He waved Enzo into a seat by the window.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’
‘Thank you.’
The kitchen, dining and living areas were open-plan. Comfortable living for one. A squeeze for two. Bétaille disappeared behind his kitchen island and primed an espresso maker.
‘You live here on your own?’ Enzo asked above the noise of beans being ground.
Bétaille smiled. ‘Yes. Saw too many marriages fail among my fellow officers, so I was never tempted. Police and families don’t mix. Besides which, I probably just never met the right woman.’ He chuckled. ‘And then you get to a certain age and, you know how it is. You don’t want someone else filling your private space, moving your things around, interfering with your routine.’ Pause. ‘How about you?’
‘Divorced once, widowed once.’
Bétaille glanced towards him. ‘I’m sorry.’
Enzo shrugged. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
Bétaille nodded, and when his machine had forced water at pressure through the freshly ground beans, he brought small black cups of it to place on a coffee table between them, with sugar lumps and spoons. He said, ‘Help yourself.’ Then, ‘I’ve been half expecting you for some time.’
‘Have you?’
He shrugged and sipped his coffee. ‘I’ve been following your progress in the press, Monsieur Macleod. You’ve done an exceptional job on Raffin’s unsolved murders. I knew you would get to Lucie eventually, and that she would probably lead you to me.’
Enzo smiled. ‘Nothing if not predictable, then.’
Bétaille cocked an eyebrow. ‘There must be a couple of killers out there getting pretty nervous by now. If I were you, I’d be watching my back.’
‘Oh, I do. There have already been three attempts on my life.’ And he remembered that dark night in the gallery of the château in Gaillac where someone had tried to stab him to death. The serendipitous quirk of fate which had led to Raffin taking the bullet meant for him in the Rue du Tournon. And, most painful of all, the woman called Anna who had been sent to kill him — a woman he had slept with and who had stirred long-dead emotions. Someone out there was very anxious to see him dead. He laughed it off. ‘So far I’ve led a charmed existence.’ He stirred a single cube of sugar into his coffee. ‘Tell me why you took on the parents’ group.’
He made a moue with his lips. ‘The Bordeaux Six, as the press called them. Referring to the number of girls, of course, not parents.’ He paused and looked like he might be wondering how to frame his next statement. ‘I wasn’t satisfied with the original investigation into the Blanc murders.’
Enzo watched him carefully. ‘Why? Blanc was guilty, wasn’t he? He killed those three girls?’
‘Yes, he was, and he did. But I was never satisfied that I knew why.’
Enzo sipped his coffee. ‘The Chinese would say the why is not important if the accumulated evidence leads conclusively to the killer. And it would seem that it did in this case.’
But Bétaille shook his head. ‘You have to understand your man. I’m sure you know that from your own experience, Monsieur Macleod. There was nothing in Blanc’s background, past or present, that would have led you to believe him capable of murdering those women.’
‘And yet he did.’
‘Yes. But here’s the thing... Although I was satisfied that we had got our man alright, like I said, I was never happy that I knew his motive. So I started digging around in his history, his connections, his friends, searching for some kind of understanding.’
‘And?’
‘I wasn’t just discouraged by the folk upstairs, I was told to stop it. In no uncertain terms.’
‘Did they say why?’
Bétaille breathed his frustration. ‘A waste of police resources on a case already resolved.’ He shook his head. ‘And who could argue with that? Blanc had admitted the murders in court and been sent down for life. No one was going to fund one man’s feeling that something wasn’t quite right.’ He drained his cup. ‘And I suppose that precipitated my decision to take early retirement. It was time to get out.’ He smiled. ‘But then, of course, along came the Bordeaux Six, and I couldn’t resist the chance they presented me to have another look at the whole thing.’
‘You spent two years on it?’
‘Off and on, yes.’
‘And did it bring any greater clarity?’
Bétaille gazed into his empty cup. ‘No, it did not.’
‘What about the six? The parents tell me you found no connections there, either.’
‘No, I didn’t. And I don’t believe there are any. I mean, apart from the obvious. But I don’t think Blanc killed any of those girls.’
‘Why not?’
‘As far as three of the missing were concerned, I couldn’t find a single connection at any level with Blanc or any of his known associates.’ He shrugged. ‘People disappear all the time, Monsieur Macleod. Usually because they want to, for whatever reason.’ He stood up. ‘Would you like another coffee?’
Enzo declined.
‘You don’t mind if I do?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer and busied himself preparing a second espresso. ‘It didn’t help, of course, that I was getting the cold shoulder from my former colleagues. I had anticipated at least some access to inside info. But they shut me out, Monsieur Macleod. People I’d worked with for years, done favours for, helped up the ladder—’ a bitterness crept into his voice — ‘wouldn’t give me anything. Not a goddamn thing!’ He clattered his cup into his saucer. ‘I suppose they’d been warned not to. But I thought, you know, that I’d get at least a nod and a wink. I almost had the sense that they were scared to talk to me.’ He flashed a look towards Enzo. ‘Why would police officers be afraid of talking to a former colleague?’
Enzo just shrugged and shook his head, and wondered if perhaps Bétaille had read more into it all than there really was. Frustrated by his lack of progress in the investigation he had taken on for the Bordeaux Six, it would have been only too easy for him to blame his failure on lack of police cooperation, informal or otherwise. Enzo wanted to keep him on track. ‘What about the other three?’
Thick, black coffee gurgled into Bétaille’s cup. ‘It was well established that Blanc had met Lucie at the offices of Rentrée. But you know, of course, that Rentrée was a Catholic charity for helping newly released prisoners back into society, so she would have met all sorts of criminals in the course of her work. The difference was that Blanc was the only one who wrote her a love letter.’
‘Quite a letter it was, too,’ Enzo said. ‘And, if you asked me to guess, I’d say there had been others before it.’
Bétaille cast him a curious glance as he resumed his seat and sipped his coffee. ‘Why?’
Enzo shrugged. ‘Instinct. Something to do with its intimacy. You don’t achieve that in a single exchange.’
But Bétaille did not seem impressed. ‘Well, there was no other letter found, monsieur. The two would have met just a handful of times at the offices of the charity. Blanc himself admits to having developed an infatuation for her, and claims to have written the letter while he was drunk in a bar.’
‘And the girl with the feather tattoo?’
‘Sally Linol?’ Bétaille shook his head. ‘Yes, she was one of Blanc’s girls. Well in with him, apparently. Known to all the others. But I don’t think he killed her. She cleared out her apartment and left. And that was before any of the murders. She just moved on. A fresh start somewhere else.’
‘What about Monica Robert? The one who was murdered.’
‘Oh, she had been one of Blanc’s alright. But ties had been severed several months before. She was working for some horrible, drug-dealing little pimp that operated out of a backroom in a café in the red-light district. She was found mutilated in a hotel room. A frenzied, sexual murder. Just not Blanc’s style. He had no history of violence towards women.’