* * *
‘It’s not much of a room, Detective Inspector,’ Haines, the civilian facilities manager, said to McCracken. He was grey haired and grey faced. He looked tired even now at half past nine in the morning. ‘You’ve got a telephone, desk and chair. I’ll sort out a filing cabinet and a desktop computer for you later today.’ He glanced up at McCracken. ‘If I’d known this was in the pipeline, I’d have got it ready beforehand, but nobody tells me anything. Sign here, please. Oh, and congratulations by the way.’
The chair squeaked as McCracken lowered himself into it. He knew he wasn’t heavy by any measure, but the thing looked as if it had been rescued from the skip.
Why had this promotion come through now? Sure, he’d passed both parts of the exams, done the board and was waiting for a posting as a temporary inspector, but there’d been no vacancy. Now, here he was, substantive, subject to assessment. And working direct to the super on this case alone with instructions to expedite it. Why was it important?
Evans’s file was good, he admitted to himself as he flipped through it. Mélisende des Pittones, dual French/British national. Father, Henri des Pittones, farmer and businessman in Poulençay-les-Pierres, western France. Old family, pre-Revolution. What did that mean? Ran a management consultancy in Paris, well connected and well regarded. Mother, former model Susan Barrow from Middle Chart, Kent. That’s why the woman’s English sounded like Home Counties. Subject’s older brother, Arnaud des Pittones, graduate of ENA, elite Paris business school, farmer and candidate for the National Assembly elections next year. McCracken looked at the papers underneath, all in French. Did Evans know French, then? Blimey, clever girl. Better get her on his team permanently. If he was going to have a team.
Subject left school at eighteen, straight into French Army as NCO trainee. Why didn’t she go as an officer with her posh background? Bloody good reports, though. Even McCracken could work out what ‘Excellent’ and ‘Très bien’ and ‘Haute compétence’ meant. She must have liked it, so why had she left?
Gérard Rohlbert was another highly educated one, silver spoon in his mouth. Done well in his studies, so was capable of hard work. McCracken grumped. Trader and financial clever boy, impressive financial assets. Trained regularly at a gym when here in London.
Unless the post-mortem showed anything strange, he’d have to go along with the downgrade as just one of those things. But in his gut, he knew it wasn’t. And how was that woman involved? He had to admit he wouldn’t be unhappy to pin it on her. A good stretch in a British prison would take her down a peg or two.
5
Mel glanced up and down the narrow street. At just after 4 a.m. it was quiet even in twenty-four-hour London. The private hotel was discreet, almost hidden away in a mews; it was why she’d chosen it for her time with Gérard. She knew that what she was about to do could land her in an English prison. What the hell. She had to know.
She plodded into the mews, her hands nesting in the pockets of a light microfibre jacket, and a bleach blonde wig covering her own bound-up hair. As she reached the shelter of a balcony overhang, she stripped off the jacket and wig and stuffed them in her nylon backpack. Now she was down to her new black clothes. She pushed a black knitted hat over her hair and wrapped a black scarf round her neck and pulled it up to obscure most of her face. Dim light glowed from traditional lanterns sprouting from the buildings at irregular intervals along with two CCTV cameras on the second floor.
She blessed the conservation laws that insisted on jointed drainpipes. Her running shoes gripped as she pulled herself up then over the ironwork railing of a first-floor balcony. She scanned the mews again. Nothing, nobody; the only sound was the hum of traffic on the street at the end of the mews. She glanced up at the first of the second-floor CCTV installations. One more climb to reach it. She stood up and grasped the next section of the drainpipe.
It wobbled then groaned as she put her weight on it. Merde, one of the brackets was loose. But there was no other way.
Tough shit, Mel. Go.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the next section, thankfully secure with a new fixing. She heaved herself up quickly onto the second-floor balcony, below and out of range of the first camera. Crouching as low as possible, she released her breath. As long as that bloody pipe didn’t come completely unstuck and crash to the ground, she was okay. She waited for ten seconds before tackling the camera. The pipe swayed but stayed put.
Just as Mel reached up to the camera, a car barrelled into the mews. It screeched to a halt outside a house three up from the hotel. Mel dropped down into a crouch. The balcony ironwork gave no shelter. All she could do was minimise her breathing and stay statue still. A young man in evening suit, tie loose, jumped out of the passenger seat. Two girls, giggling and shrieking, followed, then the driver, slamming the doors. The four joked and shouted, one young man bursting into song. An exaggerated ‘Shush’, more loud laughter and they eventually disappeared through the door of the house.
A light flashed on in the window of the second floor directly opposite Mel. The window opened and a face peered out. Mel didn’t dare move a millimetre although the cold of the November morning was seeping into her flesh. God, she’d be literally frozen if she didn’t flex her legs and arms soon. The face retracted, and the light extinguished.
Mel let her shoulders slump. After counting to sixty, she pulled on latex gloves, fished in her pocket and brought out a bottle containing hair gel. She’d mixed talc into it earlier. Starting at the edge, she smeared the mixture over the camera lens.
Mel clambered back down to the ground. Flat against the wall and motionless, she let out a slow breath of relief. She looked up and down the mews. Nobody.
