Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery)

by Alexander Campion

  They didn’t arrive back at the mas until six. David was waiting for them with his brow slightly furrowed.

  “Bad news?” Capucine asked.

  “Not at all. Isabelle e-mailed back. She came up with only slim pickings. I printed out two copies so we could go through it together. I’m assuming I’m working with you on this. Right?”

  “Of course it is. Let’s see what Isabelle came up with.”

  The printouts were barely a page long.

  from: femmelib17@wanado.fr

  to: dmartineau348@hypermail.com

  subject: Stuff for the Commissaire

  Hey, numnuts!

  Still enjoying your endless vacation while us poor working

  stiffs sweat it out in the city heat?

  Pass this on to the Commissaire.

  Bisou,

  Isa

  1 attachments: Commissaire_Le_Tellier_Informtion.doc

  Capucine’s mood brightened. This was like the old days, when she’d put her feet up on her desk during a meeting and Isabelle would admire her legs and David her shoes. Capucine put her feet up on the chair next to her.

  “Oh, my God, Capucine! Where did you get those horrid sandals?”

  “In Bandol. You don’t like them?”

  “Loathe would be the appropriate word. Those ribbons going up your leg destroy the line of your calf. No more shoe shopping in Bandol without me. If you know where to go, there are actually one or two little shops that have some very cute things.”

  David snapped his page and read. So did Capucine.

  NOTE ON NATHALIE MARTIN

  Commissaire, there’s not much in our database on Martin. I made a couple of phone calls before I ran out of time, since you wanted stuff back today. We need to talk about next steps.

  Martin is one of these people who manage to live under the radar. There was a brother—Martin, Emile—who emigrated to Australia and left no trace. I’m guessing he must have died about three years ago, but the Australians can’t produce a death certificate. Other than him, there’s no record of any kin.

  She did the usual schooling, all in Paris. She stayed at a lycée in Paris until the age of sixteen and never graduated. I got the class list, but no one really seems to remember her. After that there’s no trace. No residences listed, no tax returns, only a postal bank account with a handful of euros in it. She always listed the boat she was working on as her residence. There’s one fourteen-month absence from the territoire, but the records don’t show where she went. That probably was an around-the-world cruise of some sort.

  She’s your classic boat bum. The boating ports are full of them. The fact that she’s not leaving a paper trail doesn’t mean there isn’t a slime trail a mile wide. It’s even possible she’s had a handful of runs-in with the local flics, but they probably wouldn’t even show up in the local databases.

  For my euro, you need to get someone down to the main pleasure ports and dig around for her story. Once we get the names of the people she worked for, her pals and stuff, then stuff will start popping up. This is a hands-on job, not a screen one. No doubt about that.

  Sorry there’s not more.

  Isa

  David dropped his printout on the table.

  “I’ll go check her out? Nothing could be easier. These boat girls are all pretty much the same. They love the life of the sea but lack the skills and the muscles to get work on big-time ocean racers. So they hook up with skippers of crewed charter boats and pretend they’re cooks, even though all they really do is clean out the heads. But it gets them rides and good times. They’re on boats, get fed, laid, and hang out with the boating set. What could be better when you’re a teenager?”

  “How do you know so much about this?”

  “I used to sail a lot. I even spent a few summers working at a yacht charter operation in Villefranche. I still have some pals in the charter business. I think I can get a good rundown on your victim. There aren’t many points of departure in southern France. Saint-Tropez, the Îles d’Hyères, Antibes, and Villefranche should do it. I’ll Photoshop a few snaps from La Rochelle’s blog and have those ports covered in two or three days.”

  “And you’d do it anonymously, without using your mayor’s card?”

  “Of course. Mind you, I used to be well known in those ports and still have a lot of pals down there, but the risk of anyone making the connection is slim.”

  Capucine’s brows wrinkled.

  “Look, Capucine. It’s not like I’m some amateur. I used to do this for a living, remember? It’s the middle of August. I’m entitled to some vacation. What’s more natural than a guy like me sipping pastis with my old pals on the Riviera?”

  CHAPTER 21

  The next morning Capucine found David in the kitchen, squabbling in Provençal with Magali. Despite the fact that Capucine could pick up only a word here and there, it was clear the tiff revolved around David’s attire. David’s fashion-plate outfit had been replaced by a greasy, moth-holed T-shirt sporting the faded logo of an ancient boat race, high-tech shorts with an unwarrantable number of zippers, and—the pièce de résistance—a pair of decrepit boat shoes as flecked with dots of paint as a Jackson Pollock painting, with one sole separated enough from the upper to provide an unobscured view of David’s right big toe.

  “Going in for disguise, are we?”

  “Of course. That business of l’habit fait le moine—the habit making the monk—is pure dead on. No habit, no monk. That’s all there is to it. This is all stuff I’ve kept from my sailing days. It’s going to be just perfect.” He performed a little pirouette. “I’m off. I’ll keep in touch through your collection of cell phones. And I’m leaving you the Peugeot. I have a plain-vanilla rental car. Much more anonymous.”

