together when Peter was still a boy. All designed to expand his vocabulary, provide him with an unassailable grasp of the language, mould him into the Englishman Adam had always aspired to be.” She gazed thoughtfully off into the middle distance. “Jane’s tragedy was that she lost them both within a few weeks of each other. No sooner had she found her family than she lost it.” She looked up. “A little like you, I suppose, with Pascale.”
Enzo nodded. The thought had not escaped him.
The cat stretched and stood up, before stepping gingerly on to the desk top and looking cautiously at Enzo from a safe distance.
“And what did any of it matter? That search for an identity, a nationality. With both of them dead, the family line ended there.” She paused. “Just as mine will end with me, unless I have a child. I guess that’s the thing about being the daughter of adoptive parents. With no surviving blood relatives that I know of, I feel a certain responsibility. A certain reluctance to let my passing be the end of a whole thread of human history. But that is a decision I have yet to make.” She examined Enzo in the cold, harsh light of Adam Killian’s study. “Not a problem for you, of course. With two daughters that we know of, and God knows how many other progeny that we don’t.”
Air exploded from Enzo’s lips in exasperation. “That’s completely unfair, Charlotte. I’ve made mistakes in my life, sure. Who hasn’t? But I’m not the one who’s kept our relationship at arm’s length. And I’m certainly not going to walk away from the responsibility of our child.”
Charlotte ran the flat of her hand back over the cat’s head, following the curve of the spine to its tail. “Maybe. But I’ll tell you this. Whether or not I have the baby is a decision I will be making on my own.”
And Enzo felt a chilling sense of finality in this.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The landscape through which he had trudged in the dark looked very different in the sunshine of the following morning. Picture postcard clouds, like tufts of cotton wool, tumbled across a watercolour wash of pale blue, and the insipid yellow November sunshine brought the warmth of the south with it on the edge of a brisk wind.
The mechanic from Coconut’s said little as he navigated his Land Rover among clusters of cottages, winding through rolling countryside toward the flat, open clifftops of the southern elevation. Before leaving the garage he had listened to Enzo’s tale of tyre-slashing vandalism with an ill-concealed scepticism, passing thoughtful eyes back and forth over the Scotsman’s bruised and battered face. Whatever he believed, he merely muttered oaths and imprecations. Then he threw four spare wheels in the back of the Land Rover.
They would, he said, have to report this to the gendarmes, and Enzo’s insurance would be picking up the tab.
In the parking area at the Trou de l’enfer, the mechanic examined each of the tyres and shook his head in disbelief. “Never saw anything like it,” he said. “Not here, not on the island. It could only have been an incomer that did this, monsieur.”
“You’ve been here a long time, then?”
“All my life.”
“Always worked at Coconut’s?”
His laugh was sour. “No, monsieur. I used to have my own garage in Port Tudy. Service and repair. It was a good going business until that damned trial.” He opened his tool box and prepared to start jacking up the jeep.
Enzo frowned. “The Kerjean trial?”
“Damned defence lawyer destroyed my reputation, monsieur. And those customers that gave evidence, claiming my work was substandard? Lying bastards! All with axes to grind. But it’s hard to keep a business going in a place this size when folk spread those kind of stories about you. It was in all the newspapers, and on the telly.”
And Enzo realised that this was Michel Locqueneux, the mechanic who had serviced Kerjean’s car the day before the murder. “So what did you really think, then, of Kerjean’s story about his car breaking down?”
Locqueneux shifted his focus away from the wheel nuts he was loosening to cast a withering look in Enzo’s direction. “He was a damned liar! There was nothing wrong with that car. If he’d really had a problem, why didn’t he call me? Kerjean’s not the sort to let something like that go.”
“He claimed to have fixed it himself.”
“Hah! Kerjean couldn’t change a wheel on a toy motor, monsieur, and I doubt if he’s ever lifted the hood of a car in his life. Except maybe to top up the wash-wipe. He might be good with words, but he doesn’t know the first thing about cars.” He pulled off the front nearside wheel, and it rolled away a couple of meters before toppling over.
“You didn’t say anything about that in court.”
“No one asked me, monsieur. The procureur was an idiot, and the defence lawyer was too busy trying to make me look like one.”
Enzo watched, then, in thoughtful silence as Michel Locqueneux changed all four wheels, stewing in his own bitter memories. When, at last, he was finished, Enzo said, “Kerjean still lives in Locmaria, doesn’t he?”
“More’s the pity. There’s not a soul on this island who wouldn’t have liked to see the back of him eighteen years ago.”
“Except for a certain number of ladies, I gather.”
Locqueneux curled his lips in distaste. “God knows why. Must be some kind of animal attraction he has. Because that’s what he is, monsieur. An animal.”
Locmaria was built around a sandy bay on the southeast corner of the island, a jumble of fishermen’s cottages tumbling down the hill to the beach and a handful of houses that looked out over the water toward the harbour wall and a rocky promontory beyond.
Enzo parked opposite Le Bateau Ivre, which translated literally as the drunken boat, a pub whose darkened windows were filled with strange papier m a che pantomime characters. Captain Hook. Puss’n’Boots. He peered through the glazed panels of the door and saw a young man moving around inside behind the bar. He pushed at the door and it scraped and rattled as it juddered open. A bell rang.
“Sorry, monsieur. We’re closed.” The young man was sweeping out.
“I’m looking for Thibaud Kerjean’s house.”
The man paused mid sweep and peered at Enzo. If he recognised him, he made no sign of it. “And what would you be wanting with a man like that?”
“A little chat.”
“Pfff.” The young man exhaled through lips pressed against his front teeth. “You’re more likely to get a mouthful.”
“I take it this is his local watering hole?”
“It would be, monsieur. Except that he’s barred. He does his drinking in Le Bourg.”
“So where will I find his house?”
“Take the road around the east side of the bay, monsieur. There’s a row of cottages facing the water. Kerjean’s is the stone-faced house with the well in the front garden.”
Numerous small sailing vessels and fishing boats were moored out in the still waters of the bay, whitewashed cottages on the rise above the rocks along the west side, the sea beyond glinting like cut crystal in the low-angled sunlight. Enzo walked past several cottages facing west across the bay, stopping finally at the dry stone wall that bounded the garden of a neat, stone-faced cottage with a cobbled courtyard and a circular stone well sunk in its centre. A battered green Citroen Jumper van sat out in the courtyard. White shutters were opened on the windows and two sets of portes-fenetres. The three dormers in the roof were all shuttered over.
Enzo walked to the front door where a black anchor hung on the wall. He breathed deeply, summoning resolve and determination, and pulled the rope on an old ship’s bell bolted to the stonework. The peal of it rang sharply out across the bay, startling a line of seagulls on the quayside. There was no sound, or sign of life from within. He rang the bell again. More vigourously this time. It was more than possible that Kerjean was still sleeping
