He heard the sound of the telephone being left on the table, then Lenoir’s voice going away and asking his secretary for the latest updates from his detectives on Maillard’s case. The two men trusted each other, and he didn’t put Maillard on hold with music. They’d been working together for years, and they’d ended up on informal terms. Lenoir was younger by two or three years. Maillard’s bank had been his first client—an accident of fate. After an argument with a scheming colleague, the then chief inspector Herbert Lenoir had been relegated to traffic duty. In those years, anything was possible.
Because Maillard was always in a rush and was running late to one of his many appointments, he completely ignored a red light. Lenoir was the one to stop him. Back then you didn’t get points on your license, but the ticket was substantial and, perhaps more important, the agents took such an agonizingly long time to write it out and explain the consequences that it wasn’t worth being in a rush.
Maillard noticed right away that the diligent, depressed, intelligent-eyed officer was not in the right job. He managed to change the course of the conversation until the policeman confessed that he was about to hand in his resignation because he was fed up and disappointed. Maillard proposed that he work for the bank if he continued to feel that way. They worked with some private detectives, most of them ex–police officers who were unintelligent and unreliable but still managed to resolve some compromised cases, thanks to their contacts.
Two days later, Lenoir was at Maillard’s office dressed as a civilian. (His outfit recalled American movies from the fifties, a style he never completely let go of.) That day, he left Maillard’s office with his first case and did an excellent job. Now Lenoir had more than twenty employees, several investigation branches, and a spectacular client portfolio.
“Jean-Philippe, are you still there?”
“Yes, Herbert, tell me.”
“I can see several anomalies, and some of them could be very serious. Before moving on, I’d like you to tell me what this is all about. In this kind of investigation, it’s better for everything to be on the table.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your son-in-law was at the hospital a few days ago, visiting Pichon.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure how to interpret his actions, but from what you’ve told me, I think we have enough reasons to suspect he may have attempted to murder Pichon or delay his coma.”
There was a dumbfounded silence. What a morning. What was going on? Had everyone gone crazy?
“All right, Herbert. I owe you an explanation, but before that, I want you to assure me that this investigation will stay private. I’ll pay the expenses myself—I don’t want the bank to get involved. Can I count on your discretion?”
“You know you can count on me. Right now I’m going to change the accounting details of the case and send it to the staff. I’ll tell my secretary to inform the men I’ve assigned to the case.”
There was another silence, then Maillard spoke. “We have to meet up, but not at the bank. How about at my house?”
“OK. I’ll gather all the materials and be there in half an hour.”
51
“That little slut has been cheating on me since before we got married,” ranted Pierre-Gabriel on the phone, furious.
His whole body was aching, and the bruise on his face was still inflamed, but it seemed to be getting better, unlike his migraine.
“Have you found a secret journal or something? Have you checked her messages?” asked Morgane.
“I discovered it in Garibaldi’s notebooks. Do you remember the Tash routines that I found so funny? Do you remember how they had strange comments at the beginning?”
“Yes, the sudoku for geniuses.”
“Far from it: they were romantic notes for his beloved, and the beloved is my wife. The first one dates back to 1995.”
“1995? The girl was fifteen years old. I remember it well, because that was the year that Russki woman asked Maillard for a divorce and took the girl with her to the United States, clearing the way for me. Then Tash came back to Paris on a few occasions, and I can assure you she didn’t drop by the bank, not even to see Pichon or her father. She always came in the summer, and as soon as she arrived, she was taken to their house near that famous lighthouse in Cap Ferret. Something is wrong with your calculations. Call her and ask.”
“I already did. She won’t pick up.”
“Call her work.”
“I did that, too, and they said she’s taken the week off between two projects. That bitch has been telling me for three days that she’s working late because she has to deliver a complicated project.”
“What’s it to you? In a few days, we’ll pack our suitcases and head to paradise to relax and enjoy life with more money than anyone could imagine. We don’t need her anymore—her or her father. Fuck them!”
“It won’t be that simple. I can’t find anything in the giant’s things. He didn’t discover much more than I did. Just that the account numbers were generated by another program from another section, in files whose names depended on the day, time, minute, and second of the transaction.”
“Can’t you find them?”
“They don’t exist anymore—everything has been deleted and replaced by clean programs.”
“Fuck, and what do we do now? We’ve killed a man for nothing, and I’ve felt sick to my stomach all morning.”
“It was an accident! Get that into your head. Yesterday you told me you were sure Maillard knew the whereabouts of Pichon’s pennies.”
“Of course, and I’m still sure. You have to ask him.”
“How do I do that? I can’t show up at his office or home and say, ‘Hey, Maillard, tell me where Pichon’s money is. I’ve killed your IT expert, and I still don’t know.’ Much less with this face,” he scoffed.
“Leave it to me. I’m having lunch with him today, and I’ll try to find out more.”
“OK. By the way, did you get home all right this morning?”
