had thrown at it over nearly two centuries. It seemed to stand braced, once more, for the winter to come. Weary but resolute. It was nothing new.
Enzo abandoned his jeep and walked around to the front of the house, clutching the manila envelope that Gueguen had left for him at Port Melite. To his disappointment, he saw that the old doctor’s Range Rover was not parked in the lean-to. Either he had not yet returned from town, or he had come and gone again. Enzo decided to wait.
He tried the door, and found that, as before, it was not locked. Gassman’s old labrador was stretched out in front of the dying embers of the fire, and raised a lazy head to cast a glance in Enzo’s direction as he came in. A few sniffs in the air was enough to satisfy him that Enzo was someone he knew, a scent matched as accurately as a fingerprint to the catalogue of smells filed away in some compartment of his memory dedicated to that purpose.
Enzo crossed the room and crouched down in front of the fire to ruffle the dog’s head and ears, further reassurance if any were needed. But Oscar had already closed his eyes again, and issued only the merest whimper of acknowledgement. Enzo stood and looked around the room, checking his watch impatiently.
The place smelled of old age. Of stale cooking and body odour. And the ever-present perfume of dog hair. Enzo perched for some minutes on the edge of the armchair nearest the fire, watching as glowing logs slowly crumbled to ash. But he couldn’t contain his impatience for long. Or his curiosity, and he stood and began to wander around the room, touching things. Ornaments, books, a discarded pair of reading glasses, a framed photograph of an attractive young woman. Black and white, dated to early or mid-twentieth century by hairstyle and make-up. It was strange, he thought, how photographs from an era when the world was at war and millions had died seemed somehow innocent. It was, he imagined, Doctor Gassman’s dead wife, taken when she was still barely more than a girl.
The kitchen door stood ajar. The door next to it was closed. Enzo paused, listening, certain he would hear the Range Rover from a distance if it approached. He opened the door next to the kitchen and found himself in a tiny room cluttered with filing cabinets and bookcases, an antique writing bureau, and a small work table strewn with books and magazines. Gassman’s study. On the wall hung another framed picture of the woman out in the living room. A little older, but still attractive, with bright, smiling eyes, blond hair catching the light that slanted at an angle across her face.
Enzo wandered around the cramped little bureau, running eyes over everything, and felt uncomfortable, prying as he was into another man’s private world. The top of the writing bureau was rolled back, revealing shelves and dockets stuffed with papers and stationery, paperclips and pens. And Enzo found his eye drawn to an open compartment on the upper left side of the desk where a stack of what at first sight appeared to be thin maroon notebooks was held together by a thick elastic band. But they weren’t notebooks. He saw the gold crest of the Republique francaise, and the word Passeport embossed beneath it.
Why would Gassman have so many passports? He reached for the pile and removed the elastic band. And as he riffled through them, realised that Gassman had kept all his old passports dating right back to the nineteen- fifties. A glance through the photographs in each took him on a journey back into the old man’s youth. Like rewinding time. But it was the passport that covered the period of the early sixties that interested him most. He stopped and flicked through its pages, looking at the visas and immigration stamps of a man who had done quite a bit of travelling in his younger years. And what he saw confirmed both the records at the mairie, and his worst fears.
He heard the sound of a vehicle, and glancing up saw Gassman’s Range Rover bumping along the narrow track toward the house. He quickly reassembled the passports into their stack and snapped the elastic around them, replacing them exactly as he had found them. Then he hurried through to the living room and opened the front door. He would be in the front garden by the time the vehicle rounded the house.
His face was flushed, and he breathed deeply to try to slow his heart-rate. He was certain he knew now who had murdered Killian. All he needed was the proof, and an understanding of why.
When he got back to the annex, Enzo sat in the dead man’s seat and booted up his laptop. From his Google homepage he made a search for the website of the University of Leicester in the English midlands, and from there to the page dedicated to his old friend Doctor John Bond. He clicked on a contact link that opened up a fresh mail in his emailer and tapped in a title. Shell casing. Then he moved his cursor into the text box.
Hi John,
It’s been a long time, but I’ve seen you a lot in the news this last year. I was wondering if I could trouble you to do a big favour for an old friend…
Chapter Thirty-One
As on the day he arrived, the weather had closed in again. Low, bruising cloud scraping the hilltops, blown in on a wind from the south-west that was mild but wet. The rain fell in a fine, wetting mist that was sucked in under the umbrella that Jane had lent him. Enzo lowered his head, squinting through the rain searching for the name of the boat that the gendarme had given him on the phone.
The pontoon that ran between the line of boats in the tiny marina rose and fell with the swell of the water in the harbour, making him feel a little drunk. He glanced up and saw that the line of houses and hotels that lined the Port Tudy quayside had almost vanished in the smirr. The rattle of cables and the cries of seagulls filled his ears.
And then there it was. White, painted on a blue plaque. La Boheme. Metal hawsers running up the mast fibrillated in the wind, whining, metal vibrating against metal. Enzo stepped on to the shiny wooden boards at the stern of the little yacht, clutching a cable to steady himself, then pushed open the door that led down to the shelter of the cabin. A few steps took him out of the rain to where Adjudant Richard Gueguen sat on an upholstered bench seat along the starboard side. There was a table between facing benches, and a small galley at the far end. Curtains were drawn on the side windows. Enzo slipped into the bench opposite Gueguen, propping his folded umbrella against the wall, rivulets of rainwater streaming from the point of it across the floor.
The air was stale and damp in here, and it was almost dark, cracks of grey light around the curtains providing the only illumination. The two men sat in silence for some minutes. Then Gueguen said, “Anyone see you get on board?”
Enzo shrugged. “There aren’t many people around in this weather. And it’s early yet.”
The gendarme nodded. “Was the autopsy report any good to you?”
“It was.”
Gueguen raised an eyebrow. “What did you find?”
“It’s what I didn’t find that made it interesting.”
Gueguen frowned, dark eyes laden with curiosity. But Enzo did not elucidate. “Did you manage to get the shell casing?”
“I did.” The younger man pushed a hand into the pocket of his dark blue waterproof jacket and pulled out a clear plastic zip-lock evidence bag. He dropped it on the table, and Enzo heard the clunk of the brass shell casing on its wooden surface. He picked it up and held it toward the light creeping in around the window. The casing of the 9mm Parabellum bullet felt surprisingly heavy.
“You know how it gets its name?” he said. “Parabellum?”
Gueguen shook his head.
“It’s from a Latin phrase, si vis pacem, para bellum.”
“Meaning?”
“If you seek peace, prepare for war.”
“There will be a war break out if anyone upstairs finds out I gave you this.”
“They won’t hear it from me.”
“I still don’t understand what you want with it. There were no fingerprints found on it.”
“I know.” Enzo laid the shell casing in its bag on the table and pushed it back toward Gueguen. “I need you to do me another favour.”
