Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  “I don’t understand,” Aimée said. “You’re my banker and I want to know the bank origin of the funds sent to our account. More to the point, I need to see this wire transfer record.”

  “Mademoiselle Leduc, I’d like to help you, but the report contains no more information. The inquiry’s out of my hands; it’s been routed to the department that deals with these matters.”

  The tax man? Or a criminal fraud investigative unit?

  No one in their right mind would wire her a hundred thousand francs. Even a money launderer knew better than to attempt a transaction of over fifty thousand francs, the sum that triggered an automatic inquiry.

  “Can’t you send back the wire transfer?”

  “The bank processed the deposit in accordance with procedure. It’s too late, Mademoiselle.”

  “But Monsieur Guérin, we’ve been customers for a long time.”

  “Correct. We have a long history, Mademoiselle.”

  Her grandfather had opened a bank account with Paribas’s predecessor when he founded Leduc Detective. As a little girl, she’d accompanied him to the Place de l’Opera branch. She recalled trying to keep up with his long strides over the cobblestones.

  “Whoever wired the deposit must have showed photo ID and proof of the existence of the transferee’s bank account with Paribas?”

  “Again, the details. . . .” A sigh. “Financial regulations forbid me even telling you this much, once this inquiry has started.”

  This wasn’t like Guérin at all. He talked like a bank fonction-naire, not the man who sent her a fruit basket at Christmas, a card on her birthday, the occasional note with a biscuit for Miles Davis. Was he trying to tell her something in an oblique way? “It’s out of my hands. I’m so sorry.”

  She wouldn’t give up. “Then who can I talk to, Monsieur Guérin?”

  “It pains me to tell you that I can’t help you, Mademoiselle.”

  She doubted that. More like he wanted to keep his job.

  “What’s going on, Monsieur Guérin?”

  There was a pause.

  She continued: “Listen, you know Leduc’s finances, know this doesn’t make sense. It’s like someone’s framing me. A name, Monsieur Guérin?” she said. “My grandfather and my father valued your advice, as I have. We’ve trusted you.”

  Another pause. “Fine men, your grandfather and your father.”

  “So entre-nous, eh? That’s not breaking rules. Just a name, Monsieur Guérin.”

  Another sigh. “Just a moment. I have another call.”

  But she heard no click of another call on the line, just what sounded like creaking wood, like the creak Guérin’s ancient leather chair made when he shifted his weight.

  “Tracfin,” he whispered.

  And he hung up, but not before she registered the sound of footsteps. Had someone else been sitting in his office?

  Wednesday

  “WHY BLACKMAIL US now?” Gabrielle asked.

  She stood next to her husband, Roland, on the Savonerrie carpet in her office. The caw of crows and the scent of crisp, cold air drifted in from the tall window overlooking the Palais Royal. “I thought all this was past. Over.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me at once, Gabrielle?” Roland, all six feet of him in a navy pinstripe suit, held the blackmail note, his brow furrowed.

  “You were in Versailles at meetings,” she said. “By the time I arrived, the bookseller’s was closed.”

  “Closed? You mean you intended to pay?”

  “Nothing must jeopardize your posting, Roland. Or hurt Olivier,” she said fiercely. This wasn’t putting out fires in the Ministry; this was her family.

  Concern washed over Roland’s face; he took her in his arms and held her tightly, protectively. “Always a fighter, my Gabrielle. But blackmail never ends. It’s a stranglehold that will be pulled tighter and tighter.”

  He tore the note and newspaper article into little pieces, letting them drop like confetti into the trash. “I can’t let you do this. Not for me.”

  She watched Roland. A dreamer, a poet and brooding rebel when they’d met; but now seeing his graying temples, the upright posture, that controlled expression, she thought of him, these days, as a stoic. There was something unfamiliar in his expression. Like many of the 1968 generation protesters, he’d joined the government they’d vowed to tear down. The burden of the secrets he carried, ones they all carried in this milieu, had altered him.

  “What’s the matter, Roland?”

  He shrugged. Where had the lean aristo rebel she’d fallen for in ’68 gone? She still searched for a glimpse underneath the politico façade; every so often it appeared. More and more rarely these days.

