The Critic Page 4

  Enzo took another sip from his glass. ‘With wine this good, I don’t see how you can fail.’

  But Bonneval just shrugged. “At eight euros a bottle, monsieur, we’re never going to get rich on it.’

  Enzo shook his head. ‘It’s crazy. There are Bordeaux wines costing fifty and sixty euros a bottle that aren’t a patch on this.’

  ‘Yes, but ask any wine drinker in America if he’s heard of Bordeaux, and he’ll laugh at the stupidity of your question. Ask him if he’s ever heard of Gaillac, and you’ll get a vacant look and a shake of the head.’ The winemaker sipped thoughtfully on the product of his own vineyard. ‘Gaillac is one of the great undiscovered wines of France, Monsieur Macleod. We’ve been making wine here for more than two thousand years, even before the Romans arrived. But very few people outside of the area have heard of it. We were victims of our own geography.’ He waved a hand towards the window. ‘Out there is the river Tarn. It was the only way people could get their wines out to the world. It was our bad luck that the Tarn runs into the Garonne, which takes it to Bordeaux. There, we were obliged to unload our wines before shipping them on to other destinations.

  ‘Unfortunately, the Bordelaise didn’t relish the competition. So they levied taxes on us, built weirs and damns across the river, and charged us to use the locks to bypass them. Effectively, they choked off our trading route to the rest of the world. Which today is why Americans have heard of Bordeaux and not of Gaillac.’ He sighed. ‘But we made good wines, Monsieur Macleod. The vin du coq was shipped in barrels branded with the symbol of the rooster, and drunk in royal households around Europe. It was a great favourite of François Premier. But with the Bordelaise barring our way out, and then the phyloxera wiping out the vines, winemaking in Gaillac was all but finished by the end of the nineteenth century. It’s only during the last thirty years that young, innovative winemakers have restored our wines to their former glory. The trouble is, nobody knows about them. Which is why Petty’s death was such a blow. He was about to introduce Gaillac wines to the rest of the world. Instead, they still languish in underpriced obscurity.’

  ***

  The lights of the chai blazed out from open doors into the dark of the night. The sky was ink black, peppered with stars, the merest blush of colour still staining the western horizon. ‘Where did you park?’ Bonneval asked.

  ‘I didn’t. I walked.’

  Bonneval looked at him with surprise. ‘Walked? It’s a good three kilometres back to Château des Fleurs.’

  ‘I need the exercise, Monsieur de Bonneval. Besides, I’ve drunk a fair bit of your excellent wine tonight, and it might not have been a good idea to drive.’

  ‘It’s a long way in the dark, though.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You know, there’s a shortcut through the vineyard. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll walk part of the way with you. We have a night pick tonight. By hand. And the machine will be out as well.’

  As he followed the winemaker into his chai, Enzo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I read in Raffin’s notes that Petty’s body was discovered during a night pick. Why on earth do you harvest grapes in the dark?’

  ‘Usually just the white ones, Monsieur Macleod. They generate more heat during fermentation, so it’s better to pick them when they’re cool. Also, at night, the sap rises in the vine and the grapes are fatter, juicier.’ He grinned. ‘More alchemy. Tonight, though, we’ll be bringing in the red as well. With the big harvester. The weather is forecast to break in a few days, so I want to strip the vines before it rains.’

  They passed the tasting room, and a tall wooden table littered with bottles and notes. There were used oak barrels, stained red from the wine, stacked up against the wall behind it.

  ‘If you want to wait for me here,’ Bonneval said, ‘I just need to have a few words with my foreman.’ And he headed off into the roar of pumps and pressoir in the adjoining sheds. If the harvester was going to be out in the dark, clearly that meant that grapes would be coming into the sheds all night. Enzo glanced at some of the paperwork on the desk. A jotter was filled with notes made in a small, tight hand. They looked like mathematical equations. But Enzo could make no sense of them. There was an official leaflet on new hygiene practices in winemaking, an analytical report on grapes sent to the Laboratoire Oenologique Départmentale in Gaillac, a feuille de vinification from the Centre Technique du Vin, with graphs charting levels of sugar and alcohol. There was a great deal more to winemaking, Enzo reflected, than simply crushing grapes.

