House of War

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Dardenne. I’m in charge of the investigation. Please accept my sincerest condolences, and my promise to you that I will do everything in my power to catch this man and bring him to justice.’ Ben wasn’t lying about that part.

  She sniffed, wiped an eye and nodded sadly. ‘Thank you. But I’m a little confused. I thought that Detective Boucher was in charge. Valérie. Such a nice lady. Said I could call her any time, day or night. Are you working with her?’

  ‘I am,’ Ben said solemnly, mightily glad to have learned that Detective Boucher was a she, or else he might have put his foot in it. ‘She sent me here to fill in a few details.’

  ‘Whatever I can do to help. Although I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the others. It’s obvious who did this. I always said to Romy that no good could come of hanging around with filthy Arabs.’

  Lovely. There was nothing like emotional distress to bring out the best in people. Ben wondered what filthy Arabs in particular she was referring to. He measured his words and asked, ‘Are you saying you can identify the perpetrator?’

  ‘Of course I can identify him,’ she replied, her sorrow flaring into anger that flushed her cheeks. ‘Didn’t I always tell her that boy was no good for her? No good for anything, just like all his kind. He doesn’t even have a proper job. But she fought me and fought me. Wouldn’t listen. Said her salary was enough to support them both until he found decent work of his own. Said they were going to move in together and get married. I told her, “You have a child with that filth, I won’t have it in my home. I won’t see it, and I won’t acknowledge it.”’

  Madame Juneau was growing more charming by the second, but Ben had to play along. Let her get it out, he thought, if that’s what helps her deal with her pain.

  ‘I was happy when she finally saw sense and dumped him. I thought she would be free of him then, free to find someone new and worthy of her. But how wrong I was. Because now he’s killed her,’ she said in a hollow and ghastly voice, her eyes clouded with brimming tears. ‘She jilted him and he murdered her for it. Our baby, taken from us. Just like that. Thanks to that scum. How is that right? Tell me how that’s right.’

  The depth of her agony was so overwhelming that Ben found it hard to look at her. He asked, ‘Are we talking about Michel?’

  Hearing the name made her flush even more angrily. ‘Michel Yassa,’ she said, her face twisting as though it tortured her to utter it. ‘He’s the filthy Arab who killed my daughter.’ She pushed herself unsteadily from her armchair and teetered over to a framed picture that sat on a sideboard. Picking it up, she brought it over to show Ben. The photo was a few decades old and showed a man in French military uniform, who Ben presumed must be her husband. Madame Juneau croaked, ‘If poor Henri wasn’t so sick he would hunt him down like the animal he is and give him what he deserves. Henri was in the army, like his father. He shot an Algerian.’

  ‘Henri shot an Algerian?’

  ‘No, his father did, in the war over there in ’61. But Henri would have shot that bastard Yassa. So would I, if I could.’ Madame Juneau put down the picture and crumpled into the armchair, melting into floods of tears.

  Ben could have told her that Michel Yassa wasn’t the killer, but that would have been inviting too many questions about what else he knew. And he couldn’t discount the possibility that Michel Yassa was somehow mixed up in this. There could be more going on than Ben had realised.

  He waited a few moments for her tears to subside, then asked, ‘How did Romy and this Yassa meet?’

  She wiped her eyes and shrugged bitterly. ‘How on earth should I know? At some party or nightclub, I suppose. She just started mentioning him one day. We never asked, because we didn’t want to know. He’s just a deadbeat. A degenerate. Probably spends most of his time hanging out with other deadbeats and degenerates just like him. What does it matter? All I care about is that the police will be onto him now, and justice will be done.’

  ‘You said he doesn’t have a proper job. What does he do for money?’

  ‘He works part-time in that awful bar. Cleaning toilets, probably. Who would trust scum like that with any kind of responsibility? She was often there with him, drinking, dancing, God knows what. I told her a nice, respectable young lady doesn’t go to a place like that.’

  Ben’s memory flashed back to the picture on Romy’s phone that showed her and Michel standing outside the bar. ‘Le Geronimo?’

