Implacable prison guards watched them from behind glass in circular observation turrets at the top of concrete towers on each corner as the two cars drew into the car park. Kirsty would wait for them here, and she wound down the window and unstrapped Alexis from his baby chair to sit him with her in the front.
Enzo followed Charlotte past a huge steel door set into a harled archway where vehicles came and went over the hump of a yellow and black ramp. Pedestrian access was at the far side of the entrance, leading them into an open reception area where electric lights reflected on shiny floors and hummed in the deep silence.
Enzo had visited prisons many times, and it always depressed him. There was something about stepping inside a place of incarceration that filled him with a sense of apprehension, and then on leaving, with relief and a gratitude for the freedom he had previously taken for granted.
At a long counter, unsmiling staff behind glass took his passport, which they copied and filed and told him they would hold in safekeeping until his departure. They gave him several forms to fill out and sign, before providing him with the black number six, printed on a white card, to pin to his jacket. They took his bag and the contents of his pockets and gave him a receipt to be produced for their safe return.
It was a procedure Charlotte had clearly been through many times, and she stood waiting patiently until Enzo was finished.
Finally, the door to the prison itself was unlocked and they were accompanied through the high-security wing by two guards in black uniforms with white stripes across their chests. The place smelled like a hospital. Of body odour and antiseptic. Floors were polished to a shine, and pale green walls were punctuated at regular intervals by dark green bars that divided hallways into sections, like airlocks, gates behind them secured before gates ahead were opened. Overhead strip lights threw up glare from beneath their feet, and every sound seemed to echo back at them from every hard surface.
Finally they were led down steps, through a gate and into a room with reinforced glass walls on three sides. Régis Blanc sat behind a table facing two empty chairs. A door slammed behind them, a key turned in the lock, and they could see the guards who had brought them there through the glass, leaning back against a wall, arms folded, watching them with studied disinterest.
‘Salut, Régis. Comment ça va?’ Charlotte greeted him as if she had known him all her life and they were old friends meeting for lunch. But she didn’t kiss his cheeks or shake his hand. Instead, she sat down and folded her hands on the table in front of her.
Blanc had been slouched in his chair. He wore a white T-shirt stretched tightly over muscles honed, perhaps, in a prison gym, or by isometric exercises performed in his cell. His jeans, too, were slim fitting to reveal well-developed thighs. He had about him the air of a man tightly wound and ready to spring. Like a cat on alert. Enzo knew that Blanc was two years younger than him, but he was probably fitter than a man half his age. He looked older, though. Much of his hair had gone, and what was left of it was the colour of metal filings. It had been shorn to a stubble across his scalp. His face was lean and lined, a dead pallor pockmarked by teenage acne. But the most remarkable things about him were his eyes. They were the palest blue Enzo had ever seen. So pale they were very nearly translucent. And with pin-sharp pupils, and irises circled in black, they were like the eyes of some wild cat. A snow leopard or a tiger. And they were fixed on Enzo, suspicious and hostile, alert from the moment Enzo entered the interview room. He sat immediately upright, ignoring Charlotte’s greeting.
‘Who’s this?’
Charlotte said, ‘We had to indulge in a little subterfuge, Régis, to get him in. As far as the prison’s concerned Enzo is my assistant.’
‘And who is he really?’
‘Enzo Macleod,’ Enzo said, holding out his hand. Blanc made no attempt to shake it and kept his eyes fixed on Enzo.
‘He’s a former forensic scientist from Scotland,’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s looking into the murder of Lucie Martin.’
Blanc was on his feet so quickly that Enzo was startled into taking a step back. Blanc’s seat overturned and crashed to the floor behind him, and Enzo saw the prison officers beyond the glass pushing themselves off the wall, suddenly tense and ready to move.
There was a moment when it seemed that almost anything was possible, and Enzo calculated that Blanc could quite easily kill him before the guards had even unlocked the door.
Blanc snarled, ‘You think I’m going to sit here and let you pin Lucie Martin’s murder on me?’
‘Cool it, Régis.’ Charlotte’s tone was calm, but there was an underlying sense of menace in it that drew his eyes towards her for the most fleeting of moments before they returned to Enzo.
With a surface calm that in no way reflected the way he felt inside, Enzo said, ‘I’m not even going to try to do that, Régis. Because I don’t believe you did. I think you were in love with Lucie. And that, very probably, she was in love with you. Or, at least, thought she was.’ He saw consternation gather in the creases around Blanc’s eyes.
Charlotte stood up and walked around the table to right Blanc’s chair. ‘Sit down, Régis,’ she said. And like some schoolboy admonished by his teacher, he pulled his chair towards him and perched, sullen-faced, on the edge of it, still without taking his eyes from Enzo.
‘What makes you think that?’ His whole tone and demeanour was defensive.
‘Your letter.’ Enzo sat down so that they were all facing each other on the same level, and he was aware in his peripheral vision of the guards outside relaxing again.
‘What about it?’
‘I’ve written love letters in my time, Régis. The first one, all full of declaration. Love and intent. And the last one... Well...’ And he smiled. ‘That would depend on which of us was breaking it off.’ He placed his forearms on the desk in front of him and leaned forward. ‘But here’s the thing. Yours doesn’t fit either category. I don’t believe that was the first, or only letter. And it certainly wasn’t intended to be your last. So I can only assume there had been others. Before, maybe after.’
Blanc sat back and folded his arms, and Enzo noticed for the first time the crude tattoos on his left forearm.
‘That’s quite an assumption, Monsieur... whatever your name is.’
‘Macleod. But I know some people have trouble pronouncing that, so you can call me Enzo.’ Enzo knew that he couldn’t let his gaze wander left or right. He had to meet Blanc’s eye with the same unwavering stare with which Blanc was fixing him. ‘Anyway, maybe I’m cheating a little. Because I also know that you and Lucie were seeing each other.’
Blanc’s whole expression changed. Incomprehension clouded the clarity of his eyes. ‘How can you know that? Nobody knew that.’
‘It’s true, then?’ Charlotte’s voice broke like an intruder into their conversation, but neither of them paid it the least attention.
Enzo said, ‘She’d been going out with a boy all through school.’
‘Tavel!’ Blanc spat out his name, and Enzo was amazed that Blanc both knew it and remembered it.
He nodded. ‘When she threw him over he got jealous. Figured there was someone else. So he followed her one night. And guess who she met?’
This was clearly news to Blanc, and he took some moments to process it. Enzo could almost see the thought machinery working behind eyes that were gazing into the past, making calculations and reaching conclusions. For once Enzo was not their focus. And then it was as if he had returned from some other place, and he looked at Enzo again. His eyes wild now.
‘He killed her. It must have been him.’ And he looked around the room as if searching for a way out. ‘I’ll fucking kill him. Even if I have to break out of here to do it.’ He slammed the palms of his hands down flat on the table in front of him.