Knock 'Em Dead, page 6
He finally took in the page on Sonia’s screen. ‘Shite,’ he said.
The door opened behind him and a woman in her late forties walked in. ‘Hi Sexy,’ she said, giving Deepak’s backside a slap.
‘I’m not fond of that pet name,’ he said, hurriedly exiting the screen. ‘For me, sex is sacred.’
Martina Sicotte threw back her head and laughed. ‘For me too. I call out His name every time I screw.’ Her grin faded but the upbeat vibe persisted. ‘I have just heard something on Télé Sud. And it could be the best news ever.’
‘News?’
The desk phone rang.
‘Where’s Sonia got to, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Still on her lunch break. News?’
‘Wait a second.’ Her gold necklace swung away from her chest as she picked up. ‘Centre Sicotte, Tina speaking... Caroline!’ She made a moue. ‘I’ll be on court in two minutes... No, the meter is not running. Two minutes. Three max.’
The door opened and through it floated a little slip of a woman wearing a white blouse and a serene smile. Settling at her desk like a slowly falling mist, she reached quietly for the mouse.
Her call over, Martina hung up. ‘Nice lunch break and fifteen minutes, Sonia?’
‘Oh yes, quite nice, thank you.’ Sonia smiled, a feather evading the forehand smash of Tina’s censure. ‘Quite nice, indeed.’
‘It throws everything out if you’re not back in time. Don’t do it again.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ The greater the displacement of air, the surer Sonia’s protection from the blow. ‘I’m leaving at 3.30 today, so...’ Her carolling tone conveyed that if her boss didn’t mind, she had work to do. ‘I must get on.’
Martina led Deepak out into reception. ‘I’m telling you, Madame Sonia Bera will have to go.’
‘Everything must pass. The news?’
Tina waited as a couple bound for the fitness room were safely out of earshot. She looked into Deepak’s eyes, their centres dark and silky as chocolate ganache. ‘Ambroise Paillaud,’ she said. ‘He’s passed, alright. Passed big time.’
8
Crowd control was living up to its billing as Darac and Granot crossed the station apron.
‘Let’s get out of here before Télé Sud arrives.’ Darac put the Peugeot in gear. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’
‘An “anonymous tip-off.” Pah! That Annie Provin woman will run any story. And of course, the caller used a public pay-phone, she says. And of course, he didn’t see the incident itself, just recognised Paillaud beforehand.’ Granot let out a belch. ‘Stop at Le Panier on De Gaulle. I’m in need of croissants after all this.’
‘This is where it begins Granot, alright? We’ll stop at Rosenblum’s. I’ll treat you to a box of matzos.’
‘Treat?’ Granot shook his jowls. ‘May as well chew the box. Or air.’
Darac’s mobile rang in the dock. The number belonged to Public Prosecutor Jules Frènes. ‘That didn’t take long... Yes, monsieur?’
‘Is there any truth in the rumour?’
‘If they’re saying you’ve lost your reason,’ Granot said. ‘Tell him it’s true.’
Darac pressed on. ‘The rumour that the deceased is none other than Ambroise Paillaud? It looks as if it is, yes.’
‘You realise what this means?’
‘That they’re likely to re-run a few of his old movies on TV? I love the one in which he falls off the Arc de Triomphe on to a passing whoopee cushion.’
‘Stop that! Stop it now! The possible murder of one of France’s most beloved sons is a tragedy of national, indeed, international import. In the regrettable absence of Commissaire Agnès Dantier, you are leading the investigation on the ground. You are to remember at all times that you are acting under my orders and that you will carry out those orders to the letter. You will not deviate. You will act with decorum. If you do not, your previous record of, well, yes... success...’
‘That must have hurt him,’ Granot said.
Frènes continued: ‘That record, Darac, will count for nothing and I will strive with all the means at my disposal to make your life as a senior police officer untenable.’
‘That sounds almost like a threat, Monsieur Frènes.’
