Murder on the Champ de Mars (33 page)

He’d offended her already. He winced.

“My mother’s third cousin’s wife asked me to help you,” she said. “I do it as one of God’s creatures to another. Not all
gens du voyage
want to take your money, Monsieur.”

“Please forgive me, Sister Dorothée,” he said, ashamed that his prejudice had showed. “I’m told these words contain a curse, and that voicing it would give the words power.”

“Some say that, Monsieur Friant,” she said. “Others say a curse only has power if you grant it power.”

While she read, he gazed at this ancient convent garden, its expanse of lawn lined by fruit trees and blue and purple hydrangeas. A
jardin potager
, a kitchen garden, extended to a wall almost a soccer field away. Vast for the center of Paris. This had all been farms and countryside until Marie de Médicis awarded her land to the convents. The Sisters of Charity convent was just one of many institutions and parcels of land the church owned in the arrondissement.

The tree branches dripped and hung low, heavy with rain.

“C’est privé.”
A gardener in a blue workcoat emerged from a side path, pushing a wheelbarrow. “The garden’s not open to the public,” he said sharply to René. “Ah,
pardonnez-moi
, I didn’t see you, Sister.”

Sister Dorothée nodded.

“Can you make sense of some of it?” René asked.

“It’s very sad.”

The last thing René expected.

“You’re sure you want to know?” she asked.

What could it contain? A dying woman’s last words? He nodded.

“
D’accord
, well, some makes no sense,” said Sister Dorothée. “But from here it’s more coherent.
He covered up my sister’s murder by those men. I understood. He couldn’t do anything else, he had a daughter. What could I do … my people shunned the
boy Nicholás, painted me black. He kept the cloak over the guilty. Unfair. That’s why we live our own way, with our own kind, only trust our own. But that didn’t exist for me. Radu said Djanka was a whore—all family honor gone. I had nothing, so I took his help. When they’d gone too far and he refused to cover up more dirtiness, they blew him up. I saw them. Then we ran and hid, no protector anymore. But he wanted his daughter to know he did it for her, that she should make it right. I owed him that. Tesla, Fifi, I spit in their eyes, on their souls.”

René bowed his head, sadness flooding him. He and the nun sat in silence. Some pink and white petals of the blooming plum and almond trees had drifted to the ground, joining the pastel carpet of blossoms already covering the vegetable beds. A church bell chimed in the distance. How could he tell Aimée that her father had been part of the cover-up—had died trying to get out of it?

O
N RUE DU
Pré-aux-Clercs, named for the ancient monk’s abbey and once a popular dueling site, a shudder of wind misted Aimée’s cheeks with the spring rain. She had salvaged her phone from the gutter, wiped it off, shaken it. Still working. She waited out the second sudden shower under a stone portico. Across the street, a concierge leaned out of her open ground-floor window, talking to the postman huddling in his yellow rain slicker. And just as quickly as the shower burst, it stopped and sunlight broke over the glistening wet pavers.

At the smudged reception window in the
commissariat
, she asked for Commissaire Dejouy, crossing her fingers he hadn’t retired.

“In a meeting,” said a young recruit, his ironed collar standing at attention.

Great. Her only contact here.

“Can you tell him it’s Aimée Leduc?”

“Concerning?”

“An investigation.”

“Your identification.”

She passed over her new PI license. He shook his head. “Then that’s an official visit. You’d need permission from the
commissaire
, and he’s in a meeting.”

Helpful, this new recruit. And the stale air in here was as bad as his attitude.

“Five minutes, please,” she said, glancing at her Tintin watch. “Can you check with the
commissaire
?”

Jojo Dejouy stuck his head round the door. “I’ll take care of this, Lelong.”

Repressing the urge to smile at the bewildered Lelong, she went through the door Dejouy had opened for her.

Jojo, greyer than she’d remembered and with an expanding waist, led her past institution-green cubicles, through the haze of cigarette smoke and into his office. Brittle fluorescent light highlighted the dust layer on his file cabinet.

He closed the door. “It’s good to see you, Aimée.” said Jojo. “I appreciate you inviting me to your baby’s christening, I’m just sorry I couldn’t make it. Your father meant a lot to me. Maybe I didn’t show it when they put him against the wall.” Jojo shrugged. “I know you’re a bigger person than me. You look at the good in people, like he did.”

