Impure Blood

by Peter Morfoot

  11.59 PM

  It was almost midnight before Agnès Dantier arrived back in her home patch of Cimiez. Laid out on a saddle of rising ground in the north of the city, it was an elegant quarter; an enclave of shady avenues, stuccoed mansions, bright new apartment blocks and, most impressively of all, classical ruins.

  Agnès passed the Roman arènes feeling she was something of a ruin herself, this evening. What a day. She thought back to her encounter with the young Australians she’d met outside the Caserne. Bright, shiny, their lives in front of them. She wondered if they had found the ‘real city’ they had been searching for. Though somewhat irked by them at the time, she felt a little guilty now at the way she’d directed them to the wall plaque. It had been a brutal way to make a point. Am I turning into a bitch? she wondered. A ruin and a bitch – fabulous.

  The sky was crystal clear overhead and as she turned at the head of the down ramp into her building’s parking garage, she caught a glimpse of Mont Alban away to the east. Rising from its wooded ridge, a telecom mast rigged with red warning lights pierced the night sky like a giant, blood-beaded syringe.

  She parked, stretched out her back and set off up the footway that followed the ramp back on to the avenue. It wasn’t surprising she was feeling overwrought: predictions of race riots on the streets, of carnage at the Tour. And once more, she had had to defend Darac against the Palais. How many times had she pointed out to them that his clearance rate was the best in the region? She hoped to God he would never falter because he would be gone in a minute. Gone with his integrity still intact, though, no doubt. She loved Darac for his honesty; for his refusal to be anything other than he was. The greatest compliment she could pay him was that of all the officers she had known, he came the closest to measuring up to her father.

  And who but Darac would have volunteered to massage the hot, unwashed feet of a exhausted fifty-three-year-old? And then to have done it so carefully and without fuss?

  Blinking deeply failed to clear her tired eyes as she gained the top of the ramp. Through the blur, she didn’t notice the parked van nor hear the footsteps hurrying behind her.

  As the telecom mast came into view once more, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. It was the last thing Agnès felt before she stepped into a pit of infinite darkness.

  SATURDAY 4 JULY

  7.46 AM

  Every year, 100,000 fans flooded into Monaco to attend the Formula One Grand Prix. Twice that number was expected to show for the opening stage of the Tour de France. Although for many, the race didn’t begin in earnest until the 182 kilometre second day, the 15 kilometre individual time trial had an excitement all of its own. Above all, it meant the Tour was under way for another year. Three weeks of drama, fun and probably scandal lay ahead.

  The time trial, in which competitors set off singly at timed intervals, ran to a different timetable from a normal stage. The first rider was not due to leave until 2 pm, hours after the field was usually rolling out from the start line all together. But for the Tour detail of the Garde Républicaine motorcycle squadron, the later start made no difference – it was business as usual. By 7.30, all forty-five of them had showered and breakfasted.

  Whether they were going to cover 15 kilometres or 215, the day for every GR officer began with a maintenance check of his motorcycle. Although a peloton-less 15 kilometre circular course offered little in the way of a challenge, the mood in the locker room was upbeat, fuelled by a crossfire of banter. More exciting days lay ahead.

  ‘Hey, Cognard – I’ll get you a date with my sister if you do a wheelie off the start line.’

  ‘He’s already dating your sister, Bertrand.’

  ‘Everybody’s dating her.’

  ‘Including Bertrand.’

  The gags volleyed back and forth as the men changed into their inspection overalls. For once, the joker in the pack, Yves Dauresse was taking a back seat: he had his phone’s radio tuned to the France Info radio station. A piece on the Tour was revealing some interesting stuff.

  ‘Any bombs go off, yet?’ David Jarret asked him, peering into a mirror attached to the back of his locker door. I look a little red-eyed this morning, he thought.

  ‘They don’t reckon any of the French boys are going to do much this year,’ Dauresse said, not hearing Jarret. ‘Mightn’t win a single stage, they’re saying.’

  ‘No?’ Roger Lascaux ran a comb carefully through his blond hair. ‘One of our guys will do something fantastic. You watch.’

