Essence of Murder, page 5
‘Put everything back neatly,’ Darac said. ‘How the hell does a classy woman like Noëmi put up with you?’
‘With love, gratitude and excitement.’ The task accomplished to his own satisfaction, Armani cast a quizzical eye around the scene. ‘So what are we going to do? It’s the old problem, no? We need to get close enough to see and to act but not be seen ourselves.’
A maverick officer, Darac followed official guidelines only when they made sense to him personally and didn’t compromise his sense of justice. Accepting advice from flics with years of front-line experience was a different matter – especially if that advice was given by his beloved boss and mentor, Commissaire Agnès Dantier.
‘According to Agnès, remember where the best place to hide is?’
Armani nodded but he looked sceptical. ‘ “In plain sight,” of course. But in this case, how are we going to do that?’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Darac said, opening his door. ‘Trust me. OK?’
This was such a reversal of their usual pattern, it seemed Armani didn’t know quite how to respond.
‘Remember Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli?’ he went on. ‘Together?’
‘So?’
It wasn’t until Darac opened the boot and took out his guitar case that the penny began to drop. ‘Oh, no, no,’ Armani said, shaking his head and his finger out of time with one another. ‘No, no, no!’
‘OK,’ Darac said. ‘We’re going back to the classroom. Visual Perception 101: “People see what they expect to see.” Right?’
Armani opened his mouth to speak. A vague spluttering sound was all he could muster.
‘Visual Perception 102: “Context is everything.” Put this together. Sunny promenade plus passers-by plus two guys setting down a battered old guitar case. What does that add up to in our target’s mind?’ Darac slammed the boot. ‘Buskers. That’s what. Particularly when I start playing and you start singing.’
A fusillade of abuse followed, liberally laced with a selection of anatomically impossible suggestions. Darac saw it as an authentic touch and welcomed it. Stand-up rows were de rigueur for many a musical partnership. ‘Come on, Andrea,’ he said, enjoying himself more and more. ‘There’s a gap in the traffic.’
Aiming for the cover afforded by a low-growing shrub, Darac dragged the don’t-wannabe Bocelli toward the central reservation and while he waited for the eastbound traffic to clear, he played his next card. ‘Listen,’ he said, brows high as he eyeballed the animated Monument to Outrage that was Captain Jean-Pierre Tardelli. ‘I can guarantee you that we will be able to set up right next to this guy without him suspecting a thing. And that means we’ll be right there when the exchange is made.’
Armani looked frankly astonished. ‘Guarantee, he says!’ Another one for the sidekicks.
Darac’s brows rose higher. ‘A money-back guarantee.’
‘What money?’
Darac risked a glance around the foliage. The target was still sitting alone on the bench. ‘What money? The money that passers-by will heap into my guitar case when they hear your beautiful voice in the flesh. As it were.’
Darac’s words affected Armani like a stun gun and it was some moments before he found a reply. ‘Beautiful?’
‘Yes, beautiful. Ask anyone at the Caserne.’
‘Including... Agnès D?’
In truth, Darac had never heard anyone comment on Armani’s singing voice. As for himself, he couldn’t remember ever hearing it. He loved Armani but he had been on the end of so many of the man’s cons over the years, he couldn’t help himself. ‘Yes, Agnès is your biggest fan, I would say. She and Erica.’
‘Yes. Of course...’ Armani gave a little nod. He’d long suspected as much. ‘Beautiful, huh?’
On the carriageway, the traffic thinned and cleared.
‘So are you still dead against this, Armani?’
‘Do you know ‘Volare?’ he said.
6.16 PM
‘Staff discount card?’
The young woman shook her head. ‘It’ll be a day or two yet, they said.’
‘Sorry. Have to put it through at full price.’
Deciding not to argue, she paid in cash and made for the exit where a bag-laden man wearing an orange dashiki was disappearing into the lift. Running an eye over her as he turned, he stuck out a foot and the doors slid back open. Subtle. But she was bound for the staircase anyway and walked past him without a word. After a long day in the store’s classroom, tripping down four flights would be good exercise and besides, she wanted to take in the view from the landing windows, her first of the immediate vicinity from such a high vantage point.
