by ML Longworth
The bill came and was paid, and the three got up and headed toward the elevators. In the elevator Verlaque handed Marine and Paulik their keys, and Marine leaned against the elevator wall, suddenly exhausted. She closed her eyes and thought of Natassja and of the young woman’s long, perfect body hitting the New York pavement. She shuddered and then opened her eyes. Verlaque put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, just tired.” Marine then looked at Paulik and said, “You asked right away how Natassja Duvanov killed herself.”
Paulik looked surprised and said, “Yes. Is that morbid?”
“No, not at all,” Marine answered.
“It was the first thing I thought of as well,” Verlaque added.
Marine shook her head back and forth and pointed her index finger in the air, at nothing, but as if to signal a sudden understanding. “Pellegrino didn’t ask.”
“Maybe he already knew?” Paulik suggested.
“No no,” Marine answered, “he didn’t even know her name. He only recognized her when he saw the photograph.”
“There are people who have very limited imaginations or curiosity,” Verlaque said. He was thinking of Lady Emily and his mother.
“I guess so,” Marine said, not entirely convinced. And then she found herself thinking that a policeman, at any rate, is normally curious.
The elevator doors opened, and they walked down the hall to their respective rooms, opening their doors with the key cards almost at the same time, and said their good nights. Marine took a hot shower and wore the hotel bathrobe to bed.
She was just about to turn off the bedside light when she heard a knock on the door. She got out of bed and walked over to the heavy door and opened it slightly. It was Verlaque.
“May I come in?” he asked. He then added, grumbling, “It’s not to sleep with you.”
Marine stared at Verlaque and then looked down at her bare feet. “Come in,” she whispered, if only not to have this awkward moment occur in the hallway of the Carlton. She opened the door, allowing Verlaque to pass. He walked over and sat in one of the arm chairs, and then quickly got up and stood in front of the minibar.
“Would you like a whiskey?” Marine ventured.
Verlaque quickly opened the refrigerator door. “Don’t mind if I do,” he replied in English. Marine shrugged, not perfectly understanding the English but getting the gist. “Help yourself,” she muttered. Inside were the usual assortment of sodas and miniature bottles of alcohol and wine. Verlaque selected a Johnnie Walker, looked at the red label and winced, and unscrewed the cap, pouring the entire contents into a glass. He looked at Marine and said, “I’m so sorry. Would you like some?”
“No, thanks. You taught me well,” she replied. “Even I know that stuff is crap. What’s up? Would you like to tell me something about the case? Or should we talk about it in the morning?”
Verlaque drank half of it in one exaggerated gulp, pretending to have enjoyed the industrial liquor. He took a step toward Marine and ran his fingers through her hair. “I couldn’t resist you in elevator,” he whispered.
“What are you doing, Antoine?”
He drank the rest of the whiskey and sat down on the bed. “I wanted to talk to you that night on my terrace, but you left.” Marine tried to speak, but Verlaque held up his hand, stopping her. “You left. But maybe you were right—it wasn’t the right moment that night. It was too bright. The birds were making too much noise. It was too beautiful out.”
He patted the bed beside him. Marine walked over but did not sit down. She stood, one hand on her hip, looking down at Verlaque. “And so now you expect me to drop everything, stop seeing Arthur—wipe that smirk off your face!—and run into your arms?”
“I know I should have called you when I was in Luxembourg and England or Paris.”
“That would have been nice,” Marine whispered. “But you were busy with Lady Emily.”
Verlaque ignored the reference. “I seem to be good at only one thing—my job. My relations with my family are horrible. I messed up what we had. I find too much solace in being by myself with a cigar in one hand and a whiskey in the other.”
“Don’t say that. You had a wonderful relationship with Emmeline, for one thing.”
“Ah yes, my savior.”
Marine paused. Emmeline always came before everyone else. Couldn’t Marine have been Verlaque’s savior too? “What did she save you from, Antoine?”
