Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

by Cara Black

  She picked out a mismatched pair of right and left boots—one red, one blue—and stuck her feet into them. She draped the blanket like a shawl over her tuxedo-clad shoulders and lowered herself down the box staircase to follow the flashlight.

  Scurrying and squealing came from the darkness ahead. Now the water level was lower as it was borne away by runoff tunnels that slanted toward the Seine.

  Krzysztof hesitated.

  “I don’t do well with rodents,” Aimée said. “You go first.”

  Compared to the rushing Seine outside, the water in the tunnel flowed slowly and steadily but it was putrid and foaming. Chill emanated from the lichen-encrusted walls. The sewer was divided; the main branch had secondary connections, all leading to a collection point. The tunnels, built partly of brick, partly of stone, formed a vast underground network.

  Jules stopped, shone the flashlight beam, and pointed. Overhead were freshwater pipes, telecommunications cables, and pneumatic tubes. Rusted wire rungs led upward. All the sewer tunnels had access through manholes to the street.

  “You’ll need this,” he said, holding out a sawed-off hook. “A deposit’s required.”

  Without it they would have had no way to pry the metal gating open.

  She thrust fifty francs into his hand. “You open it, Jules.”

  He stuck the flashlight in his belt and hoisted himself up the rungs of the ladder. Krzysztof followed and Aimée heard the wrench of metal and then a clang as the manhole cover was raised.

  “Can we get out here?” she called.

  She heard the squeaks of rodents and splashing, then footsteps descending.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Not here,” Krzysztof said, landing in a puddle beside her.

  “What do you mean? It should be easy, once the cover’s off.”

  “A flic car’s parked right on top of the manhole!”

  She shivered as a burst of frigid water gushed over her feet.

  “I don’t want to drown . . . I have to get out . . . it’s too close down here.” Krzysztof’s breath came in short gasps.

  “We’ll find another exit,” she said and thought hard. Hundreds of kilometers of sewers, quarry tunnels, and abandoned Metro tracks existed but they were honeycombed with water mains, and other substructures. Without a map or guide one could stumble into a warren of passages and be lost for days.

  Yet the sewers followed the layout of the streets above: wide boulevards had wide tunnels and the narrow ones and the side streets were duplicated underground. All they had to do was follow the well-marked blue signs mirroring the streets above, then find another exit.

  “I figure we’re under . . .” The flashlight illuminated RUE SAINT LOUIS EN L’ISLE written in white paint on the stone. “See, we’re close; we’re just a few blocks from my place.” She took Krzysztof’s arm. “We’ll get out there. It’s just five minutes away.”

  “She’s right,” Jules said. But the flics were right overhead and the only way out was a sewer full of water and rodents. Two red eyes glared and a rat the size of a cat squealed as it struck her boot. She jumped as a rush of water hit her knees. “The freshwater valves opened,” Jules said. “It will rise another meter, so hurry.”

  They slogged down the tunnel in cold knee-high water laced with chlorine and feces. The flashlight’s yellow beams played across the rising water and the rivulets running down the walls. In a stone niche sat a statue of a saint, chipped and furred with moss. The saint of the sewers? With rats this big, they needed all the help they could muster.

  Panicked, Krzysztof grabbed onto a set of metal rungs and started climbing.

  “Come on, just one more street,” Aimée coaxed him.

  He clung, unsure, his feet slipping.

  “We’re almost there.” She reached for his hand and helped him down. “I promise.”

  They wound to the left and she prayed they’d find the sluice gate below her building. The ground juddered overhead. A car or truck had passed by.

  “Quai d’Anjou,” she said, pointing to the blue-and-white sign. “See.”

  She found openings—a few were bricked over; others were covered by ancient, decayed wooden doors, bearing almost invisible coats of arms. She counted them and tried the tenth, a medieval stone arch enclosed by iron grillwork. But bits of debris and plastic bags were caught in the grillwork and there was no way to open the doors. Next to it was a waist-high chute. “Here. Give me a boost. It’s dry—feel the grit? Sandstone.”

