Confession

by Martin O'Brien

  Guillermo had run the Cabrilles’ shipping interests for four years, quietly and efficiently servicing a fleet of twelve mid-weight freighters working Mediterranean, Atlantic and West African routes. At any one time, three of the fleet were usually engaged in illicit trade, namely drugs, particularly cocaine, brought in from stopover ports like Freetown, Accra and Libreville. Transhipment of cargo in those lawless ports was a hazardous business but worth the effort. Better one of the Cabrille fleet arriving in Marseilles or Toulon, Genoa or Palermo, from one of these West African ports than docking direct from Brazil or Venezuela. The proof was in the pudding. Not a single hiccup in four years. And that included his own private cargoes, outward bound from Marseilles on Cabrille vessels, and the family none the wiser.

  Guillermo and Murat Santarem had been doing business on the side for two years now, since Fonton threw it in, and Guillermo was making a considerable amount of money by providing Santarem with the means of getting his merchandise out of the country, and selling on down the line. And until the previous week everything had gone without a hitch. That girl making a run for it on Sunday night had brought home to him the problems that could arise, and as he washed up coffee cups in the kitchen behind the office he decided the time had probably come to ease himself away from Santarem. The man was getting sloppy and that worried Guillermo. After this last pick-up he’d find himself another source, move on.

  Of course it wouldn’t be easy making the break. Santarem would threaten to shop him to the Cabrilles, try to blackmail him into continuing. But Guillermo knew that the time had come to cut loose from the man. Before there were any more problems. Before the Cabrilles got to hear about it. Maybe he’d have that sailor who’d dropped by that morning go pay a call on Santarem and show him the error of his ways. The man looked like he could handle that kind of work.

  Guillermo was switching off the office lights and about to punch in the security code when the phone rang. For a moment he wondered whether he should leave it, but some instinct made him put down his overcoat and take the call.

  It was Marcel Lévy, in quite a state by the sound of it. A cop called Gastal had paid him a visit, wanting to know about the Cabrilles, Lévy told him. ‘Thought I’d better let you know, see what you think . . . maybe pass it on? Anything I can do for the family. Just let them know I’m happy to do whatever they think is appropriate.’

  Guillermo assured Lévy that he would pass on the information and put in a good word for him, for which Lévy had sounded suitably grateful, and then he put down the phone. Pulling out his chair, Guillermo sat down, reached for a cigarette, and in the half-light, smoked it to the filter.

  Santarem and the runaway girl; now Lévy and the flics. Two years earlier it was Lévy who had introduced him to Santarem, and Lévy was the kind of man who kept his memory, if not his body, in perfect order.

  It was all getting a bit too close, Guillermo decided. For a moment, just a moment, he felt a flutter of unease in his guts, a nervous twitch.

  Time to offload the dead weight, he thought to himself.

  Time to clear the decks.

  And get in first.

  He reached forward and picked up the phone, dialled a number.

  ‘It’s Guillermo,’ he said, when his call was answered. ‘I’m at Chamant.’

  As usual, he was told to hang up and wait. Which was the way the Cabrilles liked to do things. One time he’d waited two hours before the call-back. Tonight, it was just a few minutes over the half-hour.

  ‘I thought you should know,’ he told his contact. ‘There’s a man called Marcel Lévy been talking to the cops. Some guy called Gastal. About the family, so I heard. He runs a chandlery, Marin Azur, out L’Estaque way. On Mistral. That’s right, Traverse Mistral. No problem.’

  Twenty minutes later, Guillermo pulled out through the dock gates and headed home with a smile on his face.

  37

  THE DEATH OF ARSÈNE CABRILLE in room 408 of the Druot Clinic caused a kind of shocked disbelief among the duty nursing staff on the fourth floor and, in the hour that followed, amongst the clinic’s administrative team who came from their various offices on the ground floor to offer Virginie their deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences.

  Such a man . . .

  Such a loss . . .

  It had begun with Virginie’s scream.

