Murder in Montmartre (26 page)

She looked at the twisted mess she’d made of the file cabinet drawer and was about to kick it when an idea stopped her. She bent down and, avoiding the rough, sharp edges, felt under each drawer for something taped. Nothing.

She’d found evidence of Jacques’s extortion and knew that he gambled. But on a deeper level, she suspected there was more.

Whoever had killed him would have trashed Nathalie’s place by now if they suspected he’d hidden something valuable here. But they were divorced; Nathalie could have brushed off anyone who questioned her, denying that she remained in his confidence. Yet the newspaper article that had appeared in today’s paper would connect her to him. If they hadn’t known about Nathalie before, they would now.

Something bothered her. What was it? She stared at the moonlight on the rimmed frosted window, then back into Nathalie’s apartment, scanning it afresh. No computer. She scrutinized the apartment again. No printer.

She took out the Monoprix flyer, found the torn typed paper inside: a half page of computerese: //_e738:Ñ followed by more hash marks, numbers, strings of letters. She stared at it. Hadn’t Oscar Wilde said that the true mystery in the world is the visible, not the invisible.

A pattern repeated. Of course, part of an encryption key! Bordereau’s words about the data-encryption leak echoed in her mind. Did this fit? Had she finally found the link?

To piece the puzzle together she had to get onto a computer. Excited, she stuck the page in her pocket, put the files back, pushed the cabinet back under Nathalie’s bed, donned her now-dried shoes, killed the lights, and was just about to close the apartment door when she heard footsteps coming up.

She shut the door without a sound, slipped off her shoes, and padded barefoot up to the next floor, crouched down, and listened. A Wagnerian opera came from the neighbor’s flat, masking the sound of knocking on Nathalie’s door. What kind of séance were they having?

She peered down through the metal railing, saw knitted caps on men’s heads, and their down-jacketed shoulders. Then one of them looked up.

Her heart pounded. She’d seen the
mec
’s profile; it was the one with bad teeth and the knife. Her hands shook.

The timed lights clicked off. She backed up the steps. Don’t come up here, she prayed. Then light flooded the landing and stairs again. She heard shuffling, a grunt, and the impact of a crowbar as the
mec
wedged the door open.

“Quick,” one of them said, “. . . waiting outside.”

She’d have to hurry, silently descend, and slip past the broken door, evading whoever was waiting. Pulling on a woolen cap, she said another prayer as she tiptoed past the half-open door and downstairs to the vestibule.

An older woman wearing a winter white wool cape was checking her mailbox. “Cold, eh? Are you the new tenant on the top floor?”

Aimée was in no mood for conversation. She wanted to leave. Now. She put her finger over her lips, then whispered, “I’m worried. The door of number six has been broken open. And I heard noises inside as I walked by.”

Thumps sounded above. Alarm showed on the woman’s face.

Aimée nodded, pulling the woman close. “Don’t go up there. I forgot my cell phone. Do you have one?”

The woman nodded.

“Punch in 18, call the
flics
,” Aimée said.

As the woman pulled out her cell phone, Aimée slipped on her shoes, and left.

On the glistening outer steps she hesitated. Up or down? She heard the thrum of an idling engine and, looking down, saw the yellow lighted tip of a cigarette held by someone in the driver’s seat of a car. She kept to the darkened border of the stairs, climbing fast, and had almost reached the top when a figure stepped out of a doorway and blocked her path.

Thursday Night

THE OVERHEAD LIGHT POOLED on the table. René stared at a worried Isabelle.

“It’s your fault,” Isabelle said. “You! We were fine until you appeared, asking questions, pretending to be . . .”

“Blaming me won’t help find Paul,” René said.

Inside he felt sick and full of guilt. If the killer was on to Paul, no place he’d hidden could keep him safe.

René saw himself out of the apartment where Isabelle kept vigil. Above him, a lone brown leaf from a plane tree drifted in a slow dance on the breeze. He watched it, feeling as lost as the leaf. He had already checked the rooftops and the cave where Isabelle said Paul sometimes hid. No trace. Where would a frightened boy hide? He tried to think the way Paul would.

The darkened Montmartre street lay deserted at this time of night. René walked, the ache in his hip exacerbated by the freezing temperature. Around the corner, past the building where Jacques was murdered, he saw the construction site. Frost laced the corrugated metal fencing the courtyard.