“Perfectly,” answered Morgane, remembering that she’d gone over to the house of a young branch director whom she slept with sporadically. He was a fiery man, but still too sweet for her. That morning she needed love, not someone to fuck her to vent his frustrations.
52
Herbert Lenoir arrived at their appointment on time. Once inside Maillard’s home, they didn’t need more than an hour to catch up.
Maillard told him everything, absolutely everything, without omitting a single detail, including the passionate embrace between his daughter and Pichon in the hospital corridor.
Then they went on to talk about the surveillance.
Lenoir opened his laptop and played the video he’d recorded in the hospital the night Pierre-Gabriel played doctor’s apprentice. Maillard couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his son-in-law’s little ballet dance, coming and going from one patient to another, swapping IV bags, taking off the lab coat to clean the floor.
“Pause the video,” said Maillard.
Lenoir stilled the image.
“Pichon’s eyes are open—he was watching!”
“Yes, but he wasn’t fully awake. That took him a few more hours. I swapped the bags again as soon as he left.”
“That bastard is a menace.”
“It’s many millions of euros, Jean-Philippe,” said Lenoir.
Maillard didn’t reply. He was wondering how far he would be willing to go himself. Not as far as these kinds of actions, that’s for sure. He was more refined, and he favored psychological strength and subtle blackmail.
Herbert allowed him to think things over for a moment.
“Do you want to see how far people are willing to go for such copious amounts of money?” he asked, closing the video and opening a file on his laptop.
The file was named “PG de LV
Surveillance”—surveillance of Pierre-Gabriel from yesterday.
Maillard started to read. It wasn’t much, two pages in which the detective explained that he lost contact at night at La Défense. Pierre-Gabriel went to work at six thirty in the evening and did not come out again. The detective waited until four thirty in the morning, then had the insight to go back to his car in front of Pierre-Gabriel’s home. The suspect reappeared at five thirty. He got out of a car at the end of the street. He was carrying a black travel bag and had a big, hideous bruise on the right side of his face.
“Everything fits—the bruise, the baseball bat.”
“The driver of the car is definitely a brunette with short hair: look at the photographs at the end of the folder.”
The photographs were taken without a flash, at night, and he didn’t recognize the make of the car, but what interested him were the photos of Pierre-Gabriel. He looked at them carefully.
“Quite a bruise. I can’t believe none of his bones are broken. That bag is Garibaldi’s, there’s no doubt about it. Do you see that orange bit, here on the handle? It’s one of those plastic tags they sell at the stations and airports for writing the name and telephone number of the bag’s owner. I noticed it when he came to the office because I found it funny. He was a true professional, intelligent, honest, simple, and direct. Fuck, what a waste. And what’s going on with the woman?”
“It’s written there,” said Lenoir, putting his index finger on the screen. “We followed her home. Do you recognize the address?”
“Not at all.”
“I asked a friend to find out who the owner is by running the license plates, but he’ll take a while. This isn’t like in the movies. I’ll send you the information as soon as I get it. I’d guess we’ll have it by this afternoon or evening.”
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong? Never in all these years have I heard you swear so much.”
“Garibaldi’s travel bag has his work notebooks, and one of them has the transcription of the famous Tash routines I spoke to you about earlier. When Pierre-Gabriel reads it—”
“Call her.”
Maillard took out his cell phone and called Tash. She didn’t answer, so he tried several times.
“She won’t pick up!” he said, worried, turning off his cell phone.
“Don’t worry. Maybe it’s in her bag, and she can’t hear it,” said Lenoir to reassure him.
“How can I not worry if there’s a killer on the loose!? And on top of everything, he’s her husband. Fuck! It’s not normal—Tash always answers immediately.”
“He’s still at home, and she hasn’t turned up. My man will be in charge of notifying her if he sees her coming and will follow your son-in-law if he sees him go out. Everything is under control.”
“Yesterday he lost him.”
“Yesterday we were doing an ordinary surveillance, not watching a potential killer.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just a little nervous.”
“The best thing to do is tell the police, because now we’re covering up a crime. You know perfectly well that I’m risking my license and company.”
“I know, Herbert, and I really appreciate it. As soon as we’ve retrieved all the evidence that could prove there has been a robbery, we’ll turn him in, but now the most important thing is to ensure that my daughter is safe. The abominable story of Garibaldi’s death hasn’t reached the news yet.”
“This gives us time to get rid of the evidence. I find it strange that nobody has spoken about the case, not even in the local press.”
“You’re right: a murder like this, what with people’s curiosity, especially in the suburbs, should have been all over the Poitiers headlines and that whole region, even reaching Paris. Especially now that they don’t have anything important to chew on.”
“You should send her a message,” said Lenoir.
“What?”
“Tash, you should send her a message. Something simple, like: ‘Call me as soon as you can, it’s important.’ It’s not necessary to include anything else, just that. We don’t need to alarm her, and also we don’t know who else might read it.”
