Blood Counts

IF THE KILLERS WERE WATCHING the millhouse, Jacquot knew how important it was to keep to the same routine. If they sensed for a moment that he knew what was going on, what was being planned, then there was a risk they’d put together something else that might be harder to spot or defend against. Things had to stay the same, so that he could draw the killers into the open, flush them out. Right now he had the advantage of knowing what they didn’t know he knew. He was ready, on the alert. All he had to do was go through the motions, as though nothing had changed: leaving for the office in the morning, coming home for lunch now and then, as was his custom, or meeting up with Claudine and Midou in town, and always leaving for home at the same time – early – each evening.

In case one of the killers was watching the house, and another watching police headquarters in Cavaillon – which is how he would have played it – Jacquot held to this pattern as strictly as he could, but had precautions in place. He had equipped the millhouse phone line with an automatic alarm call to police headquarters. If there was anything wrong, all the girls had to do was press zero, whichever phone they were closest to – bedroom, kitchen, salon, bathroom. They didn’t even need to lift the receiver. Of course the killers could cut the lines, but it was still an option . . .

As a further defence, Jacquot had also taken possession, at a nod from Rochet, of two police-issue Berettas for Claudine and Midou and, after lowering the kitchen blinds one night, he had shown the two women how to use them. He was relieved that neither of them had put up any argument, nor winced or shivered when he told them that the chest was a wiser and an easier target than head or limbs, and whether the shot was high or low or wide the chances were that a 9x19mm Parabellum fired in this area would put down your assailant every time. They’d listened to him carefully and they did what he told them – how to hold the gun with two hands, how to work the safety with their thumbs, and how to aim on the straight rather than bother with the sights. The only problem was where to keep the guns. Since there were no children in the house, they could afford to be a little more daring, but for one reason or another each location was found wanting. Finally they agreed on the salad drawer in the fridge and in the downstairs cloakroom, the two of them promising Jacquot that they’d take one of these guns with them whenever they left the house. And never travel alone.

‘But we are not going to miss the concert because of all this,’ insisted Claudine. ‘Just so long as that’s agreed right now, right here?’ In two weeks Cavaillon was playing host to George Benson, one of Claudine’s favourite musicians, for a one-off outdoor concert between dates in Juan-Les-Pins and Nice, the gig arranged in memory of the father of one of his supporting group who had been born in the Luberon, all ticket receipts to go to a local charity. ‘If I don’t hear George Benson sing “Breezin’” live, those killers of yours will be a soft option, because your life, Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot, will not be worth living.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jacquot, as keen to see Mr Benson as Claudine was. As Cavaillon’s highest-ranking police officer under Georges Rochet – who would more likely prefer an evening’s opera in Orange – there was every chance that Daniel might even get to meet the big man. He’d been joking for weeks that if Claudine behaved herself, he might see if he could arrange an introduction. And, frankly, the risks of attending the concert were minimal. They’d be as safe in a crowd as they were in the millhouse, and he’d be with them the whole time.

One morning, a week after his talk with Rochet, Jacquot was driving into town from the millhouse, keeping an eye out for dark-coloured VW Beetles, when he heard a radio report about an explosion in Marseilles. It had only happened a few hours earlier and there were few details as yet beyond the fact that it appeared to be a car-bomb in a residential street in Endoume and that only one fatality had been reported.

This news item made him remember, in an instant, another bomb in Marseilles, an anarchist bomb tossed from a passing car, the bomb that had killed his mother, and fourteen other people, and changed his life for ever. And with his eyes fixed on the road ahead Jacquot saw again the red print dress she was wearing that last morning of her life, the way its square-cut top framed the red coral necklace his father had given her – to keep her safe – and the canvas bag she carried with painting dungarees and plimsolls packed away inside, the heels of her favourite red shoes clicking on the pavement as they walked together down the slope of Le Panier into town, the kiss on both cheeks when they parted at the school gates.

Later, he passed the shop where she’d been working, painting a backdrop for one of its window displays, a sheet of wood nailed into place where the glass had blown inwards and cut her down. Strange, he thought, how his mother and Claudine were both artists.

More than forty years later, that final memory of his mother was still piercingly sharp – that particular shade of red in her skirt, the brown skin of her arms, the smell of her hair when she kissed him – just as sharp as the last memory he had of his father, Vincent, lost at sea just months before his mother’s death. A cheery salute from the stern of his trawler, that lopsided grin of his and a long sharp whistle between his fingers that set the seagulls aloft.

As the morning wore on, little more information about the explosion in Marseilles was forthcoming beyond the fact that the victim was called Hervé Montclos, recently appointed curator at the Balon Gallery on rue Grignan. So far the police were at a loss to explain why a museum curator’s car should have been targeted, and were appealing for witnesses – anyone who might have seen anything suspicious in the hours leading up to the explosion. It was a residential street. Had somebody been seen loitering around Montclos’ car?

It wasn’t until that evening when Jacquot was back at the millhouse, watching the TV news that he suddenly spotted a familiar face in the report on that morning’s explosion: Solange Bonnefoy, one of the city’s most renowned examining magistrates. She was being escorted by gendarmes into Police Nationale headquarters on Garibaldi. At first he assumed she had been brought in to direct the investigation. But he was wrong. According to the news reporter, Hervé Montclos and Solange Bonnefoy had lived together. At approximately 5.55 that morning he had left her apartment, walked to his car, unlocked it and climbed in. As he switched on the engine, the car had exploded.