Darac was still sitting back almost horizontally in his chair.
‘Before what?’
‘Before we split. Nothing lasts for ever. It was over. Finito.’
The held-down organ note grew louder.
‘Relationships end for a reason. What was it?’
Manou sat back, crossed his arms and began tapping his foot.
‘I just… got tired of him.’
Darac had Madame Griet’s material to work with. It was time to take it and improvise.
‘Because his timid ways were a liability on the street? How did you work it, Manou? You join in with a bunch of kids skateboarding, playing football – whatever. You’re an overgrown street kid yourself so you fit right in. You gain their confidence easily…’
This was all too fast for Manou. Shaking his head, he began to squirm.
‘…As the game goes on, everybody gets hotter – especially you because you’ve got your eye on one kid in particular. You wait until he’s had enough and decides to go. This is where Florian comes in. You need him to turn up with the GHB water because you don’t want to carry the stuff yourself. You’re much too smart for that…’
‘No. No. It’s not true.’
‘…There’s no sign of the police faces you both know so well, so as you walk off the pitch, you turn to the kid you’ve picked out and say: “Listen, I know that old guy – we can blag a few euros off him, come on.” You and the kid go over to your timid benefactor for a moment…’
‘It’s a fucking lie. It never happened. Ever!’
‘…“Here, gimme some of that water, I’m hot,” you say, grabbing it out of his pocket. You pour some over your head. Maybe you feign drinking some. You pass it to the kid…’
Manou got to his feet, the veins in his arms and neck rope-taut.
‘No!’
‘…The kid drinks. I don’t need to tell you what happens next, do I? Did you get to go first or did Florian? Maybe you alternated.’
Just as it seemed Manou might come apart, he found something. Focussing his eyes into the distance, he set his feet shoulder-width apart and began taking even breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
‘This is one weight you can’t lift. The weight of your own guilt.’
The words should have worked like punches, but rehearsing his pre-lift drill had helped Manou. When he sat down, he seemed a degree or two calmer.
‘It’s. Not. Fucking. True.’
‘I repeat. Who do you think killed Florian? A parent of one of your joint victims? Maybe a brother?’
‘I don’t know who killed him. All I know is I never did anything.’
‘You never did anything…’
‘Fuck off! Alright?’
‘We’ve shown a photo of Florian to a lot of people. Our opening question was a very simple one: “Have you ever seen this man?”’ Darac sat forward and opened Madame Griet’s file. ‘Here’s an eyewitness statement by someone who had seen him. Dated and signed. Last Saturday morning at about ten o’clock, this witness saw Florian standing outside La Masarella watching a football game – just as I described earlier.’
Manou began chewing the inside of his mouth.
‘This time though, the routine didn’t go smoothly. Florian got the bottle of water stuck in his jacket.’ Madame Griet could help no further. Darac was on his own. ‘But he got it out eventually, didn’t he? After it was all over, our witness reports… now what’s the exact quote?’ Darac consulted the statement, moving his finger over a line. ‘Yes, here… “I saw the boy walking across the lobby. He looked sick and drowsy. Too much exertion in the sun, I thought. But now, I realise what had really happened. He’d been drugged.” And there’s more.’ To preserve her anonymity, Darac obscured Madame Griet’s name with one hand as he rose and showed the page to Manou. ‘You can’t dispute it. It’s here in black and white – look.’
Manou’s eyes slid across the page like bald tyres on ice. After some moments, Darac withdrew it, sat back and fixed him with a hard, level stare.
‘You raped that boy together and no doubt you raped others. We’ll find them and then you are going down for a long time.’
‘I never did it! I told you, I never used GHB for anything but bodybuilding.’ His voice took on a more urgent, intense tone. ‘Listen – I’ve been no angel since I was fourteen years old. And I like it that way. But I’ve never raped anybody. I’ve never fucked a kid. Men are what I go for.’ Tears now. ‘You’ve got to believe me.’
‘So it was just Emil.’
