The Critic Page 24

  ‘You’re still not letting me into the secret.’

  ‘Hey, Magpie, a secret’s a secret. But I’ll tell you this much, it’s mostly about number-crunching. Facts, figures, statistics.’ He nodded towards his computer. ‘They’re all in there. In the database. Most winemakers decide when to harvest the grape by using a hydrometer to measure sugar content. You know when the hydrometer was invented? 1768. Shit, man, talk about old technology! My clients send me their grapes once a week. I crush them, process them, run them through a liquid-liquid chromatograph connected to a spectrometer that feeds direct into my computer. And they get to pick their grapes at the moment of perfection. It’s not a judgment call; it’s science.

  ‘And, you know, it doesn’t stop there. Once it’s in the barrel, I run tests at regular intervals. Wines are hard to taste in the early days, but I can measure the key compounds, and can make a quality judgment from the facts and figures in my database. We can then make virtual blends between barrels and run the figures through the computer to see how they’ll taste. That way, you don’t actually have to mix the wine until you know it’s going to be good.’

  He laughed. ‘I had dinner with a client the other week. He produced a bottle of his best wine. I told him I would be really interested to taste it. I’d only ever tried it on my computer screen.’ He leaned confidentially across his desk. ‘These wine critics… Petty, Parker and the rest. They’re so goddamned predictable. I say to them, this is what you like? Okay this is what I’ll make. In a blind tasting I’ll predict nine times out of ten the score they’re going to give. And do you know what kind of power that gives me, Magpie? It’s like knowing today what a stock’ll do tomorrow. It’s inside info.’

  And Enzo thought of the lengths that Petty had gone to just to keep his ratings secret. Of the alchemy that Laurent de Bonneval had talked about at Château Saint-Michel when Enzo first arrived in Gaillac. MacConchie was exploding it all. The myths, the mysticism, and two thousand years of tradition. His secret for success was a marriage of Silicon and Napa Valleys; his wines constructed from the building blocks of molecules. And Enzo couldn’t help but wonder if in all this science, the fundamental human component might be missing. The instinct, flair, and sophistry of which Bonneval had spoken. That element impossible to define by maths or science—the personality of the winemaker.

  But he said none of this to MacConchie. There was no point. Whatever it was he was doing, it was working for him. A hundred clients on his books and a turnover of five million a year. A lifestyle that a boy from a housing scheme in Glasgow’s deprived east-end could hardly have dared to dream of. He’d had a brain, and used it. Enzo regarded him thoughtfully across the desk, and couldn’t help but admire him. They’d both come a long way in the thirty years since they’d first met. And very different paths had led them, strangely, to meet again in this place in the heart of California wine country, thousands of miles and millions of dollars away from where they had started.

  ‘You know, if Petty hadn’t been murdered, he was going to publish an article urging a boycott of American wines.’

  MacConchie looked at him in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘Unlabelled use of genetically modified yeasts. He thought it was unethical. And dangerous.’

  ‘Jesus, Magpie. If he’d published that he could have put us all out of business!’

  Enzo cocked his head. ‘Which reduces my list of suspects to a mere few thousand.’ He paused. ‘So how will you treat the samples?’

  MacConchie leaned forward, concentrated on the question. ‘I figure I’ll dry the soil samples in an oven up to a constant weight. Sieve the stuff through nylon nets to fraction and homogenise it, then digest it with concentrated HN03 by high pressure microwave.’

  Enzo looked at him. ‘Can you translate any of that into English?’

  MacConchie grinned. ‘Chemistry never was your strong suit, Magpie, was it?’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know, it’s not easy to explain this in layman’s terms. High-pressure microwave digestion for the soil, UV irradiation for the wine. Then, I figure, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for both.’

  Enzo sat back shaking his head. ‘I guess the simple answer to my question was “no”. Here’s another one. How long will it take?’

  ‘A while. This is my busiest time of year.’

