The Critic (20 page)

The fall took away his breath, and pain shot up his arm from his elbow. He heard his head crack hard on the cobbles, and his whole universe was shot through with light. A roaring sound filled his ears, to be replaced by a sudden squealing. He screwed up his eyes against the light and saw that it came from two blinding orbs no more than a metre from his face. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes and a car door slammed.

‘My God, Papa, what are you doing?’ To his great relief, Sophie loomed out of the darkness, her silhouette crouching against the light.

‘Someone was trying to kill me.’

‘What?’

‘Up there.’ He waved an arm vaguely through the air. ‘There was someone up there.’

Bertrand dipped into the light and helped him up off the road. ‘Did you see them?’

‘Well…no. But there
was
someone.’

‘Where’s Braucol?’ Sophie said. And almost as if he had heard her, Braucol came haring out of the undergrowth, growling and barking, a streak of black cat ahead of him, just inches beyond his reach.

With three agile leaps, the cat mounted a wall, a window ledge, a roof, and sprinted away across the tiles. Braucol was left barking in frustration below the wall.

Sophie shouted at him. ‘Braucol, shut up! You’ll wake the whole town.’

Enzo wondered if there was anyone in the whole town to wake. It had seemed so impossibly deserted just minutes before.

And as Braucol flapped big paws and crossed the cobbles to join them, disconsolate and defeated, Sophie said, ‘So that was who was trying to kill you, then? A cat?’

Enzo shook his head and found that it hurt. Surely it wasn’t just a cat that had spooked him. ‘There was someone up there,’ he repeated, but with less conviction than before.

‘We’d better get you home,’ Bertrand said.

IV.

Fabien parked his four-by-four at the top of the rubble track where the police had left their vehicles the night before. An abandoned length of black and yellow crime scene tape was the only evidence that they had ever been there. He gave Nicole his hand to help her up the slope towards the trees.

‘I used to play up here all the time when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘The woods were my world. I fought battles against the crusaders, hid from the Germans, got shipwrecked. The cellars of the old Cathar
château
still exist, right below the hill. Just bits of broken-down wall and the remains of a flagstone floor. But it became my
château
, my hideaway. I loved it.’ He stopped and breathed deeply. ‘And the smell of the woods takes me back every time.’ He looked at Nicole. ‘Almost as if all the years between then and now had never been.’ His face shone with some distant, happy memory. Then a shadow crossed it, like the moon slipping behind a cloud. ‘That tree, where they found Serge Coste. I used to climb it, and hide in the hollow where the killer put the body. It was
my
tree. Seeing the body there like that, I felt…violated.’

They turned at the treeline and looked back down the vine-covered slope towards the flood plain below. The moon was a bright globe in a star-encrusted firmament, turning night almost into day. They heard the wind moving through the treetops, brittle leaves whispering to the night. Fabien still held her hand, and she felt a strange, aching sensation in the pit of her stomach. Not unpleasant but accompanied by a sense of apprehension verging on fear. She could feel the beat of her heart, and it seemed to be in her throat.

‘Anyway, the
source
is up here.’ Fabien turned and led her along a well-beaten path through the trees to a small clearing where stones had been set into the earth centuries before to protect the precious water.

‘This is it?’ Nicole was disappointed. She had been expecting more, although she was not sure what.

‘There hasn’t been much rain in the last six weeks, so the water table’s low. When she’s in full flood, she bubbles out of the ground like she’s alive.’

And still he held her hand. She could feel his anxiety through it. Shattered moonlight fell among the trees to sprinkle them with bits of silver. Beyond the
source
, the forest seemed dark and impenetrable. Nicole looked up into Fabien’s face and thought how much she liked its soft cadences and the dark of his eyes. ‘What age are you, Fabien?’

He shifted uncomfortably, unsettled by her question. ‘Thirty-one.’

‘Why have you never married?’

Which brought a tiny smile of regret to his face. ‘There have been one or two close things. I guess I never met the right woman.’ His smile turned wry. ‘Certainly, my mother thinks so.’

‘So do you think twelve years is too much?’

He frowned. ‘Too much what?’

‘Of an age difference.’

She was certain he blushed, but his embarrassment was masked by the night. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Between you and me.’

He laughed. ‘When I was twenty, you’d have been eight. A primary school kid.’

‘I’m a big girl now, though.’ And then, realising what she’d said, added self-consciously, ‘Too big, most people seem to think.’

Fabien took her other hand and stared earnestly into her face in the dark. ‘
I
think you’re lovely.’

