The Dying Minutes

by Martin O'Brien

  Now she understood what they’d meant by a wasted visit. Not so much his condition, but his … personality.

  As the guard locked the ward door behind her, she asked if there was a record of visitors, and if there was could she see it? A ledger was produced and she flicked back through the pages until she found the entry for Claude Dupont, visiting his client the same day he had received a phone call from the prison, and just a little more than an hour later.

  40

  AFTER LEAVING THE hospital wing, Isabelle Cassier was shown to the office of the Assistant Warden, Jules Ranque. He came out from behind his desk and greeted her warmly, professional to professional, offered her coffee and, as she took the seat he indicated, glanced swiftly into the top of her blouse. He seemed to be in his early fifties, with a bushy grey moustache that would have looked better on tanned skin, quick black eyes and a reddened nose as though he had a cold.

  ‘Lombard made a request that his lawyer visit him,’ Ranque explained, when Isabelle asked about the phone call from Les Baumettes. ‘Not so much a request, more a demand,’ he continued, crossing his legs and smoothing a hand across his wiry grey hair. ‘Normally the salaud could have demanded as much as he liked …’

  ‘Surely prisoners are allowed to make phone calls?’

  ‘There is a schedule for these things.’

  ‘Even in an isolation ward?’

  Ranque smiled, spread his hands. ‘This is a prison, first and foremost, Chief Inspector. There are rules. You know how it is.’

  ‘He made the call himself? From the ward?’

  ‘I made it for him,’ Ranque replied with a sigh. ‘Given his condition.’

  ‘He does seem very ill. Should he not be hospitalised?’

  ‘We are fully able to cope, Chief Inspector. You could class our medical wing here almost as an annexe to a main hospital. En effet, you probably get better treatment here than La Timone.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, a garish paisley affair, and blew his nose. After a wipe and a further sniff, he slipped it back into his pocket.

  ‘You were here, on that Sunday, when Claude Dupont visited Lombard?’

  ‘Correct. Nothing out of the ordinary, I can assure you. There are no weekends for an assistant warden. It’s always the second-in-commands who work the grindstone, n’est-ce pas?’ The message was implicit. They were both in the same boat, both of them in that secondary, supporting role. Isabelle did not acknowledge this overture of familiarity.

  ‘You met Monsieur Dupont?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And how did he appear?’

  ‘Flustered, I would say. Disconfortable. He was not a regular visitor, you understand. But for someone like Lombard …? I would say he really had no choice.’

  ‘When you say “someone like Lombard” …?’

  Ranque gave her an indulgent look. ‘Lombard is no ordinary prisoner, Chief Inspector. He is a powerful presence here in Les Baumettes. To all outward appearance quiet and unassuming, but beneath that façade is a … how to say it? A force to be reckoned with.’

  ‘Even to his lawyer? Outside Les Baumettes?’

  ‘Even to his lawyer. A word from a man like Lombard, even in extremis, and life for anyone inside or outside these walls could become very difficult indeed.’

  Isabelle took this in.

  ‘And you have no idea what they talked about? The reason for the visit?’

  ‘None at all. They were lawyer and client. But I would suggest that Lombard called him in to make certain arrangements. Maybe Dupont brought something with him. Something in his pocket. A document to be signed by Lombard. Some final instruction.’

  ‘And after their meeting, when Dupont came out of the ward?’

  ‘Relieved it was over, I would say. And anxious to be gone. As I said, Lombard is not a man to cross. Even behind bars. Even now. Right at the end, he takes no prisoners. As I’m sure you will have discovered.’ A sly smile curled across his face, as though Ranque knew exactly what had happened at Lombard’s bedside.

  A silence settled between them then, but as Isabelle reached for her shoulder bag, preparing to leave, Ranque continued: ‘May I ask about the police interest in Lombard? The reason for your visit?’

  ‘You may …’ she replied, returning his smile. Equally sly and conspiratorial.

  It took Ranque a moment to get the message, then he nodded, waved a hand; he understood. He did not look at all put out.

