Knock 'Em Dead, page 2
‘Got no axe to grind!’ the boy announced. ‘No backs to mind!’
Paillaud dabbed his face with a handkerchief as he watched Caroline walk back and forth, her mobile against her ear. Unable to pick up what she was saying, his thoughts turned to his plans for the day. A disquieting thought struck him. The network of lines bit more deeply into his face as he thrust a hand into one inside pocket and then the other. He blew out his cheeks. Yes, of course he still had his wallet. He opened it. And yes, of course he still had the tickets for the train and for the exhibition. It couldn’t have been otherwise. He’d checked twice already since leaving home.
‘Done.’
Startled, Paillaud dropped the wallet. Trying to catch it, he succeeded only in knocking it under the table where it landed in a miniature explosion of dust, the tickets parachuting down after it. ‘You know, I did a comedy conjuring act at one time.’ He let a raised eyebrow make his point for him as he pushed back his chair.
‘Allow me.’ Caroline picked them up. ‘Ah, you’re going to the Brassaï show.’ She slipped the tickets back into the wallet and handed it over. ‘I’m going myself in a couple of weeks.’
‘Yes? I’ve always loved his photos. So sure-eyed.’ He planted the wallet firmly back in his pocket. ‘As I used to be sure-eyed, sure-handed, sure-footed... Now I’m not sure of anything much.’
She indicated his document. ‘Except this.’
‘Except that.’
She read it, eyes wide, until the final line.
‘Well?’
‘You realise what this will do to your standing in the community, monsieur?’
The idea amused him. ‘The oh-so-mighty community of La Crague-du-Var? So what?’
‘With respect, no one asked you to move back to the area.’
‘I was going to live out my days in Paris? You know what the winters there are like?’
‘Winters are milder still down here in Saint-Laurent.’
‘But this isn’t home, is it?’
‘I guess not.’ Caroline had just one question left. ‘Why now?’
Paillaud looked towards the station. ‘People say “I’ve got cancer,” don’t they? “I’ve got a bad heart.” Got this. Got that. I don’t. I say they’ve got me. But what they don’t know is I am going to have the last laugh.’ He turned to face her. ‘Not when it suits them but when it suits me.’
‘I see.’ Form dictated an expression of sympathy and Caroline thought about putting her hand on his. But she couldn’t, somehow. ‘Your life is your own, monsieur.’ At length, she picked up the document. ‘So this is what, really? Your way of..?’ She searched for an appropriate term.
‘It doesn’t matter what it is. Sign it.’ He looked deeply into her eyes and gave her a smile that would have broken the hearts of film-goers anywhere. ‘Please.’
‘If I don’t, you’ll find another notary, anyway.’ She signed and dated the document, and then slipped it into a zipped pocket in her daysack. ‘I’ll register it later today.’
‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’ He patted his pockets and fished out a cheque book. ‘I almost forgot.’
‘No, no. Please put that away. So when is your train?’
‘A few minutes.’ He indicated the cheque book. ‘Are you sure about your fee?’
‘Quite sure.’ She stood and, producing a more natural smile than before, offered her hand. ‘Enjoy the show, Ambroise.’
Looking into her eyes, he took her hand and kissed it. ‘I will,’ he said.
3
Directives from Divisional Command rarely brought good news. The one sitting on Captain Paul Darac’s desk bore the heading: “Re: Lieutenant Roland B. Granot.”
‘We have not taken this decision lightly, Captain.’
Darac glared at the handset, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘With respect, Commandant, you are not listening to what I’m saying. Granot’s worth as an officer is inestimable. His value to the Brigade Criminelle, to Commissaire Agnès Dantier, to me and to the other members of our team—’
‘You have your instructions.’
The line went dead. Darac slammed the handset into the cradle. Granot was due in five minutes. Five miserly minutes to conjure something positive. A plan was needed. Darac picked up the internal phone and called Vice Squad Captain Frankie Lejeune.
‘You are acting commissaire,’ Granot said, his moustachioed chops flushing a livid, lobster red. ‘Act like it!’