  France Info going to an ad break, Dauresse pulled out his earphones.

  Jarret turned to him.

  ‘Any changes in the orders likely for tomorrow?’

  ‘Why – scheduled in a little action with one of the promo caravan girls?’ He smiled, his words punctuated by locker doors closing all around the room.

  ‘Me?’ The idea seemed to amuse Jarret. ‘No, I was just wondering.’

  ‘Have you seen that redhead on the Fromages de France float?’ Lascaux waved a loose fist. ‘Ai, ai, ai.’

  Dauresse put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Roger, as you’ve only done one Tour, here’s a word of advice. A giant Camembert does not make a good bed partner. Even one with red hair. Go for the Emmental girl instead.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Think about it.’

  As the youngster did so, a shampoo bottle came winging out of the showers towards him. He kept his eyes on Dauresse as he threw up a hand, caught the missile and tossed it aside in one seamless action.

  ‘Emmental!’ He creased up, finally seeing the gag. ‘Holes!’

  Dauresse turned to Jarret.

  ‘Brain of a worm; reflexes of a cobra – got to love Lascaux, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow?’

  ‘No changes scheduled. As yet, anyway.’

  ‘So we’ve still got the Boulevard des Anglais stations?’

  Dauresse nodded his shaved head.

  ‘Unless we get out of sync, that’s where we’ll be.’ He gave Jarret a look. ‘It’s the destination target par excellence, isn’t it? If there is anything to the threat, we’ll be the ones who get blown up, shot, have fish pinned to our backs or whatever.’

  ‘No one’s going to take me out.’ His comb standing in for his automatic, Lascaux mimed firing off a clip. ‘Fucking blow them apart.’

  A couple of the boys roughed up his hair in passing.

  ‘Arseholes!’

  ‘Alright.’ Dauresse picked up his toolkit. ‘Let’s go tighten our nuts.’

  They made their way out on to the barracks square. Since Lascaux and Jarret had returned from their pre-breakfast jog, the mist veiling the surrounding mountains had lifted, carried out to sea on the back of a steady offshore breeze. Six hundred metres below, the exclusive tenements of Monaco glinted in a tight, teeming mass.

  In chatting with Granot at the briefing, the trio had learned that the principality wasn’t every local’s idea of heaven. For some, it was an ugly growth in the body of an otherwise beautiful landscape. Dauresse had particularly enjoyed hearing Granot’s immediate boss’s take on the place: ‘a modern-day Babazouk for the rich but without the charm’. Yes, Dauresse liked the sound of Granot’s Captain Darac. He hoped their paths would cross sometime. The sooner the better.

  Lascaux shielded his eyes as he surveyed the scene below. There was no doubt where his sympathies lay.

  ‘They call it filthy money, don’t they?’ He set down his kit by his bike. ‘Doesn’t look filthy to me.’

  ‘Can’t see the attraction, myself.’ Dauresse reinserted one earphone. ‘Give me Cannes any day.’

  Like an inquisitive puppy, Lascaux’s eyes were already elsewhere.

  ‘Funny-looking water tower.’ He pointed towards a structure perched on a high escarpment a couple of kilometres away to the west. Dauresse followed his gaze. Hit by the early morning sun, the building appeared to glow as if lit from within. Perhaps it was the distraction of half-listening to his radio but when he spoke, Dauresse sounded lik
e a different person.

  ‘It doesn’t hold water. It holds power. The power of the Roman Army. The Trophée des Alpes, it’s called – a reconstructed triumphal tower.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Jarret drew his bike back on to its stand. ‘You said you’d never been here before.’

  All around the square, four-stroke engines began to throb into life.

  ‘How do I know? Because unlike you two morons, I am educated.’ Catching something on France Info, Dauresse held up a hand. ‘Quiet a second.’ He listened, then pulled out his earpiece as if he’d finally caught what he’d been waiting to hear all along. ‘Guess how many people are going to be watching us on TV today? Throughout the world.’

  Lascaux turned his engine over.

