Knock 'Em Dead, page 4
Darac continued without missing a beat. ‘—but might he remember more, say, tomorrow?’
‘You’ll be the first to know if he does but, having spoken to him myself, I think it unlikely. In fact, he did well to see the individual being pushed at all. With their eyes on the track and travelling at high speed, most TGV drivers report only hearing the thump and seeing the splatter.’
Seen it all and pretends she doesn’t care. ‘Actually, he neither saw the push, nor the pusher, did he?’
Hackles higher still. ‘He saw the victim careering off the platform edge in front of him.’
‘That’s the outcome of a potential push, isn’t it?’ Darac said.
Her radio crackled into life once more. ‘A moment,’ she said, stony-faced.
Granot turned to Darac as Florence gave herself space. ‘ “Gentlemen” didn’t last long,’ he said, ventriloquially. ‘Chip on her shoulder, hasn’t she? I’ll bet she failed her P.N. entrance.’
Darac gave him a look as he took out his mobile and hit one of the hot keys.
‘What?’ the big man said. ‘No chip on my shoulder. My pain is justified.’
‘Of course... Flak?’ Darac scanned the blocks of flats behind them. ‘How far have you got?’ He listened. ‘Anything?’ He gave Granot a little shake of the head. ‘We’re down in the station now. Check in later.’
‘She’s working the floors top to bottom?’ Granot said.
‘She is.’
‘Perand’s doing it the other way round. Idiot.’
‘Skinny idiot, you mean,’ Darac said, reading between the lines. ‘Skinny, never-to-be-given-an-ultimatum-about-his-weight idiot.’
‘Rubbish.’
Florence finished her call. ‘Here’s Eric now,’ she said, looking past them. ‘And he’s got your radios. Good.’
A short and shaggy individual wearing a grubby high-vis gilet, Eric resembled an old tennis ball.
‘Before you move off, he’s going to brief you on safety. Please listen carefully.’
Eric dispensed the radios as Florence took her leave. ‘So gents, the prime thing to remember when you’re down on the tracks is: don’t fall over. You could sprain your ankle on the rails – done it myself – or sustain a nasty graze from the chippings. Done that as well.’
‘It must have been horrible for you,’ Granot deadpanned. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes, that’s your briefing. I’m off for a coffee. Want me to bring you a couple?’
Their orders duly placed, Darac and Granot left the shade and stepped out into the full glare of the sun. Their first port of call was the hazy form of a tall, white-clad figure standing, head bowed, at the far end of the platform. Speaking into a voice recorder, pathologist Djibril Mpensa was concluding his initial report as they joined him.
Darac gave his shoulder a pat. ‘What have we got, Map?’
‘What we’ve got is body parts spread high and wide. At the speed the train was going, the victim’s body exploded, effectively. The track crew have done a brilliant clearing-up job.’
Numbered card markers were scattered over the scene, each sitting on a mat of green disinfectant powder. In the roiling blur of the heat, the white-flecked patches of green put Darac in mind of a Monet. The Water Lilies, perhaps. Or maybe he too was in denial.
‘Got a name?’
‘Not as yet but I’m hopeful. Things like wallets and cards fare much better than their owners in this sort of incident. They get blown all over the place, though, so R.O. has a team combing a wide arc. As far as the pathology goes, the victim was male and elderly. That’s about it at the moment. Obviously, I’ll be waiving formal ID.’ The young man opened his overalls down to his waist. ‘So hot today.’
‘Is it ever?’ Granot said, rearranging his own into a little off-the-shoulder number. ‘That’s... no better.’
‘But you look stunning.’ Darac turned, peering along the tracks at a shape emerging through the haze.
‘Here comes R.O.,’ Granot said, making out the brawny figure of chief forensic analyst Raul Ormans.
‘Nothing wrong with your eyes.’ Darac was still unable to identify the apparition. ‘That’s one tick in the health column.’
Granot turned to Mpensa. ‘I’ve got three months to lose twenty kilos and other things. Or it’s...’ He made a throat-cutting gesture. ‘Got any advice?’
