She tried very hard to control her breathing as she heard the sound of several men running in the dark, splashing through the puddles in this cracked and pitted alleyway. She braced herself, waiting for the tailgate to be thrown open, angry hands reaching in to pull her out. But they passed her by and continued on down between the buildings. More raised voices and angry shouts. It seemed so obvious to her that she was hiding in the boot space of this SUV that she couldn’t believe they would not think to look.
Now she heard the woman’s voice again. Just the tone of it, not the words. Angry, ugly and abusive. Someone smacked a fist or a boot into the side of the SUV and the whole vehicle shook. They were all gathered just outside. Just a touch away. Sophie held her breath for so long she thought her lungs would burst.
Then the driver’s door opened and someone slid in behind the wheel. The door slammed angrily and the engine coughed to life, revving violently before the vehicle pulled away with a spinning of tyres that sent Sophie rolling back to slam into the tailgate. The driver was oblivious, picking up speed across the broken tarmac, lurching side to side and front to back, tossing Sophie around the boot like some tattered little rag doll.
After less than a minute they seemed to find the smoother surface of a proper road, and the driver accelerated hard, off into the night.
Chapter forty-three
Dominique glanced at the digital clock for the fourth or fifth time in as many minutes. 04:56. Again she felt her eyelids grow heavy, and a comforting sense of nothingness began to steal her away. Then her whole body convulsed from what felt like an electric shock, as consciousness shouted in her head that she was falling asleep. She blinked furiously at the road ahead caught in her headlights. The endless white lines flashing past on either side. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She adjusted the drift of the car, but oversteered it and had to correct.
She glanced at Enzo, asleep in the passenger seat. God knows, he needed his sleep, and she didn’t want to waken him. But she knew she couldn’t carry on much longer. All she wanted to do was to pull over on to the hard shoulder and close her eyes. Just for a minute. Just for one wonderful, stressless minute when she could let her mind and her body go.
Concentration and focus wavered again, and she forced herself back from the brink. It was no good. She had to stop.
Like manna from heaven, a large blue and white road sign ballooned into her headlights. Services in two kilometres. Just two kilometres. She could hold out for that long. She stretched each arm in turn, then flexed her neck and rubbed a hand over her face. Anything to keep herself awake for the next minute and a half.
Three hundred metres to go. She began to indicate. At least the rain had stopped, and there was almost nothing else on the road at this hour.
She crossed the broken white line and decelerated into the curve, following the signs for Essence and services. A floodlit forecourt simmered emptily before the rows of vacant parking bays that welcomed her, and she pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine.
She released a long, slow breath, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back on to the rest.
‘Why have we stopped?’
She turned her head to see Enzo rubbing his eyes. ‘I was falling asleep. I need a break.’
‘I’ll take over.’
‘No, you need a break, too. Let’s get a coffee and stretch our legs. Then just shut our eyes for ten minutes. Just long enough to get us back on the road.’
For a moment she thought Enzo was going to argue, but if he was he thought better of it and nodded.
There was almost nobody in the cafeteria, and a wan-faced girl with sleep in her eyes served them short, sweet, black coffees.
For a long time during the night, the death of Régis Blanc had exercised their thoughts.
Sometimes obligations don’t last a lifetime. Maybe, one day soon, I’ll have my say, he had told Enzo. Had someone had Blanc killed to stop him having that say? Or was it just Fate laughing at them all. Cruel and deceptive, determined to hide the truth until the last? Or maybe forever.
Impossible to know, and Enzo had realised very quickly that it was pointless to fret about it. The man was dead. A man who had killed people and sold women’s bodies for money. The world was a better place without him. And, whatever the truth, he had surely carried it with him to the grave. Which led Enzo full circle to the thought that just maybe he had been murdered for that very reason.
They finished their coffees and walked twice around the car park, gulping down the fresh, cold night air, then back at the car Enzo slid into the driver’s seat. He looked at Dominique. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said. ‘No more.’
When he next opened his eyes there was the faintest light dawning in a leaden sky.
‘Shit!’ He sat up, startled, and Dominique stirred in the seat beside him, blinking blearily into the first grey light of the day. He checked his watch. ‘Two hours!’ he said. ‘We’ve been asleep for two fucking hours!’ He leaned forward and started the car, reversing fast out of the parking bay.
The first trucks were already leaving the lorry park, and Enzo weaved his way through them to accelerate on to the feeder lane and back on to the motorway.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dominique said.
‘Not your fault.’ Enzo’s denial of blame was grudging. It was someone’s fault. Maybe Dominique’s, but most probably his, and he was cursing himself for ever closing his eyes in the first place. ‘We’ve still got three hours to go. If we had a head start we’ve lost it now.’
Even as he spoke, the heavens opened, and rain like stair rods beat its tattoo on the roof and splashed up from the road in a white mist.
Chapter forty-four
The marzipan house, with its sugary red roof and quizzical eyebrows, looked as if it might dissolve in the rain. Mist rose up from the ground around it like steam. A veil of gauze concealing all its detail and reducing it to a blur of colour and shape, like some impressionist painting.
Tall conifers stood dripping darkly in the rain as Enzo turned their car through the gates and they caught their first sight of it. The time was a little before ten a.m. He followed the sweep of the gravel drive to the parking area in front of the main entrance where there was a single car parked. A green Renault Clio. All the windows and doors were shuttered for the winter, except for a couple high up in the tower, where Enzo knew that Madame Brusque had her private rooms.
He and Dominique stepped out into the rain and climbed steps to try the front door. It was locked. They followed the path, then, around the side of the house, past shuttered bay windows and large shrubs shedding leaves on the gravel, to a porticoed side entrance. Water poured from the sloping roof above its steps where a gutter was broken, a curtain of water that they slipped through quickly to squeeze into a tiny porch. A glazed door looked into a narrow, stone-flagged entrance hall.
Enzo tried the handle and the door opened into the hall. He and Dominique stepped inside, dripping second-hand raindrops all over the flags. It was gloomy here, and the house beyond lay brooding darkly in silence. A narrow staircase led off to their right and Enzo leaned forward to peer up into the stairwell. Somewhere at the top, cold light spilled in from a hidden skylight. This was the tower.