But where? How far away?
In the country, Jacquot decided.
A farmhouse, a country mas . . .
Somewhere isolated. Standing alone . . .
Somewhere . . .
‘Boss! Boss!’ Brunet was shaking his shoulder.
Jacquot sat up, startled awake, heart suddenly hammering. He knew immediately where he was but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how long he’d been sleeping. The last time he’d been woken so abruptly had been the evening before, by Midou, before leaving for the concert. A lot had happened since then, and in his waking, for just the shortest moment, he’d thought he was back there, in the salon at the millhouse, sprawled on the sofa.
But it was just for that small, precious moment.
‘What? Tell me,’ he said, struggling off the bunk, looking at his watch. He rubbed the sleep from his face, reached for his shoes and pulled them on while Brunet brought him up to date: no sign of any Citroëns driven by women on forecourt footage from autoroute garages and 24-hour filling stations within a fifty-kilometre range; the France Auto Logistiques security uniforms the sisters had worn easy to source from two separate suppliers; and their black VW down in the basement traced to a Monsieur Georges Roland Gauthier at an address in Melun, just south of Paris.
‘So what did he have to say for himself?’
‘Not a great deal. On account of his recently beginning a four-year sentence in La Santé for receiving stolen goods. I’ve spoken to the prison authorities and they woke him up, had a word. According to Monsieur Gauthier, the last time he saw his VW was last December, parked in his garage. He assumed it was still there. I’d say he’s lying – took a wedge for the car and his silence. Money for nothing.’
Jacquot raked his hands through his hair and thought about it.
It made perfect sense. You need a car that can’t be traced back to you and whose registration is in order. What better than to ‘borrow’ it, sourcing what you need from someone serving time? And then, when you’re finished with it, you return it. It was certainly the kind of thing that Virginie Cabrille could easily have set up, given her father’s known connections. Maybe she’d even provided the sisters with a safe house in the same way, something belonging to a prison inmate, another Monsieur Gauthier, where they could stay while they planned their strikes, somewhere they couldn’t be traced.
A house, in the country. Not a town apartment.
Somewhere quiet, out of the way.
And somewhere close.
‘Good,’ said Jacquot. ‘Good work.’ He got to his feet and stretched, reached for his jacket. ‘Anything else?’
‘It may be nothing . . .’ Brunet began.
Jacquot gave him a look. ‘Jean, s’il te plaît, this is not the time to start . . .’
‘The napkin.’
‘The napkin?’
‘The one in the VW. All scrunched up it was, smeared with lipstick. With all the rest of the stuff. I went down, took a look at the tables.’
‘A napkin?’
Brunet smiled, leaning against the doorway, hands tucked in his pockets.
‘The kind you get with a takeaway. And there it was. That other telephone number. On the bit of paper you had? PB? The same number’s printed on the napkin. Address too.’
65
THE OWNER OF PIZZERIA BLAZOTS had opened up early and was reading a Sunday newspaper at the bar when Jacquot and Brunet swung into the car park. The sun was up, still hidden somewhere behind the hills, but lances of lemon light speared into a thin, blue, cloudless sky, letting everyone know it wasn’t far off making an appearance.
Pizzeria Blazots was a twenty-five kilometre drive from Cavaillon, just outside Salon, on the town’s southern flanks, one of a dozen businesses on a small trading square close to the river and the autoroute. Set between a hardware store and serviced laundromat, its double picture windows were plastered with hand-painted posters proclaiming the best feu de bois pizzas in the region – Rien Plus Meilleur. As Brunet and Jacquot pushed open the door, the scent of burnt wood from two massive brick stoves behind the serving counter suggested that, despite appearances and surroundings, the boast might not be without foundation.
You find the real jewels where you least expect them, Jacquot always said.
Blazots’ owner, Gino Condotti, was a slim, wiry fellow in his early forties, a dash of silver hair at his temples and a dark stubble reaching high up on his cheeks. When Jacquot apologised for the early call, Condotti waved it aside.
