Blanc got back to his old mill in late afternoon. Nobody had broken in. He fetched a chair out of the house, sat down on it in the shadow of the plane tree, and opened one of the bottles of Bernard’s rosé. He approached the glass carefully, the childhood memory still haunting him. He was tempted to knock it back like medicine, get it down and over with. But he repressed the instinct and took just a tiny sip. It was cool. Refreshing. Just a little sour. He leaned back, relieved that at least he hadn’t re-experienced the shock of his first taste. It was a good thirst-quencher. I must be careful, though, he told himself. Otherwise I could end up like Marius. He took another sip.
Rheinbach and Moréas. Why would the German painter have been asking questions about his neighbor? Had he heard the old stories about his car-hijacking days? Maybe something similar had happened to him. Or could there be something else behind it? Maybe a bit of blackmail between neighbors? It didn’t look like the painter was making a fortune on jigsaw puzzles. Maybe he was hard up enough to think he could make some money out of Moréas by blackmailing him with details about his past? On the other hand, if the painter really was a blackmailer, it didn’t make much sense for him to kill off his victim.
“I’ll pay Monsieur Rheinbach a visit tomorrow,” he told the wine bottle, and then put the cork back in, for fear of losing himself in one-sided conversations.
* * *
The next morning he picked up Tonon from the gendarmerie station, telling his colleague on the way to the painter’s house what he had found about the research the German had been involved in. He no longer needed Tonon to navigate for him: He had memorized the route.
“You’re starting to drive like a local,” Tonon remarked.
Blanc remembered the story about his colleague’s accident and slowed down, to the extent that a farmer in an ancient R4 behind them began honking. The two gendarmes ignored him, until eventually they turned into the painter’s driveway.
“Are you sure he’s at home?” the lieutenant asked. “He was off to paint the lavender fields.”
“Maybe he’s realized by now that they’re not in bloom yet.” Blanc pointed with his right hand at the Clio parked by the door.
And indeed the painter himself opened the door. “Glad to see you got back from Luberon so soon,” the captain said by way of a greeting.
“I only knocked out a couple of watercolors,” the German replied, giving them a querying look. “The main part of the job has still to be done.”
“I see,” Blanc replied, in a tone of voice that suggested he didn’t believe a word of it. “Can you spare us five minutes, Monsieur Rheinbach?”
The painter led his guests, for better or worse, into his studio. Blanc noticed a half-finished bottle of rosé on the table. It was a bit early in the day for that sort of refreshment. They sat down on three hard chairs. “Monsieur Rheinbach. Why did you not tell us last time that a few days before the crime you had been at the editorial offices of La Provence, asking questions about your neighbor?”
The artist’s face went red. “Does that make me a suspect?”
“I’m just curious.”
Rheinbach began playing nervously with a tube of green oil paint, then noticed what he was doing and quickly put the tube back on a side table. “I was afraid,” he said eventually, sounding ashamed of himself. “Afraid of this guy. I had only come across him a few times, happily. But a couple of times when I had been out in the woods painting flowers he had come up to me and acted threatening.”
“How do you mean? Did he have a weapon? Did he insult or mock you? Something must have made you feel afraid.”
“I can’t quite explain it, mon Capitaine, I mean he didn’t exactly produce a weapon or hit me or anything. When I saw him out in the woods with his hunting rifle, he ignored me. And all in all, he hardly ever said a word to me. It was really just the way he looked at me. He just stared at me, like a wolf. A predator eyeing its prey.”
“Why didn’t you go to the gendarmerie?”
“To complain about the way he looked at me? They’d have thought I was mad.”
“So instead you went to the newspaper journalists.”
“I didn’t tell them anything either. I just wanted to find out who this Moréas guy really was. I wanted to know if I was living next door to a human time bomb, or just some harmless nutcase. That’s not too unreasonable, is it?”
“So what did you find out?”
The painter let his hands fall on his lap. “Nothing. I had Googled him, but there are hundreds of men with the same name in France—but as far as I could tell, not one of them was the guy next door. There is simply no trace online of a Charles Moréas in Caillouteaux. I found that just as disconcerting. But as I couldn’t think what else to do, I went down to the newspaper offices, but the journalists wouldn’t tell me anything. I had the impression they were afraid too.”
