smart, and spring everything on Sabir at once. Prove what a clever man he was. Vainglory. That was what was going to do for him. The fatal hubris of the inadequate soul.
Milouins poked his head out of the salon and indicated to the footman that he should bring Calque inside. He was dangling Calque’s tape recorder like a yoyo from his right hand.
Strike one for the Corpus, thought Calque. I hope to hell they don’t torture me. That would be the final straw. It would never occur to them that I know precisely nothing.
The Countess was sitting in her customary seat, near the fireplace, with Madame Mastigou perched at her right shoulder, dictation pad at the ready.
Milouins positioned the tape recorder on the glass-topped occasional table in front of her as though it were a platter bearing John the Baptist’s severed head. Then, with a toss of his chin, he indicated that Calque should sit down.
‘Are you quite recovered from your previous injuries, Captain Calque? Madame Mastigou reminds me that you had been involved in a car accident when last we met. Alongside your assistant, Lieutenant…’
‘Lieutenant Macron. Yes. The man your son killed.’
The Countess’s eyes flared – the effect was like a dying bonfire receiving a sudden rush of cold air. ‘Please leave my son out of this, Captain Calque – my emotions on the subject are still very raw. It might act to your disadvantage.’
Calque could feel the Countess’s anger burning into him from across the room. He had the sudden, discomfiting conviction that the woman might actually be mad, and that no one in her entourage dared make the first move to have her sectioned. Working for the woman must be akin to being a senior Wehrmacht general in the final years of Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich.
The Countess drew herself up. It was clear by her attitude that she intended to cut directly to the chase. She pointed to the tape recorder. ‘You, or one of your associates, broke into my house early this morning. I assume that it was not merely to kidnap my daughter?’
Calque stared at her. What was the point of talking?
‘Milouins, where did you find this tape recorder?’
‘In the Captain’s car.’
‘And what sort of tape recorder is it?’
‘A voice-activated tape recorder, Madame.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means that it will switch itself on and off according to the volume of incoming sound.’
‘Instantly?’
‘It will respond to any sound whatsoever, Madame, yes. And it is designed to overrun. Meaning that once it has been triggered, it will continue to record for a certain period, even if the sound cuts off.’
‘Have you discovered its original place of concealment?’
‘Yes, Madame. Beneath the table in the Council Chamber. The marks of the electrical tape with which it was attached to the table are still clearly visible. They are also visible on the recorder.’
‘And the tape reel itself?’
‘The cassette, Madame? Nowhere to be found.’
The Countess turned to Calque. ‘That was clever of you, Captain Calque. That idea you had to hide the tape recorder in your car, where it would almost certainly be found. A cynic might go so far as to construe that you wished for it to be discovered. Why would that be, I wonder?’
Calque shrugged. His throat felt drier than a grain extractor.
‘Then I’ll tell you. Milouins has explained your machine to me in all its intricacies. As you can see, we know where it was hidden, and also when it was hidden, for logic dictates that you must have concealed it, illegally, during the search your policemen made of my house in May. Given this limited time frame, we have come to certain conclusions.’
Here we go, thought Calque. Bang goes my chance to bluff my way out of this.
‘Milouins cleans the Council Room at least once a month. No one else goes in there. Just him and a footman. So he conducted a little test while you were waiting outside in the hall. Play the tape, Milouins.’
Milouins retrieved a cassette tape from his pocket and placed it in the machine. He turned the volume to high and pressed play. The sound of a vacuum cleaner resonated throughout the room, followed by voices, and the bangs and crashes of moving furniture. Every now and again the tape would cut off and then start again, following a short period of silence. Madame Mastigou continued busily writing on her shorthand pad.
Calque knew what it felt like to be caught red-handed, with your fingers in the till. He must never again underestimate these people. And the Countess was not mad – that would have been too convenient. She was insane, with a hefty leavening of lunacy.
‘There. Interesting, isn’t it? I merely asked Milouins to recreate the exact sounds he would have made last week, whilst preparing the room for use. It is clear from his demonstration that you will have succeeded in recording nothing of any conceivable interest either to yourself or to the police, Captain Calque, on the ninety minutes of magnetic tape that you had at your disposal. If you had, you would have thrown the entire machine out of the window of your car, rather than just the cassette tape inside it.’
Calque decided to attempt a bluff anyhow. ‘I still have Lamia. And you have a murder you need to hush up. Even you can see that two people from the same household dying in violent circumstances within a few months of each other might stretch the bounds of coincidence. We ought to be able to come to some sort of accommodation, surely? I have considerable influence left on the force.’
The Countess glanced across at Madam Mastigou. Madame Mastigou consulted her brooch watch and nodded.
‘You misunderstand the situation, Captain Calque. My daughter, Lamia, will be back with us very shortly. At this exact moment two of my other children are entering your hotel in Cogolin and demanding to see their sister. She will leave with them, because she is a dutiful girl, and does not wish to vex her mother.’
Calque could feel the colour draining away from his face.
‘I own the main taxi service in the St Tropez peninsula, Captain Calque. In fact I own a considerable part of the peninsula itself. I invested a small part of my fortune in the local economy after my marriage – and very profitable it has been. You forget, perhaps, that my husband’s family have been Counts of this area for nine hundred years? Milouins simply called in the cab number and received an instant reply – the police and the tax authorities require each fare to be routinely logged within a central registration system, as you well know, so the process was a simple one. And Cogolin is hardly Siberia. What did you think? That you were dealing with amateurs?’
‘And the body? Out at Pampelonne?’
‘What body is that, Captain? My footman, Philippe Lemelle, has bipolar disorder. He has already absconded without leave three times during his present period of employment. Once he even sold all his possessions, including his car, to the first man he came across. Milouins came upon him living rough in Mandelieu. We took him back that time. In fact we’ve been very tolerant indeed with him – his family, after all, have been working for us for generations. But he was nevertheless given formal warning that if he absconded again, he would lose his job. That now appears to have happened.’
‘That’s bullshit, and you know it.’
‘Not according to our local doctor. Or to Milouins. Or to Monsieur Flavenot, our company registrar. I can assure you of that.’
‘I have access to the blood-stained car that killed him.’
‘Oh, please, Captain. Whoever drove that car also broke into my house and kidnapped one of its occupants – not to mention killing an innocent man via a hit-and-run. If we wished to pursue this matter, it is you and your associate who would find yourselves caught in the crossfire, not I. I think you will find, upon further reflection, that our interests coincide in this matter.’
Calque’s ears had begun to hum with tension. ‘What are you holding me for, then? You know everything. You control everything. I must be a massive irrelevance to you.’
‘You chose the word “irrelevance”, Captain, not I.’ The Countess stood up. ‘And we certainly aren’t holding you. You came here of your own free will. You may leave here equally freely. We have nothing more to say to one another.’
Calque rose to his feet in automatic echo of the Countess’s movement. What was it about the woman? Was it