Verlaque slightly winced, as though now that he had been given the permission to speak, it disgusted him. His telephone rang and swearing he took it out of his pocket and looked at the caller’s name. “Merde! It’s Roussel! Listen, Marine, I’m going to have to take this call and calm him down. He’s probably furious that I still haven’t closed Étienne de Bremont’s case.”
Marine nodded and walked Verlaque to the door, and he answered the phone on the way to his room. She closed the door, sighing and leaning her body against the cold wood. Whatever it was that Verlaque had wanted to say, he had needed a tumbler full of mediocre whiskey just to do it, and then had been easily dissuaded from doing so by a call from someone he couldn’t stand. Perhaps a simple, kind—if dull—man like Arthur was better. She was getting too old for this.
“Putain! What in Christ’s name is going on in Cannes?” Roussel yelled into the phone.
“We’re investigating a murder,” Verlaque replied, perplexed.
“Why are you there with your girlfriend? Oh, sorry . . . Your ex.”
Verlaque took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. “Who told you that Marine is here?”
“Eric Pellegrino, who else? He just called to complain that he was questioned twice! Once by you and once by a teacher!”
“Professor,” Verlaque corrected.
“Whatever! Pellegrino is an officer of the law, and Mlle Bonnet isn’t! She has no right to be there, and she certainly shouldn’t be hanging around the police station, talking to the officers! All I need is for the commissaire in Cannes to complain too! Can you imagine the shit we’d be in?”
Verlaque closed his eyes, knowing that Roussel was right.
“Do you have any developments on Étienne’s case? The Bleys have been calling me, and I’m still on vacation!”
Verlaque cringed when Roussel referred to the deceased by his Christian name. That Roussel had known the father probably meant nothing more that they had sat beside each other once at an official dinner or meeting.
“Only the fact that his brother has just been murdered, also in Saint-Antonin,” Verlaque calmly replied.
“The two deaths are not related! One brother was a good, Catholic citizen of Aix. The other, a highflier playboy on the Riviera!”
“Yes, a highflier with Russian Mafia connections!” Verlaque said, his voice, too, now rising. He told Roussel of the close physical resemblance between the two brothers and his feeling that Étienne might have been mistaken for François that night in the attic.
“Listen, Judge. You’re acting on a hunch, if you don’t mind me saying so. How many hit men do you know who just push a guy out of a window? That’s a pretty clumsy way of killing someone. He could have survived the fall!”
Verlaque said nothing, but his silence confirmed Roussel’s point. It was, he knew, not a professional killer’s method. It was more like an act of passion. He thought of those who seemed capable of such an act: Isabelle, who didn’t know about the second bank account and couldn’t be bothered to read her husband’s script; and the cold mistress, Isabelle’s own sister. Love and money were the prime reasons for homicide, and either woman could have, during a passionate argument, pushed the young nobleman.
“You’ll be back tomorrow?” Roussel asked.
“Yes.” Verlaque didn’t tell Roussel that Pellegrino could have easily not sho
wn up at the computer-training session. As if reading his mind, Roussel said, “And stay away from Officer Pellegrino!”
Verlaque hung up and turned off his phone. He undressed and took a long hot shower and thought of his past loves: those he chose not to think about, and others whose faces always brought him a smile, like Agnès, his first big love at university. He and Agnès had shared a tiny Parisian garret-apartment and had split up after two years on good terms, both acknowledging the fact that they were too young for the relationship to go any further. There had been dozens of girlfriends after Agnès, but none had got under his skin the way Marine had. He thought of going back to her room but knew that it was a bad idea. Besides, Marine was probably fast asleep. He used to watch her as she fell asleep, and as he got into bed he thought of those glorious afternoon naps in Paradiso, the white linen curtains blowing in the breeze and the sound of Italian children, playing on the beach, floating into their bedroom.