  Capucine opened her mouth to speak. David bridged her lips with a finger reaching from the point of her chin to the tip of her nose. “Don’t worry. I’m just a happy-go-lucky guy looking for a ride on some boat in the Porquerolles race and hoping maybe to run into that hottie I met last summer. What was her name again? Oh, right, Nathalie. It really would be a shame to lose that one from sight.”

  When David left, Capucine was surprised to find herself mildly disoriented. She felt awkward going to La Cadière without him and decided instead on an expedition with Alexandre to the open market in Bandol.

  The market was laid out under the stare of the Cyclops’s eye of the town church, the stands protected from the sun by flaxen parasols casting a golden light over the produce. Alexandre was overjoyed.

  “I’m going to make you stuffed artichokes, the excellence of which you’ve never even dreamt. Now, what we need is a proper market basket. We can’t wander around like Parisians. They’ll try to palm off on us the rubbish they were about to throw out. Look at those baskets over there. One of them would be perfect for us back in Paris.”

  At the mention of Paris, Capucine felt an unpleasant chill ripple up her back. How long would it be before that happened?

  At the stand, Alexandre investigated the baskets with care. “There’s an optimal size to these things. Too small and they’re useless. Too big and they’re too heavy to carry.”

  As Alexandre rooted through the bags, Capucine amused herself by trying on floppy straw hats. Abruptly, she snatched one off the rack and clapped it on Alexandre’s head.

  “Hide your face. It’s the Le Galls, complete with all three of their impossible children.”

  Alexandre admired himself in the mirror the stall provided, chuckling. “Ah, the secret snobbism of my flic wife, whose only true aspiration is to burrow into the grit of the mean streets. Just because Bandol has a reputation as the poor man’s Saint-Tropez doesn’t mean we aren’t going to run into anyone we know here.”

  “You’re right. It was a stupid idea. Let’s go back.”

  “No. We can do better than that. I really want to buy some of those artichokes and those unbelievable mackerel. The mackerel will be perfect as maquereaux grillés à la moutarde for dinner.
But before we go back, I’m going to take you to a little restaurant on a back street. A hangout for locals. Guaranteed to be completely free of Paris vacationers.”

  Lunch was as delicious as it was simple: sea bass on a bed of layered fennel, wild thyme, preserved lemons, carrots, zucchini, yellow onions, cooked in pastis. As promised, there were no tourists. In fact, there was even a healthy smattering of Provençal in the buzz of conversation.

  Lunch over, Capucine didn’t dare go back to the town and scurried straight to the Peugeot, the brim of her new hat pulled well down over her face.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the hills behind the mas. Capucine was dismayed. In her mind’s eye she had had a clear swath of safe country all the way from the mas through La Cadière down to Bandol, an hour away by car. Now Bandol and her access to the sea had been cut off. Her espace vital had been reduced drastically to the mas, the village, and the corridor in between. Capucine was well aware her paranoia was blossoming but was unable to keep it in check.

  The next morning, when Capucine took her second bowl of coffee into her “office,” the cardboard box of phones buzzed and rattled, as if filled with insects. One of the phones was ringing.

  “Good morning,” Inès said. “There’s news.”

  Capucine sat heavily.

  “The evidence from Italy has arrived. It seems it took so long because they really did send it through their post office, if you can believe that. The Police Judiciaire have put the case in the hands of a Commissaire Garbe from La Crim’. Do you know this Garbe?”

  “I’ve met him a few times. Never worked with him. Lean, tall man, late fifties, cheerful as an undertaker.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “So you’ve seen him.”

  “Yes, he came to my office to ‘consult’ with me, but, in fact, it was nothing more than a standard interview. The useful part was that he went over the basic facts the Italians have.

  “There are three main pieces of evidence. The shell casing, my jacket, and your gun. On top of that, there are all their notes and photographs of the boat. The evidence went straight to forensics, even before Garbe was appointed. They confirmed that that hole in the jacket was, in fact, from a nine-millimeter bullet and that there were traces of gunpowder on the entry hole, but no blood. They determined from the firing-pin marks that it was your gun that had fired the shell.”

  “Nothing new there,” Capucine said.

  “No. Garbe was put out that Jacques and I were the only two passengers on the boat he was able to contact. From his comments Jacques must have given him a very hard time, indeed.”

  Capucine smiled, imagining Jacques being interviewed by a police officer.

  “The key point for Garbe was that you did not return immediately to Paris and report the incident to Police Judiciaire headquarters, particularly since, to use his words, you are far more than ‘a simple observer’ in the case. He also found it curious that your cell phone is apparently switched off.

  “I played the naïve and said that you and Alexandre had decided to continue your vacation and that you probably thought there was no point in reporting an incident that would remain hearsay until the evidence arrived in Paris. I also said I had a notion that you had gone to Corsica and might be in the hills, where there was no cell phone coverage, so it probably wasn’t that your phone was off, just that there was no signal.”

  “It sounds plausible enough when you say it.”

  “Not to Garbe. He made a report to PJ headquarters, and they involved the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale—the police of the police—who have assigned a lieutenant to liaise directly with Garbe. The idea is that there is to be an investigation of your conduct regardless of the outcome of the case.”

  Capucine frowned. “How did you find that out?”

