Martin Walker - The dark vineyard

Two trips back and forth were all it took for the three of them. Fabiola’s suitcases were parked upstairs, the boxes of books placed beside the shelves in the sitting room, the plastic bags put on the kitchen counter and the medical bag by the door.

“Look,” said Fabiola when they were done, pointing at a vase filled with flowers on the table. “Pamela is so kind, welcoming me with flowers.” She went across to the refrigerator and opened the door. “And look at this, orange juice and butter, and coffee and fruit here on the counter. I must go thank her.”

Bruno and J-J strolled back to the courtyard with Fabiola, and the four of them gathered around Pamela’s table, where she had been waiting with a tray of drinks. They clinked their glasses in formal welcome to Fabiola, and J-J stole a glance at his watch.

“She’ll be here any moment,” said Bruno.

“So will my men,” J-J said. “You realize I’m probably going to have to go back to your Captain Duroc and ask to use his jail again.”

“You’re not taking her directly to Perigueux for questioning?” Bruno asked.

“No murder, so no juge d’instruction, and we’ll need the forensics report on the hair and fingerprints before we can file any charges. So no, I’m not taking her to Perigueux until I have all my ducks in a row. I’ve already got the American ambassador filing complaints in Paris. I don’t want the Canadian one joining in.”

Fabiola’s phone trilled. “Yes? Jean-Claude? Nothing but the hair and some splinters of wood. No flesh. Okay, thanks. Can you make sure the report gets amended to say that? Send me the paperwork to sign. Right. See you, and thanks again.” She looked up at them. “You heard that.”

“I heard,” said J-J, looking at Bruno. “Pretty cunning. But why would she want Bondino charged with murder? Is there money in it for her?”

“It’s the old family feud. But I don’t think there’s money involved. Greed’s not the motive. It’s vengeance.”

“So she slept with Bondino just to destroy him?” asked Pamela.

“Let’s ask her,” said Bruno, looking out through the courtyard.

At the end of the lane, a figure appeared on a bicycle, pedaling briskly, her blond hair streaming behind her. Pamela rose, put all the glasses on a tray and took them into the kitchen. “Come along, Fabiola. I don’t think we ought to be here for this, so I’ll help you unpack.”

When they had gone, J-J went across to his car, opened the passenger door and took a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment and then returned to join Bruno. The two men stood and waited until Jacqueline pulled up in front of them. She stepped off her bike and lifted her cheek to Bruno as if to be kissed. Bruno ignored this and took the handlebars in one hand.

“ Bonsoir, Jacqueline. Commissaire Jalipeau here has some questions for you, and I need to see your passport again, please.”

Suddenly wary, her eyes darting from Bruno to J-J’s grim face, Jacqueline pulled her shoulder bag from the wicker basket above the bicycle’s rear wheel and fished inside, pulling out her dark blue passport and handing it over. Bruno quickly checked the photo, and then with his eyes fixed on hers, put the passport into the chest pocket of his shirt and fastened the button.

“We now know exactly what happened,” J-J said. “We know how you put Bondino’s fingerprints on the glass you left at the farmhouse. We know where you got those bits of his hair that you put under Max’s fingernails. We know how you broke into Bondino’s computer and downloaded his files. We know how you tried to plant the evidence so that Bondino would be convicted of murder. We know all this, and we can prove it. My forensics team will be here shortly and will go over every inch of your house, every item of your clothing, and when you are arrested and in jail a policewoman will be conducting a full body search.”

J-J advanced upon her, taking one arm firmly and opening the handcuffs. “Do you have anything to say?”

She looked helplessly at Bruno. “Answer the question,” he told her. “Do you have anything to say?”

“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, her eyes fixed on J-J’s handcuffs.

“Well, let’s start where you lied the last time I asked you about this,” Bruno suggested. “You told me you spent one drunken night with Bondino in your hotel room. That wasn’t true. You entertained him in your hotel room at least three nights, the concierge tells me. And yet this was your cousin, from the other side of a bitter family feud. You seduced him and got him drunk so that you could get into his computer as he slept it off.”

Jacqueline closed her eyes and shook her head but kept silent.

“We can prove that, from your own computer files, and from the printouts we found in your files of confidential documents from the Bondino group. That’s commercial espionage,” Bruno said. “But let’s go on to your next lie. You said you left the bar with Max after the fight with Bondino and went to make love in the park by the river and then he left you to go and tread the grapes by himself. That wasn’t true, was it?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I went with him and we trod the grapes together.”

“Was that where you made love, at Cresseil’s place?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“Did you go into the house, to the bedroom upstairs?”

“No,” she said quietly. “The old man was a light sleeper. And the dog…”

“In the open air, then? Were you telling the truth about that?”

“Yes. I mean, no,” she said urgently, her eyes very wide, a trace of panic in her voice. “We were in the vat, while we were treading the grapes. We made love in the vat.”

“So what happened?” Bruno asked quietly. “Why did Max suffocate but not you?”

“We were kissing…,” she began. She stopped and closed her eyes. Bruno and J-J just looked at her, letting the silence build. Her eyes opened but seemed to focus on nothing.

“My head was over the side of the vat and I was holding the rim with both hands. Max was behind me, he was… he was very passionate. Then he was slumped on me, a deadweight. I was trapped; I couldn’t move.”

She burst into tears, and let them fall down her cheeks. “I couldn’t move, and he didn’t respond. I thought he was asleep or that he’d passed out. I didn’t know what was happening, and even though my head was over the side of the vat I was dizzy, like I was fainting. I managed to push him away, and his head hit the side with a thud and I panicked.”

Jacqueline stopped, looking down at the ground. Bruno waited, his eyes fixed on her. J-J was immobile beside him.

“And when did Cresseil come into the barn?” Bruno asked.

“I climbed out of the vat and I must have been screaming because the old man came out of his house. He saw me at the door of the barn and pushed me aside and went in. I saw him climb the steps and then he crumpled and fell, right from the top of the steps. He just fell and lay there.”

“So why didn’t you call the emergency services, the pompiers, the ambulance?” asked Bruno.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was that damned dog, yapping. It was hardly able to move, its back legs crippled, but it kept creeping across to the old man and yapping and howling and turning to snarl at me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t shut it up. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you killed the dog.”

“I hit it on the head with a big stone to knock it out, but the stone was so big.”

“Your lover was dead. The old man was dead. The dog was dead,” Bruno said flatly. “You came here to Saint-Denis determined to ruin Bondino’s project. Max’s death gave you the perfect opportunity. You began to work out in a very cold-blooded way how this could be made to damage your cousin, to have him blamed for murder and take your revenge on the family.”