Murder in the Palais Royal (11 page)

The first guard shook his billyclub. The second, armed with a taser, stepped inside. “By the wall, you lot. Now!” he ordered.

“We found him like that. And in this heat . . . still warm.”

“Parboiled more like it, eh, Alphonse?” said the other
auxi.
“Second one this month. It’s quite a comment on your cuisine.” He cleaned under his fingernails with a matchstick, a studied look of indifference on his pale face.

“Shut up, Sicard. Leave Alphonse alone.” The guard edged closer with his taser outstretched. Alphonse, oblivious, stirred the simmering pot of lentils, his thick lips moving in silent prayer.

The guard flicked the taser against the stainless steel counter. “Cut him down.” He motioned to the other guard. “I’ll call the chaplain.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” said Sicard.

“Makes every kind of sense in this hellhole.” The guard shrugged. “Then again, no one comes here for gourmet cuisine.”

“Why the hell in my kitchen?” Alphonse asked no one in particular.

The guard waved the vapors away and turned over the body. They saw the face.

Nicolas Evry’s bulging vacant eyes were webbed with thin red veins. His swollen tongue hung over his blue lips.

“So young,” said Sicard, his voice thick.

“Won’t do him much good now.”

“But he was scheduled for the review board,” said Sicard. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t you have work to do, Sicard?”

Sicard bit back his reply. He was due to be released in two days.

The guard hefted Nicolas’s body and he saw the clean, pale soles of Nicolas’s bare feet. Too clean for this dirty floor. “What are you looking at?” he snapped.

Sicard grabbed the mop, averted his gaze, and lowered his head. He knew what he’d seen. And he wondered what it would be worth.

“
I
T’S URGENT,
M
ONSIEUR Guérin,” Aimée said, over the phone. “There’s a wire-deposit mistake in our account.”

She’d tried to reach the banker all morning. Finally, she got through to him after lunch. She imagined Guérin at his desk upstairs in Paribas. He had a corner office replete with mahogany desk, leather armchairs, and private bar concealed in a matching console, and a highly polished parquet floor. His plump cheeks, little moustache, and rotund body were almost comical. His little feet, supporting such a big girth, fascinated her.

“There’s no mistake, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said Guérin. “Bookkeeping recorded a wire deposit of one hundred thousand francs.” He cleared his throat.

She’d known Guérin for years. After her father’s death in the Place Vendôme explosion, he’d guided her through shock and grief, through the intricacies of the inheritance laws, and her reorganization of Leduc Detective from criminal investigation into corporate computer security, advising on streamlining their antiquated accounting and bookkeeping systems used since her grandfather’s time.

“Monsieur Guérin,” she said. “Data entry should have alerted you. I’m sure there’s been a simple bookkeeping error.”

“‘Error,’ Mademoiselle?”

Frustrated, Aimée tapped her heels on the parquet floor of her office. On her laptop screen, she scanned Leduc Detective’s bank account display. Beside her, client records and bank statements were piled on her desk. Sunlit limestone Hauss-mann buildings caught the early afternoon light outside her window on rue de Louvre.

“No client owes my firm anywhere near this amount, Monsieur Guérin. There’s some error.”

“Given your long standing as a customer, of course I meant to call you,” he said. He gave what sounded like a short, embarrassed cough. “You have beat me to it, as they say.” He paused. “But I’ve been at La Defense all day. I’m sorry, an inquiry has started.”

“An inquiry?”

“With a sum of this size, originating from a Luxembourg bank—”

“We have no clients in Luxembourg.”

“As instructed by my chief, I filled out the regulation paperwork.”

De mal en pis,
from bad to worse. “Paperwork” meant a SAR—a suspicious activity report—kicking off Treasury alarms. This would entail forms, certificates, and affidavits to unravel the bureaucratic quagmire.

“Please, let’s correct this right now.”

“Mademoiselle, the Luxembourg bank wire-transfer deposit is a
fait accompli
,” Guérin said.

A frisson passed through her.

“Which bank wired it, Monsieur Guérin?”

“The bookkeeping report only indicates a Luxembourg origin.”

This wasn’t the helpful Guérin she knew. Why couldn’t he answer a simple question?

