Knock 'Em Dead, page 34
63
Directives from Divisional Command rarely brought good news. The one sitting on Darac’s desk bore the heading: “Re: Lieutenant Roland B. Granot, award of the Police Medal of Honour; & Re: Technician Principal Erica N. Lamarthe, award of the Edmond Locard Medal.”
‘Agnès will be back for the ceremonies,’ Darac said. ‘Perfect, huh?’
Erica was peering at herself in a hand mirror, attempting to gather up her fine blond hair. ‘Can’t wait to see her. Think I’d suit a bun?’
‘No.’ Flaco shook her head. ‘Loose on the shoulders is your look.’
‘Right.’ Erica made a moue and let the remaining strands fall free. And then her gaze fell on Flaco’s cornrows. ‘Love those. How long does it take?’
‘A couple of hundred thousand years.’
‘Ah.’
‘Loose on the shoulders!’
‘Having Agnès there will be the cherry on the cake,’ Granot said. ‘And not glacé, either. The genuine article.’
‘Those from Ceret are by far the best but the season’s finished,’ Bonbon said, helpfully. ‘The Monts de Venasques are still around. And the cake itself?’
‘A croque-en-bouche, obviously. A ten-tier tower of heaven. That shall be my reward for hitting my health targets.’
Perand gave him a look. ‘Our reward, you mean. They’re supposed to serve about fifty people.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Could we stop the cake talk?’ Darac said. ‘I still feel queasy from swallowing a diving pool.’
A look of splendid self-satisfaction softened Granot’s chops. ‘So – the Police Medal of Honour. And for valour. In the field.’ He gave a circumspect nod. ‘Not bad for someone who isn’t the action hero type. More a desk jockey. A paper chaser.’ His brow lowered quizzically. ‘Who was it who called me that?’
Darac went to his Gaggia machine. ‘Just because you look like a walrus, how was I to know you could swim like one? Thanks for rescuing Jodie first, by the way.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘She was unconscious,’ Perand said, looking half asleep himself. ‘You know what I find incredible? After all the amazing stuff she did to get to Zep, she then blew the easy bit.’
Granot bristled. ‘Yes, thank you, Perand. Thank God she didn’t succeed. Arresting her for murder? An appalling thought.’
‘It was definitely Bad Caroline, wasn’t it?’ Bonbon shook his tawny head. ‘Bent as they come.’
‘Jodie still can’t believe it.’ Granot gave a sad little smile. ‘She even feels a little hurt that Caroline hadn’t told her what she had been up to all that time, I think.’
Perand looked unconvinced. ‘She didn’t come out with that in her interview yesterday afternoon.’
‘Nevertheless.’
Erica turned to Granot. ‘I know what Caroline had on Zep. What about Vaselle?’
‘Property swindle. When I compared the deeds to the plans of his Ensoleillé development in Cagnes, I discovered he’d shaved enough off each unit to build an extra bungalow on the site. Caroline discovered it too – she handled the sale.’
‘I see. Deepak Golou or whatever he’s called?’
‘We can’t find any documentary evidence but Jodie suspects she may have caught him having sex with an underage girl at the Centre. The bastard. Caroline probably had a photo of it somewhere.’ Granot gave Darac a look. ‘When do we expect the DNA result on Paillaud/Férion?’
‘Later today. Who’s for coffee?’ A chorus of voices answered. ‘So that’s... one, two, three singles, a double and a noisette for you Erica. Flak – nothing? Right.’
Bonbon took a paper bag from his pocket. ‘And what goes better with a decent espresso than a chocolate chair-o-plane? Help yourselves.’
Flaco took one and handed them on. ‘Commissaire Dantier always says that in any contest...’ Her lips stopped moving, running aground on a sandbank of mush.
Measuring out beans at the Gaggia, Darac couldn’t resist a smile. Flaco talking with her mouth full? Unheard-of nonchalance. ‘Yes, Flak?’
‘Sorry – these chocolates are chewy. Yes, she says that in any contest, mistakes are inevitable and the winner is the one who makes the fewest.’
Perand produced one of his trademark half-sneer, half-grins. ‘Zep made plenty, although making it look as if he was tethered to Jodie on the diving board – that was clever.’
