The sisters’ last laugh.
Virginie Cabrille’s final bravo.
In the next few moments he would know.
At the top of the Somers’ drive, the six men gathered in the shadows and looked down the road towards the line of cypresses and, beyond it, the next turning. Jacquot wasn’t taking any chances. Singling out one of the older képis, he told him to get back to the cars and radio Cavaillon for back-up, as well as all available squads from Salon and an ambulance.
‘The képi gave a swift and, Jacquot suspected, relieved salute and set off down the road at an energetic jog, as though keen to be far enough away to be out of earshot if Jacquot changed his mind.
Jacquot looked at the remaining men.
‘Everyone ready? So let’s go.’
Crossing the road at a run they reached the trees and started forward down the slope, Jacquot and Brunet leading the way, the sky now starting to darken, the buzz of insects falling away. Half way down the incline the house finally came into view, its low pantiled roof cut by branches and framed by tree trunks. It looked like a distant swimming pool, rust-coloured not blue, set in shadow. And not a light showing. Something still, silent and . . . evil.
It was, Jacquot decided, a perfect hide-out. Far enough from the road and so thickly bordered by trees that you could walk or drive right past it and have no idea that it was there, a steep limestone bluff rising beyond. No lights would show through the trees or above the incline, no sound was likely to reach beyond its walls. Pausing on the slope, with maybe twenty metres of trees before the land levelled into the front yard, Jacquot briefed his team – two of the képis to go round to the back of the house and one to stay where he was and watch the drive – while he and Brunet carried on ahead.
With every crouching step, the sharper, more focussed, Jacquot became, listening out for any sound, watching for any movement, momentarily distracted by the flitting passage of a bat.
‘Looks dead,’ whispered Brunet, squatting down beside him, both men giving the two képis sufficient time to take up position at the back of the house. Away to their left, among the trees, could be heard a distant whisper of their progress, the shuffle of leaves, the occasional crack of a twig that made Jacquot wince. Finally it was silent again.
‘How do you want to do it?’ asked Brunet, scanning the darkened windows across the front yard.
‘To tell the truth, I don’t know. Maybe just . . . go up and ring the doorbell.’
‘Good a way as any,’ replied Brunet. ‘Go for it. I’ll keep you covered.’
Jacquot gripped his colleague’s arm, gave it a squeeze.
‘See you inside.’
‘Que oui.’ You bet.
As quietly as he could, Jacquot stepped forward, out of the trees, joining the narrow track that led down from the road and opened into the villa’s sloping front yard. There was no car, and no garage that he could see, no sign of habitation. Glancing back, he tried to make out Brunet but the shadows were deepening and his assistant was lost in them.
Moving forward, out in the open, uncomfortably aware of every step, Jacquot slid his gun from its holster and took in the house. Whoever owned it, he thought, had taken little care of it. Snaking weedy tendrils had crawled forward into the gravel, the paint on the wooden shutters was peeling badly, and one of the two urns either side of the front door had cracked in half, spilling soil on to the step. There was a stale, sun-slaked smell to the place – of dry earth and abandonment. Maybe, thought Jacquot, like the owner of the VW, the person who lived here had been called away for a longer time than he or she had expected.
Just a few metres from the front door, he had a change of heart. Rather than ring the doorbell, he decided to skirt the property, take a look around it first. In an instant he was glad he had. Turning down the right hand side of the house he came to a kitchen door, a bulging black bin liner set on its step, knotted at the top. After the leafy scent of the woods and the sun-dried staleness of the front yard, the warm smell of rotting food was a sudden and forceful reminder that this house might look deserted, but it clearly wasn’t.
He peered through the glass panel of the kitchen door but the room was too dark to make out anything. He tried the handle. The door opened. No lock. But he closed it again, unwilling to make his move, wondering, as he continued down the side of the house whether they were watching him, the sisters, like that Somers man, waiting for their moment.