“I don’t understand,” Aimée said. “You’re my banker and I want to know the bank origin of the funds sent to our account. More to the point, I need to
see
this wire transfer record.”

“Mademoiselle Leduc, I’d like to help you, but the report contains no more information. The inquiry’s out of my hands; it’s been routed to the department that deals with these matters.”

The tax man? Or a criminal fraud investigative unit?

No one in their right mind would wire her a hundred thousand francs. Even a money launderer knew better than to attempt a transaction of over fifty thousand francs, the sum that triggered an automatic inquiry.

“Can’t you send back the wire transfer?”

“The bank processed the deposit in accordance with procedure. It’s too late, Mademoiselle.”

“But Monsieur Guérin, we’ve been customers for a long time.”

“Correct. We have a long history, Mademoiselle.”

Her grandfather had opened a bank account with Paribas’s predecessor when he founded Leduc Detective. As a little girl, she’d accompanied him to the Place de l’Opera branch. She recalled trying to keep up with his long strides over the cobblestones.

“Whoever wired the deposit must have showed photo ID and proof of the existence of the transferee’s bank account with Paribas?”

“Again, the details. . . .” A sigh. “Financial regulations forbid me even telling you this much, once this inquiry has started.”

This wasn’t like Guérin at all. He talked like a bank
fonction-naire,
not the man who sent her a fruit basket at Christmas, a card on her birthday, the occasional note with a biscuit for Miles Davis. Was he trying to tell her something in an oblique way? “It’s out of my hands. I’m so sorry.”

She wouldn’t give up. “Then who can I talk to, Monsieur Guérin?”

“It pains me to tell you that I can’t help you, Mademoiselle.”

She doubted that. More like he wanted to keep his job.

“What’s going on, Monsieur Guérin?”

There was a pause.

She continued: “Listen, you know Leduc’s finances, know this doesn’t make sense. It’s like someone’s framing me. A name, Monsieur Guérin?” she said. “My grandfather and my father valued your advice, as I have. We’ve trusted you.”

Another pause. “Fine men, your grandfather and your father.”

“So
entre-nous,
eh? That’s not breaking rules. Just a name, Monsieur Guérin.”

Another sigh. “Just a moment. I have another call.”

But she heard no click of another call on the line, just what sounded like creaking wood, like the creak Guérin’s ancient leather chair made when he shifted his weight.

“Tracfin,” he whispered.

And he hung up, but not before she registered the sound of footsteps. Had someone else been sitting in his office?

“
W
HY BLACKMAIL US now?” Gabrielle asked.

She stood next to her husband, Roland, on the Savonerrie carpet in her office. The caw of crows and the scent of crisp, cold air drifted in from the tall window overlooking the Palais Royal. “I thought all this was past. Over.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at once, Gabrielle?” Roland, all six feet of him in a navy pinstripe suit, held the blackmail note, his brow furrowed.

“You were in Versailles at meetings,” she said. “By the time I arrived, the bookseller’s was closed.”

“Closed? You mean you intended to pay?”

“Nothing must jeopardize your posting, Roland. Or hurt Olivier,” she said fiercely. This wasn’t putting out fires in the Ministry; this was her family.

Concern washed over Roland’s face; he took her in his arms and held her tightly, protectively. “Always a fighter, my Gabrielle. But blackmail never ends. It’s a stranglehold that will be pulled tighter and tighter.”

He tore the note and newspaper article into little pieces, letting them drop like confetti into the trash. “I can’t let you do this. Not for me.”

She watched Roland. A dreamer, a poet and brooding rebel when they’d met; but now seeing his graying temples, the upright posture, that controlled expression, she thought of him, these days, as a stoic. There was something unfamiliar in his expression. Like many of the 1968 generation protesters, he’d joined the government they’d vowed to tear down. The burden of the secrets he carried, ones they all carried in this milieu, had altered him.

“What’s the matter, Roland?”

He shrugged. Where had the lean aristo rebel she’d fallen for in ’68 gone? She still searched for a glimpse underneath the politico façade; every so often it appeared. More and more rarely these days.

“Everything’s changed now,” he said. “Nicolas Evry committed suicide in La Santé.”

“Suicide?” She stepped back, horrified. Nicolas had been so young, so pathetic. But willing to keep quiet over Olivier’s involvement. “How do you know?”

