Confession

by Martin O'Brien

  And then she felt a stir of recognition. In the centre of the page was a photo of the missing girl, Elodie Lafour. A formal studio shot by the look of it. She wore a light green cardigan draped over a darker green button-down shirt and she was holding a leather-bound book in her lap. She looked about fourteen, with blonde hair secured by a hairband and a sweet uncertain smile directed at someone off-camera. But it wasn’t a happy smile, Marie-Ange decided. It was a smile for the photographer, for show, like her mother’s tight lips in the photo on the front page; something held back, something hidden behind it.

  For a moment or two Marie-Ange examined the photo, let her eyes range across the girl’s features, tried to place where this increasing sense of familiarity came from. And then, with a jolt, she had it. The hairband across the top of the girl’s head. Blue, enamelled, and wavy. She couldn’t see the ends tucked away behind the girl’s ears, but Marie-Ange had no doubt they would be a serpent’s head and tail.

  Just like the head and tail on the matching clip in her pocket.

  And the perfume . . . Versage.

  Like the reek of Cognac and beer that had come off the page when Marie-Ange had read the newspaper report about Lucienne Viviers.

  There had been no promotional gift between the pages.

  No accidental spill.

  It was Elodie Lafour.

  Elodie Lafour, she was certain, wore Versage.

  33

  ‘BON DIEU, DANIEL, YOU LOOK like a tramp. And who the fuck took your scalp?’

  Shaking his head, Jean-Pierre Salette, the Vieux Port’s former harbour master, wadded some bread, took a swipe at the last of the cheese on his plate, and shoved the lot into his mouth. Jacquot had found him at his usual corner table in Brasserie Clément, on the corner of Rive Neuve and rue Calisto, a crumpled copy of L’Equipe on the banquette beside him and the demi of rouge in front of him almost empty. His face and hands were deeply tanned, the hair a salty rug of spikey white, and his eyebrows as black as ebony splinters. Everything he wore – work trousers, crewneck jumper and plimsolls – was as blue and faded as his eyes which he now settled on Jacquot.

  ‘Work,’ said Jacquot, pulling out a chair.

  ‘Near six months and not a word,’ continued Salette, looking him over, still chewing away on the bread and cheese. ‘Is that the way to treat an old man who’s kept you out of trouble all these years . . . kept you on the straight and narrow?’ He swallowed the bread and cheese and indicated the empty pichet. ‘The least you could do is order more wine. Or do you want me to die of thirst?’

  ‘Already done,’ said Jacquot, smiling at the waitress as she put down a fresh pichet and took away the old one. ‘I asked for it on the way in.’

  ‘Now I know you’re on the scrounge. Softening me up. I may be old but I’m not stupid.’ Salette indicated with a wave of his index finger that Jacquot should pour the wine. ‘Come on, out with it. What is it you want this time?’

  From the very start, after that first dinner with Madame Bonnefoy, Jacquot had realised he would need help. And he knew that Salette was the man to provide it. The old loup de mer might have surrendered his desk at the Capitainerie to a younger man but there wasn’t much that happened in the Vieux Port that he didn’t know about, or else find out about if he had a mind to. And there was no one in the world Jacquot trusted more than his father’s old shipmate, the man who had taken the young Jacquot under his wing when his father was lost at sea and his mother murdered.

  And so he explained everything: the missing girl, the likelihood that she might be in Marseilles awaiting transportation, and the job he’d been given of finding her. Outside the police. On his own. Under cover.

  ‘Easier to get round,’ he explained. ‘I go looking for her as a cop, they’d spot me a mile off. I need to be in there, a sailor, looking for work. One of them. It’s the only way. Which is why I look like this . . . signing on as crew, sniffing around.’

  ‘They take you?’ Salette let a grin steal over his features. ‘You’re looking a little out of condition, if you ask me. Must be all that soft living up country. I’d have thought that girl of yours, Claudine, would have kept you in better shape.’ There was a glint in the old man’s eyes. ‘She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s going to like a man fattening up . . .’

  ‘There’s been no complaint,’ replied Jacquot, remembering the ache that had accompanied his wood-chopping just a few days earlier and his struggle with the log basket. ‘Of course, the tan doesn’t help.’