He reached the back yard and, for the first time, felt a human presence, there on the decked terrace jutting out from the house. Two canvas-backed chairs set at a square wooden table. A magazine. Two glasses.
Keeping close to the back wall, he climbed the steps to the deck, placing his feet carefully, feeling for squeaks and creaks. As he drew closer he could see that the magazine was curled open at the horoscopes, that there were small cubes of ice still to melt in the glasses, and that the big square ashtray was filled with a jumble of lipstick-stained stubs, one of which smouldered gently.
They had been here, the sisters, just moments before, the glass terrace door pulled to one side, open, inviting.
This was the way they had gone.
And Jacquot followed, flicking off the safety on his Beretta.
76
‘YOU MISSED. HOW COULD YOU miss?’
Marita started to chuckle. Shaking her head in disbelief, she stepped forward, crossing the room towards Claudine and pointing out a saucer-shaped chip of stone removed from the wall behind her.
‘By a metre! A sitting target, right in front of you, and you miss.’
She walked back to the door, took up position beside Marina and, holding the gun in both hands, levelled it on Midou.
‘My turn,’ she said. ‘For Tomas.’
The gun spat and jerked, the tip of the silencer snapping back and upwards.
But the aim was true.
At the far end of the room the two women let out muffled screams, and Midou seemed to quiver, then flung back her head, hopping on the spot, tiptoes scrabbling for purchase as a widening red stain spread down the leg of her jeans from just above the knee – the first of the wounds that Marita had plugged in her brother’s naked body all those months ago in a farmhouse kitchen in Corsica.
‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘That’s how you do it.’
As Marita stood aside and Marina took her place, the two bound women at the other end of the room shrieked and squirmed.
‘A moving target,’ said Marita, as Claudine scrabbled this way and that, desperate to avoid the coming shot. ‘Stay still, chérie, or it may be the worse for you,’ she called out. ‘Stay still and take it, like our brothers.’
‘For Taddeus,’ whispered Marina, levelling the gun, taking a bead on the marker-pen cross on the leg of Claudine’s ao dai, the cross that she’d missed the first time.
With a slow hiss of released breath, Marina squeezed the trigger, and the gun leapt in her hands.
This time there was no mistake.
The impact of the bullet spun Claudine off her feet and left her twisting helplessly at the end of her rope, a line of blood trickling from beneath her silken trouser leg, down between her toes. A low, disbelieving whine rose from her throat and her leg trembled and jerked as though a jolt of electricity was passing through it.
‘Two down, five to go,’ said the elder sister, taking up position, legs apart, looking down the barrel of her Beretta for the next cross, higher up on Midou’s arm.
‘Wait,’ said Marina, the shiver of excitement in her voice unmistakable. ‘Un moment. Attend. Candles. We need candles. Some atmosphere. Something festive.’
She crossed to the old kitchen dresser on the left-hand wall, sorted through the glass jars on the shelves, pulled open the two drawers, ran her fingers through the mess inside. But there were no candles.
‘There are some upstairs. Reste, I’ll get them,’ she said, and was out of the room before Marita could stop her, footsteps sounding down the passage, up the wooden stairs.
And she raised her gun, took careful aim on Midou’s slender arm and squeezed the trigger.
‘For Tomas,’ she whispered.
77
JACQUOT HAD LEFT THE KITCHEN and was halfway across the salon, the tiled floor deadening his footfall, when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted four suitcases standing by the front door. He’d been heading for the dining room, through an archway leading off the salon, but changed direction and crossed over to the suitcases. They looked new, their bulging blue fabric sides unmarked, the two smaller cases with extendable handles for wheeling along. There were no stickers and no labels, the zippered lids on all four bags secured with tiny padlocks. It was then that he heard a door creak open, somewhere below him, and the scuffle of shoes.
