Rough Trade (28 page)

Daquin took Lavorel with him for a second search at Anna Beric’s place. They entered the apartment, Daquin went straight to the bedroom and opened one of the cupboards. The wickerwork trunk was still there, in the same place. Relief or disappointment?

‘Take a good look at that trunk, Lavorel. It’s the only thing I came here to see. Have you taken it in? The wickerwork, the
corners
, the clasp, the dimensions?’

*

Return in silence to passage du Désir. Daquin and Lavorel went straight down to the basement where a few objects involved in current investigations were kept.

‘There’s the trunk in which VL’s body was found.’

‘It’s the same as the one we’ve just seen at Anna Beric’s place. No possible doubt about it.’

‘When I saw it yesterday I thought it was Anna’s. It’s not hers, but it’s identical with it. We’re going to have a great many subjects of conversation with that lady.’

Attali went to Julie La Tour’s, the manufacturer where Virginie Lamouroux had been working on the morning of Friday 14 March and approached the boss.

‘I’m extremely sorry to disturb you again but yesterday we found the body of Virginie Lamouroux. She was killed on 14 March in the afternoon. As far as we know you were the last people to see her alive. So all the details are important, you understand?’

‘Certainly. How was she killed?’

‘She was whipped to death.’

‘No!!! Some sadist?’

‘No doubt.’

The manager called out to everyone: ‘We’re closing for half an hour, everyone in my office!’

The accountant, the secretary, two salesgirls, the cutter, the
retoucher
, the accessorist and the manager were all there.

Attali repeated the information for everybody. A weighty silence. Then the manager made an announcement: ‘I’ll try to describe that Friday morning. If anyone remembers the slightest detail, then tell us. Virginie arrived at 10 o’clock. She was always on time. She went up to the showroom with the retoucher. The models were already up there. I went up in my turn, I told her in which order to present the models and then I came down again.’

Attali to the retoucher: ‘Did she say anything to you?’

‘I think we exchanged a few words about the models, the ones she liked, the ones she didn’t like. That was all.’

‘At 10.30 the clients arrived, they were Japanese.’

‘Did Virginie know them?’

‘No, apparently not. The presentation began. Virginie was good, as usual. She wasn’t a very great mannequin, but in private
presentations
like this one she was excellent, for she was very … how shall I put it? … she made people want to touch things and take them away.’

Attali remembered Romero raping her at the foot of a staircase, while he … ‘I understand very well what you mean.’

‘By 11.30 or thereabouts she had presented everything. The Japanese asked to see several models a second time. Towards noon she began to be slightly impatient She told me she had a lunch appointment at half-past twelve. And she always hated being late.’

‘“For lunch”, are you sure?’

‘Yes, that’s what I remember. At about the same time the Japanese had seen enough. Virginie changed at high speed and went down to the shop. I stayed upstairs with the Japanese.’

The secretary continued the story: ‘She came downstairs saying “I’m going to be late”. I suggested calling a taxi for her. She replied “It’ll be quicker for me to walk”. I looked at my watch. It was 12.20, more or less.’

The cutter added: ‘I saw her going out through the door. She was walking quickly in the Opéra direction.’

Daquin went towards a small table at the back of the café. A big guy stood up to greet him. The thirty-year-old man looked like a fighter, he was squarely built, sturdy with close-cropped hair. They had met on rugby pitches. Beside him on the banquette was a whole collection of photographic equipment.

‘Another cup of coffee, please,’ he asked the owner.

‘Well, what’s it about this time, mystery man?’

‘I’m going to take you onto the balcony of an empty flat in a block near here. I’ll manage to get you in somehow, and you’ll manage not to be seen. From there you have the unrestricted view of a bed on the floor below, where there should be a leg-show between 12 and 1 o’clock. You will take a few photographs for me, suggestive ones, as the phrase goes …’

‘That you’ll use to blackmail the protagonists.’

‘No way. At the most I’ll use them to apply pressure in the cause of truth and justice.’

‘And in exchange?’

‘I’ll see you’re informed when we arrest the biggest network of drug traffickers ever dismantled to date. It’ll be exclusive to you.’

‘Have you got confidence in yourself?’

‘As far as I can have in this kind of business. That’s to say not much.’

‘I’m on. Let’s go. Pay for my coffee,
commissaire
.’

Daquin listened, Attali talked: ‘VL had a lunch date on Friday 14 March at 12.30. I don’t know where, I don’t know who with. But it was in an area a quarter of an hour’s walk away from rue des Jeûneurs, going towards the Opéra. I’ve got one possibility: I’ll get a map of the district, I’ll mark off the area I can reach in twenty minutes or so walking time from the Julie La Tour boutique, and I’ll go into all the restaurants in that area with photos of VL and Kashguri. It’s dangerous. Because, even if VL had lunched
somewhere
in the district, there’s not much chance that anyone would remember her. But I can’t think of anything else.’

‘Agreed. In particular you must target the chic expensive
restaurants
. And you must find some backup. But for that …’

*

A jubilant Romero came back.

‘Martens is devastated by Sener’s murder. He hadn’t heard about it. Marinoni had told him that his name and address had been found in Sener’s diary and that they’d spent the last weekend
together
. He confirmed it. He knows the two Turkish intellectuals. About three months ago he went to the races at Enghien with Sener. They met the two in question at the racecourse, spent the afternoon with them and since they were dead drunk by the end of it they drove them back to Enghien, to the door of a luxury villa in a
location
which Martens has described in fairly precise detail. It’s the only trail left to us for my contact at the embassy, as I’d foreseen, brought me nothing. Shall we continue further in that direction?’

‘Certainly.’

*

Telephone. The duty man at the entrance.

‘A Monsieur Alain to see you,
commissaire
.’

