Then, with a flood of relief, Madame Foraque found the TV remote in her lap and realised that she hadn't turned the volume back up.
71
Sunday
Sitting out in early-morning sunshine on the gravelled terrace of the family bastide a few kilometres west of Aix-en-Provence, Paul Basquet shuffled through the Sunday papers one last time, dropping them one by one onto the table. There was nothing else he'd been able to find on the deaths in Roucas Blanc that he hadn't already read - the front-page news reports, the inside editorials, the leader comments and, of course, the obituaries. Or seen on TV - all the breathless newscasts and updates that had followed the discoveries of the bodies.
It was all so . . . astonishing. So close. The man who on three separate occasions had turned down his proposals for development in the calanques and who, according to Raissac, would be passing said proposals at the next meeting of the planning committee. Dead by his own hand, and just a few hours after the murder of his wife. According to the papers and TV, Suzanne de Cotigny was the fifth victim of a serial killer the newspapers had dubbed the Waterman, all his victims murdered by drowning.
Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary.
Basquet, in the course of his various development businesses, had met with Hubert de Cotigny on a number of occasions - at formal presentations, on the cocktail circuit, even dinner on one occasion, the last time at the opening of the Aqua-Cité open-sea extension - but he had no reason to like the man. In Basquets book, de Cotigny was a snob, pure and simple. Old school. Le gratin. Well up there with the great and the good of Marseilles. The kind of people his wife, Céléstine, had grown up with. But he still felt sorry for the man. A shocking tragedy. Losing his wife to such a random, senseless killing - as the papers would have it - and then, within hours, reaching such depths of misery and despair at the loss of his young wife that he saw no alternative to taking his own life.
Basquet wouldn't have wished that on anyone - not even de Cotigny.
He was wondering again what impact this would have on his permis, how long they would be delayed, when Céléstine joined him at the breakfast table, back from her morning jog. She picked up a table mat and, with a whoosh of breath, fanned it against her face. Basquet gave her the once-over. Too like her father to be beautiful: the same drooping heaviness in the face; the same strong nose and thinning hair; and three children over a dozen years had done her figure no favours. Standing there in her sweats, a mist of perspiration on her top lip and flushed cheeks, she looked dumpy and shapeless. For the life of him, he couldn't understand what she thought she was up to and was grateful there were no near neighbours to witness her absurd efforts. One time, driving home from the office, he'd seen her out there in the lane, her arms high to the shoulder, elbows pumping, the lower half of her legs splaying out to the left and right with every step, the way women run, like the way they throw a ball. Completely uncoordinated. He'd slowed to offer her a lift but she'd waved him on - 'No, no, I must finish.' She was so breathless that she could hardly speak. In the rear-view mirror he'd seen her push back her shoulders and pick up her pace. She knew he'd be watching.
Basquet also knew, as Céléstine put down the place mat and wiped the wristband across her forehead, that she had something to ask him. She had that look about her. Hesitant but determined, waiting for the right moment.
He wasn't mistaken. 'We've had an invitation from the Fazilleaux. Dinner and piquet. This evening. Chantal says the Durets will be there too.'
This last detail she'd found out from Chantal the previous afternoon, a fact that she was certain would sway her husband. Xavier Duret was the man who'd designed and financed the Concept Tuillot in Nice, who'd built the Grimaud yacht basin and pioneered the use of firewall construction that halved structural weights, diminished project costs and increased safety at a single stroke. But she could see at once, as she finished speaking, that even the prospect of meeting Monsieur Duret wouldn't budge her husband.
Basquet sighed, gave her a sad smile, reached for her hand even.
'I'd love to, really. But I'm up to here. It's been a dreadful week and I'm way behind. Maybe I could call in later, when I'm finished?'
Céléstine nodded. 'I'll let Chantal know.' Then she stood, took up one of the papers, and walked back to the house.
72
Rully and Jacquot knew each other too well to be bothered by silence. Which was what was happening right then - a deep, contemplative silence settling between them. Rully, eyes fixed on the steel cord that held his plastered leg, Jacquot with his arms folded on the back of his chair, chin resting on his hands, staring at a square of sunshine splashed across the bottom of Rully s bed, ribbed with the shade of the blinds.
Beyond Rully's room, there was silence too. No rattling of trolleys this Sunday morning, no urgent ringing of phones, no distant voices or squeaking plimsolls on the shiny lino. The whole hospital could have been empty, just this one room occupied.
Jacquot had brought lunch. Two steak-and-salad pittas in a foil wrap from Gassi at La Carnerie, some wine, cheese and bread. A glass of red down and halfway through the pittas, Rully had started the ball rolling, prompting Jacquot to take him through the leads and the breaks of the previous week: the gym, the splinter, Carnot's fingerprints all over Monel's place and, finally, Saturday afternoon, tying in Carnot with the second victim.
