Confession

by Martin O'Brien

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ whispered Marie-Ange, ‘give her my number,’ and told it to him.

  Jacquot repeated the number then broke the connection. As he handed her the phone he remembered something: hands tugging at his pockets. ‘Was anything taken?’ he asked. ‘Was I robbed?’

  ‘Your wallet and papers were beside you on the pavement. There was still money in your wallet, and some coins lying round on the pavement. Which means, Monsieur Muller, that if he wasn’t after your money, if it wasn’t just a mugging, then he wanted to stop you following him. Which means he must have something to do with Elodie.’

  But Jacquot wasn’t listening.

  ‘Nothing else? You didn’t find anything else?’

  Marie-Ange frowned, shook her head.

  ‘Then he’s got my gun,’ said Jacquot, and with a grunt of pain he levered himself off the pillow, feeling for the first time the bruising ache in his side where the man’s boot had connected with his ribs. ‘I’ve got to . . .’

  ‘You’ve got to do nothing, monsieur. So . . . the gun is gone. There is nothing you can do about it now.’ She gave him a look. ‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Jacquot would have nodded if he’d been able to. Instead, realising that what she had said made absolute sense, he eased himself back down on the pillows. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

  ‘And you are staying right here,’ she said, leaning forward to plump the pillows gently. ‘I’ve already made up the sofa. If I’m gone when you wake up, just help yourself to some breakfast. But right now you need rest. Even if I do want to stay up all night and talk about it.’ She smiled down at him. ‘But I’m glad we’ve met up.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Jacquot, surprising himself. ‘So am I.’

  And he smiled, closing his eyes.

  Saturday

  14 November

  47

  ELODIE COULDN’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP, but suddenly she was waking up again. Stiff and aching, but somehow not as dulled and disoriented as she had been. Lying there, she tried to remember what had happened, tried to take stock.

  She was in a cellar, on a thin mattress, on an earth floor; it was still dark and it was still raining. And she was not alone.

  That much she knew in a matter of seconds.

  The next thing she focused on were her clothes. What she was wearing. Jeans, T-shirt, socks, her favourite woollen jacket. She was dressed, but not properly dressed. There were clothes missing, she realised. Clothes she no longer had. Her Converse sneakers – gone; her leopard print rucksack – gone; the belt from her jacket – gone; and the cashmere scarf she’d taken from her mother’s dressing room – also gone.

  She remembered her mother’s dressing room. Suddenly. Stealing in there for the scarf. She could see herself pulling out the drawer, sliding out the scarf, winding it round her neck.

  And then everything came back to her very quickly. In a rush.

  Leaving the apartment, hurrying down rue Camille, waiting at a café table, waiting for . . . Murat.

  Murat.

  The name came to her like a bright, blinding light.

  Murat. Murat. Murat.

  But the light didn’t last long. It darkened. And Murat, her Murat, the man of her dreams, darkened with it. No longer the Murat she met for coffees and menthes frappées . . . the Murat who took her for walks in the park, the Murat who had held her hand in the cinema, who had kissed her there, for the first time. In the cinema’s warm, velvet darkness. Across the arm-rest. A proper kiss.

  Not that Murat.

  That Murat, Elodie now realised, was gone.

  And though she might not have been quite able to credit it at first, though it squeezed her heart to think it, it didn’t take long for the truth to settle in.

  Murat didn’t love her.

  Had never loved her.

  Everything he’d ever said to her had been a lie.

  He’d just used her. Betrayed her.

  Murat. Murat.

  With surprising clarity now, Elodie remembered the last time they’d been together, the journey from Paris to wherever she was now. South certainly, that’s how they’d left the city. Rattling along the Autoroute du Soleil: Fontainebleau, Auxerre, Chalons, the tunnel lights in the hills above Lyons. Heading for Nice, that’s what Murat had told her. They would spend a week in Nice – he had some business to attend to there – and then they’d cross the border into Italy. A holiday . . . Just the two of them . . . There was a place he knew . . . She could call her mother from there, she remembered him telling her.

