Blood Counts

by Martin O'Brien

  Virginie Cabrille frowned.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

  ‘The two policemen, who were in uniform, who fired the killing shots, have since been . . . targeted.’

  ‘Targeted?’

  ‘The wife of one was murdered, on her wedding night. The twin brother of the second policeman was also murdered.’

  Virginie Cabrille gasped.

  ‘But that is awful. How shocking.’

  ‘Indeed, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Could it be coincidence?’ she suggested, pulling a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and a hefty gold lighter.

  ‘Possibly, possibly. Two such deaths, so far apart in time, in place, in method, might indeed be construed as coincidence, or been missed altogether. But there was a third death. The wife of the officer in charge of the operation.’

  ‘So now it’s three deaths that appear to be related to the action carried out here in November?’ She lit her cigarette, pocketed the lighter and took a deep drag.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And you think I might know something about it?’ A light breeze snatched the smoke from her lips as she exhaled.

  ‘As I said, maybe you can think of a reason why someone would want revenge.’

  ‘Well, I am afraid I can’t help you there, Chief Inspector. Taddeus and Tomas weren’t married, they had no children, and what family they have is in Corsica.’

  ‘Where blood counts, Mademoiselle. An island known for vendetta, for revenge. For the settling of scores.’

  ‘So I have heard, Chief Inspector.’ Her expression started to harden. ‘In which case, I suggest you take yourself to Corsica and make enquiries there. Rather than come here and waste my time.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘As you will know, I have provided your department with every possible assistance in their investigations, at a great deal of personal inconvenience, and there, I’m afraid, it must end.’

  And then her expression softened again and she settled a look on Jacquot. She frowned, tipped her head from side to side, as though sizing him up. And then, a sudden flash of recognition.

  ‘Now I have you! Now I have you . . . I knew I had seen your face somewhere, and not just that horrible night last November. Daniel Jacquot . . . that’s the name, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. It is.’

  ‘And not from around here either. A little off your patch if I’m not mistaken?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Jacquot was beginning to feel uncomfortable, as though the balance of power was shifting. Beside him Muzon coughed lightly, cleared his throat.

  ‘I mean, Chief Inspector, that Marseilles is not your usual stamping ground. I’m right, aren’t I? I knew I’d seen you before. You’re up country, aren’t you?’

  ‘The Luberon, Cavaillon.’

  ‘That’s right. The Luberon. And how’s your wife?’

  ‘My wife?’

  Virginie put a hand to her mouth, as though she’d said something indiscreet, but her look was playful, eyes twinkling with amusement.

  ‘So sorry. Of course, yes, your partner. She’s an artist, isn’t she?’

  Jacquot felt his blood run cold. She was taunting him. How did she know all this?

  ‘How do you . . . ?’

  ‘Aix. Aix-en-Provence. At the Galerie Gavan. I saw your picture, the two of you together . . . an exhibition in Aix, wasn’t it? Natalie someone. She does those enormous abstracts. She was standing with the two of you. It was in Sud, the party pages. I saw it.’

  She was right. There had been a photograph – Natalie and Claudine and he drinking champagne in front of one of Natalie’s paintings. And the names in the caption beneath – Natalie Benoît, with Claudine Eddé and Daniel Jacquot from Cavaillon. But how could she have assumed that Claudine and he were married or even partners? Unless she’d checked.

  ‘But now, vraiment, if you don’t mind, I really must get on.’

  ‘Just a couple more questions,’ Jacquot managed, keeping his voice steady.

  She cocked her head.

  ‘Your whereabouts at the time of the murders.’ He counted off the dates for the three murders.

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Simply to eliminate you from our enquiries, Mademoiselle. Nothing more than that.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to contact my secretary. She keeps my diary. She’ll know. Although I can tell you that the last date you mentioned, the end of May, I was out of the country.’

  Jacquot nodded, seemed to consider this.

  ‘Was there anything else, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Just a small thing. I believe the Cabrille family manages a number of clinics. The Druot Clinics. There’s one here in Marseilles, another in Lyons . . .’

