The Penny Thief

by Christophe Paul

  They didn’t have to wait long. Less than two hours later, Pierre-Gabriel was leaving the hotel showered and changed, but still slightly wobbly under his green umbrella.

  He guided them to a well-known English bank near the port, where he stayed for one long hour before reappearing with a large envelope.

  A fat envelope in which Pichon had slipped a hand towel borrowed from the hotel bathroom. In reality, he was carrying the sixty thousand he’d taken out in five-hundred-euro notes in a small envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d opened an account at another branch of the same bank in Costa Rica and transferred all the money there. It wasn’t necessary to sign any documents, just to show his passport and type his PIN on a digital screen. There had been no doubt about his identity, between the bandage that covered half of his face and the old photo from eight years ago, which the snooty Pierre-Gabriel had probably touched up.

  He left the bank to go to the Saint Helier hospital. He had to leave traces along the way. What better way than medical treatment at the ER? As soon as he entered the building, he went to the bathroom, took off the bandage, left it stuck on the top of a cabinet, and joined the line like everybody else. When they received him, he requested an examination of what was left of his own bruise, partly covered by his hair, on the right side of his face. Before leaving, he again went to the bathroom to put the bandage, which nobody had dared to touch, back on.

  The last scene of his performance that day was to drop by a pharmacy to buy a bunch of medicine that would reduce the bruise inflammation and treat persistent migraines, then go to the shop next door to buy a black backpack.

  He returned to the hotel to remain shut in the rest of the day. He needed to rest, because tomorrow he was playing the final act—it was important to be in top form and finalize the details. The weather was getting worse, and the forecast called for storms the following day.

  69

  Herbert Lenoir slumped down in the enormous leather armchair at his desk. He felt tired and defeated. Despite being up all night and a large part of the day, meticulously inspecting the inside of the factory where Pierre-Gabriel de La Valette had left the body the previous night, Pichon’s corpse had not been found.

  He had just dropped by the hospital to see his friend Maillard. On that side, news wasn’t encouraging either. The operation had been a success, and Maillard was reacting well, but most of his motor functions were nonresponsive. It was evident that he would be left severely disabled.

  Lenoir reached Maillard’s room as the superintendent was leaving. Their gazes crossed with a small nod, but neither of them said hello. The atmosphere was electric.

  He entered the room to find Tash crying. When she saw him, she wiped her tears and tried to act natural.

  “Loiseau is a tactless brute. He’s been harassing you about the same subject again, hasn’t he?”

  The superintendent took every opportunity to go on about Henri Pichon. A man who seemed to have become volatile. The superintendent had supposedly tried to obtain a search warrant, convinced that the psychopath had fled because he felt cornered.

  Tash nodded and said, tears rolling down her cheeks, “I’ve called him a million times, but his phone isn’t on. I’ve also called him at home, but he doesn’t pick up. I need to talk to him and have him tell me the truth—I can’t live like this. I really don’t know anything about him, and I don’t know if he has anywhere he can hide, any other contacts.”

  Lenoir didn’t care. With Maillard in this state, he was losing a friend and a client. In reality he’d dropped by to probe Tash, to see if she was involved in the case, but it was obvious she wasn’t.

  He said good-bye politely and promised to call her if he found out Pichon’s whereabouts, then went to the office.

  He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t found Pichon’s body in the factory. It was a very, very big building, partitioned and full of dirty, useless objects, except for three carpets, perfectly rolled up in a little room off the third floor, where there was also a stove, an inflatable mattress, and some bags with a few provisions. Surely the property of some occasional dweller. But they couldn’t find a trace of the huge bag described by the detectives, or of Pichon. They’d disappeared into thin air!

  To complement his plan, he’d called Morgane Duchène at her office several times before managing to track her down at the end of the afternoon. He blurted out everything he knew about the murder of Garibaldi and Maillard’s attack, and she responded with a telling silence. But when he said that covering up the murder of Pichon the previous night would condemn her to life in prison, and that he knew the murderer had left France and was in a tax haven with the victim’s money, the silence was different, more dense. He interpreted it as a sign that the fruit had ripened, and he proposed a deal. The next morning, last thing, they would meet at his office and would strike a deal with Pierre-Gabriel. Otherwise he would deliver all the evidence he had, and it was plenty, to the criminal brigade. He warned her not to flee and that he had a detective following her.

  Lenoir called his wife and decided to go home to rest. He couldn’t do anything else. Pierre-Gabriel was still locked in his room, alive and recovering—he’d ordered a meal fit for a king. At the hospital, where one of his detectives had gone to investigate, a nurse from the emergency room had told him (unofficially, for two hundred euros) that the bruise on the gentleman from the Continent was healing well, and that, despite identifying himself with his passport and social security number, he had paid in cash.

  The next day, Saturday, Lenoir would return to the office early and would prepare the photo selection so that Morgane Duchène would have no doubts about the power he had over their respective futures. Then he’d take the first afternoon flight to Jersey, where he and Pierre-Gabriel de La Valette were going to have a little chat about how best to distribute the money.

