Chapter forty-one
The rain, the light reflecting on the shiny black wet of the road, the white lines that passed below them with such monotonous regularity; the rapid beat of the wipers on the windscreen, smearing the glare of oncoming traffic across the glass. It had all become impossibly hypnotic after only an hour on the motorway, heading south-west out of Orléans.
Enzo ached with fatigue. Every muscle hurt with every movement of the wheel, and just the sheer effort of will required to stay awake was, in itself, exhausting.
Dominique sat in the passenger seat beside him. Tense. Anxious to relieve him from the stress of driving. But he had been insistent. And she had been brooding in silence for some time before, finally, all her exasperation came bubbling to the surface. ‘He was so fucking cool!’ she said. ‘One minute he’s waving her in your face like she’s the answer to everything. The next we find out she’s been right under his nose the whole time.’
Enzo said, ‘I don’t think he knew. In fact, I’m certain of it. Because, if she really is the key to it all, Raffin — or Devez, or someone else — would have got rid of her a long time ago. What I can’t figure out is how Raffin’s wife fits into all this. If she really is the one who employed Sally at the house, to work there under a false name, then it’s almost as if she was hiding her there.’
‘From what?’
‘I don’t know. Raffin himself, maybe.’
‘Well, he seemed pretty shaken up.’
‘He did.’
‘So what do you think he’s doing now?’
‘I think he’s organising someone to get to her before we do.’
‘Well, if he thinks we’re not leaving till tomorrow, he’ll figure he’s got time to fly someone down first thing.’ They had told him they would spend the night at the studio in Paris and drive down to Biarritz in the morning.
Enzo shook his head in the dark. ‘He knows we’re on our way. Raffin may be many things, but he’s not stupid. It’s quite possible he could already have someone else on the road. Whatever we do, we’ve got to get there before they do.’ He breathed deeply. ‘As long as I can stay awake long enough.’ The thrum of the tyres on the wet tarmac was adding to the soporific effect of driving weary in the dark and the rain.
Dominique glanced at his face, flitting between light and shadow, pale and washed out in the reflected headlights of other vehicles. They had taken the train to Orléans to retrieve the car, and now would be six hours on the autoroute, but Enzo’s absolute determination was clear. Dominique knew that he saw Sally Linol now as the best and only way of negotiating Sophie’s safe release. If he had Sally, even if she knew nothing, or wasn’t prepared to tell, he would still have bargaining power. Leverage over Raffin and Devez. Because, as Raffin himself had been only too keen to point out just a few hours earlier, Sally Linol was almost certainly the key to everything.
The sound of Enzo’s mobile phone ringing startled them in the dark, cutting above the roar of the engine and the endless vibration of the road beneath them. Enzo fumbled in his pocket to find it and handed it to Dominique. At 130 kph, in the dark and the wet, he didn’t want to take his eyes off the road for a second. She answered it and put it on speaker.
‘Monsieur Macleod?’ Nicole’s voice was razor-sharp, honed thin by the airwaves and the tiny speakers of the phone.
‘What is it, Nicole?’
‘Have you seen the news?’
‘Nicole, I’m in a car on a motorway in the pissing rain. I haven’t seen a television in days.’
If Nicole was perturbed by the tone of her irascible mentor, there was no hint of it in her voice. Perhaps, Dominique thought, she was just used to it. ‘It’s on the radio, too. All over the news.’
And Enzo was suddenly afraid for Sophie. ‘What is?!’
‘Régis Blanc. He’s dead. Killed in a fight with another prisoner in Lannemezan.’
Chapter forty-two
All that Sophie could see in the window as she worked was her own reflection. Beyond it the darkness was profound. And still the rain fell, tears from heaven running in tracks through the dirt on the outside of the glass.
It was almost startling to see herself so close up and personal after all this time. Her face stained and streaked with dirt, her tan faded now to a blue-white pallor. Her hair was tangled and matted about her head. The wild-eyed creature that stared back at her from the glass was virtually unrecognisable. Certainly not the face she was accustomed to seeing every morning in the mirror above the bathroom sink, where she washed and plucked her eyebrows and applied her make-up.
But even as she looked at this strange creature gazing back at her, she saw the determination in her own eyes. An oddly dead-eyed determination that fuelled her nearly obsessive attempt to free the second hinge pin.
She had been working at it for much of the day, and now into the night. She had no idea what time it was, but darkness had fallen beyond the bars several hours ago. The bolt in the lower hinge had been stubbornly determined not to budge. For some reason, it was more badly rusted than the other.
Her hands were greasy with the butter she had been using to lubricate it, and the spoon kept slipping through her fingers. It was bent and twisted unrecognisably, and she was beginning to despair of ever getting the bolt to move.
There was a gap between the top of the metal framework of the bars and the underside of the window frame into which it was fitted, and finally, in frustrated desperation, she rammed the heels of both hands hard up under the top of the frame. To her astonishment it slid up, and the gap vanished. She held the bars, then, in both hands and pulled down sharply. The frame moved again, and she was amazed to see that the lower hinge pin had stayed slightly raised, providing her with a quarter of an inch gap into which she could work the remains of the spoon with ease.
For the first time in several hours, hope returned. An almost debilitating depression had descended on her at regular intervals. With each fresh tray of food had come the fear that this could be her last meal. Then each time left alone, she had grabbed the fresh pack of butter to start working it again into the hinge. An emotional roller coaster that had taken her from the depths of despair to impossible peaks of euphoria and then down again.
Now she was on the way back up. There was movement in the bolt. She wiped the butter from her fingers on her jeans, gripping the head of the pin and twisting as she pulled with one hand, grasping the bars with the other and shaking them violently.
And suddenly it simply came away. She stood looking at it in her hand, dumbfounded by the abrupt and unexpected success. She clutched it tightly, excitement rising in her throat and very nearly choking her. She slid the top bolt out of the upper hinge and stuffed both pins into her pocket. With trembling fingers she grasped the bars with both hands and pulled sharply inward. The whole frame came away, except where it was attached at the other side by the padlock. Hardly daring to breathe, she lowered the frame so that it rested against the wall below the window, suspended from the padlock, and reached for the window handle itself. To her astonishment the handle turned quite easily and the window swung open into the room. No need to break the glass.
Fresh air rushed into the stale warmth of her cell, stimulating and intoxicating at the same time. She pushed her face out into the darkness and felt the cold of the rain on it, like tiny chilled drops of freedom. And with a great effort she pulled herself up on to the frame of the window, crouching to very nearly fill it, and balancing herself to get a first real glimpse of the world outside.