Freeze Frame (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

After the cold of the last few days, the warmth in the sun was extraordinary, like a return to late summer or early fall. It laid its clear yellow light across the ocean like reflective glass and cut deep shadows into the sheltered waters of the tiny harbour at Port Lay. Boats tethered to the quayside strained and bumped and groaned on the gentle swell. An old man sat on the harbour wall with rod and line, dozing in the late morning sunshine. Anything taking his bait would have disturbed his peace. There was not another soul around.

Enzo and Elisabeth stood high on the east bank looking down on the harbour below. They had driven up past the deserted fish processing plant and parked in an overgrown patch of ground that had once been the car park. Whitewashed cottages with slate roofs and blue and pink shutters climbed the hillside among trees that clung stubbornly to yellowed leaves. The sea breathed through the throat of a harbour that sucked water in and out with the ebb and flow of the tide, and the plaintive cries of seagulls overhead were a lament for way of life long gone.

“That’s my house just up there.” Elisabeth pointed to a bungalow with a steeply pitched roof overlooking the harbour on the far side. She laughed. “Well, not
my
house. The house where I grew up. My mother still lives there.”

Enzo tried to picture in his mind the scene that Elisabeth had described the other day, of tuna boats in full sail plying in and out of this tiny harbour, the quayside crowded with fishermen landing their catch, seabirds clustered around the crates of fish as they lined up along the quay. But it was an image almost impossible to conjure out of this tranquil little inlet. It existed now only in photographs and in the memories of those for whom it had been a reality. If he could have seen it through Elisabeth’s eyes, then he might have pictured something quite different.

He glanced at her and saw the fondness in her gaze as she peered back through the haze of years toward her childhood. “Must have been a special place to grow up,” he said.

She smiled. “It was. Of course, like all island girls, I hoped to marry a man from the mainland and escape. When you are a child, the island is your whole world, filled with endless possibilities. But when you get older the water that surrounds you makes it feel like a prison. It shrinks, becomes confining, and you start to feel trapped by it. In the end, I had to leave.”

“But you came back.”

She laughed. “Only because I was daft enough to marry a fellow islander. Of course, Alain is still only first generation. His father’s family came from Paris. But his mother was an island girl just like me, so he has genuine island blood in him.” Her smile faded. “But all our children will leave in the end, and there’ll be no one to look after us like we looked after our parents.”

They gazed in silence for a while, enjoying the sunshine and the peace, and the comforting sound of the ocean. Enzo silently rehearsed his change of subject, before he turned his eyes toward her and said, “I wanted to ask you, Elisabeth… about your home visits to Thibaud Kerjean in the late summer of 1990, after he broke his leg.”

She didn’t move, and there was not the slightest change of expression on her face. But it drained of colour, and a glaze like cataracts crossed her eyes. It felt like a very long time before she spoke. “You know, then.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice seemed very tiny, lost in the blink of an eye on the edge of the offshore breeze that caressed their faces. Enzo said nothing, almost holding his breath. His question had been innocent enough, but Elisabeth had read more into it than he could ever have anticipated. “I’ve been dreading this for twenty years. Did Thibaud tell you?” She turned searching eyes on him, something like fear in them now. And consternation. She shook her head. “Why would he do that now, after all these years? He was prepared to go to prison back then to protect me.”

Enzo’s mind was racing. But his voice was calm, and gave no indication of the turmoil behind it. “What on earth did you see in him, Elisabeth?”

Now she looked away, her expression pained, her eyes lighting on the house where she had grown up, wishing perhaps she could be transported back there, to the innocence of childhood. “Alain and I were going through a difficult time. I’d just given birth to Primel, and after the initial joy of it, I sank into the most terrible post-natal depression. I was almost suicidal, Enzo. The baby was keeping us awake most nights. Endless, endless crying. My nerves were shot to pieces. And so was our relationship. Alain coped with it all much better than I did, but even so, things had never been worse between us.

“My mother was looking after Primel during the day, and I was still working part-time at the clinic. Alain thought it would be good for me to be out of the house, getting a break from the baby.” She drew a deep, tremulous breath. “Which is when I got to know Thibaud. After he broke his leg and Doctor Gassman assigned me to his physical re-education.”

She turned a look toward Enzo that pleaded for understanding.

“I can’t even begin to explain to you what the attraction was. I hardly know myself. People knew he was a womaniser. He had a terrible reputation. The first time I went to his house I was really quite nervous.” She breathed in deeply, eyes closed, reliving some distant memory. “But there was something about him. I… I never saw the side of him that other people talked about. I never saw the temper that woman described in court. He was gentle and sensitive. And unexpectedly intelligent. And…” She searched for the words. “He gave me something I needed then, Enzo. Something I wasn’t getting from Alain. I can’t even tell you what that was. Understanding, reassurance maybe.”