Jojo, like many in the force, had distanced himself from her papa when he’d been fingered for an offense he didn’t commit. Years later, her father had said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him; it had driven him to private work. If he could forgive his old team, she’d decided she could, too. And she knew her father would be smiling.

“Here’s the card I’ve been meaning to send.” He handed her a baptism card.

“That’s sweet, Jojo.”

“Got a picture of her?”

“
Bien sûr
, but …” She rummaged for her wallet. “Bad mother,
moi
. I took out Chloé’s newborns and forgot to put in the ones where she’s sitting up.”

Jojo smiled. “Your papa would be over the moon.”

She nodded. But she hadn’t come to socialize “You’re investigating Nicu Constantin’s knifing under the Métro at La Motte-Piquet–Grenelle?”

“Same twenty-two-year-old
manouche
questioned about the mercy killing of a patient who disappeared from Hôpital Laennec?” Jojo asked.

She nodded, disappointed he would even bring that up now that the real story of Drina’s death was public knowledge, splashed all over the papers. “Admit it, Jojo, moot point. A frame-up. Then, right after your men take him in for questioning, he’s knifed. A hate crime? I don’t think so.”

“An angel tell you from on high?”

“Smells like a ripe Roquefort,” she said, the
flic
phrase for corruption.

Jojo raised his arm and shrugged as if to say
small-fry
. He rocked on his heels. A nervous habit of his, she remembered. “You should know that we found a
procès-verbal
from 1978 signed by your father in this Nicu Constantin’s pocket. A document that should have stayed in-house—
tu comprends?
I was going to call you.” He glanced out the office window. “You don’t want that getting out, Aimée.”

Had Drina been keeping this
procès-verbal
in her notebook? Or had Nicu found this with his birth certificate?

“I don’t understand,” she said, but she had her suspicions, and wanted him to spell it out. “Why? Nineteen seventy-eight, that’s twenty-odd years ago. And it looks like a copy. Why would that
procès-verbal
matter now?”

“Back in 1978, a woman named Djanka Constantin, whom we have learned was this boy Nicu’s mother, was murdered. Your father furnished the homicide-investigation file to the victim’s family. That didn’t fly, then or now.” Jojo paused. “That’s why it matters.”

It sounded like Jojo was turning this back on her father. Again. But she had to keep pressing him.

“
Alors
, Jojo, what’s your investigation turned up apart from that?”

“What’s it to you, Aimée?”

“This all goes back to who killed Papa, Jojo,” she said. “And you
know
Nicu’s homicide wasn’t a hate crime.”

“I do?” Jojo’s phone console lit up. Jojo sighed, his shirt straining.

“His uncle, Roland Leseur, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, got knifed the same way on the Champ de Mars last night.”

“That’s news to me,” he said, looking away.

“And that Thomas Dussollier’s investigating? That’s news to you, too?”

Jojo shook his head. “
Non
, we’re in contact,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m working on it,
compris
?”

So Dussollier had acted on her request.

“It’s like walking on eggshells, Aimée. If I’m not careful, everything cracks.”

So not like walking on eggshells at all then, Aimée wanted to say, since they crack whether you’re careful or not.

Jojo shrugged. “Nicu had a juvenile record but he’d gone Evangelical, the Gypsy version.”

Accepted to pursue religious studies at the Sorbonne. Guilt welled up in her stomach. But she needed to hear Jojo’s version. “Evangelical, a Bible type?”

“If they haven’t found God, they’re robbing apartments while the owners visit their country
châteaux,
” said Jojo, “or winching out ATMs with their Mercedes SUVs—those are the ones I see in here. My ‘guests.’”

“No surprise your ‘guests’ like to float in the crème de la crème’s
quartier
, Jojo. Rich pickings. Yet as you said, none of that fits Nicu’s profile—not these days, anyway.”

Jojo rubbed his neck. “
Zut
, I’m just following the
préfecture
’s directives—trying to solve this thing. There’s intense media pressure—unheard-of demonstrations near l’Hôtel Matignon, Sciences Po students staging a sit-down at the
mairie.”
He
rocked again on his feet. “A pain in the neck. And now protests at the Ministry of Health bringing traffic to a standstill.”