‘He wasn’t tethered to her, Paul?’ Erica said.
‘No, he was just holding his end of the tape. He yanked it to move her foot which he knew would alarm me. Then when he stood feigning helplessness as he pretended to disentangle himself, I rushed forward. He suckered me, basically.’
Perand was still grinning. ‘The mistake he made then was then missing your neck with the syringe he was holding behind his back.’
‘Thanks for the thought.’
Perand turned to Erica. ‘You wouldn’t think that injecting caffeine into someone could kill them, would you?’
‘If you had no knowledge of biochemistry, you wouldn’t.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll make yours a quadruple, if you like, Perand.’
As he began grinding the beans, Darac retired into his own thoughts. For him, among the more remarkable aspects of the case was the extent to which the mistakes he and the team made had worked for them. In showing Jodie photocopied pages from Caroline’s diary, Granot had unwittingly allowed her to see something she shouldn’t – Zep’s diary entry in the slot Caroline had reserved, though tellingly not recorded, for Hervé Montand. Encountering the good doctor’s handwriting virtually every day and recognising the sort of sticky, threadbare ink line his job-lot surgery ballpoints made, Jodie realised immediately that it was Zep himself who had written his name in that slot, saw how it incriminated Montand and diverted suspicion away from himself. Pondering why and when he had done that, she could come to only one conclusion.
Granot had also told Jodie something he shouldn’t – the names of the testators of the three missing wills whom Jodie had known as patients. In her subsequent interview, she recounted that in hours of chat on the massage table, none had ever given the slightest indication of an interest in the welfare of African children, nor of anyone else. It had always struck her as strange, therefore, that their names appeared on a list of benefactors to Zep’s eponymous clinic; a list reproduced on a charity T-shirt, one of many such garments Jodie had bought over the years. And then, after her workout with Granot, there he was telling her that the trio’s wills were missing from Caroline’s files. Again, like a good detective, she put these things together and arrived at an inescapable conclusion. Like a bad detective, she had kept that conclusion to herself.
Assessing that Zep would be at his most vulnerable in the swimming pool, her plan had been to confront him just as he climbed out but he had caught sight of her when the cradle descended and was waiting on the diving platform. Brilliant and brave though her performance had been, she had risked her neck for nothing, a serious misjudgement which had almost cost her and Darac their lives.
As with some jazzers Darac knew, Zep’s own misjudgements resulted from overdoing things when he should have been underplaying them and vice versa. Partially erasing the end-of-month dots in Caroline’s diary was a case in point. In his interrogation, Zep recalled that he had no sooner started to remove them when he heard sounds from outside – sounds, the team now believed, made by Vaselle – and abandoned the idea. Erasing all the dots, or better still, leaving them all extant, would have worked better for him; as would leaving the 7 pm appointment slot empty instead of tricking up an entry to further incriminate Montand. And as Darac had told Zep when stalling for time at the pool, all he achieved by removing the wills of Blé, Martot and Colle was to draw the team’s attention to them.
Not taking other matters far enough had cost him more dearly still. Having delivered his ultimatum on the diving platform, he should then have waited until Darac was clear of his automatic, picked it up and shot him. Armed and alone, he might well have made good his escape.
Darac hadn’t been slow to recognise that he himself had made mistakes. In his whole career, few had had such a fortuitous outcome as his decision to enter the swimming pool building alone. He had had no idea of the life and death struggle going on inside and by the book, he should have waited for Granot to join him. If he had, they would have found Jodie dead.
Darac’s mobile rang. Ormans’s number.
‘Where are you?
‘My office. Is everything OK?’’
‘Go into the squad room and turn on the TV.’
‘What?’
‘Put it on Télé Matin. Or any news channel. Now!’
‘Squad room, everyone!’
The picture faded in. A stack of trays. Monsieur La Chute about to stride into the Seine. ‘It’s the Coming, Monsieur! photo,’ Darac said.
The camera reframed, lingering on a handwritten signature.
‘And it’s the original Brassaï.’
