The Critic ef-2

by Peter May

  ‘Are they important?’

  Enzo turned to her. ‘Michelle, your father could make or break a winemaker by how he rated his wine. Those ratings could very well provide a motive for his murder.’

  Enzo went into the documents file and found dozens of folders. And folders within folders within folders. Petty’s whole working life was here. Wines he had tasted and rated going back to the mideighties. Articles he had written for his newsletter, The Wine Critic. Pieces he had done for the various newspaper columns he somehow managed to feed on a weekly basis. There were schedules for wine tastings in France, the US, Italy, and Spain, dating from the early nineties. Files imported and re-imported from previous computers, previous lives.

  Enzo scratched his head. ‘Jeez. It could take weeks to go through all this stuff.’

  ‘I’ll bet the French police didn’t. It’s all in English, for a start.’

  ‘They probably concentrated on finding his Gaillac ratings.’

  ‘Well, where are they?’ She scanned the screen.

  But Enzo could only shake his head. There seemed to be no folder containing work in progress. ‘They’re not here. Unless they’re somehow hidden on the hard disk. Although I’m pretty sure the Police Scientifique would have had an expert take a look at that.’

  ‘Knowing Dad, he’d have some way of hiding them. He was good at hiding stuff. His emotions, mostly.’ She paused. ‘He was obsessed by secrecy, you know. When his newsletter came out each month, wines that got high ratings could double in price overnight. Anyone who knew in advance what those ratings were could make a killing. Buy cheap, sell expensive. He even wrote a punitive secrecy clause into the contract with his printer.’

  ‘Well, wherever he kept them, they don’t seem to be on his computer. There weren’t any notebooks or diaries among his things?’

  She shook her head.

  He thought about it for a moment. ‘Surely he made notes when he was tasting. The police must have kept them as evidence.’ He pulled up the navigation bar from the bottom of the screen and clicked on the mailer. ‘Let’s have a look at his e-mails.’

  Petty had organised his e-mail correspondence with the same meticulous care with which he had filed his back catalogue of wine ratings. There were thirty or forty folders containing two-way correspondence with wineries and negociants, journalists, printers, publishers. A huge file of several thousand e-mails under “Miscellaneous.” Nothing personal. Except for a single folder above “Miscellaneous” that was labelled “Michelle.”

  Enzo glanced round as she leaned over his shoulder to peer at the screen. She had seen it, too. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Open it.’

  He clicked on the folder, and they found themselves staring at an empty screen. Nothing. The folder was empty. He could feel her tension. ‘Did you ever correspond by e-mail?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘So why did he have a folder with your name on it?’

  She shook her head, at a complete loss. ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe he always meant to write. Don’t they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions?’

  ‘Or maybe he was waiting for you to write to him.’

  ‘Hell would have frozen over first.’

  Enzo was shocked by the vitriol in her tone. He turned to look at her, but she moved back out of his field of vision. ‘Why should I run to him? He was the one who never had time for me.’

  He thought for several long moments. ‘You know, sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and make the first move. If you love someone, you have to tell them today. Because they might not be here tomorrow.’

  She looked at him curiously, forgetting for a moment her own selfish obsessions. ‘That came from the heart. Personal experience?’

  He glanced at his watch and looked out through the window to see the light dying in the east. ‘Maybe we should eat,’ he said. ‘I know a place.’

  II

  The old square in Lisle sur Tarn was almost deserted as they walked across the dusty red blaize in the fading light. Lamps illuminated the dark interior of brick arcades around the thirteenth century bastide. Shops were shut, but customers sat at tables outside Le Cepage restaurant, and the Olivier bar in the far corner. There was a function of some kind in the Hotel de Ville, lights blazing in tall windows all along the upper floor, the sound of accordion music drifting on the warm night air. The Musee du Chocolat was locked up tight, air-conditioning keeping chocolate sculptures safe from the heat.

