Banks’s perspective shifted slightly, as if he were viewing the place from a different angle. “How’s retirement?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I know yet. It hasn’t been that long, and I’ve been consulting with my squad on high-profile cases ever since.”
“So you’re still working?”
“Basically, yes. But part-time. Less stress.” He tapped his forehead. “Let the young men do all the running round and my little grey cells do all my work.”
The shadows were creeping across the pavement in front of the Grand Comptoir restaurant over the street, almost reaching the outside tables. Its pale cream facade was still lit in the late afternoon glow. The number of pedestrians passing by started to increase as the Metro disgorged more and more people on their way home from work.
The empty tables soon filled, and the buzz of conversation got louder. Banks and Jean-Claude chatted about old times, opera, football, books, Brexit, and the future. Eventually, after the second glass of Chablis, Jean-Claude asked Banks, “You wanted to talk about something? You were very cryptic on the telephone. Is it something I can help with?”
“Perhaps,” said Banks.
“Then I suggest we finish our drinks and discuss it over dinner. I know just the place.”
CHARLOTTE PAUSED so long that Annie thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she cast her eyes down and muttered so softly that Annie had to lean forward to hear her. “Connor,” she said. “Connor raped her.”
Annie slapped the table. “Then why the hell didn’t you tell us that from the start? Do you realise how much trouble you’ve caused; the resources you’ve wasted?”
“That’s not my fault,” Charlotte argued back, her eyes brimming with tears again. “I didn’t tell you because Marnie didn’t want anyone to know and Connor’s dead, so what the hell does it matter? You couldn’t put him in jail. How the hell was I to know there was a video and that you’d end up investigating the rape? I knew it would end like this, with you lot trying to find something to charge me with, lock me up, and throw away the key. That you’d ruin the life I’ve worked so hard to build. That’s why I didn’t tell you the truth to begin with.”
“Oh, spare me,” said Annie. “You’re telling us you lied because you were surprised by the video? That you didn’t expect to have to answer any questions? Is that why you also lied about not recognising Marnie from the first picture we showed you, leading us to waste hours of valuable time finding out who she was?”
“Yes.” Charlotte sniffed. “And now Marnie’s dead, too. They’re both dead. It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? None of it matters any more.”
“Perhaps if you had insisted that Marnie get the kind of help she needed, she would still be alive.”
Charlotte gave her a look of pure hatred. “How can you?” she said. “How dare you say that to me? You’re a terrible person, a cruel person.” She started to cry again, and the lawyer passed her a tissue.
“Ease up a little, DI Cabbot,” said Jessica Bowen. “You’ve just informed Mrs. Westlake about the death of her biological daughter. She has reason to be upset.”
“You think I’m being too hard?” Annie said. “Sorry. It’s a sign of the extreme frustration this case has caused me.”
“We’re all frustrated,” said Jessica Bowen, “but let us please try to remain civilised.”
Annie glanced at Gerry, who also seemed dumbstruck by her last comment. Had she really overstepped the mark? Was she cruel? The only thing to do now was to press on to the logical conclusion.
“What was your relationship with Connor Blaydon?” she asked.
Charlotte blew her nose and looked up with reddened eyes. “What do you mean, relationship? He was my boss.”
“Other than that?”
“Are you suggesting there was more to it than that?”
Annie turned over a sheet of paper. “When Marnie’s best friend, Mitsuko Ogawa, told us about her job, she said that you were working for an old friend. We thought it seemed like an odd thing to say at the time, as you’d told us you met Blaydon at a gala event a few years before. You never mentioned a friendship. But you also indicated that you had known one another on and off for some time. Only you were very vague about it.”
“Why should I mention a friendship? There wasn’t one. We had a working relationship. I don’t know what this Ogawa woman was talking about, but it was likely just a figure of speech.”
“How long had you known Blaydon, then?” Annie asked. “Whether you were friends or not.”
“Like I said, a few years, on and off.”
“How many? Twenty?”
Charlotte turned away. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Annie referred to the notes Gerry had made again. “Isn’t it true that you had known Connor Clive Blaydon since you were twenty-one, in 1999? You were a rebellious young tearaway gadding around the Greek islands with some wealthy friends you’d met at St. Hilda’s, cadging lifts and sleeping berths on yachts. Didn’t you once cadge a lift on a luxury yacht called the Nerea, out of Corfu? And wasn’t this owned by one Connor Clive Blaydon?”
Charlotte seemed to freeze. Jessica Bowen glanced from her client to Annie and back. “DI Cabbot,” she said. “Exactly where are you going with this?”
“Patience,” said Annie. “Have patience, and all will be revealed.”
“I’m tired,” said Charlotte. “And you’ve upset me.” She implored Jessica Bowen. “Please, make them stop. It’s my right. I’m entitled to a break. I want to go home.”
“Legally, we are entitled to detain you for twenty-four hours without charge,” said Annie. “But you’re right. You do have a right to breaks, meals, and so on. Now, we have a destination in mind, and one way or another we’re going to get there. If you’re tired and need a break, we have a very comfortable cell in the basement. You’ll be fed, made comfortable, and we can start again bright and early tomorrow morning.”
