“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” Kriven said.
“Here they come…” Maurin whispered as they all watched.
There was no time to lose. Nico came in first, with the woman on his heels. When Laurent Mercier saw her, the blood drained from his face.
“Lara.” His voice trembled.
“You remember Lara Krall, Jean-Baptiste’s fiancée?” Becker asked without waiting for a response. “Ma’am, do you recognize Laurent Mercier?”
“Yes, I recognize him.”
Despite everything she’d gone through, she was calm, as Nico had advised her to be.
“Just before his disappearance, Jean-Baptiste confessed that he had cheated on you. Is that correct?” Becker asked.
“I guessed it.”
“What clued you in?”
“A bite on his shoulder that he tried to hide.”
“What explanation did he give you?”
“That it was from a one-time fling.”
Nico could see that Mercer was getting angry.
“‘An artist sometimes feels the need to stretch himself creatively,’ he told me.” Her voice was full of scorn. “That meant being open to new experiences. He begged me to forgive him. He swore that he loved me and wanted to marry me.”
“And have children with you,” Nico said. “Is that right?”
Nico could see that Mercier was getting even angrier. Lara could give Jean-Baptiste children, and Mercier could never make Jean-Baptiste happy in that way.
“He didn’t want children,” Mercier said.
“Of course he did,” Lara Krall shot back.
The dialogue played out exactly as Nico had hoped.
“Never, you slut!” Mercier shouted. He rose from his chair, his two hands planted on the table. “Jean-Baptiste would never have knocked you up, not you, not anyone else! He was mine!”
The silence was oppressive. Tears rolled down Lara Krall’s cheeks while hate blazed in Mercier’s eyes.
“You were just a fleeting whim,” Nico said to Mercier. “He didn’t need you.”
“What do you know, you schmuck?” The pitch of his voice was rising. “We loved each other. I wanted us to go to New York. We could have lived there happily. But Jean-Baptiste was too afraid to come out. He thought it would ruin his reputation.”
“You fought.”
“He dared… He dared to call me crazy. Apparently I made him want to hurl. After all those nights of lovemaking.”
“So you took a hammer and hit him.”
“I didn’t want to. I…”
“You let him rot in that pit.”
“He was so self-absorbed. And being a credit to his father was such an obsession. I didn’t count for anything.”
“Why did you assault the other young men?”
“All they wanted to do was shoot their load and leave, just like Jean-Baptiste. I made sure they wouldn’t be able to ditch anyone else.”
“Why did you bite their shoulders?”
“For Jean-Baptiste. He loved it when I did that.”
Laurent Mercier had shot his own load. He had made his confession, and now he was slumped in his chair, an anguished look on his face.
“Take him away,” Nico said.
His men came in and steered him out of the room.
“Thank you, Lara,” Nico said. “You can go home with your brother.”
“He’s free?” she said.
“Yes,” Alexandre Becker said. “Timothy may not have been entirely honest, but he didn’t kill anyone.”
The woman got up unsteadily.
“You should talk to someone about all this,” Nico said. “It’s a heavy burden, and you’ve carried it far too long.”
Lara Krall didn’t say anything. She shut the door behind her.
34
Applause and cheers rang out. The enthusiasm was evident. Everyone saluted their boss and his legendary intuition.
“A crime of passion. It’s so banal in the end,” Captain Plassard said.
“Ah, but is it?” Nico replied. “Samuel Cassian set out to redefine the limits of art and archaeology. But look what he dug up. Not only his son’s remains, but also secrets that had been hidden for far too long. Now that they’ve been exposed, maybe all those who suffered because of Jean-Baptiste’s disappearance can make peace with what happened and create better lives for themselves. That’s not so banal, Franck.”
In the midst of all the exuberance, a smiling face appeared in the doorway. It was Caroline. She made her way to him.
“Anya’s operation went beautifully, and she’s in recovery,” Caroline whispered in his ear. “We were there when she woke up, and she wants to see you as soon as you can get to the hospital. I wanted to tell you in person, and I promised that I would drag you there, although I know I won’t have to.”