Blanc leaned back and closed his eyes. The story was so pathetic it might well be true. In which case Rheinbach’s researches might have been nothing more than the reaction of a frightened man trying to protect himself. A man so afraid that he would shoot dead the supposed “human bomb” without warning down by the garbage dump? He would have liked to take a look around in this house undisturbed. Maybe later.
The captain got to his feet and nodded in farewell. Just when he reached the door, he turned back around and said: “What were you doing in the Caillouteaux town archives on Wednesday, June twenty-sixth?”
Tonon stared at him, surprised by the revelation. And Rheinbach, whose face had more or less regained his normal color, went red again. “The old church,” he eventually managed to stammer. He didn’t even ask why Blanc had known he had been at the archives. “Saint-Vincent, twelfth century. I wanted to paint it. But for that I needed to send my employers a few lines of text that they could put on the jigsaw puzzle box. So I was doing some research in the archive. It’s part of my job.”
Tonon said nothing until they were back in the car. “How did you find that out?” he asked, as soon as he had pulled shut the passenger door.
The captain tapped the tip of his nose and said, “Instinct,” with a wry smile.
“Don’t bullshit me.”
Blanc laughed and turned the ignition key. Then he told him how he discovered the fact by accident. “Strange though, that Rheinbach needed to spend six and a half hours in the archive just for a few lines of text about an old decrepit church.”
Even before they had turned off the path through the woods onto the route départementale, Blanc reached for the radio, called the gendarmerie, and asked for an appointment with the juge d’instruction. “She’s working at home today, in her house in Caillouteaux,” a bored voice said through the static. Corporal Baressi.
“Give me the address,” the captain demanded impatiently. Why was everything down here so hard?
“Number 5, rue du Passe-Temps.”
“You can’t get there in the car,” Tonon told him. “We can park on the square by the church and you can walk from there.”
“Okay, we can walk.”
“I’m staying in the car. I don’t fancy a cup of coffee with Madame le juge.”
Blanc stepped on the gas without bothering to answer. His colleague was afraid of the woman. This could become problematic. He drove up the hill to Caillouteaux and parked in the shade of the bell tower. Of Saint-Vincent church. It would make a good design for a jigsaw puzzle. If Rheinbach ever got around to painting it. Tonon took off his seat belt and made himself comfortable in the passenger seat, pointing to a perfectly polished metallic blue Citroën C5. “Monsieur and Madame Vialaron-Allègre’s car.”
“An office car?”
“Paid for by your taxes.”
Rue du Passe-Temps was actually a sidewalk of polished stone slabs, leading southwest from the square: stone-built houses on one side, on the other a wall behind which the hill fell sharply away toward the Étang de Berre. Blanc felt as if he were walking along the top of an old medieval castle wall. Number 5 was an old two-story town house of brushed-clean natural stone with dark green wooden shutters on the windows and door. There was a modern bell in a niche next to the door with a discreet security camera just above it. The captain shrugged and pressed the bell.
The juge d’instruction herself opened the door. She was wearing pale Pierre Cardin jeans and an ochre blouse, and a trail of pale blue smoke rose from the cigarette between the slim fingers of her left hand. On this occasion there was a heavy steel diver’s watch on her wrist, a model for a man that on her slim forearm looked as brutal as a handcuff. Blanc forced himself not to stare at it. She led him down a bright hallway, with Japanese woodcuts on the walls, into an office that opened onto an inner courtyard and a little pool with sparkling blue water. Somewhere in the distance he could hear piano music. Chopin, or maybe Liszt?
Aveline Vialaron-Allègre offered him a seat in an English club armchair with aromatic leather. Her Empire-style desk of dark wood was piled high with papers and folders.
“Have you got any further, mon Capitaine?”
“I’ve uncovered a few things that irritate me,” he began. “They might be clues. Or they might be meaningless.” Blanc paused. He was always careful with initial clues. Don’t try to tie yourself down to one version of events, motives, or even suspects. Stay open-minded. Don’t stop looking and listening too soon. It was an approach that in Paris had driven his colleagues, bosses, and even juges d’instruction to theatrical sighs and rolling of the eyes. The woman opposite him, however, remained calm, giving him her full attention. Against his will he had to admit that his opinion of Madame le juge had gone up a notch. So he told her about the building contractor, Fuligni, and his row with Moréas down at the harbor. About the architect, Le Bruchec, who had felt threatened, who was good with weapons, and who had been seen at the garbage dump with the murder victim. And about Monsieur Rheinbach and his unusual research into the life of his neighbor.