  ‘Listen to that baby purr… The world? I’d say… twenty million.’

  ‘Jarret?’

  ‘Eighty.’ He fired up his machine. ‘At least.’

  Dauresse gave them a level stare, his china-blue eyes wide.

  ‘Try three hundred and seventy million.’

  ‘What?’ Lascaux gave his throttle an involuntary tweak, over-revving the engine. ‘Thank fuck they’re going to be watching the riders and not us.’

  Dauresse smiled as he turned over his engine.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  8.02 AM

  Darac’s breakfast pâtisserie smelled less enticing than usual as he left Fantin and set out across Place Garibaldi. There were fewer trinket sellers around this morning, he noticed. A purge, perhaps. No such problems for the pavement artists. If anything, there seemed more of them around than usual.

  God, he felt flat.

  It was on a very different Saturday morning a couple of years ago that a watercolourist had painted Angeline’s portrait. ‘You realise you’re a dead ringer for Audrey Tautou?’ he’d said with only partial justification as he’d begun setting down the basic architecture of her face. Fifteen minutes later, he’d succeeded in producing a stunning likeness – of the actress, not of her. ‘What’s your name?’ he’d asked as he signed the work. ‘Audrey Tautou, of course. I thought you recognised me.’ Darac gave a little smile at the memory.

  As he disappeared into Rue Neuve, he recalled the first time he’d shown Angeline the Babazouk. It was an unusually cold day in January and they were on their second date. A Bordelaise just three months into a lectureship at the university, she’d enthused about the shops and restaurants she’d already visited in the quarter. But it was its ancient apartment houses that really fascinated her. ‘I live in one of the oldest,’ he’d said. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  It was as they entered Place St. Sepulchre that Darac had realised just how deeply he was falling for Angeline. She was warm, sexy and fun. Her blade-sharp mind fizzed with ideas and connections and yet she was an attentive listener. Above all, she was open and alive to things in a way he’d never encountered to quite the same degree before.

  When the time came, his apartment house did not disappoint her. The lobby was a plain, almost drab affair. But as they emerged into the ornate, groin-vaulted stairway at its rear, the look of joyous surprise on her face was something he felt would always stay with him.

  ‘This is magnificent,’ she’d said, continuing to examine the mouldings and rib work as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘Better watch your step.’ He took her arm. ‘The lady who cleans these steps once left a bar of soap on them.’

  He mimed the result. She smiled her dimpled smile.

  ‘I have the top floor.’

  ‘It feels warm on the stairway but there are no radiators.’

  ‘That’s our thermosiphon system. Do you know about that?’

  ‘No. But I hope I’m going to.’

  ‘It’s all about understanding how hot and cool air currents move. Everything here is designed to aid convection and ventilation. The orientation of the streets, the gratings above the doors, the passageways – even the swing-wing shutters – it’s all part of it. The Babazouk is like a giant chimney in a way. It works so well, it’s warm in winter and cool in summer – much less variation than the rest of the city.’

  ‘That’s really interesting.’

  As Darac put the key into his lock, he’d turned to find Angeline smiling at him.

  ‘What?’ he smiled back.

  ‘Nothing. I’m just… enjoying myself.’

  That was four years ago.

  * * *

  Angeline had showered and dressed in the time it had taken Darac to return with their breakfast. She was waiting for him stretched out on a sun lounger on their roof terrace. A modest twenty-five square metres and with no palm tree or pool, it was hardly a rival for the roof garden at the Negresco. Nevertheless, it was their favourite space in the whole apartment. The way sounds floated up from the streets; the glimpses of Château Park and the Baie des Anges; the unobstructed views of the surrounding mountains – it was perfect. And by a happy accident of orientation and sightlines, not one window overlooked it.

  It was already warm enough to sit out nude, though Angeline had donned shorts and a blouse. On the tile-top table they had made themselves, she had set a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice and a cafetière of their favourite Delta Diamante. A wicker basket awaited the pâtisserie. Darac emptied the box into it and sat opposite her. She wasn’t looking daggers at him; she wasn’t puffing anxiously on a cigarette, rehearsing what to say. And yet, Darac sensed that this might be the morning they would begin the conversation that could have only one outcome.

