by Val McDermid
‘They told me one or two things, but not that. You must’ve been devious enough for them not to realise they’d been had over.’
Karen gave her an appraising look. ‘Aye, right. You’ll go far, Daisy. But right now, we both need to go to our beds. I’ll see you downstairs at breakfast at eight. Get some sleep. I’m going to need you at your sharpest tomorrow. If anybody knew James Auld’s secrets, it will have been the lovely Pascale.’
25
Thursday, 20 February 2020
For once, Karen slept long and hard. The insomnia that had plagued her since Phil’s death and had turned her into a night walker of whatever city she found herself in had recently begun to abate. It was still unpredictable; going to bed in a state of exhaustion was no guarantee that sleep would come, nor was feeling wide awake an indication that she’d inevitably stay in that state. When she awoke just after seven, she was almost disappointed. It was as if she’d been cheated of the chance to get to know a different Paris from the one she’d traversed in daylight.
But as often happened, she woke to new insights, fresh ideas chasing themselves round her head. Jason’s idea of tracking down the source of Dani Gilmartin’s website was solid, no getting away from that. It wasn’t the only answer, however. There were plenty of other, simpler ways to track someone down if you had the resources of a police officer. Karen shook her head. What was wrong with her? This wasn’t the first time she’d juggled more than one case at a time. But this time, she was struggling to focus.
In the shower, she ran through a mental checklist of instructions for Jason. She went straight to her laptop to compose an email to him, but what leapt out at her as soon as she opened her email program was a message from Hamish. ‘Later,’ she muttered and began her message to Jason. Was this the underlying issue that was eating away at her concentration? Or had her encounter with Merrick Shand unsettled her at a deeper level than she was willing to acknowledge?
Whatever, she had to get a grip. The last thing she could afford was to screw up either case. Whether Daisy Mortimer knew it or not, she was Ann Markie’s fifth column inside the HCU and Karen knew better than to give the Dog Biscuit any ammunition to shoot her down.
She towelled her hair and ran her fingers through it in her usual vain attempt to persuade it to behave, wrapped herself in the towel and started typing before she forgot what she wanted to say.
Hi Jason
Good suggestion yesterday about tracing the website address. When you talk to the site host, keep it very low key – don’t mention the seriousness of the case. If you can get away with not even mentioning you’re a polis, so much the better. We do not want to ring any alarm bells and have the target of our investigation do a runner before we get close.
There are also other avenues to pursue. If ‘Dani Gilmartin’ is trading, she’ll have to have a bank account. If your attempt at a fake purchase works, you’ll get some banking info, even if only from your credit card company. She might be VAT registered, so talk to HMRC.
At some point she will have acquired a National Insurance number. See where that gets you. Also try the Passport Office – let’s see when her passport was issued and if it’s been renewed. Also DVLA – she probably has a vehicle registered to her. At least one of these avenues should produce an address. And I can’t emphasise enough the need to be low key here. The skeleton appears to be the real Dani Gilmartin, so someone is using her identity, and the chances are it’s the person who killed her. It’s likely to be Amanda McAndrew but we don’t know that for sure.
Keep me posted. I’m hoping to get back to the UK in the next 24 hours.
Karen
She sent the message and started to close the laptop lid. But Hamish’s name was impossible to ignore. If she didn’t read his response, it would niggle all day. Why could he not just do as she’d asked and leave it till she got back? Tight-lipped, she opened the email.
Hi Karen. Got your message. Appreciate your candour. We can work this out. Let me know when you get back and we’ll talk. Hope you get some quality French scoff! Hx
If she had to deal with a response, this was a decent one. She reminded herself that he was good at getting what he wanted without ever appearing pushy. ‘God save me from reasonable men,’ she muttered under her breath.
She found Daisy in the dining room, tucking into a croissant loaded with butter and jam. Karen helped herself to a chunk of fresh baguette and a selection of cheeses and cold meats. It was like a rerun of dinner, which was fine by her. There was already a pot of coffee on the table; as far as Karen was concerned, this was about as good as it got in the absence of bacon, black pudding and tattie scones.
