Blood Counts Read online

  ‘You’re dreaming.’ It was Claudine, her shadow falling across the table, her hand sliding over Jacquot’s shoulder. ‘Whoosh,’ she continued, pulling out a chair. ‘That old farmer sure knows how to rock and roll. Had me in quite a spin.’ She guided a stray wisp of hair back into the loosening chignon with long, delicate fingers, slipped off her shoes and laid her legs over Jacquot’s knees. ‘And you sitting here, a million miles away.’

  ‘I was thinking . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me if it’s work . . . It’s been too nice a day,’ she replied, reaching across for the disposable camera left on each table. She wound on the film, pointed it at Jacquot and pressed the button.

  ‘En effet, I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that maybe it’s time I took you home . . .’ He dropped a hand to her leg and let his fingers trail up her bare brown shin, rubbing her knee with his thumb when he reached that far, knuckles idling at the hem of her dress.

  She gave him a long, cool look.

  ‘I can tell when you’re lying, Daniel Jacquot. And it won’t work, you hear?’

  ‘What? It’s the truth.’

  ‘And you want to leave? Just as things are hotting up?’ She glanced back at the dance floor. The DJ’s amplified but strangely muffled voice spread between the tables and out across the pasture. The sun had slipped behind the hills now but already there were lit candles on tables and lanterns in the branches. They darkened the sky, brought the night closer.

  ‘You were the one who said she was tired.’

  And it was true. At breakfast Claudine had complained of a poor night’s sleep, the second or third in a row, and had sighed deeply at the thought of a long country wedding.

  ‘That was earlier. Now I’m not.’

  Jacquot shook his head and chuckled.

  Claudine straightened her back.

  ‘So? I’ve changed my mind. I’m a woman, I’m allowed. That’s what we do, didn’t you know? Just to keep you men on your toes. Talking of which . . .’

  ‘Three dances – two fast, one slow,’ he told her. ‘The slow one to get you in the mood.’

  ‘Three fast, two slow. I need priming.’ She leant foward and ran her fingertips across his cheek.

  ‘It’s not fair. You’re younger than me.’

  ‘You want it the other way round, you should have settled on someone else, someone older, someone closer to your own age, hein? In their sixties, or maybe even their seventies; with one of those frames to help them get around.’

  ‘You drive a hard bargain, Madame.’

  His fingers flicked at the hem of Claudine’s dress.

  She brushed them away as she might a settling fly and raised her chin in that way she had – as though trying to see over his head. Haughty as hell. God, how he loved her when she did that.

  Through the trees the first bluesy, bursting rhythms of a Jackie Wilson number blasted from the speakers. Both of them knew the song. A favourite. ‘Higher and Higher’.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, shifting her legs from his lap and pulling her to her feet. ‘You win.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she replied, gripping his arm as she bent to pull on her shoes. ‘And don’t you ever forget it, Daniel Jacquot. Allons-y. We dance.’

  2

  IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER FOUR the following morning when the call came through. Claudine groaned as Jacquot reached out for the phone.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Boss, c’est moi.’ It was Jean Brunet, his assistant.

  Recognising the voice, Jacquot eased himself up on an elbow and peered at the bedside clock radio.

  ‘Jean, what . . . ?’

  ‘I know it’s early, I know it’s Sunday, but you’d better come. Le Mas Bleu, on the Maubec road. There’s a body.’

  Jacquot pressed his fingers into the corner of his eyes, rubbed his face, tried to wake himself up. A ‘body’ usually meant murder. Not an accident, not a suicide, but murder.

  ‘Where on the Maubec road?’

  ‘The new place. With the avenue of cypresses. Believe me, you can’t miss it.’

  Despite his assistant’s confidence, Jacquot did miss it. Half-an-hour later, as the sky began to lighten over the Luberon heights, its wooded slopes looming ahead of him, Jacquot turned through Coustellet and started along the back lanes to Maubec. At the Maubec–Robion crossroads he looked left and right and took the former, giving it two kilometres before he decided he’d made the wrong choice and turned back for Robion. A kilometre or so past the crossroads he saw the first sign – Le Mas Bleu, à droite 100 mètres – and a minute later he did as requested, turning between spotlit stone gateposts into a gravelled drive leading between six pairs of tapering cypress trees. At the end of the drive was another pillared gateway, smaller but no less grand, and beyond it Le Mas Bleu. Even with the sky lightening fast, its stone façade was spotlit, six lights spilling upwards between blue shuttered windows and either side of a double front door studded with blackened nail heads.

