A Death in Time, page 29
‘No! No! No! No!’
‘Sit down.’
He remained standing.
‘Officer?’
Stepping forward, the guard gave Laborde the opportunity to comply under his own steam. He took it and the guard returned to his post.
‘Thank you. Samira was still waiting for you at the meeting place when you arrived there, wasn’t she?’
‘No! She wasn’t!’
‘But not because she’d had second thoughts about the break-up. I suspect she wanted you to understand unequivocally that your relationship with her was irredeemably over, a conclusion that was still hanging in the air from your conversation earlier. Poor Samira. If she had just driven straight home, she might still be alive now. Her mistake was not to realise what kind of a man you really are.’
‘No! You’ve got this all wrong.’
Laborde had settled into a pattern, Darac realised. A two-pronged attack was needed. And a change of tempo. Catching Bonbon’s eye, he drummed the index and middle fingers of his resting hand on the desk.
‘Where did you find the rock you used to smash her head in?’ Bonbon said.
Darac now. ‘How did you get her body into the water jump?’
‘What did you do with her car? Answer, damn you!’
‘Where did you discard all the bloody clothes you must have been wearing? Eh? Eh?’
In quick succession, further point-blank blows landed but if the battery were intended to cause Laborde to throw in the towel, it didn’t succeed. Another look signalled an end to the assault and Darac continued at a more considered pace.
‘Once in possession of her phone, creating an apparently genuine message was an easy subterfuge to pull, wasn’t it?’
‘I didn’t take her phone. I didn’t see her.’
‘We know from examining your phone that, like many a low-life experienced in conducting extra-marital affairs, you were in the habit of deleting your messages to and from your lovers immediately after sending or receiving one. Clever you. Among the many differences we’ve detected between the messages garnered from your phone and from Samira’s is that she was not in the habit of doing that. The messages printed out from your device were all deleted by you in the manner I described. One at a time. Except this.’ Darac brandished “Samira’s” summoning message. ‘This one, you didn’t delete at all. Why? Because, naive in such matters, you wanted us to find it. Find the one you were relying on to save you.’
‘This is all complete rubbish. Rubbish!’
‘In a vain attempt to hide any incriminating messages on Samira’s phone, you deleted them all at once. When it comes to IT, you are a complete also-ran, obviously, but at least you knew how to quickly delete entire message histories between contacts. Having read her passionate exchanges with Emil first, of course.’
‘I didn’t know anything about them until now. Nothing.’
‘You started deleting them on Samira’s phone at 10.52 last night. Just after you had sent yourself the rapprochement message.’
‘No!’
‘After you had finished all you needed to do, and rest assured, we are shortly to come on to the murder itself, you drove home to your property in La Ginistière, arriving between 11.30 and midnight. The following day, members of our forensics team discovered Samira’s phone immediately following our visit. The phone was in your car. The glove compartment.’
‘If it was there, they must have plan—’
‘Monsieur Laborde!’ Gremat shouted. His eyes darted shiftily between Darac and Bonbon. ‘I am sorry gentlemen, but you see my position, here.’
‘Surprised it took you this long to intervene again,’ Bonbon said. ‘But that’s an end to it. And this time, I mean it.’
Darac picked up the reins once more. ‘By the way, Monsieur Laborde, if at some time in the very distant future, you are minded to send a message in the guise of someone else, here’s a style point to consider. See there?’ He indicated the last few words of the self-summoning message. ‘The valedictory. Samira never once signed off to you with “Love ever.” That had become your signature sign-off to her.’
‘Telling mistake, that one,’ Bonbon said, mugging a sort of disappointed sympathy. Darac picked up an evidence case bearing the label photographs. ‘The murder itself,’ he said simply and accompanied by with a loud, percussive click, flicked open one of its two catches.
For the first time in the interrogation, Laborde appeared scared.
‘No. Please no. I can’t look at photos of—’
‘Your handiwork in killing in cold blood a young woman you called your goddess?’
Laborde hung his head.
Silence.
His hand poised to trigger the case’s second catch, Darac shared a look with Bonbon. They had arrived at this moment many times in the past; the moment when an apparently rational human being who had committed a murder in what the tabloids were fond of calling “a fit of jealous rage” was most likely to confess. And despite all the EU-driven changes to French legal procedures in recent years, securing a confession from a perpetrator was still the only sure-fire way of guaranteeing a conviction in court.
It was some moments before Laborde, his head still bowed, finally spoke.
‘It wasn’t my handiwork. I don’t know who did it. Or sent messages or any of that. I just know it wasn’t me.’
Darac flicked the second catch and set a photo on the desk between them.
Laborde looked away. ‘No! Please, I don’t want to see!’
Gremat had no such qualms. At first, he looked suitably sickened at the image of a smashed watch on the wrist of the young woman for whom time had stopped for ever. But then his brow lifted and for the first time in the interrogation, a smile lightened his expression. A look of triumph now. It had, it seemed, been worth taking the case after all.
Laborde still hadn’t found the courage to look. With an exaggerated display of respect to his inquisitors, Gremat said: ‘I appreciate I appear to be once again in breach here, gentlemen, but may I?’
