The Critic (24 page)
‘And, you know, it doesn’t stop there. Once it’s in the barrel, I run tests at regular intervals. Wines are hard to taste in the early days, but I can measure the key compounds, and can make a quality judgment from the facts and figures in my database. We can then make virtual blends between barrels and run the figures through the computer to see how they’ll taste. That way, you don’t actually have to mix the wine until you
know
it’s going to be good.’
He laughed. ‘I had dinner with a client the other week. He produced a bottle of his best wine. I told him I would be really interested to taste it. I’d only ever tried it on my computer screen.’ He leaned confidentially across his desk. ‘These wine critics… Petty, Parker and the rest. They’re so goddamned predictable. I say to them, this is what you like? Okay this is what I’ll make. In a blind tasting I’ll predict nine times out of ten the score they’re going to give. And do you know what kind of power that gives me, Magpie? It’s like knowing today what a stock’ll do tomorrow. It’s inside info.’
And Enzo thought of the lengths that Petty had gone to just to keep his ratings secret. Of the alchemy that Laurent de Bonneval had talked about at Château Saint-Michel when Enzo first arrived in Gaillac. MacConchie was exploding it all. The myths, the mysticism, and two thousand years of tradition. His secret for success was a marriage of Silicon and Napa Valleys; his wines constructed from the building blocks of molecules. And Enzo couldn’t help but wonder if in all this science, the fundamental human component might be missing. The instinct, flair, and sophistry of which Bonneval had spoken. That element impossible to define by maths or science—the personality of the winemaker.
But he said none of this to MacConchie. There was no point. Whatever it was he was doing, it was working for him. A hundred clients on his books and a turnover of five million a year. A lifestyle that a boy from a housing scheme in Glasgow’s deprived east-end could hardly have dared to dream of. He’d had a brain, and used it. Enzo regarded him thoughtfully across the desk, and couldn’t help but admire him. They’d both come a long way in the thirty years since they’d first met. And very different paths had led them, strangely, to meet again in this place in the heart of California wine country, thousands of miles and millions of dollars away from where they had started.
‘You know, if Petty hadn’t been murdered, he was going to publish an article urging a boycott of American wines.’
MacConchie looked at him in disbelief. ‘What?’
‘Unlabelled use of genetically modified yeasts. He thought it was unethical. And dangerous.’
‘Jesus, Magpie. If he’d published that he could have put us all out of business!’
Enzo cocked his head. ‘Which reduces my list of suspects to a mere few thousand.’ He paused. ‘So how will you treat the samples?’
MacConchie leaned forward, concentrated on the question. ‘I figure I’ll dry the soil samples in an oven up to a constant weight. Sieve the stuff through nylon nets to fraction and homogenise it, then digest it with concentrated HN0
3
by high pressure microwave.’
Enzo looked at him. ‘Can you translate
any
of that into English?’
MacConchie grinned. ‘Chemistry never was your strong suit, Magpie, was it?’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know, it’s not easy to explain this in layman’s terms. High-pressure microwave digestion for the soil, UV irradiation for the wine. Then, I figure, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for both.’
Enzo sat back shaking his head. ‘I guess the simple answer to my question was “no”. Here’s another one. How long will it take?’
‘A while. This is my busiest time of year.’
‘Could be that a man’s life is dependent on it.’
MacConchie nodded thoughtfully. ‘Okay. Two, three days. When do you fly back?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I’ll e-mail you the results.’ He leaned back and grinned. ‘But tonight you’ll meet my surgically perfected wife and taste my virtually perfected wines, and wallow in envy.’
But somehow Enzo didn’t think he would.
III.
The hot California sun beat through the windscreen of his rental car as he cruised slowly through The Shores housing development in the Natomas district, north of downtown Sacramento. The houses on the north side of Hawkcrest Circle were built along the shores of a man-made lake where wild birds now mated and nested. It was only a short drive to the airport from here, and had he arrived by plane, Enzo would have seen the sun reflected in the water of the flood plains that stretched between the Sacramento River to the west and the American River to the south. This was where Gil Petty had bought his home when the money started coming in. It was where his marriage had foundered, a relationship malnourished by long and frequent absences.