  70

  Morgane entered her house, closed the door, went to the living room like a zombie, and collapsed on the sofa, feeling destroyed. Her life, her splendid life, was ruined in less than forty-eight hours. Nothing was left. Nothing.

  She burst into nervous tears and spasms she couldn’t control.

  An hour later, she managed to muster up the courage to drag herself to the bathroom. She undressed, got in the shower, and turned on the cold water at full pressure. The chill made her arch and shiver, and she gasped for air, but she held on until her body and mind calmed down.

  She put on a fluffy bathrobe and went shivering to the kitchen for a glass of ice. Back in the living room, she poured a generous pull of whiskey and took the bottle with her to the sofa.

  She was starting to feel like herself again. She should have been flying over the ocean toward Mexico, where an account in a Mexican bank was supposedly waiting for her, the money from twenty years of saving.

  Just thinking about it made her feel shattered. She breathed deeply and downed the rest of her glass in one gulp.

  As she filled it again—there was still plenty in the bottle—she made an effort to suss out the latest facts. That morning, she’d been to the bank branch managed by her occasional lover, who helped her transfer the entire contents of her account to a Mexican bank. On Monday, that money would be in Mexico, and she would be able to make use of it. So far, so good.

  She spent the morning at the office, and her flight was at four in the afternoon. As long as she got there two hours ahead of time, there would be no problem. She had her luggage ready in the trunk. She’d leave the car parked at the airport parking lot, and au revoir!

  As soon as she arrived at the office, she was called in for an urgent meeting. Someone had diverted money during the compensation transactions the previous night—four million euros had disappeared from the risk provision accounts. It still wasn’t known who did this or where the money went.

  She thought of Pierre-Gabriel right away. She figured he’d seen that he wouldn’t g
et anything out of Pichon, diverted the funds from the bank, and run away. Fuck him! She had other plans. Knowing the bank, they’d find him in two or three days. It had happened in the past, and the criminal always got caught without publicity. She’d be far away by then with another identity.

  At one, she left with the excuse of going to a dentist appointment scheduled long ago.

  At two, at the check-in desk, she was told her ticket to Mexico had been cancelled that morning and that they would refund half the ticket value, which wouldn’t reach her before Tuesday.

  There was no other way to negotiate. The airline associate showed her the cancellation order, and the flight was full, so nothing else could be done. Damned programming systems—it would take her days to prove that she didn’t cancel it and that it was a technical error. She had left a little money in her current account, and she had a credit card with plenty of credit; she wasn’t a risks director for nothing. She tried to buy a ticket for the next flight, but her card wasn’t working. It had also been cancelled.

  She returned to the office in a fit of rage, just in time to pick up a call.

  It was Lenoir.

  When she hung up, she was livid, but she decided to leave the country anyway. Lenoir was not a police officer and could not stop her at the airport. When she spoke to the bank, nothing could be done about her card—she had to wait until Monday. Thankfully, she’d had the foresight to withdraw some cash for her trip and arrival, so she wouldn’t have to use the card.

  But that wasn’t all: when she logged into her email, she had an automatic notification from the branch where she’d made the money transfer to the Mexican account that morning. The notification confirmed that they’d taken into account her request, and that they had proceeded to modify the details of the destination bank to a different institution on the island of Jersey.

  That was the moment when Morgane understood that she’d been robbed of everything and was trapped, unable to move until at least Monday.

  Who was doing this to her? Maillard was out of the picture, Pichon was dead, Lenoir didn’t have that kind of access, and the only one left was Pierre-Gabriel.

  Tomorrow she would go see Lenoir, who seemed to believe she was complicit in the embezzlement. But with what money? Pichon’s? The money embezzled last night?

  71

  Lenoir had just finished selecting the materials that, in his opinion, could force Pierre-Gabriel and Morgane to distribute the money.

  He had a feeling he was missing something important. To be able to make the selection, he’d had to look at the photos from the previous night several times, and something in them gave him a strange feeling. He couldn’t define it—he just knew his eyes were seeing something that his brain wasn’t picking up. He was a good detective, he’d proved it on numerous delicate cases, and he knew that feeling, like a word on the tip of your tongue that doesn’t quite manage to come out.

  Someone knocked on the door. It was Morgane, arriving on time.

  He opened the door to a tired blonde without an ounce of makeup. Her hair was in a ponytail, and her face revealed a significant hangover. She was dressed in a simple black tracksuit and white sneakers.

  “I see last night was a long one,” said the detective.

  Morgane didn’t dignify the question with an answer and let herself into Lenoir’s office. It was a small room with white walls and a few decorative prints, seventies black imitation leather furniture with chrome-plated details, and a cheap synthetic carpet.

  He followed her, smiling, convinced that he’d achieve his objective through her.

  They both sat at the pretentious conference table, and Lenoir presented the photographs he’d selected on his computer, including the ones of Morgane’s car when she was dropping off Pierre-Gabriel at his home after Garibaldi’s murder.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” asked Morgane.

  “I want part of the money. Your lover is on the island of Jersey, and this morning he went into a well-known English bank to withdraw money. I know you’ve been at the airport looking to buy tickets to Mexico. I’ve got you both cornered.”

