The Critic

by Peter May

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘No.’ Roussel was emphatic. ‘You shouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘You’ve seen my qualifications, Gendarme Roussel. You know that crime scene analysis is one of my specialities.’

  ‘I know that I’d get shot if I let you anywhere near it. We have our own people, Macleod.’

  ‘Just a glimpse. That’s all.’

  Roussel looked at him long and hard—although perhaps it was through him, rather than at him—as he engaged in some inner dialogue, a silent argument with himself. Then he delved into the pockets of his jacket and pulled out a couple of plastic shoe covers. ‘Put these on. And touch nothing. This is strictly unofficial.’

  ***

  The source was dry, moss-covered stones carefully built around the opening of an underground spring from which water would bubble when the water table was high and tumble down the hillside to irrigate the vines. It was only three or four metres inside the treeline, a path trodden through tangling saplings and briars. Enzo could not imagine what possessed young people to come here. If sex was the object of the exercise, he could think of many more appropriate places.

  Almost as if reading his mind, Roussel said, ‘It’s the romance of the legend that draws the kids. I don’t know the whole story, but needless to say it involves young lovers meeting in secret, defying families and fate. There was a château here in the woods at one time, but it was destroyed during the Albi crusades. The cellars and foundations still exist somewhere, pretty much buried by the centuries. The old church that served it is still up there on the hill looking out over the valley.’

  He turned towards a path freshly beaten through the undergrowth.

  ‘This is the way the boy went when he heard the killer and thought it was a Peeping Tom.’

  ‘What exactly did he hear?’

  ‘Someone moving through the undergrowth, he said. Making quite a noise, apparently.’

  ‘Did he see anyone?’

  ‘Not until he stumbled across the body.’

  They followed his path through the trees, a chaos of decaying wood matted with moss, fresh saplings, broken branches, trunks choked by ivy leaning one against the other. Leaves wet with condensation slapped their faces. In the distance, light shone through the mesh of vegetation, splintered and fragmented, hanging in the mist that now rose from the rotting forest bed beneath their feet.

  Lamps powered by battery were raised on unsteady stands to throw light across a clearing where someone had broken the ground with a shovel, scraping fresh, rich earth to one side in a shallow pile that was peppered with fallen leaves. The outline of what looked like a grave was clearly marked out, but it was no more than a few centimetres deep. The clearing was delineated on the south side by the gnarled trunk of a huge chestnut tree that must have been three hundred years old. It was long dead, its twin trunks collapsed and rotten. One of them had fallen across the clearing at an angle, creating something like an arch, a natural entrance, old branches propping it up, like so many crumbling columns, to prevent complete collapse. It looked as if the tree might have received its fatal blow from a lightning strike, which had split the central trunk in two, creating a deep, natural cradle about two metres from the ground. It was this cradle that held the body, purple and shrivelled, naked legs dangling like withered sticks, arms stretched out on either side as if to hold it upright. The head was canted forward, grotesque in the harsh lamplight. There were no eyes, just deep, dark shadows, thin lips stretched back across red-stained teeth in a ghastly grimace. Black hair was smeared across the forehead. There was an odd stench of alcohol and decay in the air.

  Several uniformed gendarmes hovered around the perimeter of the clearing, just beyond the light, in which three figures in white tyvek suits moved around in careful concert searching for evidence. The splat and whine of a flash camera filled the night air as a photographer took pictures of the corpse.

  Roussel said, ‘The killer entered the wood from the east side. You can follow his path through the trees. It’s a pretty well-worn trail. I guess people must come up here quite a lot. It looks like he held the corpse under each arm and dragged it backwards. You can see the tracks the heels left through the fallen leaves.’ He shone his flashlight in the direction from which the killer had come, and Enzo saw the grooves made by the heels. ‘There’s an old farm track runs along the east side of the forest, so it was easy for him to get up close with it.’

  ‘Did the young couple hear him drive away?’

  ‘They did. No lights, though. It’s a nearly full moon, so I figure he wasn’t taking any chances.’

