Babazouk Blues, page 27
Doubt doubled the creases around Granot’s eyes. ‘Voska trying to implicate Battail with the dog trick – that I can believe. But with all the forces we’ve got looking for him, how did he get here? He was 180 kilometres away in Aix, yesterday, remember. And what makes you think he’s left-handed?’
‘If we’d had decent surveillance, we would’ve got the bastard before he got the chance to perform this butchery.’
To those who’d been around Darac for a while, the warning signs were there: a hardening of the eyes, a tightening of the mouth, a gathering flex of the torso.
‘Don’t go punching another brick wall,’ Deanna said. ‘This is still a crime scene.’
‘I’ll tell you where there will be a crime scene. Wherever I get hold of—’
She had heard enough. ‘I have to finish off in the loft.’
Deanna was already halfway up the stairs before Darac realised she’d gone. Turning, he found Flaco staring at him, wariness vying with disappointment. He stared back.
‘Alright, the case is getting to me. Your mentor isn’t practising what he preaches. Give me a break, will you?’
Her expression didn’t change. ‘Like the Lieutenant, I was just wondering how you know Voska is left-handed, Captain. That’s all.’
Realising he’d heaped misjudgement on misjudgement didn’t help. ‘Voska’s daughter Adèle told me about it,’ he said, looking away. ‘It’s in the file, also.’
‘I see.’
‘Uh… Any thoughts, either of you?’
‘I have,’ Flaco said. ‘It’s on record that Voska is left-handed and an ex-commando?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I were him, I would’ve held the knife in my right hand. The wound would’ve looked neither left-handed nor as clean, so less like a pro’s work.’
‘Difficult to switch in a situation like that,’ Granot said. ‘It’s a good thought, though.’
Once again, Darac nodded and wished he hadn’t. But he took comfort in Deanna’s assurance that the pain would soon subside and that there was nothing seriously amiss. ‘I agree that even a bodged job would have killed the victim. But maybe this fits in with the picture we’re forming of Voska. His thinking seems to go so far and no further.’
Lab assistant Lami Toto called through the loft hatch, ‘The Professor wants to know if anyone would like to take a look up here?’
‘I would,’ Flaco called back. ‘Captain?’
‘I’ve got all I need. Go, by all means.’
‘Lieutenant?’
‘Me and a loft ladder?’ Granot’s look suggested that the combination set new standards for incompatibility. ‘You’re on your own.’ He turned to Darac. ‘Voska’s motive in killing Brigitte was to stop her spilling about the porn video business, thereby leading us to him, right?’
‘He should’ve had more faith in her. She never looked like letting anything slip.’
‘At what stage do you think she knew about Voska’s involvement at the hot tub?’
Darac pursed his lips as he thought back through their various meetings. ‘Not until I told her about it in the Irish pub, I think.’
‘Because she cried? Let’s not kid ourselves, she could act her way out of anything.’
‘Except her vanity, perhaps. I’d assumed she was crying for Madame Mesnel, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was crying for herself.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Having filmed the movie with the N’Patas, I think what upset her was learning that Voska had then turned to a woman over twenty years older to… feature, albeit unwittingly, in the next episode in the series. “Old lady,” Brigitte kept repeating, outraged. That Voska could have thought of her like that, too?’
‘Yes, I don’t suppose he’d told Brigitte he’d earmarked her masterpiece for fans of so-called granny porn?’
As if attracted by the term, Malraux appeared cheerily in the doorway. ‘Battail’s in custody already. How about that for service, chief?’
It was the grin that pushed Darac nearer the edge. Granot took a step closer to him.
‘Voska did it,’ Darac said, getting into Malraux’s face. ‘Despite all the uniforms and your army of fucking little snitches, Voska came here—’
Granot interposed an arm. ‘Hey, hey!’
As sore as he was, Darac brushed Granot’s ham of a forearm aside.
Granot tried once more. ‘Mate, come on. This is not the way.’
Whether it was Granot’s words or the look in his eyes that made the difference, Darac saw the need for calm. ‘Voska came to this house undetected, Malraux. He killed Madame Andreani and got away undetected. As of now, you’re off surveillance.’
