‘I don’t know... I should never have agreed to cover up for her. I said to her, “If you didn’t do it, there’s no need.” But she kept saying if she didn’t have an alibi, she was done for. So I did because at the time I thought it was Loïc but then when they said it wasn’t I couldn’t help having doubts.’ Alice Perrin spoke breathlessly, as if she was keen to get it all off her chest. ‘I mean, it’s a crime, isn’t it? Perverting the course of justice. And Captain Darlier came back to question me and I cracked. And now it feels as if I’ve betrayed her, it’s awful.’
A group of boisterous youths came into the lobby and Magali went to sit in a corner of the breakfast room. ‘Well, all you’ve done is tell the truth. It’s always better that way.’ She couldn’t help smiling. Nothing like hypocrisy, now, is there? ‘But if it’s any comfort, perhaps you can help me get closer to the truth myself. I suppose Captain Darlier’s grilled you on this already, but is there anything she said that night, any detail, that might help us establish what happened?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve told him everything I remember.’
‘What I’m wondering specifically is whether she mentioned anything about a music score. Eric Satie. Did Enzo ever speak to her about it, do you know?’
‘I don’t remember her saying anything about that. Certainly not that evening. I mean, she was actually quite hysterical at first. She kept on saying she’d lost him for ever. I didn’t know what she was on about. I told her to calm down, have a drink, but then I had to dash to the shop before it shut because I was out of red and I was afraid she might do something silly while I was away but when I got back she was a bit better and we sat –’
‘What did you say?’ Magali jerked herself upright.
‘When? She was feeling better, you mean?’
‘No, before that. You were out of red.’
‘Yes... She can’t handle white. That’s why I went to the shop. Why?’
Magali raised her head, closing her fist as if to keep the information tight. ‘I think, Alice, you’ve just said something that will help me.’
Chapter 22
Antoine’s funeral the following Friday was organised by his sister. It was, as mourners commonly say, ‘a lovely ceremony’, held in Sentabour’s pretty Romanesque church, where Carole informed the congregation of her brother’s generosity, humility, unshakeable sense of duty and devotion to his friends. Fearing, perhaps, to portray a goody two-shoes, she said he could also be mischievous, which Magali could indeed believe, despite having seen little evidence of it herself. She wondered if Carole, while extolling her brother’s fidelity to his friends, knew of his infidelity to his wife, and whether, if she did, she put it in the general category of mischief. But on that, of course, she stayed silent, citing instead a few well-chosen examples of childhood pranks.
And then it was condolences: lining up to shake the relatives’ hands, and Carole barely touched Magali’s fingertips, giving her the iciest stare she’d received in all her life. So you’re the one whose dishonesty and incompetence killed my brother. Next to her, Geraldine, the daughter, refused to even look at her.
As Magali walked away, trying to convince herself she had a right to be there, she spotted Thierry Krief. He was standing some distance away, talking to a woman she didn’t know. Clearly not family, but it was only as Magali began to walk towards them that she realised who it must be: Patricia, Antoine’s mistress, Thierry Krief’s source of information.
Magali stopped walking, suddenly unsure of what she could say. But at that point the pair of them noticed her and Krief, after muttering something to Patricia, came up to her. With no other preamble he said, ‘I had to. I’m sorry but I had no choice.’
‘Indeed.’ She’d wanted to be angry but she didn’t have the strength and it came out as merely resigned.
‘It was going to break anyway. I’m not the only one on the story. It’s just a matter of who gets there first.’
‘Oh, and you’re very good at that, I’m sure.’
‘I’d be quite happy to put your side across. You’d be better off giving me an interview than simply letting events –’
‘Count on it,’ snapped Magali. As she turned on her heels to go, she cast a glance in Patricia’s direction. Like the Pessini women, Antoine’s mistress was looking at her as if she’d stuffed the pipe down his throat herself.
***
A walk on the beach, an art exhibition, window-shopping in narrow, winding streets adorned with Christmas lights, a glass of mulled wine, dinner in the cosiest corner of a cosy restaurant – and now?
