Confession

by Martin O'Brien

  Jacquot picked up his glass and slugged back the last of his Calva, signalling for the tab.

  ‘As of tonight,’ he said, pulling out his wallet, ‘the game changes.’

  Sunday

  15 November

  71

  EVERYONE WHO SAW IT THAT early Sunday morning held their breath. After ten days of low cloud and drenching, chilling rain there was blue sky, just a patch of it, out at sea, beyond the domed tower of Fort Saint Jean. Enough to make a sailor’s shirt, the fisherwomen on the Quai des Belges remarked one to another, pulling their shawls tight as a crisp breeze shivered over the water.

  But it didn’t last. The clouds might have moved on and the rain might have stopped but a wide bank of fog rolled in from the Marseilles roads and Golfe du Lion, high grey sails over a churning black sea. You could see its silky fingers stealing through the mouth of the Vieux Port, passing down the pannes, row after row of moored craft softened in shape and line. Streets shortened. Tall buildings lost. Church bells dropped an octave, as though clappers and rims had been baffled in blankets.

  By ten o’clock the cemetery of Saint Pierre was appropriately shrouded, scarves of fog trailing through the trees, blunting the tips of the sentinel cypresses, the ringing of chewed bits and the stamping of hoofs and the impatient whickering of the plumed horses that had drawn Arsène Cabrille’s hearse and led the cortège along the cemetery’s gravelled paths, distant and hollow, muffled in the grey gloom.

  The Cabrille family had not lived in the city long enough to have a family vault on one of the better avenues. Instead, a plot of land beyond the Porte Rampal, in an angle of the cemetery walls and screened by a semi-circle of shrubs and cypress, had been purchased from the authorities and set aside from its neighbours by a length of black anchor chain strung between two ancient cannons sunk into the ground. Inside this plot, beneath the trees, stood a limestone plinth, its stepped panels carved with tilting masts and billowing sails, snapping flags and pennants, coiled ropes and storm-tossed barques – source of the family’s fortune – its topmost decoration an oval cartouche with Baroque flourishes in which the words Famille Cabrille had been sternly incised.

  In the lawn below this plinth stood three gravestones: those of Arsène’s father, Giulio; his mother, Mariana and a newer, cleaner stone for his own dear wife. Beside the later Madame Cabrille, Arsène’s own flower-bedecked casket rested over an open grave, the mounds of earth tidily camouflaged beneath green sheets of plastic turf. Standing in front of the casket, head bowed, hands clasped, listening to the final round of blessings, Virginie covered a yawn by pretending to dab away a tear. Behind her, ghostly figures in the fog, stood her father’s mourners, all dressed in black, most of the women veiled, four of the city’s most feared crime bosses attended by their wide-shouldered retinues, along with assorted family friends, well-wishers, directors of the Druot Clinic and three members of the Opéra board all looking distinctly uncomfortable in such notorious company.

  If only they knew, thought Virginie. All of them gathered here on a Sunday morning to pay their respects, not only to a man they knew and feared and universally loathed, but also to a shifty, second-rate, cheating little hoodlum called Guillermo Ribero. Standing so close to the casket, she wondered what would happen if poor Guillermo woke up now, realised where he was and started hammering on the padded satin sides of the coffin. Or maybe poked a finger out, like a tiny pink worm, through the vent holes that Tomas had drilled below the casket’s lid. Now there would be an exquisite moment, Virginie decided, timing his return to consciousness to the very last minute, the very last second, and she leaned closer, listening keenly for any sound. But there was nothing, just the shuffling of restless feet and a rasping stir of gravel as the priest closed his missal and the service came to an end.

  And then she gave a little start, felt a shivering flicker between her thighs, as a thin whining began from the far side of the grave where an electric lift mechanism had been discreetly placed. The casket trembled slightly as the lift’s gear engaged, one of the wreaths shifted, and then slowly, smoothly, it began its descent between the draped astro-turf. When it reached the bottom, Virginie stepped forward, took a black gloveful of earth from the silver trowel a sacristan was offering her and cast it on to the box, the loose dirt dancing off the wood.

