I'll Keep You Safe

by Peter May

  Martinez reached an open palm across the table towards her. “Do you have your phone there?”

  Niamh looked at the open hand, then at the opaqueness of the man’s eyes. For some reason she felt defensive. “What do you want my phone for?”

  “I’m assuming the email will be in it?”

  “Yes,” Niamh conceded reluctantly.

  “Then I’d like to see it.”

  She reached down to lift her bag from the floor, rummaging through it until she found her iPhone and slid it across the table.

  “I’ll need your pin to unlock it.”

  Now this felt invasive. Bruised and hurting, physically and mentally, it was just one more violation. But she was in no position to refuse. “Four-five-nine-five.”

  He lifted the phone and tapped in her code, then went straight to her mailer. “How is it titled, the email?”

  “Something you should know.” And Niamh wished she could simply erase that something from her mind, as if she thought that could bring Ruairidh back. She watched as Martinez found the email and read it. He was impassive as he handed it to Braque. She read it, too, then her eyes flickered briefly towards Niamh before glancing at Martinez.

  He took the phone from her and turned it off, slipping it into his pocket. He made a note of the pin. Niamh wanted to object. But the objection never got past her lips. He said, “We have people who will want to take a look at this. You’ll get it back when they’re finished.” He hesitated. “Unless we retain it for evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Against you.” His voice was level, and his eyes watched her through clouds of obfuscation.

  For the first time two further emotions squeezed their way past her grief.

  Fear. And confusion.

  “Me?” she said. She looked at Braque, as if in the policewoman who had taken her from the hands of armed officers in the Place de la République and brought her here, she might find a friend.

  But Braque was implacable. She said, “If this is not an act of terrorism, Madame Macfarlane, which seems less and less likely . . .” She glanced at Martinez. Then back to Niamh. “It will become a murder investigation. Given that the occupants of the vehicle were Irina Vetrov and your husband, whom you believed to be having an affair, given that it was almost a week since you received the email alerting you to that fact, and given that you fought with him just before he left . . .” She paused. “We would have to regard you as a prime suspect.”

  The corridor stretched into darkness. A fire door at the far end was barely visible. The strip light on the ceiling, above the half-dozen chairs pushed against the wall where Niamh sat, flickered and hummed intermittently. At the near end stood a door with a window in it, barred on the far side, and Niamh could see the shadow of someone standing guard beyond it.

  It was cold, and she was glad of her tweed jacket. Still, she folded her arms for warmth. It was over two hours since they had left her sitting here. At first she had glanced at her watch with a manic frequency, before finally giving up. Time never passed more slowly than when it was being watched. And now her whole focus was on keeping her mind free of all thought and emotion. How could anyone possibly think she had killed Ruairidh?

  She concentrated on listening to the sounds that gradually invaded her consciousness, seeping from the walls, through doors and ceilings. Distant voices. The warble of a telephone. The chatter of a printer. All punctuated by long periods of total silence broken only by the hum of the strip light.

  When the near door swung open, its hinges sounded inordinately loud and Niamh was startled. A uniformed officer in shirtsleeves approached and held out her phone. She glanced up at him before taking it. And as he turned away she said, “Does this mean I am no longer a suspect?” But either he didn’t know, or wasn’t saying, or didn’t speak English. Without a word he pushed open the door and was swallowed by the building beyond it.

  Niamh examined her phone, switching it on and checking her mailer. “Something you should know” was still there in her in-box. She noticed that the battery was almost exhausted, and was sure that it had been around 80 per cent when Martinez took it. She had recharged it on the stand at Première Vision late that afternoon. What, she wondered, had they been doing with it? The home screen looked exactly the same as it always did. But she noticed with something of a shock that the time was now 2:17 am. Had she really been here all these hours? She double-checked with her watch. Ruairidh had been dead for more than five hours. Forty-two years snuffed out in a moment. And time, the healer, just kept moving on, until one day he would be just a distant recollection, residing only in the memories of those who had known him. And when they were gone, too, what traces would any of them have left on this earth? What point would there have been to these lives they deemed so precious? She closed her eyes to let the moment pass, then slipped the phone back into her bag.

