Blowback

Chapter Nineteen

Evening service was in full flow in the dining rooms when Enzo got back to the auberge. There was no one at reception, but as the s ommelier emerged from the cave with a bottle of Beaune he gave him a very odd look. Enzo caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the window, and realized just what a state he was in. His ponytail was a shambles, with stray strands of hair hanging down over his shoulders. His jacket and trousers were covered in dried mud, and stained green in patches by moss. No wonder Fred had looked at him so strangely. He hurried up the stairs before anyone else would see him.

In his room he changed back into his shirt and cargos, washed his hands and face, and sorted his hair. He examined his face in the mirror. There was quite a swelling on his right cheek that was already beginning to show signs of bruising. He cursed Philippe. And Sophie for encouraging him. She was, no doubt, flattered by the attention.

He went through to the living room and picked up the phone, dialling Elisabeth’s room, and waiting while it rang, and rang, unanswered. Finally he hung up and slipped out into the hallway. The door to Marc’s old study was just three doors along. He hurried past the others and hesitated in front of the study, listening for a moment in the stillness of the house. He could only distantly hear the chatter of guests downstairs, and the chorus of voices delivering and acknowledging orders in the kitchen. Half-fearing that he would find the door now locked, he tried the handle. But to his surprise and relief it turned and opened. He stepped quickly inside and closed it behind him. The room was in darkness, and he knew he would have no option but to turn on the light.

It had been embarrassing to be caught here yesterday. If he were found again today, it would be more than that. It was likely that he would be asked to leave. Elisabeth had made it clear she expected him to ask for anything he wanted to see. But he didn’t want to alert anyone to this new focus of his interest.

Almost holding his breath, he flicked the light switch down and bathed the dead man’s study in cold yellow light. He moved silently across the room to roll back the lid of the desk and open up the laptop. The start-up chorus reverberated around the room, and the operating system seemed to take forever to load. At last the desktop appeared on the screen, and he opened the mailer and quickly navigated his way to the archive folders. He stared at the screen with incomprehension, before scrolling up and down the row of folders. But there was no doubt. The Cheval folder was gone. Erased. All evidence of Marc Fraysse’s gambling relationship with Jean Ransou lost forever, along with any record of exactly how much he had placed in bets. All that remained were the two printouts he still had in his pocket.

He had always known that it would be possible for any computer-savvy person to retrace his steps through Marc Fraysse’s laptop to see exactly what he had looked at the day before. Erasing those files would have been a simple matter.

And it seemed to Enzo that the only possible person who could have done that was Elisabeth Fraysse.

Back in his room he stripped off, leaving a trail of clothes behind him as he headed for the bathroom and turned on the shower. Hot water cascaded over his face and shoulders, down his back and over his belly, warming his thighs. He stood for several minutes feeling the healing heat of the water relax muscles tight with tension and stiff from unaccustomed exertion.

He rubbed himself with a big, soft bath towel, and dried his hair vigorously before slipping into the soft silk of his black embroidered dressing gown and padding back into the living room. There he poured himself a large single malt from the fridge, diluted it with a little water, and sank into the seductive softness of the settee.

He lifted his laptop on to his knees and checked his email, then opened the moi. dssr file and scrolled through it until he found the passage he was looking for. He had sped-read through it previously, but wanted to go back now and read it more carefully, to be certain that the impression he had come away with from that first scanning had been accurate. If so, then there was a puzzling inconsistency between what he’d been told and what he had read.