Blowback

Chapter Forty-three

Several times on the ascent out of Thiers, he thought he wouldn’t make it. Wheels spinning sent his car slithering sideways, before catching and propelling him forward again.

The landscape caught in his headlamps was smothered in snow. And still it fell. Thick and wet.

He had left the town behind him now, and the road climbed less steeply, but was almost indistinguishable from everything else around it. Only the red and white stripes of the snow poles kept him from losing his way and ending up in a ditch. The falling snow almost obliterated his vision. Beyond his lights everything was black, like the fear in his heart that drove him on.

Twenty to twenty-five centimetres of snow had fallen in just a matter of hours, and he knew that when the road rose steeply toward the auberge, he was going to have to abandon his car. It would take a four-by-four to get him up there.

When he saw the stone pillars, marble plaques engraved with the Chez Fraysse logo at the road junction, he tried to keep the Citroen in third gear and turn gently without stalling it. Front wheels spinning, he only just succeeded in making the turn, and began to inch slowly up the incline. He thanked God for Lucqui’s snow poles. Without them he would certainly have lost the road.

If there had been another vehicle up here ahead of him, then its tracks had long since been covered by fresh snow. Not even the faintest impression of them remained. For a moment Enzo began to doubt everything. Perhaps, somehow, he had got it all wrong. Maybe Bertrand had picked Sophie up after all, and the battery in her cellphone was simply dead. But if Bertrand had come for her, why were her things still at Dominique’s apartment?

He was finding it difficult now to recognize the lie of the land. The dark of the pine forest pushed up out of the snow, branches laden and dipping under the weight of the wet snowfall. He thought the flat stretch cut away to his right might be the parking area at the foot of the track leading up to the buron, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then his wheels began spinning hopelessly, the car drifting left toward the drop down to the stream below the waterfall. He tried to accelerate, but it only made things worse. He dropped down to second gear and stalled the engine. The car juddered to a halt.

“Damn!” he shouted at the night and slammed the steering wheel with the heels of both hands. No point in even trying to restart it. He would never get the tires to grip again from a first gear start. He pulled on the handbrake and reached into the glove shelf to retrieve his flashlight.

Before stepping out of the vehicle, he swithered about leaving the headlights on, and decided in the end that he would. They would provide illumination up into the darkness ahead for perhaps a couple of hundred meters, then reflected light beyond that.

The wet snow creaked underfoot like old floorboards as he began the long, difficult climb. As the light from his headlamps receded behind him, he became more and more reliant on the beam of his flashlight to guide him. His thighs ached from having to lift his feet so high for each step forward through the snow. Long before he got to the top, cold and exhaustion were sapping his strength.

Finally, as he reached the end of the road, and rounded the bend, the dark shape of the auberge loomed ahead of him. There was not a light anywhere to be seen.

Guy’s yellow Trafic sat out front, several inches of snow gathered on the roof. There were no tracks in the snow. It had clearly been sitting there for some time.

From the front entrance, Enzo was unable to see if there were any other vehicles in the car park, so he made his way around the side of the hotel to direct a beam of light toward it. There were two vehicles parked beneath the plane trees. Elisabeth’s Mercedes, and a mud-spattered Land Rover. Both with snow piled on their roofs. But no sign of tire tracks in or out. He returned to the front of the auberge and turned off his flashlight. He raised a hand to push the revolving door, and found himself sucked through it into interior darkness. He had no idea where the light switches might be located, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he realized that emergency night lights were providing some kind of illumination, and the empty hotel began to take shape around him. Somewhere inside it, he knew, were at least three people, maybe more.

He did not want to use his flashlight and make himself an obvious target to anyone who might be waiting in the dark. So he contained himself until the dark outline of the reception desk took form, then began moving cautiously forward and into the corridor leading to the kitchen.

He found some switches just inside the sliding door and turned them on. Fluorescent strips flickered and flooded the kitchen with light. Cold, hard stainless steel, where so many three-star meals had been conceived and cooked, gleamed in the silence. But there was no one here. Guy’s office, too, was empty. He went back out and wandered through the lounge and the two dining rooms. Tables and chairs were draped with dust covers for the winter. From the panoramic glass frontage, he could see the lights of Thiers twinkling in the valley below, the vast white plane of the central plateau vanishing into the night beyond.

