Blowback

by Peter May

  “Did you know about a feud between the Fraysse brothers?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Of course, Guy only returned to the area after Marc got his third star. He’d been in Paris before that. But there was no hint of any animosity between them. Nothing apparent, anyway. And nothing said about it during the investigation.”

  Enzo nodded. “What do you know about Marc’s gambling habit?”

  “I know that he was accustomed to coming into town most mornings, when he wasn’t dashing off for interviews. He would buy the racing paper at the Maison de la Presse, and sit in here studying the form while he had a coffee, before heading off to the PMU to place his bets.”

  Enzo frowned. In his experience the giant French betting franchise, Pari Mutuel Urbain, was invariably found in cafés and bars. “Where’s the PMU in Thiers?”

  “In Le Sulky, a bar just down the road.”

  “Why didn’t he take his coffee there?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? Some people like to separate business and pleasure.”

  “Can we go and take a look at it?”

  “Sure.” She pushed back her chair and got to her feet, pulling on her anorak. Enzo left some coins on the table to pay for their coffees.

  Outside, the wind stung their faces, and she kept close to him, as if seeking to steal his warmth as they bowed their heads into the icy blast that blew up the Rue François Mitterand. They hurried past cutlery shops with lit windows full of Thiers and Laguiole knives.

  Le Sulky stood next to yet another kitchen shop on the corner of a narrow street that zig-zagged up into the labyrinthine center of the old historic town. It had the seedy air of most PMU establishments, so often frequented by drinkers and gamblers. In days gone by, the bar would have been lost in a fugg of cigarette smoke. Now the smokers were forced to stand outside in the cold to pursue their habit, and the lack of smoke inside allowed the smell of stale alcohol and coffee grounds to predominate.

  A man with almost shoulder-length, dark hair swept back from a lean, nervous, smoker’s face stood behind the bar. It was early yet, and business was slow. A television screen flickered on the wall behind him, but the sound was turned down. He recognised Dominique immediately, and was on his guard. A gendarme, even off-duty, was never a welcome customer. He found a smile from somewhere to greet them, but it stopped short of his eyes.

  “Salut, Fred,” Dominique said, as if she knew him well.

  But Fred was much more formal in reply. “Bonjour Mademoiselle. Monsieur. What can I get for you?”

  Dominique smiled. “A little information.” And Fred’s smile slowly dissipated. He glanced nervously toward the few faces in the bar that were turning toward them now in curiosity.

  “I don’t sell information, Mlle Chazal, you know that. Beer, liquor, coffee, and I’ll put your money on a horse for you. But information?” He shook his head. “Not my business.”

  “I’m not buying, Fred. I’m asking. And I can ask you here, or I can ask you at the gendarmerie.”

  Fred paled visibly. Anxious eyes darted toward Enzo and back again. “What do you want to know?”

  “We want you to tell us about Marc Fraysse’s gambling habits.”

  Fred frowned. Whatever he might have been expecting, it wasn’t that. He seemed to relax a little. “Is that case not long dead?”

  “No. Marc Fraysse is long dead. The case is still very much alive.” Dominique glanced at Enzo, his cue to ask what he wanted to know.

  Enzo said, “Fraysse was in here most mornings, is that right?”

  “Sure.”

  “To place bets on horses.”

  “That’s what people usually come here for.”

  “He never took a coffee, or a beer?”

  Fred let a little burst of air escape from between his lips. “Not his kind of place, monsieur. I mean, nice guy and all, but he came here to put money on horses, not drink coffee.”

  “How many bets would he place in a day?”

  Fred shrugged. “I dunno. Varied. Three or four. Sometimes he went for a triple.”

  “And what sort of money did he put on?”

  Fred hesitated. “I don’t remember.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dominique said, her tone sharp.

  “Hey.” Fred laid his palms open on the bar in front of him. “The guy’s been dead, what, seven years? I get hundreds of people in here every week. How the hell am I supposed to remember what kind of money Fraysse put on his horses?”

