Blood Counts

DIRTY FINGERNAILS. JACQUOT LOVED THAT. In most investigations it would be a scar or a squint, a gold tooth perhaps, or a tattoo. But dirty fingernails was a first. And women with dirty fingernails. He could imagine a man with dirty fingernails. But somehow not a woman.

He was thinking this, on his way back home that evening, when something in his wing-mirror caught his eye. What looked like a car, a dark rounded hump, a few hundred metres back, occasionally sliding into the mirror’s line of sight but otherwise all but hidden, backlit by the fiery furnace of a setting sun that had cloaked the countryside in a thick cover of reds and golds. He glanced in his rear-view mirror, but there was even less definition there – the Renault’s back windscreen covered in a fine dust that seemed to absorb the setting sun and colour out anything behind it. But his curiosity was aroused, his eyes now flicking from the road ahead to his left-hand wing-mirror, keeping track of the vehicle behind him.

Slowly, without drawing attention to the move, Jacquot steered away from the centre of the road and drew closer to the verge. Checking his wing-mirror again, he could now clearly see that the car was keeping pace with him, in no hurry to overtake. On a road such as this, between Cavaillon and Apt, at this time in the evening when people were eager for their homes, it was rare not to have a car race past a dawdler. But his new position, closer now to the edge of the road, with a wider view in his wing-mirror, brought him little satisfaction. The other vehicle was still too far back for him to make out model or colour or who was driving.

Again without making it too obvious, Jacquot let his speed drop by a few kilometres an hour. But still the car behind him did not appear to draw any closer, as though matching his gradual decrease in speed.

By now his curiosity and attention were firmly fixed on the car behind him, and he wondered for how long it had been trailing him, if indeed that was what it was doing. As the road slipped by he thought back over his route from police headquarters – just the usual flow of traffic for a Thursday evening, nothing remarkable, thinning as town gave way to country, pavements to dry, dusty verges – but he couldn’t recall noticing it, coming up behind him, following the same route. Already there were a number of turnings the driver could have taken but had not, the car still holding its course and speed and distance behind him. For a moment Jacquot regretted he was driving his own car. If he’d been in a squad car, he’d simply have switched on the lights and waved the driver down.

By now he was approaching the left-hand turn for the millhouse. But rather than indicate and slow for the turning he kept up his speed and carried on, towards Apt and Céreste. He knew what he was going to do. On the next section of straight road, he was going to pull over and switch on his emergency lights. The driver behind would either carry on past him in a swirl of golden dust, or pull up ahead to see if help was needed. If the car just drove past, he would start off again and follow it, find out where it was going, and maybe who was driving. The prospect of a dark-coloured VW and two women in the front seats was almost too much to wish for.

But the driver behind did neither. As Jacquot pulled in and switched on his emergency lights, the car behind swung suddenly to the right and disappeared down a narrow track. Jacquot swore softly and, checking the road both ways for oncoming traffic, pulled out in a squealing U-turn that set him on the lane back to town.

Up ahead, on the left now, he could see a plume of dust between the vines that braided the hillsides hereabouts, and as he passed the turning he caught a flash of brakelights in the swirling golden cloud. Jacquot knew that lane. It was unsurfaced, a farmer’s track used to access the fields, but it came out at St-Beyelle and joined the old country route between Cavaillon and Brieuc. Keeping his speed low, he headed on for the next turning – another, better route, narrow but surfaced, that also led to St-Beyelle. If he managed his speed, he was almost certain he would meet up with the car at the Brieuc–Cavaillon crossroads. And if the car was a Volkswagen, or was driven by two women, he would stop them or give chase, get a registration number if nothing else.

What he didn’t want to do, however, was draw too much attention to himself, to alert them – if they really were the Manichella sisters – and then lose them. Once again he regretted being in his old Renault, with no radio to call for assistance. Out here he was on his own, with just his wits and his service Beretta in the glove compartment for company.