The hotel was freezing cold, as if the heating had been turned off, and Enzo felt the chill of it seeping into his bones. He was about to head up the stairs when a sound from somewhere in the bowels of the building stopped him where he stood. Uncertain of what exactly it was he had heard, he listened intently for more. It could have been a voice. It could have been the creak of a door. But there was no further sound.

He moved slowly forward into the reception area once more, and this time noticed the line of a dark shadow down one side of the door to the cave. He approached it cautiously and realized that it was not shut. It lay a few centimetres ajar. With his heart in his throat he pulled it open, and felt a rush of cold, damp air in his face as he stepped inside.

The darkness here was profound, and he was obliged to turn on his flashlight. He raked its beam along the rows of dusty dull bottles resting in their racks below, before picking out the wooden steps that led down into the musty smell of dampness and stale wine that rose to greet him. He clutched the wooden rail at his left hand and made his way down to the stone flags that lined the floor. By the reflected glow of his flashlight, he could see icy water condensed in droplets on the bedrock walls, like cold sweat.

He sensed, more than heard, a presence in the cellar. Nothing that he could positively identify, but he knew that he was not alone. One careful step at a time, he moved along the near end of the rows, flashing light along each in turn, finding nothing but silent bottles and cold air misted by the damp.

Suddenly he was blinded by a light that seemed to come from nowhere, flashing confusion and fear into his brain. He half lifted a hand to shade his eyes, and at the far end of a canyon of wine saw Guy and Sophie. They were caught in the full glare of his own beam of light. Guy held an electric torch in a fist he made with his left hand, his arm wrapped tightly around Sophie’s neck, the gun in his right hand almost touching her temple. She could hardly breathe, and Enzo could see the raw terror in her eyes. He felt his stomach lurch sickeningly at the thought that she might come to any harm.

“Hell, Enzo! You took your time.” Guy’s voice echoed around the cave. “Sophie and me got so damn cold waiting for you.”

“For God’s sake, man, let her go! What are you doing?”

“I knew she was the only thing that would bring you. Now the only people who know the truth are all down here in the wine cellar.”

“You’re wrong, Guy. It’s over. Everyone knows now.” But he could see in Guy’s eyes, and hear in his voice, that all reason had left him. And that made him unpredictable, dangerous.

“When Elisabeth told me she had confessed everything to you, I knew it was only a matter of time before the real truth came out.” It was as if he wasn’t listening, or didn’t want to hear. “Especially when I learned that she had given you the suicide note. I had no idea she’d kept it. It might have been good enough to fool her, but not some forensic expert. I knew that much.” He paused to draw breath. “I suppose you’ve already figured it out?”

Enzo nodded. “It was a page of the letter that Marc wrote to you when he got his third star. He was making peace, asking for your forgiveness, wanting to wipe the slate clean. The words you left readable on the page were well-chosen. They could easily have been construed as the words of a man about to take his own life.”

“Elisabeth thought so.”

Enzo glanced anxiously at Sophie. Guy was a big man. His grip on her neck was powerful. He could break it with a single twist of his arm. She knew it, too, and was making no attempt to struggle. Thoughts tumbled over themselves in Enzo’s mind, searching for clarity in confusion. He knew he had to keep Guy talking. “What I don’t understand is why you went to all the trouble of faking the suicide, only then to make it look like murder.”

Something close to a smile flitted over Guy’s face. As if he believed he had been so clever. “To convince Elisabeth, of course. I needed her to believe Marc had killed himself, so that she would collaborate in making it look like murder. A murder that nobody could possibly solve.”

“A murder that you committed.”

“Yes, but she didn’t know that. And nobody ever would as long as she believed it was suicide. Even if the murder story unravelled, she and I would be able to back each other up in telling the authorities he had killed himself.”

“And why did you kill him?”

Guy let air escape through pursed lips. “You tell me, Enzo. You’re the detective.”