  Yet more time drifted by. How much of it she didn’t even want to know. There was a comfort to be found in this state of limbo, requiring no thought, no decision, no action. She would have liked, there and then, simply to close her eyes and never need to open them again.

  Then the sound of the hinges on the door once more brought her head around. Another uniformed officer held it wide for a tall man wearing a dark suit and white shirt open at the collar. A man somewhere in his forties, Niamh thought. Black hair thinning a little, unshaven, sallow skin pale from lack of sun. And yet he had a certain style about him. In the cut of his suit, and in his carefully plucked eyebrows and manicured nails. The police officer nodded towards the row of seats where Niamh sat and retreated once more, closing the door behind him. The man glanced at Niamh, unsure whether to acknowledge her or not, then sat down in a seat at the end of the row. He clasped his hands between his thighs and leaned forward on his forearms.

  They sat in silence for a long time then, Niamh listening to his breathing. A distraction from the hum of the light overhead. She felt his discomfort, and although she stared straight ahead at the wall, was aware of his head turning several times in her direction. Finally he cleared his throat and said something in French that she didn’t catch. She turned awkwardly and said, “I’m sorry, my French isn’t very good.”

  He looked at her a little more closely and nodded. This time he spoke in a softly accented English that Niamh took to be Russian, or at least Eastern European. “Are you here in connection with the explosion in the square?”

  “Yes.”

  A long pause. “You are a witness?”

  “My husband was killed in the blast.”

  He seemed startled and sat upright. “He was in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  Another long pause. “Did you know Irina?”

  Her mouth seemed very dry then, and bitter words came with a bad taste. “My husband did.”

  He appeared oblivious to the implication implicit in her tone. He said, “Irina is my sister.” Then corrected himself. “Was my sister.”

  Niamh looked at him afresh, and this time saw him very differently. The whites of very black eyes were bloodshot, and he might well have been crying. Whatever Irina’s sins, they were not his. Like her he had lost someone close and was probably still in shock. For the first time she felt pity for someone other than herself and gave voice to it. “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded again and returned to his previous position, leaning forward on his thighs, hands clasped between them as if in prayer. Suddenly he said, still staring at the floor, “You never imagine your little sister will go before you. You always think you will be there to protect her.” There was a crack in his voice as he added, “I should have been there to protect her.”

  And Niamh wondered if it should have been her job to protect Ruairidh. Death, it seemed, was always accompanied by guilt. Irina’s brother turned to stretch an arm across the space between them, a hand offered in empathy. “Dimitri,” he said.

  Niamh took it and felt how cold it was. “Niamh.”

  Then they
returned to their respective positions, several seats apart, and silence fell between them again. But it only lasted a few moments. And it was Dimitri who broke it. “Apparently they think it was Georgy who did it.”

  Niamh sat bolt upright. “Georgy? Who’s Georgy?”

  “Irina’s husband. He is from the Caucasus.” As if that explained everything.

  “Why would he kill his own wife?”

  Dimitri turned to look at her, and she saw in his eyes the hatred he harboured for his brother-in-law. “Georgy is a brute of a man. I never knew what she saw in him. But he was like an addiction. The more he was bad for her the more she wanted him. And to him? Irina was his possession. He owned her. I have never known a man so jealous. God help her if she ever tried to leave him, or anyone tried to take her from him.” He hesitated before adding awkwardly, “It seems he might have thought she was having an affair with the man in the car.”

  Niamh’s carefully contrived calm was suddenly flooded with emotions that very nearly overpowered her. Anger, hate, sorrow, revenge. “Is he in custody? Do they have him?”