‘You can’t do that to me,’ Malraux said. ‘Ever since I joined—’
‘There’s nothing I can’t do, Malraux, understand? Nothing. When Bonbon gets back from Aix, give your list of informants to him. Now fuck off out of my sight.’
Malraux’s body was shaking like a clenched fist and he didn’t walk away immediately. When he did, it was as if he’d been fired from a catapult.
‘No, wait a minute,’ Darac said.
Malraux paused but didn’t look back.
‘You can head up the slog squad. Make sure everyone has photos. Now fuck off.’
Another moment to think about it. Another high-speed getaway.
‘Chief…’ Granot’s eyes slid toward the trolley dollies waiting to take Brigitte. ‘No one gets it right all the time.’
Darac was punishing himself enough for both of them. He let the remark go.
‘So back to the commissariat?’
‘Yes.’ Moving stiffly, Darac climbed halfway up the stairs and called to Deanna. She appeared in the hatchway, light flooding around her like a halo. ‘Any news on the towel?’
‘Nothing yet, and this takes precedence now. But Map’s gone over to L’Ariane so he might be able to collect samples from the brothers’ belongings, as well.’
‘Thanks. You keeping Flaco?’
‘She’ll be right down. And Darac? Go carefully now.’
‘Of course,’ he said, reflecting that Ridge had said something similar the day before.
Granot gave him a look as he headed back down the stairs. ‘Towel?’
‘I wasn’t going to bother you with that just yet. I took it from the club. It’s got Rama N’Pata’s DNA on it.’ He felt nauseous, suddenly. ‘Let’s go and wait by the car.’
Their appearance causing a stir in a gathering crowd of onlookers, Darac turned his back on it as he leaned back against the driver’s door. Granot seemed to know what he was thinking.
‘So do you reckon the brothers escaped? Or has Voska got to them, as well?’
‘I don’t know.’ Darac essayed a slow frontal bend. ‘But I have a feeling it won’t be long before we find out.’
Granot looked back up the path. There was no sign of Flaco. ‘Come on, young lady. Not exactly “she’ll be right down”, is it?’
Darac looked for something positive to latch on to. ‘You know, on Day One, I had Flak down as diligent, principled, strong-minded.’
‘She’s a strong one, alright.’
‘But there’s a lot more to her, isn’t there?’
‘God, yes.’ Granot gave a little grunt. ‘Worth two of Perand.’ And about ten of Malraux, Darac thought. ‘If she gets the breaks, she’ll go far.’ They fell silent once more. ‘Ai, ai, ai.’ Granot slapped his forehead in irritation. ‘Completely forgot with all this. I’ve heard from Pari Mutuel Urbain. Alain Mesnel’s bet on the big race never happened. Wherever the money came from, it wasn’t there.’
Darac turned to him. ‘Go on.’
‘Alain lied to Cartin. And you know you mentioned the cost of transatlantic flights back then? They did indeed fly back from New York but they sailed there on the liner France. Not in first class but not in steerage either. Cost them a bomb. As did the hotel.’
The news was all Darac needed to rekindle his favourite theory on Taylor’s purchase of the Mesnel house. And it reminded him that the experts of the Musée Granet in Aix hadn’t yet got back to him on an email he’d sent. Aix again, he mused. What was it about this case and the city?
Flaco joined them. ‘Sorry but that was really interesting.’
‘No apology necessary. You should grab every opportunity to listen to Deanna. There’s no one to touch her in her field.’
‘And that’s why it puzzles me…’ Flaco seemed wary of continuing. ‘Nothing.’
‘Not speaking your mind? It must be one hell of a puzzle.’
‘Alright, why does someone with such incredible knowledge and experience of the human body… smoke cigarettes?’
‘Because she is human,’ Granot said. ‘Like some other people.’
Darac gave Granot a look as he eased his frame into the car.
‘Alright, let’s go and talk to Marcel Battail. This time, he might just tell us the truth.’
42
Battail seemed smaller.