Darac absently ran a hand into his black wavy hair and kept it there as he slid the letter across the desk to Frankie. He tried to catch her eye but she seemed tuned to a different channel today.
‘Perhaps there’s a way around it,’ she said, the dark contralto register of her voice somehow giving credence to the idea.
‘And Agnès half-way to New Zealand! If she was here, there’d be a way.’ Granot sat back in his chair, folding his arms over the flabby bulwark of his belly. ‘She knows how to handle these arseholes.’ And then he spotted the tell-tale yellow paperclip fastening the note to the letter. His shaggy brows lowered. ‘Let me see that... “Paul,” ’ he read aloud, ‘ “It seems Divisional have finally rumbled my stalling tactics. I’ve been over it with the union, by the way. There’s nothing they can do.” ’ Granot looked up. ‘Thanks a bunch, comrades!’ He returned to the note. ‘ “Sorry, but you’ll just have to convince the big man to comply. Courage, Agnès.” ’ Granot crushed the note into a pellet and flicking it away, landed it flush in Darac’s empty espresso cup. ‘He shoots, he...’ Granot slumped back in his chair. ‘Who cares anymore?’
Frankie scanned the letter itself. ‘Theses targets are not unachievable, you know.’
‘What – lose twenty kilos? Get my blood pressure down “significantly”? Ditto blood sugar. Ditto cholesterol or else it’s “Thanks for everything, now bugger off.” All in six months?’
Darac’s hand was still in his hair. ‘Three months.’
‘Three? Impossible!’
Frankie shook her head. ‘If you make a concerted effort, you can do it. And think of the long-term benefits to your health. You could be in serious trouble one day if you don’t do something about it.’
‘You don’t want a stroke, do you?’ Darac said.
‘Thanks, maybe later.’ Granot shook his head. ‘Twenty-eight years a flic! Twenty-five of them in the Brigade Criminelle!’ He looked earnestly from one to the other. ‘I don’t want to be redeployed. I want to be out there on the street. With you and Bonbon, like always.’
‘Of course,’ Darac said.
‘Just wait and see what he says about this when he gets back from leave. He’ll be devastated!’
Bonbon would be contemptuous of the directive, Darac knew. But it wasn’t the way to go. He was all positive body language, suddenly. ‘Look, let’s hope you do beat this thing but just suppose for a moment you don’t and they wind up parking you behind a desk. It’s not so awful. Let’s face it, you’re not exactly the action hero type, anyway, are you?’
‘Whose side are you on?’
‘All I’m saying is that your forte is, and always has been, more cerebral than physical. When it comes to chasing paper, following money, finding the one figure or timing or... anything in a report that doesn’t add up, there’s no one to touch you. And you do all those things sitting at a desk. Usually. This could be more of an opportunity than a disaster.’
Granot examined his lovely new opportunity with all the wariness of a toddler presented with an unfamiliar plate of food. ‘Twenty kilos to lose!’ he said, shoving it firmly away. ‘Twenty! I’ll never do it.’
Darac leaned in to Frankie. ‘Listen, have you got any diet books or exercise DVDs you can...?’ Her soft green eyes hardened to jade, a look he had seen many times before but never directed at him.
‘You’re confident I do, it seems.’
Grasping his T-shirt, Darac felt the need to waft a little air around his torso. ‘And I know you know...’ he lowered his voice still further. ‘... what I think about that, too.’ He gave her a look. ‘Are you alright, Frankie?’
She shrugged. ‘Perfectly.’
Darac’s desk phone rang and he took the call. ‘Monsieur Frènes,’ he said, unable to mask the contempt he felt for the public prosecutor. ‘And what can we do for you?’
Frankie turned to Granot. ‘Look, there’s no alternative, is there? If you want things to go on as they are, you have to shape up and fast.’
‘So do you have any diet books and things?’ The words stuck in his craw but he got them out. ‘I need all the help I can get.’
‘That’s better. I may still have a couple somewhere. I’ll bring them in.’
Darac ended the call. ‘One for us Granot, by the sound of it.’
