Free Blowback by Peter May Page A

a quick look.”
    “Sure. I’ll ask.”
    He slipped the autopsy report into his satchel. “Did anyone look at his computer?”
    “I believe someone from the
police scientifique
went through it. But it was never brought in for forensic examination.”
    “Why not?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess no one thought it was relevant. Forensics is not my area of expertise, and the powers that be seemed to think that Fraysse was just the victim of a random crime. In the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “You think he was murdered for his phone and his knife?”
    “Personally, no. That never seemed to me like sufficient motive. But then some people don’t seem to need a motive to kill.” She laughed, a little self-consciously. “Not that I’m any great expert on that either. There aren’t very many murders committed around here.” She looked at him curiously. “What do
you
think?”
    “I think the chances that it was a random killing are almost zero. No one would be waiting up that hill in the hope that someone might pass by with valuables to steal. Marc Fraysse took that route every day. Everyone knew that. So someone was waiting specifically for him. Whether they meant to kill him or not, that’s another matter. But kill him, they did.” He perched on the edge of Dominique’s desk and found her a willing and attentive audience. “The fact is that eighty percent of murder victims know their killer. Of those, sixteen percent are related to their killers. And half have a romantic or social relationship with them. It’s something you have to keep very much in mind when you’re looking at a murder.”
    “I thought your specialty was forensic science. The evidence.”
    “It is. But in the absence of evidence you have to look for motive, then try and put the two together to nail your killer. In this case, because of lack of evidence, or any other evidence to the contrary, your superiors seem to have been very keen to write off a celebrity murder they couldn’t solve by putting it down to a random killing. That kind of crime is almost impossible to resolve. It’s a face-saver.”
    “So you think someone had a reason for wanting to kill him?”
    “Or to threaten, or to harm him.”
    “Do you have some idea who that might be?”
    Enzo smiled and shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
    “So where will you begin?”
    Enzo gazed thoughtfully from the window, across the square toward the balustraded view of the valley below. “In his computer.”

Chapter Eight
    He was not quite certain why he was reluctant to ask Elisabeth for permission to examine her late husband’s computer. But lurking somewhere at the back of his mind was the fear that perhaps she might refuse him, in which case a valuable line of investigation would be permanently closed off. Why he thought it was even remotely possible that she might do that was unclear to him. But he didn’t want to take the chance.
    And so when he returned to the hotel he made sure that both Guy and Elisabeth were downstairs before he headed up, ostensibly, to his suite. Service staff were in all the rooms, making beds, cleaning bathrooms. Service carts stood about in the hallways, the sound of vacuum cleaners coming from several open doors. He slipped past his own rooms, nodding to a middle-aged lady in green and white who was taking toilet rolls from her cart to re-stock one of the bathrooms, and when she went back into the room, he turned the handle on the door of Guy’s study to slip quickly inside.
    He closed the door behind him and stood, with his back against it, controlling his breathing for several moments. It occurred to him how ridiculous this was. Why hadn’t he just asked her? Still, he was here now. He crossed quickly to the bureau and rolled up the top. The MacBook Pro sat where he had last seen it, and he lifted the lid to press its power button. Its start-up chorus chimed loudly and he tensed, waiting nervously for it to boot up. When,