Murder in the Palais Royal (28 page)

“Rest assured we’ve erased unnecessary data, Monsieur, and backed up your profile, but you’ll need to proceed with other inquiries.”

“The
flics,
Saj? Just tell me.”

“Think on a larger scale, Monsieur. Remember to consult the Bercy office.”

BRIF was there. The financial
flics
. The phone went dead.

Sweat broke out on René’s brow. Things were worse than he’d imagined.

He took a breath, realizing he had to keep calm. At least try to. And think.

He surmised that BRIF had closed Leduc Detective and taken the computers, but that Saj had managed to delete Aimée’s video and the bank data. René trembled. He looked at the pages spitting from the printer. This was the only proof now, here in his clinic room. The rest, in Leduc Detective’s computers, had been deleted.

How long before BRIF—Tracfin—traced certain links to his hard drive?

Some of that he could fix with a phone call. He could transfer the office files to one of his hacker students. But he had to work fast.

And proceed by himself, before they found him. Before they locked Saj and Aimée up.

A
IMÉE PARKED HER scooter in the small tree-lined Place Dauphine, enclosed on three sides by seventeenth-century townhouses. Her goal, the two-star hotel with a sagging stone façade in need of steam cleaning, held a few rooms set aside for paroled prisoners in transition. They were never far from the eyes of the law, since the Tribunal was across the square.

“Sicard?” The young man behind the small reception counter shook his head. A smug look crossed his face under brown hair combed back in a short pompadour. “Haven’t seen him. Don’t believe he’s in.”

“Believe this,” she said. “I’m with the parole board, making the routine parolee room check.”

The smug look disappeared. “Room check? Since when?”

“Do I make the rules?” she said. “Just routine, checking for arms, drugs, the usual. What room, please?”

“Better come back later.”

“I’d like to.” She shrugged. “But I’m behind, two other sites to check.” She reached into her bag. Pulled out her bank-account printout, pretended to consult it.

“His parole officer asked me to drop off some papers.”

“What kind of papers?”

Use your imagination, she wanted to say.

She smiled. “A job came up.”

Most parolees needed jobs. And soon, considering the price of accommodations. She figured this
mec
, himself a parolee by the look of him, worked in lieu of rent.

“But Sicard. . . .” He stopped.

“Go on,” she said. “Sounds like you know more that I do.” She kept the smile on her face. “What’s your name?”

“Joêl,” he said. “Look, I’m busy.”

“So Sicard roped you in too, eh, Joêl?” She shook her head. “Offered you a slice, in return for some help.”

Joêl watched her, expressionless now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But now she was sure Joêl was involved. She wondered why Sicard had cut in another person for a share of the money.

“I don’t blame you, Joêl,” she said. “Sicard told you about his foolproof plan. But you’re not the only one. He botched the first blackmail attempt; now he needs a patsy.”

He sputtered. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Not yet, you haven’t.”

“Listen, I’m clean. I can’t get in trouble now.”

“That’s why you’re going to talk to me about Sicard’s plan.”

“But you’re. . . .”

“I’m magic,” she said. “I can make this go away. Phhfft, like it never happened. But Joêl, I need your cooperation.”

“Plan? Sicard never talked about a plan.”

“Shall I chat with your parole officer?”

He shook his head. Not a hair of his pompadour moved.

A moment passed. “I read things.”

She nodded. “Like what?”

“I read him things, that’s all. He likes to get ‘current’ after all his time locked up. Newspapers, like that.”

“Magazines, too?” She held up the
Voici.

“That’s right.

She put our her hand. “His key, please.”

* * *

A
FEW MINUTES later, she unlocked the door of
chambre
17 on the creaking fourth floor. Thick wood beams supported a slanted ceiling over a dark narrow room with peeling walls. She saw the outline of a single bed and a chair. Medieval, almost monastic. She hit the light switch, and a single hanging bulb illuminated the sloping wood floor and the papers on the bed.

Finally!

But they were only La Santé release forms, indicating that Sicard had been set free the day after Clémence’s murder in the Palais Royal.

That didn’t help.