Could Paul have hidden here? He searched the fence for holes or loose siding. Nothing.

He tried Aimée’s phone again. There was no answer, so he left a message that was cut off by static. Why was she always breaking her phone?

Further on, he found a padlocked Cyclone fence. The thin timber slats blocked any view from the street. He retraced his steps, running his hands along the fencing, with no better result.

He tried to ignore the terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that Paul had been kidnapped before he’d had a chance to hide.

As he was about to give up, he heard scraping sounds from a doorway. The hair on the back of his neck rose. He thought back to the photos that had been delivered to their office. Had someone followed him?

Perspiration beaded René’s forehead. He smelled mildew, old earth, and gypsum. Then he heard a creaking, followed by a louder cracking sound. Vandals, stray cats, or—?

“You lied,” a young voice accused him.

“Paul?” he said, with relief.

Paul’s white face shone in the streetlight. The faint mewling of a cat and running footsteps sounded from somewhere down the street.

“Your mother’s worried to death,” René said. “It’s freezing. Where’s your coat?”

“More lies! Maman knows I take care of us,” he said, defiance in his eyes though his lip trembled. “I’m the man of our house.”

René didn’t know what to say to this shivering “man of the house” with smudged dirt on his face and mismatched space-invader socks, one blue and one yellow, showing over his rain shoes.

“Come upstairs, Paul,” he said. “If you mean I lied about Toulouse-Lautrec—”

“You’re not a detective,” Paul said.

“I’m a
computer
detective,” René said.

“Prove it.”

Footsteps echoed in the distance.

“Here’s my card,” René said, looking around nervously, try- ing to herd Paul forward. “Be happy I didn’t tell your mother about those model airplanes! Now get inside before you freeze.”

Thursday Night

AIMÉE SWERVED ON THE icy steps in time to avoid the old woman and her pet schnauzer. She hiked up the cascading series of stairways and stuck her nail file in her cell phone again. One message. Why hadn’t it rung? Bad reception on the
butte
? Or her missing antenna? If René had deposited Varnet’s money in the bank, she’d buy another cell phone.

She listened to her message.

Static, then René’s voice. “Aimée.” Short gasps came over the phone. “The building site off rue André . . . .”

The line fuzzed and the message ended. Had René tried to investigate without her and gotten into trouble?

She looped the long wool scarf twice around her neck and knotted it as she ran into the cold night. Forget the infrequent late night Metro, she’d make it there faster on foot.

Worried, Aimée ran up the steep rue des Saules, past the pearly dome of Sacré Coeur looming over the dark rooftops. She sprinted down winding rue Lepic with its shuttered windows. Music and a crowd spilled out of Le Jungle, the Senegalese club on rue Gabrielle. “What’s your hurry? We’ve got a table. Join us,” a man called to her.

“
Non, merci
,” she said, swerving away from his laughing figure, her footsteps pounding on the uneven cobbles.

In Place Émile-Goudeau, she slipped on the water overflowing from the gutter and almost lost her footing. She passed the squat Bateau-Lavoir washhouse, Picasso and Modigliani’s for- mer studio, now an art gallery. Out of breath, she paused by the green metal Wallace fountain, wishing her feet didn’t hurt and that sweat hadn’t drenched her shirt. Then she ran down the steps. Not far now, a few streets more, if she could just keep running.

Her lungs heaving, she crossed windswept Place des Abbesses and kept left. Down the staircase, clutching the double railing, past Cloclo’s station in the doorway of a building adorned with stone medallions. No Cloclo, just darkness.

Rue André Antoine was deserted except for the whipping wind. Then she saw two figures, short figures, just visible in a doorway.

“René!”

As she got closer, she saw his companion was a little boy with defiant eyes, who was shivering. She pulled off her coat.

“You must be Paul,” she said, draping the coat around him.

“Where’s your computer?”

Catching her breath, she grinned. “At the office.”

“About time, Aimée,” René said.

“I found Nathalie Gagnard, overdosed on pills,” she said. “Poor thing’s getting her stomach pumped but I found Jacques’s bank statements and something else that makes for interesting reading.”

He inhaled. “Sorry, maybe I overreacted. Varnet coughed up, that’s the good news. We’re solvent.” He paused.

Should she read between the lines to try and figure out what he couldn’t say in front of Paul?

Paul shoved her coat back at her and ran into the apartment building without a word, slamming the door.

