieur Macleod,’ he said.
Enzo nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’ He was feeling ambushed, and just a little resentful.
Martin took his seat. ‘We are a group of parents... relatives... of girls who either disappeared or were murdered in the weeks and months leading up to the arrest of Régis Blanc. Each and every one of us is of the firm belief that Blanc was responsible. But, in most cases, the police never even examined the links between Blanc and our girls. They’d got their man for killing those prostitutes. Why bother going over old ground to convict him for more murders when he had already been sent down for three?’
Enzo ran his eyes around the array of faces turned in his direction. ‘Are you saying that your girls were also prostitutes?’
Martin seemed uncomfortable. ‘Not at all. Lucie certainly was not.’ But he glanced awkwardly towards the others.
Monsieur Klarczyk looked to be a man in his sixties. He spoke with just the hint of an accent. ‘Karolina’s sister had been working as a waitress in Bordeaux for several months before she disappeared.’
Karolina, whom Enzo gauged to be in her forties, had no trace of an accent whatsoever. She said, ‘We’re pretty sure she’d been working for an escort agency.’ She avoided her father’s eye, and Enzo saw that he was blushing. ‘Well, I know she was, because she told me. She usually came home once a month. Then, one month, she didn’t. We never saw or heard anything of her again. She was well behind in paying for the apartment she’d been renting, but all her things were still there, and nobody had seen her in weeks.’
Enzo found his interest engaged. ‘What was her connection with Blanc?’
‘None that we know of,’ her father said.
And Karolina cut in. ‘He was a well-known souteneur. A pimp, Monsieur Macleod. Veronika was a prostitute, and she vanished at almost exactly the same time that Blanc killed those other girls.’
Her father lowered his head and couldn’t lift his eyes from the table.
Their stories were all remarkably similar. Girls who had been working in Bordeaux, away from home, telling parents and loved ones that they had jobs in restaurants or bars, one claiming to be an actress. Only one of them, other than Lucie, had turned up dead. She was Monica, the daughter of Madame Robert.
Madame Robert carried her sadness about her like something she might wear; a veil, a cape, a black shawl of mourning. It was almost visible, and only too apparent in her eyes and the tragic set of her face. She had been a single mother, doing her best to bring up her daughter on her own in the provincial town of Poitiers. But Monica had been a headstrong and argumentative teenager and run off at the age of seventeen.
‘I searched in vain for her, Monsieur Macleod. Some friends and I raised a little money for a poster campaign. We had no idea, of course, that she’d gone to Bordeaux. And the press weren’t interested. They ran her photograph a couple of times in the local paper, and once on regional television, and then other things caught their interest.’ She examined her hands on the table in front of her. ‘I was always waiting for the knock on the door, but it still didn’t make it any easier when it came. Four years later. They’d found her stabbed to death in some seedy hotel bedroom in the red-light district of Bordeaux. Naked.’ She bit her lip. ‘Her killer had done terrible things to her.’