  He heard a thump that seemed to come from a room off the dark end of the shed. He listened for a few moments, wondering if there was someone there. But there were no further sounds. The door to the room lay ajar, and there was a light burning faintly from somewhere within. Curiosity got the better of him, and Enzo crossed the shed and pushed the door open to look inside.

  Along the right-hand wall was a row of what looked like six ceramic chimneys rising out of a concrete apron, flexible pipes feeding into them from black tubing around the walls. Cold water. And Enzo realised that these were the tops of cuves which had been sunk into the ground. To the left of them, a red staircase went down at angles into a square pit below, where sealed hatches gave access to the bottoms of the tanks, presumably for cleaning. A railing ran around the top of the pit, and steps led up half a metre to another level where several more ceramic chimneys were sunk in concrete. There were hoses strewn everywhere, and tubing ran from a pump above the pit to an open door leading out to the castle courtyard, as well as into the pit itself. The source of the light was down in the pit, and the rest of the room was in darkness.

  Enzo could not see what had made the thumping sound, but he was drawn in by his curiosity nonetheless. He made his way along the top edge of the pit, holding on to the rail, until he reached the staircase. He peered down into it, but could see no sign of life. ‘Hello?’ he called, and moved on to the top step.

  ‘For Christ’s sake man, don’t move!’

  Enzo turned, startled, to see Bonneval silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘Just step away from the stairs and come towards me.’

  Bewildered, Enzo did as he was told, and Bonneval flicked on a light switch, flooding the room with a harsh, cold light.

  ‘If you’d gone down there, you’d be dead before you reached the bottom of the stairs. There are accidents like that in wine cellars every year.’

  Enzo was still none the wiser. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Bonneval crouched to remove the lid from the nearest cuve. It was filled almost to the top with white, frothing grape juice. The top of a cold water radiator broke the surface, but the liquid looked as if it were boiling. ‘It’s in full fermentation,’ Bonneval said, ‘and when wine is fermenting, particularly the white, it produces copious amounts of carbonic gas.’

  And suddenly Enzo understood why he had been in such danger. The gas in itself wasn’t poisonous. It dissolved in water, and was what made fizzy drinks fizzy. It was what put the bubbles in champagne. But it was heavier than air, and would fill your lungs like water, displacing all oxygen, and killing you in seconds.

  ‘The gas escapes from the tops of the cuves and sinks down into the pit. You can’t see it, but it’s down there. One lungful, my friend, and you’re dead.’

  It was with some relief that Enzo stepped back out into the safety of the shed. His legs had turned to jelly, and he became aware that his hands were trembling. And it wasn’t the effects of the wine he’d had over dinner. Quite unwittingly, he had come uncomfortably close to killing himself. ‘I’ll never think about champagne the same way again,’ he said. ‘Although I could do with a glass right now.’

  ‘I think you’ve had more than enough to drink already tonight, Monsieur Macleod. Especially if you’re going to be walking home alone in the dark.’

  ‘I thought you were coming with me? At least some of the way.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t. We have a problem with the pressoir.
But I’ll point you in the right direction.’ And as they walked out into the courtyard, Bonneval said, ‘By the way, I’ve got you a grape-picking job on a neighbouring domaine. It’s a farm, not a château, but they have thirty-seven hectares of vines at La Croix Blanche, and a young winemaker, Fabien Marre, who’s producing some very good wines.’

  ‘Sounds ideal,’ Enzo said.

  ‘I’ve told him you’re an old friend who wants to experience the vendange. They still do quite a bit of picking by hand, where most of ours is mechanised. It’s just up the road from where you’re staying. But here’s the interesting thing. It was on the south-facing upper slopes of Marre’s vineyard that Petty’s body was found.’

  V.