  ‘Could be that a man’s life is dependent on it.’

  MacConchie nodded thoughtfully. ‘Okay. Two, three days. When do you fly back?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll e-mail you the results.’ He leaned back and grinned. ‘But tonight you’ll meet my surgically perfected wife and taste my virtually perfected wines, and wallow in envy.’

  But somehow Enzo didn’t think he would.

  III.

  The hot California sun beat through the windscreen of his rental car as he cruised slowly through The Shores housing development in the Natomas district, north of downtown Sacramento. The houses on the north side of Hawkcrest Circle were built along the shores of a man-made lake where wild birds now mated and nested. It was only a short drive to the airport from here, and had he arrived by plane, Enzo would have seen the sun reflected in the water of the flood plains that stretched between the Sacramento River to the west and the American River to the south. This was where Gil Petty had bought his home when the money started coming in. It was where his marriage had foundered, a relationship malnourished by long and frequent absences.

  Enzo blinked to try to stay awake. He had barely been able to keep his eyes open during dinner the night before, a problem not aided by the rich, red wines poured by the hand of Al MacConchie. Then, infuriatingly, he had been awake most of the night. And now, he was once again almost overcome by fatigue. Jetlag was the curse of the modern age.

  He drew up outside a large house with wisteria growing around the gate to a courtyard entrance. Shrubs were in flower all along a bed below shuttered windows that faced out to the street. People preserved their privacy here. He walked up a short drive to the gate and pressed the bell. It rang somewhere distantly inside the house. He waited for what seemed like a very long time before the gate opened, and a small, sallow-skinned woman in black peered out at him from the shade. Beyond her, he could see a paved courtyard, shallow-pitched roofs sloping down to semitropical flowers. At the far end, a door opened into a large, airy room with a floor to ceiling view out across the lake.

  ‘Enzo Macleod for Mrs. Petty. She’s expecting me.’

  ***

  Linda Petty was smaller than he had been expecting. Small but perfectly formed, and he saw where Michelle had got her looks, if not her height. She wore jeans that tapered to her ankles, and white, high-heeled sandals. Her cream top dipped low to show off the deep cleavage of her silicon implants and was cut short at the waist to reveal her tanned belly. Although still an attractive woman, her face had that stretched quality created by plastic surgery which drew loose flesh up behind the ears, leaving unnaturally high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was too smooth, almost shiny, like plastic. Blond-streaked hair was cut short and tucked, like her face, behind her ears. Only the brown spots on the backs of veiny hands betrayed her age.

  He followed her through into the dining room, and noticed her trim buttocks and narrow thighs, wondering how much of that was down to exercise and how much to liposuction. The theme of floor-to-ceiling glass continued here, like a giant screen showing constant re-runs of the lake beyond. One complete wall of the dining room was divided into beechwood pigeon-holes behind glass, a giant wine-rack filled with priceless bottles.

  ‘It’s sealed and refrigerated,’ she said. ‘Kept at a constant twelve degrees.’ She smiled condescendingly. ‘Celsius, of course. He liked to think he was so European. His wine wall, he called it. Broke his heart to lose it in the divorce settlement.’ She slid open glass doors and stepped out on to the deck. It was north-facing here, so shaded from the sun. Steps led down to a small pleasure boa
t bobbing on the water. She eased herself into a cushioned mahogany sun chair and lifted her legs on to an equally cushioned footstool. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the sky. ‘What is it you think I can tell you, Mister Macleod?’

  Enzo squatted down on the edge of another cushioned footstool. ‘Who might have killed him.’

  She smiled. ‘Not me, if that’s what you’re thinking. After the divorce, I had everything I’d ever wanted. It was my daughter who inherited the leftovers. But, of course, you said you’d met her.’

  Enzo nodded. ‘She’s in France to recover her father’s belongings.’

  Linda Petty looked unimpressed. ‘Is she? Took her time, then.’

