Blowback

by Peter May

  Enzo felt his eyes filling, and his throat burned.

  “And she told me…” She looked up, startled to see his silent tears, and for a moment seemed almost choked herself. “She told me that you weren’t really her dad. At least, not her birth father. But that it didn’t make any difference. She still loved you, and needed you, and you would always be dad to her.”

  Enzo was finding it difficult to breathe. “I can’t believe she told you all this.”

  Charlotte found a tiny, sad smile to turn up the corners of her mouth. “She wanted me to realize what it meant to have a father. As much as to realize what it meant not to have one.” She paused. “She made a powerful case, Enzo. From experience, and from the heart. She said it was not my place to deny my son the right to his father.”

  Enzo’s world shrank, then, to that tiny place in space and time that existed only across the table between them. The café was empty. There were no customers, no voices raised in laughter, no imperious waiters conveying trays of drinks above talking heads. He hardly dared ask. “And?”

  “I think, perhaps, my mind and my body were both a little out of balance during those months of pregnancy. And I suppose Kirsty only made me feel what I’d already come to know in my heart.” She drained her glass, and her eyes met his very directly. “He’s your son, too.”

  His voice was barely a whisper. “What did you name him?”

  She smiled, and in it she saw all the fondness for him that she somehow seemed determined to deny. “Laurent.”

  ***

  Charlotte’s home and cabinet were in an old converted coal merchant’s depot in the thirteenth arrondissement. The centerpiece was an indoor garden beneath a glass roof that soared three stories above it. It was here that she conducted her therapy sessions. Her kitchen, office, and sitting room were located in an apartment above the main entrance. Glass-walled bedrooms that looked down on the garden were accessed from railed catwalks built around the inside walls.

  Their taxi drew up in the Rue des Tanneries outside the barred windows and grilled door of what had once been the coal merchant’s offices. The street was dark and deserted, it’s commercial and industrial properties padlocked and shuttered for the night. This was a quartier where once the white dust of innumerable tanneries had blanketed the streets like snow, and the waters of the nearby river Bièvre turned blood-red from the dye of Jean Gobelin’s tapestry factory.

  The rain pounded down on them as Charlotte unlocked the door and let them into a small entrance hall where they left their coats before climbing a narrow staircase to the kitchen above. “Janine?” she called as they got to the top of the stairs. A teenage girl of around eighteen or nineteen came down the steps from the sitting room as they entered the kitchen.

  She smiled brightly. “Hi, Charlotte.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. I fed him about an hour ago. So he’s sleeping like a…” She laughed. “Well… like a baby.”

  Charlotte slipped her some notes. “That’s great, thanks, Janine. I won’t be needing you any more tonight.”

  The girl smiled. “Cool. Same time tomorrow, then?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled at Enzo, and he nodded as she passed him to head downstairs and out into the night. But, in truth, he wasn’t paying much attention. His mind was filled with confusion, happiness, fear, trepidation, all rolled into one. He was barely aware of anything around him. Laurent was all he could keep thinking. Lorenzo, Laurent. Same name, different languages. She had named him after his father.

  He followed her up into the sitting room, then down a handful of steps on to the walkway that led around to her bedroom. With the light on, he could see into it from here. Her bed, neatly made for once, and the white-painted cot at the foot of it.

  “He sleeps with me,” she said. “It took me a long time to get used to all his funny little noises. His breathing.” She glanced at Enzo. “He snores like you, you know.” She paused. “Now I don’t think I could sleep without him.”

  He could hear the rain tapping out its tattoo on the glass overhead. The gentle sound of running water from the artificial stream in the garden below. Her voice echoing around all the hard, cold surfaces.

  Before they reached her bedroom she stopped and turned to look at him. “This doesn’t change anything, Enzo. Between you and me. We were good together, in those moments that we were together. And Laurent is the product of that passion. Which is not a bad thing. But I need to move on.” Her words were like stones hurled with force. Each one struck its target, and he felt the pain of every one. Knowing that he would never make love to her again, or feel the soft touch of her lips on his, or the power of the lust that made her such a fierce and passionate lover.

