A Death in Time, page 13
‘Next, Operation Place Wilson.’ The file was thin. ‘Happily, Terrevaste reports no suspicious activity whatsoever but it’s early days.’
Darac’s habitual half-smile widened a little. ‘I hear I was well out on my estimate of the numbers required for the operation.’
‘Not at all. You recommended deploying as many as budget and staffing levels allowed. That was precisely the principle I applied.’
‘Oh.’ Darac’s face fell. ‘Agnès, I can’t tell you how touched and flattered I am at the faith you seem to have in me. But…’
‘Faith has nothing to do with it. But in any case, if I were you, I wouldn’t worry. For once, you appear to have overlooked a rather significant point. I shall not be appointing my successor. The Board will.’
‘But a recommendation from you would carry enormous weight.’
‘Enormous?’ The idea amused her. ‘I doubt it. They’re strangers to me, most of them.’ She gave his hand a squeeze. ‘So just relax about it, Paul. Alright?’
He brightened a little. ‘Does that mean…?’
‘It means… relax. Let’s continue.’ She turned over the next file. ‘This is Barrau’s PM report on Denise Dubreuil, just in.’ She passed it over. ‘Routed just to me. He should have copied you in too of course, the worm.’
‘That’s an insult to worms, I think.’ Darac took the report and turned first to the cause of death entry. ‘C.O.D is… as we thought. And the hyoid bone was broken as young Lami Toto suspected. He’s a good lad, that. A lab assistant but he’s worth ten of the dep chief pathologist. T.O.D estimate… Between 4.45 and 6.15 pm. That’s quite a bit more focussed than Barrau eventually proffered at the scene. What else…? Ah – those track marks on Denise’s arms were quite genuine. She was using.’
‘Conclusion?’
‘She was who she said she was. A row with a pusher using the alias Ploine appears to have led to her murder. What the cryptic note she made means, we have no idea and possibly never will.’
One of the desk phones rang.
‘Darac? It’s Map.’
‘Good to hear from you. Agnès is with me and you’re on speaker. Go ahead.’
‘I’m emailing you a splay of photographs on the dumpster murder, some familiar, some new; and an updated dossier on the victim.’
‘Updated already? Sounds promising.’
‘The times of death and the dumping of the body remain the same as my initial estimate – respectively between 9 o’clock and 11 on Saturday evening, 1 o’clock and 4 the following morning. On the question of finding our prime suspect for the Denise Dubreuil murder, the white male using the alias, Ploine, we need look no further. We had him already. We just didn’t know it.’
Darac and Agnès’s shared a look. ‘Ploine is the man in the dumpster?’
‘There’s no doubt about it. His true name was Hugo André Cragnat, age 31, born in Tours. Listen, I have to go but the material I’m sending is all you’ll need to take things further.’
‘Great work as always, Map.’
Darac rang off. ‘So, the question now is whether Ploine, real name, what was it...?’ He checked the scribbled note he’d made. ‘Hugo André Cragnat, murdered Denise as we believed, was then himself murdered and his body dumped by person or persons unknown. Or whether Cragnat’s murderer also murdered Denise. Thomas couldn’t swear it was his raised voice he heard rowing with her, remember. Nor that it was his retreating back he glimpsed momentarily as he hurriedly made his exit.’
‘That person might just prove to be Cragnat’s chum, Ludo.’
‘Indeed. So first, I’ll update the whole team which will release Flak from her tattoo parlour crawl and then… what? Detail Perand to help her put Cragnat’s bio together?’
Agnès nodded. ‘At this stage, yes. Granot’s already building up a head of steam on the search for Ludo and the news will supercharge his efforts all the more.’
‘Yes, it will.’ A thought struck him. ‘We were speculating earlier that Denise’s notebook entry “SM” might have been Cragnat’s true initials. It seems they weren’t.’
‘Absolutely. And you’re also wondering if MT might not refer to Maurice Thomas?’
