Seen and Not Heard (27 page)

He’d listened to this all with an enigmatic expression on his face. “And what am I supposed to be doing during all this?”

“Working on your novel. While we’re gone you could keep after the police, tell them how crazy Marc is. With you to badger them, they should eventually see reason.”

“Sounds very efficient. Where were you planning on going?” His voice was mild, and Claire found herself struggling between relief and disappointment. She had thought, had hoped, he’d put up more of a fight.

“I wasn’t quite sure. South, I suppose, maybe near the Riviera. We’d call in, check to see if anything’s happened. We’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be dead,” he said flatly.

“Tom …”

“For one thing, you can’t rent a car without proper identification, and that includes a passport. For another, Bonnard knows the Riviera, you don’t. You’d be much safer in a less-inhabited part of the country. God knows that’s easy enough to find—most of the population is crowded around Paris and the southeast coast. And in case it’s slipped your mind, you can’t speak French. Not a goddamned word of it. So how do you expect to fade into the woodwork for God knows how long without Marc finding you?”

“I can’t involve you in this.”

“I’m already involved. He knows me, he knows where I live. He called you at my apartment, remember? I’m just as likely to wind up with a knife in my throat while you’re off sunning yourself at Cap Ferrat.”

“Don’t.” Claire shuddered.

“Sorry, lady. I’m in this all the way. You’ll find I have my uses. I’m a jack of all trades—I’ll be your chauffeur, your translator, and your bodyguard. And I work cheap. Just an occasional pat on the head, a crumb of affection, and I’ll be your slave.”

“I can’t let you do it.”

“You have no choice,” he said flatly, and Claire wondered how she had ever thought he was easygoing. “It’s very simple. First, I don’t have a car, but I have a friend who has an old Peugeot that simply sits around getting rusty. Second, I don’t think we should bother with your American Express card. Bonnard will expect you to get a new one—it would be his best chance of tracing you. We’ll manage without. I can get plenty of cash, and where we’re headed we won’t need much money.”

“Where are we headed?”

He grinned at her, and suddenly she found herself grinning back, feeling reckless and oddly carefree. Whether she liked it or not, she did have someone to turn to. “We’re going toward one of the darkest, emptiest corners in the back of beyond. A place where the goats outnumber the dogs, and the dogs outnumber the people. The only place in
France where grapes don’t grow. In other words, we’re going to my vineyard.”

“You have a vineyard?”

“For want of a better word. It’s a bleak and barren outcropping of earth where the sun never shines and it only rains when you don’t want it to. What grapes survived three different kinds of blight are at this moment fermenting into one of the world’s worst wines. We closed down last year and as far as I know no one’s been back since. It’ll be the perfect place to hide out. No one speaks English, but they’ll remember the crazy American who tried to grow grapes where grapes won’t grow. And Bonnard will never find us.”

Claire shook her head in disbelief. “And where is this Garden of Eden?”

“About four hours away if we drive directly. I propose we take a roundabout way in case anyone follows us. We don’t have a telephone at the vineyard, but there’s a public phone in town. Once I get you settled into the farmhouse I can go down and call the police again. Maybe by then they’ll be more receptive.”

“Or maybe by then Marc will have convinced them that he’s innocent.”

“Maybe. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, I want you to pack some clothes for you and Nicole. Just the bare essentials—we want to travel as light as possible. Then we’ll head out across town to my friend’s house.”

“Couldn’t you just get the car yourself and come back here?” she suggested, bowing to the blessed inevitable. “I could pack while you’re gone, and I promise we’d keep the doors locked.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t wanted to point this out to you, darling,” he said gently, “but this is Bonnard’s apartment. A locked door isn’t keeping him out. He has keys.”

Claire could feel her face turn pale, her small measure of security ripped away from her. “How could I be so stupid?”

“It’s all right, Claire. As far as I can tell he hasn’t come near all day.”

“I’ll get our clothes,” she said numbly. “You call your friend. I’ll be ready to leave in five minutes. If Nicole’s still asleep you can carry her.”

“We don’t need to rush …”

“I need to get out of here,” she said, her voice deep and grim. “Call your friend.”