  “Is there someone else?”

  She smiled, almost wistfully, and shook her head. “No. There is only one man in my life now.”

  He looked at her. The dark eyes below almost quizzical eyebrows. Full lips. Black curls cascading over square shoulders. And he knew that if he spent every waking moment with her for the rest of his life, he still wouldn’t understand her.

  The bedroom smelled of warm milk and perfumed baby powder. Laurent was lying on his back, swaddled in a cotton baby-grow and wrapped in blankets. His tiny pink face below a fuzz of black hair, was turned to one side, his little hands open, palm-side up, on either side of his head. His breathing was slow and regular.

  Enzo gazed at his son with a sense of awe. Sometimes it was hard to believe that by making love you could make another human being. A part of you that would live on beyond you.

  “Can I hold him?”

  Without a word, she leaned over the cot and gently lifted the child from his blankets. She passed him carefully into Enzo’s waiting arms, and he felt such a rush of emotion that for a moment he was afraid he might drop him.

  The baby boy snuffled, and coughed and turned his head. He opened his eyes. Dark, impenetrable eyes like his mother’s, and he looked up for the first time at his father. Enzo felt all the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and a huge weight of responsibility descended suddenly upon his shoulders.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The gold dome of the church at Les Invalides dominated the north end of the Avenue de Breteuil, the gateway to a complex of buildings originally built in the seventeenth century as a retreat for the veterans of French military campaigns. Later it had become home to a collection of army museums, and the final resting place of many of the country’s war heros, including Napoleon Bonaparte himself.

  The Michelin building was an ugly, modern, eight-story block set back behind black railings and stark, pollarded trees just a couple of hundred meters to the south.

  Enzo walked quickly past the green neon light of the pharmacy next door, hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, head bowed by the rain. Pierre Mages stood waiting for him beneath a shining wet black umbrella outside the security booth at the gates. It had seemed like a convenient, and appropriate, place to meet. They shook hands, and Enzo looked up at the anonymous cream and black building which had so much influence on the eating habits of a nation. “Are we going in?”

  Mages laughed. “Good God, no. I’m not welcome in there any more. And good riddance.” He nodded toward the other side of the long, wide avenue. “I know a café not far from here.”

  The café he had in mind was several streets away, the windows of its steamy warm interior misted from the damp. Hardy smokers intent on shortening their lives sat under the canopy outside, wrapped in coats and scarves against the cold, and sipping on coffees which had long since lost their heat.

  Mages found them a table by the window, and immediately rubbed a hole in the condensation with his hand to peer out at the grey, wet of the morning. “Have you had breakfast?”

  Enzo nodded. Although, in fact, he had eaten nothing. He had barely slept, the image of that tiny face staring up into his, burned into his brain as if seared on to it with a branding iron. It had been a long
night of alternating happiness and depression. But he forced himself to focus now. He was here to plumb the past, not fret about the future.

  Mages ordered them each a coffee, plus a pain au chocolat for himself. Enzo looked at him closely for the first time. Dyed black hair was scraped thinly back over an almost bald pate. His complexion was pasty pale, loose flesh hanging around sad jowls. His suit seemed too big for him, as if he had lost weight. Enzo would have guessed that he was perhaps ten years older than himself. He said, “What on earth made you write the book? Surely you knew that Michelin wouldn’t tolerate it?”

  “Of course. But I was sick of it, Monsieur Macleod. I’d had fifteen years as an inspector, one of the monks of gastronomy, and three years as deputy director. You know, there is only so much food a human being can take.”

  “Most people would have envied you a job like that. Eating in the best restaurants, your employer picking up the tab.”