“Each one of these three men had a motive,” Blanc concluded. “But none of their motives is wholly convincing. A row over a mooring place? A suspected break-in and theft of sporting equipment? The vague threat of a ‘wolflike’ stare? Of course people have been murdered in such circumstances. But a cold-blooded execution with an automatic weapon and subsequent immolation of the body? I just don’t think any of these men are capable of that.”
Aveline Vialaron-Allègre looked at him pensively. “So, a settling of scores between drug dealers?”
“Possible, but unlikely. The forensics people were in Moréas’s house and on every piece of land he owned, searched his motorbike and his old boat. Our colleagues in Marseille asked around in the drug world. Nothing. Nobody mentioned Charles Moréas and nobody seemed interested in his murder.”
“So, what do you intend to do now?”
Blanc was listening for traces of irony in the question, but it seemed to be perfectly serious. “I need a warrant to search Rheinbach’s house.”
The juge d’instruction leaned back and took a deep draw on her cigarette. “To look for a Kalashnikov under a jigsaw puzzle painter’s bed?” Now the irony was obvious.
The captain breathed in and out. “There’s something not quite right about this artist. Who runs down to the local newspaper editorial office to ask questions about their neighbor?”
“Not in itself, however, sufficient cause to make him a suspect. The man gave you an explanation. You might not believe him. Eh bien, that is your problem. But you can’t ransack his house based on that alone.”
“I’m not intending to ransack it. I just want to…” Blanc hesitated. To find a Kalashnikov? Absurd. Something else, something suspicious? But what? “Forget it,” he said in the end, giving up.
“From everything you’ve told me, the clues point more toward Le Bruchec,” the juge d’instruction replied. “After all, he was the last person seen with the victim. But I have known Lucien for half a lifetime and I was a good friend of his wife’s.” She shook her head. For a second her mask of cool elegance slipped and Blanc thought he could see sadness in her face. “Just to think of a man like Lucien running around with a Kalashnikov is grotesque, let alone the idea of him executing someone in cold blood. I am impressed by the thoroughness of your investigations, mon Capitaine, but I can’t see that you’ve presented me with a suspect. Keep looking!”
She led him back down the hallway, opened the door, and they were looking out onto a broad panorama that stretched to the distant horizon. It was as if from the protective stone shelter of her house there was a direct view of heaven.
Blanc was impressed. “The gateway to the world.”
For the first time Aveline Vialaron-Allègre smiled, if only for a fraction of a second. “Provence is a beautiful part of the country. And hard, even if it takes a little longer to realize that. And the people here are like that land they live on.” This time she did shake his hand.
* * *
“You don’t need to say a word,” Tonon grunted sleepily when Blanc got back to the car. “Winners have a different look on their faces.”
“At least Madame le juge heard me out,” the captain said in his own defense.
“Now what?”
“We start all over again from the beginning.”
“Well, that’s something. She could have just brushed you off.”
“Did you know that the juge d’instruction is friends with one of our suspects?”
“With Le Bruchec, the architect. Of course. And was even better friends with his late wife. That was one of the reasons I preferred to stay in the car rather than go see her.”
Back at the station, Nkoulou called Blanc in: “Have you got any further?” Clearly he wanted to know everything that Madame le juge knew. The captain suppressed his impatience and repeated what he had just told Aveline Vialaron-Allègre.
“What now?”
“I keep looking.”
“I wish Madame le juge had granted the search warrant. We might have been able to arrest the painter.”
Blanc suddenly realized what his boss was thinking: a rather reclusive artist, a foreigner, nobody would have complained if Rheinbach ended up in jail. A man with no Midi family going back generations. Case closed. Reputation improved. He realized that the juge d’instruction had actually been more prudent than he himself. She had foreseen how badly things might go for the painter. Parisian ruthlessness didn’t quite work down here. Merde, the woman must have taken him for a tactless idiot.
