But there was nothing.
The village, apart from a few lights and the smell of burning charcoal – a back-garden barbecue – seemed deserted.
A minute later he was out of St-Beyelle, could feel a roughening in the road surface and up ahead could see where the village’s cobbles ran out and farm track took over. Before he reached it, he pulled in to a gateway where the road surface was not too bad and opened the glove compartment to retrieve his gun. Sliding it into his pocket, he got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open.
It was a gorgeous evening now, warm and soft, the sun lost behind the slopes of the Vaucluse hills, a deep blue sky banded with tapered layers of low cloud, their bellies stained a dusky pink that somehow made the blue backdrop a deeper, darker shade. Now some distance from the village, the sharp if beckoning smell of burning charcoal had been replaced by an altogether more natural scent – of rich red earth dampened by evening sprinklers, wet lush greenery, and fresh-cut grass. He could smell the dry stones in the low wall along one side of the track, the recent passage of goats, and a hot pulse of heat from the fields either side – vine and melon and maize, a browning stand of it shifting and shuffling with a breeze he couldn’t feel. Somewhere to the right a dog barked, and Jacquot tensed. But it was a distant and solitary call, one of those country mutts chained to a post or a tree, left out in the yard, its long lonesome bark one of boredom not warning. Nothing better to do.
With the comforting weight of the Beretta in his jacket pocket, bumping against his hip with every step, Jacquot walked on – alert to each sound, each movement around him. He was about a hundred metres from the Renault, now out of sight behind him, and about fifty metres from a stand of broken down old barns and drying sheds when suddenly the chirrupping sounds of insects and the soft whoosh of a passing bat were drowned out by the grinding start of an engine, a clash of gears and the spitting angry rasp of tyres on dusty grit as a car swung out from the barnyard and set off down the lane, heading away from him in a lurching, jouncing race, back the way it had come.
It was impossible to get a registration number thanks to the fading light, the swirling dust, and the jolting speed of the car, and no way could he catch up with it. But there was now no doubt in his mind – given this evasionary tactic – that this was the same car that had been following him, its wheezing, asthmatic whine as it careered away along the track bearing the umistakable signature of an old VW Beetle.
In less than twenty seconds the car was well ahead of Jacquot who had started into a jog, holding his gun now rather than let it bang against his hip. A few seconds more and it was lost round a bend and powering back down towards the main road. For a second or two longer Jacquot wondered whether to keep after them or go back to his car and try for a chase. But it didn’t take him long to realise that neither was a practical option. They were too far ahead of him now, they had got the better of him, and as he came to a halt in the lane he saw brakelights flash once, way down the slope, and a set of headlights swing onto the main road, turning towards Apt.
They’d known he’d spotted them, known he’d be waiting for them at St-Beyelle – if they’d scouted out for the Gilbert murder they’d be familiar with this terrain – and had done the only thing they could do. And it had worked for them.
It was the killers – the sisters – in an old VW.
He was certain of it.
49
THERE HAD BEEN A HEART-HAMMERING moment of panic as the two sisters swung out of the barnyard, followed by a rush of elation as they hit the main road and accelerated away in the direction of Apt. Behind them, Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot had been left standing in the middle of a country lane, too far from his own car – which they had seen him park – and too far from theirs to do anything other than watch them drive away.
But it had been close.
If the engine hadn’t caught first time . . .
If they’d flooded it . . .
Of course, they should never have switched off the ignition. That’s what younger sister had done before elder sister had time to suggest they keep the engine ticking over.
The two sisters had been watching Jacquot for a little over two weeks now, sometimes staying in the area, camped out in the VW, or returning to the house near Pélissanne, twenty minutes south on the autoroute.
Like their other targets, photos of Jacquot had been supplied and rough personal details provided, and the two women had taken it in turns to keep a watch on police headquarters in Cavaillon until they made contact and found their mark. Marina had been the first to spot him, walking across the car park at police headquarters and out on to the street. She’d been sitting on a bench in the garden of Église St-Jean just across the road from the building and he’d passed close enough for her to make the match, noting the jeans and slip-on loafers, the linen jacket catching in the breeze, and the brilliant white T-shirt. As in the photos, there was that strong, well-shaped face and those broad shoulders, but the once close-cropped hair had grown out and he was taller than she’d expected.
