Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

ambassador filing complaints in Paris. I don’t want the Canadian one joining in.”
    Fabiola’s phone trilled. “Yes? Jean-Claude? Nothing but the hair and some splinters of wood. No flesh. Okay, thanks. Can you make sure the report gets amended to say that? Send me the paperwork to sign. Right. See you, and thanks again.” She looked up at them. “You heard that.”
    “I heard,” said J-J, looking at Bruno. “Pretty cunning. But why would she want Bondino charged with murder? Is there money in it for her?”
    “It’s the old family feud. But I don’t think there’s money involved. Greed’s not the motive. It’s vengeance.”
    “So she slept with Bondino just to destroy him?” asked Pamela.
    “Let’s ask her,” said Bruno, looking out through the courtyard.
    At the end of the lane, a figure appeared on a bicycle, pedaling briskly, her blond hair streaming behind her. Pamela rose, put all the glasses on a tray and took them into the kitchen. “Come along, Fabiola. I don’t think we ought to be here for this, so I’ll help you unpack.”
    When they had gone, J-J went across to his car, opened the passenger door and took a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment and then returned to join Bruno. The two men stood and waited until Jacqueline pulled up in front of them. She stepped off her bike and lifted her cheek to Bruno as if to be kissed. Bruno ignored this and took the handlebars in one hand.
    “
Bonsoir
, Jacqueline. Commissaire Jalipeau here has some questions for you, and I need to see your passport again, please.”
    Suddenly wary, her eyes darting from Bruno to J-J’s grim face, Jacqueline pulled her shoulder bag from the wicker basket above the bicycle’s rear wheel and fished inside, pulling out her dark blue passport and handing it over. Bruno quickly checkedthe photo, and then with his eyes fixed on hers, put the passport into the chest pocket of his shirt and fastened the button.
    “We now know exactly what happened,” J-J said. “We know how you put Bondino’s fingerprints on the glass you left at the farmhouse. We know where you got those bits of his hair that you put under Max’s fingernails. We know how you broke into Bondino’s computer and downloaded his files. We know how you tried to plant the evidence so that Bondino would be convicted of murder. We know all this, and we can prove it. My forensics team will be here shortly and will go over every inch of your house, every item of your clothing, and when you are arrested and in jail a policewoman will be conducting a full body search.”
    J-J advanced upon her, taking one arm firmly and opening the handcuffs. “Do you have anything to say?”
    She looked helplessly at Bruno. “Answer the question,” he told her. “Do you have anything to say?”
    “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, her eyes fixed on J-J’s handcuffs.
    “Well, let’s start where you lied the last time I asked you about this,” Bruno suggested. “You told me you spent one drunken night with Bondino in your hotel room. That wasn’t true. You entertained him in your hotel room at least three nights, the concierge tells me. And yet this was your cousin, from the other side of a bitter family feud. You seduced him and got him drunk so that you could get into his computer as he slept it off.”
    Jacqueline closed her eyes and shook her head but kept silent.
    “We can prove that, from your own computer files, and from the printouts we found in your files of confidential documents from the Bondino group. That’s commercial espionage,” Bruno said. “But let’s go on to your next lie. You said you leftthe bar with Max after the fight with Bondino and went to make love in the park by the river and then he left you to go and tread the grapes by himself. That wasn’t true, was it?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “I went with him and we trod the grapes together.”
    “Was that where you made love, at Cresseil’s place?”
    She nodded, biting her lip.
    “Did you go into the house, to the bedroom upstairs?”
    “No,” she said quietly. “The old man was a light sleeper. And the dog …”
    “In the open air, then? Were you telling the truth about that?”
    “Yes. I mean, no,” she said urgently, her eyes very wide, a trace of panic in her voice. “We were in the vat, while we were treading the grapes. We made love in the vat.”
    “So what happened?” Bruno asked quietly. “Why did Max suffocate but not you?”
    “We were