‘I got a text from the drummer in the band,’ Daisy said. ‘He spoke to Pascale. She’ll be in the club from noon onwards, like Chevrolet predicted.’
Karen nodded, chewing the delicious bread, trying not to make happy foodie noises. She swallowed. ‘Let’s hope she’s got something useful for us.’
Chevrolet was prompt to the minute. Karen insisted on taking their bags with them. ‘If it’s possible, I’d like to get back tonight,’ she said. ‘I think you’re right. The answer to this lies in Scotland, not here in France. The sooner we get out of your hair, the happier you’ll be, I suspect.’
Chevrolet chuckled. ‘Au contraire, Commandant Pirie. We don’t have many women of your rank in our department. Most of the teams are like Les Gautiers – we don’t have any women at all. So for me, it’s very instructional to see how women do this job.’
Karen bit her lip, then changed her mind. ‘In Scotland, we know women do this job every bit as well as men. Sometimes better. Frankly, most of us, men and women, would consider any single-sex team lacking.’ She caught Daisy grinning out of the corner of her eye as the driver set off through the narrow streets of the Left Bank.
‘Totally,’ Daisy said. ‘It’s so weird not to have the perspective of half of the human race.’
Chevrolet harrumphed. ‘Maybe so. But this is a dangerous job. It’s why we carry guns. I don’t think women react so well in life-and-death situations.’
‘And yet the unit I lead regularly tracks down killers and puts them behind bars. Without guns or machismo.’ Karen didn’t bother softening her words with a smile.
Chevrolet half-turned in his seat. ‘So what do you do when someone points a gun at you?’
‘It doesn’t happen very often because our gun control laws are much stricter than yours. It’s only happened to me once.’ Karen remembered the chill slither of cold sweat running down her spine, the shotgun barrel looking big as a dustbin lid, the slow certainty that it might be the last thing she’d see. She’d tried to keep her voice steady as she said, ‘I know you don’t want to do this. If you pull that trigger, there’s no going back. Your life’s over. Same goes for everybody you care about.’ By some miracle, they’d been the right words. Kyle Kelman had let the barrel slowly drop till it was pointing at the floor. The air had rushed back into Karen’s lungs and she knew she was going to live.
‘Once is enough,’ Chevrolet said. ‘One bullet is enough.’
‘And if you find the right words, one sentence is enough.’ Karen turned away and stared at the crawling traffic. ‘How long till we get to Caen? Are we there yet?’
The city was an intriguing mixture. The centre was dominated by impressive medieval buildings whose pale stone glowed in the winter sunshine, threaded through with squat modern blocks. It was hard to distinguish between apartments with shops on the ground floor and offices with shops on the ground floor. It wasn’t unattractive, Karen thought. Just an odd combination.
As if he’d read her mind, Chevrolet said, ‘The city paid a high price for its liberation. Many old buildings were destroyed.’
‘I kind of like the look of it,’ Karen said. ‘The colour of the stone makes it feel quite light. In Edinburgh, where I live, the old town is dark, many
of the buildings are pressed close up against each other. There’s a sense of space here.’
They drove along a canal then turned into a narrow side street. The driver pulled up by a corner bar. ‘This is it,’ Chevrolet said. ‘Bar Trente-Deux.’
‘Bar Thirty-Two,’ Daisy said. ‘Why that?’
‘No idea,’ Chevrolet said. The driver said something incomprehensibly swift. Chevrolet grunted. ‘He says thirty-two bars is the typical length of a verse of popular song.’
‘Every day a school day,’ Karen sighed, following them inside. The bar was cosy, fitted out with dark wood that appeared to have come from a previous generation to the building. Chevrolet spoke to the middle-aged man behind the counter, who jerked his head towards a pair of saloon-style doors at the back of the room.