It had been one of the squad, Bernie Muzon, who'd put it together - seeing Carnot at the front desk as Calliou itemised and bagged his possessions, and recalling the picture in Grez's apartment. But he didn't make the connection straight away. It just set him thinking. What Jacquot always loved about police work. A familiar face - you've seen it before somewhere. But where, exactly?
It took Muzon a while to place it. As Carnot waited in an interview room, Muzon went through the files, going back over the evidence, the reports, the statements, until he found what he was looking for. The photograph they'd taken from Joline Grez's bedside table. The photograph of a man with his arm draped around her shoulders. Black curly hair, dark eyes, a bored, arrogant slouch. After they'd found Grez's body in the Longchamp pool, they'd done the rounds with that photo — showing it to the staff at Galerie Prime, Grez's family, her friends - but nothing had come of it.
Until now. The man downstairs. The man he'd passed at the Duty Sergeant's desk. And when Muzon heard Jacquot was about to question the same man about another victim, Vicki Monel, he knew they were on to something.
He'd caught Jacquot on his way down to the interview room and filled him in.
'One of those lucky breaks,' said Rully, reaching up for the metal-frame bedhead and stretching his upper torso.
'And that's the truth,' said Jacquot. 'Sometimes it just piles up on your doorstep.'
'So you really think it's this Carnot character?' continued Rully.
Jacquot sighed. 'It would be nice just to have one more piece, you know? Just one more link. Ballarde, or the English girl, Holford, or de Cotigny.' He spread his hands. 'Take your pick. Right now, two out of five, it could just be coincidence. It could go either way. And there was nothing incriminating at his apartment. The boys searched top to bottom. Not a thing to tie him in.'
'But you're holding him?'
'Oh yes. Friend Carnot's going nowhere for the moment.'
'But you're not happy?'
Jacquot gave his partner a rueful smile. 'It's just a feeling. Nothing. Something. Who knows? Sure, we can place him with two of the victims. And yeah, sure, he could do it, kill - he's nasty enough. And maybe we can even come up with a motive - Vicki taking on the side, Grez not playing ball.' Jacquot paused, shook his head. 'It's just... what the Waterman does to the bodies. The sex. It doesn't... it doesn't fit. Carnot's not the kind of guy who'd go round using some wooden . . . some implement, when he's got the real thing.'
It was then that the two of them fell silent, Rully thinking through what Jacquot had told him, Jacquot trying to make sense of everything else that had cropped up in
the last few days, all of it centred around Raissac, something flitting around at the back of his mind, still shadowy, insubstantial, not quite fitting in: Gastal's interest in the man at the start of the week; Vicki Monel's apartment owned by one of Raissac's companies; Raissac's slip of the tongue out at Cassis; Doisneau's warning about Raissac and the subsequent discovery of Doisneau's body floating in the Radoub Basin; and, thanks to Salette's efforts, the information that a Raissac subsidiary appeared on a cargo manifest as an importer on a vessel due in port that very day, a vessel owned by Basquet Maritime.
Then, last thing the evening before, yet another connection - a call coming through from Raissac to Carnot; something that Gastal had failed to mention when he dropped by the interview room to let Jacquot know he'd tracked down the Renault driver. Maybe Gastal would say something about it tomorrow. Or maybe he'd just forgotten, didn't think it was important.
But how could that be, given his interest in the man? Was he keeping it to himself - something to take to Lamonzie? For the moment, Jacquot decided to let it wait. It could all yet come together. Right now it was enough to know.
It was Rully who finally broke the silence.
'So what does your new partner think?' he asked, picking crumbs from his chest hair.
'Gastal? Difficult to say. Start of the week he was a real pain. Told me he wasn't interested in homicide, nothing in it, couldn't wait to join up with Lamonzie. As good as told me he was just marking time. Then, towards the end of the week, he starts getting into his stride. Now, of course, he thinks it's in the bag. Plain sailing. We got our man.'
'So you're not going to say anything to him? Your doubts about Carnot?'
'Not much point. Just wait it out, I guess. See where the ball goes.'
'Just don't go breaking any legs,' said Rully, packing the remains of his lunch in the foil wrap, balling it up and tossing it at Jacquot.
After leaving La Conception, Jacquot made a detour into Belsunce. He'd remembered something the night before, as he went off to sleep, thinking about Boni. And he'd felt bad about it.
That Sunday, he had one more call to make.
73
Claudine Eddé had her eyes on him from the moment he came into the gallery. She sat at the small desk with its computer, telephone and pile of catalogues and busied herself with the keyboard. Apart from her nod of welcome and his return smile, there had been no further communication. Each behaved as if there was no one else in the room. Or rather, as if someone was.
But now it was time to do something about it.
He'd been there long enough now, shown sufficient interest, for her to start the ball rolling. When customers realised they were talking to the artist, it was often all that was needed to tip the balance and secure a sale. Her agent had told her that when he advised her to rent the Ton-Ton and work the gallery for a week; he'd look after all the rest.
Which she was doing. The Sunday after the night before.