  ‘Did you ever go with him on any of his wine tastings abroad?’

  ‘In the early days, yes. It was fun, then. We had a laugh and got drunk a lot. But the novelty soon wore off. He was quite obsessed, you know. And, frankly, I was more interested in a vodka martini than wine.’ She glanced back through the glass towards the wine wall. ‘Oh, I open a bottle occasionally. Something he’d have treasured. But I only ever have a glass and usually pour the rest of it down the sink.’

  It was clear to Enzo that this was something that gave her pleasure. An ironic, bitter, retrospective revenge on her dead husband.

  ‘What about Michelle?’

  ‘Oh, she was obsessed, too. Not with wine. With her father. She always thought it was something personal. That he rejected her because of something she’d done. She never could grasp that it was nothing to do with her or me. That there was no way for either of us to compete with his precious wine.’ She took a long pull at her cigarette and flicked ash towards the water. ‘I suppose that’s why she followed him to France.’

  Enzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The year he went to Gaillac. She flew out to France the week after he left. She said it was a trip to Paris to see friends. But I never believed her. She just couldn’t let it go.’ She snorted her derision. ‘And then, of course, he goes and vanishes. Murdered, as it turns out. And she never did get to have it out with him.’

  Enzo found himself taking short, shallow breaths, and everything he thought he’d known about Michelle went up in flames around him, conviction buried beneath the ash of sudden uncertainty.

  ‘But the obsession’s never left her, Mister Macleod. Since her father’s death there have been a string of older men in her life, almost as if by making them love her she’s proving to herself that it wasn’t her fault that her father didn’t.’ She glanced at Enzo. ‘Of course, all that these men are really interested in is sex. Imagine. Men your age. Older. With a young girl like that. It’s disgusting.’

  And Enzo felt himself slide from uncertainty into guilt and shame.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I.

  It was late by the time he got back. And dark. Distant lightning lit up a brooding sky.

  He had stopped several times on the long drive south from Paris, pouring coffee down his throat to try to stay awake. Now he was suffering from caffeine overload, his head buzzing, his hands shaking. He had flown out of San Francisco late afternoon, unable to sleep throughout the flight, and landed in Paris with almost a full day ahead of him.

  He turned into the driveway leading up through the trees to Château des Fleurs. An enormous wave of fatigue washed over him. Like a runner at the end of a long race, the sight of the finish line almost robbed him of his ability to reach it.

  All he wanted was to fall into bed. But it crossed his mind that Sophie and Bertrand might well have occupied it in his absence. He would probably have to make do with the clic-clac. Again. They would, no doubt, be asleep by now, and he didn’t have the heart to wake them.

  There were no lights on in the château. The Lefèvres had told him that they would be away when he got back. The gîte, too, was in darkness, and he groaned as the prospect of the clic-clac beckoned. He drove past the parking area to the foot of the steps. He would get his stuff out of the trunk tomorrow. Lightning flashed closer, a shorter gap now before the following thunder.

  It was on the second or third step, that his foot slid from under him, pitching him forward. He grazed his hands trying to break his fall. He cursed under his breath. Someone had spilled something slick on the stairs. Something like oil. It was profoundly dark, but he could see something darker pooling on the steps, sticky and wet. It was on his clothes and hands. Lightning flashed again and by its light the spillage looked almost black. He made his way up to the door, fumbled for his keys with sticky fingers and unlocked it. He reached inside and turned on a light. With a shock he saw that his hands were red. He looked down and saw that his trousers were stained the same colour. For a brief, irrational moment he thought someone had spilled red paint on the steps. Then the realisation that it was blood hit him with the force of a baseball bat catching him full in the chest.

  ‘Sophie!’ He shouted through the open door into the house, seized by a sudden and almost paralysing fear. But he was greeted only by silence. He could see that the bulk of the blood had run down from one step to the other, before being smeared over the gravel path at the foot of the stairs as if something, or someone, had been dragged across it.