  So she told him anyway, leaning forward a little as though sharing a secret, just to see how he would respond. A business-like shorthand: ‘Lombard’s lawyer, Monsieur Claude Dupont, has been found dead, together with his wife. They were tortured, then murdered. The house had been ransacked. We believe that certain items might have been removed from the property. Something that might have belonged to Lombard, which was in Dupont’s possession. Maybe something Lombard gave him on that last visit.’

  Ranque started shaking his head before she had finished speaking.

  ‘It was a few weeks ago now, but I am sure that Maître Dupont did not take anything away with him. They spoke for maybe ten minutes, that’s all. And he left as he arrived. But, as I said, maybe there was some document, folded away in a pocket. Something I could not see.’

  And that was that. A brisk farewell, handshakes, and she was shown to the door, an orderly summoned. The walk back to the gatehouse. The sliding of bolts, the turning of locks and the long electric buzz of release. Closing her mouth and breathing through her nose at last.

  Afterwards, on her way back to police headquarters, Isabelle stopped off at her apartment, and ran herself a hot shower. Stepping into its beating pinprick heat she washed Les Baumettes from her body, thinking of Ranque and his bushy moustache, the bitten fingernails and the way he smoothed back his hair with his hand held stiff, like an iron. There was something strange about him, Isabelle decided, tipping her face to the spattering stream of water. Something not altogether wholesome. Whether it was professional or personal integrity he lacked she couldn’t quite decide. But he’d seemed strained, uncomfortable, as though he wasn’t being altogether straight with her, as though he might be holding something back.

  But then, with the hot water beating over her, she thought of Jacquot instead.

  Where he was.

  What he was doing.

  And she smiled.

  So close.

  41

  JULES RANQUE SMELLED trouble.

  And that trouble had a name.

  Pierre-Louis Lombard.

  The two men – one of them with a title, the other with a number – had arrived at Les Baumettes in Marseilles’ ninth arrondissement within a few months of each other. Ranque had come first, installed as assistant warden after six years at the Centre Pénitentiaire de Lyons, in time to see Lombard brought back from the city’s Palais de Justice at the end of his trial to spend the rest of his useful life behind bars.

  If Ranque had learned one thing in his prison service it was that those prisoners sentenced to the longest terms were often the hardest to control; they had nothing to lose. How did you punish a man who was in his sixties and facing a twenty-year term? Quite simply, you didn’t. Isolation? Withdrawal of privileges? What kind of threat was that? Yet Lombard had settled into prison life without causing a ripple. Once inside he had kept to himself, did not appear to involve himself in any of the prison gangs, nor had he made any attempt to create his own little fiefdom. He just kept his head down and did his time.

  But there are always whispers in prison, and one of the whispers that had reached Ranque suggested that, in Lombard’s case, appearances really were deceptive. For it seemed that nothing happened in Les Baumettes without Lombard having some hand in it, knowing about it, being able to screw up even the best-laid plans if it so suited him or, if he was feeling magnanimous, being happy to provide whatever assistance was needed. Muscle, money, drugs, weapons … Whatever you wanted, Ranque’s source told him, Lombard was your man. In just a few short y
ears, without the authorities spotting it, he had become a major player in the prison community.

  All of which seemed to fit in with the way he had lived his life before, working the quays and wharves of L’Estaque and La Joliette like a miner on the motherlode. Always in the shadows, low profile, yet somehow always in the middle of everything. Which was why Ranque had begun to watch Lombard – visiting the kitchens where he worked in the bakery, or the library where he loaded his trolley for the book run, or spying on him from a guard tower when Lombard shambled into the exercise yard.

  And it hadn’t taken long for Ranque to see that the whisper was good. Not five minutes went past in that yard without someone stopping for a chat, a cigarette, acknowledging his presence. If that was not a compelling enough argument for his importance and standing in the prison hierarchy, there was the discovery of Ranque’s informant, just a week after that initial whisper, hanging in his cell. Suicide.

