‘Quick,’ he said, pointing. ‘The house there . . .’
And he was gone.
68
BY THE TIME MARIE-ANGE came round the back of the van, Jacquot was already through the gate and sprinting up the path. She raced after him, reaching the narrow porch in time to see that the door was off its top hinge and the hallway beyond was filled with smoke, coiling like a black snake along the ceiling and being sucked through the open doorway. She wasn’t certain whether Jacquot had barged it open himself or if he’d found it like that. All she could see was his outline up ahead, pulling his jacket off and wrapping it round his head as he disappeared into the house. Pulling off her own jacket and plugging it against her mouth, she pushed through the front door and followed him, down a smoke-filled hallway. The first thing she saw, through watering eyes, was a body sprawled against the wall, almost hidden under a rack of coats. But she didn’t stop, just hurried after Jacquot, through an archway to the right and into a small galley kitchen, the ruby glow of an electric stove plate radiating heat and colour through the smoke.
‘Get some water,’ he shouted, wrenching out the wall-plug for the electric cooker and knocking a skillet pan off the top of it and on to the floor. A boiling black spiral of smoke poured off the pan, filling the kitchen with the hot stench of burning food.
Marie-Ange didn’t waste a second. Snatching up a kettle, she emptied the contents on to the skillet and the black smoke turned into a billowing, scalding hiss of steam. On the other side of the kitchen, Jacquot leaned across the sink and flung open a window, fanning away the smoke with his jacket.
With a through-draft from kitchen window to front door, the smoke and steam soon cleared, the tiled kitchen floor puddled with blackened water, the skillet in the middle of it still hissing and ticking.
‘Another few minutes and we’d have been too late,’ said Jacquot, holding up a scorched drying cloth, its singed edges still smoking, before dropping it into the puddle. ‘Or someone else would have smelled the smoke and come running.’
‘There’s a body,’ said Marie-Ange, putting the kettle back on its stand.
‘There is? Where?’
‘The hallway. You went right past it.’
Jacquot stepped over the skillet and went to take a look. ‘I didn’t see it,’ he said, dropping down on one knee. It was Xavier Vassin, his eyes wide with shock, a neat hole in the centre of his forehead and a second hole in his left cheek. Jacquot lifted the head, felt the sticky, bony edges of a single large exit wound, and looked up at the coat rack above the body. A cream cotton windcheater was spattered with blood at about head height. Getting up, Jacquot started working through the coats. He found what he was looking for soon enough. The two high-impact bullets may have hit their target within a few centimetres of each other, but Xavier’s bony skull had deflected their trajectory and spread the spent slugs much further apart. The first had torn through the windcheater and lodged in the wall, but the second had sheared away to the left and taken a gouge of plaster out of the cornicing. He reached out, put a finger to each of the holes, then looked around the floor of the hallway. No curled, flattened shells in the plaster, and no shiny brass shell casings either. Just like the kitchen cupboard on rue Bandole.
Going back to the body, Jacquot examined the spill of blood on the front and side of the man’s white T-shirt. It seemed strangely localised – with no apparent connection to the bullet wounds – and he pulled up the man’s shirt. Just as he’d thought. No bullet, this, but a jagged wound, probably a stabbing, an inch above the top of his jeans. It wouldn’t have killed him, but it would have bled like an open tap and hurt like hell, and sooner or later Xavier would have had to get it treated.
After searching the ground floor – just the blackened kitchen, a cramped salon poorly furnished, and a squat lavatory by the back door – the two of them climbed the stairs. On the landing Jacquot found what had caused Xavier’s wound, a pair of bloodied scissors, the blades curved for cutting fingernails, small enough to fit into a purse, just lying on the carpet.
She tried to make a run for it, he thought.
Elodie must have found those scissors somewhere, and stuck them into Xavier – when he came up to feed her or check on her.
Plucky girl, thought Jacquot. A true Bonnefoy. Her aunt – and her mother, too – would be proud of her.