  If she’d counted right, this was the aperture she’d explored as a child, and it led to her building’s subterranean cave—the storage area in the basement.

  “A marquis’s daughter hid here during the Reign of Terror while the authorities searched the house for her,” she told Krzysztof. That was building lore, anyway.

  She found a wad of francs and handed it to Jules.

  “I’m going in, Krzysztof. You can stay here if you like; it’s up to you.”

  Cobwebs caught in her hair and webbed her eyelashes as she crawled up the chute. She blinked and wiped them away. Grit got under her fingernails. But the flowing air was warmer and dry. She heard Krzysztof crawling behind her. And then Aimée was facing a pile of copper pipe and stacked plastic tubing.

  She straightened up, stretched her legs, and climbed over the pipes. She shone the flashlight around and hit a light switch on the wall. A single hanging bulb sent harsh light over the cavern, which was lined with gated compartments piled with the stored possessions of the building’s inhabitants. Her own bin lay open, a pit dug in its sandstone floor from which wires and pipes protruded.

  “Nowhere’s safe.” Krzysztof’s face paled under the stark light.

  “My apartment’s upstairs,” she said. “And when we get there, you can tell me where Nelie’s hiding.”

  “I don’t know. No one knows.”

  “You’re going to have to try harder. Make some calls, track her through your MondeFocus connections.”

  He shook his head. Agitated, he picked at the cable-knit sweater he wore. “Fat chance. They think I’m spying for the right!”

  She grabbed his arm and led him upward. She needed to think. And to find warm wool socks.

  ON HER BLACK-AND-WHITE marble landing, she saw cardboard boxes piled up and an old-leather tooled chest leaning against her door. Cave #8 was written on it. A present from the concierge, no doubt. Just what she needed: to sort through her grandfather’s forgotten auction finds and then make room in the closets in her apartment for them.

  She unlocked the door.

  “Ça va, Miles?” His wet nose sniffed her boots. She bent and he licked her hand, then growled at Krzysztof.

  Together she and Krzysztof slid the boxes inside the foyer. The chest’s leather bindings were crumbling, leaving a trail of brown powder on the floor. She needed to shower to get the sewer smell off her, and then to put on clean clothes. She pulled off the cracked boots, hung up the tuxedo jacket to dry, and motioned Krzysztof toward the kitchen. “I’ll join you in a minute,” she said and, barefoot, padded to her bedroom. First, she had to call Mathilde and check on Stella, then shower.

  “Allô, Mathilde?”

  “Oui?”

  She heard irritation in Mathilde’s voice and Stella’s whimpers.

  Aimée clutched the cell phone tighter. Mathilde was young, probably inexperienced. She shouldn’t have just taken Martine’s word that the girl was capable. So many complications could occur with newborns, according to the manual. She imagined Stella’s face flushed with fever, eyes rolling up in her head, her limbs twitching, all the signs of a febrile convulsion.

  “Does Stella have a fever?”

  “Relax, Aimée,” Mathilde said. “She woke up fussy. Now she’s refusing the bottle but I’m coaxing her to drink, little by little.”

  Aimée took a slow breath and tried to remember what she’d read in the baby manual; terms like gastric distress and viral infection swirled in her head.

  �
�Last night, too, Mathilde, she woke up every hour. I rocked her back to sleep.”

  Mathilde yawned. “That’s what I’m doing. Are you coming back soon? I have an early morning class.”

  “Please, Mathilde,” Aimée said. “It won’t be much longer. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I hate to charge you for staying overnight but I’ll have to.”

  “No problem,” Aimée said. “Of course, I’m giving you taxi fare and something extra for your trouble.”

  “Oui . . . shhh. See you when you get here,” Mathilde said and hung up.

  Aimée jumped in the shower, then toweled dry and checked her cell-phone messages. One was from René saying he and Saj were working at the office. The other, from Claude, said that he’d found more video footage, that she should see it, and that he had a bottle of Chinon waiting. She thought of the Chinon and Claude’s warm arms, but before she could go to him she needed to know what light Krzysztof could shed on MondeFocus connections and the video.