  “Everything’s changed now,” he said. “Nicolas Evry committed suicide in La Santé.”

  “Suicide?” She stepped back, horrified. Nicolas had been so young, so pathetic. But willing to keep quiet over Olivier’s involvement. “How do you know?”

  Roland rubbed his forehead. “Not a nice story. My thoughts are with his family, if he had any.”

  “Terrible. I’m so sorry.” Her thoughts sped through the implications. “But who wrote this note, and what proof do they have? It can only mean that Nicolas revealed Olivier’s involvement.”

  “There’s no proof. Nothing specific in the blackmailer’s note. Just an old newspaper article.”

  “What is the worst-case scenario?” she asked.

  As she always did; it was her training. A gurgling sound came from the fountain in the center of the Palais Royal garden. Sun glinted off the sundial, a small beacon amid the rose bushes.

  “It’s over, Gabrielle.”

  “You can’t think this will simply go away,” she argued.

  Roland gripped his briefcase. His mind was elsewhere now as he gave her a small smile. “I’m due to present a report in thirteen minutes next door in the Ministry.”

  He paused. “It’s terrible about that boy, Gabrielle, but that finishes it.”

  “A ‘boy’? Face it, Roland, they’re men. Our son Olivier’s a man.”

  A long sigh escaped Gabrielle. No use arguing with Roland now.

  He reached for her hand. “I’m worried that Oliver will feel responsible for this suicide,” Roland said. “It could haunt him, scar his psyche.”

  Roland’s insight amazed her sometimes. Still. She stood in her stockinged feet, pulled Roland close, inhaled the traces of his citrus shampoo. Of course she would take care of this, and much more. She’d alerted her contacts. Roland would never know. She’d already taken the money out of the bank. Then, once and for all, it would be behind them. But first she’d wring the truth out of Olivier.

  “I’ll talk to Olivier,” she assured Roland. Somehow she’d manage it, along with defusing a major scandal, before the 8 P.M. news show.

  * * *

  GABRIELLE PRESSED THE carved woodwork panel in the wall which was a camouflaged door opening to the next office, deserted now except for hot tisane herbal tea on her secretary Jean-George’s desk. With fifteen minutes until her next meeting, she hurried into the hall, up the rear stairs two flights into a narrow top-floor corridor punctuated by skylights. In the late afternoon sky, cloud clumps cast shadows darkening the interior passage which wound to the Galerie de Valois bordering the western wing of the Palais Royal. The passages all connected but from the exterior no one would have known this.

  “Bonjour, Madame de la Pecheray,” said Polivard, a wizened older man, white hair combed neatly over his balding pate.

  Gabrielle nodded at Polivard, an octogenarian, entitled by former service to rooms in this wing reserved for the Ministry of Culture and Council of State hauts fonctionnaires. He was one of the few surviving relics of the “ancien regime,” the Vichy government.

  “I knew your father, Madame.” Polivard leaned on his cane, expectant. No doubt it was a highlight of his day to catch someone in the hallway and converse about the old days.

  “C’est vrai, Monsieur Polivard?” S
he gave a strained smile. “We must catch up one of these days.” She smiled again and edged past the old man.

  “He was one of us, you know.” Polivard winked.

  She suppressed a shudder. Her father’s ties to the corrupt Vichy government, his anti-Semitic leanings, were the last thing she could deal with right now. Or Polivard’s old-man smell.

  “A fervent follower of Marshal Petain,” Polivard said. “Fine articles your father wrote. Laval quoted him, you know.”

  Her father’s infamous phrases had been used in Laval’s Jewish Deportation Directive. The shame of the past haunted her steps, always. Could she never get away from it?

  “A bientôt.” She hurried around the corner.

  Nowadays, many high-ranking administrators used their elegant, spacious appartements de fonction, common perks for officials, as pied-à-terre for liaisons, preferring to save on hotel rooms. The higher up, the more frugal, she thought. All on the ministry franc.

  Gabrielle stayed here only if meetings kept her past midnight and Roland was working out of town. They maintained the family flat she’d inherited on nearby Place des Petits-Pères. But now this apartment presented her with a perfect place from which to call Olivier undisturbed.

