Peter May - The Critic

There was no reasoning, Enzo knew, with madness. He looked at the man and wondered when and where and how the balance had tipped that way. Bonneval had known the story of what had happened during the French revolution, and had chosen to sublimate whatever feelings it had wakened in him in the hope of receiving Petty’s blessing, and the financial rewards that would bring. And when it had become clear that this was not about to happen… ‘Why Michelle?’ Enzo closed his eyes and saw her face staring back at him from the wine, before anger forced them open to focus on the killer who stood in front of him. ‘What possible reason could you have for harming her?’

‘Because she figured it out. She came to see me this afternoon. You found his reviews, it seems. If Petty had come to taste my wines, why had he not reviewed them?’ And he seemed almost amused at the pain of realisation that he saw in Enzo’s face.

Enzo’s voice seemed tiny in the dark. ‘Because yours was the last vineyard he visited. He never reviewed the wines of Chateau Saint-Michel because you killed him before he ever got the chance.’ How could he not have seen it? Why hadn’t he listened to Michelle instead of accusing her of lying? ‘She didn’t deserve this. None of them did. You’re deluded, Bonneval!’ He heard his own voice rising in anger.

But Bonneval shook his head, and looked down into the pit. ‘The girl…well, there was a kind of poetic justice in that. She was Petty’s daughter, after all. But I did nothing. They took their own lives, monsieur. All of them. Through ignorance. Going down there to their deaths of their own free will. Stupid, unsuspecting men. And women.’ And Enzo realised now how Petty and Coste had sustained the contusions found during autopsy. Overcome by gas as they went down into the pit, they had fallen the rest of the way. Bonneval turned back to him. ‘And you people couldn’t even tell. I didn’t drown them. They filled their lungs with carbonic gas. The wine was just a convenient place to keep them until I could dispose of the bodies.’ He allowed himself a wry smile. ‘Petty may not have liked my wine. But he was damned well going to drink it for eternity.’

‘Why in God’s name did you present him to the world like that? All dressed up and staked out like a scarecrow?’

There was a wry smile on his lips. ‘My father’s old gown and hat from l’ Ordre de la Dive Bouteille. It was rather appropriate, wasn’t it?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘Until then, nobody even knew Petty was dead.’

‘But that was just the point. Nobody knew. And people needed to know. That justice had been done. To understand that their sins will always find them out.’

He seemed to have forgotten that the real reason he’d done it was because Petty hadn’t liked his wine. ‘But you certainly didn’t want anyone to know that it was you who’d been the instrument of that justice.’

Bonneval smiled. ‘No. No one ever needed to know that.’

‘ I know.’

He nodded. ‘And so did Roussel. His timing was perfect. He was the last one. It was his turn. But, like both him and Michelle Petty, I don’t think you’ll be sharing it with anyone else, monsieur.’ He turned to the wall and unhooked a rope that strained up into darkness.

Enzo watched with a mixture of alarm and incomprehension. Then heard a soft, swift current of air as Bonneval released the rope. He turned as something dark and heavy swung out of nowhere and knocked him from his feet. His head hit concrete with a resounding crack. And in the moment before blackness consumed him, he found himself looking into the flickering flame of the candle, red-painted steps descending beyond it to eternity. Into the abyss of which Charlotte had warned him. He saw his own blood making a pool around his head. And he knew with an absolute certainty, that there was nothing he could do to stop Bonneval from pushing him down the stairs to his death.

His whole world was filled with a rushing sound so all consuming that he could hear nothing else. His eyes were open, but he was blind. He could move, but only slowly, his entire body constrained by a softness he could sense but not feel. He had no conception of time or space. Only pain. A pain so intense he thought his head would burst. He remembered the flickering flame of the candle. The red stairs descending into light. Was this what lay at the foot of the steps? Was this death?

And yet he felt so very much alive. If only he could find some shred of comprehension, grasp some reference to a world he might understand. He fought through pain in search of illumination and found it in the air he breathed. Thick and sweet and filled with the fragrance of freshly crushed fruit. Grapes. His feet found solid form beneath him, and he tried to stand up. But a solid stream of heavy, wet liquid knocked him over again. And now it filled his nose and mouth. He tasted the sweetness of the grape juice, the pulp of its flesh, and realised he was completely submerged in freshly pressed must.

In panic he pushed up and broke the surface. The jet of crushed grape broke over his shoulder, and he spun away from it, hands outstretched, until he found the round smooth stainless steel wall that contained him. He followed it round, defining in his brain the limit of his circular prison, and understanding broke over him like the juice that thundered down from above. He was in the bottom of a cuve. The must had not yet begun its fermentation, otherwise the oxygen would already have been displaced by carbonic gas.

But why had Bonneval not simply pushed him into the pit? And even as the question formed in his mind, Enzo knew the answer. The killer would only have had to haul him out again. And Enzo was a big man, bigger than Bonneval’s other victims. It would have been hard enough for him to drag the dead weight of the Scotsman across the chai and bundle him into the cuve through the access hatch.

The thought of the hatch gave him fresh hope. It was, doubtless, how he had got in. It might be his way out.

He crouched down, submerged again, and felt around until he found the hatch and the seal around it. But to his disappointment realised that there was no way to release it from the inside. He broke the surface once more, and became aware that he was almost up to his neck now. There was no way he could float in something this dense. Once it was over his head, he would drown in it. And there was nothing he could do.

Blind fear gripped him. And he craned his head back, peering desperately into the darkness above. There had to be light. The lid must be off to allow the tube access to the cuve. He could hear the motor now, above the thunder of the juice, pumping it under pressure. From the pressoir? From another cuve. Enzo had no way of knowing. But at last he found light. The merest trace of it. And only in the sense that it gave vague dark form to the stream of juice that gushed down from above. Seeing it, he realised that halfway down the jet divided into two streams. That there was something there. An obstruction mid- cuve. He couldn’t see it. He reached up and couldn’t touch it. It was too far above his head. But in his soul he knew that it was his only salvation. He crouched down, submerged again beneath the heavy, sweet, thick juice and pushed up with all his might. He stretched and stretched into darkness and his fingers touched something cold and solid, before he slipped back into the must. And he realised in that moment what it was. One of the wafer thin radiators, fed cold water through black tubing, that they lowered into cuves to cool fermenting wine. If he could somehow get a hold of the thing, it just might be a lifeline. Literally. But it seemed the most slender of threads on which to hang his life. He roared his anger and frustration into the void and prepared himself to jump again, with barely any remaining hope to sustain him.