Babazouk Blues, page 24
‘He’s sitting right next to me.’
‘Put him on… Bonbon?’ It didn’t take Darac long to spark his interest.
‘There may be evidence of the crime itself on those discs, chief.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Count me in. I’ll get over there first thing.’
Listening to Giant Steps, Darac drove home to pick up his guitar for the band practice. It wasn’t until he was almost ready to set off to the club, and the hoped-for reunion with Rama, that he looked more closely at the items he’d taken from Modibo’s car. Receipts, user’s manual, an IGN map of the area: the usual stuff. But then he unfolded the map. ‘Shit.’ He thought about it a moment and then swiped his mobile. ‘Pascal?’ Darac asked the doorman to cast his mind back a couple of evenings.
‘Yeh, Sticks was up top when I went out for a smoke. He was waiting for his brother but the guy was late.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He’s a mellow fellow, right? But he was pissed off. “Now I must call a cab,” he said.’
Pascal had a reciprocal arrangement with several taxi firms.
‘Did you give him a steer?’
‘Sure, but I went back downstairs before he called any of them. If he did.’
‘Where was he going, did he say?’
‘Home, I guess. What’s this about, Darac?’
‘I’m just curious.’
‘Right. So you coming to the Sven Nordin gig tomorrow?’
‘Planning to. Failing that I’ll see you on Thursday for our gig.’
Darac rang the cab companies Pascal had mentioned. Five fares had been picked up from the club that night. None of them matched Rama’s description.
Darac’s growing suspicions didn’t change his plans for the evening. He felt he needed the band practice more than ever. But for once, his motives in going to the club had as much to do with the policier in him as the poète.
37
Closing her eyes, Cristelle rotated her pelvis and began sighing, ‘Yes!’
‘Sweetheart… there’s no need for the… theatrics quite yet… I’m not intending to… come for at least five more minutes.’
It took ten. Afterwards, the man found his other ride waiting for him. The driver’s brand new convertible had made short work of the drive from Cap Ferrat.
‘Successful meeting?’
Philippe straightened his tie and smiled. ‘Thank you so much for the lift, my dear.’
‘Thank you for my beautiful new Mercedes, Philippe. I love it.’
‘Your Golf was such an old wreck. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.’
Taylor knew exactly why. ‘And have you had the opportunity to look into the other issue we discussed?’
Philippe’s mien darkened a shade. ‘The question of Ivo is not so straightforward.’
‘The man has never been on message. Now, there’s a danger he could become a reputational risk.’
‘That is putting it very strongly.’
‘He was far too loose-tongued in talking with Captain Darac.’
‘I have scheduled a meeting with Ivo next week. I intend firing a warning shot across his bows. One he won’t forget.’
‘I’m sure but that may not be sufficient.’
‘Dismissing a member of the senior management team is a process fraught with complications. The scope for appeal being just one.’
‘It’s a step that may have to be taken, nevertheless. I can’t bear the thought that a rat like him might cause you or Maggie even a moment’s distress. Or ruin our work.’
‘My dear, I appreciate your concern, but leave it with me.’
Taylor retreated into herself for the rest of a journey she could have driven blindfold. In any other circumstances, she would have attempted to discourage Philippe from attending his clandestine ‘meetings’. But whereas lively sex would have propelled most men of his age into an earlier grave, Taylor understood that it was a part of what kept him going. And his keeping going was important to her.
She recognised that Maggie would have been furious about his whoring if she had known about it, even though, over one margarita too many, she had once confided that the only good thing about her ‘wheezy old bellows’ was that they gave her a perfect excuse for avoiding that side of things with her ‘horny old centaur’ of a husband.
Taylor understood Maggie’s position. Philippe, for all his stratospheric levels of refinement, had revealed the wanton side of his nature on her very first evening at Villa Rose. He had tried everything to get his new protégée into bed, only desisting when he realised Taylor’s ‘silliness’ was genuine distress. Mortified, he had begged her forgiveness and swore it would never happen again.