But the photos, Marina decided, did not do the man justice, did not adequately convey the real sense of him. Crossing the road, he had come straight towards her, as though he intended having a word, only to pass on his way – had he actually smiled a greeting at her? – close enough for her to see the dark shading of stubble on his jaw, the green of his eyes, a wave of dark hair curling over his collar, and the bare feet slipped into loafers. Close enough even to catch the scent of him: soap, tobacco, leather. It was tobacco he was after; twenty metres past the church he went into a tabac and a few minutes later came out unwrapping a pack of cigarettes.
This time he crossed the road before reaching the church and from a distance Marina had watched the man’s long, easy stride as he made his way back to headquarters. In the next two hours she’d established which floor his office was on, which window was his, and what car he drove: a battered old Renault with dusty windows and two hub caps missing. He liked his music, too. One afternoon, as the car swung out of the car park, he had his window down, elbow out, with Eric Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard playing loud enough for her to catch and recognise the tune. Her brother used to listen to it all the time.
That first evening, after making him, as she drove back to Pélissanne, Marina had found herself thinking of Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot in a less than professional manner. It was the bare feet that had done it, something oddly and uncomfortably arousing about that glimpse of skin around his ankles, the intimacy of the observation, its easy physicality, and for the last ten kilometres of the drive home she’d stayed in the slow lane on the autoroute, with only one hand on the wheel.
With their target confirmed, it hadn’t taken the sisters long to establish the pattern in the man’s day. How he lived. Where he lived. And who he lived with. But if police headquarters had been easy to watch – and Jacquot’s movements around Cavaillon and the surrounding countryside tracked easily enough without the two women being noticed – the millhouse was an altogether different proposition. After seeing Jacquot turn left those first few evenings, driving up a marked impasse towards a distant flickering of lights through the trees, they might have found out where he lived, but it was another matter seeing what went on there.
As far as they had been able to establish, there was only that single access road to the millhouse, a long sloping lane that ended just a few hundred metres past the property, petering out into lightly wooded hillsides and open pasture higher up. They did this by locating a vantage point across the narrow guttering of the Colavon valley on the slope of the Grand Luberon and finding an isolated spot from which to spy on the property through binoculars. From here, shifting their vantage point around the slope, they had familiarised themselves with the size and shape and lay-out of the house, counting two cars and three people: Jacquot and two women. One of them was the woman he lived with – the target they’d selected – but the other had remained unknown until one afternoon in Déscharme’
s art supplies shop on place Lombard when elder sister, browsing along the shelves, had heard Claudine introduce her daughter to a friend she’d bumped into.
At first the daughter’s presence had seemed a complication they could have done without. Mother and daughter never seemed to stray far from the house, or each other, but gradually the idea had lodged in their minds that targeting both women – getting rid of the daughter too – was easily manageable and would greatly increase their final victim’s sense of loss and grief. And, as elder sister said, a satisfactory way to combine the last two injuries for their final victim – a suitable double climax. But for the purposes of their research, to do their job properly, they needed a closer, more detailed sense of the property.
Since they couldn’t easily drive past it as they had done with their other targets they decided to walk past the house. Kitting themselves out in boots and rucksacks from a camping store in Salon they’d hiked up the impasse as though on a cross-country route to St Pantagruel, and passed close enough to hear the sound of music, a phone ringing and a woman’s voice call out. Once past the millhouse they had carried on up to the first ridge and then doubled back down through the pine and holm oak, taking up position some twenty metres beyond the old millrace, at the back of the house, with a view of the courtyard, terrace, kitchen and studio. Pulling binoculars from their rucksacks the sisters had settled down to wait and watch.
