The Critic (5 page)

It left him sticky-wet and gasping for breath. The noise and the lights receded as the machine carried on towards the far end of the field, Charles de Bonneval unaware that he had very nearly crushed a man to death.

Enzo managed to get to his knees and started crawling back towards the path where he had been walking, some twenty or thirty metres away. He found his shoulder bag lying discarded to one side, and clutching a wire strung between posts to support the vines, finally succeeded in getting to his feet. For several minutes, he stood there, unsteady, gasping for breath, fighting the nausea that accompanied the pain in his head and realised that someone had just tried to murder him.

Chapter Three

There were no lights on in the
château
when finally he got back, exhausted, head still pounding. It was after midnight. Clearly the Lefèvres had gone to bed, and as far as Enzo knew there were no guests staying in the
chambres d’hôtes
. Moonlight flooded the gravel courtyard and the garden beyond, the white stone of the
château
almost glowing in the dark. The entrance to the
gîte
was cast in profound shadow, and as he walked towards it through grass already wet with dew, he fumbled in his pockets for the key. He was one step from emerging into moonlight from the deep gloom of the chestnut trees, when a movement on the
terrasse
of the cottage caught his eye. Something glinting. The tiniest shard of reflected light. He stopped dead, every nerve and sinew in his body held in a state of extreme tension. In the absolute still of the night, his own breathing seemed thunderous.

Fear wrapped itself around him like a cloak, raising goosebumps across his shoulders. He began to shiver in the warm night. Someone had tried to kill him little more than half an hour before. It had taken him that time to make his way home. Why couldn’t his would-be killer have got there ahead of him, having failed at the first attempt?

Enzo had no idea what to do. Confront his assailant and risk further injury or even death? Or retreat to somewhere safe where he could think? But where? In the end, he decided on a middle course—to try to get a closer look at whoever was waiting for him on the
terrasse
.

Away to his left was Pierric Lefèvre’s
chai
, a long, low building covered in ivy. He backed off towards it, still in the shadow of the trees, until he was within a metre or two of the far end. Quickly, he ducked across the path and out of sight of the cottage. He stopped to listen for any sound of movement. But all he heard was the distant hooting of an owl.

He circled around the back of the
chai
until he reached the far end. From here he had a direct view across a short stretch of gravel path towards the steps of the cottage. It was still mired in darkness, but he could just make out the shape of a figure sitting at the table. Waiting for him.

Staying within the long shadow cast by the wine shed, he moved carefully across open ground to press himself against the gable end of the house. Anxious not to disturb the ivy, he craned his head around the wall to try to get a better look at his unwanted visitor. To his horror, the detector on the halogen lamp high up on the end of the
chai
picked up his movement, and the whole area was flooded with light. He cursed under his breath. Run? Or attack while he still had the element of surprise? He decided in the fraction of a second to opt for the latter and ran for the steps, exposing himself to the full glare of the light.

Something soft and heavy caught him just above the knee and he went toppling over it, sprawling across the lower steps. He looked back to see a large suitcase as it fell with a thud. It seemed strangely familiar.

A figure rose up above him as he turned.

‘Monsieur Macleod! What on earth are you doing?’ Nicole gawped at him in amazement as he scrambled to his feet.

He looked up at her, holding on to the rail to stop himself falling over again, and saw the look of incredulity verging on horror that wrote itself across her face. Were he able to see himself he would have realised why. He was spattered head to toe with red grape juice, pants and shirt mud-stained and torn. Bits of leaf and dirt clung to him, fixed by the glue of the fruit. There was dried blood down one side of his face. His ponytail had long since lost the band that held it, and his hair was a shock of sticky clumps and curls tumbling wildly over his shoulders.

She opened her mouth to speak, but for several moments nothing came out. Then she said, ‘Are you alright?’

Fear, which had given way to humiliation, now lurched towards anger. ‘No, I’m not alright. Do I look alright?’

She shook her head slowly, still staring in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘No. No, you don’t.’

***

Nicole was a big girl of good farming stock, wide-hipped and large-breasted, the antithesis of the skinny, flat-chested French girls in the TV ads and on magazine covers. She had a pretty face, though, and long silky brown hair which she gathered loosely at her neck before leaving it to cascade down her back. She was, by a long way, the brightest student in Enzo’s biology class, perhaps the brightest student of her year. But her upbringing on a remote hill farm in the Auvergne had left her somewhat lacking in sophistication. She was gauche and shy and had suffered the gibes and taunts of her more streetwise peers during her first year of university in Toulouse.

