Murder on the Left Bank

by Cara Black

  Thursday, Midnight

  In her office at brigade des mineurs, Madame Nadine Pelletier donned her readers and studied the latest updates. As a recent grandmother at the ripe old age of forty-five, she felt this case already getting under her skin and a worming sense of dread.

  Nothing could or should be allowed to dull her edge. She breathed her work, loved what she did. Her boss had offered to recommend her for a high admin post. She’d toyed with that idea for all of two seconds.

  She took a moment now to inhale, gathered that analytical part of her brain and her essential optimism to focus on the bright side. The baby had been found—she was alive and well. In the heartbreaking world of crimes against children, this was a success.

  Yet something didn’t add up. She flicked through the statements again. Almost against her will, her fingers went to her neck, to the spot where she’d had to have a mole removed. A terrible habit, picking it like a scab when trouble knocked on her door. Like now, as her boss stepped into her office, tossing tinfoil from Nicorette gum into the bin. He half smiled and chewed furiously.

  “What’s with the rumors flying around?” he asked.

  Not even an acknowledgement she’d postponed her vacances. “Rumors?”

  “Marc Durand, the hotshot fonctionnaire, is being accused of kidnapping his bébé from his ex?”

  She shook her head. “You know, and I know, it’s too early—”

  He interrupted her. “I need this cleaned up fast. He’s breathing down my neck.”

  “How’s that possible?” she asked, surprised. “We’re questioning him right now. His ex-wife, Noémi, says he threatened her.”

  “My phone won’t stop ringing. His family—”

  “He’s connected, eh?”

  “More than connected. He’s in the ministry, for God’s sake.”

  She’d jumped off a train to grab an investigative handle that got greasier and greasier by the minute. “I’m reviewing each statement carefully.” She looked pointedly at the wall clock. “I hope to finish sometime tonight.”

  Her boss chewed, looking out her window onto the quai de Gesvres, at the soot-stained Conciergerie’s walls and the silver mercury of the Seine under storm clouds.

  “What have you got so far?” he asked.

  She picked up a file. “We’ve identified the victim as Ria Girond, twenty-four, no fixed address. The hospital intake nurse confirmed she’d been referred by Emmaus. The hospital accepted her right away since she was in a program. She’d suffered from complications after a recent D&C.”

  Her boss paused. “So a botched abortion? Postpartum?”

  Weren’t back-alley abortions a thing of the past? Clinics offered safe and sanitary conditions. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Chemical addictions?”

  “Alcohol. Suspected fetal alcohol syndrome.”

  “How do you make that leap?”

  “Officers interviewed several women in the shelter’s dormitory. No grass under their feet, sir.” She handed her boss the evidence bag with franc notes inside. “Discovered under Ria Girond’s bunk bed mattress. I’m sending them to the lab to see if they’re counterfeit.”

  Payment for a snatch and grab, to her thinking. But she’d let her boss put it together. Let him think it was his idea.

  “Interesting.” Her boss seemed lost in thought. “What about the Twingo?”

  “So far we’ve identified the vehicle owner, a Paul Vitry, who works as a legal documents messenger.”

  An entry-level job often given to parolees.

  “We’re checking his latest movements,” she said. “If he was on parole and stayed at the men’s shelter. We’ll find him.”

  He unwrapped another Nicorette gum. “What’s the ground status report?”

  She read from her checklist. “So far we’ve got officers checking a squat, interviewing more late-shift staff at the women’s shelter. Got a unit canvassing the streets, another collating door-to-door reports by the homicide site. My team’s on overtime questioning the mothers from bébé swim, the swim team, lifeguards.”

  “Or,” said her boss said, spitting his gum into a trash can, “we’ll catch the murderer the way we usually do—while he’s running a red light or committing some other crime.”

  Since when had he gotten so jaded?

  Her boss’s phone rang. He glanced at it. “I’ve got to take this.”

  After he left there was a knock on her open door. A tech with even more reports.