“We’ll catch the killer,” he promised. “Monsieur Rheinbach isn’t the only one in our sights.”
“It’s not very clever to have a target in your sights and not pull the trigger,” Nkoulou responded.
And this man is the best shot in the gendarmerie. Merde, thought Blanc.
When he got back to his office he found Fabienne waiting in the hallway outside. She took him over to her computer screen. “After I found out that Fuligni had had a row with Moréas, I looked into the building contractor a bit,” she began, bringing up an official-looking PDF on her screen. “This is the building contract for the médiathèque,” she said. “Contracting client: the commune of Caillouteaux, with money from ‘Midi Provence’; General construction to be carried out by Pascal Fuligni. Estimated construction costs: eight million euros.”
Blanc whistled through his teeth. “A big fat contract,” he mumbled.
“The biggest Fuligni has ever landed.”
“Are there other local building contractors who could have undertaken a job this size?”
“No, in a hamlet like Caillouteaux, Fuligni is the only one who could do something on this scale.”
“In other words, if we were to take Fuligni in for questioning in a murder case, or, worse still, arrest him, then Mayor Lafont would have nobody else to bring his precious médiathèque into the world before the elections.”
“The mayor will do whatever he has to to keep us away from his old friend.”
“Merde.”
“Wrong word,” Fabienne said, with an ironic grin, “that’s where down here we say putain.”
“‘Whore’ instead of ‘shit’?”
“We have different priorities than Paris.”
Blanc got up and stared out of the window. “Madame Vialaron-Allègre made it quite clear to me half an hour ago that she would protect Le Bruchec. Lafont will protect Fuligni. Poor old Rheinbach, he’s got nobody looking out for him.”
“Yet one more reason to arrest him?”
“One less reason.”
All of a sudden Fabienne got to her feet and planted a kiss on his cheek. “We’re going to make a good team,” she declared. “The three upright sheriffs of Gadet.”
“Two upright sheriffs, and one not always quite so upright deputy,” Blanc said, casting a wry glance outside, where from Fabienne’s office window they could see Tonon heading along the main street and into one of the bars.
“Marius has had problems ever since the car accident last year,” she said.
The captain took his leave and went to his own office. Car accident last year? The journalist Paulmier had referred to an “old scandal,” but said it was ten years ago. I’d like to know how many skeletons Tonon has in his closet, Blanc thought. Or then again, maybe I wouldn’t.
* * *
Back in his house that evening, Blanc looked around the place. He had done the first bit, throwing out the junk. But the major work still lay ahead. First of all, the roof. Then the walls and the rewiring. A new kitchen. An Internet connection would be good. He wondered about the heating. It was enough to make his head spin. I could spend the rest of my life here, he thought, and this old olive oil mill would still not be finished. How do those people do it, whose perfectly groomed Midi houses get into the Show Home magazines Geneviève loves so much? They were mostly Parisians or English who spent no more than a few weeks a year in Provence. He decided to go out and take a walk, along the two roads that made up Sainte-Françoise-la-Vallée, and then maybe into the woods a bit. It would do him good. And maybe on the way he would stumble on a few new ideas that would help him get somewhere with the case. It had never worked in Paris, but then he never had the time for anything of the sort.
He went over the bridge, past Douchy’s farmhouse, then turned left and followed the road that went over the crest of the hill, with a dozen little houses on either side. In one garage between two buildings was Riou’s Alpine. Somewhere a dog barked. The last house. The road meandered in soft curves between the fields; on one side the irrigation ditch of a wheat field murmured. Eventually Blanc came to a gate where the asphalt road came to an end. Beyond lay a sparse forest with trees some twenty to thirty feet high—pines, oaks, and shrubbery. A few outcrops of stone protruded from the sandy ochre soil like the tops of buried ruins. He went through the gate and along the forest trail. Cicadas. Heat. The scent of pine embraced him like a silk handkerchief. Ancient walls of yellowish stone flanked the hill. Hundreds of tiny white snails the size of a pinhead at the tips of the scrub, a spotted brown snake as long as a man’s arm, which fled under a thornbush as he approached. A round heap of stones that looked like the remains of some collapsed building. Red and blue plastic cartridge cases lying on the ground, left by some hunter. What had he been hunting? Blanc could see neither birds nor rabbits. He felt the only creature of any size in this silent forest.