  ‘I leaned over to kiss him and . . . he just looked up at me and smiled and closed his eyes,’ she told the nurses who came running to her father’s room. She repeated the same story to her father’s physician, to the Head of Admissions, and to anyone else who came within range. Two hours later, that same Head of Admissions helped Virginie to her car and personally drove her back to the family home in Roucas Blanc. Like everyone at the clinic, he told her, he was stunned and appalled by her father’s sudden and tragic passing. Of course, he demurred, as Mademoiselle Cabrille probably knew, sometimes, regretfully, this kind of thing happened with stroke victims . . . like earthquakes, n’est-ce pas? he’d said. Always the aftershocks . . .

  And Virginie had nodded and sniffed and thought of her finely placed thumb in that tented hollow between her father’s neck and shoulder, Dam Têe Nâng, the black place, a pressure point she’d learned about from Taddeus, which effectively blocked the supply of blood to the brain. It had taken just moments for the monitor beside her father’s bed to register the attack – a sudden, dangerously increased pulse-rate, excessive electrical activity in the brain – and just a few moments more to show a green flatline for both functions.

  Dead in eight seconds. She had never done it faster. Standing back from the bed, she’d dusted her hands, composed herself and then screamed.

  He had had it coming, of course – his lack of imagination, his old-fashioned ways – and for months now she’d been playing with the idea. But it was the girl, Elodie Lafour, that had stiffened her resolve. She couldn’t miss this one, wouldn’t miss this one. Yet despite that garagiste Valentine saying that the Lafour girl was all the cop Gastal had been interested in, and despite the death of another young girl reported missing in Paris just the previous week, and despite the fact that no ransom demand had been made – the implications of which should have been clear to a blind man – her father had refused to be swayed. If Virginie wished to pursue it, he had told her on the drive home from Valentine’s workshop in rue Chatelier, then she could do so only after a more pressing business interest – the security of the merchant ship Hesperides and its cargo – had been successfully concluded. And that, as far as he was concerned, was an end to it, chopping the air with that gnarled old hand of his to indicate the discussion was over. That was how he had wanted it. And that was how it would have gone had it not been for that timely phone-call from Cous-Cous, just the perfect opportunity to arrange un petit coup de famille.

  At no time had Virginie felt the least shred of guilt at having so coldly disposed of her father. If that nurse had said room 407 and not 408, she’d still have done it, she acknowledged now. For symmetry’s sake, as much as anything. As she started searching through the drawers in her father’s desk, the only things on her mind, besides Elodie Lafour and the ransom demand she’d soon be making, were the pleasing symétries attached to his murder. A decade earlier he had drowned Virginie’s mother, Léonie, in the swimming pool. Her mother’s crime? Sleeping with the family lawyer, a man who had subsequently had his testicles removed by Taddeus, and his moustachio-ed top lip scissored off by Tomas, the two items then wrapped in plastic and posted to his home address. The rest of him they’d taken on to the family’s yacht, weighted with chains and dropped into the bay.

  Now it was her father’s turn to die, at the hands of his daughter, albeit for the lesser crime of standing in her way.

  Frankly, Virginie decided, there wasn’t much difference between her father and her old dog César. Another satisfying parallel. Though she had felt love for the animal she had felt also a compulsion to take responsibility, to spare the beast further misery. And t
o do it herself. Her dog. Her job. So it had been with her father.

  And then to kill him in the very clinic that he had endowed in memory of the wife he’d murdered, giving it her maiden name and using it, along with an increasing number of other hospices and private clinics, as a fail-safe means of laundering their other businesses’ excessive cash profits . . . why, there was yet another, pleasing symétrie.

  And never, ever again would she have to endure Charles Trénet singing ‘Boum’ or ‘La Mer’. It was worth it just for that, she decided as she crossed to her father’s drinks tray and poured herself a large scotch. Coming back to the desk, she sipped her drink and felt a buzz of warmth and power. Of all the spirits, whisky had that effect on her. Warming, comforting, but most of all enabling. A couple of scotches and she felt as if she ruled the world. Which, since pressing her thumb into her father’s neck, was pretty much the case.

  She put down her drink and was reaching for her father’s desk diary when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Oui. Entrez,’ she called out, not bothering to look up as Taddeus and Tomas came into the room.

