Free Mayhem in Margaux by Jean-Pierre Alaux, Noël Balen Page B

maintain the roof. The winemaker and his assistant took a few blind steps, squinting and slowly adjusting to the darkness. Around them they made out the shapes of dishes on wooden crates, piles of dirty clothes on the ground, and makeshift beds of burlap bags.
    “What is this shit?” Virgile whispered.
    “It looks like it’s inhabited,” Benjamin answered, pointing to two aluminum bowls where blowflies were fighting over a piece of fat stuck in a reddish sauce.
    Benjamin pointed to a candle fixed on an empty can near a straw mattress covered with several tattered blankets. Virgile lit it. The soft glow revealed the desolation of the place and the poverty in which the inhabitants of the sheepfold were languishing. Benjamin dug through a big box crammed with packages of macaroni, coarse semolina, and rice. Then he opened an old sports bag with makeshift string handles—the originals were broken. Inside the bag he found six passports stamped with the Moroccan coat of arms. He quickly leafed through them, finding photos of relatively young men, most with moustaches. Some looked world-weary. Others looked more debonair.
    “Moroccans?” Virgile asked.
    “So it seems. Illegals, no doubt.”
    “That’s no reason to pen them up like dogs! And it stinks in here. The smell’s unbearable.”
    “I wonder where it’s coming from,” Benjamin said.
    “There’s no running water in this shack. Look over there. They have buckets filled with water. They must fill them at a spring. I don’t think there’s a toilet, either.”
    A muffled moan reached them from the back of the room. Virgile lifted the candle. A shapeless mass was lying on a filthy mattress. They walked over slowly and made out the bald head of a man curled in a fetal position. He had vomited on his blanket and was shaking with fever. His teeth were chattering. He stared at them with terrified dark eyes. Benjamin and Virgile spoke some reassuring words, which the man obviously didn’t understand. His cracked and swollen lips were bleeding, but he found the strength to utter a few words in Arabic.
    “He must be burning up with fever, and in this heat, I’m amazed he’s still alive,” Benjamin said.
    Virgile was fumbling with his cell phone.
    “No bars.”
    Benjamin looked at the man again and told him he would get help. Benjamin’s voice seemed to calm him.
    “This is an outrage,” Benjamin said.
    “Yes, it’s absolutely disgusting.”
    “My first choice of words would probably have been revolting or abject, but I’m with you on this. It is absolutely disgusting. This man needs help right away. We must get to a place with cell coverage and call an ambulance. I’ll ring Inspector Barbaroux too. He’ll do something about this. And I’m betting it will shed new light on the Rinetti investigation.”
    Before they left, Virgile filled a plastic bottle with the warm water from the pail near the door and set it down next to the mattress so the man could at least moisten his chapped and swollen lips. They gingerly pulled off the soiled blanket and covered him with a blanket from another mattress that looked cleaner.
    “I’m just sorry we can’t take him with us and drive him straight to the hospital,” Virgile said.
    “No, we don’t know what he has. It’s better that we leave this to the paramedics. We can’t do anything more here. Let’s go.”

12
    Benjamin put down the teapot and unfolded the newspaper. The news story took up practically all of the front page. Running across the top was the headline, “An Unsavory Harvest in the Vineyards of Médoc.” A photo taken with a telephoto lens captured the crumbling sheepfold between clumps of trees. The foreground, a bit out of focus, showed rows of vines in saturated colors verging on turquoise. In a concise style devoid of metaphor and baroque turns of phrase, the Sud-Ouest reporter gave a brief history of the Château Gayraud-Valrose without elaborating on the financial ups and downs of the last