Peter May - The Critic

‘Okay,’ Enzo said, ‘print all that out for me.’ He felt a frisson of excitement. Things were starting to fall into place. ‘This gives us pretty much his full flavour vocabulary, describing what he smelled in a wine, tasted in a wine, and how it felt in his mouth. These are almost certainly what he created the codes for.’

‘As well as his ratings,’ Sophie said.

Bertrand nodded. ‘A through to F and 1 through to 5.’

‘Which means…’ Enzo did a quick mental calculation. ‘…we’re looking for a total of ninety-two codes.’ He lifted the pages from the printer as it fed them out through the inkjet and crossed to the whiteboard. He wiped off Petty’s coded rating for the Sarrabelle Syrah and started listing the flavours in columns, beginning with Fruit. Then he moved on to the one-word sensual descriptions, and finally the ratings. It took him nearly ten minutes, and the others watched in silence as his marker pen squeaked its way across the shiny white surface. ‘Okay.’ Enzo stood back and looked at the lists before picking up the notes they had made at old Domenech’s house the night before.

He scrutinised his scribbles, frowning in concentration. His writing had become less and less legible as the night wore on.

‘There,’ he said at last. ‘The 2001 Petrus Pommerol that we had. Domenech agreed with Petty’s published description of a wine with strong hints of liquorice and vanilla.’ He ran a finger down through his notes, stopping and tapping near the foot of the page. ‘Now, when he tasted the three Gaillac reds that we only have the coded notes for, he discerned vanilla and liquorice in the Sarrabelle Syrah, and vanilla in the Cuvee Lea.’ He held out a hand towards Bertrand. ‘Give me the printouts.’

Bertrand handed him the coded reviews of the three wines they had taken to Cordes en Ciel, and Enzo pinned them to the wall beside the board. He stood scanning them studiously before exasperation exploded in a breath from pursed lips. ‘Trouble is, there are too many repeating codes. There are codes unique to each one, but there are several. We have no way of knowing which one might be liquorice. And of the ones that repeat, which one might be vanilla.’ He slumped into the rocker and let his notes fall into his lap. ‘Shit! The sample’s too small. We’d need to go on tasting wines until we found a unique flavour to match a unique code, or multiple codes that repeated so often that we could be sure of the match.’

Sophie cocked an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Well, I’m all for tasting more wines.’

But Enzo was adamant. ‘No. It’s not the way.’ He glanced semi-apologetically at Bertrand. ‘It was a good idea, but it’s not how we’re going to break the code.’

‘Well how are we going to break it?’ Sophie cocked her head at her father.

‘ We are not going to do anything. You are going to leave me in peace to think about it.’ He cast a rueful look at Michelle. ‘All of you.’

Sophie stood up. ‘Well, there’s no point in arguing with him. When my Papa makes up his mind about something, that’s it.’ She took Bertrand’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s go to town and find a cafe.’ She flounced out with Bertrand in tow. Enzo saw that the rain was still falling from the heavens.

He sighed and turned to Michelle. ‘You can stay if you want.’

But Michelle shook her head. ‘No. You need to think. I understand that.’

‘I’m sorry about Sophie.’

‘I understand that, too. Maybe if I was her, I’d feel the same way.’ She got up from the stairs and crossed the room to plant a gentle kiss on Enzo’s forehead. He smelled her perfume and felt her warmth, and for a moment was tempted to forget about codes and killers and take her through to the bedroom. But the thought that someone else might be about to go missing, that someone else was in danger of suffering the same fate as Petty and Coste, and probably the others in Roussel’s file, weighed on his conscience, and he knew that Michelle would have to wait. He gave her hand a squeeze, and felt a rush of regret as she went out onto the terrasse to recover her umbrella and brave the rain.

He got up and crossed to the wine rack and took out a bottle of Chateau Lacroux 2001 Vignes de Castellan. He uncorked it and poured himself an inch of it before swirling the deep, rich red around inside the glass. The wine was at perfect room temperature and gave off the distinctive Gaillac aromas of the duras and braucol grapes. Which made him think of the puppy for the first time in hours, and he looked in vain around the room before spotting him curled up fast asleep under the table. Enzo smiled. Daughters and dogs, he thought. Endless trouble. But always worth it. He took a mouthful of wine. Red fruits, a hint of black cherry, liquorice.

He carried the bottle over to the rocking chair, sat down, and filled his glass. As he sipped at the wine, he gazed at all the flavours he had written up on the board, until they blurred and swam in front of his eyes. He refilled his glass and turned his attention to the coded reviews: ky, ms and nj. wjc. gf+ amp;lbj+++ jmo, zt amp;nm, with a little nj giving way to ky, la amp;ma

The letters were always in groups of two or three. Some of them made words, like la and ma. Others made no sense at all. jmo or hh.

He drank some more wine and closed his eyes. But the codes were still there, etched by light on his retinas. There had to be a simple logic to it. He thought back to his own allusion to the French-English dictionary. Two lists of corresponding words, one of which was in alphabetical order. And something began to chip away at his consciousness from somewhere below the surface. Something nagging, insistent, like a woodpecker drilling holes in trees. His head hurt at the thought, and he wondered irrationally, if woodpeckers ever got headaches. He felt his glass slip in his hand, and he put it down on the floor before he dropped it. There was something there. Something just beyond reach. Something that someone had said. Something right in front of his eyes. A key to unlocking the code. But he was so, so very sleepy.

He was a long way down. It was very dark here, and strange creatures floated through the murk, skulking in the shadows, bulbous eyes staring at him through fronds that waved about in the eddies and currents of cold, cold water. There was a tug on his line, and he realised that there was very little oxygen left. He could hear a voice, from somewhere very far above, calling him back to the surface. He had found something down here, and he wanted to tell them. But he knew he mustn’t make his ascent too quickly, or he would lose it.

He pushed off towards the voice, mud and sand rising all around him. He tipped his head back and saw the light and heard the voice again, and found himself rising at an alarming rate. Too fast. He broke the surface gasping for breath.

‘Papa!’ Sophie glared at him. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

Enzo frowned. ‘Only a couple of glasses.’

The door opened from the terrasse, and Michelle came in. Sophie turned to look at her. ‘Where were you?’

‘I waited in the car until I saw you coming back.’

‘Well, the great mind here, who wanted us to leave him alone so that he could concentrate, drank some wine and fell asleep. That’s what old men do, you know. Fall asleep in chairs.’ She flashed Michelle a very purposeful look, just in case she’d missed the point.

‘What time is it?’ Enzo ignored his daughter’s barb.

Bertrand looked at his watch. ‘Nearly six. You’ve been out for a couple of hours, Monsieur Macleod.’

Enzo stood up stiffly and focused on the whiteboard; then he ripped one of the coded reviews from the wall and blinked at it, trying to remember. And then he did. He turned to find three faces looking at him expectantly, and he smiled and waved the piece of paper in the air. ‘It’s quite simple, really.’