The Critic

IV

Fabien parked his four-by-four at the top of the rubble track where the police had left their vehicles the night before. An abandoned length of black and yellow crime scene tape was the only evidence that they had ever been there. He gave Nicole his hand to help her up the slope towards the trees.

‘I used to play up here all the time when I was a boy,’ he said. ‘The woods were my world. I fought battles against the crusaders, hid from the Germans, got shipwrecked. The cellars of the old Cathar chateau still exist, right below the hill. Just bits of broken-down wall and the remains of a flagstone floor. But it became my chateau, my hideaway. I loved it.’ He stopped and breathed deeply. ‘And the smell of the woods takes me back every time.’ He looked at Nicole. ‘Almost as if all the years between then and now had never been.’ His face shone with some distant, happy memory. Then a shadow crossed it, like the moon slipping behind a cloud. ‘That tree, where they found Serge Coste. I used to climb it, and hide in the hollow where the killer put the body. It was my tree. Seeing the body there like that, I felt…violated.’

They turned at the treeline and looked back down the vine-covered slope towards the flood plain below. The moon was a bright globe in a star-encrusted firmament, turning night almost into day. They heard the wind moving through the treetops, brittle leaves whispering to the night. Fabien still held her hand, and she felt a strange, aching sensation in the pit of her stomach. Not unpleasant but accompanied by a sense of apprehension verging on fear. She could feel the beat of her heart, and it seemed to be in her throat.

‘Anyway, the source is up here.’ Fabien turned and led her along a well-beaten path through the trees to a small clearing where stones had been set into the earth centuries before to protect the precious water.

‘This is it?’ Nicole was disappointed. She had been expecting more, although she was not sure what.

‘There hasn’t been much rain in the last six weeks, so the water table’s low. When she’s in full flood, she bubbles out of the ground like she’s alive.’

And still he held her hand. She could feel his anxiety through it. Shattered moonlight fell among the trees to sprinkle them with bits of silver. Beyond the source, the forest seemed dark and impenetrable. Nicole looked up into Fabien’s face and thought how much she liked its soft cadences and the dark of his eyes. ‘What age are you, Fabien?’

He shifted uncomfortably, unsettled by her question. ‘Thirty-one.’

‘Why have you never married?’

Which brought a tiny smile of regret to his face. ‘There have been one or two close things. I guess I never met the right woman.’ His smile turned wry. ‘Certainly, my mother thinks so.’

‘So do you think twelve years is too much?’

He frowned. ‘Too much what?’

‘Of an age difference.’

She was certain he blushed, but his embarrassment was masked by the night. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Between you and me.’

He laughed. ‘When I was twenty, you’d have been eight. A primary school kid.’

‘I’m a big girl now, though.’ And then, realising what she’d said, added self-consciously, ‘Too big, most people seem to think.’

Fabien took her other hand and stared earnestly into her face in the dark. ‘ I think you’re lovely.’

She could barely hide her pleasure. ‘A lovely spy.’

‘A beautiful spy.’ He let go of her hand and slipped his arms around her, drawing her tenderly towards him. She put her hands around his neck and stretched up to meet his lips as he bent to kiss her. For such a big, clumsy man, he was very gentle. The aching in her belly had spread to fill her whole body. She wished he would put his hand on her breast. Men were always looking at her as if they wanted to, but few of them had ever had the courage to actually do it. And Fabien was much too much of a gentleman. So slowly she drew one of his arms out from behind her, and slid his hand up to cover one of her breasts, an erect nipple pushing hard against the taut cotton of her tee-shirt. She felt his tension, and then an almost uncontrollable wave of desire as she pressed her body against his to feel his passion pressing right back.