Chevrolet led the way. As if it would have gone down any other way, Karen thought cynically. They found themselves in a spacious room with a compact stage at the far end, a drum kit glittering in the middle. Tables and chairs were arranged cabaret-style, and a long bar ran along one side wall. The house lights were up, and as always, the dim wattage made the daytime bar forlorn, stripped of its nightlife glamour. In a corner by the stage, a woman sat at one of the tables. She appeared to be working her way through a pile of paperwork. She barely looked up when they entered and went back to scrutinising the next sheet on the stack.
They wove their way through the tables, Karen studying the woman as well as she could in the poor light. She had a tumble of blonde hair so bright it must have come from a bottle. As they grew closer, Karen decided with a wry twist that Pascale Vargas was that quintessentially French phenomenon, the belle laide. Wide forehead, jutting prow of a nose, a scarlet lipsticked slash of a mouth and a square jaw. An unlikely combination of features generally dismissed as ugly that somehow came together to create a magnetic attraction. She wore a baggy jumper with a boat neck and a necklace made from apparently random chunks of brightly coloured plastic.
‘Madame Vargas?’ Chevrolet spoke first.
The woman looked up, taking off her glasses with their bright red heavy frames. ‘Oui,’ she drawled.
Karen worked out that Chevrolet was introducing them. Pascale clearly decided Karen was the one who mattered and fixed her gaze on her. ‘Parlez Français?’
Even Karen could manage that. ‘I don’t’ – she gestured with a thumb to Daisy – ‘but she does.’
Pascale grinned, showing an improbable number of teeth. ‘Then we speak English. I think it will be easier. Please, sit down. Call me Pascale. Madame Vargas sounds like my grandmother.’
Karen pulled out a chair and sat. ‘I’m very sorry about Paul.’
Pascale looked across at the stage, her lips pursed. She turned back, gathering herself, and said, ‘He was a beautiful soul. He played with such grace, such inspiration. And I loved him.’
That was something Karen understood. To lose the man you loved in a moment of senseless violence. It was tempting to share but that was seldom a productive way to conduct an interview unless you were a tabloid journalist. ‘We knew him by his original name,’ she said. ‘James Auld. Did he ever talk to you about his past?’
Pascale shook her head. ‘I’ve known many musicians over the years. Most of them play to forget themselves and their back pages. Paul told me about his time in the Legion but almost nothing from before that. I knew he was Scottish, and he had a brother who died, but that’s all, I think. We spoke of many things but not much about our history.’
It didn’t sound as if Pascale was going to be much more use than the boys in the band. All this way for next to nothing, ‘When did you see him last?’
‘A couple of weeks ago. He had come back from London. He said he’d been to see someone to check he wasn’t imagining things.’
Karen’s senses quickened. ‘Imagining things? What things?’
Pascale’s smile had no joy in it. ‘I asked him but he wouldn’t say. He said he was chasing a phantom. That he’d tell me about it when he had worked out the truth.’
‘Did he say why he wouldn’t tell you?’
‘He said I would think he was crazy.’ A twisted smile. ‘He said he thought he was crazy.’
‘And that’s it? Nothing more than that?’
‘Non.’
‘Did he ever talk about having an enemy? Someone who wanted him dead?’
A frustrated shake of the head. ‘Why would he? People liked Paul. He wasn’t perfect but he wasn’t a shit either. He wasn’t somebody who would start a fight.’
‘Did he have any financial worries? Was he in debt?’
Pascale frowned. ‘I don’t think so. He lived a simple life. He didn’t gamble, he didn’t do drugs, he didn’t go to fancy restaurants. He had a small pension from the Legion, and the band was always in demand. He wasn’t rich but I never saw a sign of troubles with money.’ She sighed. ‘I wish he’d been here the weekend before he went to Scotland instead of going to Dublin.’
‘Dublin?’ Karen leaned forward. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Daisy straighten up. ‘Paul went to Dublin?’
‘Oui. Like I said, the weekend before he went to Scotland. The band played here on the Thursday night and on Friday he caught the train to Paris then he flew to Dublin.’
‘I’m interested in anything unusual in Paul’s behaviour. Did he often go to Dublin?’
