Blood Counts

‘. . . the young lady’s funeral.’

He’d never thought as far as a funeral. Somehow it sounded even more final than the news of Marie-Ange’s death. Her funeral. A funeral that had taken place just the day before, according to Ballarde, while he was eating Ayam Batutu at the millhouse with Claudine and Midou. And he hadn’t known about it. When Davide Chabran called, the old man had said nothing about it – just going through his nephew’s address book and calling up people he didn’t know to pass on the terrible news. Going through the motions.

If he’d known about the funeral earlier, Jacquot now wondered, would he have gone? The distance involved, the time it would have taken, a long way to go for . . . for a woman he’d known no longer than a year, for no more than three or four weeks in total – their time together in St Bédard and Marseilles. It was not, after all, as if she had been an old friend whom he had known for years – a family member, an old friend, a lover. To travel to Metz to attend her funeral might have seemed . . . excessive. De trop, a little over the top.

And yet, and yet . . . She was a woman who, even in their brief time together, had stolen into his heart, touched something deep inside him. And whose loss had rocked him to the core.

Of course, he would have gone. Of course, he would have been there, at the end. Just like Davide Chabran, an old man in his eighties, who had made the journey to Metz, to attend her funeral, to pay his respects, an old man who probably hadn’t known Marie-Ange any longer or better than Jacquot had.

Yes, he would have gone, and he would have mourned her deeply. Just as he did now. And he regretted that he hadn’t known, that he hadn’t gone.

Regrets, he thought, such useless but such damning things.

When, some fifteen minutes later, they reached the Chabran property with its closed wrought-iron gates, pillars and stone anchors, Jacquot had Brunet slow down. At the end of an avenue of plane trees, the sweeping front steps of an ancient château could just be made out, the rest of the building, set on rising ground, lost behind a screen of gnarled branches and shifting leaves.

‘Must be quite a place,’ said Brunet, as they moved on, heading towards the bridge and village, following Ballarde’s directions.

They found the track a hundred metres after the bridge, on the left, just as Ballarde had told them. Parking a few metres further on, where the road widened a little, the two men set out along the path through a mix of pine, holm oak and stray, twisted olive trees, surrounded by the drilling hum of insects, the liquid chirping of birds and the raw resinous scent of pine. At first the path was level, a dusty leaf-litter track wide enough for them to walk comfortably side by side, but soon it began to narrow and steepen. Maybe it was all that cycling, but Brunet quickly drew ahead, leaving Jacquot to climb on alone. All those cigarettes, all those long lunches were starting to tell, he decided, but then he comforted himself with the thought that Brunet was a good ten years younger.

It wasn’t long before his assistant was out of sight, no sign of him save for the occasional flash of his white shirt up ahead in the trees, and the distant crack of a trodden branch. It was growing warmer, too, the sun slanting down the hillside, streaming through the trees, dappling the path. Jacquot slid off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and climbed on, aware of his heartbeat and the closeness of his shirt. And as he climbed he thought of Léo Chabran jogging up this path, the catch of his breath, the weight of his steps, the physical demands of running over this sliding cover of fallen pine needles. In the wheelhouse of that coastguard cutter, Jacquot had noted the man’s build, the lithe, easy way he moved. Now he knew why.

Jacquot had just started thinking about stopping for a moment to draw breath when he saw up ahead that the path levelled out, running parallel to the ridge but still some distance below it. He would stop there, he thought to himself, before climbing on, and this he did, congratulating himself that he had come so far without actually opening his mouth and gasping for breath. Since there was no view to speak of, the valley concealed by the woods, he contented himself with his immediate surroundings, a wider section of path – almost a clearing – with trees on one side and a rising slope of bare rock on the other. Leaning back against a slab of limestone, he tuned in to the hum of insects and watched a lizard skitter across the pine needles, clamber onto a rock and scuttle away.

Two weeks before, on a fine sunny morning such as this, Léo Chabran and Marie-Ange had come this way. And before them, along this same path, their killers had come too, lugging that eighteen kilo trap along with them. If the killers really were the two women in the Gilbert photos, then they’d have to be pretty tough and determined to carry off something like this, Jacquot decided. Just to make a point. So many other, easier ways to have killed Léo Chabran, and still remove his foot.

What they had done, thought Jacquot, was nothing less than a grandstanding performance. A bold, dramatic act. Long rehearsed and well directed, the two women watching his movements, familiarising themselves with his routine, the play of his day in Toulon, Marseilles and here, until they’d identified this path through the woods, the route of his morning run, as the most suitable place of execution. To cause his lover, Marie-Ange, the greatest possible grief and pain.

Jacquot wondered how many times they had come here, to check out the path, maybe concealing themselves amongst the trees to watch Léo jog past. To watch his footfall. The way he ran. To place the trap in exactly the right place. Many times, he guessed. Until they were sure.

Yet Marie-Ange had died too. At about the same time as Léo, according to the pathologist; but some considerable time after the trap had been sprung.

Which meant . . .

Which meant she had come looking for him.

Something the killers could never have anticipated.

Marie-Ange just turning up like that, coming up quietly on this pine-needle path while the killers watched the life blood drain out of Léo.

Or maybe she’d called out his name, and they had heard her coming?

Or maybe they’d met her on the path, going back down to their car after Léo had died?

Whichever it was, she would have seen their faces, been able to give the police a description.

She had to die as well. No alternative.

It was then, as Jacquot reached for his cigarettes, going through it all, that he realised something else. If Marie-Ange had never been meant to die, hadn’t been a part of their hit, then the bullets in her heart and her head were not the ‘wounds for wounds’ he had at first assumed. Never had been. And it was out of synch, too, he now realised. After ‘foot for foot’ came ‘burn for burn’, not ‘wound for wound’.

Which meant that there were still three more killings to come.

‘Boss? You down there?’ It was Brunet’s voice, somewhere up ahead.

‘Taking a leak,’ replied Jacquot, pushing himself off the rock, trying to keep a grip on these thoughts. ‘J’arrive, j’arrive. I’m coming.’

Five minutes later, he caught up with Brunet. His assistant was squatting down beside a tall slab of rock that jutted out from the undergrowth, causing the path to veer to the left before curving back to the right. There was still a twist of blue-and-white scene-of-crime tape knotted to an overhanging branch.

It was, Jacquot decided, the perfect place to conceal a trap. The path here, forced between a stand of trees on one side and a steep slope on the other, was narrower and more deeply grooved than Jacquot had seen so far, covered with a thick surface dressing of pine needles and holm oak leaves. You could almost see where a jogger’s foot would fall as he rounded that bend, the layer of pine needles deep enough here to conceal a trap whose open jaws – nearly a metre across – were almost the width of the path.

‘Right there,’ said Brunet. ‘That’s where they laid it. And I reckon that’s where they hid themselves.’ He pointed to a bank of trees where the slope downhill wasn’t so steep, maybe twenty metres back from the bend with enough ground cover to hide in. Jacquot walked over to it, stepped across a length of fallen timber, and squatted down. He glanced back over his shoulder at the path – a clear view between the trees, a perfect observation post. He looked back at the nest they must have lain in – roots, pine needles – no different from any other square metre of the wood. They had left no sign.

‘What now, Boss?’

Jacquot came out of the trees and clambered back onto the path. He looked around. He would remember this place. The place where Marie-Ange had died. For a moment, a very odd moment, he felt very close to her. As though she were standing right beside him, pushing back that loop of black hair, tilting her head the way she did – and those dark, velvet eyes of hers settling on him, seeing everything.

‘Lunch,’ he replied.

And as he said the word, he shivered.