A Death in Time, page 6
‘Alright. I do promise. But look at what you’ve just done, Sam. You’ve broken off with your boyfriend because your brother ordered you to.’
Gathering in Carole’s arm once more, Samira smiled. ‘Did I?’
‘Well didn’t you?’
‘Let me tell you something. It was over weeks ago. Julien couldn’t see it but I’ve finally told him flat. All the rubbish Dilip came out with had nothing to do with it. But it was convenient.’
‘Why convenient?’
Samira smiled. ‘It spared me having to tell Julien the truth. There’s only so much TLS a girl can take, you know.’
Carole looked blank. ‘He made you read the Times Literary Supplement?’
Samira threw back her head and laughed and it was some moments before she leaned in to Carole and whispered, ‘TLS - Tiny Lingam Syndrome.’
It wasn’t just the delicious experience of feeling Samira’s warm breath on her ear but Carole felt lighter suddenly. ‘You mean..?’
Samira crooked her little finger. ‘I’ve had more fun in bed with Levallier’s Public Sector Disputes and Settlements Volume 3.’
Now both women laughed but as they disappeared into the café, Carole reflected that if Samira’s relationship with Julien had been over some time ago, with whom had she been having far from boring sex in the past month?
TEN
Darac’s shadow fell over the Blue Devil’s pay table. In the background, the silvery horn of Clifford Brown was doing its best to remind everyone what genius was.
‘Kick anyone’s ass today, Garfield?’ club owner Ridge Clay said, his eyes still on the day’s Nice-Matin.
‘Not today, Ridge.’ Darac replied, as ritual demanded. ‘Good house in?’
‘For Julia Hülsmann?’ Palms were slapped in greeting. ‘Of course.’ Although Ridge was the master of the unreadable expression, Darac’s long apprenticeship told him the man was happy about something. ‘And speaking of sold-out gigs,’ Ridge went on. ‘Cambridge. Just heard. That makes two out of the four for the tour. So far. Five will get you ten both London gigs will come through for us, too.’
The Didier Musso Quintet’s tenor player Dave Blackstock hailed from Canterbury, venue for the opening leg of the DMQ’s annual tour, and that gig had been sold out for some weeks. Cambridge, though? This was news.
‘We’ve no personal connection there, have we? Or would now be a good moment to mention you’d majored in Hard Bop Studies at one of the colleges?’
‘At NYU, I did just that, more or less. No, this is all on the music, Garfield. All on the music. The two main guys at the club there are fans. One of them in particular. Name of Steve… Randall.’
With touching delicacy, Ridge aimed an hors catégorie-sized index finger at his mobile and handed it over. ‘There.’
The email made interesting reading.
‘Aah, he saw us the last time we played in England… The Marsden Jazz Festival.’ Darac pictured the scene: grey October day; polite but slightly wary welcome from the crowd; DMQ bang on it from beat one; rapturous applause at the end. ‘Monsieur Randall has good taste. It was a great gig, that. Best of the tour.’
An all too familiar face appeared behind Darac, jowly, moustachioed, and irritated to be there.
‘And as I recall,’ Ridge said, exchanging nods with the interloper, ‘No one showed up to drag you off to no crime scene. No offence, brother.’
‘None taken,’ Lieutenant Roland Granot said. ‘Shall we?’
‘If we must, Granot.’
‘According to Public Prosecutor Jules Frènes we must.’
Darac handed back Ridge’s mobile and the pair headed for the door.
‘Say hi to Julia for me.’
‘You can do it yourself when you get back.’
Darac and Granot shared a look. Back in less than two hours? It could happen. Somewhere over the rainbow.
On their way up the steps, Darac touched the club’s talismanic poster for luck and on gaining street level, kisses of parting with doorman Pascal were exchanged before it was safe to ask Granot the time-honoured question.
‘So what have we got?’
‘A strangling. Port Lympia. Woman by the name of Dubreuil.’
ELEVEN
At Port Lympia, lights were flashing from vehicles clustered around the entrance to a short flight of steps indirectly linking the quayside to the broad Boulevard Stalingrad beyond.
