‘I believed him. The whole way through. I stood up for him. I looked after him when he broke down, terrified it would go to court, that he’d end up in prison.’ She put her hands back down, palms flat. Her wedding ring was scratched and dull. ‘Then, a few weeks ago, I found the photos.’
Forty-Nine
SUNDAY EVENING
Dobbs frowned at him. ‘OK, just so we’re clear . . .’ He looked down at his pad and read from his notes. ‘Ginny fell. Tristan tried to help her. You didn’t see him again.’ He looked back up, straight into Paul’s eyes. ‘How did he manage to climb down the mountain? Was he an experienced climber?’
‘I didn’t know this until yesterday, but yes, it seems so.’ Paul felt momentarily buoyed to be able to tell the truth about something, and the words flowed easily. ‘He said he’d been doing some courses. He had all the kit. He climbed down, and he climbed back up – but he couldn’t find her.’ He folded his arms. ‘It was after that he went mad . . . he shouted at me, blaming me – when he was the one who’d planned the route—’
‘Tristan planned the route? I thought this trip was your wife’s idea.’
‘It was . . . but he helped. Maybe he told her he’d been doing some climbing. I don’t know.’ Paul shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anyway. He was yelling at me, then he swung his rope at me. It still had that big metal clip thing on the end of it, from where it attached to his harness.’
‘The belay device?’
‘If you say so.’ Paul uncrossed his arms and lifted a hand to the side of his head. He gingerly peeled back a piece of his matted hair and turned his head to the side, giving Dobbs a clear view. ‘He cracked me across the head.’
‘Nasty. Then what?’
Paul turned his head, looked away. ‘He ran off.’
When he turned back, Dobbs’s expression was sceptical.
‘I assumed he’d gone for help. Or he was heading back down. He knew the way, after all. I thought he’d be here, in fact. When we arrived.’
Dobbs’s expression had become unreadable.
Paul was about to start adding in something more, ready to start babbling, when the intercom buzzed. He’d babbled just the same when the police had questioned him about what happened at the work party, and he’d tried to rein it in since then, but it was hard to curb his natural tendencies to talk himself out of a hole using far too many words. Saying that, he’d managed to lie his way out of that mess fairly convincingly. Mostly due to a fuck-up with things being deleted from phones that worked in his favour.
Thinking about it, why was he defending Cat? Going along with her stupid plan? She could say what she liked about what had really happened that night in January. But without evidence, and with him denying the whole thing, what could anyone do? The intercom buzzed again, and this time Dobbs picked up the phone. He kept his eyes locked on Paul as he listened to the caller, then he sighed and put the receiver back in its cradle.
‘Captain Pigalle would like to speak with you,’ Dobbs said.
‘Now?’ Paul felt a flutter of unease in his belly. The plan was that he and Cat would tell their stories separately, then the police would go and find the others. Why was Pigalle interrupting now? This did not sound good.
The door opened and Pigalle appeared. His face was flushed, his jaw set. ‘Thank you, Monsieur Baxendale. I just have a couple of questions then you can carry on.’ He sat down next to Dobbs and slid a couple of papers across to the embassy man.
Paul watched Dobbs’s face as he started to read. He lifted up the top sheet and, underneath, Paul could see what looked like a printout of a photograph. Dobbs’s expression rippled and morphed from impatience to something else quite different. He glanced up at Paul, and anger flashed in his eyes.
‘Have you had any issues with . . . aggressive behaviour before, Mr Baxendale?’
No calling him “Paul” now. Something had shifted. He’d heard rumours of the French police tactics before. Was Pigalle going to pin all this on him?
‘What’s this about?’ Paul’s stomach was doing small somersaults, but he was trying his hardest to keep a neutral expression.
‘How was your relationship with your sister-in-law, Mr Baxendale?’ Pigalle asked.
The somersaults were getting bigger. ‘What’s this about? What has my wife said?’
Pigalle smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘We would like to hear this from you, monsieur.’