Enzo glanced at his daughter, then back to her captor. “You were going to lose everything.” He paused to think. “What was he going to tell the Press that day? That he was going to sell up to pay off his debts?”

Guy’s mirthless laughter resounded in the silence of the cave. “Of course he wasn’t going to sell! Not the restaurant, anyway. He had too much of himself invested in it.” He drew a long, quivering breath. “My little brother’s problem, Enzo, was that he was too successful too soon. The future stretched ahead of him without any challenge. He was bored. So he found his excitement elsewhere. In his reckless gambling. In his affair with Anne. Only at the last did he realize he was on a course to self-destruction, that he was going to piss away everything he had worked for.”

“So what was he going to tell the press?”

“Toward the end he had been seeing some psychotherapist in Paris.” The word psychotherapist was laden with contempt. “She’d persuaded him that it wasn’t too late to save the situation. That he could still put things right. Which is why he finished it with Anne. A clean break, a fresh start. Marc Fraysse on top again. But I only found out what he was intending to do when I took a call from an assessor at an auction house in Paris. The man wanted to arrange a time to come and value the wine.” His voice trembled, still, with indignation. “ My wine, Enzo. The cave didn’t mean anything to Marc. He saw it only as a way of raising cash to pay off the goddamned debts. His debts. In theory he owned half of it, but it was my collection. My wine.”

“So you confronted him?”

“Damn right, I did. Do you know what the bastard was going to do? Announce the closing of the restaurant during the winter. Tell them he was going to use those dead months to develop new dishes, new menus, shake everything and everyone up. Take the time to do some renovations. Chez Fraysee would be reborn in the spring.” A snort of frustration and contempt exploded from his nostrils. “But it was all smoke and mirrors. A cover up. Renovations to mask a saving on overheads, new menus an excuse to reassess the wine, sell off the old to buy new.”

It all became clear to Enzo. It was Marc’s mercurial genius in the kitchen which had created the opportunity for success, but Guy’s solid financial management that had built the Fraysse empire. And Guy’s passion, Guy’s obsession, which had amassed one of the most prestigious and valuable collections of wine in the whole of France. And his little brother was going to take it away from him. “So you killed him to save your wine?”

“To save it all, Enzo. Come on! He was an addict, a gambler. He’d put his restaurant- our restaurant-in hock to a bookie. He had fresh cards in his hand, ready for a new play. But sooner or later he’d lose, crash again. Destined to fail.” Guy shook his head and Enzo saw tears glistening in his eyes. Even at this distance. “The irony of it was, the only dispensable part of he empire was Marc himself. He might have been the creator, but in the end we didn’t need him any more.” He waved his hand toward the ceiling. “Look how successful we’ve been without him.”

“And Elisabeth?”

“She had no idea. She really did think he’d killed himself.”

Enzo felt the cold rising up into his legs through the flagstones beneath his feet. His hand trembled. “So what are you going to do now? Kill me and Sophie? Because that’s not going to do you any good, Guy. Like I said, it’s over.” And he reached very carefully into his inside pocket to take out the photocopy of the restored ‘suicide’ note that Raymond had given him. He shook it open and held it up. “That’s the page of your letter, made fully legible by a machine called a VSC6000. The police already have it in their possession. And the photographs of blood spatter on the back of Marc’s hands taken at autopsy prove beyond doubt that he was murdered, and didn’t commit suicide. Killing us won’t make any difference now, Guy.” But he could see fear and indecision behind the tears, a man on the edge. He had embarked on a certain course and, like a runaway truck on a dangerous descent, there was no guarantee he could stop himself. Enzo couldn’t afford to wait and find out.

He flicked a switch, plunging Guy and Sophie into darkness, then ducked quickly out of the beam of Guy’s flashlight. Guy’s voice rose in panic. “What are you doing? I’ll kill her, Enzo, I will.” He started dragging her along the end of the racks flashing the beam of his electric torch up and down the rows. Then he froze at the sound of breaking glass. “For God’s sake, Enzo, what was that?”

Enzo’s voice boomed out of the darkness. “A St. Emilion Grand Cru, 2005, Guy. Worth what… a hundred and fifty euros?”

“Stop it! I swear I’ll kill her.”