  As he pulled up in the forecourt, he spotted Brunet lounging against the side of his squad car, chatting with a couple of uniformed képis. His assistant was a little shorter than his companions, lithe and lean in leather blouson, jeans and trainers, with a sharp, angular face below a thin crop of dark hair. In his spare time Brunet cycled with a local club – road-racing, hill-climbing and time trials – and the exercise showed in his wiry, muscled frame. Even when he was relaxing – leaning against the squad car as he was doing now, or sitting in a chair, or standing at a bar – there was always something coiled and dynamic about him, as though he was waiting for a flag to drop, or a starter’s gun to fire. He was in his mid-thirties, single, and when work and training allowed as enthusiastic in his pursuit of women as he was in his cycling. His reputation in both areas of endeavour, Jacquot knew, was well-established and well-deserved.

  Cutting short his conversation with the képis, Brunet hurried over.

  ‘Welcome to Le Mas Bleu, Monsieur,’ he said with a small bow, as though Jacquot were an arriving guest and he the manager.

  Over Brunet’s shoulder, Jacquot took in the sculpted olive trees either side of the front door and the blue-glazed pots of shooting lavender on each step. He’d heard of the place but never been here. Open just a couple of months, he seemed to recall. An old farmhouse and attached barn transformed into a bijoux little hostelry, beds covered in Provençal quilts and old stone walls left bare, Jacquot suspected. He wondered what the food was like.

  ‘So. You say we have a body?’

  ‘Murder,’ said Brunet, as they crossed the forecourt together. ‘Woman, mid-twenties, a single gunshot wound. Husband swears he was asleep, didn’t hear a thing.’ Brunet looked doubtful. ‘He’s putting on a good show, mind you . . . the wide-eyed, stunned look. One of ours, too. Marseilles PD. Name of Gilbert. You want to have a word?’

  Jacquot stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Gilbert? Noël Gilbert?’

  Brunet gave him a look. ‘You know him?’

  ‘He was married yesterday. I was at the wedding,’ Jacquot explained, and they started forward again, a little faster this time, up the front steps and into the entrance hall. It was just as he’d expected: bare stone walls, terracotta pantiles for sconces, kelim rugs on polished wood floors, and a fine old fireplace exploding with stiff-stemmed, purple-tipped gladioli in more blue-glazed vases.

  ‘That’s what he told us,’ said Brunet. ‘That he’d just got married. But so far we don’t even know the wife’s name. Can’t get anything else out of him. According to the hotel owner, a Monsieur Valbois, the room was reserved by Gilbert for one night only, and paid for on his credit card.’

  ‘This Valbois, he knew it was a honeymoon booking?’

  ‘Apparently Gilbert told him. Said he wanted the best room, but only gave a Marseilles address when he made the reservation. Didn’t say anything about the bride . . . her name, where she lived, where the wedding was. Just said they’d be arriving late. I got in touch with Marseilles PD but so far they ha
ven’t been able to give us much more than his personnel file details. Parents dead. Lives alone in the family home. A couple of commendations. Future looks bright.’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Jacquot.

  ‘Valbois let us use one of his spare rooms. That’s him, now.’ Across the hall a man in sleeveless cardigan, check shirt, cotton trousers and tasselled loafers came down the stone stairs and headed in their direction.

  ‘He’s by himself? Gilbert?’ asked Jacquot, acknowledging Valbois with a brief nod, but keeping his attention on Brunet.

  His assistant shook his head.

  ‘There’s a képi with him. In the room. And one outside.’

  Jacquot nodded, then turned to the owner, gave him a short smile, shook his hand. A weak, damp handshake; long, tapered fingers and lacquered nails, Jacquot noted.

  ‘Monsieur Valbois, I believe?’