  The two men took up position in front of the desk, just as they would have done with her father. Neither wore a jacket, but each sported a black armband on their white shirtsleeves.

  ‘It is sad news,’ said Taddeus.

  ‘Trés triste,’ his brother, Tomas, agreed.

  If they suspected anything, it was impossible to tell.

  ‘He was old,’ said Virginie softly, as though age was the killer and not her. ‘It was his time. Regrettable, of course, but there you are. C’est la vie. C’est le mort. But there is business to attend to,’ she continued.

  ‘First, the girl . . . Elodie Lafour. I want her found, fast, before the docks open for business. Bring in whoever you need, but make it happen,’ she said, settling a look on the twins, who stood with legs apart, hands behind their backs, their shaven heads shining in the lamplight. If she had any feelings for anyone, she decided, it was for these two men before her. Not that she would ever let them know that.

  But Virginie wasn’t finished. ‘And while you’re doing that, I want that raddled old whore Cous-Cous out of Endoume.’ She tapped a wad of documents with her fingernail. ‘I have checked – the house is not in her name. Give her time to pack her bags, then drive her to the Sofitel. Two weeks and she’s on her own. Compris?’

  ‘Oui, Mam’selle. Pas de problème,’ replied Taddeus, then he raised his hand, cupped it over his mouth and coughed softly. There was something he wanted to say.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ asked Virginie, recognising the signal.

  ‘It seems that flic Gastal is getting busy.’

  ‘Gastal?’

  ‘Apparently he’s been chatting with one of Valentine’s mechanics. There’s two of them worked there. Arabs, both. A friend saw one of them leaving police headquarters yesterday. He’d been there a couple of hours. I wondered if you had any instructions?’

  Virginie didn’t need to give it much thought. Who’d miss him? Some Arab? She reached for her drink, swilled the whisky around in the tumbler. ‘Set an example,’ she said. ‘And make it the pair of them, just in case. Anything else?’

  ‘Tomas had a call from the Spaniard. It seems one of his contacts is also getting pally with this Gastal. A guy called Lévy . . . runs a chandlery out L’Estaque way. Same brief. Anything he can get on the family.’

  Virginie took a gulp of her whisky and felt a warm pulse of excitement.

  ‘Take him out too. Time to let people know there’s a new boss in town.’

  It was then that she remembered something.

  ‘Attendez,’ she called out, rummaging in her bag. She pulled out a key ring and flung it across the desk. Taddeus reached out and caught it.

  ‘I forgot. There’s a young woman at the lodge. In the bedroom. Please release her and give her what she’s owed.’

  ‘How much should we give, mam’selle?’ asked Tomas.

  Virginie smiled, ‘Whatever you think appropriate for her pains. I shall leave it to you.’

  The two brothers smiled. An unexpected treat.

  ‘Merci, mademoiselle,’ they said, almost together.

  38

  MURAT SANTAREM WAS WATCHING TV in his mother’s salon when Xavier called by.

  ‘You see the story in the newspaper?’ asked Xavier, dropping the latest edition on to Santarem’s lap. ‘That girl in Paris. It’s the same one, isn’t it? You’ve got her downstairs.’

  ‘So what if I do . . . who cares?’ asked Santarem, switching off the TV and picking up the paper. He scanned the headlines, looked at the picture of Elodie Lafour, then put it aside.

  ‘So she’s worth a bit, I’d say.’

  ‘She’s already taken.’

  ‘You gotta be kidding! What do you get . . . twenty from the Spaniard? A girl like this, you’re talking millions.’

  ‘I got customers, Xavier. I got a core business. I don’t go changing the goalposts. I do what I do. I do what I know. That’s good enough for me.’ He was pleased with the way he’d said that, and ran the words through in his head once more. I do what I do. I do what I know. Yeah, he liked the sound of that.

