She went silent for a moment, and the knuckles of her interlocked hands turned white with tension on the table in front of her. Enzo guessed that she was recalling some of those strange things.
‘Anyway, one of the girls found out that our weirdo was married, with a very young family, and was some kind of politico at the mairie. I mean, none of us ever read the papers, or watched TV, but apparently he was all over the news. Youngest ever adjoint to the mayor.’
Enzo sat back. ‘Jean-Jacques Devez.’
Rabbit eyes darted a frightened look in his direction and Sally nodded.
‘So you blackmailed him.’
Resentment flared briefly in the one-time prostitute. ‘I didn’t, no! But the other three figured he would probably be willing to pay to keep our sordid little sessions permanently under wraps.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want anything to do with it. He was a weirdo, yes, but he paid good money. Why risk that?’
‘So what happened?’
‘They went to see him, all three together, and he went berserk. Smashed up the furniture, threatened to kill them if they breathed a word to anyone. They were pretty shaken up, and I thought, Shit! Time to get out of here. Packed up my stuff and left. Didn’t tell a soul. Just got the hell out of there as fast as I could. Seemed to me you don’t go messing with people like that. We’re little people, know what I mean? We don’t control much of anything in our lives. And people like him... Well, they have power and money. They control everything, and they’re dangerous. Get away with anything, too.’
‘Like murder,’ Dominique said.
Sally nodded and stared at her hands.
‘Only Devez didn’t kill anyone,’ Enzo said. ‘Régis did it.’
Sally swung her head slowly from side to side, and it was clear that she still found it difficult to believe. ‘When I heard the news, in Paris...’ Her face was a mask of consternation as she lifted it towards Enzo. ‘It just didn’t seem possible. Régis? He would never have laid a finger on his girls.’
Dominique said, ‘But he strangled your three friends.’
‘I can only think that Devez forced him to do it somehow. Had some kind of, I don’t know, power over him, or hold on him.’
Everything was falling into place for Enzo now. ‘Or made him an offer that he couldn’t refuse. An inducement.’
All the lines around Sally’s eyes gathered themselves in a frown. ‘What possible inducement could he have offered Régis to make him do a thing like that?’ But it wasn’t a question Enzo needed to ask. He knew the answer.
He said, ‘So you went to Paris.’
She shrugged. ‘Where else would I go?’
‘And resumed your—’ he searched for the right word — ‘career.’
She glowered at him. ‘It was never my intention to go back on the game. I wanted to make a clean start.’ Her indignation faded almost as quickly as it had fired itself up, and she sighed with sad despair at the memory. ‘Only it’s not that easy. In the end you do what you know, you do what you can do.’
‘And that’s when you met Pierre?’ Enzo saw in her eyes, then, a kind of acceptance that somehow they knew everything about her.
She nodded. ‘Best friend I ever had. I loved that man. You know? I mean, really loved him. Not in a sexual way. Cos, well, that wasn’t ever going to happen. Though I’d have slept with him in a heartbeat if he hadn’t been gay.’ She looked away self-consciously, staring into the empty void of recollection beyond the window. ‘We were, you know, total confidants. Told each other everything.’
‘Including the story of Devez and the three dead prostitutes?’ Dominique said.
Sally dragged her eyes away from the window and looked from one to the other. ‘I never in my wildest imagination thought he’d go blackmailing Devez. I mean, Jesus, the man was a fucking superstar by then. Followed me to Paris. Well, he didn’t, but that’s what it felt like. Rising star in the town hall. Tipped to be the next mayor. You just don’t fuck with people like that. Christ, he’d already had three girls killed. Why wouldn’t he do it again?’
‘So you didn’t know anything about it?’ Enzo said.
She shook her head. ‘All I knew was that suddenly Pierre had money. Lots of it. And he was generous, you know. Splashed it around. Spent a lot of it on me.’
Dominique folded her arms across her chest. ‘And you never thought to ask him where it came from?’
‘He said it was a wealthy client who’d fallen for him big time, liked to indulge him.’
‘And you believed that?’
‘Well, maybe not. But, you know, some things you don’t ask.’ She sucked in a long, slow breath then expelled it quickly, as if summoning her courage for the final revelation. ‘Then, one night, he told me. He was drunk. And scared. Something had spooked him. I was... incandescent. I can’t begin to tell you. I’d have killed him myself if I could. But, you know, he’d a way of wrapping me around his little finger. Calmed me down. Told me he was setting up one last payment, and then that would be it. He and I would get out of Paris. Set ourselves up somewhere else, enjoy the fruits of the payouts Devez had already made.’ She stopped, eyes staring into the abyss. ‘And then he was dead. Murdered in his apartment. And I knew they’d be coming for me.’ She looked up, reliving the horror of it. ‘I had no idea what to do, where to go. I was sure they would find me. No loose ends. These people never leave loose ends.’
Dominique drew up a chair and joined them at the table, curiosity written large all over her face. ‘So what did you do?’
A sad smile flickered across her face. ‘I was rescued by an angel.’
Enzo said, ‘Marie Raffin.’
Sally looked up, surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘Educated guess.’ He paused. ‘What was Marie’s involvement in all this?’
‘She was a journalist, you know? I’d never met her before, had no idea who she was. Only she turns up at my door within twenty-four hours of Pierre getting murdered and says that if I’m prepared to help her, she can keep me safe.’ She gasped. ‘Jesus, I nearly bit her hand off. Seems she was working on some kind of story about Devez. An exposé. Something she’d been at for months, something linking him to the murders in Bordeaux. I don’t know what her source was, or how she knew, and I didn’t ask. She was just there, offering me an escape. And I jumped at the chance. She brought me down here, set me up as housekeeper under an assumed name. Showed me how to use make-up to cover my tattoo. She said it would only be for a short time and that as soon as the story had broken I would give a statement to the police, and they would put me in protective custody. Devez would go to jail and I’d be safe.’
She breathed her exasperation, irony turning her mouth down at both corners. ‘But, then, as you know, Marie herself was murdered. I can’t tell you how scared I was then. Absolutely certain they would come for me. But they never did. And here I am, twenty years on, a middle-aged spinster living on her own in the tower of an upmarket chambres d’hôtes, changing the sheets of wealthy fucking guests and cleaning their shit out the pan when they’re gone. My whole fucking life wasted.’
A life, Enzo thought, configured by fear and mired in regret.
She looked at him almost defiantly. ‘So what now? A statement to the police and protective custody? Just like Marie Raffin promised all those years ago?’