Impure Blood

by Peter Morfoot

  It was just before nine when Flaco’s desk phone rang. Rubbing her eyes, she almost dropped the receiver as she picked up.

  ‘Yes?’ As if it had a life of its own, the pen she was holding began to tap, pocking the margin of her pad. ‘What a mess.’ She stopped immediately.

  ‘What was that, Flak?’

  ‘Nothing. Go ahead.’

  ‘It’s Partin, here. I’m with the team up on Mont Boron. I’ve just spoken to the Alledargues.’ He spelled the name. ‘They’re a retired couple who live next door to Commissaire Dantier. They were the ones who weren’t in when Lieutenant Granot called round earlier. To cut a long story short, Madame Alledargue, the little beauty, spotted that the van we’re looking for had a Département 31 registration. 31 is Haute-Garonne, where she’s from. That’s why it stuck in her mind.’

  Flaco punched the air.

  ‘Fantastic, Partin.’

  Across the other side of the room, Darac looked up from his case notes.

  ‘There’s more, Flak. She’s certain “A” was the letter immediately before it. “A for Alledargue” she’d thought at the time. The woman may be egocentric but she’s observant.’

  Flaco smothered the phone.

  ‘Listen up, everybody.’ One or two voices continued. ‘Quiet please!’ Silence. ‘The van has a Département 31 plate. And “A” was the final letter.’

  Fist pumps, silently mouthed thank-yous, raps on desks – the news was celebrated all around the room.

  ‘I wish we’d known that before we dug up all this.’ Perand waved a hand at the piles of paper crowding the work table in front of them. ‘And sent the pavement pounders out.’

  As Flaco continued the call, he and the rest of their group began pulling out the A-31 plates from the follow-up stacks.

  ‘Anything else from Madame Alledargue?’ Flaco began tapping on her pad in earnest. It had worked last time. ‘Or from the husband?’

  ‘Plenty. All of it irrelevant.’

  No more tapping.

  ‘So they didn’t see the van arrive or leave or see the driver?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too much to hope for. But that’s great work, Partin,’ she said, unconsciously copying Darac’s manner.

  As the call ended, Perand handed her a greatly reduced stack of follow-ups.

  ‘With all the non-A-31 plates taken out, it leaves just two buyers and one hirer to check out, chief.’ He smiled his lopsided smile, enjoying the rib. But it disappeared as he took back the top page.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ He showed it to Adèle Rousade. ‘Did you pick this one out?’

  ‘Hours ago, darling. It’s an A-31, no?’

  ‘That it is.’

  Adèle’s features fell like a dropped lipstick.

  ‘So what have I done wrong?’

  ‘Not a thing.’ Subsiding into his chair, he held out the page to Flaco. ‘It’s just that if either of us two had got this one, the buyer’s name would have jumped straight out. As you say – hours ago.’

  At their desks, Darac’s team was following the exchange like spectators at a play.

  Frankie spoke for them all.

  ‘Don’t drag it out, for God’s sake. Who bought the damned van?’

  Holding up the page for everyone to see, Flaco announced the name. No one quite believed it. But it was there in black and white.

  9.34 PM

  Rue Vaulesne was one of a network of streets linking Boulevards Cessole and Auguste Raynaud in the north of the city. An essay in vernacular architecture, there were scarcely any two structures in the street that looked as if they belonged together.

  Outwardly, the two guys strolling along Rue Vaulesne didn’t seem much alike, either. Exuding an attractive mixture of warmth and sensitivity, one was dark, strongly built and moved with a sort of easy confidence. The other, a skinny individual with wiry red hair, had the mischievous alertness of someone who was used to taking his chances. But they had at least one thing in common. They enjoyed a joke. Or that’s what it would have looked like to anyone watching.

  ‘I suppose it was too much to hope the van would be parked outside,’ Bonbon said.

  Darac laughed and gave his mate a punch on the arm.

  ‘Can you see us?’ he asked.

  Lartou Lartigue’s voice buzzed into his earpiece.

  ‘Yes we can, chief. We just rang the landline again – intending to pose as the phone company, this time. Still no answer.’