“What was that about, René?” she asked. “Didn’t you convince Paul’s mother to let him give evidence?”

“His mother’s our witness.
She
saw three flashes.”

“Three? But she drinks, doesn’t she? I thought Paul—”

“I’ll explain on the way back,” René said.

Friday Morning

AIMÉE TWISTED THE WHITE porcelain knob of her claw-footed tub. The water heater had fired up, thank God. She poured in lavender essence. Steam rose as she sank her cold legs and aching feet into the hot water.

As she inhaled the citron-tinged lavender, her mind wandered. René’s recounting of Paul’s mother’s story, the names of planets, the phrase “searching the stream,” Bordereau’s mention of a data-encryption leak, and the computer printout in Nathalie’s files whirled in her head. Five minutes later, with the water still only up to her hips, the gas flame sputtered and died.

Great.

She toweled herself dry, pulled on her father’s worn flannel robe and woollen socks. With the printout, she worked on her laptop in bed, searching and culling encryption sites. Without success. She needed Saj.

As orange dawn streaked the sky, she curled up under the duvet and slept, exhausted. She was awakened by the phone ringing in her ear and opened her eyes to see the cursor on the laptop screen blinking by her face.

“Allô
?”

“Aimée, big problem,” René said. “Maître Delambre’s gone to a hearing in Fontainebleau. Isabelle’s having second thoughts.

She says she can’t give evidence. What should I do?”

She couldn’t let their witness get away.

“Meet me at 36, Quai des Orfèvres,” she said. “Bring her with you, any way you can.”

She filled the sink with ice cubes and stuck her face in, to wake up. Holding her breath, she kept her face immersed until her cheekbones went numb. She pulled on black tights, a woolen skirt, and a black cashmere sweater and zipped up her knee-high boots. At the door she grabbed her coat and ran down the worn marble stairs, swiping Stop Traffic red lipstick across her lips.

She called La Proc as she ran along the quay. She was their only hope. Eight minutes later she met René and Isabelle huddled by the guard post. Gunmetal gray snow-filled clouds threatened above. Around her ankles, a flurry of wet leaves gusted from the gutter.

“
Bonjour,
we have an appointment,” she said, showing her ID to the two blue-uniformed guards.

She herded René and a hesitant Isabelle inside the courtyard of the Préfecture, turning left under the arcade to the wide brown wooden doors.

“Where’s Paul?” Aimée asked.

“At school.” Isabelle glanced at René. “Where’s her computer? You said she works on a computer.”

“Sometimes we have to do things the old-fashioned way,” René said.

They climbed several flights of the brown-tiled stairway. Aimée remembered counting them as a little girl. Five hundred and thirty-two steps, still the same. When she got to the top, if she’d counted right, her father would give her a Carambar. At the Enforcement Section, she showed her ID again.

Isabelle pulled back, staring at the group of policemen standing by the head of the stairs.

A uniformed
flic
ushered them along a high-ceilinged corridor, past open-doored offices. Their footsteps echoed on the polished wooden floor. A few heads looked up as they entered the long arched corridor of the
procureur général’s
wing. Aimée heard laughter, a snatch of conversation—“Barring the miracle of the loaves and fishes, her sighting puts the
mec
in the
boulan-gerie
at the time of the murder”—and smelled the aroma of coffee.

She paused. Isabelle had come to a halt and was buttoning her coat, her mouth tight. “I’m leaving.”

“What’s the matter, Isabelle?”

Isabelle shook her head. “Forget it.”

Dread hit Aimée. Too late now, she wanted to say. So much depends on you. Instead, she nodded. “This place makes me nervous, too.”

“
Stupide
, I’m leaving, I can’t get involved.”

“It’s a lot to ask of you, I know,” Aimée said, perspiring. “We wouldn’t impose, René wouldn’t be so persistent, unless we had to. Remember, it’s not
about
you and Paul.”

“Easy for you to say!” Isabelle turned away.

Frightened, nervous probably, needing a drink. Aimée had to reach her, to convince her. She put her arm around Isabelle’s thin shoulders. “You’re right, Isabelle, easy for me to say. You can walk away right now, go down the stairs, and leave. However, a man was murdered and you were the unlucky one who witnessed the shots. And if you don’t speak up, the killers will get away with it. They’ll probably do it again. And then someone’s looking for Paul—”

She paused. Isabelle wouldn’t meet her gaze. So close, and yet . . .