“Thank you. My God, thank you.”
He took her in his arms and waved to his men. They understood that his mother was okay.
“She’ll leave the hospital in eight days. And it looks like you’ve just closed your case. I’m so happy for you. You’ve been burying yourself in your work. Now maybe you can come up for air.”
Nico would be able to collect material evidence over the next few days: how Mercier was able to attract his prey, the knife he used to stab them, the hammer he had probably saved like a relic… Maybe even the old souvenirs of his life with Jean-Baptiste.
“Boss?” Commander Charlotte Maurin called out. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”
She led him into the hallway. Nico didn’t let go of Caroline’s hand.
A young woman was waiting under the lit sign—like the ones at a train station—that announced the Criminal Investigation Division.
“Chief, please meet Élodie.”
With a radiant smile, she shook the chief’s hand and then Caroline’s.
“Élodie is my fiancée,” Commander Maurin said.
“It’s a pleasure, Élodie. Welcome to La Crim’,” Nico said. “Have Charlotte show you around. But before she does that, I just have just one thing to ask: please take good care of our commander here.”
“I will,” Elodie said.
Nico said good-bye to the pair and took Caroline down the narrow corridor to his office, where he could finally take her in his arms. And just as he was moving closer to breathe in her scent, a Jay-Z cover of “I’d Do Anything” popped into his head. Dimitri had been listening to it a few days earlier. Rap wasn’t exactly Nico’s genre, but the sentiment was spot-on.
“May I have this dance, ma’am?” he said as he opened his arms to her. She stepped into them and put her cheek next to his. Nico began humming. Yes, he’d do anything—everything—for her.
Epilogue
Two weeks later
A revolution in point of view: something that looked entirely banal when viewed horizontally could become something fresh and innovative when viewed vertically. Surely that was one of Samuel Cassian’s objectives—to capture a specific moment in time and invite people to stop what they were doing and see it from an entirely different perspective. Cassian had accomplished this and was ready to move on.
He had no way of knowing that his banquet burial would end not just a chapter in his life, but his whole life as he had known it.
“How could I have imagined that some crazy person would make my own child a prisoner of my art? That he’d murder my son and bury him in this trench?” Cassian ruminated as he stood with Nico in front of the pit, which was being filled for a final time.
Nico put his hand on the distraught old man’s shoulder. The bones would be returned to Jean-Baptiste’s family. Samuel and his wife would finally be able to give their son a proper burial in a site with a marker.
“We have a house in Sicily. A beautiful island,” Cassian said. “Jean-Baptiste will be put to rest there.”
The last cubic feet of dirt covered all traces of the banquet burial. Nico felt the man shaking.
“Justice has been serv
ed,” Samuel said. He had been moved to tears. “Thank you.”
“I was only doing my job, sir.”
“Don’t be so modest. Maigret can sleep soundly. He has a worthy successor.”
Nico smiled.
“You’re a good man, Nico. My son would have become one too, but he made an error in judgment that turned out to be fatal. I could have helped him.”
“He didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“I wish he had thought more of me. Gay or straight, I loved him. And maybe if he had come out, I could have told him that his friend, Mercier, was the wrong person to be involved with.”
“I know.”
Nico thought of his own father, an amiable man, like the one he was talking with here.
“The Criminal Investigation Division has made an arrest in the thirty-year-old slaying of the son of well-known artist Samuel Cassian,” a reporter told Parisians watching the afternoon news. “Charged with murder is Laurent Mercier, a school friend of Jean-Baptiste Cassian. The arrest was made just before the artist’s dig at the Parc de la Villette was filled in again, after its exhumation.”
Those at the site clapped as the banquet was buried for the final time. The journalists started jostling each other and shouting questions. Louis Roche, the head of park security, gave Nico a nod. But Nico’s mind was elsewhere. He was already thinking about a new investigation. There was no respite in Nico’s job: solving Paris homicides. Because it wasn’t just a job. It was personal.
Thank you for reading The City of Blood.
We invite you to share your thoughts and reactions on Goodreads and your favorite social media and retail platforms.