  But the further they travelled, the quieter he had become. Increasingly moody, impatient with her . . .

  She was sure she must have said something to upset him, but the more she tried to cheer him up, the more distant he became. Maybe a grunt in response, that was all, the countryside sliding by, darkness gathering, headlights coming north, flicking past them, tail-lights curving south like a long red serpent.

  Until . . .

  It was night-time, she remembered – Saturday night, however long ago that was. And she was hungry. They’d parked up in a motorway service station north of Lyons, before the tunnels. He’d taken her to the rest-rooms, then gone to buy baguettes, an Orangina for her and a Red Bull for him. He was waiting for her when she came out of the rest-room, took her back to the van and they drove on, eating the baguettes, drinking . . .

  And that was all she could remember. Headlights, tail-lights and a smothering darkness settling around her – more immediate, more powerful, than sleep.

  She’d been drugged. She’d been kidnapped. There was no other possible explanation.

  Kidnap. Hostage. Ransom.

  The words slid into her head and made themselves comfortable.

  Murat had targeted her, seduced her, then trapped her. And right now, he’d be making his demands. So much money and you can have your daughter back.

  Because Murat must have known that her mother and step-father were rich, that they would pay, that they could afford whatever he asked. And Murat would have known it, she now realised, because he’d made it his business to find out. And she had told him. Either directly – where the family went on holiday, the cars they drove, the chauffeur for her step-father. Or indirectly – her clothes, her manners, her accent, the private school where he sometimes came to meet her after class.

  And if he was making ransom demands, he had clearly found out where she lived. She might always have met up with him in a museum or a gallery or at a café, never at her home on rue Camille, but it would have been easy enough for him to follow her after one of their dates.

  Thinking of home made her think of her mother. And thinking of her mother made Elodie sob out loud.

  Oh, Maman, Maman . . .

  But then another thought lodged in her head. Something that stopped the tears and the sobbing.

  Maybe there was no ransom.

  Maybe Murat didn’t know she was rich, or if he did he didn’t care.

  Maybe there was some other reason he had taken her.

  Maybe he had something else in mind?

  He was Arab, she knew that. From a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, he’d told her. Not that she could believe that any more. So perhaps he was going to sell her – turn her into a white slave? She’d read the stories in the newspapers, seen the documentaries on TV.

  Which might explain why she was not alone down here in the cellar.

  She pushed herself up on one elbow and looked around. Five or maybe six shapes around her. Softly snoring. Whimpering. Restless. Starting to move about.

  Were they girls like her? Other girls Murat had seduced and trapped?

  But there was no time to give it any more thought.

  Somewhere above her, Elodie heard knocking. A distant rat-a-tat.

  Then stockinged feet shuffling along what must have been a hallway, the sound of locks being turned, of bolts being pulled back, a door opening, voices. Bolts and locks again, more footfalls passing directly overhea
d.

  Straining her ears, Elodie tried to make out what was being said. But the voices were muffled. All she could say was that, judging by the tone of the voices, there was some kind of argument going on.

  But she wasn’t prepared for what came next.

  48

  IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT WHEN Xavier got to Murat Santarem’s place.

  ‘You’ve taken your time,’ said Santarem, opening the front door just a fraction, looking up and down the street as Xavier slipped past him. ‘You get the sleepers?’ he asked, bolting the door.

  ‘I got ’em,’ said Xavier, going ahead of him, down the hall to the kitchen.

  ‘Go quietly, the old lady’s just gone to bed,’ whispered Santarem, shuffling after him.

  In the kitchen, Xavier had the carrier bag on the table and was tipping out the various packets.

  ‘They still quiet?’ he asked, nodding to the floor and the basement beneath.

  ‘One or two are beginning to stir.’

  ‘They eaten yet?’

  Santarem shook his head. ‘I was hanging on for you. We need to get things going.’ He tore open one of the boxes and emptied the contents – maybe twenty blue pills – into a mortar. ‘Here,’ he said, handing Xavier the stone pestle. ‘Get crushing. Maman left a stew – we can use that.’