Enzo had taken her on early that first summer to help him crack the Gaillard case. There was, it seemed, nothing she didn’t know about computers, and she could surf and navigate her way around the internet like an experienced sailor. He needed help again, so he had asked her for a few days of her time before the first semester of the new university year got under way. He knew, too, that she had spent much of the summer nursing her dying mother, and that she could probably do with the break.

When he came out of the shower wrapped in a towelling robe, blood was running down the side of his head where the hot water had reopened his wound. She made him sit in a chair while she pressed a clean towel against his head to stop the bleeding. Her large breasts quivered at eye-level, just centimetres from Enzo’s face, and he tried hard not to look at them. They were, he reflected, Nicole’s most outstanding feature, a subject of discussion on more than one occasion amongst male lecturers in the staffroom at the university. She always seemed intent on making the most of them, wearing tee-shirts a size too small, or low-cut tops that revealed acres of cleavage. Hoping, perhaps, to attract attention. Which, of course, they did. Always of the wrong kind.

Enzo closed his eyes.

‘Do we have any disinfectant, Monsieur Macleod?’

‘Coping with the aftermath of an attempt on my life wasn’t one of the things I considered when packing my bags, Nicole.’

‘You should always be prepared.’ Nicole was nothing if not practical.

‘There’s really nothing prepares you for someone trying to kill you.’

‘You must be exaggerating. Are you sure you didn’t just trip, or something, and fall in front of that harvester.’

Enzo contained his irritation by clenching his teeth. ‘Someone hit me on the head, Nicole.’

‘Had you been drinking?’ She sniffed his breath.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘I thought as much.’ She looked around the room. ‘Ah, that’ll do.’

Enzo turned to watch as she headed for the bottle of malt whisky on the table. ‘Good idea. Make it a large one.’

She lifted the bottle and tutted. ‘You’ve probably had more than enough already, Monsieur Macleod.’ She unwrapped the seal and pulled out the cork. ‘It’ll make an ideal disinfectant.’

‘Nicole, that’s a thirty-year-old Glenlivet single malt!’ Enzo watched in horror as she soaked the towel in the pale amber liquid and came back to press it once more to his head. ‘Jesus!’ He flinched from the pain. Not only was it a criminal waste of good whisky, but it hurt like hell.

Nicole held him firm. ‘Don’t be a baby.’ She glanced up at the whiteboard. ‘So this is the Petty case we’re looking at?’

‘You’ve read up on it, haven’t you?’

She nodded. ‘Disappeared four years ago.’

‘From this very
gîte
.’

‘Really? God, that’s spooky.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘The autopsy report said he’d drowned in wine, then twelve months later turned up in a Gaillac vineyard pickled red and partially preserved. Why would he do that?’

‘Petty?’

‘The killer. If he’d got away with it for a whole year, and no one even knew for sure that Petty was dead, why did he suddenly draw attention to it?’

‘If we knew that, we’d probably know who did?’

‘Did you bring the laptop?’

He nodded, then winced from the pain. ‘We’ll set it up in the morning.’ And, as an afterthought, ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Here, of course.’

He pulled away from the towel. ‘Nicole, you can’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because there’s only one bedroom. And I don’t want your father storming in here and accusing me of trying to have my wicked way with you.’

She blushed to the roots of her hair, and her eyes strayed away self-consciously towards a rickety open staircase leading up to a gloomy mezzanine built into the roof. ‘What’s up there?’

‘A couple of kid’s bunk beds that wouldn’t do for either of us.’

She looked at the settee. ‘That’s a clic-clac. Folds down into a bed. You could have that.’

‘Why couldn’t
you
have that?’

‘Monsieur Macleod! I need the privacy of my own room.’

Enzo sighed.

‘And one other thing,’ she made a face, ‘I hate to ask, but… do you think you could bring my suitcase up the steps? It’s too heavy for me.’

Enzo’s frustration released itself in an explosion of air from between his lips. ‘Nicole, why can’t you ever travel light?’

‘Because unlike you, Monsieur Macleod, I always come prepared.’

Enzo knew of old that when it came to things practical, there was no point in arguing with Nicole. She would make a fine wife and mother some day, if she could ever find a man. He eased himself to his feet and walked stiffly across the room, every muscle in his body complaining. In the doorway he stopped and turned. ‘How’s your mom?’

A shadow fell across Nicole’s face as if the light had dimmed. ‘Not so good.’