Ears cocked, Granot appeared in the doorway. Darac beckoned him in. There was a look suspects adopted before confessing: a sort of fear-relieving resignation. Sensing that such a moment was coming, neither of them said a word.
Manou dried his eyes with the heels of his hands.
‘Emil…’ The word was dredged up as if from a pit of hatred. ‘Emil was… mad for young boys. “Cherub meat”, he called them. “Moist little morsels.” He had seen videos by the score but that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted the real thing. But he was way too scared to do anything about it. Then he read somewhere about GHB. The answer to a prayer, he called it. Especially as he knew I used the stuff.’ He looked at Darac with a sort of injured pride. ‘He thought I would join in. He was wrong. He thought I would at least give him some of the stuff so he could do it. He was wrong again. So the bastard stole some from me. Mixed my pots up when I wasn’t looking. I never gave him any help. Ever, understand? I’m not… an accessory to anything he did. I told him not to do it or we were finished.’
Darac ran a hand through his hair.
‘So a whiter than white, straight schoolteacher meets you. Two years later, that same man is drugging boys so he can rape them?’
‘Yes! That is exactly it.’
‘Did you ever witness him committing rape?’
‘No. I told you. I didn’t even know he had finally done it until you read out that eyewitness report.’
Granot gave Darac a look. He knew no neighbour had reported anything half so incriminating.
‘What did he say had happened that morning, then?’
‘Nothing, according to him. Once he’d fucked up the pass, he went back into the city, he said. Lying bastard.’
Darac had little doubt that that was what had happened.
‘The pass?’ he said. ‘That sounds pro.’
Manou gave him a look that would have played to the rear stalls at the opera.
‘I know words for stuff you wouldn’t believe but it doesn’t mean I do them.’
Granot caught Darac’s eye. He nodded, putting him in.
‘Where were you when all this was happening?’
Manou seemed happier with life, suddenly.
‘I’m so glad you came in, big boy. I was waiting for him to ask me that. I wasn’t at the apartments last Saturday morning. Not at the time you said. You can check.’
‘We will. Check with whom?’
‘I worked from eight to eight in the evening at Peerless.’
‘Driving a cab? By no means a perfect alibi.’
‘That’s where I’ve got you, again. From eight until two, I was in the squawk box.’
‘What’s that – some sort of club?’
‘Are you listening to me? I was working. The squawk box is what we call the booth at the back of the office. I was taking walk-ins, answering calls, organising the drivers. Six hours straight, I did that.’
Darac picked up the baton.
‘Point by point through your questioning, you’ve denied anything that might incriminate you until we’ve shown it was pointless to persist. And all through, you have been at pains to dissociate yourself from Florian. You even maintained you hadn’t seen him for months at the beginning. Remember?’
‘I would still be denying it now if somebody hadn’t seen him and the kid last Saturday. What do you expect? I knew you would think we were in it together. And what with him being a teacher and everything, I knew you’
d think it was me who’d tried to talk him into it. Especially as I had the GHB.’
‘We’ve only got your word for it that you didn’t. Florian’s dead. You know you can say what you like about him.’
‘But I wouldn’t do. You’d catch me out. Being such clever boys.’
The air conditioner suddenly made a sound like a labouring helicopter. Darac reached back and slapped it with a practised hand. It whined for a moment, then resumed level flight.
‘And so-ooo butch.’ Manou was beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Yowzer.’
‘Records show you took a phone call from Florian last thing on Thursday evening,’ Darac continued. ‘Recount the conversation.’
‘Can I have a coffee? That’s not what he said. I just want one.’
‘Answer the question.’
Manou sighed extravagantly, a performance that made Granot squirm. Manou the hard man, he could tolerate. Manou the queen, he couldn’t. ‘I’m not anti-gay,’ he’d once said to Darac. ‘But camp makes me really grit my teeth.’ He was feeling that way now.
‘Am I getting under your skin, darling?’ Manou was enjoying himself more and more. ‘Good, because I dreamt you got under mine last night.’ He rolled his tongue around his lips. ‘You weren’t very caring, you naughty boy.’
