“Oh, he doesn’t actually do it himself.” Jacques’ voice faltered again as a wave of anger ripped through him. “He pays other people to do it for him. I know it’s true because he told me himself. He told me that, ultimately, he was the one responsible for Yvonne’s death!”
Claudine dissolved into tears from the force of Jacques’ attack and her tears melted his heart. He stepped towards her and took her in his arms.
“I’m sorry, Maman. I didn’t want to upset you. I know you loved Yvonne as much as I did. But I had to ask you about this. I hope you will understand.”
They hugged each other tightly for a few moments before Claudine pulled back from Jacques.
“What is it, this danger you are in?” she asked hesitantly, as she dried her eyes, “What exactly did Philippe say to you?”
“He said that because I can identify one of the men who kidnapped Yvonne, the one who was not killed, some of his… his associates, they want to kill me. They think that if they kill me they will be safe. He said he told them not to, that he would not agree to it, but he thinks they might try anyway. He says I must get away from here; go somewhere where they cannot find me.”
“You must tell the police everything, Jacques. There is no alternative. Maybe they can give you some protection.”
“Monsieur Jefferson has asked us not to speak to the police yet. He wants a little more time to try and solve the case.”
Jacques looked at his mother and saw the pain in her eyes. He wondered if he could go on and tell her about the sting in the tail of what he had told her. He decided, having got this far, that there was no point in holding anything back.
“There is something else,” he said, “You remember Eloise, my new girlfriend, the girl I brought with me when I came to tell you about Yvonne?”
“Yes, of course. What about her?”
“Well, Philippe Lacoste is her grandfather.”
Jacques waited for his mother to work out the implications of what he had just told her. When she did, a look of concern spread over her face.
“But that would mean…” Claudine put a hand to her mouth, “Oh, Jacques. Oh no! I am so sorry,” she said, taking both Jacques’ hands in hers.
They looked into each other’s eyes and then hugged each other. When they broke, Jacques’ mind was back on practical matters.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked, “If Monsieur Lacoste was telling the truth, they are going to try to kill me; that hasn’t changed. What do you think I should do?”
“The most important thing is for you to get away from here, out of danger.”
“Then I will leave Port Grimaud. I will take the Esprit and go.”
“Where will you go?”
Jacques turned back to the window. “I don’t know,” he said, “And it’s probably better that you don’t know where I am. But I’ll keep in touch, I‘ll let you know that I’m safe.”
Tears filled Claudine’s eyes again as Jacques prepared to leave the apartment. He took his mother in his arms and hugged her. “I hate to leave you like this,” he said, “But I’ll be back, when this terrible business is all forgotten.”
Jacques left his mother at the door to her apartment and ran down the steps to the canal side below. He took one last look up at his mother’s window; she was there, leaning out over the balcony. She waved to him and smiled.
“Take care of yourself,” she whispered to herself.
Jacques waved back and was gone, lost in the milling crowd of tourists.
_________________________
Although Eloise had closed her eyes when Jacques had pulled the bed covers up, she had not gone to sleep and soon after he had left the boat to go and see his mother, she had got up and climbed the stairs to the saloon.
In the saloon, she found the pad and pen Jacques had used to write down the kidnappers’ instructions. She picked them up and then sat at the table as she wrote a note to Jacques. It didn’t take long, there wasn’t much to say but as she wrote, there were tears in her eyes and one spilled onto the note. She took her handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the damp spot with it, smudging the writing, and then used the handkerchief to mop her eyes as she sobbed quietly to herself.
Having left a note for Jacques on the Esprit, Eloise gathered up her things from the master cabin and from where they were scattered around the saloon, packed them all into her holdall and left the boat. On the quayside, she turned and took a long look at the Esprit before heading down the Rue Grande and past the hotel on her way to the Place du Marché. Once there, she found the road leading from the Place to the Rue des Deux Iles, the narrow road that led to Philippe’s house. When she reached the house, she knocked on the door, her knock a little apprehensive. Moments later, the door was opened by Philippe.
“Eloise! I was not expecting you.” He smiled at her briefly but the smile faded quickly; he knew his granddaughter had been devastated by the news that he was Jacques’ father.
“I think we need to have a talk,” said Eloise tersely as she pushed past him into the house. Philippe watched her, noticing that she had her holdall with her. Slowly, he closed the door and followed her into the living room.
“I’m guessing that you need somewhere to stay,” he said, pointing at her holdall, which she had dropped next to the sofa before sitting down. He sat in the armchair beside the sofa and looked her in the eye as he waited for her to respond.
“Well, I can’t really stay with Jacques any more, can I?” She threw the words at him, clearly disgusted with the situation in which she now found herself. Philippe nodded his understanding of her predicament.
“I’m sorry that you had to find out the way you did. If I had known that you and Jacques were seeing each other, I would have done it differently.” Eloise looked at him, her heart softening a little, but only a little.
“Well, what’s done is done. And it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. Jacques would still be related to me.”
