Blowback

Chapter Eighteen

A fourteenth century monument historique, Chateau de Puymule sat up on a rocky mound above a tiny collection of mediaeval houses in a bend on the road about two kilometres below Saint-Pierre. The turreted roofs at each corner of this tall, square stone edifice gave it a Disneyesque appearance that was not quite real. Trees and rock gardens climbed the slopes all around it behind high iron railings. A path wound up from the gate to an arched entrance beneath a square tower with a steeply pointed roof.

When Enzo pulled up on the road below, the light was failing. It was not yet dark enough to trigger the floodlights that would illuminate it against a black sky once night had fallen, but it was the kind of twilight that robbed the world of clarity and created uncertainty in the shadows.

There were no lights in any of the houses, and only the distant sound of a barking dog and the smell of woodsmoke in the air gave any indication that there was life nearby.

Enzo checked his watch. He had overestimated how long it would take him to get here, so he was a little early for his meeting with Fred. He walked up a rough, cobbled track to the gate and saw that the padlock which would normally secure it was open, its chain dangling from one of the spikes. The right-hand gate itself stood slightly ajar.

Enzo was surprised. A plaque on the gate announced daily visits between 2:30pm and 5:30pm from May till September. The chateau was closed to the public from October till April. He strained to see through the gloom toward the dark shadow of the castle and wondered if, perhaps, anyone still lived there. Many historic monuments were privately owned and only open to the public to raise funds for restoration.

The wind whistled through autumn trees around the building, detaching the last stubborn leaves and rattling branches. Enzo pulled his jacket more tightly around him and stamped his feet. It was damned cold. On an impulse, rather than stand around waiting, he pushed the gate open and started up the curve of the path toward the main entrance, drawn by curiosity and impatience.

Lichen-covered stone walls bounded what had once been a moat, lined now with grass and shrubs and saplings of mountain ash. Enzo crossed the stone bridge that spanned it to the tall wooden doors that arched beneath the tower. A heavy, black-painted iron ring hung from the right-hand door. Enzo lifted it with both hands and tried to move it. To his amazement, it turned clockwise, lifting some ancient, heavy latch on the other side, and releasing the door to swing inwards. He heard the sound of it echoing away into darkness. There had to be someone here.

“Hello?” Only the echo of his own voice replied before it was smothered by the night.

He moved forward cautiously over centuries-old flagstone, feeling the cold rising from them through his feet. Somewhere ahead was the faintest glimmer of light. Enough, at least, to allow him to distinguish his way forward through the shadows. He was in a vast entrance hall, with stone steps spiralling away to his right. Ahead, another tall, arched door stood ajar, and he could see an orange-yellow light flickering beyond it.

“Hello,” he called out again. Still no response. He pushed the door wide enough to reveal a long banqueting room awash with the light of dancing flames in an enormous open fireplace, its chimney rising up to the rafters, clad in decorated oak panelling.

A long table was set with, perhaps, twenty places, as if for a mediaeval banquet. Damp air was warmed by the flames and felt clammy on his skin. There was nobody here. But the scrape of a shoe on stone flags somewhere out in the entrance hall stilled his heart. He was going to feel more than a little foolish, and certainly embarrassed, if he had walked into someone’s private home.

He moved back out into the hall and felt the soft, damp darkness slip over him like a glove. A movement caught the peripheral vision of his right eye and made him turn in time to see a fist coming at him out of the dark. White knuckles, the glint of a ring. Instinctively he pulled back, ducking away, and was struck only a glancing blow. Still, it hurt like hell, filling his head with light, and dropping him to one knee. He heard, and felt, more than saw, his attacker coming at him again. And he pushed off, with his standing leg, dipping his head low and leading with his shoulder, a technique he had learned on the rugby fields of Hutchie Grammar. He made contact with soft flesh and hard bone. Rank garlic breath exploded in his face. A loud grunt filled his ears. With his weight for leverage, Enzo pushed the attacker back against the wall, and heard the crack of a skull against stone, almost like a bullet shot.

This time the man cried out in pain. Enzo had a handful of jacket in his right hand, and lashed out with his left fist. He felt it strike the hard, unyielding, protective shield of the man’s rib cage. Bone against bone, and pain went spiking up his arm. The man tore himself free of Enzo’s grasp and Enzo heard the rasp of his leather soles on the stone as he staggered away toward the main door. Enzo went after him, damned if he was going to let him get away. Out on to the old drawbridge, awash now with sudden moonlight. He saw his attacker just ahead of him. Tall, dark-haired, wearing a short fleece jacket and jeans. Now the moon was gone, the man reduced to the merest shadow. But Enzo could see the fugitive had hurt himself and was not moving freely. He almost hurled himself across the bridge, gasping to draw breath into protesting lungs, and lunged at the man’s back. A classic rugby tackle. They both went down, Enzo on top, and the air was expelled from the man beneath him like air from a bellows.