  Salette narrowed his eyes, let them range over Jacquot’s face and hands. And scalp. ‘Don’t tell me. You got papers saying you’re on northern routes?’

  Jacquot nodded.

  ‘You flics,’ chuckled Salette. ‘It’s a miracle you catch anyone.’ The chuckle broke into a laugh that made him catch his breath, then cough. He reached for the pichet, refilled his glass, took a slug. ‘So what do you need?’ he asked, after drowning the cough and getting his breath back.

  ‘Where to start would be good?’

  Salette gave it some thought, working gnarled brown fingers across a white stubbled chin. Jacquot could hear the rasp.

  ‘Well, you’ve got your work cut out, and no mistake,’ he began. ‘A half-dozen ports within spitting distance of this table and a lot of traffic.’ He tipped his head towards the Vieux Port. ‘A couple of thousand craft tied up right there, and more along the coast.’

  ‘Just what I needed to hear,’ said Jacquot, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting up.

  ‘But it’s not all bad,’ the old man continued. ‘Take away the pointus and the fishing skiffs out there, and you’ll be down to maybe a thousand craft of one sort or another – sail, motor. If, like you say, there’s a bunch of these girls being moved then you can discount the smaller vessels. No room, see. Below decks. So now you’re down to a few hundred, but of those there’ll be no more than fifty lived in . . . full-time, you understand. And this time of year, in weather like this, maybe no more than ten or fifteen. The rest’ll be pretty much wrapped up for the winter.’

  Jacquot nodded at this swift and confident appraisal, relieved that his companion was giving the problem due consideration, and felt for the first time a trace of hope that the job was maybe not as daunting as he’d feared.

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Salette, emptying his glass and smacking his lips as Jacquot refilled it. ‘There may be a lot of boats out there, but there aren’t many sailors, if you know what I mean. Not the kind who’d set sail in this kind of weather. It’s been pushing a force seven out beyond the islands and you’d need a good skipper to see you through that. Since it started up, I can count on one hand the boats that have come and gone. And I know ’em all.’

  ‘What about the other marinas?’ asked Jacquot. ‘Madrague? Pointe Rouge? L’Estaque?’

  ‘The same story. L’Estaque’s a possibility, c’est certain. But the others . . .’ Salette shook his head. ‘Too small – port and boats both. Too difficult to get your girls aboard and keep ’em there. Someone would notice. And where are they going to go, anyway?’ he asked with a shrug and a wave of his hands, wine tilting in his glass. ‘Most of them haven’t got the range . . . haven’t got the specs to make a long trip. You ask me, it’s the freighters you need to keep an eye on. Like you’re doing. Get les petites into a container, haul ’em aboard with food and water, and you’re pretty much home free. A week’s sail and you’re half-way across the Atlantic, or port hopping down the African coast. In the meantime, they’ll likely be somewhere ashore. That’s what I’d put my money on. A warehouse or basement somewhere, with a skipper and crew that know how to look the other way when they come aboard.’

  ‘What about another port? With the strike on, would they take them to Fos or Toulon?’ Jacquot thought he knew the answer, but he wanted Salette to confirm it. He stubbed out his cigarette and waited.

  The old harbour master gave it some thought, then shook his head. ‘If they’ve
got a system, they’ll stick to it. They won’t change things. If the girls are here for transport, yours included, that’s what’ll happen. They’ll go from here, using whatever means they’ve got in place. Far too tricky to set something up at the last moment – some other ship, some other port. Even if they’ve got to keep the girls till the strike ends.’

  ‘That’s what I reckoned,’ said Jacquot.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ asked Salette.

  ‘Just keep an eye open, ask around.’

  ‘Where’re you staying? Up in Moulins?’

  Place des Moulins had been Jacquot’s home when he’d worked in Marseilles. Since the move to Cavaillon, he’d rented the place out, leaving it under the watchful eye of his concierge, the formidable Madame Foraque.

  Jacquot shook his head. ‘Auberge des Vagues. On Impasse Massalia.’

  ‘So you’ll have Madame Boileau looking after you now?’

  ‘Is that her name? I didn’t know.’