  ‘Anything else we need to know?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Everyone in place?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  Darac and Bonbon were still shaking their heads and chuckling.

  ‘Let us know immediately if anyone comes back to the house. Otherwise, don’t come on again until I get back to you. And no more calls to the landline – we’ll know soon enough if anyone’s home.’

  ‘Check. Good luck, chief. Out.’

  ‘It’s the next one.’ Overdressed in the heat, Bonbon paused to mop his brow. ‘No lights on.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Just smiles now – the gag seemed to be wearing off. ‘They could be using blackout curtains.’

  The target address was a semi-detached, two-storey townhouse rendered, where it was adhering, in stained lavender-washed plaster. On one side, the property abutted the end wall of a dreary three-storey apartment block; on the other, a half-closed wrought-iron gate gave on to a path that led to the rear of the house.

  ‘You go round the back, Bonbon. I’ll wait a second, then try the front door.’

  ‘Got your safety off?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Bonbon opened the gate and, leaving it at the same angle he found it, disappeared down the path. Darac turned to the door. Listening for sounds inside, he stood at a right angle to it and knocked. He heard nothing. No lights came on as far as he could tell. He knocked again. Still no one came to the door. But he heard muffled steps on the pavement behind him. With any luck, it would be just a passer-by. Darac had every confidence in Lartou and the others but earpieces could go down and so could the links to them. Feeling anything but relaxed, Darac essayed a smile and turned. Moving with the exaggerated care of someone walking a tightrope, the interloper proved to be a frail old man carrying a bag of shopping.

  ‘Evening, monsieur,’ Darac said.

  His eyes fixed determinedly ahead, the old boy said nothing as he shuffled on his way.

  A third knock unanswered, Darac went to join Bonbon in the back yard. Bounded at the rear by a flat-roofed outbuilding, it was a scruffy, utilitarian space. Terracotta pots proliferated. Some were planted up, most were stacked against the outbuilding’s cinderblock front wall. In the fast-fading light, they looked like clusters of clinging barnacles.

  Overhead, a corrugated plastic canopy connected the outbuilding’s roof to the rear wall of the house. A shield against prying eyes, perhaps, as much as a shelter. Stumbling over a partly demolished wall, Darac adopted it as a redoubt as he looked around for Bonbon. He couldn’t see him.

  ‘Bonbon?’ he whispered into his mouthpiece. There was no reply. ‘Bonbon?’ Still no answer. He was nowhere to be seen. ‘Psssttt!’

  The outbuilding door opened. A figure slipped stealthily out into the open; open, that is, to the yard and to anyone looking out of the ground-floor window of the house. The figure looked thicker-set than Bonbon. But it was him, alright – he and Darac were both wearing bullet-proof vests under their shirts. The figure disappeared momentarily and then reappeared at Darac’s side.

  ‘You had me worried there for a minute.’

  ‘I was talking into my mouthpiece but it must be down.’ Bonbon’s expression conveyed none of its usual whimsicality. ‘So no signs of life at the front?’

  ‘Armani shuffled past on the pavement. That was it.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be anyone in at the back. That outhouse concerns me, though. The floor’s concrete and there’s a small pile of broken bricks in one corner.’

  ‘H
ow small?’

  ‘Too small to conceal anything like a body. But it could cover a Gartreuix-style hatch. It would make too much noise to shift a pile of bricks now, though.’

  Shards of ice chilled the sweat running down Darac’s back. Bonbon had worked on the case of Jean-Marie Gartreuix, a killer who had concealed the remains of his many victims in an old wine cellar that extended under his garage.

  ‘After we’ve checked out the house, we’ll get right back out here.’

  ‘I know it’s… Just a second.’ Bonbon took the whisper down a notch. ‘Did someone just open that curtain a crack?’

  Keeping very still, the pair stared at the ground-floor window of the house.

  ‘That’s how it was, I think.’ He gave Bonbon a tap on the knee. ‘Alright, let’s do it. Quiet and careful, now. Or we may as well have sent for Freddy Anselme.’

