by L. S. Hilton
I got her coat off and propped her on the bed with a couple of pillows behind her, half-sitting. I locked the door and put out the good old ‘Do Not Disturb’, turned the TV on, flicked through until I got MTV, not too loud. As I turned back to the bed she moaned and her eyelids flickered, startling me, but she slipped back under in seconds. I pulled on antiseptic plastic gloves and took the works I’d picked up in Belleville from my bag, along with a black sequined elastic belt from H&M. Then the pack of Camels I’d taken in the café, where I’d also lifted a teaspoon. I hoped to God Stéphane hadn’t gypped me – there hadn’t been time to have a little chase of the gear, even if I’d felt like passing a couple of hours monged out, but Yvette used him; he was bound to be reliable. I’d seen it done, most recently by Lawrence in bloody Chester Square. I took off Leanne’s boots, fetched an Evian and a miniature of Johnnie Walker from the minibar and tipped a bit of the whisky down her throat. Most of it dribbled down her cheek, but that wouldn’t matter.
I really, really don’t like needles. Rihanna was singing about diamonds in the sky. I had my Cartier lighter and a cotton pad. The gear was the colour of strong tea. Holding the belt taut between my teeth, I fixed her up in the crook of her left elbow, half of what I’d bought from Stéphane, more than enough. She twitched a bit as I hit the vein, but I was pressing down on her shoulder and I was strong. A couple of minutes, I’d read, until the body forgets to breathe. One of the nicer ways to go.
It was the second time I had watched a person die. I could have run a little montage in my head – Leanne with her original chestnut hair at school, pleated navy skirt hiked up to her thighs, Leanne twirling her cocktail at the Ritz, Leanne and I dancing in a club on the Riviera. All swirly and happy and poignant. If I’d been that kind of person. Or I could have thought about the sound a thirteen-year-old girl’s head makes when it hits the red brick of the sports hall, and a slim figure with carefully tonged hair who stood there and did nothing. But I wasn’t that kind of person, either. So I waited until Leanne’s body forgot, then I waited a little longer, and while I waited I opened Leanne’s phone. I remembered her birthday; I’m good like that. She was twenty-seven, like me. I called Stéphane from her phone and hung up before he answered. I copied a French mobile number from her phone to mine, then I wriggled gently off the bed, letting her fall onto her side, and went meticulously through her things with the gloves on; the wheelie bag on the luggage stand, the cosmetics in the bathroom. There was a collection of business cards in the pocket of her Chanel bag, hopefuls from the Gstaad Club presumably. Rupert’s card was amongst them. I didn’t see much point in taking that. Her wallet contained a few hundred euro and an open-return train ticket. I pocketed that, her passport, her bank card, everything with her name, as well as her hairbrush and a stray lipstick, the kind of things that might fall out if the bag’s owner was jacked up and careless. I was guessing the Cleret guy would have checked in, as he was shouting the room, and walked her in later. One look at her and the front desk would have known better than to ask questions: this was Paris after all, and the Pavillon is a stylish hotel. No photos, no book or magazine on the night table, the rumpled clothes low-end and obvious. A non-person, really. I didn’t know where she lived, or what had become of her parents, she was nothing to me. Rihanna was singing her umbrella song. I picked up mine and left. Just like you imagine, it does get easier. Perhaps I didn’t need to kill her. But then, I hadn’t killed her because I needed to. That was the third time, and it wasn’t an accident at all.
23
Two weeks. That time in Como had just flown by, in comparison. Two weeks of pacing and smoking and conjecturing, playing it out, over and over again. When, finally, I saw Cleret loitering at the end of my street one evening, it was all I could do not to rush through the traffic and kiss him.