  Shaking his head, as though he couldn’t credit it, Xavier flopped down in a chair beside the TV, looking sour. ‘Man, it’s just a phone call. A pick-up. And we’re out of here.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. I spoke to my man and the exchange is on for this weekend; word is the strike’s going to wind down. Seven girls. That’s the deal. And I’m not going to him and saying, “Oh, sorry. There should have been seven, but now there’s only six.” If it goes wrong again, there’ll be trouble. And blood.’

  ‘We could bring him in on it,’ suggested Xavier. ‘Tell him what we got down there. Divide it three ways – there’d still be a stack of it. We wouldn’t have to work for the rest of our lives. Retire some place, free and clear.’

  Santarem gave him a look. ‘We do it my way. That’s all there is to it. Understood? Now, what about those sleepers? Our guy come up with anything?’

  Xavier clenched his teeth, balled his fists. For a moment he wanted to reach out and throttle the man, but he took a few deep breaths and calmed himself.

  ‘I said, has our man . . .’

  ‘Tonight,’ said Xavier, interrupting him. ‘It’s arranged.’

  39

  WHEN JACQUOT TURNED INTO IMPASSE Massalia and saw the spill of blue neon from Auberge des Vagues’ front door, he felt a weary sweep of relief. And disappointment. All he’d managed to do his first day on the job was have his cover blown by Franco, sign up with what felt like every shipping line agency between the Vieux Port and Corbière, call in on a dozen or so freighters moored along the wharves’ inner basins, and note down the registration details of the blue Seat parked outside Ribero Agence Maritime. Hardly an Olympic performance, he decided. If it hadn’t been for his meeting with Salette – and the old man’s assertion that at this time of year and in this kind of weather the marinas were an unlikely bet, but that he’d call up some old friends, put the word out – Jacquot would have ranked his first day an exercise in futility. But you had to start somewhere, he thought, and then remembered Madame Bonnefoy saying the same thing. It was just like every other investigation he’d ever been involved in. You started with so little but, gradually, things came into focus, began to make sense, take shape. It was like building a wall. You started with one small brick, and then you added another and another. It was the way these things went. You carried on. You built the wall.

  Right now, as Salette had observed, a merchant vessel seemed the likeliest bet, and both men knew that the dockers’ strike was the one advantage Jacquot had. If it hadn’t been for the strike, someone could have put Elodie on a ship and sailed her out of there before he’d done up his laces that morning. But while the strike was on, there was still a chance of finding her somewhere. He had maybe another forty-eight hours before the dockers’ demands were met or
they simply gave up and went back to work.

  Pushing through the hostel’s front door, Jacquot clomped down the hallway and headed for the payphone at the bottom of the stairs. Beyond the reception desk he could see Madame Boileau’s shadow on the other side of the frosted glass door that led to her private quarters. When Madame Bonnefoy came on the line he turned his back on the desk and brought her up to date, putting as positive a spin on it as he could – his work along the wharves, signing up with the shipping agents, and how his friend Salette had promised to keep his eyes and ears open on their behalf.

  ‘There’s not much that happens in these ports without Jean-Pierre getting to hear of it,’ explained Jacquot. ‘His network is . . . formidable. He also suggested that the nineteen freighters laid up on the quays waiting for loading and unloading be thoroughly searched before being allowed to leave port. It would give us a little more time.’

  ‘And be hell to implement,’ said Madame Bonnefoy. ‘As you well know, Daniel.’

  She was right. He did know. Apart from ships being notoriously difficult to search, every shipping line involved would be threatening law suits before they set foot on a companionway. He was clutching at straws, he knew it. He just needed more time.

  ‘Tell me about this shipping agent you mentioned. The Spanish one. Could he be involved, this Ribero?’ asked Madame Bonnefoy hopefully.

  ‘There was just something, madame. I can’t explain it. A feeling that there was more to him, more to his operation. Who knows? But if you can find me an address, or any kind of record, then we move to the next step.’

  It was then, after Madame Bonnefoy promised to get everything she could on this Ribero, that Jacquot made his request for a more convincing log to explain away his tan.

  ‘How stupid of me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think . . .’ She was clearly upset by her mistake, immediately concerned and contrite – as though she had let the side down. He could hear the irritation in her voice. ‘Quelle stupide! Je suis . . . stupide.’