Box of Bones (A Captain Darac Novel 3)

by Peter Morfoot

  ‘Well, alright, but if we have a storm like we did earlier, we won’t be venturing out on to the terrace.’

  ‘Thanks, Paul. So what will you make?’

  ‘Uh… I could do my poulet à l’estragon, I suppose.’

  Frankie caught his eye and shook her head.

  ‘Or my poulet au citron, perhaps?’

  ‘Wonderful. Julie will be delighted.’

  ‘She does realise—’

  ‘I’ve told her you may have to leave suddenly or even cancel at the last minute.’

  ‘And it didn’t deter her?’

  ‘Nothing deters Julie. She thinks your job is utterly fascinating, anyway.’

  The first of the espressos was on its way.

  ‘Listen, will you ring the café to cancel? I’m on in a minute.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I mean, I’ll be busy.’

  ‘I’ll do it straight away.’

  ‘And tell them it is just a postponement. We ought to go soon – Chef Max looks as if he might succumb to a coronary at any moment. Just the two of us. How’s that?’

  ‘Excellent idea.’

  ‘Until tomorrow.’

  ‘Indeed. Oh, one last thing. Is it alright if Julie gives you a ring tomorrow morning? She has a favour to ask. Well, she called it a favour. Actually she has something for you.’

  ‘Uh… yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Good. And, Paul? Thank you again. For everything.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Darac gave Perand a sympathetic smile as he took his espresso. He’d tasted the bitterness of unrequited love himself. But he’d never been dragooned into domesticity by the woman’s lover into the bargain.

  As drinks were dispensed and Frankie helped Erica set up an array of visual aids, Darac went to share a few thoughts with Agnès. Their conversation flowed as easily and amusingly as normal but at moments he wondered if he detected a new note, a subtle new scent in the atmosphere between them. There could only be one cause: the rumour of his burgeoning relationship with Frankie. He tried to assess Agnès’s feelings about it. Not flat-out disapproval, certainly. Nor distance or disappointment. But there was something.

  A call came in on the hot-desk phone. A light indicated it was from the duty officer’s desk along the corridor. Bonbon took it and handed Agnès the receiver.

  ‘Go ahead, Bé.’ She listened for a moment and responded, ‘Tell them no comment on the Villefranche hanging for now.’ Agnès handed back the phone. ‘My, it’s taxing being commissaire.’ She slipped off her shoes. ‘Alright. Ready, Erica?’

  ‘All set, Agnès.’

  ‘Paul? Dazzle us.’

  ‘Well I’ll start, anyway. This is what Bonbon and I found at the scene.’ He gave Erica a nod. A shot of the hanged man, face to the Citadelle wall, filled one of the screens. ‘We’ll go into the “how?” of this murder later but let’s start with the “who?” because it’s significant. Next one, please.’

  Erica brought up the desperate face of a man whose life had been squeezed out of him. Studying it, Darac wasn’t alone in filling his lungs for the sheer pleasure of breathing.

  ‘He looks vaguely familiar,’ she said. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘None other than Monsieur Jean Aureuil. The man who earned the two-million-euro So-Pro reward.’

  Voices rose in the air like startled pigeons. Flaco seemed especially exercised at the news. ‘It’s too great a coincidence that the murder isn’t the work of Pierre Delmas, but how could it be?’ she said. ‘Aureuil’s name was never released.’

  ‘Anyone have a theory on that?’ Darac asked the room. ‘No? What if Delmas knew Aureuil’s name already?’

  Around the room, brows were still furrowed. And then Agnès clicked her fingers. Eight years too late, she realised what the gang had actually done.

  Clocking that she had the whole thing down, Darac gave her a look. ‘Like to—?’

  ‘No, no.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘You outline it.’

  ‘Alright.’ He shifted his weight on the desk. ‘From the beginning, we focussed on the fact that the robbery, although executed with panache, was ultimately unsuccessful. Everything was returned, there were no ill-gotten gains to divide up between the thieves. We were left considering that Pierre Delmas may have negotiated a separate deal with the others beforehand. And it was that sum, earmarked for his daughter Sylvie, that he was cheated out of subsequently. We got that wrong.’ He raised both hands. ‘In fact, I got that wrong. Delmas didn’t need to negotiate such a deal because there were ill-gotten gains to divide.’