With nowhere to hide, Jacquot tucked himself in behind a closed door beneath the main staircase. He assumed it led to the basement, and he was right. On the other side of it, footsteps pounded up the wooden stairs and the door burst open so forcefully that it banged against the toe of his shoe, swinging back and slamming shut. As it did so Jacquot saw a short, dark-haired woman dressed in jeans, boots and jumper stop in her tracks and start to turn in his direction, as though suddenly, subliminally, aware that there was someone behind her.
And as she turned, bringing up a gun, Jacquot sprang from his hiding place and, judging himself close enough, swung out with his own gun hand. He didn’t aim the strike, it was simply instinctive, a wild lunging swipe. And at first it seemed to be too low, glancing off the woman’s shoulder, only for the pistol grip in his fist to connect with a mighty crack against her temple. Her head snapped sideways and she dropped on the spot, caught round the waist by Jacquot who could only watch in dismay as her gun spun from her grip, flew high into the air and came tumbling down, far out of reach. On the tiled floor it would have clattered dreadfully, might even have fired off a round, but instead it landed on the sofa, bounced a couple of times and then lay still.
Bundling the woman onto the same sofa, Jacquot knelt beside her and turned her face into what little light there was. Though the hair was now a different colour, he recognised the face immediately – Julie, the woman who, the evening before, had come to find him in the bleachers. In her black polo shirt and black trousers, with her name tag and security badge and business-like clipboard. He remembered, too, the newspaper picture that Brunet had sent from Ajaccio. Marina. The shorter and younger of the two Manichella sisters. Receiving first prize at an agricultural show for the best honey. But she didn’t look so happy now. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open, and the side of her head was matted with blood, trickling down the hairline and pooling into her ear. Jacquot felt for a pulse in her neck, and found it. She was alive, but clearly out of the game.
It was in the heartbeat silence that followed their tussle, kneeling beside the sofa, that Jacquot heard a distant cry that seemed to rise up from behind the closed basement door. There was a pleading in the sound, a muffled note of despair and agony and terror. It was a frighteningly familiar sound, too, and Jacquot knew at once it was Claudine. Jumping up from the sofa, he raced to the basement door and turned the handle. The lock was new and oiled and it gave without a sound, the hinges opening without a squeak. The stairs, too, did not let him down – firm and thick and solid – and just a few silent seconds later he stepped from the last one and found himself in a long, neon-lit passageway. There were three doors, two closed on the left and one open on the right. It was from this door that the low, desperate moaning came. And the unmistakable ‘click-click’ sound of a gun’s breech mechanism.
In an instant Jacquot was at the door – Claudine and Midou just two bloodied bodies twisting from a ceiling beam at the end of the room, and the elder Manichella sister standing with her back to him.
‘Vite, vite, chérie, you are missing all the fun,’ she said, and glanced over her shoulder.
‘Police,’ called Jacquot. ‘Put your weapon down.’
She didn’t, of course.
And Jacquot knew she wouldn’t.
Which was why his Beretta stayed on her every centimetre of the way, as she dropped into a crouch, spun round and swept up her gun.
They squeezed their triggers just a fraction of a second apart – the crashing blast of Jacquot’s Beretta filling the room, covering the no less lethal phut from Marita’s silenced gun.
For a moment the two shooters looked at one another.
Then they crumpled to the floor.
78
JACQUOT SAW HIS SHOT HIT Marita a few centimetres below her left collarbone, just off centre, and he watched her jerk backwards under the impact, gun skittering across the floor, her head coming down with a mighty crack on the concrete.
But that same moment, still deafened by the blast of his own gunshot, Jacquot felt a massive blow against his left hip. For a moment he stood there in the doorway, like an old man steadying himself againt the motion of a train, then tottered back a step and fell.
The pain of his landing, in a sitting position against the open door, was excruciating and, eyes wide with shock and disbelief, he felt what he knew was a wet pulse of warm blood flow across his skin and settle between his legs. Looking down at his lap he could see the side and front of his linen trousers soaking up blood in a widening scarlet stain and he wondered, sitting there blankly, if he was going to die.