The path led ever upward, deeper into the silvery green leaves and needles and knotty stems. Eventually Blanc reached a little hill from where he could make out his olive oil mill on the other bank of the river. It looked like a little picturesque ruin. On the ground beneath him he found a little round spot of asphalt on which someone had painted “328” in white oil paint. Surprised, he began to look more carefully around him and found a little circular plaque about the size of a man’s head—perhaps marking a buried water tank? He had seen television news reports about forest fires in Provence and knew that water tanks had been installed all over the place. He thought back to the firemen he had seen waiting in the shade on the edge of the road to Gadet. In an emergency they would need water supplies to fight the flames.
Beyond the hill the sandy path took him between rocks and shrubbery until it suddenly opened out on the right-hand side to reveal a valley with long rows of vines, glowing golden in the evening sun. It was a depression between two hills, about a hundred yards by a hundred yards, an enchanted valley hidden from the world by pine trees and oaks. He heard a harsh cry in the distance and made out a peacock fanning out its tail feathers. Another of the birds stalked amid the vines, dragging its train of feathers behind it, while yet a third sat on a stone wall beyond the vines like a king on a throne. At the other end of the valley, Blanc could just make out some figures in the setting sun. He squinted and saw one of them coming toward him: Sylvie Micheletti.
“You’ve discovered Domaine de Bernard,” she called out, waving to him. A frayed straw hat covered her narrow face and long neck, her jeans had red patches from the earth, and in her hands she carried filigree pruning shears.
“I didn’t expect to come across a vineyard in the middle of the forest,” he admitted.
“An oasis in the desert,” she laughed. “The soil is good, the sun shines all day long in the valley, while the stones and trees protect the vines from the mistral.”
“And the peacocks?”
“Flowers with feathers. You just have to get used to their call.”
They chatted for a few minutes. Blanc noted that she was suntanned and happy, but beneath her mood and skin tone there was something else. Maybe sorrow, or extreme exhaustion. All the long way back his thoughts were not on his murder case, but on his neighbor in her hidden valley.
* * *
The following morning it wasn’t Douchy’s rooster that woke him, but the clattering of his shutters. Someone trying to break in, he thought to himself, jumping out of bed, grabbing his gun and rushing to the door. But all he found outside was an icy wind, gusting around the house, the rustling leaves on the plane trees sounding like a waterfall. The cicadas were silent. Despite it being early morning, the sky above was white. In the pure light he could make out every stone in the walls and every movement on the swirling surface of the Touloubre as clearly as if he had been on drugs.
Blanc retreated into the house. The shock of his sudden awakening and the cold had driven every iota of tiredness from his body. He pulled on a tracksuit and found his old running shoes. He intended to take the same hike he had the evening before, only this time as a jog before breakfast.
A few minutes later he was already in the forest. The wind didn’t relent even for a second, ripping pine needles and leaves from the treetops and chasing them down the sandy track. The scent in the air had vanished. The sun was already shining but every drop of sweat was blown away by the wind. The rustling of the leaves was so loud that he didn’t hear the horse galloping toward him through the undergrowth.
“Did the wind wake you?” asked Paulette Aybalen, from the saddle above him.
Blanc flinched in shock when he noticed her next to him, the horse having slowed to a trot. “Is this the famed mistral?” he asked.
“The infamous mistral, we’ll have it all day long—if we’re lucky. Or else it could last three days. Or six, or nine. Whichever it is, it will be a multiple of three, unless it dies down after just twenty-four hours.”
“Is that a fact or a superstition?”
“An old wives’ tale, but it’s worth heeding. I should warn you it can be dangerous to be out in the woods during the mistral. In fact it is forbidden during July and August. You’re not exactly setting a good example.”
“Is the wind likely to bring trees crashing down on my head?”
“No, but if a fire should break out anywhere it will race through the dry wood like a ravenous monster. The flames will be faster than you, and I don’t want you to end up like the guy they found on the garbage heap.”
Blanc was so surprised he nearly stumbled.
“What do you know about my investigation?”