Donning her shades against the low September sun, she gazed out over the arcaded lower reaches of the avenue. A tram emerged and she followed it as it crossed Place Masséna and took the curve into the boulevard beyond, the route she would be taking herself in a few minutes. The Place itself fascinated her. As a largely vehicle-free intersection, it seemed to work. But seated figures atop lines of tall poles? Chequer-board pavements? A frisky, over-scale statue of Apollo? Pink walls, pink porticoes, pink everything? As an aesthetic statement, she found it preposterous. Preposterous yet strangely beautiful.
Back on the ground floor, she fell in behind a gaggle of elderly tourists and, fishing out her Lignes d’Azur travel pass, edged slowly towards the exit.
‘Mademoiselle?’ The voice was male and authoritative. ‘A moment there, please.’
She told herself to act naturally. Whatever that looked like here. When it came to speech, she knew her accent would sound alien but Nice was a multi-ethnic city and her French itself was impeccable. Trusting her instincts, she added just a touch of irritation to her look of surprise as she turned to face her inquisitor. First, his uniform. Navy-blue. Two-way radio. Shoes, not boots. No visible weapon. She relaxed. The man himself was a match for his voice; the mien impressive, the physique strong. He was, though, some years older than he sounded. And then she spotted the patch on his shoulder: Security.
If he were a cop, as she had feared, he was a retired one. It was a far better option but the encounter, she knew, could still prove tricky. No longer commanding the respect that was once his right, such a man might seek to stamp his authority wherever he could. An ego massage was called for. Losing the look of irritation, she resolved to address him as “Officer” and smile winningly.
But it seemed the smile would not be necessary: he was already smiling at her. Even in her present state of mind, hyper-alert to the point of paranoia, she was in little doubt the smile was genuine. A touch paternalistic perhaps, but well-meaning, nevertheless.
‘Yes, officer?’ she said, taking no chances.
‘Well...’ He peered at the ID brooch pinned to her jacket lapel. ‘... Zena.’ He gave a little back-header toward the street. ‘Does that look like the staff entrance to you? Entrance and exit?’’
Was that all this was? She almost laughed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know there was a staff entrance. And exit.’ Actually, after “Welcome to our Palais Masséna family” it was the first of the “We don’t like to call them rules” the training woman had spelled out in the morning session. Zena berated herself for not having taken it more seriously. ‘So I can’t go out this way?’
‘Not in your uniform,’ he said, the kindly smile persisting. ‘Staffroom stairs up into Sacha Guitry at the back of the store. That’s what you’re supposed to do.’
Zena wondered if reciting a few of the stats she’d picked up in her introductory session might encourage the man to take pity on her. Carrying over 600 brands, the store’s five vast sales floors boasted a total surface area of 13,000 square metres. Its flagship Paris store excepted, Pal-Mas, as everyone called it, was the largest of its kind in the country. Amen. In other words, the place was massive. ‘All that way?’ she said, annoyed with herself at how lame it sounded.
‘All that way.’
‘Really? You see, thing is, officer, we were meant to finish by six so I’m already late.’
‘This is your first day?’
‘Very first,’ she said, sensing him weaken.
‘So you must have arrived for work out of uniform.’
Not so weak after all. She indicated the tote bag at her feet. ‘My day clothes are in here.’
‘Well if you’d changed back into them, you could have gone out this way.’
‘Didn’t have time. I needed to buy this.’ She held the bag open. Alongside a couple of rolled-up garments was a Moka coffee pot, a white porcelain cup and a receipt for both. ‘Just moved here, you see.’ She felt the moment was right to chance her arm. ‘I don’t really want to be any later back, officer. If it’s at all possible.’
En route to the door, an extravagantly made-up woman Zena recognised from her afternoon session gave the guard a wave.
