A Death in Time, page 9
‘So we can probably rule out the world of work. Or, rather Noëmi’s work. Although Armani himself pooh-poohed the idea, what if a con bearing a grudge against him is planning to stage some sort of felony which eyewitnesses will testify with absolute certainty was committed by Madame Noëmi Tardelli? Providing the con had ensured that the real Noëmi had no alibi and preferably some sort of motive to commit the crime, the Tardellis would be in for an anxious time of it, at the least. If the crime happened to be murder…’ He let a raised eyebrow complete the thought.
‘You’re right in theory, of course,’ Frankie said. ‘Hate and revenge crimes are expressly designed to deliver the maximum amount of pain to the victims. And this could God forbid, turn out to be a prime example of it.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s so outlandish, though.’
The radio crackled on. Charvet with a report. A young dog walker had called in from Villefranche. Scenting something of interest, his multiple charges had pulled the lad into a back alley, ruelle Moncet, which houses a pair of dumpsters. A clothed body had been crammed into one of them. Sight unseen, Public Prosecutor Frènes had already assigned the case to the Brigade. Granot and Bonbon were en route to lead the investigation on the ground.
‘If ruelle Moncet is the alley I’m thinking of, there’s no CCTV anywhere around there.’
‘Which is why the dumper chose that particular dumpster, presumably.’
Turning into Avenue des Diables Bleus, Darac’s eye was drawn to his second home, the Blue Devil Jazz Club, where a trio of seagulls was engaged in a turf war over the terra infirma that was the club’s temperamental neon sign. He blared his horn and, still spatting, they took off as one.
‘Gulls – what’s the point of them?’ he said.
Frankie gave him a reproving look. ‘Paul, seagulls are an essential part of the urbano-marine eco system. Though I hope the one who made off with my lunch in Jardin Albert three years ago is rotting in hell.’
‘The Prosecution rests.’
Ahead, a double-parked van was making life difficult for a queue of buses attempting to pull out of the new gare routière at Vauban. Darac pulled on the handbrake.
‘Logjam,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘As if I needed reminding. For just about the first time ever, there’s a sizeable example of the phenomenon on my desk. Glad Granot and Bonbon are on today. A trip out for me would not have been ideal.’
SIXTEEN
Since there had never been occasion to celebrate an international call-up for members of a Gilles Laborde athletics squad, no one was quite sure what form the party should take. Although the logic was unclear, it was with an eye to its “potential publicity value” that Dilip Padar had offered to host the event. A quiet word from Samira to team captain Emil Arcot was all it had taken to quash the proposal: ‘He’s under orders to keep a tight rein on me, Emil. He’d bind and gag me if he could.’ Shot putter Emil had replied that if Samira ever required it, his 105 kilos of solid muscle were at her disposal. The prospect excited her. Emil, she suspected, was one member of Gilles’s squad who definitely wouldn’t suffer from TLS.
In the end, Emil had booked a small performance space adjacent to a bar in the Department of Letters and Human Sciences building for the occasion. Now that the morning before the night to come had arrived, all that remained was a meeting to recap a few points and “the job,” in the words of farmer’s son Emil, would be “a good ‘un.” The team met in the refectory.
Star steeplechaser Julien was usually the last to arrive at any form of gathering. After all that had happened between them, Samira wondered if the wounded little warrior might not show at all. But he did and although he returned her words of greeting with a cool nod, he didn’t appear nearly as suicidal as Samira had suspected he might. It was an act, she assumed. No one could get over the loss of a beauty like her as easily as that.
Uniquely, Emil was the last to arrive but only because a crucial delivery had been late turning up.
‘Morning, all,’ he said, dumping a stack of T-shirts on the table in front of him. ‘Unisex. Four sizes. Petit to Fucking Huge. A word to the fashionistas among you.’ He gave Samira and long jumper Ade Okoko meaningful looks. ‘There’s no obligation to wear these but we’re all going to wear them so get over it, OK?’
