The cicadas took up again around 8:30 in the evening. The mistral had suddenly stopped in the middle of the afternoon, as if somebody had turned off a fan up on Mont Blanc where the wind came from. By suppertime the air was pleasantly cool, and the water Blanc gulped down from the plastic bottle deliciously cold. He had showered for what seemed like hours to get the stench of smoke and blood from his pores. He realized he had missed the cicadas.
He had been flying on autopilot for the last few hours. He couldn’t remember the noise the Sig-Sauer had made, just the kickback from each shot, a dull punch to the outside of the elbow. He couldn’t remember Lafont’s screams, just the red splashes that appeared on his shirt growing ever larger until they covered his whole torso. He couldn’t remember what Aveline had said to him, only her hands as she grabbed his right arm and pushed it up. He couldn’t remember what the mayor yelled at him, just the spittle flying from his mouth.
The first sound Blanc actually recalled hearing was a curse and a deep male voice, curiously muffled. “Goddamn tourists!” Three pompiers in full kit and breathing masks beneath their silver helmets had broken through the undergrowth while Aveline and he were kneeling next to Lafont trying to stem the bleeding with some strips of cotton torn from Blanc’s T-shirt. Then the firemen saw the wounded man. Blanc responded by jumping to his feet and showing his police badge, a rather absurd gesture in the middle of a burning forest.
If the firemen hadn’t put rubber masks over their faces, from which they greedily sucked in a flow of oxygen, they might well have suffocated. But in the end they made it back up the hill to the roadside where the blue lights of large fire engines, two ambulances, and half a dozen blue Méganes were waiting. Lafont was taken into the back of one of the ambulances. Suddenly Commandant Nkoulou was there and ordered two gendarmes to sit next to the stretcher in the ambulance, which then set off with a patrol car escort.
Eventually Blanc had found himself back at his desk, staring out of the window, waiting for a call from the emergency department from the Hôpital Nord in Marseille, where they had taken Lafont. Aveline was at the court in Aix. Tonon had shown him the Kalashnikov they had found in the steel cabinet in the town hall. Fabienne was writing notes for the file, staring for hours on end at her computer, avoiding looking at him. Then the call from the hospital came and Tonon opened a bottle of rosé and Fabienne had kissed him on both cheeks, and Nkoulou came in and said he could go home.
* * *
Amongst the bits and pieces he had brought from his Paris apartment was a radio alarm clock, a promotional gift in a box that Geneviève and he had never even opened. Now Blanc had set it up to the rear of the house, so its aerial might receive a signal. While the digital display still showed a blinking 00:00 because he had never bothered to set the time, the nine o’clock news was droning out of the plastic loudspeaker. The forest fire had just managed to make the penultimate item on the national news: almost thirty acres wiped out, the mistral gusting at up to fifty-five miles an hour, the speedy intervention of the firefighters. The gendarmes in Miramas had arrested a man who had been too lazy to take an old mattress down to the garbage dump and instead had set fire to it on the roadside on the route départementale. The very final item was the arrest of Lafont “in connection with investigations into a murder case and local corruption.”
So Lafont will only be charged with the murder of Moréas, Blanc thought. He was too weak to be interrogated, the doctors at Marseille’s Hôpital Nord had said. Maybe they owed him a favor or two. One way or the other, it would give Lafont time to think up a strategy. If he denied having anything to do with the death of the building contractor, they would be unlikely to dispute his defense. After all, what did they have to prove he had killed Fuligni? And then what would happen? At the trial at the courthouse in Aix, Aveline wouldn’t want to get involved in a charge that had no hope of success. She would let Fuligni’s death pass as an accident, if she even mentioned it at all. None of the lawyers would mention Fuligni, and no verdict would be pronounced by a judge. Lafont would pass as merely the man who had taken out a violent guy everybody had been afraid of. All the old allegations against Moréas would come up again, the files Tonon had kept up all those years would be opened again. Who knew, maybe Marius himself would have to take the witness stand. A clever defense lawyer could do something with that. In the end Lafont could come out as the man who got rid of a thug the police had failed to put away in twenty years. Maybe even the good guy.
He heard the knocking of a diesel engine coming from the little road. A white, modest C3 he had never seen before drove through his gate. Blanc shot to his feet, suddenly nervous. The oblique rays of the evening sun reflected off the windshield so he couldn’t make out who was in the driver’s seat. Whoever it was drove up to the old olive oil mill so fast that the tires sent up clouds of dust. Instinctively he reached for his belt, but he had left the Sig-Sauer on a shelf in the bedroom. The driver’s door opened.
Aveline.
It took him a moment to recognize her. She was wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans and, despite the late hour, large sunglasses, covering a wide plaster on the side of her forehead. Her hair was hidden by a blue baseball cap with the words NOVA SCOTIA on it.
“What sort of car is that?” he asked, walking toward her.
“It’s a rental, from the garage. Until the new C5 is delivered.”
“At the state’s expense, I assume.”
“It was an accident incurred while working.”
“It’s a good thing our juges d’instruction don’t have too many accidents while working.”
She took off her sunglasses and smiled. “Are you worried about the financial drain on the French taxpayer, mon Capitaine?”
“I’m worried about you, Madame le juge.” He came a few steps closer to her.
“You would have done better to worry about yourself.”
“Does your husband intend to send me to the guillotine?”
“He’s already sharpened the blade and hoisted it.”
“I can already feel a twitching in my neck.” He was standing right next to her now, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Then my husband realized that the scandal surrounding Lafont was not only unavoidable, but potentially useful. The elections are imminent. The minister will personally make sure the ‘Affaire Lafont’ is the basis to launch a campaign against local corruption. La ville propre. Clean up the town. A good slogan, don’t you think.”
“And what role am I expected to play in this?”
“None at all. Commandant Nkoulou will play the leading role in this little comedy. You should be glad your head is still on your shoulders.”
“I am indeed,” said Blanc, taking her in his arms and kissing her.
She allowed him a long embrace, then she leaned back a bit and looked him in the eyes. It was a look that seemed to be simultaneously cold and passionate. “Let’s be quite clear on one thing,” she said in a soft voice. “I have no intention of ever leaving my husband.” Then she kissed him again.
My life just keeps getting more complicated, Blanc thought.