From the moment he met her off the train, Vincent had been perfect. Not just gentlemanly and attentive but earnestly, studiously impeccable, his ready smile and deferential manner making her feel as proper and pampered as royalty.
Nice as it was, though, to be crowned Queen Magali, she couldn’t help wishing he would just occasionally allow himself to be normal – not open doors with quite so much of a flourish, nor nod at everything she said with such eagerness. Because after all, she knew very well what was in the back of his mind, or very probably the front – where all the planning takes place – and it was neither deferential nor gentlemanly.
At least, that’s what she assumed: this, for him, was a date. He’d been preparing it for weeks and all that had gone before this moment – approaching the doors to 309 and 310 – was preamble, ritual, conversational foreplay. Was he really interested in what she thought of Kandinsky? Did he honestly think the maternity dress she bought for Sophie was lovely? More likely, as he listened so approvingly, he was simultaneously rehearsing the lines to be spoken when they reached the bedroom door.
There was something to be said, though, for planning, because now she was there, it suddenly struck her she was totally unprepared. Not that she hadn’t thought about it but she’d reached no firm conclusion. Stuck in a dither again. Was it a date for her too? Or simply an excursion? Special offer: Day trip to Montpellier in the company of a genuine gendarme! But if that was so, why had she allowed him to hold her hand?
And behind it all, more pressing than any exploration of affinity, was her own crucial agenda: Enzo Perle. But Vincent’s mind was off duty and although, as they had walked on the beach, he had listened to her expound the details surrounding Antoine’s death, his only comment at the end was, ‘Well, let’s just hope it was that Daveney fellow. No one wants to be dealing with a psychopath.’
Having stressed all the reasons why it couldn’t have been Paul – briefly mentioning, sop to her conscience, the string: ‘Could have been there quite a while, probably dropped it after one of his therapy sessions’ – Magali found this response unacceptably lackadaisical.
‘No one wants to,’ she said urgently, ‘but what if we are?’
To which he merely shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sure it’ll get sorted out pretty soon. Look,’ he said, pointing ahead of them, ‘a jellyfish.’
Rather than murder, he was more inclined to talk about marriage. Similar, really, if you happen to be married to Dickhead. Confiding (‘This whole past year has been pretty hellish, to be honest’), confessing (‘I’ve only myself to blame, Rebecca really put up with an awful lot’), he tossed away his professional shell to appear before her sensitive, wounded and bewildered. To a certain extent, she understood and commiserated, since the story was a mirror version of her own: wife abruptly announces departure, husband suffers breakdown. Except that his daze appeared to have lasted much longer, and involved a greater degree of self-pity, than was either necessary or decent. So Rebecca, love of your life, is telling the world you’re an arsehole – get over it!
‘A whole year?’ she said, astonished. ‘It took me a week!’ Though perhaps, looking back, her own passage through the slough of despond had been indecently brief.
The matter of Enzo wasn’t brought up again until dinner, which she’d chosen as the best time to put it fair and square on the table: after the duck, Vincent mellowed by wine, opposite her,
trapped, not a jellyfish in sight.
She waited for him to finish a story about some hair-raising off-piste adventure, then said, ‘By the way, I almost forgot.’ A likely story! ‘I was wondering if you could do me a favour. Do you think you could get hold of Albert Roncet’s emails?’
‘Roncet? You’re still on that case too?’
‘I asked an acquaintance up there, a journalist, but they won’t give them to him. So I thought, maybe an official request from the gendarmerie...’
He pursed his lips. ‘I can have a try.’
‘And maybe… Enzo’s computer records? Just the Internet. Eight months or so should be fine,’ she added casually. He’d said when he gave her the folder that everything was in there, but it wasn’t. All she had of Enzo’s online activity were the emails exchanged with Brigitte.
Vincent left a long pause as he chewed and swallowed. ‘And might I ask why?’
‘I got a call from Alice Perrin.’
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. Everything’s been so nice up to now. ‘Really?’