  “Just in from the lab, Madame le Commandant.”

  The one she’d been waiting for.

  Madame Pelletier compared the half-melted hospital ID bracelet to the high-resolution magnified photo from the memory card from Aimée’s camera.

  “A match,” she said, “good job.” She looked up at the brigade des mineurs tech and smiled in approval. Next to him stood a young flic, thin and dark haired.

  “Milo Barres, Madame le Commandant,” he said. “From the commissariat at Place d’Italie. You wanted to see me?”

  The rookie flic rocked on his heels. Nervous. Not much older than her daughter. He could be her son. She’d beaten the cobbles like him once.

  “Merci for coming,” she said. He was the one who’d found the burned-out Twingo. “I read your file.”

  Alarm fluttered in his eyes.

  She assumed a motherly expression. “I read the files of everyone who works on my investigations. Do we know anything more about the Twingo’s torching?”

  “Oui, Madame le Commandant.”

  Eager, he pulled out his notebook. Her team were trained pros, but she knew from experience it always paid to involve the local flics. Observant flics who knew their terroir—the habitués, repeat offenders, junkies, who’d talk.

  “The concierge at 51 rue de Domrémy, in the quartier Jeanne d’Arc, smelled smoke and noticed flames at five-fifteen,” he said. “She called the fire department. But according to bystanders—”

  “Bystanders?” she interrupted.

  “A Paul Anglin and his younger brother Mathieu, who live down the street.”

  “Go on.”

  “They noticed the Twingo there as they were coming home from school. Putting it there approximately twenty minutes before.”

  She nodded to give him encouragement. “You trust those boys?”

  He shrugged. “I know their grandmother. They’re good kids.”

  “So let me pick your brain since it’s your patch. You grew up there, didn’t you?”

  He rocked again on his heels, which made a rubbery sound on her floor. “My cousin did,” he said. “But I know it like the back of my hand. My aunt watched me after school. Now I live near Bastille because I don’t shit where I eat.” He looked down. “Excusez-moi for the language.”

  “Sounds like you know where crime happens. Why don’t you show me on the map?”

  He grew voluble now. Pointed to a spot on her map of the thirteenth. “Crimewise, it’s mainly burglaries here near the abduction site and around Butte-aux-Cailles.” He ran his finger down to the Periphérique. “Around Porte d’Ivry, it’s lowlifes running scams. Over in the section surrounding Porte d’Italie, we’re called to purse snatchings. By rue Watt, it’s a homicide dumping ground. Here by Place Nationale, it’s small-time drug dealing.” His finger stopped. “But Chinatown’s quiet; they police their own.”

  “Can you come up with a scenario? You know, thoughts about where this victim could have been headed?”

  “You’re asking, where would I go if I kidnapped a baby?”

  “Wouldn’t the kidnapper, in theory, need a place to hide, to lay low?”

  “My bet’s the abandoned rail tracks and tunnels of la Petite Ceinture.”

  “Show me.”

  He pointed to a spot on the map. “You could hide a baby there
, if you knew where you were going. There are down-and-outers who live there. They keep to themselves.”

  She studied the map, concentrated on la Petite Ceinture, the abandoned rail track and its tunnels. Wouldn’t it make sense to pull a unit to search there for Ria Girond’s accomplice—assuming it was Paul Vitry, the Twingo driver?

  Again, that unease overtook her. She looked at the copy of the photo Aimée Leduc had given her, the baby playing in the sandbox in a red hoodie.

  Had they picked up the wrong baby, botched the job? Had Paul Vitry murdered Ria Girond to keep her mouth shut?

  Who the hell had hired them?

  “Merci, Barres,” she said, in dismissal.

  He turned to go. Paused at the door. “Madame, my partner took the statement from the young woman who called the incident in.”

  “Ah yes, Vaddey Mang. I read her statement.”

  “The woman refuses to leave. She’s afraid.”