  Dimitri shook his head. “He’s gone missing since the explosion. The police are very anxious to find him.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Irina and Georgy’s apartment was in the Rue Houdon, above her workshop and the boutique on the corner below it. This was a narrow cobbled street near the top of the hill in Montmartre. It fell steeply away from the Rue des Abbesses and the little Jehan Rictus garden square just above that, famous for its Wall of Love. Forty square metres of blue tile on which the words I love you are written 311 times in 250 languages. Words that Georgy Vetrov had perhaps taken just a little too seriously.

  It was still pitch dark when Sylvie Braque arrived to meet up with a van full of officers from the police scientifique, two uniformed policemen and a colleague from the brigade criminelle. The streets were deserted, too early yet for the municipal water wagons that would sluice down the gutters and spray the sidewalks. But lights shone from the odd boulangerie, and the occasional delivery truck climbed its weary way up the hill.

  Vehicles lined one side of the Rue Houdon, vans and private cars, and a tall square trailer covered in graffiti and old torn posters that looked like it might have been abandoned. So they all had to park around the corner in front of the Café L’Aristide and walk down.

  Philippe Cabrel was younger than Braque, but held the same rank. He was short and cocky and losing his hair, but for some reason that Braque could never fathom was popular with the ladies. Dishevelled and bleary, he looked as if he might have been dragged from the bed of one of them within the last hour. He cast an incredulous eye over Braque. “What the hell, Sylvie? You didn’t get all dressed up like that just to search an apartment.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “So where were you?”

  “I wasn’t anywhere.”

  “Oh come on. Sexy skirt, high heels, low-cut blouse. You must have been somewhere. Got a secret lover you haven’t been telling us about?”

  To Braque’s annoyance her heels clicked loudly on the pavement, echoing off the buildings that rose all around them. “If you must know I had a date.”

  “Ohhh.” Cabrel grinned. “Anyone we know?”

  “No.”

  The police scientifique and the uniformed officers were waiting for them by the door to the stairs of the Vetrov apartment. “No reply,” said one of the uniforms. Braque had already tried calling several times.

  She waved a warrant. “Better break it down, then.” The officer smiled. A chance to do some damage.

  “Hang on,” Cabrel said. “No need for that.” He knelt down and took a keyring full of slender steel instruments from his wallet, and choosing the right one expertly picked the lock. The door swung open. “There we are. No need to wake the neighbours.”

  The uniform looked disappointed.

  As they climbed the stairs to the apartment itself Braque said, “Where did you learn that little trick?”

  He grinned. “When you’ve spent as much time undercover as I have, Sylvie, you pick up a thing or two.”

  At the door of the apartment he repeated the process then pushed it open into a narrow hallway, reaching in to switch on a light before stepping aside to let the forensics team in their Tyvec suits and bootees go in first. He picked up on his earlier theme.

  “So, are you going to tell me about this date or not?”

  “No.”

  He tutted and raised his eyes towards the ceiling. “Why not?”

  “Because it never happened.”

  He looked surprised. “How’s that?”

  She sighed and realized she was going to have to come clean. “It was a blind date.” Then qualified herself. “Well, not exactly blind. I’d seen photographs of him.”

  “A dating website?”

  “Yes.” She was glad that there was so little light spilling from the apartment on to the landing and he couldn’t see her embarrassment. “I was supposed to meet him in a Korean restaurant in the Rue Amelot. But the bomb went off in the square before I got there and, well . . . I never did get there.”

  “He’s going to think you stood him up. Could you not have phoned?”

  “I didn’t have a number. And anyway . . .” She gave him a look. “I was busy.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He grinned. Then, “I don’t suppose that’ll do your standing on the website much good.”

  “No it won’t.” She pursed her lips in annoyance. Another dead end in her search for a relationship to replace her marriage. It was a constant source of irritation to her how quickly her ex had been able to replace her.

  “Who’s looking after the kids?”

  “They’ve been with their dad this week.”

  She saw the mischievous twinkle in Cabrel’s eye when he said, “He still with that new girl?”

  “Yes.” She almost spat it at him.