  ‘Tyre tracks?’

  Roussel shook his head. ‘It’s stony ground up here, monsieur. And it hasn’t rained in weeks.’

  Enzo craned his neck and gazed up into the dark above them. The nearest leaves were illuminated by the light from the clearing, but beyond it was just blackness. The warm September weather had retarded the fall, and only a few leaves had begun to turn. The bed of old, dead leaves through which the killer had dragged his victim, was from another year, another fall.

  One of the STIC techniciens called out suddenly. He was crouched down on the west side of the shattered chestnut. With careful precision he lifted up between white-gloved fingers what looked like a discarded cigarette end. ‘There’re three of them,’ he said. He sniffed at it. ‘Fresh. If there’s any saliva on these there’s a good chance we’ll get DNA.’

  Enzo pursed his lips thoughtfully. DNA seemed like missing the point.

  The technicien put the cigarette butts into separate ziplock bags, and labelled them each in turn.

  Enzo said to Roussel, ‘So how did you identify the victim?’

  ‘I recognised him.’

  ‘Really?’ Enzo looked again at the shrunken, shadowed face of the corpse. ‘I’m not sure I would have.’

  ‘We were best pals when we were kids. When he was about ten he had a terrible biking accident. Front wheel caught in a railway line as we went over a crossing. Turned it right around and threw him over the handlebars. Nearly killed him. Fractured skull, depressed fracture of the cheek, broken jaw. He was a terrible mess. They just about had to rebuild his face. And didn’t do a very good job. You could always see the scars.’ He paused. ‘Still can. Have to get his wife to make the official ID, though.’ He looked less than thrilled at the prospect, and was lost for a while in private contemplation. Then he said, ‘After we left school we sort of, you know, went our separate ways. But I still saw him. We had some good nights out. I always kind of found it hard to believe that he would just take off like that, without saying anything to me. But then I thought, if it had been me, would I have said anything to him? And I figured probably not.’ He shook his head. ‘But I never dreamt of anything like this.’

  The adjutant from the STIC approached. He was a small man inside a tyvek suit that looked two sizes two big for him. The hood left only his face exposed, so Enzo could not see if he was bald. Or, if he had hair, whether it was dark, fair, silver. It was extraordinary how little you could tell about someone from the face alone. But he had thick brown eyebrows and looked to be man in his forties. He glanced cautiously at Enzo then addressed himself to Roussel. ‘There’ve been a lot of people tramping about here before we arrived, David. It’s a shitty crime scene. Doesn’t make our job any easier. But it looks like the kids disturbed him in the middle of trying to bury the body. The cigarette ends would indicate that he’d been here a while. Hard work digging a grave in ground as hard as this.’

  ‘Hardly much of a grave,’ Enzo said.

  The adjutant turned hostile eyes in his direction. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘A forensic expert from Scotland. He’s not here in any official capacity.’

  The adjutant fixed him again with an unfriendly stare. ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘My point is he wasn’t digging a grave at all. And the digging he did wasn’t done tonight.’

&nb
sp; Roussel turned towards him in surprise. ‘How do you know that?’

  Enzo said, ‘It’s a late fall this year.’ He nodded towards the pile of earth and the leaves that had settled on it. ‘Those leaves didn’t just come down in the last couple of hours.’

  Both men looked at the pile of earth, but neither of them said anything.

  ‘He probably dug that up the night before.’

  ‘Why?’

  Enzo shrugged. ‘Who knows? Probably preparing the ground before he brought the body.’

  The adjutant’s voice was laden with skepticism. ‘So what did he bring the body here for if it wasn’t to bury it?’

  Enzo said, ‘What does that corpse weigh, do you think? Seventy, eighty kilos? A lot for one man to handle. You can see that by the deep grooves left in the forest floor by the heels. So why would you go to the trouble of heaving it up into that tree cavity if you were just going to get it down again to bury it?’ He made a point of meeting the adjutant’s eye. ‘But you’re right about the cigarettes. He probably was here for quite a while. Waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’ Roussel said.

