by John Brooke
Now you could hear sirens in the distance.
Now you could see the glow of fire above the ridge…
Francine had taken the stage from a helpless Luc Malarmé. She said whoever was able might be needed. They should keep their distance, but be ready to work. Luc stood beside her, watching his special moment literally go up in smoke, still unaware that the fire on the far side of the ridge was burning in his vines.
Aliette and Sergio hurried with the remaining crowd a hundred paces up the road. From that vantage on the crest of the hill, they saw the blaze spreading outward on both sides of the villa on the ridge. Luc Malarmé’s vines were the flashpoint, clearly — but there were no fences between one parcel of vines and the next. The entire plateau was under siege.
Many vignerons work late during the early summer when the days stretch on, but not on a Saturday night. It’s a good time to set a fire in the vines. Aliette was standing close to Luc when it dawned. This was no accident. She saw realization flicker in his eyes. Then something else.
Resignation? Something fateful? She’d glimpsed it when he’d come about his dog.
Which was probably why Luc did not race toward it in a panic the way most people did when disaster came to their lives. Aliette had seen that a thousand times.
And she knew she was looking at a serious crime. And that she would have her mandate.
Soon firefighters from half a dozen towns and villages had arrived to help. They were supported by at least a hundred able-bodied others, a cop and a judge included. It was an exhausting, often frightening, few hours. As they worked, obediently following hectic directives shouted by long-time volunteers who knew the drill, it was made very clear by more than a few angry voices that the communal effort was not out of any support for their controversial neighbour, but to ensure the fire didn’t spread. Angry or otherwise, it was a given: everyone available pitched in to help the pompiers contain it. Years of work and food on the table were hanging in the balance.
There were irrigation systems installed at regular intervals. The hoses were branched to the closest. There were huge reservoir tanks placed along the forest roads for the same purpose — the nearest was a kilometre away. The trucks came and went, refilling, then returning to crash through the muddy soil to the front lines. Aliette and Sergio fell into well-marshalled teams and did what they could, taking their turn carting buckets to places where the trucks and the irrigation spigots could not reach, clearing all scraps of old dried vines, carting them away in armfuls.
Aliette had never in her life been in such a situation. It seemed that this was what war must be like. She could certainly imagine nothing more chaotic. She and Sergio were soon separated. A spade was thrust her way and she helped dig a trench to create space between one flaming row and the next and experienced a deathly scare when flames suddenly surrounded the spot where she and two others were working like frantic machines. The heat was unbearable, closing in. She felt her hair would start to flame, her lungs felt seared like meat in a pan — but there was no way out of the circle. The woman beside her began to scream… But you can’t hit fire with a spade!
Then the hoses arrived and doused it. Aliette and the third woman hugged and comforted the one who’d panicked. Then all three got back to work, battling on. It was past midnight when the conflagration was finally under control and petered out to sporadic flares amid rows of mucky cinders. They spent another hour milling about in the road, waiting for the OK to stand down.
Aliette’s new Trois Suisses catalogue jeans were grotesque with mud, her Barcelona sandals ruined beyond hope. And where was Sergio?
She walked up the drive to the house. The gendarmes were also on the job. The inspector had not been carrying her police credentials that evening — only her worries — but she was recognized and allowed to pass. She found Luc Malarmé sitting on his front step, grim, dirty, as exhausted as she. His house was untouched but his vines were destroyed. Aliette was commiserating half-heartedly with Luc when a woman emerged from the house, bringing two tall glasses. She was surprised to recognize financial advisor Chloé Dafy under a layer of sweat and soot.
Nodding a greeting to her client the Chief Inspector, the banker sat herself down by Luc.
He accepted his water and quaffed half of it. ‘Merci.’ Then offered the rest to the cop.
Who accepted and cooled her throat. ‘Merci.’
Aliette did not know much about Chloé Dafy beyond her ability to clarify a police officer’s various bank accounts and mortgage plan. She was mid-thirtyish, and always a bit dowdy in her banker’s clothes. On a Saturday, sooty mess aside, tight jeans and an interesting top showed a healthy, attractive shape. It seemed Luc and Chloé knew each other; he was comfortable with her beside him… Yes, there was the white car, nondescript in a clump of trucks and official vehicles. Could a banker and an ex-con rock star communicate beyond the intricacies of his finances? Of course Aliette didn’t ask. She was happy he had someone on such a calamitous night. She was thinking it ironic in the extreme that this should be the woman offering comfort to Luc Malarmé — the daughter of the librarian who proudly presided over the website that hosted the poisonous Miri thread. And she was relieved. If Chloé Dafy was taking care of Luc, he did not need her. An absurdly self-centred thought, she knew. But still…
Handing back the empty glass, Aliette wished Luc Malarmé ‘Bon courage.’
In reply, he told her, neither vainglorious or defiant, but, rather, serious and muted like a fateful boy, ‘They can’t stop me from being who I am, Inspector.’
She had no reply to that. She left him with his banker and went to find her judge.
PART 2
TOWARD THE NIGHT OF MUSIC
We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message… All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.
