Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

by Cara Black

  This was formerly the residence of the first archbishop of Paris. Later it had been an outpost of Charles V, then Marie-Thérèse’s chancellor’s quarters. It had became a sugar refinery and then, in the last century, a high school.

  Perspiration dampened Aimee’s collar. She had to figure out what to say to Gabriel when she found him.

  Using the stairway, she descended into the bowels of the École Massillon, to the blackened boiler room. The fourteenth-century foundation emitted a dank chill, barely combatted by the heat radiating from huge soot-stained boilers abutting the wall. They must recently have been stoked. The boilers were firing at full blast, and charcoal dust lay everywhere. Carved out of the thick wall was the half-oval window she remembered. It was not glassed in; it was needed for ventilation. This window was level with the sidewalk and looked onto rue du Petit Musc. Quai des Celestins lay beyond it, then came the Seine, and, across the river, the Hôtel Lambert on the Ile Saint-Louis. The Hôtel Lambert, again.

  She leaned against the window’s rusted bars. She could see a pair of brown walking shoes and the bottom half of khaki trousers passing by on rue du Petit Musc’s pavement. The man was so close she could have reached out and untied his shoelaces.

  “Gabriel?”

  The legs turned and retreated. The streetlight illuminated a mec with blond hair, a barrel chest, and close-set eyes now scanning the building.

  “I don’t see Nelie,” she said.

  “And I don’t see you. Why’d Krzysztof leave?”

  She had to keep him talking until Morbier arrived.

  He hunched over and peered down and inside.

  “Don’t you have something for me?” Gabriel asked. His gravel-edged voice was the one she had heard over the phone.

  The light from the boiler illuminated her coat sleeves but she didn’t think he would be able to get at her through the chipped and rusted iron bars. But her certainty was wrong.

  With two swift kicks, he dislodged them.

  She jumped back but thick fingers reached in and grabbed her, encircling her neck. Her face was wrenched hard against the gritty stone. She tried to bite his fingers but couldn’t turn her head so that her teeth could find a purchase. Her hands were free, though, and she scratched his and tried to get away. His pressure on her throat increased and as she struggled, her face was thrust against the wall again. Where were Morbier and his men?

  “You don’t . . . have Nelie, do you?” she sputtered, her fingernails scraping against the stone as she sought something, anything, to fight back with.

  Her hand caught the metal poker used to stoke the furnace that hung from the boiler door. Choking, she wrapped the tail of her tuxedo jacket around her hand, seized the hot poker, and slammed it against his thick knuckles, his hands, his arms. The air filled with the smell of singed hair and burning cloth.

  “Ayyeee . . .” One hand relinquished his grip. She kept beating the other until it, too, fell away.

  “You set the bomb—”

  “Screw you.” The blade of his Laguiole knife sliced through the air. She heard footsteps. Men were coming. “Where’d you take the brat?” he asked.

  “So it was you in my apartment.” She hooked the hot poker around his ankle. “Why do you want the baby?” He let out a piercing yell as the poker connected with bare skin. She yanked him against the building with all her might. She could smell searing flesh. “Why?”

  His screams were the only reply.

  And then he was surrounded by scuffling legs and the impact of punches, the sounds of thuds. She heard the wail of a siren, then shots, and still she held on, yanking harder. Now she could only smell coal fumes. Outside, a car squealed off.

  “Leduc?”

  She dropped the poker.

  “Let go. It stinks.” Morbier’s face was above her, at the window. “Pretty messy barbecue, Leduc.”

  MORBIER SAT BEHIND his desk, rubbing the gray growth on his chin. His jowls sagged and his eyes were red rimmed. He pointed at her soot-stained Che Guevara T-shirt. “Your new hero, Leduc?”

  “Part of my cover,” she said.

  She took another sip of espresso. Her legs felt warm; the shivering had stopped. The ice pack she held to her forehead was already partly melted and sagging.

  Smoke spiraled from a burning cigarillo in the Ricard ashtray. Aimée took another from Morbier’s yellow Montecristo tin and lit it from the box of kitchen matches on his desk.

  “Help yourself, Leduc, why don’t you?” he said. “Didn’t you quit?”