  Virginie Cabrille started to shake her head. ‘There is a clinic here, and in Lyons, and others, but they are not “managed” by the family. Nor are they owned by the family. En effet, the clinics are administered by a board of trustees, funded by the family.’

  ‘And at these clinics, would the drug Dyethelaspurane be used?’

  ‘I am a businesswoman, Chief Inspector, not a chemist nor a doctor. I have no idea what drugs are used at the clinics. Why should I?’ She flicked her cigarette over the balustrade. ‘So, if there’s nothing else, Messieurs?’

  ‘For the moment . . .’ began Jacquot.

  ‘Good,’ she cut in, reaching forward to shake their hands. ‘Then if you’ll excuse me, I have a million things to do.’

  Part Two

  29

  IT WAS LÉO CHABRAN’S USUAL morning run. Out of the kitchen of his uncle’s home, across the gravelled stable yard, past the walled garden and on to the drive. Eight pairs of flaking plane trees, more than a century old, rising out of grassy banks, a green tunnel arching over his head. Cool, shifting shadows at this early hour. At the front gate he turned right, out on to the country road and into the sun for the first time, feeling its warmth settle on his neck and shoulders, heading down the slope towards the village of Cruis, crossing the bridge over the dried-out watercourse but turning off into the woods before he reached the first houses.

  Whenever he stayed with his uncle, Léo always followed the same route, at the same time every morning, a little before eight o’clock. Twenty kilometres, start to finish, the first three kilometres an easy downhill trot until he turned into the trees where the road gave way to a pine needle path and the land began to rise. It wasn’t a steep path, but it was long and winding and narrow, and the treacherous surface of slippery pine needles always slowed his pace and made each footfall count. Soon he would be a hundred metres above the family home, be able to glimpse its pantiled roofs through the trees, following the rise and fall of the ridgeline before dropping down the slope for the final push. The final kilometres. Back on the road. Downhill again. Then up the drive, heart pumping. No sound save the pounding tread of his running shoes and the drawing of breath through nose and gritted teeth. By the time he reached the stable yard his uncle would be up and he’d be able to smell the coffee.

  But that was still a long way off. Leaning into the slope, coated in a sheen of sweat, Léo glanced at his watch. Forty minutes since turning off the road. Not quite halfway, yet despite the distance covered and the incline of the slope his breathing was controlled, the stiffness in arm and shoulder had eased, and the burning sensation in the muscles above his knees had passed. It had been a good run so far and he felt a burst of exhilaration. Soon he’d be home, smell that coffee.

  In the meantime, dodging past a wall of limestone that jutted into the path, with the pine needles sponging beneath his feet and the new morning scent of resin sharp and clear, Léo took his mind off thoughts of the track and let it wander to the woman he’d left sleeping in his bed. The new woman in his life. Marie-Ange Buhl. They had met the previous November, late one night in the port of L’Estaque. One minute he’d been leaning over his chart table, in the wheelhouse of the coastguard cutter he commanded, the next she was there, reaching forward
to shake his hand. One of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen – a cap of black hair, eyes the colour of caramel, slim and elegant, a lovely, yet hesitant smile as she shook his hand. Enough to take the breath away. Which had surprised Léo. He was no slouch when it came to women, but this one . . . this one was different. He knew it immediately.

  A policewoman had been his first thought, coming aboard with that man Jacquot, the police inspector. The two of them chasing after a missing girl. His cutter, the P.60, at their disposal according to the fax message he’d received prior to their appearance from the Préfét Maritime in Toulon. Which was how he had come to pick up two bullets in his left arm and shoulder in the action that followed. Yet when he woke in hospital the following day, there she was, asleep in his bedside chair, so he had time to focus on her, remember her, remember what had happened until the moment the firing started. And note once again how beautiful she was.

