The Critic

Chapter Three

There were no lights on in the chateau when finally he got back, exhausted, head still pounding. It was after midnight. Clearly the Lefevres had gone to bed, and as far as Enzo knew there were no guests staying in the chambres d’hotes. Moonlight flooded the gravel courtyard and the garden beyond, the white stone of the chateau almost glowing in the dark. The entrance to the gite 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 Lefevre’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.

Something 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.

Enzo had taken her on early that first summer to help him crack the Gaillard case. There was, it seemed, nothing she didn’t know about computers, and she could surf and navigate her way around the internet like an experienced sailor. He needed help again, so he had asked her for a few days of her time before the first semester of the new university year got under way. He knew, too, that she had spent much of the summer nursing her dying mother, and that she could probably do with the break.

When he came out of the shower wrapped in a towelling robe, blood was running down the side of his head where the hot water had reopened his wound. She made him sit in a chair while she pressed a clean towel against his head to stop the bleeding. Her large breasts quivered at eye-level, just centimetres from Enzo’s face, and he tried hard not to look at them. They were, he reflected, Nicole’s most outstanding feature, a subject of discussion on more than one occasion amongst male lecturers in the staffroom at the university. She always seemed intent on making the most of them, wearing tee-shirts a size too small, or low-cut tops that revealed acres of cleavage. Hoping, perhaps, to attract attention. Which, of course, they did. Always of the wrong kind.

Enzo closed his eyes.

‘Do we have any disinfectant, Monsieur Macleod?’

‘Coping with the aftermath of an attempt on my life wasn’t one of the things I considered when packing my bags, Nicole.’

‘You should always be prepared.’ Nicole was nothing if not practical.

‘There’s really nothing prepares you for someone trying to kill you.’

‘You must be exaggerating. Are you sure you didn’t just trip, or something, and fall in front of that harvester.’

Enzo contained his irritation by clenching his teeth. ‘Someone hit me on the head, Nicole.’

‘Had you been drinking?’ She sniffed his breath.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘I thought as much.’ She looked around the room. ‘Ah, that’ll do.’

Enzo turned to watch as she headed for the bottle of malt whisky on the table. ‘Good idea. Make it a large one.’

She lifted the bottle and tutted. ‘You’ve probably had more than enough already, Monsieur Macleod.’ She unwrapped the seal and pulled out the cork. ‘It’ll make an ideal disinfectant.’

‘Nicole, that’s a thirty-year-old Glenlivet single malt!’ Enzo watched in horror as she soaked the towel in the pale amber liquid and came back to press it once more to his head. ‘Jesus!’ He flinched from the pain. Not only was it a criminal waste of good whisky, but it hurt like hell.

Nicole held him firm. ‘Don’t be a baby.’ She glanced up at the whiteboard. ‘So this is the Petty case we’re looking at?’

‘You’ve read up on it, haven’t you?’

She nodded. ‘Disappeared four years ago.’

‘From this very gite.’

‘Really? God, that’s spooky.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘The autopsy report said he’d drowned in wine, then twelve months later turned up in a Gaillac vineyard pickled red and partially preserved. Why would he do that?’

‘Petty?’

‘The killer. If he’d got away with it for a whole year, and no one even knew for sure that Petty was dead, why did he suddenly draw attention to it?’

‘If we knew that, we’d probably know who did?’

‘Did you bring the laptop?’

He nodded, then winced from the pain. ‘We’ll set it up in the morning.’ And, as an afterthought, ‘Where are you staying?’

‘Here, of course.’

He pulled away from the towel. ‘Nicole, you can’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because there’s only one bedroom. And I don’t want your father storming in here and accusing me of trying to have my wicked way with you.’

She blushed to the roots of her hair, and her eyes strayed away self-consciously towards a rickety open staircase leading up to a gloomy mezzanine built into the roof. ‘What’s up there?’

‘A couple of kid’s bunk beds that wouldn’t do for either of us.’

She looked at the settee. ‘That’s a clic-clac. Folds down into a bed. You could have that.’

‘Why couldn’t you have that?’

‘Monsieur Macleod! I need the privacy of my own room.’

Enzo sighed.

‘And one other thing,’ she made a face, ‘I hate to ask, but… do you think you could bring my suitcase up the steps? It’s too heavy for me.’

Enzo’s frustration released itself in an explosion of air from between his lips. ‘Nicole, why can’t you ever travel light?’

‘Because unlike you, Monsieur Macleod, I always come prepared.’

Enzo knew of old that when it came to things practical, there was no point in arguing with Nicole. She would make a fine wife and mother some day, if she could ever find a man. He eased himself to his feet and walked stiffly across the room, every muscle in his body complaining. In the doorway he stopped and turned. ‘How’s your mom?’

A shadow fell across Nicole’s face as if the light had dimmed. ‘Not so good.’

She lay in the dark, the bedroom window open to the night, and gazed up at the reflected moonlight on the ceiling. For a short time she had been able to forget, to occupy herself with Monsieur Macleod and his injuries. To listen to his story of attempted murder among the vines and feel the thrill of his danger. It hadn’t occurred to her that if her mentor were in danger, then she might be too.

But any such thoughts were crowded out by the returning memory of her mother wasting away in the dark, holding her daughter’s hand, like she was holding onto life. She felt hot tears filling her eyes and turned over to blink them away, spilling them onto the pillow. And for a moment she fantasised that maybe the door would open as she was drifting off and Monsieur Macleod would slip between the sheets beside her, folding himself into the curve of her back. And that he would just hold her. Just for the comfort of it.

Peter May

The Critic