  She pulled on black jeans and the nearest T-shirt. No time for makeup. She slipped on socks to warm her numb feet and black patent leather-heeled boots.

  In the kitchen, she spooned the butcher’s scraps into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl, which stood on the brown mosaic–tiled floor. The kitchen, in the throes of remodeling, stood with one wall open, revealing pipes and ancient lath and plaster. Disaster lurked every time the contractor went to work.

  She found Krzysztof standing at the closed kitchen window. Below, searchlights shone and Zodiac boat motors beat the water. Divers, their masks catching in the light, bobbed in the Seine.

  “They’re looking for you,” Krzysztof said.

  She stilled her shaking hands.

  “For someone,” she said. “You took my bag; they don’t know my identity.”

  She felt a cool breeze and realized she must have forgotten to shut the salon window.

  “Hold on,” she said. But when she checked, she noticed the baby blanket hanging from the chair, not on the recamier where she’d left it, neatly folded. And the box of wipes was on the floor, not on the table. Papers had been moved. Yet René hadn’t been here; he didn’t even have a key.

  She sensed a stranger’s presence. Someone had entered her apartment and not to sniff her underwear. Whoever it was now knew the baby had been here. It wasn’t safe here for Stella any longer. She couldn’t bring Stella back here. Aimée stuck her phone in her pocket, ran back to the kitchen, and picked up Miles Davis.

  “We have to go. Now.” She grabbed Krzysztof’s arm and pulled him down the hallway.

  His eyes widened. “What the hell?”

  She had to appear calm. He was already a bundle of nerves; she knew if she told him any more he’d bolt.

  “Claude left a message. He’s found more video footage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re going to check Claude’s video of the march,” she said, grabbing her bag and the first jacket she found, the damp tuxedo, as she led him out the door.

  “Good,” he said, his tense mouth relaxing. “You’ll see the proof that we were set up.”

  On the staircase, she punched in the speed-dial button for taxi service. “Twelve rue Saint Louis en L’Isle, please.”

  Downstairs, Madame Cachou stood in the doorway of the concierge’s loge, reading glasses pushed up on top of her head, chewing a pencil.

  “Come to complain, have you?” she asked.

  “Mais non, I want to thank you for bringing up the boxes,” Aimée said, tugging Miles Davis by his leash.

  “There’s more, you know.”

  “Miles Davis loved staying with you. Could I impose again?”

  Miles Davis cooperated by wagging his tail and licking Madame’s outstretched hand.

  Her face softened and she stuck the pencil behind her ear. “Such a good boy.”

  Aimée put a hundred francs in her waiting palm. “Merci.”

  IN THE TAXI speeding through the dark Left Bank streets, Krzysztof sat beside her, his fingers twisting the loose yarn on his sweater’s sleeve. She rubbed a clear spot on the fogged window so she could look back at the quiet streets. No one seemed to be behind them.

  She couldn’t put Stella in more danger. Whoever had sifted through her apartment had seen the diapers and knew she’d kept the baby. She couldn’t lead them to Martine’s either. As long as Stella was safe, Aimee’s time was better spent getting Claude’s video, which might give her a lead to Nelie’s whereabouts.

  With the bombs and Vavin’s murder, the stakes had shot sky-high. She drummed her fingers on the window, wishing the taxi would go faster. Her fear was that the Halkyut operatives had already found Nelie. She tried to put that thought aside.

  “You must tell me everything, Krzysztof,” she said. “About Orla, the Alstrom files that Nelie found. And why Nelie’s hiding. Who is she hiding from?”

  “I don’t understand your involvement,” Krzysztof said. “You work for Regnault and they work for Alstrom. How can I trust you?”

  “And I want to know why, when you saw Orla’s body at the morgue, you didn’t identify her. I have to have your answer before I can trust you,” she said.

  “I couldn’t take the risk. It wouldn’t have helped Orla anyway. If I had opened my mouth, the flics would have locked me up. I’m wanted. MondeFocus told the flics that I planted the bottle bombs at the demonstration. There was even an article about me in the newspaper.” He rubbed his forehead. “All lies. We were just trying to stop the oil agreement.”