‘There’s our beacon, Granot,’ Darac said. ‘One that isn’t attracting many rubberneckers by the look of it.’
‘Good. Not in the mood for them tonight.’
Granot’s radio crackled into life.
‘Perand here, Lieutenant. Been at the scene about ten minutes or so.’
‘Who’ve we got from Path?’
One thing was certain, it wouldn’t be Chief Pathologist Professor Deanna Bianchi. The woman wasn’t due back from leave for another week.
‘The Prince of Darkness, sadly.’
Darac and Granot shared a look. Assistant Chief Pathologist Carl Barrau had many nicknames, none of which was flattering.
‘We’re just passing Notre Dame. What sort of gaff is it?’
‘It’s an odd little shoe box of a place tucked away on the ruelle behind that flight of steps. Three studio apartments. Two on the ground floor, one of the parties at home. Our Mademoiselle Dubreuil had the one on top. I can’t get into it just now. It’s about the size of the stationery cupboard next to your desk and Barrau and co are squeezed into it already. I’m going to question the retired gentleman who’s at home downstairs, a Monsieur Maurice Thomas or Thomas Maurice, depending. He is the landlord of the other two and he was the one who sounded the alarm. He knew the mademoiselle was at home and went up to see her about some minor repair she had requested. Knocked on her door. No answer. Knocked louder, called out, banged on it – still no answer. Being a socially minded little fellow, he popped round to the Police Municipale station around the corner and eventually convinced one of the boys in blue to go back with him and take a look. Much to that officer’s amazement - bingo! A body. Monsieur Thomas or Maurice was right to have been worried.’
‘OK, question him formally. And Perand? Make sure you nail the man’s name.’
‘Yes sir. Got you, sir.’
‘That’s it.’
The radio crackled off.
‘Still can’t resist playing the smart arse, can he?’
It was with no great enthusiasm that they made the turn on to the Quai des Deux Emmanuels. Acting as a sort of prophylactic to what was to come, a couple of memorable passages from the Julia Hülsmann Quartet’s previous performance at the Blue Devil came into Darac’s head – drifts of notes and chords in which images formed and faded like figures in a mist. He wondered if they had begun their set and whether he might after all be in a time to catch a little of it later.
Noting that senior forensic analyst Raul Ormans’s van was yet to arrive, Granot added his Renault to the cluster of marked and unmarked vehicles on the quai and the pair stepped out into the salt-tang of the evening air. It didn’t take Granot long to find something that irritated him.
‘Look at that little lot,’ he said, indicating a row of “superyachts” moored on the opposite side of the port. ‘If “little lot” is what you call an assemblage of floating gin palaces.’
‘The collective noun for superyachts… How about “a vulgarity”?
Granot performed his impression of an irked walrus. ‘If it isn’t, it should be. I tell you, it gets more like Monte Bloody Carlo every year down here.’
Darac knew what was coming next.
‘How much do you reckon each one of those baubles fetches? Eh?’
‘They don’t call it Millionaires’ Row for nothing, Granot. Actually, millionaires are ten a penny, aren’t they? They’re all billionaires these days.’
Granot had a concluding thought on the matter as they headed up the steps. ‘As you may have noticed, I’m a middle of the road kind of guy, politically.’
‘I’ve noticed.’ Darac put his arm around the big man’s shoulder. ‘But I’m convinced you’ll come to your senses one of these days.’
‘As the youngsters say, “Good luck with that.” But when I come face to face with a show of wealth like that back there? No. It sticks in my craw. And it gets this going.’ He tapped his nose. ‘I’d like to follow some of that money, I can tell you.’
‘You see? There’s hope for you yet but before we start the new revolution, let’s suit up and sign in.’
A person for whom all hope was gone was one Denise Dubreuil. Play bills on the wall of her studio apartment revealed that in the late 1990s, Mademoiselle Dubreuil had been a member of the Lyon-based Fly By Night Players, a low-budget travelling theatre company specialising in comedy. On stage, her roles had included Antoinette in Feydeau’s A Flea In Her Ear, and Dorine in Molière’s Tartuffe. Her two final appearances on this earth had been as the victim of a brutal murder and as the subject of a preliminary post-mortem examination by Nice’s deputy chief pathologist, Dr Carl Barrau.