  ‘Adieu,’ she whispered, the smile hidden behind her veil. ‘Adieu, les deux.’ And she turned away to join the other mourners, walking with them to the line of limousines waiting to carry them away. When the last outlines had faded into the mist, their footfalls a soft distant crunching, a small bulldozer concealed behind the trees started up, its rubberised caterpillar treads making little noise as it headed for the mound of earth beside the grave and lowered its scoop. In six deft moves, swinging back and forth between pit and pile, the grave had been filled by the time Virginie reached her limousine.

  Tomas and Taddeus stood beside it.

  ‘Did you get what I wanted?’ she asked.

  Taddeus nodded, dug into his pocket, pulled out a wrap of paper and handed it to Virginie. Carefully she opened the wrap, looked at the hairclip. ‘Very pretty,’ she said. ‘Just the thing. And she’s safe?’

  ‘Quite safe, mam’selle,’ replied the elder brother. ‘She should be waking up any time now.’

  ‘Like someone else we know,’ replied Virginie, slipping the hairclip into her small clutch bag and sliding into the back of the limousine.

  Taddeus and Tomas nodded their agreement.

  Ten minutes later, as the cortège passed between the last of the mist-shrouded trees on the Grande Allée and turned through the cemetery gates on to rue Saint Pierre, Guillermo Ribero opened his eyes, blinked and wondered where he was.

  72

  THERE WAS A PHONE MESSAGE and a package waiting for Jacquot at the front desk when he made it down to a late breakfast at Auberge des Vagues.

  Madame Boileau delivered them both.

  ‘You know a man called Salette?’ she asked, as Jacquot passed her desk, one gnarled hand on the package, the other clasping the ends of her woollen shawl.

  Jacquot was taken aback. He thought for a second or two before answering, frowning as though the name was not immediately familiar.

  ‘Salette?’

  ‘Jean-Pierre Salette. The old harbour master,’ she said, looking at him suspiciously.

  ‘I seem to remember the name,’ he said, not wishing to be more exact.

  ‘Well, it seems he remembers you. Said there’s a ship you may be interested in. Called Brotherhood.’

  Jacquot nodded. ‘Sounds encouraging,’ he replied, remembering what Salette had told him the last time they’d met.

  ‘They say the strike’s ending today,’ continued Madame Boileau. ‘Back to business.’

  ‘Then perhaps I won’t need this Monsieur Salette.’

  Madame Boileau looked doubtful. ‘Use every contact you have is my advice. And you can’t go wrong with a man like Salette. I’ve known him years. An eye for the ladies, and a nose for the sea. As good a man as you’ll find.’

  Jacquot agreed with every word, but gave no sign of it bar a thoughtful nod. As though this was a judgement worth considering, and he was grateful for the recommendation. He was about to move on when she slid the package across the desk.

  ‘This came as well. Last night. By courier. You were back too late for me to hand it over personally, but I didn’t want to leave it out for you.’

  Jacquot took the package, thanked Madame Boileau and headed down to the basement canteen which was humming with a loud, raucous crowd of seamen, of every age and size and shape, a dozen chattering languages under a cloud of cigarette smoke, every bed in his dormitory and every room in the hostel taken as word had spread that the strike was about to end. He looked round for Franco, wondering whether his new friend had gone north or had come back to Marseilles. There was no sign of him, no familiar faces, so he helped himself to coffee, found himself a table, ordered eggs and ham and pastries, and
opened the package Madame Boileau had given him. A sailor’s log suitably curled and aged and stained – Mediterranean routes this time, rather than Baltic. And a note from Solange Bonnefoy, clipped and precise, giving nothing away. Apologies for the delay. They say the strike is ending. Any progress?

  For a brief moment, Jacquot felt a twist of guilt. As soon as he finished breakfast, he’d call her, bring her up to date. He should have called the night before but it was late when he got back to the hostel, and he was too tired to do anything but fall into bed and sleep, waking only briefly when the first early risers started moving around the dormitory. As for the strike ending . . . well, it didn’t really matter any more. Whether it ended or continued made little difference now. He might keep his disguise, would certainly continue to work undercover – Gastal would never allow it any other way – but, as he’d told Marie-Ange in the bar the night before, the game had changed.