  Xavier made no move to take the pestle. He just looked at it.

  ‘Here,’ repeated Murat, pushing the pestle against his arm. ‘Take it. Get moving, or they’ll be up here asking to call their mothers.’

  ‘You get moving,’ replied Xavier, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘But I’m out of here. With that girl. If you don’t want to go that route, cashing in on her, fine. But I do. And I’m taking her with me.’

  Santarem’s shoulders slumped, then seemed to straighten. ‘Are you fucking with me?’

  ‘Yeah, I am,’ replied Xavier, playing the end of his keffiyeh through his fingers but keeping his eyes on Santarem.

  Santarem was quick as a striking snake. But Xavier was quicker. As Santarem swung back the stone pestle and hurled it at Xavier with all his strength, he ducked to the right and the spinning pestle took a piece out of the wall behind him. When he sat up, he had Jacquot’s gun in his hand.

  The sight of the gun stopped Santarem in his tracks.

  ‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ he asked, stunned by the appearance of the weapon. ‘You gotta be kidding me?’

  Xavier shook his head. ‘You had your chance.’

  Santarem spread his hands, gave a big shrug, his eyes flicking between Xavier and the gun. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Whoa there!’ He chuckled a little.

  Xavier saw the change in him. Suddenly the hardness had gone. This was not the man who had thrown the pestle. The gun saw to that.

  Santarem pulled out a chair and settled himself at the kitchen table. Time to talk now, to negotiate. He could handle that. ‘So, we do it your way,’ he said, with an easy smile. ‘Hey, no problem.’

  Xavier gave it some thought. Even lowered the gun.

  Santarem saw the move and relaxed.

  ‘You know what?’ Xavier smiled at him. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Reaching across the table, he buried the snout of Jacquot’s Beretta against Santarem’s chest and pulled the trigger. The sound of the gunshot may have been muffled but it still filled the room.

  Santarem rocked back in his chair from the force of the shot, but his knees, catching under the table, brought him tipping back, his face smacking down on to the plastic cloth.

  As the echo died away, a voice called from above, ‘Murat? My boy? Is that you?’

  49

  THE CORSICAN BROTHERS, TADDEUS THE elder, and Tomas, had had a busy night. After taking care of the bound girl in Virginie’s bedroom – asleep when they entered, but awake soon enough, her eyes wide as they set about her, teeth chewing the gag, limbs thrashing uselessly against the restraints – the two of them had dumped her body down a manhole in a side-street off République then driven over to Valentine’s workshop in the Fifteenth. Forcing the lock on the metal grille, they’d searched the garagiste’s office by torchlight, and found what they were looking for, just as Gastal had done before them, in Valentine’s desk diary and Rolodex. Halfan hour later, they parked outside Alam Haggar’s home on place Lapeyre and waited.

  At a little after eight o’clock, dressed in jeans, trainers and hoodie, Alam jogged down the steps of his apartment block. He was swinging his leg over a Vespa, rocking it off its stand, when Tomas came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. When Alam turned and saw the man who not two days before had pressed the barrel of a gun against his testicles, the same man who had probably done for his boss Valentine, his face turned white and he tried to kick the scooter away from him and make a run for it. But Tomas was too fast. He sidestepped the tumbling scooter, caught the sleeve of Alam’s hoodie and brought him up short.

  ‘Hey, hey, hey. N’inquiète pas. Don’t fret,’ Tomas had said, and smiled encouragingly. ‘Tiens, tiens. Hold on,’ he continued as the lad struggled to pull free. ‘We need your help, that’s all. And it’ll be worth your while, I promise. More than before, hunh? What do you say?’

  The soft tone was persuasive. Alam eased up, relaxed. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew it.

  ‘Come on then. It’s cool. No problems. Just some help is all. We need some muscle. A couple of hours, no more,’ said Tomas, even letting go of Alam’s sleeve and bending down to pick up the scooter, set it back on its stand. ‘And afterwards, when the job’s done, we can drop you wherever you need to be. How’s that? Limo service,’ he said, nodding towards the black Volkswagen where Taddeus sat at the wheel. When Alam looked in his direction, Taddeus nodded, smiled, raised a hand from the steering wheel.

