When he turned to run, Tomas stepped out from between a rack of roping and stood in his path. One hour later, they dropped Lévy’s body behind a stand of recycling bins on rue Bandini, just as they’d done with Alam and Ibin on the Corniche road out past Fausse Monnaie.
Acting on information supplied to them by the recently deceased Monsieur Marcel Lévy, the two brothers then returned to their car, drove down to the promenade and turned left, back towards town, cutting off the Littoral at La Joliette and winding up into Saint Mauront, cruising past Murat Santarem’s house and peering through the slow intermittent drizzle at its curtained windows. There were no lights on and the house was far enough away from the nearest streetlight to guard its secrets – a black, shadowy façade, two floors, a low pitched roof, an attached garage, and what looked like a basement beneath the steps leading up to the front door.
Thirty metres on, around a corner, Taddeus parked their car. Opening umbrellas, they made their way back to the house. Without breaking stride, they pushed open the gate, walked up the path and jogged up the front steps.
50
INSIDE THE HOUSE, MURAT’S MOTHER had woken up to find herself lying on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t for the life of her remember how she had come to be there, nor how long she had lain there, nor how she might have sustained her injury – a throbbing lump the size of a plum on the side of her head which she examined with shaking fingertips. All she knew with any certainty, as she reached for the basement door handle and struggled to her feet, was that her old limbs ached something dreadful, and that lying on the floor was not a good idea for a lady of her age.
It was years since she’d taken a drink, but she seemed to recall that this was how she’d felt when she’d had too much, a few too many jaunes down at Bar Chat with Murat’s father, or an eau-devie with her neighbour Pauline, both long gone, God rest their bones. The symptoms were all there: a throbbing headache, a certain unsteadiness putting one foot in front of the other, and a wincing sensitivity to light, making Madame Santarem screw up her eyes as she made her way to the sink for a glass of water, noting as she did so that her son was also asleep, head on the table. What had they been doing to get themselves in such a state? she wondered. When there was so much work to be done, for goodness’ sake. Their guests to be fed and watered, the buckets in the basement to be emptied. More of Murat’s lovely girls come to stay, sleeping down there, regaining their strength. Seven of them this time. Les pauvres. Such sad lives, Murat had told her. Deprived, abused . . . terrible things had been done to them. Unmentionable. She remembered him shaking his head as he told her of the horrors these girls had endured. And how he had rescued them, how he was going to save them, how he would send them away somewhere safe. Her son’s kindness made her mother’s heart flutter with pride. Maybe later, after supper, if any of them were still awake, she’d read to them, down there in the basement.
Humming to herself, but otherwise making as little noise as possible so as not to wake her son, Madame Santarem set about preparing the girls’ supper, putting the daube to heat in the oven, scraping potatoes, finding a saucepan, water, salt. Et voilà. There, that would do it, she thought, and she pulled out a kitchen chair, smiled at her sleeping son, and blessed him for his kind heart and generous spirit. A saint . . . vraiment her boy was a saint.
Some time later – the kitchen clock said 2.20 but she didn’t believe it – she heard the water in the saucepan begin to bubble. The sound made her frown. What was it she was cooking? Ah, yes. Potatoes. For the girls. Their supper. And there in the oven, she could smell it already, a daube to go with them. But there was one more thing she had to do, she was sure of it. Something she had to prepare, since her son was still sleeping. She looked around the kitchen and wondered what it was.
The answer was right in front of her, on the table. A mortar, filled with those little blue pills. The job that her son usually did. Vitamins for the girls. Since Murat was sleeping, she drew the mortar towards her and looked around for the pestle. She needed the pestle to grind them down, so she could season the stew with them, flavour the water they would drink. But she could see no sign of it.
Where had it gone? she wondered.
What should she do?
Think, think, think.
A spoon . . . why, she could use a spoon. Of course, just perfect.
Spoon, spoon, spoon, she repeated, so she wouldn’t forget what it was she was looking for, going through the various drawers until she found the one with the cutlery, and a spoon, just the right size, and brought it back to the table.
But by the time she sat down again, made herself comfortable, she had lost the thread, wondering what she was doing with a spoon in her hand.