  As far as they could tell, nothing stirred inside the house as they ghosted their way to the back door. It took Darac precisely three seconds to pick the lock. Standing well to the side, he gave the door a gentle push but it opened only as far as a security chain allowed. It took another ten seconds to retrieve the wire lasso from his tool roll, hook it around the track bolt and disengage it. The door swung wide open. For the moment, they remained still.

  Poised to fire if necessary, Bonbon slipped quietly inside. The lobby was dark but his eyes were sharp. No one was there. Torch in one hand, automatic in the other, Darac swept quickly past him and through a half-open door into the kitchen. No one there either. And there was no sound from the rest of the house. He gave Bonbon a beckoning nod.

  ‘Bread and bleach,’ Darac whispered, sniffing.

  ‘You’re supposed to say “clear”.’ Bonbon’s eyes darted between the two doors that gave off the room. ‘Santoor might be lurking around here somewhere.’

  ‘If he is, he might just get his head blown off. By mistake.’

  The living room was next. No one. Silent. And dark enough for Bonbon finally to switch on his torch. Alternating entry and cover, the pair worked their way through another three rooms until there was just one left – the larger of the two bedrooms. They shared a look and then went in together. Torch beams criss-crossed as they pierced the silent gloom.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  The two of them almost sank to their knees but they knew the relief they felt was no more than a temporary respite. They still had no idea where Agnès and Vincent were; nor even if they were alive.

  Nor had they encountered the owner of the house – Madame Corinne Delage.

  Bonbon wasted no time in peeling off his shirt.

  ‘At least we can get out of these vests now.’ They headed back down the stairs. ‘Before we do anything else, I’m going to shift those bricks. Only take a minute.’

  ‘Take half a minute if we do it together.’

  Darac didn’t believe in an afterlife from which the dead could somehow communicate with the living. But he knew from experience that places in which a violent death had occurred, or in which a victim’s body had been dumped, sometimes retained an atmosphere of pain and hopelessness that could live on for years. Atmospheres, though, made very unreliable witnesses. As he and Bonbon stepped into the outbuilding, he detected nothing whatever out of the ordinary except to wonder what use an old woman like Delage had for a pile of broken bricks.

  Resting the torches on a couple of battered old paint tins, they donned exam gloves and set to work, picking at the pile. Reliving earlier memories, Bonbon hesitated as they finally got down to the base layer. He hadn’t known any of Gartreuix’s victims. Agnès was a different story.

  ‘It’s going to be alright, Bonbon.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They shifted the bricks, then swept away the rubble and dust.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  It was alright. There was nothing. More relief. More temporary respite.

  Darac was already speaking to Lartigue as they walked back through the lobby.

  ‘There’s no one here, Lartou. Get that? Not Agnès, Vincent or Corinne Delage, for that matter. So send Roulet and the dog in and get Flaco on to the neighbours. Tell her to begin with the one who identified Delage in your photo.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘It would make life a lot easier if we could put the lights on in here. The curtains seem pretty thick.’

  ‘Go for it. We’re watching.’

  Bonbon’s torch found the wall switch.

  ‘They’re on, Lartou.’

  ‘You can’t tell from outside.’

  ‘Good. Keep watching – we’ll turn some others on.’

  One by one, Darac and Bonbon put on as many lights as they thought useful.

  ‘That’s all good, chief.’

  ‘Excellent. Keep Ormans and the others back until I call again, okay?’

  ‘Will do. Out.’

  ‘Let’s start in the kitchen.’

  The various cupboards and drawers revealed nothing of interest. Then in a pantry, Bonbon found several keys hanging from a row of hooks. One of them caught his eye.

  ‘Sweet Mary… Look at the serration profile.’ He handed it over. ‘Familiar?’

  ‘Shit… And there’s us thinking Delage was only incidentally linked to Florian and therefore Manou.’

  ‘Looks as if she’s a keyholder to their secret world.’

  ‘Let’s be sure.’

  Darac took Florian’s key from a pocket and put the two together. ‘Yes it…’ He looked more closely. ‘No, we’re wrong. It doesn’t match. See?’ He indicated the one incongruent jag. ‘It should go in there, not out.’