  At first he had been certain that the girl, Marie-Ange, and the policeman, Jacquot, were lovers. There had seemed something so tight and close between them. It was only later, while he recovered from his wounds in hospital, that she let him know that this was not so, that Daniel Jacquot was not a lover, and that she was not a policewoman, but a fleuriste, a flower-shop girl. There in Marseilles. For the life of him Léo couldn’t think of a better job for her. Just perfect. The scent of the flowers on her hair when she leant over to straighten his pillows, the golden smears of pollen on her sleeves, the way she arranged the blooms she brought him – every day – fingers dancing over the stems. Standing back to say, ‘Voilà, regardes, comme elles sont belles,’ brightening his drab hospital room not just with flowers but with funny cards and silly little toys that she bought on her way to the hospital and that made him laugh. Like the jack-in-a-box with the pirate eyepatch, and the plastic submarine for his bath. He had them still.

  He’d spent ten days in hospital while his wounds were treated, and she’d visited every day. And when the time came for his hospital discharge, with two months’ disability leave in which to recover before recall to active duty in the new year, she’d helped him move back to his apartment in Toulon, seen him settled and comfortable, sleeping on the sofa the first night, but coming to his bed the second.

  And that’s how it had been ever since. Those first weeks together in Toulon; Christmas spent at Cruis with his uncle, who’d taken to his latest ‘companion’ with extraordinary enthusiasm – as though he knew something that Léo didn’t; the next few months interrupted by nothing more onerous than three-day patrols with four days off, and numerous weekend visits to Cruis.

  But now it was his last weekend before full recall, a new command and a senior posting at La Rochelle. He would be away longer, their time together shorter. He had to act, today. He had to do now what he had always imagined he’d be able to put off until some distant time. That time, he now realised, was here.

  Which was why, as he levelled out on to a wider stretch of pathway just below the ridgeline, he’d decided that this evening, in just a few more hours, before dinner, he was going to walk Marie-Ange down the drive and, under the plane trees where the men of his family traditionally proposed to their women, offer her the ring and promise her his love, and . . .

  The shock was immediate. The ground seemed to give beneath the ball of his left foot. A hard, springing sensation. A screech of metal and something swift and sharp clamping and biting his leg, pitching him forward, bringing him down with a thump, the air driven from his lungs, then sucked back in to be expelled in a piercing shriek as a wave of burning, bursting, agonised pain shot up his leg.

  If his mind had been on the track he might have seen it – an odd, unlikely-looking ridge of pine needles and holm oak leaves spread across the path. Something not quite right about it. But his mind hadn’t been on the track, and he hadn’t really registered it, and before he could do anything about it, his foot slammed down in the middle of it.

  Before he blacked out Léo Chabran saw a length of shiny new steel chain leading to the nearest tree trunk, and looked back over his shoulder to see the wicked overlapping jaws of a rusted hunter’s trap clamped around his leg, a few centimetres beneath his knee. There was blood oozing thick and fast from the torn flesh, and the leg looked oddly misshapen as though the toe of his trainer was not quite sitting straight, pointing off into an altogether impossible direction. That’s when he saw the bone tent-poling the skin on the inside of his calf-muscle, and heard soft laughter and gentle clapping.

  For a moment he believed that help was at hand. Someone come from nowhere to spring the trap off his leg, call an ambulance, care for him and comfort him until the emergency services arrived.

  Then he saw their faces, and he knew he was mistaken.

  30

  MARIE-ANGE BUHL SMILED AS she dressed. She had beaten him to it, waking before him, reaching out a hand, bringing him to her with a gentle touch and softly whispered entreaties. She looked at the bed, at the still warm marks of their bodies impressed upon it, the lace-edged linen sheet twisted into a knot, and the folded quilt slipping like a slope of snow to the floor.

