Peter May: Blowback

Enzo heard the pride in her voice, and saw it in her eyes as she turned back to look at him, arms still folded imperiously across her chest.

“And the multi-million euro business it is today,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Do you have children, Madame Fraysse?”

“Two, yes. A boy and a girl. Both away at university.”

“Training to follow in their father’s footsteps?”

Her laugh betrayed genuine amusement. “Good God, no! They grew up seeing first hand just what a damned hard life it is running a hotel and restaurant. It’s much more than a career, you see, monsieur. It’s your life. And no escaping from it.” She laughed again. “And like most of the younger generation today, my children don’t really want to work at all. They’ll probably be perfectly happy to fritter away the next few years in education before inheriting a business that will keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. No doubt they will either sell up or get others to run it for them.” She met Enzo’s gaze directly. “Do you think me very cynical?”

Enzo gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “You know your children better than I do, Madame Fraysse.” Yet he couldn’t help wishing that he had been able to persuade his own daughter to finish her degree rather than go to work in a gymnasium. Generalisations were dangerous things. “But I think that in order for me to make any real progress in this investigation, I am going to have to get to know your husband as well as you did.”

“Not an easy thing, when he has been gone seven years.”

“That’s why I have to rely on you. And Guy, of course. How did you first meet Marc?”

She smiled, and her eyes glazed over with distant memories. “We were just kids, really. I think I was seventeen, and training to be a nurse at a hospital in Clermont Ferrand. Marc and Guy were in the middle of their apprenticeships with the Blanc brothers, and having a pretty hard time of it from all accounts.”

For a moment, Enzo felt as if she had left the room, transported back in time to relive those precious memories of a youth long lost. There was a lengthy silence, but he didn’t dare break it. Then she smiled again, as if returning from a journey that had taken only seconds in reality, but hours in her mind. She was back.

“Some of the other girls and I used to sneak out of the nurses’ home at night to meet up with the boys from the restaurant. They all lived in the hotel in some horrible cramped rooms up in the attic, and they had to sneak out, too. There was a park near the university, Jardin Lecoq, and an old boat shed on the lake. That’s where we used to meet up and have secret meals. The boys always cooked for us. Best food we’d ever had.” She laughed. “There were a lot of teenage hormones being given free rein in those days. But Marc was hopeless. So shy. Guy was much bolder, much more sure of himself. But it was Marc I always had the soft spot for.”

“You were married young, then?”

“Good heavens, no! We all went our own ways, and it was some years before Marc and I met up again. I was over thirty when we got married.”

“And Guy? Did he end up marrying one of the nurses, too?”

But Madame Fraysse just shook her head. “No. Guy never married. I don’t know why. Just never met the right woman, I suppose.”

Enzo scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Would you say that Guy dominated his younger brother?”

Madame Fraysse thought about it for a moment. “In many ways I guess he did. In the old days, certainly. He was older, more outgoing, never short of confidence. I suppose Marc must have aspired to be like him. But in the end, it was Marc who had the talent and the drive to make the most of it. Guy would probably still have been working in some grey accountant’s office, wasting his life counting other people’s money.”

For some moments, Enzo was lost in thought. Memories he hadn’t entertained for years flickered on the periphery of his consciousness, like an old black and white movie seen out of the corner of the eye.

“Monsieur Macleod?”

He looked up, surprised.

“Are you still with us?” Her smile was a little forced.

“I’m sorry. Just running some thoughts through my head.” He made himself focus again. “What did Marc do when he wasn’t in the kitchen?”

Madame Fraysse laughed again. But there was no amusement in it this time. “When was he not in the kitchen?” She perched herself on the edge of the armchair opposite again. “When Marc got his third star, Guy got the money to build him his dream kitchen. You’ll see it shortly. Extended out from the original house, but mostly hidden from the view of the clients. He had an office built on to it, with picture windows looking into the kitchen so that he could always see what was going on. He spent a lot of time there, planning menus, taking phone calls. He was the darling of the Paris media, you know. They couldn’t get enough of him. And he was always making early morning dashes up to Paris to record some radio or TV show, then driving like a maniac back down the autoroute.

“And then, of course, he ran. Every day. He was fanatical about his fitness. So many chefs die young, Monsieur Macleod. All that butter and cholesterol in French cuisine. That was one of the reasons he worked so hard to develop the low-fat style Fraysse, as he liked to call it. Food that used few of the fatty ingredients of traditional French cooking, but which was still served with wonderful sauces that fizzed with flavour and life. Only the best, purest ingredients were good enough for Marc. He really elevated the preparation and cooking of food to a pure art form.”

There was no disguising her undying admiration for her late husband, almost as if she were defending him from attack. And there had been those critics, Enzo knew, who had not admired the style Fraysse, and who had taken no small delight in saying so.

“He also had a small office up here in the apartment, just off our bedroom. You can see it if you like.”

Enzo stood up. “I’d like that very much.”

He followed her through an open doorway to the bedroom. More austerity. An uncomfortably high-looking bed with antique head and footboards, a couple of pink Chinese rugs the only compromise to comfort on the otherwise hard, polished surfaces of the floor. A dresser with a large, circular mirror sat in the window space, and an enormous dark-wood armoir stood against the far wall.

“All his clothes still hang in the wardrobe,” she said. “I never did have the heart to throw them out.” She stopped to open one door of the armoir, revealing a row of pants and jackets hanging neatly on the rail. Polished shoes lined up beneath them, and shelves up one side contained scarves and hats, gloves and sweaters. She reached in to touch a Paisley-patterned silk scarf lined with cashmere, stroking it fondly. Then she grasped it and raised it to her face, breathing deeply. Her smile was bittersweet. “I can still smell him on it. Even after all these years. It’s strange how we leave something of ourselves behind us, so long after we are gone. A scent, a strand of hair. It’s comforting, really, to think that we don’t just vanish entirely without trace.”

No, Enzo thought. Only some murderers manage that.

She pushed open a door to an adjoining room. “He had his petit bureau in here. His little private den.”

Enzo followed her in. It was a small room with one single tall, arched window facing out on the view. A roll top desk was pushed against the wall beneath it, mahogany filing cabinets on either side, one topped with an inkjet printer/copier. The rest of the room was bare but for a couple of armchairs arranged around a fireplace that looked and felt as if it hadn’t seen flames since the flame of life had been extinguished from its owner. The walls were painted cream, the skirting boards and architraves a dark chocolate brown. Framed photographs of Marc Fraysse covered the walls. Press photographs, mostly. Marc pictured with celebrities, politicians, movie stars; engaging in a round table debate in a TV studio; in the kitchen, dressed in his chef’s whites and tall hat. And in framed reviews, letters from Michelin, and a hand-written note from the late French president, Francois Mitterand. Dear Marc, I have no idea how to fully express the pleasure I derived from indulging in the pure “style Fraysse” at Saint-Pierre yesterday evening. I am salivating still. Or, as my political opponents would probably have it… dribbling…