  Enzo spoke calmly and evenly. “The same way you remembered that he placed three or four bets a day, and sometimes a triple.”

  Dominique said, “I can get the auditors in here, Fred. We can go back through every entry in your books for the last ten years, if that’s the way you want to play it.”

  Fred’s pallor had a tinge of grey about it now. He shrugged again. “I dunno, fifty, a hundred euros a horse?”

  “Are you asking us or telling us?” Dominique was getting impatient, and Enzo could see that Fred was starting to shut down. Whatever he knew, he didn’t want to say, especially not in front of Dominique.

  “Well, thanks very much,” Enzo said, and he felt Dominique turn toward him in surprise. “That’s been very helpful.” He turned to Dominique. “Why don’t you head on up to the Café Central and get a couple of coffees on the table for us. I’m just going to have a little flutter here myself.” And he reached into his satchel for his wallet.

  The skin around Dominique’s eyes darkened, and he saw the anger in them. He was getting rid of her, and she knew it. But whatever thoughts went through her mind she kept them to herself. “Okay,” was all she said. She nodded to Fred and left.

  Enzo waited until the door had closed behind her before sliding a hundred euro note across the bar. “Whatever you tell me, Fred, is between us.” He raised his eyebrows. “Okay?”

  Fred looked at the note, Enzo’s fingertips still on it, pinning it to the counter, then glanced up to search the Scotsman’s eyes for some kind of illumination. None was forthcoming, but his hesitation did not last long. He lowered his voice. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Where then, and when?”

  “Tonight. About seven, after I get away from here. I’ll meet you outside the gates of the old Château Puymule on the road to Saint-Pierre. You know it?”

  Enzo nodded. He had passed it several times on the road, sitting off to the right on the way up to Chez Fraysse. An impressive, historic building open every day to the public during the tourist season. But shut now. Fred’s eyes turned down toward the note on the counter, and Enzo lifted his fingers.

  One blink and it was gone.

  ***

  He saw her through the glass, sitting alone, her hands on the table in front of her, fingers intertwined. The café was empty, and she cut a lonely figure sitting there under the harsh fluorescent light. She looked up as the door opened, and her face darkened. There were no coffees on the table.

  He sat down opposite her, and for a moment she refused to meet his eyes. Then, when she did, he saw that all the warmth had left hers. “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Her voice was low and controlled.

  He felt the stab of her anger, and his own face colored. “He wasn’t going to say anything with you there.”

  “Then you should have gone back later. I have to live here, Enzo. And you completely undermined me in front of him. Stripped me of all my power and authority. Turned me into some silly woman who can be brushed aside.”

  Enzo drew a deep breath. “I’m sure he didn’t see it like that.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  Enzo reached out to take her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  She withdrew it quickly. “Don’t make it worse. I’m not some silly woman, and you can’t just appease me with a squeeze of the hand and a patronising apology.”

  Enzo withdrew his own hands and pushed them into his pocket. “Ok. Then let me put it another way. I’m here to investigate a murder, Dominique. I have a few days at
the most. They’re closing the hotel next week and everyone will be gone. I’m not going to pussyfoot around fragile sensibilities and risk losing any of the little time I have.” They glared at each other for a moment. Then Enzo sighed. “I’m genuinely sorry if I stepped on your toes. I didn’t mean to, and it won’t happen again.”

  Her voice remained steady. “No, it won’t.” The tension between them almost crackled in the air, like electricity. Before suddenly she seemed to relent, and it dissipated. “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing. Yet.”

  She searched his face. “I’ve been straight with you, Enzo. Shared everything I have.”

  “And I’ll be straight with you, too. He didn’t want to talk in there. I’m meeting him tonight. And whatever he shares with me, I’ll share with you.”

  “You told him that?”

  “No, I told him that whatever he told me was between him and me.” He grinned. “But I gave him a hundred euros, so I figured that bought me the right to lie a little.”

  A reluctant smile pushed its way on to Dominique’s lips and a little of the warmth returned to her eyes.

