Enzo watched with a mixture of alarm and incomprehension. Then heard a soft, swift current of air as Bonneval released the rope. He turned as something dark and heavy swung out of nowhere and knocked him from his feet. His head hit concrete with a resounding crack. And in the moment before blackness consumed him, he found himself looking into the flickering flame of the candle, red-painted steps descending beyond it to eternity. Into the abyss of which Charlotte had warned him. He saw his own blood making a pool around his head. And he knew with an absolute certainty, that there was nothing he could do to stop Bonneval from pushing him down the stairs to his death.
II
His whole world was filled with a rushing sound so all consuming that he could hear nothing else. His eyes were open, but he was blind. He could move, but only slowly, his entire body constrained by a softness he could sense but not feel. He had no conception of time or space. Only pain. A pain so intense he thought his head would burst. He remembered the flickering flame of the candle. The red stairs descending into light. Was this what lay at the foot of the steps? Was this death?
And yet he felt so very much alive. If only he could find some shred of comprehension, grasp some reference to a world he might understand. He fought through pain in search of illumination and found it in the air he breathed. Thick and sweet and filled with the fragrance of freshly crushed fruit. Grapes. His feet found solid form beneath him, and he tried to stand up. But a solid stream of heavy, wet liquid knocked him over again. And now it filled his nose and mouth. He tasted the sweetness of the grape juice, the pulp of its flesh, and realised he was completely submerged in freshly pressed must.
In panic he pushed up and broke the surface. The jet of crushed grape broke over his shoulder, and he spun away from it, hands outstretched, until he found the round smooth stainless steel wall that contained him. He followed it round, defining in his brain the limit of his circular prison, and understanding broke over him like the juice that thundered down from above. He was in the bottom of a cuve. The must had not yet begun its fermentation, otherwise the oxygen would already have been displaced by carbonic gas.
But why had Bonneval not simply pushed him into the pit? And even as the question formed in his mind, Enzo knew the answer. The killer would only have had to haul him out again. And Enzo was a big man, bigger than Bonneval’s other victims. It would have been hard enough for him to drag the dead weight of the Scotsman across the chai and bundle him into the cuve through the access hatch.
The thought of the hatch gave him fresh hope. It was, doubtless, how he had got in. It might be his way out.
He crouched down, submerged again, and felt around until he found the hatch and the seal around it. But to his disappointment realised that there was no way to release it from the inside. He broke the surface once more, and became aware that he was almost up to his neck now. There was no way he could float in something this dense. Once it was over his head, he would drown in it. And there was nothing he could do.
Blind fear gripped him. And he craned his head back, peering desperately into the darkness above. There had to be light. The lid must be off to allow the tube access to the cuve. He could hear the motor now, above the thunder of the juice, pumping it under pressure. From the pressoir? From another cuve. Enzo had no way of knowing. But at last he found light. The merest trace of it. And only in the sense that it gave vague dark form to the stream of juice that gushed down from above. Seeing it, he realised that halfway down the jet divided into two streams. That there was something there. An obstruction mid- cuve. He couldn’t see it. He reached up and couldn’t touch it. It was too far above his head. But in his soul he knew that it was his only salvation. He crouched down, submerged again beneath the heavy, sweet, thick juice and pushed up with all his might. He stretched and stretched into darkness and his fingers touched something cold and solid, before he slipped back into the must. And he realised in that moment what it was. One of the wafer thin radiators, fed cold water through black tubing, that they lowered into cuves to cool fermenting wine. If he could somehow get a hold of the thing, it just might be a lifeline. Literally. But it seemed the most slender of threads on which to hang his life. He roared his anger and frustration into the void and prepared himself to jump again, with barely any remaining hope to sustain him.
III
Nicole saw the floodlit facade of the chateau at the end of its long avenue of trees. Dust rose up in the night all around them from the wheels of Fabien’s four-by-four. It had been his suggestion they come here, after they had failed to find Enzo at the gite.
As they circled the lawn in front of the main entrance, Nicole pointed with excitement to Enzo’s 2CV parked outside the chai.
‘He’s here!’
Fabien pulled in beside it and they jumped out on to the gravel forecourt. Nicole started for the chateau, but Fabien grabbed her arm. ‘There’s a light in the chai. I can hear pumps going.’
They followed the old brick wall of the chai along to a door that stood open, bleeding feeble light out into the night. The crumbling brickwork of Hubert de Bonneval was patched and repaired with pebbles from the river. Fabien pulled the door wide, and they stepped over the tube that fed carbonic gas up from the maintenance pit below the cuves.
Laurent de Bonneval looked up, startled, as Nicole followed Fabien inside. He had failed to register their arrival above the thunder of the pumps. He was crouched at the top of the steps with a bucket and brush, scrubbing at the concrete. Beyond him, a sack of sand dangled from the roof on the end of a rope. A candle burned on the apron above him, down now to its last inch. Dull fluorescent strip lights flickered overhead. Bonneval stood up and climbed quickly on to the apron.
‘What do you want?’
Fabien stared him down. ‘It was you who killed Petty and Coste, wasn’t it?’
Bonneval gave a small snort of derision. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’
‘Because the mineral fingerprint of the wine taken from Serge Coste’s stomach shows that the grapes were grown at La Croix Blanche.’
Bonneval raised an eyebrow. He seemed almost amused. ‘Do they? In that case it must have been you who killed them, Fabien.’
‘That’s what Macleod thought.’
‘Did he?’
‘But what he didn’t know, that you and I do, is that I didn’t make any wine the year Petty went missing. I was reequipping my chai. Remember? You should, because I sold all my grapes to you.’
Nicole stepped forward, fearful and aggressive, and Fabien held her arm. ‘Where’s Monsieur Macleod?’
‘I have no idea.’
Fabien said, ‘His car’s outside, Laurent.’
‘What were you doing when we came in?’ Nicole pulled free of Fabien’s grasp and moved towards the stairs that led to the pit. She looked down at the bucket. Soapy water on the floor around it was marbled with veins of red, seeping across the cement and spilling onto the top step. ‘That’s blood.’ She swung towards Bonneval. ‘What have you done?’
There was a strange, sick smile on his face, but he said nothing, and then looked startled as she lunged for him. He stepped back to avoid her and caught his feet in a tangle of coiled tubing. The moment hung in the air, as if some unseen finger had pressed a pause button. Bonneval glanced behind him, as he tried to catch his balance. There was no containing rail here along the edge of the apron, only a sheer drop into the pit. His arms windmilled as he fought to prevent the fall. Wide eyes stared at Fabien, a silent plea for help. But there was nothing the young winemaker could do. And, as if the pause had been released, he toppled backwards into space. Nicole’s scream filled the room, before they heard the smack of his body as it hit the floor below.
‘Oh, my God, I’ve killed him!’ She jumped down from the apron, and started down the stairs.