  ‘The reward itself!’ Perand said, sounding as if he admired both the concept and his own perspicacity.

  ‘Exactly. With Jean Aureuil’s murder and other developments, I’m sure that the reward was what the gang was after from the start.’

  Flaco raised a hand. ‘Isn’t there a problem with that? From the gang’s point of view, I mean. The reward was two million euros and the haul was… how much, again?’

  ‘Nineteen million-plus in cash,’ Granot said, twisting the end of his moustache. ‘And there was jewellery and other stuff.’

  ‘So the gang beat the alarms,’ Flaco went on. ‘They dug a tunnel. They set up the elaborate scenario to confuse us. They also broke into the safety deposit boxes. And more besides. That’s a lot of work to put in, unnecessarily. And on top of all that, they got away. Got away without having to resort to violence, hate, weapons, et cetera. So they wind up getting two million when they actually had got clean away with more than nineteen million. That doesn’t add up.’

  ‘Clean away?’ Darac said.

  ‘Well they did, didn’t they, Captain? To start with.’

  Granot stopped playing with his moustache. It was time for him to speak and Darac recognised it.

  ‘Go on, mate.’

  ‘The original So-Gén gang of ’76 got clean away, too,’ he said. ‘From the bank itself, that is. But that’s only the start of your problems as a bank robber. What do you do with the traceable loot, like the jewels? Fence it? Barter it for drugs? Do you launder just the cash? It sounds straightforward enough but there are a number of problems. First, the return from illegal laundering or selling on the black market is always lower than the value of the original stash. Then there’s the fact that setting up the deals inevitably brings more people into the equation and that hugely multiplies the risk of someone talking, or being made to talk, to us. And before all that happens, there’s the problem of maintaining the integrity of the haul itself. My experience is that one or more of the gang invariably keeps something back. They see a watch, a ring or a necklace they like the look of and pocket it. And then they give it to a girlfriend who goes and wears it to the policemen’s ball.’

  Laughter all round.

  ‘Or they use some of the stolen cash to buy a car or whatever and the notes are subsequently traced by some poor sweat like me.’ Winding up to the finish, he took on a more serious mien. ‘It’s absolutely in this après-robbery phase that over ninety per cent of’ – he supplied airborne speech marks – ‘successful robberies fail and the brilliant and daring gang members get caught. Set against those odds, our So-Pro boys made a terrific bet. A guaranteed two million euro payout? Fantastic.’

  ‘Beautifully summarised,’ Agnès said. She gave Flaco a look. ‘Alright?’

  ‘I see it, yes.’

  Bonbon was wrapped around his chair in a knot of Gordian complexity. But there was nothing tangled about his thinking.

  ‘Going for the reward is the percentage play, when you think about it – providing there aren’t hundreds of people in the gang.’

  It was hardly necessary, but Frankie raised a finger to attract Darac’s attention. He felt like answering, ‘Yes, darling?’ but decided against it. They were under scrutiny as it was.

  ‘So Jean Aureuil, solely, scooped the two million euro reward.’ She turned to Granot. ‘How did they divide it up, do you suppose?’

  ‘He couldn’t write cheques for the am
ounts, clearly. I think when I follow the money, I’ll find a trail of share deals, small business purchases and so on that involve the others. But there’s an obvious point here we haven’t touched on. So obvious, I only thought of it just before the meeting.’ Granot’s expression was one of imperious certainty. ‘We’ve got Jean Aureuil – dead. We’ve got Michel Fouste, Carl Halevy and Alain Saxe – dead. All within a few days of each other. And on Saxe, thanks to Erica’s way with a hard drive we have this column of figures.’ He brandished a computer printout. ‘It’s headed “400,000”; the rows below it are subtractions from that principal. This is the second reference we’ve come across to the number four hundred thousand; the other was on Sylvie’s fake bank statement. So assuming equal shares, which now seems probable, we know how many were in the gang, don’t we? Two million divided by four hundred thousand equals five. Four dead plus Delmas, in other words. And that, my friends, means Aureuil’s death will be the last. The killings have stopped.’