Claudine had calmed down since her first-night show and celebratory supper, waking in an empty bed to all the usual doubts and uncertainties. It had been a haul getting herself up and coming in to work, sitting alone in the same gallery that had hummed the night before, manning the desk in case someone stopped by and felt like buying.
Like the man who'd just come in. Only the second that afternoon. The morning had been fine, a load of people passing by and coming in, but after lunch she might as well have closed up. In fact, she'd been thinking of doing exactly that when the buzzer sounded and the door opened. And in he came.
Claudine had just about plucked up enough courage to leave her desk and introduce herself, when he turned to her and said:
'She's very good, isn't she?'
Which stopped Claudine in her tracks. How to respond? She could either say it just so happened she was the artist and thank you so much. Or pretend she wasn't; play along as the gallery assistant he clearly imagined she was.
'She'd be very pleased to hear you say that,' she replied, feeling her neck redden, cross with herself that she hadn't had the nerve to tell the truth. 'Any artist would.'
'She's really got a touch.' He was standing in front of the canvas entitled Ripe 2, two glass preserving jars filled with figs, the fruit strangely disfigured by the varying thickness of the glass. 'She's got the colour, the shade. Real texture. And seeing the figs pushed up against the sides of the jars gives them a real sense of... I don't know . . .' He looked to the floor as if he'd find the word there. 'Form, I guess. Life.'
For a moment Claudine wondered if this was the start to a pick-up line. The kind of thing he tried on shop girls - which he now assumed she was - to initiate a conversation. A gentle flirting.
But Claudine wasn't convinced. He'd really been looking at the piece, and everything he said about it - the way the jar changed the shape of the figs, either through the thickness or touch of the glass - was exactly the effect she had sought to achieve.
Then he looked at the title card to see the price and nodded, as though he'd expected as much.
He moved on. 'I was supposed to be at the opening last night but I got held up. Did you go? Was it fun?'
Which knocked the breath out of her. It couldn't be, surely not? Not her sister's no-show? The man Delphie had tried to set her up with? No, it couldn't possibly . . .
'Yes, I did. It was great. Do you know the artist?'
The stranger shook his head. 'I met her sister at a party. She invited me. I'm sorry I missed it.'
So it really was him. Claudine couldn't believe it. Her stomach started doing cartwheels. Somehow she managed to speak. 'Well, you're seeing it now. That's the main thing.'
'Looks like she sold some, too,' said the man, indicating the red dots.
'They went mad.'
'You don't have to be mad to know talent like this,' he replied.
He came to the desk, turned and looked around, as though he were about to share a secret - or ask her out. It was neither.
'Is there anything, you know. . . ?' He cast around for the right words.
Claudine looked up at him, prepared herself.
'. . . Just a little less . . . expensive?'
Not what Claudine had been expecting. She could hardly speak. There's a small one. By the window. The lemons on a plate.'
He went over and looked at the painting, stood back from it, then leant forward to see the price. Which she liked, his looking at the picture first, before checking how much it cost.
'It's four thousand,' she said, the only words she could manage. As if he couldn't read.
'It's really nice.' And then: 'I'll take it.'
He came back to the desk and took a chequebook from an inside pocket. When he opened it she could read, upside down, the name - D. Jacquot. Was that what Delphie's no-show was called? She couldn't remember if her sister had mentioned a name. But she could remember how her sister had described him. And he certainly didn't look like a policeman. A cool-looking linen jacket, shiny black hair tied in a ponytail, lovely fingernails, and barefoot, just a pair of espadrilles with the jeans. He reminded her of the footballer, Ginola, the one in the coffee ad. But not so pretty. A little bit of Depardieu roughening up the mix. But very, very attractive all the same. And a lovely voice, soft and hard at the same time. And those eyes. She'd have trouble mixing a green like that, soft and shifting, translucent, like the undersides of certain leaves.
'To whom should I make it payable?' he asked, glancing up at her.
'To the artist, Claudine Eddé,' she replied.
He filled in the cheque, tore it out and handed it to her.
'Thank you, Monsieur. I'm sure you'll enjoy the painting.'
'I'm sure I will.' And then: Tell me, how long before I can pick it up?'
'If you leave your address we can send it to you. Or otherwise you could collect it when the exhibition closes.'
'Which is?'
'Friday,' she replied, knowing that she was saying all the wrong things, but unable now to do anything abo
ut it. 'We close at six.'
He nodded, gave her a smile. 'I'll come back,' he said. 'Maybe get to meet the artist, and say thanks personally.' And with that he pocketed his chequebook, nodded goodbye and left the gallery.
Leaving Claudine Eddé not a little cross with herself - that she'd played the shop-assistant and not told him who she was; and how embarrassed she'd be when he found out the truth. Which he was sure to do, when he came back to collect his painting on Friday evening.
And he hadn't even made a pass.
She wasn't sure which was worse.
For the next two hours, and despite herself, Claudine tried to recall whether or not he'd been wearing a wedding ring.
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