In the days that followed, they’d stayed in close contact with Claudine and her daughter, and it didn’t take long for the sisters to see what a handsome woman the mother was. There was something about the way she strolled down the aisles in the town’s supermarché, tall, slender and somehow effortlessly elegant in her short denim skirt, T-shirt and espadrilles, leaning forward over the delicatessen counter to examine more closely a fish or a cut of meat, the way she touched a finger to her lips, the way she slid the notes from her wallet at the check-out. And nice too, très agréable, très sympa, greeting the check-out girl with a smile and a few words as she might an old friend – bonjour, ça va, and then merci bien, à bientôt – her voice husky and honeyed, her laugh, when her daughter said something funny, clear as crystal ringing across the car park as she pushed their trolley to the car.
But while Marita had remarked on this, Marina had stayed quiet, eyeing Claudine with a stern and savage jealousy. The looks, the easy style, everything about the woman set her teeth on edge, made her want to smash her down, get rid of her. Here was the woman who held that man in her arms, the woman who lived with him, cooked for him, cleaned for him – and loved him. And was loved back. And younger sister thought, too, of the life this woman lived, as well as the man she lived with, and she knew she’d been short-changed. This was how you should live your life, with a good-looking guy in a beautiful house, not in a shared family farmhouse on some bleak Corsican hillside where the only men you met had hands like sandpaper and hot breath that stank of bad teeth, stale beer and garlic. If you were lucky, they chewed parsley before they plunged their tongues into your mouth. The kind of man her elder sister had ended up with, and look what had happened to her.
As usual, Marina had been busy daydreaming as they followed Jacquot’s car out of town – imagining his grief at the loss of Claudine, and how she would effect a meeting, how she would soothe him, make him well again, without his ever realising it was she who had killed Claudine – when her sister had tapped her leg and nodded ahead. He was slowing down, pulling in to the kerb and the emergency lights were blinking on.
Marina had only seconds to react: either carry on past him and risk being followed if he had made them, or get off the road.
‘Take a right,’ Marita had said, pointing to a narrow opening no more than twenty metres ahead. And with a stamp on the brakes, she’d made the turn and powered away down the lane.
Beside her, Marita looked back towards the road.
‘He’s turning round,’ she said. ‘He’s coming back. He’s spotted us.’ She glanced at the track ahead. ‘See that barnyard up ahead? We’ll pull in there and wait.’
And that’s what they’d done, under cover of the dust cloud they’d stirred up, watching him pass the entrance to their track but take the Brieuc turn, for all the world as though he’d missed it in the first place and was just doubling back. But Marita knew that wasn’t the case. Somewhere along the line, this Jacquot had found a link, connected the killings – she was sure of it now. And he’d been on the look-out.
But was he looking for a black VW Beetle? And two women?
Certainly she and Marina had been in the frame – it was only to be expected. The last time they’d called home one of the cousins had told them that a detective from Ajaccio had paid a call at the gendarmerie in Scarpetta and had the local man come out with him to Tassafaduca, knocking on the farm door, asking to see them. The deception had gone well enough and the flic from Ajaccio had left Tassafaduca none the wiser.
But now . . . ?
‘He knows,’ said Marina, settling herself behind the wheel on the road to Apt, foot hard down on the pedal and feeling a thumping in her chest.
‘I think he has known for a long time,’ replied Marita.
‘Do you think we should let it rest for a while?’
‘I don’t think it makes any difference. Whether he knows or not. There’s nothing he can do now.’
They drove on for a while in silence, towards a darkening sky, Marina thinking about Jacquot, Marita going through their plans for the days to come. So much to do, so much to arrange. And so little time. At Apt they turned off the main road, switched on their headlights and headed south over the Luberon heights to Lourmarin and then Cadenet, weaving their way back to Pélissanne.
Outside Lambesc, Marita turned to her sister.
‘Did you get the scissors? The dye?’
‘Yes,’ replied Marina.
‘And the kit?’
‘It’s on the way.’
Marita nodded.
Beside her, Marina licked two fingertips, pulled a pellet of gum from her mouth and tossed it out of the window.
