Stick Together

by Sophie Hénaff

  Capestan looked at her officers’ faces. Dax somehow both in deep concentration and completely uninterested; Rosière still in a bait; Orsini seemingly trying to challenge her, without any luck; and Merlot with an empty plastic cup in one hand and in the other, the rat he had narrowly avoided squashing. Next to him, standing up and gripping the back of his chair, Saint-Lô was fizzing, desperate for action:

  “So then, our rogue is unmasked! What are we waiting for? What is his name? Where is his base?”

  Yes, these were the pressing questions. The others could wait.

  “His name is Max Ramier. And our job today is to flush him out.”

  Lewitz cast his spirit level to one side and went to fetch the plumb line from his toolbox. He held it up to the top corner of the bookcase that he had just finished for the games room.

  Good. The spirit level and the plumb line were in agreement: it was leaning to the right, rather dramatically, in fact. Or perhaps it was the floor. Yes, that was it, the floor was not straight. And anyway, from a distance you could hardly tell, and once the unit was full, no-one would know any different.

  The lieutenant scooped up the board games and books that everyone had brought for the communal stash. When he put the Scrabble box on the middle shelf, it stuck a bit on the fresh paint. That would make a nice souvenir.

  21

  “Is there one person in the entire prison service willing to take my call, or am I going to have to show up in person? I’m warning you, this is Lieutenant Torrez on the line. You don’t want me face-to-face. Yes, I’ll hold. Again.”

  An exasperated Torrez chucked his hands-free kit to one side and gripped his iron even tighter. He pressed the steamy tip onto the shirt collar with such force that the board quaked on its aluminium legs. They had been pinballing him from one department to the next for over an hour and, for one usually so calm and dogged in his research, his patience was wearing thin. He was not making much progress on the shirts either, which worried him with the deadline looming.

  Max Ramier had not been released for good conduct. He had served the whole of his sentence and, in the process, sown a healthy amount of terror in the prison yard. Few people had called him a friend, and he had confided in fewer still. He was an aggressive man prone to furious outbursts that were as sudden as they were inexplicable. Other than him never speaking about any hidden loot, there was not much more on the prison grapevine. He never spent anything and did not harp on about any grudges or unfinished business. This set him apart from other armed robbers, who often ranted about settling scores, baying for blood and blaming anyone and everyone outside the clink for the bad luck that had landed them there. Ramier was all action and no talk, which was rare.

  Once that avenue had run dry, Torrez was focusing his efforts on official channels. He needed Ramier’s address. The one from the armed robbery case notes had not been in use for years, the slammer taking its place by default: when the rent stopped coming in, the administration had resolved matters. But Ramier could not have left Lyon-Corbas prison without stating an address, even if it was only temporary. He must have been assigned a probation officer too. This was the information Torrez was still waiting on.

  One more tricky crease at the end of the sleeve and Torrez put down the iron with a sigh. He would never make it.

  Three sharp knocks at the door announced Capestan’s arrival.

  “Come in!”

  She opened the door and flashed him her customary smile.

  “Any excitement from the cells?”

  Torrez gave her a quick lowdown.

  “Great. Will you text me if you hear any more?”

  The lieutenant nodded. His commissaire had not even seemed to notice that he was ironing in his office. She was so unintrusive that at times it verged on indifference. Torrez knew that was not the case – she just kept her questions and concerns, her hurt and her anger, to herself. She was quick to share her joy, her enthusiasm, but revealed nothing else. She maintained a sunny front and appeared completely open, all the while letting no-one learn a thing about her. But as hard as he had found it to decipher her fully, Torrez was beginning to understand her. He could tell she was anxious. A problem was fluttering around her head; the lieutenant could almost see it through the windowpanes of her eyes. He would know what it was when she was ready to tell him. If she wanted to keep quiet, then surely she had her reasons. Torrez did not doubt the commissaire for a second. After she pulled the door shut behind her, the lieutenant’s mobile sprang back into action. Finally. His threat of a personal visit had come good.

