Murder at la Villette, page 12
“Why don’t you tell me about her? What happened? How did she end up in prison?”
A wail of anguish erupted from Madame Olivera. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Her shoulders trembled, and Aimée helped her into a chair.
“She grew up here, that’s why.” Madame Olivera wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. “This rotten place.”
“What do you mean?” said Aimée. “I’m here to listen.”
Madame Olivera deflated, her anger and frustration gone.
“Why? Doesn’t matter now. She’s gone. Dead at twenty-two. Can you imagine that a girl with a degree in hospitality management and with a five-star-hotel job in Lisbon, waiting . . .”
Aimée sat and listened as a river of pain tumbled out. Madame Olivera and her husband had come here from Portugal and found jobs as the concierges of this building and another. Her husband had worked a second job at la poste. Her daughter had loved to study. But les Modous had gotten claws into her.
“Les Modous are the Senegalese dealers around the corner on Place du Maroc, and all over here. Six months and she was stealing from us, lost her internship, got caught in some robbery. Later I found out they’d promised to burn our building down if she testified against them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“That’s what I tried to tell the flics, the therapist, the lawyer, all of them. But it was too late.”
Aimée tried to put it together. “So why did Melac, the officer, come here?”
Madame Olivera stood, a haggard slump to her shoulders, to go stir the pot simmering on her stove. Garlic, onions—something wonderful.
“He’d promised to put in a good word for her at the parole hearing. Yet it was too little, too late. She was dead. He came to apologize and offer help—he said he felt guilty that the real culprits didn’t pay.”
Deep sadness filled Aimée. He’d tried to do right by her.
A church bell chimed.
“Madame, Melac was murdered after he came here. That night.”
A pause.
“So you think I’m involved,” Madame Olivera said. Her face was instantly harsh again.
“Non, but—”
“Get out.”
“I need to ask you questions.”
“That’s what this is about, eh?”
“It’s about piecing together his movements. What time did he come here? Did anyone from the area have it in for him?”
“Ask me if I care.”
Hostility radiated in waves from this woman. And Aimée understood. Still, she needed her help.
“Please talk to me,” she said. “I’ll put in word that you assisted the investigation.”
She didn’t know how, but she could try.
“Like that changes anything?”
“You owe me nothing, I understand, but he’s the father of my child, madame,” Aimée said. All of sudden it welled up inside her—the shame and guilt. Her last words to him had been so angry. She could never take them back. “We had a fight and then . . . he was murdered.”
Madame Olivera sighed. “Et alors, he came in the evening. Ten or eleven, I don’t know. He could have walked into trouble outside.”
Why hadn’t she thought of that?
Alert, Aimée stood, parted the shade and looked out.
“You mean with les Modous who’d set your daughter up?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? He’s a flic, non? This quartier’s infested with drifters on the run or lying low. The dealers like it that way. It keeps everyone quiet. He said he’d noticed some of his ‘former’ clients. It goes both ways, if you know what I mean.”
Surprised, Aimée joined the woman at her stove.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying? He’d seen someone he’d been investigating?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She stirred the pot. “I’ve got to get this to my stall in the Portuguese market. Look, my husband dropped dead of a heart attack when my girl went to prison. To get by I clean apartments and sell my soup, caldo verde, green broth.”
“Is there anything you can remember? Anything he said about noticing someone from his past? A ghost?”
Madame Olivera looked away.
“There’s nothing here for me anymore. Nada. I’m going back to Portugal to build a house on the land we bought.”
Why didn’t she answer Aimée’s question? Or did she need to read between the lines?
“Madame, it’s only us talking. Just you and me. You’re leaving, you’ll be out of harm’s way, so you can level with me. Point out who he meant.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He just said if he were hiding, he’d hide here.”
Was this connected? Revenge from a gangster who’d spotted Melac visiting Madame Olivera?
“I get a criminal hiding here from the law, but wouldn’t the locals demand bribes? Payback to keep incognito?”
That cliché of honor among thieves rarely rang true, according to her father. A thug turning on a thug—it happened all the time.
“Oui et non.” Madame Olivera shrugged. “There’re ways to do it. The flics won’t set foot around here.” She tasted a spoonful. Reached for the salt. “Les Modous like it that way. You trade, share, pay in some way, keep your head down and go to ground. Justice takes place here in different ways. But it happens.”
Madame Olivera, widow and distraught mother, wanted vengeance for her daughter.
“Tell me his name,” said Aimée.
She snorted. “And you’ll do what your colleague wouldn’t?”
So she’d asked Melac for help.
“No promises.”
“His name? Never knew his gang name, he’s just un Modou.”
“Is he here? Around?”
“Not for a while.”
“Help me and I’ll help you.”
“If I do?”
“Sit down.”
She did, and Aimée outlined her idea.
“You mean keep my eyes and ears open and keep in touch, c’est ça?”
Aimée took one of the burner phones from her bag. Thank God René had given her several.
“Use this burner and call the number programmed in it to reach me.”