***

She lay in the dark, the bedroom window open to the night, and gazed up at the reflected moonlight on the ceiling. For a short time she had been able to forget, to occupy herself with Monsieur Macleod and his injuries. To listen to his story of attempted murder among the vines and feel the thrill of his danger. It hadn’t occurred to her that if her mentor were in danger, then she might be too.

But any such thoughts were crowded out by the returning memory of her mother wasting away in the dark, holding her daughter’s hand, like she was holding onto life. She felt hot tears filling her eyes and turned over to blink them away, spilling them onto the pillow. And for a moment she fantasised that maybe the door would open as she was drifting off and Monsieur Macleod would slip between the sheets beside her, folding himself into the curve of her back. And that he would just hold her. Just for the comfort of it.

Chapter Four

I.

The early morning sky was a burnished gold, painting the edges of the leaves a fiery red, and throwing long shadows from the
pigeonnier
towards the
gîte
. And as the sun slid slowly up above the distant treeline, it suffused the main room with a warm autumn light to accompany the rap of knuckles on glass.

Enzo lifted his head sharply, painfully, at the sound of knocking on the half-glazed front door, only to be blinded by the light that flooded through it. He could see the silhouette of a figure on the
terrasse
trying to see beyond the reflections in the glass.

He had slept soundly enough, but the clic-clac was hard and uncomfortable and had done his aching body no favours. He groaned as he swung his legs out from the covers and found the floor with his feet. He reached for his bathrobe and dragged it on, sweeping his hair back from his face and walking stiffly to the door. Blinking in the sunlight as he swung it open, he found himself looking into the quizzical green eyes of Michelle Petty.

She looked him up and down with naked curiosity, eyes lingering a moment on the blood-stained lapel of his robe, before examining the dried blood around the wound high up on the side of his head. Then she focused on his eyes and he blinked self-consciously.

‘Been in a fight?’

He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. ‘You could say that.’

‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?’

‘Sure.’

He opened the door wide, just as Nicole stepped out from the bedroom, stretching sleepily, her dressing gown hanging open over a flimsy nightdress. ‘What’s all the noise?’

Michelle looked at her, surprise giving way to…what? Disapproval? Enzo wasn’t sure. But when she turned her eyes back towards him, all warmth in them had vanished. ‘I think maybe I’ve made an error of judgment,’ she said. ‘I’ll not bother you any further, Mister Macleod.’ She turned to hurry down the steps.

‘No, hang on…’ Enzo started after her.

‘Who was that?’ Nicole said.

He turned back in the doorway and stabbed a finger in her direction. ‘You. Make yourself decent and pack your bag. You’re not staying here another night.’

‘Well, where’ll I go?’

‘I don’t know. Get yourself a cheap room somewhere.’

‘The
château
does
chambres d’hôtes
.’

‘Aye, at a hundred and twenty euros a night.
Cheap
, I said. I’m not made of money. And try and get somewhere close by. I don’t want you sleeping over, but you’re going to be spending most of your days here.’

Michelle had passed under the
pigeonnier
where a child’s swing stirred slightly in the early morning breeze and was heading towards the parking at the end of the drive when Enzo caught up with her. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Nicole…she’s not what you think.’

Michele didn’t miss a step. ‘Why would it matter to you what I think?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want you thinking I’m the sort of man who preys on young women.’

‘She certainly is young. More girl than woman, I’d have said.’

‘She’s one of my students.’

They reached her rental car and she turned to face him. ‘It just keeps getting worse.’ She paused. ‘I thought you were a forensics expert.’

‘
Former
forensics expert. I’m a professor of biology now at a university in Toulouse. They asked me to set up a department of forensic science after we cracked the Gaillard case.’

‘We?’

Enzo glanced back towards the
gîte
. ‘Nicole’s been working as my assistant for a bit of extra cash.’ He added quickly, ‘I’m not sleeping with her.’

‘It’s of absolutely no interest to me who you sleep with.’ She looked down at his bare feet on the gravel path and then again at his bruised face and the dried blood matting his hair. ‘You seem an unusual sort of man, Mister Macleod. Who were you fighting with?’

‘Someone tried to murder me last night, Miss Petty. Cracked me on the skull and dumped me in the path of a mechanical harvester. I was very nearly just another elusive flavour in a bottle of wine.’

She frowned. A look of genuine shock in her eyes. ‘Why would someone want to murder you?’

‘Because they don’t want me finding out who killed your father.’ She drifted away into unspoken thought. ‘Why did you come here?’