  “The juge d’instruction assigned to the case, an old friend, Joseph Léonville, invited me to lunch. It was awkward, to say the least.”

  Capucine said nothing.

  “Capucine, this is not going the right way at all. These two bovines are perfectly capable of destroying my case against Tottinguer once they figure out the link. I can’t allow that to happen. I need to get going right away.”

  There was a long, awkward pause.

  “Look, Capucine, you understand the urgency. Do you know anyone in the fiscal brigade who could take over? Just for the time being, naturally, until you are back in circulation. No one has anything even close to your talent.”

  CHAPTER 22

  That night, Inès left her office punctually at seven thirty, as she always did. She had finally caught up with the pile of work that had accumulated while she was away, and was looking forward to getting home to her little apartment, having a cup of green tea from Mariage Frères, her sole extravagance, and spending time mapping out a plan to get the Tottinguer case moving with Capucine in hiding. She told herself for the thousandth time that going on that boat trip had been lunacy.

  Before the trip everything had been perfect. She had had just enough evidence to open a criminal instruction on Tottinguer. She had lined up the ideal Police Judiciaire detective to handle the investigation. Not only was she almost without peer at criminal investigation, but she also had considerable financial expertise. And it had all come unglued because of a brass shell case.

  Ruminating over the wisdom of replacing Capucine with another detective, she walked slowly down the cement staircase of the underground parking lot where she kept her little Citroën during the day. Deep in thought, she sauntered the narrow tunnel, only wide enough for a single row of cars on either side. The place always made her think of an endless mine shaft.

  By the time she reached her car, she had almost, but not quite, concluded that replacing Capucine with another officer was the right thing to do. Even if Nathalie’s murderer were found, it was possible the IGPN investigation of Capucine would result in her dismissal from the force or reassignment to an administrative function. In any case, she really couldn’t wait any longer, now could she? The tricky part was going to be finding another officer even half as good as Capucine.

  There it was, her little Citroën. It was so old, it was getting unreliable. She really should replace it. But buying a car was such a hassle.

  She squeezed into the tight space between her car and the one next to it. As she leaned forward to slide the key into the lock, she was struck by a violent blow in the middle of her back. She found herself on her hands and knees, her head spinning, with no memory of falling. She shook her head to clear it. She was dealt an even more violent kick to her buttocks, slamming her face down on the cement floor. The world began to ease away from her. She felt squeezed into a closet-size room with walls of grainy cement flecked with red. Her nose was plugged shut, and she couldn’t suck enough air through her mouth to fill her lungs. She heaved and gasped, the loudness of the tortured sound scaring her.

  Strong hands jerked her up onto her knees. While she was still being held from behind, a man loomed up in front. Her head sagged. The one behind her reached deep into her hair, scratching her scalp, and snapped her head up.

  The one in front was just a slip of a boy in his teens, at the edge of emaciation. Jeans designed skintight dangled around his skinny legs; a long, thick chain hung from belt loop to pocket; his eyebrows were decorated with an almost comical number of piercings; a large ebony disk distended one earlobe.

  The boy slapped her. She saw his arm move and she heard the report, but she felt nothing. It was as if she was observing the scene from inside her little room.

  “Bitch. I’m going to teach you to keep your place and not stick your ugly face where it doesn’t belong.”

  She heard another report and felt a jolt like an electric shot. The pain shocked her. Her lungs froze. She was drowning. Her body willed her to convulse forward, but her hair was still held tight. After an eternity the pain subsided enough for her to take shallow puppy breaths, which brought no relief and instead intensif
ied her agonized want of air.

  Through a dun mist she saw the boy’s hand unzip his jeans and extract a member so long and skinny, it could have belonged to some barn rodent. She wanted to look up at his face, but her eyeballs refused to obey.

  “Open up, bitch!”

  The command made no sense to her.

  Another violent slap. The ebbing tide of her consciousness slipped away. The boys began punching her face rhythmically, as if performing a gym exercise. Again, she could see the fists arriving and could hear the blows resonating in her cranium, but could not feel them. She noticed his member had become flaccid and he needed to hold it up with the hand he was not using to slap her. Everything went chalkboard black-gray. She had no idea exactly at which point she lost consciousness. Later, she was aware of rising up on her knees, her forehead still resting on the ground. She was alone. She could breathe through her mouth. Not well, filling her lungs. She remained immobile on her knees for an eternity.

  The world sharpened into focus. The pain had become a whole separate, not entirely unwelcome, presence. She was elated. She had a profound sense of achievement.

  Her handbag, implausibly, was right next to her. She extracted her BlackBerry and touched the speed dial for her secretary.

  “Oui, madame.”

  “Marie, listen to me very carefully. I need you to call both Le Figaro and TF1 and tell them that I’ve been assaulted in the parking garage next to the office. Tell them they both will get an exclusive to the TV and print story, which is breaking right now. When you’ve done that, wait for exactly half an hour—you’re going to need to give them time to get here—and then call emergency and have the SAMU come and pick me up. I want the SAMU fully covered on TV. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, Madame. You want a close-up of you being loaded into the ambulance.”

  “You’ve got it! You’re a treasure.”