‘It might not but anyway, there’s no indication of any wrongdoing on his part.’
‘Unless, Paul,’ Agnès said. ‘He is a very clever man indeed.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
How many training sessions had Gilles Laborde led since his appointment as head coach to the university’s athletics team? Thousands. But to each one, he brought the same energy and drive, ever-increasing knowledge, and a redoubled commitment to excellence. And it wasn’t just on the technical side. His people management skills, he believed, were second to none. To perform at their best, some athletes required an occasional kick up the backside. Others responded to an arm around the shoulder. And to get the most out of some, you had to get into bed with them, metaphorically speaking. But with young women as beautiful as Samira Padar, there had been nothing metaphorical about it.
A stats man, Gilles had noted that Samira had been the 13th athlete under his care he had bedded. Ever since playing at centre three-quarter in his college rugby team, 13 had always been his lucky number. But attachment to the number had had nothing to do with his decision to leave the tally where it stood and not just for the foreseeable future. There would be no 14th young woman for him to bed because he knew he had found his ideal. It was true that Samira’s athletic potential was not great. Training to be the best athlete she could be was all he asked of her, or of anyone. That was all he had ever asked of his own daughter but she had never understood it. Samira would never become a second Grace Nahili but in every other respect, she was unsurpassable, indeed perfect, and most importantly, she was his.
Zoë? He should never have gone with her in the first place. The marriage was a sham and she knew it. Look at how she had behaved once the anniversary party had reached its climax. Pathetic. Getting rid of her wouldn’t be easy. But it was going to happen. Quite simply, Zoë’s days were numbered.
Gilles had predicted that the more gifted members of his squad would not overindulge at the announcement party and as the session had ended on a positive note for most of them, he had once again been proved right. If Gilles had allowed it, Julien Baille might even have run a PB for his event but wanton disregard of the meticulously prepared schedule for any athlete could not be tolerated. No one ever won a medal for peaking in training.
‘What was Julien up to?’ assistant coach Kevin Macdonald had asked Gilles as, casting weak shadows from the Stade’s antique floodlights, the squad trooped off to the changing rooms at the end of the session. ‘He was running like a kid with a wasp up his arse until you stepped in. What do you reckon? Gaining his international vest gone to his head?’
‘He knows better,’ Gilles said. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with him before our debrief.’
‘Maybe calling him out in front of the others would work better. Temperamental bastard.’
‘Mac, I’ll have a word with him and that’s an end to the matter.’
But the matter did not end there. Julien had ridden away into the night before Gilles got the chance to say anything at all. On any other occasion, a display of such wilful disrespect would have greatly angered him. Tonight, he barely registered it.
Gilles had arranged to meet Samira by her car. Most members of the squad preferred to take the team bus to and from the stadium’s grandly named Players and Officials Only car park, a poorly lit and bumpy strip of overgrown wasteland laid out in the shape of a hockey stick. Some, though, opted to drive or ride themselves. Spaces at the top, handle-end of the stick were the favoured ones and not only because they were closest to the changing rooms. Those further out were darker and bumpier and furthest of all, the few spaces hidden among trees around the blade end of the stick were seldom used at night. Except, that was, by anyone wishing not to be seen.
Samira wound down her window.
‘Sam, I’ve only got a second – I’m already late for the post-session with Mac and Franck but I’ve got something I must tell you.’
‘That’s a coincidence.’
‘Even in this light, you look beautiful. And you didn’t have a shower. You know how that turns me on… But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. Aren’t you going to get out of the car?’
‘Actually, Coach Laborde, no. I’m not.’
Gilles’s smile faded but he was not disheartened. This was some sort of game, wasn’t it? The pair liked to play games. Especially in bed. He made a remark of the sort Alain Delon, Michel Piccoli or Jean-Paul Belmondo might have made in a movie. Cool. Hip. Sexy.
Samira relented, but she left her driver’s door open as she joined him.