  ‘Clément Valbois. Oui, c’est moi.’ The man looked to be in his early forties, slim and delicate, his narrow face pale with shock. ‘But this is all so dreadful,’ he said, hands pressed to his cheeks.

  ‘Monsieur Valbois, I’m Chief Inspector Jacquot. From Cavaillon. Please . . .’ He took the man’s elbow and directed him to a pair of armchairs set either side of a painted longcase clock. A sunflower decorated the face of its circular pendulum and a low oily tick sounded from its chained mechanism. ‘So, what can you tell me, Monsieur?’ Jacquot asked, as they settled in their seats.

  Perching on the edge of his chair, Valbois dropped his hands to his lap and leant forward.

  ‘They arrived late, just after eleven, and went straight to their room.’

  ‘You were here when they arrived?’

  ‘My partner, Gunnar, he was here to welcome them. A bottle of champagne had already been sent up to their suite.’

  ‘Gunnar . . . ?’

  ‘Larsson. Gunnar Larsson.’

  ‘And he is where, exactly?’

  ‘In Aix. He left at midnight, when I took over.’

  ‘Aix?’

  ‘A party he just didn’t want to miss.’

  ‘So he doesn’t know?’

  Valbois shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t want to spoil his fun. He’s been working so hard . . . ’

  ‘And when will Monsieur Larsson return?’

  ‘Later this morning. For lunchtime. He’ll be horrified.’

  Jacquot nodded.

  ‘Did he say anything to you about Monsieur and Madame Gilbert? Anything he might have noticed? Anything . . . strange?’

  ‘Nothing. It was late. They were tired. He showed them up to their room and he left them.’

  ‘So the first you knew about this was when Monsieur Gilbert called you? When he found the body?’

  ‘He didn’t call, Chief Inspector, he screamed. It was just after three. Everyone was woken. A terrible, terrible noise. Just this high-pitched screaming wail. I heard it down here.’

  ‘You are full, Monsieur?’

  ‘Just three other rooms, thank goodness.’

  ‘So . . . six other guests?’ Jacquot guessed.

  ‘That’s correct, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘And when you heard this scream, you went to his room?’

  ‘When I reached his floor he came running down the corridor towards me.’ Valbois drew a breath. ‘Completely naked. Screaming, “Ma femme, ma femme. Elle est morte. Elle est morte.”’

  ‘You went into their room?’

  ‘I had no choice. He caught me, by my arm. Pulled me there. Back to their room. Persille. All the rooms are named after herbs. Persille is the largest, has the best view, and fully en suite . . .’

  ‘So you have seen the body?’

  Another deep breath. Valbois held it as though his life depended on it, and then let it out in whispered bursts.

  ‘Oui, Chief Inspector. I saw her. As though she were sleeping. And the pillow red. Just a deep, deep scarlet. Affreux, pauvre chérie . . .’

  ‘Was there any blood on Monsieur Gilbert?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘All over? Body? Hands? Face?’

  Valbois gave it some thought.

  ‘Just down one side – where he had slept beside her? Where the blood . . . I suppose, where it . . . pooled.’

  Jacquot took this in.

  ‘Monsieur, thank you. Now I would like to see the room, if you please.’

  3

  PERSILLE OCCUPIED MOST OF THE top floor, apart from a wide corridor running the length of the roof space with four windows overlooking a cobbled courtyard and fountain below. A gendarme stood at the room’s fabric-covered double doors. Jacquot stepped past him with a nod, Brunet followed and the owner, Valbois, came up behind, not sure whether to follow them in or wait outside with the képi.

  Inside the room, Jacquot paused and looked around. Like the rest of the house, the walls were bare mortared stone and the floorboards a worn oak strip, a dozen or more beams branching from walls and floors to support a gently pitching tiled roof. The summer before, this would have been a dark old attic filled with a generation’s worth of tat. Now it smelled of perfumed candles or possibly bath oils – warm and close up here in the head of the house – the lighting delivered not through dusty, broken panes and low-watt bulbs but by means of concealed up-lighters hidden among the tied beams above their heads, beams softly coloured with what looked like a green limewash. These same soft shades of green were repeated in overstuffed upholstery, a scatter of rugs, pleated blinds on three mansard windows and, at the end of the room, raised on a low dais, the drapes hanging around a four-poster bed and its quilted cover, half-spilled across the edge of the mattress and dais step. It wasn’t to Jacquot’s taste – too staged and deliberate – but he could see that it would look good in a brochure, or to illustrate a magazine article.

