A Twist of Orchids (33 page)

After about fifteen minutes, Mara came up with three possibilities. There was Le Clos du Jacquot near Montferrand; Le Clos de la Jaconde outside Les Eyzies; and a place called Le Clos de Jeannot southwest of Issigeac. Each website showed photographs and gave details and coordinates. The first was a cluster of
gïtes
, self-catered cottages, that offered a swimming pool, a play area for children, and barbecue facilities. The second was a bed and breakfast. The third was a couple of rather tatty-looking holiday chalets near the river. Mara called the numbers given. The owner of Le Clos du Jacquot told her that none of the
gïtes
was rented at the moment but all were spoken for as of the end of May. A call to Le Clos de la Jaconde activated a bilingual recorded message asking Mara to leave a name and number; the owners, Beth and Didi, would call her back as soon as possible. The number for the chalets was answered by a very deaf old woman who shouted at her and eventually gave her to understand that the chalets were available but that she would have to speak to her son who was not there at the moment and could she call back?

They put Beth and Didi’s establishment lowest on the list because Julian said he couldn’t see Nadia holing up in a B & B. They decided to drive out to the other two places. Le Clos du Jacquot was nearest, so they went there first. The
gïtes
, three of them, stood on a wooded rise overlooking farming country. There was a chain across the access road. Julian parked in front of it, and they went the rest of the way on foot. Jazz and Bismuth ran ahead, marking every upright object with abandon.

All of the
gïtes
were shuttered. The owner did not live on the property or anywhere adjacent that they could see. Perhaps he
was one of the local farmers. In the distance, a man on a tractor was harrowing a field. The puttering of the tractor sounded small and lost in the early evening silence.

They walked around the property, rattling the door handles, trying to see through gaps between the shutters. Dimly they made out plastic deck furniture stacked inside the front rooms, iron bedsteads with bare mattresses. The pool stood half drained and covered; the brick barbecue was in bad repair; the sandy play area was overgrown with weeds. If Nadia were hiding out here, it would be a pretty cheerless existence, Mara observed. Julian shrugged and said it was easily as good as what she’d been used to in Périgueux.

When they returned to the van, Julian walked down the road a bit. Apart from their own tracks, the grass was upright and unbroken. No other vehicle had come that way recently.

It was growing dark by the time they reached Le Clos de Jeannot, a waterfront property that stood on the north shore of the River Dropt, just on the border between the departments of the Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne. The chalets were nothing more than a pair of weathered pine cabins with identical cookiecutter design facades, suggesting that they aspired to an alpine setting. They, too, were locked and shuttered, although the sandy road running past them had seen recent traffic. The site offered no special amenities. Perhaps guests were meant to swim in the river, for there was a patch of shingle that could pass as a minute beach on which a picnic table stood lopsidedly, like a piece of jetsam abandoned by the sluggish, green current.

The dogs were running back and forth, tongues out, tails up. Bismuth found a plastic bag of garbage along the side of the first cabin. Julian chased him off before he could rip into it. Then, frowning, he squatted down and opened the bag. It was full of greasy food wrappers, plastic milk bottles, chicken bones. He stood
up, signaled Mara to stay where she was, and slipped quietly around the rear of the cabin. Everything was utterly still. A loose shutter gave him a view of the interior. He made out nothing but the dark shapes of furniture upended against a wall. He was moving toward the second chalet when Mara was suddenly beside him.

“I think there’s someone in there,” she said in a low voice. “Bismuth is scratching at the door.”

Together they crouched behind a screen of bushes. The other cabin was set downstream and a little further back from the river in a copse of trees. Bismuth was on the porch, looking up expectantly. He whined softly and clawed at the bottom of the door. Jazz, on the pathway leading up to the porch, gave a sharp bark. Bismuth continued whining.

The door opened cautiously. Bismuth wagged hopefully. A booted foot shot out to drive the dog off. With a yelp, Bismuth shied away, tail between his legs. A trusting animal, Bismuth was sure this human had not meant to kick him, so he edged back cautiously to try another friendly approach. From his position on the path, Jazz barked again. The door opened wider and a head poked out. It was bound in a print scarf tied at the back. In the dying light, Julian made out dark curls springing out from the front of the scarf, thick eyebrows that curved over two large eyes. The nose was long, the cheeks fat with the fullness of childhood not yet outgrown. Somehow Julian felt he knew the face; it was enough for him to realize that the person in the doorway was not Nadia.

“
Va-t-en! File!
” a voice yelled. The door slammed shut.

“Wait,” Julian said, putting a restraining hand on Mara, who was already on the move. “Until it gets dark.”

