The Critic Read online

  ‘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.

  II.

  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.

  III.

  Nicole saw the floodlit façade of the château at the end of its long avenue of trees. Dust rose up in the night all around them from the wheels of Fabien’s four-by-four. It had been his suggestion they come here, after they had failed to find Enzo at the gîte.

  As they circled the lawn in front of the main entrance, Nicole pointed with excitement to Enzo’s 2CV parked outside the chai.

  ‘He’s here!’

  Fabien pulled in beside it and they jumped out on to the gravel forecourt. Nicole started for the château, but Fabien grabbed her arm. ‘There’s a light in the chai. I can hear pumps going.’

  They followed the old brick wall of the chai along to a door that stood open, bleeding feeble light out into the night. The crumbling brickwork of Hubert de Bonneval was patched and repaired with pebbles from the river. Fabien pulled the door wide, and they stepped over the tube that fed carbonic gas up from the maintenance pit below the cuves.

  Laurent de Bonneval looked up, startled, as Nicole followed Fabien inside. He had failed to register their arrival above the thunder of the pumps. He was crouched at the top of the steps with a bucket and brush, scrubbing at the concrete. Beyond him, a sack of sand dangled from the roof on the end of a rope. A candle burned on the apron above him, down now to its last inch. Dull fluorescent strip lights flickered overhead. Bonneval stood up and climbed quickly on to the apron.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Fabien stared him down. ‘It was you who killed Petty and Coste, wasn’t it?’

  Bonneval gave a small snort of derision. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

  ‘Because the mineral fingerprint of the wine taken from Serge Coste’s stomach shows that the grapes were grown at La Croix Blanche.’

  Bonneval raised an eyebrow. He seemed almost amused. ‘Do they? In that case it must have been you who killed them, Fabien.’

  ‘That’s what Macleod thought.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘But what he didn’t know, that you and I do, is that I didn’t make any wine the year Petty went missing. I was reequipping my chai. Remember? You should, because I sold all my grapes to you.’

  Nicole stepped forward, fearful and aggressive, and Fabien held her arm. ‘Where’s Monsieur Macleod?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Fabien said, ‘His car’s outside, Laurent.’

  ‘What were you doing when we came in?’ Nicole pulled free of Fabien’s grasp and moved towards the stairs that led to the pit. She looked down at the bucket. Soapy water on the floor around it was marble
d with veins of red, seeping across the cement and spilling onto the top step. ‘That’s blood.’ She swung towards Bonneval. ‘What have you done?’

  There was a strange, sick smile on his face, but he said nothing, and then looked startled as she lunged for him. He stepped back to avoid her and caught his feet in a tangle of coiled tubing. The moment hung in the air, as if some unseen finger had pressed a pause button. Bonneval glanced behind him, as he tried to catch his balance. There was no containing rail here along the edge of the apron, only a sheer drop into the pit. His arms windmilled as he fought to prevent the fall. Wide eyes stared at Fabien, a silent plea for help. But there was nothing the young winemaker could do. And, as if the pause had been released, he toppled backwards into space. Nicole’s scream filled the room, before they heard the smack of his body as it hit the floor below.

  ‘Oh, my God, I’ve killed him!’ She jumped down from the apron, and started down the stairs.

  Fabien covered the distance between them in four quick strides and grabbed her wrist. ‘Don’t go down there!’

  ‘Why not?’

  He jumped down beside her and lifted the candle. ‘I showed you before, remember?’ And he pushed her aside and started slowly down the stairs, holding the candle ahead of him. He had gone only three or four steps before the flame separated from the candle, and he dropped it, retreating quickly to the top of the stairs, grabbing fast lungfuls of air. He looked down into the pit where Bonneval’s body lay at an oddly twisted angle, blood pooling slowly across the tiles around his head. ‘It’s full of gas down there. He was probably gone before he hit the ground.’

  Nicole was in shock. Chalk white. ‘It’s my fault. I killed him.’

  ‘He killed himself, Nicole. And God knows how many others.’

  And the memory of fear replaced guilt. ‘Monsieur Macleod! What’s he done with him?’

  Fabien’s face reflected a grim acceptance of the worst. But he didn’t express it. ‘I don’t know.’ He cocked his head, listening for a moment to the sound of pumps thundering in the chai. He took her hand. ‘Come on.’

  They ran through into the old shed and Fabien flicked a row of switches, one after the other. Strip lights hummed and flashed overhead, and they realised that the sound of the pumps was coming from the next shed along.

  Three pumps roared in the narrow aisle between two rows of stainless steel cuves. Pink tubing, like giant worms, lay around the floor, feeding in and out of red plastic tubs. Yet more pumps sat idle on trolleys. Nicole glanced helplessly at Fabien as his eyes darted around the chai, following tubes up to the metal catwalk above them. ‘He’s pumping must from one cuve to the other.’ He frowned, and then clarity filled his eyes. ‘Jesus. Macleod must be in the tank.’

  He let go of her hand, and she ran after him, as he sprinted for the stairs that led up to the access grilles. By the time she had climbed up after him and run along the walkway, he was crouching down at the neck of a cuve. She could see the dark must pulsing through the semitranslucent plastic of the tube and heard the sound of it crashing into the tank. Fabien held an inspection lamp over the open edge of the neck and they peered inside. The foaming red juice was nearly up to the top. Nicole’s face was creased with anxiety. She turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘If he’s in there,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’

  A small cry of anguish broke from her lips, just as an arm broke the surface of the must, streaming red fingers grasping for the black pipes that fed water to the radiator. Enzo’s upturned face, mouth open, gasping for air, followed it for the briefest of moments before disappearing again into the froth.

