Murderous Mistral

by Cay Rademacher

  “We have different priorities than Paris.”

  Blanc got up and stared out of the window. “Madame Vialaron-Allègre made it quite clear to me half an hour ago that she would protect Le Bruchec. Lafont will protect Fuligni. Poor old Rheinbach, he’s got nobody looking out for him.”

  “Yet one more reason to arrest him?”

  “One less reason.”

  All of a sudden Fabienne got to her feet and planted a kiss on his cheek. “We’re going to make a good team,” she declared. “The three upright sheriffs of Gadet.”

  “Two upright sheriffs, and one not always quite so upright deputy,” Blanc said, casting a wry glance outside, where from Fabienne’s office window they could see Tonon heading along the main street and into one of the bars.

  “Marius has had problems ever since the car accident last year,” she said.

  The captain took his leave and went to his own office. Car accident last year? The journalist Paulmier had referred to an “old scandal,” but said it was ten years ago. I’d like to know how many skeletons Tonon has in his closet, Blanc thought. Or then again, maybe I wouldn’t.

  * * *

  Back in his house that evening, Blanc looked around the place. He had done the first bit, throwing out the junk. But the major work still lay ahead. First of all, the roof. Then the walls and the rewiring. A new kitchen. An Internet connection would be good. He wondered about the heating. It was enough to make his head spin. I could spend the rest of my life here, he thought, and this old olive oil mill would still not be finished. How do those people do it, whose perfectly groomed Midi houses get into the Show Home magazines Geneviève loves so much? They were mostly Parisians or English who spent no more than a few weeks a year in Provence. He decided to go out and take a walk, along the two roads that made up Sainte-Françoise-la-Vallée, and then maybe into the woods a bit. It would do him good. And maybe on the way he would stumble on a few new ideas that would help him get somewhere with the case. It had never worked in Paris, but then he never had the time for anything of the sort.

  He went over the bridge, past Douchy’s farmhouse, then turned left and followed the road that went over the crest of the hill, with a dozen little houses on either side. In one garage between two buildings was Riou’s Alpine. Somewhere a dog barked. The last house. The road meandered in soft curves between the fields; on one side the irrigation ditch of a wheat field murmured. Eventually Blanc came to a gate where the asphalt road came to an end. Beyond lay a sparse forest with trees some twenty to thirty feet high—pines, oaks, and shrubbery. A few outcrops of stone protruded from the sandy ochre soil like the tops of buried ruins. He went through the gate and along the forest trail. Cicadas. Heat. The scent of pine embraced him like a silk handkerchief. Ancient walls of yellowish stone flanked the hill. Hundreds of tiny white snails the size of a pinhead at the tips of the scrub, a spotted brown snake as long as a man’s arm, which fled under a thornbush as he approached. A round heap of stones that looked like the remains of some collapsed building. Red and blue plastic cartridge cases lying on the ground, left by some hunter. What had he been hunting? Blanc could see neither birds nor rabbits. He felt the only creature of any size in this silent forest.

  The path led ever upward, deeper into the silvery green leaves and needles and knotty stems. Eventually Blanc reached a little hill from where he could make out his olive oil mill on the other bank of the river. It looked like a little picturesque ruin. On the ground beneath him he found a little round spot of asphalt on which someone had painted “328” in white oil paint. Surprised, he began to look more carefully around him and found a little circular plaque about the size of a man’s head—perhaps marking a buried water tank? He had seen television news reports about forest fires in Provence and knew that water tanks had been installed all over the place. He thought back to the firemen he had seen waiting in the shade on the edge of the road to Gadet. In an emergency they would need water supplies to fight the flames.

  Beyond the hill the sandy path took him between rocks and shrubbery until it suddenly opened out on the right-hand side to reveal a valley with long rows of vines, glowing golden in the evening sun. It was a depression between two hills, about a hundred yards by a hundred yards, an enchanted valley hidden from the world by pine trees and oaks. He heard a harsh cry in the distance and made out a peacock fanning out its tail feathers. Another of the birds stalked amid the vines, dragging its train of feathers behind it, while yet a third sat on a stone wall beyond the vines like a king on a throne. At the other end of the valley, Blanc could just make out some figures in the setting sun. He squinted and saw one of them coming toward him: Sylvie Micheletti.