He passed the scissors to Marie-Ange, and looked around the landing. Three closed doors. The first door he pushed open led to a bathroom – plastic shower curtain, one toothbrush, a pair of trainers in the bidet; the second concealed an untidy pit of a bedroom at the front of the house, bed unmade, clothes littering the floor, the whole room thick with the airless smell of a man who didn’t care too much for ventilation; but in the third room, at the back of the house, was a single bed, its thin blue counterpane rucked and ruffled, its pillow dented, a tray of food spilled on the carpet.
Jacquot stood in the doorway and could almost see the action playing out in front of him. Elodie’s lunge from the bed, the girl clearly no longer drugged but pretending to be asleep as Xavier bent down to put the tray on the bedside table. And then she was off that bed, scrambling past him for the door, while a stunned Xavier groped to find his wound, realised what had happened and turned to give chase.
Which of them, Jacquot wondered, had thrown the scissors to the landing floor? Was it Elodie? Or had she left them sticking in Xavier’s gut, for him to pull out and cast aside?
But before she’d got very far, probably before she made the stairs, Xavier was after her, oblivious to his wound, desperate to stop her reaching the front door and running out into the street. A door which suddenly sprang open as his two killers shouldered it off its hinges and dealt with everything – Elodie and Xavier.
At rue Bandole they had been hours behind the action. But here it was ten or fifteen minutes. No more than that. Any longer and the place would have been ablaze. He wondered about the timeframe, the loss of headway? Had the killers not known where to come after hitting the Santarem place? There was no other explan -ation. But some time after hitting rue Bandole, they’d found out and followed up.
‘She was here, wasn’t she?’ said Marie-Ange quietly, the scissors in her hands.
‘Oh, yes, she was here,’ replied Jacquot, turning from the doorway. ‘But where is she now?’
It was then that they heard the first siren.
Marga, back at rue Bandole. She’d have told the police where he and Marie-Ange were headed. He could almost hear her. ‘They said they were going to rue Artemis . . .’
Jacquot could have kicked himself. He should have kept his mouth shut or at least waited until they were out of earshot. And learnt his lesson; it was Madame Boileau all over again.
‘Time to go,’ he said, as a car squealed to a halt out in the street. ‘Come on, out the back. Allons-y. We’ll have to make a run for it.’
69
ALAIN GASTAL WAS NOT IN a good mood.
The day may have begun badly with the loss of his latest snout, Marcel Lévy, but the appearance of Mademoiselle Carinthe Cousteaux in his office had changed all that. If Gastal could have picked a better informer he couldn’t imagine it. A woman of a certain age, a once trusted confidante, motivated by that greatest of all persuaders. Not fear, but revenge. A woman who had been unceremoniously dumped by the new management, given just a few hours to pack her things, and driven to the Sofitel where a stand -ard room had been laid on for just two weeks. There was no need for him to coax, or threaten, or scare, no need to play the heavy to get Carinthe Cousteaux talking. She wanted to talk. Was happy to do it. And for more than two hours, in Gastal’s office in Police Headquarters on rue de l’Evêché, that’s exactly what she had done.
For the last four years, maybe twice a week, Monsieur Arsène Cabrille had shared her bed in Endoume, and during that time there wasn’t a great deal she hadn’t learnt about the man and his operations. And remembered. Things he’d said to her, told her about, let slip; things
she’d heard him say on the phone or in his sleep even. Her insurance policy, she told Gastal. Just in case. And her recall was prodigious, nothing less than an insider’s guide to Monsieur Arsène Cabrille and his various operations. Everything from his clinics, care homes and hospices to his construction companies and trading fleet, the thing Cabrille loved most, a dozen mid-sized freighters and their occasional illicit cargoes – cocaine and heroin usually – never more than two- or three-hundred-kilo bales concealed in otherwise legitimate ten-thousand-bale loads. There was even a ship in port that very moment, she’d told him, and though the name escaped her now, she’d assured him that she would remember it in due course.
And Gastal had lapped it up, having to hold up his hand and stop her occasionally when he had to change the tape, so he wouldn’t miss a thing, the only real disappointment the way she shook her head when he’d asked about the missing girl, Elodie Lafour. It didn’t ring a bell, she told him. Cabrille hadn’t mentioned it. She was sure of it.