  Enzo said, “Listen, what are you doing for lunch?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably open a tin of soup or something. I’ll get some bread at the boulangerie on the way back to the apartment.”

  “No one to cook for you?”

  A sadness dulled her smile. “Or to cook for.”

  Enzo shook his head. “That seems incredible to me. An attractive woman like you.”

  She caught his glance at her ring hand. “Oh, I used to be married. He was a fonctionnaire at the mairie. We had a little apartment away from the gendarmerie. Both employees of the state, but our hours never quite matched up. In the end he found someone else to share his time off with.” She shook her head and made herself smile. “And the kind of hours I work, I’m not going to find someone else in a hurry.”

  Enzo gazed at her thoughtfully for some moments.

  She said. “Don’t pity me. I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

  Enzo shook his head. “I wasn’t feeling sorry for you. I was just thinking what a waste it was.” He hesitated. “Maybe I can offer you something better for lunch than a tin of soup and a baguette.”

  She laughed. “Don’t tell me you cook, too.”

  “I do actually. But that’s not what I meant. I’m having lunch at Chez Fraysse today. Why don’t you join me, since it’s your day off?”

  Her mouth fell open just a little, before she became aware of it and snapped it shut.

  “After all, you did tell me you’d never eaten there. And maybe at last you can say you’ve met a man who would be happy to spend that kind of money on you.”

  She stared at him for some moments, almost in disbelief, before her face broke into a grin. “Oh, my God! What am I going to wear?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The staff ate in a long recreational shed out back, behind the kitchen. Canteen style tables and chairs were laid out in two rows to feed the twenty kitchen staff and other employees of the hotel. The toilets and locker rooms stood at one end.

  Morning service for the staff was at eleven, and lasted no longer than thirty minutes, so that the kitchen was geared up and ready for lunch service in the restaurant by midday. Most of the chefs had been in preparing for the day’s services since eight, and were more than ready to eat.

  As Enzo wandered in, the shed was filling up. Big pots of steaming food were being placed along the two lines of tables: Andouillette sausage, bowls of pasta, salad, potatoes, several huge containers of hot brown lentils in a thick onion gravy. Bottles of water and cheap vin de pays stood at intervals along the tables. But no one was drinking the rough, red wine. Cutlery was grabbed from piles at the ends of the tables, but Enzo noticed that most of the cooking staff had their own Laguiole or Thiers knives that they unfolded from pockets and used for eating.

  He noticed, too, the men he had seen putting in snow poles along the road the day he arrived. The big man with the dark haunted expression who had caught his eye then, caught it again now. He was unshaven, his hair long and greasy, hanging over his collar. Enzo nodded and smiled. But the man gazed back at him from behind unfathomable dark eyes, and made no acknowledgement whatsoever. He wore thick, workmen’s overalls and a fluorescent yellow vest. The treads of his green Wellington boots were caked with mud. His eyes dipped back to his food which he shovelled unceremoniously into his mouth with big, dirty hands.

  Enzo squeezed past and scanned the faces of all those taking seats along the length of the two rows of tables. He saw Sophie, assiduously avoiding his eye. She was sitting amongst a group of young kitchen staff, obviously stagiaires, who were laughing and joking as they passed the food along and snatched chunks of rough cut bread from one of the many baskets.

  And then his eyes fell on the person he was looking for.

  Georges Crozes sat at the end of the far row, on his own. There were several empty chairs between him and the other staff, as if he either discouraged mealtime company, or the others were simply reluctant to sit beside the boss.

  Enzo pushed along to the end of the row and sat himself in the seat opposite. He waved aside the offer of a plate from one of the chefs de partie, two seats away. He wasn’t here to eat. Georges Crozes raised his eyes to look at him, as if Enzo had just invaded his private space. Which he probably had.

  “You don’t mind chatting for a few minutes while you have lunch, do you?”

  Crozes shrugged. “Do I have any choice?”

  “It’s up to you.”