‘Yessir,’ Samira said, saluting, a move which Ade copied only half-ironically.
‘Good. And here’s the message.’ Emil held up a petit against the vast acreage of his torso to reveal the legend: Nahili et Baille, Le Jour de Gloire Est Arrivé! ‘And on the reverse, we have...’ Finding his inner fan dancer, Emil threw a few shapes while flipping the garment seductively around: Laborde pour Président!
There were cheers and even the woebegone Julien seemed to find something to enjoy in the moment. ‘OK, let’s divvy ‘em up,’ Emil announced. ‘Petits first. Samira? Catch.’
‘That’s the furthest you’ve thrown all season,’ Grace Nahili said, bringing laughs to which Emil added more by launching the next garment in a parody of his shot-putting technique. Shouting ‘Go-oooo!’ he watched hawk-eyed as the cloth orb floffled down hopelessly short of its target, ‘Another PB,’ he said. ‘And Mademoiselle Nahili? Come the moyennes, you’ll be lucky to get one at all.’
New items of business came and went in quick succession. Music? Emil had engaged Ade Okoko’s DJ sister Lisa for the evening. Drinks? Gilles had already set up a generous tab with the bar. But everyone agreed that the highlight of the evening would be the live exchange of greetings and congratulations with the Laborde’s own party over in La Ginestière. And when the man in question arrived as the meeting was drawing to a close, it was to a warm round of applause followed by a chaser of quips and inappropriate suggestions.
‘I’d be careful if I were you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Remember you’ll all be at training tomorrow evening. Stade Walter Vallain 7 o’clock. No absentees.’
Groans and further challenging suggestions.
‘Loving the T-shirts,’ Gilles went on. ‘But me for president? I’ve already got a better job.’ Gravity now. ‘And I mean that. Tonight, when the announcement is made that Grace and Julien have been selected for our national squad?’ His hand went to his heart. ‘That will quite simply be the happiest moment of my professional life. Look forward to seeing you all later.’
More applause and, led by Captain Emil, three cheers for the three heroes of the hour.
It was a good moment on which to end and with one exception, the team dispersed in an upbeat mood. But Gilles had a couple of tasks still to perform and when Samira approached him wearing an enquiring expression, he set about the first of them. ‘Your new laptop? It’s in my office.’
‘Madame Zoë has had time to transfer all the files from the old one and so on?’
‘She had.’
‘Excellent!’
‘Let’s go.’
In the office, Gilles opened his kitbag, took out both machines and speed read an accompanying note. ‘So… there were no problems. Bill to follow at some stage. I think that’s all…’ He looked up. ‘Can you manage both of them?’
‘Yes. I’ll send her a thank-you text.’
‘She’ll like that. Here we are’ He handed them over. ‘I have something I’d like to run by you.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Although we didn’t take him up on it, I think it only right and proper the team formally thanks your brother for his generous offer of hosting this evening’s party. Don’t you?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Gilles was taken aback. ‘I didn’t mean thank him in any material way. As head coach, I just thought I’d write him a letter or something.’
Samira could look and sound cloyingly sweet if it pleased her to do so. She could do sour just as easily. ‘No, Gilles. And that, as you often say, is the end of the matter.’
SEVENTEEN
Darac was preparing to set off for Agnès’s office when the crown of an ash-blonde bob appeared over the stack of paperwork piled up on his desk.
‘Anyone there?’ she asked.
He stood. ‘Fair point, Agnès.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But I thought I was coming over to you?’
They exchanged kisses of greeting.
‘Sit, sit,’ she said. ‘The exercise is good for my back. As is standing.’
‘If you insist. And by this time tomorrow, I swear that Mont Papier here will have been levelled. At least a thousand of these pages is assorted guff from on high. Even Granot would give most of it a swerve.’
‘And the other five thousand?’
‘Just… things. Nothing crucial. Everything that’s supposed to have been actioned, has. Including stuff for Frènes. Altar boy’s honour.’
