Peter May: Blowback

He was finding it difficult now to recognize the lie of the land. The dark of the pine forest pushed up out of the snow, branches laden and dipping under the weight of the wet snowfall. He thought the flat stretch cut away to his right might be the parking area at the foot of the track leading up to the buron, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then his wheels began spinning hopelessly, the car drifting left toward the drop down to the stream below the waterfall. He tried to accelerate, but it only made things worse. He dropped down to second gear and stalled the engine. The car juddered to a halt.

“Damn!” he shouted at the night and slammed the steering wheel with the heels of both hands. No point in even trying to restart it. He would never get the tires to grip again from a first gear start. He pulled on the handbrake and reached into the glove shelf to retrieve his flashlight.

Before stepping out of the vehicle, he swithered about leaving the headlights on, and decided in the end that he would. They would provide illumination up into the darkness ahead for perhaps a couple of hundred meters, then reflected light beyond that.

The wet snow creaked underfoot like old floorboards as he began the long, difficult climb. As the light from his headlamps receded behind him, he became more and more reliant on the beam of his flashlight to guide him. His thighs ached from having to lift his feet so high for each step forward through the snow. Long before he got to the top, cold and exhaustion were sapping his strength.

Finally, as he reached the end of the road, and rounded the bend, the dark shape of the auberge loomed ahead of him. There was not a light anywhere to be seen.

Guy’s yellow Trafic sat out front, several inches of snow gathered on the roof. There were no tracks in the snow. It had clearly been sitting there for some time.

From the front entrance, Enzo was unable to see if there were any other vehicles in the car park, so he made his way around the side of the hotel to direct a beam of light toward it. There were two vehicles parked beneath the plane trees. Elisabeth’s Mercedes, and a mud-spattered Land Rover. Both with snow piled on their roofs. But no sign of tire tracks in or out. He returned to the front of the auberge and turned off his flashlight. He raised a hand to push the revolving door, and found himself sucked through it into interior darkness. He had no idea where the light switches might be located, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he realized that emergency night lights were providing some kind of illumination, and the empty hotel began to take shape around him. Somewhere inside it, he knew, were at least three people, maybe more.

He did not want to use his flashlight and make himself an obvious target to anyone who might be waiting in the dark. So he contained himself until the dark outline of the reception desk took form, then began moving cautiously forward and into the corridor leading to the kitchen.

He found some switches just inside the sliding door and turned them on. Fluorescent strips flickered and flooded the kitchen with light. Cold, hard stainless steel, where so many three-star meals had been conceived and cooked, gleamed in the silence. But there was no one here. Guy’s office, too, was empty. He went back out and wandered through the lounge and the two dining rooms. Tables and chairs were draped with dust covers for the winter. From the panoramic glass frontage, he could see the lights of Thiers twinkling in the valley below, the vast white plane of the central plateau vanishing into the night beyond.

The hotel was freezing cold, as if the heating had been turned off, and Enzo felt the chill of it seeping into his bones. He was about to head up the stairs when a sound from somewhere in the bowels of the building stopped him where he stood. Uncertain of what exactly it was he had heard, he listened intently for more. It could have been a voice. It could have been the creak of a door. But there was no further sound.

He moved slowly forward into the reception area once more, and this time noticed the line of a dark shadow down one side of the door to the cave. He approached it cautiously and realized that it was not shut. It lay a few centimetres ajar. With his heart in his throat he pulled it open, and felt a rush of cold, damp air in his face as he stepped inside.

The darkness here was profound, and he was obliged to turn on his flashlight. He raked its beam along the rows of dusty dull bottles resting in their racks below, before picking out the wooden steps that led down into the musty smell of dampness and stale wine that rose to greet him. He clutched the wooden rail at his left hand and made his way down to the stone flags that lined the floor. By the reflected glow of his flashlight, he could see icy water condensed in droplets on the bedrock walls, like cold sweat.

He sensed, more than heard, a presence in the cellar. Nothing that he could positively identify, but he knew that he was not alone. One careful step at a time, he moved along the near end of the rows, flashing light along each in turn, finding nothing but silent bottles and cold air misted by the damp.

Suddenly he was blinded by a light that seemed to come from nowhere, flashing confusion and fear into his brain. He half lifted a hand to shade his eyes, and at the far end of a canyon of wine saw Guy and Sophie. They were caught in the full glare of his own beam of light. Guy held an electric torch in a fist he made with his left hand, his arm wrapped tightly around Sophie’s neck, the gun in his right hand almost touching her temple. She could hardly breathe, and Enzo could see the raw terror in her eyes. He felt his stomach lurch sickeningly at the thought that she might come to any harm.

“Hell, Enzo! You took your time.” Guy’s voice echoed around the cave. “Sophie and me got so damn cold waiting for you.”

“For God’s sake, man, let her go! What are you doing?”

“I knew she was the only thing that would bring you. Now the only people who know the truth are all down here in the wine cellar.”

“You’re wrong, Guy. It’s over. Everyone knows now.” But he could see in Guy’s eyes, and hear in his voice, that all reason had left him. And that made him unpredictable, dangerous.

“When Elisabeth told me she had confessed everything to you, I knew it was only a matter of time before the real truth came out.” It was as if he wasn’t listening, or didn’t want to hear. “Especially when I learned that she had given you the suicide note. I had no idea she’d kept it. It might have been good enough to fool her, but not some forensic expert. I knew that much.” He paused to draw breath. “I suppose you’ve already figured it out?”

Enzo nodded. “It was a page of the letter that Marc wrote to you when he got his third star. He was making peace, asking for your forgiveness, wanting to wipe the slate clean. The words you left readable on the page were well-chosen. They could easily have been construed as the words of a man about to take his own life.”

“Elisabeth thought so.”

Enzo glanced anxiously at Sophie. Guy was a big man. His grip on her neck was powerful. He could break it with a single twist of his arm. She knew it, too, and was making no attempt to struggle. Thoughts tumbled over themselves in Enzo’s mind, searching for clarity in confusion. He knew he had to keep Guy talking. “What I don’t understand is why you went to all the trouble of faking the suicide, only then to make it look like murder.”

Something close to a smile flitted over Guy’s face. As if he believed he had been so clever. “To convince Elisabeth, of course. I needed her to believe Marc had killed himself, so that she would collaborate in making it look like murder. A murder that nobody could possibly solve.”