She was ringing her hands in nervous distress, watching herself doing it, unable to bring herself to look at him again.

“It didn’t last long. But it was very intense. Very passionate.”

“And the night of the murder?”

“He was with me. My mother was looking after the baby here at Port Lay, and I telephoned Alain to say I would stay over, too. As far as he ever knew, that’s where I was. But I was with Thibaud. A holiday cottage that he looked after for some Parisians. It’s where we always met. Right out on the point, near Kervedan. No neighbours.” She sighed deeply, shaking her head. “Then over the next few days, when suspicion began to fall on Thibaud for the Killian murder, I was in a panic. You have no idea. I was his only alibi.”

Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I knew that to speak up would mean the end of my marriage. I was prepared to do it, Enzo, I really was. But Thibaud wouldn’t let me. Point-blank refused. And in the end he was cleared, thank God. It restores a little of your faith in our system of justice.”

“And if he’d been convicted?”

She turned to face him now, brushing the tears from her face. “I wouldn’t have let him go to prison, Enzo. Even although he was prepared to do that. I couldn’t have lived with myself. I would have had to come forward then.”

Enzo thought about everything he had read and heard about Thibaud Kerjean. He was a drunk, a brawler, a womaniser who beat up his women. He had the temper of a madman. Not one person had a good word to say about him. It was hard to reconcile that with the picture Elisabeth painted. A man of honour and integrity, who had been prepared to sacrifice his own freedom to protect her reputation and her marriage. And yet, hadn’t Enzo himself experienced that other side of him, too? The human face behind the gorilla mask. Kerjean had attacked and assaulted him. But he had also saved his life. He was no more a murderer than Enzo or Elisabeth. Just a deeply flawed, deeply troubled man.

Almost as if reading his thoughts, Elisabeth said, “I see him sometimes in the street now, and it is shocking to see how drink has reduced him. He’s the merest shadow of the man he was. He doesn’t acknowledge me. Won’t even meet my eye. I think, in a way, he knows what he has become and is ashamed of it.”

“And now?” Enzo said. “How are things between you and Alain?”

She turned sad eyes on him, filled with regret. “They couldn’t be better, Enzo. I love him. I always have. What happened between Thibaud and me was… it was an aberration. I lost my way for a time, but I found my way back in the end. I never really wanted to be with anyone but Alain.” The regret in her eyes dissolved into apprehension. “Are you going to tell him?”

Enzo shook his head. “No. Your secret is in safe hands, Elisabeth. You have my word on that. I never really believed that Kerjean had done it.” He turned a thoughtful gaze out across the water. “But there have been developments now. And I’m looking in another direction altogether.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Elisabeth dropped him off at Port Mélite to pick up his Jeep. She had said little on the drive back from Port Lay, and Enzo guessed that she was now dreading the lunch with Alain at the Café de la Jetée. How could either of them behave naturally with her husband after the revelations that had passed between them? Enzo almost suggested calling it off, but it might have seemed unnatural to cancel.

“I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes, then,” she said, and he stood and watched as she accelerated her SUV up the hill, back toward Le Bourg. He was about to get into his Suzuki when he heard Jane calling him from the house. He turned to see her coming down the path to the gate.

“You just missed Adjudant Guéguen,” she said. And she waved a large, manila envelope at him. “He left this for you and asked you to call him.”

Enzo went to meet her at the gate and took the envelope.

“You seem very close with the doctor’s wife these days.” She watched him carefully.

“She’s a nice lady,” Enzo said. “And very happily married.”

Jane nodded, and he saw what looked like regret in her eyes. “When you get back from Paris, I’ll probably be gone. But keep your key. Feel free to use the place.” She paused. “Any further developments?”

Enzo hesitated for a long moment before he said, “I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. It wasn’t Thibaud Kerjean.”

Jane searched his face with inquisitive eyes. “And do you have someone else in mind?”

He nodded slowly. “Actually, I do. But I’m not quite sure yet just why.”

***

He didn’t open the envelope until he was sitting behind the wheel of his jeep. He waited until Jane had gone back into the house, watching for the door to shut, before he tore it open. Inside was a stapled document about nine pages long. He turned it over to look at the front page. It was a copy of the autopsy report on Adam Killian. There was a handwritten note paperclipped to it.

Enzo smiled. He wanted to punch the air, but restrained himself. Guéguen must have gone out on quite a limb to obtain these for him. But he knew that the shell casing, in particular, could prove crucial. He checked the time. He could take five minutes to look through the autopsy report, and only be a little late for his lunch with the doctor and his wife.