Where was the notebook? Dita’s message said Sicard had tried to contact Clémence, he’d unnerved her, and he’d mentioned a “book.” That had to be the notebook, either here or with Sicard. It began to seem like Clémence, desperate for money, had lied. But she didn’t know for sure.

If Clémence’s killer had taken it, she was back to square one.

She had to search the room before Sicard returned. She got on her hands and knees and checked the floorboards, then the mattress, the sheets and pillow. Nothing. She eyed the cracks in the walls, above the door frame. Her fingers came back covered in dust. She turned back, and her eye fell on the cracked porcelain bidet with a high tank above it.

Nothing behind the bidet. She stood on the rim, used her Swiss Army knife to pry up the lid. She felt something. Her hand came back with a wet plastic Monoprix bag. Water dripped down her arms.

She dried the bag off, washed her hands. From the hallway came creaking noises. She grabbed her knife, listening. The creaking continued, as footsteps moved down the hall.

She had to get the hell out.

A laundry cart blocked the stairs on the narrow landing.

Merde!

A door on the right was labeled EXIT. Good. She’d leave by the back stairs and go through the bag’s contents at her office.

But inside the small foyer she found that the door to the rear stairs had been nailed shut. A definite fire code violation. She faced a leaded-glass window overlooking the Seine. The plastic bag ripped open. Onto the worn tiled floor tumbled a child’s first reader, an Asterix comic book, lined paper with a penciled word ‘
bonjour
’ misspelled with a
d
instead of
b.

She crouched down.

Underneath the rest of the torn bag’s contents, she discovered the brown leather notebook Nicolas had tried to give her in La Santé.

At last! But pages had been ripped out. Sicard must have taken the important ones. Dejected, she scanned the few pages of Nicolas’s clear handwriting that remained.

She recognized the page Nicolas had showed her in prison, filled with numbers. Looking closer, she realized it contained a list of payments to a post office bank account. Three thousand francs each month, like clockwork. Until this month.

She turned the page to find a passage referring to his sister Maud, a Le Pen supporter, his distaste at Maud’s high-minded rightwing tone, how he’d joined
Les Blancs Nationaux
to “show Maud” and take Olivier’s dare. And how the video had “cooked his goose.” That was all.

She could trace this bank account; she knew it would lead to the de la Pecherays. She’d hoped for more; a link to Olivier, to the old couple, the synagogue; but it wasn’t there.

Disappointed, she stood up. Then she felt a thickness under the cover. She wedged out a much-folded paper. A letter from Maud, dated January 1994. Maud wrote that she would find whoever put him inside, find out who was to blame, punish them. It was not her little brother’s fault. Maud demanded that he leave Clémence, saying she couldn’t support him and that
putain.
Aimée shuddered at the vindictive tone. There were a few rambling lines about Maud’s “little episode,” how she “didn’t mean to hurt people but it was all his fault.”

Then she opened a folded telegram. Stamped “received and cleared La Santé,” the telegram header read “Clinique Pyschia-trique de Lille”: “Informing you Maud Evry committed yesterday for mental breakdown. Stop. A danger to herself and others.”

Aimée’s mind reeled. She felt a fleeting sympathy for Nicolas Evry.

The hallway door creaked open. A rush of damp air passed her. She looked up to see a man filling the doorway.

“That’s personal,” he said. “Mine.”

She rose, backing up against the wall, her right hand gripping her Swiss Army knife behind her back. In two strides Sicard was close enough to grab the notebook.

“I’m with the parole office, Sicard,” she said. “Joêl gave me your key.”

“I know. The fool.” Sicard, muscular, in his early thirties, dark blond prison-cut short hair, wore shapeless pants hitting above his ankles.

She moved the knife a centimeter at a time along the wall, eyeing the door, ready to sprint past him.

Sicard caught her left wrist in a steel grip.

“The parole office never heard of you,” he said. “Who are you?”

Useless to lie now. “The truth?” she said. “Aimée Leduc, a private detective. My testimony put Nicolas in La Santé.”

He stared at her.

“But I made a mistake,” she said. “Nicolas tried to give me his notebook the day I visited him. The day he was killed.”

“That’s what
you
say.”

“He didn’t tell you?” She had to keep him talking, find a way to get past him and escape from this narrow, stifling place.