‘You could try eating less and moving more. Preferably quickly.’
‘Thank you.’ He gave it the full Oliver Hardy moue. ‘I never thought of that.’
The mood picked up considerably as Ormans joined them. ‘Treasure trove,’ he announced in his rich basso profondo. ‘You’ll never guess who these goodies belonged to?’ He held up a poly bag. ‘None other than Monsieur Ambroise Paillaud.’
Mpensa looked none the wiser.
Granot gasped, almost happily. ‘Ambroise Paillaud?’
‘Yes.’
‘Monsieur La Chute?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s made my day.’ A crow with powder-speckled feet hopped on to the track bed in front of him. ‘In... a manner of speaking.’
‘You’ve never heard of him, Map?’ Darac said.
‘Sorry.’
‘Comic actor. A bit like Tati. Not so interesting, nor as big a star, but if you’re in the mood for them, his films are hilarious.’ Darac opened the laptop. ‘I’ll bring him up.’
Before he’d even entered the password, Ormans had launched into a definitive summary of the comedian’s life and works. It had been, he held, a rags-to-riches story that had begun in nearby La Crague-du-Var and ‘come into its full flowering’ in the Paris of the early sixties. Paillaud’s refusal to go with the times was generally thought responsible for the gradual decline in his celebrity, a state of affairs which appeared to have had no deleterious effect on his skilfully managed fortune. ‘As you might imagine, the locals welcomed the wealthy star’s return to La Crague a few years ago with open begging bowls.’ He grinned. ‘Arms, I mean.’
One point stood out irresistibly to Darac. ‘Paillaud’s speciality was the pratfall, right?’
Ormans nodded. ‘Hence the soubriquet. Ironic, considering.’
‘That’s one word for it.’
‘What – you think he might have fallen voluntarily?’ Ormans gave the line an actorish flourish. ‘His last great performance?’
The half-smile that invariably played around Darac’s lips widened. ‘Well, it crossed my mind, yes.’
Ormans’s gloved fingers delved among the credit cards and keys in his goody bag. ‘In that case, you’d better take a look at these tickets.’
Map and Granot looked on as Darac examined them.
‘Advance senior return to Nice, validated at 11:43 today.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Return, note. And... a timed entry ticket for the Brassaï photography show at MAMAC. For 3 o’clock this afternoon.’
‘If the great man jumped, it must have been on a pretty sudden impulse,’ Granot said. ‘Doctor?’
‘It happens. Remember that teacher we attended, Darac? Frémet? No, Frémarde. The man spent all day booking a couple of holiday flights and then hanged himself.’
‘These no-frills airline sites can do that to you. You’ve got house keys, credit cards and so on, R.O. Any sign of a mobile?’
Ormans shook his head. ‘No mobile in bits or otherwise as far as we can see. He may not have had one, an old-school type like him.’
‘So that’s the search completed?’
‘As far as the station approaches are concerned. We can check the flanks, adjoining streets and so on later.’
‘I’d better just take a look,’ Darac said, gazing along the tracks. He handed the laptop to Granot. ‘Send Lartou the most recent shot of Paillaud you can find. It’ll help ID him on the CCTV footage. Assuming the victim and the effects actually match up.’
‘Perhaps that’s Paillaud’s last great performance.’ Granot looked half-intrigued, half-appalled at the complications it would involve. ‘A disappearing act.’
‘We won’t go there unless we have to.’
‘On that less than happy thought,’ Ormans said, ‘ I’ll be at my van, logging these in.’
‘Thanks, R.O.’ Darac turned back to Granot. ‘Get hold of crowd control, will you? Needs beefing up. Should a blood-stained bit of paper with Paillaud’s name on it have fluttered in through somebody’s window and they contact the media – need I say more?’
As if seeking the sympathy of an invisible companion, Granot shared a look with thin air before replying. ‘Anything else, master?’
‘You love all this, remember?’