A cluttered, airless space, the apartment was in the shabby state that property ads were apt to describe as “in need of some updating.” One glance at Barrau was sufficient to convince Granot that more profitable lines of enquiry could be pursued elsewhere.
‘I’ll leave you to it, chief. Back in a bit.’
‘OK, Granot.’
Dressed in a clean but worn-looking skirt and blouse with a newer cardigan on top, the body was lying on a rust-coloured rug at the foot of the bed. Her legs were slightly apart, one knee raised. Rising from a crouching position over the corpse, the skeletal form of Barrau put Darac in mind of a blood-sucking insect, the sort that prays on its victims at night.
‘Captain Darac,’ he said, his tone more of an accusation than a greeting. ‘You took your time.’
For years, Barrau had offered few thoughts on the why, how and when of things at the scene of even the most clear-cut murder, an unhelpful attitude which had eventually landed him in hot water. Darac had been the instigator of a complaint that had led to Barrau’s official reprimand and relations between them had never recovered.
‘Manual asphyxiation, obviously. I’ll know more later. My assistant will return shortly to answer any other questions. Good evening.’
‘Just a moment, Doctor. Your thoughts on a time of death? Roughly.’
Barrau sighed. ‘Between one and seven hours ago. Roughly.’
‘Thank you and goodnight.’
Deciding to wait for the reappearance of said assistant before turning his full attention to the corpse, Darac confined himself to a glance at the ravaged mask that had been her face. Protruding tongue? Present. Petechial haemorrhaging in her wide-open eyes? Present. Ligature marks around her swollen neck? Absent. Yes, the poor woman had been manually asphyxiated, alright.
Darac tried to look beyond the horror. Denise Dubreuil had been an impressively bright-looking woman in her day, he assessed. Bright enough to have played the sage servant Dorine in Tartuffe, indeed. He imagined that for actors involved in repertory theatre, the trajectory from playbills to penury was not uncommon. But the life stories of few could have ended as horribly as this. He felt nauseous suddenly and although he knew it would soon subside, he recognised it was a feeling that was happening increasingly. He also recognised that his resolve to bring killers to justice was as strong as ever. That was one feeling he suspected would never subside.
Downstairs, Granot found Crime scene co-ordinator Jean-Jacques Lartigue.
‘Evening Lartou. Any goodies for us?’
Lartigue bent to retrieve a couple of bags from an evidence case marked p. o. brigade criminelle, caserne auvare. ‘In this one, I have the victim’s passport, identity card, driving licence etc. And in this second one, her address book, a notebook, and a small collection of personal papers. If you sign for them, you can take them now.’
Granot examined the contents of the first bag and signed. ‘No mobile?’
‘Afraid not and we’ve looked everywhere. And there are no phone bills or other docs relating to one. Same goes for a car if she owned one.’
‘Not everyone who can drive owns a car, but no mobile? In this day and age?’
‘It’s a tick in the suspicious box.’
‘Quite. Where did she work?’
‘Wherever it was, it was a cash in hand job, by the look of it. And we know what that could mean.’
‘Hmm.’ Granot took a glance around the corridor. ‘Perand’s in with the landlord, a Monsieur Maurice, I gather?’
‘It’s a Monsieur Thomas, but yes he is.’ Lartigue indicated a door on which a plastic figure 1 was hanging at a diagonal. ‘Apartment two next door, I’ve discovered, has been rented for the past nine months by a Gérard…’ He consulted his phone. ‘Ploine.’ He spelled it. ‘Funny name. I’m just about to run the usual checks.’
‘Keep us posted. Lami around?’
Lartigue directed Granot to the yard at the back of the property where he found fresh-faced young path lab technician Lami Toto. Armed with a phone, tablet and laptop, he was nevertheless filling out a paper form.
‘How’s it going, Lami?’
‘Fine, Lieutenant,’ he said, smiling. ‘Yourself?’
‘Ask me after I’ve sunk a few boats.’
‘Boats? I thought you were going to say beers.’
‘That too. What are you doing out here? Apart from inhaling cat pee and a melange of foodstuffs on the turn?’