  “You’ve discovered Domaine de Bernard,” she called out, waving to him. A frayed straw hat covered her narrow face and long neck, her jeans had red patches from the earth, and in her hands she carried filigree pruning shears.

  “I didn’t expect to come across a vineyard in the middle of the forest,” he admitted.

  “An oasis in the desert,” she laughed. “The soil is good, the sun shines all day long in the valley, while the stones and trees protect the vines from the mistral.”

  “And the peacocks?”

  “Flowers with feathers. You just have to get used to their call.”

  They chatted for a few minutes. Blanc noted that she was suntanned and happy, but beneath her mood and skin tone there was something else. Maybe sorrow, or extreme exhaustion. All the long way back his thoughts were not on his murder case, but on his neighbor in her hidden valley.

  * * *

  The following morning it wasn’t Douchy’s rooster that woke him, but the clattering of his shutters. Someone trying to break in, he thought to himself, jumping out of bed, grabbing his gun and rushing to the door. But all he found outside was an icy wind, gusting around the house, the rustling leaves on the plane trees sounding like a waterfall. The cicadas were silent. Despite it being early morning, the sky above was white. In the pure light he could make out every stone in the walls and every movement on the swirling surface of the Touloubre as clearly as if he had been on drugs.

  Blanc retreated into the house. The shock of his sudden awakening and the cold had driven every iota of tiredness from his body. He pulled on a tracksuit and found his old running shoes. He intended to take the same hike he had the evening before, only this time as a jog before breakfast.

  A few minutes later he was already in the forest. The wind didn’t relent even for a second, ripping pine needles and leaves from the treetops and chasing them down the sandy track. The scent in the air had vanished. The sun was already shining but every drop of sweat was blown away by the wind. The rustling of the leaves was so loud that he didn’t hear the horse galloping toward him through the undergrowth.

  “Did the wind wake you?” asked Paulette Aybalen, from the saddle above him.

  Blanc flinched in shock when he noticed her next to him, the horse having slowed to a trot. “Is this the famed mistral?” he asked.

  “The infamous mistral, we’ll have it all day long—if we’re lucky. Or else it could last three days. Or six, or nine. Whichever it is, it will be a multiple of three, unless it dies down after just twenty-four hours.”

  “Is that a fact or a superstition?”

  “An old wives’ tale, but it’s worth heeding. I should warn you it can be dangerous to be out in the woods during the mistral. In fact it is forbidden during July and August. You’re not exactly setting a good example.”

  “Is the wind likely to bring trees crashing down on my head?”

  “No, but if a fire should break out anywhere it will race through the dry wood like a ravenous monster. The flames will be faster than you, and I don’t want you to end up like the guy they found on the garbage heap.”

  Blanc was so surprised he nearly stumbled.

  “What do you know about my investigation?”

  “I read La Provence. Most of what they cover is Olympique de Marseille games and the most gru
esome local crime stories. I believe you even interviewed Pascal about the murder.”

  “I didn’t ‘interview’ Monsieur Fuligni, I only asked him a few questions. Anyway how do you know that? It wasn’t in the paper.”

  “You sought him out in front of half the harbor at Saint-César. Something like that doesn’t have to be in a newspaper for people to get wind of it. And the old boy has troubles enough.”

  “You mean his mooring?”

  “I mean his wife.”

  Blanc thought of the Romanian secretary in her skimpy clothes and nodded. “Is she making his life hell?”

  “She’s putting cuckold’s horns on his head. And with the man for whom Pascal has built loads of houses: Lucien Le Bruchec.”

  Blanc came to a stop, and not just because he was out of shape and the track led steeply uphill. “Those two are an item? Who else knows about it?”

  Paulette laughed. “Everyone who knows them. It’s been going on for quite a while. Lucien was lonely after his wife died. Miette was lonely because … well, you’ve seen Pascal’s secretary, I assume. Nobody’s ever too old for a little affair.” She glanced at him with just a trace of a challenge in her eyes.