  Sometime soon there would be a ransom demand. A price set.

  An exchange arranged.

  He had no doubt that Elodie was alive.

  The question was, for how much longer?

  73

  ALAIN GASTAL WAITED UNTIL THE last mourners had moved off before coming out of the trees. He’d arrived twenty minutes before the service, flashed his badge at the grave-diggers, and watched the service from behind the bonnet of the earth-mover.

  As the mourners had assembled, gathering at the graveside, Gastal whistled softly at the line-up. They were all there, criminal royalty every one of them: René Duclos, head of the Duclos family from Toulon; Jean-Claude Rachette, also known as ‘Hachette’ the Hatchet, after his favoured means of punishment; Guy Ballantine, whose grandfather had established the family’s fortune by swindling the Gestapo out of fifteen million francs; and there, in the wheelchair, a rug tucked round his long-lost, machine-gunned legs, Patric ‘Le Papa’ Polineaux, the parrain of all parrains, godfather of all godfathers.

  They weren’t alone, of course. Standing around them were the heavies, every one a gorille who’d cut a throat just to see how far and how high the blood would spurt. Dozens of murders between them, maybe hundreds, not to mention drug running, prostitution, racketeering, extortion . . . and not a single night spent behind bars. All of them in black topcoats and shiny black suits, white shirts and thin black ties. They looked as if butter wouldn’t melt.

  And standing apart from the mourners, in a slim black pencil skirt and double-breasted black jacket, gloved and veiled, Arsène Cabrille’s only child, his daughter Virginie. Educated at all the best schools in Marseilles and Paris, and finished at the prestigious Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, otherwise known as Sciences-Po. Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale rolled into one. No one did it better than Sciences-Po when it came to equipping its graduates with the means to make it in the world. In France, you didn’t come better educated than that, borne out – as Gastal knew – by two of his contemporaries at the DGSE, both of whom had studied at Sciences-Po, both men taking promotions that should have been his. Not even Arsène Cabrille’s fabled wealth and fearsome influence could have secured his daughter a place there. She had done it on her own. And not so much as a parking ticket to her name.

  As he watched her dab at her eyes, standing just a few metres away from him in the clinging fog, as the priest flourished a sign of the cross over the descending casket, Gastal wondered just how much she knew, how much of her father’s operations she’d been privy to?

  Though he couldn’t prove a thing – beyond a string of flimsy coincidences and the testimony of snouts no longer around to back up his case – Gastal had no doubt that Arsène Cabrille had been behind the murders of Jules Valentine, his two young mechanics, and Marcel Lévy. And he was equally sure that this Santarem character and his mother and Xavier Vassin had also been despatched by the family. Seven murders in just four days. But did Virginie know about any of it? If she was working for the family, as rumour had it, was it in some legitimate corner of the empire isolated from the real action? Or did she have her finger on the trigger? There may have been a woman in that English limousine in Chatelier, but was Virginie Cabrille the woman in question?

  There was only one way to find out.

  He would call on her.

  He would look her in the eye. And he would know. One way or the other.

  And if she was involved in those murders, if she did have Elodie Lafour squirrelled away somewhere, and if she did decide to ransom the girl – or damage her in any way – he would climb up on to her shoulders, and the shoulders of those smirking Sciences-Po bastards back in Lyon, and grab the promotion that was his due. Bocuse, j’arrive.

  As the earth-mover swung into action, Gastal stepped up to the grave and watched the first scoop of earth tumble down, rattling on to the wooden lid of Cabrille’s casket. As he listened to the dull thumping of earth on wood, and then the soft shuffling of earth on earth, he removed a wad of chewing gun from his mouth and pressed it against the new headstone waiting to be set above the grave.