‘I’m here because I agreed to meet you,’ she said. ‘I was going to wait a little but I may as well say it now. It was fun while it lasted, Gilles, but no more. It’s over.’
‘Yeah – right.’ He aimed a hand at her groin. She took a pace back. ‘Really playing hard to get? Love it!’
‘I’m not playing games. I mean it.’
‘No, no. Come on, now.’
The minutes ticked by with Gilles continuing to cling to the belief that Samira was teasing or testing him, but as her message finally began to sink in, he began to sink into hopeless denial. ‘But we’re so good together.’
‘Gilles – we were only “together” for a few weeks.’
‘It was a whole month.’
‘Was it? Well it was a whole month I deeply regret.’
He was stunned but words continued to come. ‘Regret the sex? No, no. You can’t pretend all that moaning meant you didn’t love it.’
She shrugged. ‘I enjoyed it. I did. But that’s all.’
‘And now…what? There’s someone else? Someone better? Than me?’’
‘There might or might not be. But that’s not your concern.’
‘Our ages? Is that it?’ His eyes bored into her. ‘I know I’m thirty years older than you but…’
Samira had once before witnessed Laborde losing his temper. But she was not going to be cowed. ‘But what?’
‘Look, there’s something you don’t know. This is not just a fling for me. Our time together is… I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Oh, you have?’ She waggled her head. ‘So have I.’
‘But you… You don’t know what plans I’m making.’
‘Plans?’ She made to get into her car. ‘Save them for poor, poor Madame Zoë. Who in case you’ve forgotten, is the wife you so despise and laugh at behind her back. Samira glanced at her watch. ‘I must go. And so must you or Franck and Mac will coming looking for you. And find you here. With me, right? You’ll be blown, Coach Laborde. Blown!’
‘Yes, yes, it’s still too early for that – you’re right.’ He jumped back into his car. ‘Look, we can’t leave it like this. After you’ve driven out, wait for me around the corner, will you? In that spot I showed you, once. By the builders’ yard. No one will see us there. I’ll be no more than twenty minutes. Be there, Sam.’
As he hurried away to the session debrief with his assistants, Samira was already thinking beyond the next twenty minutes. She was thinking about her plans for the following morning.
TWENTY-EIGHT
For as long as he had been playing guitar, Darac had begun most days with his “morning detox” – jamming along with a favourite track or two, improvising all the way. Priorities had inevitably shifted with Lily’s arrival but if one source of inspiration had become a little more difficult to tap into, another had come on stream and it was magical. Lily was going to grow up around music and both he and Frankie believed her life would be all the richer for it. Might the cot-side lullabies he was playing to her help engender a love of melody, harmony and rhythm? Perhaps; perhaps not. Of one thing, they were sure. Alongside the shared bedtime stories to come, papa’s bedtime busking could only have reinforced Lily’s sense of security and of being loved.
On this particular evening, Darac père had treated Darac fille to an arrangement of Grant Green’s ‘Idle Moments’ so liltingly serene, he had been in danger of nodding off at the fingerboard half-way through the number. Had Frankie caught a few bars, she might well have followed suit but the Manzano case was keeping her at the Caserne and would continue to do so for some hours. At least the couple were off-duty tomorrow.
It was well past eleven when Darac’s mobile groaned in his pocket. Bandleader Didier Musso began as if the conversation had been going on for some minutes.
‘Still can’t find those Mingus scores and I’d love to do the whole of Black Saint on tour.’
‘Evening, Didi.’
‘And to you. The Mingus scores?’
‘What’s the problem? It wouldn’t take long to download them for everyone. Besides, we’ve performed most of it before.’
‘Yes, and that’s when I made the extensive notes and revisions I want to go over tomorrow.’
‘Ah.’ Darac took a sip of his beer. ‘We’re a jazz group, I seem to recall. You know, making stuff up as we go along?’
‘Exactly. I want to work through what we did before so I can cast it from my mind.’
It made a sort of sense. ‘Can’t you just… Never mind. I bet Luc has them.’