  “I’m always quitting.” She glanced around. “New office. You’re coming up in the world, Morbier.” Wood file cabinets, a computer screen with a blinking cursor. “I didn’t think you knew how to use one of those,” she said, pointing to the computer.

  “I even type like a pro now,” he said. “I’ve graduated from two-finger hunting and pecking.”

  Outside his office there was a large open room with vacant cubicles and computers. Once it had been the incident room. She saw the adjoining office, the number five painted on the glass beneath the transom. Her father’s old office.

  “A real nice mec, Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said, consulting some papers in a brown file folder. “Ex-military, low-level ops. I thought I knew him from somewhere.”

  She bit back her surprise. “So, he fits Halkyut’s profile.”

  “Let’s say he’s a bottom-feeder, not their usual level operative.” Morbier shook his head. “Seems like they didn’t vet him with their usual thoroughness.”

  She figured Gabriel was someone Halkyut used for jobs that could go wrong.

  “Any good news, Morbier?” After all, it was Gabriel who had set the bomb at the Hôtel Lambert. “Did he give you a confession?”

  “The evening’s young.” Morbier smiled wryly. “But it seems that he skipped his parole appointment yesterday. So we’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Missing a parole appointment meant there would be no need for lawyers or an arraignment. Gabriel had a ticket to La Santé. He’d be arrested and then it would take several weeks or even months to process his case. With luck he’d end up in a maximum-security prison like Clairvaux.

  There was a knock on the frame of the open door.

  Aimée looked up to see a young policewoman wearing a blue cap cocked at a jaunty angle.

  “Commissaire, a package for you,” she said, with a Provençal accent wide enough to push a cart through.

  “From whom?”

  “France2.”

  Nicolas was on the ball.

  “Do me a favor, Officer,” Morbier said. “Set up the VCR for viewing a tape, s’il vous plaît.”

  Aimée blinked. Morbier polite? Not only did he type now, he also said please.

  She stubbed out her cigarillo. “You got a fast response from Nicolas, Morbier. Must be your good manners.”

  “That, too. And Nicolas owes me at poker. Big-time.

  “Nicolas says this Claude Nederovique made a splash ten years ago but hasn’t produced anything in a while,” Morbier told her. “Is he part of MondeFocus now?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to direct suspicion toward Claude even if he’d deserted her, abandoned her to those mecs.

  “He’s just helping out. He’s filming, that’s all,” she said.

  She hit Play. The images flickered by, disjointed. There was more footage than what she’d viewed on Claude’s video. He and Krzysztof should have gotten to Bobigny a while ago. Yet she’d had no phone call.

  Now the video showed a smiling mix of students and Socialist types, milling about on a narrow street. The cameraman talked to an assistant about lighting, angles. Krzysztof and a woman in a red-and-white Palestinian scarf passed out candles. Bottles of wine were being shared in the loose ranks of marchers who were singing “The Internationale.” The camera cut to a blonde with long hair. There was a close-up. From the remarks of the cameraman about her low-cut jeans, it seemed he was a derrière man. Then they heard his sigh as sh
e put the strap of a backpack over Krzysztof ’s shoulder and pecked his cheek. Next they saw an unfocused blue glare. A wobbling handheld shot showed a limping woman shouting. Another woman grabbed her and ran toward the Pont de Sully. More wobbling. The first woman slumped to the ground.

  Nelie. It was Nelie.

  The next shot showed the woman in the red-and-white Palestinian scarf, which was now soaked with blood. Aimée didn’t recognize her but seeing the scarf turning red with her blood made Aimée queasy. The cameraman’s voice said, “Hurry . . . bomb squad’s arriving.” He zoomed in . . . then came a shot of a backpack out of which bottles and yellow rag fuses were spilling.

  Watching the tape she felt relieved. The march had happened just as Krzysztof had described it. But the most important question was still unanswered.

  Morbier said, “Great idea, Leduc! You’ve wasted my time. It’s after midnight. I could have been halfway home, and not had to call in a favor.”

  “Wrong, Morbier.” She hit the Rewind button.

  “Important, eh? All I saw was a bunch of long-haired radicals partying, and the CRS doing its job.”

