You already have an angel.
In the two days since she’d caught his arm on rue Pythéas, Jacquot suddenly realised how deeply Marie-Ange had drawn him in, how swiftly she’d worked a kind of warm, gentle magic on him. Deliberately or not, he couldn’t say for sure. But draw him in she had. And old Salette had seen it, taken him aside and given him fair warning.
Burrowing his hands into his jacket pockets, Jacquot watched the 2CV a moment longer, then set off down the street, relieved to be away from her – from her magic – but feeling, too, the weight of her absence, the emptiness it entailed, just the dreary prospect of a solitary Sunday evening in November, with the rain starting up again, stretching ahead of him.
What to do? he thought, nearing the centre of town. So many options when he’d lived here: long Sunday lunches that turned into suppers, new friends turning into lovers, parties, music, shopping. But now, working this case, a knock on a friend’s door, just passing by kind of thing, simply wouldn’t work. Too much to explain – the hair, the clothes.
And then he remembered Claudine – and the Sunday lunch with Maddy and Paul that he’d promised to be back for. He’d forgotten all about it, forgotten to call her, to let her know that he was fine, but wouldn’t be able to make the lunch. He felt a stab of guilt. Dieu, he’d be in for it now! He started looking round for a phone booth, saw one on the corner of rue Paradis and ducked into it. He shovelled around in his pockets for change, found the right coins and dialled the number – the first time, he realised, that he’d called her since Paris. As the rain spat against the plastic cover of the booth, he heard the ringing in their millhouse kitchen. He could see the room, smell it: bread baking, coffee perking, garlic; the tilting shelf of cookery books, the old beams, the bound bunches of herbs; her paint-brushes standing in solvent on the window-sill above the sink, a jug of flowers on the table, a bowl of fruit. The more he thought about it, the more he missed it. And her. Yet no one answered. She wasn’t there. Finally the ansaphone clicked on. Her voice, when it came, was sweet and immediate. ‘Il y a personne ici à ce moment, mais laissez vos détails, s’il vous plaît . . .’ All those sibilant ‘s’ sounds. That smooth whisper of hers. He could almost taste her. But that’s all he got. Her soft voice sounding so close, but so distant, followed by an abrupt beep.
‘It’s Daniel. I’m fine. Sorry about lunch, and sorry I haven’t called. It’s been a . . .’ He paused, not certain that the usual work excuses would cut it. ‘But it’s going fine. No need to worry. Not long now and I’ll be back. You be good. Love you.’
Twenty minutes later, feeling as lonely as the first girl at a party, Jacquot carried his bucket of popcorn into the middle row of Cine Luxe’s big-screen theatre and settled down for two hours of Godzilla, his choice of movie decided by the presence in the cast of Jean Reno, one of Jacquot’s favourite actors. Not such a bad way to pass the time, he thought. And in the flickering darkness, whenever Reno was off-screen, he thought about Claudine and Marie-Ange and Elodie. Like driving at night, Jacquot had learnt that the darkness of a cinema was a good place to think things through. And when the film ended he’d make his way back to Impasse Massalia, his dormitory bed at Auberge des Vagues, and get in a good night’s sleep.
78
WHILE JACQUOT LOUNGED IN HIS cinema seat, picking at his popcorn and planning his next moves, Marie-Ange pulled off the autoroute and followed the signs for Aubagne. A pretty little sleeper suburb enclosed by a sprawl of new building, it huddled under the soft rain below the twin bulks of Monts Garlaban and Saint Baume, now just shadows looming above the rooftops, black slopes outlined against the low yellowed belly of the clouds.
All she had was the name of a street in the old quarter, but she found it within minutes, without a single wrong turn, as though she’d been there a dozen times before. Or been led there. And being a Sunday there was no shortage of parking space. So she parked. Because she knew she was close. Though Marie-Ange had never called on Agim Zahiri, she knew it was just a short walk now. Even the rain had eased off.