Still, the Rules say that one must never be too eager to greet a gentleman caller. I went home and forced myself to pay attention to two long articles in the Art Newspaper. Some time later I looked at my watch, a slim pink gold Vacheron Aronde 1954: 9.45 p.m. I brushed out my hair and changed my sweater for a ruffled Isabel Marant blouse, swapped my boots for neat Saint Laurent heels, gorgeous claret patent, but not too high. Time to go out to play. I swung down to the boulevard and crossed next to the bus stop, passing close enough to him that he could smell my scent (Gantier’s Tubéreuse, good and strong). I walked on to the corner, aware that my tight grey jeans and heels were snagging a few stares, and turned left down the Rue Vaugirard, cut down to the taxi rank on the Place Saint-Sulpice. There was a bar I was fond of on the Rue Mazarine, done out like Julien’s orgy to look like a bourgeois drawing room, quiet in the week. They made good cocktails, but tonight I ordered straight bourbon, drank it slowly, looking out into the street over the artful net curtains. It took him twenty minutes to find a position in a doorway opposite. We were just metres apart as I exited the bar and turned left again, heading down to the river. No footsteps behind me; the soles of those shoes, thick and brown like supermarket pastry, must be made of rubber. Not bad, stranger.
This was sort of fun. I came out on the quai and waited at the crossing in a crowd of tourists on a romantic late walking tour. I walked over to Cité, round Notre Dame and over to the Ile Saint-Louis. Quite the stroll for him, work off some of those spare kilos. It was an unusually warm night for November and the cafés at the head of the island were crowded, the queue for ice cream at Berthillon snaking along their terraces. I felt electric, vividly alive, aroused, the muscles in my thighs and arse alert to his seeking gaze. I took the Rue Saint-Louis en l’Ile, crossed once more at Pont Marie to the Right Bank. It was 11.15 p.m. There was the usual bunch of tramps carousing under the bridge. I could smell their filth under cheap spirits, my senses as vivid as an animal’s. I perched on the thick balustrade, lit a cigarette, waited some more. He couldn’t be that far behind. I felt almost sorry if he’d lost me that easily. Then, there he was, coming towards me, his face shadowed under the ornate streetlamp. I’d have bet he looked irritable. I had the number ready, the one I had taken from Leanne’s phone. I pressed ‘Call’. He paused to take it, his head moving as he scanned the bridge for me.
‘Allô?’
‘Monsieur Cleret, it’s Judith Rashleigh. It’s been a while.’
‘Alors, bonsoir, mademoiselle.’
‘I’m at the end of the bridge,’ I said, and hung up.
I hopped down, walked a little further to the front of the cab rank that served the Hôtel de Ville, waited again. I could sense him quicken his pace as I opened the door and asked the driver if he was free – he couldn’t risk losing me to the Parisian traffic, perhaps, or he hadn’t the funds for another taxi. I stepped back, holding the door open as he approached.
‘I thought you might like a drink.’
He didn’t speak, just slid along beside me on the broad seat of the Mercedes. I leaned forward and asked the driver to take us to the Ritz.
‘Rue Cambon? I have a feeling for the Hemingway.’
He had been silent all along the Rue de Rivoli; now he turned to face me. He looked weary, but faintly amused.
‘As you like.’
We waited while the bartender fussed impeccably, setting water glasses with floating cucumber and redcurrants on frilled coasters, producing a rose martini for me and a gin and tonic for him. As he reached forward to taste his drink his shabby jacket fell open over the slight swell of his belly, the absurd monogram. I felt a swift, alien spasm of desire.
‘So. Shall we begin?’
‘Where?’
‘Well, since you’ve already fucked me, perhaps we can dispense with polite conversation.’
He raised an eyebrow, rather well.
‘The monogram. On your shirt? The party at the townhouse in Montmartre. I believe you know Julien? At least you went to his club to check up on me, La Lumière on the Rue Thérèse?’
He inclined his head, faintly gallant. ‘Indeed.’
For a moment, neither of us sp
oke. I’d worked it out a few weeks ago. We’d met at the club, that night we both behaved so naughtily in the darkroom. What I couldn’t work out was the sting. Until I knew exactly what he wanted, I couldn’t play this. But then, we knew one another already, he and I. That dim incense-scented room, the burn of the leather on my palms, his teeth in my neck . . .
