Freeze Frame by Peter May Read Free Book Online

three bullet holes in the chest as suspicious, Mr. Macleod. But, yes. It was.”
    Voices in the corridor interrupted their conversation. A young man from the car rental company knocked on the door and brought in paperwork for Enzo to sign. He seemed self-conscious, almost deferential in the presence of the senior gendarme, and was anxious to be away again as soon as possible.
    “The car’s round the back,” he said. “The Suzuki Jeep.” He handed Enzo the keys and was gone.
    Guéguen rose from his desk and reached for his cape and hat. “I’ll walk you round.”
    Enzo gulped down the last of his coffee and lifted his overnight bag, and the two men left by the same side entrance and walked around to the back of the gendarmerie. On the far side of a muddy parking area stood a concrete block with two heavy steel doors. Guéguen followed Enzo’s eyes.
    “The cells.” He walked toward the nearest door and pushed it open. “Take a look. This is where we brought Kerjean when it was decided to charge him.”
    Enzo walked into a dark cubicle. A hole in the floor at the back of the cell served as a toilet. High up in the wall above it was a window, allowing minimal light to penetrate thick cubes of unbreakable glass. A stone plinth was covered with a thin, unsanitary looking mattress. It was cold and damp, the walls scarred with the graffiti of drunks and petty crooks. Not a place you would want to spend any time.
    “Myself and one of the more senior gendarmes were dispatched to bring him in.” Guéguen seemed lost for a moment in his memory of the event. “We were pretty nervous about it. Kerjean was… still is… a big man. And he had something of a reputation for violence. He wasn’t any stranger to these cells. He’d spent a few nights here after getting into drunken brawls in town. And he never came quietly.”
    “You thought he might resist arrest?”
    “Who knows what a desperate man accused of murder might do? As it turned out, he came like a lamb.”
    “Do you think he did it?” Enzo watched carefully for his reaction, but the big gendarme just smiled.
    “Of course he didn’t. He was acquitted, wasn’t he?” He reached into an inside pocket and produced a dog-eared business card. He found a pen and scribbled some figures on the back of it, before handing it to Enzo. “Here.”
    Enzo turned it over. It was a telephone number
    “That’s my private cellphone. Officially, I can do nothing for you, Monsieur Macleod. Unofficially…” he glanced across the sodden car park toward the house, “… I’ll help you in any way I can. And I don’t just
think
Kerjean did it, I’m sure he did. Even if he can’t be tried again, I’d love to see him nailed.”

Chapter Seven
    The brief rush of traffic following the arrival of the ferry had long since subsided. The sky had darkened, the last of its light squeezed out by the rainclouds. Le Bourg, the small town at the top of the hill above Port Tudy, was deserted. Lights shone in a few shop windows:
Le Relais des Mousquetaires
, the
Bleu Thé
, the
Î
le et Elles
hairdresser on the square opposite the war monument and the church.
    Enzo lost his way several times in the narrow streets, terraces of gabled houses with steeply pitched roofs and dormer windows, painted pink and white, and brick-red, and blue. Finally he saw a roadsign for Port Mélite.
    After he left the town, and the Ecomarché supermarket on its outskirts, place names and arrows painted on crumbling road surfaces replaced conventional roadsigns. His Jeep, with its canvas roof and brutal suspension, proved draughty and damp and noisy as he steered it east through the gathering gloom along the island’s north coast. This was flat, dull countryside, punctuated by the odd stand of trees and occasional clusters of isolated cottages. Finally the road turned into a long descent to the tiny village of Port Mélite, a small group of houses huddled around a short sweep of sandy beach. Through the rain and