Knock 'Em Dead, page 7
‘I was going to have an Earl Grey tea. Would that be alright?’
She had never tried it. ‘My favourite, thank you.’
As the woman padded into her kitchen, Flaco moved quickly to the sideboard and slid open a drawer. And then another. Nothing. Perhaps she had jumped to the wrong... The third drawer came up trumps and she offered the object to the dust-lined footprint. It fitted exactly.
‘A slice of lemon?’ the woman called out.
‘Perfect,’ Flaco said, slipping her phone out of her pocket. She took a shot of the object and put it back in the drawer. When her hostess returned, Flaco was playing innocently with her mobile. ‘Sending a quick email,’ she said. ‘Just routine.’
‘Right.’
The station PA’s four-note clarion drifted in from the balcony. A lengthy live announcement followed, every so often eliciting a groan from the waiting crowd.
Flaco took her tea. ‘Sounds as if people aren’t getting what they want.’
‘Well,’ the woman said, a harder edge in her voice. ‘Isn’t that so often the way?’
10
Darac pulled up at temporary lights, the second stop for road works he had had to make since passing the sign to La Crague. ‘So tell me about this Martina Sicotte.’
‘She’ll be in her mid-forties now, I should think,’ Granot said. Vehicles dribbling through on the open carriageway began to dry up. ‘Twenty-year pro on the tennis circuit. She could well be the Tina our mystery woman is or was playing.’
‘Hot, then?’
‘I certainly am.’
‘You do have a certain boil-in-the-bag look.’ The light went to green. ‘But I meant Martina.’
‘Martina hot? She was not. Luke-warm at best.’
‘Did I miss something? I thought you said she was a long-term pro?’
‘She was and I’m sure she hammers the locals. Including the men. But her mother, Yolande – now she was a tennis player. A true champion. Hard as nails.’
‘So it’s her centre, Yolande?’
‘No, she kept her maiden name, Yolande Bertrand.’ Granot gave Darac a look. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of her.’
‘You know me and sport.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Granot laid a hand on Darac’s forearm. ‘I’ve just told you Yolande was a top-ranked tennis player, right?’
‘What’s with the death grip?’
‘She marries a Monsieur Sicotte and in time, gives birth to a girl. She calls her Martina.’ His shaggy eyebrows rose, creasing his forehead like an old dog blanket. ‘Martina. OK? Now why might she have chosen that name?’
Darac shrugged. ‘After her own mother? How should I know?’ He saw it. ‘Ah.’
Granot brightened, a teacher encouraging a slow pupil. ‘Yes?’
The lights turned green. ‘She named her after Tina Brooks.’
‘Who the hell is Tina Brooks?’
‘Hard bop sax player. Great improviser. A man, oddly enough.’
‘It was after Martina Navratilova, you imbecile. Best woman player of all time.’
‘Navrati... Oh yes. Rings a bell now.’
At a sign, Darac turned towards an uninspiring ensemble of buildings dotted around a small, unimaginatively landscaped green space. ‘Here we are, the Sicotte Centre for Mind, Body and Spirit.’ He ran an eye over the glass and concrete. ‘Eighties Mediocre – a style that never dates. It’s always crap.’
Granot’s eyebrows rose. ‘I tell you what isn’t.’ He pointed at the one shade tree in the lot. Parked underneath was a smart white convertible. ‘Voilà.’
Darac headed for it and drew up alongside. The car was a white Porsche Boxster with red leather seats. ‘Got her.’ Darac gave Granot’s knee a slap. ‘Good shout, man.’
‘All part of the service.’
Darac retrieved the laptop and fed in the registration. A couple of quick searches provided the basics. ‘One Caroline Rosay is the owner, a notary public residing in La Crague. Single. Clean record.’ He angled the screen. ‘This is her. What do you think?’
Granot flipped open his notebook. ‘Considering Rafal Maso was plugged in to his own little world at La Poche, he did give a pretty detailed description.’ He read it out and peered at the screen. ‘It’s her, alright.’
‘Agreed.’