Enzo scrambled to his knees and straddled the man, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him over, just as the moon emerged once more from a fractured sky. He was shocked to see the face of the young chef whom he’d seen glaring at him in the staff canteen that morning. There was blood streaming from a gash in his forehead.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Enzo shouted.

To his surprise the young man shouted back. “Just stay away from her!”

Enzo grabbed his lapels. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re just some dirty old man who can’t keep his filthy hands to himself!”

“What?” Enzo glared at him, filled with anger and incomprehension.

“She’s my girl, okay?”

“Who?”

“Sophie!”

There was a moment’s hiatus before rage tore through Enzo like a storm, and he lifted the young man’s shoulders by the lapels and then slammed them down again. Hard. “You stupid little shit! Philippe, that’s your name, isn’t it? She told me about you.” He sucked air into his lungs. “I don’t know what Sophie is to you, and I don’t care. But she’s my daughter!”

Philippe’s face froze in an expression of incredulity. Confusion filled flickering, troubled eyes as he tried to process the information.

“It was you spying on us in the hall outside my room the other night, wasn’t it?”

“I… I… I didn’t know. I didn’t realize…”

“No, of course you didn’t. And you didn’t stop to think, or ask.” Enzo let go his lapels and got stiffly to his feet, brushing mud and moss stains from his trousers and his sleeves. He ran a hand over the side of his face and felt a swelling on his cheekbone. Philippe pulled himself on to one elbow and looked up at the figure of Enzo looming over him. Enzo stabbed a finger at him. “You stay away from my daughter, you hear? And keep your mouth shut about me and Sophie, sonny. Or I might just tell her real boyfriend that some scrawny chef’s been sniffing around her like a dog in heat. Bertrand’s a body-builder, jealous as hell, and got a temper to go with it. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if he comes looking for you.”

The young man got to his feet with difficulty, holding his ribs where Enzo’s knuckles had made contact, bruising them, maybe even cracking one. He turned and limped off into the darkness. Enzo stood breathing hard, and was filled with a momentary sense of elation. He had done not badly for an old guy. The young chef was certainly less than half his age, but Enzo had still seen him off.

If the thought briefly puffed him up, then sudden floodlights illuminating the chateau and a gruff voice shouting at him from across the moat deflated him just as fast.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

He turned to see a large man in workman’s overalls and shirt sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms striding toward him. He was caught in the full glare of the floodlamps on Enzo’s side of the moat, casting a giant shadow behind him on the castle wall.

“I’m sorry,” Enzo said. “Are you the owner?”

“I’m the caretaker. Who are you?” He stopped and glared at the intruder, a definite sense of threat in all of his body language.

Enzo’s confident facade faltered a little. “I just saw that the gate was unlocked, and wondered if the chateau was still open for viewing.”

“Are you blind? There’s a notice on the gate. We’ve been shut for a month. Now clear off before I call the gendarmes and have you arrested for trespass!”

Enzo raised a hand in peace. “Okay, okay, I’m going. Keep your shirt on.” He had no illusions about being able to see this man off if it turned physical. And he headed down the path, through the trees, feeling bruised and stiff, and thinking how ridiculous it was for a man of his age still to be getting into fights.

He pulled the gate closed behind him and saw a car sitting at the foot of the path, next to his own, engine idling, headlights cutting across the road and absorbed into the darkness beyond. As he reached the passenger side, he peered in to see Fred sitting impatiently behind the wheel. He opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Fred cast him a wary look. “You’re late.”

“Actually, I was early. I got distracted.”

“You alone?”

“Yes, why?”

“I saw some guy running down the track and then heading up the road on a motorbike.”

“Nothing to do with me.” Enzo felt himself blush as he lied. But he wasn’t about to even try to explain.

Fred’s eyes narrowed a little as they wandered over Enzo’s face, and then down over his dirt-stained jacket and pants. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

“I fell,” Enzo said too hurriedly, and it was clear that Fred didn’t believe him. “Anyway, we’re not here to talk about my adventures in the dark. You were going to tell me about Marc Fraysse’s gambling habit.”

