Score! (72 page)

‘“Bat” is the operative word,’ said Baby harshly. ‘Isa’s a bloodsucker. He’s got a perfectly good mistress, called Martie, bankrolling him in Oz. He didn’t break up with her when he married Tab, who turned out to be not rich enough because Rannaldini wouldn’t help out. I bet Isa suggested you buy some horses for him to train.’

Then, ignoring bellows from Bernard that the gate wasn’t clear, Baby vaulted on to his pony and galloped off in the direction of Valhalla.

It took Chloe some hours to trace the ex-directory number of Jake Lovell’s yard.

Having gone to bed early, Isa was woken not by the news of a sick horse, which he would have understood, but by Chloe in hysterics.

‘Who the hell’s Martie?’ she screamed.

‘My business partner.’

‘A bit more than that.’

‘Well — it’s all over anyway. Who told you about her?’

‘Baby. I told him about us.’

Isa sat bolt upright. ‘You what?’

‘The police found my lipstick near Rannaldini’s body and Quercus on his dressing-gown. I needed an alibi.’

‘Well, I’m not giving you one, you stupid bitch. Anyone who kisses and tells deserves all they get.’ And Isa hung up.

Tristan paced in torment up and down his baking, airless veal crate of a cell. The light was fading outside his frosted window, but he could see nothing except the inside of his own heart. He knew that a gentleman never named the women he had slept with. Montignys didn’t fuck and tell, as Rannaldini had, although Étienne had fucked and painted enough.

For the last three years he had been having an
affaire
with Claudine Lauzerte, so discreetly that not even Rannaldini’s secret service had rumbled them. He had fallen in love with her back in 1977 when she’d joined their table, the first time Rannaldini had taken him to
Don Carlos
.

His dream had come true in 1993 when he’d cast her as the object of a young man’s adoration in
Le Rouge et Le Noir
. As she had grown in beauty under Oscar’s lighting and his direction, so had their passion for one another. At first she had held off. Only when he had found her sobbing wildly over a newspaper report that he was sleeping with some starlet had he broken down her defences and they’d become lovers.

But at what price? Claudine’s husband Jean-Louis, the appropriately named Minister of Cultural Affairs, was universally acknowledged to be a brute.

And that was another reason why Tristan had identified with Carlos. He had experienced all the hell of loving a married woman, with a stern, undemonstrative, unfaithful yet possessive husband. He could never drop in on Claudine unannounced, never expect her to ring him in case the telephone number showed up on a bill closely scrutinized by Jean-Louis’s accountants, never ring her at home in case one of the spying servants answered. Nor could he write because Jean-Louis or his secretary, also a spy, frisked the post.

As Claudine became even more adored because of Tristan’s films, and was voted the Most Admired Woman in France, Jean-Louis’s jealousy increased, and so did the interest of the press who followed her every move.

At first she had been reckless and while they were on location spent all night in Tristan’s arms. This had compensated for the endless taunts that he was a closet gay, impotent, incapable of sustaining a relationship. He had also had to endure the hostility of beautiful women like Chloe and Serena, who couldn’t understand why he rejected their advances, not to mention the endless matchmaking of his brothers’ wives.

He had prayed Claudine would leave Jean-Louis and move in with him or, better still, marry him. He didn’t give a toss about the twenty-four-year age gap. Sometimes, when life became unbearable, she had come near to it.

But just before Étienne’s death, one of Claudine’s friends had rung to say a newspaper was on to her and Tristan and about to blow her saintly Madame Vierge image sky high. Claudine had no desire to relinquish the moral high ground, so she had retreated into her arid marriage. Gradually, for Tristan, hope had died, but he couldn’t stop loving her.

Until suddenly he had been jolted by Tab, and believed, by some miracle, there might be life and love after Claudine. But Rannaldini had promptly stamped on that flower.

In his most despairing thoughts since then, Tristan had dreamt that Claudine, having four children of her own, might not mind that he couldn’t give her children. He had so longed to see her again at the screening of
The Lily in the Valley
: he knew Jean-Louis was in Tuscany and was devastated when she’d failed to show up, on the excuse that filming commitments in Wales were too heavy.

