Attali remembered Romero raping her at the foot of a staircase, while he … ‘I understand very well what you mean.’
‘By 11.30 or thereabouts she had presented everything. The Japanese asked to see several models a second time. Towards noon she began to be slightly impatient She told me she had a lunch appointment at half-past twelve. And she always hated being late.’
‘“For lunch”, are you sure?’
‘Yes, that’s what I remember. At about the same time the Japanese had seen enough. Virginie changed at high speed and went down to the shop. I stayed upstairs with the Japanese.’
The secretary continued the story: ‘She came downstairs saying “I’m going to be late”. I suggested calling a taxi for her. She replied “It’ll be quicker for me to walk”. I looked at my watch. It was 12.20, more or less.’
The cutter added: ‘I saw her going out through the door. She was walking quickly in the Opéra direction.’
11 a.m. Le Capucin café, La Chapelle Metro
Daquin went towards a small table at the back of the café. A big guy stood up to greet him. The thirty-year-old man looked like a fighter, he was squarely built, sturdy with close-cropped hair. They had met on rugby pitches. Beside him on the banquette was a whole collection of photographic equipment.
‘Another cup of coffee, please,’ he asked the owner.
‘Well, what’s it about this time, mystery man?’
‘I’m going to take you onto the balcony of an empty flat in a block near here. I’ll manage to get you in somehow, and you’ll manage not to be seen. From there you have the unrestricted view of a bed on the floor below, where there should be a leg-show between 12 and 1 o’clock. You will take a few photographs for me, suggestive ones, as the phrase goes …’
‘That you’ll use to blackmail the protagonists.’
‘No way. At the most I’ll use them to apply pressure in the cause of truth and justice.’
‘And in exchange?’
‘I’ll see you’re informed when we arrest the biggest network of drug traffickers ever dismantled to date. It’ll be exclusive to you.’
‘Have you got confidence in yourself?’
‘As far as I can have in this kind of business. That’s to say not much.’
‘I’m on. Let’s go. Pay for my coffee, commissaire.’
1 p.m. Passage du Désir
Daquin listened, Attali talked: ‘VL had a lunch date on Friday 14 March at 12.30. I don’t know where, I don’t know who with. But it was in an area a quarter of an hour’s walk away from rue des Jeûneurs, going towards the Opéra. I’ve got one possibility: I’ll get a map of the district, I’ll mark off the area I can reach in twenty minutes or so walking time from the Julie La Tour boutique, and I’ll go into all the restaurants in that area with photos of VL and Kashguri. It’s dangerous. Because, even if VL had lunched somewhere in the district, there’s not much chance that anyone would remember her. But I can’t think of anything else.’
‘Agreed. In particular you must target the chic expensive restaurants. And you must find some backup. But for that …’
*
A jubilant Romero came back.
‘Martens is devastated by Sener’s murder. He hadn’t heard about it. Marinoni had told him that his name and address had been found in Sener’s diary and that they’d spent the last weekend together. He confirmed it. He knows the two Turkish intellectuals. About three months ago he went to the races at Enghien with Sener. They met the two in question at the racecourse, spent the afternoon with them and since they were dead drunk by the end of it they drove them back to Enghien, to the door of a luxury villa in a location which Martens has described in fairly precise detail. It’s the only trail left to us for my contact at the embassy, as I’d foreseen, brought me nothing. Shall we continue further in that direction?’
‘Certainly.’
*
Telephone. The duty man at the entrance.
‘A Monsieur Alain to see you, commissaire.’
‘Yes, I’m expecting him, send him up.’
Alain entered in a rush and threw a large brown envelope onto the desk.
‘You’ll have a good laugh. Good luck, and don’t forget the reward, as you promised.’
He left immediately.
Daquin opened the envelope. Three large photos. Not works of art, but clear enough. In the first one Meillant, standing, seen in profile, perfectly recognizable, was taking part in fellatio with a big peroxide blonde who was kneeling in front of him, her face buried between his legs. Next photo: the big blonde, with her hair in her eyes and her breasts thrust forward, was sitting astride Meillant who was lying on his back. The identification in this one was less obvious. In the last photo the woman was kneeling while Meillant was fucking her from behind. She was clutching the foot of the bed and her features were very distinct, she was facing the camera. All that within an hour, the guy was in good form. I couldn’t have imagined anything better.
The image of Soleiman flashed before his eyes, his shattered body beneath the duvet. A stab of desire. I’m going home.
26 SATURDAY 29 MARCH
9 a.m. Enghien-les-Bains
Not very difficult to find the villa. Martens had said: ‘They had come to the racecourse on foot, as neighbours. To get them back home we drove about one or two kilometres. They live in a house beside the lake, in a cul-de-sac that runs alongside a big lycée built of brick.’
