Blood Counts Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Martin O’Brien

  Blood Counts

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1998

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part Two

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part Three

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  About the Author

  Also by Martin O’Brien

  Jacquot and the Waterman

  Jacquot and the Angel

  Jacquot and the Master

  Jacquot and the Fifteen

  Confession

  Writing as Jack Drummond

  Avalanche

  Storm

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409051442

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Preface Publishing 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Martin O’Brien 2010

  Martin O’Brien has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Preface Publishing

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84809 058 3

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  Typeset in Times by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

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  For Susan and Simon,

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  at 20 BWD

  1998

  There were seven entry wounds – four in one body, three in the other – but only two of these wounds had been fatal.

  The first of the killing shots was effected by a 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge fired from a police Beretta 92G at a range of no more than ten metres. Milliseconds after leaving the muzzle of the Beretta it broke through the skull of Taddeus Manichella two centimetres above the right eyebrow, mashing a path through the soft tissue of the frontal lobe and exiting four centimetres behind and below the left ear.

  The second killing shot was another 9x19mm Parabellum bullet, also fired from a police Beretta 92G at a similar range, entering Tomas Manichella’s chest four centimetres to the left of the mid-sternal line, shredding the muscled anterior wall of the heart, cutting down through the lungs and lodging in the lower spine.

  During the police pathologist’s autopsy which followed the shoot-out in the Roucas Blanc district of Marseilles only two bullets were retrieved from the brothers’ bodies, leaving a total of twelve entry and exit wounds. None of these wounds was treated except for the massive cranial damage to the back of Taddeus Manichella’s head where a wedge of gauze dressing was applied and bandaged into place to contain the splintered remains of the skull and to prevent any further leakage.

  After three weeks in police custody, the refrigerated bodies of the twin brothers were shipped on an overnight SNCM ferry from Marseilles to their home in Corsica. For ease of transport the thick, black and zippered plastic bags containing their bodies had been put into two deal coffins. On arrival in Ajaccio, after passengers had disembarked from the vehicle ramp and companionways, the cargo hold was opened and the coffins discreetly transported to a dockside warehouse. It was there, in the late-afternoon, that two women, the twins’ sisters, took possession of the caskets, driving them back to the family farm in the village of Tassafaduca, high in the hills above Corte.

  As is the custom in such remote and isolated settlements the first thing the women did was to open the caskets, unzip the bags and lay out the bodies on trestle tables in the kitchen. They did this alone, that first night, after the children had been settled in the roof space of the old family home and their elderly parents seen off to bed. By the light of a low-wattage ceiling light and a scattering of home-made candles, the two women washed their brothers’ bodies and plugged their wounds with a thick poultice of honey, chestnut flour, macerated myrtle leaves and crushed arbutus berries.

  Wounds washed with love, plugged with hatred.

  They worked in silence, one sister to one brother, their fingers soon red and aching with cold, the putrefying stink of the bodies barely disguised by the smoky tallow scent of the candles and the sweet perfumes of the honey and herbs. When the two bodies had been prope
rly prepared and dressed in clean clothes they were returned to their caskets with red coral charms clasped in their hands, and the night-time shadows of the old farmhouse were filled with a light tap-tap-tapping as the lids were secured for the final time.

  At eleven o’clock the following morning the caskets were taken from the family home and carried in slow and sombre procession through the steep tilting streets of Tassafaduca to the church of Sant’ Anselmo. There, with family and villagers crowding into the icy nave, prayers were said and blessings given before the brothers were delivered to the village’s small hillside cemetery, their caskets lowered into a single shallow pit, jerking and tipping on their ropes, rough wooden edges scraping against the stony sides of the grave until they lay five feet down, one beside the other, heads pointing north.

  It had taken two days to dig this pit with spade and pick-axe, three of the twins’ cousins volunteering for the task. Another month and the two coffins would have been left in a barn for the winter, or a fire would have been lit and kept alight long enough to soften the ground for digging. But the snow had not yet come, just a dusting on the distant peaks of Monte Cinto in the west and on Pica Tassa to the north. In its place, that bleak winter morning, came a chill, shawling drizzle that silvered the mourners’ best black homburgs, stiff black suits and woollen headscarves, all hands gloved or pocketed against a sharp little breeze that whipped through the chestnut trees and snatched at the brown tufted grass.

