44

AS THE DAYS PASSED, JACQUOT grew increasingly jumpy. A slammed car door in the street, an exhaust backfiring, a horn blaring were enough to have him tense, start to reach for his gun – a gun he usually left in his desk drawer but now buckled diligently to his belt.

As well as jumpy, Jacquot had also begun to get angry. This slow-burn anger had started up, almost without him knowing it, when he’d read through the pathologist’s report on Marie-Ange – the way the killer had fired that second shot to her head, to make sure she was dead. Point blank, the tip of the silencer just a centimetre or two from her skin, close enough for the muzzle flash to burn. There was something so cold and callous and ruthless about it, something so careless and merciless, and it was that single unnecessary action that had lit the fuse deep inside him. Now that flickering spark of anger had grown into a red-hot flame that made him screw up his eyes and set his teeth tight in his jaw, made him clench his fists and want to scream with rage – and not just because these shadowy killers had gunned down a young woman he had known, respected and . . . felt strongly for, but because those same killers were now threatening his own family, intent on killing them – in whatever manner they’d decided on – just to cause him pain.

Both Claudine and Midou, however, seemed far more at ease. They might have limited their trips to town – only doing so at planned times and along planned routes that could be covertly supervised – but in all other respects they followed an easy daily routine which, to someone watching, would have appeared quite normal. When Jacquot left for Cavaillon after breakfast, Claudine went to her studio at the back of the millhouse, while Midou sat in the kitchen working on her thesis. With the door between studio and kitchen left open they carried on an occasional, easy conversation – always aware of each other: the swish of a paintbrush being rinsed, the turn of a page, the tap of a keyboard, a cough, the scrape of a chair. And after lunch, at the kitchen table or under the vine on the terrace, the two women would take it in turns to have a siesta, one after another – a forty minute nap on the sofa while the other one stayed awake and kept watch. All the ground floor doors locked.

As the days passed, Jacquot also felt increasingly convinced that he, Claudine and Midou really were being watched. Without any kind of evidence to support this belief, he was suddenly certain of it. He could even pinpoint the moment he first felt it: getting out of his car in the police headquarters’ outdoor car park and walking across the gravelled yard to the front steps of the building. In the space of that thirty-metre walk, it was as though he could feel eyes burning into him, and in as casual and relaxed a way as he could manage, he’d glanced around him, as though someone had called his name, or he’d heard something, or something had caught his attention. Of course, there’d been nothing to see, just the church of St-Jean, the usual flock of pigeons taking off from its slatted wood belfry, a passing car, a woman pushing a pram. That was all. But as he went in through the front doors and strode over to the lifts, he was as certain of the sensation of being watched as if someone had actually tapped him on the shoulder.

There had been no giveaways then, and none since, either at headquarters, in town, or out at the millhouse – no distant wink of sunlight off the lenses of binoculars, no rustling in the undergrowth, no suspicious shadows, no tangible sense of being followed. But still he couldn’t shake off the feeling, a sixth sense that someone was there, close by, watching and waiting.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling either.

Nor was it pleasant being so powerless.

Doing nothing – not being able to do anything.

It was even worse than the waiting.

At first it had felt like time was on his side, that the three- to four-week gap between murders during which, Jacquot supposed, the killers stalked their prey and planned their attack, gave him equal time and space to prepare.

But prepare for what?

The trouble was, he had no idea when an attack might take place, where it might come from, or how it might be effected. Which meant that instead of having time to prepare, all he had was time to fill. And while he waited there was never a moment when the words ‘wound for wound’ and ‘stripe for stripe’ didn’t scream through his head.

It didn’t take long for the strain of this hanging around, this waiting for something to happen, to make itself felt. For Claudine and Midou, too. The frequently repeated wish, usually brought up at the breakfast table or over supper, and certainly thought about in the hours between, that whatever was going to happen, would it damn well happen soon. In short, the waiting was unbearable.

It was for this reason that Jacquot decided to act, to follow up something that had been on his mind. Niggling away at him.

After clearing the assignment with Rochet, he called Brunet into his office.

‘I have a little job for you,’ Jacquot began.

Brunet looked suspicious.

Jacquot played it just as Brunet would have played it – stretching it out. It was a small pleasure but he enjoyed it.

‘Thought you might like it.’

Brunet said nothing, just raised an eyebrow. Jacquot wondered if he knew he was being played.

‘Maybe take your bike,’ he continued, recalling that drive the two of them had taken to Forcalquier and Brunet complaining about the road surface. ‘Challenging stuff up in those hills. Good practice for your time trials. And exercise too. Your legs’ll be aching after a couple of kilometres.’ Jacquot chuckled.

‘You want me to go cycling?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘And where do you have in mind?’

Jacquot gave it some thought.

‘Corsica.’