She dragged back her focus from some distant place. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night, thinking about what you said yesterday. I thought maybe…’ Her voice tailed away.

‘You might take me up on my offer?’

‘I’m not sure, Mister Macleod. I mean, what do you really care about me or my father? I might be useful to you, that’s all.’

‘Someone tried to kill me last night, Miss Petty, which makes this very personal to me. I’m going to find your father’s killer whether you help me or not.’

II.

There was a weariness in Roussel’s demeanour as he showed them into his office.

‘I knew it was a mistake to tell you about Mademoiselle Petty.’ He glared at Enzo. ‘Now you’ve come back to haunt me, like all mistakes do.’

‘Could we do this in English?’ Michelle said. Although she spoke passable French, she found Roussel’s accent impenetrable.

Roussel looked to Enzo for elucidation, then shrugged when Enzo obliged. ‘We did it through another gendarme last time whose English was pretty poor. I think yours is better, monsieur.’

Enzo explained to Michelle, then turned back to the Frenchman. ‘Madamoiselle Petty has engaged me to represent her interests in the recovery of her father’s personal belongings.’ He ignored the
gendarme’s
theatrical sigh. ‘And to achieve closure on the unanswered question of who murdered him and why.’

‘I’ve already told you, monsieur, we’re not an information service for private investigators.’

‘Madamoiselle Petty has an absolute right to take possession of her father’s things. They are legally hers.’

‘Then she is entitled to make her request through the proper channels.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Michelle’s frustration was patent.

‘He’s being an officious bastard,’ Enzo told her. Then turned back to Roussel. ‘There’s not a single reason in the world for you to hold onto that stuff. I’m quite sure the
Police Scientifique
at Albi went over everything with a fine-toothed comb at the time. No doubt the reports are in the file. Now we can do this the easy way, and you can sign release forms right here and now. Or we can do it the hard way, and I’ll make a personal complaint to the Préfet about police obstruction.’

Roussel fixed him with a long hard stare, before his face slowly melted into a smile. Enzo had no idea what he found amusing. ‘I admire your balls, monsieur. There are not many Frenchmen would have spoken to a
gendarme
the way you’ve just spoken to me.’

‘The Scots are renowned for being bolshie.’

‘I know. I’ve watched your countrymen play rugby against
La France
. I shudder to think what goes on in the scrum.’

Enzo couldn’t resist a smile. On whatever other subjects the Scots and the French might diverge, they always found common ground on the rugby pitch. Especially against the English.

‘What, are we sharing a joke now?’ Michelle’s frustration was turning to irritation.

Roussel ignored her. ‘Alright, monsieur. I’ll let her take her father’s things. But as for access to other evidence, my answer’s still the same.’

‘Well?’ Michelle was impatient to know what was happening.

Enzo said, ‘He’s agreed. You can take your dad’s stuff. But knowing the French, there’ll be a blizzard of paperwork.’

***

Through a window that opened into the courtyard, Enzo could see Michelle fighting that blizzard at reception. Roussel lit a cigarette and blew smoke speculatively in Enzo’s direction. The sun was rising above the shallow pitch of the roof, glancing brick-red off terracotta Roman tiles, and spilling across the courtyard towards the residences. A low-ranking
gendarme
in shirt-sleeves was washing the boss’s car. Roussel tipped his head towards Enzo’s injuries. ‘Too much to drink last night?’

‘Someone tried to kill me.’

The cigarette paused halfway to the
gendarme’s
mouth, his smoke hanging in the still morning air with the same sense of suspended animation. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘I am.’ Enzo told him what happened.

‘No witnesses?’

Enzo shook his head, and Roussel looked at him for a long time, almost as if trying to decide whether he believed him or not. Finally he said, ‘I was on the net last night, looking at your qualifications.’

‘Impressive, huh?’

Roussel grinned. ‘The piece I read credited you with many things, Monsieur Macleod. Modesty wasn’t one of them.’ He took a thoughtful pull from his cigarette. ‘An honours degree in biochemistry, a masters in forensic science. Head of biology section, Strathclyde police. Blood pattern interpretation at crime scenes, DNA databasing…’

‘And one of only four people in the UK to train as a Byford scientist. Which makes me an expert on serious serial crime analysis.’ He met the
gendarme’s
steady gaze. ‘We don’t have to be at odds, Gendarme Roussel. I can help you.’