Granot’s teeth were gritted practically to stumps. But he knew better than to rise to the bait.
‘Just answer the question.’
Another deep sigh.
‘We-ell… because of the way things were going, I told Emil it was all over between us. He told me not to be so silly. Him tell me that! He said he wouldn’t involve me in any of it so all I had to do was turn a blind eye. I promised I would never shop him but it didn’t change anything. It was over. Then he said, no, we were meant for each other and he would buy me a nice present to prove it. I said he could buy all the presents he liked, it wouldn’t make a difference. I put the phone down, saying I was never going to speak to him again. And I was as good as my word. If you’ve got records, you’ll know he rang me yesterday about noon – right? I was in at home, working out. When I saw whose number it was, I didn’t bother answering.’ He smiled triumphantly. ‘But you know that already, don’t you?’
‘We don’t know you were at home when you got that call, do we?’ Granot said. ‘You could have been standing right next to Florian.’
‘But I fucking wasn’t. Alright?’
‘In that Thursday-night call, did Florian mention what plans he had for the day after? What he intended to do?’
‘No. I’m getting bored with you, Fattie.’ He turned to Darac. ‘Where’s that coffee? You’ve got a machine there.’
It was time to put the squeeze on.
‘Let’s go back to the previous Saturday morning,’ Darac said. ‘If Florian had succeeded in drugging that boy, where would he have taken him?’
Manou sat upright.
‘What’s this? You told me he did succeed. That eyewitness saw the kid…’
‘We don’t know all the facts. Maybe the boy did have heat stroke, after all. I repeat the question. Where would he have taken him? Your apartment?’
Pinball.
‘Might have.’
‘So how was he going to get in? You were out and no key to your place was found on Florian or among his effects.’
‘Uh… no, he did have a key then. But… I got it back off him in the week. I didn’t want him having it any more. Like I said, it was over between us.’
Darac opened a drawer and took out a small poly bag. Manou peered at it then seemed to freeze in his seat.
‘When you were still maintaining you knew nothing about anything, you said you had no idea about this.’ Darac allowed the key to slide out on to his hand. ‘It was found under a mat. A mat made out of an opened-out pizza carton. Now tell us more.’
‘I can’t. It’s… just a key.’
Darac looked into Manou’s black eyes. They stared back at him with such studied innocence, he was convinced he was lying.
‘Florian was trying to hide it from someone. We’ve already tried it in doors at La Masarella and L’Horizon Bleu…’
‘Trying doors? That’s a waste of time.’ Manou started tapping his knee. ‘There must be a million doors in Nice. You can’t go round them all, can you?’
‘Relax,’ Darac said, smiling.
Manou stopped tapping.
‘I am relaxed. Get me that coffee now. No. Not coffee. Water.’
Granot gave him a knowing look.
‘With or without GHB?’
‘Don’t get funny with me, you mountain of fucking…’
‘Lard?’ Granot said, happy to be back on track with Manou.
It was time to increase the pressure by seeming to ease it. With someone as labile as Manou, Darac realised, it might prove particularly effective.
‘I’ll get you some water.’ Darac got to his feet. ‘That’s if our cleaning lady has remembered to replenish the cup dispenser. Looks as if she has.’ He kept his eyes on Manou as he stood at the cooler. ‘We don’t intend to try every door in Nice, obviously.’ He pulled a paper cup from the stack. ‘But it would be remiss of us to leave out your…’ He turned to Granot. ‘Some water?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Sure?’
Tension was starting to knot Manou’s back muscles. Like a horse nodding to release its bridle, he raised and lowered his head suddenly.
‘Yes, it would be remiss to leave out the workplace… what’s it called?’
‘Peerless Taxis, you mean, chief?’
Staring straight ahead, Manou took in a long breath through the nose.
Darac shook his head as if Granot’s suggestion were ridiculous.
‘No, no – not Peerless.’ The tension in Manou’s shoulders eased slightly. ‘Florian’s workplace – the school. He did work there for the last eight years, after all.’