But the pain was too great for death, he decided. In death any pain would be numbed, surely? And there was certainly no numbness about the agony lancing like a dagger through his left hip. He also knew for a fact that a coldness seeped through the body in the moments before death. But he didn’t feel cold, just that soaking sticky warmth. Laying his gun aside, he raised his left arm and let the fingers of his right hand explore the source of the blood and the pain, gently fumbling at the torn pocket of his trousers.
And there it was . . . a raw, delicate opening at the tips of his fingers.
But that wasn’t all. Further back was another scorching fumarole of pain from the torn flesh of the exit wound, an open flapping hole far wider and more ragged than the entry wound.
Jacquot felt a rush of shock at the damage he had found. He really had been shot, and shot quite badly. But the next instant he was aware of something infinitely more harrowing, a growing wail from the other side of the room, its volume and insistence breaking into his dulled consciousness.
From where he sat he lifted his head to see Claudine struggling against her bonds and screaming at him through her silvery duct-tape gag – a repeated, two-syllable phrase that could as easily have been ‘Daniel’ as ‘Midou’ or ‘Help us’. And then he saw Midou, beside her mother, her body hanging from its bindings, her head on her chest, her white T-shirt and white rhinestoned jeans stained a horrible scarlet.
It took only a minor attempt to get to his feet to persuade Jacquot that he’d never be able to manage it. The pain shafting through his pelvis like a thousand white hot steely speartips made it abundantly clear that such an attempt would be cruelly dealt with. The only thing he could manage was an elbowed haul across the floor, on his stomach, dragging his legs behind him.
‘J’arrive. J’arrive.’ I’m coming, I’m coming, he called out, surprised by how dry his mouth was, how constricted his throat, and with every push back with his elbows, propelling himself forward, he flicked out a tongue over lips that felt suddenly hot and parched. Finally, panting from the effort, the points of his elbows painfully skinned by the rough concrete, he reached Claudine, the side of his head brushing against her leg.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay . . . soon have you down,’ he managed to say, but he knew at a glance that that was easier said than done.
The only way he could release her was by reaching up to undo the rope knotted around its bracket. As gently as he could he rolled onto his back, sob
bing with the pain, and pressed his palms to the floor, pushing himself up against the wall, centimetre by centimetre – the back of his head, his shoulders – until he could reach up with his hand, find the knot and start to untie it.
Twist and unwind, twist and unwind he went.
‘Nearly there, nearly there,’ he called out, his voice croaky and tight, while Claudine hopped round to face him, raising herself on tiptoes and stretching up her arms to provide some slack. ‘Another twist and another . . .’
Then, suddenly, the knot was loose and the rope was pulled from his hand as Claudine tugged it clear of the hook and dropped down beside him, favouring her good leg and pulling the tape from her fingers and mouth.
‘You’re hurt . . . She shot you . . .’ she said, now tearing at the rope around her wrists. When her hands were free, she lifted back the corner of his jacket and stared at the spread of blood.
‘Oh, mon Dieu!’ she cried.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he said. ‘And you? Your leg? You okay?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. It kind of hurts but doesn’t. Even when I move it. Just . . . hot.’
‘Can you get to Midou? Can you get her . . . ?’
But before he could finish, Claudine was off, levering herself up against the wall and hopping over to her daughter, one leg bloodied, limp and useless.
In seconds she had the rope holding Midou off its bracket and, taking the weight with one hand, reached out her other to catch her daughter round the waist. Letting go the rope the two of them came to a slumped rest in a puddle of blood.
‘She’s not moving, Daniel. She’s unconscious . . .’ There was fear and panic in Claudine’s voice.
‘She’ll be okay. It’s just shock,’ he croaked, praying it was true as he palmed himself over to them, hands sticky and slippery with blood, his and Claudine’s. ‘Which is good, it’s good; it’s blanked her out. No pain.’
Blood Counts Page 30