‘When Brigitte didn’t appear to be home the day you got out,’ Granot said, for the first time using the polite vous form to the man, ‘didn’t you wonder where she was?’
‘I thought she was hacked off or playing hard to get.’ Battail’s whole body juddered. ‘But she was there.’ He lowered his head into his hands. ‘She was there all the time.’
‘When did you suspect something was wrong?’
Battail seemed not to have heard the question.
‘Monsieur?’
‘Uh… when she didn’t come home last night. I rang the salon today and they said she hadn’t been in. Not yesterday either. She never did that.’ Staring straight ahead, Battail began to relive the moment that would always be with him. ‘There was no noise or anything from the loft but something told me to go up there.’
Darac gave it a beat. ‘I’m truly sorry about what happened to Brigitte.’
Battail said nothing. His grief was his own. He wasn’t sharing it with anyone.
‘Thierry’s attack word?’ Granot said. ‘Just for the record.’
The Brigade’s records of no concern to Battail, he said nothing. Darac saw a different way in. ‘The dog wouldn’t have gone for Brigitte, anyway, would he? However many times you said it.’
Battail looked up. ‘You’re right. It was Psycho, the word. He’d never have done it.’
Granot nodded. ‘On to the other matter. Saturday, 2 January. Do you know what happened at the hot tub?’
‘No.’ Battail’s head dropped, his voice going with it. ‘I wasn’t there and that cunt never told me anything about it. Never saw him again, afterwards.’
Darac sensed that Battail was too exhausted to lie. ‘Rewinding a few weeks, did you ever mention to Voska that there was this dotty old woman who lived across the way? A woman who played loud music in her hot tub?’
‘Yeah but I didn’t think he was even listening. It was weird what he wound up doing. It’s young girls that turn him on, not old bags like Mesnel.’
‘Why do you think Voska went on to kill Brigitte? And then tried to frame you for it?’
Battail’s shoulders heaved. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never done anything to him.’
‘You hindered our efforts to get to Voska before,’ Darac went on, ‘but things have changed, haven’t they? I know it goes against the grain but you can help us.’
Granot essayed his most sympathetic look. ‘For Brigitte’s sake.’
‘Where does Voska go? Who does he spend time with?’
‘Adèle’s his only family but she hates him. And he doesn’t think much of her. There is one bloke: Pazzo.’
‘Who is he? The source of the fake ID documents Voska deals in from time to time?’
‘I don’t know. Dag—’ Battail couldn’t bring himself to use either of Voska’s names a second time. ‘He keeps the people he knows apart. All I know is, Pazzo drives a truck.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The RV broke down when he moved into L’Ancienne Bastide. He got a trucker he knew to give him a tow. Supposed to be a nutter. That’s all I know.’
‘What sort of truck?’ Granot said.
‘Dunno.’
Darac handed him the photos of Modibo and Rama N’Pata. ‘Ever seen them?’
Battail shook his head.
Reasoning that the man would be able to live more easily with anger than grief, Darac decided to tell him the truth. ‘The brothers shot a video with Brigitte, too, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re lying.’ Tears misted the hard man’s eyes. ‘Lying!’
Darac produced the DVD. ‘I can arrange for you to see it but I wouldn’t if I were you.’
‘The fucking slag!’ Showing such raw emotion in front of his interrogators seemed to make Battail hate himself all the more. ‘I want to go.’
‘You can go but not home, just yet. If you need anything from there, you’ll have to go through Officer Lartigue, the crime-scene coordinator. Got that?’
‘I’ll stay at the tattoo parlour.’
Darac called in a uniform from the floor. ‘Take this gentleman to the Babazouk.’
Darac offered his hand. Battail ignored it. As he made his exit, the desk phone rang.
‘Charvet here. I’ve got Paris on the line: a Captain Marc Galtier. He’s got something on the Alicia Simon abduction.’
A knot forming in his stomach, Darac shared a look with Granot and put the phone on speaker. ‘Go ahead, Galtier.’