‘You were an altar boy?’ she said. ‘This is my sceptical look in case you’ve never seen it before.’
‘Me an altar boy? Not as such. But we established some time ago that “guitarist’s honour” doesn’t quite work somehow.’
‘Quite.’
Agnès had understood from the beginning that, so long as it wasn’t overdone, banter, asides and gags were useful tools in maintaining the morale of any police unit. That it came as naturally to her as it did to her second-in-command was one of the reasons Nice’s Brigade Criminelle was the harmonious outfit it was.
‘You caught the flash about the Villefranche dumpster incident, Paul?’
‘Uh-huh. The victim isn’t someone who happens to bear a marked resemblance to Armani’s wife, by any chance?’
‘Noëmi? No, the body is male. That’s all we know so far. Why might it resemble her?’
‘This is why I wanted a word.’ Leaving nothing out, Darac recounted Frankie’s story. ‘So,’ he said at the end of it. ‘What’s your assessment, Agnès? Coincidence or crime?’
‘What would be your response to that question?’ she said, her tone neutral, her eyes locked on his. ‘If you were commissaire?’
Agnès had been on the point of retiring for some time but a date had finally been set.
From January, 2015, roughly nine months away, Nice’s Brigade Criminelle would have to function without the leadership of the most admired commissaire in its history. It was a prospect almost no one at the Caserne wanted to entertain. And as to the appointment of her successor? Agnès herself had no doubt who should succeed her and had already made a powerful case on their behalf both in writing and informally to anyone she knew had a say in the decision-making process. Her choice was an officer who, for the time being at least, had no idea of her advocacy.
Agnès’s counter question and the way she had posed it made Darac come out in goose bumps. ‘My first thought is that I already know your answer to my question.’
Agnès’s eyebrows rose, reforming the fine lines on her forehead into deeper creases. ‘I’m waiting, Monsieur Le Commissaire.’
‘Lord. Alright, I don’t necessarily believe that there is a potential crime here but it’s better to err on the side of caution, isn’t it?’
‘As a rule. What should we do practically?’
‘Frankie can’t work with Astrid to produce a likeness of Noëmi Two and have it circulated, obviously. Every time Noëmi herself steps out, she’s liable to be recognised as the impostor. Besides, on its own, it’s too passive.’
‘Quite. So?’
‘We’d need to detail a squad of undercover watchdogs to patrol Place Wilson and environs. A squad commanded by the Invisible Man himself, Alain Terrevaste from Foch.’
‘Agreed – Tee-Vee would be ideal. How big a squad for a covert operation like that?’
‘As big as staffing rotas and the budget allow. Five? More, ideally, some walking through, some installed in spots commanding views of the scene.’
‘And for how long should this undercover operation go on?’
‘As long as it takes? Bit of a fudge there but, again, I guess staffing and budget are key.’ The goose bumps returned with a vengeance. ‘Agnès, this role play. You’re not testing the water, are you? About me, I mean.’
‘I don’t think I follow you.’
‘You don’t?’ He gave her a look. ‘Agnès, you may remember that we Daracs descend from a long line of sheep farmers.’
‘From Creuse way back, as I recall. So?’
‘So I know when the wool is being pulled over my eyes. You follow everything. Always.’
‘If that is the case, it’s something we share, isn’t it?’
‘Thank you, but if you’re looking at the possibility that I, of all people, might make a reasonable stab at succeeding you, of all people, as the next commissaire of our beloved Brigade, I have to declare I wouldn’t. I would be worse than useless.’
‘As acting commissaire, you’ve stood in for me on numerous occasions. And made a good job of it.’
‘Thank you but the keyword there is “acting”. Yes? It’s not the same at all as doing the job full time.’
‘Paul, have I ever lied to you? And don’t answer glibly. Think about it.’
‘Alright.’ He ran a hand into his hair and kept it there. ‘I… don’t know.’