When Taylor had finally fallen asleep that night, she had dreamed about one of her many childhood homes, an A-frame house high in the hills above Monterey Bay. After rain, huge yellow slugs used to appear in the yard. For a joke, her adoptive father Jonathan had once picked up a choice example and dropped it into her hand. The feel of the thing disgusted her. How he’d laughed. Taking pleasure in a child’s revulsion, that was how it had all begun. Soon afterwards, the slugs gave way to something even more repulsive. Each time it happened, Jonathan swore it would be the last. Years later, Philippe had made the same promise to her but he had been true to his word.
Maggie was in high dudgeon on their return to Villa Rose. ‘You scoundrels, I’ve been looking for you all over the place. What did we say? When off the premises, mobiles on?’
Taylor mimed shooting herself in the temple.
Philippe spread his arms wide. ‘What can we do to make it up to you?’
‘I’ll think of something for you later. In the meantime Taylor, you and I have a date.’
‘Alright, but I do have work to do around here, you know.’
When it eventually came time to buckle down, Taylor found it hard to concentrate. It wasn’t the effect of two slowly sipped mojitos down in Saint-Jean, nor the nature of the task itself: running over arrangements for the following Sunday’s press preview. It was something far less routine. Her musings were interrupted by a knock at her door.
‘May I come in?’ Ivo said.
‘Is it urgent? I have a lot to get through, still.’
‘What a pity. No, I can wait. Or is “it can wait” better?’
‘Ivo, I would rather you didn’t turn up at my door unannounced.’
He looked her up and down. ‘I’ll ring next time.’
‘Goodnight.’
Hoping Ivo wouldn’t be around long enough for there to be a next time, she returned to her desk. On the notepad in front of her were written just two words: Paul Darac?
38
Jazz club owners lived for the special nights; the rare gigs in which performers found something extra in a sound, a solo or even a whole set, and blew away the paying public as a result. On the occasions it had happened at the Blue Devil, Ridge had felt as proud as a new father. You couldn’t buy that feeling.
Monday night practice seemed to offer far less. Yet although it brought in not a single cent, Ridge had a special fondness for the institution. Practice night would be one of the things he would miss if, after so many years of toil, the club closed its doors for good.
In the curtained-off cubby hole that passed for his office, he put his glasses back on and added up the quarterly figures for a third time. Maybe he’d missed something. After a couple of minutes of concentrated tapping, his trusty old Commodore calculator came up with precisely the same bottom-line figure as before.
For the seventh quarter in a row, a more creative approach was called for. At least Ridge would be reprising his role as the Harry Houdini of the balance sheet to the accompaniment of one of his favourite soundtracks in the world: jazz musicians loosening up to play. There were silvery tinkles, arpeggios and block chords from Didier’s piano; thick-toned slams and woody flurries from Luc’s bass; honking clarions and butter-soft harmonies from the alto and tenor saxes of Charlie Pachelberg and Dave Blackstock; glittering fanfares from Jacques Quille’s trumpet; feather-light runs and four-to-the-bar changs from Darac’s guitar. But as other instruments added their voices to the melange, there were no flams, rolls or paradiddles from Rama N’Pata’s drums.
Downstairs, Didier concluded his warm-up and began handing out manuscript paper. ‘OK everyone: “Lil’ Darlin’”. Just the opening bars.’ He threw up a hand toward the drum kit. ‘Where has young Sticks got to?’ He checked his mobile again. ‘Anyone?’
Trombonist Pierre Leconte’s ears pricked up. ‘Who the hell is Sticks?’
‘Yes, some of you horns haven’t encountered him yet, have you? Rama is his real name. Very special. Providing he turns up.’
Englishman Dave Blackstock had a characteristic take on it. ‘Jazzers: unreliable bastards. Is the kid coming from work or what?’
‘I suspect he’s not going to make it at all,’ Darac said, unable to elaborate on his suspicions, nor let anyone in on the sleight of hand he now knew he would have to pull off later in the session. ‘Let’s get on.’
‘Alright.’ Didier gave up on the call. ‘Without drums is there any point doing this?’