‘Madame Simon has washed up here in Paris. She’ll be staying in hospital for a day or two but apart from concussion, a stiff neck and a head cold, she’s alive and well.’
‘Yes,’ Granot said, raising his fist.
‘That’s excellent news, Galtier. Anything on Voska?’
‘Afraid not. No sign of him. Nor any lead.’
‘So what’s Madame Simon saying happened?’
‘After Voska jumped her, he drove her to Aix TGV station, gave her sufficient cash to buy a ticket to Paris and told her to take the next train.’
‘And she did? What’s she been up to in the meantime?’
‘Keeping quiet.’
‘Keeping quiet barefoot?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Voska dumped her shoes and her phone at the Étang de Berre as a diversion. Meanwhile, we now learn, she was on a train to Paris.’
‘She was wearing shoes when we picked her up.’
Darac recalled that Angeline kept a pair especially for driving in her car. ‘The shoes that were found at the Étang were high heels. These were flats, were they?’
‘It should be in the report… Yes, they were.’
‘OK. Any thoughts on why she carried out Voska’s instructions so assiduously after he’d let her go?’
‘He phoned “some people in Aix” telling them to burn her husband and their two-year-old son if she was picked up within twenty-four hours. A staged call, of course.’
‘But she believed it.’
‘Well she had been kidnapped and that was pretty unbelievable. Besides, Voska is one mean-looking guy. I wouldn’t have taken the risk.’
‘Neither would I,’ Granot said, under his breath.
‘Why the twenty-four-hour moratorium?’
Once again, Galtier’s tone supplied the quotation marks. ‘“Some other people” were flying Voska out of the country in that time. We don’t buy that, either, obviously.’
‘Quite. What did Madame Simon do when she got to Paris?’
‘Thought it too risky to check into a hotel so she walked around and then slept rough.’
‘She was more likely to get picked up doing that.’
‘Nevertheless, she managed to evade us. For slightly more than twenty-four hours.’
Darac ran a hand through his hair. ‘You’re right. She did well, especially when you think how terrified she must’ve been. So have you managed to keep a lid on the story?’
‘Media don’t know a thing.’
‘It won’t last. Thanks for the update, Galtier.’
The call ended, Charvet rang immediately.
‘Captain, I’ve got a young American woman on the line who insists on talking to you.’
‘Put her through… Taylor, hello.’
The woman said something indecipherable.
‘I’m glad you rang because—’
‘Hello? I say to Captain Darac?’
It wasn’t Taylor. The voice had a deeper timbre and her French was execrable.
‘Who’s speaking?’
‘My name is LaWanda Coteel.’
She spelled the name and asked if she could continue in English.
‘English? Yes, English is OK.’
Granot shrugged and sat back hors de combat. He knew only a few words of English and most of them related to sport.
‘My friend Davis Chadburn and I were staying at the campsite over near Eze until a couple of days ago. L’Ancienne Bastide?’
‘Yes?’
‘To cut to the chase, we saw the wanted man. Voska? We’re camping up in the Mercantour now and we’ve only just seen the poster.’
‘Thank you. We also know he stays there – stayed – pardon, there.’
‘Yes but here’s the thing. We saw him at the site hours after he’d driven away. He returned on foot after dark. No RV.’
‘Could you’ – what was the English for élaborer? – ‘say more?’
‘We were camping with some other people and needed to be alone for our special time so we went off to the woods beyond the site.’
Special time? If Darac understood what had been said, the January night air must have made it very special. ‘Continue please.’
‘We saw him on the edge of the woods, starting to walk across the scrub… walk across the clearing.’
‘Which night did it happen?’
‘It was about quarter after midnight last Saturday night. Sunday morning, really.’
That was Joao Pinsa night at the club. The night Rama missed his ride with Modibo. ‘You and Mister Chadburn are certain the man was Gilles Voska? It was dark, no?’
‘There was a moon and we’d seen this man around the campsite. He made a real impression us, believe me.’
Darac heard a voice prompting her.
‘Oh yes, this is important, Captain. As he was walking away, there was just enough moonlight to see something glinting… there was something in his hand that we could see? It was a tool of some sort.’ LaWanda suggested what they thought it was. Darac didn’t recognise the word. ‘Just a minute, we have a dictionary here.’