They set off on a path signed, presumably without irony, to “The Complex”. ‘She’s a notary, Granot. A notary who has a meeting with a man who only half an hour or so later winds up dead.’
‘At college, that is what we would have termed “a significant connection”. We don’t know if she was his notary, of course.’ Granot swiped his mobile. ‘Easy enough to check, though. I’ll get Charvet on it. He likes having something proper to do in between buzzing people in and out.’
Granot called the duty desk at the Caserne and asked Charvet to search the national registry of wills database, the FCDDV. ‘Soonest, please.’ He went to ring off but Charvet had more. Granot listened, nodding forbearingly. ‘Blueberries, yes, I remember. Superfood... I’ll get one... Several then, alright? Thanks.’ He rang off and after a few paces returned to his theme of the moment. ‘You know, one of these days, it might matter that you don’t know a blind thing about sport, chief. Might affect a case, I mean.’
Darac adopted the look of a wild-eyed street boy. ‘ “Who’s the world ping-pong champ, flic? Tell me or I’ll blow your freakin’ head off!” ’ He dropped it. ‘That’s going to happen.’
‘Sport’s a part of life. It’s all around you. And what does Agnès say? “No knowledge is wasted.” True?’
‘True, but while I’ve got sports nuts like you and Bonbon around...’ He went no further, running aground on the tide ebbing away in Granot’s eyes. ‘Listen, they haven’t banished you yet. And they won’t if you get your act together.’
‘ “They haven’t benched you yet,” works better. You’d know that if you knew anything about sport.’
Darac’s mobile rang. ‘It’s Flak. I’ll put her on speaker.’
Drawing into the shade of the main building, they paused to take the call.
‘One of my card people got back to me, Captain.’
‘If you’ve got a flag on you, raise it.’
As Flaco gave the contact’s name and address, Granot’s eye was taken by a line of scantily-clad individuals filing giddily out of reception. Leading them was a glossy individual wearing the expression of someone who was used to being adored. As if a button had been pressed, Granot felt an urge to adore him with a sharp jab to the nose.
‘We’re the seekers of truth,’ the line’s tail-end Charlie volunteered, answering Granot’s unasked question as he skipped by. ‘Deepak’s doing it outside, today.’
‘Is he?’ Granot said, his smile fading quicker than a sliced backhand.
‘The woman has a treadmill set up on her balcony, Captain. She was working out on it when she saw the whole thing. Paillaud jumped all by himself.’
‘Suicide? And she’d testify to that?’
‘She would. There’s only one problem. She’s lying.’
‘Hold it a second, Flak,’ Darac said, as a couple of muscle-bound men in shorts tottered past them like a pair of giant babies. ‘OK, go on.’
‘She could have seen what she claimed only if she’d been standing on the extreme right-hand end of her balcony. The treadmill is set up on the opposite end, though, and she confirmed she didn’t move it.’
As Granot listened, he watched the babies disappear into reception. A moment later, a woman in a white short-sleeved tunic appeared framed in the doorway. Following a brief exchange with someone at the desk, she began jogging briskly towards them. Her fair hair gathered into a stubby ponytail, there was more than a suggestion of a tomboy in the way she looked and moved.
‘Left something in my car,’ she said to Granot as she ran past, offloading the line like a rugby player’s pass. ‘So much for our memory course!’
Granot gave a fruity little chuckle. The staff in this place weren’t all wankers, it seemed.
‘So why did she lie?’ Darac continued to Flaco.
‘She’s Casquette’s girlfriend. There was a framed photo of the pair of them freshly secreted in a drawer – so I wouldn’t make the connection, obviously. I found it when she left the room, briefly. I let her talk for a while before confronting her about it.’
‘Excellent. Was he with her before the confrontation with Paillaud?’
‘No, he rang her afterwards.’
‘ “Hi sweetie, would you do me a big favour?” ’
‘More or less exactly what he said.’
‘How big a favour is it, do you think?’