  This morning she’d made Léo late for his run.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Marie-Ange made herself a pot of coffee, stacked a tray with warm slices of brioche, butter and a pot of conserve, and went through to the morning room, her favourite room in the house save their bedroom. It was perfectly fit for its purpose, this room, facing east across a silvered landscape of olives towards the slopes of the Lure hills. It was stone-flagged, low-ceilinged and heavily beamed, which might have given it a chill, shadowy feel if not for the early-morning sunshine that poured into it, the furnishings deep and soft and welcoming in an old-fashioned chintzy English way, and the table by the french windows which she used for her breakfast wide enough to take her tray, and a book or newspaper if she ever tired of the view. Not that that was ever really an option.

  Setting to with an appetite, she looked across the lawns towards the lower rougher slopes where twenty hectares of olive trees stretched away from the house, and from between their ancient twisted limbs she spotted the old man, Léo’s uncle Davide, step into the sun. He wore his customary cream cotton work trousers, and a blue denim shirt that showed up the deep mahogany of his chest and face, shadowed now beneath the brim of a battered sun hat that Marie-Ange knew had belonged to his wife and that covered a wild thatch of white hair. Every morning, before breakfast, he wandered through those trees of his, testing the fruit, checking the leaves, the bark, thinking whatever thoughts he had in those quiet early times. If he’d been younger, Marie-Ange had decided, he’d probably have joined Léo on his run.

  But Davide Chabran wasn’t young. He was in his eighties, slowing down physically if still filled with brio and wit and affection. The first time Marie-Ange had met the Comte de Chabran, it was as if she had known him for ever. She found him sweet and engaging, kind and caring, and he took to her with an equal enthusiasm. It wasn’t always Léo who stayed up with the old man, listening to his stories of another world, of war and command, music and parties and lovers, and it hadn’t taken long for Marie-Ange to feel a real warmth and genuine regard for him.

  Now, half-way across the lawn, he looked up and spotted her in the window, took off his hat and waved it, a long sweeping wave that spoke of great distances. She waved back and, pushing herself away from the breakfast table, she went through to the kitchen, brewed some fresh coffee and brought it to the table just as Davide tramped across the terrace, dusting his hat against his trouser leg, kicking off his trainers and slipping his feet into the heel-flattened Moroccan slippers he’d left by the french windows.

  ‘Is he gone?’ asked the old man, sitting down at the table.

  ‘Just. He was late this morning.’

  ‘Nothing could surprise me less,’ he said, and with a small smile he held out his cup while Marie-Ange poured.

  It happened as she put down the cafetière. A sudden dryness in the mouth, a shutting out a
nd lessening of the sounds around her – the old man’s chatter about the olives, the ticking of a clock – until all she could hear was the thumping of her heart, and a muffling of volume as though she had just plunged her fingers into her ears. These were sensations with which she was familiar, the start of one of her ‘moments’, a special kind of intuition that tuned her in, somehow, to the past or the present. She had had these ‘moments’ since she was a young girl; sometimes they were triggered by something she saw or heard, but most often they came without warning. Whatever the cause, she had learnt to pay close attention to whatever thoughts were stirred, to what she saw or what she heard – distant actions, dimly perceived, or low, barely audible whisperings. It was how she had come to know Jacquot, writing him anonymous letters when she saw in a newspaper the photo of a young man whom he had arrested for murder. He had the wrong man, she had written, and when her letters failed to change things, had come and found him. That he had responded in the way he did – accepting her ‘insight’ and putting her recommendations into play – was one of the reasons why she had started to feel so strongly about him. The kind of man he was. So unlike a policeman. So easy to fall for.

  If not for Léo . . .

  Now, as the silence deepened around her, Marie-Ange felt an overwhelming sense of threat. Chilled to the bone, she felt goose bumps race over her skin, even with the morning sun slanting over her. She was no longer having coffee with the old man, she was out in the hills, on a woodland path, and she could hear the rhythmic beat of Léo’s breath and footfall, drawing closer and louder as he laboured up the slope. But she couldn’t see him. Just hear that panting breath.

  But that wasn’t all. She was suddenly aware of a presence in the woods, in the trees and undergrowth either side of the path he followed. Something cold and dangerous and malevolent.

  Shadows moving, settling, hunching down, waiting . . .