And now someone was putting all that at risk, someone intent on bringing their happiness and love and comfort to an end. Striking at him, through Claudine. Or Midou. Or both of them.
Now, in this still afternoon heat, after losing the sisters in their car just a couple of evenings back and meeting up with Virginie Cabrille that morning at Le Mas Bleu, Jacquot wondered how he could have been quite so sanguine when he spoke with Georges Rochet and Solange Bonnefoy and Guy Fourcade about using Claudine and Midou for bait. He’d felt such confidence about it initially: that they’d find the sisters, that something would happen, that the threat would be removed. A hotel or chambre d’hôte would call in to say that two women matching the photos they’d all been given, had just checked in, and by the way they were driving a VW. And then it would all be over, the threat gone, the two sisters somehow apprehended before any attempt could be made on one or both of those women asleep in the rooms above.
Jacquot thought of the sense of loss and sorrow he’d felt when he’d heard of Marie-Ange’s murder – a woman he’d hardly known, but one who had . . . occupied his thoughts in a way he might not have anticipated – and he suddenly understood just how much worse it would be to lose Claudine. Or Midou. The thought of it – just the merest possibility of it . . .
Gritting his teeth, stunned now by his own over-confidence and underestimation of the opposition – the true threat the sisters posed – Jacquot opened the fridge, found the Beretta in the salad drawer and slipped it into the back of his jeans. Pushing open the back door he went down the steps to the yard and, standing on the stone slabs and old grinding wheels that made up this tree-shaded terrace, he looked around, from the back corner of the house where the old mill-wheel had once stood, and up the slope of lawn to where the millrace came out of the trees. On one side of this stone channel the trees began almost immediately, in a border extending up the slope, but directly in front of him and to his right, past Claudine’s studio, the terrace gave way to an expanse of lawn, a small swimming pool and the kitchen garden where Claudine grew all her own produce – and often sat at her easel to paint. Even in the heat of summer this garden flourished, some hidden, underground spring keeping the vegetables and herbs and flowers in a rich profusion; and the grass he walked over, soft and springy underfoot, was always green, never needed watering.
Without thinking, Jacquot set off up the slope, feeling the sun beat down as he stepped out into the open, the barrel of his Beretta pressing against the small of his back as he strolled up to the line of trees: a cluster of olive, some holm oak and further up a spread of thin pine. The closer he got to the trees, the noisier the electric tzzzz-tzzzz-tzzzz of insects became, his eye caught by the flick of a lizard’s tail and the rustle of leaves as it scampered away. At the edge of the lawn the ground became rougher, and as he pushed aside an olive branch he cursed his espadrilles. For a moment he thought about going back to the house, finding something more suitable to wear, but he decided to go on; he didn’t intend to go far; he’d manage with the espadrilles, he thought, even as a twig scraped against his bare ankle. Just a brief scout around.
Despite the espadrilles, the scrapes and scratches, the heels sometimes falling loose, even having one of them snatched clean off as he stepped through the undergrowth, Jacquot made his way through the woods, keeping the house on his left, ranging from a few metres inside the treeline to some twenty metres beyond it. It was not a journey he made often, maybe once every few weeks to clear the undergrowth or load up with kindling for the fire-pit, but it was familiar ground. Normally, he’d be looking at his feet, stooping over for firewood, but this time he kept looking back at the house, now spread below him, his eyes on a level with its first-floor windows – Midou’s bedroom, and the landing corridor, their own bathroom and Claudine’s dressing room at the far corner – searching for the best angle, the clearest view.
And then he found it, a small hollow where the slope of the hill dipped into a narrow ledge of almost flat ground and the back of the millhouse presented itself almost unobstructed– from the swimming pool and long windows of Claudine’s studio on the left, past the terrace and fire-pit, the back door and kitchen, to the dining room and salon, with the upper windows ranged above.