  Her shoulders tensed at Morbier’s dismissive tone. It was all there, in blurred color. Why didn’t he see it?

  She hit Play once more, took the remote control, and stood close to the screen. “OK, see, here’s Krzysztof.” She pointed to him as he passed out candles. Then she fast-forwarded. “Here’s the blonde.”

  “It’s blurred; it’s hard to see what’s happening.”

  “Bear with me. You’re seeing this at sixty images a second, not frame by frame.”

  “Quite the expert, eh?”

  She was just parroting what she’d learned from Claude.

  “Notice something else, Morbier?”

  “I concur with the cameraman—nice derrière.”

  “The blonde’s putting the backpack on Krzysztof’s shoulder,” she said. “She kisses him. And then she disappears. But see the blond man on the sideline?”

  “Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said. He scratched a kitchen match on the table’s edge and lit up a cigarillo.

  She fast-forwarded and hit Stop. “This woman . . . recognize her?”

  Morbier exhaled a puff of blue smoke. “Orla.”

  “But do you recognize who she’s reaching for? It’s Nelie Landrou.”

  “So that’s what she looks like.”

  In slow motion they saw Nelie limping. She had an anguished look on her face, and was almost doubled over as she ran. But there was no baby; Aimée didn’t see Stella.

  “Keep going, Leduc.”

  She forwarded the video in slow motion now. “Here’s the proof the blonde gave the backpack with the bottle bombs to Krzysztof. It was a setup.”

  “You’d be a good avocat, Leduc,” Morbier said. “It’s easy to interpret the video the way you want, in your client’s favor.”

  Aimée was frustrated. “Look at the video. The proof is right there!”

  “Or it was an elaborate plan, and Krzysztof expected her to bring the bottle bombs in the backpack and to give it to him.”

  Aimée rewound the video to show Krzysztof’s smiling face as the blonde was kissing him. “I think he’s just a sucker for a pretty face. Doesn’t it look like that?”

  “It wouldn’t persuade the tribunal.”

  She sat down, tired. “It doesn’t have to. Gabriel Leclerc’s off to La Santé anyway for a good long visit. Show him this in a tête-à-tête. Get him to spill. Tell him you’d appreciate his cooperation and you’ll reciprocate, et cetera.”

  “Reciprocate?” Morbier snorted. “It’s out of my hands. Out of my realm now.” But he tapped his pencil, a sure sign he was thinking.

  “Promise Gabriel a three-man cell instead of the usual one for six,” Aimée said. Her temples were throbbing. She needed more ice. “Or say you’ll try to get him assigned to the VIP wing. You know, along with the disgraced financiers and officials.”

  There was silence except for the whir of the tape rewinding. Aimée could smell the bitter dregs of her espresso. She was worn out. All she wanted to do was crawl under her duvet.

  “He’s pretentious enough to like that,” Morbier said. “You actually think he’ll admit that Halkyut is involved in sabotaging ecology groups and, in particular, MondeFocus?”

  Smart. Why had she underestimated Morbier? He had to watch his back and he was always moaning about imminent retirement. And he didn’t like taking on the ruling powers.

  “Morbier, you won’t lose your pension or anything else, and you’ll just gain in self-respect.”

  “So you’ve got it all figured out, eh?”

  “Figured out?” She shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  She didn’t know what else to say. She stood up, buttoned the tuxedo jacket, shouldered her bag, and walked to the door.

  “Still not going to tell me, Leduc?”

  She froze. “Tell you what?”

  Hiding the baby? Finding Vavin’s body? There was so much she’d kept from him. She wished she could confide in him, like she had before.

  “Leduc, you there?”

  She turned to face him. But he sat shaking his head, in disgust or anger, she couldn’t tell. When he looked up, she saw the redness of his eyes and the pouches under them. And, for a moment, she saw him for the hard-working, aging man he was. And the one constant in her life, her father’s old partner, whose pigheadedness time hadn’t tempered. Others came and went, but Morbier was always there.

  “Leduc, I covered for you . . . the hole in the Seine . . .”

  She cringed. So he knew about that. Would they make her pay for the damage?