‘I learnt something very interesting.’ She rested her chin on her hands. ‘Brigitte Bussert is allergic to white wine.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, feigning to wonder where the interest could possibly lie.
‘Which means it’s extremely odd that Enzo should have poured her one that evening.’
This was the only moment when Vincent let his impeccability slip and even then it was slight – a barely perceptible sigh of exasperation or weariness. ‘He was upset, not thinking. Poured it out automatically. I didn’t know she was allergic but it explains why the only prints on the glass were his.’
Magali pressed her lips together and nodded. ‘Of course.’
Her terseness made him reach out and grasp her hand. ‘Magali, I’m sorry. I know you have your ideas on this and I respect them. I do hope it won’t turn into a problem between us.’
‘No, why should it?’ She looked at the hand holding hers. The first moment of intimacy. A signal, physical and explicit. The hand wasn’t part of Vincent any more but an alien presence wrapping itself around her. For a moment she thought she must withdraw her own, make her position clear. Instead she relaxed, edging her arm forward, sending back a message of acceptance.
Visibly relieved, he dipped his head in appreciation. ‘You know, we found a make-up bag belonging to Brigitte in her bedroom with a spot of blood on it. Also a spot on her pullover. They’ve gone for analysis. But I didn’t want to mention any of that. I invited you here because I wanted to see you again. Perhaps one day we’ll talk about work and go into everything in depth. But not now. I’d rather just enjoy the pleasure of your company. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all.’ She extracted her hand and took a sip of wine. ‘I was just thinking, though, that when you gave me the file on Enzo, you said you wanted me to help.’
‘And so you have. I was frittering away the time doing nothing. You got me focused again. Just being here now helps enormously, even if we talk about other things.’
‘I see. So it’s not actually helping with the nitty-gritty. It’s being some kind of muse.’
‘Well… if you want to put it like that.’
‘Very flattering.’
‘Psychological help, shall we say. Which is just as important, if not more.’
‘Mmm. Empathy, I suppose.’
‘Precisely.’
‘All right,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ll leave it at that. But I hope, as you say, that it does get sorted out quickly because if it doesn’t, it’s only going to get worse.’
‘How so?’
‘The only reason I can be here now and feel relatively tranquil is because Antoine’s death is so recent. The killer won’t strike again so quickly, he’s going to lie low for a while. But he knows who I am and where I live and he knows where my son lives too. And the more time passes, the more it’s going to be unbearable to me to think that he’s out there, planning to kill Luc. So please,’ she said, this time reaching for his hand herself, ‘whatever you do, be right. Be absolutely certain that you haven’t made a mistake you’ll regret.’
His eyes met hers and for several seconds they looked at each other in grave, mutual assessment. Then he gave a brief nod. ‘Dessert?’
***
Walking back to the hotel, Vincent carried the shopping bag, leaving Magali free to slip her arm round his, which she did. So now everyone looking at us sees a couple. The oddness of it disturbed her, like walking over strange, uncertain terrain, but with each step she grew more used to it, wanted it to be true. And she realised he was right: it was a pleasant moment, and part of the pleasure was letting go of the obsessional fear, handing over the responsibility to him. Let him be right, let them all be right, and the prowling killer vanish. And even if they were wrong, let her, just for a while, lean her head against his shoulder and relax.
But now they stood on the landing, each with their own key, and Vincent, eyes bright with affection, was thanking her for a full and perfect day. It was just at that moment, the pair of them hovering on the cusp of a kiss, that her telephone tinkled and, unaccustomed as she was to the priorities of romance, she instinctively reached out a hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’ She pressed her fingers to her brow. ‘I’m just on edge, I suppose.’
‘It’s all right, you can take it.’ He turned to open his door.
‘It’s only a text.’ She seized the phone, read the message twice and thrust it back in her bag. ‘From Bernard Marty,’ she said. ‘Paul Daveney’s confessed.’
He turned back to face her. ‘Well… That’s a relief.’
‘Yes.’ But in her mind the young man Charlotte had described smiled slowly. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Only suppose?’ He raised his eyebrows, smiling a little sadly. Can’t you let go of all this? What’s the matter with you?