Enzo blinked to try to stay awake. He had barely been able to keep his eyes open during dinner the night before, a problem not aided by the rich, red wines poured by the hand of Al MacConchie. Then, infuriatingly, he had been awake most of the night. And now, he was once again almost overcome by fatigue. Jetlag was the curse of the modern age.
He drew up outside a large house with wisteria growing around the gate to a courtyard entrance. Shrubs were in flower all along a bed below shuttered windows that faced out to the street. People preserved their privacy here. He walked up a short drive to the gate and pressed the bell. It rang somewhere distantly inside the house. He waited for what seemed like a very long time before the gate opened, and a small, sallow-skinned woman in black peered out at him from the shade. Beyond her, he could see a paved courtyard, shallow-pitched roofs sloping down to semitropical flowers. At the far end, a door opened into a large, airy room with a floor to ceiling view out across the lake.
‘Enzo Macleod for Mrs. Petty. She’s expecting me.’
***
Linda Petty was smaller than he had been expecting. Small but perfectly formed, and he saw where Michelle had got her looks, if not her height. She wore jeans that tapered to her ankles, and white, high-heeled sandals. Her cream top dipped low to show off the deep cleavage of her silicon implants and was cut short at the waist to reveal her tanned belly. Although still an attractive woman, her face had that stretched quality created by plastic surgery which drew loose flesh up behind the ears, leaving unnaturally high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was too smooth, almost shiny, like plastic. Blond-streaked hair was cut short and tucked, like her face, behind her ears. Only the brown spots on the backs of veiny hands betrayed her age.
He followed her through into the dining room, and noticed her trim buttocks and narrow thighs, wondering how much of that was down to exercise and how much to liposuction. The theme of floor-to-ceiling glass continued here, like a giant screen showing constant re-runs of the lake beyond. One complete wall of the dining room was divided into beechwood pigeon-holes behind glass, a giant wine-rack filled with priceless bottles.
‘It’s sealed and refrigerated,’ she said. ‘Kept at a constant twelve degrees.’ She smiled condescendingly. ‘Celsius, of course. He liked to think he was so European. His wine wall, he called it. Broke his heart to lose it in the divorce settlement.’ She slid open glass doors and stepped out on to the deck. It was north-facing here, so shaded from the sun. Steps led down to a small pleasure boat bobbing on the water. She eased herself into a cushioned mahogany sun chair and lifted her legs on to an equally cushioned footstool. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the sky. ‘What is it you think I can tell you, Mister Macleod?’
Enzo squatted down on the edge of another cushioned footstool. ‘Who might have killed him.’
She smiled. ‘Not me, if that’s what you’re thinking. After the divorce, I had everything I’d ever wanted. It was my daughter who inherited the leftovers. But, of course, you said you’d met her.’
Enzo nodded. ‘She’s in France to recover her father’s belongings.’
Linda Petty looked unimpressed. ‘Is she? Took her time, then.’
‘Did you ever go with him on any of his wine tastings abroad?’
‘In the early days, yes. It was fun, then. We had a laugh and got drunk a lot. But the novelty soon wore off. He was quite obsessed, you know. And, frankly, I was more interested in a vodka martini than wine.’ She glanced back through the glass towards the wine wall. ‘Oh, I open a bottle occasionally. Something he’d have treasured. But I only ever have a glass and usually pour the rest of it down the sink.’
It was clear to Enzo that this was something that gave her pleasure. An ironic, bitter, retrospective revenge on her dead husband.
‘What about Michelle?’
‘Oh, she was obsessed, too. Not with wine. With her father. She always thought it was something personal. That he rejected her because of something she’d done. She never could grasp that it was nothing to do with her or me. That there was no way for either of us to compete with his precious wine.’ She took a long pull at her cigarette and flicked ash towards the water. ‘I suppose that’s why she followed him to France.’
Enzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The year he went to Gaillac. She flew out to France the week after he left. She said it was a trip to Paris to see friends. But I never believed her. She just couldn’t let it go.’ She snorted her derision. ‘And then, of course, he goes and vanishes. Murdered, as it turns out. And she never did get to have it out with him.’
Enzo found himself taking short, shallow breaths, and everything he thought he’d known about Michelle went up in flames around him, conviction buried beneath the ash of sudden uncertainty.