‘The Lycée Mossette?’
‘That’s it. Don’t you think so, Manou?’
‘Well… if you’re going to try doors.’ He wiped his free hand over his chest. ‘That’s the one place it might be worth it. Must be plenty of rooms he could have used. Store cupboards and shit.’
‘Thank you.’ Darac handed him the cup. Compressed by Manou’s grabbing hand, water sloshed over the rim. ‘That’s helpful.’
So helpful, it had decided Darac on his next move.
9.47 AM
‘We’ll take my car.’
Granot’s eyes narrowed.
‘No jazz?’
‘Philistines – the lot of you.’
They signed out at the duty officer’s desk.
‘Anything from the boss, yet?’
Alain Charvet, who was manning the desk, shook his greying head.
‘I can call her, if you like.’
Darac remembered how tired she had been the previous evening.
‘She isn’t late for any appointments or anything?’
‘No, no. She wouldn’t have been in at all today if it weren’t for this Tour business.’
‘Alright. We’ll leave it for a while.’
Bzzzzzzzut!
It was crazily hot on the steps.
‘Muscles is spinning quite a story, isn’t he?’ Screwing up his chops, Granot slipped on the one classy element of his entire summer wardrobe – his Ray-Bans. ‘The street scum didn’t degrade the culture vulture – it was the other way around! You don’t buy that, do you?’
‘I don’t trust Manou as far as you could throw him. And yet…’ Darac left the thought hanging.
‘You do buy it?’
‘No, not necessarily. But he’s a strange one, isn’t he? Homo-erotic tough one minute; limp-wristed simperer the next – I’ve never met a gay man quite like him.’
‘Let’s hope we never meet another.’
Granot had to make an effort to keep up with Darac as they set off across the compound.
‘You certainly got lucky with that statement bluff.’
‘It did
have some basis in fact. And I had a bit of a head start on the part I made up.’
‘Don’t get you.’
‘I didn’t just tell him what I wanted him to think was in the statement. I let him read it. Or at least look at it.’
‘Still don’t get you.’
‘He can’t read but he didn’t know I knew that.’
Granot gave a throaty chortle.
‘Well, well… Let’s put Manou’s possible role in the GHB business on the back burner for a minute. Are you absolutely certain he didn’t kill Florian? He has no alibi.’
‘Well, we don’t know whether he has or hasn’t, do we? Not until we know exactly what happened to Florian. And when.’
Granot looked unconvinced.
‘Maybe, but Manou told Bonbon he got up at ten, alone, and then stayed alone in the apartment until the pair of you got there. That’s hours unaccounted for.’
‘If I’d killed somebody, I’d have furnished myself with a better alibi than that. Especially if I were a hustler like Manou.’
‘Perhaps.’ Granot was already sweating profusely. ‘Maybe there was no arm he could twist.’
‘Manou – are you kidding?’
‘You know what I mean. Manou could be your murderer.’
‘No, no – I’m with Bonbon on this one. I think he’s guilty of something but I very much doubt it’s Florian’s murder.’
As they reached Darac’s Peugeot, he spotted Adèle Rousade, the officer’s assistant, coming out of the archives office in Building G. Their eyes met. He gave her a smile. She blanked him.
‘What’s wrong with her? She was as happy as a lark earlier,’ Granot said, pulling the passenger seat back before getting in.
‘There’s nothing wrong with Adèle.’
‘So that just leaves you, then, doesn’t it? Don’t tell me. I can guess.’
* * *
With the Gare Thiers rail station at their backs, they walked down stone steps into the dreary Rue de Bruges. Peerless Taxis was halfway along the street, sandwiched between a sex shop and a kebab place. Only a hundred metres or so from the palm-studded elegance of Rue Verbier, they could have been anywhere in backstreet Europe.
‘This hasn’t just started,’ Granot said, folding his copy of Nice-Matin’s Tout Sur Le Tour into a fan. ‘You and Angeline.’
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