Martin Walker - The dark vineyard

“J-J, can you come up here a moment?” he called. When the big commissaire came into the room, Bruno pointed to the brush in the plastic bag.

“Look carefully and you’ll see short dark hairs on that brush. Obviously, they aren’t Jacqueline’s. My guess is they belonged to Bondino. She told me he spent one night in her old hotel room, but just before I came here I went to check with the manager’s wife, and she said it was two or three nights. Whenever Max wasn’t with her, Bondino was. He could have used her hairbrush then. Or maybe it’s his. So it’s possible that Bondino never laid a hand on Max, just as he said, whatever the DNA evidence might suggest. Somebody else put those hairs under Max’s nails to incriminate Bondino. I think you’d better get your forensics team over here.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched, Bruno. I suppose you see her motive as that family feud, and those documents you explained to me,” said J-J, looking through the items on the dressing table. “What’s that? A nail file?”

A nail file might be just the thing to put Bondino’s hair under Max’s fingernails, thought Bruno as J-J pointed at the thin plastic sleeve on the dressing table.

“Got any evidence gloves in your car?”

“In the glove compartment. Help yourself,” said J-J, thumbing a number into his phone to call his forensics team.

Out in the courtyard, Pamela was poking through a large yellow plastic bag that she had pulled from the garbage can. “No wrapping paper, but more of these strips of tape,” she called. Bruno waved an acknowledgment and grabbed two sets of gloves, then ran back up the stairs and handed a pair to J-J. He blew into them to loosen the latex, slipped his hands into them and then picked up what turned out not to be a nail file. He eased a long flexible plastic strip from the sleeve.

“A strip of thin plastic protected inside plastic. What on earth could that be?” he asked, holding it up to the window and turning it. Bruno switched on the desk lamp and they looked again.

“Wait a minute,” said Bruno. He darted down the stairs again and returned with some of the strips of tape that Pamela had rescued, holding them against the light.

“You always get fingerprints on sticky tape,” said J-J.

“Yes, but whose?” said Bruno. He went into the bathroom and came out with some talcum powder, then delicately tapped the bottom of the can, dusting a small amount onto one of the bottles of toilet water on the dressing table. “Let’s assume those are Jacqueline’s prints on her scent bottle,” he said, and gently blew away the talc. The ridges of a thumbprint emerged on the glass. He placed one of the adhesive strips alongside it. “That’s the same print, right?”

“Yes, it looks like it,” said J-J. “So what’s your point?”

“Watch.” Bruno carefully unwrapped a little of the plastic bag and dusted some talcum power onto the handle of the hairbrush and then blew it away. “That print there will belong to Bondino, and I know why she wanted his prints. His laptop computer has a security device, some kind of sensor that required his fingerprint to unlock it. That’s why she needed him in her bed and asleep in her room. She wanted to get into his computer. Some of the documents in those files of hers downstairs are confidential business plans and company accounts. Maybe that’s what she was after. But if she could fake his prints to get into his computer, what else could she do with them?”

“You think she could have transferred them onto that glass we found at Cresseil’s place?” asked J-J.

“That’s what the adhesive tape strips were for. I think she lifted the fingerprints from her hairbrush and then put them on the glass. That’s one for your forensics team to check when they get here. If that’s what she did, there’ll be traces of the adhesive on the glass.”

“Hello,” called Pamela from downstairs, above the sound of another car arriving. “Fabiola’s here. There’s nothing more in the garbage can, no wrapping paper. Are you two both upstairs?” Bruno shouted, “Yes,” and heard her footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Those bits of tape,” he said when she came into the bedroom. “I think they were used to lift fingerprints from one thing and transfer them to something else.”

“Oh yes?” she said, not the least bit surprised. “I think I remember something like that from one of the IRA bomb trials in Britain. You remember, the Northern Ireland troubles. So whose fingerprints do you have?”

“We aren’t sure yet,” said Bruno as J-J began working his phone again. “Let’s go down and say hello to Fabiola. I need to find out what happened with the pathologist’s report.”

Fabiola’s car was packed. There was a suitcase on the floor of the passenger’s side, and a cardboard box on the seat with a large stuffed plastic bag atop it that tumbled into the driver’s seat as soon as Fabiola emerged. The rear seats were down and the cargo space stuffed to the brim with suitcases, shopping bags and cardboard boxes.

“That’s my life,” she said. “Everything I own is in that car.”

“I’ll help you unload,” said Bruno, hearing J-J’s heavy tread coming down the wooden stairs. “But first we need to know about the pathologist’s report. J-J, you should listen to this.”

“The attestation has been filed,” Fabiola said as J-J joined them. “Accidental death by asphyxiation, but with a cautious appendix saying the blow to the head was inflicted after death. So you have no murder.”

J-J let out a vast explosion of breath, and his shoulders sagged. “Putain, putain, putain…”

“It looks like we may have another crime: planting false evidence,” said Bruno.

“Not to mention wasting police time and dropping me in the merde,” added J-J. “But how did she come to be at the death scene to plant those fake hairs?”

“You mean the ones I found under Max’s nails? I don’t think there was anything fake about them,” said Fabiola. “They were real hairs, with follicles on the end. It’s not like someone got them from a barber’s clippings. Remember, Bruno? I looked at them with a magnifying glass.”

“Like these?” asked J-J, holding up a plastic evidence bag that contained the hairbrush.

Fabiola looked carefully, and then asked for a magnifying glass. J-J got one from his car, and she looked again, then pulled out her phone. “I’m calling my colleague in Bergerac. There’s something we can check.”

She dialed quickly.

“Jean-Claude? Listen, it’s me. That autopsy we did with the asphyxiation, the one with the long delay over the head wound, can you check something for me? Yes? It’s the fingernails. You remember we found hairs in them and follicles. Was there any other alien flesh under the nails or just the hairs? There seems to be a possibility that the hairs were planted on the corpse. Okay, I’ll wait for your call. Thanks.”

Fabiola turned back to them. “He’ll let me know, but I can’t say I remember anything except the hairs. None of those traces of flesh you usually find if the hairs have been snatched in a struggle.” She looked forlorn. “I’m sorry; it’s my fault,” she went on. “I wasn’t thinking about planted evidence, so I didn’t look for anything else. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Would that be definitive proof that the hair was planted, if there’s no flesh in the nails?” Bruno asked her.

“No, but it’s very suggestive,” she replied.

“I think we need a drink,” said Pamela. “You help Fabiola unload the car and I’ll bring the glasses. Ricard for everybody?” They nodded. “The door to Fabiola’s gite is open. I put a new gas canister in the kitchen and some milk and eggs in the refrigerator. The eggs are from Bruno’s hens, by the way. Just go straight in and put your stuff wherever you want.”