‘I haven’t finished. You and I are to be the public faces of this investigation. We will be under scrutiny both here and abroad. I shall be giving a press conference later which will be beamed around the world. You shall be at my side.’ He gave the details. ‘And you shall behave yourself.’
‘My availability later depends entirely on where we get to. Now I have a crucial task to perform.’ He pulled up outside Rosenblums. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘If that arsehole has anything to do with it,’ Granot said. ‘I may not be the only one clearing out my desk.’
‘I can play the notes as written.’ Whether Darac would feel like doing so was another matter. ‘If I have to.’
Had Granot’s grizzled old chops sprouted tusks at that moment, his impression of an astonished walrus could not have been more complete. ‘Captain Servile? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Acting Commissaire Servile if you don’t mind. Let’s go buy some air.’
As Darac grabbed his mobile, it rang again.
‘Florence Feilleu, Captain. I have an update. Following Lieutenant Granot’s call, I instructed a team to board the westbound train from Saint-Laurent. They did so at Le Muy.’ She gave it a beat. ‘You were supposed to say “But Le Muy doesn’t have a station anymore” so I could impress you with the fact that we can board and deboard wherever we like.’
Darac grinned. Florence appeared to have regained her sense of humour but she was making a point, too. ‘Actually, I didn’t know Le Muy ever had a station. How did it go?’
‘From our interviews, it’s clear that no one on board could have seen the incident at Saint-Laurent.’
Darac shrugged. ‘It was a long shot.’
‘However, we were able to apprehend one Claude Grange, the passenger you dubbed Selfie Man. He’ll be only too happy to talk to you, he says. He was travelling to Les Arcs and that’s where we’re holding him. I can patch you through if you’re ready.’
‘Great work, Florence. Compliment your team, too.’
‘You see, we do have our uses.’
“Happy to talk” proved to be something of an understatement.
‘I’d seen Monsieur Paillaud on my way in to the station to begin with. Outside a café. But stupid idiot that I am, I called him Jacques Tati. Can you believe it?’
Granot and Darac shared a look. Grange was two witnesses in one? Unheard-of riches.
‘And me, his biggest fan, Captain. And look what happened in the end. They’ve just told me. Unbelievable!’
‘We’ll get to that. When did you encounter Monsieur Paillaud at the café?’
‘Be about 11.15.’
Granot made the note, adding that it corroborated young Rafal Maso’s account.
‘He was meeting a woman.’
‘Did you see her, Monsieur Grange?’
‘Before he turned up, yeah. Well dressed, good looking. Very smart woman.’
‘We’d like to talk to her. Can you tell us anything that might help us find her?’
‘See where this gets you. I’d gone over to Saint-Laurent to see a man about a car. It’s a long way, especially with mine in the garage, but you don’t come across all that many—’
‘Monsieur. Keep it relevant, please?’
‘Sorry, yeah. In the end I didn’t go for it but me and the guy got talking. And then she drives up and parks right next to us. Boxster convertible, glacier white, red leather upholstery. Beautiful car. Didn’t get the registration before you ask. Why would I? But I can tell you one thing – she was off to play tennis after the meeting she’d come in for. Not that I knew who it was with then. The meeting, I mean.’
Darac shared another look with Granot. ‘Do you know how soon after the meeting the woman was intending to play?’
‘Dunno.’
‘How do you know any of this?’
‘Once she’d parked, she got on her mobile as she went round to the boot to get something out. People don’t realise how loud they’re talking, do they? Even so, I didn’t catch it all. Just bits.’
‘She didn’t open with, “Hello, it’s Alicia,” or anything? Think.’
‘Uh... No. She said, “Hi, it’s me.” ’
‘So she was calling someone she knew well.’
‘And that came across in how she was talking. Warm. Casual.’
Darac glanced at his watch. If the woman had gone to the court immediately after the meeting with Paillaud, was it possible she was still playing? Even if she were, there were an awful lot of tennis courts in the area. ‘She didn’t mention the venue, did she?’
