ocean. Enzo silently rehearsed his change of subject, before he turned his eyes toward her and said, “I wanted to ask you, Elisabeth… about your home visits to Thibaud Kerjean in the late summer of 1990, after he broke his leg.”
She didn’t move, and there was not the slightest change of expression on her face. But it drained of colour, and a glaze like cataracts crossed her eyes. It felt like a very long time before she spoke. “You know, then.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice seemed very tiny, lost in the blink of an eye on the edge of the offshore breeze that caressed their faces. Enzo said nothing, almost holding his breath. His question had been innocent enough, but Elisabeth had read more into it than he could ever have anticipated. “I’ve been dreading this for twenty years. Did Thibaud tell you?” She turned searching eyes on him, something like fear in them now. And consternation. She shook her head. “Why would he do that now, after all these years? He was prepared to go to prison back then to protect me.”
Enzo’s mind was racing. But his voice was calm, and gave no indication of the turmoil behind it. “What on earth did you see in him, Elisabeth?”
Now she looked away, her expression pained, her eyes lighting on the house where she had grown up, wishing perhaps she could be transported back there, to the innocence of childhood. “Alain and I were going through a difficult time. I’d just given birth to Primel, and after the initial joy of it, I sank into the most terrible post-natal depression. I was almost suicidal, Enzo. The baby was keeping us awake most nights. Endless, endless crying. My nerves were shot to pieces. And so was our relationship. Alain coped with it all much better than I did, but even so, things had never been worse between us.
“My mother was looking after Primel during the day, and I was still working part-time at the clinic. Alain thought it would be good for me to be out of the house, getting a break from the baby.” She drew a deep, tremulous breath. “Which is when I got to know Thibaud. After he broke his leg and Doctor Gassman assigned me to his physical re-education.”
She turned a look toward Enzo that pleaded for understanding.
“I can’t even begin to explain to you what the attraction was. I hardly know myself. People knew he was a womaniser. He had a terrible reputation. The first time I went to his house I was really quite nervous.” She breathed in deeply, eyes closed, reliving some distant memory. “But there was something about him. I… I never saw the side of him that other people talked about. I never saw the temper that woman described in court. He was gentle and sensitive. And unexpectedly intelligent. And…” She searched for the words. “He gave me something I needed then, Enzo. Something I wasn’t getting from Alain. I can’t even tell you what that was. Understanding, reassurance maybe.”
She was ringing her hands in nervous distress, watching herself doing it, unable to bring herself to look at him again.
“It didn’t last long. But it was very intense. Very passionate.”
“And the night of the murder?”
“He was with me. My mother was looking after the baby here at Port Lay, and I telephoned Alain to say I would stay over, too. As far as he ever knew, that’s where I was. But I was with Thibaud. A holiday cottage that he looked after for some Parisians. It’s where we always met. Right out on the point, near Kervedan. No neighbours.” She sighed deeply, shaking her head. “Then over the next few days, when suspicion began to fall on Thibaud for the Killian murder, I was in a panic. You have no idea. I was his only alibi.”
Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I knew that to speak up would mean the end of my marriage. I was prepared to do it, Enzo, I really was. But Thibaud wouldn’t let me. Point-blank refused. And in the end he was cleared, thank God. It restores a little of your faith in our system of justice.”
“And if he’d been convicted?”
She turned to face him now, brushing the tears from her face. “I wouldn’t have let him go to prison, Enzo. Even although he was prepared to do that. I couldn’t have lived with myself. I would have had to come forward then.”
Enzo thought about everything he had read and heard about Thibaud Kerjean. He was a drunk, a brawler, a womaniser who beat up his women. He had the temper of a madman. Not one person had a good word to say about him. It was hard to reconcile that with the picture Elisabeth painted. A man of honour and integrity, who had been prepared to sacrifice his own freedom to protect her reputation and her marriage. And yet, hadn’t Enzo himself experienced that other side of him, too? The human face behind the gorilla mask. Kerjean had attacked and assaulted him. But he had also saved his life. He was no more a murderer than Enzo or Elisabeth. Just a deeply flawed, deeply troubled man.
Almost as if reading his thoughts, Elisabeth said, “I see him sometimes in the street now, and it is shocking to see how drink has reduced him. He’s the merest shadow of the man he was. He doesn’t acknowledge me. Won’t even meet my eye. I think, in a way, he knows what he has become and is ashamed of it.”
“And now?” Enzo said. “How are things between you and Alain?”
She turned sad eyes on him, filled with regret. “They couldn’t be better, Enzo. I love him. I always have. What happened between Thibaud and me was… it was an aberration. I lost my way for a time, but I found my way back in the end. I never really wanted to be with anyone but Alain.” The regret in her eyes dissolved into apprehension. “Are you going to tell him?”
Enzo shook his head. “No. Your secret is in safe hands, Elisabeth. You have my word on that. I never really believed that Kerjean had done it.” He turned a thoughtful gaze out across the water. “But there have been developments now. And I’m looking in another direction altogether.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Elisabeth dropped him off at Port Melite to pick up his Jeep. She had said little on the drive back from Port Lay, and Enzo guessed that she was now dreading the lunch with Alain at the Cafe de la Jetee. How could either of them behave naturally with her husband after the revelations that had passed between them? Enzo almost suggested calling it off, but it might have seemed unnatural to cancel.
“I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes, then,” she said, and he stood and watched as she accelerated her SUV up the hill, back toward Le Bourg. He was about to get into his Suzuki when he heard Jane calling him from the house. He turned to see her coming down the path to the gate.
“You just missed Adjudant Gueguen,” she said. And she waved a large, manila envelope at him. “He left this for you and asked you to call him.”
Enzo went to meet her at the gate and took the envelope.
“You seem very close with the doctor’s wife these days.” She watched him carefully.
“She’s a nice lady,” Enzo said. “And very happily married.”
Jane nodded, and he saw what looked like regret in her eyes. “When you get back from Paris, I’ll probably be gone. But keep your key. Feel free to use the place.” She paused. “Any further developments?”
Enzo hesitated for a long moment before he said, “I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. It wasn’t Thibaud Kerjean.”
Jane searched his face with inquisitive eyes. “And do you have someone else in mind?”
He nodded slowly. “Actually, I do. But I’m not quite sure yet just why.”
He didn’t open the envelope until he was sitting behind the wheel of his jeep. He waited until Jane had gone back into the house, watching for the door to shut, before he tore it open. Inside was a stapled document about nine pages long. He turned it over to look at the front page. It was a copy of the autopsy report on Adam Killian. There was a handwritten note paperclipped to it.
Here’s the autopsy report you asked for. Please don’t show it to anyone else. I hope to have a shell casing to give you by tomorrow.
RG