Jacquot paused for a moment, looked ahead. Ten metres away the stone channel of the old millrace showed through the trees and the woods on the other side began to thicken. Another ten paces and his view of the house would be compromised as the angle sharpened and the perspective changed. Here, he decided, was the best view of the house, and above its pantiled roof he could see, across the valley, the rising green slopes of the distant Grand Luberon.
Sitting himself down, Jacquot pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up the last one, the click-click-click of his lighter adding another layer of sound to the surrounding buzz of insects. Drawing in the first smoke, he let it out in a plume, tapping the ash into the now empty packet. The last thing he wanted to do was start a fire, but the spot was perfect for a quiet, contemplative smoke – the sun dappling through the trees, the ground warm and soft, the air sharp with the smell of pine from the conifers behind him. Here, he thought, would be a fine place to build a small pergola, somewhere for him and Claudine to sit as the days ended and shadows lengthened. No need for a roof, just a section of decking, a couple of canvas chairs they could stow away beneath the planking . . .
He was working out the logistics – they’d have to lose a tree or two to maximise the view and provide proper access, maybe using the tree stumps as support for the deck – when his eye was caught by a glint of silver amongst the leaf litter just a couple of metres to his right. For a moment he just looked at it, his attention held, wondering what it was – a coin, a piece of jewellery – as he finished his cigarette. Putting out the hot tip in the empty cigarette pack and folding it tightly, he slipped it into his pocket and got to his feet. A couple of steps and he was there, closer now to that silver flash that had caught his eye. He reached down, fingers pushing between the twigs and leaves . . . And it was paper, a piece of silvered paper, a sweet wrapper . . . He opened it up and sniffed it a couple of times. A sweet, minty scent still strong enough to make out . . . chewing gum.
Putting it in a shirt pocket he looked around and realised, by a combination of broken twigs and a squashed scooped-out hollow, that he was standing in what looked like a kind of long nest. Whether he was imagining it or not, whether anyone else would have been able to see it, he was certain now that he could make out the shape of a body – elbows there, the chest, the narrower tapering of legs behind him – with his own espadrilles firmly planted at waist-level. He knelt down for a closer look.
At first it was a question of focus, trying to read the leaf litter, no longer a rough carpet of browned leaves and acorn husks and pine needles at his feet but, close to, a more intimate weave of twigs and knotted stems . . . And there, hardly able to believe that he had seen it, found it . . . a single curl among all the stiffened angles. A twist of colour that shouldn’t have been there. He leant forward, just a few centimetres, and squinted. A strand of material. Blue. Snatched from someone’s coat, a sleeve maybe, and caught there.
And then something truly startling.
At the top of the outline. Where the head would have been.
If he hadn’t been focusing, squinting, looking so carefully, he might never have seen it.
A hair. What looked like a single hair, also caught on a twig.
Adding the strand of blue cotton to the gum wrapper that he’d found a moment earlier, he reached forward for the twig with the hair, lifting it away from its companions, the hair shivering, catching, unfolding, as long as his hand.
A dark colour, blackening towards one end.
It had to be from a woman.
Jacquot got carefully to his feet, feeling an angry tightness in his chest.
There was no doubt about it.
They had been here.
Right here. This close.
And he hadn’t heard or seen a thing.
55
LIKE CLAUDINE AND MIDOU, JACQUOT had had every intention of taking a nap before the evening’s entertainment. But by the time he’d found separate envelopes for the gum wrapper (its silvered exterior a perfect surface for prints), the twist of blue material, and for the dark strands of hair (he’d found three more in quick succession), he could hear movement above – a door closing, water running. Going through to the salon, he poured himself a drink and settled in front of the TV news. He’d wait till the girls had finished, then quickly go up and get himself changed and ready.
‘Wake up, Gran’père!’ It was Midou, shaking his shoulder. ‘Too much wine at lunch, if you ask me.’
