‘How were they with one another?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did they seem close? Distant? Cordial? In love? Argumentative?’
Jade delivered the coffee.
‘Thanks, darling. Cordial, I suppose is the word. She did most of the talking. I remember that.’
‘A woman doing most of the talking?’ Max said, getting to his feet. ‘Who’d have thought it? Right. To work.’
‘He’s a genius,’ Justine said as Max headed for the kitchen. ‘You wouldn’t think it, would you? But wait until you’ve tasted the food.’
‘I’m looking forward to it. If I sent a sketch artist over here, do you think you could come up with a likeness of the mysterious woman?’
‘I could give it a try.’
Darac got to his feet. ‘Thank you. She’ll ring beforehand. And I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’
36
The black desk phone to his ear, Darac got to his feet and gazed out over the compound. It was only then that he realised Frankie was standing immediately below his window. She seemed to be talking to the wall – the person she was with was hidden in the lee of the building. He tried to work out by Frankie’s mien and by her body language who it might be.
His call connected. ‘Hi, Erica – listen, have you found anything on Saxe’s mobile?’
‘Lots of things. But nothing links directly or indirectly to any of our other principals.’
‘You’ve been around R.O. too long. That’s the kind of thing he says.’
‘A little bit of his genius probably has rubbed off.’
‘He’s there, isn’t he?’
‘Sitting right next to me.’
Darac’s habitual half-smile gave way to a full grin. ‘Saxe’s computer?’
‘Looking at it now. Nothing in a saved file of much note. But among the deleted stuff, I’ve just come across some figures that got us thinking.’
‘What’s so special about them?’
‘There’s a column here headed €400,000.’
Darac turned away from the window. ‘Is there?’
‘That’s the pay-off on the faked bank statement to the cent, isn’t it?’
‘It is indeed.’ The worn patch by the desk leg was looking particularly threadbare this afternoon. ‘I’ll come over.’
En route, he discovered that Agnès was Frankie’s invisible friend. ‘I thought you were talking to the wall.’
‘Once a Jew, always a Jew.’
‘Right, I’m off to La Trinité,’ Agnès said, hitching her bag on to her shoulder. ‘A second witness to the stabbing has come forward.’ She smiled at them both. ‘See you.’
‘Bye,’ they said in unison.
‘That smile,’ Darac said, as Agnès took her leave. ‘She’s heard, hasn’t she?’
‘Perhaps.’
A uniform walked by and glanced at them. ‘He knows.’
Frankie clicked her tongue. ‘I doubt it.’
Checking no one was within earshot, Darac came in a little closer. ‘I rub Agnès’s feet and it’s all anyone talks about for days. I share a passionate moment with you and no one says a thing – except Granot and Bonbon and they’re family.’
‘You know why, don’t you?’
‘No – tell me.’
‘Because this isn’t just a bit of harmless fun, an opportunity to rib you. It’s serious.’
Darac looked into her eyes. ‘Is it?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said softly, meeting his gaze.
He was within the thickness of a top E-string of kissing her all over again.
‘But I still think’ – she brushed her fringe away – ‘that we should keep everything on hold.’
‘Hold. Absolutely. Of course.’
Her mobile rang and she took the call. A van had been held at the toll booths on the A8 beneath Cime de la Forna. A man and six tearful young women from Eastern Europe were on board. The gendarme at the scene didn’t believe their story that they were bound for a stint of lemon-picking at Cap Martin.
‘I’m needed.’
‘Me too,’ Darac said. ‘I think we should go for the regulation kiss goodbye, this time.’
‘Or even a handshake.’
‘Handshake is good. Anyone looking?’
They exchanged regulation kisses of parting and went their separate ways.
* * *
Erica was tapping figures into a calculator when Darac walked into the crime lab with a new spring in his step. On Erica’s bench, Alain Saxe’s computer was displaying the spreadsheet that was the source of all the interest.
‘The column is headed four hundred grand exactly? Bit of a coincidence, Erica.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Don’t you believe in them?’ Raul Ormans said, on his way out. ‘Coincidences?’
