When he reached them he took in Midou’s wounds – the first on the side of her thigh a few centimetres above her knee, the second just below the elbow where it had clearly shattered one of the bones in her forearm. Both entry and exit wounds dripped with blood.
‘Just two shots, right? Two shots? That’s all?’ he asked Claudine, looking to see if there were any other wounds on Midou.
‘Just the two,’ confirmed Claudine, cradling her daughter. ‘Grâce à Dieu. Grâce à Dieu. I thought we were dead. Finished. It was . . .’ Tears streamed down her face; tears of joy, of fear, of pain, Jacquot couldn’t tell. ‘Thank God you got here, Daniel. Thank you, thank you . . . and thank you, God.’
‘She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine,’ he said, wrapping an arm round Claudine’s shoulders, as much for his own comfort as hers, the relief that he had got to them in time, and that she and Midou were both safe, washing over him in waves. ‘But we need to get her to a hospital before she loses too much blood,’ he continued, starting to unbuckle his belt. ‘Here, help me pull it through,’ he said, handing the buckle to Claudine and angling his hips. ‘We can use it as a tourniquet.’
As Claudine tugged the belt free, Jacquot grunted with pain at each jerk. He could feel sweat popping out of his brow, seeping through his hair and running down his chest. It felt as though his body was leaking, with sweat and with blood. But with one final, jarring tug the belt was free, and Claudine was looping it around Midou’s thigh, slipping the leather tongue through the buckle and pulling it tight.
‘Can you get upstairs?’ he asked, wincing with the pain. ‘I’ve got men out there, waiting. They may even have heard my shot. They’ll help.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Claudine, passing Midou into his arms and starting to lever herself up. ‘Will you be okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Just go to the front or back door and start shouting.’
But it wasn’t to be.
Claudine wasn’t going anywhere.
‘I’m afraid, mes chers, that your men will be no help at all,’ came a light, teasing voice.
Jacquot and Claudine spun round.
Standing in the doorway, a gun in her hand, was Virginie Cabrille.
79
‘MY, MY, WHAT A MESS you’ve made, Chief Inspector.’
Virginie stepped into the room and pushed Marita’s shoulder with the toe of her shoe. The crumpled body moved, but did not respond.
‘How ever will I clear it all up?’ she said, looking around the room, tut-tutting to herself. ‘Then again,’ she continued, her eyes finally settling on Jacquot, ‘maybe I don’t need to. Enfin, it rather speaks for itself, don’t you think?’ She waved the gun at the body on the floor, at Jacquot, Claudine and Midou. ‘Two sisters, driven by revenge, and you, desperate to protect your family. A harrowing crime. A shoot-out. And not a single survivor, no witnesses . . . I’m sure we can make it look convincing enough, wouldn’t you say?’
Through the pulsing fiery pain in his hip and thigh, Jacquot tried to take it in, make sense of what was happening. It didn’t take him long. He might have got rid of the sisters, but with Virginie Cabrille taking their place he, Claudine and Midou were as good as dead.
And she was right, Jacquot realised. She wouldn’t have to do a thing. Just shoot them all where they were. It might be difficult for a crime-scene team to accurately read the passage of play and come up with a plausible explanation – who, when, how? – but whatever their findings Jacquot knew it was unlikely that Mademoiselle Cabrille would ever be called on it.
‘How did you get out?’ he asked, wincing as he tried to straighten himself, turn and face her. The question was academic, almost laughably irrelevant, but he knew with a chill, terrible certainty that all he could do now was play for time. ‘You were not to be released. I made that quite clear.’
‘Not clear enough, it seems. At least, not to your local examining magistrate. A Monsieur Fourcade, I believe. Since he had been provided with no information from you, and no evidence, and since he was unable to contact you to confirm the charges laid against me, he had little option but to grant my lawyer’s request for my release into his care. As a result, I am currently recovering from my ordeal at Le Mas Bleu, with my lover, who’ll be only too happy to provide an alibi for this brief visit.’