And all the time, Gastal had watched her, couldn’t take his eyes off her. Those scarlet lips, those soft almond eyes as black as treacle, the silky crossing and recrossing of her legs, the occasional shifting of her shoulders that seemed to set into movement the great and glorious juxtaposition of her breasts.
Nearly three hours after finding her in his office, Gastal thanked her for her help and her time and, rather than have one of the squad take her back to the Sofitel, he’d offered to drop her back there himself. The least he could do. And she had seemed delighted at the prospect, the personal service, and when he suggested en route that maybe they should stop somewhere for a drink, or a light supper, she had seemed equally happy to accept, switching on a warmth of attention and flood of compliments that washed over him like a scented wave. With as solid a certainty as a man can possess, he was sure that within the next few hours he would be opening the front of Mademoiselle Carinthe Cousteaux’s blouse and helping himself to its contents.
But it was not to be. After a nightcap in the Sofitel bar, the lights of the Vieux Port twinkling through a rain-smeared picture window, just as he was about to suggest that maybe they would be more comfortable in her room, as if reading his mind, the lady mentioned that ten thousand francs would be a suitable . . . an appropriate gesture of goodwill on his part.
She’d said it with a confiding smile, her fingers brushing across the tops of his thighs, and it had taken more than a few seconds before Gastal quite understood what it was she had just told him. If he wanted to sleep with her, then he’d have to pay. Not that he was unused to the exchange of money before sex. But this time he’d been appalled. The very thought of it! Five thousand he might have managed, but ten was out of the question. And he’d been so certain . . . had no idea . . . Fuming with anger and indignation, but holding on to his temper, for this was a snout not to mess with, he had made his excuses and left with as much dignity as he could muster. Back in his car, he slammed the steering wheel with his fist, elbowed the door and swore low and long. It was exactly then that he heard a police despatcher call in an all points on six girls in a house on rue Bandole.
By the time he arrived the place was overrun with paramedics and an emergency victim-support unit seeing to the girls, while four of his squad stood talking it over in the kitchen.
‘She’s not here, boss,’ Laganne had told him, chewing on a toothpick. ‘She was, but someone took her.’
And now, an hour later, stepping aside as the body of Xavier Vassin was loaded on to a stretcher and manoeuvred down the hallway on rue Artemis – the name and address provided by a Belgian girl called Marga at rue Bandole – there was still no Elodie.
Gastal swore under his breath. He’d been so certain they’d find her – that he’d find her – so sure of it, as he’d spun across town towards rue Bandole and then on to rue Artemis, that he could almost taste the raviolis of foie gras and truffles at Pierre Orsi.
But he was getting closer. He knew it. He could smell it. Vassin was the man who’d snatched Elodie from Santarem – an accomplice, maybe, who’d grown too greedy, that was the way Gastal read it. And the two gorilles who had got to rue Bandole next and had tracked him down here, put him down and taken the girl, were probably the same ones who’d done Valentine and his boys, and maybe Lévy, and maybe even the same ones who’d removed Mademoiselle Cousteaux from her Endoume love nest to a guest room in the Sofitel. In which case it seemed reasonable to suppose that Virginie Cabrille might also be after the girl.
What he couldn’t figure out was who the man and the woman were, the ones who’d come in third at rue Bandole, the ones who’d thoughtfully covered the bodies of Murat Santarem and his mother, and, by the look of it, done the same at rue Artemis – the doused fire, the stove plug out, the thrown skillet.
‘We’ve got a gun!’ called Grenier, breaking into his thoughts, holding up an evidence bag. ‘In a kitchen drawer. Beretta. Looks like service issue. Maybe one of ours.’
Gastal frowned. ‘Call it in. Get it matched. Ballistics. And prints too. Like, yesterday,’ he added, when Grenier just pocketed the bagged gun and strolled off with a nod in his direction.
Christ, sometimes he hated them more than they hated him.
70
TWO MEN, DRESSED IN BLACK. Two professionals, in Jacquot’s opinion, given the ruthless efficiency of their killing style. Everything measured. Precise. No slugs, no casings. Nothing left to point to them at the house on either rue Bandole or rue Artemis, nothing to give them away save the slick style of the murders.