‘But the obsession’s never left her, Mister Macleod. Since her father’s death there have been a string of older men in her life, almost as if by making them love her she’s proving to herself that it wasn’t her fault that her father didn’t.’ She glanced at Enzo. ‘Of course, all that these men are really interested in is sex. Imagine. Men your age. Older. With a young girl like that. It’s disgusting.’
And Enzo felt himself slide from uncertainty into guilt and shame.
I.
It was late by the time he got back. And dark. Distant lightning lit up a brooding sky.
He had stopped several times on the long drive south from Paris, pouring coffee down his throat to try to stay awake. Now he was suffering from caffeine overload, his head buzzing, his hands shaking. He had flown out of San Francisco late afternoon, unable to sleep throughout the flight, and landed in Paris with almost a full day ahead of him.
He turned into the driveway leading up through the trees to Château des Fleurs. An enormous wave of fatigue washed over him. Like a runner at the end of a long race, the sight of the finish line almost robbed him of his ability to reach it.
All he wanted was to fall into bed. But it crossed his mind that Sophie and Bertrand might well have occupied it in his absence. He would probably have to make do with the clic-clac. Again. They would, no doubt, be asleep by now, and he didn’t have the heart to wake them.
There were no lights on in the
château
. The Lefèvres had told him that they would be away when he got back. The
gîte
, too, was in darkness, and he groaned as the prospect of the clic-clac beckoned. He drove past the parking area to the foot of the steps. He would get his stuff out of the trunk tomorrow. Lightning flashed closer, a shorter gap now before the following thunder.
It was on the second or third step, that his foot slid from under him, pitching him forward. He grazed his hands trying to break his fall. He cursed under his breath. Someone had spilled something slick on the stairs. Something like oil. It was profoundly dark, but he could see something darker pooling on the steps, sticky and wet. It was on his clothes and hands. Lightning flashed again and by its light the spillage looked almost black. He made his way up to the door, fumbled for his keys with sticky fingers and unlocked it. He reached inside and turned on a light. With a shock he saw that his hands were red. He looked down and saw that his trousers were stained the same colour. For a brief, irrational moment he thought someone had spilled red paint on the steps. Then the realisation that it was blood hit him with the force of a baseball bat catching him full in the chest.
‘Sophie!’ He shouted through the open door into the house, seized by a sudden and almost paralysing fear. But he was greeted only by silence. He could see that the bulk of the blood had run down from one step to the other, before being smeared over the gravel path at the foot of the stairs as if something, or someone, had been dragged across it.
He hurried back down the steps, careful this time not to slip. The blood was still a vivid red. Fresh. Not yet the rust brown it would turn when dried and oxidised. He could see it in the grass now, a bloody trail leading away from the house towards the trees and the shadow of the
pigeonnier.
He could hear the approaching storm moving through the trees above him. The light from the
terrasse
made little impression on the night. Beyond its circle of illumination, the castle parkland seemed even more obscure. But the blood almost glowed. Caught in a sudden flash of lightning it was like the ghostly trail of a giant slug.
Enzo had forgotten his fatigue, all rational thought displaced by an all-consuming fear for his daughter. The thunder crashed ever closer. He ran across the
pelouse,
leaving tracks in wet grass, and could see the drag of other footprints left there, straddling the path of the blood. Into the impenetrable shadow beneath the ancient
pigeonnier
, and smack into something soft and heavy suspended from the beams overhead. With fingers made clumsy by fright, he fumbled to switch on the penlight on his keyring and shone it in front of him.
‘Jesus!’ The blasphemy slipped involuntarily from his lips, as he felt bile rising from his stomach. More lightning threw the image in front of him into stark relief against the black beyond.
Braucol was strung up by the neck. His killer had used the child’s swing as a gallows rope, and slit the puppy’s stomach open from neck to pubis. Tears stung Enzo’s eyes, like the coming rain. He could imagine Braucol greeting the stranger on the steps, trusting and playful, trying to untie his shoelaces. Quite unprepared for the thrust of the knife coming out of the dark. The amount of blood on the steps and the trail of it through the grass told Enzo that the first blow had not been fatal. Braucol had still been alive when his murderer strung him up and slit him open.