Roussel took a final puff on his cigarette and threw it away. ‘I appreciate the offer, monsieur. I really do. But we don’t need your help. We have all the expertise we require within the service.’

For a moment, Enzo had felt he was making progress with the man. Now he sighed and changed the subject. ‘Well, maybe you could tell me a little bit about
l’
Ordre de la Dive Bouteille
.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘How many members does it have?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘That’s all?’

Roussel nodded.

‘So how come you couldn’t track down the owner of the costume that Petty was wearing?’

‘Every current member of the
Ordre
was still in possession of his robes. The society was formed more than half a century ago, Monsieur Macleod. There have been dozens of members over the years. When one dies, someone else takes his place. All the accoutrements go to the relatives of the deceased. There was no way of accounting for all of those.’

‘So who’s the head of the
Ordre
?’

‘The president?’

‘Ah, yes, there’s always a
Monsieur le Président
, isn’t there?’

‘Why should I tell you?’

‘It’s not a secret, is it? I’ll find out anyway.’

‘So you will.’ Roussel kicked at a stone on the ground with one of his big, black boots. ‘His name’s Jean-Marc Josse, a winemaker at Mas Caussé near Cestayrols. He’s been running the show for a long time. A real character.’

The sound of a door banging made them turn as a triumphant Michelle strode out of the
gendarmerie
waving a sheaf of papers. ‘I have the release forms, signed and sealed. A veritable Amazononian forest.’ She beamed at Enzo. ‘Thank you, Mister Macleod. Now all I have to do is go to somewhere in Albi to get the stuff.’

‘The TGI,’ Roussel said. ‘The Tribunal de Grande Instance in the Place du Palais. It’s a beautiful old building.’

III.

Nicole sat on the
terrasse
of the Grand Café des Sports at a plastic table under a yellow awning. The tables at the Brasserie Saint-Pierre next door were empty for the moment, waiting in silent anticipation for the
midi
rush. There were only a couple of other tables occupied at the Café des Sports, a disabled man in a high wheelchair, and two farmers in from the country, greasy overalls and cloth caps and big fingers holding small glasses of red wine. Nicole’s car was lined up among the others in the shade of the trees in the Place de la Libération, where old men sat on benches watching the traffic and sucking on nicotine-stained, hand-rolled cigarettes held precariously between dried lips. On the far side of the square a young girl was setting tables on the pavement outside the Cassis restaurant where lotus eaters from England gathered to exercise their native tongue and complain about the French. A brown puppy with a huge head and big paws was flapping up and down the pavement, playfully chasing passers-by.

Nicole sipped her coffee and munched on the
chocolatine
she had bought in a
boulangerie
across the square, and examined the map and the list of
chambres d’hôtes
she had acquired from the tourist office beside the abbey. There were dozens of them. The trick was going to be finding one close to
Château
des Fleurs, the cost of which would not send Monsieur Macleod into another fit of Scottish apoplexy. He could, she reflected, be seriously bad-tempered at times. She put it down to the lack of a woman in his life.

She highlighted the Château des Fleurs on the map with a marker pen, then drew a circle around it with a radius of around two kilometres. Now she tried to match the place names within the circle with place names on the list.

Her concentration was such that at first she didn’t notice the tugging at her shoes. When she did, she tutted with irritation and looked under the table. The brown puppy was pulling at the laces of her running shoes and had somehow managed to undo both of them. When Nicole’s head appeared beneath the level of the table it stopped, looking at her eagerly, as if for approval, but poised ready to back off if its achievement had the opposite effect. Nicole could not be angry. ‘You little devil!’ She reached down and ruffled its head, and it went springing delightedly around the table. She leaned over to retie her shoelaces.

‘Sorry about that. He’s been doing it all week.’

She looked up to see the waiter grinning at her. He was a young lad, with a shock of dark, curly hair shaved close around the back and sides of his head. Nicole was aware of his brown eyes being drawn involuntarily to her cleavage then quickly, self-consciously away. ‘What, untying shoelaces?’

He nodded. ‘It’s a trick he’s learned. Some of our customers are less tolerant of him than you. He’s only narrowly avoided the toe-end of a few boots.’

‘So who taught him the trick? You?’

The boy laughed. ‘No, he’s not mine. Or anybody’s, I don’t think. Probably too many pups in a litter, and he’s been dropped out the back door of a car somewhere. At any rate, he seems to have adopted us. We call him Braucol.’ The pup heard the familiar sound of his name and danced around the waiter’s feet, trying to grab a shoelace. The boy nudged him away with his toe.