We appreciate your support.
Acknowledgments
The tableau-piège has been buried, and another page has been turned. I’d like to thank all those who have fed my imagination. Chief Nico Sirsky will always hold a special place for them in his heart.
Jean-Marie Beney, prosecutor at the Cour d’Appel of Dijon, and professor at the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
Florence Berthout, general director of the Établissement Public du Parc et de la Grande Halle de la Villette.
Dr. David Corège, chief of emergency medicine in Saône-et-Loire and medical expert for the Cour d’Appel of Dijon.
Jean-Paul Demoule, former president of the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, professor of European protohistory at the Université de Paris I Sorbonne-Panthéon—UFR Art et Archéologie.
Valérie Ebersohl, archivist at the Établissement Public du Parc et de la Grande Halle de la Villette.
Tatiana Grigorieva, of the Centre Culturel de Russie de Paris.
Lucien Jougla, chief of security for the Établissement Public du Parc et de la Grande Halle de la Villette.
Henry Moreau, police commander, chief of staff for the director of the Police Judiciare of Paris.
Dr. Lionel Yon, orthopedic surgeon.
And Lilas Seewald, my dear editor at Fayard Noir.
A wink to Bernard Müller, doctor of social anthropology, in memory of the Société pour le Déterrement du Tableau-Piège, researcher at the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux.
And a special mention to the true artist, Daniel Spoerri, whose work and excavation of his tableau-piège inspired this novel.
About the Author
Writing has always been a passion for Frédérique Molay. She graduated from France’s prestigious Science Po and began her career in politics and the French administration. She worked as chief of staff for the deputy mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and then was elected to the local government in Saône-et-Loire. Meanwhile, she spent her nights pursuing the passion she had nourished since penning her first novel at the age of eleven. After The 7th Woman took France by storm, Frédérique Molay dedicated her life to writing and raising her three children. She has five books to her name, with three in the Paris Homicide series.
About the Translator
Jeffrey Zuckerman was born in the Midwest and lives in New York. He has worked as an editorial assistant, a lifeguard, and a psychology researcher. Now an editor for Music and Literature Magazine, he also freelances for several companies, ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to old-fashioned book publishing. He holds a degree in English with honors from Yale University, where he studied English literature, creative writing, and translation. He has translated several Francophone authors, from Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Antoine Volodine to Régis Jauffret and Marie Darrieussecq, and his writing and translations have appeared in the Yale Daily News Magazine, Best European Fiction, and The White Review. In his free time, he does not listen to music.
About Le French Book
Le French Book is a New York-based publisher specializing in great reads from France. As founder Anne Trager says, “There is a very vibrant, creative culture in France. Our vocation is to bring France’s best mysteries, thrillers, novels, and short stories to new readers across the English-speaking world.”
www.lefrenchbook.com
Discover more books from
Le French Book
The Paris Lawyer by Sylvie Granotier
A psychological thriller set between the sophisticated corridors of the Paris courts and a small backwater in central France, where rolling hills and quiet country life hide dark secrets.
www.theparislawyer.com
The Winemaker Detective Series
by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen
A total Epicurean immersion in French countryside and gourmet attitude with two expert winemakers turned amateur sleuths gumshoeing around wine country. Already translated: Treachery in Bordeaux, Grand Cru Heist, Nightmare in Burgundy, and Deadly Tasting.
www.thewinemakerdetective.com
The Greenland Breach by Bernard Besson
The Arctic ice caps are breaking up. Europe and the East Coast of the United States brace for a tidal wave. A team of freelance spies face a merciless war for control of discoveries that will change the future of humanity.
www.thegreenlandbreach.com
The Consortium Thriller Series by David Khara
A roller-coaster ride dip into World War II that races through a modern-day loop-to-loop of action. What impact could the folly of war—death camps, medical manipulation and chemical warfare—still have today?
www.theconsortiumthrillers.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise
More praise
Title
Info
Dedication
Quote
Dune quote
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Thank you
Acknowledgments
About the author
About the translator
More books
riends
The City of Blood Page 19