Romero and Marinoni easily found the lycée on a map and went straight there. They entered the cul-de-sac, Martens had said: ‘A very big house, well hidden, a black gate, very high, with gilding, very flashy.’ The house was there at the corner of avenue Regina and avenue Château-Léon, pompous names for two deserted culs-de-sac. Closely protected in fact. Railings covered with ivy, more than two metres high, and above it, carefully pruned chestnut trees. It was just possible to make out a large garden and a large house, millstones, brick and cement, tasteless. The shutters were open, the house seemed to be inhabited, but that was all that could be said. Access to the lake was also closed off by railings. No shops or concierges nearby. Impossible too to stay there too long without attracting attention. Go round the lake to see if the house was visible from the opposite bank.
A few hundred metres away the estate agents Gay, announcing that they specialized in high-class property. Let’s give them a try.
The two inspectors went in and introduced themselves to a charming young blonde woman, wearing a grey suit, serious efficiency. The villa at the corner of the avenue Regina and the avenue Château-Léon? The villa Léon. Yes indeed, she knew it very well. The Gay Agency manage it. It had been let for two years to Monsieur Oumourzarov, a Turkish businessman. Very high rent, paid without difficulty. The villa was very handsome, the entire raised ground floor was given over to reception-rooms, drawing-rooms, a dining-room, a smoking-room. On the first and second floors, ten or so bedrooms, five bathrooms. View over the lake …
‘What do you know about Monsieur Oumourzarov?’
‘Well … not very much.’ She searched through her files and took out the one dealing with the villa Léon. ‘On his form he had described himself as director of a commercial firm. Payslips from the Turkimport company, registered office in Istanbul. And the Parillaud Bank had guaranteed his credit-worthiness. Would you like the address of Turkimport?’
‘Certainly.’
She wrote it out on one of the agency cards and held it out to them.
‘What’s he like physically?’
‘About forty, medium height, slim, Brown hair, fairly average in fact. Typical businessman of today.’
The two inspectors left.
‘We’ll have a drink by the lake, then back to passage du Désir. I don’t think we’ve wasted our time.’
11 a.m. In Paris
Attali and Rimbot had decided to work systematically through the entire area marked out the day before as the one where Virginie Lamouroux probably had a lunch date. Daquin had said ‘the s
mart expensive restaurants’. But what was a really smart and expensive restaurant like? Not always easy to identify. Better to spread the net a little too wide rather than too narrow. In each restaurant the inspectors showed first the photo of Virginie, then that of Kashguri, then the two together. Do you know either of them? You’ve never seen either of them? Nor both of them together? Which ones of you were there on Friday 14 March at lunchtime? These two faces don’t mean anything to you?
It was difficult on Saturday, in this area. Most of the restaurants were closed. They had to note carefully those that had been visited and those they would have to come back to. Mark on the map which streets had been explored. And continue to believe in what they were doing.
6 p.m. Passage du Désir
The atmosphere in Daquin’s office was that of a council of war. Everyone was there, Romero, Marinoni, Rimbot, Attali and Lavorel, surrounding the chief.
Lavorel had worked well. In less than six hours, and on a Saturday, he had produced a solid report on the Turkimport company: ‘Turkimport is a very big Turkish import-export company, the second largest in this sector, specializing in the import of machine tools and agricultural machinery and in the export of processed agricultural products. A limited company, quoted on the Bourse. The chairman is a former general, now retired. The Parillaud Bank supplies part of their capital through its subsidiary branch in Turkey. This latter also has agreements with the Bank of Cyprus and the East in a number of very big operations in Turkey and the Lebanon.’
Silence, Lavorel considered his achievement, it was a success.
‘The French office was opened two years ago. It has been run by Oumourzarov from the start. The registered office is at La Défense, in the Atlantic Tower. We have the list of the principal customers, import and export. Some of them are linked to the Parillaud Bank. It will be very difficult for us to find out more. About the prices charged, for example. Turkimport is considered at high levels as a support for the French presence in the Near East.’
‘Can we establish a link with Kutluer?’
‘Not at the moment. And it’s not at all certain that such a link exists. Kutluer and Moreira are family concerns, small-time operators in one sense. With Turkimport we’re entering the world of large-scale international trade and high finance. A change of scale.’
‘Where does the merchandise come in?’
‘Partly through Roissy, partly through Marseilles.’
‘Romero and Marinoni, tomorrow you’ll go to the customs at Roissy. Get out of them all you can. I shan’t tell the magistrate or my chief before Monday. In fact I’ll try to do it as late as possible. We’ve been obstructed over the murder of the Thai girl. Let’s see how far we can get this time.’
27 SUNDAY 30 MARCH
10 a.m. Villa des Artistes
Daquin was still in bed. Barely awake. Sounds in the kitchen. Soleiman was making the breakfast. A flood of light through the glass panel in the roof. Soleiman brought the tray up. Naked. Great blue and green bruises on his body. His face still badly marked. He put the tray down on the bed.
‘Come and say good morning to me, my boy.’
*
Both down on their knees, by the low table in the downstairs room. A large map of the Paris area. Photographs. Soleiman spoke, Daquin wrote. For each name, a photo and a record card: address, known activities, descriptions of all habits or individual characteristics that it had been possible to discover, possible links with the Association of Lighting Technicians or the shops in Faubourg Saint-Martin. For each card, a cross on the map. Soleiman had added a few names to the list, without photographs. Thirty or so people in all. Sometimes Daquin asked questions. It took three hours to complete everything.