“Jojo, that’s classic—when isn’t there a protest bringing traffic to a standstill?”

Bravo, Martine
—she must have managed to seed accusations against the Ministry of Health with the right contacts at
Le Monde
. And Rose was rallying the students with her petition. They had been marginalized during their lifetimes, but no one could ignore Drina or Nicu in death.

Small consolation, but something. And maybe a safety net for Aimée. Enough outcry might force a deeper investigation into Nicu’s murder.

The officer from reception knocked on the office window. Gestured for Jojo to pick up the phone.

“
Alors
, take that
procès-verbal
, Aimée. It’s got no bearing anyway, but
la maison
”—he meant the
préfecture
—“will play by the rules and order an investigation. You cleared your father’s name; why get muck on it?” He picked up the phone. “Leave the door open on your way out,
s’il te plaît.
” As he started to turn his back on her, he pointed to the yellowed envelope on his desk. “Don’t forget that.”

It was addressed to Madame Constantin, in what she recognized as her father’s faded handwriting. The sight of it seized her heart in a choke hold.

Inside was a copy of the same
procès-verbal
on Djanka’s homicide she’d found in her father’s files, minus the crime-scene photos.

B
UT AS SOON
as she came out of the
commissariat
, it came flooding back. The memory was ten years old, but she felt it as clearly as if she were reliving it—the twisted, burned metal of the fence around the column in Place Vendôme, her papa’s melted watch, the blackened van door gaping open on the cobbles.

Her ringing phone brought her back to the street she was standing on, to the pigeon pecking near her feet. Her father’s loss went back to being to a dull ache that never went away.

“Aimée, we’re at the park,” said Babette. “Chloé’s having a big day. Her first tooth’s almost here. She’ll sleep like a log this afternoon.”

Sounded like Babette had it all under control, thank God. The perfect nanny, ready to take her Wednesday afternoon off.

“Put Chloé on,” she said.

“
Un moment
, Aimée.”

Sounds of gurgling on the line.

“
Ça va, ma puce?
I hear that tooth’s about to peek out.”

More gurgling. Her breath caught at the image of the little rosebud mouth. Babette’s voice. “Wet diaper. Need to change it. We’re near the slide. See you at the park?”

“I’m on the way, Babette.”

Aimée hurried up the Métro stairs at Sully–Morland in the sunshine. Ahead on her right nestled a vestige of the Bastille prison in the wedge-shaped square Henri-Galli. Daffodils blossomed around the lichen-encrusted stone tower base. Spring was here.

Across the quai lay Île Saint-Louis. Children’s laughter drifted, the khaki-green Seine rippled. The fragrance of blossoming chestnut trees overlay the diesel fumes from the Number 67 bus. She headed into the square and the play structures inside.

She pictured Chloé and Gabrielle by the slide, Babette pulling out their snacks and juice from a baby bag on the stroller. Pictured taking Chloé home to play with Miles Davis, a long nap.

But neither Chloé nor Gabrielle were by the slide. She jumped at a sudden, loud buzz: a hard hat wearing earphones was using a chainsaw to cut branches off a fallen tree trunk behind a barricade. Sawdust flecks fluttered in the air.

Parents were packing up, enticing toddlers off swings.
The irritating whine of the saw was prompting an exodus. At the far end of the park, Babette was reaching down to settle Gabrielle in her baby backpack. Aimée started to wave but realized Chloé’s stroller wasn’t there. Nor was Chloé in Babette’s other arm. Where was she? Alarmed, she looked around.

Melac and Donatine sat on a bench by the Ping-Pong table, Chloé beside them in her stroller. What was Babette thinking? Livid now, she stomped across the sandy gravel toward them. Babette had strict instructions … and that snake Melac had somehow talked her into handing Chloé over?

She’d give Melac and Donatine more than a piece of her mind. She got caught behind two women, who obstructed her view, then a boy riding his bike wove in between them, blocking her way.

Furious now, she contemplated getting that expensive lawyer, who’d done nothing for her so far, on the line to issue a restraining order against these two.
Calm down
, she needed to calm down before she made a scene at the park.

All of a sudden, she heard screeching brakes as the boy’s bike skidded. Gravel sprayed, hitting her calf, as the boy swerved to avoid a dog on the path. He veered, lost control and crashed into the flimsy barricade around the fallen tree.