Earlier, in Paris, they had asked Marten if he wished to come with them to view the recovery of the car. The real purpose then had been for him to identify Ford’s body and spare Nadine the awful task. He wasn’t sure why they had brought him with them now when they could as easily have had a patrol car take him back to Paris.
Marten looked out at the passing countryside, sickened and numbed, trying to piece together what had happened. When Ford had still not returned home at eight that morning, Marten had tried his cell phone without success. By nine he had called Lenard’s office to see if perhaps Ford had gone directly there for his appointment with Lenard and Kovalenko. It was then he’d been told that both detectives were on their way to Ford’s apartment on the rue Dauphine. Marten knew instantly what it meant and tried to prepare Nadine. Her reaction was to calmly call her brother and sister, both of whom lived within blocks of each other, and ask them to come over. In the brief, tension-filled moments before the police arrived, Marten had had the presence of mind to take Halliday’s appointment book and give it to Nadine to hide away. She’d done it just as the front doorbell chimed.
Several police cars, a diver’s van, and a large tow truck were at the scene when Lenard pulled in and stopped. The three got out and crossed the gravel to the top of a rocky ledge that stood two or three times a man’s height above the swift flow of the river.
The tow truck had backed up to the edge of the bank and had its lift arm out over the water, its heavy cable attached to something beneath the water’s surface. Lenard looked at two divers below him in the water. One of them gave him the thumbs-up and he nodded. The diver signaled the tow truck. A motor revved, its winch turned, and the cable tightened.
“Monsieur Marten.” Lenard watched the top of an automobile become visible in the water below. “Does the name Jean-Luc mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
The truck’s motor grew louder as the cable fought against the weight of the car and the pull of the river.
Lenard took his eyes from it to look at Marten directly. “Dan Ford was coming here to meet someone named Jean-Luc. Do you know who he is?”
“No.”
“Did he ever talk about a map?”
“Not to me.”
Lenard held Marten’s gaze a moment longer, then turned back just as the top of a gray Toyota sedan broke the surface. The truck’s motor revved higher, and the car was lifted into the air. When it was high enough to clear the riverbank the lift arm swung landward, bringing the dripping Toyota over the gravel. Lenard nodded and immediately the car was lowered to the ground. Like Ford’s Citroën’s, the Toyota’s windows were open, allowing the water to quickly fill it and sink it below the surface.
Lenard moved away from Marten, and he and Kovalenko approached the car together. Kovalenko reached it first, and Marten saw his face twist up as he looked into it. His expression revealed everything. Whoever was inside had suffered the same fate as Dan Ford.
35
“What is your full name, Mr. Marten?” Kovalenko had opened a small spiral notebook and was turned in the front seat, looking at Marten as Lenard drove them away from the scene and back toward Paris.
“Nicholas Marten, M-A-R-T-E-N.”
“Middle name or initial?”
“None.”
“Where do you live?”
“Manchester, England. I’m a graduate student at the university.”
“Place of birth?” Kovalenko was talking easily, his big dog-eyes gently inquisitive.
“United States.”
Suddenly the vision of Dan Ford’s body in the river-soaked Citroën blocked out everything else. A wave of almost unbearable guilt swept over him as he remembered the infamous homemade rocket-launcher explosion that had caused Dan, at age ten, to lose his right eye and wondered, if he’d had his full sight, if he might have seen his assailant sooner and had a chance to save himself.
“What city?” he heard Kovalenko ask.
Abruptly Marten’s thoughts shifted to the present. “Montpelier, Vermont,” he said flatly, Nicholas Marten’s history programmed into him.
“Mr. Ford was from Los Angeles. How did you happen to know him?”
“I went to California one summer when I was a teenager. I met him and we became friends.” No hesitation here either. Marten had already thought it through. No need to mention Rebecca, or any other part of his life in L.A. Just keep it simple. He was Nicholas Marten from Vermont, nothing more.
“That was when you met Detective Halliday?”
“That was later. I went back after Dan had become a police beat writer.” Marten looked directly at Kovalenko as he said it, giving the Russian nothing that could raise doubt. At the same time, three names rattled through him as if they’d been stamped out by a machine. Neuss. Halliday. Ford. And then one last name, the one that connected them all.
Raymond.
It had to be Raymond. But that was crazy. Raymond was dead. Or was he? And if he wasn’t, who was next on his list? Him? Maybe even Rebecca? Even though Chief Harwood had expunged any record of her being at the firefight, she had been there nonetheless, and whether she remembered it or not, she had seen him, and Raymond knew it.
Suddenly he thought maybe he should tell Lenard and Kovalenko who he was and what he knew. But the minute he did they would be in touch with the LAPD, telling them John Barron was in Paris and asking them to reexamine the circumstances surrounding Raymond Thorne’s supposed death and cremation. If that happened it would only be a matter of time before Gene VerMeer or the others still looking for him would descend on Paris like vultures. The late Raymond Thorne would be of little interest. It was John Barron they would be looking for.
So, no, Marten could say nothing. If Raymond was alive, Marten as “Marten” was the one who had to find out and then do something about it.