“Harm a single hair on her head, and I’ll break every fucking bottle in this cave.” The menace in his voice in no way reflected the uncertainty in his heart. But he’d made his play. He had to see it through now. The sound of more breaking glass echoed around the glistening bedrock. “That was a Crozes Hermitages. Oh, and here’s a good one. Lynch Bages. Must be more than a thousand euros in this one.” Enzo dashed it on the floor. The smell of wine, like fresh blood, filled the air. And he went running down the aisle between the racks pulling out bottles at random, letting them smash on the floor behind him. “Are you dying a little bit with every bottle, Guy?” he shouted.

Guy’s shriek of anguish filled the cellar, and the deafening report of a gunshot stopped Enzo in his tracks. Guy’s flashlight swung around the end of the row, catching Enzo full in it’s beam. Guy still held Sophie by the neck, but Enzo could see the panic in his eyes as he directed his torch toward the broken glass and priceless wine that pooled on the floor. He no longer had the gun at Sophie’s head, and she used the moment to drive an elbow hard into his gut.

He grunted in pain and cursed, the beam of his flashlight crazily criss-crossing the cave as Sophie struggled to break free. Then it fell from his hand and rolled away across the floor. He swung a fist blindly in her direction, catching her on the cheekbone and sending her spinning away in the darkness to fall semi-conscious to the flags.

Enzo made his move, trying to cover the four or five meters between them before Guy had a chance to recover. But Guy was quick to swing the gun in his direction. And even by the reflected light of the fallen flashlight, Enzo could see the intent in his eyes. He knew, in that moment, there was nothing he could do to stop him from pulling the trigger.

The sound of the shot reverberated around the walls, and Enzo staggered two steps back, clutching his chest, wondering why he could feel no pain. He looked down and saw there was no blood on his hand as Guy toppled backwards, crashing into a row of wine bottles and sending the rack tipping over to smash its precious cargo and spill its contents over the floor. Priceless wine washed all around him. Worthless now.

The bullet wound was almost in the center of Guy’s chest. His head was pushed forward by the rack that semi-supported his fallen body. His eyes were wide open, staring at the wound, as if in disbelief. But he was quite dead.

The cave was suddenly flooded with light. Enzo turned to see Elisabeth standing on the top step, the gun she had used to shoot her husband’s killer and one-time lover still trembling in her hand. “I never knew,” was all she said.

It had taken a plough to clear the road up to the auberge and make it accessible for the phalanx of police vehicles and ambulances that was gathered now at the front entrance of the hotel. Blue and orange lights flashed out of sync, casting alternating color tints across the virgin snow that lay thick all around.

It had stopped snowing now, and with a clearing sky temperatures were plunging, forming a hard crust on the snow, and ice in the tire tracks up the hill.

Forensics officers from the police scientifique were still meticulously photographing the scene in the cave before the waiting medics could remove the body. Enzo had already briefed the first gendarmes on the scene, but he knew that a long night of interrogation and official statements lay ahead.

Sophie’s cheek, where Guy had struck her, was swollen and already darkening. One of the Samu had washed and dressed the broken skin where blood had been drawn. She was shaken, but otherwise alright.

She stood on the top step, wrapped in a blanket, her father’s arm around her, still slightly dazed, shocked by the trauma of the last hours. Enzo could feel her trembling against his body.

They moved aside to allow two officers to lead an ashen Elisabeth Fraysse to a waiting van. She glanced at them both, but passed without a word. Enzo and Sophie watched the gendarmes put her in the back of the van, and saw for the first time that she was handcuffed.

“It’s so sad,” Sophie said. “What will happen to her?”

“I’ve no idea. But I can’t imagine that anything could be worse than what she’s already suffered.”

“She saved our lives.”

Enzo nodded. “She did. And killed the murderer of the only man she ever really loved. A man she was prepared to forgive anything. Even his affair with a hotel receptionist.”

Sophie said, “It’s a terrible thing, papa, when two brothers fall out like that. When hate is stronger than blood.”

Enzo raised his eyes toward the firmament, and saw a nearly full moon rising over the pine clad hills. “It is,” he said.