“I’ll do as you say—you’re the expert.”
He sent Tash the message while Lenoir called one of his men. When he finished, he looked at the time.
“I have to go. I’m meeting Morgane for lunch, and you know how she is about punctuality.”
Lenoir smiled. “I just spoke to the detective watching Pichon’s home. Your daughter is upstairs. If she goes down before you talk to her, he’ll tell her to call you urgently.”
“You’ve just taken a huge weight off my shoulders.”
Lenoir smiled again. “As soon as I find out anything about the proprietor of the car, I’ll email you.”
“Thank you. Can you drop me off at La Défense on your way?”
“By all means!”
They collected all the materials and locked up Maillard’s house.
53
“You seem worried.”
Morgane was sitting in front of Maillard at a little table tucked away in the corner. She’d chosen a restaurant on the esplanade, expensive and far away from the bank tower, to avoid interruptions from colleagues. Maillard seemed on edge. He’d taken out his cell phone and put it on the table, on top of the yellow cloth napkin, and he kept glancing at it. He wasn’t normally like this.
“You seem worried,” Morgane repeated, taking his hand affectionately.
“I’m sorry,” he answered, looking up at her, his gaze absentminded. “I’m a little tired, and this situation is getting out of hand.”
“Tell me, can I help in any way?”
“No. At the moment, it’s better if I don’t tell you anything. Everything will be back to normal shortly. I curse the day I hired Pierre-Gabriel, that bigheaded twit.”
Jean-Philippe had aged years over the past few days: he was thinner, his skin was rough, and he had more gray hairs. But above all, he’d lost that charm that was so characteristic of him, or at least that’s what it seemed like to Morgane, who was worried about his comment concerning her lover on the side.
“Don’t work yourself up over those lists. He’ll get them back to you as soon as he returns to the office. He has a cold, from what you told me yesterday.”
She said it to test the waters. That morning, after going home to take a shower and get changed, she arrived late to a meeting, where she had to make an extraordinary effort to stay focused. She returned midmorning to the crystal tower, the symbol of the bank, by subway. She rarely went to meetings by car—she arrived more relaxed after public transit. As chance would have it, when she entered the immense hall, Maillard was just leaving one of the elevators, accompanied by a small, nervous-looking man in an old-fashioned inspector’s trench coat.
The situation was extraordinary, because Maillard never went down with a visitor, except on rare occasions with celebrities or important clients at the bank.
What could he be doing accompanying this man to the door? Stranger still, why were they still talking in the middle of the hall? And last but not least, why did Maillard look so worried as he rushed back to the elevator?
She stayed to one side, near the reception desk, where anyone not associated with the bank had to request an identification card before being allowed to enter.
“Who is that person Maillard was with?” she asked one of the cheerful young women who took care of admitting guests.
“I’m sorry, that information is . . .” she said, raising her eyes toward Morgane. When she recognized the risks director, she blushed and answered in a quiet voice, “A superintendent of the criminal brigade.”
“Thank you. It was just out of curiosity,” Morgane said, smiling.
She went to the elevators flashing a casual smile, but she felt pale and queasy, as if she had on
a carnival mask that hid the reality of the wearer.
There was no point in calling Pierre-Gabriel again and upsetting him. She’d agreed to meet Maillard for lunch, and she’d try to find out what was going on.
“The lists and more things,” said Maillard, bringing her back to the table.
Morgane was going to ask what he meant when his damn phone interrupted her again.
Maillard seized the tactless device.
“Tash, sweetie, thanks for calling. Are you still at Henri’s?”
“What? Just a second, I’m in a restaurant. I’ll go out to the esplanade so I don’t bother anyone.”
He made a sign to excuse himself, then got up and left Morgane alone at the table with her champagne and raspberry syrup, intrigued, indignant, and concerned. It was the first time he hadn’t spoken with the girl in front of her. Also, he’d asked if she was with Henri, and he must have meant Henri Pichon—what other Henri could it be?
Everything was starting to fit together. Pierre-Gabriel had told her this morning that Pichon was Tash’s lover, and Maillard said yesterday that there was no need to worry about the future, that everything would be sorted out in a few days. It was obvious that Pichon and Tash had made a deal with the old man. They would share the loot. That’s why they’d deleted everything from the bank computers, and Maillard was in it up to his neck.
As soon as she returned to the office, she’d call Pierre-Gabriel and tell him everything, even about the criminal superintendent. They had to make decisions before it was too late.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I wanted to be alone to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong, Dad? You called me five times in a row, then left a voice mail,” said Tash.
“It’s important for me to talk to both of you.”
“Dad, don’t meddle in my private life. I don’t know how you found out that I’m at Henri’s, but don’t—”
“Pierre-Gabriel has discovered the Tash routines, and you’re in danger, real danger. He’s gotten himself into a lot of trouble. Have you seen his face?”
The Penny Thief Page 15