That second security camera would be easy to neutralise, stupidly so. It was a few doors along at the top of a retrofitted metal spiral stair reaching up to the second floor.
Shuffling along close to the wall, Mel reached the bottom tread. Her soft shoes made no sound as she climbed the stairs. The gate at the top was locked, but she bent her knee, slotted her left foot between the bars halfway up and eased herself over the top. On the tiny balcony, she smeared the hair gel and talc mixture over the lens of the second camera. Hopefully, the overnight hotel receptionist was reading her book or chatting on the phone to a friend or watching a soap. The security feed would just look blurred on her monitor.
Mel wiped the excess gel off on the hem of her hoodie then looked down. Two storeys to the ground, but only one to drop to the floor she needed. From halfway down the metal stairs, on a level with the first-floor balconies, she calculated she could make it to the nearest one with a little stretch. She took a deep breath, released it, then swung her leg towards the iron railing. Her foot just about reached. She shifted her weight onto that forward foot and pulled herself onto the railing edge.
The first room was dark with the curtains closed, but she clambered across to the next balcony – her target. Crouched down behind the iron railing, she peered in through the window. Curtains and nets were undrawn. Light cast from the streetlamps was enough to show the unmade bed and the numbered yellow markers on the floor. Fingerprint powder traces bloomed on the windowpanes but, thank goodness, the sash window lock wasn’t engaged. Bloody sloppy, though. Mel shoved her gloved fingers under the edge of the lower pane and pushed hard upwards.
It rattled and groaned. She stopped and looked around. Nobody. No shout challenging her. She edged the window up slowly until the gap was just wide enough for her to slip through. First, she eased a pair of plastic overshoes over her running shoes and stepped into the bedroom she’d left seventy-two hours ago.
Silence. And a sharp, pungent smell from the mattress. She waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. A puddle of water in front of the fridge. Mel stepped lightly between the yellow markers and headed for the bed. She crouched down and gently lifted the mattress. Nothing. She looked inside the pillowcase. Same result.
A rattle broke the silence
. The main door handle turned. The swish of a key card. Mel’s heart thumped. Who the hell was that at four in the morning? Surely not the police.
‘No. Not that one,’ came a voice with an accent. ‘Police not finished. We not clean tonight. Change next one.’
‘Xarasho,’ a second voice replied. Russian.
Mel let out a long breath. They were a bit keen, doing housekeeping at this time of night. Didn’t it disturb the other guests? She counted up to twenty before moving. In the bathroom, she scanned the tiles and the shower cubicle. More fingerprint powder residue, but the towels and complimentary toiletries, her comb, toothpaste and brush – everything personal – had gone.
The hanging rail in the wardrobe was empty; all the clothes had been bagged up and taken away by the police, so no pockets to check. She searched the obvious places like the underside of the three drawers in the unit inside the wardrobe. Was this a complete waste of time? She glanced round the room again. Damn, the bedside table. How could she have missed it?
Nothing in the drawer except a Gideon Bible. She hadn’t seen one for years. She flicked it open. On the flyleaf were jumbled numbers and letters in several rows written in pen and sometimes pencil. Ah, references to verses, perhaps. Then she stopped scanning. A number in pencil 01.63.45.87.99, like a Paris telephone number. And it was in Gérard’s handwriting.
Outside, a vehicle engine sounded. She glanced at her watch. The early morning shift and deliveries would start soon. She needed to get out of there. Grabbing her backpack, she fished out a fine-gauge felt-tip pen and wrote the number on the skin of her inside arm.
She stood and was just about to make for the window when it was flooded with light from the outside. She shrank back behind the velvet curtains. A narrow but intense beam from a powerful torch or portable searchlight was shining straight in. Mel’s pulse increased. Was it a police patrol? Or somebody else?
After a full minute, the light cut. Mel crouched down and crept towards the window. If only she had a ’scope.
She raised her head a few centimetres and risked a glance outside. Two men were packing something away in the open side door of a blue van with its engine running. One man heaved the van door closed, the other leapt into the driver’s side and revved the engine. On the side was a pale logo – ‘ASG’. Another man’s voice shouted ‘Oi!’ from the opposite building. But the van disappeared out of the mews entrance into the early morning traffic.
Mel clambered down from the hotel balcony. She stuffed her overshoes into her pocket. She’d dump them in a fast-food rubbish bin on the way back. Ditto the gloves, but near a Boots.
She shuffled along the wall to the other end of the mews. Once round the corner out of CCTV view, she freed her hair and let it fall over her face. After reversing her microfibre jacket she walked briskly for a half-kilometre, then dived down into the Tube and caught an early train back to the nearest station to Aimée’s. Nobody was around when she sneaked into the back entrance of the building. Mel had felt guilty at having pinched the set of keys her hostess had left in the marble dish on the hall table the previous evening, but there’d been no other way.
* * *
‘Sleep well?’ Aimée asked across the breakfast table.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Mel said, perfectly truthfully. ‘I had to get up. I made myself a cup of tea. Did I wake you?’
‘Ah, I thought I heard a door close. No, I went back to sleep.’
