Blood Counts

JACQUOT MIGHT HAVE BEEN OFF duty, as excited as anyone in the audience as the moment for George Benson’s appearance drew nearer, but he was still very much alert. Within minutes of taking his seat beside Claudine and Midou he had scanned and discounted their near neighbours – certainly no pair of women sitting together – and he could see no one who looked to be in any way a potential threat. Also, because their side seats were at an angle to the stage there seemed little possibility of the sisters having any kind of opportunity to take sniper-style pot shots at them, unless they were on stage themselves or had climbed one of the trees on Bournissac – and it was no easy matter to unpack a rifle and scope, take aim and fire, with crowds of people all around them. Nor were there any windows that he could see that would provide the killers with any kind of vantage point.

Their banked seats were also high enough, Jacquot now realised, to provide an excellent view not only of the stage and the bleachers opposite, but of the audience below, tidily seated in rows. Claudine had brought a small pair of binoculars with her, which Jacquot asked for, and he swept them over the crowd, picking out familiar faces: Guy Fourcade, just as he’d said, in the fourth row behind the Mayor; Dominique Crystal who owned Restaurant Scaramouche, and her family; the Préfet and his new, much younger wife; Michelot, their over-enthusiastic director of tourism; as well as a number of others whose backs and shoulders and profiles Jacquot could make out in the growing darkness.

But no sign, so far as he could see, of Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille. He was wondering whether, for some reason, she’d decided not to come when his eye was caught by a movement in the central aisle.

And there she was, sashaying towards the front rows with a group of her friends, ten or twelve of them at least. Jacquot was close enough for his view of her to fill the lenses: slicked-back black hair, bare shoulders, a black basque-style top over skinny jeans, a glittering necklace, bracelet, earrings, watch, her scarlet lips moving as she said something to the girl on her arm, the girl she’d played tennis with that morning. She looked young and glamorous, carefree and excited, and as she found their row, five back from the stage and just behind Guy Fourcade, and ushered her friends into their seats, she cast her eyes over the crowds as though searching for someone.

Jacquot wondered if it was him she was looking for, and the very next second, just as the thought lodged in his head, she lifted her eyes – deeply mascara-ed – and looked at the bleachers to her left and right. As she did so, for a split second, their eyes met, so close through the binoculars that Jacquot felt a jolt, as though she could actually see him, as though she’d caught him watching her. For a wild, idiotic moment he expected her to smile or wave at him, but he knew there was no way she could have made him out in a crowd like this, in the gathering darkness. And then her eyes were past him, and she was turning back to her friends, finding her seat and making herself comfortable, just the back of her head and bare shoulders visible.

But there was no time left for him to watch her. Up on the ridge of St-Jacques rockets sailed up into the darkening night sky and exploded, one after another – golden palm trees and extravagant blooms of sparkling colour, followed by the time-lapse bop-bop of the explosions. As the twinkling embers fell back to earth a disembodied, amplified voice came from a dozen speakers set around the stage in the centre of Cavaillon.