Madame Olivera shuffled through a drawer and handed Aimée a much-thumbed photo of her daughter and a young Senegalese man smiling.
“That’s him, the salopard.”
“Madame, keep a packed bag by the door. If you see him, call me, then you take a taxi and board the next flight to Portugal.”
AS AIMÉE WALKED out, she heard the roar of a motorcycle, reverberations echoing off the walls. Isabelle’s crew? A gang? She looked around. The red taillight blinked at the end of the street and then disappeared.
Her nerves fizzed.
She couldn’t be too careful. They could be checking up on her. Or worse.
She took out the burner phone Isabelle had given her and hit the speed dial.
“Aimée?”
“We need to talk.”
“Bon, I’m at the squat.”
“Not there.”
Pause. “Trouble?”
As if she weren’t in trouble already?
“I don’t know yet. Are you off to work?”
“Soon,” Isabelle said. “I’ll leave early. Where?”
Aimée thought of a location. Told her.
THE BLAND BRICK façade of the prestigious architecture school on avenue de Flandre revealed nothing. Yet the interior was entrancing, as the entry opened up to the complex of courtyards, higgledy-piggledy buildings from different eras and displays with human-size maquettes of student architectural projects.
Avant-garde. Creative.
Cold, Aimée thought, shivering and buttoning her coat.
Aimée tramped over the jagged cobbles winding between buildings. Next door had been the Erard piano manufacturer, and it made her think how waves of history passed through the quartier, of the heritage and legacies of those gone.
Her grandfather used to come to Au Boeuf Couronné, the nineteenth-century brasserie celebrated for its beef and bone marrow dishes made from five bones. Nearby was the kitchen shop where he’d taken her once for a deal on a copper skillet, which still hung on her kitchen wall.
The abattoir at la Villette, the sugar refineries and biscuit factories had once reigned here, employing two-thirds of the residents. Those had closed, the jobs disappearing. Urban renewal pulled the manufacturing warehouses, printing presses and small ateliers down and put in the périphérique, the ring road, which her father had called an abomination. He’d liked old Paris.
Aimée found the small student cafeteria on the second floor of a back building. Strains of violins and cellos drifted from somewhere below. Peaceful.
On the café’s wall were blueprints stamped with space invaders. After purchasing two espressos, she sat on a bench under hanging vines and a robust rubber tree.
“I didn’t recognize you, Aimée.”
Aimée scratched under her wig and tightened the ponytail clips.
Isabelle sat down with a quizzical look, and Aimée handed her one of the cups.
“I think a motorcycle’s following me.”
She knew she sounded paranoid. And the bikers were her safety net.
Isabelle shifted on the bench.
“Explain.”
And she did, wishing her chest didn’t heave.
“First off, we don’t police that part of la Villette unless asked,” said Isabelle, pouring in extra sugar. “Still, if you had a description or license number, I could send out an alert. Get people checking.”
Aimée downed her espresso. The hardness of the bench and angular lines of the postmodernist cafeteria were giving her a headache. “Look, Melac was in this area shortly before he got murdered. Maybe someone from a past case recognized and followed him. Exacted vengeance.”
Isabelle sipped. Aimée caught the hooded look behind her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me, Isabelle?”
“I was waiting for confirmation,” she said. “But word’s out your former flic who died, Melac, witnessed a deal going down. By this I mean a large transaction.”
“And you weren’t going to tell me?”
“Did I say that, Aimée?” Isabelle took her hand. “I’m trying to help. It was an important deal.”
Don’t burn bridges, she could hear her father say.
“Important to you?”
“To the gangs involved. One of the Angels’ cousin is a runner for them. Grunt work, but he passes on what he hears so we stay on top of what’s going on.”
“What gangs?”
“No one’s saying it’s a hit.”
“Even if Melac saw it, he’s not—”
“A flic,” Isabelle interrupted. “I know, but he could testify. Once a flic, always a flic. That’s how they think.”
“Does this involve drugs, les Modous down near rue Bellot?”
Madame Olivera had intimated Melac had inadvertently seen a “client.”
“I’ll get back to you. There’s a gang in Buttes-Chaumont who act like it’s their private dealing ground.” Isabelle squeezed Aimée’s hand. “Trust me. If my Angels did it, you’d know.”
“They resent me.”
“You’re an outsider. They’ll resent you until they trust you. Until you’re tested.”
“So I need to show them?”
Isabelle slipped a key into her palm. Gave her a door code.
“They’ll fall in love with you, don’t worry,” she said.
Before Aimée could ask how, her phone trilled. The burner phone from René.
“Leduc, I’m waiting,” said Morbier.
The weasel René had given this number to Morbier. He’d known she’d have thrown the other phone away.
Isabelle stood up, waved and left. Aimée covered the phone with her hand.
“I’m not giving myself up, Morbier.”
“Good. That would be more than stupid, given what I found out.”
“You know who the killer is?”
“Did I say that?”
She heard a little voice in the background. Familiar. Was it Chloé?
Was he taking her daughter hostage? “Let me talk to her, Morbier.”
“Meet me at your office.”
