Peter May: The Critic

‘You received a fax from Madame Taillard, the police chief in Cahors?’

‘I did.’

‘Then you’ll know I’m here about the murder of Gil Petty.’

Roussel allowed himself to drop into his seat, and he folded his arms across his chest. Enzo noticed a foot-high plastic model of Lara Croft standing to one side of the computer, the cardboard box it had come in discarded amongst the detritus piled up on the floor behind the desk. ‘I don’t like the Police Nationale, monsieur. They’re civilians, we’re army. They get funded, we don’t.’ He picked a pen out of a jar of them standing on his desk and scribbled with it on his inkpad. It left nothing but an indentation in the paper. ‘ Gendarme — issue. Doesn’t work.’ He picked up a file on his desk and pulled off the paper clip that bound it, holding it up for Enzo to see. ‘Paper clips? Got to buy them ourselves. You think the Police Nationale buy their own paper clips?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘No, of course you don’t. And I have no idea how I can help you.’

‘I’d like access to your files on the Petty case.’

Roussel gazed at him very directly for a long time. Then his face broke into an unexpected smile of genuine amusement. ‘I like a man with a sense of humour, Monsieur Macleod. What makes you think I would give you access to the files?’ But before Enzo could reply, he lifted a hand to stop him. ‘No, tell me this first. Who are you?’

Enzo was taken aback. ‘Well, you know who I am.’

‘Do I?’

Enzo sighed. ‘My name’s Enzo-’

Rousell cut him of. ‘No, I know who you are. Or, rather, I know who you tell me you are.’ He reached across the desk. ‘And what I read in a fax from someone purporting to be the chief of police in Cahors. You could be the killer for all I know. And you want me to hand over my files?’

Enzo was at a loss.

‘And in any case, the Gendarmerie Nationale doesn’t give out information to private investigators.’

‘I’m not exactly a private investigator.’

‘No, you’re not.’ Roussel opened a slim file on his desk and lifted a sheet of paper to examine it. ‘You’re a former forensics officer from Scotland. You’ve lived in France for twenty years and you teach biology at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse.’

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about me.’

‘I did some checking. In my business it pays.’

Roussel had done his homework, but it was time, Enzo thought, to turn defence into attack. ‘It’s easy enough, monsieur, to find facts that are readily available on the internet. It’s quite another to solve a crime when none of the facts are apparent, and it requires some intelligence to unearth them.’

Colour rose high on Roussel’s cheeks, marring a smooth, tanned complexion. ‘Your point being?’

‘Petty was missing for a year before his body turned up. Not only did you fail to find him, you didn’t even know he’d been murdered until his killer decided to put him on public display.’

Roussel’s anger was apparent only in the almost imperceptible clenching and unclenching of his jaw. He gazed at Enzo with steady dark eyes. ‘People go missing all the time, Monsieur Macleod.’ He tapped another file on his desk. A fat one this time. ‘I have nearly half a dozen cases in my missing persons file. Very often people have their own reasons. Nothing sinister. A marital break-up, a secret affair, redundancy, mental illness. Sometimes they just want to disappear.’ He opened the file and lifted out a sheaf of papers held together with a clip he had no doubt bought himself. ‘This one I was at school with. Serge Coste. Just upped sticks and left a year ago. His wife says she has no idea why. But I figure they had a big bust up. They were childless. She wanted to adopt, he didn’t. That sort of thing can put people under all sorts of pressure. But we’ll probably never know why he left, or where he went.’ He closed the file and slapped his hand on top of it. ‘We had no reason to suspect foul play when Petty disappeared. Even when we came under pressure-he was an international personality, after all-we could find no evidence that there had been any crime committed.’

‘Even when he turned up strapped to a cross like a scarecrow in a vineyard?’

‘That was twelve months later. The trail was cold as ice.’

‘Not where he was found. He’d only been there a matter of hours. You had a fresh crime scene. And a killer always leaves something behind. Some clue. No matter how small. Always.’

Roussel pursed his lips to contain his anger. ‘Officers from the Police Scientifique in Albi examined the scene in the minutest detail, Monsieur Macleod. If the killer had left some trace, we would have found it.’ He pushed himself back in his seat and pulled open a drawer. He took out a book and dropped it on his desk.

Enzo inclined his head to look at it.

‘Your friend, Roger Raffin is causing me no end of trouble, Macleod.’ Enzo noticed that Roussel had dropped the monsieur. ‘Especially now that it’s been translated and published in the United States. Although no doubt only because it contains the Petty case. You just missed his daughter.’

This time Enzo’s interest was piqued. “Michelle Petty? She’s here?’

‘Not for long. She was looking for his personal belongings.’

‘After three years? She’s taken her time.’

‘Four years since he went missing. And it’s the first contact we’ve had from any member of the family-apart from arranging to ship the body back for burial.’

‘So what did you tell her?’

‘That his personal effects are still regarded as evidence in an open case. So I don’t think she’ll be here for much longer.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d know where she’s staying.’

Roussel fixed him with hard eyes. ‘And why should I tell you?’

‘To get me off your back.’

Which brought a smile to the gendarme’s face. The first in a while. ‘Now there’s an offer. She’s staying at the Chateau de Salettes, Monsieur Macleod. It’s where all the really wealthy tourists stay. I’d say Michelle Petty has done pretty well from her father’s death.’

The narrow road wound upwards amongst vineyards that stretched away through chalk hills north and south, as far as the eye could see. Some of the vines were still laden, heavy bunches of tightly packed black braucol or duras grapes, or the yellow-green mauzac or loin de l’oeil — romantically named “far from the eye” because of it’s long stalk. Others had already been harvested, and seemed naked somehow, stripped of their fruit under the hot September sun. The vendange was early this year after a heat wave in July and a warm, wet August. It promised a fine vintage.

The landscape was punctuated by tall, thin poplars, like exclamation marks, and the distinctive pins parasols, pine trees that spread their dark canopies like giant parasols to provide shade from the heat of the day. Hilltop villages in shimmering white stone were roofed with red Roman tiles and set at shallow angles, in the Mediterranean style. Enzo’s polished cream Citroen 2CV rolled on soft suspension as he steered it right at the crossroads. The car was his pride and joy, lovingly restored by a specialist in Belgium from the carcasses of cars long since extinct. It was quintessentially French, and with its roof rolled back like a sardine can, gave Enzo’s big frame all the space he needed.

From its windows he had a panoramic view across the rolling hills to the valley below, and he reflected that this landscape would not have looked so very different in Roman times. Stone-built villas, poplars, vines. Land tamed and cultivated by men in skirts and sandals. The only difference now was that the roads were metalled, and the grapes were harvested for the most part by machines that shook them violently from their stalks. Enzo could see one now, in the distance, huge wheels straddling vines carefully pruned to accommodate them. A monster of a machine, towering over the vineyard as it made its steady progress up the hill, grapes drawn into huge containers on either side.