‘I can come along, can I? Not scared the car might tip over or anything?’
‘We’ll just have to risk it.’
‘Three months... Three!’
As they filed into the corridor, Darac moved in next to Frankie and put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Sure everything’s fine?’
‘Yes?’ she said, as if mystified by the question.
‘This isn’t like you.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘So where are we going?’ Granot said, lost in his own problems.
Darac withdrew his arm. ‘Saint-Laurent-du-Var station. Problem with a passenger on the 11.50 TGV.’
‘What sort of problem?’
‘The trying-to-get-on-it-while-it’s-going-flat-out sort of problem.’
‘Ah. The victim was pushed, obviously.’
‘According to the train driver, poor sod. There’s no sign of the perp.’
‘Witnesses? See – I may be on my way to the knacker’s yard but I still know the ropes.’
Hoping that Granot’s affection for self-pity might cool at some point over the next three months, Darac pressed on. ‘As yet, the driver is all we have. The Transport Police are talking to him at Gare Thiers. We’ll look in on him and then go off to Saint-Laurent. Pathology’s already there.’
‘Deanna?’
Darac shook his head. ‘She’s not back until Monday.’
‘Not Barrau?’
‘Off sick, thank God. It’ll be Map.’
‘So we’ve got no Agnès, Deanna, Bonbon or Barrau? There’s no bugger on, hardly.’
‘We are a bit – Darac was about to say “thin” but he stopped himself in time. ‘ – light.’ Brilliant. ‘At the moment.’
The elephant well and truly back in his room, Granot missed the faux pas. ‘Twenty kilos... And I only got Mark Cavendish in the Tour draw.’
‘I thought he was supposed to be good.’
‘As a sprinter, yes. Superb. But he’s not going to win the Tour overall, is he?’ Another shake of the head. ‘Twenty kilos and Cavendish. Who’d you draw, Frankie?’
‘What? Oh, can’t remember. Bonbon had never heard of him so...’ She shrugged, a characteristic gesture to which she added a curiously ambiguous smile. ‘No great loss, eh?’
‘Unlucky.’ He gave Darac a look. Clueless when it came to sport, his boss had previous when it came to drawing the favourite. ‘Chief? And don’t say Cadel Evans.’
‘I was going to say Bill Evans but that’s jazz talking.’
Once more, life had dealt Granot a bad hand. ‘You did draw Cadel Evans?’
‘Now that you mention it, yes. Funny name. You’d think I’d remember it.’
‘This is a black day for justice!’ They had reached Granot’s office. ‘I’ll just pick up a couple of pizzas and my walking frame and I’ll be right with you.’
Darac was too concerned with Frankie for a comeback. ‘No hurry.’ He turned to her. ‘Got a second?’
‘You could have told the man you’d miss him if he did have to go.’
‘Miss him? It would be little short of a disaster for us.’
‘Personally, I mean.’
‘I did, more or less. He knows that anyway.’
‘Really?’
He kept his eyes on Frankie as he called through the doorway. ‘Granot?’
‘What?’
‘I’d miss you if you had to go.’
‘I know you would, you arsehole.’
Darac blew out his cheeks. ‘It was tough going but I think that finally cleared the air.’
The routine seemed to do nothing for Frankie’s mood. ‘You wanted a word?’
‘Ye-es... You know the Quintet have got the Jazz Festival gig coming up in a couple of days? It’s a much bigger and better event this year. No more Cimiez. We’re in Jardin Albert now.’
‘Paul, you are literally wearing the T-shirt. And you’ve talked of little else for the past two months.’
Was that what this was about? Surely not. ‘We’re playing the Théâtre de Verdure stage. Anyway, I was wondering, just this once, if you’d like to come. As my guest, of course.’
‘Alright.’
‘And after our set, there’s this fabulous trio out of London and then finally... What? You don’t want the usual week to think about it and then say “Sorry, can’t”?’
‘No, I was thinking I should go along this time.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ He smiled but it faded almost immediately ‘And Christophe, too if he can.’ Say he’s out of town. ‘Or is he..?’