“This is a nightmare. I want to go home.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have to stay in custody until we’re satisfied with your answers to our questions,” she said. “It’s the law.”
Charlotte glanced at Jessica Bowen again.
“You’ll be all right,” the solicitor said. “I’ll be nearby. You’ll be well treated. I promise you.”
But Charlotte didn’t look happy in the slightest, least of all when two female officers marched her out of the interview room and down to the custody suite.
“YOU KNOW Nelia Melnic?” Jean-Claude asked, clearly stunned by Banks’s revelation of what he wanted to talk about.
“Yes. She goes by the name of Zelda now. She’s a friend. Why, do you?”
“No. No. I’ve never met her. I just know the name. I’m surprised, that’s all. I hear she’s very beautiful.”
“Yes.” They were having dinner at a restaurant Jean-Claude knew, lost in the maze of backstreets of the 9th Arrondissement. The specialty was seafood, and both were enjoying the house platter along with a bottle of fine white Burgundy, chosen by Jean-Claude. They had been fortunate to get there early enough for a table out front.
“Why are you so surprised?” Banks asked.
Jean-Claude paused, a shrimp midway between his plate and his mouth. “Because she is famous here, Alain. Perhaps not with the general population, though many will certainly have heard of her, but with the police for certain. She was a legend in the squad room. Did she not tell you?”
“I know something happened here,” Banks said. “Something serious involving a pimp called Darius. But that’s about all I do know.”
Jean-Claude gave him a serious look. “Most of the story is classified, you understand. I could not possibly tell you all the names and positions of those involved. There was a scandal. Well, a narrowly averted scandal. Very few people know the details.”
“But you’re one of them?”
Jean-Claude inclined
his head slightly. “I had some small involvement. To be perfectly honest, though, even I don’t know the names of the major players. They were important people, that is all I know. Government people.”
Banks tussled with an extremely recalcitrant langoustine. “She has a French passport.”
“Mm. You see, I didn’t know that. Why are you interested?”
Banks told him about Zelda and Ray and the trouble with the Tadićs, Keane, and Hawkins, leaving out the murders and abductions.
Jean-Claude swallowed a mouthful of wine and said, “So that’s what became of her. Perhaps she is the sort of woman trouble follows around?”
“Perhaps,” said Banks. “The Tadićs are from way back in her past. They abducted her outside her orphanage as she was leaving. But this Darius business is more recent.”
“It was just over three years ago,” said Jean-Claude. “The month of March. I remember it well.”
“Did you work the case?”
“There was no case. And I told you, even I don’t know the full details.”
“But you said you had some involvement. What happened?”
“Darius was a pimp. Or perhaps that does him an injustice. His girls were all beautiful, high-class, très chic, and très expensive. With a Darius girl, it was strictly dinner at Maxim’s, then back to a suite at the George V, if you know what I mean.”
“No matter what the price,” said Banks, “the business is the same. I’d say he was a pimp.”
“You would get no real argument from me. We knew of him, of course. He was born in Algeria and came to Paris in his late twenties. A crook from the start. He very quickly made his way up the ladder through a mixture of brutality and business acumen. His rivals seemed to have a habit of disappearing, and he was not averse to hurting the girls when he thought it necessary to keep them in line.”
“A nasty piece of work then?”
“Very nasty.” Jean-Claude paused to finish the remains of his meal, ending with the last oyster, which he washed down with the Burgundy, then went on. “What nobody knew for quite some time was that he had a little blackmail business on the side. You know, the usual: photos, sometimes film, famous or highly placed victims.”
It sounded very much like what Neville Roberts had been doing back on Banks’s home patch. “But I thought you French were more permissive than us lot about that sort of thing,” he said. “Don’t most Frenchmen have a mistress? Visit prostitutes? I seem to have read only recently about a Frenchman who died while having adulterous sex on a job-related trip, and it was classified as a ‘workplace accident.’ ”
Jean-Claude laughed. “So the Frenchman’s workplace is his mistress’s boudoir? Oh, Alain. What have you been reading? Or perhaps it is the films of Vadim, Rohmer, or Truffaut that influence you? Yes, we are to a certain extent more liberal than you English as regards domestic arrangements and matters of the boudoir, but remember this was quite recent, and believe it or not, even France has been stricken by a plague of uber-morality in public life since the old days. #BalanceTonPorc—what you call #MeToo—has made its presence known here. Just look at the trouble with Roman Polanski, for example. That would never have happened a few years ago. The tide is turning. But if only that were all.”
“There’s more?”
“Isn’t there always? Dessert?”
Banks patted his stomach. “I think I’ve just about got room.”
Jean-Claude caught the waiter’s attention and ordered apple tarte tatins and Calvados for both of them. A couple of elegantly dressed French women took the next table. One of them, mid-forties, perhaps, with short, tousled brown hair, a pale oval face and full lips, wearing a cream blazer over a pale blue blouse, was particularly attractive. After they had adjusted their chairs and disposed of their handbags, she turned slightly and gave Banks a quick smile. Then they began speaking in French so fast that Banks couldn’t follow at all.