She could barely hide her pleasure. ‘A lovely spy.’

‘A beautiful spy.’ He let go of her hand and slipped his arms around her, drawing her tenderly towards him. She put her hands around his neck and stretched up to meet his lips as he bent to kiss her. For such a big, clumsy man, he was very gentle. The aching in her belly had spread to fill her whole body. She wished he would put his hand on her breast. Men were always looking at her as if they wanted to, but few of them had ever had the courage to actually do it. And Fabien was much too much of a gentleman. So slowly she drew one of his arms out from behind her, and slid his hand up to cover one of her breasts, an erect nipple pushing hard against the taut cotton of her tee-shirt. She felt his tension, and then an almost uncontrollable wave of desire as she pressed her body against his to feel his passion pressing right back.

V.

Enzo had sobered up a good deal by the time they got back to the
gîte
, forty minutes in the passenger seat of Bertrand’s van, the window down, cold air blowing in his face, the best part of a litre of mineral water poured down his throat.

He could feel the swelling at the back of his head where it had cracked off the cobbles, and his elbow was distended and stiff where it had broken his fall. He had no idea, now, whether he’d had simply imagined everything on the hilltop at Cordes, or whether in fact there had been someone there. But it left him feeling unsettled and vulnerable again. For there was no doubt that someone had tried, and failed, to kill him on his first night here. Why wouldn’t they try again?

Bertrand drove past the line of parked cars opposite the
chai
and pulled his van up at the foot of the steps. Enzo climbed stiffly down on to the gravel and shrugged aside offers of help from Sophie. ‘I’m fine,’ he said tetchily, and climbed up to the
terrasse
to unlock the door.

The room was filled with the glow from his computer screen, and he crossed to the table to switch on the desk lamp and drop into the seat in front of it. He got rid of his screensaver and saw that there was an e-mail waiting for him. He opened up his mailer. It was from Al MacConchie in California.

Hey, Magpie….

It was a long time since anyone had called him that. It was the nickname schoolfriends had given him when, as a teenager, his Waardenburg syndrome had manifested itself in a silver stripe running back through dark hair from his temple.

Bring your samples. I’ll see what I can do. Let me know what flight you’re on and I’ll pick you up at the airport.

‘We’re going to bed, Papa.’ He looked up as Sophie and Bertrand climbed the stairs to the mezzanine. ‘You should, too.’

‘I’ve got to book a flight.’

‘Where to?’

‘California.’

She stopped mid-step, and Bertrand nearly bumped into the back of her. ‘Why?’

‘I’ll explain tomorrow.’

He waited until the light went out upstairs and he thought they might be sleeping before he got up to pour himself a small whisky sprinkled with a dash of water.

‘You’re not having a drink, are you?’ Sophie’s voice came out of the dark like a reproach from the gods.

‘Sophie!’ He tried to imbue her name with all the gravitas of an adult chiding a child. If he was going to make this booking tonight, he needed something to keep him awake. He heard her sighing.

It took him nearly half an hour of internet searches, and a dozen small sips of whisky, before he found a flight that wouldn’t bankrupt him. Paris to San Francisco with Air France in four days’ time. Non-stop. Eleven hours and forty minutes. He groaned at the prospect. Then he remembered Charlotte’s suggestion that he stay over with her the night before flying out, and his stomach flipped over.

He sent an e-mail back to MacConchie with his flight details and put the computer to sleep. His head was throbbing and his eyes felt full of grit. He turned off the light, and waited for his pupils to dilate before standing up and making his way to the door. The moon was still dispensing its light across the lawn and through the glass. He opened the door and stepped out on to the
terrasse
to breath in fresh air. The night was filled with the sound of warm wind in the trees. He could see the dark shape of them swaying against the sky.

A movement distracted him and drew his eyes towards the line of parked cars beyond the
pigeonnier
. And with a shock, he realised there was someone sitting in one of them, a flash of white face caught in the moonlight. Alarm bells began ringing in his head and he was about to call for Bertrand when the car door opened, and by its courtesy light he saw that it was Michelle. She stepped out of the car and stood looking across the grass towards him.

He closed the door of the
gîte
and went down the stairs. They met beneath the
pigeonnier
, the child’s swing turning in the wind. Her hair blew about her head, and she swept it back out of her face. She seemed very pale.

‘How long have you been sitting there?’ He searched her face for some clue as to what might be in her head, but there was an opaque quality in it, an evasive cloudiness in her green eyes.

