Peter May - The Critic

‘You might take me up on my offer?’

‘I’m not sure, Mister Macleod. I mean, what do you really care about me or my father? I might be useful to you, that’s all.’

‘Someone tried to kill me last night, Miss Petty, which makes this very personal to me. I’m going to find your father’s killer whether you help me or not.’

There was a weariness in Roussel’s demeanour as he showed them into his office.

‘I knew it was a mistake to tell you about Mademoiselle Petty.’ He glared at Enzo. ‘Now you’ve come back to haunt me, like all mistakes do.’

‘Could we do this in English?’ Michelle said. Although she spoke passable French, she found Roussel’s accent impenetrable.

Roussel looked to Enzo for elucidation, then shrugged when Enzo obliged. ‘We did it through another gendarme last time whose English was pretty poor. I think yours is better, monsieur.’

Enzo explained to Michelle, then turned back to the Frenchman. ‘Madamoiselle Petty has engaged me to represent her interests in the recovery of her father’s personal belongings.’ He ignored the gendarme’s theatrical sigh. ‘And to achieve closure on the unanswered question of who murdered him and why.’

‘I’ve already told you, monsieur, we’re not an information service for private investigators.’

‘Madamoiselle Petty has an absolute right to take possession of her father’s things. They are legally hers.’

‘Then she is entitled to make her request through the proper channels.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Michelle’s frustration was patent.

‘He’s being an officious bastard,’ Enzo told her. Then turned back to Roussel. ‘There’s not a single reason in the world for you to hold onto that stuff. I’m quite sure the Police Scientifique at Albi went over everything with a fine-toothed comb at the time. No doubt the reports are in the file. Now we can do this the easy way, and you can sign release forms right here and now. Or we can do it the hard way, and I’ll make a personal complaint to the Prefet about police obstruction.’

Roussel fixed him with a long hard stare, before his face slowly melted into a smile. Enzo had no idea what he found amusing. ‘I admire your balls, monsieur. There are not many Frenchmen would have spoken to a gendarme the way you’ve just spoken to me.’

‘The Scots are renowned for being bolshie.’

‘I know. I’ve watched your countrymen play rugby against La France. I shudder to think what goes on in the scrum.’

Enzo couldn’t resist a smile. On whatever other subjects the Scots and the French might diverge, they always found common ground on the rugby pitch. Especially against the English.

‘What, are we sharing a joke now?’ Michelle’s frustration was turning to irritation.

Roussel ignored her. ‘Alright, monsieur. I’ll let her take her father’s things. But as for access to other evidence, my answer’s still the same.’

‘Well?’ Michelle was impatient to know what was happening.

Enzo said, ‘He’s agreed. You can take your dad’s stuff. But knowing the French, there’ll be a blizzard of paperwork.’

Through a window that opened into the courtyard, Enzo could see Michelle fighting that blizzard at reception. Roussel lit a cigarette and blew smoke speculatively in Enzo’s direction. The sun was rising above the shallow pitch of the roof, glancing brick-red off terracotta Roman tiles, and spilling across the courtyard towards the residences. A low-ranking gendarme in shirt-sleeves was washing the boss’s car. Roussel tipped his head towards Enzo’s injuries. ‘Too much to drink last night?’

‘Someone tried to kill me.’

The cigarette paused halfway to the gendarme’s mouth, his smoke hanging in the still morning air with the same sense of suspended animation. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘I am.’ Enzo told him what happened.

‘No witnesses?’

Enzo shook his head, and Roussel looked at him for a long time, almost as if trying to decide whether he believed him or not. Finally he said, ‘I was on the net last night, looking at your qualifications.’

‘Impressive, huh?’

Roussel grinned. ‘The piece I read credited you with many things, Monsieur Macleod. Modesty wasn’t one of them.’ He took a thoughtful pull from his cigarette. ‘An honours degree in biochemistry, a masters in forensic science. Head of biology section, Strathclyde police. Blood pattern interpretation at crime scenes, DNA databasing…’

‘And one of only four people in the UK to train as a Byford scientist. Which makes me an expert on serious serial crime analysis.’ He met the gendarme’s steady gaze. ‘We don’t have to be at odds, Gendarme Roussel. I can help you.’

Roussel took a final puff on his cigarette and threw it away. ‘I appreciate the offer, monsieur. I really do. But we don’t need your help. We have all the expertise we require within the service.’

For a moment, Enzo had felt he was making progress with the man. Now he sighed and changed the subject. ‘Well, maybe you could tell me a little bit about l’ Ordre de la Dive Bouteille.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘How many members does it have?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘That’s all?’

Roussel nodded.

‘So how come you couldn’t track down the owner of the costume that Petty was wearing?’

‘Every current member of the Ordre was still in possession of his robes. The society was formed more than half a century ago, Monsieur Macleod. There have been dozens of members over the years. When one dies, someone else takes his place. All the accoutrements go to the relatives of the deceased. There was no way of accounting for all of those.’

‘So who’s the head of the Ordre?’

‘The president?’

‘Ah, yes, there’s always a Monsieur le President, isn’t there?’

‘Why should I tell you?’

‘It’s not a secret, is it? I’ll find out anyway.’

‘So you will.’ Roussel kicked at a stone on the ground with one of his big, black boots. ‘His name’s Jean-Marc Josse, a winemaker at Mas Causse near Cestayrols. He’s been running the show for a long time. A real character.’

The sound of a door banging made them turn as a triumphant Michelle strode out of the gendarmerie waving a sheaf of papers. ‘I have the release forms, signed and sealed. A veritable Amazononian forest.’ She beamed at Enzo. ‘Thank you, Mister Macleod. Now all I have to do is go to somewhere in Albi to get the stuff.’

‘The TGI,’ Roussel said. ‘The Tribunal de Grande Instance in the Place du Palais. It’s a beautiful old building.’

Nicole sat on the terrasse of the Grand Cafe des Sports at a plastic table under a yellow awning. The tables at the Brasserie Saint-Pierre next door were empty for the moment, waiting in silent anticipation for the midi rush. There were only a couple of other tables occupied at the Cafe des Sports, a disabled man in a high wheelchair, and two farmers in from the country, greasy overalls and cloth caps and big fingers holding small glasses of red wine. Nicole’s car was lined up among the others in the shade of the trees in the Place de la Liberation, where old men sat on benches watching the traffic and sucking on nicotine-stained, hand-rolled cigarettes held precariously between dried lips. On the far side of the square a young girl was setting tables on the pavement outside the Cassis restaurant where lotus eaters from England gathered to exercise their native tongue and complain about the French. A brown puppy with a huge head and big paws was flapping up and down the pavement, playfully chasing passers-by.

Nicole sipped her coffee and munched on the chocolatine she had bought in a boulangerie across the square, and examined the map and the list of chambres d’hotes she had acquired from the tourist office beside the abbey. There were dozens of them. The trick was going to be finding one close to Chateau des Fleurs, the cost of which would not send Monsieur Macleod into another fit of Scottish apoplexy. He could, she reflected, be seriously bad-tempered at times. She put it down to the lack of a woman in his life.