  The dusty track shone silver in the moonlight, as did the strips of chalky, stony soil between the rows of vines that stretched away into the darkness on either side. The track was raised a metre or more above the vines, and Enzo had a fine moonlit view across the floodplain of the Tarn. Away to his right, he saw the lights of the vendangeurs hand-picking the mauzac grapes for the vin mousseux, a wine produced in almost identical fashion to champagne, except that in Gaillac there was no final addition of sugar before the bottle was sealed. It was known as méthode gaillacoise, and had most of the attributes of champagne at a fraction of the price. Enzo had discovered it many years before. He could hear the voices of the grape-pickers in the distance, the lamps on their helmets dancing in the dark like demented fireflies.

  The air was still balmy and soft, redolent with the heady scent of ripe fruit. Fresh from having consumed several glasses of it, Enzo reflected on what a fine creation wine really was. He was wondering how on earth man had first stumbled upon the secret processes of fermentation, when he was startled by the sudden roar of an engine off to his left. Lights from a massive mechanical harvester flooded the vineyard, and Enzo stopped for a moment to watch as it began its steady progress along the first row towards him. He felt the ground shaking beneath his feet, and thought that he preferred the gentler sounds of the vendangeurs picking by hand.

  He carried on along the track and had covered less than twenty metres when a dark shadow loomed unexpectedly out of his peripheral vision. He had no time to turn before something struck him hard on the side of his head. The pain was intense, but short-lived as the night burned out in a glare of bright light before plunging to black.

  ***

  It was like struggling up through a sea of treacle, fighting to break the surface. And when, finally, he did, it brought only pain. And light. And noise. And confusion.

  Enzo had no idea where he was. His head hurt like hell. Like the worst migraine he’d ever had. He smelled earth and leaves. And something sweet. Something rich and dark and seductive. Grapes. He tried to focus. But still he was blinded by the light. He blinked furiously to try to clear his vision without success. The roaring in his ears, he thought, must be the blood pulsing through his head. He put his hand to his face and felt something sticky and warm, and he could smell it, even above the scent of grapes. The blood wasn’t in his head, it was coming out of it. He started to panic and tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t support him. He found himself clutching vine leaves, searching for support. Grapes burst in his grasping hand, and he felt the juice running down his arm. And still the noise got louder.

  He looked down and realised that he could see perfectly well. Blood and grape juice mixed together in his hands. He looked up again only to be blinded once more by the light. But this time, something was emerging from its glare. The dark, ridged tread of a tyre that stood a metre high and was turning relentlessly towards him. Somehow the light had risen above him now, and with a suddenly clarity, he realised he was about to be crushed by the giant mechanical harvester he had been watching earlier. A machine probably driven by Bonneval’s son, oblivious to the fact that he was about to kill the man he had been introduced to less than an hour before.

  It was almost on top him, the thrum of its motor unbearably loud. The ground shook as if gripped by a seismic event of Richter Scale magnitude. The vine was being rattled and shredded as interlocking bars on either side of it ripped the grapes from their stems. Some powerful suction drew them up into the body of the beast. And still Enzo’s legs would not support him. He shouted at the thing in futile desperation, but there was nothing he could do to stop it from running over him. Then, at the very last moment, with a great effort, he rolled himself to one side, into the narrowest of gaps between the wheel and the adjoining row of vines. The rubber of the tyre grazed his face as it went past, and he was struck by a huge blast of hot air that carried in it stinging fragments of stalk and leaf and grape skin, and a fine mist of grape juice.

  It left him sticky-wet and gasping for breath. The noise and the lights receded as the machine carried on towards the far end of the field, Charles de Bonneval unaware that he had very nearly crushed a man to death.

  Enzo managed to get to his knees and started crawling back towards the path where he had been walking, some twenty or thirty metres away. He found his shoulder bag lying discarded to one side, and clutching a wire strung between posts to support the vines, finally succeeded in getting to his feet. For several minutes, he stood there, unsteady, gasping for breath, fighting the nausea that accompanied the pain in his head and realised that someone had just tried to murder him.