Revulsion fuelled anger and incomprehension. Why would someone do something like that? Then fear returned, and he looked back towards the
gîte
. A sudden, dreadful picture filled his head. Tangled bedsheets soaked in blood. Sophie and Bertrand murdered as they slept. He sprinted back through the night, powered by panic, a dread desire to banish the image from his mind’s eye, to know that it wasn’t true. Lightning ripped through the night, and thunder struck like a blow, almost immediately overhead. He took the steps two at a time, calling their names aloud as he burst through the door into the bedroom. A flick of the light switch revealed the bed neatly made up, undisturbed. He stood for a moment, staring at it blindly, then ran back through to the
séjour
and up creaking stairs to the mezzanine. Both bunk beds were empty.
Confusion filled his head like a fog. Where were they? Why weren’t they here?
And why in God’s name would someone slaughter a defenceless dog. Poor Braucol.
‘Bastard!’ He roared his frustration into the night after the retreating thunder, then froze on the spot. Through the window at the back of the
gîte
he saw a light moving along the gallery at the top of the
château
. It flashed through the dark in the direction of the cottage and was then extinguished as suddenly as it had appeared. Sheet lightning crossed the sky, illuminating the shadow of a man leaning on the rail of the gallery looking across the gardens towards the
gîte
.
For the briefest of moments Enzo wondered if it might be a burglar in the castle, a thief taking advantage of the absence of its owners. But a burglar wouldn’t have killed and strung up a puppy. And Enzo knew with an absolute certainty that Braucol was a calling card, an unmistakable message. The light in the gallery flashed on again, for several seconds, and then off. Whoever was up there was letting Enzo know it. Banking on anger dispensing with caution. Making Enzo come after him. Luring him into the dark halls and corridors of the
château
where his adversary would have every advantage. And though all of that rationale passed through Enzo’s mind in just a fraction of a second, the red mist that Braucol’s killer had foreseen robbed him of his reason.
He hurried down swaying steps to the kitchen and drew a long, sharp chef’s knife from the block. Someone was waiting for him up there. Someone who had tried to kill him in the vineyard, someone who had murdered a defenceless animal just to inflame his anger. It was time to put a stop to it, one way or another.
On the gravel path, he slipped past the narrow shadow of a poplar, ducking beneath the low hanging branches of the chestnut trees that framed the approach to the
château
. Granite chippings crunched beneath his feet as he ran beyond the abundance of carefully nurtured flowers and shrubs that grew all around the walls of the estate office. Overhead, an exhalation of the passing storm parted clouds, allowing moonlight to burst through. Still lightning flashed as it moved beyond the far hills, and Enzo felt the first spots of rain on hot skin.
Silver light bled all colour from the
château
gardens, lying now illuminated before him. Manicured lawns and low hedges laid out in repeating patterns towards an avenue of
pins parasols
. There was no point in stealth. His would-be assailant was probably following his progress, watching unseen from the shadows of the gallery sixty feet above.
Enzo glanced up to the line of stout oak beams protruding from the wall to support the gallery. Brickwork filled in the walls around crisscrossing timbers. Black windows in white stone were like missing teeth in a wide smile. A smile that mocked. It seemed like a very long way up.
He stopped at the door and listened. In the distance he heard the hooting of an owl, and the rumble of the passing storm. It had been short-lived, violent. Its legacy of rain began now in earnest. As the moon vanished again behind raincloud, he felt the night, like a living thing, close in around him. The rain obliterated any sound the intruder might make. The left half of double doors that should have been locked stood ajar. Opening into blackness. And for the first time since the rush of blood to his head, Enzo questioned the wisdom of what he was doing. Surely it would make more sense to stand guard out here in the rain and call the police? If the intruder wanted to come out, then they would at least meet on equal terms. He checked his cellphone and cursed softly as rain splashed on its blank display. He hadn’t charged it during his trip to America. The battery was spent.
But almost as if his adversary could read those thoughts from his hesitation, there was another blink of light. This time from a second floor window. Just the briefest of glimpses that seemed to say,
Come on, you coward. Come and get me
. It gave Enzo renewed motivation to push open the
château
door. It creaked loudly, and the castle breathed cold damp air into his face. The sound of the rain retreated as he stepped inside.