Leaving Granot to simmer, Darac redundantly looked both ways and stepped on to the track bed. With the tang of hot metal in his nostrils, he had taken no more than a couple of paces when his thoughts turned to Frankie and an altogether sweeter scent suggested itself to him; her signature Marucca perfume. Frankie... Had she ever exhibited even a hint of coolness toward him before? He couldn’t think of a single occasion. As if it were a case, he began searching for a motive. Whatever it was, Frankie hadn’t wanted to share it with him. Indeed, she hadn’t acknowledged that anything was troubling her. Yes, it had been tactless of him to refer to the use Granot might have been able to make of her old diet books but she would normally have made a joke about it, produced a crushing put-down and come out of the exchange on top. Nothing was off-limits usually.
It had been in the one-on-one confessional atmosphere of an all-night stake-out that Frankie had first revealed her misgivings about her figure. She would have given anything, she’d said, to have been “blessed” with the elfin frame of Darac’s then lover, Angeline, and not “saddled” with the hour-glass curves she had. At the time, Darac had felt that Frankie’s figure was something he couldn’t really comment upon and had gone no further than bland reassurances. Lately, he had had no such qualms.
His radio crackled into life. ‘Found something?’ Mpensa’s voice. ‘Over.’
‘What, Map?’ Darac hadn’t realised he was staring at one of Monet’s water lilies. Up close, it looked less cheerful. ‘No, no. Just... thinking. Over’ He felt a degree of guilt about it but the tracks had been searched thoroughly, hadn’t they? A couple of minutes lost wouldn’t harm the investigation. And what was more important, anyway? Deciding he could keep his eyes open and think, he set off again.
Start at the beginning. For three years, he and Frankie had worked on virtually every case in tandem. Murders. Rapes. Kidnappings. Armed robberies. Thousands of hours side by side. “Spending low quality time together” was how they characterised their relationship, a joke but also a way, he now suspected, of playing down its significance for the benefit of Frankie’s husband Christophe, and Darac’s lover, Angeline. That was fair enough. They were no more than friends, after all.
Then one day, out of a clear blue sky, Frankie told Darac she needed “a new challenge” and was leaving his team to head up the vice squad. Some time later, Angeline told him she was leaving him, also – to head up a whole new life. It had taken him months to get over losing her but it wasn’t until the following year that his submerged feelings for Frankie had finally come to the surface, and in expressing them, he discovered she had felt the same all along. Ever since, the two of them had been in a shall we? shan’t we? situation that would have been easy to resolve but for one thing. Angeline may have flown the coop; Christophe had not.
But what was happening now?
When he returned to the platform, Rail Liaison Officer Eric had arrived with the promised double espressos, and a surly-looking kid wearing a rapper T-shirt. Before they went any further, Granot relayed the info that the assumed victim had had neither driving licence, mobile phone, nor next of kin.
‘And this young man, chief,’ he said, as if announcing something remarkable. ‘Is one Rafal Maso. He runs La Poche over the way, there.’
‘Runs? Good for you.’
Rafal shrugged. It was nothing.
‘His mother owns it,’ Eric said, brightly, as if enjoying denting the boy’s cred. ‘Owns a few places locally. Lives upstairs. Him, I mean, not the mother.’
‘Alright son,’ Granot said, as Darac peeled back his overalls down to the waist. ‘Tell the Captain here what you just told me,’
Rap fan Rafal ran an eye over Darac’s Nice Jazz Festival T-shirt. If he felt any affiliation with him over it, he kept it to himself. ‘I’ve got to get back to my bar.’
‘That wasn’t it,’ Granot said.
Rafal sighed and began retelling the story of the meeting between a “stuck-up, hot-looking ” woman and a “funky” old man. He had been too busy to hear what they discussed, the boy said, but he’d seen things, including the later moment when the train and the old man met head-on.
‘We’re standing more or less where it happened and your place is at ground level, right?’ Darac scanned the greenery behind the platform. ‘So how did you see it?’
‘Uh... through a gap?’ Rafal said, with practised condescension.
Darac downed his espresso. ‘Which gap?’
The boy extended an arm. ‘That brown patch in the shadowy bit? That’s the café awning.’
‘Thank you. You say the angle cut off the part of the platform where the victim was standing?’
