The Critic by Peter May Read Free Book Online

surface. And when, finally, he did, it brought only pain. And light. And noise. And confusion.
    Enzo had no idea where he was. His head hurt like hell. Like the worst migraine he’d ever had. He smelled earth and leaves. And something sweet. Something rich and dark and seductive. Grapes. He tried to focus. But still he was blinded by the light. He blinked furiously to try to clear his vision without success. The roaring in his ears, he thought, must be the blood pulsing through his head. He put his hand to his face and felt something sticky and warm, and he could smell it, even above the scent of grapes. The blood wasn’t in his head, it was coming out of it. He started to panic and tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t support him. He found himself clutching vine leaves, searching for support. Grapes burst in his grasping hand, and he felt the juice running down his arm. And still the noise got louder.
    He looked down and realised that he could see perfectly well. Blood and grape juice mixed together in his hands. He looked up again only to be blinded once more by the light. But this time, something was emerging from its glare. The dark, ridged tread of a tyre that stood a metre high and was turning relentlessly towards him. Somehow the light had risen above him now, and with a suddenly clarity, he realised he was about to be crushed by the giant mechanical harvester he had been watching earlier. A machine probably driven by Bonneval’s son, oblivious to the fact that he was about to kill the man he had been introduced to less than an hour before.
    It was almost on top him, the thrum of its motor unbearably loud. The ground shook as if gripped by a seismic event of Richter Scale magnitude. The vine was being rattled and shredded as interlocking bars on either side of it ripped the grapes from their stems. Some powerful suction drew them up into the body of the beast. And still Enzo’s legs would not support him. He shouted at the thing in futile desperation, but there was nothing he could do to stop it from running over him. Then, at the very last moment, with a great effort, he rolled himself to one side, into the narrowest of gaps between the wheel and the adjoining row of vines. The rubber of the tyre grazed his face as it went past, and he was struck by a huge blast of hot air that carried in it stinging fragments of stalk and leaf and grape skin, and a fine mist of grape juice.
    It left him sticky-wet and gasping for breath. The noise and the lights receded as the machine carried on towards the far end of the field, Charles de Bonneval unaware that he had very nearly crushed a man to death.
    Enzo managed to get to his knees and started crawling back towards the path where he had been walking, some twenty or thirty metres away. He found his shoulder bag lying discarded to one side, and clutching a wire strung between posts to support the vines, finally succeeded in getting to his feet. For several minutes, he stood there, unsteady, gasping for breath, fighting the nausea that accompanied the pain in his head and realised that someone had just tried to murder him.

Chapter Three
    There were no lights on in the
château
when finally he got back, exhausted, head still pounding. It was after midnight. Clearly the Lefèvres had gone to bed, and as far as Enzo knew there were no guests staying in the
chambres d’hôtes
. Moonlight flooded the gravel courtyard and the garden beyond, the white stone of the
château
almost glowing in the dark. The entrance to the
gîte
was cast in profound shadow, and as he walked towards it through grass already wet with dew, he fumbled in his pockets for the key. He was one step from emerging into moonlight from the deep gloom of the chestnut trees, when a movement on the
terrasse
of the cottage caught his eye. Something glinting. The tiniest shard of reflected light. He stopped dead, every nerve and sinew in his body held in a state of extreme tension. In the absolute still of