Double Identity

by Alison Morton

  Published in 2021 by Pulcheria Press

  Copyright © 2021 by Alison Morton

  All rights reserved Tous droits réservés

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  The right of Alison Morton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988 Sections 77 and 78.

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  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  * * *

  Propriété littéraire d’Alison Morton

  Tous droits de reproduction, d’adaptation et de traduction, intégrale ou partielle réservés pour tous pays. L’auteur ou l’éditeur est seul propriétaire des droits et responsable du contenu de ce livre.

  * * *

  Le Code de la propriété intellectuelle interdit les copies ou reproductions destinées à une utilisation collective. Toute représentation ou reproduction intégrale ou partielle faite par quelque procédé que ce soit, sans le consentement de l’auteur ou de ses ayant droit ou ayant cause, est illicite et constitue une contrefaçon, aux termes des articles L.335-2 et suivants du Code de la propriété intellectuelle

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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  ISBN 9791097310271

  Deeply in love, a chic Parisian lifestyle before her. Now she’s facing prison for murder.

  * * *

  It’s three days since Mel des Pittones threw in her job as an intelligence analyst with the French special forces to marry financial trader Gérard Rohlbert. But her dream turns to nightmare when she wakes to find him dead in bed beside her.

  * * *

  Her horror deepens when she’s accused of his murder. Met Police detective Jeff McCracken wants to pin Gérard’s death on her. Mel must track down the real killer, even if that means being forced to work with the obnoxious McCracken.

  * * *

  But as she unpicks her fiancé’s past, she discovers his shocking secret life. To get to the truth, she has to go undercover with the European Investigation and Regulation Service and finds almost everybody around her is hiding a second self.

  * * *

  Mel can trust nobody. Can she uncover the real killer before they stop her?

  * * *

  A stunning new thriller from the author of the award-winning Roma Nova series, fans of Daniel Silva or and Stella Rimington will love Double Identity.

  1

  Mel shivered. A cold breeze drifted over her bare backside. Dieu, the window must be open. Stupid in late November in London. But windows had been the last things on Mel’s mind last night.

  Still drugged with sleep, she stretched out her hand towards Gérard’s face. His eyes were closed, the lashes resting on his pale cheeks. Too much time indoors, Mel thought and smiled. In his early morning relaxed state, Gérard looked more like a boy of seventeen than a man of thirty-seven.

  Her eyelids were so heavy. She closed them. After a few seconds, she realised she wasn’t tired, just thick-headed. Opening her eyes again, she blinked hard then tugged on the duvet to cover them both against the too fresh air, but it was trapped under Gérard’s body. Never mind, she could think of a much more pleasurable way to warm up than hiding under the bedclothes. She stroked his skin with the tips of her fingers sliding over the fine brown hairs on his shoulder, then down his chest and over his stomach towards…

  He didn’t stir.

  He was cold. Stone cold.

  No.

  Then the smell hit her.

  She sat up. The world spun around her. She shot her hand out onto the mattress to steady herself, then knelt beside him. Not wanting to, but knowing she had to, she stretched out her hand, two fingers close together, for the side of his throat. Nothing. She pressed harder, desperate for a sign. But he was too still and too pale. And the blue lips…

  Dieu, no. Not her Gérard. Not clever, witty, vibrant Gérard. He couldn’t be gone. But she’d confirmed enough dead bodies during her military life, the last only three weeks ago in a blazing desert wadi in Africa. She sat back, shivered and pressed the palms of her hands into her eye sockets. The sourness ran up her gullet. Clamping her hand over her mouth, she stumbled to the bathroom and threw up in the pan.

  * * *

  Ambulance. She must call an ambulance.

  * * *

  She sat on the toilet seat and gulped down water from the plastic tooth mug. In the bedroom, the green-uniformed man and woman were examining Gérard. Through the gap of the almost closed door, Mel could hear them mumbling to each other. After a few minutes, they stopped talking. They were making a call, giving the hotel name.

  The woman came into the bathroom. Her calm face didn’t seem as sympathetic as it had been earlier.

  ‘What is it?’ Mel asked.

  ‘We’ve had to call the police. We’ve found something and there are marks on the deceased’s body.’

  ‘What? Let me see!’ Mel said and leapt up.

  The woman held out her plastic-gloved hand.

  ‘No, stay here, and don’t wash. The police will want to talk to you.’

  * * *

  ‘What sort of a name is Mellysand?’

  She clutched the bathrobe tighter and braced her legs to steady her balance. This was surreal. Gérard was dead and they suspected her. Why? How was she supposed to have done it? She shook her head which seemed full of mush thumping to escape.

  ‘It’s pronounced “Mél-i-send-uh”,’ she said. ‘And it’s the name I was given by my parents.’

  ‘Not very English, is it?’

  Le bon Dieu save me from these parochial Brits, she thought. And this cop was even worse than most. He didn’t look like one either in his jeans, tan leather jacket, unshaven and with a single earring. But his warrant card looked genuine, and the two uniformed police outside had let him in.

  ‘You got any ID?’ he barked.

  Mel pulled a pale turquoise and blue card with her photo and signature out of her purse and offered it to him.