It was exactly then that she heard a gentle tapping at the front door.
That boy, Xavier. That’s who it was. Murat’s friend. Come to help her with the stew.
She looked down at Murat, sleeping so peacefully. She’d have to tell Xavier not to make any noise. She didn’t want anyone waking up her son until he was good and ready. Exhausted he was, all that work, the responsibility . . .
Another knock at the front door. A rattle of the doorknob.
‘Alors, alors. J’arrive,’ she called out, putting down the spoon and getting to her feet. Across the kitchen and down the hallway she went, humming happily to herself.
51
CLAUDE PELUZE LOOKED AT THE two bodies. They’d been lodged behind a bank of recycling bins on a wide stretch of pavement outside Fausse Monnaie. Save for the hands and the faces they could easily have been mistaken for a pile of old clothes dumped on the ground because there was no more room in the bins. A seagull had been at work on the topmost of the two bodies, a strip of cheek already removed, squirts of gull shit caking the shoulders of the second body. It was the gull, tugging at the flesh, that had caught the attention of a room-service chef returning home after her shift at Hôtel Caron on the Corniche. She was currently sitting in one of the gendarmerie patrol cars that had turned up following her call.
Even with the cops there, the seagulls were still patrolling. Yellow eyes stern and watchful, heads flicking to left and right, they rode the damp breeze or strutted impatiently to and fro across the pavement, feathers ruffling, watching for any opening.
Peluze turned away and walked over to the parapet while one of the Police Nationale boys ran some tape round a lamp-post to isolate the crime scene. Out on the Corniche road, tyres swishing over the shining surface, a few early drivers coming in from Prado and Roucas Blanc and Montredon slowed to take a look. Peluze watched their curious faces turn as they passed, trying to see what had happened. If they had seen what he’d just seen they’d never have slowed down, he thought. Or maybe they would.
Leaning against the parapet, looking out to sea, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up, cupping the flame on his Zippo against a drift of rain coming in from the Frioul Islands. Just a couple of kilometres offshore, they showed up in the dawn light like humped grey whales, an inshore swell breaking against their rocky sides in a lacy white spray. Snapping down the lid on his lighter, Peluze slipped it back into his pocket, took a deep drag on his cigarette and turned as a scene-of-crime van pulled up on to the kerb. He went over and briefed the man in charge.
One by one other squad cars turned up, lights flashing or unmarked. The boys in the unmarked cars were from rue de l’Evêché – Serre and Grenier, first, followed by Muzon and Laganne. Each of them took a look at the bodies then joined Peluze by the parapet.
‘Any ID?’ asked Grenier, one of the longest-serving officers on the squad. ‘Anyone know ’em?’
‘The one with no cheek, Gastal had him in yesterday,’ said Peluze, flicking away his cigarette half-smoked. He watched it hit the roof tiles of a house below the parapet and roll away in the streaming rain. ‘Name of Haggar. Alam Haggar. The other’s probably his chum. They worked at Valentine’s, over on rue Chatelier. Couple of grease monkeys is all. But it looks like someone
had it in for them.’
It wasn’t long before Gastal arrived.
‘Here comes the crapaud,’ said Muzon, and they turned to watch their boss drive his car up on to the pavement and lever himself out of the driving seat. There was, indeed, something toad-like in Gastal’s appearance: the bowed legs, the hunched shoulders, a complete absence of neck, slightly protuberant eyes and a pelt of black hair as thick and as short as felt napping, that came to a point in the middle of his low forehead. He wore a tight, three-piece suit the colour of dry mustard, a blue shirt and a bold red tie that would have been happily hidden by the waistcoat if the waistcoat had been buttoned up.
Peluze felt the muscles in his shoulders tense. ‘Christ, I hate that little fucker,’ he muttered.
‘You and everyone at l’Evêché, mon brave,’ Muzon muttered back, managing a tight little nod of greeting when he caught Gastal’s eye. ‘And not just because he dresses like an Englishman.’
‘So, what have we got?’ asked Gastal, shouldering his way past the scene-of-crime boys and glancing down at the bodies. He frowned as though he recognised something.