‘It’s not impossible. It being Mingus and all.’
Frankie appeared, set down her bag and, miming that she was going to look in on Lily, blew Darac a kiss en-route.
‘Listen, Frankie’s just home after a really challenging day. Call me in the morning, alright?’
‘Roger. Or is it over and out?’
‘Night, Didi.’
Tuesday, March 18th
TWENTY-NINE
Darac had never subscribed to the view that continual exposure to beauty eventually bred indifference toward it – indeed he felt quite the opposite – and as he turned by a Colonne Morris on to the Promenade des Anglais’s westbound carriageway, the glitter-and-be-gay dance of light and colour that was the Baie des Anges did its best to compensate for losing his day off with Frankie and Lily. It was a reaction that led him to reflect more deeply on how things had changed for him over the past year. Leading a double life as a police detective and a jazz musician, albeit a part-time one, had long suited his instincts and temperament. But now he was a family man too, would leading a triple life give him more satisfaction still? Could such a way of living even be sustainable in the long term? Might something have to give, eventually? And what might that something be? Realistically, there was only one candidate. All would become clear, he supposed.
With Bonbon in the passenger seat and young officer Yvonne Flaco scrolling her laptop in the back, the trio had been en-route to the city’s zone sportif for a good five minutes before the conversation turned to the matter in hand.
‘Right, that’s enough fun for one day, what do we know so far, Bonbon?’
‘O-K… At just after seven o’clock this morning, the Stade Walter Vallain’s night-security-cum-gateman, an old-timer by the name of Eric Cauvin, found a body half-submerged face-down in the track’s water jump. It was definitely no accident.’
‘A water jump on an athletics track?’
Flaco looked up from her screen. ‘They use it in the 3,000 metres steeplechase, Captain. There are barriers on each lap which the athletes hurdle but behind one of them is a pit filled with water that slopes up. The runners hop on to the barrier and jump off as far as they can so they land in the shallow end of the pit and then keep running. Some hardly break stride doing it.’
‘Each to their own, Flak. Anything on the victim, Bonbon?’
‘Not as yet. Understandably distressed at the discovery, night-man Eric was pretty incoherent on the phone, apparently. The stadium’s just down the road from Commissariat Joinel and so under the command of one… Just a sec.’ Bonbon consulted his phone. ‘Sous-Brigadier Bernard Sorbissone, uniforms from there were dispatched to guard the scene and act… Oh-oh.’ Bonbon’s bad news face had been known to make hardened criminals weep. ‘Act as crowd control.’
Darac shared the sentiment. ‘Give me Foch’s site-security-cum-crowd-control unit any day. But into every life and all that. Path there yet?’
‘On their way and they’ll probably beat us to it but no-one had turned up as of five minutes ago. Oh, and Agnès has dispatched a mobile incident truck to the site, as well.’
‘With Joinel just up the road? Interesting. Flak, you’re checking what?’
‘Whether there were any events or matches at the Stade last evening. It seems there weren’t but it’s used for other things, too. Still looking.’
‘Good work.’
‘Here’s one for you while we await news from the rear,’ Bonbon said. ‘Now you’re a husband and father, you need to know these things. Including the Allianz Riviera, how many full-size football pitches do you reckon there are within the zone sportif?’
‘You’re asking me a sports question? I’ve just been telling Frankie how brilliant you are. I take it all back.’
Flaco’s habitual scowl softened into a grin as she continued her search.
‘A: what happened to Agnès’s “No knowledge is valueless”?’ And B: why were you discussing my brilliance with Frankie? Do B first.’
‘It’s March 18th.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Bonbon’s elastic band of a mouth formed an upside-down U while he weighed the point. ‘Thanks but I can’t really take credit for that.’
‘It’s the first anniversary of your finest hour, you idiot.’
Bonbon still looked blank.
‘The Saint-André poisoning case, Lieutenant?’ Flaco said, ever respectful of a senior officer’s rank. ‘The plea change in court?’