  Blanc’s mind was racing: Had Moréas found out about the affair and mocked Fuligni for it until he decided to get revenge? Or had Moréas threatened to make Bruchec’s secret public, and had to be silenced? On the other hand, if Paulette Aybalen already knew and told him so openly about it, then surely everyone really did know about it? Even Fuligni himself, who in addition had hooked up with a young Romanian. Just a little meaningless affair, not something to shed blood over? “Thanks for the information,” he said, still coughing from the effort of the jog.

  “Just don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.”

  “You would be under witness protection.”

  “That makes me feel better already. I’m going to let my wild horse here gallop on a bit,” Paulette called back. “The mistral makes the animals nervous.” She spurred on the animal, waving good-bye as she rode off. Blanc finished his route, more confused than ever, and for more than one reason.

  * * *

  Later Blanc found himself crawling through Gadet in his car. He was wearing a light jacket over a white T-shirt because the gusting wind had made it noticeably cool. The mistral caused a flurry of leaves and little white disposable plastic bags to dance along the sidewalks. The cars along the main street were parked at such oblique angles it looked like an earthquake had shaken them; men and women crossed the street with shopping baskets and trolleys without taking any notice of cars or motorbikes. He spotted Tonon and wound down the window.

  “What are you doing out and about so early?”

  “Friday is market day in Gadet.” The fat lieutenant held up an empty wicker basket. “Park your car at the gendarmerie and come back here. We’re going shopping.”

  “Won’t the food have spoiled by evening?”

  “We have a fridge in our office, in case you hadn’t noticed. I haven’t lived here just since yesterday.”

  Blanc sighed, but he thought it was best to go along with his colleague. He wasn’t going to do any work over the next hour or two anyway. So ten minutes later he and Tonon were strolling through the packed little square behind the restaurant. The blue-and-white sun canopy of a fish stall billowed in the wind. Mountains of vegetables. Jars of honey. He was impressed and even a little intimidated by the gourmet produce and the energetic housewives and laughing pensioners pushing past, heading for specific stalls where they were kissed on both cheeks. He wondered if Tonon had been whispering in the ear of Paulette Aybalen.

  “This is not how you do it,” his colleague, who had already filled his basket, said. He got a plastic bag from one of the stalls and said, “Now I’m shopping for you.”

  Marius held a cheese wrapped in dried green leaves under Blanc’s nose. “Banon,” he explained, “ripened in oak leaves.” Then came black olives, tomatoes, a melon from Carpentras, a bag of cherries. Blanc was expecting the plastic bag to burst at any moment. “Right, now we get ourselves a couple of baguettes and then it’s home to Daddy Nkoulou.”

  Blanc didn’t want to imagine what would happen when their boss found them in the gendarmerie station laden down with all the shopping. Or the look on his face if he heard himself referred to as “Daddy.” But he said nothing, just hurried into the office and piled all the stuff into a little camping fridge purring away under Tonon’s desk.

  Just at that very moment the door was thrown wide open and Corporal Baressi forced his massive form into the room. “I thought this might interest you,” he said, tapping on a piece of paper in his left hand. “This is just in from Saint-César. Pascal Fuligni is dead.”

  A Fatal Boating Accident

  Blanc turned on the blue flashing lights and pulled out of the parking place with screeching tires. “Are you trying to catch up with Fuligni in the next world?” Tonon cursed at him as he tried in vain to put on his safety belt in the swerving Renault. “No matter how fast you go, you’re not going to bring him back! And in any case the report said it was an accident. A fisherman saw Fuligni’s yacht drifting across the Étang de Berre with no one at the helm, and in the water next to it the drowned owner was floating with a huge bump on the back of his head.”

  “How do you end up with a bump on your head on a sailing boat? Somebody must have hit him on the skull.”

  “There was no one on the Amzeri when the fisherman got there. Not a soul. No other boat anywhere near. Nobody swimming nearby,” Tonon said.