  Crozes ripped open a piece of sausage with his pearl-handled Laguiole, allowing its stuffing of pig’s intestine to burst out of it. The smell almost turned Enzo’s stomach. So this was how a three-star Michelin chef ate at lunchtime. “What do you want to chat about?”

  “Marc Fraysse.”

  “What about him?”

  “How long had you worked for him before his death?”

  “I was with Marc from the time he got his second star.”

  “So that was about… seven years before he was killed?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You must have been pretty close.”

  Crozes glanced up as if he suspected Enzo of loading the question in some way. “Professionally, yes. Personally, no.”

  “But you must have spent, what, ten, twelve hours a day with him?”

  “I must have done.”

  “You spend that much time with someone every day over seven years, you must get to know them pretty well.”

  Crozes sighed, and a mouthful of sausage was followed by a forkful of lentils. “The man was a genius. I never worked with anyone like him. His attention to detail was extraordinary, and he brought me to realize just how important those details were. He made me, Monsieur Macleod. He moulded me in his image. And I knew the only reason he did that was because he saw himself in me. He saw what I could be. And he made damn sure I fulfilled my potential.”

  “You liked him, then?”

  Crozes shook his head. “No. I didn’t like him. I loved him, monsieur. He was father, brother, mentor, friend, all rolled into one. But only in the kitchen. It was the only place we ever spent time together. I didn’t know the first thing about his private life. Nor he about mine. That was beside the point. The only thing that mattered was what we put on the plate.”

  Enzo found it hard to imagine how such an intense professional friendship could fail to spill over into a personal one. And yet something in Crozes’ tone, and his choice of words, led Enzo to believe him. And he supposed that outside of the kitchen, neither man really had much of a personal life anyway. Which brought him to the question which had been burning through the facade of patience he had been at pains to build around himself. He glanced along the table, and saw the glowering face of a young man turned in his direction. The youth, in his chef’s whites, immediately averted his gaze when he saw that Enzo had seen him. But something in his eyes had le
ft Enzo feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

  Enzo turned back to Crozes, lowering his voice. “I heard a rumor that Marc Fraysse and your wife were having an affair.” He watched carefully for a reaction.

  Crozes jabbed a forkful of sausage into his long, lean face and chewed in silence, still staring down at his plate. Then slowly he raised his eyes again to meet Enzo’s. “You repeat that to anyone, monsieur, and I will personally beat the crap out of you.” There was no doubting his sincerity, and given his ten year advantage over Enzo, there was a distinct possibility he could keep his promise.

  “Does that mean it’s true?”

  Anger fired in his eyes. “No, it does not. I don’t know where it came from all those years ago, and I don’t know who’s repeating it to you now, but it’s a lie. It always was.” He leaned forward, his voice low and threatening. “You’re eating in the restaurant today, I hear.”

  Enzo nodded apprehensively.

  “Then take care, monsieur. You shouldn’t upset the chef before dining. You never know what you might find in your food.”

  He wiped the blade of his Laguiole on his sleeve and folded it up, standing suddenly, his meal unfinished in front of him, and pushed his way brusquely past the other diners to make his exit.

  A hush fell over the shed, and Enzo felt eyes turning toward him. There couldn’t have been anyone at the two rows of tables who wasn’t aware that something fractious had passed between le patron and the Scotsman. He waited for a few minutes, until mealtime conversations had resumed, albeit, tentatively, before rising from his seat and making his way outside.

  He could almost feel the buzz of speculative chatter that started up at his back.

  ***

  Enzo entered the empty west dining room from the garden terrace. Tables were set. Crisp, fresh white table linen laid out with simple but elegant bone-handled silver cutlery made in Thiers. Condiment dispensers were fashioned from the horns of Auvergnat cattle. Serving staff were administering the final touches to the presentation. The hotel, Enzo knew, was full. Both dining rooms were fully booked, lunch and evening, as they were every day. Seventy-five couverts, with diners asked to make their menu choice while still in the lounge, sampling their amuse-bouches and quaffing their aperitifs, to provide the kitchen with maximum advance notice of the numbers ordering from the two set menus, and any unusual orders from the carte.