John Berger
• 13 •
CONFLICTED CHORUS
Sunday morning, Aliette left Sergio sleeping soundly, went downstairs, put on coffee and opened her laptop. She was surprised. She expected unanimous, triumphant glee. She found a conflicted chorus of chatters.
ChèreAmante: This is disturbing news.
TruthTeller: Was anyone there last night?
MarieSoleil: I was there. I saw it. I saw him. He was destroyed.
Guerrière: My husband went on the truck. Big mess.
Leina: I’m worried. I feel responsible. Like we cast a spell.
TruthTeller: There’s no law against talking.
Leina: He did not deserve that.
IssaE: What does he deserve?
Leina: Did we push someone’s heart the wrong way?
SaintThérèse: Us? LOL! Stop being silly!
Leina: What’s so silly? Someone went too far!
TruthTeller: Well it wasn’t me!
IssaE: No sympathy, you?
TruthTeller: Are we meant to feel sympathy for the likes of him?
Guerrière:Would Miri feel sympathy?
SaintThérèse: I say no.
TruthTeller: He felt none for her.
Aliette put some jam on a toast, poured herself a mug of coffee.
NEW!
TruthTeller: No sympathy. No responsibility.
IssaE: Our truth teller is hard.
ChèreAmante: Our sympathy is inconsequential.
Leina: What about our contempt?
Big question. No one replied to Leina.
But IssaE appeared to be connecting with one of Miri’s defenders. But only one. Was one a dangerous number here? It seemed Miri’s acolytes were confused by the crime. The scale of it. That someone would risk lives and livelihood setting fire to the vines in vengeance for their gentle heroine, inspired by their angry venting. Were they afraid of something that they knew?
Or perhaps it was simply
time for Miri’s ladies to get going. Mass. The market. Sunday lunch for the family. A busy day. Aliette sipped coffee, pondering it.
Then she went up to get dressed and rouse Sergio. She sent him home after breakfast.
There was a busy day ahead for the police as well.
• 14 •
FORENSICS FIRST PASS
‘Salut.’
Junior Inspector Bénédicte Barnay was on Sunday duty, at her desk with paperwork. Sleepy. ‘One call. Guy from IJ.’ She passed the number.
‘Up late?’
‘Alex is on the volunteers.’
‘God bless the volunteers. Incredible thing. I haven’t worked like that…ever.’
‘You were there?’
‘And Sergio. We went up to the concert at Prades, next thing you know we’re in hell.’
‘That man’s life is one long train wreck,’ Bénédicte muttered, less than sympathetic.
The chief inspector went to her desk and picked up the phone.
‘Bonjour, Inspector… Yes, at the scene. Been here since dawn.’ Inspector Daniel Drouin, a forensics expert with Identité Judiciaire, had come up from Division in Montpellier to supervise the team picking through the ashes. When she reached him, he was standing in the smouldering wreckage. ‘Tragedy. Nice view here… Yes, it was deliberate. Very deliberate. Four flash points at the four corners closest to the house. I’m guessing they were assuming it would burn outward — path of least resistance — and would be seen and contained before it got done with Monsieur Malarmé’s vines.’ Which was more or less the case, though seven other growers had suffered damage to parts of parcels abutting the edges of the targeted area. Yes, Luc Malarmé’s vines were effectively ruined.
‘They?’
‘Or he. One person could arrange it in an hour. I gather everyone was at the village.’
‘No security cameras?’
‘None. Says he doesn’t believe in this paranoid security culture.’
‘That sounds about right. Any ideas on the flash?’
‘Working on it. Ethanol… xylene… An acetate base, it seems.’
‘Smells a bit like nail polish remover? An odour in the air as I was leaving, I mean under all that ghastly water and fire stench.’
‘His girlfriend caught that too.’
Well, good. Something to share with Chloé Dafy. ‘Can you make a sample?’
‘It looks like we can. I will send — what? — five sheets with my report.’
Treated paper. A variation on glossy perfume scratch-and-sniff pages.
‘Perfect. And perhaps a dozen more for the gendarmes. Our interviews?’
‘Not a problem.’
‘Sergeant Legault being helpful?’
There was a pause as Inspector Daniel Drouin weighed his words. ‘Maybe it’s Sunday, but he doesn’t seem too interested.’
‘More like a conflict of interest.’
‘I see. Or maybe I don’t. In any event, he’s in there now having his turn. He sent some men to look in the woods. Maybe our firebug left something behind.’
‘A green cap,’ Aliette ventured obliquely.
‘A green cap?’
‘A lot of local feelings at play here, Inspector. A green cap would fit well… Have the media invaded?’
‘Not so bad as you’d imagine, actually. A nice little riot at Lunel last night. Bigger story.’
‘What could be bigger than Luc Malarmé?’
‘Maghreb kids turning militant, some heading off to Syria, the rest burning down the town.’
‘Ah, well…’
‘Count your blessings, Inspector.’
She definitely would. Was her presence required at the scene?
