Kerjean turned and walked briskly past the gendarme and out into the dark. Gueguen closed the door behind him and approached the bar.
“He never paid for that pint,” the barman said.
Gueguen dug into his pocket and pulled out a five-euro bill, dropping it on the counter.
Enzo said, “Can I get you a drink?”
The gendarme shook his head. “No, thank you. And I would suggest, monsieur, that you drink up and go home yourself.”
Enzo wasn’t about to argue. “Perhaps you’re right.” He drained his glass and settled up with the barman. “ Bonsoir.” He nodded at all the faces turned toward him and headed out into the night. At the foot of the steps he saw Kerjean disappearing in the direction of the harbourside bars, whose lights still reflected on the dark waters of the bay. He heard the door closing behind him and turned to see Gueguen following him out. He waited until the gendarme got down to the sidewalk. “It wouldn’t have hurt. One drink. Would it?”
“Monsieur, if I had accepted a drink from you, it would have been all over the island before morning.”
“So what were you doing in the bar, then? Out solo drinking or here to meet friends?”
“A gendarme has no friends. I was keeping an eye on you.”
“Oh?” Enzo raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Following me, were you?”
“I saw your rental Jeep up the road. A good thing I stopped by. Kerjean would have murdered you.”
“Like he murdered Killian?”
“I was speaking figuratively.”
Enzo grinned. “I know. And you’re right. He would have. But I have my own personal guardian angel.” He craned to peer over Gueguen’s shoulder. “How the hell do you get your wings tucked in there?”
“I had them clipped. I don’t work for the big man any more, you see. The pay was better downstairs.”
“I didn’t think gendarmes earned that much.”
“They don’t. The reward is that you get to be part of one of the most feared and hated institutions in France.” He laughed ruefully. “That’s why we have no friends, monsieur. Only colleagues.”
Enzo smiled. There was something likeable about this man. A fine, dry humour, and a sense of resolve and fair play that made you feel he was someone you could depend on in a crisis. “The other day, you said to me you would help me in any way you could. Unofficially.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I’d like to know a bit more about Thibaud Kerjean, adjudant. The circumstances surrounding his arrest, exactly why investigating officers at the time thought he was their man. You were here. Uniquely placed to see it all first-hand. I’d appreciate your insights.”
For the first time Gueguen seemed uneasy. He glanced up the road and then down toward the harbour. “Not here. I don’t really want to be seen talking to you, Monsieur Macleod. You can bet there are eyes on us right now.”
“Where, then?”
“I’ll meet you tomorrow. Two o’clock, at the Fort de Grognon. Do you know where that is?”
“I saw it signposted this afternoon when I was driving out to Pen Men.”
“You’ll find it on any of the tourist maps. We’re not likely to be disturbed there. And it’s a place with an important bearing on the telling of the story.” His breath billowed around his head like smoke in the light of the streetlamps. He flexed frozen cheeks to bare his teeth in a grin. “It’s an interesting tale.”
Lights fell out from the house across the dirt track leading along the coast to Les Grands Sables, and the gate squeaked on its hinges as Enzo pushed it open. He felt obliged to call in to say goodnight before heading across the lawn to the cold of the annex.
As he closed the gate again, he turned and looked out across the strait toward the mainland. An almost full moon hung low in a clear, black sky, reflecting in coruscating shards across the silvered surface of the ocean. The coastline between Lorient and Vannes was delineated by a line of lights like tiny glowing beads on a taut thread stretched along the horizon.
“Admiring the view?”
He turned, surprised, to see Jane Killian standing in the open doorway, light tumbling out around her and into the garden. He hadn’t heard her open the door.
“It’s a stunning night.”
“In the summer, on a night like this, you can light a fire on the beach and sit out with a bottle of wine, talking into the small hours. You can even go in bathing if you feel like it. We get the full benefit of the gulf stream here. The water’s always warm.”
“Not right now, I’ll bet.”
She laughed. “No.” Then her smile faded. “I was expecting you back earlier. I prepared a meal. But I guess you’ve probably eaten by now.”
“Oh.” Enzo felt suddenly guilty. And at the same time annoyed. He didn’t want to feel obliged to spend his evenings with her. He wasn’t a house guest, after all. But perhaps he should have called to say he was eating in town. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.”
“It’s okay. It was a casserole. It’ll keep till tomorrow.”
Which trapped him into eating with her then. Enzo succumbed to a sudden sense of claustrophobia. For all that the Ile de Groix was a flat stretch of rock set in an open sea, he felt cornered by its insularity, by his ability to escape it only when the ferry timetable allowed, and by the social obligations to his hostess that it seemed were impossible to avoid.
“Come in and have a drink,” she said. And he didn’t see how he could politely refuse.
They went into the house, and she poured him a large whisky, and refilled a glass sitting on a small table beside her chair. Enzo wondered how many times she’d filled it already this evening. It was clear that she had been drinking. She was not drunk, or even mellow in the way that a few whiskies can sometimes affect you, but she held herself stiffly, with a kind of brittle self-control. She sat down, her legs folded up beneath her on the chair, and turned a penetrating gaze in Enzo’s direction. “You’d think,” she said, “that after twenty years you’d get used to being lonely.”
Enzo sipped on his whisky and looked reflectively into the dying embers of the fire. “I don’t think you ever get used to it. You get to tolerate it after a while. It becomes a way of life.”
“You’ve had other lovers, though?”
“Oh, yes. There have been a few. Nothing that ever stuck. In a strange way, being with other women just served to remind me of what I was missing, without ever satisfying the need.” He glanced toward her, suddenly self-conscious, and wondered why he was telling her this. The whisky, perhaps. Or maybe it was simply that sharing your loneliness in some way helped to reduce it. At least for a while.
“Yes,” she said. “Your needs never go away. Just the means of fulfilling them. Funny, isn’t it, how you fill your life with other things? Work becomes a passion. Hobbies become addictions. But at the end of the day, it’s still just you. And an empty glass.”
“And an obsession with keeping a promise to a dead man?”
She turned her eyes down toward her glass, as if she might find a suitable response somewhere in its gentle amber. But “yes” was all she said. She raised it to her lips and took a small sip. “So what did you find out today?”
“Not much. Your father-in-law’s doctor is still alive. But only just, and lost in a world beyond our reach. I did see his medical records, though, but all they did was confirm what we already knew. That he was terminally ill and not long for this world.”
“Not much return for a day’s work, then.”
Enzo was stung. “Nothing comes fast in this job, Jane. The whole point of forensic science is the examination of everything in minute detail. Conclusions are only arrived at after careful analysis of all the evidence.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as a criticism. You’d think I would have learned patience after all these years. The truth is, the more time passes the more impatient I become. It’s a kind of desperation, I guess, a loss of self- control. And in the end, I suppose what it really means is that I’ve lost hope.” And then, as if she had somehow accessed and replayed his thoughts of the previous evening, she added, “So relax, Enzo, you’re not my last hope. That’s long gone.” She smiled, but it was an unconvincing smile.