‘He swore to her that he hadn’t done anything. He and Paillaud rowed. There was no pushing or shoving and then he left. The train hit when his back was turned. That’s what he told her.’
‘His name?’
‘Vaselle, Guy Antoine.’ She spelled the surname. ‘Motoring offences only. You should be getting his photo from the Caserne any second now.’
‘Tell us about him.’
‘He’s the quality control manager of Montand Sanitary Ware, a ceramic business in the zone industrielle just up the Var. He’s the brother-in-law of its owner, a Monsieur Hervé Montand, who’s also the mayor of... La Crague.’ She spelled that, too. ‘Wherever that is.’
‘It’s stuck half-way up a mountain on the other side of the river from the factory. Not far from Carros.’
‘Really? Carros, I know. I’ve never heard of La Crague.’
‘Odd little place. Got a sort of Land That Time Forgot feel. Where does Vaselle live?’
‘In Cagnes.’ Flaco gave his address, landline and mobile number. ‘The mobile he gave to this particular girlfriend, at least. I rang it there and then. It’s switched off. And there’s no one at home. No one answering the phone or the door, anyway.’
‘So the girlfriend doesn’t know Vaselle’s whereabouts?’
‘She says not.’
Darac pulled at his T-shirt, fanning a little air around his chest.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘Yes I do. I told her to contact us if he rang again or showed up. I really scared her – I’m certain she will – but shall I take her in, anyway?’
‘No – better to leave her in situ. In the meantime...’ He glanced across at Granot but the big man, ahead of him on the play, was already calling Mobile Response. ‘... We’ll get a couple of uniforms round to Vaselle’s place and we’ll post a plain-clothes where you are, just in case.’
‘Understood.’
‘Good work, Flak.’
He could picture the modest little smile the young woman from Guadeloupe was allowing herself.
‘Oh, Perand rang me, Captain. He’s got a call-back with a potential eyewitness, as well, a Monsieur Recolte who lives over the shops on the opposite side of the station.’
‘Ah yes?’ A maverick himself, Darac cared little for matters of form but free spiritedness in a junior officer was one thing; not respecting the team ethic, another. ‘Perand hasn’t shared this with us.’
‘Probably because he suspects Monsieur Recolte is senile or lonely or both. Anyway, 4.30, he’s seeing him.’
‘Fair enough. That’s it.’
Granot’s call to Mobile Control over, he turned as Ponytail came jogging back from the car park. She was breathing as easily as if she were walking.
‘Got it,’ she smiled, brandishing what looked like a travel brochure.
The big man smiled back at her, an occurrence so rare, Darac almost dropped his mobile as they continued on their way.
‘I don’t think you’re Roland Granot. You’re an impostor from the Planet Charm.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You actually smiled. Warmly. At the jogger.’
‘Bollocks.’
Order restored.
Reception was a thing of tongue-and-groove pine, leather-clad seating and chequered carpet tiles; a somewhat down-at-heel space presided over by a photo of a young tennis player receiving a small silver cup from a small silver-haired man.
‘Martina?’ Darac said.
Granot nodded. ‘Just about the only tournament she ever won.’
At the desk, a smartly dressed little wraith of a woman aged, Darac guessed, in her mid-fifties, was already smiling before she looked up from her keyboard.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, flashing his ID and checking hers, ‘Sonia. Could you tell us if Madame Sicotte is still ..?’ He searched for the term.
‘On court?’ Granot said.
‘Yes, she is.’ Sonia checked her screen. ‘Court One.’
‘And she’ll be free when?’
‘The lesson ends in... ten minutes.’
‘Her opponent...’
‘Pupil,’ she said, the smile unchanged.
‘Her pupil is one Caroline Rosay, yes?’
Sonia half-rose from the cover of the desk and scanned the area. The coast was clear. ‘May I ask what this is about? We do have certain guidelines now to do with...’ She lowered her voice. ‘... confidentiality.’
‘What it’s about, Sonia, is also...’ Darac lowered his voice. ‘... confidential.’
‘Of course. And personally, I do think it’s all nonsense, this new thing.’