  She turned the key, an elongated antique, opening the door to the high-ceilinged eighteenth-century suite of rooms. An eclectic mix of furnishings had been provided, courtesy of the State: bulbous inlaid-wood chests, rococo beveled mirrors, delicate Louis XVI upholstered chairs, and more armoires than she could shake a stick at, all smelling of other people’s lives.

  Then an acid sweet odor overlaid with that of malt scotch met her nostrils. Shocked, she saw her son Olivier sprawled on the bed’s duvet beside his own vomit, passed out. His jeans and rumpled suede jacket trailed off the chair; his billfold lay on the floor.

  “Wake up, Olivier!”

  A groan answered her. She could only stall fifteen minutes at most; she still had to revise the script yet again for the minister’s approval. Instead of telling her son about Nicolas’s suicide, holding his hand, calming him down, she’d have to get him into the shower.

  A chirping beep came from somewhere near Olivier’s head. His long tanned arm reached for his cell phone.

  “No, you don’t.” She grabbed the cell phone. “Get up. What are you doing here?”

  “Maman.” His eyes opened. Those long lashes, the pout of a mouth, that slim jaw. Just like her father.

  Her baby.

  “What time is it?” He yawned, stretched, and then winced. “Bang-up rave last night . . . this morning . . . whenever.”

  “But you have class. Since when do you lie in your own spew?” Disgusted, she stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, then opened the window. “Now clean it up.”

  The breeze scented by flowering lime trees lining the Palais Royal garden below wafted inside. The waters spouting from the central fountain into the circular pool glinted in the fading light. The quadrangle was like a private garden in the center of Paris. And with the gates locked at night, it was a garden just for the elite.

  “Don’t worry, Maman. The maid. . . .”

  “And let talk begin, Olivier? You’re not allowed to use this apartment. How long before the staff leaks that my spoiled playboy of a son—”

  “You’ll get around it, Maman, you know how.”

  She’d spoiled her only child. Gone wrong a long time ago, letting him getting away with things because of her guilt for working late hours. Or was it his inborn charm that got around her?

  “And abuse this privilege? My work, my service to the Republic, is what earned this. It’s part of my compensation.”

  “Save that for the earnest interns, Maman.”

  “That’s enough, Olivier. I want your word that you’ll never use this suite again.”

  He nodded. She noticed all the messages on her cell phone. But she had to deal with Nicolas’s suicide before she ran back to deal with the ministry crisis.

  “We have to talk about Nicolas Evry.”

  Ready for tears or remorse, she watched him.

  “That loser?” He exhaled in disgust, then sat up and shrugged. His boxers lay low on his hips. “You paid him off, right? History, far as I’m concerned.”

  She stepped back, shocked at his coldness. “How can you say that? You’re damn lucky he took all the blame.”

  “For a price.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t stomach this.”

  Olivier crinkled his nose. “I agree. Pretty rank.” He balled up the duvet, shoving it into the corner. He scratched his crotch. “I’m taking a shower.”

  “Here your father and I were so worried how you’d take the news, that it would scar your psyche.”

  “Quit the New Age stuff, Maman.” With a bored expression, he paused at the bathroom door. “And no more martyred looks. I’ll go to class. Promise.”

  “Bon. I should get down on my knees and thank you for that, eh? The boy’s dead, you don’t give a—”

  “Who?” Surprise painted his face.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “Stop the riddles, Maman.”

  And she realized Roland had passed the awful job on to her. Angered, she inhaled, trying to control herself, wondering how to word her news.

  “Nicolas died in prison,” she said unable to say “suicide.”

  Olivier shook his head. “A tough place. So, he got a shiv in his back from a cellmate?”

  “This isn’t American télé, Olivier. He committed suicide.”

  A blank look filled Olivier’s face, then he averted his gaze. Was he remembering?