‘Your two lads,’ said Peluze. ‘Looks like Haggar and his side-kick, Ibin Hahmoud. Judging by the angle of the bodies, I’d say their arms and legs have been broken. Then they got a bullet apiece in the back of the head. One slug came out through the mouth, the other through an eye. Nothing for ballistics, but judging by the exits they’ll be heavy calibre from a serious piece.’
Before Gastal could say anything, there was the squawk and hiss and static of another report coming in from Despatch. Grenier went over to his car and took it. A moment later he came back to the group.
‘We got another one,’ he said. ‘Over at L’Estaque. Same kind of MO. Broken legs, broken arms, and a bullet in the back of the head. Very nice.’
‘They got a name yet?’ asked Gastal, feeling a shiver of certainty.
‘Lévy. Marcel Lévy. Runs a chandlery near the marina. It was his wife who found the body.’
Gastal tossed back his head, set his eyes on the low cloud above and made a series of ‘pah-pah-pah’ sounds that set his chins trembling and made him look even more like a toad.
Shit, he was thinking. He must be getting close, really getting under someone’s skin good and proper. Valentine, the two kids who’d worked for the garagiste, and now Lévy?
Forty-eight hours. That’s all it had taken.
And the name Cabrille was written all over it.
52
JACQUOT WOKE TO THE SMELL of roses. He was sure it was roses – warm, soft and velvety. If the smell had a colour, that colour, he decided, gently working his neck against the pillow, would be pink. Dark pink roses, turning to red at the tips of their petals. Like the roses on the wallpaper at the foot of the bed.
For a while he didn’t move, not daring to lift his head from the pillow, just flicked his eyes around the room, noting only a weak pulsing behind his eyes and a tension in his shoulders. In shuttered daylight, he could see an old armoire on his left, its wooden panels dark and polished, a dressing-table set against the rose-patterned wallpaper and between two half-shuttered windows, and a chest of drawers on his right – pine by the pale look of it, and nowhere near as grand as the armoire. Sparse furnishings but unmistakably feminine, all the props of a woman’s bedroom there. A satin, dragon-embroidered wrap on a hook behind the door, clothes left over the back of the dressing-table chair, scarves and belts hanging from its mirror frame, and candles everywhere – big fat church candles on the chest of drawers, a nest of them in all sizes in the blackened fireplace. And the smell of roses, drifting off the quilt and pillows. And from another room, the distant humming of a clothes drier.
It was then, with a jolt of alarm, that Jacquot realised his shirt and his trousers had been removed, just his shorts remaining. And he couldn’t remember having taken them off himself.
Oh, Dieu, he thought, and forgot all about the roses – and the injury to the back of his head. He sat up in bed too quickly and groaned. As much at the prospect of Marie-Ange Buhl having undressed him as the great wave of hangover headache that now took revenge for that sudden, unwise movement, making him squint with the pain.
Slowly, stiffly, he swung his legs out from under the duvet and planted them on the bare tiled floor. From there, with many further grunts and groans, he managed to get to his feet and straighten up, his head feeling twice its normal size and weight, his neck and shoulders as pliant as a slab of rock.
There was a message for him on the kitchen table, propped between a tube of arnica and a jar of Tiger Balm.
I am at work, Fleurs des Quais on rue Francis.
I have left you some medicine, and the car keys.
It’s a green 2CV in case you can’t remember.
She’s called Rosie, by the way.
Please be kind to her.
P.S. Your trousers and shirt are in the drier.
Je m’excuse. You were soaked through.
But there was no time to mull over the previous evening – meeting up with Marie-Ange, being undressed by her, and spending the night in her bed. Back in the bedroom he heard the phone ringing. He got there as the ansaphone clicked on. He grabbed up the receiver and pressed the Stop button.
‘Monsieur Muller?’ It was a woman’s voice, but not Marie-Ange’s.
‘Oui, c’est moi,’ he replied.
‘Béatrice Nalon, here. Madame Bonnefoy’s assistant. She is in court this morning, but has the information you requested. She suggests you meet her for lunch on rue Breteuil.’ If the message sounded odd – like some war-time code – Béatrice Nalon showed no sign of it.