‘Not really. He…well, his girlfriend, she asked me in for coffee. He didn’t say much. Still in a bit of shock. Sat there strumming his guitar, looking into space. Answered my questions but it was mostly rambling about all the great fun. Before, I mean. Parties, music. I gathered he meant before he killed Miri Monette. He says they all hate him now, but couldn’t get more specific than that. We’ve looked through his barn. People will do it for the insurance, especially in this shrinking economy. He has a can of accelerant, but it hadn’t been opened for years. Old technology. Not the same stuff at all. Which doesn’t totally let him off the hook, but —’
‘Shrinking economy’s not really his problem, Inspector. But her. Did she say anything?’
‘She said some people have held grudges for the longest time. She hears it all the time at her bank. I didn’t really get into it with her. I gather that if it was a property thing, it happened long ago when she was a child. Or at least before she met him…’ He paused. ‘I thought his kind only hooked up with other famous people.’
‘I think his pickings are pretty slim these days.’
‘Yes, I suppose they might be.’ Drouin wisely let any further comment there go by.
Aliette backed up. ‘Sorry, that didn’t sound right. She’s a good woman. Certainly knows her business. Helped me a lot when I first got here.’
‘Perhaps she will again.’
‘We’ll see.’ Getting a bank to reveal client accounts and records required a strong mandate; if that happened, it would be two or three steps down the road. ‘But him: did he say anything about any bad business? I mean before.’
‘No. Just fun, parties, music and how he was going to fix it with his songs. Strange guy.’
Aliette agreed, ‘Very strange guy.’
Inspector Drouin promised his report by noon next day.
• 15 •
A DIRTY LITTLE BUSINESS TRICK
Luc Malarmé had mentioned a name that day way back in March when he’d first come in to report the killing of his dog. Aliette had been too boggled to note it. She called Mathilde Lahi at home, apologized, told her all about the night before, then posed her question.
‘That would be Francis…Francis Fernandez.’ Mathilde told her where to find him.
It wasn’t far. She went on foot, over the bridge and up the hill to the maison de retraite. The nurse pointed. Francis Fernandez sat in the sun in a wheelchair, one of a dozen residents parked in front of the nursing home in the silence of the afternoon. No one conversed. Sunday is family day, but their families, their lives, were in their memories.
Francis smelled of stale urine. His green eyes were milky. He looked past her, as if fascinated by the river below. Aliette placed herself in front of the wizened, sun-browned man and asked him to remember his dealings with Luc Malarmé.
He was guarded. ‘I was happy enough with the arrangement. He kept me working, earning a living. It was better than any other offer that came my way after I’d sold off… Yes, I heard lots of things during the first years. Much of it was directed at me. They were pissed because I sold to him and not to them… I worked there until they put him in jail for the…’ Now Francis looked at her, eyes tightening with the shameful association, ‘for the thing with that film star. It was on the télé. I could probably be working for him still…but my health.’ Though he clearly meant the shame.
‘Who were they? The ones who were angry.’
‘Everyone who had parcels along that stretch. But what he did… to her, I mean, it got people talking like they never had. I heard more things. So I stopped. I wanted nothing more to do with him. I didn’t want to be in those vines any more. I wrote him a letter and told him it was time for me to retire.’ He frowned. Yes, shame. ‘It took me far too long to realize that I —’
An abrupt stop. A long look, straight through her, seeking the mindless river.
Francis Fernandez confessed, ‘No one else could have been so stupid. I’d broken trust with everyone. They were my friends, my real friends. He used me. The donkey farm, the house… when I finally understood, I wanted to crawl under a rock.’ A rueful clarity gripped him
. ‘Some of us don’t wise up till we’re old, eh?’
‘Who was most angry at losing a chance at your land?’
The old eyes returned to default-mode vague. ‘Probably all of them.’ Francis Fernandez sat there, a bewildered old man in a sunny mote of empty silence.
‘He came back,’ Aliette prompted. ‘Back from prison.’ Francis nodded. ‘Has he visited?’
‘I made him understand I do not want to see him.’
‘You know they burned his vines last night?’
Another weary nod. A tear squeezed out the corner of his ancient eye.
Aliette walked back over the bridge to the office and got in the car.
Prades was a ghost town on a Sunday afternoon. Even the previous night’s disaster could not stop the habitual retreat to family at the stroke of noon. In any event, the fire in the vines was now in the hands of the police — nothing left to do but close doors and shutters against the heat and partake of a long lunch with dramatic stories, then a siesta.
The population of Prades hovered at around 400. Regardless, every community needs a mayor. Not a big job; it’s usually a second job and minimally compensated. It’s a responsibility nonetheless, and they all wear the tri-colour sash come July 14 and when performing civil rites.
The longtime mayor at Prades had died the same year Aliette Nouvelle was transferred from Alsace. Francine Tabler had campaigned and won on the strength of a no-nonsense bottom-line savvy a single mother naturally learns, and on her reputation as an honest, hardworking picker of grapes and cleaner of houses — roles Francine still filled to supplement her household spend. An adolescent daughter is expensive.