‘This is my time,’ he explained. ‘The ovens cool overnight and someone has to be in early to feed them up. No gas here. Wood only. It takes time, sure, but it’s worth it. Coffee?’
With large espressos served, and a dish of pizza romana biscotti set between them – miniature pizzas crusted with sun-dried tomato, studded with garlic and dusted with oregano – Condotti took the photos of the two sisters that Brunet handed him, looked at them one after the other, then held them out side by side as though to compare them. He shook his head.
‘This one I don’ know,’ he said, dropping one of the photos on to the counter. ‘But this one . . .’ He pursed his lips then nodded his head, still holding the picture of the smaller, younger sister. Marina Manichella. He slid it onto the counter and tapped it with a finger. ‘This one I do know.’
‘She a regular cusomer?’ asked Brunet, reaching for a biscotto and dipping it into his espresso.
‘Once, maybe twice, a week, enough for me to recognise her.’ Condotti pushed the photo back to Brunet.
‘How long has she been coming in?’
Condotti gave it some thought.
‘Maybe three or four months. Something like that.’
‘You ever talk to her?’
‘Sure. We friendly people here. Over the counter, you know? Or clearing tables. Word here, word there. But she not a local, I can tell you that for certain. Never seen her round town. I got the feeling . . . she just dropped by . . . driving past on the autoroute, maybe. We’re close, and the pizzas here are better than anywhere else.’
‘And she never came in with anyone? She was always alone?’
‘Si, tutto solo.’
‘She ever order a takeaway?’ asked Jacquot, taking over from Brunet.
‘Now and then.’
‘Did she phone in the order, or just drop by and wait?’
‘Most times she call before – real sexy voice. Then come by and pick up.’
‘How long between making the order on the phone and coming by to pick it up?’
‘The usual . . . the time it takes to bake the pizza. People, they don’ like to have the pizza stay too long in the box. They want it straight from the oven, so it’s crisp and hot, and get it home and eat it quick. And she never come by in our busy time, you know? So there’s no rush, no delay.’
‘So you never delivered?’
Condotti shook his head.
‘How far do you deliver?’ asked Brunet, as Jacquot considered this.
‘Depends. Normally it’s just around town. Say five or six kilometres range. We just got a few scooters, so country lanes are out. But a big order – like twenty pizzas, a party somewhere – then, sure, I drive it out myself in the van. Got a warming oven in there, see? But for one pizza . . . ?’ he smiled, shook his head. ‘It’d have to be close.’
‘And it was only ever one pizza? She didn’t order any more than the one?’
‘So far as I recall, just for her. Regular, sometimes medium, but never the grande.’
‘You recall the last time she was in?’ asked Jacquot again.
‘Couple of days ago. Phoned, picked up, left.’
‘You see what car she drove?’
‘Black, for certain.’ Condotti shrugged. ‘Cars, you know . . . I maybe am Italian, but cars . . . pouf!’ He spat on his fingertips and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Pizza? Yes. Women? Yes. Wine? Yes. But cars . . . No, molto grazie.’ He nodded to the empty coffee cups. ‘You wanna ’nother?’
‘I tell you what,’ Condotti said, working the Gaggia, the black coffee spurting into the cup. ‘She don’ like cars too much neither. Never clean it. Dirty, you know. Always dirty.’
‘Was she ever with anyone? In the car, I mean, travelling with her?’ Brunet took his cup with a nod of thanks.
Condotti shook his head. ‘Like I say. Always alone.’ He seemed to consider this for a moment, then he ducked beneath the bar and came out with a large cake tin. He pushed it under one arm, levered off the lid and spilled some more biscotti onto the empty dish.
‘Tell you something, though,’ he continued, shoving the cake tin back under the counter. ‘You ask me, she didn’ just come for my pizza. A real flirt. Sometimes she used to sit there in the window and chat up the boys working here. And customers too. She liked the young ones. Up there in her late thirties, I guess, but she always hits on the kids.’
