internet, who would have known about it?’
‘If we knew the answer to that,’ Enzo said, ‘we might be a lot closer to knowing who killed him.’
It was Nicole who spotted the flaw in the logic. ‘But whoever killed Gil Petty, also killed the man we found last night, right?’
Enzo nodded, the memory of the autopsy still only too fresh in his mind. ‘Almost certainly.’
‘But you said this morning there didn’t appear to be any connection between them. Has that changed?’
‘No. The second victim was a local man called Serge Coste. He managed a bricolage store in Gaillac. No connection with Petty, or the wine industry.’
‘So wine wasn’t necessarily the motive for the murders.’
Enzo inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘You might be right, Nicole. And it’s certainly a danger that, if we focus too much on motive, we could miss stuff that’s right under our noses. Which is why we’ll carry on working our way, step by dull step, through every scrap of information we can dig out. Just like the Chinese.’ He turned towards Sophie. ‘Do I get a glass of my own wine or not?’
‘Sure, Papa.’ She brought him a glass and pecked him on the cheek. ‘Me and Bertrand’ll just go and get our bags from the car and get ourselves sorted out up the stairs.’
Enzo took a small sip of the Memoire and enjoyed the silky vanilla texture of it on his tongue. Then he took a full mouthful and felt himself relax a little as the alcohol slipped back over his throat. He let the aftertaste fill his mouth and nasal passages for a moment before turning back to the computer screen. He selected a vineyard at random, Domaine Sarrabelle, and went into the folder. There were four wines reviewed in separate documents. The Saint-Andre that he and Michelle had drunk the previous night, a chardonnay, a syrah and a sweet vin doux. He opened the syrah review, and sat staring at it for a long time, lost in a deep, puzzled concentration.
‘What’s wrong?’ Michelle’s voice came to him through a fog of confusion.
He looked up. ‘You said your father was obsessed with secrecy. Did you know he used a cipher?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘No, I didn’t.’
Enzo hit the print button, and the inkjet printer on the bookcase chattered and spewed out a page. He lifted it up and crossed to his whiteboard and began copying onto it what he had printed out. The others watched in silence as his blue marker pen squeaked its way across the shiny, white surface. He wrote:
Domaine Sarrabelle-Syrah -2002
100 % Syrah
Tile red oh amp; nm. ky, ks amp; la ky ms amp; nj. wjc. gf+ amp; lbj++ 5–8 jb ca
As he turned around, Sophie and Bertrand came heaving huge travel bags in from the terrasse. Enzo eyed the bags in disbelief. ‘I thought you were only here for a week?’
‘We are,’ Sophie said. ‘I had to leave so-o much stuff behind.’ She looked at the board. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Petty’s review of Domaine Sarrabelle’s 2002 syrah.’
She gazed at it for a moment. ‘It’s in code.’
Enzo grimaced. ‘Well spotted.’
Sophie ignored his sarcasm. ‘Great. A puzzle. You’re good at those, Papa.’
Enzo looked at the board. Random groupings of letters and numbers in twos and threes. Petty had been a man of exceptional talent and intelligence. It was not going to be a simple matter, he knew, to unpick a code created by him.
II
Nicole lay on her back gazing up at the ceiling in the dark. She glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was just after midnight. Her mind was a seething mass of facts and fears. Random pairs of letters swam in front of her eyes. Without a starting point, how could they ever crack Petty’s code? She tried to focus on it, but the recollection of the folder entitled La Croix Blanche kept forcing its way into her thoughts. Why had Fabien told her that he had turned Petty away, when Petty had in fact reviewed his wines?
The reflected headlights of a vehicle in the yard swept across her ceiling, and she heard a car door slam shut. Fabien had not been home when she got back to the house, and she had received only a chilly greeting from Madame Marre.
She slipped out from between the covers and pulled her curtains aside in time to see Fabien, caught in the full glare of security lamps outside the house, striding across the yard and into the chai. After a moment, lights flickered on in the shed, and fluorescent light fell out into the night. Nicole made a very fast decision, and turned quickly to pull on her jeans and drag a warm, hooded sweatshirt over her head. She slipped into her training shoes and opened the door to the hall. A night-light cast the faintest glow down its length. She listened for a moment and, hearing nothing, closed the door behind her and made her way carefully towards the stairs. The top step creaked loudly and she froze, listening intently for any indication that the formidable Madame Marre might have heard her. But all that broke the silence of the house was the heavy tick, tick of an antique grandfather clock in the downstairs hall.
She hurried down the remaining stairs and out of the front door to the garden. There she stopped and breathed the cool night air and was relieved to be out of the house. The lights were still on in the chai. Away to her left, agricultural machinery sat in the brooding shadow of a long, open shed with a rust-red tin roof. At the far end of the old farmyard, beyond the chai, was the shed where the wines of La Croix Blanche were ageing in new oak barrels. Its door stood open, and a wedge of light lay like a carpet in the approach to the entrance.
As she ran across the yard, the security lights came on, and she felt very exposed. She jogged down the length of the chai, stopping only to gather her breath as she approached the shed where the barrels were stored. The lights went off again behind her, and she approached the open door with a great deal of nervous apprehension. She paused in the doorway and peered inside. Rows of barrels, stacked two high, ran off towards the back of the shed. The central strip of each barrel was stained pink between the cooper’s bands of steel. Darker rivulets, like blood, ran down their bellies from cork bungs. The wine was still fermenting, and the smell of it in the air was thick enough to cut.
There was no sound, and no sign of Fabien. She stepped inside and saw an opening off to her left leading to another room filled with yet more barrels. There was an electric pump on the floor, and silver tubing coiled around it like a giant snake.
‘What the hell are you doing here!’ The sound of Fabien’s voice startled her, and she turned in a panic, clutching her chest. He was standing in the doorway, wearing his ubiquitous baseball cap, glowering at her out of the darkness.
‘I was looking for you.’
‘This is no place for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s dangerous.’
Nicole almost laughed. ‘Dangerous? Wine? Only if you drink too much of it.’
But he didn’t laugh with her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the yard. ‘Come with me.’
Nicole followed reluctantly, although in truth, she had very little choice. ‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
He took her through the chai, where pumps were thundering in the still of the night to transfer freshly fermenting grape juice from one cuve to another. Past rows of brand new stainless steel tanks, and old resin containers from Fabien’s father’s time, to a large room through the back. There, the tops of sunken cuves rose fifty centimetres from the concrete floor. Fabien let go of her hand and knelt down at the nearest of them, and carefully removed the lid.
‘Kneel down.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do what I tell you.’
Scared now, Nicole did what she was told and knelt down beside him.
‘Take a sniff in there.’
She looked down into the cuve and saw the yellow-white frothing grape juice in full fermentation.
‘Go on, smell it.’
With great apprehension she leaned over to smell the fermenting juice and felt her head snap back so
