Still Life

by Val McDermid

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jason said. ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘It cut me to the bone, son. Soon as she was able, Dani started to run wild like her mother. She’d stay out late, sometimes all night. She announced she was a lesbian and all men were rapists. That didn’t go down well in a wee town. We were living in Galashiels back then and some nights I’d walk the streets looking for houses with lights on, just on the off-chance I might see her. It was round about then that Lizzie got sectioned. She’d finally tipped over the edge with the drugs. Got hooked on something that turned a corner in her head and left her in a place where she didn’t recognise herself any more, never mind the rest of us.’ He dashed his hand across his eyes perfunctorily then drank some more.

  So the line Dani Gilmartin had spun to the people in Tullyfolda about her mother bankrolling her had obviously been a lie. There were things Jason wanted to ask but when he consulted his mantra – ‘What would Phil do?’ – he reckoned he should let Gilmartin talk himself out. ‘I don’t know how you get past something like that,’ he said.

  ‘I moved out of the town and into Whitbridge,’ he said. ‘Lead us not into temptation, eh, son? And it kind of worked. Dani was shocked into calming down. For a while at least. She decided she wanted to be a silversmith. God knows where she got that idea from. She set her heart on a college course, cost a rake of money I didn’t have. Lizzie had burned her way through every penny I’d earned, and then some. But I managed to scrape it together. Sold some antique tools I’d had from my granddad. Off she went to college and she never came back. The last I heard from her was about four years ago. She heaped the blame for Lizzie’s state on me and told me she hated me. It was like having the heart carved out of me for a second time.’ He swallowed the last of his drink.

  ‘Would you like another one?’

  ‘No thanks, son. I’ll need to get back to work and you need a steady hand with a power saw.’

  ‘Her mother died last year, is that right?’

  ‘Aye. Breast cancer. It took her quick in the end. But she’d not been living in her own head for years.’

  ‘And Dani didn’t come back for her funeral?’

  ‘I doubt she even knew about it. I’d no idea how to contact her. The phone number I had for her was out of service.’ A deep sigh shuddered through him. ‘I always hoped she’d come back. Even if it was only to rub my nose in how well she’d done.’

  ‘Don’t give up hope, Mr Gilmartin. It may be that this is not Dani. That’s why I need a DNA sample from you. So we can compare it.’

  He rolled his empty glass back and forth in his strong, scarred fingers. ‘I’m not stupid, son. If you’re taking this much trouble to find out whose body this is, I’m guessing they didn’t die in their sleep. You think they’ve been murdered, am I right?’

  Jason squirmed. ‘It’s what we call a suspicious death. That doesn’t mean it’s criminal. If your old granny dies in her sleep and she’s not been to the doctor in a while, then it’s treated as suspicious till we establish what happened.’

  Gilmartin shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. ‘You’re a kind lad. But we both know this isn’t anybody’s granny. Either this is my Dani or my Dani had a hand in it. This’ll sound harsh, but I think I’d rather mourn her than visit her in prison. It’d be like walling up a cat. Or a raven.’

  Jason had no idea what to say. Instead, he took the DNA testing kit from his inside pocket. ‘There’s only one way to find out for sure,’ he mumbled. ‘Can we do this, is that OK? It’s not intrusive, I just wipe this big cotton bud inside your cheeks.’

  ‘Why not?’ There was a resignation in Gilmartin that filled Jason with pity. The man had endured years of suffering and, one way or another, there was more to come. The joiner opened his mouth wide.

  Jason glanced around but nobody was paying them any attention. He swabbed Gilmartin’s mouth, trying to ignore the sour fumes of whisky and tobacco, popped it into the tube, sealed it and carefully inscribed the details. ‘Thanks, Mr Gilmartin. I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can, but I should tell you there’s a hold-up in the lab. They’re short-staffed at the moment.’ He took out a card. ‘But if you want to talk to me, you can reach me here.’ Then he remembered. ‘One other thing. Did Dani ever have a dental implant that you know of?’

  Gilmartin’s face betrayed the answer. ‘When she was sixteen. She tripped on the outside stair at her granny’s and broke one of her front teeth. She was raging, she thought she’d have to have a plate. But the dentist managed to swing it that she got an implant.’ He swallowed. ‘You don’t need that DNA now, do you?’

  There was nothing more to be said. They stood up and shook hands. Now a single tear slipped from Gilmartin’s left eye and trickled down, taking a wrinkle as a watercourse. ‘The hardest thing, watching her and her mother both, was that they weren’t bad people. Just different from the rest of us. Like animals that can’t bear captivity.’

  21

  Driving through Paris in the back of a police car reminded Karen of that Marianne Faithfull song. What was it? ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’. Being whisked through Parisian streets had never been on Karen’s bucket list, but it was nevertheless one to cut out and keep. They’d been escorted through the chaotic Gare du Nord by one of Les Gautiers whose name she’d failed to catch. He’d hustled them into a car parked right outside, watched over by a gendarme in uniform. They dodged through the traffic with lights flashing and occasional blasts of the sirens. She thought the driver was having the time of his life.