“You were saying there’s more?” he prompted Jean-Claude.
“Yes. Darius’s clientele, customers, whatever you called them, were very mixed. They included men highly placed in government, ministers, prominent businessmen, even gangsters, Russian oligarchs . . . People in possession of closely guarded secrets. Men who, under the right circumstances, might find themselves talking out of turn.”
“I think I know where you’re going,” said Banks.
“You are thinking of your Profumo affair, no doubt?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what President de Gaulle said about that?”
“No.”
“He said that’s what happens when the English try to behave like the French.”
Banks laughed. “But that was back in the Cold War,” he said. “Russian spies and all that.”
“Well, it is true that the objectives have changed now that the Cold War is over, but the game remains the same. Darius had some highly placed customers, and some of his most beautiful girls were Russian. Trafficked girls, we suspect. Pillow talk is what it is, and money is always a good incentive for loose tongues. Only this time the matter exchanged involved business dealings, stocks and shares and takeovers, rather than weapons and military or political strategy.”
“And Zelda’s part?”
“Your Zelda was one of Darius’s favourites. Apparently, she was also very smart and she knew what was going on. And she spoke fluent Russian. Like your Pretty Woman film, one client came into her life and fell in love with her, what you would call a cabinet minister, with special responsibilities involving criminal intelligence and the police in general. My boss. Like your Home Secretary. He wanted her to change, wanted them to go away together. He was going to leave his wife and children for her.”
“Emile?” said Banks, remembering Zelda’s journal.
“Yes. You know this? You know the full story?”
Banks glanced at the woman at the next table. She was in animated conversation with her friend and was paying not the slightest attention to him and Jean-Claude. “No,” he said. “Just a few fragments. Please go on. I promise not to interrupt again.”
“When this . . . Emile . . . had an idea of what was going on, he devised a scheme. If Nelia could somehow get to Darius’s cache of blackmail material—especially the audio tapes—and either destroy it or hand it over to him, she would become a heroine of the French people. In secret, of course, as all the best heroes and heroines are.”
“And here’s me thinking they were posthumous.”
“Cynic. Well, not in this case.”
“So how did it go wrong?”
“It didn’t. Not until the end.” He glanced around to make sure nobody was paying attention. They weren’t. “None of this was for public consumption, but according to Nelia’s statement in camera, Darius came in while she was removing the documents from his safe. He saw what she was doing and attacked her, tried to kill her. In the struggle, she managed to grab a knife from the table and stabbed him several times. Then, when he was weakened and incapacitated, she slit his throat, just to make sure he was dead.”
“And was he?”
“Oh, yes. According to someone I know who was at the scene shortly after it happened, there was blood all over the place. The girl was calm as anything, like a zombie. In shock, no doubt.”
“So what happened?”
“She disappeared. The rumour was that she had, of course, been pardoned for what happened to Darius and spirited away. Many, many people who would never admit it publicly were secretly more than glad that he was dead and his cache of blackmail material destroyed. Beyond, that, I don’t know, except she was never mentioned again. You know more than I do about the aftermath and her later adventures. Emile must have got the French passport for her—he was certainly highly placed enough to do her that favour—and she cleared off, never to darken our shores again. It was to everyone’s advantage that the whole affair was hushed up and forgotten. Much went on behind closed doors, you understand. A scandal was narrowly avoided. The documents and t
apes were destroyed, of course, a few low-profile arrests were made, and the girl had her freedom . . . There was only one extremely tragic consequence.”
“Emile?”
“Yes. Three months later he was killed in a road accident on his way back from a meeting in Strasbourg.”
“Accident?”
Jean-Claude gave a very Gallic shrug. “So they said. And there was no evidence to the contrary. No witnesses, no forensic indications that he had done anything except fall asleep at the wheel and veer off the road into a convenient tree.”
“Drugs?”
“Toxicology showed nothing in his system except a small amount of alcohol. Not even enough to get him charged with driving under the influence.”
“Darius’s partners, no doubt?”
“Yes. Enforcers. But as far as we know they are all working for someone else now, peddling drugs in Marseilles. We keep an eye on them, of course, make sure they don’t end up back here, but without their leader, there’s not a lot of enthusiasm left in them for Paris.”
“They’re not after Zelda?”
“Darius’s women all drifted away after his death, some to other pimps, no doubt, and others to an escape from the life, and this Nelia was just one of them. It’s unlikely they would still be chasing her after all this time. Loyalty among crooks only goes so far and lasts so long.”
“And Zelda hasn’t been seen or heard of here since?”
“No,” said Jean-Claude. “I will ask around, if you like. Get back to you tomorrow. But I still think the answer will be no.”
“You would know if she had been seen over the past few days?”
“Believe me, if she was here, I will know by tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Jean-Claude.” That didn’t mean she hadn’t been back in secret, but from what he had heard, Banks now doubted that she would have chosen Paris as the first stop on her escape route. He would have to search further afield, if he was to search at all. He had hoped he might see her here, get a chance to talk and clear some things up, but perhaps it was best to simply let her be, let her live the rest of her life the way she wanted. God knows, she deserved it.
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