  Chapter Three

  There were no lights on in the château when finally he got back, exhausted, head still pounding. It was after midnight. Clearly the Lefèvres had gone to bed, and as far as Enzo knew there were no guests staying in the chambres d’hôtes. Moonlight flooded the gravel courtyard and the garden beyond, the white stone of the château almost glowing in the dark. The entrance to the gîte was cast in profound shadow, and as he walked towards it through grass already wet with dew, he fumbled in his pockets for the key. He was one step from emerging into moonlight from the deep gloom of the chestnut trees, when a movement on the terrasse of the cottage caught his eye. Something glinting. The tiniest shard of reflected light. He stopped dead, every nerve and sinew in his body held in a state of extreme tension. In the absolute still of the night, his own breathing seemed thunderous.

  Fear wrapped itself around him like a cloak, raising goosebumps across his shoulders. He began to shiver in the warm night. Someone had tried to kill him little more than half an hour before. It had taken him that time to make his way home. Why couldn’t his would-be killer have got there ahead of him, having failed at the first attempt?

  Enzo had no idea what to do. Confront his assailant and risk further injury or even death? Or retreat to somewhere safe where he could think? But where? In the end, he decided on a middle course—to try to get a closer look at whoever was waiting for him on the terrasse.

  Away to his left was Pierric Lefèvre’s chai, a long, low building covered in ivy. He backed off towards it, still in the shadow of the trees, until he was within a metre or two of the far end. Quickly, he ducked across the path and out of sight of the cottage. He stopped to listen for any sound of movement. But all he heard was the distant hooting of an owl.

  He circled around the back of the chai until he reached the far end. From here he had a direct view across a short stretch of gravel path towards the steps of the cottage. It was still mired in darkness, but he could just make out the shape of a figure sitting at the table. Waiting for him.

  Staying within the long shadow cast by the wine shed, he moved carefully across open ground to press himself against the gable end of the house. Anxious not to disturb the ivy, he craned his head around the wall to try to get a better look at his unwanted visitor. To his horror, the detector on the halogen lamp high up on the end of the chai picked up his movement, and the whole area was flooded with light. He cursed under his breath. Run? Or attack while he still had the element of surprise? He decided in the fraction of a second to opt for the latter and ran for the steps, exposing himself to the full glare of the light.

  Som
ething soft and heavy caught him just above the knee and he went toppling over it, sprawling across the lower steps. He looked back to see a large suitcase as it fell with a thud. It seemed strangely familiar.

  A figure rose up above him as he turned.

  ‘Monsieur Macleod! What on earth are you doing?’ Nicole gawped at him in amazement as he scrambled to his feet.

  He looked up at her, holding on to the rail to stop himself falling over again, and saw the look of incredulity verging on horror that wrote itself across her face. Were he able to see himself he would have realised why. He was spattered head to toe with red grape juice, pants and shirt mud-stained and torn. Bits of leaf and dirt clung to him, fixed by the glue of the fruit. There was dried blood down one side of his face. His ponytail had long since lost the band that held it, and his hair was a shock of sticky clumps and curls tumbling wildly over his shoulders.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but for several moments nothing came out. Then she said, ‘Are you alright?’

  Fear, which had given way to humiliation, now lurched towards anger. ‘No, I’m not alright. Do I look alright?’

  She shook her head slowly, still staring in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘No. No, you don’t.’

  ***

  Nicole was a big girl of good farming stock, wide-hipped and large-breasted, the antithesis of the skinny, flat-chested French girls in the TV ads and on magazine covers. She had a pretty face, though, and long silky brown hair which she gathered loosely at her neck before leaving it to cascade down her back. She was, by a long way, the brightest student in Enzo’s biology class, perhaps the brightest student of her year. But her upbringing on a remote hill farm in the Auvergne had left her somewhat lacking in sophistication. She was gauche and shy and had suffered the gibes and taunts of her more streetwise peers during her first year of university in Toulouse.