‘Most of the evening.’

‘Why?’

‘I was waiting for you.’ She glanced towards the
gîte
. ‘Where’s Charlotte?’

‘She’s gone back to Paris. I thought you were leaving.’

‘So did I.’ She scuffed the gravel with the toe of her shoe. ‘Then I got to thinking. About that kiss. Up at Château de Salettes. And about whether I really wanted to go or not.’ She looked up from her feet, into his eyes, and reached up to touch his face.

He shook his head. ‘I’m old enough to be your father.’

‘My father’s dead.’ Her voice was flat, emotionless. ‘I’m not looking for another one.’

She pushed herself up on tip-toes towards him and her nose crinkled in a smile.

‘I smell whisky.’

Chapter Fifteen

I.

It was his first night in the bed. After the clic-clac it had been soft and warm, enveloping him in quilt and mattress, to relieve aching and weary bones and draw him down into a deep sleep. Now sunlight spilled in through the unshuttered window, lying hot across the bed, and he felt Michelle’s breath in his face. She kissed him. A soft, wet kiss, her tongue dragging across his lips and nose. He reached over and ran a hand over her smooth, hairy body. And an arrow of consciousness pierced his slumber, startling him awake.

Braucol gazed lovingly into his face and licked him again.

‘Jesus!’ Enzo sat up spitting and spluttering, then groaned as pain flooded his head. There had been way too much alcohol the night before. But where the hell was Michelle? And then he remembered. He wrapped a sheet around his nakedness and hurried through to the bathroom to slunge cold water on his face. She had been reluctant to spend the night as long as Sophie and Bertrand were there.

‘Sophie doesn’t like me,’ she had told him.

‘Nonsense. Why wouldn’t she like you?’

‘Because she likes Charlotte, and Charlotte doesn’t like me.’

Women, Enzo reflected, always seemed aware of things that passed him by. And so he had spent the night alone. Again. Waking up to the dog on the pillow next to him. He brushed his teeth with extra vigour, then found his towelling robe and went through to the
séjour
. Sophie and Bertrand were heating
croissants
in the oven. The room was filled with the smell of their savoury sweetness and the aroma of fresh coffee.

‘
Bonjour
,’ Bertrand said brightly. Sophie scowled at her father, then turned away to pour herself a coffee. She was in a mood with him. Enzo raised his eyebrows towards Bertrand in silent question, but Bertrand just shrugged and made a facial apology in silent response.

‘I need your help collecting soil samples today,’ Enzo said.

For a moment, Sophie forgot her mood and turned around, coffee raised to her lips. ‘What for?’

He explained the principal of wine fingerprinting and told them they would need samples from every vineyard Petty had visited. ‘We know where he went from his tasting schedule. I’ll draw up a list after breakfast and we can divide them up among us. I doubt if any of the
vignerons
are going to welcome us with open arms, so we’ll not tell anyone what we’re doing. Nicole can collect a sample from La Croix Blanche.’

‘And Michelle? I suppose she’ll be helping too?’ Sophie cocked a disapproving eyebrow at her father.

‘Any objections?’

Bertrand said, ‘I think I’ll just go and take my shower.’ He hurried out of the room, leaving father and daughter in awkward silence.

‘Look, if this is because I had one little whisky last night…’

‘I saw you,’ Sophie said. ‘You and Michelle Petty out there by the
pigeonnier.
’

‘You were spying on us?’

‘No, I was worried about you. I heard you going outside.’ She drew a deep, indignant breath. ‘It’s disgusting, Papa.’

‘What is?’

‘You and that…that girl. She’s less than half your age. Younger than Kirsty, for God’s sake!’

Enzo gasped in frustration. ‘I don’t believe I’m getting lectured on my love-life by my own daughter. It’s none of your business, Sophie.’

‘You’re my father!’

‘You’re my daughter. And you’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s none of
my
business who
you
go out with.’

‘That’s different.’

‘No, it’s not. We’re all adults here. We make our own choices in life. I’ve been twenty years on my own, Sophie.’ He choked back a sudden surge of self-pity. ‘Sometimes a man needs the company of a woman.’

‘What about Charlotte?’

‘Good question. One I’ve asked
her
often enough. I’m still waiting for an answer.’

They stood glaring at each other, but the flame of their anger was subsiding as quickly as it had flared. And with two steps, Sophie extinguished it completely, throwing her arms around her father’s waist and burying her head in his chest. ‘I’m sorry, Papa. I just worry about you. I don’t want to see you hurt.’