‘If we’d had decent surveillance, we would’ve got the bastard before he got the chance to perform this butchery.’
To those who’d been around Darac for a while, the warning signs were there: a hardening of the eyes, a tightening of the mouth, a gathering flex of the torso.
‘Don’t go punching another brick wall,’ Deanna said. ‘This is still a crime scene.’
‘I’ll tell you where there will be a crime scene. Wherever I get hold of—’
She had heard enough. ‘I have to finish off in the loft.’
Deanna was already halfway up the stairs before Darac realised she’d gone. Turning, he found Flaco staring at him, wariness vying with disappointment. He stared back.
‘Alright, the case is getting to me. Your mentor isn’t practising what he preaches. Give me a break, will you?’
Her expression didn’t change. ‘Like the Lieutenant, I was just wondering how you know Voska is left-handed, Captain. That’s all.’
Realising he’d heaped misjudgement on misjudgement didn’t help. ‘Voska’s daughter Adèle told me about it,’ he said, looking away. ‘It’s in the file, also.’
‘I see.’
‘Uh… Any thoughts, either of you?’
‘I have,’ Flaco said. ‘It’s on record that Voska is left-handed and an ex-commando?’
‘Yes.’
‘If I were him, I would’ve held the knife in my right hand. The wound would’ve looked neither left-handed nor as clean, so less like a pro’s work.’
‘Difficult to switch in a situation like that,’ Granot said. ‘It’s a good thought, though.’
Once again, Darac nodded and wished he hadn’t. But he took comfort in Deanna’s assurance that the pain would soon subside and that there was nothing seriously amiss. ‘I agree that even a bodged job would have killed the victim. But maybe this fits in with the picture we’re forming of Voska. His thinking seems to go so far and no further.’
Lab assistant Lami Toto called through the loft hatch, ‘The Professor wants to know if anyone would like to take a look up here?’
‘I would,’ Flaco called back. ‘Captain?’
‘I’ve got all I need. Go, by all means.’
‘Lieutenant?’
‘Me and a loft ladder?’ Granot’s look suggested that the combination set new standards for incompatibility. ‘You’re on your own.’ He turned to Darac. ‘Voska’s motive in killing Brigitte was to stop her spilling about the porn video business, thereby leading us to him, right?’
‘He should’ve had more faith in her. She never looked like letting anything slip.’
‘At what stage do you think she knew about Voska’s involvement at the hot tub?’
Darac pursed his lips as he thought back through their various meetings. ‘Not until I told her about it in the Irish pub, I think.’
‘Because she cried? Let’s not kid ourselves, she could act her way out of anything.’
‘Except her vanity, perhaps. I’d assumed she was crying for Madame Mesnel, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was crying for herself.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Having filmed the movie with the N’Patas, I think what upset her was learning that Voska had then turned to a woman over twenty years older to… feature, albeit unwittingly, in the next episode in the series. “Old lady,” Brigitte kept repeating, outraged. That Voska could have thought of her like that, too?’
‘Yes, I don’t suppose he’d told Brigitte he’d earmarked her masterpiece for fans of so-called granny porn?’
As if attracted by the term, Malraux appeared cheerily in the doorway. ‘Battail’s in custody already. How about that for service, chief?’
It was the grin that pushed Darac nearer the edge. Granot took a step closer to him.
‘Voska did it,’ Darac said, getting into Malraux’s face. ‘Despite all the uniforms and your army of fucking little snitches, Voska came here—’
Granot interposed an arm. ‘Hey, hey!’
As sore as he was, Darac brushed Granot’s ham of a forearm aside.
Granot tried once more. ‘Mate, come on. This is not the way.’
Whether it was Granot’s words or the look in his eyes that made the difference, Darac saw the need for calm. ‘Voska came to this house undetected, Malraux. He killed Madame Andreani and got away undetected. As of now, you’re off surveillance.’