  ‘Someone to come. I mean, why would you choose to bury a body right next to a well-known lover’s haunt? You’d pick somewhere a million miles from where anyone was likely to stumble across you. And even if you didn’t realise it was a popular meeting place, and you suddenly heard people nearby, you’d hold your breath and not make a sound. But this guy went crashing off through the undergrowth, drawing attention to himself.’ Enzo turned towards the path by which the body had been brought in. ‘And even if he’d panicked and wanted to make a getaway, it’s a clear path out. No need to make all that noise.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Roussel said.

  But the adjutant from the STIC was nodding grimly, embarrassed, but professional enough to admit that he had missed what Enzo hadn’t. ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, what?’

  The adjutant looked again at the leaves on the earth. ‘He only wanted it to look like he’d been interrupted burying the body. He wanted to be interrupted. He wanted the body to be found.’ He turned now towards the corpse. ‘Propped up there for the world to see.’

  ***

  As they walked back down towards the vehicles below, Roussel said, ‘The adjutant from the STIC is going to be pretty pissed off at losing face like that, Macleod.’

  ‘At me?’

  ‘No, at me. For letting you anywhere near the place. There’s going to be hell to pay. I can feel it in my bones.’

  Enzo glanced at him. ‘What rank do you have, Roussel?’

  ‘Gendarme.’

  ‘Just rank and file gendarme?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So how did you get put in charge of a case like this?’

  ‘I was the first officer on the scene.’

  Enzo blinked in surprise. ‘And that qualifies you to lead the investigation?’

  Roussel became defensive. ‘We are all trained in basic investigative and forensic techniques, monsieur. Of course, I answer to a higher authority, but I am perfectly well qualified to be the investigating officer.’

  They walked in silence for a few steps before Enzo said, ‘When I went through Raffin’s notes, there were quotes from statements made to the Press by a police spokesman who wasn’t you.’

  There was a tension now, in Roussel’s voice, a hint of buried resentment. ‘At the height of the inquiry, because it was such a high profile case, they appointed a PR officer from Albi to speak to the press. But he had nothing to do with the investigation.’

  The group waiting down by the vehicles turned towards them as they heard their voices. Enzo stopped Roussel and lowered his. ‘I don’t know why the killer wanted us to find your friend tonight, Gendarme Roussel. But I figure it’s his first big mistake.’ Roussel waited for more. ‘There has to be a link between Petty and this man. And maybe others in your missing persons file. It’s just opened up a whole new avenue of investigation. We can’t let it slip by us.’

  ‘We?’

  Enzo drew a deep breath. ‘Alright. You.’

  Roussel held him steady in his gaze. ‘You don’t think I’m up to this, do you, Macleod?’

  Enzo considered his response. He said carefully, ‘I think I can help you.’

  Chapter Eight

  The bedside lamp cast a pool of yellow light on the ceiling, and a circle of it spilled across her pillow. But the rest of the room seemed plunged into deeper shadow, dark and depressing.

  Nicole sat on the edge of the bed ringing her hands, her nightdress hardly enough to keep her warm. Tears ran hot down cold cheeks, raising gooseflesh on her arms, and try as she might she couldn’t restrain the sobs that bubbled up from her chest to break in her throat and part her lips. Her head ached and her eyes burned.

  She looked up, startled by the gentle knock on her bedroom door, and a wedge of soft light fell into the room from the hall. Fabien’s silhouette nearly filled the door frame. He stood there, hesitating on the threshold, and she could hear the bewilderment in his voice.

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘You had no right to speak to Monsieur Macleod like that. He hasn’t done you any harm.’

  ‘He was coming to spy on us.’

  ‘He’s trying to find out who killed a man. Two men now.’ Her breath trembled as she sucked it in. ‘He’s a good man. I owe him everything, and I’ve let him down. I don’t know how I can face him tomorrow.’ And fresh tears tumbled over her cheeks.

