Jacquot and the Waterman (26 page)

Gastal repeated the procedure with the cross-hair, aiming it between the brunette's legs. The same tattoo materialized on screen. He clicked the mouse again and the
original picture returned. He squared an outline around
the brunettes head, clicked again and her face filled the
screen - lips apart, eyes dreamy, fingers pushing through
her hair.

Gastal pointed his fingers like a gun. 'Badaboum.'

A little more than an hours drive north of Marseilles,

Max Benedict turned off the Rocsabin road and

lurched down a bumpy track, marking his trail with a
plume of swirling, chalky dust. The sun was low in the
sky and cast a warm, golden glow across the landscape,
pooled with shadows in those hollows where the sun no
longer reached. Through his open window Benedict
could smell rosemary, pine and wild fennel, and up
ahead, across the tipping bonnet, he caught sight of the
house flickering beyond the trees
-
its pantiled roofs and
honey-coloured stone walls, its blue-shuttered windows
and the spray of golden mimosa that sheltered its big
oak door.

Benedict had arrived in Paris that morning, flying north
the previous day from Palm Beach to New York's La
Guardia airport. Without contacting any of his friends in
the city, he'd transferred directly to JFK and made the
connection for Air France's last transatlantic service. An
obliging stewardess had recognised him and, once they
were airborne, invited him into First Class. In Paris, his
head feeling tight and woolly from too much airline claret,
he'd taxied to the Gare de Lyon and caught the train south
to Aix. Three hours later, he'd picked up a rental jeep and
driven the thirty kilometres north-west to Cavaillon, then
up into the hills of the Luberon, following the signs for St
Bedard-le-Chapitre, Chant-le-Neuf and Rocsabin. As the
road became narrower, his hangover began to feel more
manageable, his shoulders appeared to be loosening and
his mood grew less frustrated. As he pulled through the
last stand of pines, before dropping down into the gravelled courtyard of his home, Palm Beach suddenly seemed
a very long way away.

Benedict had spent the last three months in that
seaside haven for the rich and famous, attending the trial
of one of that city's more illustrious names, a Senator's
son accused of aggravated rape and assault. It had been a
professional assignment, covering the proceedings for a
magazine that specialised in, and was required reading
among, those very same rich and famous, particularly
when the pampered lives of one of their own went astray
and the perpetrators believed themselves beyond the law.
Which, in the Palm Beach rape trial, much to Benedict's
dissatisfaction, had proved to be the case. After three
'Letters From The Courthouse', published in consecutive
issues, the defendant had been acquitted of the charges
against him despite a mass of evidence. It had been a
sobering, frustrating three months and Max Benedict,
veteran crime diarist and roving editor-at-large, reckoned
he was due a break. And there was only one place in the
world where he could do that. Max Benedict had bought La Ferme Magny eighteen
months earlier, a run-down Provençal
mas
whose occupants
-
the farmer Magny and his wife - had finally
decided that life in town looked altogether more practical
and comfortable than life in the country running three
sloping hectares of vines. But the place was more of a mess
than Benedict had anticipated, and back home in the
States he joked to friends that all he had done was buy a
view, and was now building a home from which to enjoy it.
For more than a year he'd had a team of builders in there,
tearing out floors and walls, repointing, replumbing, rewiring
. . .
re-everything. And then — even more work, more
expense - installing a pool, set on a terrace between the
house and the vines, facing west through a bordering line
of cypresses, its blue depths now slanted with bars of
golden sunlight.

It seemed an age since he'd been there and he felt a
surge of affection for this ancient farm perched on the side
of a valley with the Luberon highlands rising away to the
south, as well as a deep and abiding gratitude for his good
fortune. Pulling up at the front door he switched off the
engine and, over the ticking of the hot metal, listened to
the sounds he'd been waiting for. The buzz of crickets, the
hum of bees, a distant birdsong, and the creak of a breeze
through the pines.

It was the first time that Benedict had been to the house
without builders there, the place littered with their rubbish. Now it was finished - everyone gone - and he relished
the solitude, the peace, and was surprised by the unexpected sense of ownership he felt. Without switching on
any lights, beyond checking to see that the electricity had
been connected, Benedict walked through the rooms, their
rough stone walls painted white, the tiny windows opened
up, and the rotting Magny floorboards replaced with
stripped maple and cool marble - everything according to
his specifications. And in the centre of every room stood
the packing cases he'd sent over from the States, packing
cases which over the next few weeks he'd work his way
through, unwrapping his possessions, deciding where
everything should go.

By summer's end La Ferme Magny would be home.

There was nothing like a plan. Preparation. The attention to detail. If you'd asked, the Waterman would have told you that it was half the fun. The satisfaction of knowing a name, friends and family, home and work, sharing the same bus, browsing through the same shops, deliberately brushing past the object of your affection in the street, sometimes even stopping them to ask directions - gradually drawing the prospective victim closer, closer.

Then, with all the information to hand, selecting the
time and the place, confident that everything planned and
provided for will be rewarded. Almost as a right. The
uncontested prize for your thoroughness and your diligence. The watching, the waiting, the gathering momentum, sometimes spread over weeks at a time, that led,
inevitably, to the act itself and that glorious, gratifying
consummation.

But then, the Waterman sometimes reflected, preparation wasn't always everything. There were also those
unplanned moments when life conspired to provide an
unexpected opportunity. Something unforeseen. A
moment's weakness, a second's hesitation: that fatal carelessness. A gathering of chance events to be seized upon
and taken.

Thinking about it now, the Waterman was hard pressed
to say which approach was the more enjoyable, the more
satisfying. Preparation or opportunity. It was just like
business, the Waterman decided. You either did your
homework, or you just struck it lucky. Both, in their
different ways, were equally rewarding.

This evening the Waterman had no special plan, no
whispering need. In the last three months, there had been
two such chance encounters and a third that had taken
weeks of preparation before the final strike. Perhaps,
tonight, this city by the sea would offer up something else,
another opportunity. And either the Waterman would
seize it, or let it slip by like a leaf carried along in a stream.