‘Any of them do anything about it?’
‘Took a couple of them round the back, so I heard. One of the customers, one time. A waiter.’
‘Any names?’
Condotti turned down his mouth, shook his head.
‘Just kids. Could have come from anywhere,’ he said.
‘You recall anything else?’
Condotti looked at the two men. Let a slow smile slide across his lips.
‘She built, you know what I’m saying? Big tits. And this tight little blue jumper she wear, buttons open halfway down. You couldn’t help but look, you know what I’m sayin’? Like a TV set, it take your eye, you can’ look away. Good legs, too. She may be on the short side, but the undercarriage . . . it look pretty neat.’
And with that, Jacquot and Brunet slipped off their stools. They might not have got a delivery address, but they’d learnt more than they’d bargained for.
‘Hey, you don’ finish my biscotti,’ said Condotti, when he saw they were getting ready to leave. There were maybe six of the pizza biscuits left. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching for a Pizzeria Blazots napkin and tipping them into it, twisting the top.
In exchange for the napkin wrap, Brunet passed over his card.
‘If she comes in again, be sure to call us. Like the moment she steps through the door. And when she does, take your time getting her pizza baked.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ Condotti replied. ‘So, you mind me askin’? What she done?’
‘Won the Loto,’ said Brunet.
66
JACQUOT AND BRUNET DID NOT return immediately to Cavaillon. Once back in the car, Jacquot drove south out of Salon heading towards Lançon past the town’s small airstrip, then west to Cornillon and Miramas, before turning north towards Eyguières. He drove slowly, an elbow poking out of the side window, looking to left and right across fields of maize and droop-headed sunflowers, to distant wooded slopes and rocky hilltops, his eye holding on any building – barns, farms, drying sheds, and huddled pantiled roofs. At Eyguières, he turned right and followed a narrower road whose surface sent up a thin stream of rust-coloured dust behind them. From here he joined the Chemin de la Liberté before finally crossing the concrete levees of the Durance and slipping beneath the autoroute. Rather than join it and head for home, Jacquot continued on his cross-country route, gear-changing up into the foothills of Roque Rousse, before starting down towards Pélissanne, keeping, as far as he could, within a ten-kilometre radius of Salon. The time it might take to bake a pizza.
By now the sun was up and casting long shadows, the car’s interior filled with the warm gusting scent of the countryside, occasional stands of roadside cypress flicking fingers of shadow across its bonnet. Somewhere along this route, thought Jacquot, somewhere within this rough circle that he had marked out, or just outside it, were Claudine and Midou. Within, say, twenty minutes’ drive of Pizzeria Blazots. Maybe, right this minute, actually within sight. In one of those farm buildings down there on the valley floor, or somewhere amongst that scattering of terracotta roofs. The thought was tantalising – so close, so near.
Yet all it did was fill Jacquot with a gut-knotting sense of frustration, a sense of powerlessness that made him grip the wheel, clamp his teeth and badly misjudge a turn, clashing his gears on a particularly sharp right-hand bend as he dropped down towards Aurons and Vernegues.
Because this was about as far as the Cavaillon taxi that the sisters had hijacked had been able to reach. Of course they could have refilled, but as Brunet had established no Citroën had been reported on the security videos of any garage forecourt within a fifty kilometre range of Cavaillon. And so early on a Sunday morning, all the smaller filling stations in-country would have been closed for the night.
He wondered how they were fixed for transport, wherever they were, now that they had lost the VW. They might have made it back to base last night but they’d never be able to use the Citroën now, not a stolen car, with the registration number so widely spread.
Or did they have some other means of transport, a back-up to the VW?
Not for the first time in this investigation, Jacquot wished he’d had Marie-Ange sitting beside him. In Marseilles, while they’d worked on the Lafour case together, she had had an uncanny ability to zero in on a house – to know that it was somehow significant. And as far as Jacquot could recall, she was usually right. If she’d been sitting here now instead of Brunet she could probably have directed him to the very door.