  Blanc raced through Gadet and turned onto the route départementale 16. He passed a few cars and a single truck, which on a Friday around here was the height of business traffic. “Do you sail, Marius?” he asked between clamped lips, not taking his eyes off the narrow road.

  Tonon shrugged his shoulders. “Now and again a friend takes me out to the Calanques. But that’s in a motorboat. I’ve never really worked out how all that stuff with sails, rudders, and the wind works. How about you?”

  Up north everybody went out to sea, the stormier and colder, the better. Blanc, who hated his origins, had for that reason alone never set foot on a sailing ship. He shook his head.

  Tonon scratched his chin in amazement. “Still, now that I think about it, it occurs to me that sailors normally stay in port during the mistral. The wind is far too strong and far too cold.”

  “Maybe Fuligni was on a little trip and left yesterday?” The captain reflected on how mild the weather had been on his walk to the Bernard vineyard. “Then this morning the mistral caught him by surprise.”

  The road headed downhill toward Saint-César. They had a view over the houses to the Étang de Berre. Small steep waves rushed across its surface, sending up spray from the crests; it was as if the lake was coming to a boil. In the yacht harbor the gusting wind was rocking the vessels from side to side in their moorings, creating a cacophony of plastic and steel sterns knocking against the wooden piers. Blanc screeched to a halt at the parking lot, immediately recognizing Fuligni’s silver Mercedes coupe. Then he flinched. Not far away stood a white Audi Q7. Lafont? The mayor of Caillouteaux was nowhere to be seen. At this early hour there wasn’t much going on down at the harbor, except for the policemen and forensic experts in their white protective garb, two photographers who the captain assumed to be photojournalists. Two police corporals held up a tarpaulin screen, but it was fluttering so violently in the wind that it didn’t conceal anything. Behind it, a woman was kneeling down on the wood, bent over something that looked like a bundle of wet towels. Dr. Fontaine Thezan had pushed her big sunglasses back onto her hair and was examining the body with an apparatus of some sort that Blanc couldn’t make out. He hurried down the pier, waved through by the corporals—and found himself standing next to the corpse of the building contractor.

  Fuligni was wearing a T-shirt and light summer trousers, both dark and heavy from the water. He was barefoot, and had brownish seaweed wrapped around his lo
wer arm. His eyes were closed, his mouth unnaturally wide open. Blanc watched as Dr. Thezan carefully examined the body. The air smelt of marijuana and brackish water, but something else too: decomposition. He took a step back.

  “A fisherman reported it to us at nine thirty-one A.M.,” one of the corporals who had taken out a notebook and was reading from it told him. “He was still out on the Étang de Berre, called in from his cell phone. He had already pulled Fuligni on board his boat. Then he came here as fast as he could, and we just unloaded the body onto the pier.”

  “Any witnesses see what time Fuligni set out on his yacht? Whether he was alone or not?”

  The corporal shook his head. “We asked the harbormaster and the few other people who were already on their boats. Nobody saw anything. The harbormaster was on duty from around eight A.M., and would have noticed Fuligni if he had left Saint-César after that time. So it must have been earlier.”

  Blanc glanced at Tonon and nodded in the direction of the corpse. “T-shirt, summer pants, no jacket, no shoes. Very underdressed for somebody intending to go sailing in the mistral.” He waited until the pathologist called him over.

  “First fire, now water,” she said by way of greeting. “You seem to be a master of the elements.”

  “Sounds as if you think I killed them.”

  “It would be a new twist.” She gave him a brief smile, then turned serious, carefully touched the corpse’s head and turned it so that Blanc could see the back of the skull. She had combed Fuligni’s thinning hair to one side, and indicated a serious swelling on the skin. “Hematoma,” she explained. “Must have been a pretty hefty blow.”

  “Fatal?”

  “Probably not that bad. We’ll only know at the autopsy, but I suspect the skull wasn’t damaged. He probably drowned. It’s a fairly common sailing accident, I’ve had a few amateur sailors with similar wounds on the dissecting table. Morbus nauticus in Latin.”

  Blanc looked at her in surprise. “With blows to the head?”