  ‘French?’ He frowned, flicked it over to the other side, then back. ‘You don’t sound very French.’

  ‘That’s where I was born. My mother is English.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Visiting friends and doing some shopping.’

  ‘I’ll need a list of those friends and dates.’

  ‘Why? Am I under suspicion?’

  The cop looked down at the bed, duvet pulled back, bottom sheet stained by body fluids.

  ‘When there’s a dead man in your bed and you were presumably the last person to see him alive, let’s say you’re at least a person of interest.’

  * * *

  It was the humiliation of it all. Gérard’s clothes and hers rolled up and stuffed into separate brown paper bags, her bag, phone and keys taken away. A policewoman handed Mel a white coverall. She stumbled as she stepped into it and her fingers trembled as she pulled up the zip to isolate herself from the rest of the world. The woman’s grip on Mel’s arm was real enough as she led her down into the mews yard and bundled her into the back of the police car. Mel was too dazed to question anything. What the hell was wrong with her? She should have stood up to them and refused, but she had somehow lost the energy to protest. Fine bloody soldier she was.

  In a plain room at the police station smelling of disinfectant and containing a desk and a row of cupboards,
the police doctor tried to reassure her, but failed. Now Mel sat trembling on a padded bench curtained off from the rest of the room while the woman took samples from Mel’s hands and nails, then swabbed her mouth. She winced as the doctor pulled her hair when snipping off a few strands. Then she had to pee in a pot and let her take blood. Mel just nodded when she asked something; nothing seemed unreasonable. She wasn’t usually squeamish, but had to look away, face red with embarrassment at parting her legs for the doctor to take the vaginal swab so soon after she and Gérard… Then she’d thrown up again.

  A policewoman brought Mel a grey tracksuit to put on afterwards. She slumped and rubbed her eyes. She and Gérard had been too busy until the early hours for much sleep. But now the man she’d given her heart to and was going to spend her life with, perhaps with children, was a cold body; lifeless when he’d been so full of life. She would never again see his brown eyes shine, hear him tease her about her military stride, or laugh at his sharp jokes. She bowed her head and gulped.

  The policewoman came back with a Styrofoam cup of grey tea and some tissues for her face. She took Mel to a hard plastic seat in a corridor watched over by a sergeant working at a desk.

  Mel closed her eyes against the harsh white light and tried to pull her thoughts together. She blinked hard and shook her head to try to clear it. It couldn’t be a hangover – she hadn’t had enough to drink. More like her brain was floating away, stoned.

  Police officers came and went, calling out to each other, laughing. Some were quieter; the occasional one glanced at her. None of them said anything to her.

  What had they done with Gérard? The police must by now have some idea how he’d died. He’d been fit and strong. And where had that syringe come from? Neither she nor Gérard took drugs. Dieu, her head hurt. How long was she going to be kept here? She should demand a lawyer if they were going to treat her as a suspect. Her jaw muscles contracted and try as she could to suppress it, she yawned again.

  * * *

  Half an hour later in an interview room, the cop from the hotel flicked the recording machine on. He intoned his name, date and fellow officer’s details. So he was a sergeant and his name was McCracken. The woman detective constable was called Evans, a name as ordinary as her face. The grey walls met a dirty white ceiling; in the far top corner the red LED of a camera blinked. In any other circumstances Mel would have laughed at how much it looked like interview rooms on cop dramas. Now, it was intimidating.

  But she was damned if she was going to let them see her fazed, however shaky she felt inside. She’d done her resistance training. She pushed her shoulders back and drew herself up straight, ready for their offensive.

  ‘Interview started at 12.20, Friars Green Police Station.’ He looked up at Mélisende. ‘Please state your full name and age.’

  ‘Mélisende Marie Cathérine Elisabeth des Pittones, twenty-nine.’

  The detectives looked at each other.

  ‘Well, Mellysand—’

  ‘As I said before, it’s “Mél-i-send-uh”, but you may call me Mademoiselle des Pittones.’

  Take that, you rude bastard.

  McCracken snorted.

  ‘So how long had you known the deceased?’

  ‘Just over four months, if you mean intimately. Socially, twenty-two years.’

  The woman detective stared at her.

  ‘We became lovers on my last trip to England.’

  A sour taste rose in Mel’s throat and she coughed hard. But she swallowed it down. She was not going to be sick in front of these two. The woman, Evans, gave her a plastic cup of water.

  ‘What’s your current occupation?’ McCracken continued.

  ‘Unemployed, as of three days ago.’

  ‘Okay, what was your occupation up to three days ago?’ McCracken growled at her.

  ‘French Armed Forces.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’ She flicked out her hand, grabbed his notepad and scribbled a number on it. ‘That’s the number for the Dir-rat, sorry D-R-H-A-T, where you can check.’

  ‘Who’s that, then?’

  ‘Human resources, Direction des ressources humaines de l'armée de terre.’ Mel looked at him, eyebrow raised. ‘You speak French, I presume?’

  McCracken whispered something to his colleague who took the note and left.

  ‘Detective Constable Evans has left the room. Interview paused at 12.30 p.m.,’ he intoned and tapped the LCD screen of the recording machine to ‘off’.

