Rough Trade (18 page)

Romero drank a whisky standing at the bar, and munched some crisps. Ever since that morning he hadn’t been able to shake off an uneasy feeling every time he thought of Yildiz. A strange mixture of curiosity, anxiety and guilt. At eight-thirty precisely a woman came into the restaurant. Medium height, but the impression of being tall because her shoulders were strong, her hips slim and legs long. Very pale, triangular face, broad forehead, high
cheekbones,
immense golden eyes. All crowned with a great mass of naturally curly, coppery red hair, which this evening was arranged in a large 1900s-style chignon. Romero was transfixed. For an instant, he looked round to see what lucky man she was smiling at.

‘Are you Romeo?’

The serious voice, the accent …

‘Yes, well, I’d like to …’

‘I’m Yildiz.’

His breath was taken away. Fortunately, the receptionist came looking for them to take them to their table. A house cocktail for Yildiz, another whisky for Romero. Their grills arrived. Yildiz spoke first, about Istanbul, and how difficult life was for Turkish women, about her family. And her shyness, her loneliness during the four months she’d been in France …

Romero thought she laid it on a bit thick there. He would have to stay on his guard. He launched into his job: he was a police inspector, in the Finance Squad, a difficult investigation into the trafficking of black labour … in the course of which the name of Turgut Sener had cropped up.

‘I remembered that you worked at the embassy, and I thought you might be able to save me a lot of time and save me from making a few blunders if you could tell me what sort of man Turgut Sener is, what they say about him at the embassy …’

Yildiz took time to look at him, her chin resting on her hand. ‘Turgut Sener isn’t liked, or valued at the embassy. He belongs to the Turkès party, he’s been put there to watch the ambassador, who’s considered too moderate. He has a reputation for trafficking in everything, and extorting money under every kind of pretext from Turkish workers who need his services.’ She smiled at him. ‘Does that satisfy you?’

‘If you don’t mind me saying … Pardon my indiscretion, but why would an ambassador keep such a corrupt attaché?’

‘You perhaps aren’t all that familiar with the situation in Turkey at this moment. Turgut Sener will stay at the embassy as long as the Turkès party deems it necessary. The ambassador has no choice.’

Romero digested the information. Daquin would know what to do about it.

‘One more thing, Yildiz. If he’s corrupt and if everyone knows it at the embassy, it wouldn’t be all that inconvenient for you if the French police take an interest in him?’

‘You could see it like that.’

‘And you could give me some information on how he spends his time? In exchange, I’ll tell you all the little villainies he gets up to, if I find any.’

‘It could be fun.’

And she held out her hand to seal the deal. Romero took it and raised it to his lips.

This woman’s dangerous, he thought, and I’m in love. 

‘As predicted, the meeting with Deputy Paternaud turned up
nothing
. He gave us the same spiel as Caron. On the other hand, we’re making rapid progress on the photofile of club members: the
majority
of them are well known, and we’re finding their photos at press agencies. We’ll have a complete file by Wednesday evening.’

‘Very good. Santoni can then leave for Munich on Thursday. I’ll see about contacting the Swiss and German police. While you’re waiting to go, Santoni, try to find out what these deputies have in common. They’re not in the same parties, nor elected from the same regions, so what’s the link between them?’

Madame Lamouroux led the way up the dark stairs, with Attali at her heels. This was the third diamond merchant they’d visited that morning. First floor, hefty old reinforced door. They rang. A young man in his thirties came to open up for them. Attali presented his card, explained: a woman had disappeared leaving her diamonds behind. The family and police were trying to identify them. They walked into a narrow, ill-lit, terribly old-fashioned office. There was a long wait. Madame Lamouroux no longer understood what she was doing there.

Enter a stooped old man with a limp. Madame Lamouroux took out an envelope from her bag, tipped it up on the little table
covered
in black velvet. The man turned on a lamp, put a magnifying glass to his eye, rolled the stones, then straightened up.

‘You’re from the police, they tell me?’

Attali held out his card.

‘Madame is the mother of the young woman we’re looking for.’

‘I know these stones very well, I was the one who sold them. All of them.’

Photo of Virginie Lamouroux.

‘Yes. To her. There’re about two million francs’ worth here.’

Madame Lamouroux felt tears welling in her eyes. The old man fondled the stones.

‘This one here’s the last I sold her. Two hundred thousand francs.’ (He opened the drawer of his desk, consulted an enormous register.) ‘The sixth of March. She brought me the money in cash.’