  It was a cogent argument and all around the room, what had been strained minds and bodies until an hour or so ago began to relax even more. Whether they were criminals or not, corpses piling up all over the city was something every officer abhorred.

  ‘So, chief,’ Granot went on. ‘You can shelve your concerns about A1 Security and other parties.’

  ‘Good work, Granot,’ Darac said. ‘I sense there’s more to come on this aspect but whether there is or not, our primary goal remains the same: catch Pierre Delmas.’

  Frankie looked up from her notes. ‘I take it he’s still made no application to the utilities? Internet provider, phone, housing people?’

  ‘Nor to a medical practice, interestingly.’ His eyes locked on hers. ‘Be interesting to see what happens next, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It will.’

  Granot’s gaze joined the traffic streaming on to the Darac–Frankie freeway. Trading coded messages? The pair had forgotten their audience.

  ‘Yes,’ the big man said, bristling. ‘What Delmas will do next is interesting. It’s of paramount interest, in fact.’

  ‘He might give himself up now,’ Flaco said.

  ‘“My work is done here?”’ Perand gave her a sideways look. ‘So why didn’t he turn himself in right after killing Aureuil?’

  ‘Could be a lot of reasons.’

  ‘On the hanging,’ Agnès said. ‘Let’s rewind to the “how” you mentioned, Paul.’

  ‘Perand interviewed the man who found the body.’

  ‘Okay… Can we have the next slide?’ Perand asked Erica.

  A paved waterside walkway came up on the screen.

  ‘Despite the weather, it was on this path that at about 8.45 p.m., one Monsieur Patrice Feilleu was walking his dog.’ He checked his notes. ‘Fifi. A poodle.’

  ‘God bless the dog walkers of this world,’ Bonbon said.

  ‘Yeah, let’s hear it for them. Feilleu’s head was down against the wind and rain and he says he may even have passed by the body without spotting it. Fifi went ape, though. Erica?’

  The shot of Aureuil hanging once more appeared on the screen.

  ‘Feilleu called in on his mobile straight away and then waited until we got there. No one else came in the meantime and he saw no one else on or near the path beforehand.’

  ‘8.45,’ Agnès said. ‘Has the new improved Barrau been of any help establishing the time of death?’

  Still wrapped around his chair, Bonbon somehow fished his notebook from his pocket.

  ‘He reckoned… sometime between 8.30 a.m. and 8.30 p.m.’

  Agnès made a sound in her throat. ‘Not exactly pinpoint, considering the circumstances. The bugger’s punishing us. Did he offer anything useful, Bonbon?’

  ‘To be fair, he did. Aureuil was strangled from behind with a ligature of some sort’ – Erica brought up a close-up shot of Aureuil’s neck – ‘and then was laid on his back for an unspecified time.’

  ‘There was lividity staining?’

  ‘Indeed there was.’

  Erica showed a montage of Aureuil’s back and legs. Purplish patches had formed where pooled blood had leaked into the tissues. There were also abrasions on the skin.

  Anticipating Agnès’s next question, Raul Ormans riffled the pages of his notebook.

  ‘Ye-es, those abrasions correspond to tears in the man’s jacket.’ He swivelled his glasses up on to his pate. ‘Erica, I believe we have that slide as well?’

  The shot came up.

  ‘At great personal peril, I found a patch of material on the slippery rocks below the walkway.’ He looked expectantly at the screen. ‘Rocks below? Do we have a shot of that?’

  ‘Sorry. No rocks.’

  ‘Alright – you’ll just have to picture it. I haven’t had time to run the test yet but I think the patch will match Aureuil’s jacket.’

  ‘So the body was laid on the rocks, initially? How did it arrive there? Have you anything to show us, Lartou?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  A groan went up.

  ‘But the fact I have nothing is significant. The CCTV cameras covering the ends of the walkway are working perfectly and there’s no sign of a hanging party in the footage.’

  ‘Not being caught on CCTV fits Delmas’s security background.’ Agnès shared a look with Darac. ‘So how did the body get on to the walkway?’

  ‘Unless Delmas abseiled down the Citadelle wall, which, let’s face it, is unlikely, he must have arrived at the scene by boat. A small, shallow-draft one. A motorboat, say.’