Dan Ford had been sadly prophetic when he told him this was “his war”—and you are going after it until you get it or it gets you and everything else be damned.”
It was never more true.
“What is your age?” Kovalenko was talking to him again and at the same time scribbling something in his notebook.
“Twenty-seven.”
Kovalenko looked up. “Twenty-seven?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do in the years before you came to Manchester?”
Anger suddenly touched Marten. He wasn’t on trial here and he’d had enough. “I’m not sure I understand why you’re asking me these questions.”
“Mr. Ford was murdered, Mr. Marten.” Lenard was looking at him in the mirror. “You were his friend and one of the last people to see him alive. Sometimes the most trifling information becomes helpful.”
It was a solid, standard answer and there was no getting around it. Marten had no choice but to try to keep his reply as vague and simple as he could.
“I traveled around, tried different things. I was a carpenter, a bartender, I tried my hand at writing. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.”
“And when you finally decided you chose a university in England. Had you ever been there before?”
“No.”
Kovalenko was correct in implying that suddenly leaving America for college in the north of England was out of the ordinary. His question needed a response both detectives would believe and without a second thought. So he told the truth.
“I met a girl. She happened to be a teacher at Manchester. I followed.”
“Ah.” Kovalenko half grinned and again put it down in his notebook.
It was clear now why they had wanted him along, especially as they went to retrieve the second car. Identifying the body had been one thing, but seeing Ford’s savaged body had been a shock for them all, and they knew Marten, as Ford’s close friend, would be even more shaken than they, and they had counted on it. It was why Lenard had asked him about Jean-Luc and why Kovalenko was pressing him now, trying to make him reveal something under emotional duress he might not have otherw
ise. It was a course of action Marten should have been prepared for because as a homicide detective he’d done the same thing any number of times. But he hadn’t been. He was out of training and had only started actively investigating again when he arrived in Paris yesterday. He’d had little time to prepare for everything. Not being ready for police questioning in a homicide investigation, even though the necessity had never been apparent, was a lapse he knew could trip him up. Kovalenko’s questions also made him wonder what they were after. Yes, he had made the mistake of questioning Lenard too boldly in Halliday’s hotel room, but that wasn’t enough for this kind of questioning, and he knew there had to be some other reason. In the next instant he found out what it was, and it caught him wholly off guard.
“Why did you turn away in Parc Monceau when you saw Detective Halliday?” Kovalenko’s soft manner and warm, doggy-eyed look had vanished. “Yesterday you came into Parc Monceau with Mr. Ford. When you saw Detective Halliday with Inspector Lenard, you immediately turned and walked away.”
It wasn’t just the Russian bearing down. Lenard was staring in the mirror, watching him, too, as if this were a plan between them. Let the Russian question him while Lenard watched for a reaction.
“I owed him money and had for a long time.” Marten gave them something believable, as he had before. “It wasn’t much, but I was embarrassed. I hadn’t expected to see him there.”
“How did you come to owe him money,” Kovalenko pushed back, “when, as you said, you barely knew him?”
“Baseball.”
“What?”
“American baseball. Halliday and Dan and I had lunch one day in L.A., we were talking baseball. We bet on a Dodgers game and I lost. I never paid him and I never saw him again until yesterday in the park, but it always bothered me. I left hoping he wouldn’t see me.”
“How much did you owe him?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
Lenard looked back to the highway and Kovalenko’s severity faded.
“Thank you, Mr. Marten,” he said, then scribbled something on a notebook page and tore it off, handing it to Marten.
“That is the number of my cell phone. If you should think of anything you feel might help us, please call me.” Kovalenko turned back, made a few more notations in his book, then closed it and for the rest of the time was quiet.
36
Lenard brought them back into Paris at the Porte d’Orleans, turning onto the Boulevard Raspail and passing Montparnasse Cemetery in the heart of the Left Bank, going toward Ford’s apartment on the rue Dauphine. Suddenly he turned onto the rue Huysmans, drove halfway down the block, then pulled over and stopped.
“Number twenty-seven, apartment B.” Lenard turned to look over his shoulder at Marten. “It is the apartment of Armand Drouin, the brother of Dan Ford’s wife. It is where she is and where your personal things have been taken.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The law allows us to take over a crime scene for investigation, and we are treating the Ford apartment as a crime scene.”
“I see.” Immediately Marten thought of Halliday’s appointment book. Even hidden away it would be found. They were already wary of him. Even if they thought Dan had taken it they would try to blame him. And if they dusted it for fingerprints and then took his, they would have him right away. What would he say then?
“When will you be returning to England?”
“I’m not sure. I want to be here for Dan’s funeral.”
“If you don’t mind, I would like a telephone number in Manchester where I can reach you if we have further questions.”
Marten hesitated, then gave Lenard his number. It would have been foolish not to. The detective could get it in a moment if he chose. Besides, he would need every ounce of their good graces once they found Halliday’s book and came asking about it.
He was pushing open the door, his mind already jumping ahead to Nadine and her brother’s apartment and the mountain of emotion he knew he would find inside, when Lenard called him back.