On the Grands Boulevards, it was a fine day, there were lots of people about: coming out after lunch, returning to work, strolling around. A tall man, almost six foot, tanned, well-built, in his fifties, with a big moustache, came out of a café on Boulevard Saint-Denis and walked unhurriedly towards Faubourg-Saint-Martin. He
stopped
at a newspaper kiosk, bought
Hürriyet
and read the front page as he walked on. A thin young man in a grey wool bomber jacket, leaning against the kiosk, watched him pass, let him walk ahead a little, then followed him, hands in jacket pockets. He measured his step exactly in time with his, increased his stride without changing the rhythm, caught up with him. There was a bulge in his jacket. The other man felt something touch his back, just under the
shoulder
blade. He wanted to turn round. Heard a champagne cork pop. A luminous bloody explosion in his head. He crumpled to the
pavement
, stone dead. The thin young man overtook him, continued walking with the same measured step, until the next entrance to the Metro.

Daquin dealt with his current business. Contacted his Swiss and German colleagues. Agreed. Mail to follow. Wrote a report on Euroriencar in order to get permission for Drugs to tap the
telephone
and do a surveillance.

Called Soleiman. ‘This evening at the house. No danger any more. A cop at the door. I’ll explain to you. Just make sure he doesn’t see your face.’

*

Telephone.

‘Commissaire Daquin?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Jurandeau here, superintendent at the 2nd arrondissement. There’s been a murder right on the street, corner of boulevards Saint-Denis and Sébastapol. I’m letting you know because the
victim
is a Turk, a workroom manager. And you’re working in the Sentier at the moment, so they tell me.’

‘Yes. Absolutely. I’m on my way. Thanks.’

‘We’ll meet down there.’

The uniformed cops had blocked off a large rectangle on the wide boulevard pavement and were directing the crowd around it. In the centre, clusters of men in civvies were to-ing and fro-ing.
Flashlights
. Daquin showed his papers and stepped over the barrier. He introduced himself to Jurandeau, said hello to Crime, explained his presence. The photo service had finished. Daquin crouched beside the body, spread face-down. A tall, broad-shouldered man. A black hole under his left shoulder-blade. A rivulet of blood had trickled on to the pavement, beside his head. In his right hand, the man held a Turkish newspaper. Daquin looked at the title. A clean
murder
. Nothing to do with the butchery yesterday at his house. More like a setting for a tasteful
film
noir
.

He stood up and went to see the inspectors from Crime, busily looking for witnesses among those nearby, but no one had seen anything. And that is undoubtedly true, thought Daquin. One of the inspectors took the time to tell him that the corpse was of someone called Osman Celik, boss of a tailoring workroom in
passage
Brady. He had papers on him, which were apparently in order. Killed at about 2 p.m. with a bullet from a revolver, at close range, in the back. The weapon was probably armed with a silencer. The bullet must have burst the heart and death would have been instantaneous, pending the autopsy report. As for anything else, they didn’t know where he came from, or why he’d had a bullet put in him.

‘You think this death can have any link with your investigation?’

‘I don’t know. The only thing I can tell you is that I’ve not come across the name of Osman Celik yet. A complete stranger to me. That puts your case in a more difficult light.’

‘To be honest, we were really hoping you’d take it on.’

‘No, keep it, keep it. But keep me posted, obviously, if you come across an enormous packet of heroin in his workroom …’

The body was taken away, the various police services left, one after the other, and the pavement was again free for pedestrians. A team from Crime pursued their systematic questioning of people in the nearby shops, while another went to visit Celik’s workroom. Daquin retraced the last few metres the victim had strolled. He walked with his nose in the air, in a state of alert. A hundred metres or so away was a newsagent’s kiosk, with several Turkish newspapers on a rack. Daquin showed his warrant card.

‘Just now, at about two, did you sell
Hürriyet
to a tall Turk of about fifty?’

‘Yes. Is that the man who’s been killed up the road?’

‘News travels fast. So, this man?’

‘He comes by almost every day, at the same time.’

‘You know him?’

‘Yes and no.
Bonjour
, thank you, that’s all. He always comes from further down the boulevard and continues up that way.’

‘Anything special today?’

‘No. Nothing.’

