Blood Counts

MORE THAN A MONTH AFTER Noël Gilbert had woken to find his new wife dead in bed beside him, the police investigation into her murder had got no further than two suspects, a man and a woman, in their thirties, maybe forties, driving a black or dark blue or green VW, last seen at a Cavaillon garage a few days before the murder, possibly the same two people in the three pictures taken at the church in St-Florent, in the procession down its main street, and outside the gates of the Blanchards’ farmhouse. And possibly the same couple that Jacquot had taken for ‘mourners’ at the cemetery in La Bouilladisse.

As far as he and his team had been able to ascertain, their two suspects had not been guests at the church ceremony, or at the reception and hog roast that followed, and no one they had interviewed remembered seeing them with the exception of Noël Gilbert and the garagiste Gaston Lapierre. As for the murder weapon, a 9mm automatic with silencer, police had searched the grounds of Le Mas Bleu, swept the storm culverts either side of the Maubec–Robion road, and retraced the killers’ route through the vineyards, but found nothing.

‘What about the car?’ asked Guy Fourcade, Cavaillon’s examining prosecutor, who had called Jacquot in to review an investigation that was rapidly grinding to a halt. The two men were sitting in Fourcade’s office in the Magistrates’ building, a set of three french windows behind his desk overlooking place Lombard in the old town. One of the windows was latched open, the leaves on the plane trees outside shifting gently in an afternoon breeze. It was not a meeting that Jacquot had been looking forward to. When investigations stalled, it was Fourcade’s job to get them started again, or know the reason why.

Fourcade was in his late forties, still fresh-faced with bright enquiring eyes and a tidy crop of short black hair, and though he projected an air of easy camaraderie – all on the same team, kind of thing – Jacquot wasn’t taken in. After their first few encounters he had mentioned it to Claudine: the frosty edge to Fourcade, that thin, covering smile.

She had told him all he needed to know. ‘He played rugby to club level, but unlike you he never made it any further. And he was not a happy man when I had to make it clear to him a few years back that I was not interested in taking him to my bed. Oh, and the hair is not his own.’

‘According to the garage-man, Lapierre, it wasn’t anything special,’ replied Jacquot. ‘A Beetle, he thinks. Dusty, dirty. Done some travelling, he said.’

‘That’s how it looks,’ said Jacquot. ‘But without a registration number . . .’ He spread his hands. He didn’t have to say anything more. Both men knew that Volkswagen Beetles might not have been the most popular car in France, but there were enough of them around to make tracing one an almost impossible undertaking. And, as Brunet had speculated, it didn’t even need to be French. It could as easily have been registered in Germany, or the Netherlands, or Switzerland. Indeed anywhere in mainland Europe.

The two men fell silent, Fourcade with his elbows on his desk, twisting a pencil between his fingers, Jacquot sitting back in his chair, legs crossed.

‘We have an alert out for any incident involving our likely suspects, a man and a woman in their thirties, early forties, driving a dark-coloured VW, and on the drug used on Gilbert. Right now, there’s nothing more we can do – until something else happens, something we can tie into the Gilbert murder.’

‘There’s just no reason for it, Maître. A country girl? New husband put out for the count while she gets a bullet in the eye? And the killer uses a silencer? We’ve been through Gilbert’s background and there’s nothing of note, nothing to explain it. There’s something else going on here; we’ve only got a part of the story. It’s just . . . we need something else to go on. And we haven’t got it yet.’

‘Well, let’s hope you get it soon,’ said Fourcade, his voice sharpening a little, his eyes narrowing. ‘People aren’t happy, Daniel. The Blanchards are well-known around here, and popular. There are going to be some awkward questions coming my way very soon and I’ll need some answers. Just as soon as you can supply them, s’il te plaît.’

And then the smile was switched back on, a friendly hand resting lightly on Jacquot’s arm as Fourcade walked him to the door and bid him adieu.

Outside on place Lombard, Jacquot lit up a cigarette and wondered again about the ‘mourners’ at the cemetery in La Bouilladisse. For some reason he couldn’t shift them from his memory, still cross with himself for not checking them out. If only to eliminate them from the enquiry.