Josef dropped the neatly folded paper on Malgreave’s desk. “As ordered, sir,” he said, dropping wearily into the chair across from his superior. He wiped his domed forehead with a linen handkerchief. “A nasty business.”

Malgreave smiled benevolently at his assistant. “A nasty business indeed. Your wallowing in the sewers has brought it closer to completion, my friend.”

“Sewers, indeed.” He gestured toward the paper. “Is that what you wanted leaked?”

Malgreave picked up the evening paper. The ancient photograph of the Marie-le-Croix orphanage reproduced poorly—it looked shadowy and gothic, full of brooding evil. The headlines were suitably macabre—“Orphans’ Sex Ring Tied to Killings” got the message across quite nicely, if without subtlety.

“You did well, Josef. You and Vidal.” He kept his face bland at Summer’s involuntary wince. “And there’s no mention of Bonnard?”

“None at all. Just the dead butcher, Sahut, the bureaucrat, Alpert, and Rocco Guillère described in such intimate detail that you don’t need his name to know who they’re talking about.”

“Very good. And de Salles?”

“Also profiled. I’m afraid Vidal got a bit creative in that part when he talked to the reporter. He said the boy had a marked talent for miming.”

Malgreave shrugged. “No harm done. At this point I don’t care what we have to do to smoke him out, just so long as we can make it stick in the end.”

“Just so.”

“You look tired, my friend,” Malgreave said. “You’ve
been at work even longer than I have. Go home and spend some time with your wife.” Before it’s too late, he added silently.

“You’ve been here almost as long,” Josef pointed out politely.

Malgreave shook his head. “You go home. I have to check the telephone calls and then I’ll leave.”

“I checked with Gauge when I came in,” Josef said. “Just the usual crank calls. I’ll check the transcripts to make absolutely certain, but it seems ordinary enough. Some hysterical woman insisting the killer was after her stepdaughter, a man with an incomprehensible tale of drugs and such. Gauge was in the midst of typing them up. I’ll go over them and then go home.”

Malgreave’s forehead creased. “Maybe I should take a look …”

“Sir!” Josef managed a look of affront. “Surely you can trust me on a matter such as this. I’ve been checking the phone calls for months now.”

“Of course.” Malgreave backed down. It had been a long day, and the tension was beginning to tell on both of them. “I’ll go home for a bit. But call me if anything turns up.”

“Of course, Chief Inspector.”

Josef watched the old man leave. It was funny how he’d aged in the last few years. The chief inspector couldn’t be more than fifty, yet he looked at least ten years older. Would the job do the same thing to him?

He had every intention of finding out. And the way Malgreave was going, it would be soon. When they cracked this case, Josef had every intention of seeing that he was in line for his share of the glory. Malgreave was always generous in sharing the credit. If he could just keep Vidal down where he belonged, and if Malgreave did as he threatened and retired once they put a stop to the recent killings, then his future looked rosy indeed.

He settled down into Malgreave’s chair, his broad bottom fitting nicely into the worn leather seat. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of dead cigarettes. A filthy habit, and as far
as he could see it, Malgreave’s only weakness. That, and the bitch he was married to.

Lucky for him that Helga was so understanding. Her ambition rivaled his, and she had no objections to late nights, early mornings, and an absentee husband if his salary and prestige continued to rise. And if sometimes he felt a little lonely, if he missed his son and daughter as they grew up without him, then that was the price he had to pay for the good life.

But things would be much better once he took over Malgreave’s job, Malgreave’s private office with the window overlooking the street. He could set his own hours, not have to put in twelve- and fourteen-hour days to impress his superior. He’d leave that to brownnoses like Vidal.

Pierre Gauge’s shaved head ducked inside the door. If he was surprised to see Josef relaxing in his superior’s chair his bland face didn’t show it. “I’m going off duty, sir,” he said, and Josef took pleasure in the respectful title. “Do you want the transcripts in here?”

“Leave them on my desk,” he said airily. “I’ll check them tomorrow morning.”

“Very good, sir.” And Pierre Gauge departed, leaving Josef to his dreams of glory.

