Peter May: Blowback

He watched the earnest concentration in her face as she worked to recall every detail. And he couldn’t help but think that although it was not a pretty face, it was attractive in its plainness, devoid as it was of make-up. And that there was a beautiful serenity in the deeply warm brown of her eyes.

He followed her into the buron. “It was pretty much like this then too. Rainwater lying in pools in the mud. Only there was a mess of footprints.”

“Which you identified?”

“There were five sets in total. Marc Fraysse himself. His brother. His wife. And two others that we were never able to identify. Presumably belonging to the murderer, or murderers.”

“Or to anyone who might have taken shelter earlier in the day, long before Marc got here.”

Dominique shook her head. “The forensics people didn’t think so. They felt that the footprints were fresh, or at least made at the same time as the others.”

“Casts were taken?”

“Yes.”

“And the body was where, exactly?”

Dominique stepped deeper into the gloom. “Right here. Lying at right angles to the wall.”

“Face down?”

“More or less. His head was turned to one side. The police scientifique found traces of blood and brain tissue on the back wall, and from the way the footprints were configured, it seemed as if he had been knocked back by the blast, banging against the wall, before tipping forward.”

“You’ll let me see the autopsy report? And the photographs?”

“I can show you a copy of the autopsy report, and pics of the crime scene. But the pathologist still has the originals of the photographs he took at the post mortem.”

Enzo nodded then stepped back out into the mist, screwing his eyes up against the light. Was it getting brighter, or was it just the contrast with the dark interior of the buron? Whatever, it felt better to be out. There was a strange, pervasive presence within the tumbledown building. Enzo had felt it before at crime scenes, almost as if a victim’s spirit could not rest, but haunted the place until the killer had been found. However, he knew that this was just the product of an over-active imagination.

He turned to find Dominique looking at him appraisingly. “Did you know him?” he said. “Marc Fraysse.”

“I’d met him, yes. He was a local celebrity.”

“He was celebrated all over France.”

“And the planet. Chez Fraysse was voted the fifth best restaurant in the world the year before he died. But he was a local boy, born and bred. So he was ours. We felt that sense of pride in him that you would feel for a member of your own family. Marc, Guy, Elisabeth… everyone knew them.”

Enzo smiled. “You were very fortunate to have a restaurant like that on your doorstep.”

Her sudden laughter, and the patent amusement in it, took him by surprise. “Oh, I never ate at Chez Fraysse!” She punctuated her words with more laughter. “The cheapest menu was a hundred and fifty euros back then, Monsieur Macleod. Do you think I can afford that on a gendarme’s wages?”

“Surely a woman like you has a man who would be prepared to spend that on her?”

Her smile faded a little, and he saw her eyes cloud like cataracts. “Never knew one who would,” she said. She struggled to rediscover her smile. “If you’re finished here, we should go back down the hill.”

But Enzo stood his ground. “One last thing.” He glanced around, as far as the mist would allow him to see. “His belt and pouch were missing, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“And never found.”

“No.”

“Did you search for them?”

“We did. A dozen officers combed an area of about five hundred square meters around the buron, and the whole length of the track. We found nothing. Not even a cigarette end.”

He turned his gaze back on her, and found her looking at him, head dipped slightly, so that she appeared to be looking up from below her finely arched brows. Her eyes were wide and shining again, and full of warmth. He said, “This is the first time in any of my enquiries that I’ve had this kind of cooperation from the police.”

She grinned. “Just don’t tell my superiors.”

“Why? I mean, why are you being so helpful?”

She shrugged with a kind of casual innocence. “When I took the call from Guy Fraysse to say that his brother had been murdered up here on the hill, I was twenty-eight years old. It was my first murder.” She smiled. “And last.” She paused. “I hope. Anyway, although I was nominally in charge of the case, being the first officer on the scene, it was really taken out of my hands. Marc Fraysse wasn’t just a chef. He was a celebrity. France’s favourite son. I had procureurs and juges d’instructions and commissioners of police descending on me. This was far too important a case to be left to some hick gendarme.” He detected the merest hint of bitterness in her tone. “But for all the high flyers who arrived in Thiers in the days that followed, not one of them was able to throw any light on the murder. And when the publicity finally faded away, so did they.” She drew a deep breath. “I would like to know who murdered him, Monsieur Macleod. And if you can’t find his killer, I don’t think anyone ever will.”

By the time they got to the bottom of the track the cloud, if possible, had settled even lower across the hilltops, and the buron had vanished from view, almost as though it had never existed, and the murder of the most celebrated chef in France had been the figment of someone’s colorful imagination.

Dominique opened the door of her van. “Do you want to take a look at the evidence and reports?”

Enzo nodded. “Yes, I do. But not now. I want to go and check in up at the auberge and meet the family first. I want to get a feel for the place. And the man.”

On the road up to the hotel, Enzo passed a group of workmen hammering in snow-poles. They stopped and watched as he drove by. One of them nodded when Enzo caught his eye. A big man, unshaven, with dark, haunted eyes. Their pick-up was parked at the roadside a few meters further on, and beyond that the road suddenly opened out on the left, the ground falling away steeply, fifteen or twenty meters to a stream in spate at the foot of the gully. A low, white-painted wooden fence acted as a barrier. A little further on the land rose sharply, and a waterfall dropped sheer from the rocks to a pool of bubbling, frothing effervescence that fed into the stream.

It was through the trees above the waterfall that Enzo caught his first glimpse of the auberge, home to Chez Fraysse, one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants. As he rounded the bend in the road, it swung into full view. Enzo’s initial reaction was one of disappointment. He had not been sure what to expect, but the square, stolid stone house with it’s steeply pitched lauze roof did not quite measure up to his image of a three-star Michelin establishment. But then, for most of its life it had just been a rural auberge, an etape on the road for the travelling salesmen who had once plied their trade along the old D2089 between Clermont Ferrand and Saint-Etienne. It wasn’t until he pulled into the paved parking area beneath plane trees that spread their branches to offer summer shade that he realized how deceptive that first impression had been.

The stonework of the original house had been sand-blasted to its original rusty yellow, and meticulously pointed. Graceful conservatories had been appended to the south and west, with tasteful stone-faced extensions built out to the north and east. The east-side extension linked up with an L-shaped out-building, converted to guest rooms, forming three sides of a courtyard shaded by a huge chestnut tree shedding brown leaves on shiny cobbles. There were more bedrooms in a converted barn on the west side of the car park, with beautifully manicured terraced gardens descending to an outdoor swimming pool. High end guest rooms for a three-star restaurant so remotely located were a must. Not only to provide overnight accommodation for those who wished to drink and drive, but in combination with the restaurant to maximise the high income stream which would mean survival in a tough business.