  ‘An old trout, but a big heart. You’ll be eating well, that’s for sure. Her sister does the cooking. Incroyable. They make their own conserves. And there’s a brother, Luc, with a smallholding up round Bouilladisse – chickens, pigs. They smoke their own ham, you know . . . délicieux. Tell the old girl I still think fondly of her,’ he said, with a lewd wink. ‘In her day she was quite a performer.’

  ‘And how do you suppose I can do that when my name is Jan Muller and I’m half-Dutch?’

  ‘And you think she believed you? Take my word for it, Madame Boileau’s got a nose for bullshit and she’ll sure have smelt it on you.’ Salette leant forward and sniffed dramatically. ‘Boufff!’ he declared, turning his head away. ‘Unmistakable.’

  ‘Well, thanks for that, old man. That’s really made me feel good.’

  Salette shrugged. As if he cared. ‘So how long are you going to be here?’

  ‘Until I find her. Or the strike ends. Whichever comes first.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with the Brotherhood. We’re meeting up Sunday, if the weather breaks. The usual place. Why don’t you join us?’

  ‘If I can, I will.’

  Salette considered this. ‘So . . . Sunday it is, then.’

  34

  EVEN UNDER LOW GREY SKIES and through a soft mist of rain, the Druot Clinic’s four-floor cube of white stucco and tinted blue windows on a tree-lined side-street off Avenue du Prado had a sleek, summery look to it. As she slid her vintage Porsche roadster into an empty space in the parking lot, Virginie felt her spirits rise. Locking the car, she hurried up the front steps into the building, automatic doors swishing open for her, a glitter of raindrops tumbling from her coat as she swung it off her shoulders and shook it on to the marble tiles.

  It was Cous-Cous who had called her. The old man was feeling unwell, she had reported, her voice low and timorous. There was a possibility that Monsieur Arsène had suffered a small attaque sometime in the night, Cous-Cous continued, and what should she do?

  Virginie had done it all for her. After telling her father’s mistress to get him dressed and ready – there was nothing to worry about, it was fine, Virginie assured her – she had phoned the Druot to have an ambulance despatched, giving Cous-Cous’s address as the pick-up point.

  At no point did Virginie consider going to her father herself. This was not the first time the old man had suffered a stroke and been taken to the clinic, and she knew the drill. It would take at least twenty minutes for the ambulance to reach the small fisherman’s cottage that her father had bought for his mistress in Endoume, and a further twenty for the paramedics to check him over. It would then take at least as long again to make it back to the Druot with their patient. Even if Virginie had been there to meet him, there would have been no time for anything beyond ‘Papa, Papa’, before his trolley or wheelchair was whisked into a lift and the old boy was taken for tests. Those tests, Virginie knew from experience, could take anything from one hour to three, and it was for this reason that, after calling the clinic to start things moving, she had turned back to her lover to continue what Cous-Cous’s call had so cruelly interrupted.

  Now, some four hours later, Virginie strode across the clinic’s entrance hall and headed for the lifts. From her many previous visits she knew where to go. Top floor, one of two balconied suites overlooking the green expanse of Parc Borély. As she stepped from the lift she wondered which it would be: 407 or 408.

  Let the numbers do the talking, she decided. She was a qualified accountant after all, and numbers had a purity she respected.

  If it’s 407, the old boy lives.

  If it’s 408, he dies.

  ‘Ah, Mademoiselle Cabrille, bonjour, bonjour,’ called the senior ward sister at the nurses’ station. ‘Your father is fine, just a little woozy. He’s in four hundred and eight. At the end of the corridor, to the right.’

  Virginie smiled and carried on walking, down the corridor and around to her right. She knocked lightly at the door to 408, pushed it open and slid inside.

  The first thing she did was flick down the corridor blinds. Then she went over to the bed and leant down to kiss her father’s forehead. It was difficult not to recoil from the smell of old wrinkled skin, wine-sour breath and the cheap perfume of that whore Cous-Cous.

  ‘Papa, Papa, Papa. Did that naughty little Cous-Cous give you bad dreams?’ she whispered, drawing back from the bed.

