Knock 'Em Dead, page 20
‘I realise it must be important, or you wouldn’t be...’ Erica’s delicate features took on a sharper quality. ‘Hmm.’
Bonbon shared a look with Darac. ‘She’s cracked it already.’
‘I’m promising nothing.’ She drew down the corners of her fine-lined mouth. ‘But there may be a way. Let me sleep on it.’
‘You see?’ Darac said. ‘Miracles.’
‘I really do mean it when I say I’m promising nothing.’
‘Well I’m going to promise you something.’
‘Sorry, we forensic analysts aren’t allowed to accept presents.’
‘This isn’t really a present, just a thank-you. A way of saying sorry for wasting your time with Vaselle’s phone call.’ He glanced at the caddy. ‘And for landing that on you.’
Erica leaned back against her bench. ‘It hasn’t anything to do with what’s in the other evidence cases, has it?’
Bonbon gave an involuntary laugh. ‘As if we would.’
‘No, no, it’s just papers and so on. Homework for us.’
She brightened. ‘Alright, then. Go on.’
A tension-building beat.
‘How would you like a front-row seat for the Quintet’s Jazz Festival gig in a couple of days?’ He smiled as if he’d just offered her a free ticket for a round the world trip. ‘There are two other outfits playing, also.’
‘Uh-huh. And the thank-you part of this is?’
29
Tucked between a gallery and a gift shop at the intersection of two busy ruelles, Chez Pepe had been one of Darac and Angeline’s favourite eateries in the old town of Nice, a quarter known as the Babazouk. She had wandered in and out of his thoughts all day and as he passed the place on his way home, Darac glanced at “their” table by the window. A woman was sitting there alone. A pretty elfin brunette wearing a strappy black dress. A woman who could have been Angeline herself. She smiled and, as if turned to stone, Darac stopped dead. Angeline just happened to be there? Or had she been waiting for him? An unopened bottle of red sat on the table. She looked at it, and then at him.
You’re over her.
She turned the label towards him. Their favourite, he guessed. He didn’t look.
After four years, she dumped you by text.
She raised her brows. An invitation.
“Make love, hit someone, or play the guitar.” That’s how she thought you dealt with every problem you couldn’t immediately solve.
Her eyes were dancing.
And think of Frankie. A true soul mate. A woman of true heart and wit. A true beauty.
Angeline pursed her lips.
And yet...
He managed a smile but, indicating the case he was carrying, he tapped his watch, mouthed “work – got to go” and walked away. Walked away without a backward glance. But when he was out of sight, he stood for some moments looking back, looking around, wondering what the hell he was doing.
Are you hoping she’ll come after you? After everything that happened then and is happening now?
He moved on, any thoughts of continuing the debate scotched when his mobile rang. Unless the caller were Angeline herself, of course. Steeling himself, he checked the ID.
‘Granot?’
‘I know it’s late but this is important. I’m working through Caroline’s diary. She’s supposed to have made or agreed to a meeting in her office at 7 o’clock with the odious Mayor Hervé Montand, right?’
‘Go on.’
‘Accordingly, she has entered a name in that slot. Only thing is – it’s not Montand’s.’
Darac ran a hand into his hair. ‘Who, then?’
‘Guess.’
30
It was the sort of morning that had attracted artists and tourists to the Côte d’Azur before there even was a Côte d’Azur; a morning of such vibrantly intense light that the atmosphere seemed to thrum. To a couple of sleep-deprived officers heading along the busy A8 autoroute, the effect was less appealing. On the opposite carriageway, vehicles strafed by the low sun flashed past like glitter balls in an endless strobe-lit parade.
‘We played a jazz festival in the U.K. a couple of years ago,’ Darac said, squinting behind his shades. ‘Marsden. It was great. Great and grey. Ever been to the north of England, Bonbon?’
‘North London’s as far as I’ve got. Wembley, to be exact.’
‘Was it grey? Flat? Dull?’
‘As ditch water.’
‘How much would you give to be there right now?’