‘I could eat a horse,’ she said.
‘A pizza will have to do,’ replied Marita.
50
THE SUN MIGHT HAVE GONE, a few brave stars starting to glitter in a darkening sky, but it was still warm when Jacquot arrived at the millhouse, wondering if the Manichella sisters had already discovered where he lived, and deciding they probably had. There were no lights on inside, but a glow came from the rear terrace. Crunching over the gravel of the driveway, turning down the side of the house, he found Midou swinging lazily in a hammock, a tangle of logs crackling in the fire pit, and a bottle of white wine open on the table. There was also the unmistakable scent of marijuana hanging in the still air.
‘Maman’s having a rest. She’s pooped.’
‘She okay? I’ll go up . . .’
‘No, no, she’s fine, just a little peaky . . . out of sorts,’ said Midou, swinging her legs out of the hammock and sitting astride it. ‘And you’ll wake her. Best leave her.’
‘How long has she been sleeping?’
‘A couple of hours,’ said the girl, glancing at her watch. ‘After she finished work in the studio. Said she was going to lie down for a bit.’
Jacquot felt a flutter of unease.
‘Maybe I’d better go and check . . .’
‘You sit there, I’ll go and check,’ said Midou, unsaddling herself from the hammock. ‘I know you. You’ll just go and wake her, to make sure she’s still breathing.’
Five minutes later Midou was back.
‘Out like a light,’ she said, refilling her glass. ‘But it’ll do her good. She’s been looking a little tired.’ It was said with no intent to criticise, but Jacquot found himself on the defensive.
‘It’s the exhibition,’ he said, maybe too quickly. ‘Always the same. A month before the opening she gets the jitters, thinks she can’t paint, and tries to do too much.’
‘You think it’s just
that?’ asked Midou. ‘Or this Blanchard thing?’
‘Well, that certainly doesn’t help, but I don’t think we’re seriously at risk.’
After his close encounter an hour earlier, Jacquot knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with Claudine’s daughter, but he judged it better to downplay the threat rather than amplify it.
That evening Claudine did not make an appearance. After a pleasant evening together during which he and Midou had grilled some steaks on the fire-pit, tossed up a salad, and finished a further bottle of wine, she took her leave, leaning down to kiss his cheek.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, patting his shoulder. ‘It’ll be fine. And so will Maman.’
Half an hour later, finishing off the last of Midou’s spliff, Jacquot took a torch from the kitchen and wandered around the house, out to the driveway and back to the terrace, flashing the beam between the trees, pausing to listen out for any suspicious sounds above the gentle trickling of the mill stream and the low static beat of insects.
But there was nothing. Just a deepening darkness sliding like oil through the trees, a pleasing, comforting sprinkle of stars through the branches, and a gentle, swaying contentment in his head.
Too much wine, he thought, too much grass. But still . . .
Back in the house, he locked and bolted all the doors, made sure the windows were secured and, leaving the hall light on, climbed the stairs to bed.
Part Three
51
ON THE LAST FRIDAY OF the month, a little before lunchtime, a convoy of lorries came off the A7 autoroute, pounded across the Durance bridge and pulled up one behind the other, hydraulic brakes wheezing, on the corner of Cours Bournissac and rue Dumas. All four were painted in black livery, the carrier’s name – France Auto Logistiques – printed in shadowed silver across the lorries’ sides. A few moments later the police tape that had been put up the night before to seal off place du Tourel from all approach roads was lowered and the lorries moved forward and parked. Within thirty minutes their crews were hard at work – all dressed in black T-shirts, hard hats, big-soled climbing boots and gunslinger tool belts – hauling out scaffolding from the back of the lorries to start rigging the stage for the appearance of Monsieur George Benson the following evening. A holiday feeling gripped the residents of Cavaillon and it wasn’t long before word spread through the bars on Cours Bournissac and along the pastry counter at Auzet’s that there was almost certainly going to be a surprise guest appearance from George Benson’s sometime playing partner, Monsieur Al Jarreau.
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