Kirsty had just brought a cafetière of freshly made coffee through from the kitchen on a tray with cups and sugar cubes when the phone rang. ‘I’ll take that in the study,’ she said, and left them to pour their own.
The gloom from the courtyard outside seemed to permeate the whole apartment, the dying of the light at the end of the day casting the corners of the séjour into darkness. Enzo found a switch for one of the uplighters and it threw light across the table as Dominique poured their coffee. The pianist upstairs was back to practising scales. Chromatic. Endlessly repeating semitone steps up and down. Stiff fingers still hesitant, even after all these years. And Enzo wondered what the point of it was. He felt depression settle on him like dust.
Somewhere Sophie was being held hostage to his investigation. Wherever she was the light would be dying, too. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it was she must be feeling. Only to unlock the horrors of his own imagination. He quickly opened his eyes again, and wanted to cry out. To throw his fists wildly about him, to hit anything and everything in his way. In his head he heard his scream, but the room remained silent. Invaded only by the distant sound of the piano.
He turned to find Dominique looking at him. She didn’t ask. She didn’t have to.
The door from the study opened and Kirsty emerged, as if in slow motion. Her eyes were lost in a focus somewhere far beyond the room they were in. Enzo saw how pale she was. All the blood had drained from her face, and she looked almost ghostlike in the gloom. ‘What is it?’ he said.
It took some moments for his words to cross the distance to that place her thoughts had taken her. Her delayed reaction to his words was startled, and she responded as if he had just spoken. ‘What?’ She seemed confused.
‘Who was on the phone?’
‘Doctor Demoulin. From Biarritz.’
Enzo stood up, immediately. Something was wrong. ‘What did he say?’
Again his words appeared to travel a long way before they reached her. She looked at him. ‘Alexis has a congenital condition. There’s no treatment. Nothing that can be done.’ She glanced at her son in his playpen. But he was oblivious, focused on trying to fit plastic shapes into the correct holes in a yellow board, before giving up in frustration to throw them on to the floor. Hand — eye — brain coordination not yet developed enough to fulfil the desire. ‘He’ll have to wear hearing aids all his life.’
Enzo said. ‘The technology’s amazing these days, Kirst. You won’t even see them.’
Her eyes flickered back to her father. ‘That’s what Doctor Demoulin said.’
‘See?’ Enzo tried to force a smile. ‘I told you he was a good guy.’
She suddenly took two steps towards him, bursting into tears and throwing her arms around him, just as she might have done as a child. She buried her face in his chest and he cradled her head in his hand and remembered all the times he had held her like this. Before a loveless marriage and a new-found love had torn them apart. The greatest regret of his life. She drew her head back and looked up at him, eyes filled with tears and a strange intensity. ‘I love you, Dad,’ she said.
No longer Papa, he was Dad again. And he felt tears running down his own cheeks, strangely hot in the cold of the apartment.
‘I love you, too, pet,’ he said, and held her all the tighter.
‘He said he would put it all in a letter.’ Her voice came muffled from his chest. ‘A detailed explanation, along with a prescription for the hearing aids.’ She drew away from him now. Wiping the tears from her cheeks with the flat of her hands. ‘I’ve got to get out. Take Alexis with me and get some air. Time to think.’
‘It’s raining, Kirst.’
‘Doesn’t matter. He’ll be fine in his pram.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No,’ she said, almost too quickly. ‘I need time to myself. Besides, you have other things to think about.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But you could get my coat from the wardrobe in the bedroom while I get Alexis ready. The fawn one with the belt.’ And she went to lift her son from his playpen.
Enzo exchanged a glance with Dominique and saw the sympathy in her eyes. He wiped away his own tears, embarrassed, and went into the bedroom through glass-panelled double doors that led straight off the séjour.
The wardrobe was a big, antique garde-robe in polished walnut. A family heirloom, perhaps, from Raffin’s family or Marie’s. He opened both doors and searched among all the coats and jackets hanging there for Kirsty’s fawn raincoat with the belt at the waist. People have their own distinctive scent, whether from the traces of perfume, or soap or aftershave, or from the oils secreted through the skin, earthy, musky, unmistakable. He could smell his daughter among these clothes, a scent as familiar to him as fresh air on a Scottish winter’s day. And he could smell Raffin, too. Some aftershave or hair oil that he must always have been in the habit of using. Just behind Kirsty’s coat he saw a pale green linen jacket with the breast pocket torn away, threads still hanging from it where the material had been violently ripped. The remnants of some crest or emblem embroidered into it were still visible along the inside edge.
Enzo stopped dead, and for a moment thought his heart might have stopped, too. In his head he tumbled back through time to an open gallery running around the roof of the château at Gaillac, where a shadowy figure had lured him in the dark and tried to drive a knife into his heart. Someone who had cut himself in the attempt, and fled in panic at the arrival of Bertrand, leaving Enzo dazed on the floor, and clutching the bloodstained, torn pocket of a pale green linen jacket with a maker’s emblem embroidered on it.
His breath was coming to him with difficulty now. It was Raffin! Raffin who had lured him up a stone staircase on that dark night and tried to kill him. And here was the jacket he had worn. Freshly laundered to get rid of the blood, but still missing its breast pocket.
Enzo’s world was collapsing about him like a house of cards. If it was Raffin, then Raffin must have killed Marie. And somehow it was Raffin who was implicated in the murder of Pierre Lambert. Raffin who had kidnapped one of his daughters and was intent on marrying the other. Raffin, the father of Enzo’s grandchild!
He had accepted Enzo’s offer to use new science to resolve the cold cases he had assembled in his book. Because how could he refuse? But he could never have imagined just how successful Enzo would be. And it must have become apparent to him at a very early stage that sooner or later Enzo was going reveal Raffin himself to be the killer of his wife.
The implications were igniting in Enzo’s mind like firecrackers on Guy Fawkes night, though there was still too much missing for him to make all the connections and see the whole display. He felt weak, and sick, and angry, but he knew that somehow he had to stay in control.
‘Dad?’ Kirsty’s voice crashed into his thoughts from the other room.
‘Coming.’ He grabbed her coat, his mind still a mess of confusion, and hurried through to the séjour.
Alexis was wrapped up warm in her arms, his pram sitting out in the hall, ready to go. She passed him to her father while she pulled on her coat. And, as Enzo handed her the baby back, she looked at him quizzically. ‘What’s wrong?’
He had no idea how to be natural in this situation, and just shook his head. A forced smile, he was sure, appearing more like a grimace on his face. ‘Nothing. Don’t get cold out there.’