  ‘Yes it should.’ Bonbon rubbed his eyes, feeling tired suddenly. ‘Jumping to conclusions. Let’s calm it down.’

  ‘Especially as there’s a hell of a lot to do here and we don’t know how long we’ve got.’

  Bonbon put back the key as sounds behind them signalled the dog-handler’s arrival. He was dressed casually, as if he were out walking his pet.

  ‘How’s it looking on the street, Roulet?’

  ‘No one would know there’s a surveillance op going on, chief. If and when Delage or anyone else comes back, they’ll walk right up to the house, no problem.’

  ‘Armani or Martinet would grab them first.’

  Roulet’s receding hairline receded still further.

  ‘They’re not out there, are they?’

  ‘Yes they are. Okay – let Félix do his stuff.’

  The dog set to work, laying down a soundtrack of scampering and sniffing under Darac and Bonbon’s own searches. As the seconds ticked by, the one thing they had wondered if they would find was conspicuous by its absence.

  ‘Still out shopping at this time of night?’

  ‘Maybe she ditched the trolley.’ Bonbon shook his head. ‘Pointlessly, if she did. She never denied ramming it into Florian.’

  Nothing else leapt out at them in the kitchen. Félix was already exploring the stairs as they moved through into the living room. An impressive flower arrangement caught Darac’s eye.

  ‘They look fresh.’ He lifted the bouquet carefully out of the vase. ‘And so does the water.’ He sniffed it. ‘Fresh today, I would say. So Delage has been home.’ He lowered the arrangement carefully back into the vase. ‘Or someone has.’

  ‘Where has the old girl got to?’

  Looking for anything at all that might help them, they examined the room in more detail. Modestly furnished, it was clearly an older person’s domain. But apart from a few framed photographs and a small collection of ornaments on a sideboard, it wasn’t a space in which the past spoke louder than the present. Because of that, Darac decided to look first at what few mementoes there were.

  ‘Do those ornaments tell us anything about her, Bonbon?’

  ‘They’re country pieces, interestingly enough. Sentimental value only…’ He picked up a plain cylindrical pot. ‘This is worth a couple of hundred euros, though. It’s a confit jar. Salt glaze, probably early nineteenth century.’ />
  Darac glanced at the object and then turned back to one of the photographs.

  ‘It’s the one in this photo.’ He held it up. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s just like it, certainly.’

  ‘When was it taken – early 1950s?’

  In the photo, three adults and a child were sitting around a table in a farmhouse-style kitchen. The adults were a couple in their late forties, large-boned, with kind faces, and a lad in his early twenties who was the spitting image of them. The mother was simply dressed and wore a crucifix. Father and son looked as if they had just come in from working in the fields. The child was aged about eight and she was tucking into a huge plate of something hearty. The confit pot was sitting in the middle of the table.

  Bonbon looked more closely at the little girl.

  ‘That’s a young Corinne, isn’t it? The age is right and although it must be sixty or so years ago, you can see a resemblance.’

  ‘That squashed little face. Like a pug. You’re right – I’m sure it’s her.’ Darac turned the photo frame around. His luck was in – there was a note written on the back: The whole family. Mama, Papa, Antoine and me. Summer 1949. Darac shook his head. ‘Family fun on the farm? That’s not the childhood I’d have pictured for someone as bitter and twisted as Corinne Delage.’

  ‘They look serene there but who knows? They could have been at each other’s throats the rest of the time.’ Bonbon took a wad of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Let’s see what light Perand’s case notes shed.’ He straightened the paper. ‘Here goes: “Delage née Groismont. Birth re-registered as 10 October 1940, Grandeville, Île-de-France”.’

  ‘Grandeville? Never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s fifty kilometres south-east of Paris, according to Perand. He continues: “Grandeville sounds the sort of place that if it had a horse…” What?’ Bonbon’s brow creased in incomprehension. He had a second stab at it. ‘“Grandeville sounds the sort of place that if it had a horse… it would rise to the status of a one-horse town.” He looked at Darac. ‘Bloody idiot. He means…’

  ‘It’s a small rural community, yes. I’ll have a word with him.’