‘I saw the train hit the guy. Awesome! But that’s all I saw.’
‘Anyone else in the place see the incident?’
‘I was the only one in there.’
‘It’s usually empty,’ Eric volunteered. ‘That’s why I go.’ He turned to Rafal. ‘Nobody in the B&B bit upstairs, then?’
Some officers might have reminded Eric that it was the police’s job to ask questions but it was a valid one and Darac let it stand.
‘I did have a booking last night,’ Rafal said. ‘But he left after breakfast.’
‘OK.’ Darac wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ‘The call the woman went outside to make, did she get through?’
‘She was talking into it and listening, so what do you think?’
‘After she returned, she and the old man carried on for fifteen minutes or so, you said?’ Rafal shrugged assent. ‘How long did the old man stay on?’
‘After maybe... five minutes, he got up, went to the bog and left.’
Keeping Paillaud’s celebrity a secret, Granot closed the image page on the laptop and brought up a passport photo. Scrolling the holder’s name off the screen, he turned it to Rafal. ‘This him?’
‘Looks like him.’
‘You gave a pretty full description of the woman to Lieutenant Granot,’ Darac said. ‘Anything else you can tell us about her? How did she arrive at the café?’
‘She had car keys.’
‘Where did she park?’
‘On a road, somewhere?’
Darac’s sarcasm threshold had been crossed twice already. ‘Answer the question, kid.’
‘There’s a couple of spots you can park down the street.’
‘You didn’t see the car?’
‘No. Look, can I go? I had to close up to come over here. I’m losing money.’
Darac concluded the interview with the usual caution that further questioning may be necessary. As Granot circulated the woman’s description, Darac took a call from crime scene coordinator, Jean-Jacques Lartigue.
‘I’m putting you on speaker, Lartou... So how’s the CC looking?’
‘I’ve got Paillaud arriving at the station. I’ve got him validating his ticket. I’ve got him walking to the end of the platform.’
‘And the “but” this time is?’
‘You’ll see if you look behind you, chief.’
He and Granot turned. Mounted on a pole were two cameras pointing in opposite directions.
‘Paillaud positioned himself directly under that pole. If he’d stood anywhere near the platform edge, he would’ve been in shot. The base of the pole is the one place you can’t be seen on camera. Same applies on the Marseille-bound platform.’
A deliberate choice or just chance? Darac didn’t believe in coincidences, usually. ‘That could be significant in itself, Lartou.’
‘I tell you what I’ve also got, chief. I’ve got a couple of individuals approaching him. Separate incidents, one directly after the other. Click play on the first of the files I’ve just sent you. It’s footage from the forward-facing camera. Not good quality, I’m afraid.’
They watched as a fleshy, bare-headed man emerged at the top of the underpass steps and walked with a sort of excited surprise towards the camera.
‘He’s hailing Paillaud, look,’ Granot said. ‘An old friend, by the look of it. He’s certainly excited to see him.’
Darac gave a little shake of the head. ‘Too excited, I think. He’s approaching Paillaud more or less as I approached Sonny Rollins, the one time I met him.’
‘You think he’s a fan?’
‘He’s waiting on the opposite platform when he looks across and sees his hero. Decides to come over and pay his respects. That plays, doesn’t it?’
As the man approached the foot of the CCTV pole, he disappeared out of the bottom of the frame.
‘Keep watching, chief,’ Lartou said. ‘What happens next is interesting.’
With their backs to the body of the station, Paillaud and the man crabbed arm-in-arm into the CC shot. Paillaud looked behind him a couple of times, took a half-pace to the side, and then, wreathed in smiles suddenly, embraced his new friend around the shoulder. The man held out a camera at arm’s length.
‘Taking a selfie,’ Granot said. ‘He’s a fan, alright.’
The shot taken, Paillaud dismissed the man, ignoring his entreaty for a parting handshake. His adoration seemingly undimmed, the fan bounced away toward the underpass steps as a train pulled into the Marseille-bound platform opposite. Paillaud, meanwhile, had slipped back into his pocket of invisibility.