  What particularly concerned Ranque was what Lombard might know of him. For Ranque had worked in the prison service long enough to realise that his State salary was never going to make him rich. It needed topping up. And Ranque had wasted no time in using his position as Les Baumettes’ assistant warden to set up the scams he’d learned but never had the opportunity to carry out at other prison facilities. Tobacco, drugs, alcohol, even women. Anything could be arranged if the price was right. And at Les Baumettes, with multi-million-franc contracts for renovations and refurbishment up for grabs, there had been even more opportunity to line his pockets. A favourable word on behalf of a bidding construction company, or an electrical supplies outfit, or a security systems provider … The list of potential suitors was endless – all kinds of commercial interests keen to suckle at the State’s swollen tit, all of them tendering estimates, all of them prepared to grease whichever palm was presented to secure their bid. And in pretty much every case, the palm presented was Ranque’s.

  But did Lombard know?

  About the trafficking and supply behind bars? He had to, surely.

  But what about the contracts and backhanders? Did he know about those too?

  Because suddenly, on his deathbed, everyone wanted to see him. First the lawyer, Dupont, obviously taking some kind of instructions from his client. And now some hot little Chief Inspector snooping round, requesting an interview with Lombard then telling him that Dupont had just been murdered.

  Ranque swung his chair round to one of the few unbarred windows in the great stone and razor-wire sprawl of Les Baumettes prison and gazed over the walls at a distant, sparsely wooded slope, thrown now into shadow.

  On his deathbed maybe, thought Ranque, but Lombard was still breathing. And while he breathed, he might easily prove a significant threat to everything that Ranque had so carefully engineered for himself.

  A man with nothing to lose.

  Turning back to his desk, Ranque reached for the phone and dialled a number.

  Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door. A guard first, a prisoner following. The guard was in a blue uniform shirt and black trousers, a ring of keys on his belt, the prisoner with his wrists shackled to a leather belt.

  With a wave of his hand, Ranque dismissed the guard.

  ‘But, sir …’

  ‘That will be all, sergeant. I will call when I’m finished.’

  Left alone, the prisoner looked around the governor’s office. His name was Castel and he was short and fat, his pudgy pink fingers clasped in front of him, dull eyes slow but watchful. The last time he’d stood there, eleven years earlier, he’d been confined to solitary for his own protection, and had been there ever since. He might not have been very visible but everyone in Les Baumettes knew who he was, and there were many who would have been waiting for him had he made an appearance. He wouldn’t have lasted a night in the general prison population. Not after what he had done …

  ‘I have a proposal to make,’ Ranque began, picking at some lint on his trousers. ‘It’s a one-time offer, and it never happened. C’est clair?’

  Castel’s eyes latched on to Ranque. He smiled a coy little smile, nodded. What was clear was that he liked the sound of whatever was coming, even before he’d heard it.

  ‘You look sick. Not well. Some time in the infirmary should do the trick.’ Ranque gave a couple of short, sharp sniffs, cleared his throat.

  ‘If you say so.’ The man’s voice was high and reedy.

  ‘Isolation.’

  Castel nodded again, waited.

  ‘There is a man there. Very ill, le pauvre. A pillow should do it. To put him out of his misery.’

  A silence settled between them, broken only by the soft metal crunch of Castel’s chain links. Both men understood what would come next. A job had been offered and accepted; now all that remained was a price.

  ‘There is a young man, just in,’ continued Ranque, leaning forward to brush a smear of dirt from a shoe. ‘Twenty? Twenty-one? Very beautiful. Mauritanian, I believe. Do your job and I’ll have him sent to your cell. One night only. No interruption. Whatever you want. Compris?’

  Castel licked his lips. ‘Whatever I want?’ Almost a squeak.

  ‘Anything.’

  Another coy smile. ‘Compris.’

  42

  ON THE TERRACE of Hauts des Pins, a blue cashmere rug wrapped around what remained of his legs, his skull-like features thrown into shadow beneath the brim of a favourite Panama, Patric Polineaux decided that fate had dealt him a fine hand of cards.