  Madame Pelletier thumbed through the reports on her desk. “Afraid of whom?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  Of course not.

  “Look where she lives,” Madame Pelletier said. “It’s right here in her statement. I hope you know what to do.”

  He looked nonplussed. “Escort her home?”

  She tsked, shook her head. Talk about wet behind the ears. But ripe with potential.

  “In your file, Barres, it spoke of your future aspirations to make detective in the brigade criminelle.”

  His shoulders straightened. “Oui, Madame le Commandant.”

  “Then here’s an early Christmas present.” She handed him Vaddey Mang’s folder. He blinked. “Et alors, turn Vaddey Mang into your informant. She’s come this far. Risked giving a statement. This is your chance; use it. Wouldn’t you like to be the only flic with a Chinatown informer? A real connection?”

  He stood at attention, understanding in his eyes. “Should I give her a burner phone and send her home in a taxi?”

  “Et voilà, now you’re thinking,” she said with a little smile. “Gain her trust. Cultivate a relationship. Start by signing her up for an evening class. Get her a student card, and go back to school with her. That’s where you can meet, and no one’s the wiser. It gives her an excuse and cover. Start there, and think long term.”

  His face glowed. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain.

  “For incidentals,” she said, palming him a hundred-franc note. “Repay me when you make le crim.”

  “Merci, Madame le Commandant.”

  Her boss entered and motioned the rookie out.

  After Barres had left, he closed the door.

  Never a good sign.

  “We’re going quiet on this,” he said.

  Startled, she paused by the map. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do. The homicide victim, a homeless alcoholic, suffered complications from a D&C, was released from the hospital, and snatched a baby. Her boyfriend, a Paul Vitry, whose body we discovered in the morgue half an hour ago, owned a Twingo, which they used to get away.”

  Where had this come from? “Half an hour ago?” She shuffled through her files. “Why wasn’t I informed?” Her pulse raced. “How does that solve who killed Ria Girond? Or this Vitry, for that matter? Who hired them to abduct a baby?”

  “Back-burner time. Refer to this as an ongoing investigation . . . the usual.”

  Anger boiled inside her. “My job’s to investigate an abduction of a juvenile—”

  “Your job’s to conclude the active investigation. Word’s come down, and that’s the way this ball rolls. Comprends?”

  Her shoulders tensed. “Who’s rolling this ball?”

  “Higher pay grades than either of us.”

  Thursday, After Midnight

  True to Martin’s word, a G7 Taxi waited outside, parking lights on, engine purring. Puddles glimmered on the Champs-Élysée’s pavement under the fingernail moon. The air was clear and biting, freshened by the storm.

  “You’re Monsieur Martin’s client, c’est ça?” said the taxi driver, a young woman wearing a headscarf.

  “That’s right,” Aimée said, checking her phone. No word from Melac. “Where are we going?”

  “I believe you have information that explains.” She smiled. A warm, crooked grin. “Please sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  In other words, shut up, and read whatever Martin had slipped in the Gauloise packet. She pulled out a red ticket stub. On the back was written, Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.

  An Oscar Wilde quote—what did that mean?

  Under it a string of alphanumeric script. A code.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  The taxi let her off in front of an arching black wrought-iron gate, villa de port-royal lettered on top. She entered the alphanumeric code as the red lights of the taxi faded in the night. The small, rain-streaked door on the right buzzed open. She found herself in a narrow, damp passage opening to a courtyard redolent with night-blooming jasmine. As quiet as a grave, she thought. She shuddered.

  A diffuse yellow glow showed behind the etched glass double doors of a townhouse. A knock brought a broad-shouldered, white-uniformed nurse to the door.

  “He’s tired tonight,” she said without any greeting. She was middle-aged, with wide-set eyes. “Please keep it short.” She spoke in an even tone with an accent. “This way.”

  Unsure where she was headed, Aimée followed her into a ground floor corridor and then into a master suite. A cloying warmth came from portable heaters running at full blast.