“It’s not that,” she whispered. “I just remembered it’s Friday. We’ve forgotten about Loulou again. He’s probably waiting for us right now at Chez Nous. I left my phone in the van.”

Julian swore. “Leave it. He’ll forgive us.”

A half-hour later, as night closed in around them, thin lines of light became apparent between the shutters of the second chalet. Julian and Mara made their way toward it and stepped quietly onto the porch. Julian reached down and scratched at the door. Jazz and Bismuth, attracted by this dog-like behavior, trotted up to investigate. Julian went on scratching. Jazz, intensely interested, barked. Julian heard footsteps. The instant the door was jerked open, he was through it, followed by Mara and the dogs.

“You’re supposed to be dead, you little bastard!” Julian roared, flinging himself onto the figure that tried to squirm away. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what the bloody hell is going on?”

“Who are you?” the young man said. He was lying flat on his back, looking very frightened.

“Julian Wood,” said Julian, stooping over him. “You called me, remember?”

“This is Kazim?” Mara was so startled that she nearly dropped the length of wood that she gripped like a club.

“Leave me alone!” Kazim cried out shrilly, but he seemed to have no real fight in him. “And get those dogs out of here. I don’t like dogs.” Jazz and Bismuth were circling around, toenails clicking on the wooden floor.

Julian grabbed Kazim by the shoulder, flopped him over onto his stomach, and kneeled on him. “You’re in no position to be picky about your company.” He yanked the scarf off the young man’s head and bound his wrists behind his back. Then he leaned down to address Kazim’s left ear.

“You really are a piece of shit, aren’t you. Do you know your mother is crying her heart out because she thinks you’re dead?”

“Well, I’m not,” Kazim retorted sulkily. “All right?”

“Not all right, you little
merdeux.
If you’re not dead, whose body was it they found in the skip?”

“I’m not saying anything to you.”

Julian yanked the curly head back sharply and let it free-fall to the floor. Mara winced.

“Let’s get something straight. I will ask you questions. You will give me answers. Otherwise I will beat them out of you. Clear?”

“Okay, okay,” Kazim gave in.

“So talk.”

Kazim talked, punctuating his sentences with the meaningless
quoi
that seemed nowadays to be the inevitable tag to everyone’s speech.

“It was Peter,
quoi.
The English guy living with Nadia. He stole the caps I gave her. He overdosed. He was a jerk, a
zéro.
And before you go on about my mother, my father knows I’m alive. Who do you think has been bringing me food,
quoi?
”

“Your father knew all along? He purposely identified Peter as you? Why?”

“Oh,
merde.
Do you need everything spelled out? The Ton was after me,
quoi.
It was the only way I could shake him.”

“You were selling drugs?” Mara asked.

“Nadia did the pushing, not me.”

“Speaking of Nadia”—Mara looked around her—“where is she?”

“That little bitch? How should I know?”

“She’s not staying here? The police are looking for her, you know.”

“So’s my old man.”

“Wait a minute.” Mara exchanged looks with Julian. “Did you happen to talk to your father about her on the phone last night?”

“Might have done. What’s it to you? He blames her, all right?” Kazim burst out. “He thinks what happened is all her fault. He wants her punished. What”—Kazim broke off as Julian stood up and hauled him to his feet—“what are you going to do with me?”

“Personally, I’d like to kick the crap out of you.” Julian shoved him toward the door. “But first I’m taking you home.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to drop you in it.”

•

Julian made Kazim lie on the floor of the van and tied his ankles with a length of nylon cord. Mara drove, and Julian sat in the back with the Ismets’ errant son, riding shotgun, so to speak. Far from being silent, Kazim talked volumes on the drive to Brames. He seemed relieved at being found and did not object even when the dogs nosed him.

“It was my cousin in Istanbul who started it,
quoi,”
he said, as if to exonerate himself. “He’d bury maybe 50 grams of H in with our supplies for the store. I’d cut and sell it here through Nadia. She uses, and she knows her way around. Then I’d send my cousin a share of the profits, and he’d send more stuff. But I want one thing straight. My parents never knew a thing, okay?”

“How did Ton-and-a-Half come into it?” Mara asked over her shoulder. “Were you dealing for him as well?”

“No way,” said Kazim vehemently. “Oh, I knew who he was,
quoi.
Him and that axeman of his. But the last thing I wanted was to get mixed up with either of them. And that was my problem. The Ton got word someone was working locally, and he didn’t like it,
quoi.”

“So you were competing on his turf?”