‘You can’t do that to me,’ Malraux said. ‘Ever since I joined—’
‘There’s nothing I can’t do, Malraux, understand? Nothing. When Bonbon gets back from Aix, give your list of informants to him. Now fuck off out of my sight.’
Malraux’s body was shaking like a clenched fist and he didn’t walk away immediately. When he did, it was as if he’d been fired from a catapult.
‘No, wait a minute,’ Darac said.
Malraux paused but didn’t look back.
‘You can head up the slog squad. Make sure everyone has photos. Now fuck off.’
Another moment to think about it. Another high-speed getaway.
‘Chief…’ Granot’s eyes slid toward the trolley dollies waiting to take Brigitte. ‘No one gets it right all the time.’
Darac was punishing himself enough for both of them. He let the remark go.
‘So back to the commissariat?’
‘Yes.’ Moving stiffly, Darac climbed halfway up the stairs and called to Deanna. She appeared in the hatchway, light flooding around her like a halo. ‘Any news on the towel?’
‘Nothing yet, and this takes precedence now. But Map’s gone over to L’Ariane so he might be able to collect samples from the brothers’ belongings, as well.’
‘Thanks. You keeping Flaco?’
‘She’ll be right down. And Darac? Go carefully now.’
‘Of course,’ he said, reflecting that Ridge had said something similar the day before.
Granot gave him a look as he headed back down the stairs. ‘Towel?’
‘I wasn’t going to bother you with that just yet. I took it from the club. It’s got Rama N’Pata’s DNA on it.’ He felt nauseous, suddenly. ‘Let’s go and wait by the car.’
Their appearance causing a stir in a gathering crowd of onlookers, Darac turned his back on it as he leaned back against the driver’s door. Granot seemed to know what he was thinking.
‘So do you reckon the brothers escaped? Or has Voska got to them, as well?’
‘I don’t know.’ Darac essayed a slow frontal bend. ‘But I have a feeling it won’t be long before we find out.’
Granot looked back up the path. There was no sign of Flaco. ‘Come on, young lady. Not exactly “she’ll be right down”, is it?’
Darac looked for something positive to latch on to. ‘You know, on Day One, I had Flak down as diligent, principled, strong-minded.’
‘She’s a strong one, alright.’
‘But there’s a lot more to her, isn’t there?’
‘God, yes.’ Granot gave a little grunt. ‘Worth two of Perand.’ And about ten of Malraux, Darac thought. ‘If she gets the breaks, she’ll go far.’ They fell silent once more. ‘Ai, ai, ai.’ Granot slapped his forehead in irritation. ‘Completely forgot with all this. I’ve heard from Pari Mutuel Urbain. Alain Mesnel’s bet on the big race never happened. Wherever the money came from, it wasn’t there.’
Darac turned to him. ‘Go on.’
‘Alain lied to Cartin. And you know you mentioned the cost of transatlantic flights back then? They did indeed fly back from New York but they sailed there on the liner France. Not in first class but not in steerage either. Cost them a bomb. As did the hotel.’
The news was all Darac needed to rekindle his favourite theory on Taylor’s purchase of the Mesnel house. And it reminded him that the experts of the Musée Granet in Aix hadn’t yet got back to him on an email he’d sent. Aix again, he mused. What was it about this case and the city?
Flaco joined them. ‘Sorry but that was really interesting.’
‘No apology necessary. You should grab every opportunity to listen to Deanna. There’s no one to touch her in her field.’
‘And that’s why it puzzles me…’ Flaco seemed wary of continuing. ‘Nothing.’
‘Not speaking your mind? It must be one hell of a puzzle.’
‘Alright, why does someone with such incredible knowledge and experience of the human body… smoke cigarettes?’
‘Because she is human,’ Granot said. ‘Like some other people.’
Darac gave Granot a look as he eased his frame into the car.
‘Alright, let’s go and talk to Marcel Battail. This time, he might just tell us the truth.’
42
Battail seemed smaller.
‘When Brigitte didn’t appear to be home the day you got out,’ Granot said, for the first time using the polite vous form to the man, ‘didn’t you wonder where she was?’
