Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile

by Folsom, Allan

  “Vodka, Mr. Marten?” Kovalenko abruptly shut down his laptop and got up, crossing the frigid room toward a relic of a night table where a bottle of Russian vodka sat, two-thirds empty.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then I will drink for both of us.” Kovalenko poured a double shot of the colorless liquid into a small glass, lifted it in toast to Marten, and downed it.

  “Explain to me what is there,” he said, gesturing with his glass toward the bed, Halliday’s appointment book and Dan Ford’s accordion file beside it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you found in Detective Halliday’s book and the other piece.”

  “Nothing.”

  “No? Mr. Marten, you should remember I am not entirely convinced you are not Mr. Halliday’s killer. Nor, for that matter, is Inspector Lenard. If you wish me to include the French police, I will.”

  “Alright,” Marten said brusquely and went over and poured himself a double shot of vodka. Downing it in one swallow, he held the empty glass and looked at Kovalenko. There was no point in keeping quiet now. All the information was there on the bed. It was only a matter of time before Kovalenko uncovered it.

  “Do you know the name Raymond Oliver Thorne?”

  “Of course. He was looking for Alfred Neuss in Los Angeles. He was shot in a battle with the police and later died. His body was cremated.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Dan Ford didn’t think so. He discovered that Thorne’s police records were missing from the numerous official files they were in. Moreover, the people involved with Thorne’s death certificate and his cremation are either dead or missing. Apparently Halliday had the same opinion, because he was following a prominent California plastic surgeon who suddenly retired and moved to Costa Rica within days of Thorne’s death. Later the same man showed up in Argentina with his name changed. What that means, I don’t know. But it was enough to make Halliday buy himself a plane ticket to Buenos Aires. He had planned to go there right after he was finished here in Paris. It’s in there.” Marten nodded toward the appointment book on the bed. “His notes on it, his ticket, too.”

  “Why were you keeping this information from Inspector Lenard?”

  It was a good question and Marten didn’t know how to answer it, or at least answer without revealing who he was. Or telling what had happened with Raymond in L.A. and why the men of the squad were dead.

  Suddenly it occurred to him how he could avoid a direct answer and at the same time get the thing he needed most but had no access to—a copy of the fingerprint the police had lifted from Dan Ford’s car. It was chancy, because if Kovalenko turned against him he could lose everything and in a blink end up in the custody of the Paris police. Still, it was an opportunity he hadn’t expected, and whatever the risk he would be foolish not to at least try.

  “What if I told you Dan Ford suspected it was Raymond Thorne who killed Alfred Neuss?”

  “Thorne?”

  “Yes. And maybe Halliday and Dan himself. As you know, all three of them were involved when Thorne was in L.A.”

  A spark Marten hadn’t seen before suddenly showed in Kovalenko’s eyes. It told him he was on the right track, and he kept on.

  “Neuss is murdered in Paris. Halliday comes to follow up. And Ford is already here as the Los Angeles Times correspondent. None of them recognized Raymond because he’d had cosmetic surgery, but he knew them all and they were getting too close to whatever he was doing.”

  “That means you are accepting that Neuss was his primary target, Mr. Marten.” Kovalenko picked up the vodka as if it were part of his arm, poured what was left into his glass and then Marten’s, and handed Marten the glass. “Did Ford have a theory about what this Raymond Thorne might have wanted from Neuss, before, in Los Angeles, or now, in Paris? Or why he might have killed him?”

  “If he did, he didn’t tell me.”

  “So.” Kovalenko took a long pull of vodka. “What we have amounts to a faceless suspect, with no known motive for killing Neuss and no known motive for killing Ford or Halliday other than the fact that they had both seen him in his previous incarnation. Furthermore, as far as anyone knows he’s dead. Cremated. It doesn’t make much sense.”

  Marten took a sip from his drink. If he was going to give Kovalenko the rest, this was the time. Trust the Russian, he said to himself. Trust he has his own agenda and won’t turn you over to Lenard.