  On these hillsides Taddeus and Tomas had played as boys, and as young men they had learnt to hunt here – boar and partridge and quail – before the summons came to leave the island and serve their master. At twenty they had gone, and more than twenty years later they had come home for good, attended now by a silent, jostling crowd of mourners. At their head was the twins’ nodding father, borne along in his favourite chair by four burly nephews and set beside the single grave, with their shawled, whiskered stub of a mother at his side, shuffling rosary beads through crooked fingers. Then came their two sisters, their five uncles, assorted cousins and family friends, and the elders of the village of Tassafaduca, its slate walls and steeply pitched roofs crowding together on the slope below the cemetery.

  No tear was spilled. No flower was laid. Just pale faces framed in black, and dark, dulled eyes cast down towards the hard ground. They had done this before, all of them gathered there. In these distant hills they knew death, just as they knew life, and neither held any surprise for them. It was the way things were. Life and death. Just that. And as the single, hollow bell of Sant’ Anselmo tolled through the valley of Tassafaduca, taken up by the nearby campanile of Cabrillio and Borredonico and Scarpetta, and the first shovelful of earth and stone drummed over the wooden lids of the twins’ coffins, the mourners turned their backs on the grave and made their way home.

  But it wasn’t over.

  And the brothers Taddeus and Tomas Manichella were not forgotten.

  Part One

  1

  1999

  IT WAS A SPRING WEDDING. A country wedding. A twenty minute drive from Cavaillon, on the northern slopes of the Grand Luberon, in a meadow as green as Eden, under a milky sapphire sky. And most of the guests, Jacquot could tell at a glance, were country people. The suits the men wore gave the game away, either too tight – not yet old or worn enough to justify a fresh purchase – or a size too large, as though room had been left for growth, or its owner had shrunk with age. Collar tips were turned up, shirt cuffs buttoned and frayed, ties loud and wide, faces nut brown, stiff hair brushed flat. Their smiles and gusts of laughter were as broad and as big as the land, and their voices rang out in a jolly patois.

  As for the women, Jacquot decided, their outfits were gay and colourful and festive but had about them a sense of ‘best’. They looked like the kinds of dresses that had served as long and as well as their men’s suits, bought from a catalogue, or a market somewhere, or years earlier from fashionable boutiques in Cavaillon or Apt, or cut from patterns on kitchen tables. Taken from creaking armoires, hung up in the shade to air out any mustiness, maybe dry-cleaned for the occasion, they were worn with an easy, comfortable familiarity.

  The only items of dress that appeared to cause any real discomfort, however, were shoes, men and women’s both. Brightly polished and sensibly heeled they may have been, but Jacquot could sense their pinching grip, their stiff ungiving edges, the way their owners swayed between the tables set beneath the trees, the way they stood chatting in groups, lifting a foot like a horse lifts a hoof, just to ease the weight off biting leather. And when they started to dance on the large squares of ply pegged out on a stretch of level ground, not a few of the women kicked off the offending items. Harder for the men – stooping to untie all those laces.

  It was late afternoon now and the rain that had threatened had failed to show, the sun still bright and warm as it slipped down through the branches, dappling the cloth on Jacquot’s table – thick white damask, crumpled now, ringed and stained with spilled wine, spotted with grease from the hog-roast sandwiches they’d all fetched themselves from the firepit. It was, he decided, tipping back the last of his coffee and glancing at his watch, just about time to call it quits and head home. It had been a long day.

  They had arrived at the church in St-Florent at eleven that morning – Jacquot in linen suit and loafers, Claudine in a matching light blue jacket and sleeveless dress that he hadn’t seen before. She looked long and lean in the outfit, the jacket high off the waist, the dress’s satin sheen sharpening slim hips, firm breasts and flat stomach; tanned legs in blue court shoes, long neck sliced with a single string of pearls, dark hair caught up and combed into a tight little chignon. They’d sat at the back of the church, by the stone font, because they weren’t really family enough to claim anywhere nearer to the altar. The invitation from famille Blanchard had been sent to Claudine in recognition of the help she’d given the bride’s younger sister preparing her art-work portfolio for admission to Aix’s École des Beaux Arts. When their daughter was subsequently awarded a place, Blanchard Père et Mère were convinced that Claudine, who sometimes lectured at the school, must have pulled some strings with the admissions board, rather than believe in their daughter’s talent. And so, the invitation.