Moving past Marita’s sprawled body, Virginie Cabrille went to the kitchen dresser, wiped the edge of it with her fingers and leant against it, Marina’s gun swinging idly from her fingers.
‘Of course, I had to give a sworn undertaking to return to police headquarters tomorrow morning for further questioning from you. Which, naturally, I will do. Anything to help the authorities.’ She gave an icy little chuckle, her black eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘But since you won’t be making that meeting, and since there really isn’t any evidence to speak of – I’m right, arent I? – I’d say I’m free and clear. Wouldn’t you?’
‘What happened to my men?’
Virginie gave a brittle little laugh.
‘Men? Really? But they went down like little puppy dogs. The two down the road I locked in the boot of a squad car. The others, I regret, were not so fortunate.’
Jacquot was stunned, couldn’t believe it. She’d killed four men? Brunet and the three képis? It certainly didn’t say much for their own chances of survival.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, a sudden beat of confidence in his chest; just a metre or so from his left foot, his eye had been drawn to Marita’s gun.
Virginie Cabrille rolled her shoulders in a lazy shrug.
‘I am really not bothered, Chief Inspector, whether you believe me or not. Just please don’t imagine that anyone’s coming to help you.’
Beside him he could hear Claudine start to whimper softly, desperate to get her daughter out of there, away to safety, but unable to do anything about it, the blood still dripping from their wounds. He put his hand on her wrist and squeezed tightly. He heard her sniff and take a breath, trying to settle herself.
‘Ah, Madame Eddé, I believe?’ said Virginie Cabrille, turning her attention to Claudine. ‘And your daughter, Midou, if I’m not mistaken. How nice to meet you at last. And so much prettier than those photos we have of you.’ She lifted the gun and touched the end of its silencer to her lips, gave a little frown, as though of recognition. And then, ‘You remind me . . . you remind me of that woman in the TV ad. You know, the one for that moisturiser . . .’
But Jacquot wasn’t listening. Dropping his head to his chest so Virginie Cabrille wouldn’t see what he was looking at, his eyes locked on to Marita’s gun, gauging the distance, working out how to reach it, make a grab for it, aim and fire it . . .
He wondered if he could do it. The pain would be gigantic, of course, and Virginie Cabrille already had a gun in her hand, but there was nothing else for it.
Their only chance . . .
As unobtrusively as he could, he started to shift his position – as if he was uncomfortable, needed to accommodate his pain – pushing away a little from Claudine, and putting himself another few centi-metres closer to the gun. He also needed to keep Virginie talking, distract her somehow.
‘So I was right then,’ he said, interrupting the TV ad talk, taking advantage of the moment to reposition himself once again. ‘It was you? Behind all this?’
‘Yes, you were right,’ she replied, turning back to him. ‘I could see it in your eyes when you came to Roucas Blanc, that you’d made me, knew it was me. I’m right, too, aren’t I?’
Jacquot nodded, shifted position again, leaning over onto his right hip as though to ease the pain in his left. The movement put him another few centimetres closer to the gun.
‘From that moment, yes. After we left, I just couldn’t shake the idea that you had something to do with it. I didn’t know how . . . didn’t know about the sisters then. All I knew was that you were involved. Supplying the killers, supporting them.’
Virginie Cabrille sighed.
&n
bsp; ‘They had a good run, didn’t they? Absolutely ruthless, the pair of them. Alors, it hasn’t quite worked out as we’d planned . . . You and that girl, that sidekick of yours. It was supposed to be different, you see. The two of you were meant to suffer, like all the others. Not die.’
‘But why? Why involve yourself? Why take the risk?’ asked Jacquot, desperate for more time, praying her attention would wander, that something would distract her.
‘Why? Because Taddeus and Tomas were special,’ she replied, her voice still low, but filled with menace, suddenly pushing herself away from the dresser, making the flowerpot towers on the topmost shelf wobble and grate. ‘For twenty years they looked out for me . . . became closer to me than my own family. Taught me everything I know,’ she continued, coming towards them, stooping now to pick up Marita’s gun, smiling at Jacquot as she straightened up, shaking her head; she’d seen it too, seen what he’d been planning.