  Fabien stepped into the room and pushed the door shut behind him. He hesitated briefly before sitting on the bed beside her. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand that I should never have come here. And when I discovered this was where Petty was found, I should have left immediately. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that.’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  Fabien looked down at his hands, embarrassed and upset by her distress. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.’

  Which set her off on a fresh squall of sobbing. He seemed at a loss for what to do before putting a clumsy arm around her shoulder in an attempt at comfort. She didn’t appear to notice, and so he left it there and they sat still for several minutes in a silence broken only by her sobs. Finally, she half turned towards him. ‘Why did you hate Petty so much?’

  ‘It wasn’t him. It was the system he represented. A system that serves only one man’s taste. That wants to deliver something as unvaryingly predictable as cola. A system that’s destroying diversity.’

  For a moment, Nicole forgot her distress, startled by his intensity, impressed by his eloquence.

  ‘Petty’s been replaced by Parker, but nothing’s changed. Winemakers talk now about “Parkerizing” their wines. Making it to suit his tastes, trying to win his favour, pitching for one of his high ratings. Instead of following their own instincts, making wines that come from the heart and the soul. The critics are even telling us how to make our wines these days. Filter, don’t filter. Micro-oxygenate. The wealthy châteaux are all employing consultants at hugely inflated fees just to make wines that’ll please Parker, and Petty before him. Which leaves the rest of us, who don’t have that kind of money, fighting for crumbs at the critics’ table.’

  ‘But if you make a good wine, surely people will recognise that?’

  ‘What’s a good wine? A wine that Parker likes? Does that mean one he doesn’t like is a bad wine? Of course not. But these people don’t want wines to be different. They want them to be all the same.’ He was on a roll now, and Nicole was being carried along with it. ‘You understand what we mean by terroir?’

  ‘It’s an area, a region.’

  ‘In winemaking, terroir refers to the vineyard, and how all the specific qualities of the land affect and change the wine. The type of soil, whether the vineyard is elevated or flat, whether or not it is south-
facing. What weather systems affect it, even the micro-climates that exist between one part of the vineyard and another.’ Fabien shook his head. ‘But there are people who refuse to accept the concept of terroir. They want to believe that they can make wines in California, or Chile, or Australia, that they taste just the same as wines grown in Bordeaux, or Burgundy, or the Rhone Valley. Terroir doesn’t exist, they say. Because to admit that it does means they will never makes wines like the French. Which is what they all aspire to.’

  ‘Don’t you want to make wines that taste like Bordeaux?’

  ‘Of course not. How can I do that? The soil is different here, the climate is different. We grow different grapes. I want to make good Gaillac wines.’

  ‘But you also want people to know they exist.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So people like Petty and Parker are important.’

  Fabien just shook his head. ‘Petty came here. But I wouldn’t let him taste my wine.’

  Nicole was astonished, her tears forgotten. ‘Why not?’

  It was a long time before Fabien answered her. And when he did, it was in a very small voice for such a big man. ‘I was scared.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘That I would get bad ratings.’ He turned to meet her gaze of consternation. ‘I took over the vineyard eight years ago, when my father died. He was very traditional. Made the same wine his father had made before him. In the same chai, in the same old concrete cuves. But there was a whole new generation of young winemakers at work in Gaillac, and I knew that to compete I would have to change things. Modernise, employ new techniques. So I borrowed. A huge amount of money, Nicole. I’d be scared to tell you how much. I mortgaged everything. The house, the farm. I built a new chai, installed stainless steel cuves, all the latest equipment. I went to Bordeaux and Burgundy, to California and Australia, just to see how other people were doing it.’ His eyes fell away to gaze at the floor. ‘Petty was the first international critic to come and rate Gaillac wines. If he marked down the wines of La Croix Blanche, I’d never have been able to sell them. I’d have been ruined. Lost everything to the bank.’ He glanced at her. ‘How could I ever have faced my father in the next life?’