‘We need to talk to her and briefly to Madame. Is there somewhere private we’ll be able to conduct the interview?’
‘Martina’s office. Just back along the corridor, there.’ Pursing her lips, Sonia gathered the loose papers in front of her and soundlessly squared them up. ‘That is very private.’
Learning that once off court, Caroline would have to cross reception en route to the locker room, Darac and Granot withdrew to a row of chairs lining the side wall.
Sans travel brochure, Granot’s jogger friend appeared at the desk and after a word with Sonia, walked across to greet them. ‘You’re waiting to talk to Martina and Caroline? They won’t be long.’
‘Thanks,’ Darac said, wondering how she had acquired the unusual scar on her cheek.
Granot produced an avuncular grin. ‘Glad of the sit-down, to tell you the truth, mademoiselle. And you are?’
She extended her hand. ‘Jodie Foucault.’
Foucault. The name, courtesy of philosopher Michel, put Darac in another time and place. His former lover, Angeline, had written extensively on the man’s theories and was wont to discuss them with Darac over a late-night glass or two. He could still articulate the arguments. Where he detected contradictions in Foucault’s thinking, Angeline saw paradoxes. And wasn’t it the paradoxes, she suggested, that pointed to the deeper truth at the heart of all modern French thinking? He could picture her now, sitting out on the roof terrace of his apartment, from time to time noting down a new idea, a discussion topic for some future class. Then they would sip more wine and listen to more music before wandering back into the apartment, and to bed.
This was the second time today, he realised, that he’d had thoughts of Angeline. It triggered another memory of the night Frankie had first shared her reservations about her figure; and how she envied, she had said, Angeline’s slender, “wear anything” frame. Because it had seemed disloyal, Darac hadn’t told Frankie that Angeline, despite everything she knew and lived by, had occasionally expressed a reciprocal envy for her.
Frankie... Darac needed to talk to her. He was rehearsing with the band at the Théâtre de Verdure later, the alfresco venue in Jardin Albert. Perhaps she would be free afterwards.
‘Won’t be long,’ Granot said, rising.
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear what we were saying?’
Darac looked past him at Jodie. ‘Foucault – any relation to Michel?’
She gave him a quizzical smile. ‘Michel? There’s a great-grandfather, I think. But he’s on my mother’s side.’
Darac shook his head. ‘Sorry. Irrelevant.’ He turned to Granot. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To the workout room.’
‘You are?’ Granot was definitely an impostor. A poorly briefed one. ‘Why?’
‘Jodie’s going to give me a quick tour. She’s got a plan. Reckons she can get my weight down – the lot.’ The rolling hills of his chins took on a lofty resolution. ‘With her help, I think I can beat this thing.’
‘Good. Excellent.’
‘Follow me.’ Jodie smiled, leading Granot away. ‘Don’t be put off by all the rowing machines and things. They can look a bit daunting...’
Grinning at the strangeness of it all, Darac glanced at his watch. There was still a good five minutes before the interview so he had time to call Frankie. He stepped through the front doors, and checking he had a sightline back into reception, took out his mobile. No answer. He left a message.
The two women wore white tennis dresses, expensive wristwatches and red shale-clouded shoes. And that was where any similarity in their appearance ended. As if she were carrying around her own personal fairground cut-out, Martina Sicotte had an oddly mismatched appearance. Her pinched, sun-scored face reminded Darac of photographs of dustbowl era sharecroppers in the U.S. but her muscular frame and legs were unmistakably those of a professional athlete. The mismatches didn’t end there. Her right forearm was twice the circumference of her left. Darkly powerful, she looked as if she might have been sitting in an armchair for the past forty-five minutes.
One towel draped across her thighs, another around her neck, the lean and fair-haired Caroline Rosay was sweating profusely.
‘You teach for half an hour and then conclude with a short game?’ Darac said, hoping Granot was surviving his tour of the workout room; the big man still hadn’t shown.
‘Yes, I run through a core programme and then we play a set or for fifteen minutes whichever comes first.’
