sitting position. “See if you can move your arms and legs. Don’t want to go moving you any more if there’s something broken.”
Enzo tried his fingers, making fists with each hand, then bending and extending each arm. It was painful, but nothing seemed broken. Finally, he pulled his knees up into his chest, folding his arms around his shins in an embrace of self comfort, a fruitless search for warmth from his own body.
“Guess you’re still in one piece, then. Come on, let’s get you on your feet.”
Powerful arms helped him through the pain barrier to raise him unsteadily to his feet. Almost immediately, his legs gave way beneath him, and he grabbed on to Lucqui to stop himself from falling, his right hand finding the barrel of the shotgun then sliding quickly down to feel the bite of cold metal on his skin. This gun had not been fired any time recently. So whoever had shot at Enzo, it wasn’t Lucqui.
Finally, Enzo found his voice. “S..someone sh..shot at me.”
“I know, I heard it.”
“Wh..what the hell were you doing out here at this time of night?”
“Looking for poachers. And it’s a good job for you I was. I was up the hill there when I saw your car rolling backwards down into the gully. You must have left the handbrake off.”
“I didn’t!” Enzo’s denial seemed unnecessarily strenuous, even to him.
Lucqui was unconvinced. “You’re lucky you didn’t get your head blown off. Damned poachers! They shoot at anything that moves.”
The only illumination in the kitchen came from a handful of strategically placed night lights, and so areas of it remained mired in shadow. But it was warm, and light from the hall fell in long yellow slabs through the glass across the marble table at its center. Enzo sat swaddled in blankets, sipping on piping hot chocolate, his hair hanging in damp strands over his shoulders. In a few minutes he would retreat to his room and stand under a hot shower until all vestiges of the deep chill that had penetrated every cell of his body were banished. But life and warmth had already returned to much of him, bringing with it more pain and a hot, stinging sensation on the skin of his face and hands.
He looked around as the doors slid open and Guy returned with the promised bottle of mirabelle and two shot glasses. He sat down opposite the Scotsman and placed them on the table between them, looking at him with concerned blue eyes. “Feeling any better now?”
Enzo nodded. “A bit.”
Guy poured them each a stiff measure. “This’ll help.” He pushed a glass at Enzo, who lifted it to his lips and poured it back in a single gulp. It almost took his breath away as he felt the heat of it burning all the way down to his stomach. His face flushed. Guy grinned. “See what I mean?” He refilled Enzo’s glass, then took a much smaller sip from his own.
Enzo looked at him. “How the hell could they see me in the dark like that, Guy, when I couldn’t see them?”
But Guy just shrugged. “On a night like tonight they’d probably have been using night-sight goggles. Lucqui’s got a pair himself.” He took another sip of mirabelle. “They must have been having a bit of fun with you. You had a lucky escape, Enzo. Not to have been either shot, or drowned. It could have been a fatal accident.”
Enzo knocked back his second glass, and banged it down on the table. “It was no accident, Guy. Someone deliberately tried to kill me tonight.”
Chapter Thirty
The drizzle settled on them like a fine mist. A penetrating wet. The road, the forest, the drop to the pool at the foot of the falls, all seemed strangely unnatural in the sulphurous light of the morning after.
The tree had been moved off the road. Only a little debris remained as witness to it ever having been there. The revving of a powerful diesel engine filled the still air as the tractor on the bend winched Enzo’s vehicle painfully up the scree. A breakdown truck with a flashing orange light was standing by to take it down to a garage in Thiers. Several other vehicles were parked at the roadside, including Dominique’s blue van.
Her waterproof jacket shone wet in the dull morning light, her dark eyes troubled and searching his face with concern as they walked down toward the tractor, retracing Enzo’s steps of the night before. He moved stiffly, although more freely now than when he had first woken. “You’re not still thinking of going to Paris after this?” she said.
“Of course. What else am I going to do? Sit around here waiting for someone to try to kill me again?”
“You don’t know that someone was trying to kill you, Enzo.”
But he just dug his hands in his pockets and kept his thoughts to himself. “Well, anyway, I’ve not been wasting my morning while they cleared the road. I made a few phone calls. Arranged a few rendezvous.”
“Jean Ransou?”
“Among others. I’m having lunch with Ransou tomorrow at the racetrack at Vincennes.”
Dominique’s eyes opened wide. “He agreed to meet you, just like that?”
“I didn’t think he was going to be very cooperative at first. But the mention of the name Marc Fraysse changed everything.”
She frowned. “Be careful, Enzo.”
He nodded solemnly. “I will.”
By the time they reached the bend in the road, Enzo’s car was back on the tarmac, and the roar of the tractor had subsided. Enzo walked around his 2CV inspecting it with critical eyes. In fact, the damage was not as bad as he had feared. The paintwork was scratched, and the rear wheel arches and the lid of the trunk were dented in places. A mechanic in blue overalls was hooking it up to winch it on to his truck.
“What do you think?” Enzo nodded toward his battered car.
The mechanic shrugged indifferently. “I don’t think there’s much mechanical damage. The engine stalled, probably within a few minutes, and the lights drained the battery.”
Dominique peered inside the car. “What about the handbrake?”
“When I first climbed down to take a look at it, the handbrake was in the off position. The idiot who was driving it must have got out without putting it on.”
Enzo bristled. “I’m the idiot who was driving it, and I can assure you, I put the handbrake on before I got out of the car.”
“If you say so, pal.” He climbed into his cab to start up the winch.
Dominique glanced thoughtfully at Enzo. “You couldn’t have.”
Enzo restrained the urge to raise his voice. “Look at the incline of the road up there where the tree was,” he said. “If I’d got out of the car without putting on the handbrake it would have started rolling backwards immediately. As it was, I was out of the car and over the other side of the tree before it began to move.”
“So how come the handbrake was in the off position?”
His indignation was beginning to get the better of him. “Well, obviously someone was hiding in the woods, watching for my arrival, waiting to ambush me. I left the driver’s door open. He must have slipped in and released the handbrake while I was climbing over the tree. And then he tried to shoot me.”
“But why, Enzo? Who would want to kill you?”
“Whoever killed Marc Fraysse. Which only tells me that we must be getting pretty damned close to finding out who that is.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Paris, France, October 2010
Enzo had not known what to expect of Jean Ransou, but the image that confronted him when they met outside the blue gates of the hippodrome, deep in the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern outskirts of Paris, was like