The camera pulled back. The photograph was hanging in an alcove over a writing desk. Panning now. A living room. Quite large. Untidy. A chaise longue. Doors. Posters. Play bills. More framed photos. A low table. Then, the familiar face of the TM interviewer, speaking. Now a two-shot. The interviewee was Ambroise Paillaud.
‘They’re running an old interview.’ Perand yawned. ‘So?’
Darac’s heart jumped. ‘No, it isn’t. Look at the ticker.’
BREAKING: AMBROISE PAILLAUD ALIVE PACT WITH GHOST-WRITER MAURICE FÉRION TRUST FUND GIFTS MILLIONS TO LA CRAGUE-DU-VAR STRINGENT CONDITIONS APPLY BREAKING: AMBROISE PAILLAUD ALIVE PACT WITH GHOST-WRITER MAURICE FÉRION...
Gasps in the squad room. Then uproar.
‘Hey, hey!’ Darac called out. ‘Listen.’
‘Monsieur Paillaud, commentators are already referring to this affair as Monsieur La Chute’s last laugh.’
‘Last laugh? No, I hope there’ll be many more to come. I’m particularly looking forward to the biopic. Quite a twist for the third act, my brother Maurice and I have given them, haven’t we? And I can’t wait for next May. Cannes should be a real hoot. I had thought it would be more fun to attend as Maurice but I’m now thinking it will be even more special to appear as myself.’
‘Granot? Chief? You were right!’ Bonbon said, lapping it up. ‘The bugger!’
‘Shouldn’t you be contrite? You and Monsieur Férion have perpetrated a hoax on such a scale—’
‘A hoax implies a lack of serious intent. Our intention was deadly serious.’
‘In the case of murdered notary public, Mademoiselle Caroline Rosay, particularly so.’
‘In all our years of planning, it never occurred to Maurice and me that Mademoiselle Rosay was anything other than honest. If it had, we would have gone to a different notary. Ultimately, it was the fact that the mademoiselle was a blackmailer that got her killed.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Granot said.
‘Nevertheless, in his confession, Doctor Arnaud Zep stated that he would not have murdered Mademoiselle Rosay if you hadn’t presented her with a new will and then apparently taken your own life just minutes later.’
‘So to spell it out, Zep used my will as a cover, a smokescreen he thought the police, like an entire troupe of Monsieur La Chutes, were bound to stumble blindly through to the wrong conclusion...’
Erica grinned. ‘I love that connection.’
‘... He thought, “No one will suspect me – they’ll suspect the beneficiaries named in the previous will.” You think that makes me responsible for the murder of a blackmailer?’
‘I didn’t say that. But what about the question of your own motives, here? Are you not laughing at the expense of your home village, at the police, the judiciary, and your millions of fans throughout the world?’
‘One can only laugh at the laughable – is that not true? People such as the public prosecutor in charge of this investigation. A pompous buffoon if ever there was one...’
Laughter.
‘Shhh!’
‘... Nevertheless, like the majority of people in our country, I generally fear rather than revere the police.’
‘Too right.’ Perand nodded, a tough guy, suddenly. ‘But piss off.’
‘But I have come to have a grudging respect for Captain Paul Darac and his team in Nice...’
Cheers. Fist pumps. Desk slaps.
‘Shhhhh!’
‘Yes, they did stumble blindly through the smokescreen at first. But unlike Monsieur La Chute, they didn’t fall over at the end.’ Paillaud looked into the camera and smiled. ‘Sorry for stealing your thunder by coming clean, ladies and gentlemen, but I knew that despite my brilliant performance, you were about to work out the whole thing. Just a couple of missteps on my part were all you needed. Chapeau! But I’m sure you...’
Erica could scarcely contain herself. ‘He’s talking to us!’
‘Shhh!’
‘And this...’ Paillaud swept an arm across the scene. ‘... plays much better for me than being bundled into the back of a police car, don’t you think?’
‘That, my friend,’ Granot said. ‘Is coming anyway.’
‘How about this guy?’ Bonbon was wide eyed. ‘I love him. Can’t help it.’
‘Shhh!’