Agim Zahiri had come into her life at Fleurs des Quais, no more than a month after Marie-Ange stepped off the train at Gare Saint Charles and started work in Marseilles. One quiet Wednesday morning, alone in the shop on rue Francis, she was on the phone advising on a complicated order for wedding bouquets when she felt a sudden warmth, as though a beam of heat had been directed at her. When she looked up there was a big black woman standing in the doorway, arms filled with bunches of flowers that she’d selected from the display racks on the pavement. She wore an extravagantly knotted turban whose printed pattern, black birds on a canary yellow background, was repeated in the folds of cloth wrapped round her body. She looked like a ball of sunshine, Marie-Ange decided as she put down the phone. Somewhere in her middle- or late-fifties, Martiniquaise or Guadaloupienne, Marie-Ange had guessed. Wrongly on both counts, as it turned out; Agim Zahiri was Senegalese. And closer to seventy.
‘Alors, quelle surprise,’ the woman had said in a lilting singsong voice, sailing across to the counter and laying down her flowers, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth like a big mother hen. ‘And a very good morning to you, child,’ she’d continued. As though she’d known Marie-Ange since the day she’d been born, as though she knew all about her.
Which, of course, she did.
‘Surprise, madame?’ Marie-Ange had asked as she took the flowers and began to wrap them.
‘Oh, don’t you go and be so coy, young lady,’ Agim Zahiri had chortled, big brown caramel eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘I am sure you know exactly what I mean.’ And taking a pencil and a scrap of paper, she had written down her address. ‘There are times when those with the sight needs to clean their spectacles, n’est-ce pas?’ She’d pushed the piece of paper across the counter, paid for the flowers and left the shop, calling over her shoulder, ‘You’ll know when you needs me. I’ll be waiting.’
It hadn’t taken Marie-Ange very long to work out exactly what Agim Zahiri was talking about, but she hadn’t done anything about it until tonight. And there, up ahead, on a side-street off rue Gachiou, stood the lady herself, looking out of her front door, waiting for Marie-Ange. Just as she’d promised all those weeks ago at Fleurs des Quais on rue Francis.
‘Brrrr, but it’s cold!’ she said, hugging herself, and then opening her arms to hug Marie-Ange. ‘I thought you’d be here earlier,’ she chided, closing the door behind them. ‘A night like this,’ she continued, giggling mischievously, ‘I’ve made us some chocolat chaud. You likes that, I think.’
And for the next two hours the two of them sat in Agim’s kitchen, just as bright and colourful as its owner: the yellow lampshades, the blue and white plastic table cover, the tall green candles and the short black ones, a rainbow rug on a red-tiled tomette floor, cushions in tiger stripes and leopard spots. And from her new friend Marie-Ange learnt a little more about the strange talent she possessed.
‘The older you gets, the more you sees,’ Agim told her. ‘When I was younger, just the time of the month, that’s all it was. Like I thinks it is with you . . .’
Marie-Ange nodded, cupped her hands round her hot chocolate, sipped and listened.
‘. . . those were the only times, back then. Just dreams that would wake me up dead of night, make me sweat with the cold fears. Or these big silences . . .’ she spread her arms and circled them to show just how big the silences were ‘. . . just descending and, and . . . isolating me from all the world around me. So that I could peek into that other place, see something others couldn’t. But now, alors, let me tell you, there’s no stopping it. All the time. Oufff, but it can be exhausting! Then again,’ she continued, untangling the knot of bangles on her wrists, ‘you do get to meet some interesting people.’
‘Like me?’
‘The moment I walked into that shop, there you was. Like a light shining. And I knowed. Instantly. Two of a kind. And there’s not many of us round about. You not alone, I’m telling you, but
you gotta look.’
The hot chocolate had been quickly demolished and Cognacs poured, peanuts shelled. Memories, tales, histories swapped.
‘We like fortune tellers, you and me and people like us,’ said Agim, ‘but without the crystal ball. The past and the future. Some see just the one, some the other, and some, like you and me, we can see the both. It’s all there for us, to see what we see.’
‘I’m not good on what’s coming,’ said Marie-Ange. ‘It’s usually what’s happened with a link to the present. Or people. Sometimes I can look at someone and just . . . know something about them.’