  Quietly, slowly, looking from side to side – two new suitcases open on a pair of stools, clothes dropped on the floor and draped over the back of an armchair, an empty bottle of champagne, its label floating in the melted ice water – Jacquot made his way towards the dais and bed at the end of the room.

  The girl was lying on her back, head on the pillow, haloed by dark curls, lips parted and kiss-smeared with lipstick, one mascara-ed eye open – a cold disinterested blue – the other a scorched blackened pit between eyebrow and cheekbone. Not a spot of blood on her face. That was all on the pillow behind her head, just the one side of it where the blood had spilled from a hole that Jacquot knew would be the size of a saucer, shards of bone and wads of tissue blasted into the goose down.

  He tried to remember her name – Inès? No. Ilena? No. Irèna? No. Isabella . . . Isabelle. Yes, that was it. Isabelle Blanchard. Izzy. Someone had called her Izzy.

  Jacquot’s eyes dropped from her face to her body, oddly flat-chested now, the weight of her breasts sliding to her sides, nipples drawn out of shape as though the torso had been stretched or deflated. The quilt had been tossed aside but a crumpled top sheet still covered her legs and belly. One arm lay across it, noticeably hairy, the other thrown back over the pillow. It was how she had fallen asleep, possibly in the glow of their lovemaking, sprawled and satisfied. And that’s how she’d stayed, after the gun had been fired and blown her brains out. A splinter of light from the bedside light glanced off her finger. She was still wearing her wedding ring.

  Jacquot followed the spread of blood from the pillow into the centre of the bed where it had soaked down into the mattress where Gilbert had been lying. The impression of his body was still there, curved and hollowed, and there was a sudden and sure certainty in Jacquot’s mind that Noël Gilbert had not killed his wife. Hadn’t touched her. Just woken to a warm stickiness on his skin, reached for the bedside light. Then looked down between them. With waking, light-squinting eyes. Taking it in. Trying to shake off sleep and make sense of it.

  The blood, the stillness, that dark, mascara-ed hole . . .

  A cold dread, a mounting disbelief.

  Trying to blink the image away, rub it from his e
yes.

  But the picture didn’t change, didn’t go away.

  Jacquot breathed deeply through his nose, stayed still, trying to get a sense and measure of what had happened here.

  Who would want to kill her? A country girl.

  And why in the eye?

  Why not between the eyes? In the head? In the heart? All of them deadly shots.

  Was there significance there in that single killing shot to the eye?

  Something the eye had seen?

  And why not the husband too?

  Why had he been spared?

  And why hadn’t he woken up?

  Little wonder that Brunet was doubtful.

  Jacquot knew how his assistant would read it: Gilbert, a young city boy forced into a marriage he didn’t want; suddenly, for some as yet unknown reason, driven to despair on his wedding night; a fit of madness, un moment de folie, un crime passionel . . . But it was worth remembering that Brunet was a single man, older than Gilbert, with a formidable reputation for bedding, and moving on from, a significant number of women. Brunet was a tomcat . . . but maybe Gilbert wasn’t.

  Jacquot took another long breath in through his nose, let it out, then frowned and sniffed again – shorter, double sniffs. Something hung in the air, beneath the scented candles. Not the warm, crumpled scent of lovers’ sheets, nor the cold ashy note of cordite. Something sharp and astringent . . . something that shouldn’t have been there.

  He went to Gilbert’s side of the bed and, reaching out a hand to the stone wall, he bent down to the pillow, sniffed again. Something cold. Metallic. Chemical. A hospital smell.

  He turned away from the bed. Brunet was sitting in one of the chairs, waiting for him to complete his preliminary search, knowing his boss wouldn’t appreciate any interruption. Behind him Monsieur Valbois had strayed past the door, hands clutched in front of him, almost stooping, like a room service waiter asking if there was anything more he could do . . .