“One last thing, Monsieur Marten. Two Americans you knew personally have been brutally murdered within a very short period of time. We don’t know who did it, or why, or what is going on, but I would warn you to take extra precaution in everything. I would not want it to be you who is next pulled from the Seine.”
“Neither would I.”
Marten stepped out and closed the door, standing for a moment to watch as Lenard drove off. Then he turned for the apartment. As he did, he stepped directly into the path of a man walking a large Doberman. He let out a startled cry and took an awkward step back. In the very same instant the dog’s ears went flat and with a horrifying snarl it lunged for Marten’s throat. Marten cried out again and threw up an arm to protect himself. Immediately the man jerked on the Doberman’s leash, pulling the animal back.
“Pardon,” he said quickly and moved the dog past and on down the sidewalk.
His heart pounding, Marten stood frozen where he was, staring after them. For the first time since he’d left L.A. he realized he was genuinely afraid. The Doberman had only added to it. But it hadn’t been the dog’s fault. The animal had simply sensed the fear, and its attack had been instinctive.
The feeling itself had begun while he was still in Manchester and had first seen the article about the dead man in the park. His first reaction then was Raymond! But he knew Raymond was dead and he’d tried to push it away, say it wasn’t so, that it was someone else who had committed the crime. Then Dan Ford had called to tell him the victim was Alfred Neuss, and again came the awful feeling that Raymond was still alive. It was a sensation made worse by Ford’s revelation that all of Raymond’s medical and law enforcement records had been expunged. Now Ford and Jimmy Halliday and the man in the Toyota were, like Neuss, heinously dead. And Lenard had warned him he could be next.
Raymond.
Just the idea of it chilled him to the core. He had no proof whatsoever, but inside he knew there was no question, either. It was no longer “the pieces” alone, or trying to understand what Raymond had been about, or what he’d set in motion. It was now all of those things—and Raymond himself. He was not dead at all, but alive and somewhere here in Paris.
37
6:50 P.M.
Kovalenko wore two sweaters and sat huddled over his laptop in his cold and tiny fifth-floor room of the seventeenth-century Hôtel Saint Orange on the rue de Normandie in the city’s Marais district. Today was Wednesday and he had been in Paris since Monday. Barely three days and he was certain he would freeze to death—in this archaic, run-down excuse for a hotel. The slightest breeze made the windows rattle mercilessly. The flooring was warped and the boards creaked loudly almost anywhere he stepped. The drawers in the lone dresser were a game of either in or out because they stuck both ways and made the simplest act of opening or closing them a wrestling match. The bath, in the salle de bains at the far end of the hallway, gave lukewarm water for two minutes at best before it turned ice cold. Then there was the heat. What little there was came on for less than a half hour at a time and then the furnace shut down for two or three hours more before it came on again. Finally, there were bedbugs.
Complaints to the management had been futile, and he’d had no better luck with his superior at the Ministry of Justice in Moscow when he’d called asking for permission to change hotels and was told the hotel had been selected and nothing could be done about it. Moreover, he was in Paris, not Moscow; he should count his blessings and stop complaining. End of conversation, end of telephone call. He might be in Paris, but at least in Moscow he had heat.
So the best he could do was forget his surroundings and get on with the business at hand. That was what he had done the moment he’d come in—laptop in one hand and a paper bag with a ham and cheese baguette, a container of mineral water, and a bottle of Russian vodka, all purchased in a small neighborhood market, in the other.
His first order of business was with Nicholas Marten, who was st
ill a mystery and whom he didn’t trust. He might have been a friend of Ford and known Halliday briefly, but Kovalenko didn’t like his seemingly offhand yet pat answers to questions. They were definitive but vague at the same time, all except for the girl he had said he had met and followed to Manchester, where he now lived. He might be a graduate student, he might not, but there was certainly more to him than what appeared. And maybe the girl, too.
Kovalenko opened his laptop and turned it on. Three clicks of the pointer later he had the number he wanted. Readying his notepad, he picked up his cell phone and dialed.
A switchboard operator at Greater Manchester Police headquarters put him through to an Inspector Blackthorne. After he identified himself, he asked for help in verifying that a Nicholas Marten from Vermont, U.S.A., was indeed a graduate student at the University of Manchester, England.
Blackthorne took his number and said he’d see what he could do. Twenty minutes later he called back with confirmation. Nicholas Marten was indeed a registered graduate student, had been at the university since April.
Kovalenko thanked Blackthorne and hung up, satisfied but not quite. He made a notation in his notebook: Marten in graduate school. Where did he do his undergraduate work? And then a second: Find out who the girl is and what her current relationship is with Marten.
That done, he took a bite of his sandwich, washed it down with a solid two fingers of vodka, and turned back to his laptop to write out his report for the day, hoping that in doing so he might get some sense of what had happened.
Aside from the still-troubling sense about Marten, foremost in his mind were the murders of Dan Ford and the man in the other car, and the troubling questions surrounding them. Putting aside his own considerable feelings of guilt at having been unable to prevent at least the killing of Dan Ford, a number of other things remained in the forefront—the absolute butchery of the victims, the short time span between when he’d seen Ford pull into the turnout and when he had been murdered, and how the cars had been moved into the river.
Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile Page 38