  *

  Capestan went back to the sitting room. She had been planning on telling Torrez, but he already had his hands full, so no point interfering. She was drifting around the commissariat, turning but not settling, as if running away from an inevitable brush with the top brass, the telephone call that would take the case away from them. Or a question that would force her to take action.

  Dax had copied the name “Max Ramier” and pasted it into every online search box imaginable. Every time he looked up to see his “Delete illegal hacks always” Post-it, he would grunt an “Oh yeah” and return to his keyboard. In four hours of searching, he had already found three people with the same name, all quite useless but nonetheless duly noted.

  The commissaire sat at her desk and switched on her lamp. Early afternoon and the light from outside was already too dim. As Capestan focused all her thoughts on the warm ring cast by her orange lampshade, Lebreton gave her desk a gentle tap.

  “Was Diament given the file about the armed robbery?”

  “No. The information still hasn’t made it up from Lyon. And I was too busy to phone them myself this morning . . .”

  “We’ve got to tell them, Anne. It’ll look like we’re withholding information, which is exactly what we are doing. It’s dishonest. It’s downright foul play.”

  Capestan plucked a tissue from the box on her desk and used it to mop up a tea stain from her mug.

  “It’s fine, it’s not like their intel. has reached us at supersonic speed either.”

  “We’ve got to obey the rules, Anne. What are we gaining by doing this? A day, maybe two? They’ve got a guy on remand, let’s not forget. That gives him the perfect alibi for the murder in Lyon. And since all the crimes are linked, they’ll have to let him out.”

  He was right, of course. Anyhow, at some point the file would land at number 36. Except Lebreton did not know the full story. He had not read the sheet. Capestan dropped the tissue into the bin at her feet.

  “No.”

  “Anne, please . . .”

  Capestan hesitated. Her instinctive misgivings about him from their clash in the past had not completely gone away. Which was a pity. If anyone in the team was capable of making well-considered, wise and balanced decisions, it was the commandant. She had to bring him up to speed. He would understand and his opinion would be valuable.

  The commissaire cautiously pulled the sheet of paper from the top drawer of her desk.

  It was not just the three victims in the Minerva case. Another name was lurking in there.

  “Here, read this. It was in the file. I’m not giving it to them, although they might find it out for themselves. And I think that every moment we extract from them will count. Just tell me what you think. It’s at the bottom of the page. The victims’ name.”

  The woman and the boy killed in Velowski’s office were called Orsini.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Lebreton said under his breath, staring at the document.

  The idea of vengeance, their findings in the inquiry, everything appeared in a new light. A new darkness, if truth be told.

  Why had Orsini not said anything? He must have known that his name would come up eventually.

  Why was he playing for time?

  And most pressing of all: was he simply an investigator, or was he a murderer?

  *

  The sound of the doorbell rang through the commissariat. Lebreton looked up an
d eyed Capestan. They both knew it was Lieutenant Diament at the door. They had to react fast. Now was the time to decide. Lebreton handed the sheet back to her:

  “It was fine in your drawer. Shall I let Diament in?”

  Capestan shook her head. No. Any dirty deeds were her call. She picked up the abridged file and headed for the door.

  The towering Lieutenant Diament was standing in the doorway looking extremely irritated. Contact had been broken and there was a sense that he harboured a deep disdain for the officer responsible.

  “You have something for us, I hope.”

  “Absolutely, I was about to call.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  Something about Diament’s reserve and lack of enthusiasm made him impossible to play. His huge paw seized the dossier and he flicked through it with his thumb.

  “All there?”

  “Of course. Why do you ask? You wouldn’t ever send us incomplete documents, would you?”

  Capestan loved to play.

  No smile or expression of regret from Diament whatsoever. Just the faintest glimmer of a “fair enough”.

  “Goodbye, commissaire,” he said in a cursory manner, but only after spinning on his heel.

  “Don’t forget to release that poor suspect of yours,” Capestan said as he was getting into the lift.

  She could not resist a little sideways dig from her starting block to his. The inter-departmental race was on. And this time, she could not afford to lose. A colleague was at stake.

  Soon she would have to confront the colleague in question, but first she needed to run a few small checks.