Bonbon closed his aching eyes. ‘Think of a number and double it.’
With the diary entry bombshell vying with Frankie and Angeline for headspace, Darac had had difficulty concentrating as he’d worked on into the night. It was almost 2 o’clock before he finally went to bed and to unwind, he decided to read just a few more pages of Ambroise Paillaud’s autobiography. It was a mistake, the narrative sweeping him along until he’d finished it.
If his compelling account were to be believed, Paillaud’s life story was a true rags-to-riches affair, his talent to amuse evolving as an antidote to the deprivations of a chaotic childhood. His “family”, loose around the edges but tight-knit inside, had always loved his antics but taken them for granted. He was just “the funny one”, a rubber ball of a kid who “always bounced back”. Harbouring no showbiz aspirations, it was almost comically apt that the future Prince of the Pratfall’s first great stunt was to “stumble into the profession itself”. But for an off-duty studio executive spotting him larking about on a Paris street, cinema fans the world over may never have got to see anything of Ambroise Paillaud. The trajectory of his career – obscurity, rise, peak, decline, obscurity – was, Darac recognised, a familiar one. But if Paillaud had slipped out of the public eye in his latter decades, the star maintained that it was only because he had wanted it that way. As he finished the final chapter, Darac couldn’t shake the conclusion that the rubber ball of a boy who had always bounced back was still bouncing back even in death.
After finally turning out the light, Darac had been able to snatch only a couple of hours’ sleep. He had spent most of it having dreams and nightmares. In one episode, he and Frankie, dressed in clothes made of shredded paper, had been charged with unspecified offences and put on trial. Perhaps it was inevitable that Angeline had appeared, acting as both judge and jury. Darac had been convinced that the misunderstanding could be straightened out if he and Frankie were allowed to speak in their defence. But every attempt to do so resulted in a part of their clothing disappearing, and with it, the flesh underneath. It wasn’t until the pair of them were almost invisible that the familiar chasm of oblivion opened up beneath him and he fell down, down, down.
He had awoken with a great wrenching shudder. As he came round, he felt better about the situation with Frankie until he realised he was comparing it only with his nightmare. He was desperate to talk to her. Just the two of them. And what had Angeline been up to at Chez Pepe? If she had wanted to speak to him, why hadn’t she just called? She still might. Angeline never gave up easily on anything she wanted.
After showering and dressing, he’d needed an espresso to kick-start his day. Once again, it had given him a slight flickering sensation in his eyelids. Worse, his heart had spent a couple of bars beating out of time with itself. But he’d be alright, wouldn’t he? The Daracs were a long-lived family. On his father’s side, anyway. When things had calmed down at work, he resolved to discuss the condition with Deanna Bianchi. As a renowned medic, she would give him as much detail as he wanted; as an enthusiastic smoker, she would advise him what to do about it without delivering the sort of improving lecture his own doctor was wont to do.
The sun was still blinding.
‘This may just be a first,’ Bonbon said, his Perpignan accent lacking its usual percussive energy.
‘Because you haven’t sucked a single sweet since we set off?’ A delay on the feed from Darac’s brain to his lips gave him an involuntary beat. ‘How’s that for alliteration?’
‘Super.’ Bonbon gave the CD player a tap. ‘I was thinking you hadn’t given Sonny Rollins yet one more shot at turning me on to jazz. Or Louis Armstrong. Or that Ornate fellow.’
‘Ornette, Bonbon. Ornette Coleman.’
‘Him too.’
‘So how come you didn’t get a decent night’s sleep?’
‘A case full of papers doesn’t make the best bedtime story. But I was finally just going off when cousin Guim came back with his girlfriend. And two new mates. Who rang three others. Six of them turned up in the end. I threatened to arrest them.’
‘And?’
‘They’re probably...’ Bonbon yawned. ‘...still partying.’