  “If it was Raymond who left the fingerprint in Dan’s car, I can prove it beyond question.”

  “How?”

  Marten lifted his glass and drained it. “Halliday made a computer copy of Raymond Thorne’s LAPD booking record. When? I don’t know, but Raymond’s photograph and fingerprints are on it.”

  “A computer copy. You mean a disk?”

  “Yes.”

  Kovalenko stared at him in disbelief. “You found it in his appointment book.”

  “Yes.”

  57

  RUE DE TURENNE. 3:45 P.M.

  A clerk put the bottle of vodka into a bag along with a large piece of Gruyère, a hand-wrapped package of thinly sliced salami, and a large loaf of bread. Also a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a packet of razors, and a small aerosol can of shaving cream.

  “Merci.” Marten paid the bill and then left the small neighborhood store, turning up the rue de Normandie and walking toward Kovalenko’s hotel. In the last hours a chill wind had come up, pushing a wall of dark clouds and bringing with them a spit of snow. Marten’s hands were cold and he could see his breath. It felt like Manchester in the north of England, not Paris.

  Kovalenko had sent him out to replenish supplies and get the toiletries he needed for the night—and, he was sure, give him time to look through Halliday’s appointment book and Ford’s accordion file to see what he could uncover for himself without Marten’s help. Both men knew Marten could simply have walked away, passport or not, and disappeared into the vastness of the city, with Kovalenko none the wiser until it was too late.

  To guard against such a thing, the Russian had given him a little information as he’d opened the door to leave, to wit: The Paris police were looking for him. The Eurostar had arrived in London three and a half hours earlier without him, and the Metropolitan Police had notified Lenard within minutes. Furious, Lenard had called Kovalenko right away, not just to inform him but to vent, telling him he had taken Marten’s behavior as a personal affront and had put out a citywide alert to arrest him.

  Kovalenko had simply said it was something he felt Marten should know and take to heart when he went shopping. And then, like that, he had sent him out.

  In a way Kovalenko hadn’t had much choice. Moments before Marten left, Kovalenko had requested that Lenard send a duplicate of Dan Ford’s murder file to his hotel room right away. A complete file, he had emphasized, one that included a clear photocopy of the fingerprint lifted from his car. So it was obvious Marten couldn’t very well be in the room when Lenard or his people came to deliver the file.

  It was equally obvious, Marten thought as he walked, head down against the wind and thick flakes of blowing snow, that he had to be very aware of police looking for him.

  He came into the decaying lobby of the Hôtel Saint Orange warily, shaking snow from his head and shoulders. Across it, a short, emaciated woman with stringy gray hair and a black sweater stood behind the desk chatting on the phone.

  He saw her eye him as he walked past, then turn away as he reached the elevator and pushed the button. Nearly a minute passed before it arrived and he saw her look at him again. Then the door opened, and he got in and pressed the button for Kovalenko’s floor.

  A moment more and the door slid closed and the elevator started up. It creaked and whimpered as it rose, and Marten relaxed. Alone in the elevator, for the moment at least, he was out of the public eye. It gave him a second to think. Beyond the obvious—Kovalenko, the pressure from the French police—something else troubled him
and had since morning, and he wished he had had the presence of mind to talk to Lady Clem about it. It was the increasing sense that Rebecca hadn’t told him the whole truth when he finally confronted her at the Crillon the night before, that her story about drinking a glass of champagne and falling asleep in the bath had been just that, a story, and, in fact, she had been doing something else. What it was she couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about—if she had been with a boyfriend, or a lover, maybe even a married man—didn’t matter. This was no time for her to be blithely fooling around, not if it was Raymond who was out there, and somehow he had to make her understand she just couldn’t take life as she had before. She had to be very seriously aware of where she was and whom she was around. She had to—

  The loud thud as the elevator jerked to a stop cut Marten’s thoughts. The door slid open and he peered into the hallway. It was empty. Cautiously he stepped out and started toward Kovalenko’s room.