He drew her to him. She was all he really had in the world. The only one he could count on for unconditional love. And he hated it when they fought.

They broke apart at the sound of the door opening and turned to see Nicole hesitating on the threshold. Her eyes were red-rimmed and raw, her face the colour of chalk. It was clear she had been crying, and now tears gathered again in stinging eyes, like rain in clouds.

‘My God, Nicole, what’s happened?’ Enzo reached her in three strides.

Her lip quivered as the tears burned tracks down her cheeks, and she looked up into his face. ‘My mother’s dead.’

II.

The
gendarme
was young, attractive, with short dark hair, and black Mediterranean eyes. She smiled at Enzo across the desk and told him that Gendarme Roussel had taken several days’ leave. Enzo nodded through the open window towards the other side of the courtyard.

‘Does he stay in the apartments?’

‘No, he and his wife moved out when they had their second kid. They live in his family home near Lisle sur Tarn.’

Enzo nodded thoughtfully. ‘The pathologist in the Serge Coste case has a sample for me to collect. But they won’t release it without the proper paperwork. Gendarme Roussel was going to take care of that for me.’

Her smile widened. ‘He did. If you’ll hold on a minute…’

She disappeared through an open door, and Enzo heard distant music and voices raised in laughter. Out in the courtyard, where a group of
gendarmes
stood smoking, the shadows of clouds raced across the gravel, the advance guard of rainclouds approaching from the southwest.

He couldn’t shake off the depression of Nicole’s news. He had never met her mother, but he knew her father, and knew too how hard it was for a man on his own. Nicole had been inconsolable. No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of someone close, it always comes harder than you could ever imagine. He had sent her straight home, and made her promise to call him once they had fixed a date for the funeral.

‘Here you are.’ The smiling
gendarme
emerged holding a large buff envelope. She handed it to him. ‘He left it for you.’

As he buzzed the gate open to step out into the street, he saw how dark the sky was beyond the river, sunlight cutting tile-red roofs sharp against the black. He felt the wind strong in his face and smelled the change of weather in it. The rain would not be far behind. He would need to hurry. He did not want to be digging up earth samples in the wet.

***

The first drops of it fell as he tipped the last trowelful of sandy earth into his plastic carrier bag. When he had first crouched between the vines to dig deep into crumbling, dry soil, the wind had been fierce, whipping through the leaves on either side of his head, filling his ears with a sound like rushing water. Which was probably why he had not heard the motor of the approaching vehicle. Now the wind had dropped, and the rain was starting to fall. He turned his face up towards a sky swollen with cloud and felt it splash warm on his skin. He tied the bag shut and stood up, turning abruptly into the shadow of Fabien Marre. The young man was blocking his way out from between the rows.

They were both big men, and their eyes met on a level. Enzo was startled. He had not heard the other man approach. But he stood his ground, determined to brazen it out. The rain began to fall in earnest, so that within seconds they were both soaked, rain streaming down faces carved in stone.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Fabien’s eyes dropped to the carrier bag and the dripping trowel in Enzo’s hands.

‘None of your business.’ Enzo moved to push past him, but Fabien shoved a big hand into his chest.

‘It’s my land. Which makes it my business. What’s in the bag?’

In his day, Enzo could have met Fabien on an equal physical footing. But although he kept himself fit, there were twenty years between them. He would be no match for the younger man. ‘Nicole says you told her you refused to let Petty taste your wines.’

‘So?’

‘We found his reviews. He tasted five wines from La Croix Blanche.’

Lightning crackled somewhere over the other side of the hill, followed seconds later by an explosion of thunder.

Fabien shrugged. ‘He didn’t get them from me. You can buy my wines in any supermarket or
cave
around here.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘You’d have to ask him.’

‘I would. Only someone murdered him.’

Fabien held him in a steady, unblinking gaze, face streaming. His change of subject took Enzo by surprise. ‘So, when’s the funeral?’

More lightning, more thunder. Enzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nicole’s mother.’

Enzo felt anger rise up his back like bristles on a porcupine. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘I thought I might go.’

Confusion diluted anger for just a moment, and Enzo stared at Fabien through narrowed eyes. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Me and Nicole, we have…an understanding. I think she’d appreciate my support.’

Enzo shook his head. ‘You stay away from Nicole. That’s the only thing you need to understand. You go anywhere near her, you answer to me.’