It had taken them longer than five minutes. Claire had thrown clothes together into a large suitcase, paying little attention to her choices, but Nicole had proven almost impossible to wake. Her clothes were filthy, and she managed to swim to consciousness only long enough to struggle into clean clothes and submit to having her face and hands washed by a maternal Claire before drifting back into a semi-stupor.

Without a word Tom scooped her up, wrapping a blanket around the thin, frail body. “Are you sure she’s all right?” Claire worried. “Maybe we should take her to a doctor.”

“She’s fine, Claire. She’s just drugged. All she needs to do is sleep it off.”

“You’re certain?”

“Reasonably so. If she seems to be falling deeper into sleep we’ll stop at the first hospital we can find. Does that satisfy you?”

“It’ll have to. A hospital will want to know where her father is, and I’d rather not have to answer those sorts of questions.”

“We could tell them I’m her father.”

“Which would work fine until she woke up enough to start speaking in French,” Claire said. “God knows, I wish you were her father.”

“At least Bonnard isn’t either. Come on, Claire. Hélène said she’d meet us out front.”

“Hélène?” Claire echoed. “Your friend is a woman?”

He managed the ghost of a grin. “I told you I tried being a vintner, a writer, a dancer, and an artist. I never told you I tried being a monk.”

“No,” she said. “You never did.”

The Peugeot had definitely acquired more than its share of rust. Claire wished she could say the same thing for its driver. As she and Nicole bundled into the back seat she caught a whiff of Opium, a mane of black hair, and a decidedly hostile smile from the driver, who then proceeded to involve Tom in a raucous conversation held entirely in French. Claire tried to summon up enough energy to seethe, but the heavily drugged child in her arms took all the emotions she had to spare, so she merely leaned back in the cramped seat and tried not to concentrate on the back of Tom’s head as he flirted with the French woman.

His hair was too long. There was a badly mended hole in the thick black sweater, and Claire wondered who’d darned it. Certainly not the exotic creature with the mundane car who couldn’t seem to control her high-pitched laughter. Claire told herself if the woman giggled one more time she’d scream. She’d wanted to scream for hours now, and had controlled herself. It wouldn’t take much to break that control.

Traffic in Paris was always ghastly; in rush hour it was bordering on criminal. It took forty-five minutes and several close brushes with death for the aging French car to travel
less than a city mile, with Hélène laughing all the way. When they finally pulled up outside a block of modern, soulless apartments, the dark-haired woman slipped from the car, once more casting the subdued Claire a calculating look, and then proceeded to kiss Tom full on the mouth.

It was a very long, fishy kiss, and while Claire could see Tom’s participation was more polite than enthusiastic, it didn’t keep from arousing at least a trace of fury in her apathetic body. She glared at the woman’s departing wave, glared at Tom’s amused expression, and hugged Nicole’s sleeping body tighter.

“Are you going to sit in the back seat and glower?” he inquired coolly. “Or are you going to keep me company up here?”

“I think I should watch Nicole.”

“And I think I’ll have a hard time driving with you fuming behind my back. It’s not my fault Hélène’s an affectionate girl.”

“Hélène’s a …” Nicole’s sleepy moan stopped Claire before she said something she knew she’d regret. “I’ll stay back here,” she said again.

“Suit yourself. It’s going to be a long drive.”

Her whole body ached with weariness and pain. She couldn’t remember if Marc had ever been as rough as he’d been last night. He probably had and she’d been too besotted to notice. But she noticed now. At least she’d managed a long shower, but even twenty minutes under a steaming spray hadn’t managed to make her feel clean.

“The longer, the farther away from Paris and Marc, the better,” she said, turning her face into the cracked leather seats.

And without another word Tom pulled into the rush hour traffic with all the reckless self-concern of a kamikaze pilot intent on his mission.

The battered white Fiat looked like a thousand other cars caught in the maelstrom of Paris rush hour. The interior of the car was shadowed in the early-evening light, and the driver wore a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face.
It would have taken a discerning eye indeed to realize that face was covered with thick white makeup, the mouth painted in a grin of maniacal glee at odds with the stylized tears dotting the clown-white cheeks.

The Fiat pulled away from the curb, following the Peugeot through the crowded streets of Paris, heading toward the northeast. And in the car there was absolute silence.