He remembered Paulette Lefèvre, just a few days before, leading him up to the
grande salle
on the second floor. The broad stone staircase, sunlight falling in through narrow windows. He tried to remember how the castle was laid out. Off to his left was the dining hall, where he had looked at Pierric Lefèvre’s photographic record of the restoration. To his right, off a narrow hallway, were the couple’s living quarters. A salon, a kitchen, a study, a reading room. Immediately above it was the Lefèvres’ bedroom. That was where he had last seen the light. The central staircase divided the
château
into two equal halves. Up one level, opposite the bedroom, was the dusty, cluttered
grande salle
where Pierric had uncovered Petty’s roots among the
château
archives. Up one more level was the gallery, running right around the top of the castle, doors opening off it into rooms beneath the roof, the one-time living quarters of serving staff. The gallery was contained by low, brick walls, and beams that supported the roof. Where the wall extended to the roof itself, there were unglazed windows exposing the long corridor to the night. It would be freezing up there in winter, and suffocatingly hot in the summer.
Enzo stood in the dark of the hall, listening for the slightest sound. Then he heard the creak of a floorboard, the clatter of something fallen or dropped. A soft curse. The intruder was in the
grande salle.
In that moment, when he knew where his adversary was, Enzo sprinted up the staircase to the half-landing and pressed himself against the stone wall, trying to stop his own breathing from drowning out other sounds. He was in the deepest shadow here. Distant lightning flashed through the windows on the floor above, to zigzag down the steps towards him and then vanish, and Enzo ran swiftly up to the second floor while the image of the stairs was still burned in his mind’s eye.
One hand pressed against the wall to guide him, he worked his way along to the huge studded door of the
grande salle
. It stood open, but the density of darkness beyond it was suffocating. He reached a hand inside the door to feel for the light switch. It clicked loudly in the vast stillness of the room. But there was no light. He did not have the courage to venture into the darkness, and retreated to the landing, where he stood for several long minutes, reflecting on his stupidity. He had been suckered in here on someone else’s terms, someone who knew exactly where he was. Someone who knew exactly what their next move would be, while he could only guess at it. But it was not too late for Enzo to change the rules, withdraw from the game. It was not too late for common sense to prevail.
More lightning briefly illuminated the staircase, and he saw a shadow move from the landing above him, the rasp of leather soles on stone. And the memory of Braucol dangling, bloody and dead, from the rafters of the
pigeonnier
, fuelled fresh anger.
‘You bastard! Come out and face me like a man!’ His voice echoed back at him from cold stone and died in the dark. With his knife held at arm’s length ahead of him, he began up the final two flights of stairs to the top of the
château
, one soft step at a time.
From the half-landing he looked up towards the gallery and saw the faintest moonlight edging broken clouds in a ragged sky beyond. But the rain was still falling, heavy now, relentless, drumming on the roof, drowning out all other sound. With barely enough light to see by, Enzo edged himself up the last of the steps, moving out and onto the gallery just as the far-off lightning underlit a turbulent sky and cast momentary flickering light all along the open corridor. Tiled floors. Wattle and daub walls, bleached timbers. The blade of his knife flashed briefly in the dark. And a shadow rose up in front of him. A shadow without face or form. And pain shot up his forearm to his elbow as his knife went clattering away across the tiles. He had no time even to call out before something dark and heavy swung out of the night to catch him square on the side of the head. He dropped to his knees and fell face-forward to the floor. A boot sunk into the soft muscle of his stomach and robbed him of his ability to breath. He rolled over, away from the pain, and looked up as his attacker raised a blade level with his head. The final gasp of the storm breathed light across the sky behind him, and he saw the killer in full silhouette as he crouched down to deliver the final, fatal blow. The lightning passed in a moment, and darkness absorbed him again into obscurity. The rain still hammered on the roof.
Enzo’s outstretched hand found the handle of his dropped knife. He grasped it, and in desperation, lunged towards where his opponent had been. He felt contact, the sound of his blade slicing through soft flesh and heard a scream. In an unexpected flood of moonlight, he saw his attacker recoil and turn around as a second figure appeared behind him. For several ludicrous moments, both men appeared almost to be dancing, locked in furious embrace, each grunting from the effort of trying to gain ascendancy over the other. Then they took several forced steps backwards and toppled to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Enzo heard the sickening crack of skull on terracotta, a gasp of pain, and then one man detached himself from the other to fly past Enzo, heading for the stairs. Even above the thrum of the rain Enzo could hear his panicked retreat down the staircase. Rasping breath, a sob of pain, footsteps clattering on stone. The other man groaned.