‘Yes, I do. But only rarely.’
‘That’s a coincidence – it’s just what I think. I’m off to fire some guns.’
‘Have fun.’ He turned to Saxe’s computer. ‘Confusing spreadsheet, isn’t it? Looks as if a four-year-old child has done it. When was this created, Erica?’
She selected the file menu. ‘28 May 2003.’
‘Okay, the odds on this being a coincidence have just gone through the roof. That date is two days after the robbery was discovered – one before the haul was recovered.’
‘I told you I’d got something. So we know the four hundred thousand was never paid in to Sylvie’s account. But it looks as if the gang had at least earmarked the sum. Maybe they intended to pass it on to her, after all.’
‘I wonder…’
‘See those smaller amounts listed under the principal?’ A slender fingertip pointed to the screen. ‘I was wondering if they represented deductions.’
He peered at the figures. ‘Difficult to tell, isn’t it? There’s no running total or anything.’
‘If there were, it would leave €312,487.’
Folding his arms, Darac set his weight back against the work bench. ‘An eighty-eight grand or so shortfall… Whatever this means, we’re following money again so I’ll get Granot on it.’ He tapped the computer screen. ‘Very well found, Erica.’
‘Thanks.’ There was a ballpoint pen on the bench, a promo item from a rugby club. Erica picked it up, absently pressed the end cap and clicked out the tip. And clicked it back again.
‘I hear you and Frankie…’ Her search for an appropriate conclusion ended in a concise little shrug. ‘You and Frankie.’
It was the moment to play things down. ‘Okay – me and Frankie. At the end of a ridiculously long day, we fell into each other’s arms and enjoyed a big, sloppy kiss. End of story.’
The pen clicked in and out. ‘It’s not, though, is it? I know you’ve always adored her.’
‘Everyone does. She’s adorable.’
Adorable – another good word for Angeline’s list.
‘She is, yes.’
‘What’s that sad little smile about?’
Erica tossed the pen on to the desk. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
Another colleague concerned about Christophe, Darac concluded as he took his leave. And then he took a call from Frènes.
37
Pierre Delmas smiled as he switched off France Info and retuned to his regular listening. It seemed that leaving Saxe’s mobile on the train had achieved exactly what he’d hoped. Yet he felt a certain pity for the man he’d so easily duped. Captain Whateverhisnameis’s efforts had been rewarded by a severe reprimand from the Palais de Justice, they had said. His recklessness had created disorder, danger to the public and inconvenience at the station. He’d been lucky not to earn a lengthy suspension.
‘That’s the powers that be, for you,’ Delmas said aloud. Powers that be? It sounded wrong to him. With some difficulty, he pressed the record button on his player. ‘Look up whether it’s powers that be or are,’ he said into the mike. Now all he had to do was remember to play the message back sometime.
The image razor sharp
in the lenses of his Leica binoculars, he scanned the scene once more. Still no sign of his subject. He retrained them on the door.
A battle had gone his way, but the war was still very much to be won. The police had infinite resources and he had almost nothing. But there were things in his favour. Most importantly, they didn’t know what he knew, and they had no idea where he was staying. Also, his technical expertise was second to none. There was nothing he didn’t know about surveillance and security.
But then, there was his condition. In some respects, NCL was an out and out hindrance. No man on a mission would choose to suffer headaches, depression and diminishing physical co-ordination. But it had one saving grace. The ultimate deterrent – the prospect of losing one’s life – simply didn’t apply to him. He was a dead man walking, anyway. Just a few more days. That was all he needed. His faith in God had been severely tested over the past few days but He would grant him this, he was sure.
At last, there was activity at the house. The door opened. A swelling shadow appeared. And then someone stepped quickly into the light, exiting the narrow field of view of his lenses before Delmas could identify who it was. He panned, rolling the focus wheel with a trembling finger. The image blurred. He tried again. Worse. And again. He kept trying. Just when it seemed that the identity of the figure would remain a mystery, the scene snapped into sharp focus. ‘Yes,’ Delmas said aloud. ‘It is you.’