‘Goodnight, André.
‘Night, Nadine.’
She gave him a second look. ‘You’re not giving our Zara here a hard time are you? She’s new. We haven’t even got her behind a counter yet.’
‘Her name’s Zena. And I don’t make the rules.’
Out in the avenue, a tram, no more than a monochrome blur against the sun, slowed almost noiselessly into the stop.
Nadine wrinkled her nose. ‘Let her through. Come on.’
André scanned the sales floor behind them. The coast, it seemed, was clear. ‘Alright. But just this once.’
‘Thank you,’ Zena said, picking up her bag. ‘I won’t do it again – promise.’ She smiled, cheekily. ‘André.’
His good humour undented, the guard shook his head. ‘You girls. Be the death of me, you will.’
Zena let that pass without comment but she was one of the girls already, was she? The thought pleased her as she walked out into the arcade with her saviour.
‘Thank you, too, Madame.’
‘Nadine. It was nothing. When you’ve been in retail as long as I have, you can sell anything to anyone – not just sweeties like André.’
‘I don’t usually disobey rules. There was such a lot to learn today, I just forgot.’
Nadine had the air of someone who thought she had seen it all and probably had. ‘I’ll tell you a good reason for not wearing your uniform on your way out of the store. Better than simply “It’s the rule.”
‘Ah, yes?’
‘Customers will stop you and say, “ Have you got Item Such-And-Such? Where is it? Take me.” Telling them to go find it themselves because you’re on your way home doesn’t go down well. And if reported, will get you the sack.’
‘I see.’
Zena was glad of her shades as they stepped out on to the platform where the French public’s love affair with boarding an already full tram, bus or train was in full swing.
‘You getting this one?’
‘I’m over the other side,’ Zena said.
‘See you tomorrow, then. And well done, today.’
As Nadine disappeared into the press of bodies, Zena crossed the avenue and checked out the passengers lined up on the platform. Back home, she knew the best spot to board at any tram stop in the city. Here? A group gathered at the tail end of the platform had the look of locals so she invited herself to the party and when the tram rolled in no more than a minute later, the doors of the rearmost car duly opened directly in front of her. Paying attention to every face, she boarded, validated her pass in the machine and stood by the doors. Out of habit, she reached for her iPod but, reminding herself that she needed all her wits about her, she abandoned the idea. Debussy or MC Solaar or Richard Galliano could wait. A couple of men squeezed into the car at the last minute and the tram pulled away.
Zena was a bright, slender and, by her mother’s account, “pretty enough” young woman. Perhaps that was a view shared by one of the latecomers, a middle-aged man wearing a Lacoste T-shirt who appeared to have his eye on her as the tram crossed the Place and slinked around the curve into Boulevard Jean Jaurès. Or perhaps his interest had nothing to do with her looks. Breaking her journey was the easiest way to find out.
Zena let the first stop come and go but at Cathédrale Vieille-Ville, she got out and, keeping her eyes on the tram’s rear doors, walked the few paces to the end of the platform. Emerging at the top of a flight of steps between a sandwich shop and an appointments–only medical lab, she watched as a steady trickle of passengers followed in her wake: a woman, a second woman, a couple of kids, a man. But there was no sign of T-shirt and Zena began to breathe a little more easily. But just as the doors were due to close, there he was, once again leaving things until the last second.
She needed an escape route. Exposed in either direction, the boulevard was a non-starter so she began dancing down the steps toward the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys that made up the old town of Nice, a quarter some locals called the Babazouk and which thus far, she had explored only on a map. Gauging that she had descended far enough, she turned and, standing on tip-toe, peeked back over the top step. As the tram whirred away from the stop, T-shirt was all-action, smartly crossing the tracks to the opposite platform, continuing across the adjoining roadway and, on reaching the far pavement, disappearing through a door set into hoardings screening off the building site beyond. Relieved and exasperated in equal measure, Zena walked back up the steps and returned to the platform.