  Another nurse, young and blonde, checked the IV drip of an ancient man lying in a hospital bed. His sunken face, flecked with brown age spots, didn’t diminish the twinkle in his eyes. Aimée watched his long fingers reaching out to pinch the young nurse’s bottom.

  “Behave, Monsieur Chopard,” she said in a bored tone. German, based on the roll of the r’s.

  Maybe she was paid to ignore. Maybe he was harmless.

  Aimée doubted the latter. She committed Chopard’s name to memory.

  The nurse pulled up a chair for Aimée, then with quiet steps exited and shut the door. A click. Antiseptic odors mingled with the old-man smell in the baroque-style suite.

  “You’re not a nurse,” he said. His voice came out dry, rasping, and caked by years of nicotine.

  “True,” she said. “You’re up late.”

  “Sleep? I’m lucky to get three hours.”

  “Martin sent me. I’m Aimée Leduc.”

  The blue irises of his eyes, clear for his age, bored into her. A scrutiny that made her squirm.

  “Ah, such an unfortunate series of events,” he said at last.

  She looked at this shrunken old man and knew the truth. Her stomach churned. “You’re part of the Hand,” she said in what came out a whisper.

  He didn’t deny it. Smiled. Reached up to moisten his lips with a damp washcloth. She noticed his thick-ridged fingernails.

  “Do you have it?” he asked. “Non, of course you don’t. Not yet. But you want Léo Solomon’s silly notebook as much as I do.”

  The old man’s crepe-lidded eyes, piercing and sunken in his face, studied her. A thin nest of silver hair crowned his skull.

  “You’re going to find it. A matter of time.” His sigh rattled in his throat. “Don’t screw it up with a high body count.”

  She’d play along. “Like the others have?” She slid her hand into her bag, and her fingers closed around her makeup compact.

  “If only people listened to me . . .” Another rattling sigh. “Alors, I don’t handle day-to-day operations now. I’m ninety-one, had to quit that last year.”

  Quit running the empire he and his cohorts had built, which would keep functioning as long as others did the dirty work. She’d had en
ough.

  “Call me stubborn,” she said, “but if I take the chances, I do it my way.”

  Choking sounds; then a fit of coughing overtook him. Good God, was he going to choke to death in front of her? Couldn’t she wring his neck first? But the hideous sounds subsided into laughter.

  “Mademoiselle Leduc, such a chip off the old block. But ancient history doesn’t concern me.”

  She snorted. “Au contraire. Léo Solomon’s notebook seems so juicy and incriminating you’re killing for it.”

  A cocktail of drugs and painkillers sat on his bedside table next to rubbing alcohol and lanolin lotion for bedsores.

  “Prove it,” he said.

  “If I find it, what’s in it for me?”

  “We’re very generous. Your father understood.”

  “I don’t think so. You murdered him.”

  “Crossed wires. An accident. So regrettable.”

  That was all he could say?

  “Seems you don’t like loose ends,” she said.

  “Please, mademoiselle, don’t take this the wrong way.”

  “You tried to kidnap my child.”

  No one got away with that.

  “A mistake,” he said. “We want to work with you.”

  Like she believed that? Once he had the notebook, she’d be the one with a pair of scissors in her neck.

  But she had to understand how it all connected.

  “You were in the POW camp with Léo and Pierre,” she said. “That’s the bond among all of you.”

  “Ah, we radicalized behind barbwire before it became fashionable. Kids today think they’re the first.”

  Radicalized?

  “We struggled to survive in the stalag, returned home to no jobs, rationing. So we used the skills we learned in the camp; the Nazis were good teachers. We vowed never to go hungry or so cold again, stuck together, and survived.”

  That was how he justified cheating, lying, and extorting money. But for once, she’d act smart. Grit her teeth.

  “I’m a realist, Monsieur Chopard. What’s generous to you?”

  “Ah, très efficace, mademoiselle. Who has time to haggle?”