As well as the shock of being so suddenly woken, and the shame of dozing off like an old man in front of the TV, was his surprise at seeing Midou. She looked exactly like her mother – a younger, shorter, thinner version – and she was beaming with excitement. A night out at a concert after weeks poring over her books and, more recently, being kept at home by Jacquot, and Midou Bécard was clearly ready to rock, in a pair of rhinestoned white jeans, white T-shirt and black rhinestoned waistcoat. Her hair was stylishly ruffled and gelled, and her face delicately made up to bring out the elfin, gamine quality of her character.
‘You like?’ she asked, slipping her thumbs into the waistcoat pockets and giving him a twirl as he straightened himself up. ‘I got it this afternoon while you were loitering outside Pascal’s, looking grumpy.’
‘I was not grumpy . . .’ he began, clearing his throat, knowing he had been, but then Claudine came into the salon, and he felt his heart quicken and his breath catch.
If Midou looked good, Claudine was a dream. She was wearing a cream silk ao dai which her friend Gilles Gavan had brought back after a recent trip to Cambodia. Jacquot might occasionally have found the voluble little art historian and lecturer and sometime painter a bore, but he was entertaining enough in short bursts and Claudine’s best friend, and that was good enough for Jacquot. Gilles also had impeccable taste. On the other side of the world, he had seen the traditional Khymer ao dai, thought of Claudine, and had the best tailor in Phnom Penh run off half-a-dozen outfits – for summer and winter, in silk and cotton, in blues and reds and emerald greens. He’d also bought slippers to go with them, daintily embroidered in gold thread and each with a curled toe. The ao dai’s long light shirt and full trousers suited Claudine’s tall rangey frame and, with a silken length of scarf wrapped around her neck, she looked simply ravishing. He, by contrast, was still in his jeans, espadrilles and Levi shirt and looked drab and dishevelled.
‘You both look – magnificent,’ he said, struggling off the sofa.
Claudine gave him an arch look.
‘Which is more than I can say for you. So get a move on or we’ll be late.’
Thirty minutes later, showered and changed, the millhouse secured, Jacquot drove them down the impasse and out on to the main road. It was still early, a little after seven, but Claudine had decided to make a night of it, arranging to meet up with friends for drinks in town before George Benson took to the stage at ten o’clock. Beeping their way through the crowds heading for place du Tourel and the supporting acts, they parked once again at police headquarters and set off for their pre-concert drinks party.
While Claudine and Midou mixed with their friends on a roof-top terrace in the old town, Jacquot took the opportunity to call Brunet to make sure that everything he’d asked for had been put in place: two reserve képis with binoculars on the flat roof of the tourist centre, and two more on the roof of La Poste, to keep an eye on the crowds; photos of the Manichella sisters handed out to every patrol, along with details of their car; and everyone equipped with two-way radios.
‘Where are you?’ asked Jacquot, after Brunet had confirmed that everything had been done according to plan.
‘Corner of Sadi Carnot and du Tourel,’ Brunet told him. ‘In Bertrand’s bookshop doorway, at the back of the stage.’
‘How does it look?’
‘Mayhem, but fun. A good crowd, that’s for sure.’
They signed off, Brunet promising to get in touch if anything turned up. Pocketing his radio, Jacquot joined Claudine and Midou, took a drink and decided he might as well start enjoying himself.
Safety in numbers, he thought, safety in numbers.
56
JACQUOT MIGHT HAVE BEEN OFF duty, as excited as anyone in the audience as the moment for George Benson’s appearance drew nearer, but he was still very much alert. Within minutes of taking his seat beside Claudine and Midou he had scanned and discounted their near neighbours – certainly no pair of women sitting together – and he could see no one who looked to be in any way a potential threat. Also, because their side seats were at an angle to the stage there seemed little possibility of the sisters having any kind of opportunity to take sniper-style pot shots at them, unless they were on stage themselves or had climbed one of the trees on Bournissac – and it was no easy matter to unpack a rifle and scope, take aim and fire, with crowds of people all around them. Nor were there any windows that he could see that would provide the killers with any kind of vantage point.