38
On Quintet nights, Darac liked to walk to the Blue Devil, part of a pre-performance routine that rarely changed. Many found it a paradoxical or even perverse approach for a man who loved to improvise but it made perfect sense to him. If you want to fly, first you need the ground.
At the foot of the steep stone steps that led into the club, he paused to honour his talisman – a poster entitled Blown Away by the Brass Section. It was his practice to reach up and touch it before crossing the threshold but, carrying two guitar cases this evening, he blew a kiss, instead. Feeling slightly transgressive, he passed underneath it and backed through the twin red-painted doors into the lobby.
Pascal the doorman was sitting at the pay table, scribbling something down on the back of a flyer. Whatever he was putting together, it was giving him trouble. The page was a muddle of arrows, underlining and crossings-out.
‘Two axes?’ He crossed out another line. ‘One was enough for Django.’
‘I need all the help I can get.’ Darac indicated the smaller of the two cases. ‘Got the SG back – going to give it some blues tonight.’ He glanced into the takings tin. ‘Not a bad crowd in, by the look of it. See you later, Pas.’
‘Wait a minute.’ He put down his pen. ‘I’ve got something to run by you.’ He cleared his throat and scanned the page for a way in. ‘Check it.’ He started up a little mouth music.
‘My name is Pas, I sit on my ass, on an old drum stool, in the vestibule. You can’t pass my table, unless you are able to drop it in the can, for the…’ He ground to a halt. ‘That’s as far as I got. What do you think?’
Darac had maintained for years that, muzak excepted, there was no genre of music that didn’t have merit. But he had a tin ear for rap.
‘That’s as good as I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Truly.’
‘Yeah?’ Pascal beamed, primping the lapels of his jacket. ‘I got it. I got the juice.’
‘Certainly have, man. Ridge around?’
‘Upstairs.’
In the concert room, Dexter Gordon’s Our Man in Paris album was entertaining a buzzy crowd. Jacques Telonne, Darac was amused to note, was not among them. Swapping greetings with some of the regulars, he ran an eye over the bandstand. The club’s much-loved Steinway was in position; Marco’s drums were set up; chairs, music stands and mikes were all ready to go. And, its stand-by light aglow, Darac’s amp was warming its valves in its time-honoured spot, stage left. It didn’t matter how many times he’d seen a bandstand dressed for a performance, the sense that magic might happen right there was a feeling Darac loved.
In the kitchen, he found Khara, the club’s waitress, hat check girl, barmaid and everything in between, in an unfamiliar position. She was sitting down. Standing over her, the chef Roger was administering a glass of something steaming.
‘Hot lemon and ginger,’ he said, answering Darac’s enquiring look as he headed back to his bench. ‘Head cold. Flu, maybe.’
Khara wrapped her long, tapering fingers around the glass. ‘No greeting kisses tonight, Darac.’ Her voice was a threadbare wheeze. ‘I’ve got a razor where my throat used to be.’ She coughed. ‘Ow.’
‘I never thought I’d say this, Roger, but your wife looks terrible.’
‘Came on just like that.’ He started feeding a cut of meat into a mincer. ‘Ridge has called Fama and Carole in early.’
‘How are you getting…?’ Watching Khara massage her throat, Darac redirected the question. ‘How is she getting home? Cab?’
‘A cab is no good – we live on the top floor of our block. I’m going to run her back after I’ve prepped everything.’
‘One call and I could get you a ride straight away. The Caserne’s only just around the corner and the driver will escort Khara right to your door.’
‘A police escort?’ she said. ‘That’s all’– a sneeze – ‘I need.’
‘He or she will be in plain clothes, and the cars are unmarked – don’t worry.’
Roger left the meat to disgorge by itself. ‘Don’t send that stuntwoman who nearly killed everybody today. Including you and your partner.’
‘That stuntwoman is the best driver you’ll ever come across.’ He glanced at the mincer. ‘Your meat’s running over.’
‘I don’t care who it is.’ Khara took a sip of her drink, swallowing as if it contained broken glass. ‘Just get them here quickly.’