‘I’m shaking in my shoes.’ Thunder burst above their heads, so loudly that both men ducked involuntarily, momentarily chastened by an anger greater than their own before recovering their dignity and resuming their stand-off. Fabien tipped his head towards Enzo’s carrier bag. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s in the bag?’

Enzo glared at him and sounded much braver than he felt. ‘No.’

‘Looks to me like you’re stealing my land.’

‘Does it?’

‘And you’re trespassing.’

Enzo thrust out his jaw. ‘You know, in Scotland there is no law of trespass. Because we figured out a long time ago that nobody owns the land. We inhabit it for a short time. And when we’re gone, other people inhabit it. The land is forever, we’re just passing through.’

‘Semantics.’

‘That’s a big word.’

‘I read a lot.’

‘Well, read my lips. Stay away from Nicole.’ As Enzo tried to move past him, Fabien’s wet hand pushed into his chest once more. Enzo looked down at it, a hand that could do him a great deal of damage if its owner chose to use it for that purpose. Then he looked into the young man’s eyes. Their faces were only inches apart.

‘I could take you any day, old man.’

‘Maybe you could. But you’d suffer a lot of collateral damage in the process.’

The two men stood dripping in the rain, staring each other down, like animals in the wild. Each daring the other to make the first move. Each knowing that whatever the outcome, it would be bloody for them both. A few moments seemed to stretch into eternity. Then Fabien’s hand dropped to his side, and Enzo pushed past, their shoulders bumping, ungiving and hard, neither man wanting to lose face.

Fabien turned and watched, impassive, as Enzo got into his 2CV, backed it out around Fabien’s four-by-four, and headed back towards the road, down a track which had become a stream. Wipers smeared a fly-stained windscreen. Lightning flashed again across the valley, but the thunder had retreated beyond the hill. Like the threat of violence which had passed, its fury was spent and its roar muted.

III.

Enzo pulled out eight inches of plastic from the roll in the machine and drew the cutter across it to make a plastic bag big enough to take a small trowelful of earth. Then, carefully, he placed the cut edge inside the machine and hit the
start
button. The plastic crinkled around the soil as the machine sucked out the air to create a vacuum before heat-sealing the bag.

He passed it to Sophie for labelling, cut another bag from the roll, and poured in the last of the eighteen samples they had collected.

There was a knock at the door. Michelle opened it, shaking her umbrella out on to the
terrasse
and propping it against the wall before stepping inside. ‘Hi.’ She tried to sound bright, but there was a tension behind her smile. ‘The rain’s really bad. Nobody’s picking grapes in this.’

Enzo had seen the harvesters out earlier, a frenzied attempt to strip as many of the vines as possible before the deluge. Now the vineyards were empty, harvesters abandoned, dripping in the rain.

Sophie cast Michelle a look, then turned back to her father who was concentrating on the final seal. ‘This is the one from Château Lacroux?’

‘Yes, the
argile calcaire
.’ It was a stony, chalky texture.

‘Hi,’ Bertrand said to Michelle. He was doing his best to ignore the atmosphere that Sophie was doing her best to create.

Michelle gave him a smile of appreciation and crossed the room to see what they were doing. She brought the smell of damp clothes with her and looked at all the bags laid out on the table. ‘Are those the soil samples?’

Enzo nodded as he hit the
start
button for the last time. ‘Yeah.’

‘I thought I was going to help with that.’

Without looking at her, Sophie said, ‘Some of us manage to get out of our beds earlier than others.’

Enzo glared at his daughter, remembering all the weekend mornings he’d had to tip her out of her bed in time for lunch. ‘We had to move fast before the rain started,’ he said.

The machine sucked the air out of the bag, then buzzed as it heat-sealed it shut.

‘Wow, where’d you get that?’ Michelle said.

Enzo straightened up and stretched his stiffening back. ‘At the hypermarket in town. It’s a food saver, for vacuum-sealing foodstuffs. Ideal for preventing contamination of the soil samples.’

‘How are you sending them to the States?’

‘I’m not. I’m taking them myself.’

Michelle pursed her lips. ‘Do you have official permission?’

‘Why would he need permission?’ Sophie glowered at her.

‘Because you can’t just go carrying soil samples with you on an airplane into the United States. Americans are paranoid about contaminants being brought in from other countries. Bugs and bacteria and viruses. They’re even scared you might carry something into the country in the treads of your shoes. That’s why you have to sign a form on the plane saying you haven’t been on a farm before travelling.’ She looked at Enzo. ‘You do have permission, don’t you?’