That night Marine dreamed of long, tanned bodies floating past gray skyscrapers. Verlaque dreamed of Emmeline in Normandy, only it wasn’t her house in the dream but Pogorovski’s. And somewhere down the hall Commissioner Paulik fell asleep with the celebrated aria from La Wally in his head, and he saw in his dream the opera’s heroine, who flings herself into an oncoming avalanche in the Austrian Alps, desperate in love.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tribeca Models was located on a backstreet in old Nice, but the building stood out from its medieval neighbors thanks to a polished white marble facade, automatic smoked-glass doors, and brass light fixtures—universal 1980s design. Inside, large, framed photographs showcased the agency’s wares—models, mostly women—clothed or partially clothed. Bruno Paulik slowly made his way around the foyer, looking at each photograph and tilting his head as if he were in an art gallery. Marine didn’t know if he was mocking the photographs or not; in either case, she had to turn away to hide her grin. Verlaque was speaking to the receptionist, who could have been a model herself, and then walked over to Marine and slipped his arm through hers, giving it a gentle but firm squeeze. The stainless steel elevator doors opened, and Verlaque immediately withdrew his arm, as if by instinct. A white-haired woman stepped out of the elevator and introduced herself to the trio as Maria Pogorovski. She was a handsome, tall, and big-boned woman, a good ten to fifteen years older than her husband. She was bedecked in chunky and expensive-looking jewelry and was wearing a bright pink tailored pantsuit. The color of her lipstick and nail polish perfectly matched her attire, something Marine always associated with women of a certain age on the Côte d’Azur.
Mme Pogorovski led them into the elevator, and they rode it four flights up to the top floor. Evidently she had thought their visit merited a formal greeting in the lobby, and if she was surprised to see a law professor in company with a judge and a policeman, she didn’t let on. The elevator doors opened directly into her office, a large room with floor-to-ceiling plateglass windows that looked over the roofs of Nice and, to the south, the sea. Seeing the expression on Marine’s face, she warmly said, “Nice may not be the center of fashion, but as you can see, I must have a sea view where I live and work.” She made a sweeping circular motion with her hand that included the large windows and then the whole room, as if inviting the Aixois to take in the beauty, and luxury, of the office. Her French was very good, but a strong Russian accent gave her words a heavier sound than her husband’s more fluent, more songlike voice.
The furniture and artwork was surprisingly contemporary given the Russian woman’s conservative clothing. The four sat down at a round table designed by Eero Saarinen in the 1950s; Verlaque had recognized the white pedestal base and marble top immediately. “My husband told me that you are here investigating the death of François de Bremont,” Mme Pogorovski said, looking mostly at Verlaque, having assumed that he was in charge of the investigation.
“That’s right,” he replied. “François de Bremont worked for your agency, non?”
“Worked,” Mme Pogorovski repeated, sounding out the word “worked” with a long drawl. “If you can call it work. Nice work if you can get it—isn’t that the song? Yes, he arranged apartments for our girls and showed them around Nice, helped them with paperwork, that sort of thing.”
“Didn’t he work well?” Verlaque asked, hearing the sarcasm in the Russian’s voice.
“He was difficult to tie down,” she went on. “When you needed him, he was never around. The girls loved him, though. He was good to them, and, don’t get me wrong, we at Tribeca were all very sorry to hear of his death.”
Marine looked at Mme Pogorovski and asked, “What exactly was M. de Bremont’s relationship with Natassja Dubanov?”
Mme Pogorovski’s tanned face lost its elegant composure for a second, and then tightened again. “Why do you want to know about Natassja?” she asked suspiciously.
“I know that she committed suicide, and that she and François were friends,” Marine replied. Feeling the Russian’s stare pierce her skin, Marine then added, “A suicide and a murder—they are both violent deaths, even if one is chosen, and the other not. We’d just like to know if there is a connection between the two.”
“How could there be?” Mme Pogorovski answered, her voice strained but softer. “Natassja committed suicide, as you know, in New York. Yes, I think they were friends, but we are all friends here, at Tribeca.” Again, she made a sweeping motion with her arm to include the whole room.
“Do you know why Natassja killed herself?”