Jacquot sagged, closed his eyes and let his head fall forward as chill despair washed through him. She had won, snatched away his one chance of levelling the odds. They were surely dead now.
‘When they died,’ she continued, ‘trying to protect me, I knew I had a score to settle. Just like their family.’
Swinging the two guns by their trigger guards, Virginie Cabrille stood in front of him, a couple of steps away, just out of reach.
Jacquot raised his head, looked up at her.
‘They were hired guns,’ he said. ‘Nothing more. Killers. Just a pair of low-life hoodlum gorilles.’
‘That’s right. They were,’ she said, her voice hardening, eyes narrowing. ‘But they were my hoodlums, Chief Inspector. My brothers too. Blood brothers. And I wanted someone to pay for what happened to them. Wanted it very much. And I mean, really pay. Pay dearly. And you know what? I knew I could do it. I knew I could get away with it. Which is what I’m doing now.’
The next instant she stopped swinging the guns and flipped them forward, into her grip, their long silenced muzzles ranging between Jacquot, Claudine and Midou.
‘So who first, Chief Inspector?’ She levelled one of the guns on Midou. ‘Why don’t we start with the girl? She won’t feel a thing, I promise.’
‘Non, non, non. You can’t, you just can’t,’ Claudine cried out, harsh and then suddenly defiant. ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you even think such a thing . . .’ And she pulled Midou to her, tried to scrabble away, pushing out her shoulder and half turning her back to shield her daughter from the gun.
‘For God’s sake, wait, wait!’ said Jacquot, desperate to stop what was happening, trying to lever himself towards Virginie Cabrille, holding up a blood-smeared hand as though to push her away, push the gun aside.
It was a hopeless effort, and he knew it.
She was going to shoot Midou.
And then Claudine.
And then him.
She’d leave him till last.
He could see it in her eyes.
She was going to make him watch.
Claudine had sensed it too, just as he had.
‘Please, please. I beg you,’ she called from behind him, her voice softening, pleading. ‘She’s my daughter. She’s seen nothing. Me, Daniel, okay. But not my daughter. You can’t . . . you just . . .’
‘Oh, but I just can,’ said Virginie Cabrille. ‘Here, watch . . .’
And she thumbed back the hammer – a double click – and moved a little to one side, to see past Claudine’s protective shoulder, to take proper aim on the bloodied girl.
‘Ah, there she is, there she is. I can see her . . .’
And Jacquot watched in horror and disbelief as Virginie Cabrille’s finger tightened on the trigger.
‘No,’ he cried out. ‘No, no, no . . .’ and flung himself towards her, reaching out for her legs, hoping somehow to throw her off balance, to bring her down.
But she stepped back, out of range, steadied the gun again, and . . .
In the confines of the basement the gun shot was deafening, a blast of sound loud enough to cover Claudine’s shrill, piercing scream.
A blast.
A mighty, shattering blast.
For several seconds Jacquot tried to make sense of it.
A single blast. An echoing, terrible, clattering sound that bounced off the walls of the room and rang in his head.
A gunshot. A real gunshot.
But Virginie Cabrille was using one of the sisters’ guns.
With a silencer, screwed into the muzzle.
There could be no blast.
There could be no gunshot. Just that low phut.
That’s when Jacquot saw the figure in the doorway.
Brunet, lowering his gun.
And Virginie Cabrille – a wide-eyed look of shock on her face, her chest pushed out as though she was trying to straighten her shoulders, the guns dropping from her hands, her eyes closing with a flutter and her body toppling forward.
80
‘I SAW HER COME THROUGH the trees at the back of the house,’ said Brunet, kneeling beside Jacquot on the basement floor. The medics had him laid out, flat on his back, his left trouser leg scissored open from waistband to knee. Pressure pads had been applied to his hip and a saline drip attached to his arm.