“I’ll pick Paul up,” Isabelle said. “I’ll take him to my sisters in Belleville.”

“Can you tell me this won’t go through your mind when you’re out on the quay, or taking Paul to a new school? Won’t you constantly wonder if the
mec
who was looking for Paul will turn up at your door? And worry that this time he’ll find him?”

Isabelle’s eyes clouded. “I did time in prison. Years ago, but still, they won’t take what I say seriously.”

“That’s past. You know how prison feels. My friend will go there if you don’t help us,” she said. “René’s arranged a place for you and Paul to stay. A safe place. Please.”

“Mademoiselle Leduc.” The
flic
cleared his throat, beckoning to them. “May I remind you, La Proc’s got a tight schedule.”

The lines at the corner of Isabelle’s mouth had relaxed a fraction. “Today?” she asked Aimée. “We can go today?”

“Right after you speak with La Proc. You’ll do fine, just tell her the truth. La Proc’s fair. Remember that.”

After a single sharp rap, a woman’s voice called, “
Entréz.”

The
flic
opened the door and gestured them inside. Tall ceilings, windows overlooking the Seine, a framed photo of Mitterrand wearing the blue, white and red ribbon of Le Président. A coveted corner office indicated Edith Mésard’s status.

La Proc wore her blond hair coiffed sleekly behind her ears. In her tailored dark green Rodier suit, holding a dossier, she looked formidable. It was the word Morbier had used to describe Mésard’s prosecutorial skills. A white-haired man sat next to her desk.

“
Bon,
make it good, Mademoiselle Leduc. You’ve got fifteen minutes,” La Proc said.

“Thank you for making the time, Madame La Proc,” Aimée began.

“You won’t mind if a consultant to Internal Affairs stays?” Edith Mésard asked. “He’s interested in what might transpire.”

The white-haired, ruddy complected man filled out his double-breasted navy blue suit. His eyes flicked over them, calculating. Who was he?

Aimée cleared her throat. “All the better. This is my partner, René Friant; Isabelle Moinier, and you are Monsieur . . . ?”

“Ludovic Jubert,” he said. His eyes locked on hers.

She felt the color drain from her face and a leaden sensation in her feet. She’d finally flushed him out. Yet she was filled with fear.

“Monsieur Jubert, you worked with my father, didn’t you?” She paused, searching for the words. “I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”

“So I gather, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

Concentrate! She had to concentrate on his reactions as well as to make sense to La Proc.

“You can catch up later, I’m sure,” Edith Mésard told her in a calm tone underlaid with steel. “You indicated urgency, Mademoiselle Leduc? I’m listening.”

“On the night of Jacques Gagnard’s murder, Mademoiselle Moinier, who lives on rue André Antoine in the adjacent building, saw three flashes. I think that means there were three shots fired. I believe that a high-tin-content bullet, presently undergoing tests in the police lab, was responsible for the gunshot residue on Laure Rousseau’s hands, not her Manhurin.”

“So you’re saying what?”

“Laure didn’t shoot her partner.”

“I don’t understand,” Edith Mésard said. “Where did this ‘bullet’ that’s being tested come from?”

“The rooftop. I dug the bullet out of the chimney.”

Ludovic Jubert hadn’t said a word. His eyes hadn’t even blinked. Behind him, flecks of snow fluttered outside the window, drifting over traffic moving at a snail’s pace along the quai. And disappeared into the sluggish pewter Seine below.

“Who do you suggest shot Jacques Gagnard?”

“Another apartment resident heard men speaking Corsican on the scaffold that encircles the roof.”

Edith Mésard looked at Ludovic Jubert. Aimée saw his shoulders move in a slight shrug.

“If you and your partner would wait outside, please,” Edith Mésard said.

“YOU LOOK like you saw a ghost,” René said.

She nodded and sat beside him on the wooden bench. The hall radiator sputtered, emitting ripples of heat. “I did. In the flesh.”

A metal trolley with several coffees stood by a potted palm.

“Tell me about it over coffee?”

She nodded.

He edged off the high bench, slipped some francs into the tin with “two francs
s’il vous plaît”
pasted on it, filled two plastic cups with espresso, and handed her one.

“It’s about my father. And Jubert.”

“Your father?”

“And a cover-up.” She sighed, leaned back, and told him about Laure’s hint that her father had been involved in some cover-up and Jubert’s supposed connection to the Place Vendôme explosion that had killed Aimée’s father.