  Fabien grabbed for the hand as it lost its grip on the pipes, and Nicole watched in horror as fingers slipped through grasping fingers. And then somehow, at the last, formed a bond, and Fabien reached further in to seize his wrist. He braced himself against the neck of the cuve and pulled with all his might.

  Enzo broke the surface once again, and this time his free hand grasped the lip of the neck. Nicole reached over, and between them she and Fabien pulled him free of the cuve. He scrambled for footholds and toppled over the rail, to lie gasping on the catwalk, stained red by juice that seemed to stream from every pore.

  Nicole was sobbing with relief. She knelt beside him, repeating his name over and over again. He opened his eyes, and for a moment met Fabien’s, a world of misunderstanding still between them. And as he pulled himself up on one elbow, Nicole threw her arms around him and pulled his head into the cleavage between large, quivering breasts. Where he was sure, for several long seconds, that he was going to suffocate.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I.

  Nicole sat watching the President’s secretary copying a document and wondered why she was there. She had informed the university in writing that owing to personal circumstances she would be unable to continue her studies at the department of biology this year. She had been clear and unambiguous. But the summons from the university President had been equally clear. Her presence was required at two-thirty on Thursday afternoon. And she had begun to fret that perhaps they were going to demand compensation for loss of fees. Which would be something that neither she nor her father could afford.

  Well, if she couldn’t pay, she couldn’t pay. They couldn’t make her. Only Monsieur Macleod could get blood out of a stone.

  She sighed and glanced through an open door to the mezzanine where students stood around in animated groups, talking and laughing, drinking coffee and making the most of whatever time they had between lectures. And she envied them. She missed student life already, and nothing she could do at home seemed to please her father. No one, it appeared, could live up to the impossibly high standards set by her mother. And there was no way she could escape the daily comparison.

  She was thoroughly miserable.

  From behind the closed door of the President’s office, she heard men’s voices raised in what sounded like anger, and she was sure that she could hear Monsieur Macleod’s strange, Scottish-accented French among them.

  ***

  ‘I object to being ordered here like some schoolboy to be dressed down by the headmaster!’ Director Frauziol was red-faced with indignation. ‘This university has no jurisdiction over the police scientifique. We chose not to participate in your department of forensic science for the simple reason that we refuse to work with amateurs.’ He looked pointedly at Enzo.

  Monsieur le Président was the personification of calm, pouring oil on troubled waters. ‘Now why don’t we all just relax, gentlemen? You were not ordered here, Monsieur le Directeur. Your presence was requested. Isn’t that correct, Monsieur Gineste?’

  Everyone looked towards the representative from the Ministry of Justice. ‘Absolutely, Monsieur le Président. We are here to find a means of facilitating cooperation between the Toulouse laboratory of the police scientifique and the University of Paul Sabatier. At the request of the Garde des Seaux. We are all here at his pleasure.’

  ‘Well, I find it rich,’ Enzo said, ‘being called an amateur by an idiot.’ He glared at Director Frauziol.

  Frauziol was unruffled. ‘An amateur is what you are, Macleod.’

  ‘Monsieur Macleod, if you don’t mind. And in my case, the only reason you can’t call me a professional is that I don’t get paid for what I do. But I’m better qualified than you are.’

  ‘Qualifications that are not recognised in France.’

  Enzo stabbed a finger at him across the room. ‘Well, let me tell you what the French press and public will recognise very quickly when they see it. And that’s incompetence. Yours.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, there’s no need for this.’ Monsieur le Président looked longingly from the window towards the Lycée Bellevue at the far side of the Route de Narbonne. It was clear he wished he were somewhere else.

  ‘Yes there is,’ Enzo said. ‘The police scientifique is a publicly funded body, with a responsibility towards futur
e generations of forensic scientists.’

  ‘We don’t have the time or manpower to waste sending trained scientists to talk to students, monsieur.’

  ‘Well, you’d better find both.’ Enzo leaned over and opened his canvas satchel. He pulled out a plastic evidence bag containing a white glove. ‘You’ll recognise this?’

  The Director paled. ‘That was an oversight.’

  ‘An oversight? You call something that might well have cost men their lives an oversight? I would call it professional ineptitude.’

  The fonctionnaire from the Ministry leaned forward to peer at the glove. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  Enzo said, ‘A vital piece of blood evidence on an inside finger of this glove, which was missed by the lab in Toulouse, could have led to an earlier resolution of the murder of Gil Petty, and prevented the killing of others, including Petty’s daughter and Gendarme David Roussel. It belonged to Laurent de Bonneval’s father. Who, by a strange quirk of fate, gave a DNA sample, along with dozens of other men in the area, to rule himself out of a criminal investigation into a rape shortly before his death. That sample is still on the DNA database, and familial searching could have led us to his son at least two years ago.’

  The fonctionnaire and the President turned to look at the Director. He remained resolutely silent.

  Enzo said, ‘There’s not much any of us can do about it now. And if I can stop taking this personally for a minute, I’ll admit that I don’t blame Monsieur Frauziol per se.’ He turned towards Frauziol. ‘But as Director the buck has to stop with you.’ The dark cloud of depression left by David Roussel and Michelle Petty’s deaths still hung over him.