Fabien covered the distance between them in four quick strides and grabbed her wrist. ‘Don’t go down there!’
‘Why not?’
He jumped down beside her and lifted the candle. ‘I showed you before, remember?’ And he pushed her aside and started slowly down the stairs, holding the candle ahead of him. He had gone only three or four steps before the flame separated from the candle, and he dropped it, retreating quickly to the top of the stairs, grabbing fast lungfuls of air. He looked down into the pit where Bonneval’s body lay at an oddly twisted angle, blood pooling slowly across the tiles around his head. ‘It’s full of gas down there. He was probably gone before he hit the ground.’
Nicole was in shock. Chalk white. ‘It’s my fault. I killed him.’
‘He killed himself, Nicole. And God knows how many others.’
And the memory of fear replaced guilt. ‘Monsieur Macleod! What’s he done with him?’
Fabien’s face reflected a grim acceptance of the worst. But he didn’t express it. ‘I don’t know.’ He cocked his head, listening for a moment to the sound of pumps thundering in the chai. He took her hand. ‘Come on.’
They ran through into the old shed and Fabien flicked a row of switches, one after the other. Strip lights hummed and flashed overhead, and they realised that the sound of the pumps was coming from the next shed along.
Three pumps roared in the narrow aisle between two rows of stainless steel cuves. Pink tubing, like giant worms, lay around the floor, feeding in and out of red plastic tubs. Yet more pumps sat idle on trolleys. Nicole glanced helplessly at Fabien as his eyes darted around the chai, following tubes up to the metal catwalk above them. ‘He’s pumping must from one cuve to the other.’ He frowned, and then clarity filled his eyes. ‘Jesus. Macleod must be in the tank.’
He let go of her hand, and she ran after him, as he sprinted for the stairs that led up to the access grilles. By the time she had climbed up after him and run along the walkway, he was crouching down at the neck of a cuve. She could see the dark must pulsing through the semitranslucent plastic of the tube and heard the sound of it crashing into the tank. Fabien held an inspection lamp over the open edge of the neck and they peered inside. The foaming red juice was nearly up to the top. Nicole’s face was creased with anxiety. She turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eye.
‘If he’s in there,’ he said. ‘He’s dead.’
A small cry of anguish broke from her lips, just as an arm broke the surface of the must, streaming red fingers grasping for the black pipes that fed water to the radiator. Enzo’s upturned face, mouth open, gasping for air, followed it for the briefest of moments before disappearing again into the froth.
Fabien grabbed for the hand as it lost its grip on the pipes, and Nicole watched in horror as fingers slipped through grasping fingers. And then somehow, at the last, formed a bond, and Fabien reached further in to seize his wrist. He braced himself against the neck of the cuve and pulled with all his might.
Enzo broke the surface once again, and this time his free hand grasped the lip of the neck. Nicole reached over, and between them she and Fabien pulled him free of the cuve. He scrambled for footholds and toppled over the rail, to lie gasping on the catwalk, stained red by juice that seemed to stream from every pore.
Nicole was sobbing with relief. She knelt beside him, repeating his name over and over again. He opened his eyes, and for a moment met Fabien’s, a world of misunderstanding still between them. And as he pulled himself up on one elbow, Nicole threw her arms around him and pulled his head into the cleavage between large, quivering breasts. Where he was sure, for several long seconds, that he was going to suffocate.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I
Nicole sat watching the President’s secretary copying a document and wondered why she was there. She had informed the university in writing that owing to personal circumstances she would be unable to continue her studies at the department of biology this year. She had been clear and unambiguous. But the summons from the university President had been equally clear. Her presence was required at two-thirty on Thursday afternoon. And she had begun to fret that perhaps they were going to demand compensation for loss of fees. Which would be something that neither she nor her father could afford.
Well, if she couldn’t pay, she couldn’t pay. They couldn’t make her. Only Monsieur Macleod could get blood out of a stone.
She sighed and glanced through an open door to the mezzanine where students stood around in animated groups, talking and laughing, drinking coffee and making the most of whatever time they had between lectures. And she envied them. She missed student life already, and nothing she could do at home seemed to please her father. No one, it appeared, could live up to the impossibly high standards set by her mother. And there was no way she could escape the daily comparison.
She was thoroughly miserable.
From behind the closed door of the President’s office, she heard men’s voices raised in what sounded like anger, and she was sure that she could hear Monsieur Macleod’s strange, Scottish-accented French among them.
‘I object to being ordered here like some schoolboy to be dressed down by the headmaster!’ Director Frauziol was red-faced with indignation. ‘This university has no jurisdiction over the police scientifique. We chose not to participate in your department of forensic science for the simple reason that we refuse to work with amateurs.’ He looked pointedly at Enzo.
Monsieur le President was the personification of calm, pouring oil on troubled waters. ‘Now why don’t we all just relax, gentlemen? You were not ordered here, Monsieur le Directeur. Your presence was requested. Isn’t that correct, Monsieur Gineste?’
Everyone looked towards the representative from the Ministry of Justice. ‘Absolutely, Monsieur le President. We are here to find a means of facilitating cooperation between the Toulouse laboratory of the police scientifique and the University of Paul Sabatier. At the request of the Garde des Seaux. We are all here at his pleasure.’
‘Well, I find it rich,’ Enzo said, ‘being called an amateur by an idiot.’ He glared at Director Frauziol.
Frauziol was unruffled. ‘An amateur is what you are, Macleod.’
‘ Monsieur Macleod, if you don’t mind. And in my case, the only reason you can’t call me a professional is that I don’t get paid for what I do. But I’m better qualified than you are.’
‘Qualifications that are not recognised in France.’
Enzo stabbed a finger at him across the room. ‘Well, let me tell you what the French press and public will recognise very quickly when they see it. And that’s incompetence. Yours.’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, there’s no need for this.’ Monsieur le President looked longingly from the window towards the Lycee Bellevue at the far side of the Route de Narbonne. It was clear he wished he were somewhere else.
‘Yes there is,’ Enzo said. ‘The police scientifique is a publicly funded body, with a responsibility towards future generations of forensic scientists.’
‘We don’t have the time or manpower to waste sending trained scientists to talk to students, monsieur.’
‘Well, you’d better find both.’ Enzo leaned over and opened his canvas satchel. He pulled out a plastic evidence bag containing a white glove. ‘You’ll recognise this?’
The Director paled. ‘That was an oversight.’
‘An oversight? You call something that might well have cost men their lives an oversight? I would call it professional ineptitude.’
The fonctionnaire from the Ministry leaned forward to peer at the glove. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
Enzo said, ‘A vital piece of blood evidence on an inside finger of this glove, which was missed by the lab in Toulouse, could have led to an earlier resolution of the murder of Gil Petty, and prevented the killing of others, including Petty’s daughter and Gendarme David Roussel. It belonged to Laurent de Bonneval’s father. Who, by a