  Suddenly he was unsure. He had seen no police vehicles outside, and he wondered if Lenard’s messenger had not yet come, or perhaps had come and gone. Or—what if he or she had used an unmarked car and was in the room with Kovalenko now?

  He went to the door and listened.

  Nothing.

  He waited a moment longer and then knocked. There was no response. He hadn’t been gone that long, and Kovalenko had not said anything about going out. He knocked again. Still nothing. Finally, he tried the knob. The door was unlocked.

  “Kovalenko,” he said cautiously.

  There was no reply and he eased the door open. The room was empty. Kovalenko’s laptop was on the bed, his suit jacket next to it. Marten went in and closed the door behind him, setting his bundle on a side table. Where was Kovalenko? Had the police come or not?

  He took another step and then he saw it, a manila envelope with the seal of the Paris Prefecture of Police sticking out from beneath the Russian detective’s jacket. Breathlessly he picked it up and opened it. Inside was a thick file folder. And inside it, on top of maybe fifty carefully typed pages and a dozen crime scene photographs, was an eight-by-ten enlargement of a fingerprint. Beneath it were the words empreinte digitale, main droite, numéro trois, troisième doigt (fingerprint, right hand, number three, middle finger), and stamped beneath that was Pièce à conviction #7 (Exhibit #7).

  “You’ll want this,” Kovalenko’s voice crackled behind him. Marten whirled. Kovalenko stood in the doorway, a computer disk in his hand.

  Marten looked past him. He was alone.

  “Where were you?”

  “Taking a piss.” Kovalenko came in and closed the door.

  58

  “Did you look at it?” Marten indicated the disk.

  “Did I compare the two? Yes.”

  “And?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Kovalenko crossed to the bed, loaded the disk in the laptop, and stood back as Raymond’s LAPD fingerprint sheet came up on the screen. He clicked to the right hand, then to the number three middle finger and hit the “maximize” cube. And the screen filled with a single, exceptionally clear fingerprint.

  Marten could feel his pulse rise in anticipation as he held the eight-by-ten enlargement up beside it. Slowly a chill settled over his shoulders and eased down his spine as, one after the other, each whorl, loop, and arch matched perfectly.

  “Jesus God,” he breathed and looked to Kovalenko.

  The Russian was watching him closely. “It would seem Raymond Oliver Thorne has emerged from his own ashes and landed in Paris,” Kovalenko said quietly. “I think it would be safe to assume it was he who killed Dan Ford and also the man he went to meet, the printer’s representative, Jean-Luc—”

  “Vabres.”

  “What?” Kovalenko’s response was sharp.

  Abruptly Marten twisted from the screen and looked directly at Kovalenko. “Vabres was the printer rep’s surname.”

  “How did you know? Neither Lenard nor I divulged it to you or anyone else.”

  “I found it in Dan’s notes.”

  Marten clicked off the laptop. The deep, almost animal fear Raymond had aroused in him, as some unstoppable, untouchable, unknowable, netherworld creature, was oddly calmed with the certainty that he was alive. It was an assurance that gave Marten courage to go the next step with Kovalenko.

  “The French word carte can mean map or chart, but it can also mean menu. You were looking for a map, but it turned out to be a menu Dan Ford was going to pick up from Vabres when he was killed.”

  “I have learned the meanings of the word, Mr. Marten. Vabres’s company does not print maps, and it had not printed a menu in more than two years. Nor was there a map or a menu in either Ford’s car or in Vabres’s Toyota.”

  “Of course not, Raymond took it.” Marten got up and crossed the room. “Somehow he learned Vabres had it and was going to give it to Dan. He not only wanted it, he didn’t want either of them talking about it afterward. So he killed them.”

  “Where did Vabres get this ‘menu’ if his company did not print it? And why did he call Mr. Ford at three in the morning and ask him to drive far out into the countryside to give it to him?”