‘Correct answer,’ she said, producing an enigmatic smile that would have given the Mona Lisa a run for her money. ‘Right, I’m away to set up that watch on the Tardellis home patch.’ She turned on her heel and, disappearing behind Mont Papier, called out. ‘Let Armani know, will you?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, so in a daze, his voice scarcely reached the lower slopes of the mountain. Commissaire Darac? No. It was an idiotic concept. Well, perhaps not idiotic. But it was plain wrong. And Agnès knew that. Surely. Didn’t she?
EIGHTEEN
At last you answer,’ Cassie said, thinking aloud. Dangerous.
‘At last you ring, Carmen. What do you want?’
She breathed again. The signal was threadbare. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.
‘I’ve got something to report.’
‘Important?’
‘I think so.’
‘You think so? I told you never to ring unless it was important.’
‘It’s Dédé.’
‘No names!’
‘Sorry but she didn’t make our rendezvous yesterday.’
‘I know and you should’ve rung yesterday to report it. Do not deviate from the plan. Ever again. Hear me?’
‘Yes.’ If Cassie hadn’t been so scared of her boss, she would have laughed. If what they were doing qualified as a plan, it was the foolhardiest ever devised. But it wasn’t only exasperation at the chance of it succeeding that distressed her. It made her sick to her stomach to think of what it involved. If only she were in a position to extricate herself, she would. But how? The odds on that were longer still.
‘When will she—?’
‘Not for a while. She’s taking a break.’
‘Taking a break?’ How had she managed to pull that off? ‘What does that mean for me?’
‘I’ll tell you at the place. Usual time.’
‘Don’t forget—’
He rang off.
‘… To go fuck yourself.’
As the light began to go down on Place Garibaldi, Cassie abandoned her post and walked slowly away. She knew Dédé was renting a first-floor studio flat somewhere on the quayside at Port Lympia. She’d whispered something about steps. Perhaps she ought to try and see if she was there. It was risky, though. The pair had never been allowed to meet outside the job. If he caught her, Cassie would regret it, she knew. But somehow, Dédé had got herself a break. It might be worth the risk to find out how. Yes. Cassie was going to see her. First thing tomorrow. Before the Briefing.
NINETEEN
At Maison Laborde, Gilles’s and Zoë’s three surviving parents had been first to arrive and by late afternoon, the house was either buzzing with family (Zoë’s perspective) or crawling with them (Gilles’s take). The man’s social skills were such that, Inès aside, no one would have guessed they weren’t truly welcome. If necessary, it was a performance he could have kept up all day.
‘Maman, you look gorgeous.’
Zoë only half-guiltily showed off her dress. ‘It’s Chanel. Off the peg, of course, but still wildly expensive for me. I hardly know I’m wearing it. It is wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘It is but I meant you look gorgeous, not just what you’re wearing.’
‘I don’t look like a cross-dressing construction worker in it?’
She didn’t, Inès assessed, though if she had – so what? ‘No!’
‘Aah, darling. You mean that, I can see.’
Inès did indeed mean the compliment and it struck her that despite the many stresses incurred in planning such a party, now the day itself had arrived, her mother appeared more relaxed than she had seen her in years. Relaxed, happy and so obviously in love with her obviously fabulous husband.
‘Look who’s just arrived,’ Fabulous said, sweeping past. ‘I’ll settle her in.’
‘I’ll come too.’ Zoë turned to Inès. ‘Better wait here a moment. Remember?’
Inès had never known the great aunt after whom she had been middle-named, but Odette, the sister who had survived her sibling by some 30 years and counting, had done her best to make up for the loss. Eclipsing her grandparents on both sides of the family, Great Aunt Odette had been Inès’s favourite since childhood. A conventionally minded but kind-hearted soul, it seemed that Odette had latterly been given to voicing thoughts uncensored by the constraints of decorum, a development that endeared her to Inès all the more. Other developments, Zoë had warned, were less cheerful. While the robust eighty-nine year-old’s long-term memory was as reliable and rich as ever, its everyday counterpart had become a pale shadow of its former self.