‘I thought she was hacked off or playing hard to get.’ Battail’s whole body juddered. ‘But she was there.’ He lowered his head into his hands. ‘She was there all the time.’
‘When did you suspect something was wrong?’
Battail seemed not to have heard the question.
‘Monsieur?’
‘Uh… when she didn’t come home last night. I rang the salon today and they said she hadn’t been in. Not yesterday either. She never did that.’ Staring straight ahead, Battail began to relive the moment that would always be with him. ‘There was no noise or anything from the loft but something told me to go up there.’
Darac gave it a beat. ‘I’m truly sorry about what happened to Brigitte.’
Battail said nothing. His grief was his own. He wasn’t sharing it with anyone.
‘Thierry’s attack word?’ Granot said. ‘Just for the record.’
The Brigade’s records of no concern to Battail, he said nothing. Darac saw a different way in. ‘The dog wouldn’t have gone for Brigitte, anyway, would he? However many times you said it.’
Battail looked up. ‘You’re right. It was Psycho, the word. He’d never have done it.’
Granot nodded. ‘On to the other matter. Saturday, 2 January. Do you know what happened at the hot tub?’
‘No.’ Battail’s head dropped, his voice going with it. ‘I wasn’t there and that cunt never told me anything about it. Never saw him again, afterwards.’
Darac sensed that Battail was too exhausted to lie. ‘Rewinding a few weeks, did you ever mention to Voska that there was this dotty old woman who lived across the way? A woman who played loud music in her hot tub?’
‘Yeah but I didn’t think he was even listening. It was weird what he wound up doing. It’s young girls that turn him on, not old bags like Mesnel.’
‘Why do you think Voska went on to kill Brigitte? And then tried to frame you for it?’
Battail’s shoulders heaved. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never done anything to him.’
‘You hindered our efforts to get to Voska before,’ Darac went on, ‘but things have changed, haven’t they? I know it goes against the grain but you can help us.’
Granot essayed his most sympathetic look. ‘For Brigitte’s sake.’
‘Where does Voska go? Who does he spend time with?’
‘Adèle’s his only family but she hates him. And he doesn’t think much of her. There is one bloke: Pazzo.’
‘Who is he? The source of the fake ID documents Voska deals in from time to time?’
‘I don’t know. Dag—’ Battail couldn’t bring himself to use either of Voska’s names a second time. ‘He keeps the people he knows apart. All I know is, Pazzo drives a truck.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The RV broke down when he moved into L’Ancienne Bastide. He got a trucker he knew to give him a tow. Supposed to be a nutter. That’s all I know.’
‘What sort of truck?’ Granot said.
‘Dunno.’
Darac handed him the photos of Modibo and Rama N’Pata. ‘Ever seen them?’
Battail shook his head.
Reasoning that the man would be able to live more easily with anger than grief, Darac decided to tell him the truth. ‘The brothers shot a video with Brigitte, too, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re lying.’ Tears misted the hard man’s eyes. ‘Lying!’
Darac produced the DVD. ‘I can arrange for you to see it but I wouldn’t if I were you.’
‘The fucking slag!’ Showing such raw emotion in front of his interrogators seemed to make Battail hate himself all the more. ‘I want to go.’
‘You can go but not home, just yet. If you need anything from there, you’ll have to go through Officer Lartigue, the crime-scene coordinator. Got that?’
‘I’ll stay at the tattoo parlour.’
Darac called in a uniform from the floor. ‘Take this gentleman to the Babazouk.’
Darac offered his hand. Battail ignored it. As he made his exit, the desk phone rang.
‘Charvet here. I’ve got Paris on the line: a Captain Marc Galtier. He’s got something on the Alicia Simon abduction.’
A knot forming in his stomach, Darac shared a look with Granot and put the phone on speaker. ‘Go ahead, Galtier.’
‘Madame Simon has washed up here in Paris. She’ll be staying in hospital for a day or two but apart from concussion, a stiff neck and a head cold, she’s alive and well.’
‘Yes,’ Granot said, raising his fist.