He had forced himself to go to Hortense’s party the next day, but the sight of numerous Montignys, a tribe to which he no longer belonged, milling around the lawn — Aunt Hortense in navy blue pinstripe, the Croix de Guerre in her lapel, his self-regarding brothers and their braying wives, and the smell of crayfish drifting over the white rose hedge — had sent him fleeing back to Valhalla.

Here he collected the address book with Claudine’s telephone number in Wales, showered, changed into the peacock-blue shirt and the jeans she had given him, and on which Lucy had put the patch of a greyhound’s head, and set out for the sleepy village of Llandrogan.

He had rung from Valhalla to say he was on his way, his mobile cutting out before Claudine could say no. He had driven like the devil and arrived while she was getting ready, her hair, which she hadn’t had time to wash, still in rollers, with only one eye made up and her tummy still blown out from an early supper.

As he bounded upstairs like Tigger, she had sent him down again to pour himself a huge drink, which, by the time she had joined him, had become two. She had looked so exquisite, he had swept her back up to bed, which had not been a success. He had come instantly. In the old days, he would then have made love to her with his tongue and his hands, until he was raring to come again. Now he sensed her relief.

‘It couldn’t matter less,
chéri
, we’re both exhausted. I have lines to learn and I’ve got to get up at six. I’m not as young as I was.’

It was a far cry from
The Lily in the Valley
when they had made love all night, and the violet shadows beneath eyes softened by happiness had only enhanced her haunting beauty.

Claudine herself, that Sunday evening in Llandrogan, had suddenly felt too old and set in her ways. Reason has reasons the heart knows nothing about. She didn’t want him to stay the night. She longed to take off her make-up and cover her face with skin food. Worry about the lurking paparazzi would keep her awake when she needed to look good on the set, and if she fell asleep she might snore.

When Tristan told her about the problems with Rannaldini, she had been unsympathetic. All directors became increasingly twitchy as the end of a shoot approached. Unable to bear it any longer, he had dropped the bombshell that Maxim was his father. To his amazement, she wasn’t very interested.

‘The aristocracy have always been irregularly conceived,
chéri
. My sister wasn’t my father’s daughter. I’m not sure I was either. Jean-Louis’s father was a naughty old boy too. Whenever we go shooting on the estate I notice how the beaters all look like Jean-Louis.’

‘For Christ’s sake, it’s not the same. My grandfather was a psychopath who raped my sixteen-year-old mother, so I’m three-quarters his mad, tainted blood.’ Tristan had wanted to hit her, but had shaken her instead.

‘Stop it, you’re hurting me,’ she had cried.

And what the fuck d’you imagine you’re doing to me? thought Tristan.

‘I cannot have children,’ he said bleakly.

Claudine had shrugged.

‘There are too many children in the world. They’re nothing but trouble. Marie-Claire is threatening to marry a
pied-noir
. Patrice is divorcing. Béatrice is pregnant by her Egyptian boyfriend. Jean-Louis is out of his mind with worry.’ Then, seeing Tristan’s blackening face, ‘Anyway,
chéri
, you have elder brothers, it is not as if there’s any need to carry on the Montigny line.’

When he tried to explain, he knew he was boring her. He would have liked to have left then, but he had drunk too much brandy, and was too tired so instead he had crashed out on her bed. She had shaken him awake at three thirty. It would soon be light.

‘I’m so terrified of the English press — they’re everywhere.’

It wouldn’t do to forfeit being the Most Admired Woman in France, thought Tristan savagely.

As he had driven away from Llandrogan into the desolation of dawn, and pulled into a field to sleep, he had been reminded of the time he had broken the news of Maxim being his father to Lucy and how she’d given him black coffee, laced with Drambuie, wrapped him in her duvet, held him shuddering in her arms and listened and listened, and how her hair was the same soft brown as rain-soaked winter trees.

Coming back to earth, still pacing his cell, he remembered how on the day after the murder, for the first time in months, Claudine had actually slipped into a telephone box in Llandrogan to ring him, pleading with him not to use her as an alibi. She must know he’d been arrested, but she was clearly not coming forward to save him. There was no light in the little frosted window. And no dawn for him.

As Karen walked into the Pearly Gates with Ogborne after the cinema, Jessica dragged her outside into the drizzle.

