Had Enzo been prone to uncharitable thoughts he might have felt that perhaps Bertrand could have done more. But he knew this young man. Knew that he loved his daughter. And that if Bertrand couldn’t protect her, then no one could. His face was swollen and bruised, his nose broken and set in high-grip tape. Enzo nodded. ‘I know. There’s no blame in this, Bertrand. I just want to find her and get her back. Did they say anything — anything at all — that might give me something to work on?’
Bertrand shook his head hopelessly. ‘They barely spoke to us, Monsieur Macleod. They grabbed us at Argelès. Two of them waiting in the apartment. But I think there were four in all. They took us straight to that house, and just kept us there till I got away.’ His lower lip was trembling. ‘I went back to try and get her. But they took her. A van and two cars. Just drove off.’ He closed his eyes, squeezing out tears. ‘And I went and broke my stupid bloody leg in the dark.’ He opened his eyes again, and Enzo saw the pain in them. ‘Get her back, Monsieur Macleod. You have to get her back.’ And Enzo knew that Bertrand was passing the baton of responsibility on to him.
Back out in the hall, the investigating officer of the Police Nationale said, ‘Have you the least idea why someone would want to kidnap your daughter, monsieur?’
Enzo said grimly, ‘Well, it’s not for financial gain, I can tell you that.’ He sucked in a deep breath to steady himself. ‘I’ve been investigating a group of cold cases.’
The policeman nodded. ‘I know, monsieur. We know all about you by now.’
‘Then you’ll know that there have been at least three attempts on my life. Someone really doesn’t want me continuing with my investigations. And it looks now like they think they’ve found a way to stop me.’
‘Then, with the greatest respect, monsieur, I suggest that’s exactly what you do.’
Kirsty struggled to keep up with her father as he strode through the hospital. His breathing, stertorous and full of anger, echoed back at them off all the shiny surfaces of the sterile corridors. By the time they got to the car she could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He stopped by the driver’s door and turned towards a litter bin raised on a concrete coping between lines of cars. He kicked it with the flat of his foot, all of his pent-up and impotent rage channelled into the violence that sent it spinning away across the asphalt, spilling its contents over the car park.
‘Bastards!’ he yelled at the sky.
Alexis began to cry.
‘Papa...’ Kirsty said. But Enzo wasn’t listening. His phone was issuing an alert. An incoming text. He grabbed it from his pocket and brought up the screen with fumbling fingers. As his eyes scanned the text he went very still, and Kirsty saw him suck in and bite his lower lip. ‘What is it, Papa?’
Without a word, he handed her the phone. The text had come, ostensibly, from Sophie. It was from her phone, at least.
Stop investigating the Raffin cold cases or you’ll never see me again.
Kirsty looked up with frightened eyes at her father. ‘What are you going to do?’
His voice was barely audible above the roar of traffic from the Route de Ganges. ‘I’m going to get these fucking people, that’s what I’m going to do.’ And he remembered all their attempts to stop him. At the château in Gaillac, in the mountains of the Auvergne, at Raffin’s apartment. He remembered their attempt to kill Kirsty in Strasbourg. And the note left on his windscreen, just the other day. Had that been yet another attempt to lure him to his death? But what could it possibly be about the apparently straightforward murder of a young woman twenty-two years ago that had driven them now to the desperate act of kidnapping his daughter?
‘What if they kill her?’
Enzo turned wild eyes in her direction. ‘They’re going to kill her anyway, Kirsty. If they haven’t already. I can only hope that somehow they believe keeping her alive gives them continued leverage.’
Kirsty looked at him helplessly, bouncing Alexis up and down to try to calm his crying. ‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No. If I wasn’t motivated before to solve the Lucie Martin murder, I damn well am now. Because only by finding her killer, or killers, am I going to find Sophie.’
‘But what if it’s not that murder they want to stop you looking at? What if it’s the murder of Marie Raffin?’
Enzo closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I can only think in a straight line, Kirsty. If it’s not Lucie, it’s Marie. One or other of them is going to lead me to Sophie’s kidnappers. Then there’ll be another murder. Only, I won’t be investigating it. I’ll be committing it.’
He took several long, slow breaths, trying to calm himself, before looking at his phone.
‘But first things first.’ He tapped a dial icon and lifted the phone to his ear. He heard it ring three times before it was answered. But whoever was on the other end was saying nothing. Enzo said, ‘If you want me to stop coming after you, I need to know that she’s still alive.’
Another long silence. He heard ambient sounds and a scraping noise, then what sounded like footsteps. A door opened, then a hand went over the phone to muffle voices. When it lifted away again, Sophie’s voice nearly broke his heart. ‘Papa?’
‘Baby, are you alright?’
‘Papa, they say they’ll kill me if you don’t stop chasing Roger’s cold cases.’
He heard her voice breaking. A stifled sob.
‘Don’t worry, baby, I’m going to get you out of this.’ Though he had no idea how.
‘Papa—’
He heard the phone being snatched from her before it went dead.
Kirsty watched as his phone hand fell away from his ear, and she thought she had never seen him look so old, or so defeated.
Chapter thirty-one
For the longest time Dominique just held him. She felt the pain in his silence, and in the tears she wiped from his cheeks. ‘We’ll find her,’ she told him. ‘We will.’ And he nodded, grateful that for almost the first time in his adult life he did not feel completely alone. Even so, he was overwhelmed. By pressure and emotion. By love for his daughter and hatred for those who had taken her.
The drive back to Cahors from Montpellier had taken nearly four hours, and both Enzo and Kirsty were exhausted by the time they got to the apartment. Emotionally, physically and mentally drained.
Now Enzo and Dominique lay fully dressed in each other’s arms on his bed in the dark. He realised that he had to remain focused, that he couldn’t allow his emotions to drive his thinking or his actions. If ever he needed to stay cool and clear and calm, this was the time. But anger and fear, in equal measure, kept bubbling into his consciousness, like carbonated water fizzing and spitting and drowning out cogent thought. The only thing saving him from himself was Dominique.
All of his instincts were telling him that somehow Régis Blanc was the key. Not the killer, at least not of Lucie Martin. And not behind the kidnapping of his daughter. But somehow at the centre of it all. He recalled vividly the picture of him that he had carried away from the prison in Lannemezan only yesterday. Lean and fit, and with a tension inside him so tightly wound that Enzo had felt him capable of unravelling in violence at any moment. And yet he had controlled himself with a steely composure, keeping close those secrets he had hinted that one day he might reveal to the world. But not yet. Not to Enzo. And Enzo knew that somehow he had to get inside the man’s head and find them for himself.
A soft knocking at the door interrupted his thoughts, and he heard Nicole’s voice from the other side of it. ‘Ready now, Monsieur Macleod.’