Darac came off the autoroute near the construction site for the Allianz Riviera stadium and headed for what he still referred to as the “new” bridge over the Var at Les Baraques. As if it were a requirement, he waited until they had crossed it before collecting his thoughts on the case. Several details puzzled him and he went over them one after the other, returning to the most pressing only as he began to skirt the racquet-shaped grounds of Centre Sicotte. By the time he made the turn on to the narrow shelf of La Crague itself, he’d formed a few tentative theories.
‘It looks almost strange like this, doesn’t it?’ Darac couldn’t recall seeing the village bathed in sunlight before. Not up close, anyway. It was like encountering a taciturn neighbour wearing fancy-dress. ‘You awake?’
Bonbon gave his head a clearing shake and sat up. ‘Am I a what?’
‘Wake.’
‘Definitely. Ready for anything.’
They pulled up outside a neatly kept villa washed in Roman red.
‘Good. Anything is just what we may need.’
31
‘Jodie?’ Martina Sicotte’s expression managed to temper concern with reproof. ‘I didn’t expect you to work today.’ Tossing her pen on to her desk, she rose and enveloped Jodie’s slight frame in her arms. ‘Sonia has cancelled your morning appointments.’
‘I’ve just uncancelled them,’ she said across Martina’s broad chest. ‘I need to work.’
‘Caroline has not vanished,’ a voice intoned behind her. ‘She has merely moved on to a different plane.’
‘Thank you, Deepak,’ Martina said, holding on tighter still to Jodie. ‘Not now’. She gave him the hard eye. ‘OK?’
‘As you wish.’ He put his hand on Jodie’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be in the Pilates room if you need to talk. Stretching.’
‘You can stretch yourself right up your arse for all I care, Denis.’
Jodie’s use of Deepak’s true given name hastened the man’s exit.
‘He means well,’ Martina said, finally releasing Jodie as the door closed.
‘Does he?’
‘He believes all the wishy-washy crap, trust me.’ She looked into Jodie’s weary eyes. ‘But forget him. Let’s us talk. Girl to girl.’
‘No – thank you. But I do need to say something.’
‘Yes?’
Jodie raised her eyebrows, chasing a line as straight as a balance beam in her forehead. ‘Caroline wasn’t just a client.’
‘I know. She’d become a good friend.’
‘She wasn’t just a good friend.’
Sympathy giving way to surprise, Martina sat back against the edge of her desk. ‘Ah, I had no idea.’
‘No idea that I’m a lesbian? Why should you? My sexual preference is no one’s business but my own. My own and my lover’s.’
Martina’s face hardened. ‘So why are you telling me now?’
‘Because it may come out anyway, and I wanted to stress that I haven’t abused my position here. I’ve never once...’ The beam bit more deeply into her forehead as she searched for the term. ‘... preyed on a client. Clothed or unclothed. And it certainly didn’t happen that way with Caro.’
‘I’m sure it didn’t.’ Martina’s lips widened into a smile; her eyes remained cool. ‘But thanks for the reassurance. My business motto may be “Do whatever makes the punters happy”, but we also have a duty of care, haven’t we? Even Deepak knows that.’ The smile disappeared. ‘And if he ever did cross the line, make no mistake, I would fire him immediately.’
Jodie returned Martina’s look. ‘Yes? I’m glad to hear that.’
Martina stood, taking Jodie’s hands. ‘Now I know what Caroline meant to you, I’m even more certain you should go home.’
A knock at the door.
Martina frowned in irritation. ‘Come in.’
An outsized figure wearing an antique tracksuit appeared in the doorway.
‘Ah, Lieutenant,’ Jodie said. ‘I’ll be right with you.’
32
‘Go through to the kitchen.’
In the daylight, the livid whorls and swirls of Arnaud Zep’s face seemed even more Van Gogh-like to Darac.
‘Coffee, gentlemen? I’m test driving a chocolaty little Costa Rican number at the moment. Cartago farmers collective.’ He nodded. ‘Promising. ’
Darac would have given anything for a decent espresso at that moment. Or any espresso. A single, even. A thimbleful. A dry bean to crunch between his teeth. At his shoulder, Bonbon gave him a curiously questioning look.