  At the southwest corner, they passed beneath enormous oak beams that held up ancient, sagging buildings. Beyond, a long narrow street ran between cantilevered houses down to the river. Lights from Le Romuald restaurant fell out into the evening gloom.

  ‘So how do you know about this place if you’re not from around here?’ Michelle inclined her head towards him quizzically.

  Enzo could see her green eyes fixed on him, bright and interrogative. Gone was the pain that had clouded them earlier as they went through her father’s belongings. ‘It was a recommendation. From the proprietors of the Chateau des Fleurs. They said if I ever wanted to romance a young woman this was the place to come.’

  She laughed. ‘They did not.’

  He grinned. ‘No, they didn’t. They said that the food gets cooked over the smoking embers of an open fire in a huge cheminee, and that the cuisine is excellent.’

  A young man raked through the remains of oak logs on a hearth raised to waist height, pushing freshly burning chunks of wood to the back, and dragging glowing remnants towards him. He set a grilling rack above the embers and marinated lamb cutlets hissed and sizzled, spitting garlic and blood, as he placed them over the heat.

  Michelle watched, fascinated, as she finished her salad entree of goat’s cheese and gesiers. She looked at Enzo, a sudden question occurring to her. ‘Why do the French call a starter an entree?’

  ‘Because that’s what it is,’ Enzo told her. ‘The entry to the meal. It’s a French word. It’s Americans who have corrupted it to mean a main course.’

  ‘I suppose you Europeans think Americans have corrupted everything.’

  Enzo smiled. “Not everything. You make some pretty good wine in California.’

  ‘My father thought so. Californian reds made up most of his top ten. That and a handful of Bordeaux.’

  ‘No Burgundies?’

  ‘He loved Burgundy. He just didn’t rate it as highly. He adored pinot noir, but not as much as cabernet or merlot or syrah.’

  ‘Which makes his ratings very much a matter of individual taste.’

  ‘Of course. What else is a critic going to do, but say what it is he likes and what he doesn’t? A lot of people followed my father’s recommendations and found that they agreed with him. That’s why he was so successful.’

  ‘For someone who wasn’t speaking to him, you seem to know a lot about your father.’

  She shook her head in vigorous denial. ‘That was his fault, not mine.’

  Enzo let her sudden flame of anger die again before he said, ‘You talked earlier about curling up with him on an armchair, watching television together.’

  ‘That’s when I was just a kid. He used to call me his little fish, and I would make these fish mouths at him and make him laugh. And he ended up calling me “fishface.” My friends were horrified. But I was happy enough. I used to figure it meant he loved me.’ She pushed the remains of her salad away, as if she had suddenly lost her appetite. ‘But that was before his newsletter took off big time.’

  A light came on in a central courtyard which was open to the sky beyond French windows. There were tables and chairs out there for summer diners, potted plants, crimson ivy creeping up brick walls, and a large woodstore at the back to feed the fire. Michelle was distracted for a moment before gathering her thoughts again.

  ‘At the height of his celebrity, he had nearly sixty thousand subscribers. That’s still more than Robert Parker has today. But he started off with just a handful. It was a hobby. He loved to drink wi
ne. He and mom had friends round for blind tastings, and they’d all get drunk. And summer holidays were always spent wine-tasting, touring around chateaux in France in the cheapest rental car he could find. The great would-be connoisseur of fine wines pitched a tent every night and slept under canvas. He was a bank clerk, for God’s sake. He couldn’t afford any of it, and he was spending more than fifty percent of his income on wine so that he could taste it and rate it for his precious newsletter. Mom had to get a job, and boy did she hate that!’

  Enzo saw how the gentle glow of the fire was reflected in her face, soft hollows and flickering light. There was something touching, childlike in her intensity, but her eyes were feral, and at times when she turned them on him, he had a disconcerting sense of her sexuality. Something in the way she looked at him. Something predatory.