‘Never. Not since I knew him. We once went to Biarritz for the weekend, but never Dublin. He never mentioned knowing anyone there.’
‘Did you see him after he came back? Between Dublin and Scotland?’
‘No, but we spoke on the phone.’
‘Did he say what he’d been doing in Dublin?’
‘He said he’d had a bit of business but he spent most of his time walking round the city. And he found a jazz bar.’
‘He didn’t say what the business was?’ Daisy chipped in.
‘I told you all he said about it.’
‘And Scotland?’ Karen said. ‘What did he say about Scotland?’
‘Nothing much. He goes to see the widow of his brother. Mary.’ She shrugged. ‘I know nothing of her. She has never been here, to Caen.’
Now Karen produced the photograph she’d found in Auld’s apartment. ‘Do you know anything about this photograph?’ She handed it to Pascale, who studied it carefully.
‘He looks like Paul, but it’s not Paul,’ she said firmly, tapping Iain Auld with a fingernail. She turned it over and her puzzled frown cleared. ‘This is the photograph he found in the book.’ She looked up. ‘His sister-in-law let him choose some things belonging to his brother when she was moving house. He chose a James Bond book, because it was a favourite. And he told me he took it down to read it again, and he noticed something about the back of the book. La page de garde. I don’t know how you say it in English, the inside paper stuck to the back of the book?’
‘Endpaper,’ Daisy said. ‘What about it?’
‘There was an outline of something and when he opened it up, this photo was there. He said it was his brother and another man he didn’t know.’
‘What was his reaction? Was he surprised? Puzzled?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘He sounded angry. Not surprised. I asked him what it was about but he said he didn’t want to talk about it.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Paul was not a man you could push. If he didn’t want to talk about something, that was that.’ Pascale handed the photo back.
Karen showed her the newspaper clipping and the writing on the reverse side. ‘Does this mean anything to you? “12 NT. Ouds. Hilary 92/3”.’
Pascale rubbed the middle joint of her finger up and down her philtrum as she considered. ‘I have no idea. It’s nothing to do with music, that’s for sure. I wish I could help.’ She looked at her hands, folded in her lap, and sighed. Then she raised her eyes and met Karen’s.
�
�I want you to find the man who did this. I think Paul did not deserve to die like that. Find him and make him pay the price, Commandant Pirie.’
Karen nodded. It wouldn’t bring Pascale’s man back, but she knew from her own experience that it gave the heart some ease to know something had been exacted from the person who had taken so much. She stood. ‘Thanks for your time.’ She handed Pascale a card. ‘If anything else occurs to you—’
Chevrolet thrust his arm past her and dropped his card in front of Pascale. ‘You will call me, Madame Vargas.’
Pascale’s lip curled. She said something curt in French.
‘Allons,’ Chevrolet said, equally curt and annoyed. Karen and Daisy followed a few paces behind. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Karen said softly.
‘Dublin. We totally need to go back to that flat.’
‘Oh yes. I think we’ve finally got our hands on the end of the thread.’
26
Karen said nothing until they were well on the way back to Paris. ‘We need to go back to Paul Allard’s apartment,’ she said to the back of Chevrolet’s head.
He half-turned. ‘Why? I thought you said there was nothing there of interest.’
‘That was before Dublin was mentioned.’
‘You found some connection to Dublin?’
‘There was a letter from an art gallery in Dublin,’ she said. ‘Daisy, tell the man.’
Daisy gave her a quick sideways flick of the eyes. ‘It said something like, “yes, we do occasionally handle paintings by the artist you inquired about. We have none at present. The ones we have dealt with come from a private collection.”’
Chevrolet’s eyebrows rose then furled into a frown. ‘And you did not mention this?’
‘Why would we? You saw the state of that living room. I don’t think he ever threw away a piece of paper. If you’d come across that letter, would you have thought it had any significance?’ Karen glared at Chevrolet. ‘I know my job. Until Pascale mentioned Dublin, that letter was meaningless.’