‘No, but I know who she was playing, if that’s any use.’
‘I’d swap this guy for Perand any day,’ Granot whispered, pen still at the ready.
Darac grinned. ‘Excellent, Monsieur Grange. Tell us.’
‘It was somebody called Tina.’
‘Tina..?’
‘No surname. Sorry.’
Darac’s face fell. ‘Ah.’
‘Good player, this Tina, apparently. The woman joked she’d never scored a single point against her.’
Granot wrote “Tina = Martina Sicotte???” in his notebook and underlined it.
‘Anything else you can tell us before we move on to what happened later?’
‘Just a minute – the officer’s saying something to me... Right. He says he’s sending the selfie I took to your lieutenant right now. Don’t get your hopes up – it’s terrible.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Anything else on the woman in the Porsche?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Did you hear the end of the call or had she gone to the café by then?’
‘She was just going but I heard it.’
‘How did she sign off?’
‘ “See you tonight,” it sounded like.’
‘I see. So back to Ambroise Paillaud.’
‘Monsieur La Chute, himself. Of all the people to run into! I’m still in shock. I nipped over to the other platform to apologise to him to begin with. For calling him Tati. I knew it wasn’t him. I don’t know why I said it.’
‘He was standing under the CCTV pole, wasn’t he?’
‘Was he? I didn’t notice.’
‘Was he with anyone?’
‘No, he was by himself. That’s the way he liked it, they say.’
As Grange recounted the way Paillaud’s initial coldness had turned to enthusiasm at the request for a selfie, a copy of the photo itself pinged in on Granot’s laptop. He and Darac smiled. The camera’s zoom and autofocus settings had combined to bisect its twin subjects, picking up instead an angry-looking individual getting out of a car in the street behind them. Wearing shorts and a blue shirt, he was raising a blue casquette to his head.
‘Full face, look,’ Darac said, under his breath. ‘What a break.’
Granot was already routing the shot to the forensic lab at their home station, the Caserne Auvare. From there, images would be emailed to all concerned officers, TV and print media. ‘I’ll ask Lartou to get stills flown all around the neighbourhood, as well,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Darac continued to Grange. ‘The guy your camera focused on by accident, monsieur – did you notice him at the time?’
‘No. Sorry.’
Grange’s part in the call ended with his assurance that he’d seen nothing of the “accident” itself. And that he would thank God for the rest of his life that he hadn’t.
After signing off with Les Arcs, Darac made another call. ‘Flak? Any second now, a really nice shot of Casquette is going to buzz into your inbox. Ditto Perand’s. You know what to do.’
‘Right, Captain.’
He shared what he’d just learned with her. ‘Anything resembling a lead so far?’
‘Nothing. A lot of people were out, though. I’ve put cards through.’
‘One of them might get back to you with something. It has happened, they tell me.’
‘Could you just pass on a message to Lieutenant Granot?’
‘Pass it yourself. I’ll put him on.’
Giving Granot a second mobile to deal with occasioned a display of such cack-handed confusion, a set of juggling clubs would scarcely have created more difficulty.
‘Rahsaan Roland Kirk used to play three saxes at once,’ Darac said, helpfully.
‘I’m a detective, not an octopus... Yes, Flak?’
‘If there’s any help I can give you with this Divisional Command directive, just ask.’
‘That’s kind. Won’t forget it, Flak. Signing off, now.’ He elbowed Darac in the ribs. ‘Told you. Worships me.’
‘She can’t be right about everything.’
In his juggling act, Granot had dropped his notebook and it had somehow found its way under the clutch pedal. Darac had to get out of the car to retrieve it and as he handed it over, three underlined question marks caught his eye.
‘Who’s Martina Sicotte?’ he said.
9
‘Thanks for responding to the card I left, mademoiselle,’ Flaco flashed her ID. ‘You saw the whole thing, you say?’