‘That is fine,’ said Jacquot. ‘Tell her I will be there. Thank you.’
53
AS HE WHISKED UP A bowl of eggs and set a buttered skillet to heat on the stove, Xavier reflected that his first instinct had been spot on. Jan Muller, the man who’d followed him from the Bar Dantès the night before, the man he’d floored on the corner of rue Jacobe, was a cop. As sure as eggs are eggs, he thought, tipping the mix into the skillet. There’d been nothing in Muller’s wallet to suggest he might be, and his seaman’s papers in their grubby plastic case had looked authentic – soiled, salt-sticky in the rain, many times folded and unfolded; the real thing. But the gun was another matter.
Xavier had found it in the left-hand inside pocket of Muller’s pea-jacket. An easy reach for a right-hander. Going for a wallet, coming out with a gun. Xavier had pulled it out and turned it in his hand, rain spattering off it. A slim, blue-black Beretta 92G, the three-arrow maker’s mark in the middle of the grip, ten rounds in the magazine, one chambered. It was slickly maintained, a little scuffed round the muzzle, and pleasingly weighted in the hand.
That gun was the clincher. All the sailors Xavier knew carried knives, or else the rope-bound lead cosh he favoured. Not one of them carried a gun. And the Beretta 92G, as Xavier also knew, was a flic’s gun. Service issue.
Jan Muller, if that was his real name, was a cop. Had to be. And working undercover. No question. Most likely narcotics, and most likely tailing Petitjean. Which meant that Petitjean would have to be dealt with. Silenced. The dealer knew Xavier’s name, even knew where he lived. Soon as he could manage it, he’d pay a call down Montredon and deal with it. Yesterday he’d have stuck Petitjean with a blade, or laid in with the cosh. This time he had a gun.
As he flipped his omelette and shuffled the skillet, Xavier acknowledged that finding the gun had changed everything, given him the edge, the impetus he needed, that extra lick of confidence. He’d never owned one before, never carried one, and feeling its weight in his pocket as he headed off for the meet with Santarem had given him a real buzz. Guns were serious, guns got the job done. Now that he was moving up in the world, it was time he had one. And now he did.
Switching off the electric ring, Xavier slipped the omelette from skillet to plate, sat at the table and started eating, just knocked out by how easy it had all been, how e
verything had fallen into place. Not that killing Santarem had been a part of the plan. It just . . . happened. When that pestle whistled past his head, he’d reached for the gun without thinking, an instinctive self-defence. And he recalled the sense of triumph he’d felt as he’d levelled it on Santarem. The look of surprise on the other man’s face. The sudden turning of the tables. The way the gun changed the perspective, directed the action.
It had been a good feeling – pure, powerful, irresistible – and as Santarem pulled out that kitchen chair, switching on that smile, flashing those even white teeth, Xavier had simply reached forward, stuck the barrel into his chest and pulled the trigger . . .
Just because he could.
And because a part of him suddenly wanted to.
And it had been . . . just staggering. Feeling the gun buried in Santarem’s chest kick back in his fist, hearing the muffled report, watching that chair flip back and then slam forward, Santarem’s face smacking down on to the table.
In-croy-able.
After that, it was a stitch. Once he’d checked Santarem was a goner, he’d pulled the stew from the oven, ladled out a portion and roughly crumbled two of the blue pills and one of the yellows over it. He’d been filling a bottle with water when the old lady finally made it down from her bedroom and came into the kitchen. She saw the gun, saw her son flat out on the table, a pool of blood already gathering around his stockinged feet, but Xavier could tell that she didn’t quite know what to make of it.
No need to kill her, he thought. Mad as a bag of snakes anyway. So he put her down with a tap on the temple from the butt of the Beretta.
Down in the basement, flicking a torch from face to face, it hadn’t taken him long to find Elodie.
‘I’m a policeman. I’ve come to get you. Here, eat this, drink this,’ he’d told her, squatting beside her, supporting her as he helped spoon the food into her mouth, washing it down with the water. Hell of a mess, but he’d managed it, felt her drift away.
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