Possibly she was paranoid, but Mel had left her smartphone at Aimée’s while she was out so she couldn’t be tracked. She’d been too wired to sleep after her self-imposed mission so spent the next hour checking the phone thoroughly for any signs of tampering while the police had had it. Most smartphone bugs were software, but it was possible to insert a physical one. Who knew what the police here could do? She’d deliberately left it unconnected to the charging cable. If they had messed about with the software, the phone would have discharged quickly or be running hot. She held it in the palm of her hand for a few seconds. No, it was as cold as McCracken’s face but still half-charged.
She’d entered the number from the hotel Gideon Bible in her contacts list as if it was the standard Paris phone number of a friend. In this case, a fake friend. Perhaps it simply was a number. When she’d checked on the Pages Blanches reverse directory page for Paris, it reported that the number wasn’t listed. If only she had the resources of her former intelligence database, she’d know in seconds.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Aimée’s sharp voice interrupted her thoughts as she poured a second coffee.
‘I think I’ll go home for a while. I suppose they’ll release Gérard’s body soon. Will you take him back to the Vosges for… for burial?’ Mel could hardly say the word.
‘I can’t leave him here. My parents would be very upset.’
‘I imagine they’re devastated. I’m calling them tonight.’
‘They seemed to have understood what I was saying when I phoned them the day before yesterday, but I don’t think they really took it in.’
‘You will tell me when, won’t you?’ Mel asked.
‘Of course. I expect you to be there as his fiancée. When are you leaving?’
‘They took my identity card, but I’m going to the police station this morning to insist they give it back.’
‘What? They can’t do that. It’s the property of the French government.’ Aimée tapped at her phone, the red polished nails flying over the glass front. ‘If they don’t, I’ll get a temporary one issued for you and a full passport.’
* * *
Mel had read every single notice on the board in the public reception area of Friars Green Police Station by the time Evans brought her suitcase out. The detective stood in front of the case, flipped open a notebook and looked squarely at Mel.
‘The inspector wants a contact address for you. Just in case.’
‘Very well, but where is my identity card, please?’
‘I’ll be able to release everything once this formality is completed.’
Evans clearly wasn’t going to hand anything over until Mel had complied. Well, it was information anybody could find without a lot of trouble.
‘Mélisende des Pittones, 79900 Poulençay-les-Pierres.’
‘Street name?’
‘There isn’t one. Everybody knows my father, so any letter will get there.’
‘Well, you must have a house name.’
‘You really don’t need one, but if you must it’s the Château des Pittones.’
Evans raised an eyebrow but wrote it down. She dipped her hand into her jacket pocket, handed Mel an envelope and went back into the interior of the police station without another word.
Mel tore open the envelope and was relieved to find the blue and turquoise ID card. She pocketed it, grabbed her case by the handle and bounced it down the concrete steps onto the grey flagstones of the street. Thank God she would never have to come back to this bloody place ever again.
6
‘I don’t know, Papa. I really don’t want to get in the way of Arnaud and his kids. Thierry is nearly fifteen and seems interested in the farm. I don’t want to be the boring aunt hanging around the place. There’s no role for me here.’ She perched on the corner of Henri’s mahogany desk.
‘Ma chère Mélisende, this is your home. There will always be a place for you, and Arnaud agrees.’ He knocked the dregs from his pipe into the ashtray. ‘You are of the Pittones, of this land. You belong to it and it belongs to you.’
She laughed. ‘I love it when you go all solemn and romantic.’ She bent over and kissed his cheek. Just entering his sixties, Henri des Pittones wasn’t and hadn’t ever been a handsome man; his mouth and eye sockets were too big for classic looks, but he had presence that came from the confidence of holding the same land as fifty generations of ancestors. His plentiful brown hair was salted with grey and he had the same dark brown eyes as his daughter.
‘Don’t be disrespectful, you wicked girl.’
<
br /> She laughed again. ‘I’m going to see Maman. She’s in the garden, I expect?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘No doubt worrying whether her precious ones will survive the frost.’
Susan des Pittones, formerly Barrow, was muffled up against the cold and tutting over her beloved plants. Her black woolly hat, blonde hair, black scarf, the old sheepskin coat and black boots made her look like a large bumblebee. Her eyes lit up when she spotted Mel.
‘Darling! Tea?’
* * *
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
Susan searched her daughter’s face but Mel looked straight back.
‘I loved it, Mum, but ended my contract because my life in the future was going to be with Gérard. Now what do I do?’ She shrugged. ‘No way do I want to work in an office. I can’t see myself selling photocopiers or being nice to children.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘I phoned my old colonel and I’m going to Strasbourg tomorrow to see him. I only hope they’ll take me back.’
‘God, Mel, they’ll fall over themselves. Of course, they will. You could go for officer training and end up running the whole shooting match.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think I could be diplomatic enough for that.’
‘Well, see how you get on in Strasbourg, love. You never know what might come up.’
* * *
Mel sweated under her battledress despite the pinching early December wind. When she’d been ushered into Colonel Vasseur’s office and had questions barked at her, she hadn’t expected to be sent out on the endurance course the next day with a load of juniors to look after.
Double Identity Page 3