‘Not interested,’ Darac said, aware Zep was testing him. ‘But my lieutenant—’
‘Me neither. We’re here on business.’
‘Not interested was the right answer, Captain.’ Zep followed them along the hall. ‘A power juice, perhaps?’
‘Pass.’
‘Lieutenant?’
‘Ditto.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Whatever power juice is.’
The kitchen was all white planar surfaces. Except for the bike sitting wheels-up on the tiled floor and a basket of very bio-looking vegetables, it had the appearance of a lab, a place for scientific experiment rather than preparing meals.
‘Nice machine,’ Bonbon said, indicating the bike. ‘Admired it last night. Expensive?’
‘It’s worth more than any car I’ve owned, put it that way.’ Righting the bike, Zep wheeled it out of the way and gestured them to sit at the table. They remained standing. ‘Could we be reasonably quick? I’m due at the surgery in twenty minutes. Appointments.’
‘Are you cycling to work?’ Zep was wearing chinos and a blue, short-sleeved shirt. ‘Or isn’t this a training day?’
‘Every day is a training day, Captain. No, as you see, I’m not dressed for it. I have kit stationed at the surgery.’
‘And the bike?’ Bonbon said. ‘How does that get there?’
‘I have a roof rack on my car.’
Bonbon, looking fully awake at last, smiled his foxy smile. ‘I see. Handy. ’
‘Indeed.’ Zep’s eyes narrowed. ‘Didn’t you spot it? It’s the grey Ford Focus parked outside.’
‘There are several cars parked outside. Didn’t notice it, particularly.’
‘Are you sure about that juice? I could up the carotene. Good for vision.’
‘I’ll muddle through, thanks.’ Bonbon grinned. ‘As always.’
Darac judged that now was the moment. ‘So you have appointments this morning, Doctor. Last evening, Caroline Rosay made an appointment of a different kind, didn’t she? With Hervé Montand, 7 o’clock.’
‘So I believe, yes.’
Darac brandished a sheet of A4. ‘A photocopy of the appropriate page from her diary. How do you explain this?’
Zep glanced casually at the page but then froze. ‘I... don’t understand.’
‘You were very selective in what you told us, yesterday. I warned you about it and you swore you had revealed everything.’ Darac eyeballed the man. ‘Didn’t you.’
‘Yes and I assure you I did.’ He re-examined the entry. ‘I can’t explain this. I made no appointment with her nor vice versa. My 7 o’clock, as I think you know, was with Kerthus. A home visit.’
‘Then why did the mademoiselle write your name into that slot in her diary and not Montand’s?’
‘I don’t know. If I remember correctly, he said she had phoned him to make the appointment. Why would he say that if she hadn’t?’
Darac was nursing a theory about it but he kept it to himself. ‘I have to tell you that we’re checking Mademoiselle Rosay’s landline phone, computer and mobile records.’
Zep produced a peculiarly tight-lipped smile. ‘Good because it will establish that we haven’t communicated in... it must be months. Last year some time, I think.’
Once again, Darac had another theory. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Feel free to examine my records if you wish. Including for phones at the surgery. I hereby give permission.’ He slipped his mobile out of his trouser pocket. ‘And by all means check this in the meantime, if you can be quick about it. I need it for work.’ He selected a page. ‘Go into emails and texts as well, if you like. Naturally, I would appreciate it if you refrained from reading the messages themselves. Inevitably, some of them are medically sensitive.’ He handed the mobile to Bonbon. ‘It is the only one I have, by the way. You can check that out, too.’
As Darac continued, Bonbon began cross-checking Caroline’s numbers against Zep’s call log. Dead end. He then delved into the wider picture; the electronic back story of the man’s last several days. It was some moments before he handed the device back. ‘As far as this goes, it checks out, Doctor.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You have computers, laptops?’ Darac said, pointlessly making a conscious effort to keep his eyelids still. ‘Here and at the surgery?’
‘Of course. And as long as our work and our patients’ confidentiality is in no way compromised, everything can be made available to you.’
‘I’ll send someone over.’