Keeping an eye on the other car, still concealed behind the vines but betrayed by its pluming trail of golden dust, Jacquot indicated left and took the turning, just a couple of kilometres now before his road intersected with the track and the old Brieuc road, and the two cars came together.

But when he reached the crossroads, his view only fleetingly interrupted on the way there by the odd farmhouse and villa and rise of land, there was no sign of any traffic coming through St-Beyelle – no lights, no dust. And no sound of a car either. Coming to a stop in front of St-Beyelle’s small stone chapel he switched off the ignition and wound down the window. Not a sound. Just the warm tick of his engine, the springs in his seat and a soft evening pulse of cicadas.

He sat there for a couple of minutes, waiting. But no car appeared. Since there were no turnings off the track that he could remember, save gateways into fields of maize and vine and melon, and since there was no way the other driver could have crossed ahead of him, it was clear the car must have pulled in somewhere the other side of the village while Jacquot’s view had been obstructed.

Letting off the hand brake, he let the Renault roll forward and turned into the single street that led through St-Beyelle. It was cobbled and the tyres bubbled over the stones, the car picking up a little speed as the slope steepened, fast enough for Jacquot to touch the footbrake as he coasted through the tiny settlement, eyes flicking to left and right, looking for a car, for figures.

A minute later he was out of St-Beyelle, could feel a roughening in the road surface and up ahead could see where the village’s cobbles ran out and farm track took over. Before he reached it, he pulled in to a gateway where the road surface was not too bad and opened the glove compartment to retrieve his gun. Sliding it into his pocket, he got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open.

It was a gorgeous evening now, warm and soft, the sun lost behind the slopes of the Vaucluse hills, a deep blue sky banded with tapered layers of low cloud, their bellies stained a dusky pink that somehow made the blue backdrop a deeper, darker shade. Now some distance from the village, the sharp if beckoning smell of burning charcoal had been replaced by an altogether more natural scent – of rich red earth dampened by evening sprinklers, wet lush greenery, and fresh-cut grass. He could smell the dry stones in the low wall along one side of the track, the recent passage of goats, and a hot pulse of heat from the fields either side – vine and melon and maize, a browning stand of it shifting and shuffling with a breeze he couldn’t feel. Somewhere to the right a dog barked, and Jacquot tensed. But it was a distant and solitary call, one of those country mutts chained to a post or a tree, left out in the yard, its long lonesome bark one of boredom not warning. Nothing better to do.

With the comforting weight of the Beretta in his jacket pocket, bumping against his hip with every step, Jacquot walked on – alert to each sound, each movement around him. He was about a hundred metres from the Renault, now out of sight behind him, and about fifty metres from a stand of broken down old barns and drying sheds when suddenly the chirrupping sounds of insects and the soft whoosh of a passing bat were drowned out by the grinding start of an engine, a clash of gears and the spitting angry rasp of tyres on dusty grit as a car swung out from the barnyard and set off down the lane, heading away from him in a lurching, jouncing race, back the way it had come.

It was impossible to get a registration number thanks to the fading light, the swirling dust, and the jolting speed of the car, and no way could he catch up with it. But there was now no doubt in his mind – given this evasionary tactic – that this was the same car that had been following him, its wheezing, asthmatic whine as it careered away along the track bearing the umistakable signature of an old VW Beetle.

In less than twenty seconds the car was well ahead of Jacquot who had started into a jog, holding his gun now rather than let it bang against his hip. A few seconds more and it was lost round a bend and powering back down towards the main road. For a second or two longer Jacquot wondered whether to keep after them or go back to his car and try for a chase. But it didn’t take him long to realise that neither was a practical option. They were too far ahead of him now, they had got the better of him, and as he came to a halt in the lane he saw brakelights flash once, way down the slope, and a set of headlights swing onto the main road, turning towards Apt.

They’d known he’d spotted them, known he’d be waiting for them at St-Beyelle – if they’d scouted out for the Gilbert murder they’d be familiar with this terrain – and had done the only thing they could do. And it had worked for them.