Jacquot was the last to be treated. When the medics arrived he’d put them to work on Claudine and Midou first, watching as the two women were treated, their wounds attended to, the blood loss halted. As soon as they’d been stretchered from the basement, the medics had set to work on him.
‘At first I couldn’t think who it was . . .’ continued Brunet. ‘. . . How she’d got through . . . Why the two képis back in the woods hadn’t seen her.’
‘Did she kill them?’ asked Jacquot, trying to remember their faces, their names.
‘Just the one,’ said Brunet. ‘Ferdi, the older of the two. My guess is he must have seen her. The other one doesn’t remember a thing, just a major chop to the neck and a helluva headache. Garbachon, too, and the other képi, out cold and locked in the boot like you said.’
Jacquot winced as a needle was plunged into his thigh.
One of the medics gave him an apologetic look. Had to be done. Sorry.
‘I waited till she was out of sight behind the house,’ Brunet continued, ‘and then came after her. By the time I got to the terrace, there was no sign of her. Then I saw the body in the salon and thought it must be her. I was checking her out when I heard Claudine start screaming. After that, it all happened so fast . . .’
But Jacquot was having trouble concentrating, a gentle, swaddling heaviness creeping over him. He tried to blink his eyes into focus, but he felt them drift away from Brunet’s face to the ceiling above him.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Jacquot heard one of the medics say.
The words had a strange, dipping texture to them, as though the medic was in a different room. Distant. A little tipsy, maybe.
‘I think he’s gone aready,’ he heard Brunet reply. ‘Eyes are closed . . . mouth open. Just like he is when he takes a nap after lunch . . .’
Jacquot tried to close his mouth and open his eyes, tried to say something, tried to think of something to say.
But it was suddenly beyond him.
Nothing was working . . .
81
IT SEEMED TO JACQUOT THAT he’d been trying to open his eyes for a long time. And now, at last, he had managed to do it. Squinting, blinking, trying to focus, a few cautious glances to left and right to establish where he was – not yet confident enough to move his head. A stretch of slatted blinds. A wall-mounted television on an extendable arm. A canula taped to the inside of his elbow with a plastic drip feed attached to it. Stiff sheets, and the smell of chemicals and polish. A bedside table with a water carafe and glass.
A private room. A hospital.
He was in a hospital and he was alive.
It took a few more minutes to check himself out, a kind of mental inventory, sending out messages to his arms and legs, fingers and toes
, testing everything; finally lifting his head from the pillow, raising an arm, trying to bring saliva into his parched mouth. He looked back at the bedside table. The water carafe was a torment. And remained so. He might lift his head and raise an arm, but there was no way he was going to reach that carafe and pour himself something to drink. The great weight of bandaging that he could feel wadded around his hip, not to mention the possibility of pain, of doing further damage to himself, made that a reach too far.
He’d been shot in the hip. He remembered a jagged, splintery entry wound on the jut of his pelvis, and a flapping exit wound at the back and top of his thigh . . .
But the next thing that came into his head – like beaming flashes of light – were the names Claudine and Midou.
Where were they? How were they? Were they close by?
In the same hospital? Beyond the blind, which he could tell from movements on the other side had been placed on an indoor window?
‘Welcome back, Chief Inspector. You had us worried for a moment.’
For a moment . . . For a moment . . .
A woman drifted into view.
She hadn’t been there a moment ago . . . He hadn’t heard a door open or close . . .
He turned towards her and tried to focus on her. Her hair was dark and tied back and she wore black-framed glasses. She was dressed in a white lab coat unbuttoned over a grey shirt and jeans. There was no stethoscope around her neck, but Jacquot knew she was a doctor.
‘I’m in a hospital . . .’ he began. So stupid. Of course he was.
‘Clinique Aix Pasteur. And I’m Doctor Parri. The one who stitched you up.’
Stitched you up . . . Stitched you up . . .
She gave him a smile that overlapped the last three words. When she spoke, it seemed that the words didn’t quite match the movements of her mouth. A kind of time delay, as though his ears were learning how to hear again. It was the strangest sensation. He knew he was coming round from an anaesthetic, but . . .
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