  ‘Of course, when he got successful and subscriptions were going up every month, he never had to buy wine at all. It arrived on our doorstep. Cases of the stuff. Everyone wanted him to taste and rate their wines. What had started as a hobby, turned into a passion, and then an obsession.’ She examined the backs of her hands, as if they might provide some kind of window to the past. ‘That’s when we lost him. When he quit his job and the money began to come in, and we started being able to afford the things we’d only ever dreamed of.’ She shook her head at the irony of it. ‘Just as life should have begun to get good, it started falling apart.’

  ‘How did he make his money?’ Enzo was puzzled. ‘He couldn’t have earned that much from the newsletter, surely?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. There was a point when he got enough subscriptions that he could give up his job. But it was everything else that made him the money. The syndicated newspaper columns. The books-on Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone, Piedmont, Rioja. He was producing one a year, and they were all bestsellers. Then there were his radio slots, his half-hour weekly show on cable TV, speaking engagements.’

  ‘I’m surprised he had any time left over to taste the wines.’

  ‘Oh, he always had time for tasting wine. He had a custom-made tasting room in the house. He would spend hours in there. And when he left to go on tasting trips he would be away for weeks on end. You know, he could taste a hundred wines in the morning, have lunch, then go on tasting in the afternoon.’

  ‘If I tasted a hundred wines I wouldn’t be able to stand up.’

  Michelle laughed. ‘He didn’t swallow, Mister Macleod, just tasted and spat.’

  Enzo shook his head in wonder. ‘Even so. A hundred wines in a morning? How on earth could he ever remember one from another?’

  ‘He took notes, of course. But my father had an extraordinary memory. Some people have photographic memories. My father could remember smells and tastes. He could file them away then pull them back at will. He could pinpoint the grape, the year, and the chateau of a wine he hadn’t tasted in ten years.’ She was lost for several long moments in some sad reflection. ‘He had a pretty good memory in general. He used to tell us about when he was a kid, just four or five years old. His parents forced him to learn by heart all the US presidents, and all the US states, and made him rhyme them off as a party-piece for visitors. All the same, he had to train his sense of smell and taste. I used to hold his hand as we walked down the street, and he would close his eyes and identify all the smells that came to him. Cut grass. Tar. Rotting garbage. Cherry blossom. He was good at it.’ She drew a deep breath and brought herself back to Enzo’s original question. ‘So, yes, he always had time for tasting wine, Mister Macleod. It was his family he had no time for.’ She shrugged. ‘You know the rest, I guess. Mom divorced him. Got the house and half his money. And his difficult, adolescent daughter refused to talk to him ever again.’

  Their lamb came to the table then, along with potatoes that had been scooped out, mashed with cream and garlic, then stuffed back in their skins and roasted in the oven. The meat was smoky tender and perfectly pink. Enzo filled their glasses from a bottle of Domaine Sarrabelle Saint Andre, a hundred percent braucol aged in oak. It was soft and smooth, fruit and vanilla on the tongue.

  ‘So now you know our whole sordid little story,’ Michelle said. ‘But I don’t know anything about you. Are you married, Mister Macleod?’

  ‘Enzo.’

  ‘Are you married, Enzo?’

  He looked up and saw again that strange quality in her eyes, pupils dilated, a penetrating ring of green around black. She flicked her head to toss her hair back over her shoulders.

  ‘I was once,’ he said. ‘A long time ago. Back in Scotland. A girl I was at university with.’

  ‘Any children?’

  He avoided her eyes and focused on cutting his lamb. ‘A little girl. Kirsty. She’s a couple of years older than you now.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I met someone else.’

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Yeah, not a very original story, is it?’

  ‘She was French?’

  ‘Good guess.’

  ‘There had to be some reason you were here.’

  He sipped some more Saint Andre. ‘Her name was Pascale. I met her at a forensics conference in Nice. She was younger than me.’

  ‘Aren’t they always?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve always conformed to stereotypes. It’s easier than being original.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Oh, you know, not that different from your dad. My wife divorced me, got the house and just about everything else. And my little girl wouldn’t talk to me again.’