  If the lad had still wanted to run, it should have been then. His last chance. That was the moment for it. And he’d have made it; he’d have got away and lived to tell the tale. But he didn’t. As Tomas had judged correctly, the gentle approach, the winning words, the promise of money, even stooping to pick up the scooter, had convinced their target there was nothing to fear.

  ‘Yeah. Okay, I guess. What’s the job?’ the lad had asked.

  Again the friendly, confiding tone. ‘Just a small job, won’t take more than a couple of hours, less if we’re lucky. But we’ll need to pick up your chum. We’ll need the two of you,’ said Tomas.

  Five minutes later, Taddeus was driving them up rue Saint Pierre, Tomas in the front passenger seat, Alam behind – free to jump from the car if he felt like it. But the thought never occurred; he didn’t think about it, not at any of the stops they made at traffic lights and intersections, passing up the western edge of the Saint Pierre cemetery or looping down beneath the A50 autoroute before heading up into Saint Loup where Ibin still lived with his parents. Nor, at any point, did Alam pause to wonder how the two men knew where he lived.

  When they got to Ibin’s, they made Alam get out and ring the doorbell, the two of them staying in the car. Ten metres ahead they watched an older woman open the door – Ibin’s mother – and then the other boy dodged past her, shouting something back at her as he waltzed Alam away from the door, out into the rain, and back up the street towards the Volkswagen. That was when Alam pointed out the Corsicans. At first Ibin had taken one look and, like Alam, turned to make a run for it. But, like Tomas, Alam had held him back, whispered in his ear.

  A moment later, a suspicious scowl on his face, Ibin was sitting beside his friend in the back seat, Taddeus was pulling out into traffic and Tomas was sliding a cassette into the player. As they headed south, down through Pont-de-Vivaux and Capelette towards Prado, with Ella Fitzgerald crooning her way through ‘Summertime’, ‘Manhattan’ and ‘Blue Moon’, Tomas explained what they wanted. They were headed for their workshop, he told the boys. He needed them to keep watch while he and his brother loaded up some stuff. By the time they reached their destination, a narrow unlit impasse one street back from the rocky waterfront of Ma
ldormé, the two boys were up for anything.

  As they got out of the car, Tomas pointed to the end of the alleyway. ‘We need one of you there,’ he said, ‘and one of you down there. If you see anyone coming, just radio it in. Here, come on into the workshop and I’ll get you kitted up with the walkietalkies.’

  And that was it. As they stepped into the brothers’ workshop, relishing the prospect of walkie-talkies and some well-paid adventure they could crow about to their friends, bending under a metal grille much the same as the one at Valentine’s garage, they were as good as dead. Five minutes after that grille was back in place, Taddeus had Ibin tied to a chair, while Tomas set to work on Alam.

  Ibin didn’t see a thing after Tomas broke his friend’s leg. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed, grunting in terrified alarm when he heard Alam’s second leg get broken, and then both arms.

  After that, Taddeus took over and it was Ibin’s turn.

  By the time the Corsicans got to L’Estaque, it was after midnight. They cruised past Marcel Lévy’s chandlery store and twenty metres further on they parked their car and walked back up the slope. All the lights were off in Marin Azur’s interior and the place was locked up for the night. In less than thirty seconds, Taddeus had the door open and both men were inside. In the back office, Taddeus switched on the light, rifled through the desk drawers and found what he was looking for. Holding up Lévy’s business card, he lifted the phone and dialled his home number.

  When Lévy came on the line, Taddeus introduced himself as Inspector Monque of the local gendarmerie. He apologised for the lateness of the hour but went on to explain that there had been a break-in at Marin Azur, and could Monsieur Lévy please come down to the shop?

  Twenty minutes later, Lévy arrived to find Taddeus standing by the counter. He knew in an instant that this was no Inspector Monque and realised equally swiftly who it really was.

  The Spaniard had fucked him. That fucking Dago had fucked him over!