  Bon débarras! Good riddance, connard, thought Gastal, and he plugged his hands into his pockets and ambled off into the fog, unaware that ten feet below him, under three tons of limestone scrag, Guillermo Ribero had finally woken up, realised where he was and started to scream, his fists drumming against the wooden sides of the casket, his polished fingernails scrabbling and tearing at its satin upholstery, and the brittle ribs of Arsène Cabrille snapping one by one under his squirming, frantic weight.

  But there was more to come that Sunday morning.

  Back at police headquarters the squad room was buzzing when Gastal arrived, all the boys called in on Sunday to sort out the mess from the night before. When they saw him the buzz subsided.

  ‘We got anything on that gun yet?’ asked Gastal, eyes fixing on Grenier who’d found the weapon at Xavier Vassin’s home and been tasked with its identification.

  Grenier took a deep breath, pushed through some papers on his desk as though he was looking for the details when he knew them already. He looked up, glanced across at Peluze and Bernie Muzon.

  ‘Well?’ pressed Gastal, catching the glance and sensing that something was up.

  ‘Yes, boss . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Initial tests indicate that the bullet that killed Murat Santarem was fired by the gun found in Xavier Vassin’s kitchen.’

  ‘And the gun belongs to . . .?’

  Grenier took another breath, rubbed the palm of his hand across his stubbly scalp. He didn’t want to do this, but he had no choice.

  ‘Jacquot, boss. Daniel Jacquot.’

  For a moment there was silence as Gastal took in this piece of information. And then he began to laugh. A chuckle first, a shake of the head, and then he took a deep breath and really laughed, held his sides and rocked on his feet.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, wheezing with the effort of speaking. ‘Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.’

  74

  ‘SO WHERE AM I TAKING you?’ asked Marie-Ange, peering over the steering wheel, trying to make out the road ahead through the curtaining fog.

  ‘Somewhere special, I promise,’ replied Jacquot. ‘Just head for the Corniche. You’re doing fine.’

  She’d picked him up shortly before midday, as arranged on the phone, on the corner of place de Lenche and rue Caisserie. The walk from Impasse Massalia had done him good, opened up his muscles, his mind, filled his lungs, the fog thick enough for him to risk turning down rue de l’Evêché, scuttling past police headquarters, head sunk into his collar, but not so deep that he couldn’t glance up at the patchwork of lit windows on the upper floors. Sunday morning and all the boys at work, thought Jacquot, trying to make sense of what they’d found at rues Bandole and Artemis.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ asked Marie-Ange. ‘You looked exhausted. You must have been out like a light. And how’s your head?’ The questions tumbled from her. Jacquot sensed she was feeling nervous.

  ‘Just about in one piece,’ he repl
ied, pressing his foot against the floormat – had she seen that Renault coming out from the right? She had. The 2CV slowed. He eased his foot off the imaginary brake. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Any dreams? Feelings?’ he added.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. Nothing.’

  It was the one thing she had hoped he wouldn’t ask. If only because she’d have to say no. No dreams. No silences. No dusty taste. She knew the reason, but didn’t feel she could tell him. Not about her monthly cycle, about how her ‘moments’ usually coincided with this time of the month. And truth to tell, she didn’t want to tell him, would have been crazy to tell him. If he knew there’d be no more dreams, no more ‘moments’ for the next few weeks, she’d be superfluous. He’d thank her and that would be it. He’d go his own way because she could no longer help. That was the way policemen were. So she kept quiet.

  There was something else that bothered her too. Something much more unsettling. If she was eased out of the investigation – the continuing search for Elodie – she wouldn’t be around him any more. And for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, she didn’t like the prospect of that at all. The last two days had been special. Meeting up with him again, working together, both of them following the same trail. As she double-declutched and second-geared her way round the bend into rue des Catalans she quietly breathed him in, sitting there beside her: the warmth of him, from his walk; the dampness of the sea fog on his pea-jacket; the sharp scent of soap – not perfumed, but strong and clean; and the rich aroma of tobacco clinging to him. People always said how they hated the smell of tobacco. Not Marie-Ange. She might not smoke that much, but she loved the rich dark scent of it on a man. Cigars, pipes, cigarettes, it didn’t matter. It suited them. Suited him.