  She watched her father’s eyes flicker open and turn to her, roaming over her features until finally they settled and focused on her. As soon as they did, the old man frowned.

  Was he trying to remember who she was? thought Virginie.

  Or did he know exactly who she was . . .

  . . . and what she was about to do?

  35

  MARCEL LÉVY KNEW THAT HAVING his prints on a bag of cocaine was bad. But he knew that providing les flics with information about the Cabrille family was infinitely worse. Look at old Valentine, dead in his workshop. La Toppa had been full of it that lunchtime. Beaten to a pulp, Toni, the barman, had told him. Torn limb from limb, Janni, the pretty little waitress had said. And the Cabrille name written all over it, that’s what La Toppa’s regulars all agreed. Him included. Which meant that Valentine had likely been blabbing about the family. And the Cabrilles had got to hear about it and dropped by his workshop for a chat. Because when the Cabrilles came knocking on your door, that’s what usually happened – a bullet in the back of the head from the old man, or a more extended interval of pain if that sadistic little bitch, the daughter, and her two Corsican cronies were involved. Which, judging by Toni’s lurid description, they had to have been.

  And now it looked like the same cop was leaning on him to take Valentine’s spot. Playing catch with that bag of coke. Just to reel him in. Lévy felt a shiver start up in his shoulders and drop to his guts.

  Merde alors, what a fucking mess.

  What was it the cop had said? A nasty lurch, that was it. ‘I think you will agree, Monsieur Lévy, that life just took one of those nasty little lurches . . .’

  No fucking kidding.

  But what to do about it? What to do?

  After the cop had gone, sauntering out of the shop, whistling lightly, Lévy had locked the front door and switched the sign to Fermé. Taking refuge behind his counter, he’d pulled out a stool and sat in the shadows, his beady grey eyes on a level with the drawer of the cash register, reviewing his options. It hadn’t taken him long to realise that he didn’t have any. That fat slob of a cop would work his balls till they scraped the ground, and then toss him to the dogs. Or in this case, the Cabrille family, in whose activities – surprise, surprise – the cop had been particularly interested. Anything he could find out about the family, the cop had said – ships, cargoes, movements.

  But it wasn’t just the Cabrilles he was interested in. He had also wanted to know about Fonton and Santarem and anyone local involved in the trafficking game. Lévy wondered if it had anything to do with the missing girl in Paris. They’d b
een following the case up at La Toppa, and most of the regulars had been surprised there’d been no demand for ransom. The Lafours? A family like that? With their kind of money? Well, whoever had her could demand millions. On the other hand, they also agreed, it didn’t take a genius to work out that if there was no ransom, the girl was likely dead or en route somewhere. There’d been hours of speculation as Toni stood behind his bar and polished his glasses, but as far as Lévy could remember there’d been no mention of Marseilles or any local involvement.

  Sitting there in the shadows, by the till, he wondered now if Santarem did have the girl and didn’t know what he was sitting on – a good grafter but thick as pig shit when it came to the bigger picture. All his brains in his face. Maybe he’d give the lad a call. Old times. How’re things going? And whatever he found out he could pass on to the cop; give him Santarem rather than risk the Cabrilles.

  A sudden squall of rain battered against the window, and brought him round. Despite the twisting in his gut, he knew now what he had to do.

  Play smart. Play for time. And cover his arse.

  And the only way to do that was to talk to the Spaniard.

  36

  ON THE CHAMANT QUAY, IN the offices of Ribero Agence Maritime, Guillermo Ribero was ready to call it a day. With the docks shut down by the strike there’d been little he could gainfully do, but when you worked for the Cabrille family you kept your sheet clean or you paid the price, Cabrille-style. And with Citron hanging around, always on the look-out for a way into the family’s favour, it was best to put in the hours, even if all he’d managed to do was flick his way through a pile of magazines and sign up a single sailor for possible crew. Big son of a bitch who looked like he could handle himself, and didn’t seem too bothered what jobs he was asked to do, someone who might just come in handy for the Santarem handover. If the strike ended that weekend, which was what Citron had dropped by to tell him, Citron’s father being the dock union boss, then he could do with some extra muscle. He didn’t want any more mistakes, nothing to jeopardise his pitch.