Forced to refocus on the purpose of their meeting, Fred retreated again into a self-protective shell. “How do I know you won’t go repeating this?”

“You don’t. But if the choice is between an official audit and an off-the-record chat with me, I know which I’d choose.” Enzo breathed deeply and smelled the alcohol on Fred’s breath, along with the unpleasant perfume of stale cigarette smoke. “Come on, Fred! What are you hiding?”

“We had an unofficial arrangement, Marc and me.” He flicked a nervous glance at Enzo, then held the steering wheel in front of him with both hands and stared off through the windscreen into darkness. “There were the bets he laid off officially, through the PMU. And then there was the money I put on for him unofficially through… well, let’s just say through people I knew.”

“Illegal gambling.”

He saw Fred’s knuckles whiten on the wheel. “Just a little freelance betting.”

“Of which you took a percentage?”

“I’m not a charity.”

“What sort of money are we talking about?”

Fred hesitated. “A lot.”

“What’s a lot?”

Fred shrugged. “I don’t know exactly.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Over the piece… maybe two or three hundred thousand.”

Enzo was stunned. “You mean that’s what he bet?”

“No, that’s what he lost. He bet a lot more. Sometimes he won.”

“Jesus.” Suddenly Enzo saw Marc Fraysse in a whole new light. And he recalled his brother’s words of just a few hours before. Marc’s predilection for gambling on games of boules during their days in Clermont Ferrand. Used to gamble half his wages on his ability to drop those balls right on the jack, Guy had told him.

“It was an obsession, monsieur,” Fred said. “I mean, at first I saw it as a way of making a bit of extra cash. But it got out of hand, know what I mean. And I couldn’t get out of it. He just didn’t want to stop.”

Enzo reached into an inside pocket and produced the printouts he had taken from Marc Fraysse’s email folder. He had brought them with him on a hunch, more than an instinct, if not quite an educated guess. He handed them across the car. Fred dropped them into his lap, rolled down the window, and lit a cigarette, before reaching up to switch on the courtesy light. Enzo saw the nicotine stains on his fingers as he pulled smoke into his mouth.

Fred lifted the sheets into the light. “What’s this?”

“You tell me.”

He peered at them myopically for a moment before his eyes widened and he turned to look at Enzo. “Jesus Christ! I didn’t know he was into this, too.”

“Tell me.”

Fred stabbed a finger at the email address. “Jean Ransou. Bookmaker to the stars.”

Enzo frowned. “Legal or not?”

“Oh, definitely not. Gambling turns over nearly thirty billion a year in this country, monsieur, and the government takes twenty-five percent. So that gives you an idea of the margins for making money on the black. If you’re a movie star, or a pop singer, or a celebrity chef… even a big wheel in the underworld… and you want to bet big money without sharing your winnings, or paying taxes, then you go to Jean Ransou.”

“Who takes his own cut, of course.”

“Sure he does.”

“And the authorities don’t know about him?”

Fred laughed. “Oh, you can bet they do. They’ve just never caught him. Or maybe they don’t want to. I mean, who knows how many politicians and judges and high-ranking cops use his services? I don’t know how he does it. Money gets laundered through the system somehow. He’s got plenty of legit operations. Whether they make money, or it’s just a cover, I wouldn’t know. But he’s the man.”

“Was it you who introduced Fraysse to Ransou?”

Fred’s laugh was derisive this time. “Hell no! A guy like me wouldn’t get within spitting distance of a guy like Ransou.”

Enzo waved a hand at the emails. “So what does all this mean?”

“Just dates, and races, and horses, and the amounts he wanted to bet. Take this line, for example…” He pointed to the top sheet, first line: PV: 18/12: 3e: 14: 150; 7e: 4: 130; 9e: 5,9,10: 200. “PV is the hippodrome at Paris Vincennes. 18/12 is the date. Third race, horse number fourteen. One hundred and fifty euros. And so on.”

“So the initial letters always indicate the racecourse?”

“Sure. Paris Vincennes, Deauville, Longchamp, Paris d’Auteuil, Marseilles Borely. There’s a lot of racecourses in France.”

Enzo did some quick calculations based on the emails he had looked at. “So Fraysse was putting upwards of a thousand euros a day on these horses.”

Fred nodded. “Looks like it. And that’s in addition to what he was putting on with me, above and below the table.”

Enzo exhaled through pursed lips. “He was a seriously addicted gambler, then.”

“He was.”

And on the basis of the figures Fred had already quoted him, Enzo realized that Fraysse’s losses must have been enormous.