There was a few moments pause as Philippe and Eloise considered this and then Philippe spoke; he wanted to make amends in some way.
“You must stay here with me until you go home,” he said and smiled a weak smile.
“That’s kind of you Grandpa, but I think I’ll check in at the hotel again. I need my own space right now.”
“OK, but you must think of this house as your own. Come here whenever you want to. It doesn’t matter if I’m here or not. I want you to think of this as your second home. OK?”
Eloise smiled. “OK,” she said. “Thanks.”
Philippe got to his feet and went into the kitchen. Eloise watched him, not sure why he was doing so but when he returned a few moments later he handed Eloise a key ring with a key on it and a piece of paper.
“This is the key to the front door. I want you to have it so that you can come in whenever you wish, and maybe sit on the canal side watching the boats; there’s a good view from there. And on the paper is the code for the alarm system.”
Eloise smiled and took the key and the paper from Philippe. She put them in her bag and then looked at Philippe, her expression changing to a serious one.
“Grandpa, I want to know what’s going on, what you are involved in. I think you owe me that.”
Philippe sighed. “You are right. I do owe you that. But first, we will have a drink.” He got up and went to the cabinet in the corner of the room and removed a bottle and two tumblers. “Whisky, I think. For you too.” Eloise smiled as he poured the whisky into the glasses and handed one to Eloise. “So, where to start?”
_________________________
In the Place du Marché, Carter was sitting at a table outside the Café Poisson reading a newspaper when his phone rang. He removed it from his pocket and answered it.
“Inspecteur. Bonjour,” he said cheerily and listened to what Le Grande had to say before ending the call.
By the time Conrad found him at the café, Carter had folded the newspaper and put it on the table. Conrad wal
ked quickly towards Carter and sat in the chair next to him before looking at him enquiringly. “Well,” he said, “What news?”
“Well, firstly, Inspecteur le Grande says he will overlook the fact that you had an illegal firearm in your possession.”
Conrad nodded. “Good. Anything else?”
“It was the same gun,” replied Carter.
“Which links the guys here to Rob’s murder.”
“And that’s another link in the chain connecting Rob to this case. It’s not just the coded email any more. I never thought his death was just a coincidence and this proves it.” Carter paused for a moment. “I think it’s time we checked out Lacoste’s place. I don’t know how, or how deeply, he’s involved but I know he’s involved.” Just as he said this, Carter’s phone rang and he answered it.
“Eloise. Hi.”
_________________________
Leaving Conrad to contemplate what he had told him about his escape from being prosecuted by the French police and about the bullets matching, Carter took the two minute walk from the café to the Hotel Giraglia and went into the hotel. He really had no idea why Eloise wanted to see him but even if his curiosity had not got the better of him, he would have wanted to see how she was getting on after all that had happened, and Nicole was expecting him to look after her.
As he entered the hotel bar, Carter saw Eloise sitting alone at a table with a drink in her hand. He went over to her and greeted her before sitting in the seat next to her.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“I’m good thanks,” he responded, not wanting to commit himself to staying any longer than he needed to. “You wanted to see me.”
Eloise adjusted her position and sat forward as she spoke. “I went to see Grandpa today. There were things we needed to talk about.” She glanced at Carter. “About Jacques and me.”
Carter nodded, although he didn’t really understand why Eloise would need to talk to her grandfather about her relationship with Jacques.
“My grandfather is not a criminal,” continued Eloise, “He is just a business man who has got involved with something that he never should have. But he has never done anything illegal before, I want you to understand that.” Eloise looked into Carter’s eyes and he looked back into hers, not wanting to give any indication of what his thoughts about Philippe were. “And the only reason I’m here now is because I want to clear him of any involvement with Rob’s death.”
“Please. Just tell me what you know,” responded Carter non-committally.
“I don’t know much, he wasn’t particularly forthcoming but I did find out that the diamonds are coming from England.”
“Any idea who is supplying them?”
“No, he wouldn’t tell me that. He just wanted me to know that he is very unhappy with the way things have turned out. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was supposed to be a harmless little enterprise, perhaps sailing a little close to the wind, legally, but no one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Well, people have got hurt, Eloise. And not just your brother,” said Carter.
Eloise nodded as she looked down at her hands. “I know, but it wasn’t his doing and I don’t want to see my grandfather get into trouble because of something he didn’t have anything to do with,” she said as she looked him in the eye again, “Mum couldn’t cope with that right now, not on top of everything else.”
Carter relented a little, he knew that Nicole was already struggling to come to terms with Rob’s death and that the last thing she needed was for her father to be implicated in his death. He leaned forward and returned her look.
“I can’t keep him out of it, Eloise,” he said. “Things have gone way too far for that. But I will try to soften the blow for your mother. I care about her too, you know.” Eloise smiled softly at this.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “She told me a bit about you guys.”