  She’d never forgotten her six-year-old son tugging at her skirt in their country-house kitchen that scorching hot day. “Why’s grand-père hanging from the tree? He told me I couldn’t climb it. And he’s sticking out his tongue at me. It’s not nice.” She’d found that her father had hanged himself from the pear tree in the garden. Again she felt her searing pain. She’d tried to shield Olivier in her arms, tried to block his view. Mimosa scent wafting in the heat from the bush near her father’s dangling foot, she recalled. She stifled a sob.

  Where was the six-year-old who’d clutched a fistful of mimosa behind him, dirty streaks from tears running down his cheeks? “I’m sorry, Maman. Are you mad? Did he make a mistake? Won’t grand-père come back when he’s better?” There was an apologetic tone in his voice, as if he’d done something wrong. Her own father, the grandfather Olivier had looked up to.

  What had happened to her beautiful boy?

  Money in the right hands went only so far. What if Olivier was implicated, his onetime white supremacist affiliation discovered? With a Vichy-government, Nazi-sympathizer grandfather, the old stories would get raked up.

  Olivier put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. She had to snap out of it and deal with the present. Instead of comforting him, he was cradling her in his arms.

  “Don’t cry, Maman. ”

  “Is there something you didn’t tell me, Olivier? Something I should know?”

  “Nicolas was a strange mec. Moody.”

  “Did he tell anyone, Olivier?”

  “He liked money too much. And I told you, I hardly knew him.”

  “Madame de la Pecheray?” It was Jean-Georges’s voice.

  “Un moment.” She blotted her eyes with the towel.

  “It’s all right, Maman.” Olivier lifted her chin. “Believe me. Listen to Papa.”

  She hoped he was telling the truth. And she hoped she hadn’t heard that cold tone in his voice. Just imagined it.

  “Alors, I’d never disturb you, Madame,” said her secretary through the closed door, “but the minister’s en route here.”

  Jean-Georges watched her back. A jewel. But then watching Gabrielle’s back was his job in the Ministry of Culture.

  “Hurry, clean this up, Olivier. Hide your things.”

  Clean up, hiding. Wasn’t she always cleaning up and hiding something?

  Wednesd
ay

  AIMÉE SAT ON their hard office floor across from Saj, who was crosslegged on the tatami. Sunbeams caught reflecting gleams from the chandelier’s prisms. Outside the window, the hum of afternoon traffic was punctuated by the blasts of a horn, the rumble of buses.

  Saj liked spreading out on the floor. A bamboo curtain, a tatami mat, and a surge protector were all he required. He leaned over his laptop, long dirty-blond dreadlocks cascading down his back over his cotton muslin shirt. A leather strip held coral and turquoise beads, from his recent ashram stay in India, around his neck.

  “Sounds like you want the pedigree,” he said.

  “Whatever you call it. Hack into the bank, Saj.”

  “That’s René’s metier.”

  “Right, but René can’t help us,” she said. “We have to get to the bottom of this. This amount tripped off the alarms,” she said. “You know what that means.”

  “Inquiries, freezing the account, tax audit, the usual?”

  “Not that bad, I hope.”

  No one knew Ministry systems and networks like Saj, or how to hack into them. The Ministry had intervened to commute Saj’s prison sentence so that he would patch the holes he’d hacked. They’d even kept him on call as a consultant.

  “My banker was guarded, Saj,” she said. “I’m sure someone in his office was listening to the conversation.”

  Saj stretched, brown prayer beads clicking around his wrists, still tan from India. He reached for his tea. Steam rose curling in a lazy spiral. The only reminder of René’s bloodstain was a pale circle on the wood floor that she’d scrubbed this morning.

  “I’ve known the banker for years,” she said, shifting on the hard floor. “He wouldn’t tell me anything, but before he hung up he whispered ‘Tracfin’.”

  Saj sat up. Whistled. “Tracfin, the money-laundering investigators?”

  “You know it?”

  “Tracfin stands for Traitement du Renseignement et Action Contre Les Circuits Financiers Clandestins, Treatment of Information and Action Against Illicit Financial Circuits. Sounds bland, but I’d say your banker pointed you to what used to exist in a subbranch below the normal radar. Initially with customs, Tracfin’s now the financial intelligence unit of the Ministry of Economy. They investigate and decide whether to alert the judicial authorities to prosecute. Kind of über investigators.”