  Mages’ laugh was without humour. “You have no idea, monsieur. Nobody does, unless they’ve done it. Eating huge meals twice a day, writing detailed reports on every mouthful, inspecting rooms, prices. Up and down hotel stairways. Always on the road. Always away from home. A damned lonely existence. And then back to Paris, stopping only long enough at the Service du Tourisme to file your reports, pick up your next assignment, and hit the road again. Oh, and of course, you always had to travel by road. Michelin makes tires after all. It wouldn’t do for its inspectors to travel around the country on trains and planes.”

  He took a mouthful of coffee and nibbled on his pain au chocolat.

  “Let me assure you, when you have eaten your way from one end of France to the other, in every kind of restaurant you can imagine, the last thing you ever want to see in front of you again is another plate of food. You start to hate it. Every dish a trial, every meal an ordeal.

  “And, of course, you are sworn to secrecy. You can’t even tell your friends what it is you do for a living. Not that it’s what you could call a great living. I would have earned more as a bank clerk. And during my time there, the number of inspectors almost halved, which only meant more work for those of us who were left. More food. More goddamned food than you would ever want to eat in a lifetime.”

  Enzo watched him dip his pain au chocolat into his coffee. “You seem to have rediscovered your appetite.”

  Mages smiled. “This is a rare treat. Since I quit, my wife put me on a strict diet. I was a skinny young man when I married her. By the time I retired I had put on more than thirty kilos.”

  Enzo did a quick calculation. That was between sixty and seventy pounds.

  “And that’s not to mention the damage I’ve probably done to my arteries, wolfing down all those high cholesterol sauces made with butter and cream and foie-gras.”

  Enzo could almost have sworn that the grey skin around his eyes became tinged with green as he spoke. “So you enjoyed your job, then?”

  The ex-Michelin inspector laughed heartily. “At first I loved it, Monsieur Macleod. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. But, really, who would want to live in heaven. You can have too much of a good thing, and the endless routine of roads and restaurants becomes tedious to the point of ennui.”

  Enzo sipped on his coffee. “They fired you when the book came out?”

  “No, they banned me from publishing it while I was still in their employ. Confessions of a Michelin inspector splashed in extracts all over the popular press was not the image they wanted for the guide.”

  “So you quit?”

  “I did.”

  “And was the book a success?”

  Mages shrugged. “Moderately. It created a bit of a stir when it first came out. But, you know, the media moves very quickly on to the next hot thing. There’s nothing more redundant than yesterday’s newspaper.” He paused. “Or unsold books on a shelf. A meal that has gone cold. We sold a few, and remaindered a lot.”

  “You were still deputy director the year Marc Fraysse was murdered.” Enzo watched him carefully.

  “I was.”

  “You must have read Jean-Louis Graulet’s piece giving air to the rumor that Fraysse was going to drop a star in that year’s guide.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Was it true?”

  Pierre Mages looked Enzo very steadily in the eye. “Absolutely not. If Michelin had awarded four stars instead of three, monsieur, Marc Fraysse would have been in line for another.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The restaurant, Au Gourmand, was in the aptly named Rue Molière just off the Avenue de l’Opéra, next door to an antique shop and opposite a realtor. In keeping with the shifting tastes of the French palate, it shared the street with a Japanese restaurant and a pizzeria.

  Jean-Louis Graulet was waiting for him at a table by the window in this pocket-sized eatery that still catered for the theater going public of Paris. He rose to shake the Scotsman’s hand and waved him into the seat opposite.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’ve read a great deal about you.”

  “All of it good, I hope.”

  Graulet smiled. “Almost none of it, actually. It seems that the French police and the political establishment are not very fond of you.”

  “Only because they don’t like me showing up their mistakes. Much in the same way, I suppose, that a chef might resent you taking over his kitchen and humiliating him by preparing a better meal.”

  This time the food critic laughed out loud. “God forbid! I love to eat, monsieur. I hate to cook.”