  “Don’t ask me to go out on a limb. Again!”

  “You’re focusing on me, Morbier. Focus on that salaud Gabriel, who set the bomb.“ She fixed her eyes on him. “It’s not MondeFocus, not Krzysztof or Nelie. It’s those who employed Gabriel. It’s Halkyut and the ones who hired them.”

  “I know,” he said, a thaw in his voice. “That’s the problem.”

  She felt vibrations shaking the table. Noticed Morbier’s hands clutching the edges.

  “You OK, Leduc?”

  Startled, she nodded. What had come over him?

  “Remember the pool in Butte aux Cailles?” he said, a distant look in his eyes.

  A faded image of cracked yellow tiles, spring water feeding into a pool. She hadn’t thought of that in years.

  “She insisted you take swimming lessons,” he said, an unreadable look in his eyes. “She overrode your father’s objections. She took you every week, even talked me into it a few times.”

  Aimée’s gut wrenched as she remembered the smile on the carmine red lips greeting her as she emerged from the swimming pool and the feel of the dry towel her mother held to wrap around her.

  “Maman?”

  Her American mother, the woman Morbier never mentioned.

  “For once in her life she was right,” he said with a sad smile. “It’s a good thing she made you take swimming lessons.”

  “Are you going to tell me something about her that I don’t know?”

  “She always said you had to learn to take care of yourself. And you can. But now it’s time to stop.”

  “Where did Maman go, Morbier? I . . . if you know something, tell me. I can take it.” She clenched her fists and fought back tears. “If she’s dead, just . . . can’t you just say it?”

  He stared. “Now’s the time for you to step away, let us handle it. It’s too dangerous, Leduc. Will you stop?”

  Bargain . . . this was the bargain. The powers that be had warned Morbier off. He’d asked for her help in nailing Monde-Focus, Krzysztof, and Nelie, but she’d tied Gabriel to the bombs and Halkyut. René and Saj would find documentation, proof, they had to. And now Morbier wanted her to back off.

  “Even for you, this is low,” she said, her shoulders tensing. “Going along with them!”

  “It’s for your own sake, Leduc,” he said.

  E
ven if she wanted to, she couldn’t turn Nelie in. And she wouldn’t hand Stella over to the authorities.

  “Why don’t you find a man, have babies, do what other people do?”

  She averted her eyes. If only he knew. “That’s rich coming from you, Morbier.”

  He’d lost custody of his grandson, Marc, to the other grandparents who lived in Morocco after his estranged daughter was killed in Belleville.

  “Once and for all, will you do as I say if I tell you what you want to know, Leduc?”

  She yearned to know so much it hurt. But he was trying to manipulate her. Nothing came for free from Morbier.

  “Not on your terms, Morbier,” she said. “I don’t negotiate about Maman. Either you tell me because it’s the decent thing to do, or you don’t.”

  “You make everything so difficult, Leduc.” Morbier sighed.

  “You’re just dangling a carrot in front of me to get me to do what you want. You don’t know anything more about her, do you?”

  Morbier said, “Your swimming saved you. It’s nothing to do with ‘them’ or this snake pit of an investigation.”

  But he was wrong. Abandoning Stella, turning Nelie in were too much like her own mother’s case. She had to get out of this room, this Commissariat, with all the memories it held, before she broke down.

  “You can’t ignore the video, Morbier. You saw it. Someone trumped up a plan to brand Orla and Nelie as terrorists for blocking some trucks in La Hague. They want all the ecological protesters stopped, or denounced as violent agitators. I won’t let it rest,” she said, reaching for the ice pack. “I’m leaving.”

  He met her gaze full on. “I don’t know if your mother is alive or not.”

  “That’s all?”

  Morbier tented his fingers. Again he had that unreadable expression in his eyes.

  “Your father took you to the Klee exhibition in the Palais Royal on your fourteenth birthday, remember?”

  A Sunday afternoon, the crowds, and her father’s arm through hers, holding her tight. His nervous talk, none of his usual jokes about art. She remembered sitting in the café, looking out to the Palais Royal fountain, then blowing out the candle on a slice of chocolate gâteau ganache.