  As for Jacquot, he recognised some of the faces from town, men and women both, knew one or two of the names, had once sorted out a quarrel between two of them over a boundary wall, for which both parties – now reconciled – gave him bone-crushing handshakes and mighty slaps on the back. And though he didn’t realise it at first, when bride and groom came down the aisle arm in arm at the end of the service, he knew the groom too. Or rather, it turned out, the groom knew him, or knew of him.

  Standing in line at the firepit, the young man had come over to Jacquot and introduced himself.

  ‘Noël Gilbert, Chief Inspector. Police Nationale, Marseilles. I saw you at Roucas Blanc last year. The Cabrille place.’

  ‘Daniel. The name’s Daniel,’ he replied, shaking the offered hand, taking in the sharply cut black hair, spiky on the neck and above the ears, the red cheeks, the tiny shaving nick on the point of the chin. He didn’t recognise the lad, but he remembered the Cabrille place in Roucas Blanc, the shoot-out he’d missed by a matter of minutes, the blood on the garage walls, on the floor, the sharp scent of cordite and the tell-tale faecal stink of a stomach wound.

  ‘You were there? With Peluze?’

  The younger man nodded, letting go of Jacquot’s hand.

  ‘If it weren’t for Chief Inspector Peluze I wouldn’t be here now. Pulled me down behind an old Porsche when the bullets started flying. What a noise in that garage. First time under fire and, well, I suppose I was frightened. I didn’t know what to do.’ He shrugged, spread his hands in a there-you-are gesture.

  ‘You’d be lying if you’d said any different. We all would. And it doesn’t change. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. A gun’s always a gun. And a bullet may be small . . .’

  ‘She
’s clear, you know? Off the hook.’

  Jacquot frowned, took another step closer to the firepit, the smell of roasting pork thick and succulent, carried on a smoky breeze.

  ‘The Cabrille woman?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille. All charges dropped.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  Gilbert shook his head.

  ‘Nothing. Free to walk.’

  Jacquot was stunned by the news. Kidnap, attempted murder, murder . . . It couldn’t be.

  ‘But we found the Lafour girl on her boat . . . And Chief Inspector Gastal dead in her basement. And the two gorilles . . .’

  ‘She had a lawyer down from Paris. Slippery as a peeled grape, he was. He wouldn’t let us pin a thing on her. No charges filed.’

  Jacquot noted that ‘us’ – the police as family, the team. He had a feeling this young man might go far.

  ‘So you’re not in Marseilles these days?’ the groom asked.

  ‘Cavaillon,’ replied Jacquot. ‘They put me out to graze.’

  Gilbert took this in, nodded, cast around for his new wife. They both spotted her at the same time, a dozen tables away, surrounded by a gaggle of great-aunts and grandmothers, a tall, big-boned country girl in an off-the-shoulder gown that showed a generous swell and plunge of cleavage. In church the shoulders, and cleavage, had been concealed, her hair piled high beneath the veil; now the veil was gone and the hair was loose, a bundle of black curls tumbling over bare white shoulders. She had a lovely smile, thought Jacquot, and twinkling mischievous eyes. Gilbert had chosen well.

  ‘You’d better go and rescue your wife,’ said Jacquot, stepping up to the serving tables now, first in line at last, and holding out his two plates. Fat wedges of pork were carved off the haunch and dropped onto them, along with blistered belts of crackling, thick slices of buttered bread and a healthy sprinkle of rock salt on the side. ‘Never a good idea to let the old ones give the young ones too much advice.’

  ‘I think you might be right. So . . . if you’ll excuse me, Chief Insp—’

  ‘Daniel. At weddings I’m Daniel, remember?’

  ‘Okay, okay. Thanks . . . Daniel.’ He held out a hand, forgetting Jacquot’s loaded plates. For a moment Gilbert wasn’t sure what to do, a pat on the arm or back just a little too familiar with a senior officer, even at a wedding, even if said senior officer had told him, twice now, to use his christian name. Instead, he’d raised his hand – somewhere between a wave and a salute – and hurried off.