Their banked seats were also high enough, Jacquot now realised, to provide an excellent view not only of the stage and the bleachers opposite, but of the audience below, tidily seated in rows. Claudine had brought a small pair of binoculars with her, which Jacquot asked for, and he swept them over the crowd, picking out familiar faces: Guy Fourcade, just as he’d said, in the fourth row behind the Mayor; Dominique Crystal who owned Restaurant Scaramouche, and her family; the Préfet and his new, much younger wife; Michelot, their over-enthusiastic director of tourism; as well as a number of others whose backs and shoulders and profiles Jacquot could make out in the growing darkness.
But no sign, so far as he could see, of Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille. He was wondering whether, for some reason, she’d decided not to come when his eye was caught by a movement in the central aisle.
And there she was, sashaying towards the front rows with a group of her friends, ten or twelve of them at least. Jacquot was close enough for his view of her to fill the lenses: slicked-back black hair, bare shoulders, a black basque-style top over skinny jeans, a glittering necklace, bracelet, earrings, watch, her scarlet lips moving as she said something to the girl on her arm, the girl she’d played tennis with that morning. She looked young and glamorous, carefree and excited, and as she found their row, five back from the stage and just behind Guy Fourcade, and ushered her friends into their seats, she cast her eyes over the crowds as though searching for someone.
Jacquot wondered if it was him she was looking for, and the very next second, just as the thought lodged in his head, she lifted her eyes – deeply mascara-ed – and looked at the bleachers to her left and right. As she did so, for a split second, their eyes met, so close through the binoculars that Jacquot felt a jolt, as though she could actually see him, as though she’d caught him watching her. For a wild, idiotic moment he expected her to smile or wave at him, but he knew there was no way she could have made him out in a crowd like this, in the gathering darkness. And then her eyes were past him, and she was turning back to her friends, finding her seat and making herself comfortable, just the back of her head and bare shoulders visible.
But there was no time left for him to watch her. Up on the ridge of St-Jacques rockets sailed up into the darkening night sky and exploded, one after another – golden palm trees and extravagant blooms of sparkling colour, followed by the time-lapse bop-bop of the explosions. As the twinkling embers fell back to earth a disembodied, amplified voice came from a dozen speakers set around the stage in the centre of Cavaillon.
‘Mesdames, Messieurs . . . Je vous présente . . . Des États Unis . . . Monsieur . . . George . . . Benson . . .’
57
EVERY LIGHT WENT OUT AND a wave of cheering and clapping and whistling rippled across place du Tourel and Co
urs Bournissac. In the darkness, shadowy figures could be seen crossing the stage – the supporting musicians and backing singers, Jacquot supposed, taking their positions. And then, when everything had settled – breathless, excited seconds when the crowd seemed to freeze with anticipation – a single spotlight speared through the night sky and illuminated the Roman arch.
And stepping into the light came George Benson.
White tuxedo, black T-shirt, black trousers. Immaculate.
A roar of approval and welcome swept through the heart of Cavaillon. Waving to the crowds, Benson walked to a stand of guitars, selected a cream-coloured Gibson archtop and lifted the wide leather strap over his head, settling it onto his shoulder. Stepping forward to the microphone, he bowed to the audience in front of him and to the crowds on Cours Bournissac, and smiled that George Benson smile.
‘Bonsoir, Cavaillon. It’s good to be here.’
Another rolling roar of delight from the crowd.
Without further delay, he turned to his backing group, nodded three times and then swung round into the opening bars of ‘Breezin’’. In an instant, the audience was on its feet and the game was on.
Up in the bleachers, Jacquot, Claudine and Midou did the same as everyone else, if only to see what was going on down on stage, and very soon there wasn’t a body in the crowd not swaying to the Benson beat, as endless classics, with only the briefest interruptions for guitar changes or adjustments to the equipment, beat through that hot balmy night in Cavaillon. ‘Love Times Love’, ‘On Broadway’, ‘Turn Your Love Around’, ‘Never Give Up On A Good Thing’.
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