Mme Pogorovski looked down at her hands, and then looked up at Marine, with, Marine thought, a true sadness in her eyes. “No, I don’t. I know that Natassja was homesick for Russia—Kazakhstan in her case—she had called me the day before she died, crying. But I thought it was a temporary homesickness, that’s all. All of the girls get it, after the glamour of modeling wears off and the hard work becomes a reality.” She looked down at her hands again and, twirling the diamond bracelet on her wrist around and around, added, “I still cannot forgive myself.” The Russian’s dark eyes were watery.
“Was Natassja particularly close to any of the other models?” Verlaque cut in, wanting to give Mme Pogorovski some relief from her guilt, a guilt that to him seemed entirely real.
“No, she didn’t have any particular friends that I knew of, at least here in France,” Mme Pogorovski answered quickly.
Marine opened her mouth to protest, but Verlaque had already got to his feet and, outstretching his hand, said, “Thank you, Madame, for your time. We’ll let ourselves out.”
Once in the elevator, Marine demanded, “How could a twenty-year-old girl not have a best friend?”
“Do you think that’s weird?” Verlaque asked, reminding Marine that Verlaque, at twenty, probably hadn’t had a best friend, either. Not waiting for an answer, Verlaque turned to Paulik and asked the commissioner if he had had a best friend at that age.
“Sure,” Paulik replied. “Ma moto.”
Marine and Verlaque looked at each other and laughed. Paulik then added, “Just kidding. I loved my motorcycle, but I also did have a great buddy named Lili.”
“Lili?” Verlaque asked. “What an old Provençal name. Where is this guy now?”
“Runs a bistro in Paris. I haven’t been there in years, but the last time we ate there the food was delicious and the place was packed.” Paulik gave Verlaque the bistro’s name and address, which Verlaque immediately entered into his BlackBerry.
The elevator doors opened and Marine walked on ahead, stopping at the receptionist’s desk. Marine leaned over and the two women spoke, in hushed tones, for a few minutes. The young receptionist then passed Marine a small piece of paper. Once outside, Marine showed Paulik and Verlaque what was written on the paper: a telephone number. Verlaque looked at it and asked, “The best friend?”
“Yes,” Marine said. “She’s a model here in Nice, with Tribeca.”<
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“Well done.”
“So Mme Pogorovski obviously didn’t want to give us another model’s name,” Paulik said.
Verlaque nodded and said, “Apparently. But I do think she seemed sincerely upset at the girl’s death.”
“I agree,” said Marine. “Maybe she is. But maybe at the same time she doesn’t want us to know more about the reasons why Natassja killed herself. Perhaps she feels that she might be at fault somehow.”
The three walked on in silence until they got back to the car. Verlaque looked at Marine as he was unlocking the car doors and asked, “Can you give the best friend a call and try to visit her, while Bruno and I go to the casino in Cannes?”
“Sure,” Marine said, and once they were in the car she dialed the model’s phone number. The girl was very reluctant to see Marine, and only once Marine promised to show her identification did she agree to meet. Verlaque dropped Marine off on the promenade des Anglais, and they arranged to meet in two hours at the same spot.
Marine walked along the boardwalk, looking out at the sea and at some brave bathers—mostly elderly—and thought about what she wanted to ask the best friend, whose name was Tatiana. They had agreed to meet, at Tatiana’s suggestion, on a bench directly across from the Hôtel Negresco. When Marine saw the hotel, she looked across the street to the benches that line the promenade. She saw, sitting on one of the benches, a girl dressed in loose-fitting sweatpants, listening to her iPod. Marine sat down beside the girl, and after a few seconds the girl slid her earphones off and demanded, “Are you the professor?”
Marine nodded. “Yes. My name is Marine Bonnet,” she said, turning and shaking the girl’s hand. “I teach law at the university in Aix-en-Provence. Here’s my card.” The girl took the card and looked at it, and handed it back to Marine, saying nothing.
“I’m actually in Nice on police business,” Marine continued. “We are investigating the murder of François de Bremont. I grew up with François and his brother Étienne. Did you know François well?”