  He hurried back down the steps, careful this time not to slip. The blood was still a vivid red. Fresh. Not yet the rust brown it would turn when dried and oxidised. He could see it in the grass now, a bloody trail leading away from the house towards the trees and the shadow of the pigeonnier. He could hear the approaching storm moving through the trees above him. The light from the terrasse made little impression on the night. Beyond its circle of illumination, the castle parkland seemed even more obscure. But the blood almost glowed. Caught in a sudden flash of lightning it was like the ghostly trail of a giant slug.

  Enzo had forgotten his fatigue, all rational thought displaced by an all-consuming fear for his daughter. The thunder crashed ever closer. He ran across the pelouse, leaving tracks in wet grass, and could see the drag of other footprints left there, straddling the path of the blood. Into the impenetrable shadow beneath the ancient pigeonnier, and smack into something soft and heavy suspended from the beams overhead. With fingers made clumsy by fright, he fumbled to switch on the penlight on his keyring and shone it in front of him.

  ‘Jesus!’ The blasphemy slipped involuntarily from his lips, as he felt bile rising from his stomach. More lightning threw the image in front of him into stark relief against the black beyond.

  Braucol was strung up by the neck. His killer had used the child’s swing as a gallows rope, and slit the puppy’s stomach open from neck to pubis. Tears stung Enzo’s eyes, like the coming rain. He could imagine Braucol greeting the stranger on the steps, trusting and playful, trying to untie his shoelaces. Quite unprepared for the thrust of the knife coming out of the dark. The amount of blood on the steps and the trail of it through the grass told Enzo that the first blow had not been fatal. Braucol had still been alive when his murderer strung him up and slit him open.

  Revulsion fuelled anger and incomprehension. Why would someone do something like that? Then fear returned, and he looked back towards the gîte. A sudden, dreadful picture filled his head. Tangled bedsheets soaked in blood. Sophie and Bertrand murdered as they slept. He sprinted back through the night, powered by panic, a dread desire to banish the image from his mind’s eye, to know that it wasn’t true. Lightning ripped through the night, and thunder struck like a blow, almost immediately overhead. He took the steps two at a time, calling their names aloud as he burst through the door into the bedroom. A flick of the light switch revealed the bed neatly made up, undisturbed. He stood for a moment, staring at it blindly, then ran back through to the séjour and up creaking stairs to the mezzanine. Both bunk beds were empty.

  Confusion filled his head like a fog. Where were they? Why weren’t they here?

  And why in God’s name would someone slaughter a defenceless dog. Poor Braucol.

  ‘Bastard!’ He roar
ed his frustration into the night after the retreating thunder, then froze on the spot. Through the window at the back of the gîte he saw a light moving along the gallery at the top of the château. It flashed through the dark in the direction of the cottage and was then extinguished as suddenly as it had appeared. Sheet lightning crossed the sky, illuminating the shadow of a man leaning on the rail of the gallery looking across the gardens towards the gîte.

  For the briefest of moments Enzo wondered if it might be a burglar in the castle, a thief taking advantage of the absence of its owners. But a burglar wouldn’t have killed and strung up a puppy. And Enzo knew with an absolute certainty that Braucol was a calling card, an unmistakable message. The light in the gallery flashed on again, for several seconds, and then off. Whoever was up there was letting Enzo know it. Banking on anger dispensing with caution. Making Enzo come after him. Luring him into the dark halls and corridors of the château where his adversary would have every advantage. And though all of that rationale passed through Enzo’s mind in just a fraction of a second, the red mist that Braucol’s killer had foreseen robbed him of his reason.

  He hurried down swaying steps to the kitchen and drew a long, sharp chef’s knife from the block. Someone was waiting for him up there. Someone who had tried to kill him in the vineyard, someone who had murdered a defenceless animal just to inflame his anger. It was time to put a stop to it, one way or another.