‘Now, let’s tackle Operation Meillant.’
Daquin got up, went to the bookcase and produced a brown envelope from between two big volumes. He took out the photos of Meillant making love with the wife of Jencovitch, the boss of the workshop at the Bouffes du Nord, and put them down on the table.
‘Not bad, quite a feat.’
‘Do you also have a laugh when you show photos of me to your buddies?’
Daquin, suddenly serious, sat down on the sofa.
‘What I’m suggesting to you is a big risk for me. If you continue to persist with your victim mentality, you’re going to feel sorry about the fate of the guy you’re in process of destroying, because you’ll be thinking of yourself, and you’ll feel sorry about your own fate. And inevitably you’ll do stupid things. If you’re incapable of thinking of yourself as anything but a victim you might as well tell me now, Sol, and I’ll stop bothering.’
11 a.m. Customs Department, Roissy
Subdued activity in the commercial transactions section.
Romero and Marinoni introduced themselves: working on the drugs traffic between Turkey and Iran. Had come to have a chat with specialists, on the spot, in a totally unofficial way. In your opinion is it possible or not that drugs are getting through on a regular basis thanks to big companies officially carrying out large-scale international trade?
Some activity in the office. Men coming in, others going out. The customs officers offered coffee. The discussion became general.
‘You know, we only work efficiently through denunciation. Everything happens higher up along the line. When the companies are well known, and the flow of goods is regular, only a minute part of the delivery is checked.’
‘And can the companies know in advance which part?’
Laughter.
‘Yes and no, that depends. And then we have orders to speed up the transactions in the case of some French companies or those very close to them. And besides, we may receive orders that work the other way, when we’re told to be really meticulous with awkward foreign companies in order to make them lose a few days, or even a few months, which has happened.’
It was aperitif time. The customs office was fully manned. The name of Turkimport cropped up in conversation. A man of about forty, silent so far, was following their enquiries. He still didn’t say anything, but a little later he announced that he was going off-duty at 1 o’clock. The two inspectors came across him again, as though by accident, in the car-park. He addressed them first: ‘Where can we go for some peace and quiet?’
‘You’re the one who knows the area.’
‘There’s nothing here. Follow me, I’ll take you to the place where I live.’
Ezanville. A few kilometres from the airport. Once a little Ile-de-France village, now lost among bungalows and dormitory-style estates. A café crammed with people in a deserted street. They sat down at a little table right at the back. The atmosphere was suffocating. The customs officer introduced himself: ‘I’m Pascal Dumont. Why are you interested in Turkimport?’
Romero hardly knew what to say.
‘We’re not only interested in Turkimport. It’s just one of the names.’
‘Stop. I’m not stupid. You’ve given up a whole Sunday morning just to pick up something about Turkimport. Now that you’ve got something, take it further. I started work very early this morning, I want to get back home as soon as possible.’
‘Why do you want to talk to cops about Turkimport, outside duty hours?’
Smile. ‘Suspicious, it’s normal. But you’ll have to take risks.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I’m over forty, I have a family, I lead a conventional life. It’s just that sometimes I get fed up with being told to be quick, not to try too hard. Customs officers are treated like half-wits. My brother and one of his friends were working on the flight of French capital to Switzerland. With not very orthodox methods, no doubt, but with the green light from their superiors. As long as they discovered accounts held by ordinary French people, all was well, they were heroes. Two weeks ago they brought back a print-out which included the names of members of the government. Three days later they fell into a trap set by the Swiss. They’ve been in prison over there in Basle, for over a week, and everyone’s been letting them down. Not even a word
in the papers. There’s a rumour that they’ve been “exchanged” in return for information about bent coppers who have bank accounts in Switzerland. I’m helping you about Turkimport because it’s both personal vendetta and professional revenge.’
A pause. Romero and Marinoni didn’t react. Dumont went on: ‘I can tell you how the Turkimport business is carried out, at least for the export side. The papers are always in order. Deliveries every week, twenty or so packing-cases. We always check the first one, not the others. For the last two years I’ve been waiting to know what’s inside them.’
‘Why not open them?’
‘Because we have orders. Turkimport is protected.’
‘Who by?’
‘I don’t know exactly. It comes from government departments, probably going through our secret services. Are you really looking for drugs?’
‘Let’s say we are.’
‘I’d be tempted to imagine something else. Illegal transfers of technology, things of that sort. In view of the type of protection.’
‘How are the Turkimport operations carried out?’
‘Every Monday morning twenty cases arrive. Customs inspection. Then they go to the transit area and despatch takes place over a week, depending on the space available in the planes leaving for Istanbul. Turkimport doesn’t have its own airlines. Let’s get some fresh air out on the pavement.’
They stood by the cars.
‘We’ll make a date for tomorrow evening. About 10 o’clock. I’ll take you into the transit zone warehouse area, I’ll manage to leave you alone somewhere and I’ll come back for you about 2 o’clock in the morning. OK with you?’
Rough Trade Page 24