  Karen stared out of the window, fascinated by the strangeness of it all. Everything was alien – the shops, the outfits of the pedestrians, the signage, the apparent randomness of the traffic flow. She’d been to Paris once before, for a long weekend with two of the girls from work not long after she’d joined the Historic Cases Unit back in Fife. She remembered mostly peching up hundreds of steps – the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur – and trailing round some supposedly discount clothes shops rammed with clothes she would never have worn even if they’d had them in her size. She and Phil had talked about coming over for a proper break but, like most of their plans, it had been snatched from them. Which reminded her of Merrick Shand, triggering a bubble of rage to burst inside her head.

  The man who had met them was sitting in the front passenger seat and he turned to speak to them in rapid French. Daisy responded in kind. ‘Tell him I don’t speak French, Daisy. And remind him that I’m the boss.’

  Daisy nodded and came out with another stream of French.

  ‘Ah, OK,’ the flic said. ‘I am sorry, I did not know. I am Giles Chevrolet. Nothing to do with cars. It means “goat farmer”. I am one of Les Gautiers, so, the team of Commandant Gautier. I am like a sergeant, I think?’

  ‘I’m a sergeant,’ Daisy said. ‘DCI Pirie is the same rank as your commandant.’

  All very lovely, Karen thought, but time to get a sense of what was happening here. ‘Is there a plan of action?’

  ‘Naturally. We have information from your investigation and it seems clear that while we must work hand in hand, this is a Scottish crime. So we are willing to give you full support here in Paris.’ He gave her a boyish grin that Karen felt sure he’d practised over the years.

  ‘And that means, what? In practical terms?’

  ‘I know you wish to see Paul Allard’s apartment. But before you can do that, we must obtain permission from the juge d’instruction – you know this thing, the juge d’instruction?’

  Karen nodded. ‘We have something similar in Scotland. How long will that take?’

  ‘The commandant will see him this afternoon. I think there will be no obstruction. I was also told you have a desire to speak with his colleagues? The men in his jazz group?’

  ‘That’s right. But where are we going right now?’ Karen asked.

  ‘We meet with his colleagues. They have a . . . prac
tice room?’

  ‘Rehearsal room,’ Karen said. ‘Do these guys speak English?’

  Chevrolet shrugged, ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.’

  Karen tried not to show her frustration. ‘But Commandant Gautier, he speaks English?’

  Chevrolet gave the charming grin again. ‘Better than I do. He has studied with the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist brigade.’

  ‘So, wouldn’t it make more sense to hook me up with the commandant and we can sort out the warrant for the apartment while you whisk Sergeant Mortimer away to talk French to the people who maybe don’t speak English?’

  Daisy said something rapidly in French which Karen presumed was lending weight to what she’d said. Chevrolet ran a hand through his already perfectly tousled hair. ‘This is not my orders.’

  ‘Then maybe you need to speak to your boss and get new ones?’ Now it was Karen’s turn to smile sweetly.

  He turned away and spoke rapidly into his phone. Daisy was frowning intently and she gave Karen a covert thumbs-up. Chevrolet ended the call and said, ‘OK. It is not how we do it normally, but Les Gautiers, we make our own rules. It seems that the commandant is about to speak with the judge, so I will take you to the parquet – the place of the court. Then we will go to the room of rehearsal and talk to the musicians, no?’

  ‘Thank you. That seems to be the best use of our time. And when you’ve finished, perhaps Sergeant Chevrolet could bring you back to meet me at Allard’s apartment, Daisy. I don’t think it’ll be a quick search.’

  Chevrolet seemed taken aback. She wasn’t sure whether that was because he wasn’t accustomed to being told what to do by a woman or because he assumed their visit was going to be perfunctory. ‘OK,’ he said, drawing the word out. He said something to the driver, who muttered something under his breath and threw the car into a terrifying U-turn.

  A few minutes later, they stopped outside a small café. Chevrolet jumped out, opened the back door and gestured that she should leave. ‘Please, Commandant Pirie, go inside,’ he said. ‘My boss, he is with the judge, just round the corner. He told me he will meet you here.’

  ‘How will I know him?’

  Chevrolet looked her up and down. ‘He will know you, madame. You do not look French.’

  And with that, he was back in the car. The last thing Karen saw was Daisy’s anxious face looking out of the rear window. They’d talked on the train about the approach they’d take to the witnesses. But their preparation had been limited because they had little idea of what they were looking for. Karen was about to find out what kind of cop Daisy was. More to the point, so was Daisy.

  Karen managed to order a café au lait. She wondered if she’d have long to wait and whether she could risk something off the menu. She thought a croque monsieur was some form of toastie but she didn’t want to chance it. Not that she was particularly conservative about food – she absolutely didn’t want to be wrestling with something complicated when Gautier showed up.

  She’d been staring at her empty cup for ten minutes or so when a shadow fell over her. She looked up to find a tall man in a grey suit studying her. He had a thin ascetic look, his neatly parted hair streaked with iron grey at the temples. ‘Madame Commandant Pirie?’ he said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

  Karen stood up hastily. ‘Commandant Gautier?’