‘Yes, I’m expecting him, send him up.’

Alain entered in a rush and threw a large brown envelope onto the desk.

‘You’ll have a good laugh. Good luck, and don’t forget the
reward
, as you promised.’

He left immediately.

Daquin opened the envelope. Three large photos. Not works of art, but clear enough. In the first one Meillant, standing, seen in profile, perfectly recognizable, was taking part in fellatio with a big peroxide blonde who was kneeling in front of him, her face buried between his legs. Next photo: the big blonde, with her hair in her eyes and her breasts thrust forward, was sitting astride Meillant who was lying on his back. The identification in this one was less obvious. In the last photo the woman was kneeling while Meillant was fucking her from behind. She was clutching the foot of the bed and her features were very distinct, she was facing the camera. All that within an hour, the guy was in good form. I couldn’t have imagined anything better.

The image of Soleiman flashed before his eyes, his shattered body beneath the duvet. A stab of desire. I’m going home.

Not very difficult to find the villa. Martens had said: ‘They had come to the racecourse on foot, as neighbours. To get them back home we drove about one or two kilometres. They live in a house beside the lake, in a cul-de-sac that runs alongside a big lycée built of brick.’

Romero and Marinoni easily found the lycée on a map and went straight there. They entered the cul-de-sac, Martens had said: ‘A very big house, well hidden, a black gate, very high, with gilding, very flashy.’ The house was there at the corner of avenue Regina and avenue Château-Léon, pompous names for two deserted
culs-de
-sac. Closely protected in fact. Railings covered with ivy, more than two metres high, and above it, carefully pruned chestnut trees. It was just possible to make out a large garden and a large house, millstones, brick and cement, tasteless. The shutters were open, the house seemed to be inhabited, but that was all that could be said. Access to the lake was also closed off by railings. No shops or concierges nearby. Impossible too to stay there too long without attracting attention. Go round the lake to see if the house was visible from the opposite bank.

A few hundred metres away the estate agents Gay, announcing that they specialized in high-class property. Let’s give them a try.

The two inspectors went in and introduced themselves to a charming young blonde woman, wearing a grey suit, serious
efficiency
. The villa at the corner of the avenue Regina and the avenue Château-Léon? The villa Léon. Yes indeed, she knew it very well. The Gay Agency manage it. It had been let for two years to Monsieur Oumourzarov, a Turkish businessman. Very high rent, paid without difficulty. The villa was very handsome, the entire raised ground floor was given over to reception-rooms,
drawing-rooms
, a dining-room, a smoking-room. On the first and second floors, ten or so bedrooms, five bathrooms. View over the lake …

‘What do you know about Monsieur Oumourzarov?’

‘Well … not very much.’ She searched through her files and took out the one dealing with the villa Léon. ‘On his form he had described himself as director of a commercial firm. Payslips from the Turkimport company, registered office in Istanbul. And the Parillaud Bank had guaranteed his credit-worthiness. Would you like the address of Turkimport?’

‘Certainly.’

She wrote it out on one of the agency cards and held it out to them.

‘What’s he like physically?’

‘About forty, medium height, slim, Brown hair, fairly average in fact. Typical businessman of today.’

The two inspectors left.

‘We’ll have a drink by the lake, then back to passage du Désir. I don’t think we’ve wasted our time.’

Attali and Rimbot had decided to work systematically through the entire area marked out the day before as the one where Virginie Lamouroux probably had a lunch date. Daquin had said ‘the smart expensive restaurants’. But what was a really smart and expensive restaurant like? Not always easy to identify. Better to spread the net a little too wide rather than too narrow. In each restaurant the inspectors showed first the photo of Virginie, then that of Kashguri, then the two together. Do you know either of them? You’ve never seen either of them? Nor both of them together? Which ones of you were there on Friday 14 March at lunchtime? These two faces don’t mean anything to you?

It was difficult on Saturday, in this area. Most of the restaurants were closed. They had to note carefully those that had been visited and those they would have to come back to. Mark on the map which streets had been explored. And continue to believe in what they were doing.

The atmosphere in Daquin’s office was that of a council of war. Everyone was there, Romero, Marinoni, Rimbot, Attali and Lavorel, surrounding the chief.

Lavorel had worked well. In less than six hours, and on a Saturday, he had produced a solid report on the Turkimport company: ‘Turkimport is a very big Turkish import-export
company
, the second largest in this sector, specializing in the import of machine tools and agricultural machinery and in the export of
processed
agricultural products. A limited company, quoted on the Bourse. The chairman is a former general, now retired. The Parillaud Bank supplies part of their capital through its subsidiary branch in Turkey. This latter also has agreements with the Bank of Cyprus and the East in a number of very big operations in Turkey and the Lebanon.’

Silence, Lavorel considered his achievement, it was a success.

‘The French office was opened two years ago. It has been run by Oumourzarov from the start. The registered office is at La Défense, in the Atlantic Tower. We have the list of the principal customers, import and export. Some of them are linked to the Parillaud Bank. It will be very difficult for us to find out more. About the prices charged, for example. Turkimport is considered at high levels as a support for the French presence in the Near East.’

‘Can we establish a link with Kutluer?’

‘Not at the moment. And it’s not at all certain that such a link exists. Kutluer and Moreira are family concerns, small-time
operators
in one sense. With Turkimport we’re entering the world of large-scale international trade and high finance. A change of scale.’

‘Where does the merchandise come in?’

‘Partly through Roissy, partly through Marseilles.’

‘Romero and Marinoni, tomorrow you’ll go to the customs at Roissy. Get out of them all you can. I shan’t tell the magistrate or my chief before Monday. In fact I’ll try to do it as late as possible. We’ve been obstructed over the murder of the Thai girl. Let’s see how far we can get this time.’