53

THERE WAS NO DOUBT IN Jacquot’s mind that Virginie Cabrille had recognised him the moment he’d stepped through the arch of bougainvillaea, found a table and ordered coffee. Maybe she even knew their paths would cross on this trip to Cavaillon, had planned it deliberately. The way she glanced over at him, then turned her attention back to the game, pulled the ball from her shorts and served her ace . . . as if he didn’t exist. Or, if he did, that he was of absolutely no interest to her. And she had behaved in exactly the same manner off-court, with a remarkably assured performance of failing to recognise him until prompted, when all the time she knew very well who he was, and why he was there.

Brunet was right. A hard one, through and through. What Jacquot couldn’t work out was why she should bother with the subterfuge, pretending not to know him.

Of course she knew him.

And he knew her.

It was a ridiculous game to play.

But she had played it very well indeed, immediately distancing herself from him, in front of Brunet and her friend, and distancing herself, too, from anything the Manichella sisters might have planned. As Brunet drove them back to Cavaillon, Jacquot wondered why she should choose to be so closely involved. The two brothers – Taddeus and Tomas Manichella – were hardly family, and in personal terms all she had lost was a few days’ freedom while her smart Paris lawyer found whatever loopholes he could to effect her release, with all charges dropped. Hardly enough to warrant involvement in a killing spree, carried out by two sisters whose thirst for revenge – an old and well-established Corsican tradition – was driving the action. That she was funding the two sisters, supporting them, he was in no doubt, but whether for kicks, for a laugh, or for some deeper, more complex reason, Jacquot was still unable to say.

He was equally in no doubt that her presence, that particular weekend, at Le Mas Bleu, was no coincidence, and as he and Brunet arrived back at headquarters in Cavaillon, Jacquot had a sudden and discomforting thought, which he couldn’t shift, that while he and Virginie Cabrille played their game of cat and mouse, something had happened at the millhouse. Back in his office, he called Claudine. The phone rang six times, Jacquot holding his breath, his heart rate beginning to pick up. When the ansaphone connected, he jammed down the receiver and hurried from his office.

With the concert preparations closing so many of the access streets in Cavaillon, it was an agonisingly slow journey out of town. Once again he wished he’d taken a squad car, or had the emergency blue light he could fix to his roof, to get everyone out of his way. But he wasn’t driving a squad car, and he didn’t have his emergency light, and every snail’s pace metre, every hold-up and red light was a torture, stop-starting all the way along a crowded Cours Leon Gambetta, the midday sun scorching down, pulsing off the road and beating against the Renault’s dusty bodywork.

And then a ‘beep-beep’ and a flash of lights from a car coming towards him. A very familiar car. With two very welcome, familiar faces visible behind the windscreen.

‘We were just going to call by your office,’ Claudine called out as their progress was halted almost parallel to Jacquot’s car. Midou leant across her mother and blew him a kiss. ‘There’s some shopping we need to do. We thought we’d take you to lunch first. Maybe Gaillard’s?’

‘We’ll take you, but you’re paying,’ shouted Midou.

Jacquot took a deep breath, heart somersaulting with relief, almost angry with them for causing him such concern. But he held it in, drowned it with relief.

‘Good idea. Just what I was thinking. Park at headquarters. I’ll meet you there.’

There was a beep from the car behind and Jacquot drove on, down under the railway bridge, around the roundabout and back into town, seeking out Claudine’s Renault just a few hundred metres ahead in the slow-moving line of traffic.

From now on, he determined, he wasn’t going to let them out of his sight. Even if it meant an afternoon trailing round the shops.