  *

  Nestled in the leather armchair under the window in the snooker room, Rosière was close to finishing the manuscript. She had read it in a oner to get a feel for the story. A sort of Victorian comedy of manners in the mould of Jane Austen. The plot and characters had nothing to do with the armed robbery in Lyon or the trauma it had caused. Yet something, a vague, subliminal sensation, was nagging Rosière. In and of itself, the novel was not worth the paper it was printed on. The situations were out of kilter and the reactions muddled. She might have written this off as amateurism but, curiously, every page, every sentence, seemed to have been mulled over and carefully constructed. Velowski was trying to say something without wanting to say it outright, all the while hoping people would know what he meant without fully understanding. He had typed with one hand at the keyboard and a can of worms in the other. He needed people to take time to get to know him. This manuscript had been his only means of escape. It was not entirely trivial, even if authors do cling on to their texts as if they were their youngest child. Rosière intended to get going, ignore the story and click into writer mode. On a piece of A3 card, she drew up a grid and filled in the boxes along the top and down the side: names, objectives, methods, interactions and characteristics.

  As she was straightening her glasses, Lewitz popped his head round the corner.

  “Torrez has found something for Capestan. Come and have a listen,” he said.

  “Coming,” she said with a grumble.

  Pilou took off like a pilot fish.

  *

  “Twenty years in prison, not a single visit,” the commissaire said in summary. “Ramier killed Melonne for the money, but resentment must have pulled hard on the trigger too.”

  She clapped her hands together before carrying on:

  “So, we have an address, that’s great – 25, avenue Montaigne. Let’s go.”

  “Avenue Montaigne?” Rosière asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the address of the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, that is. Seems our guy couldn’t resist a bit of a splurge.”

  22

  They had had to organise a stakeout on the hoof because Ramier was not at the hotel when Capestan and Lebreton showed up. The need to improvise brought about two further problems. Firstly the squad, cut off from the public prosecutor’s office, had no search warrant relating to this brand-new suspect. Unless they caught him red-handed or he did a runner, they would not be able to arrest Ramier. And second, after reading the file, the B.R.I. would arrive at exactly the same conclusions as their rue des Innocents friends and rush to the scene twice as fast and with a warrant to boot. Perhaps they were already on their way.

  If the B.R.I. swooped in ahead of them and nicked Ramier, the case would be closed in a second. They would have their man, leaving the squad to walk away feeling even more deflated and humiliated than before. From her post on a bench just up from the palace beneath a line of horse chestnuts, Capestan was watching the far end of the lavish avenue Montaigne, praying for something to happen. She needed Ramier to arrive now.

  The withered husks of the bare trees had been replaced by electric lights that weighed down the flimsy branches. The lack of foliage meant the hotel was fully visible, complete with its immaculate stone façade and miniature balconies draped in scarlet geraniums. Endless window boxes combining with the red of the blinds put the finishing touch to this landmark site.

  Gaggles of young girls had virtually chained themselves to the railings that protected the box hedges lining the hotel’s terrace, smartphones at the ready, apparently praying for something to happen too. Surely they were not waiting for Ramier. As yet more of them gathered from the surrounding streets, Capestan wondered which other star had pulled such a crowd.

  *

  Parked a few metres downstream of the Athénée, Saint-Lô and Lewitz were using their wing mirrors to keep a close eye on the broad avenue, as well as making the most of their height advantage in the chunky seats of their 4x4.

  Lewitz could not believe his luck. He caressed the black leather racing steering wheel, letting his fingertips graze the gearstick with a tenderness and admiration that he would not have been able to muster had it been Rihanna’s booty. His only regret was the tinted windows. He had said so earlier to the car-hire people:

  “Hey, wait, I want clear windows, you hear me. If I’m riding a Porsche, I want people to gawk at me when we hit a red light! And I’m not rolling the windows down in the middle of December . . .”

  “No, no, ignore him,” Rosière had said, holding out her Platinum card. “These windows are just fine.”

