Blood Counts

AL GRENIER WASN’T WRONG. THEY were all there – family, friends, local dignitaries. Black suits and civic sashes and Légion buttonholes, even dress uniforms for the heads of the Police Nationale and Gendarmerie. And not a black armband in sight; for Minette Peluze there could be no such informality. And every man jack from the squad on rue de l’Evêché was there. They must have closed up headquarters, Jacquot thought to himself; there couldn’t have been many left behind.

A funeral service had been held earlier that morning, for family only, at Église St-Croix in La Bouilladisse, but the interment in the town’s old cemetery was open to all. The cemetery was smaller than Marseilles’ St-Pierre, a long rectanglar plot of land on the crown of a wooded hill above the town, and by the time Jacquot arrived, actually caught behind the cortège as it wound its way up the hill from the church, most of the allée and gravelled path around the Martine family crypt was tight with mourners, a wide, spilling pool of black against the glaring limestone. By the time he’d joined the crowd, having parked some distance down the road from the cemetery gates, the casket had been taken from the hearse by pallbearers and was being blessed by a curé dressed in brilliant white lace surplice and purple stole. Over the heads and shoulders of the mourners, nodding to familiar faces turned in his direction, and with the advantage of his place on the slope, Jacquot was able to see the flick of holy water and the sign of the cross from the curé as the pallbearers prepared to carry the casket into the crypt.

As they moved forward Jacquot caught sight of Claude Peluze, standing with his daughter and grandchildren and son-in-law. Jacquot was too far away to make him out in any detail, even with the slope in his favour, but the lowered head and sagging shoulders of his old friend told Jacquot all he needed to know.

It was exactly then that he noticed something else, a movement away from the crowd of mourners, beyond the Martine crypt, higher up the hill near the cemetery gates. Two figures dressed in black. In trousers and coats, by the look of it. Two men? A man and a woman? Two women? It was difficult to tell from this distance. All he could say for sure was that they looked like mourners, visiting a family grave. But then one of them raised an arm and shielded his or her eyes against the sun, clearly looking in their direction. Hardly surprising given the crowd gathered around the crypt, spilling across the allée, quite a size for a small cemetery in a small sleeper suburb of Marseilles.

But it was a ridiculous idea – to imagine that the same two possible suspects from the Blanchard wedding might also be here in La Bouilladisse. It was a cemetery, for goodness sake, open to anyone to visit a family grave, to pay their respects. That’s all they were, a couple of mourners momentarily distracted by the sight of the crowd down the slope – nothing more. He shook away the troubling thought; so unlikely, so . . . ridiculous. Yet he kept his eyes on them, darting between them and Minette’s casket as it was manhandled into the shadowed interior of the family crypt. And as the casket disappeared, the two distant figures turned and went back up the path, as though their visit was at an end and they were headed home.

For a moment Jacquot didn’t know what to do: whether to stay where he was or go after them, get a closer look at them, maybe ask for their names, see what car they drove. What any policeman would think of doing; following up, on the off-chance.

Yet even if he’d decided to do it, there was no time now. The pallbearers re-emerged from the crypt and the gates were closed with a jarring clang, the family turned to their limousine and the crowd of mourners began to disperse, making their way to their own cars. As the black-clad pool spread out, thinned, it didn’t take long for the boys from rue de l’Evêché to gather round Jacquot: Al Grenier, who’d made the call, Luc Dutoit, Etienne Laganne, Charlie Serre, and the stutterer Pierre Chevin. Hands were clasped, backs slapped, but the greetings were quiet, the smiles quick and strained.

‘You coming to the house?’ asked Laganne, pulling a cigarette pack from his pocket, shuffling some out, offering them round. All except Al Grenier, who didn’t smoke, helped themselves, snapped lighters and settled into a loose circle. With a frown Laganne regarded the empty packet, crumpled it and was about to chuck it away when he remembered where he was, balling it up and slipping it back into his pocket instead.

‘She’s done all Minnie’s recipes,’ added Laganne, as though that was all the excuse they needed. ‘Apparently it was stipulated in the will. “When they come and get me I want feasting. I want everyone to have one last taste. And remember.” Something like that.’