‘An’ that’s how it starts, child. That’s how it begins,’ said Agim. ‘Like, lookin’ at you now, I knows about the man in your life. There is one, isn’t there? Tall, he is, a rough, rugged sort of fella. Big and strong. Not beautiful, no film-star looks, but . . . mesmeric all the same, hein? And when you see him, your insides just start churning. Something about him . . . His eyes maybe, the size of him, his presence. The kind of man you wants in your bed, to curl up against.’
Agim saw the blush rise on Marie-Ange’s cheek and let out a laugh that set her chins and chubby arms shaking. ‘There you go. There you go. Plain as day. And right now, ma petite, you’re just a very few centimetres . . .’ Agim measured the distance between thumb and forefinger ‘. . . from falling badly, badly in love with him. Or maybe you already have. But you listen up, child,’ she continued, ‘don’t you show your hand. Not yet. Not for a long while maybe. Now is . . . now won’t work. And maybe never will. Only time can say.’
Agim settled back in her chair and aimed a long, level look at Marie-Ange. ‘But I tells you one thing, for sure and certain, that there is something big linking the two of yous. Something strong, very strong. And I don’t think yous ever be able to break free from him. Or him from you.’ She stopped talking, nodding her head up and down slowly, as though there was more she knew but wasn’t telling. ‘But enough of that, enough of all that. Tell me, how you getting on with the girl?’
‘The girl? Elodie? You know about Elodie?’
‘I knows!’ laughed Agim. ‘Course I knows. Soon as I seen the picture in the paper. The girl who died.’
‘That’s why I came. What I was going to ask.’
‘And I knows that too, child.’
Marie-Ange paused, frowned. ‘But when you saw that picture, didn’t you want to do something about it?’
Agim smiled at her. ‘Why? I knew I didn’t have to. I remembered my little girl in the flower shop.’
Marie-Ange’s heart was beating fast. ‘So . . . do you know anything? Can you help me . . . help us?’
‘I knows she alive, child. And I knows she safe.’
Marie-Ange couldn’t help but smile. Just what Jacquot had said. But maybe there was more. ‘Is she here in Marseilles?’ she asked.
‘Maybe. Somewhere close and that’s for sure. But why don’t you show what you brought me? In your pocket there. That might help.’
For a moment Marie-Ange didn’t understand what Agim meant.
‘The clip you found. A hairclip, ain’t it?’
Stunned, Marie-Ange dug into her pocket and pulled out the blue enamelled serpent. Agim took it, shuffling it around in the darkly lined palms of her hand, as though it were hot.
‘Yes, I right for certain.’ Serre-tan was how she said it. ‘Alive. And, yes, close by.’ Now Agim pressed the clip tight in her hands, one fist held inside the other, thumbs tapping against her lips. ‘But she in a strange sort of place. A strange kind of room. The walls . . . The walls aren’t straight. And the windows are small, and the curtains too. There’s a noise as well, like . . . mmmmmmmhhhhhhh . . . Something like that.’ Agim frowned, as though trying to put the picture together, trying to make sense of whatever it was she could see. But suddenly the frown turned to a smile, as though something had come to her. ‘This house where she is has a name . . . Léonie. I didn’t have that before.’
Then the smile faded as swiftly as it had come, wiped away. Agim opened her hands, cupped the clip. ‘But wherever she is, that girl is in very dangerous company. Not just criminal dangerous, I means evil dangerous. Someone, someone . . .’ Agim shuddered, seemed suddenly lost for words.
‘Man or woman?’ prompted Marie-Ange.
Agim laid the hairclip on the table, pushed it around with her finger, shaking her head. ‘A woman. There’s men around, too. Bad men. But it’s a woman at the roots of it. And she’s young, certainly.’ Serre-tan-mon. ‘And cruel, even more certainly. Oh and cold, cold as night,’ shivered Agim, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Whatever you do, child, you take good care . . . You be very, very careful . . .’
79
ALL WAS QUIET IN THE study of Arsène Cabrille save an occasional spattering of rain on the terrace windows, the squeak of a chair and the rustle of paper. At her father’s desk, its tooled leather surface lit by the silver spill of a desk-lamp, Virginie sat back in the shadows and contemplated her handiwork. She had used two sheets of paper and worn white kid gloves while she wrote. The notepaper and padded envelopes were cheap brands found in stationery shops throughout France, the pen a simple Biro.