  Madame Juneau frowned. ‘Yes, that’s the name. I’d forgotten it, or else I would have told Detective Boucher.’

  ‘That’s not a problem. I’ll tell her myself. Did you happen to give her an address for Michel Yassa?’

  She shrugged and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t have it. But I told her I know he lives in one of those terrible housing projects in Saint-Denis. That’s where they all live. Like rats in a hole.’

  ‘Did Romy go to visit him there often?’

  ‘I told her it wasn’t safe there. No decent French girl in her right mind would go near that place. Those that do are always getting attacked and raped. But she wouldn’t listen to me. She never listened. Always going off to dangerous places, and we’d warn her against it, and off she’d go anyway. Last time it was Tripoli, in Libya.’

  Ben realised that she was talking about Romy’s recent field trip. This was the information he needed. ‘That would be for her job with the Institut Segal, yes?’

  ‘She went there with the director. Otherwise I’d have been terrified. You hear all these stories about what happens to white girls travelling in those countries.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Except nowhere is safe now, is it?’

  ‘Tell me more about her trip to Libya. Do you know the dates she went there and came back?’

  Madame Juneau didn’t need to think about it, because the memory was very recent. ‘It was only last week. She came home just a couple of days ago. Why are you asking? I don’t see the point.’

  So Romy had been in Tripoli when the video clip was taken, three days ago. Which also meant that the meeting between Segal and Nazim, which she’d secretly witnessed and caught on camera, had taken place there. Then Romy had returned home to Paris the following day, when she’d called Michel for the first time in weeks. If Ben told her mother that Romy’s last phone contact with her ex-boyfriend had been just that morning, not long before her death, it would make Michel look even more like a suspect in her eyes.

  Ben replied, ‘Just gathering information, Madame Juneau. One more thing. Did Romy speak Arabic?’

  She looked at him as though it were a strange question. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. She might have been learning it for her work. That’s not important, is it? All I care about is catching that filth. I thought the police were already hunting for him, instead of coming round here asking me more questions. I’ve been sitting here waiting for the phone to ring, telling me that they’ve got him. I hope he tries to run, so they shoot him in the legs before they drag him to prison. I want him to suffer for what he’s done.’

  Ben could see she was becoming more and more agitated. He stood up and said, ‘Madame Juneau, I’ve troubled you enough. Again, please accept my condolences for your loss, and my apologies for disturbing you at this difficult time.’

  ‘Just find the animal who murdered my little girl,’ she said, and started crying again.

  Ben touched her arm. ‘Make no mistake, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,’ he replied, and left.

  Chapter 18

  Ben drove fast away from Fontenay-sous-Bois, as relieved to have escaped from the pressure cooker of a mother’s grief as he was focused on what he had to do next.

  His imperative now was to track down Michel Yassa before the police did. If there was any connection between Yassa and Nazim al-Kassar, the former’s arrest for Romy’s murder would be certain to drive his accomplice deep underground. Ben had no idea what that connection might be. There probably wasn’t any. But if there was, he would find it. And if there wasn’t, it st
ill didn’t hurt to find out more. Why had Romy suddenly called him twice after weeks of no contact, the last time just minutes before she died? If the guy knew anything at all that could shed light on this thing, Ben wanted to know it too.

  He stopped for fuel, then pulled up in a layby near the filling station and left the motor running while he checked his phone. Still nothing from Keegan about Tyler Roth. No word from Thierry, either. But Ben didn’t have time to feel frustrated. He took out Romy’s phone and looked again at the photo of her and Michel outside the bar. Le Geronimo was a lead that Detective Valérie Boucher didn’t have, and with that he gained a tactical advantage over her.

  A quick web search using his own phone threw up the address of the bar, which turned out to be in the same area that Romy’s mother had said she thought Michel lived, Saint-Denis. Which meant the cops might have a rough idea where to find him, but no specific location to begin searching.