Carole, a large, cheery Englishwoman, appeared in the doorway. ‘My, look at you!’
As Carole went into full nursing mode, Darac rang the Caserne and arranged the lift.
‘Car will be here in five minutes, guys.’ He headed for the archway into the stairwell. ‘Unmarked ZX with a nice young man at the wheel – Fabien.’
‘Not too nice, I hope,’ Carole said, grinning. ‘Eh, Roger?’
‘Bof!’ It was going to be a long evening. ‘Thanks, Darac.’
‘It’s nothing. Get well, Khara.’
‘She says, “Thank you!” Now, what you need, sweetheart…’
Abandoning the patient to Carole’s ministrations, Darac climbed the stairs that led to the first-floor dressing room. If he were ever brought to this spot blindfolded, he would have been able to identify the location immediately. The smell, a melange in which damp plasterwork and drains were the principal notes, was not quite like any other.
A voice that was also not quite like any other greeted him from the landing. Born and raised in the South Bronx, NYC, the club owner Ridge Clay spoke in a strange, hybridised argot – standard French laced with words and expressions from the black neighbourhoods of home.
Darac had neither touched the poster nor kissed Khara – an ominous precedent. As he set down his guitar cases, he wondered if anything might derail his usual bi-play with Ridge.
‘Garfield – kick anybody’s ass today?’
The world saved, Darac slapped his palm into the big man’s. ‘Not today, Ridge. Carole’s arrived, by the way. And a car’s coming for Khara.’
‘That’s good.’ Looking Darac in the eye, Ridge nodded, gravely. ‘Some week, huh?’
‘You could say that.’
‘It was in Nice-Matin, you know – what happened in the cemetery.’ He shook his large head. ‘Pictures, too.’
‘Annie Provin rang me. Did I “want to do an interview for TV?” I declined.’
‘Reporters have no respect for anything except a good story. Death and destruction? They’ll splash that every time.’
Death… The subject was never far from Darac’s thoughts at the moment. He knew Ridge would have his own very partic
ular thoughts on it. But did he want to hear them now? Maybe now was the perfect time.
‘You grew up in the church, didn’t you, Ridge? Gospel choirs and all that.’
‘Yes, sir. East 149th Street Baptist. And every so often, I feel those ever-loving arms around me, still.’
Ridge had a way of imbuing even the most trivial statement with significance. When matters were weighty, the effect could be overpowering.
‘You believe?’ Darac decided to leave out ‘despite everything’. ‘Believe in something beyond this veil of whatever it is, I mean?’
As if a DJ with a penchant for corn were looking on, Dexter’s ‘Stairway to the Stars’ drifted in from the concert room.
‘I tell you one thing I believe: you don’t play the same at Carnival time as you do the rest of the year. You don’t realise it, I know, but just for a few days, your solos work in a different way. Now that must mean something.’
He shouldn’t have started this. But there was no going back now. ‘And that something is what, do you think?’
Ridge turned away, trusting the banister rail with his weight. When he spoke, his words rumbled around the stairwell like a downtown subway train.
‘Most of the time, you’re a player who takes a solo to the edge, right? And once there, you jump off. And you fly around getting further away, making it harder to find a way back. And then you take one flight too many. Now you’re really in trouble. But then you hit on something. And it points you in the right direction. You follow it. And you do make it back.’
‘That’s what a jazz solo is, isn’t it? It’s what everyone does.’
Ridge shook his head. ‘No. Most cats head back before they hit trouble. You don’t.’ He tramlined his forehead. ‘You love those remote places. This is when you’re playing at your best, I’m talking about.’
‘And around carnival time, I don’t do that?’
‘You get out to the edge, alright. You tip a toe over… and you bring it right back.’
‘And you infer what from that?’
Still resting his weight on his forearms, Ridge turned to him. ‘When my mother passed, I really felt a sense of the vastness of the place she had gone to.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t think of it as Heaven or Eternity, per se. It was just this… endless space I’d never even really thought about before. Then, at age nineteen, there I was – standing on the edge looking right into it.’
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