  “That’s what I wondered when I found the menu in Dan’s accordion file. What was the urgency?” Marten looked at the floor, then ran a hand through his hair and looked back. “Maybe we’re thinking behind the game. What if Vabres had already alerted Dan to the menu’s existence and told him what the occasion was? If it was important enough, if the event was more than a simple social affair, Dan would have wanted to see it for himself, for verification if nothing else. And what if he told Vabres to call him any time of day or night once he had it and he would meet him? Then Vabres got it and realized how important it was and began to worry if maybe it was none of his business, if he should be passing that kind of information to the press. The thought kept him awake. Then finally, in the middle of the night he decided yes, that Dan should have it. And he called him right then to meet him. Who knows, maybe they had arranged the place beforehand or had met there before—”

  Kovalenko watched him for a long time before he spoke; when he did it was quietly. “That is a very believable scenario, Mr. Marten. Especially if it was, as you suggest, a menu for an event Raymond didn’t want made public or even talked about between two men.”

  “Kovalenko,” Marten said, walking toward him, “it wasn’t the first menu but the second.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Marten opened Ford’s accordion file and took out the Kitner envelope, then slid the menu from it and handed it to Kovalenko.

  “This is the first. Vabres had given it to Dan earlier. I don’t know what Dan was after, or thought he was after, or if it had anything at all to do with the second menu and why he was killed. It centers around prominent Russians. Maybe you can give it some meaning.”

  Kovalenko looked at it. The crisp, expensive off-white card stock, the raised dark gold lettering.

  Carte Commémorative

  En l’honneur de la

  Famille Splendide Romanov

  Paris, France—16 Janvier

  151 Avenue Georges V

  Marten saw him register surprise when he looked at it, but Kovalenko didn’t acknowledge it.

  “It seems to be a harmless gathering of members of the Romanov family,” Kovalenko said simply.

  “Harmless until people started getting killed and we discovered Raymond is alive and somewhere out there on the streets.” Marten moved closer, looking Kovalenko directly in the eye.

  “Raymond sliced my best friend to pieces. You are a Russian policeman investigating the murder of Alfred Neuss, a former Russian citizen. He bought diamonds in Monaco from Fabien Curtay, also murdered, also a former Russian citizen. A year ago your own investigators were in America and Mexico following up on the murders of former Russians Raymond allegedly murdered there. The Romanovs are one of the most celebrated families in Russian history. What’s the connecti
on, Inspector—between the Romanovs and Neuss and the others?”

  Kovalenko shrugged. “I don’t know if there is one.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “What the hell is it, a bunch of coincidences?” Marten was getting angry. The Russian was giving him nothing. “If it is, is it a coincidence that two menus are involved?”

  “Mr. Marten, we don’t know for certain there is a second menu. That is your conjecture. For all we know Mr. Ford could have been after a map, as I first said.”

  Marten jabbed his finger at the Romanov menu. “Then why did he give this one a number?”

  “A number?”

  “Turn it over. Look at the bottom.”

  Kovalenko did. Written by hand at the bottom were the words Jean-Luc Vabres—Menu #1.

  “That’s Dan’s handwriting.”

  Marten saw Kovalenko’s eyes travel up the back of the menu to the top, saw him fix on something there. Then he handed the menu back with a shrug. “A numbering method for his own filing system, perhaps.”

  “There was something else. It was written in the same hand at the top of the card. I saw you look at it. What did it say?”

  Kovalenko hesitated.

  “Tell me, what did it say?”

  “Kitner to attend.” Kovalenko showed no expression at all, just said the words.

  “You told me earlier your reading of English was not the best. I wanted to make certain you understood what was there.”

  “I understood, Mr. Marten.”

  “He’s referring to Sir Peter Kitner, the chairman of MediaCorp.”

  “How can you be certain? I’m sure there are many Kitners in the world.”

  “Maybe these will explain.” Marten spilled the contents of the Kitner envelope in front of Kovalenko—the newspaper clippings Ford had collected of stories about Sir Peter Kitner.