  “You can’t prove anything about me. The fact that you have a photo of Pierre-Gabriel getting out of my car means nothing. The woman who participated in Garibaldi’s murder was a short-haired brunette. As for my trip to Mexico, I often travel to that country on business. I have friends there, and I’m planning to go for my next vacation. Anyone can verify this. You have nothing against me, Lenoir. Nothing!”

  Lenoir was silent for a moment. Something was missing. What Morgane was saying could be true—but then what was she doing in the airport with her suitcases, and why did she go back to the office?

  Morgane had just figured out that Lenoir knew nothing about the money diverted from the bank the previous night, and nothing about her own financial misfortunes. The evidence against her was not conclusive, and it seemed that Pierre-Gabriel had the key to the pennies. So she tried to take the bull by the horns.

  “I propose a deal: I’ll help you get in touch with Pierre-Gabriel, and you leave me alone. I wouldn’t mind a few million either.”

  Lenoir didn’t exactly know how to deal with the change in circumstances, but he thought it was best to have her on his side.

  “OK, you have my word.”

  Morgane laughed sarcastically. “Lenoir, the only lover I have is Maillard, a wonderful man who used to tell me everything, so don’t talk to me about your word.”

  Lenoir did not reply.

  “We can start whenever you like,” said Morgane.

  “Do you know where to find him?”

  “As I said, I know nothing more than you. But I have his email, and we can start there.”

  Lenoir sent an email to Pierre-Gabriel requesting a reply, which arrived in less than a minute, taking both of them by surprise. Pierre-Gabriel asked Lenoir to explain briefly what he wanted. Lenoir typed out the long list of evidence and his desire for an equitable distribution of the money, and Pierre-Gabriel replied that he wanted to see the evidence in question.

  Lenoir replied with all the photographs attached—except the ones of Morgane’s car, because she refused.

  Pierre-Gabriel requested some time to think.

  “This could take a while—would you like to get a bite to eat?” asked Lenoir.

  “No, thanks. My stomach feels queasy.”

  Last night, Morgane had drowned her sorrows and anxiety in the bottle of single-malt whiskey she kept at home for Maillard. Her low tolerance and lack of food the previous day had taken their toll, and her hangover was horrendous—but now she felt a bit better. Maybe she’d lost her money, but she’d recovered her freedom. They had nothing on her, and that was a relief.

  72

  Henri Pichon finished getting dressed in Pierre-Gabriel’s tight jacket and raincoat and checked his inner pocket for the envelope with the money he’d withdrawn from the bank.

  The previous night had been an endless parade of nightmares, especially the purple, swollen face of Pierre-Gabriel looking at him from a few inches away with googly, lifeless eyes. Henri woke up several times in cold sweats, shivering, and took a long time to get back to sleep as he went over what had happened in the past two days.

  In the morning, he picked up the black backpack from the sofa. It contained the shoes and bloodied clothes he’d found in the closet near the entrance of Tash and Pierre-Gabriel’s apartment.

  He glanced again at the overly carpeted hall, decorated in pure English style. In the small fireplace, crowned by a golden mirror, lay the ashes of the lists, Garibaldi’s notebooks, and the clothes Pierre-Gabriel had been wearing the previous day. On the table was Garibaldi’s laptop, where his programs and routines had been replaced by new ones that had facilitated the diversion of the four million from the previous night. Henri had left all of Lenoir’s emails on the screen as evide
nce, along with the damning photographs. To one side were a printout of his ticket to the Dominican Republic, departing that very night, and Maillard’s wallet. The medications, neatly arranged, were in the bathroom, and the tablets were flushed down the toilet. The suitcase was packed, ready to go, and sitting on the bed.

  He’d done a thorough cleanup of his fingerprints all over the room and the bathroom. In any case, the evidence was too clear for them to take the investigation any further.

  He left with the backpack and his personal bag, stopping by reception to ask them to prepare the bill, because he would be leaving that night. Now he was going to take a light stroll before lunch to clear his head. They told him a storm had been forecast, so he shouldn’t go near the cliffs.

  He crossed the parking lot in the persistent rain, got into the car, and left the engine on to warm up—and to give the other detective enough time to get back.

  The detective arrived in a rush, raincoat in one hand and a sandwich in the other.

  Pichon drove away slowly, and in no time he was heading north on the A12, concentrated on remembering to drive on the left. After a few miles, he turned east toward the cliffs. The road was narrow, and the rain was so heavy that you couldn’t see five yards ahead; fortunately, nobody crossed his path. At last the GPS indicated a left turn along a road that led back north. From what he remembered from mapping the journey online, he was less than a hundred yards away from his destination, and he needed to drive carefully. The rain calmed down a little, and he was able to see the edge of the cliff blending in with the sea and the sky.

  He stopped the car a few feet away. The detectives were lagging behind on the little paved road behind a small stone wall. Pichon readjusted the seats and mirrors to their original positions by pressing the memory button, carefully cleaned the inside of the car with his tissue, and stepped out. Then he did the same with the locks and trunk.