“Merde
, you just don’t get it, do you? He’s got his own pipeline, I mean big volume, and he didn’t want my chicken-piss action bringing in the cops. So he put the word out,
quoi.
He wanted my ass!”

Julian intoned grimly, “I’ll bet he did.”

“Yeah. So Nadia tells me I have to cool it,
quoi.
But then my father gets this stupid idea about Elan and me dressing up as a
salepar.
I don’t want to, but he makes me do it. So here’s me, working the markets dressed up in this fairy Turk outfit, fucking slippers on my feet, great stinking jug on my back”—Kazim’s voice cracked slightly—“and who should I see one day but the
Ton and Serge coming toward me in the crowd. I nearly crapped my pants,
quoi.
”

“So you started a fight to get yourself arrested,” Julian cut in. “And then you disappeared. You think fast, I’ll give you that.”

“Yeah.” Kazim gave a hoarse laugh. “But the funny thing of it was, turned out the Ton hadn’t even figured out who I was yet,
quoi.
Not until
you
started asking around for me,
quoi!
”

“For Christ’s sake, stop saying
quoi
,” Julian snapped in irritation.

“Then what happened?” Mara asked, barely able to keep her eyes on the road.

“I hung out at Nadia’s. But I was running low on cash, and she was leaning on me for rent,
quoi.
I knew my cousin was due to send another shipment, so one night I went back to the store for it. I let myself in, and I had to go through all the new foodstuffs before I found it in a bag of spices. But I saw right away I couldn’t leave things like they were, boxes broken open, bags torn apart. So I had to make it look like a trashing,
quoi.
And I had to be quiet about it, with my parents sleeping upstairs. You ever try trashing a place without making a sound? I didn’t break anything except the glass in the door, just made a mess,
quoi.
”

“You really are a toe rag,” snarled Julian.

“At least I didn’t take the cash.” Kazim sounded huffy. “And I couldn’t bring myself to write racist shit on the walls the way some would have done.”

“Oh, good of you.”

“What else could I do? I couldn’t tell them. They’d have gone straight to the cops,
quoi.
”

At this point Kazim seemed to dry up. Maybe he was thinking of his parents. More likely, Julian thought, of the trouble he had landed himself in. If his imagination stretched to it, he might also have wondered about what would happen to his father for
having falsely identified Peter and burying him as his own. What kind of penalty did that carry?

Julian nudged him with his foot. “Go on. What happened next?”

“You happened,” said Kazim sullenly. “You spread the word on who I was and that I rode a red Honda Bol d’Or. It was easy for the Ton’s men to spot me after that,
quoi.
A junkie named Deep Freddy told Serge you were after me, and the Ton sent Serge to get to me before you did because he figured you were a narc.”

“You should have gone straight to the police.” Mara glared at Kazim’s prone form in the rear-view mirror and immediately found herself swerving to avoid dropping them in a ditch.

“Are you crazy? And put myself in it? I would have been all right, but that
vache
Nadia sold me. Serge caught up with me outside her place. He sticks this fucking gun in my ear, and says, ‘The Ton wants a word.’

“So then he ties my hands and blindfolds me and dumps me in the trunk of his car, and we drive. When we get to where we’re going, he drags me out, and I’m shitting myself because I’m pretty sure he’s going to waste me,
quoi.
But he pushes me ahead of him and pulls the blindfold off. I’m in some kind of room full of ferns and stuff,
quoi
, and I see the Ton and a woman, and the Ton says, ‘Welcome to the party, son.’ He says, ‘You hungry? You want something to eat?’ And I start to feel better because why feed me if he plans to bump me off,
quoi?
He says, ‘Open your mouth, kid,’ and I open my mouth, and Serge jams the barrel of his gun in it. It nearly broke my front teeth, and it cut the back of my throat. I’m choking on my own blood, and the bastard keeps shoving the thing in. ‘ This is the
amuse-gueule
,’ Serge says, and you can tell the
salaud
’s enjoying himself by the way he says it. Then the Ton says he’s a businessman and he’s interested in my little pipeline. He says, ‘Who’d’ve thought a snot-nosed kid
like you could think up such a sweet set-up?’ Which I guess was a kind of compliment, except I wasn’t feeling all that good about it,
quoi.
He says he’s got a proposition for me. I go home, do business as usual, only now it’s his associates in Istanbul at the other end, and the shipments are in kilos, not grams. As long as I do my job, he says, I’ll be okay, my parents will be okay, and there’ll be a year-end bonus for me,
quoi.
I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about, I don’t do drugs, and he laughs and says, ‘Dunk him.’