If Jacquot had been investigating these killings as a duty cop, he’d have rung every doorbell there and then, hustled friends and neighbours out of their beds, and started asking questions. Did anyone see anything? Hear anything? Tonight? Last night? The last seven days? Cars? Faces? Strangers? But he was working undercover. Proper police procedure was not an option here.
‘It’s like we’re right back at square one,’ said Marie-Ange, quietly, hopelessly. They were sitting at a table in Bar Dantès where, twenty-four hours earlier, she had first spotted the man in her dreams: Scarface. Xavier. Xavier Vassin. It was well past midnight, but they weren’t the only customers.
‘On the contrary,’ said Jacquot. ‘We are much further along, much closer. At Santarem’s house we were maybe a day behind Elodie, but at rue Artemis maybe just a few minutes. En effet, if we had gone there before rue Bandole we might even have Elodie with us right now. But we didn’t. Sometimes that’s how it is.’ He shrugged, glancing across at his companion. For a woman who’d seen three dead bodies in the last four hours, Marie-Ange appeared remarkably composed, if a little downhearted.
‘So close, but so far,’ she replied, stirring her menthe frappée. ‘I don’t know why I ordered this,’ she continued. ‘It tastes horrible.’
‘However it tastes,’ said Jacquot with a smile, ‘it’s worth remembering that a menthe frappée was the drink Elodie ordered before she disappeared.’
This information brought a fleeting smile to her face. ‘Really? Then that’s the reason. I couldn’t understand why I asked for it. It just popped into my head. And I was worrying that I was losing my way. Not being any help. Not being able to tell which house . . .’ She looked down at the table and shook her head, her hair falling forward like a pair of wings. ‘And now we’ve hit a dead end.’
‘I promise you we haven’t,’ replied Jacquot, taking a sip of his coffee and following it with a slug of the Calva he’d ordered to accompany it. ‘Police work,’ he continued quietly, ‘investigations like this, well, it’s like building a wall. Each case the same. Never varies. Just stone after stone, one on top of the other, until . . .’
‘Until it all comes tumbling down,’ she interrupted miserably.
‘Non, non, non. Pas du tout. Look how far we’ve come since the last time we sat here. We know that Elodie is in Marseilles. We know that she was probably picked up by Murat in Paris, in his van with the Paris plates. We know that she was brought here with
other girls, six of whom are being looked after by the emergency services, and even now being reunited with their parents. We identified Scarface – Monsieur Xavier Vassin. Established that he worked with this Murat Santarem, trafficking these girls, and we tracked them both down – first one, then the other. And now we know that Elodie is with two men, professional hit men, either working on their own account or, more likely, for someone here in Marseilles. Someone big. Someone who can afford to bring in professionals, or else employs them right here. And it’s the latter I’d go for. Those two men in black are Marseillais, for certain.’
‘And how exactly do you work that out?’ asked Marie-Ange, her eyes wide, stunned by Jacquot’s take on what she saw as complete failure.
‘M’écoute. They knew their way round town. They knew where to go. How to get there, do what they had to do, and get out of there. And they’ll have been looking just as long as we have. Maybe longer. Which suggests they have a base, somewhere safe, here in the city. Somewhere they can go without arousing suspicion – so rule out a hotel.’
‘What’s our next move then?’
Jacquot looked at his watch.
‘We sleep on it. It’s been a long day.’ He pulled the car keys from his jacket pocket and pushed them across the table. ‘Take the car. Get yourself home. I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘But what about Elodie?’
‘She’s safe,’ said Jacquot.
‘Safe?’ Marie-Ange started shaking her head as though Jacquot had just suggested the monarchy would soon be returned to power, as though, finally, he had lost his senses.
‘Safer than she’s been all week,’ he continued.
‘And how exactly do you figure that?’
‘Up until now, mademoiselle, we’ve been working against the clock. The dockers’ strike, the threat of transportation, God knows what else. But now Elodie Lafour’s not going anywhere. She’s become too valuable. A real commodity. And very soon, believe me, there’s going to be a hefty ransom demand.’
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