The interviewer was beginning to look impatient. ‘Monsieur, if I may—’
Paillaud sailed on. ‘Good girl, that Wanda. Very quick with my glass at the bar. If you’re wondering how Maurice and I worked it at the station, he was waiting for me in the toilet at La Poche. First he passed on a note about his stay. Then we swapped clothes. I gave him my toupée and my blessing. We hugged. We wept. And then off he went as me. I came out as him. The boy at the bar didn’t suspect a thing, as we knew he wouldn’t. And Monsieur Vaselle? About a week before, I’d filched the phone on which I later summoned him to the station. Slipped it right out of a teenager’s pocket while asking him for directions. Were Maurice and I hoping Vaselle would lose his temper with the man he thought was me and do something he shouldn’t? That was up to him, wasn’t it? Just as it was up to Caroline Rosay to do her duty as a notary. By the way, Maurice used to throw himself around almost as much as the future Monsieur La Chute when we were boys. He just didn’t do it for laughs as I did. And I owe it to him to say that he performed his final leap much better in rehearsal. A back garden wall is obviously a poor substitute for a railway station platform. Anyway, I’ve written you a letter, Captain. Should receive it tomorrow.’
‘Wonder if he signed it,’ Perand said.
‘Shhh!’
The interviewer had finally wrested back control. ‘If we could continue? I’m sure officers from the local commissariat here in Paris will be with us very shortly.’
Paillaud tossed his toupée aside. ‘There. Now they won’t recognise me. Yes, we were discussing the question of respect. How worthy of it is La Crague’s Mayor Hervé Montand, would you say? How much is he entitled to?’
Ignoring the question, the interviewer held up a wad of A4 pages. ‘This is a copy of Monsieur Férion’s trust fund holdings, a sum which will be made exclusively available to the commune of La Crague-du-Var, even if said mayor remains in office and agrees to your various provisos. This document was received here at Télé Matin at precisely the same moment broadcasters and print media throughout France received theirs. Quite a publicity coup.’
‘One might almost say “stunt”, if it weren’t in such poor taste.’
‘Indeed. We are sitting in the modest apartment Monsieur Férion owned for the past thirty-eight years. Although the trust fund is vast, he lived simply. Explain that, monsieur’.
Perand jumped in. ‘It’s a chunk of Paillaud’s own money, you fuckwit! A Plan B in case the will shtick didn’t work for some reason – like people spotting Paillaud wasn’t dead.’
‘Shhh!’ Erica clicked her tongue. ‘I missed the reply.’
Bonbon leaned into her. ‘I think that’s what Paillaud said, more or less.’
The interviewer continued. ‘Monsieur Hervé Montand, the mayor of La Crague, is unavailable for comment at the moment...’
‘I’ll bet he is,’ Darac said.
Granot punched the air. ‘Jodie for mayor!’
‘Shhhh!’
‘... but the social housing provision and several other conditions spelled out in the Férion document send a clear message to him, and to the community, do they not?’
‘I would hope so.’
‘And that message is?’
‘Your family chucked mine out like so much rubbish all those years ago. But look what that rubbish contained. Me, for one. You might just find another national treasure among the outsiders you’re going to be rubbing shoulders with from now on.’
‘A fine, improving sentiment, monsieur. But are you entirely sincere about it?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Paillaud gave it a long couple of beats and then grinned. ‘But we did get you, didn’t we, Montand? We really knocked you dead!’
The interviewer looked away, listening intently. ‘Monsieur Paillaud, we have a live link now to someone you have already referred to, a significant player in this saga. Monsieur Jules Frènes, one of the public prosecutors...’
Derision. Cat calls.
‘Guys,’ Darac called out. ‘Better listen.’
Once again, the interviewer paused. ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to have to hold you, Monsieur Frènes. I’m advised, as predicted, that officers have arrived to take Monsieur Paillaud in for questioning...’
The screen blanked out.
Bonbon shook his head. ‘That might just have been the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV.’
64
To Darac, for whom leading a double life was second nature, a rooftop apartment suspended between the tangle of the old town and the Nice of the boulevards was a perfect place to live. But sometimes, the Babazouk was all he needed. The buzz on the streets was not always sonorous; the smells not always sweet. But harmonious and discordant, delicious and sour, it was a world that was alive and kicking and he loved it.