‘No, he’s around at the moment. I’ll ask him.’
‘OK.’ Darac smiled and, pursing his lips, gave an enigmatic nod. ‘Right.’ He nodded again, part of a dumb show intended to convey that he recognised something was amiss between them; that it needed putting right; and that he hoped they might start right away.
‘Back to Sepia Joe,’ she said, taking her leave.
‘The retro pornographer?’
‘The same.’
‘Lovely,’ he said to her retreating back. ‘See you later.’
Without turning, she gave a little wave and walked away down the corridor.
Granot was struggling into a fresh shirt as Darac stepped into his office. ‘Something’s on Frankie’s mind. She’s not herself.’
Granot checked his desktop screen and logged off. ‘It’s not surprising, is it?’
‘It’s not?’
‘She’s worried about me, obviously.’
‘That’s... probably it.’
‘And I tell you what, the news will kill Flak. She really looks up to me, that girl.’
At the desk, Duty Officer Charvet had a word for Granot as they signed out of the building.
‘Blueberries. That’s what you want. They’re a superfood.’
‘That and steak frites,’ Granot said, slipping on his shades. ‘Especially if you throw in a few Chimay Blue Tops. Or Duvel Tripels.’
Charvet turned to Darac. ‘It may be hopeless,’ he said.
4
Mayor Hervé Montand was lying face-down on the table, his head half-submerged in a horse collar-shaped cut-out. Attending him was a bright-eyed, slightly built woman of about 30, wearing navy blue trousers and a crisp white tunic. Her ID badge read: Jodie Foucault, Masseuse. Montand was her eighth patient of the morning.
‘Here’s the tight one,’ she said. ‘This may hurt a little.’
Jodie may have looked ill-equipped for such physically demanding work but her short, lean frame was deceptive, the legacy of a youth spent in top-level gymnastics. The crescent-shaped scar on her cheek was not the only souvenir of the years she’d spent defying gravity in ever more impossible ways – there was steel in Jodie’s sinews still. Her oil-filmed hands began to work and then relax the muscle, rolling it out into the surrounding tissue. ‘Knead... Relax... And roll...’ Her tone was as soothing as if she were lulling a child to sleep. ‘There, how does that feel?’
Montand replied in a series of breathless blurts. ‘If I were a betting man... I’d hazard a good few euros... that you bake the finest baguettes...’ He flinched ‘... in all of La Crague.’
‘All of La Crague?’ Jodie grinned, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. ‘Fame at last.’
‘A little more respect... If you don’t mind!’
Jodie squeezed harder.
‘Argh!’
‘Easing down now... Anyway, I’m not even the best baker in this surgery. Or at Centre Sicotte, come to that. Oh, and if you take a nice deep breath before you speak, you’ll find it more comfortable.’
He made a perfunctory croaking sound in his throat. Jodie felt the soft pink flesh of his back rising as he filled his lungs.
‘How many sessions might I need?’
‘Let’s assess things again after three. But what would help you in the long run is to build up the muscles around the strained ones.’
Another breath. ‘It’s not easy to find the time. With all my mayoral duties.’
‘And what has the mayor been up to this morning? To do this to himself?’
‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘That I recall.’
‘You don’t know how you did it?’
‘Mademoiselle Foucault... I am not in the habit of telling falsehoods.’
Ten years old again, Jodie stuck out her tongue. The back of the mayor’s head, as bald and round as a toilet bowl, seemed to take no offence. ‘I can tell you how you did it.’ She felt his muscles tense all the more. ‘Easing down once again... if you’re interested?’
‘Yes, of course I’m interested.’
‘Injuries to the latissimus dorsi typically occur as a result of pulling, dragging or shoving a weight. Injury is especially likely if the patient is off-balance or twisting at the time.’
More tension still. Jodie took her kneading up a notch.
‘Now I think about it, I did... move some documents around... in the council chamber.’
‘They must have been heavy old documents.’
‘You recommend building up the muscles?’ Montand said, moving on.