  Just as the man behind the desk thought to himself that the millionaire should let her toyboy live a little, Rosière turned to Lewitz and reminded him of the purpose of the luxury model:

  “It’s for a stakeout, Lewitz, a STAKE-OUT. Undercover. And outside the Plaza, a Cayenne happens to be the most discreet option, O.K.? But if you’re sat in the front looking like a dog with two tails, it won’t be low-key for long, will it.”

  Lewitz caved. More because of her bankcard than her reasoning, but still he caved. There were several things he did not regret: the sleekness, the comfort, the hundreds of buttons and the beast of an engine. Obsessed with his Porsche, he did his best to convey his enthusiasm to a partner who could not have been less interested in the finer details of the automobile. Saint-Lô turned to him briefly and gave an appreciative nod out of simple courtesy. In his days as a guardsman, he had endured hours of conversation in taverns with toothless wenches, learning to listen without hearing in a manner befitting his inner poet. Suckled on the work of François Villon, Du Bellay, Ronsard and Clément Marot, he knew how to remove himself from the world, especially a world that no longer acknowledged him.

  As a child, Saint-Lô had envisioned a whole other destiny for himself, one built on battles and derring-do. He had dreamed so often of finding his own Excalibur to pull forth, or saddling up to seek fresh conquests and glory. But his heart, soul and flair were trapped here, in a century where everyone sneered.

  Yet Saint-Lô now felt a different breeze on his face. His moustache detected the gust of adventure. It had been an age since anyone had entrusted him with even the most minor mission, and keeping an eye on this palace of the vanities was captivating him just as much as guarding the king’s encampment ever had in days gone by. So while
Lewitz was babbling, Saint-Lô was being reborn. He felt the lifeblood of the musketeers coursing through his veins and awakening the ardour of his spirit. He knew he was ready to strike down the enemy and fight to the bitter end. His love of poetry and his hunger for battle were taking him over like ivy scaling a virgin wall. The finest swordsman in all the land had reported back for duty.

  If Max Ramier were to wend his way through the crowd of screaming young girls swarming round the hotel entrance, Saint-Lô would spot him and rouse Lewitz from his blissed-out state.

  *

  Meanwhile, Rosière was busy trying to harpoon her plateful of salade italienne with a piece of elegant silverware.

  “Bloody rocket, always takes at least five goes with your fork to get anywhere.”

  Sitting alongside her, Lebreton was stirring his coffee in a delicate china cup. Rosière threw down the implement in defeat and tore off a piece of bread to mop up the dressing. They had been holed up in the hotel’s bar for two hours now, where they had seen no end of crystal, jewellery and snobbery, but no Ramier, nor any other celebs. Waste of bloody time and now she was fed up. Her stiletto tapped along to the frantic rhythm of her impatience.

  “These stakeouts are a pain in the arse. I hate waiting about.”

  “No-one likes waiting, Eva,” Lebreton said, crossing his long, slender legs.

  The blend of his thoroughbred physique and his dandy style meant he fitted in perfectly with these made-to-measure surroundings, not that he seemed to care.

  “Erm, you do! Look at you there, all calm . . . It’s like a hobby to you.”

  Lebreton gave a crooked smile that emphasised his thin scar. His eyes followed a tray of cocktails elegantly swaying beneath a velvet-clad waiter. The e-fit with the green fur and scabbard came back to him.

  “It’s weird that a crook seeking to keep a low profile would choose a palace hotel,” he said.

  “Not really. First off, maybe he’s not bothered about keeping a low profile. He’s not shy of theatrics, as we saw with the street sign. Like all armed robbers, he must have an ego the size of a ramraider’s car. Plus, the thought of guffing into some silk sheets must have got him very excited in prison. He can afford a taste of the high life now that he’s gone to the effort of swiping back that lucre. And these so-called ‘palace’ hotels are all the same – discreet to the point of turning a blind eye to their guests’ activities. Until a scandal comes along to disturb their peace and impunity, I bet many a puffed-up prince has paraded around the capital’s connecting suites with a bevy of slaves. No-one bats an eyelid at reception when they hand over the keys to anyone who can afford it: monsieur has made an excellent choice; we very much hope to see you again soon; blah, blah. Anyway, old Ramier’s small fry compared to most of this lot.”