Carter looked down as he spoke, wondering if he was sharing too much about his relationship with Nicole but deciding to be honest with her daughter. “I love her very much, always have,” he said. “But I have to get to the bottom of this.”
Eloise nodded her agreement with that sentiment and reached into her pocket. “Then you might need this,” she said as she handed Carter the key to Philippe’s house. Carter took the key and turned it over in his hand as she continued. “He told me to use the place as my own, as a second home. And this is the code for the alarm system.” She handed him the piece of paper with the alarm code written on it. “The panel is just inside the door.” She looked at Carter wondering what his response to what she was doing would be. “We’re having dinner together tonight at a restaurant in Sainte Maxime, so that we can get to know each other a bit better.” Eloise gave Carter a knowing look. “That will be your chance.”
_________________________
After Jacques had left his mother’s apartment, he had gone for a walk along the beach to try to clear his thoughts. He had walked and walked and walked, hoping things would start to clarify in his mind but it had been hopeless.
As the sun began to set, he decided to go back to the Esprit and talk to Eloise. Keen to get back to her, he emerged from the shade of the Grande Rue, half walking half running, and crossed the helipad. He strode over the Esprit’s gangway, across the aft deck and opened the saloon door. Once inside, he called to her. “Eloise? Eloise, where are you?” There was no response.
Jacques walked leadenly towards the helm station and sat in the helmsman’s chair. He rested his hand on the gleaming chrome of the wheel and stared out at the fuelling station opposite.
As his eyes dropped from the scene, they fell upon a small white piece of paper folded in half and propped up in front of the instrument panel. It had his name written on it. He picked it up and opened it.
Jacques sighed as he read the note. The contents did not really come as any surprise but he had hoped that he would have the opportunity to talk to Eloise before she left. Still clutching the note, he rested his hand on the wheel and stared again at the petrol pumps.
_________________________
Under cover of darkness, Carter and Conrad followed the same route that Eloise had followed earlier in the day. When they reached the front door of Philippe’s house, Carter knocked on the door. He wanted to be absolutely sure that no one was in so when there was no response, he knocked again. When there was still no sign of movement from within the house, Carter tried the key Eloise had given him. The door opened and they went inside, closing the door quietly behind them. As the alarm bleeped the warning that it had not been switched off, Carter went over to the source of the noise and tapped in the code Eloise had given him.
The bleeping stopped immediately and Carter and Conrad began their search, looking briefly round the kitchen before moving into the living room. Conrad began to search methodically through everything in the living room while Carter looked into each of the other rooms which led off from it. One of the doors he opened led to a room which was obviously Philippe’s study. He turned to Conrad.
“Hey, Conrad, let’s take a look in here,” he said gesturing with his hand for Conrad to join him.
Conrad followed Carter into the study where Carter saw Philippe’s laptop on the desk. He opened it and pressed the button to turn it on while Conrad began opening the desk drawers and searching them.
When the laptop had fired up, a smile appeared on Carter’s face and he shook his head as he spoke. “Careless. Very careless,” he said, “No access security.”
Carter proceeded to open Philippe’s email system and began looking through his messages. Conrad came over to join him and watched over Carter’s shoulder as he worked his way through them. When he found the one Philippe had sent to Rob, Carter smiled.
“Gotcha,” he said as he opened the message and saw the groups of numbers, identical to Rob’s printout.
Carter searched the laptop’s email system for other messages which had been sent from the same address and when
he saw the list, he smiled again.
“You can see how it could have happened. Most of the messages from the email [email protected] were sent to [email protected]. And Rob’s email address was [email protected] so typing in the first few letters would bring up both addresses. Get distracted for a moment and click on the wrong one and the message goes to the wrong person. We’ve all done it.”
Conrad nodded. “So now we just need to find out who [email protected] is. That would give us the next link in the chain. And it should be a whole lot easier to trace than [email protected] was. Unless of course bainesautomotive doesn’t exist either.”
“Time for us to do a bit of research,” said Carter as he got up from the desk. “Can you download these messages so that we can go through them later?”
Conrad nodded and held up the memory stick he had already taken out of his wallet in anticipation of Carter’s request.
CHAPTER 16
Early the next morning, Carter and Conrad were in Carter’s hotel room. Carter was on the phone to Inspector Harris while Conrad sat on the bed, waiting expectantly.
“All the coded messages were addressed to someone called Robin at baines automotive.co.uk,” said Carter.
“What do you need from me?” asked Harris.
“Well, we did a quick Internet search which showed that there is an engineering company called Baines Automotive based in York. Is there any chance you could arrange for all the information you have about the company to be available for me at the airport when we get there?”
“I’ll see what I can do. And if anyone’s available, given that it’s Saturday, I’ll get them to meet you and hand it over to you.”
“Thank you, that’s great.”
Carter took the phone from his ear and ended the call. He looked at Conrad.
“He says he’ll get what he can together for us.”
“Time for us to make arrangements to head back to Yorkshire then,” suggested Conrad and Carter nodded.
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