Roland rubbed his forehead. “Not a nice story. My thoughts are with his family, if he had any.”

“Terrible. I’m so sorry.” Her thoughts sped through the implications. “But who wrote this note, and what proof do they have? It can only mean that Nicolas revealed Olivier’s involvement.”

“There’s no proof. Nothing specific in the blackmailer’s note. Just an old newspaper article.”

“What is the worst-case scenario?” she asked.

As she always did; it was her training. A gurgling sound came from the fountain in the center of the Palais Royal garden. Sun glinted off the sundial, a small beacon amid the rose bushes.

“It’s over, Gabrielle.”

“You can’t think this will simply go away,” she argued.

Roland gripped his briefcase. His mind was elsewhere now as he gave her a small smile. “I’m due to present a report in thirteen minutes next door in the Ministry.”

He paused. “It’s terrible about that boy, Gabrielle, but that finishes it.”

“A ‘boy’? Face it, Roland, they’re men. Our son Olivier’s a man.”

A long sigh escaped Gabrielle. No use arguing with Roland now.

He reached for her hand. “I’m worried that Oliver will feel responsible for this suicide,” Roland said. “It could haunt him, scar his psyche.”

Roland’s insight amazed her sometimes. Still. She stood in her stockinged feet, pulled Roland close, inhaled the traces of his citrus shampoo. Of course she would take care of this, and much more. She’d alerted her contacts. Roland would never know. She’d already taken the money out of the bank. Then, once and for all, it would be behind them. But first she’d wring the truth out of Olivier.

“I’ll talk to Olivier,” she assured Roland. Somehow she’d manage it, along with defusing a major scandal, before the 8 P.M. news show.

* * *

G
ABRIELLE PRESSED THE carved woodwork panel in the wall which was a camouflaged door opening to the next office, deserted now except for hot tisane herbal tea on her secretary Jean-George’s desk. With fifteen minutes until her next meeting, she hurried into the hall, up the rear stairs two flights into a narrow top-floor corridor punctuated by skylights. In the late afternoon sky, cloud clumps cast shadows darkening the interior passage which wound to the Galerie de Valois bordering the western wing of the Palais Royal. The passages all connected but from the exterior no one would have known this.

“Bonjour, Madame de la Pecheray,” said Polivard, a wizened older man, white hair combed neatly over his balding pate.

Gabrielle nodded at Polivard, an octogenarian, entitled by former service to rooms in this wing reserved for the Ministry of Culture and Council of State
hauts fonctionnaires
. He was one of the few surviving relics of the “
ancien
regime,” the Vichy government.

“I knew your father, Madame.” Polivard leaned on his cane, expectant. No doubt it was a highlight of his day to catch someone in the hallway and converse about the old days.

“C’est vrai,
Monsieur Polivard?” She gave a strained smile. “We must catch up one of these days.” She smiled again and edged past the old man.

“He was one of us, you know.” Polivard winked.

She suppressed a shudder. Her father’s ties to the corrupt Vichy government, his anti-Semitic leanings, were the last thing she could deal with right now. Or Polivard’s old-man smell.

“A fervent follower of Marshal Petain,” Polivard said. “Fine articles your father wrote. Laval quoted him, you know.”

Her father’s infamous phrases had been used in Laval’s Jewish Deportation Directive. The shame of the past haunted her steps, always. Could she never get away from it?

“
A bientôt
.” She hurried around the corner.

Nowadays, many high-ranking administrators used their elegant, spacious
appartements de fonction
, common perks for officials, as
pied-à-terre
for liaisons, preferring to save on hotel rooms. The higher up, the more frugal, she thought. All on the ministry franc.

Gabrielle stayed here only if meetings kept her past midnight and Roland was working out of town. They maintained the family flat she’d inherited on nearby Place des Petits-Pères. But now this apartment presented her with a perfect place from which to call Olivier undisturbed.

She turned the key, an elongated antique, opening the door to the high-ceilinged eighteenth-century suite of rooms. An eclectic mix of furnishings had been provided, courtesy of the State: bulbous inlaid-wood chests, rococo beveled mirrors, delicate Louis XVI upholstered chairs, and more armoires than she could shake a stick at, all smelling of other people’s lives.