It hadn’t taken long to write the covering letter, nor had it taken much time to compose the message that accompanied it. In a funny sort of way, she thought to herself, she’d been writing it for years, in her head.
Now the moment had come, and she had written it for real.
For her lover, Nathalie Plessin. For justice and revenge. For pleasure and pain.
On the first sheet of paper, just four lines written in small capital letters:
DO AS YOU ARE TOLD OR SHE’S DEAD.
WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO DO AFTERWARDS
IS NO CONCERN OF MINE
It was signed:
AN OLD FRIEND
The message that accompanied this note, also written in small capitals, was longer. A single paragraph of instructions followed by five more paragraphs, fifteen lines in all.
But she hadn’t finished yet.
Leaning forward, Virginie reached for two fresh sheets of paper and wrote a second letter in the same neat little capitals, just as she had done before. So he wouldn’t be able to ignore it; to pretend he’d never received it. This was Virginie’s fail-safe, her back-up, to make sure her instructions were properly followed.
The second letter read:
CHÈRE MADAME
I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT YOU WILL WISH
TO SPEAK ABOUT THIS MATTER WITH YOUR HUSBAND
Then she copied out the message on a second sheet, word for word, remembering Nathalie as she did so. Her lover’s smile, the fall of blonde hair, the way she kissed, the scent and softness of her body, the strange and special tastes they shared. And how it had all ended.
When Virginie finished writing, she slid the two letters, with their identical messages, into the padded envelopes. Both envelopes carried Paris addresses, and into one of them she dropped the girl’s hairclip.
When it was done, she sat back once more in her father’s chair and felt a pleasurable warmth spread through her body.
Oh, how sweet revenge.
Just two short letters. That’s all it took.
How sweet and simple was that?
She knew, of course, there’d been other ways to do it. A visit from Taddeus and Tomas was usually enough to effect a satisfactory conclusion when someone crossed her. But something had always held her back, some sense that the best revenge needed time . . . time to refine its power and sharpen its edge. And she’d been right. Oh, how she had been right. She didn’t even need to be there, to see him open the letter, to see his fear, to feel his pain. She felt it now, just looking at those two envelopes, and was warmed by it.
She called in Taddeus.
‘I have a job for you,’ she said, sealing the two envelopes and pushing them across the desk to him. She was still wearing the kid gloves. Taddeus saw them and reached into a jacket pocket for a handkerchief before picking them up.
‘A vot’ service,’ he replied.
‘There is an Air France flight to Paris in just over an hour,’ Virginie continued. ‘Tomorrow morning I want you to deliver these packages to the addresses on the envelopes. Get yourself a motorbike helmet. Look like a messenger. There’s no need to wait for any reply.’
Monday
16 November
80
‘YOU KNOW A MAN CALLED Jacquot, don’t you?’
It was Jean Davide, one of a group of cloaked crow-like counsellors coming down the glistening steps of the Palais de Justice, gowns and briefcases held over their heads as they hurried through the rain to their cars. Solange had just arrived from her offices on Cours Pierre Puget and was coming up the steps. Davide parted company with his colleagues and ducked under her umbrella; she was tall enough, and held it high enough, for the shorter Davide to do so with ease. They were close, too close for Madame Bonnefoy’s liking, for Davide had a way of looking at her, an insinuating manner, that made her feel uncomfortable. There was something cold and wet and fish-like about him, as though he’d just been plucked from the ocean. Clammy, that was the word. Already late for a client interview in the holding rooms beneath the Palais, Madame Bonnefoy wouldn’t have put up with such a close intrusion if she hadn’t heard the name Jacquot.
‘Jacquot? Daniel Jacquot, up in Cavaillon. Yes, why?’
‘Signed a warrant for his arrest last night,’ said Davide, Adam’s apple rising and falling behind his advocate’s collar like a pale walnut on a string. ‘According to Chief Inspector Gastal at headquarters, he’s here in Marseilles, not Cavaillon, and his gun’s been picked up as a murder weapon. His prints all over it. Gun and cartridges both. I’m afraid Gastal was quite insistent. There wasn’t much I could do but oblige.’
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