  “Nelie’s uncle was my boss at Regnault.”

  “Is that why you had Regnault files? Did you find the reports about Alstrom’s pollution of the North Sea?”

  “My partner’s working on it,” she said.

  “You still wonder about me, don’t you?” Krzysztof said. “I assure you, I know we cannot achieve peace with bombs.”

  She had to trust him; he’d saved her life.

  “I want to know why Vavin and Orla were murdered.”

  Terror painted his face. “Nelie’s uncle was murdered?”

  “Like I said, I want some answers.”

  He hesitated. “Nelie’s afraid.”

  “You mean she’s afraid the authorities will take away her baby because she’s wanted for her part in the demonstration at La Hague?”

  “If her evidence isn’t publicized, the oil agreement will go through,” Krzysztof said.

  “So the person who killed Orla was trying to get to Nelie, right?”

  “But if she has the reports, why hasn’t she given them to me?” Krzysztof asked.

  And why had Nelie left her baby with Aimée? Vavin couldn’t have been ignorant of Stella’s existence; he was Nelie’s uncle. Why not choose Vavin? Or was Aimée supposed to have met Vavin at the antique shop and turn the baby over to him to take to Nelie? He’d been murdered nearby. Again, another person murdered in place of Nelie.

  Aimée tried to piece it together. Was Vavin killed because he wouldn’t reveal Nelie’s whereabouts? All she had was suppositions.

  Krzysztof stared at her. “They’re going to kill me, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Halkyut,” Krzysztof said. “I saw Gabriel at our march. He was standing on the sidelines, watching.”

  “And he killed Orla? Is that what you mean?” She wanted to pry a straight answer from him.

  “Maybe the killer was the baby’s father,” he said.

  She hadn’t thought of that before. As the taxi sped along the quai, she checked again. No headlights behind them.

  “Maybe the baby’s a pawn, think about that. He could threaten to obtain custody unless she shuts up about what she knows.”

  Was that what this was all about? Domestic drama? Aimée didn’t think so, but who knew?

  “You mean so Nelie won’t divulge what it says in the Alstrom report?”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Then why do you think they want to kill you?”
>
  “Nelie had a difficult pregnancy,” he said. “She missed a lot of classes. Orla helped her.”

  What did that have to do with it, she wanted to ask. Instead, she said, “You mean Orla was protective of her?”

  “Orla had to take care of the baby when it was born,” he said. “Nelie bled too much.”

  She thought back to the bloodstains in the baby bag. “Is she in the hospital?”

  “She refused to go back to see the surgeon after her Cesarean. He had her name and she was terrified he’d turn her in. Nelie said she broke up with the father when he found out she was pregnant.”

  The rosebud mouth, mauve-pink eyelids . . . those minuscule fingers gripping hers. How could anyone not want Stella?

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she said, her frustration mounting. “Would the father threaten to obtain custody if he didn’t want the baby?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, if it gave him leverage over Nelie. The last thing she said was that the father would be able to trace her if she went back to the surgeon.”

  Krzysztof was clutching at straws like she was.

  “Who is the baby’s father . . . can’t you guess?”

  “Nelie had nothing to do with him after she got pregnant. According to her, he was out of her life. She never told me his name.”

  “Don’t you have any idea?” Aimée said, her patience wearing thin. “Someone else in your class or in your crowd?” And then it clicked. “You suspect that the father’s a member of MondeFocus?”

  “Who else?”

  She pulled out the photo she’d taken from his room.

  “You stole that.” There was outrage in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to find you—and Nelie.”

  “What else have you done?”

  “Could any of these mecs in the photo be the father?”

  “I’m getting out of this taxi. You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you?”

  She put her hand on his arm. “I believe that you were set up. And we’re going to see the proof of it in Claude’s video.”

  Krzysztof subsided. “You’re right.” He stared at the photo, his shoulders shaking. “We were idealists, naive. That was taken two years ago. It seems like another world. Another time.” He pointed to the men in the photo. “Non. That one’s gay; this one’s studying in Nanterre.”