The departure board promised a Pont Michel-bound service in nine minutes. Adding another sixteen or so for the ride and then the four-minute walk, it meant she should be back in her apartment in just under half-an-hour. Or forty minutes if she took fright at the first face she saw on the tram and let it go. She told herself not to overreact like that again and settled in to the wait.
She spent it taking in the street life of the boulevard and contemplating the building site opposite. Extending from Place Masséna to the Théâtre National de Nice, which was still some distance off, the site was huge. The hoardings, unlike any she had seen before, were themselves interesting, a combination of photographs and trompe l’oeil representations of the development they were concealing: extensive gardens, a children’s playground, a water jet miroir d’eau. There was no Place Masséna-style preposterousness here. Assuming the completed reality lived up to the images, the new “Promenade du Paillon” promised to be stunning. But it was the concept outlined in the accompanying blurb that exercised Zena most. Due to open next year, the space would serve as “a 12-hectare green lung in the heart of the city.” What? With the mountain air of the lofty Alpes Maritimes at its back and its feet washed by the glittering waters of the eponymous Côte d’Azur, did the city of Nice have any need of a green lung? Zena wondered what the planners could have dreamed up to ventilate some of the places she knew.Places that could definitely use a lung. Of any colour.
She heard a muffled ringtone, one of the two prepaids, and following best practice, checked the space around her. No one was within earshot but as she fished the mobile out of her bag, she believed the point was academic, anyway. What were the chances of a bystander understanding a single word of what she was about to say?
Apparently, no one had briefed her that Nice’s connections to Russia and its citizens dated back over a century and a half.
Exchanging the usual preliminaries in her native dialect, she listened to what she knew would be just the first of a string of questions.
‘I had a couple of moments,’ she replied. ‘But they were nothing. I’m on it, don’t worry.’
Another question.
‘Blue suit. Cream blouse. Lapel badge.’ She gave a dry little laugh. ‘Yes, blue – the colour of a field of Provençal lavender.’
As the call progressed, the scope for wry observations diminished and by the time her tram was on the approach, Zena had only one more point to clarify.
‘The day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If all goes to plan.’
6.32 PM
Standing apart from the others, Thea Petrova ended the call and would have made a second but for the sudden attentions of a florid-looking man clutching a near-empty wine glass. Quickly slipping the mobile into her handbag, she took out a Spanish fan and opened it with a snap. ‘Yes?’
‘Laurent Salins,’ he said. ‘Could do with a fan, myself. It’s like an oven out here. Too hot for this white. I’ve had to go on to red.’ He brandished the glass as proof. ‘They haven’t thought it through.’
Salins may have had a point. With the shadows cast by one of its celebrated stands of pines falling unhelpfully on the box hedge that enclosed it on three sides, the Villa’s west lawn was a trap for the late afternoon sun. The younger ones appeared to be revelling in it. Gathered in clumps, the older types had the look of flowerbeds that had gone over in the heat. And that was despite the efforts of the fan-fluttering ladies among them.
‘Not thought it through at all,’ Salins said. ‘And you are?’
‘Unavailable,’ Thea replied, a verdict that sounded particularly final in her Russian-accented French. ‘Excuse me.’
Wearing the sort of expression unlikely to encourage further conversation, Thea strode purposefully away. Salins followed. ‘I just wanted to ask if you knew when the admin woman goes home? Madame Tiron?’
Thea pursed her lips and kept going. One of the clumps parted and without missing a fan beat, the climber that was Marcia Calon threw out a tendril and snagged Thea’s arm. ‘Oh, do join us. Jérôme? Bring drinks. What would you like, Thea?’
If Laurent Salins knew when he wasn’t wanted, it was clear he didn’t care. ‘Do any of you know when Madame Tiron goes home? I’ve something to take up with her.’
As Jérôme scurried off to the bar, Thea granted Marcia an audience, thus leaving the others to deal with Salins’s question.
‘Sorry, monsieur. This is my first time here.’