Daquin continued down the boulevard, towards the Opéra. On his left, a big café, the Gymnase. A name Soleiman often
mentioned
. ‘I dropped in at the Gymnase … They said at the Gymnase …’ The Gymnase was the general meeting place for Turks in the Sentier. It was plausible that Celik went there on a regular basis. Daquin went in and drank a coffee at the counter. It had a special atmosphere. Only Turkish customers. Conversations were animated, sometimes violent, punctuated with frankly hostile looks directed towards the intruder. Obviously everyone was talking of the murder, but no one said anything to him. Daquin refrained from asking questions, and went out on to the terrace. He sat down, ordered another coffee and looked at the sea of pedestrians on the boulevard. Around the café, on the trees and posts were waste-paper baskets and on a fence to a worksite a bit further off was a small very crudely made poster; Turks were stopping to read it and hold even more discussions. Daquin stood up, paid and went to take a look. It was in Turkish obviously, but there, very clearly, on the second line, he saw the name of Celik Osman. Daquin touched it with his finger, the glue was still fresh. He went back into the Gymnase, asked for a knife – the proprietor gave him one with undisguised ill grace, but without asking for an explanation. Daquin carefully eased a poster off, folded it and put it in his
pocket
, and went back into the café to return the knife to the proprietor. You could have heard a pin drop.

Attali, Romero and Lavorel looked through the file which had just arrived on the murder of Mme Buisson, the concierge at the Villa des Artistes. There was an identikit picture of the murderer. Short, five foot two or five foot four. Very broad shoulders, swarthy, short black hair. Square face, very developed jawbones, hook nose, thick black eyebrows. There was the list of witnesses who’d been
questioned
to make the identikit. It was astonishing how many there were: five people had seen the killer. First autopsy report: a single stab wound, very violent, and with an upward thrust. The work of a specialist. Commando training? The weapon: a long, curved,
thin-bladed
dagger, rare, very difficult to handle, but which generally made a fatal wound.

When Daquin arrived he also looked at the file. A speedy job by the look of it, but well done. Signed Conrad. The nerd was trying to make amends.

‘You look knackered, boss. Sit down. For once, I’ll make the coffee.’

Daquin sat down, and let them get on with it. It was true that he was tired. He glanced at his watch: in three or four hours he’d be fucking Soleiman.

Lavorel began.

‘Euroriencar belongs to someone called Kutluer, who directs a vast assortment of Turkish companies in Germany, He himself lives in Istanbul. And in that business capital also happens to be the Bank of Cyprus and the East. The French branch was opened in 1979.’

Romero took over: ‘Euroriencar was the company that Moreira called on the phone yesterday. He talked to someone called Mehmet. He told him about the visit from a man posing as a work inspector. He’s still under the impression it was a journalist
hard-up
for copy and isn’t too bothered by it, but, even so, he wants to offload some chemical products, he says. Mehmet’s agreed to stock them until they can be despatched.’

‘With Moreira and Euroriencar, we’ve got the first definite
staging
post in the network in France. There’ll be others. Drugs are going to take over their surveillance. But Romero will continue to supervise the phone tap. And what about Sener?’

‘I’ve arranged it with two inspectors from Drugs. We start tomorrow.’

Daquin gave a quick rundown on the body in boulevard
Saint-Denis
. ‘Not necessarily any connection with our case but … This coffee’s red-hot, too weak.’

Attali talked about VL’s family and the diamonds.

‘Why stones?’

‘Because she wanted to be able to get out quietly and quickly. According to the diamond merchant, in situations like that, people buy diamonds. More interestingly, VL made her last purchase on the morning of Thursday 6 March. She bought more than 200,000 francs’ worth of stones.’

‘That’s dear for a screw with an anonymous model, even in New York.’

‘That’s what I think. If you add up everything you know about VL’s activities around 1 March, this is what you get. She was present at the scene of the crime on Friday night. She went off to New York. She came back with a load of cash. It looks as though either she saw something, or more likely, she salvaged the video of the murder. There must have been a video, and we’ve hardly taken much interest in it till now. And she’s blackmailing the murderer.’

‘Baker?’

‘If Baker was in Paris on 29 February, but then VL wouldn’t have needed to go to New York. More likely someone Baker and VL knew, and they joined forces to blackmail the murderer.’

‘An interesting theory. Attali, you must find VL for me. But stake out her parents’ house in case, improbable now, but one never knows, she might go back there to look for her diamonds. Read the statements that have been made again, go back to see the models, the friends and perhaps Sobesky’s son as well. Show them the photos we have, all the photos, of the Turks as well as the members of the Club Simon, in fact everybody, and try to get a lead for me, just a tiny lead, to look for VL.’