‘That’s excellent news, Galtier. Anything on Voska?’
‘Afraid not. No sign of him. Nor any lead.’
‘So what’s Madame Simon saying happened?’
‘After Voska jumped her, he drove her to Aix TGV station, gave her sufficient cash to buy a ticket to Paris and told her to take the next train.’
‘And she did? What’s she been up to in the meantime?’
‘Keeping quiet.’
‘Keeping quiet barefoot?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Voska dumped her shoes and her phone at the Étang de Berre as a diversion. Meanwhile, we now learn, she was on a train to Paris.’
‘She was wearing shoes when we picked her up.’
Darac recalled that Angeline kept a pair especially for driving in her car. ‘The shoes that were found at the Étang were high heels. These were flats, were they?’
‘It should be in the report… Yes, they were.’
‘OK. Any thoughts on why she carried out Voska’s instructions so assiduously after he’d let her go?’
‘He phoned “some people in Aix” telling them to burn her husband and their two-year-old son if she was picked up within twenty-four hours. A staged call, of course.’
‘But she believed it.’
‘Well she had been kidnapped and that was pretty unbelievable. Besides, Voska is one mean-looking guy. I wouldn’t have taken the risk.’
‘Neither would I,’ Granot said, under his breath.
‘Why the twenty-four-hour moratorium?’
Once again, Galtier’s tone supplied the quotation marks. ‘“Some other people” were flying Voska out of the country in that time. We don’t buy that, either, obviously.’
‘Quite. What did Madame Simon do when she got to Paris?’
‘Thought it too risky to check into a hotel so she walked around and then slept rough.’
‘She was more likely to get picked up doing that.’
‘Nevertheless, she managed to evade us. For slightly more than twenty-four hours.’
Darac ran a hand through his hair. ‘You’re right. She did well, especially when you think how terrified she must’ve been. So have you managed to keep a lid on the story?’
‘Media don’t know a thing.’
‘It won’t last. Thanks for the update, Galtier.’
The call ended, Charvet rang immediately.
‘Captain, I’ve got a young American woman on the line who insists on talking to you.’
‘Put her through… Taylor, hello.’
The woman said something indecipherable.
‘I’m glad you rang because—’
‘Hello? I say to Captain Darac?’
It wasn’t Taylor. The voice had a deeper timbre and her French was execrable.
‘Who’s speaking?’
‘My name is LaWanda Coteel.’
She spelled the name and asked if she could continue in English.
‘English? Yes, English is OK.’
Granot shrugged and sat back hors de combat. He knew only a few words of English and most of them related to sport.
‘My friend Davis Chadburn and I were staying at the campsite over near Eze until a couple of days ago. L’Ancienne Bastide?’
‘Yes?’
‘To cut to the chase, we saw the wanted man. Voska? We’re camping up in the Mercantour now and we’ve only just seen the poster.’
‘Thank you. We also know he stays there – stayed – pardon, there.’
‘Yes but here’s the thing. We saw him at the site hours after he’d driven away. He returned on foot after dark. No RV.’
‘Could you’ – what was the English for élaborer? – ‘say more?’
‘We were camping with some other people and needed to be alone for our special time so we went off to the woods beyond the site.’
Special time? If Darac understood what had been said, the January night air must have made it very special. ‘Continue please.’
‘We saw him on the edge of the woods, starting to walk across the scrub… walk across the clearing.’
‘Which night did it happen?’
‘It was about quarter after midnight last Saturday night. Sunday morning, really.’
That was Joao Pinsa night at the club. The night Rama missed his ride with Modibo. ‘You and Mister Chadburn are certain the man was Gilles Voska? It was dark, no?’
‘There was a moon and we’d seen this man around the campsite. He made a real impression us, believe me.’
Darac heard a voice prompting her.
‘Oh yes, this is important, Captain. As he was walking away, there was just enough moonlight to see something glinting… there was something in his hand that we could see? It was a tool of some sort.’ LaWanda suggested what they thought it was. Darac didn’t recognise the word. ‘Just a minute, we have a dictionary here.’