I shook myself back into the present, took a long swallow of my drink. God, I wanted a cigarette; I wanted to be able to exhale a slow plume of smoke in his eyes. ‘You remember?’
‘How could I forget?’
There was something absurdly unreal about this Bogart-and-Bacall routine we seemed to be pulling. Stick to the point, Judith. So what if he’s already banged you months ago in some lousy swingers’ club? I sat up straighter, tried for a hard, flat tone.
‘You were following me, then? Because you are now, obviously.’
‘No, not then. Not exactly. But it seemed a – pleasing coincidence.’
‘I want to know why.’
‘I should have thought that was obvious.’
‘Cheap shot. Why are you following me?’
‘Because you killed Cameron Fitzpatrick.’
Now I really wanted a fucking fag.
‘That’s absurd.’
He sat back a little, drank some water and remarked conversationally, ‘I know that you killed Cameron Fitzpatrick because I saw you do it.’
For a few seconds, I truly thought I might faint. I stared at the cocktail stick spearing the pale pink rose balanced on the edge of my glass. I wished I could faint. My instinct had been right, that sudden frisson of fear, the sense that I was being watched there, back under the bridge. A rat, sure enough. A rat who scented blood.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please tell me, now, why you are following me.’
He reached forward and gently touched the back of my hand.
‘Don’t worry. Finish your drink. I haven’t got a squad of cops outside. Then maybe we can go somewhere more private.’
‘I don’t have to listen to a word you say. You have no right –’
‘No, you don’t. No, I don’t. But I think you will. Now finish your drink.’
I let him pay the bill and walk me through the long corridors, glowing pink like the inside of a shell, past the naff glass cases of jewellery and scarves, past the disdainful porters, to the Place Vendôme. I followed him mutely round the square, across to the arcades of Rue Castiglione, right to Concorde. It was chilly now, and my low heels were beginning to rub after so much walking. I was glad when he sat down on a bench at the locked entrance to the Tuileries.
‘Take this.’ He handed me his jacket; I was shivering. I let him arrange it around my shoulders, a waft of sweat breezing from the synthetic lining, my eyes fixed on the lights of a bus crawling up the Champs. I tried to light a cigarette, put the filter in my mouth. Smooth.
‘So, Mademoiselle No-Name, you can call me Renaud. I’ll call you Judith, unless you prefer Lauren?’
‘It’s my middle name, Lauren. My mother was a fan of Lauren Bacall. Cool, no?’
‘OK, Judith then. Now, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.’ He took my lighter from my shaking hand and lit my fag. ‘OK?’
‘You speak excellent English.’
‘Thank you. Now I’m going to show you a picture. That’s him, right, Cameron?’
I had to squint in the traffic glow from the crossroads. He held my lighter to the screen. It was. Caught on Renaud’s phone, coming down the Spanish Steps, his face dipped away from the Roman sun. I had managed not to think of his face for so long.
‘You know it’s him.’
‘Yes, but what you don’t know is that his name wasn’t Cameron Fitzpatrick. It was Tommaso Bianchetti.’
All that Oirish charm.
‘He was pretty good, then,’ was all I said.
‘Yes, he was. Very good. Irish mother, maid in a Roman hotel. Anyway, this is what I need to explain to you. Bianchetti washed money for . . . associates in Italy. He’d been doing it for years.’
‘The Mafia?’
Renaud gave me a pitying look. ‘’Ndrangheta, Camorra . . . Only amateurs say Mafia.’
My feeling about Moncada had been right then, too. ‘Excuse me.’ Weirdly, I was starting to feel better.
‘Your old colleague, Rupert, he didn’t call Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick called Rupert. Nice little scheme, one he’s pulled hundreds of times. Real stuff mostly, not bothered with the effort of fakes. But times were getting a little tough in Italy, and the mark-up on a fake piece was so much better. Rinse the picture and the money. That’s how I got involved.’