  ‘You think you’re bloody clever, don’t you?’

  Mel countered his glare with one of her own.

  ‘No. I’m just answering your questions. I can’t help it if you can’t deal with it. And for what it’s worth, you’re being bloody rude.’

  They sat in silence. She closed her eyes and shook her head. It felt stuffed full like a heavy cold. It must be tiredness or reaction to shock, her logical mind told her. She opened her eyes after a minute and glanced at McCracken. He was studying the far wall and twiddling his pen between his fingers. What a boorish man. Mel’s opinion of the British police dropped to zero.

  Evans came back five minutes later. She gave McCracken a note. He read it and harrumphed. He tapped on the LCD screen and said in a terse voice, ‘Interview terminated at 12.38,’ then shut it down. He stood up and turned to Mel. ‘Come with me.’

  * * *

  The superintendent’s office was a significant step up in decor, although still dull. A petite blonde woman wearing her uniform neatly sat behind a polished desk with the obligatory flat screen and keyboard to one side. Her name badge said Superintendent Denise Fredericks. Her expression was thoughtful as if trying to suppress the anxiety of sitting on a box of snakes. Opposite her on this side of the desk sat a brunette, sleek hair in a chignon bound with a tortoiseshell clip, and wearing a skirt suit straight out of a Paris fashion house.

  Mel stopped as soon as the dark-haired woman turned round to see who had entered the room. Mel caught a quick breath, then took a step forward.

  ‘Aimée.’

  ‘Bonjour, Mélisende,’ the brunette replied in a formal tone.

  ‘English, please,’ rapped out the superintendent in a voice belying her size.

  Aimée rose, came over to Mel and kissed her on both cheeks. Mel hugged her tightly. Aimée brought her hands up and patted Mel’s back. After a few seconds, they separated and sat down facing the superintendent. McCracken moved up to the side of his super’s desk, crossed his arms and waited.

  ‘Detective Sergeant McCracken, Madame de Villiers, second secretary at the French Embassy here in London, the deceased’s sister, listed as next of kin.’ Superintendent Fredericks glanced at Mel, then Aimée. ‘I gather you know one other?’

  ‘Yes, we were at school together,’ Mel said. Whether the futuristic establishment in a select part of Paris that consistently turned out a hundred per cent top percentile exam success could be called a school or a hothouse was in question, but it created a solidarity amongst its former pupils that was almost unbreakable.

  ‘I realise that Mademoiselle des Pittones as a dual national is not entitled to consular support while here in the UK,’ Aimée said in a smooth tone. ‘Nevertheless, as her friend, I wish to offer her my informal assistance. We both have emotional ties to my brother, so common cause. I have formally identified him. How else can we help you, Superintendent?’

  Brava, Aimée! But Mel knew she’d pay once they were behind private doors.

  ‘The coroner’s office has been informed and you should know that a post-mortem will be required as it is an unexplained death,’ Fredericks replied. ‘As part of our investigation we would like a full statement from Miss des Pittones as she was the last to see the deceased alive.’

  ‘Of course. I will arrange a lawyer immediately. Will tomorrow morning at eleven be convenient?’ Aimée drew on all the natural hauteur that Mel had seen in action before. Few industrialists or politicians attempted to patronise her once, let alone twice
.

  McCracken took a step forward but his boss waved him back and nodded at Aimée.

  ‘Very well, we will return tomorrow morning,’ Aimée stated. ‘Come, Mélisende.’

  2

  Mel said nothing during the short taxi journey. Aimée lived alone now in a two-bedroom flat in a discreet part of south Mayfair. The November sun was going down rapidly; the late afternoon light blinded her as they travelled west. Once inside the flat, Aimée pulled the scarf from her neck and threw her Louis Vuitton bag on the living room sofa.

  ‘What the hell is my brother doing lying on a mortuary slab?’ she shot at Mel. ‘And how long have you been fucking him?’

  ‘Fine words for a senior diplomat, madame!’

  ‘Sans blague.’

  Mel winced at Aimée’s biting tone. Aimée sniffed, then went straight for her drinks tray. She thrust one tumbler of dark amber liquid at Mel and took a good mouthful from her own before dropping onto the sofa.

  ‘I haven’t seen Gérard for months – over a year, to tell the truth,’ Aimée said. ‘You know we’ve never been close. He works here in the UK much of the time, so Papa tells me, but he doesn’t come to see me. I know I’m busy, but he could at least have phoned.’

  ‘He tried twice, to my knowledge.’

  ‘Oh? When was that?’

  ‘About four months ago, when we got together.’ That evening had started as a meal shared by long-standing acquaintances as they were then. He’d made her laugh, recalling silly stuff about people they both knew, listening to her stories of comic foul-ups in her regiment, talking about their dreams for the future. The banter had progressed to flirting. When they’d left the warmth of the restaurant and stood on the street to say goodbye, neither had wanted to be the first to leave. He’d stared into her eyes, into her soul, and she was lost. She knew in that instant in her thudding heart he was the one. Now he was closed up in a cold mortuary drawer and his dragon of a sister was firing questions at her.