He flipped first to the pathologist’s conclusion. Nothing unexpected there. Killian had died from three bullet wounds to the chest, one of which had ruptured his heart before passing straight through him. Another had lodged in his spine, severing the spinal cord. Either one would have killed him. The third had punctured his right lung and exited through a wound in his back.

Enzo skim-read the initial examination, and leapfrogged through the opening of the chest cavity to the dissection of the organs. When he finished, he sat frowning for almost a full minute, thinking hard, before searching back through the paragraphs he had just read, looking for something that wasn’t there. Finally, he closed the report and sat staring out at the empty beach in front of him. He was filled with confusion, and consternation, and dread building in the pit of his stomach.

***

Enzo was full of apologies for being late when he arrived at the Cafe de la Jetée. Alain and Elisabeth were sitting on the
terrasse
with old Jacques Gassman. “I got held up at the house,” Enzo said. “There were messages for me.”

Alain shook his hand vigourously. “That was very inconsiderate of you, Monsieur Macleod. Dammit, man, we’ve had to sit here drinking while we waited for you.”

Enzo grinned and shook hands with the old doctor. “Good to see you again, Doctor Gassman.” He noticed that Elisabeth’s smile was a little frozen. Then cast his eyes over the empty glasses on the table. “Let me get you all another before we eat.”

But Doctor Gassman got stiffly to his feet. “Not for me, thank you, Monsieur Macleod. I must be on my way. Don’t want to spoil lunch for you young folk.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Elisabeth chided him.

But the old doctor just raised a hand and smiled. “Bon appetit,” he said, and he shuffled off across the cobbles toward where his Range Rover was parked at the quayside.

Enzo lifted the glasses from the table. “Same again?”

“Please,” Elisabeth said. “We’re both on red.”

When Enzo got to the bar inside he cast a quick glance back toward the door. Both Alain and Elisabeth were facing toward the harbour, and he could see old Gassman behind the wheel of his Range Rover, starting the motor. He turned back to the counter. The barmaid was busy serving someone else, and he carefully set out the three glasses in front of him. For a moment, she had her back turned as she poured a measure of
pastis
, and he lifted one of the glasses by its stalk and slipped it quickly into his shoulder bag.

When he looked up again, he saw a vacant-eyed regular at the far end of the bar watching him. The man was unshaven, and wore a Breton peaked cap pushed back on his head. The glass in front of him was empty. There was no way he had not seen Enzo slipping the wine glass into his bag. Enzo almost blushed. It was the first time he had ever been caught stealing a glass from a pub. He recovered a little of his composure, winked at the man and put a finger to his lips.

The barmaid turned toward him, and he gave her his best smile. “Three glasses of red please, for the table on the terrasse, and whatever my friend at the end of the bar there is having.”

“Cognac’ she said, and turned immediately to lift his glass and fill it from the optic. A slight smile passed across the lips of the man with the peak cap as he lifted his glass toward Enzo, winked, and took a sip.

“I’ll bring them out,” the barmaid said.

Enzo felt the warmth of the sunshine on the back of his neck as he took his seat at the Servats’ table. “Suddenly we have an Indian summer,” he said.

Alain nodded. “Sometimes it happens that way. Just to lull us into a false sense of security before winter comes to force us back indoors.”

“Pity I won’t be staying to enjoy it.”

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re leaving us?”

“I’m going to Paris tomorrow. Not quite sure when I’ll be back.”

“To do with your investigation?” Alain asked.

“Yes.” He could see that he had piqued their interest, but was not going to volunteer any further information. Instead he changed tack completely. “Tell me, doctor, do you have any idea when it was that Doctor Gassman first came to the island?”

Alain shrugged. “I would just have been a kid. Sometime in the early sixties I would guess.”

“You couldn’t tell me any more specifically than that?”

“I’m afraid not.” Alain tilted his head a little, a slight frown of puzzlement about his eyes.

Elisabeth said, “You can find out, of course, from the
mairie
. They are bound to have a record of when he first arrived in the commune.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll do that.”

Their drinks arrived, and they chinked glasses and wished each other good health before sipping on soft red wine, rich with fruit and tannins.

“So…” the doctor said. “What about Kerjean? Is he still in your sights?”

Enzo shook his head. “No. Not at all. If there’s one person on this island who I know for sure didn’t murder Killian, it’s Thibaud Kerjean.” He took another sip of his wine.

“You have another suspect, then?” The doctor was looking at him, wide-eyed with curiosity.

“Perhaps. I’m not sure yet. I’m still looking for a motive. But I’m hoping that’s what I’m going to find in Paris.”