But Marie-Ange was gone. This time he was following his own hunches. Which, at this moment, were thin on the ground.
‘We’ve probably just driven right past them,’ said Brunet, giving voice to what Jacquot was thinking. ‘This house, that house – down that driveway, through the trees over there. You want to stop at every house and knock on the door and see who answers.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Jacquot, levelling out on to the flatlands west of Lambesc. ‘But we don’t have the time and, as usual, we don’t have the resources either. We’re just going to have to wait for a break. And hope it comes soon.’
‘Maybe la Mademoiselle back at headquarters has decided to come clean, admit everything, and take us to the sisters.’
Jacquot grunted.
‘You know something? I just can’t see that happening.’
Five minutes later, with a lazy swing of the wheel, he turned on to the autoroute slip road and pressed his foot to the floor for the drive back to Cavaillon.
‘You want a biscotto?’ asked Brunet, indicating the napkin in his lap. Of the half-dozen that Condotti had given them, there were now just two remaining.
Jacquot’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead. For a moment it seemed as though he hadn’t heard what Brunet had said.
‘I said, do you want a biscotto?’
This time Jacquot glanced down at the napkin, then back at the road.
A moment later he shook his head.
‘All yours,’ he said.
67
IT WAS EARLY MORNING AND Marina Manichella was still asleep in her bed. But her elder sister, Marita, had managed no more than a couple of hours, woken by a hot, gritty anger that had gripped her since leaving Cavaillon.
Everything had gone so well at first, better than they could have dreamt of in what was by far the most ambitious of their exploits. The way their uniforms had worked, gaining them access to restricted areas with just a flash of their badges . . . simple laminate badges put together at their kitchen table. So easy. And the way the cop’s assistant, Brunet, had fallen for that line about Jacquot meeting the singer, even giving them directions as to where to find him. And how easy it had been to persuade the man to leave his women in Marina’s care. How easy to have him wait by the gate while they lured the two women down to the car, put the pads over their faces, and bundled them into the back seat. And all those people so close.
But then, on the
way out of town, it had all fallen to pieces.
The ringing clamour of gunshots, that wrenching, screaming skid, bouncing over the pavement and tipping into that ditch.
And all this . . . mess-up, because Marina had failed to put the girl down properly in the first place, failed to properly search their bags and, as a result, failed to find the guns. With Marina, you just couldn’t take anything for granted, thought Marita bitterly. Of course, she could understand her younger sister not thinking that the women might be armed and, given the time constraints, not being too thorough in her search. But still . . .
Yet somehow Marita had kept her temper, all the way back to Pélissanne, saying not a word, eyes on the rear-view mirror for any flashing blue lights coming up behind them, or casting ahead for patrol cars and road blocks. Inside lane, 110 km/h, and not a fraction over. But as soon as they were back at the house, hiding the car in the barn and toting the two bodies – armpits and ankles – into the basement, she’d laid into Marina. Just like they did at home, just as they’d always done. There had been a slap, recriminations, tears, with Marina stamping up the stairs and locking her bedroom door. The same as it always was.
But it could have been worse, Marita reflected now, watching from the kitchen window as the sun broke cover over a distant wooded hilltop. Another kilometre or two and they’d have been on the autoroute where those gunshots would have finished everything. The autoroute was no place for bullets and shredded tyres. Too fast, too busy, and too many cops. But on avenue Dupont they’d recovered, saved themselves. Flagging down the Citroën, transferring the women from one car to the other, and getting out of there as the first sirens started wailing.
At least, thought Marita, the girl had shot at the tyres and not through the front seats. Which was what she would have done, if the positions had been reversed. Same result but shredding the driver and passenger, not the tyre. Knock out the opposition first. Then take your chances. She wondered if the woman’s daughter had considered that. Must have done, Marita decided. But then, the girl wasn’t used to killing. Would have gone for the softer option.
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