  She bit into a pain au raisin.

  ‘How can a simple pastry taste this good?’

  He picked up a croissant.

  ‘They mix amphetamines in the dough, I think.’

  ‘They’re probably just fattier, saltier and sweeter than anyone else’s.’

  ‘That’s probably it.’

  His eyes fell on her bare foot. The safe thing was to do nothing, but a sort of emotional vertigo came over him. All at once, he felt compelled to stray near the edge, to flirt with destruction. He closed the fingers of his left hand around her toes and gently began to bend them back.

  ‘It was an interesting meal last night,’ she said, withdrawing her foot. ‘Despite having a flaming row with a guy from the Sorbonne about—’

  ‘What’s happened to us, Angeline?’

  Five words were all it took to burn off the veneer of normality under which they had been hiding. Angeline swung her legs off the sun lounger and sat up, her large brown eyes staring through her sunglasses, through the floor, through to the centre of the earth. He leaned forward.

  ‘Let’s make love. Now. Out here.’

  At length, she turned to him.

  ‘Hitting someone. Playing your guitar. Making love.’ Her words came out evenly, almost gently. ‘Those are your three solutions to any emotional crisis. But not everything can be solved that way. It just can’t.’

  She got to her feet.

  ‘Angeline…’

  He watched her walk away.

  ‘I love you,’ he called out, a flare fired into the chasm.

  Once again, she made what seemed a conscious decision to turn and face him.

  ‘Yes, I know you do.’

  She continued into the apartment.

  Darac was aware of gravity suddenly, a colossal weight pressing down on him. Hitting someone. Playing the guitar. Making love. No, she was wrong about that, surely. He dealt with crises much more subtly. Didn’t he? He looked at his hands. They were balled into fists. Opening them, the remains of the croissant fell like scattered ash on to the table.

  8.42 AM

  Darac left the apartment and walked through stark sunlight to the Théâtre Esplanade car park. It might have been cold and raining for all he noticed. Turning the Peugeot’s ignition fired up the CD player. The opening salvo of Louis Armstrong’s ‘West End Blues’ ripped across his lowered spirits. There was an energising joy in those phrases, a clarion call to life. But even the genius of Armstrong couldn’t
lift Darac this morning. As the number settled into the reflective mood of its verse, he turned it off.

  What had just happened back on the terrace? For the first time, he and Angeline had acknowledged there was a problem. A major one. But mightn’t there be a way back? Nothing terminal had been said.

  His earlier relationships had ended in no-holds barred, cathartic bust-ups; typical Act Three scenarios that had left both parties feeling at least energised. On a couple of occasions, it had even rekindled things for a while. This morning had been the opposite. No resentment. No smashing of objects. No shouting. Instead, a few short sentences, heavy with sadness and disappointment. He couldn’t bear the thought that this could be the end. He loved Angeline. It was as simple as that.

  He pulled into the Caserne and showed his ID at the barrier.

  The guard on duty gave him a look.

  ‘CD player bust, Captain? I could get you a new one for nothing. More or less.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, Berthoud.’ The barrier rose. ‘Headache, that’s all.’

  Darac knew that if he let it, the situation with Angeline was going to resonate through his day like a held-down organ note. He made a resolution not to think consciously about it. He had a murder to solve. And, possibly, a series of date rapes.

  After three seconds, he was right back there. It was about four months ago that he’d become aware of Angeline’s diminishing feelings for him. At first, he wondered if she had found someone else. He was enough of a realist to accept the possibility; enough of a Frenchman to think it inconceivable. The debate hadn’t lasted long. He felt with some certainty that Angeline would not have broken their bond of trust. The fault line ran through different terrain.

  He parked in the space marked with his name and rank.

  Perhaps unusually for a left-leaning intellectual, Angeline had never voiced disapproval of the police per se. And she had seen immediately that Darac was a totally different animal from the average career officer. Nevertheless, his role as a detective had worried her from the start.