  He was smaller than Enzo had been expecting. A thin, mean-faced man who did not look at all like someone who enjoyed his food. He had lively amber eyes, and for all that his facial features were not arranged in a particularly attractive way, he had a disarming smile. Enzo had come prepared not to like him, and found himself unexpectedly engaged.

  He looked around at the pale yellow walls of the restaurant, the maroon chairs with their gold piping and monogrammed Gs, the books and bookshelves painted on the wall by the kitchen door. “Why did you pick this place to meet?”

  “I’ve heard good things about it and want to review it in my blog. It used to be called the Barrière Poquelin, and was owned by Claude Verger. Cleverly named, don’t you think? Barrière Molière might have been the obvious choice. But Molière was born Jean Baptiste Poquelin. That showed some originality. As did the food. It’s where Bernard Loiseau cut his teeth and made his name before getting sucked into that dreadful place down at Saulieu.”

  Enzo couldn’t resist a wry smile. “You’re not here in disguise, then?”

  He laughed. “No, monsieur, I am not. If I had been, how would you have recognised me?”

  “I take it the owners already have.”

  “Oh, you can put money on it. But they’ll be far too discreet to say so.” He paused. “A glass of champagne?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  Graulet caught the attention of a hovering waiter who was instantly at their table. He ordered two glasses of Veuve Clicquot and slipped on a pair of half-moon reading glasses as he lifted the menu. “I think I’ll have the Ouef de poule,” he said. “I’m interested to know what they mean by a contemporary version of Eggs Florentine.” He ran his eye down to the main courses. “Ah, and in your honour, I think I am bound to try the Selle d’agneau d’Ecosse. I expect you have sampled a fair amount of Scottish lamb in your time.”

  “I have.” Enzo looked at the menu. The lamb was marinated in hibiscus, and then cooked in a sauté pan. But Enzo had to smile. The menu described it as being cuite au sautoir. A nice pun, since a sautoir was both a sauté pan and a St. Andrew’s Cross, the flag of Scotland. It was presented with gnocchi, preserved kumquats, and a reduction of the cooking juices. “Never had it served like this though.” He ran his eye down the other choices and decided on seasonal vegetables in an open ravioli as a starter, and civet de sanglier, a stew of wild boar, for his main c
ourse.

  “Bravo,” Graulet said. “A perfect choice for a man who lives in the Lot. What wine would you like with it?” He passed Enzo the carte des vins.

  “What about the Cahors? The Château Lagrazette.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to pick anything else. It will go wonderfully well with the sanglier and the lamb.” He removed his reading glasses and looked candidly at Enzo. “So what do you want to know about Marc Fraysse?”

  “I want to know why you printed a rumor about him losing a star when it was patently untrue.”

  Graulet canted his head to one side. “Was it?”

  “It was. And I got that from the horse’s mouth.”

  “The horse, no doubt, being that manufacturer of pneumatic tires which likes to think of itself as being the ultimate arbiter of good taste.”

  Enzo tipped his head in acknowledgement.

  “Hmmm. Well, monsieur, I think I can tell you without risk of contradiction that the rumor began with Fraysse himself.”

  Enzo frowned. “How’s that possible?”

  “Because the man was paranoid. You have no doubt heard the story of our little contretemps that cemented our mutual dislike?”

  “Yes.”

  Graulet sipped his champagne thoughtfully. “I have to tell you that although I didn’t like his food, there is no doubt that he was an extremely talented chef. But his cuisine owed far too much to the traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. He introduced his own slant on it, I grant you. But he failed to bring it into the twenty-first century, unlike some of his contemporaries. The excellent Michel Bras, for example, who is unique in the way he has used natural regional ingredients to transform traditional dishes. Not to mention his presentation, which is pure art. Bras is atypical of the Michelin-starred chef, while Fraysse was just another hack as far as I’m concerned. Another typical anointee of the monks of Michelin.”