‘I’ve got an electronic metronome thing on my guitar tuner,’ Darac said. ‘I can put it through my amp. It’ll sound hideous but it will give us the tempo.’
‘Let’s do it. Set it at seventy beats per minute, to start.’
Darac rigged up the device and adjusted the volume to a level the band would be able to hear when they were all playing together.
‘My favourite tempo,’ Luc said. ‘Seventy thuds per minute.’
‘I told you it wouldn’t sound good.’
Didier had a better idea. ‘What say we get Ridge down here? He’s not the worst drummer in the world – close maybe – but it might just give us more feel.’
‘If Ridge can keep time to “Lil’ Darlin’”, I’ll finally admit French cheese is better than English,’ Dave said.
Charlie took a pair of headphones out of her sax case. ‘Darac?’
His mind was elsewhere – Argentina, to be exact, where for the next couple of weeks Marco was on a field trip and unreachable. But what light could he have shed on Rama’s life away from the music scene, anyway?
‘This is Earth calling.’
‘Pardon, Charlie?’
‘Plug these cans into your time machine and give them to Ridge.’
‘Good idea.’
Having taken little coaxing, Ridge settled on the stool and proceeded to smash, splash and slam-dunk his way around the kit.
‘Close enough for jazz,’ Dave said.
‘Just warming up, brother.’ Ridge swapped his sticks for brushes. Wearing Charlie’s headphones, he at least looked the part. ‘Ready.’
His head buzzing with questions, Darac was staring into his guitar case as Didier counted the band in. It was a moment or two before he realised all eyes were on him.
‘The intro?’ Didier said.
‘Yes?’
‘Feel like playing it?’
Three hours later, the rehearsal concluded with a competent ‘Milestones’ but, overall, it had been a mediocre session. Even with the beat pulsing in his ears, Ridge had proved incapable of handling the super-slow tempo of the Basie tune. For his part, Darac’s work had been uninspired and plans to perform the number were shelved. The knives were out for Rama. The kid may have been a genius, but an absent genius was no use to anyone. Didier ended the evening by calling another mate of Marco’s to sub his sub for the gig.
On his way out, Darac paused at Jeanne Mesnel’s feet.
Ridge’s voice rumbled up from below. ‘Garfield, what was that about?’
Darac cursed himself. The simplest bit of sleight of hand imaginable and he’d bungled it. ‘So you saw, huh?’
‘Saw what?’
It seemed he had got away with it after all. And now he had to lie about it. ‘Well, I played like a drain in there.’
‘That’s not what I meant. You OK?’
He felt far from OK but there was nothing he could say about it at the moment. ‘Ridge, you know I never talk about the cases I work on. When the current one is over, I’ll tell you all about it. See you later, man.’
As sombre as black marble, Ridge watched him go. ‘Take good care now.’
Darac stepped quickly across Avenue des Diables Bleus, his mind alive with ideas, counter ideas and conclusions. The trigger had been the IGN sheet map he’d removed from Modibo’s glove box: someone had drawn a cross in red ink over the campsite at L’Ancienne Bastide, the last known address of Gilles Voska.
What business did the N’Patas have there? Darac remembered that one of the offences for which Voska had done time was providing quality documents for illegals. He hadn’t been their original source but the middleman in a series of deals that netted him some serious money and in the process, a serious hold over the illegals concerned. Rama and Modibo N’Pata, though, were bona-fide French citizens. Could Voska have some other hold over them? The boys were certainly broke: Modibo’s repossessed car proved that. Wondering if drugs, as so often, were at the bottom of it, Darac had earlier rung Narco chief Armani Tardelli. But Armani had absolutely nothing on the brothers. Squads in the boys’ home city of Nantes had nothing on them, either.
Darac decided to abandon the question of their connection and concentrate on what had actually happened to Rama. He went over every moment he’d spent with him. Contextualised, what had seemed innocent took on a new complexion. During the Joao Pinsa gig, a casual remark – ‘She’s too old for you’ – had discomfited the young man. So much so, it temporarily short-circuited his preternaturally precise sense of rhythm. That’s why Darac noticed it. Now, with the accumulation of other details, a possible explanation was emerging.