‘I found this in my bag. I wrote Oscar’s mobile number on the back of it on Thursday. It’s a memo from Tristan to Bernard and the props department, saying he was planning to reshoot part of Posa and Carlos’s pistol scene in the Unicorn Glade on Friday night, and he would need the.22 out of the props cupboard. Is it important?’

Karen didn’t even notice the drizzle become a downpour.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said joyfully.

‘And, by the way, Mikhail’s looking for you,’ said a relieved Jessica. ‘He’s in the production office.’

Karen found Mikhail utterly despondent about his crocus-yellow Range Rover.

‘I telephone ten garage today and ask how much they charge for bottle-green blow-job. They all shout ’orrible things and hang up.’

‘I think you mean respray.’ Karen had only just contained her laughter, when Mikhail said he wished to make a statement.

‘I took the Montigny from the votch-tower and I borrow lighter with lilies from Tristan two or three days earlier. I must have dropped it in the wood. I went there to kill Rannaldini about ten forty-five, but he was already dead, strangled and shot. I also must confess I actually make friends again with my wife, Lara, on night before murder. When Rannaldini took her to votch-tower for bonk, he boast Montigny painting on wall was vorth three million. Finding Rannaldini dead, I took painting instead.’

‘What did you do with it?’ Karen’s pen would hardly write for excitement.

‘Hid it under Tristan’s mattress for safe-kipping.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Tristan wasn’t bonker like Sylvestre or Alpheus and wouldn’t squash painting. But when I go to remove it on Friday morning it had vanish…’

Mikhail was amazed but greatly cheered when Karen gave him an ecstatic hug. Gablecross was never going to speak to her again, but she was more and more convinced Tristan was innocent.

The Llandrogan Badger Action Group held their monthly meetings at the Leek and Grasshopper hotel on Sunday nights. The badger setts along Chantry Wood were the pride of the area, and at least forty badgers were known to travel nightly through the wood, over Jackson’s Meadow, skirting Catmint Cottage, down to the stream which divided the valley.

In summer months, the Action Group (or BAG, as they liked to be known), anxious to observe the badgers’ habits and protect them from baiters, fierce dogs and even fiercer farmers concerned about bovine tuberculosis, set up a camera to record these nocturnal perambulations and their time and date.

On Sunday, 15 July, Gareth Stacey, BAG’s bearded secretary, who spent a lot of time in the field and who stank worse than any badger sett after a rhubarb raid, was about to give a slide show of this month’s findings.

‘Come on, buck up,’ grumbled Major Holmes, the village bully, who didn’t care much for badgers but longed to get stuck into the wine and light refreshments that followed.

‘It’s like magic,’ said pretty Tracey Birkett, who taught at the local primary, ‘that the brocks don’t know we can see them all lit up.’

Out went the lights. Click, click, went Stinker Stacey. On the screen a stout female badger appeared, looping the loop.

‘Upside-down,’ barked Major Holmes.

Click, click, the right-way-up badger was followed by a barn owl, Lady Wade-Williams’s Burmese cat, a couple of cubs, then a huge bull badger, who produced roars of applause.

This woke up Keith, the junior reporter on the
Llandrogan Echo
, furious at having to cover the event when he could be in the pub, and who in the dark couldn’t keep himself awake gazing at pretty Tracey Birkett.

Click, click, click, click.

‘Look you, Gareth,’ said Merv the milkman, ‘we have an intruder.’

‘By Jove, we do,’ said Major Holmes.

As Stinker Stacey repeated the slide, everyone could see a tall dark man in a peacock-blue shirt, jeans and loafers coming out of the wood.

‘He’s yummy,’ sighed Tracey.

‘Wouldn’t mind having a teddy bears’ picnic with him,’ said Mrs Jones, the local baker, with a cackle.

‘Looks familiar,’ said the Vicar, cleaning his glasses.

‘It’s Lady Wade-Williams’s handyman — he’s always on the poach,’ said Merv the Milk.

The handsome intruder was followed by several rabbits, a fox, more badgers — two of them humping to loud cheers — and Mrs Owen’s Jack Russell on a late-night spree.

‘There he is again,’ said Jones the baker, in excitement.