Enzo found Dominique in the crowd and the two stood locked in embrace, the rest of the world eddying around them, before reluctantly they let go to kiss with a short, desperate intensity. They hurried to grab a recently vacated table outside the café at the north end of the concourse. A harassed waiter swept away the crumbs and lifted empty, stained coffee cups before taking their order. It was cold, and their breath condensed in clouds, rising with the noise into the cavernous glass-roofed station.
Dominique had abandoned the car at Orléans and taken the train the rest of the way. Quicker, she had told Enzo on the phone, than driving into Paris in the rush hour. She listened in silence now, sipping her coffee, as Enzo told her about his visit to Mathilde de Vernal, and the confirmation that Pierre Lambert’s great friend and confidant was, indeed, Sally Linol. The prostitute from Bordeaux with the feather tattoo on her neck.
‘And she never resurfaced?’ Dominique said.
Enzo shook his head grimly. ‘Never.’
‘So what does it mean?’
‘I wish I knew.’ It was the question that had been exercising his mind ever since dropping old Jean-Marie Martinot back at his apartment with the promise of keeping him up to date with any developments. He glanced at Dominique and saw the concern on her face. ‘How did you get on with Anne-Laure Blanc?’
And she told him. All about Alice, and the clinic, and the secret funding of her treatment. Enzo’s consternation grew as she spoke.
‘But who would pay that kind of upkeep for the daughter of a serial killer?’
Dominique glanced at her watch. ‘Hopefully we’ll find that out in an hour or so.’
Enzo frowned. ‘How?’
She smiled. A rare moment of sunshine on a dark afternoon, Enzo thought.
‘An old colleague of mine,’ she said. ‘An ex-gendarme who turned out to be a genius with figures. We always knew he had a special talent. He could make the most extraordinary calculations before you even had time to take in the figures. We used to try and catch him out, throwing him impossible sums, like a curveball at an unsuspecting kid. Additions and subtractions and multiplications that we didn’t even know the answers to. But he never failed. Every one of them rattled off his tongue. And it would take us the next ten minutes to work it out on paper to see if he was right. And he always was.’
‘Ex-gendarme?’
She nodded. ‘He got headhunted by Tracfin.’
Enzo pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No idea what that is.’
‘It’s a government organisation set up five years ago to track and prevent money laundering, and to cut off the flow of finance to terrorists. They have absolute power to access financial records and bank accounts.’
Enzo sat back and raised an eyebrow. ‘And you asked your friend to find out who’s been paying for Alice Blanc’s care?’
Dominique’s smile was faintly smug. ‘He owed me a favour.’
‘That’s some favour.’
She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, smile fading. ‘I don’t know why, Enzo. I just get the feeling that it could be the key to everything.’
Enzo noticed the car idling in the street outside Raffin’s apartment. A large, black government car with a uniformed chauffeur behind the wheel. Any other car that stopped here, just two hundred metres from the Senat building at the top of the Rue de Tournon, would have been moved on by traffic cops within minutes. But it looked as if it might have been there for some time, belching fumes into the rain and the gathering gloom, a rectangle of dry tarmac beneath it.
It wasn’t until Enzo and Dominique reached the first-floor landing of Raffin’s apartment block that he realised just whose vehicle it was.
Raffin was emerging from the apartment, pulling on his coat, accompanied by a tall, good-looking man who might have been in his early forties. The man wore a long black coat and a crisp white shirt with a red tie, and he had the unmistakable dyed and manicured coiffure of a typical homme politique. Enzo realised that he knew him, but couldn’t immediately place him.
Raffin was startled to see Enzo. ‘Oh.’ His voice echoed down the narrow stairwell. ‘Are you here to see Kirsty?’
‘I’m here to see you,’ Enzo said. ‘There have been developments.’
Raffin looked uncomfortable. He glanced at his companion. ‘Jean-Jacques, this is Enzo Macleod, and...’ His eyes flickered towards Dominique.
‘Dominique Chazal.’ Enzo filled in the blank for him.
Raffin nodded and turned to introduce the other man. ‘Jean-Jacques Devez.’
And Enzo realised now that they were in the presence of the Mayor of Paris. He had seen photographs of him many times in the press, and in television debates and news items. The would-be future president. But he had not recognised him out of context. And yet there was something about him that seemed more familiar than a face seen on television. Something oddly, indefinably personal. In the smile. Or the impenetrable darkness of his eyes. The two men shook hands, and Devez nodded a dismissive acknowledgement towards Dominique. He was more interested in Enzo, and cast appraising eyes over him, his smile faintly sardonic. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The great Enzo Macleod. One hears so much about you these days. You’re quite the celebrity.’
Enzo inclined his head a little. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’
Devez widened his smile. ‘None of us ever do. A man like you would be a welcome addition to any government department dealing with crime. In an advisory capacity, of course. If I ever get elected, we must talk.’ He turned to Raffin. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’ And glanced at his watch. ‘Don’t be long. We’re a little pushed.’
‘I’ll be right down,’ Raffin said. And as the scrape of Devez’s leather soles on the steps receded down the stairwell Raffin lowered his voice and turned to Enzo. ‘What is it? I’ve got a really important meeting.’
Not even an enquiry about Sophie. Enzo bit back his annoyance. ‘One of the Bordeaux Six, the girl with the feather tattoo on her neck... She was the best friend of Pierre Lambert.’
Which finally got Raffin’s full attention. He stared at Enzo. ‘You’re kidding?’
Enzo shook his head. ‘There’s a link, Roger. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s important. And someone’s been paying a fortune to keep Régis Blanc’s daughter in a specialised care clinic for the last twenty-three years.’
Raffin frowned. ‘Who?’
‘We don’t know yet. But we hope to very soon.’
‘Well, what’s the connection?’
‘I don’t know that, either.’
Raffin glanced at his watch. ‘Look, we’ll talk about this when I get back in a couple of hours. I’ve really got to go.’ He hesitated a moment, as if replaying what Enzo had just told him. Then repeated himself. ‘Got to go.’ And he hurried off down the stairs.
Dominique looked at Enzo. ‘Any word on Sophie?’ She mimicked Raffin’s voice. The question he had failed to ask. Then she shook her head. ‘So that was the great Roger Raffin. What a charmer.’
It was the first thing Kirsty asked when she let them in, anxious eyes searching her father’s face. And when he shook his head, his disappointment was reflected in hers. She hugged him before turning with moist eyes to kiss Dominique on each cheek.
‘Come through,’ she said. ‘Can I make you coffee? Or maybe you need something stronger?’
‘Coffee would be good,’ Enzo said.
Alexis was crawling around the floor amid a colourful clutter of plastic toys contained within a baby frame designed to limit the extent of his wanderings. He didn’t appear to hear them come in, but as soon as he saw Enzo his face lit up, and Enzo stooped to lift him high into his arms and rub the child’s nose with his. A chortle of delight burst from the baby’s lips, and he grabbed his grandfather’s ears and held on tight.