Like she’d fall for that? Get trapped?
Aimée thought fast. “Café by the church at Metro Jourdain.”
She hung up.
EN ROUTE SHE ducked back into Zia’s café, nodded to her and then returned to the old pay phone downstairs.
Rustling up some coins from her coat pocket, she found enough to make a call. Thank God.
“Urbanisme Éclectique, bonjour,” answered the receptionist at Sébastien’s studio. “How may I direct your call?”
“May I speak with Sébastien? It’s about my order.”
Pause. “Ah, Sébastien left a message for you. He’s sourced the timber. The project order’s at the current site.”
Code. He’d leave a key for her to stay at his ongoing renovation site.
“The decorators are handling the rest.”
Code again. Regula was taking care of Chloé. For now.
How long could she depend on them, imposing on their work time and childcare?
But how long ago had Sébastien left this message? Had Morbier discovered Chloé’s location to use her as leverage? Pretty low, even for him.
“When did he leave that message?”
“Just now, madame.”
“Merci.”
HER UNEASE MOUNTED as she took the Metro. Every face, every passenger’s movement heightened her fear.
Stop. Breathe.
She had to remember this disguise gave her a different look. And she had another one in her bag. She needed to think ahead. To plan an escape route. But she already knew one of her options.
Her grandfather had taken her to the quartier a long time ago when he’d come to buy anoraks for the two of them from the Breton shop that sold fishermen’s jackets and raincoats. They were heavy duty, ready to battle gales and waves in the Atlantic.
She’d loved her fisherman’s raincoat, and playing hide-and-seek with him in the places he’d shown her around the quartier.
“Shhh, it’s our secret,” he’d said. “Only the people who live here know about it. But there’re lots of secret funny places here. Old walls, remnants of buildings, sink holes to the quarries, all from when this was a farming village.”
He’d woven a spell, and they were off on an adventure, and despite missing school for an afternoon, she’d learned history. At least that was the excuse he’d given her father.
Morbier knew how to reel her in. He could have a posse waiting to arrest her. But for all Morbier’s faults, she doubted he’d do that. He’d have to have something so convincing or damning that she’d give herself up if she wanted to ever see her daughter again. He’d strike a deal. Like always with him, nothing came free.
Anything Morbier offered, she’d pay for.
THE CAFÉ AT Metro Jourdain opposite the church looked as if it were sliding down the hill. Or like those villages in Provence perched on a steep crag, clenching onto the rock by fingertips—a wonder of human resilience. During the war, Jourdain was one of the steep Metro stations used as an air raid shelter until the Germans took the whole line to turn it into an armaments factory. Luckily, they never finished it before Libération. This hilly northeastern part of Paris was once home to the anarchists, thieves who escaped into the lawless heights and lived tax-free until the waste ground and outlying villages were incorporated in 1860.
Full of habitués, too. Bearded old men reading L’Humanité, the Communist newspaper, children scooting up and down between the outdoor tables and their parents. And the flower shop, the fromagerie, the small bookstore and bistros were filled with locals. A bit down at the heel in spots, tarnished, but well worn and vibrant.
Could she spot surveillance? Outside on the terrace, the young woman pushing a stroller and picking a table opposite? The waiter who greeted her with a more booming than usual bonjour as he handed her a menu—was he flagging a watcher?
About to leave, she saw Morbier beckoning her from inside the café, where the awning had hidden him.
At least the tall doors were open to the terrace and she knew there was an exit out the back by the WCs.
“Leduc,” he said, puffing on a cigarette. “The usual?”
She nodded.
He summoned the waitress. “Two cafés double, s’il vous plaît.”
After she left, Aimée looked around.
“Make this quick, Morbier,” Aimée said, her voice lowered. “I’m here only because of Chloé and you know that.”
“You left the hospital treatment, absconded from police custody while a suspect and dropped me in the merde.”
He cleared his throat and nudged her ankle with his foot under the table.
His go-to signal for her to be quiet. Listeners nearby.
The waitress set down two steaming demitasses of espresso.
“Merci,” he said, palming her a twenty-euro note.
She got the message and closed off the area with several chairs and a sign reading RESERVÉ.
“But apart from that . . . I won’t mention the boomerang effect it had on me, Leduc.”
He took several sips. Always one for the dramatic pause.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“You know Chloé’s safe, I imagine. You know I would never use her. I don’t know where she is, and no one is looking for her on our end.”
She wanted to believe him.
“Is that golden, Morbier?”
“Gold.”
It made her think.
“Why?”
“First of all, you’re family.”
Of course, because the police connections made Chloé part of the “family”: Claude, her great-grandfather; Jean-Claude, her grandfather; and Melac, her father, were all in the force once.
Untouchable. Or among his contacts they were.
“What’s so important that you need to show me?”
Aimée watched Morbier. He looked tired. And too old to be doing whatever he was doing. But his mind was sharp as a razor.
“Tell me,” she said. “Or I leave in thirty seconds.”
She downed the double espresso.
“Two anonymous letters arrived at the commissariat. Denunciations. Pointing the finger.”
