Why had Anne-Laure not told them about the child’s illness? It had loomed so large in their lives at the time. Only two years to live, Lulu had said. And yet Anne-Laure had spoken of Alice as if she were still alive. Now, it seemed to Enzo, the woman had been evasive when Dominique asked her about her daughter. Alice is lucky. She got away from all this. She was no longer in Bordeaux, she had told them. And then, enigmatically, She’s never set eyes on her father in all the years since they sent him to prison. And never will.
‘Found it.’ He turned at the sound of Dominique’s voice. She had been huddled over his laptop on the dresser opposite the bed for the last ten minutes.
Enzo crossed the room to stand at Dominique’s shoulder and look at the screen. She had found the American website of NORD, the National Organisation for Rare Disorders. Pompe Disease was emblazoned at the top of the page.
Dominique read aloud from the text: ‘Pompe disease is a rare genetic disorder characterised by the absence of the lysosomal enzyme, GAA. This enzyme is required to break down glycogen and convert it into the simple sugar, glucose. Failure to properly break down this thick and sticky substance results in a massive accumulation of it in cardiac and skeletal muscle cells. The infantile form is characterised by severe muscle weakness and diminished muscle tone, and usually manifests within the first few months of life. Additional abnormalities may include enlargement of the heart, the liver and the tongue. Without treatment, progressive cardiac failure can cause life-threatening complications between the ages of a year to a year and a half.’
Enzo straightened up. ‘That sounds horrible. No wonder her parents were devastated.’
Dominique scrolled down the page. She stopped and whistled softly. Then read, ‘Treatment requires the coordinated efforts of a team of experts specialising in neuromuscular disorders. Paediatricians, neurologists, orthopedists, cardiologists, dieticians...’ She sat back. ‘God, a whole army of specialists.’ She squinted again at the screen in the dark. ‘And more recently they seem to have developed some kind of enzyme-replacement therapy that has to be done every two weeks.’ She swivelled in her seat to look up at Enzo. ‘Régis could never have paid for treatment like that, Enzo. And Anne-Laure?’ She paused. ‘How can that child still be alive?’
Enzo lay awake, turning it over in his head again and again. It felt important, but he wasn’t sure why. He and Dominique had decided to go back to ask Anne-Laure about the child first thing in the morning, which for Enzo only meant more hours of passive waiting, treading water, while Sophie was being held somewhere under threat of her life. If she was still alive. But that was a thought he could not bring himself to contemplate.
He was aware of Dominique curled into his side, her skin on his, her arm thrown carelessly across his chest, holding him like a child clinging to her father. And he felt the comfort of her warmth and her touch. He tried to visualise how it would be for him right now if he were on his own, but it was simply unimaginable. Somehow he would have had to cope, but could not see how. In almost no time at all he had picked up where he had left off with Dominique nearly a year before. And very quickly she had become his rock, his anchor. He trusted and needed her, and could no longer picture his life without her in it. If he believed in God, he might even have thought that He had sent her to him in his hour of greatest need.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply, despairing of ever again finding the escape of sleep.
And then the ringing of his mobile phone startled him awake.
Both he and Dominique sat upright, hearts pounding, as Enzo fumbled to answer it. He saw that it wasn’t even midnight. And a glance at the screen told him it was Nicole calling. ‘What’s happened?’ He breathed fear into the phone.
‘Nothing bad, Monsieur Macleod. But go and wake up your laptop. I want to talk to you on FaceTime.’
Enzo and Dominique pulled on dressing gowns and drew up chairs in front of the computer. Enzo tapped the trackpad then entered his password. Almost immediately his FaceTime video-conferencing software began ringing. He clicked on the bouncing icon and Nicole appeared, full screen, a miniature screen in the bottom corner displaying the pale, bleary faces of Enzo and Dominique, illuminated only by the light of the computer. Nicole looked flushed with excitement, her hair all about her head in a tangle.
She said, ‘I’ve been going through those files, Monsieur Macleod.’
‘Which files?’
‘The Bordeaux Six. And I’ve found something.’
Enzo almost held his breath. ‘What?’
‘It goes back to the murder of Pierre Lambert in Paris.’
Enzo frowned, and Dominique said, ‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘It was the third case in Raffin’s book,’ Enzo told her, though he couldn’t for the life of him see the relevance. ‘Lambert was a rent boy in Paris, a homosexual prostitute found murdered in his apartment. I tracked down the killer, a professional hitman. But not who paid him. Why anyone would have hired a professional to kill someone like Lambert was always a mystery. And I’ve never got to the bottom of it. He was salting away a lot of money in offshore accounts, and the suspicion was that he’d been blackmailing someone. But who...?’ He shrugged.
‘Yes, yes,’ Nicole said impatiently. ‘You can fill her in on all that later. The thing is, I’ve found a link between Lambert and one of the Bordeaux Six.’
Enzo felt his face stinging. ‘What sort of link?’
‘It was there in the book, but we never paid much attention to it at the time. You remember, you gave me Monsieur Raffin’s notes to look over, and there was a little more detail in there. So it sticks in my mind.’
‘Nicole...’ Enzo prompted her, frustration creeping into his voice.
‘I’m coming to it, I’m coming to it.’ She breathed deeply and then it all poured out of her. ‘The police interviewed all of Lambert’s friends and known associates at the time. But there was a girl. Someone everyone said was his best friend. She’d just gone missing. Simply vanished. A prostitute. Lambert’s fag hag. She spent more time at his apartment than her own. Like they were lovers. They even slept in the same bed together.’ She paused. ‘And they never did track her down.’
‘And?’ Enzo was still struggling to see the connection.
‘Her name was Sally, and she had the tattoo of a feather on her neck.’
And all the hairs stood up on the back of Enzo’s.
When Dominique woke, it was to see Enzo standing fully dressed at the window, staring gloomily out across the street as the first light of dawn painted the city grey. His hands were pushed deep into his pockets, and she could tell by the slump of his shoulders that he was hurting. She felt a surge of both pity and love, and slipped silently from the bed to cross the room and put her arms around him from behind.
He folded his arms around hers, still gazing from the window, and she said, ‘Did you sleep at all?’
‘Maybe. If I did, I wasn’t aware of it. But you know how that can be.’
She nodded. ‘What’s the plan?’ For she knew there would be one. He wouldn’t have spent all these hours awake without planning some kind of schedule for the day ahead.
He untangled himself from her and sat down in front of the laptop. The first image on screen when he woke it from the sleep he had been unable to find himself, was the face of the girl with the feather tattoo. Nicole had scanned it and sent a jpeg by email. He paused for a moment, staring at it, as perplexed now as he had been when Nicole first told them about the link. It seemed inconceivable to him that it could simply be coincidence. But he had no other way of explaining it. Or even beginning to understand it.