‘It was disgusting.’ She forced a smile. ‘Please, come in.’
Wearing stone-coloured shorts and a strappy top, the woman was in her early thirties, tall, slender and with shoulder-length, dyed-blonde hair. She owed her full, high-set breasts to implants, Flaco guessed; and her small, even teeth had been veneered so blindingly white, they had the unnatural look of old-fashioned dentures.
With the sun streaming in, the living room was a brightly cheerful if, by Flaco’s own standards, untidy space. Among the painted lightweight furniture, an old-fashioned mahogany sideboard caught her eye. On its cluttered top, the footprint of something recently removed was the only part of it not overlaid by a film of dust.
‘You were out on your balcony when it happened?’
‘Yes. Go through.’
Flaco went to the rail and checked out her twentieth different view of the station that afternoon. Not one of the more comprehensive views, in truth.
‘Great cornrows you have,’ the woman said, joining her. Standing next to one another, the pair looked about as different as it was possible for two women to look. ‘I had it done once but it looked stupid.’ She smiled, artlessly. ‘You’ve got to be black, I suppose.’
Now wasn’t the time. ‘So exactly what did you see?’
Somewhere behind them, a kettle came to the boil and clicked off.
‘I saw this well-built guy run, well not run, walk – walk quickly up to the old man standing at the end of the platform.’
‘How come you noticed? Everyone else I’ve spoken to has said, “you don’t expect me to stand looking out of the window all day, do you?” ’
The woman indicated her sun lounger. Under it was a low, flat object covered by a plastic sheet. ‘My treadmill. I have to watch my...’ She hesitated, giving her short, strapping visitor a half-sympathetic, half-patronising look. ‘I’m a workout junkie.’
‘Me too. Kick-boxing is my thing. Is that where it lives, the treadmill?’
The question seemed to wrong-foot the woman. ‘Yes... I just pull the lounger to one side and it’s good to go where it is.’
‘Would you show me? I’m thinking of getting one.’
The request further unsettled her. ‘Alright. It’s not powered or anything. Just a roller.’
‘That would suit me. Useless with technology.’
The demo took up no more than a minute. At the end of it, the woman’s breathing had increased but her anxiety level appeared to have diminished.
‘Thanks for that.’ For the first time, Flaco thought she could detect alcohol on the woman’s breath. ‘Alright to continue out here?’
‘Sure.’
‘This well-built guy – have you ever seen him before?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She showed her Grange’s accidental close-up of the man on her mobile. ‘This him?’
‘I think so... Yes. It is. Definitely.’
The reward smile not coming easily to Flaco, she gave a brisk nod. ‘What happened when the two of them came together – the guy and the old man?’
The woman began twisting a strand of hair around her finger. ‘They went off on one.’
‘They fought physically?’
‘No, no. They just had words. Only lasted a few seconds.’
‘Right.’ Flaco moved in closer. Yes, the woman had been drinking alright. A spirit of some kind. Unsurprising, perhaps, under the circumstances. ‘And then what happened? Take your time.’
The woman put her hand to her forehead. ‘The guy had got off his chest what he’d wanted to, I guess, because he turned and left. And then...’ She reached for the handrail in front of her. ‘The old man took a running jump... straight in front of the TGV.’
‘He jumped? Completely of his own volition?’
The woman straightened. ‘Yes. There was no push. Nothing. He ran and jumped.’
‘You’d be prepared to say that at an inquest?’
‘Yes.’ She reached for Flaco’s forearm. ‘Could we go back in? I’m sick of this view today.’
After what she’d just seen and heard, Flaco’s thoughts were already returning to the sideboard. ‘Of course.’
Repairing to a sofa occupied by a menagerie of soft toys, the woman made a space for herself and gestured Flaco into the armchair opposite.
‘This is cheeky but I missed my coffee break earlier.’ Now was the moment for a smile. ‘I heard the kettle. If you were about to have one, I’d join you.’