  He nodded courteously and gestured to her cup. ‘I see you subscribe to the coffee tendency. Can I order you another?’

  ‘Always,’ she said. He ordered their drinks at the counter then returned.

  He crossed one long leg over the other and smiled. ‘This is a tradition in the French homicide brigades. Every day, we take coffee together. When we can, we eat lunch together. We are friends and we are loyal like a family.’ His English was clear and precise, his accent faint. Not for the first time, Karen felt ashamed of her monoglot self.

  ‘The cops I know are more like a real family. Feuds and arguments and rivalries. But my team is very small, and it sounds more like yours.’

  ‘The thing I found hardest when I was seconded to the Met was the execrable coffee in the office. The camaraderie only happened in the pub. I felt very uneasy there.’ He raised his cup in a mock toast. ‘Here’s to coffee.’

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation in this,’ Karen said.

  He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘It’s your case, really. Allard was a French citizen, it’s true. But he was also British, and he was killed in your country. The roots of his murder may be here in France but I think it is more likely that they lie in his past and present connections in Scotland.’

  ‘To be pedantic, we’re still calling it a suspicious death. Though my instincts all tell me it was the result of criminal violence, we’ve not had the final report from the pathologists. But I agree with you that the reason behind Allard’s death probably lies in Scotland. I don’t know how much you’ve been told about him, but when he left the UK, he was a person of interest in the disappearance of his brother, Iain Auld.’ Gautier leaned forward, twin frown lines appearing between his brows. ‘Iain was a senior civil servant, and the two brothers had a violent quarrel the night before Iain vanished without trace. The Met thought he’d probably been murdered. His brother was their prime suspect. Pretty much their only suspect, to be honest. They fixed on him and stopped looking. When he did a runner – sorry, when he left the country, the investigation more or less came to a halt. Did you know about this?’

  Gautier shook his head. ‘This is news to me. It is surprising. The Legion checks for involvement with crime before it accepts recruits.’

  ‘He was only a suspect, though. He hadn’t been arrested or charged. The Met didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest warrant. So he’d have come up clean.’

  He shrugged. Karen had a moment of delight at the sight of a genuine Gallic shrug. ‘This sounds lazy to me. If they had reason enough to stop looking for anyone else after he disappeared, they should have had reason enough to issue a warrant for his arrest, no?’

  ‘You’d think so. But for whatever reason, they didn’t. Iain Auld was a very senior Scottish civil servant, so maybe some political pressure was applied? I didn’t find any evidence of that when I reviewed the case two years ago.’

  Gautier gave a cynical smile. ‘If they did their job properly, you would not have found any evidence, though.’ Another shrug. ‘However he arrived, I understand your man had a blameless career in the Legion, and there is nothing known against him since he left. But what you say reinforces what I already believed. The answers you seek are, I agree, in Scotland. Or maybe London. But not here.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I need to see his apartment. I’ve got no leads right now. It’s my best hope.’

  ‘I understand that. And you can have carte blanche to explore his apartment. I have the permission of the juge d’instruction. I will take you there as soon as we have finished our coffee. One of my officers will meet us there and I will leave you in his hands. I have other business to conduct, I hope you are not insulted by this?’

  ‘Not at all. I don’t imagine this is high on your list of priorities.’ Karen managed not to look as pleased as she felt. She didn’t want an officer of her own rank and experience looking over her shoulder. In spite of all her assurances of cooperation and sharing, she preferred to be in control of the case information. She’d let Gautier know when she’d put the pieces together. She didn’t want him taking over, casting his own interpretation over her findings. In one respect, ACC Ann Markie had been right about her – she didn’t always play well with others.

  Paul Allard’s apartment was in a narrow street leading down the hill from the Place de l’Odéon. Karen caught a glimpse of the impressive portico of the theatre, took in the restaurant on the corner and thought this looked like a neighbourhood it’d be pleasant to live in. The buildings were clean and well-maintained, the shops at street level were
small businesses selling everything from second-hand books to imported Chinese porcelain. A uniformed gendarme stood outside a pair of massive wooden doors halfway down the street, and Gautier double-parked outside, effectively blocking the street.

  He led Karen over to the officer, who had a similar air of haplessness to Jason. Gautier fired a stream of swift French at him and he nodded like a clockwork toy. He stammered a reply and the commandant said something in return. He turned to Karen. ‘OK. This is Officer Henri. He has the key from the concierge. He will escort you to the apartment and wait with you. He will not interfere with your search.’ He gave a mischievous smile. ‘Unless there is something you cannot reach.’ He held out a hand and they shook.

  ‘I appreciate your assistance. I’ll make sure you get a full report.’

  He winked. ‘Full enough to cover both of us will do fine. And if there is something you need us to follow up, let me know. Good luck, Madame Commandant Pirie.’ And he was gone, waving casually at the trapped driver glaring murderously at his car.

  Karen followed the silent officer through the doors and into a small courtyard. He unlocked a door that led to a stairwell and they climbed flight after flight, passing a pair of doors on each landing. Finally there was nowhere further to climb. He unlocked the far door and gestured to her to enter.