  Ben slammed the Alpina into gear and took off. Saint-Denis was to the north of Paris, about twenty-five minutes’ drive from where he was now, less if he put his foot down. He picked up the A3 Autoroute and stormed northwards, keeping a watchful eye out for traffic police, then hit the A1 and veered west towards his destination.

  As one of the most important historical centres of France, Saint-Denis was named after the great medieval basilica at its heart, whose tower Ben could see dominating the skyline as he approached. He was no historian, but he knew about the treasures that the cathedral housed, like the crown of Charlemagne and the relics of the third-century bishop who would go on to become the patron saint of Paris. The Basilica of Saint-Denis had been a place of pilgrimage through the Middle Ages, and home to the tombs of French royalty dating back to the sixth century, including some of its most notorious players like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Another of its famous incumbents was the Frankish king Charles Martel, ‘the Hammer’, who crushed the advance of the invasion force of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi at the Battle of Tours in 732.

  But for all its rich cultural heritage, Saint-Denis was far from being a popular tourist spot. Mention its name to most Parisians and the typical response was a frown or a sigh. The place’s reputation for crime and danger had been further tarnished by the terror attack that had claimed the lives of 130 victims in the nearby stadium a few years earlier. The surviving perpetrators of the atrocity had shot it out with the police at a Saint-Denis apartment building. All of which contributed sadly to the negative attitude taken by people like Romy Juneau’s mother against the whole area.

  Outside the cathedral the market square looked more like a souk than a European street market, filled with colour and bustle, and as Ben filtered through the crowded neighbourhood he could easily have believed he was in Marrakesh or Istanbul. A little further on stood social housing projects that might have appeared fresh and modern and optimistic back when they were first thrown up to accommodate the waves of immigrants coming in, but now they came over as sad and stained. He wondered if Michel Yassa lived in one of them.

  The Geronimo bar where Yassa hung out was just a couple more blocks away, on the corner of a cobbled street opposite a halal butcher’s shop. Around the side of the bar was a narrow alleyway choked with empty crates and wheelie bins. Ben parked the Alpina near the entrance to the alleyway and walked inside the bar.

  The bar’s interior was long and narrow, and not busy. The tall buildings opposite blocked out most of the light, so that what little of it filtered through the dirty windows made for a dim, murky ambiance. It had looked pretty basic in the photos on Romy’s phone, and wasn’t any better in real life. Not quite spit’n’sawdust, but not far off it.

  Ben’s plan was to scout the place, ask around, get talking to people and pretend to be someone who owed Michel Yassa money and had come to pay, in the hope that he’d be pointed in the right direction. The best place to start in such cases was generally the bar itself, where the lone barman was busy washing up glasses. Ben would buy a drink, pull up a bar stool and start the conversation by asking casually whether Michel was working today.

  But he never got that far, because luck was already with him. Glancing around the dim room Ben noticed a young dark-haired guy sitting by himself at a table near the back, near a doorway with a sign pointing towards the bathrooms. He was wearing faded jeans, white trainers and a G-Unit hoodie, and bore a striking resemblance to the fellow in Romy’s photos.

  Evidently, the police hadn’t caught up with him yet. Michel Yassa didn’t appear to be expecting them to. He showed no appearance of being a man on the run. In fact he was going nowhere at all, and clearly hadn’t moved for some time. He was slouching low on a red vinyl bench seat, apparently lost in a world of his own as he gazed at the bottle of beer in front of him with a vacant look that Ben guessed might have something to do with the five more empties on his table. It looked as if he’d bought them all at once and been working his way steadily through them.

  Yassa didn’t look as though he was planning on leaving any time soon, but Ben kept an eye on him as he went over to the bar and bought a single measure of a blended brand that was the only scotch Le Geronimo stocked. He carried his drink over to a table a distance away from Yassa’s and sat watching him. The barman didn’t seem to give a damn, so Ben lit up a Gauloise. Just like old times.

  Four minutes later, Michel Yassa hauled himself up from his seat and began making his way a little unsteadily towards the doorway leading towards the toilets. Ben set down his empty glass, stubbed his cigarette into it, stood and followed.