‘May you what, Monsieur?’ Darac said.
‘May I instruct my client properly to consider this evidence as you request?’
‘On this occasion? By all means.’
Gremat patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Monsieur, I advise you to look. Carefully.’
For whatever reason, Laborde clearly hated the experience of having to focus on a close-up, high-definition image of the watch and Samira’s so perfect skin. After some moments, he shook his head and looked away once more.
‘On your behalf, Monsieur Gremat,’ Darac said, ‘I shall ask the question you are supposed to have waited until the end of our session to pose. Head Coach Laborde, in the image you have just examined, did you notice the time at which Samira’s wristwatch was stopped?’
It appeared to be dawning on Gremat that all may not have turned around for his client after all.
‘No.’
‘I agree, it’s not that easy to make out. I’ll help you. It shows 10.30 and a few seconds.’
‘I don’t see what you’re driving at but whatever it is, it’s irrelevant. I didn’t do it!’
‘No? I’ll help you again. We know you left the players’ car park at the Stade at 10.32. How can we pinpoint that time so precisely? Because you made a seemingly spurious but memory-cementing remark to Eric Cauvin about the time. Cementing it in his memory, that is.’
‘Remind me exactly what the remark was, chief?’ Bonbon said, masking the disingenuousness of the question with almost as much aplomb as their suspect.
‘Sure. Monsieur Laborde expressed concern that Eric was missing the start of Annie Provin’s news programme on TV.’
‘I see.’
‘Good of him, considering he was in such a hurry to make his rendezvous with Samira.’
‘I was,’ Laborde said. ‘I told you that. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’
Gremat, for whom the penny had well and truly dropped, was once more gazing at the ceiling.
‘I can see that your advocate understands that we’ve got an anomaly of monumental proportions on our hands here, Monsieur Laborde.’
‘What anomaly?’
‘In winding back the hands on Samira’s watch to a time just before you had left Eric to his programme, you thought you were giving yourself a perfect alibi for the time of her murder.’
‘No! I did not! I’ve no idea about any of this. But what if poor Sam’s watch does give me an alibi? What’s so wrong with that?’
‘Your alibi is based on the time-honoured principle that it is beyond human capability to be physically present in two different places at once. Another infallible principle is that a dead human being isn’t capable of doing anything, let alone composing and sending a message a whole twenty-one minutes after they had been brutally murdered.’
Laborde looked stunned. Undone. Done for.
‘Sending that message to yourself after setting up the false alibi, Monsieur Laborde?’ Bonbon shook his head. ‘You’d already incriminated yourself over the location, then you add a timing blunder into the mix? These are what we call in the trade schoolboy errors, mate. Sorry – Monsieur Head Coach.’
‘Stop all these lies,’ Darac said, eyeballing the man. ‘And confess. Confess now.’
Mugging disbelief, Laborde looked to Gremat for a lifeline. A shrug was all that was thrown back.
Darac gave it a couple of beats. ‘Gilles Francois Laborde, do you confess to murdering Samira Naidu Padar on the evening of Monday, March 17th, 2014?’
Laborde slowly shook his head.
‘The suspect indicates that he does not so confess,’ Bonbon noted for the recording.
‘You’ll have all night to think about it, Monsieur.’ Darac summoned the guard. ‘Back to the cells.’
FIFTY-THREE
Outwardly, Alain Terrevaste appeared to have not a thought in his head as he waited for traffic to clear a crossing on rue Beaumont. He was actually re-evaluating the whole situation. So the woman Agnès Dantier had told him to think of as Noëmi Two existed after all. And there was now little doubt in his mind that Captain Francine Lejeune had bumped into her in that guise just as she had reported. Since he and two of his keenest-eyed subordinates had begun the surveillance operation, there had been no sign of Noëmi Two in Place Wilson or any of the adjoining streets. But now, in a completely different guise – her true look, he suspected – here she was a good kilometre from that initial sighting. What had she been doing that day? Where was she going now, as herself? What was this all about? In the lighting shop opposite, an assistant flicked a switch and every bulb in the place flared into life simultaneously. It failed to trigger a concomitant reaction in Terrevaste’s brain and still in the dark, he crossed the street and continued up rue George Ville.
At least, he assumed, the question of where Noëmi Two was going would soon answer itself. Wherever it turned out to be, she appeared to be in something of a hurry and for a pavement artist as skilled as Terrevaste, it made tailing her as easy as it got. He wondered about calling in this new sighting. So many pedestrians used Bluetooth to make calls these days, it wouldn’t have looked out of place if he had suddenly started talking. It did however present a problem. The more discreet the mike and earpiece used, such as his own barely visible combo, the more passers-by were inclined to think they were being spoken to and say something in return. But drawing even momentary attention to himself was anathema to the Invisible Man and so calling now was out. Besides, he wanted to have more to report before he did.