DNA evidence from the hot tub had implicated a man of African origin. In a murder case, Agnès always said, there is no such thing as an unthinkable possibility. Darac had proved this many times. Modibo, he didn’t know. But Sticks? He was as sweet as could be imagined. A kid in thrall to an all-purpose criminal like Voska, however, was more capable of the unthinkable than most. But this crime? This kid?
Reluctantly following his train of thought past every green signal, Darac had almost reached Place Garibaldi when three frisky teenagers derailed it. He moved to step around them but the pin-pupilled youngsters weren’t having any. There would be no ‘Sorry, sorry, monsieur!’ this time.
The younger boy eyed Darac’s case. ‘The dude’s got a guitar. Bet I can play it better.’
‘Fuck off, you’re crap.’
It appeared to be the funniest remark ever made. As they doubled up, Darac jinked out of the way but once again, his new best friends couldn’t get enough of him.
‘Come on, guitar man,’ the girl said, breathing weirdness all over him. ‘Play us a tune.’
The younger boy made a grab for the case. ‘I’ll fucking play it if you won’t.’
‘Look, I’ve given you two chances. Two is all you’re going to get.’
The younger boy got in Darac’s face. He looked no older than seventeen but he was burly enough to be a handful and wired enough to try proving it. Before he made a move, the older one pulled him back.
‘Leave it! He’s a pig. I’ve seen his picture in the paper.’
‘You don’t read the paper. And he can’t be a pig, he’s got a fucking guitar.’
‘He’s a pig. I know he is. Let’s get out of here!’
‘Fucking flic!’ the girl shouted as they ran off.
Darac had reached the tram stop when the sound of roller shutters clattering down across the Place masked the sound of stones pinging the pavement around his feet. And then, to cries of ‘Yes!’ and ‘Run!’ what felt like a fair-sized pebble caught him just above the ear, stunning him.
Although Darac was a devout atheist, his first reaction was a good Catholic one: guilt. The clout was punishment for having gone out to play when he should have been working exclusively on the case. The fact that he’d come away from the club with what might prove significant evidence did little to stem the feeling.
Applying pressure to the wound with the hem of his scarf, he continued past the tram stop. Etched on to the platform screen were the aphorisms: NO ART WITHOUT TRUTH AND SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND. Irritated and improved in equal measure, he crossed the Place and turned into the Babazouk. A familiar voice called from the doorway of Cave Martini.
‘Darac? Or is it Saint Stephen?’
‘Just kids, Denis.’
‘I saw them running away. Come in, my friend. We’ll have a drink.’
It was another hour before Darac finally went home.
39
Darac’s morning detox wasn’t working. Nothing lifted his spirits; not even Armstrong’s ‘Potato Head Blues’, the best argument he knew for the existence of the human race.
He set down the guitar, picked up his mobile and stepped out on to the roof terrace. Gazing up toward the viewpoint on Château Park, he called the lab. ‘Patricia, has Barrau gone home yet?’
‘Yes, about half an hour ago.’
‘So who’s in this morning?’
‘Professor Bianchi’s here now. And Dr Mpensa will be in at ten.’
‘Will you tell Deanna I’ll be over with some evidence in about half an hour?’
Skipping breakfast, he emerged on to a Boulevard Jean Jaurès washed clean by overnight rain. Expiation, renewal and growth were in the air but Darac didn’t believe it. It was going to be a hell of a day. He swiped his mobile.
‘Granot? I won’t be in for a while. Off to the lab and then back to L’Ariane. If Frènes wants to know anything, we’re making good progress.’
‘We are? That’s nice.’
Misjudging the speed of an oncoming tram, Darac hopped into the path of a motor scooter, causing the rider to swerve. ‘Has anything… Yeah? And you’re another one, arsehole!’ Darac shouted, off mouthpiece. ‘Anything come in on Voska?’
‘The Aix lab isn’t open yet, is it?’
‘I meant from Chevalier.’
‘Nothing.’
* * *