  By the time he reached the doorway, Yassa had disappeared through it. Beyond was a long, dingy corridor with a bare brick outer wall that he guessed ran parallel with the alleyway outside. The men’s toilets were off to the right. Ben entered and found Yassa at one of the urinals, standing with his back to him and one hand pressed against the tiled wall for support. He was weaving on his feet.

  Ben let him finish and get zipped up. Yassa turned to leave without bothering to wash his hands, and only then did he register Ben’s presence. He hesitated, then went to push past Ben towards the doorway.

  Ben said, ‘Michel.’

  Yassa stopped. ‘Do I know you?’ He blinked. Stared, confused at first. Then his bleary eyes focused into a look of terror, and the drunken haze receded like a gale force wind ripping into a blanket of North Sea fog. He backed away from Ben with his arms outstretched and his palms raised. ‘No! No! Please! Don’t kill me!’

  Ben had no idea why Michel Yassa thought he was going to kill him. But he worried that the guy was about to start yelling and screaming for help, which might draw all kinds of attention Ben didn’t want. This was meant to be a private conversation.

  So he knocked him out with a punch to the jaw, caught him as he fell, and bent low and scooped his unconscious body up over his shoulder. Back out in the corridor, he found a fire escape door with a panic bolt. As he’d guessed, it led outside to the alleyway. He could see the Alpina parked at the mouth of the alley.

  Ben carried Michel Yassa past the stacked crates and rows of bins, and out into the cobbled street. One or two people were around, but either they hadn’t noticed anything unusual or kidnapping was just daily routine in this neighbourhood. Ben opened up the car boot, dumped Michel Yassa inside, then slammed the lid, got behind the wheel and took off.

  Moments later, he passed an incoming fleet of police cars with lights and sirens going. The cavalry had finally arrived, and were headed towards the social housing buildings up the street. He watched them screech to a halt and clamber from their cars. A small but hard-looking female plain-clothes officer with shoulder-length fair hair jumped out of the lead vehicle, wearing an open jacket that showed the sidearm on her hip, and marched towards the building with a look of fierce determination. Detective Boucher, personally leading the troops to bring Romy Juneau’s killer to justice.

  Ben smiled to himself as he drove past them with Michel Yassa in the boot. ‘The early bird gets
the worm, Valérie.’

  Chapter 19

  When Nazim al-Kassar arrived at the Georges V, one of Paris’s most exclusive hotels, the venerable Ibrahim al-Rashid was sitting quietly on a sofa in his suite with several of his retinue around him, as well as his personal bodyguards and a number of other members of their group.

  Al-Rashid was surrounded by an aura of great authority and commanded the deepest of respect. Nobody knew exactly how old he was, but his long beard was as snowy white as his turban and the traditional thobe robe that draped around his tall, slender, slightly stooped frame. To his devotees, one of the many proofs of the man’s infinite wisdom was the fact that he had never been charged, or even questioned, in connection with any jihadist organisation or act. This was the ultimate demonstration of al-Taqiyya, the art of dissimulation, whereby the Qur’an provided detailed guidance on those circumstances under which the faithful could disguise their true ideology in order to deceive and protect themselves from the infidel. For nearly forty years al-Rashid had orchestrated his terror operations from behind a curtain of calculated secrecy, while maintaining the outward appearance of a saintly and humble man of peace. As a result he was able to travel freely around the world with no need for the aliases and false identities his soldiers required to stay one step ahead of the infidel intelligence services.

  One of the means by which he preserved his anonymity and freedom was the swift, unhesitant elimination of anyone he suspected even slightly of treachery. Another was his strict avoidance of any form of modern communications technology. He would have nothing to do with telephones, let alone texts or emails. All discussion was to be carried out face to face, and even then only in utmost secrecy.

  Nazim wasn’t armed, but let al-Rashid’s stern-faced bodyguards frisk him before he was allowed to approach. One of them swept him with a hand-held scanner to check for wires or microphones. Normally Nazim would not have submitted to such indignities, but he said nothing.