Chapter 1
June 1938, Collioure, France
The young boy sat crying quietly, as he waited on the stone front step of the terraced house. His swollen red eyes were fixed looking down between the tight-packed houses of the narrow cobbled street which meandered up the hill away from the hustle and bustle of the small fishing port of Collioure. He ignored the sounds of families, chatting animatedly, as they sat down for their evening meals. Cooking smells, wafting out of open front doors, mingled in the hot dry air with the scents of the summer flowers, which spilled from the windows and balconies of the buildings round him.
Alasdair McGonnigle was walking slowly and contentedly up the hill from the port. His drab Scottish life was now a distant memory; he was living his dream. Henri Matisse, André Derain and even his compatriot Charles Rennie Mackintosh could not have imagined, or even painted, a more perfect day. The boy jumped to his feet and ran forwards as he saw McGonnigle stroll casually into sight. Alasdair dropped his large canvas bag onto the ground and knelt to catch the obviously upset child in his arms.
“What’s wrong Claude?” he asked the little boy, anxiously.
“Papa’s back,” the boy said between large sobs. “He’s waiting for you”.
“Where’s your mother?” Alasdair asked, glancing towards the open front door of the house where he had rented a room for the past five months.
“She’s inside”
“Is she alright?”
The boy shook his head and started sobbing uncontrollably.
“Claude, I want you to run straight to your grandmother’s house and stay there until either your mother or I come for you. Do you understand?” The boy nodded again and ran off quickly down the cobbled street. He didn’t look back. Alasdair picked up his belongings and placed them beside the front door. He headed slowly across the front step, through the doorway and into the house.
Alasdair stood quietly, letting his eyes adjust from the bright sunlight to the relative darkness of the silent interior. His body shivered in the coolness of the house. Light shone weakly from the partially open doorway of the living room at the end of the corridor. Down on the beach he had finished work on two paintings that afternoon. The first was a portrait of Antoinette sitting on a large boulder with her back to the sea. Reflected light from the water had highlighted her dark hair as it floated softly in the gentle summer breeze. How he envied Antoinette, with her olive skin and hazel eyes.
He burnt easily in this climate with his red hair, in spite of his large straw hat which gave him some protection from the fierce sun. The second painting was of Antoinette and her son Claude, paddling together on the edge of the sparkling turquoise sea. He had rarely seen them so happy, laughing and playing together. He had felt jubilation at the astounding quality of his work. It seemed all the elements had come together in his efforts to capture Antoinette’s beauty, spirit and passion on canvas. Now, only a few hours later, he felt trepidation as he walked slowly past the foot of the stairs and along the black and white tiled floor of the narrow passage. He pushed the door open and quickly took in his surroundings.
Jacques Aubrey was seated in the middle of the room, his legs straddling a simple wood chair as he rested his arms along its back. He glared at Alasdair and stood up quickly, knocking the chair over in the process. Alarmed at this movement, Alasdair’s eyes darted round the room frantically and he recoiled, horrified, as he saw Antoinette cowering behind a large chair in the corner of the room. He ran to her, darting past Jacques who tripped over the fallen chair as he lunged at Alasdair. Antoinette was in a state of shock, a trickle of blood running down from the corner of her mouth and a large bruise starting to form over her left eye. She seemed almost too terrified to look at Alasdair directly as he bent down to make eye contact.
“Go,” she implored, her voice barely a whisper. “Go now, before he kills you”.
McGonnigle’s Legacy Description:
At five years old Claude Aubrey witnesses the stabbing of his father Jaques, a fisherman and smuggler, at the hands of Alasdair McGonnigle, a Scottish painter who is lodging at his home in the picturesque French fishing port of Collioure on the Mediterranean Sea.
Now in his seventies, Claude’s sister Valérie is brutally murdered at his luxury villa on the outskirts of Collioure. The apparent motive for her death is the theft of two paintings by Alasdair McGonnigle. Claude, now a notorious crime lord, finds himself in the bizarre situation of assisting the police to catch her murderer. A man known to hedge his bets and not to be denied his rightful revenge, Claude instructs his second-in-command Guillaume Dumas, a former French Legionnaire, to secretly track down the killer and extract retribution.
Will McIntyre, a Scottish born art expert working for Interpol, along with his twin brother Iain, are brought into the murder investigation at the behest of the French police in Perpignan. As the investigation moves onwards to Nice and then Paris, Will is injured in the crossfire as he is gunned down in the metro tunnels underneath Paris. With time against him, Claude must unmask the murderer and inflict his own vengeance before Will can solve the case.
From the ashes of his paintings, the story of Alasdair McGonnigle emerges to reveal a man tortured by divided loyalties and betrayal whilst Claude is forced to re-evaluate the past as he unravels the mystery of his mother’s life.