  The senior forensics officer called from the other end of the hall. “Okay guys, you can come in now. Gloves on.”

  They each pulled on latex gloves and walked into the apartment. It was bigger than it seemed from the outside. Three bedrooms, a large open-plan lounge and kitchen with views from windows on two walls that looked out over the city. Lights twinkled below them into a misted distance. The furniture was Scandinavian. White walls were hung with original artwork. Cabrel examined the tableaux briefly, reeling off the names of the artists. Martin Barré, Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost, Mickalene Thomas, Enoc Perez. Art theft was one of his specialities. “Expensive,” he said.

  A laptop computer sat open on the dining table, amidst a scatter of papers and books. A MacBook Pro. Braque sat down at it and tapped the space key. The screen lit up. She went straight to system preferences and brought up Users and Groups. Current user and administrator was Georgy Vetrov. This would have to go back to HQ for forensic examination by a computer expert. But before she closed and bagged it she checked his mailer to see if he, too, had received an email from “a.well.wisher.xx@gmail.com.” Nothing.

  “Hey Sylvie,” Cabrel called from down the hall. “We got a staircase here leading down to what looks like her workshop. Want to take a look?”

  Irina’s workshop was spread across a mezzanine level above her boutique. There was a draftsman’s desk, a workbench strewn with scissors and clips and needles and dozens of offcuts, several tailor’s dummies, and racks and racks of hanging clothes. Jackets and trousers and capes and skirts, and any number of tops in a range of colours and styles. The place smelled faintly of incense. Musky, like sandalwood.

  A laptop on a stand beside the draftsman’s desk woke from sleep at Braque’s touch, its screen filled with diagrams and patterns in a complex piece of dressmaker’s software. Braque supposed that it, too, should go back for examination.

  She looked around. Here was Irina Vetrov’s creative soul. Everything had come out of her imagination. A reflection of who she was, or rather who she had been. There was a dress under construction on one of
the tailor’s dummies. Eighties retro, with subtly padded shoulders and short sleeves. A dress designed for a slender figure, with a daring slash at the cleavage, and another at one thigh. It was cut from a soft, textured fabric whose weave of a dozen or more coloured threads created the illusion of pale mauve verging on blue. Braque wondered how much a dress like that might cost. Thousands probably. Well beyond her pay scale. But she fancied that it might well fit her, and that if it did she would look like a million euros in it.

  The chief forensics officer came down the stairs. “We’ll get DNA from his razor, and hers from the hair in her hairbrush. Looks like he might have left in a hurry. If he’s packed anything at all it must have been in an overnight bag.” And Braque knew that she was unlikely to get any sleep tonight.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was now a little after 4 a.m. Niamh only knew because Dimitri kept looking at his watch, delivering a running commentary on the passage of time as his frustration grew. She was still endeavouring to keep her mind a blank.

  Then the near door pushed open, crashing into their separate worlds of pain and silence, and Martinez stood holding it wide with one arm. Under the other, he grasped an untidy folder bulging with papers. If it was the same one he had brought with him into the interview room earlier, Niamh thought, then it had grown considerably fatter. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and his skin was a putty grey. “You can go now,” he said curtly. And as Dimitri stood up he said to him, “Come tomorrow at eleven. We’ll take a full statement.” He turned to Niamh, wedging the door open with his foot, and held out his free hand. “Your passport, please, Madame. You are not free to leave Paris until I say so. Everything will be returned to you then.”

  “Am I still a suspect?”

  “You are a material witness. And, anyway, I am assuming you will not want to leave without your husband’s remains.”

  Niamh had often heard bodies referred to as remains. But in this very personal context, in the aftermath of a car bomb, the word took on sickeningly macabre connotations. She felt a wave of nausea rise through her body, and a sudden weakness in her legs caused her to stagger slightly. Dimitri caught her arm and glared at Martinez. “Not a very clever choice of words, Commandant. Perhaps you were absent the day they taught tact at the police academy.”