‘It’s pretty cramped upstairs.’
‘I know you’re far too polite a young man to agree out loud, but for a thin bugger, Barrau fills any space he’s in, doesn’t he? Like gas.’
Lami grinned. ‘I wanted to check out these bins, anyway.’
Carrying out such a task strictly belonged to Raul Ormans’s forensic team but there was good co-operation between the two units and in any case, R.O’s outfit was yet to show.‘Anything of interest?’
Lami held out a poly evidence bag.
‘Ah, I see.’
Behind them, Barrau flew silently away into the night, a departure that would have gone unnoticed but for red zone gatekeeper Patricia Lebrun sounding the all clear with a loud and hearty ‘Goodnight, Doctor Barrau.’
‘We can go back in now, Lami.’
As they approached, Patricia was chatting with what some of the less enlightened wags in the unit referred to as the “trolley dollies.”
‘Good work, that woman.’ Granot said.
‘All part of the service.’
Voices drifted up from the quayside.
‘Ooh, I’m wanted.’ She had a final thought for Granot. ‘You still using that step counter?’
He grunted. ‘Bust. Through overuse.’
‘I know the feeling,’ she said, beginning the descent once more.
‘Evening, boys.’
‘Lieutenant.’ With a practised flick of the wrists, the men from the morgue raised the trolley’s undercarriage. ‘Now?’
‘Be a little while yet.’
They reversed the move with equal panache. ‘Just give us a shout as and when.’
Darac was looking through the contents of the victim’s fridge when he heard familiar voices out on the landing.
Granot was quick off the mark with her personal details. ‘As those wall posters indicate, the deceased is one Denise Ernestine Dubreuil. Never married. No next of kin. Born in the Pipet quarter of Vienne on August 29th 1968.’
Darac was surprised. ‘She was only… 46? I know being strangled is likely to age a person but she looks about 20 years older.’
‘She was 45, Captain,’ Lami said, respectfully correcting him.
‘Ah, yes.’ Darac felt just the slightest pang of guilt. ‘You’d never know my mother taught maths. Any more on the woman, Granot?’
Granot repeated what he had learned from Lartigue and then Lami took over the briefing.
‘Here’s the reason for that ageing effect, Captain. I retrieved them from the mademoiselle’s bin in the yard.’ Lami held up the poly bag. ‘Needles. We’ll determine later if it was she and not one of the two other residents who actually used them but…’ Kneeling, he gently pulled back the sleeve of her cardigan. The track marks on her forearm resembled a schematised metro map. ‘That tells its own story, I think.’
It was a story that drug squad Captain Jean-Pierre “Armani” Tardelli may have known something about and if he didn’t, he would welcome being put in the picture. Darac put in a call for him and was advised he was out on a case of his own but would ring back within the hour. In the meantime, Granot had already found Denise’s rap sheet on the database and read aloud from it as he scrolled.
‘Cautions, rehab courses, community service, more cautions... And a couple of short terms. The first was three months for failing to show up for a court appearance.’
‘That’s harsh,’ Darac said.
‘See it from their point of view. After everything they’d tried, I suppose they’d had enough and were upping the ante. However, it didn’t seem to work. The second term was six months… for soliciting. Not a pro, by the look of it. Did it just for a fix. Familiar pattern, isn’t it? She was living in Lyon throughout most of this period, by the way.’
‘That’s where the theatre group she belonged to was based,’ Darac said. ‘Folded years ago.’
Granot’s shaggy brows lowered. ‘This is interesting. She was released after four months of the six in that second term but that was two and a half years ago now. Nothing since. Cleaned up her act?’
Darac took another look at the track marks. ‘Lami?’
‘Again, we’ll determine it more precisely, Captain, but I’d say she was still using regularly. And there’s something else.’ He referred to his notes. ‘She moved to Nice only six weeks ago. Before then, she was living in Marseille.’ He opened his laptop. ‘It was a rue de Rouet address. Quite a varied street scape. It is pretty swish in places.’ He brought up an image of a high-end block. ‘But she didn’t go from there to here. This is the stretch she lived on.’