‘No,’ she said, ‘it is. Definitely.’
Then she pulled his head towards hers, kissed him fiercely on the mouth, and the two of them tumbled into the bedroom.
Chapter 23
Who was the man who came to Enzo’s house? Of all the unanswered questions, this was the one that troubled Magali the most. Not because it was any more puzzling than the others, but to know that the killer could go back there and speak so warmly to his victim’s mother made her more afraid of him than ever. Before, she had thought of him as human. Evil, twisted, vicious, yes, but still a man of flesh and blood, who had to eat and sleep like everyone else. Now she began to imagine something more sinister, a force that moved and left no trace, taking whatever human form it fancied.
Nonsense, of course. Horror-film stuff she had to ignore, rip out of her unruly imagination. But although she could do that for hours at a stretch, there always came a moment when she felt the killer’s disembodied presence, suddenly there in the creak of a door or the ghostly whisper of the wind.
She drew him. Based on Charlotte’s description, she produced an identikit picture which went back and forth between them, Magali adjusting this or that feature till Charlotte declared it to be a perfect likeness.
It made him human again. She propped the portrait on the piano and studied the lines of his bland, unexceptional face. At first she’d made the eyes cold, small round bullets of hatred and bile, but in fact they were gentle. That was a detail on which Charlotte insisted: the kindliness of his eyes. Sometimes she looked at the portrait and that was what she saw: a gentle young man, not dissimilar to Luc, who would never wilfully hurt anyone. Then a couple of minutes later, though the features were the same, the intention behind them shifted. Kindness gave way to menace, a dark, irrational force swirling around her.
What did it mean? That he wore a mask perfected over many years to hide the cruelty within? Or that the prospective buyer of Enzo’s house was nothing but that – a man who happened to be passing through and thought it might be a pleasant place to live.
The second interpretation was her refuge, a trick she perf
ormed to switch into security mode, relax: Benamrouche was guilty after all, Paul was a homicidal nutter, Balland would find his burglar and Vincent, as he had ably demonstrated in room 310 of the Hotel Voltaire, knew exactly what he was doing. Even if it didn’t do it for me. No need to worry, everything under control.
But she knew it was a trick because she was both conjuror and spectator. Split personality disorder. Another label to add to the collection.
She’d done it because at that particular moment, she was ready to say yes. Because he’d prepared the right ingredients – windy beach, Christmas glitter, candlelit dinner – and they worked. And because she wanted to prove to herself there was life – well, sex at any rate – after Dickhead. Not, of course, that he’d ever been generous with either.
Yes. I believe you. Yes, Enzo was flustered when he poured that glass of white wine. Yes, she killed him. Yes, now, please, because Paul has confessed and Luc is safe, so yes, now is the moment, let’s do it.
The morning after, boarding the train – thick, dark clouds of doubt overhead – looking down from the carriage steps at Vincent’s bright, expectant face, she promised nothing. ‘I’ll give you a call.’ And she raised her hand and turned away. What did that mean? Maybe, sometime, don’t hold your breath? Or: this is the start of a deep, fulfilling relationship? To her it didn’t seem like the start of anything, except a protracted dither.
She waited. From Roudy there came nothing, except confirmation that Albert Roncet’s computer was still with the police, and that Roncet, ever cautious, had deleted none of his emails. But the investigating judge considered the case closed and passed the buck back to the police, whose ears, when it came to Roudy, were bunged with bureaucracy and indifference.
Emboldened by her dinner with Balland, she sent him a gentle reminder: Any news of Lucie Terral’s purse? You said you’d find out where it came from.
When no reply came, she cast her mind back over their talk. What, he’d objected, if she got it from a shop in Royan? Or anywhere else for that matter. The search would be fruitless. No, she’d argued, it had to be online. Couldn’t he get hold of Lucie’s emails? Or better still, all her online activity over the past eight months, say. That should be enough.
One Green Bottle (Magali Rousseau mystery series Book 1) Page 17