“How do you know Nicolas didn’t commit suicide?” Sicard said.

“Nicolas wanted to expose them; he thought he had evidence,” she said, her words coming fast. “That he’d get justice for the murder of that old couple.”

Sicard stuck the notebook in his trouser pocket. Her moist hand held the knife, but she couldn’t move. Sicard pinned her left arm against the wall.

“But you know all that, Sicard,” she said. “He told you. You two shared a cell.”

“Sharing a cell doesn’t mean sharing secrets,” Sicard said. “We were scheduled for the same parole date, but his lawyer screwed him. I found him hanging in the kitchen.”

Sicard wouldn’t need a job if he could get blackmail money. But she’d noticed his awkward gait, as if his shoes were too small. A small sag of defeat in his shoulders. Whatever he’d found, he hadn’t figured out how to use it.

Perplexed, she wondered why.

“Weren’t you supposed to give this notebook to Clémence?”

“Too late.”

“Then why tear out some of the pages, Sicard?”

“They’re at the copy shop. They weren’t any good to Nicolas any more. Someone should make money with them.” Sicard gave a short laugh. “You think they’re beating down the door to hire me? The dock where I worked doesn’t want to know me. I can’t even pay for this place after tomorrow.”

“And blackmail’s easier.”

His eyes glittered. “You’re going to help me.”

“You want to go down, implicated in Nicolas’s murder?”

“Eh? Not me. In prison, you pay a guard ten thousand francs and it’s done. But you’ll never prove it.”

Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.

“I don’t have to,” she said. “Why did you get Nicolas work in the kitchen?”

“Quit changing the subject.”

“It’s a plum job, Sicard.”

“Why not? He liked serving the VIP wing.” Sicard let out a snort. “Better leftovers. Magazines.”

She nodded, putting it together. “Those
Voici
magazines. He saw photos of Olivier with models, and it made him burn.”

Sicard gave a quick nod.

“It’s more than that, Sicard,” she said. “What did he do for you in return?”

“Promised to help me when we got out.”

“That’s a lie. Come on, Sicard. What did he do for you?”

“Like I told you.”

“Do you have children, Sicard?”

He shrugged. “Never had the time.”

She nodded to the comic book and primer lying on the worn tile floor. It fit together now.

“I think you can’t read, Sicard,” she said. “That’s why you needed Nicolas, and now Joêl.”

Sicard kicked the wall. Plaster dust fanned over the tile. “Shut up.”

“You don’t understand the words in the notebook,” she said. “It drives you crazy, so close and yet so far.”

“Nicolas was stupid. Those aristos screw you.”

“In return, Nicolas was teaching you to read, wasn’t he?”

Shame and surprise showed on Sicard’s face.

“Nicolas could have gone to a Grande École,” she said. “He was bright, sharp, not like the other
mecs
in prison.”

Sicard averted his eyes. But he hadn’t let go of her arm. His grip was so tight, it was cutting off her circulation.

“That was the deal: you got him the job in the kitchen and he would teach you to read,” she said, trying to think how she could use this to get away. “Why not scratch each other’s back; nothing wrong with that.”

“At night, Nicolas showed me letters.” Sicard’s words came slowly. His brow furrowed. “How to turn them the right way.”

A dyslexic. He’d confused
b
and
d.

“Then someone hanged him by his own socks from the meat hook,” he said.

From the open leaded-glass window came the toot of a barge, the sound of lapping waves. She thought of making a break for the window, but it looked too small to climb out of and there would be a long drop below to the riverbank.

“And they’ll get away with it, Sicard.” Her breath came fast. “If you let them.”

He wrenched her arm with the knife, grabbed the knife, and put it to her throat.

“You’re my ticket out,” he said. “I’ll make them pay in my own way.”

She had to reason with him. Perspiration dampened her brow.

Her eyes went to the hallway door, but he twisted her arms behind her, pushed her forward. Now he held her own knife pointed at the back of her neck. The sharp tip felt cold at the base of her skull.

“You think a little notebook will threaten the spoiled son of a ministry type, Sicard?” she said, gasping. “They have more people in their pockets than you’ll ever know.”

“Not if you help me.” He tightened his grip. “With your help, I’ll play them like a piano.”