“You could have told me before.” René’s large green eyes flashed in anger. “But, Aimée, Laure’s disjointed ramblings don’t prove anything.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Jubert knows I broke into STIC. That’s why he’s here. He probably found out I used his name to request an expensive ballistics test. He wants to see what I’ve discovered.”

René shook his head. “How can he prove it? You covered your tracks, right?”

“Jubert’s not a good adversary to box with. But if I’m going down, he’s joining me.”

René took her hand. “You’ve found the eyewitness you needed to clear Laure, and the lab report. Hell, you’ve even found the bullet.”

“If they’ll accept it as evidence and credit Isabelle’s account.”

“How can they not?”

“I hope so,” she said. Looking down at her wet boots, she told him, “You won’t like this, but it’s better you work at home. Don’t go to the office.”

He rolled his eyes. “Giving it to me piecemeal, eh. What else haven’t you told me?”

“I can’t pin it down but there is a thug named Petru mixed up in this, too. He’s Corsican, but he doesn’t fit in with the Separatist movement. And he—or his friends—were on my tail.”

René handed her a box from his briefcase. “This arrived this morning.”

The return address was Dr. Guy Lambert, Hôpital Quinze-Vingts, Opthamaligie Department.

Something she’d forgotten at his office? She slit the tape with her keys.

Inside lay a six-month supply of her eye medication, a referral to an eye specialist, and several lines of Lord Byron’s poem “Fare Thee Well”:

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain.

She crumpled the paper.

René stared at her.

“Guy’s parting gift. Conscientious, as always.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s gone to Sudan to work with Doctors Without Borders.”

“Sudan?”

“To save the blind of Africa,” she said. “To get as far away from me as he can, and still work medical wonders.”

René kept staring. “He saved your vision, Aimée.”

Her lip trembled. If René didn’t shut up she’d burst into tears. She lowered her gaze.

“Like I didn’t know that, René!”

“Another thing you didn’t tell me,” René said, hurt and something else mingling in his voice.

“Isn’t it enough that I burden you with my love life . . . or my nonexistent love life, most of the time?” she asked. “It would be selfish. You’ve found someone and seem so happy; it’s not fair to dump on you.”

Instead of the acknowledgment she expected, more anger flashed in his eyes. “I thought we were closer, Aimée.”

“You’re my best friend! But do I have to reveal the squalid details of how I let Guy down?”

Pride, yes, her pride prevented her from revealing that Guy had left her. Left her because of who she wasn’t.

René shook his head in disgust.

All wrong, she got everything wrong with René whichever way she turned.

“Didn’t you throw yourself into this investigation to fill the void, Aimée? As usual?”

She slumped in the chair. Was he right?

He stood up, brushed off his black wool jacket, and handed her a card with the address of the Convent des Recollets. “Paul and Isabelle’s accommodation. The convent offers assistance to families in transition.”

He took his briefcase and walked down the hall.

What had she done now?

She called after him, “René, you’re so happy, I didn’t want to—”

He turned. “So I gather.”

How could it all go so wrong and all at the same time? René upset, Laure in a coma, Guy on another continent leaving Byron to console her: three thin lines. And Jubert with his gray snake eyes, now high up in Internal Affairs. The list grew. And the gnawing fear that Jacques’s murder was part of something bigger. The tape in her head replayed Lucien Sarti’s voice, the sensation of his thigh brushing hers, and his warm lips’ imprint on her cheek.

The door opened, and the floor creaked under Isabelle’s feet.

“Ça va?”
Aimée managed a small smile, handing her the convent’s address. “They’re expecting you. Ask a friend to bring your things over. Stay until things get sorted out.”

“Merci,
” she said.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, a moment please.” Edith Mésard spoke from her office.

Aimée crunched her plastic espresso cup and tossed it into the wire trash bin.

Edith Mésard and Jubert stood by a grouping of wingback chairs. A cigarette butt smoldered in an otherwise clean ashtray on the windowsill.

“No need to sit down, Mademoiselle. I’ll make it brief and to the point,” Edith Mésard said. She buttoned her tailored jacket. “Besides the municipal code infractions I could charge you with, not to mention a misdemeanor charge of evidence tampering and some hijinks with the police intranet system—” she paused. “You’re compromising a joint
Renseignements Généraux
and
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire
undercover operation.”