His own words drew him back to the here and the now, in the dark of this dimly lit old wine cellar, and he looked at Enzo. ‘And then I knew there was no way I could tell Mireille that I had killed our baby. I panicked. I hid her body and cleaned away all traces of her blood. But I had no idea what to do next. When Mireille got home, I told her Lucie had gone for a walk and hadn’t come back. It was all I could do to persuade her not to call the police right there and then. When she still hadn’t returned, hours later, I suggested we search her room.’
‘And found the letter that you’d left there from Blanc.’
He nodded. ‘It was never going to be enough, and when they started searching for her, they were sure to find the body.’ His eyes wandered involuntarily towards a dark corner at the back of the chais, and Enzo wondered if that was where he had put her. ‘Then it was as if God had stepped in and offered me a way out. Blanc was arrested on the Monday for the murder of those three prostitutes, and I knew what I had to do.’
Enzo said, ‘You came down here in the dark that night and strangled your own daughter, post-mortem, so it would seem like Blanc might have done it, if ever she was found. Then you carried her down to the lake, weighted her body, and dropped her into the deepest part of it.’ Enzo paused, biting his lip to contain his anger. What this old man had done was simply unforgivable. ‘Your own daughter!’
The old man lifted eyes filled with shame. ‘What happens now?’
‘You should know,’ Enzo said. ‘You must have sat in judgement of people just like you many times.’ He controlled his breathing. ‘You should get a coat and we’ll go together to the gendarmerie in Duras. You can make your statement there.’
Madame Martin knew that something was wrong, but the old judge did not have the courage to tell her. ‘I’m just going to get my coat and hat,’ he said, ‘and Monsieur Macleod and I are going for a short drive. We won’t be too long.’
He headed out to the old Roman path that led down to his study.
The old lady looked at Enzo with fear in sad eyes, and he wondered if, somewhere behind them, perhaps she knew what it was that was wrong. ‘Where are you going?’
Enzo was acutely embarrassed. Here was maybe the only innocent in this whole sordid story. A woman who, inexplicably, had lost a daughter, and was soon to discover that the man she loved had killed her. For Mireille Martin it was the worst of all possible outcomes. He said, ‘We’re just going into Duras.’
‘Why?’
She was spared his answer by the muffled sound of a distant gunshot. Frightened eyes immediately sought Enzo’s for clarification. For his part, he knew exactly what had happened. He hurried through the house and out on to the Roman road, old Madame Martin trailing along behind him. The door to Martin’s study stood open. Martin himself was spreadeagled in his captain’s chair, most of the top of his head missing where he had shot himself through the roof of his mouth.
The sound of the scream that tore itself from Madame Martin’s throat was one, Enzo knew, that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Chapter forty-eight
Paris, Spring 2012
For Enzo, spring was the best time of the year in Paris. All the flowers in bloom, trees laden with blossom, the air still fresh from the winds of winter, as yet unadulterated by the heat and the pollution of the summer months to come.
Soft clouds were scattered thinly in a blue sky, the morning light bright and clear in the spring sunshine. The Luxembourg Gardens were busy. Couples strolling hand in hand, mothers pushing prams, students gathered together on park benches, laughing and smoking, or reading study books for upcoming exams. At the far end of the circle, the Sénat building glowed almost white beneath imposing slate roofs. Palm trees in huge pots stood around the faux lake, newly recovered from their winter hibernation in the great greenhouses that served the park.
Enzo pulled up a couple of pale green-painted chairs for them near the grass, and Dominique manoeuvred Laurent’s pushchair into a position between them where he could see them both, as well as the sunlight coruscating on the water beyond. He was toddling now, but not to be trusted on his own. Released from his pushchair he would be off like a bullet, little legs carrying him forward at a furious pace until he stumbled and fell. Which was not a good idea near water. But he was happy enough, for the moment, in his pushchair.
In the months that had passed since the events of the previous autumn, Laurent had accepted Dominique, unquestioningly, in the role of his mother. But there had been a special bond forged between father and son during those months, too. They had spent hours and days and weeks together, Enzo leading him through an early exploration of the world around him with all the time and patience of a well-practised dad.
They sat for some minutes, just watching life flow around them. Then Dominique said, ‘Don’t you ever get upset at the injustice of it?’
He looked at her, surprised. ‘The injustice of what?’
‘Solving all those murders, and yet still losing the bet.’
He shrugged. ‘I know I won. That’s all that matters. And what’s two thousand euros among friends?’
She laughed. ‘Tell me that when the next tax bill comes in.’
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if people want to believe it was Blanc who murdered Lucie, so what? More important, I think, that old Madame Martin was spared the truth.’
‘You really think she doesn’t know?’
‘Oh, probably. In her heart. But there will always be a part of her that can believe something else. Another version of events. And maybe that’s what you need to survive.’
Dominique leaned across the pushchair and put her hand over his. ‘You’re a good man, Enzo Macleod.’
He chuckled. ‘Maybe. But I could probably be better.’ He glanced at his watch, and she saw a flicker of apprehension cross his face.
‘You really have no idea why it is Kirsty wants to see you?’
‘None.’
‘And you don’t think it’s strange that she specifically asked you not to bring me?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s wrong with a daughter wanting to see her dad on his own?’
Dominique lifted one eyebrow to signal her scepticism. ‘Sure you’re not keeping something from me?’
He held up two fingers. ‘Scout’s honour.’ He looked ostentatiously at his watch again. ‘Look, I’d better go.’ And he stood up. ‘Will you two be okay here on your own? I shouldn’t be too long.’
‘We’ll be fine.’ Dominique stood up to kiss him, and he noticed that there was still the slightest stiffness in her movement. But, if there was any pain, she steadfastly refused to admit it. She said, ‘Will you tell her that we’re going to get married?’
He nodded and held her by the shoulders, looking directly into the concern in her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, she’s going to be nothing but happy for us.’
‘I hope so.’ Dominique sat down again and watched anxiously as he headed off towards the Senat and the top of the Rue de Tournon.
Raffin’s apartment was a place so full of bad and painful memories for Enzo, that he had been delighted when Kirsty told him that they were going to move. A bigger, brighter, more modern apartment in the fourteenth arrondissement. It would be, she had thought, a better place to raise Alexis.
But, for the moment, they were still in the first-floor apartment that looked out on to the cobbled courtyard at the back of the buildings on the east side of the Rue de Tournon. The chestnut tree was already in full blossom, always the first to have its fat green buds burst into leaf, and the first, too, to shed them.
Enzo climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. It was on this first-floor landing that he had met Jean-Jacques Devez for the first and only time, puzzled by a sense of familiarity, later explained only too brutally by events. It was here that Raffin had been shot, an assassin’s bullet meant for Enzo. And it was here, in this apartment, on a hot summer’s evening, that he had first met Charlotte. An encounter that had changed his life in ways he could never have imagined.