  The diamonds, the sapphires and the emeralds had all gone off for sale within a day of Didier bringing them to the house. The family’s gem man had come in and taken a look, peering through his loupe. Not the best quality, apparently. Poor colour, some significant flaws, inferior cutting. Fourth, maybe a few of them third-division stuff, he’d suggested, but nothing finer. Ten … maybe twelve million. Not as much as Polineaux had hoped for, but a good return on a single night’s work. And there were still the bearer bonds and share certificates and property portfolio to consider. Another useful acquisition.

  Only two things remained. The gold bars kept in his safe, back there in the main salon, and the concertina file with its bits and pieces strewn across the table beside him. The tapes, the videos, the various documents pinned down beneath an ashtray. A quite extraordinary treasure trove of information. A remarkable collection. Lombard had, indeed, been a very busy little bee.

  Of course, some of it he knew about. But there was still so much more that was new, things he had never imagined: names he recognised, people he knew; the things they got up to. And if the documentation was sometimes beyond belief, photos and tapes and videos didn’t lie.

  Given all the familiar names, the closeness of it, what surprised Polineaux most was how little he himself featured in the haul. And if it was satisfying on the one hand – low-profiles always paid off – it was nevertheless annoying not to have learned more about that long-ago heist on the Col de la Gineste, and the current whereabouts of his gold.

  His gold. His gold. His damn’ gold.

  The biggest goddamned heist in history.

  And he was the one who’d dreamed it up, put it all together. On his own. And carried it off. It made Mesrine look like a school girl. A secret bullion shipment from Algiers, via Toulon, to Marseilles and Paris. Reparation? Investment? Who cared? Three tons of gold. In three security trucks. Two hundred and twenty-five bars. Seventy-five bars in each truck. Each bar at a delivery weight of over four hundred troy ounces or more than twelve kilos. Valued back then at a little over three hundred francs a troy ounce. More than thirty million francs.

  And the plan had been a honey, practised a dozen times, polished to perfection. Fifteen men in three separate units. Three drivers, three four-man squads, each of them fit enough to deal with the opposition, and handle the transfer of bullion from the security trucks to half a dozen unmarked transports, waiting in Lombard’s warehouse, down in the railyards of Le Canet.

  A real Marseilles job.

>   Something to be proud of.

  But someone had snitched. The flics were waiting for them at Le Canet. Two of the trucks were seized. But not the third. That one never arrived. It just vanished, disappeared for long enough for someone else to get hold of what remained of his gold.

  Seventy-five bars. Just like the two in his safe. A little over a ton.

  Just … gone.

  But now, maybe, coming up for air.

  Polineaux had a feeling.

  And old man Polineaux had learned to trust his feelings.

  43

  WHEN THE MOMENT came, at a dark, silent hour in the night, Pierre-Louis Lombard was too weak to do anything about it.

  He’d recognised the man when they’d wheeled him in that afternoon, just by the size of him. The heaviest man in Baumettes. That con Castel. The butcher of La Bouilladisse. One of the living, breathing horrors from ‘S’ wing. Solitary. For their own protection. He was coughing, sharp and tight, holding a pudgy fist to his mouth as though to stop the spread of germs, limit the risk of infection. As if someone like Castel cared about something like that. But it made a good cover, Lombard supposed. At Baumettes, nothing surprised him.

  Without raising his head from his pillow, Lombard watched the two ward orderlies and the two guards transfer Castel’s bloated body from trolley to bed, heard the springs shriek at the load, and then the jolly rattle of the trolley’s wheels, no longer burdened by that huge weight, as the guards pushed it out of the ward. Once the new patient was settled, the two orderlies followed the guards and the locks turned.

  It was one of three things, Lombard decided. Either the man really was sick (in which case, how come he stopped coughing when the orderlies had gone?), or he was taking some time out from solitary, or he’d come to the ward because he had a job to do. With a growing sense of resignation, Lombard decided that it was the third option he should go for. The man was here for a reason, and Lombard knew what that reason was. Deep inside he’d been expecting something like this. Either the AIDs would get him, or someone would finish him off first.