‘I thought you were working for him. For Rupert.’
‘I wonder who could have told you that? We’ll leave that for a minute, shall we? I was hired by an extremely angry American. Banker, Goldman Sachs. Found out that the Rothko he’d been showing off at his pad in the Hamptons was a fake. Wanted his money back. Which led me to Alonso Moncada.’
‘Moncada deals fakes then?’
‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no.’
‘Why you?’
‘What did you think I was, some old-school shamus? I chase money, for people who want to get it back quietly.’
I couldn’t help glancing at his terrible shirt, the awful shoes. ‘You don’t look like someone who chases money.’
‘Yes. And you do.’
I took that one on the chin.
‘Bianchetti was one of several guys who worked for Moncada. Moncada acquires the piece for cash, provided from a small Roman bank controlled by . . . associates. Covered as a business loan. They shift it to a private client for a profit, the client can keep it as an asset or auction it legitimately. Moncada provided the funds, Bianchetti the provenance. Everyone makes money. Very neat.’
‘So?’
‘So I went to the gallery where my man picked up his Rothko, talked them into giving me the name of the previous owner and persuaded him – no, actually, it was a her, nice woman, three children – to give me Moncada. She had no idea she’d been duped either. It took a long while to track him down, and in the meantime I began to pick up Bianchetti’s name, under the Fitzpatrick alias. I went to London to trace him – Bianchetti, that is – followed him to Rome, and then you pulled your little stunt – don’t interrupt – and I followed you to Moncada. It was the first time I’d been able to set eyes on him. Obviously I was quite intrigued by you, too. But I didn’t know what it was you’d made off with, however you did it.’
‘I didn’t –’
‘Shut up.’ He scrolled through a file on his phone, showed me another picture, myself and Moncada, apparently enjoying a pizza. I was surprised by how calm I looked in the photo.
‘So then, finally, the Stubbs comes up last winter, and it has Fitzpatrick – now tragically deceased – amongst the provenances. So then I knew what you had sold to Moncada.’
‘But Rupert?’
‘Well, by then I was considerably more than intrigued by you. So I had a look at the police report, found your name. I guessed you’d have something to do with art. I knew you were English. So I started at the top. Two calls.’
Only two auction houses in London worth bothering about . . .
‘The nice girls on reception hadn’t heard of you, so I spoke to the heads of department, in turn. And came up with your old employer.’
‘Go on.’
‘So, I went along for a little talk.’ He gave a half-smile. I hadn’t noticed that I had started shaking again, but he had. He pulled the jacket more tightly around me, solicitous.
‘It gave Rupert a bit of a shock when I mentioned Fitzpatrick. I told him that I had seen his department’s name alongside Fitzpatrick’s with the provenance of the picture. And then I asked about you. When he heard you’d been in Italy he practically exploded. He was very eager to employ me, on the side, comme on dit, to find you. So he showed me your picture. I needed to check you were the same girl I’d see
n, naturally. And there you were. The beautiful girl from Rome. You do have an unforgettable face.’
‘Thanks. How romantic. And the townhouse? What were you doing at Julien’s?’
‘Blind luck. A lot of people know Julien, a lot of powerful people. I like to check up on him while I’m here, and one must amuse oneself now and again, no? We are in Paris, after all, chérie. I’d been trying to find you in London, nothing. Your mother didn’t know anymore.’
‘My mother?’
‘Not hard to find. Social services.’
I swallowed in shock. ‘Was she . . . was she OK?’
‘You mean was she drunk? No. Just fine. I didn’t say anything to worry her. But then I drew a blank. You see, your flatmates just said you’d sent a cheque for the rent, gone abroad. Soo and Pai. Nice quiet girls, the medical students. They suggested that you enjoyed going to parties. Not their sort of thing. Very much mine though. I was over here – just catching up with some friends for the weekend – and there you were again.’