“I read La Provence. Most of what they cover is Olympique de Marseille games and the most gruesome local crime stories. I believe you even interviewed Pascal about the murder.”
“I didn’t ‘interview’ Monsieur Fuligni, I only asked him a few questions. Anyway how do you know that? It wasn’t in the paper.”
“You sought him out in front of half the harbor at Saint-César. Something like that doesn’t have to be in a newspaper for people to get wind of it. And the old boy has troubles enough.”
“You mean his mooring?”
“I mean his wife.”
Blanc thought of the Romanian secretary in her skimpy clothes and nodded. “Is she making his life hell?”
“She’s putting cuckold’s horns on his head. And with the man for whom Pascal has built loads of houses: Lucien Le Bruchec.”
Blanc came to a stop, and not just because he was out of shape and the track led steeply uphill. “Those two are an item? Who else knows about it?”
Paulette laughed. “Everyone who knows them. It’s been going on for quite a while. Lucien was lonely after his wife died. Miette was lonely because … well, you’ve seen Pascal’s secretary, I assume. Nobody’s ever too old for a little affair.” She glanced at him with just a trace of a challenge in her eyes.
Blanc’s mind was racing: Had Moréas found out about the affair and mocked Fuligni for it until he decided to get revenge? Or had Moréas threatened to make Bruchec’s secret public, and had to be silenced? On the other hand, if Paulette Aybalen already knew and told him so openly about it, then surely everyone really did know about it? Even Fuligni himself, who in addition had hooked up with a young Romanian. Just a little meaningless affair, not something to shed blood over? “Thanks for the information,” he said, still coughing from the effort of the jog.
“Just don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.”
“You would be under witness protection.”
“That makes me feel better already. I’m going to let my wild horse here gallop on a bit,” Paulette called back. “The mistral makes the animals nervous.” She spurred on the animal, waving good-bye as she rode off. Blanc finished his route, more confused than ever, and for more than one reason.
* * *
Later Blanc found himself crawling through Gadet in his car. He was wearing a light jacket over a white T-shirt because the gusting wind had made it noticeably cool. The mistral caused a flurry of leaves and little white disposable plastic bags to dance along the sidewalks. The cars along the main street were parked at such oblique angles it looked like an earthquake had shaken them; men and women crossed the street with shopping baskets and trolleys without taking any notice of cars or motorbikes. He spotted Tonon and wound down the window.
“What are you doing out and about so early?”
“Friday is market day in Gadet.” The fat lieutenant held up an empty wicker basket. “Park your car at the gendarmerie and come back here. We’re going shopping.”
“Won’t the food have spoiled by evening?”
“We have a fridge in our office, in case you hadn’t noticed. I haven’t lived here just since yesterday.”
Blanc sighed, but he thought it was best to go along with his colleague. He wasn’t going to do any work over the next hour or two anyway. So ten minutes later he and Tonon were strolling through the packed little square behind the restaurant. The blue-and-white sun canopy of a fish stall billowed in the wind. Mountains of vegetables. Jars of honey. He was impressed and even a little intimidated by the gourmet produce and the energetic housewives and laughing pensioners pushing past, heading for specific stalls where they were kissed on both cheeks. He wondered if Tonon had been whispering in the ear of Paulette Aybalen.
“This is not how you do it,” his colleague, who had already filled his basket, said. He got a plastic bag from one of the stalls and said, “Now I’m shopping for you.”
Marius held a cheese wrapped in dried green leaves under Blanc’s nose. “Banon,” he explained, “ripened in oak leaves.” Then came black olives, tomatoes, a melon from Carpentras, a bag of cherries. Blanc was expecting the plastic bag to burst at any moment. “Right, now we get ourselves a couple of baguettes and then it’s home to Daddy Nkoulou.”
Blanc didn’t want to imagine what would happen when their boss found them in the gendarmerie station laden down with all the shopping. Or the look on his face if he heard himself referred to as “Daddy.” But he said nothing, just hurried into the office and piled all the stuff into a little camping fridge purring away under Tonon’s desk.
Just at that very moment the door was thrown wide open and Corporal Baressi forced his massive form into the room. “I thought this might interest you,” he said, tapping on a piece of paper in his left hand. “This is just in from Saint-César. Pascal Fuligni is dead.”