  He looked up to find that her eyes had softened. There was sympathy in them. ‘And there’s me been banging on all day about me and my dad.’ She reached out to put a hand over his, and he felt an electricity in her touch. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Of course not. Why should you?’ She left her hand over his, and he began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Anyway, we had a sort of rapprochement recently.’

  ‘You’re talking again?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘That’s what you meant when you said earlier about telling people you love them, because they might not be around tomorrow.’

  ‘Actually, I was thinking about Pascale.’ He gently slipped his hand out from under hers to scoop up some potato with his fork. It was easier if he concentrated on his food.

  He heard her small, sharp intake of breath. ‘She died?’

  ‘In childbirth. More than twenty years ago. Left me to bring up little Sophie all on my own.’

  ‘So you have two daughters?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And there’s never been anyone else?’

  He shrugged. ‘There’ve been women. Nothing lasting.’ He thought about Charlotte. She was the only woman who had ever meant anything to him after Pascale. But he still had no idea what he meant to her. And he wasn’t about to discuss that with Michelle.

  ‘That’s really hard to believe.’

  He looked up, surprised. ‘What is?’

  ‘A good-looking man like you, without a woman.’

  He felt trapped by her eyes and disconcerted by the hunger he saw in them. His mouth was dry, and there was a strange stab of desire in his loins. But she was far too young. ‘I told you, I’m not the sort of man who preys on young women.’

  ‘And there was me hoping you might just have been saying that to lull me into a false sense of security.’ Still she fixed him with eyes that seemed to penetrate the very depths of his darkest desires, and he knew she would be difficult to resist.

  III

  The balmy warm of the evening had given way to a slight autumn chill. It was carried in the humidity condensing on the grass as dew and gathering along the river to form a mist that would obscure the early sun of tomorrow morning. Enzo drew his 2CV alongside Michelle’s rental car where she had parked it that afternoon. There was condensation forming on the windscreen.

  They stepped into the wash of moonlight. She shivered and insinuated herself under his arm, running a
hand across his chest in search of warmth. He felt her own warmth through her tee-shirt and her breasts pressing into his side. Almost instinctively he put an arm around her shoulder. She turned her face upwards and pushed herself up on tip-toes to brush her lips against his in the lightest of kisses. ‘Are you going to invite me in for a nightcap?’

  ‘I only have whisky.’

  ‘I love whisky. I love it on a man’s breath when I kiss him. Sweet and smoky and sexy. But I’ve never tasted it on the lips of a real Scotsman before.’

  Enzo felt blood rushing to that place between his legs that would steal away all reason.

  They walked past the other cars parked there, and almost subliminally Enzo heard the tick, tick of a cooling radiator. A vehicle not long arrived. There were still lights on in the castle, and he assumed that the Lefevres were recently returned from an evening out.

  At the foot of the stairs, Michelle slipped out from under his arm and jumped on to the first step to turn and face him. Their eyes were on a level now. The green of hers almost glowed like a cat’s in the moonlight. She took his face in both her hands and kissed him. A long, searching kiss that made his legs nearly fold beneath him. She broke away and smiled. ‘Just wanted the before and after effect.’

  Enzo was not sure he could restrain himself long enough for an after effect. He fumbled for the keys in his pocket and climbed the stairs ahead of her to search in the dark for the keyhole. When, finally, he found it, the key wouldn’t turn. He had a moment of confusion. He was certain he could remember locking the door when they left. Then fear stole in to displace the desire that had occupied him only moments before. He pushed the door open and felt for the light switch, blinking in the sudden flood of light that it brought.

  She was sitting in the rocker facing the door, legs crossed beneath a long, flowing black skirt, revealing black leather boots with pointed toes. A black, cotton top dipped from her long, ivory neck to the swell of her full breasts. A black lace shawl was draped across shoulders nearly obscured by the cascade of dark, curling hair. She was rocking very gently back and forth, and her dark, dark eyes regarded Enzo and the young woman at his shoulder with what appeared to be dispassionate interest.