The pursuit continued routinely until his quarry turned into the narrow conduit that was rue de la Malonnière. Deserted but for Noëmi Two, the street posed an altogether tougher challenge but Terrevaste needn’t have worried. Almost immediately, she turned at a gap between buildings into a ruelle that gave on to a blind yard in which, he knew, there was only one possible port of call – a near derelict two-storey building that in a former lifetime had been a workshop of some kind. Ghosting quickly alongside a wall top-dressed with glass shards, Terrevaste stopped at the corner and slipped a hand mirror out of his pocket. By the look of things, Noëmi Two was knocking at what had once been the building’s side door; knocking in what just might have been a coded sequence – three, one, and then two knocks. But if it was a code, had he heard it from the beginning? Gaining covert entry to the building presented no problem – he had a variety of means at his disposal – but since he or his unit might have to replicate the code at some stage, it was essential to be sure. The concern soon evaporated – no one came to the door and to avoid being seen by her as she retraced her steps to the street, Terrevaste prepared to dart back along the ruelle. But then she produced a key from her bag and disappeared inside. On the floor above, a thin curtain was drawn across the one window that hadn’t been bricked up. A minute later, a light went dimly on behind it.
Terrevaste slipped the mirror back into his pocket and, taking a moment to gather his thoughts, realised that the safe course of action was to call this in now. After all, he had no idea why the mysterious Noëmi Two had come to this out-of-the-way hole, let alone who she had fruitlessly tried to summon to the door with what may have been a secret knock; summoned when she had a key. Odd. But how much better would it look to the brass, he told himself, if he waited until he could haul her off to the Caserne under arrest. Charges? Suspicion would do to begin with. Yes, that would make them sit up and take notice. Everyone from the high and mighty Commissaire Agnès Dantier on down would have to recognise that he was the only officer in the region who could have found this woman in the first place and then brought her in.
Keeping well out of a possible line of sight from the window, Terrevaste stepped smartly towards the blind front face of the building. He knew she had gone upstairs but he listened anyway. Nothing. His shoulder brushing the brickwork, he stole silently around the corner to the side door. He put his ear against it. As he expected, still no sound from inside. Now the lock. A spring latch. Child’s play. He slid a titanium shim into position – credit cards were for amateurs – and the door opened without a sound. He stepped inside, opening a fan of daylight on to a debris-strewn floor. Closing the door behind him, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the thin light spilling down the stairs before treading as silently as he could towards them. The gods were with him. A toilet flushed on the floor above, giving him the cover he needed to mount the stairs unheard. Quickly gaining the top step, it pleased him to think he might catch his quarry literally with her trousers down. It would make for the easiest arrest ever.
For a split second, he didn’t recognise the face that suddenly appeared before him. But he saw the blade. Cold steel jagged at his throat and Alain Terrevaste dropped gasping and gulping and gushing to the floor. In the shock and the pain, a solitary thought flashed and faded in his head. He knew who had done this to him. And only he could have known. Only he. Only…
‘Carmen!’ the man shouted, grabbing the mobile out of his victim’s pocket. ‘Pull yourself together! I need to go and check the car radio comms immediately. We’re getting out. Now! Right?’
Cassie couldn’t speak but she nodded frantically.
‘Say you understand!’
She whimpered an approximation.
‘Good. Take all the stuff down, bin-bag it – you should only need one – and lose it. Use the dumpster on the corner of Beaumont and Auguste Gal. I’ll meet you at the car in ten minutes. Got that? Ten minutes.’
‘Hm.’
He bounded down the stairs. The front door slammed. The stabbed man was twitching, spluttering, the head nodding as if accepting he was bleeding his life away. Cassie scrambled to her feet and backed away. If she emitted one scream, she knew she would succumb to full-on hysteria. She had to fight it. And fight the urge to throw up, too. Think! She realised he would be back for her if she didn’t get to the car when he’d said. If she was still here, she would spend her last moments bleeding to death in all this filth. If she managed to get away from the building, he might intercept her. She had to face it. He would catch her eventually whatever she did. Think, Cassie, think!
FIFTY-FOUR
Agnès had chaired some remarkable team meetings at the Caserne Auvare over the years but tonight’s had promised to be something special and it hadn’t disappointed so far. Paraphrasing the title of one of Darac’s favourite Fats Waller tunes, the squad room was jumpin’. And with Agnès’s reading glasses making regular trips from the top of her head to her nose; her discarded slingbacks parked next to her bare feet; Bonbon sitting in a particularly contorted contraposto in his seat – all was as it should be in the Brigade’s world. Even the squad room’s brand-new boon to displaying case material – a multi-slotted frame allowing whiteboards to be left dressed and slid into position as required – was behaving itself.
‘Frankie,’ Agnès said, as the last aftershocks of what had been an eruption of applause finally died down. ‘You deserve every second of that accolade. Posterity will decide whether your handling of this latest appalling child sex-trafficking case will stand as a landmark but I must tell you that when I reviewed the earlier stages of it, I thought your chances of nailing the Manzanos themselves were slim. Whatever happens in court, they will not escape heavy sentences thanks to the evidence you’ve so brilliantly and painstakingly put together. It is a veritable triumph.’
