There was absolute silence around the table. Enzo felt her pain. He said, ‘I take it there were no arrests?’
She shook her head. ‘They said they thought it had probably been a client. Maybe drug-related.’ She took a moment to compose herself. ‘She was a heroin addict, apparently. And infected with HIV.’
‘And the connection with Blanc?’
‘She was one of his girls, or had been. He claimed he’d let her go months before because he didn’t like his girls taking drugs. And, of course, he had half a dozen people who vouched for where he was the night she was murdered.’
‘Sally was one of his girls, too.’ It was Monsieur Linol who cut into Madame Robert’s story. Enzo swung his gaze across the table to take in the small, bald man who sat with his wife at the far end of it. He was dressed in a grey suit, worn shiny in places, and tightly buttoned over a white shirt with curled-up collar. His wife seemed even smaller. You could see that she had been a pretty woman once, but her face had collapsed with the years and her skin was the colour and texture of parchment.
‘What happened to Sally?’ Enzo said.
‘Vanished,’ Madame Linol said. ‘Two days before the first of those girls that Blanc killed was murdered. She knew them. Everybody said so. But there was no trace of her, Monsieur Macleod. Nothing. Her apartment had been cleared out, but no one saw or heard anything of her ever again.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘We’re convinced that man killed her, too. They just never found the body.’
Enzo looked around the assembled faces. ‘I don’t understand. How did you all get together like this?’
Madame Bru said, ‘We all became familiar with each other’s cases while we were trying to get the police to do something about our own.’
Monsieur Veyssière, whom Martin had introduced as a widower, said, ‘It seemed natural that we should get together, pool resources, since we were all so obviously interconnected.’ He glanced towards Guillaume Martin.
Martin said, ‘I suggested that we form a group to bring pressure to bear on the police. We managed to get quite a bit of publicity at the time. But the media never sustains interest for long, and the police resented our intervention. So, in the end, we resorted to hiring an investigator of our own.’
Enzo raised an eyebrow. ‘Who?’
‘The man who arrested Régis Blanc for the murder of the three prostitutes.’ He nodded acknowledgement of Enzo’s surprise. ‘Commissaire Michel Bétaille. It was his final case before retirement, and I knew from having spoken to him that he was never entirely satisfied with the circumstances surrounding the murders and Blanc’s arrest.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, perhaps, Monsieur Macleod, if you were to pay him a visit, he could tell you that for himself. Suffice it to say that he jumped at the chance of re-examining the whole case, and following up on the connections to our missing and murdered girls.’
‘And what did he find?’
Silence fell around the table once more, and nobody was keen to meet anyone else’s eye. At length, Martin said, ‘He didn’t find anything. He worked for nearly two years on the case, and charged us a considerable amount for his time. The trouble was that none of his former colleagues seemed anxious to help him. They denied him access to evidence and statements. In the end, he simply gave up, and we were no further forward than we had been two years before.’
‘You’re our last chance to find out the truth, Monsieur Macleod.’ This from Madame Bru, and Enzo’s heart sank. He hated being anybody’s last chance. She reached down to retrieve a folder from her bag, which seemed like a cue for all the other families around the table, including the Martins, to do the same. Six folders in shades of blue and red and yellow and green, tied with black ribbon and held with elastic, were pushed towards Enzo.
He raised his hands defensively. ‘Woah! I can’t take on all these cases,’ he said. ‘I’m here to look into the murder of Lucie Martin. I don’t know that any of these are even connected to it.’ He looked around the table for their understanding, but saw only their sadness. The silence stretched from seconds to a minute, or more, before someone began picking desultorily at their starter. Someone else took a sip of wine, then more eyes turned without relish towards the food on the plates in front of them. Before lifting again to look at Enzo. He sighed. ‘Listen, I’ll take a look at them, alright?’ And he could barely believe he was hearing himself say it. ‘I can’t promise anything. But if something jumps out at me... well, I’ll look into it further.’ He felt absolutely trapped. ‘It’s the best I can offer.’
But it was an offer met by more silence.
Madame Martin began ostentatiously to clear away their starters, most of which had barely been touched. ‘I’ll just serve the beef now,’ she said, colour high on her cheeks. She avoided Enzo’s eye.
Enzo reached for his glass and took several gulps of the Bergerac, fervently wishing that he were somewhere else. He gathered the folders towards him and made them into a neat pile at the side of his place. The Lucie Martin case was on the top, and he opened it to see photographs and documents. Newspaper cuttings, a photocopy of Blanc’s letter to the murdered girl. He looked at the old judge and said, ‘Would you, by any chance, have the original of the letter that Blanc sent to Lucie?’
Martin looked puzzled. ‘You’ve got the photocopy there. And surely you’ve read the text of it already, in Raffin’s book?’
‘Yes, I have. But I’d like to see the original, if it’s available.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll get it for you.’ And he stood up.
But before he left the table, Enzo said, ‘How do you know that it really was from Blanc?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How do you know it was Blanc who wrote it?’
Martin appeared slightly embarrassed, as if he had been caught in the act of something illicit. He shrugged. ‘Michel Bétaille obtained samples of Blanc’s handwriting. Don’t ask how.’ He paused. ‘I paid for a graphologist to compare them with the letter.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘There was no doubt, Monsieur Macleod. They came from the same hand. It was Régis Blanc who sent that letter to my Lucie.’
Chapter eight
When Bertrand regained consciousness, he opened his eyes to disorientating darkness. Then his first awareness was of Sophie’s face next to his, her lips, her breath, her whispered words, ‘Oh, thank God. I thought they’d killed you.’ And yet it all seemed to come to him once removed, as if through gauze.
Pain followed, searing inside his head like a red-hot poker. He tried to sit up, and winced from the bruising in his midriff. Well-developed abdominal muscles were all that had saved him from serious internal injury during the repeated kicking from heavy boots.
He tried to adjust his position and reach out to Sophie, but his hands were tied behind his back. More pain. Rough plastic cord cutting into soft flesh around his wrists.
Next came the realisation that they were moving, and he heard the roar of an engine. They were in the back of a vehicle of some sort.
‘Where are we?’ he whispered in despair.
‘I don’t know.’ Sophie’s voice sounded ragged. ‘They put sacks over our heads and tied us up and threw us in here. We’ve been driving forever.’