  ‘With the victim lying on deck. Or somewhere horizontally, anyway. A few seconds lying on the rocks wouldn’t have given all that lividity.’

  ‘Then he strung up the body, clambered back on to the boat and left as he had come.’

  Agnès gave Perand a look. ‘It’s a long shot but better get on to Maritime.’

  He made a note of it. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  As Perand picked up the phone, Agnès took things forward again. ‘If you wanted to disguise a strangling as a suicide by hanging, you wouldn’t do any of this, obviously. So what other reason could there be for stringing up a strangled body? And why do it in such a public place?’

  Granot gave a very convinced nod. ‘Delmas is displaying the final gang member’s body as a kind of trophy. He’s saying: “Look, everybody – I’ve won.”’

  ‘It’s one interpretation, certainly,’ Darac said. ‘I don’t want to burst our bubble but let’s just speculate for a moment that Aureuil isn’t the final victim—’

  ‘He is, I’m telling you.’

  Darac saw Granot’s irritation and raised it. ‘Just as speculation, if that’s alright with you? Displaying a body like that could also act as a warning to others, couldn’t it?’

  Granot shrugged.

  ‘Let’s rewind a little,’ Agnès said. ‘Whether it was an act of triumphalism or to serve as a warning, I’m exercised by the venue. Yes, the walkway is well-frequented and the killer knew a hanging corpse would soon be discovered. But how was it that he wasn’t discovered hanging it? What he did must have taken quite some time.’

  Darac nodded. ‘It may be a popular spot for a stroll in normal weather but in heavy rain and with a gale blowing? I think Delmas simply assumed no one would be around.’

  ‘Vis-à-vis our dog walker, he got that part wrong,’ Bonbon said. ‘But happily for him, not when he was actually performing his hangman routine.’

  Perand put down his phone. ‘Maritime have nothing. Large vessels? Yes, they’re all over them. Small fry? Not so much.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Agnès sat back, her forehead creased in fine, almost exactly parallel lines. ‘Physically strong, isn’t he? Pierre Delmas. For a dying man.’

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Darac. ‘Think he had help?’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘Not that this woman looks the type to help string up dead bodies,’ Astrid said, retrieving her sketch pad fro
m her bag. ‘But as we’re on the subject of Delmas’s possible pals, I’ve got one here.’ She flicked through pages. ‘I did it at Café Grinda… Good call on the quail, by the way, Darac.’

  ‘I thought you were a vegetarian,’ Granot said, perplexed.

  ‘Because the thought of munching slaughtered songbirds doesn’t do it for me?’

  ‘Meat’s meat.’

  ‘Thanks for that. Anyway, here we go.’ She held up a page showing a watercolour sketch of a pleasant-looking red-headed woman. ‘This is the woman the staff at the café saw having dinner with Delmas shortly before the So-Pro job.’

  ‘Let me see that,’ Darac said, reaching. It couldn’t be. Could it?

  ‘Know her?’ Agnès said.

  ‘I… I’m not sure.’

  But he made a mental note to ask Bonbon and Flaco back to his office afterwards. He had something he wanted to run by them.

  * * *

  He didn’t have long to wait. The meeting broke up ten minutes later with no further progress having being made.

  ‘Okay, you’re going to think I’m crazy,’ he said, back in his office.

  ‘Bit late for that, mate,’ Bonbon said.

  Darac held up Astrid’s watercolour. ‘She look familiar?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘Flak?’

  ‘Who do you think it is, Captain?’

  ‘Answering a question with a question?’ He propped up the sketch on his desk and went to sit behind it. ‘You’ve been in the Brigade too long.’

  She smiled. ‘No, I don’t recognise her.’

  ‘Think back to the shooting at the cemetery. Except for Delmas and Carl Halevy, you met everyone who was at the scene.’

  ‘The cemetery? Who could—?’

  ‘Don’t try to work out how anyone there could possibly be connected to Delmas. Just look at the likeness.’

  The pair looked harder at the sketch. After a moment, the dawn of realisation broke on Bonbon’s face.

  ‘You don’t mean your father’s girlfriend – Julie Issert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I do think you’re crazy.’ He indicated the painting. ‘This woman looks no more like Julie than any other attractive red-headed woman. Of a similar age.’