Peter May - The Critic

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Someone tried again to kill me last night.’

Which took the wind out of her sails. Her voice shrank in size. ‘What happened?’

So he told her, and it seemed to him that she was almost more upset about Braucol than about the attempt on his life.

‘It couldn’t have been Fabien.’ She was filled with self-righteous certainty.

‘Why not?’

Her conviction crumbled just a little. ‘Because…because he’s not like that.’

‘And you know him so well.’ Enzo couldn’t hide his skepticism.

‘I’ve known him nearly two weeks, Monsieur Macleod!’ And after a moment, ‘And in ways you couldn’t possibly.’

Enzo looked at her, shocked, uncertain what she meant, and afraid to ask. ‘Nicole, whoever it was that attacked me last night, I slashed him in the dark with my knife. Fabien’s got a badly cut hand. You must have seen the bandage.’

Nicole wavered now towards reluctant uncertainty, but remained defiant. ‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

And Enzo cursed inwardly. A simple DNA test on the bloodied piece of torn pocket would prove it one way or another. But for that to happen he would have to admit to the investigating gendarmes that he had withheld evidence from them. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Now. Please, Nicole. Until we know for sure who’s responsible for these killings, we’re all in danger.’ He flicked his head towards the bed and sighed at the sight of her enormous suitcase. He knew how heavy it would be. He had carried it often enough. ‘Finish packing, and I’ll take your case down to the car.’

‘I don’t need your help, thank you, Monsieur Macleod. I have someone else who’ll carry my suitcase these days.’ She returned to the packing of it, making it clear in tone and body language that their discussion was at an end.

Enzo contained his frustration. She was a stubborn girl, filled with the certainty of ignorance. Her experience of the world was naive and second-hand, selectively assembled from surfing the internet and watching TV. The things he knew, the things he had seen in his life, would be incomprehensible to her, shocking beyond belief. And yet, she would always know better.

Fabien was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. Through the kitchen door, Enzo could see his mother hovering by the sink. He lowered his voice. ‘Anything happens to that girl…’

‘And what, old man?’

Enzo squared up to him and saw Fabien almost wince in the face of his intensity. ‘They’ll need DNA to identify your remains.’

Nicole stood silent, listening at the top of the stairs. Something in Enzo’s tone scared her more than any argument he could ever have made. Mr. Macleod was such a gentle big soul, she was both touched and shocked by his threat to Fabien. She drew back into the shadows as Enzo pushed past the young man and out of the front door. Fabien didn’t move. He remained standing in the downstairs hall for a long time after Enzo had gone. Perhaps he had been as shaken by Enzo’s words as Nicole. She moved forward now to try to catch a glimpse of him through banister uprights, and the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. Fabien turned a pale face towards her and caught her watching. There was nothing for it but to carry on down.

As she reached the downstairs hall, Madame Marre appeared in the kitchen door behind her son. Fabien and Nicole looked at each other for several long moments. Then her eyes fell to his bandaged hand. ‘What did you do to your hand, Fabien?’

A glob of spittle transferred itself between upper and lower lip. His face was pale and angry. ‘I’m sorry, but I want you out of here, Monsieur Macleod. ASAP.’

Paulette Lefevre stood behind her husband pink-faced with embarrassment. But she said nothing. Lefevre himself was puffed up with anger and indignation. He had just removed the bloodied swing from beneath the pigeonnier and put down sawdust to soak up any remaining blood from the damp earth below. They stood in a knot of confrontation outside the estate office.

‘There have been nothing but women coming and going at all hours of the day and night since you got here. You’ve vandalised the interior of my gite by drilling holes in the wall for your precious whiteboard. And now this! Break-ins, the ritual slaughter of animals. Gendarmes crawling all over the estate.

Enzo regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Who else knew you wouldn’t be at home last night?’

Lefevre was pulled up short. He glared at Enzo. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Whoever was waiting for me here knew that the place would be empty.’

‘Well, you knew. You should be asking yourself who you told. After all, it was you they were waiting for. Not us.’

Enzo ran his mind back over the past few days. Who might he have told? But, then, he dismissed the thought. ‘It doesn’t matter who I told. Certainly not anyone who might want to kill me. You’re the only ones who knew for certain the place would be empty. And you knew when I’d be coming back, because I told you.’

The globs of spittle on each lip had grown in size and seemed permanently connected as Lefevre exploded in indignation. ‘Are you suggesting I broke into my own home and lured you in to attack you?’

‘No, I’m just speculating about who knew what, and when.’ Enzo glanced towards the chai. ‘How come Petty never tasted your wines, Monsieur Lefevre?’

‘Who says he didn’t?’

‘He didn’t review them.’

Paulette said, ‘We always leave a bottle in the gite for our locataires. We left one for you, if you’ll recall.’

Enzo did. And recalled, too, that it wasn’t bad. ‘So why didn’t Petty review it? You’d have thought it might have had some resonance for him, since this is where his family originated.’

‘You’d have to ask him that.’ Lefevre finally got rid of the spittle, flicking it away on the tip of a lizard-like tongue. And Enzo tried to remember who it was who’d suggested exactly the same thing. Fabien Marre. That’s who. He had used almost exactly the same words, too. The day they confronted each other in the rainstorm at La Croix Blanche.

‘I would,’ Enzo said, echoing his own response from that day. ‘Only someone murdered him.’

‘I want you out of the gite by the end of today.’

‘Monsieur Macleod has paid until the end of the week, Pierric.’ Paulette Lefevre was trying very hard to soften the blunt edge of her husband’s ire.

‘Midday Saturday, then. And you can take your whiteboard with you!’ Pierric Lefevre stormed off into the estate office. His wife hovered for an apologetic moment, an appeal for forgiveness in her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and hurried after her husband.

The voices of men rang out across the cut green grass, the smack of hands on leather, the thunder of studs in turf. Enzo sat high up in the empty stand watching the first team regulars battling it out with the reserve team in a training match. One or two diehard fans leaned on the white painted rail around the pitch watching their heroes sweep towards the far posts, the oval ball switching from one set of hands to the next, to be carried across the line in a diving try. On match day, it would have brought a roar from fanatical crowds jamming this tiny stadium. Today it brought a shouted reprimand from the trainer. Where the bloody hell was the full-back?

Gaillac was, after all, in the heart of rugby country. Catholicism came a poor third to the twin religions of wine and rugby.

Enzo had stayed away from the gite for the rest of the day. It would, in any case, have been depressingly empty without Sophie and Bertrand, and Nicole and Michelle. And Braucol. Braucol was dead. The others he had sent away. His isolation was self-inflicted. He was treading treacherous water on his own until MacConchie e-mailed him the results of his sample analysis. He was pretty sure he would not sleep tonight.