by Cara Black
These tapes might contain information about her mother … why hadn’t Christian remembered sooner?
“I’ll stop at Romain Figeac’s, then come to the office.”
“I’m driving to Media 9,” he said. “A negotiation question and since you weren’t there …”
She heard the complaint in his voice.
“Hold out for the exclusives,” she interrupted. “We wouldn’t want to design and implement a security system with our blood, sweat, and tears, only to see them hire a cheap-upkeep server to continue our work … and watch it crash.”
“True,” René said. “But I could use some help.”
“Bien sûr, don’t worry, I’ll tackle my desk soon,” she said. “But be careful, René, not like last time with Euroworld, eh? We’ve learned our lesson.”
SHE NEEDED to get into Christian Figeac’s atelier and she didn’t want to wait for him.
In her apartment, she opened the worm-holed armoire and pulled out her kit. She’d find the hiding place for the tapes without anyone’s being the wiser. It was her father’s favorite tactic. She hoped Christian wouldn’t mind.
She hung up her linen jacket and put on a blue service jacket and a cap with L’eau de France’s logo of the Seine snaking across it. She struggled into the blue twill pants. Maybe she should try Morbier’s pills. Every time she quit smoking she felt it in her hips!
“OUI?” ANSWERED a reedlike man wearing an apron double-tied around his waist who stood at the concierge’s door. A burnt vanilla aroma wafted from the interior.
“Bonsoir, Monsieur, sorry to interrupt your dinner,” she said, setting down her tool bag. She handed him a card reading PLOMBERIE DELINCOURT 24/7 SERVICE.
From inside his hallway a television blared Questions pour un Champion, the quiz show on France3.
“Monsieur Figeac called about a blockage. He’s concerned about a compliance complaint.” She gave him a big smile, pushed the cap to the back of her head, and pulled a clipboard from her bag. “Tiens, he’s not home.”
“You’re the second one tonight.”
“Eh, do you mean the cleaners?”
“People coming and going like this is the Gare de Lyon!” The man untied his apron. He stared at her clipboard as if it were dirty. “Come tomorrow morning.”
“Sorry, Monsieur,” she said, “but if you could unlock the apartment, I can lock up after.”
Irritation clouded the man’s face.
Aimée shrugged. “Just doing my job, Monsieur. Don’t mind me, eh, a quick plumbing adjustment, then I’ll be gone.”
All she wanted was to get into Romain Figeac’s writing room and search the back wall panels for the tapes. Why hadn’t she noticed before?
She wished he’d hurry up.
He stood, not budging.
From the hall the pitch of the contestants’ shouts mounted to a frenzy. The concierge was torn between the finale of his game show and escorting her upstairs.
“Make it quick,” he said, glancing at his watch.
He wouldn’t let her forget it, she could tell.
“Is something cooking on the stove?”
He reached for a big key ring. “I burned the sugar instead of caramelizing it.” He shook his head. “A catastrophe with crème brûlée!”
Aimée hefted her plomberie bag and followed him into the hallway to the staircase for the Figeac apartment. The concierge hit the light switch.
And then she saw the black smoke pouring down.
“Call the pompiers.”
He stood paralyzed.
“Hurry—there’s a fire!” she said, keeping the panic from her voice with effort. “Give me the keys. Vite, get help!”
He clattered over the parquet to his flat.
She climbed to the next floor, then crouched down in the hallway. From her bag, she pulled out her scarf, sprayed it with Evian aerosol, and, covering her nose and mouth, knotted it at the back of her head.
Praying it wasn’t too late to find the panels, she unlocked the door to the Figeacs’ apartment and crawled inside. But she didn’t get far.
An inferno of heat, flames, and smoke enveloped her, fast and furious, blinding her, as searing pain shot through her hands.
She jerked back, her foot caught on a burning chair, and she stumbled. Embers fell from the burning ceiling, showering her clothing. Her work shirt ignited. Flames licked her ears, singed her hair. Ripping her shirt off, she grabbed her plomberie bag and rolled on the floor, smothering the flames.
She had to get out. Crawling forward, she reached the door, struggled to her feet, turned, then heaved herself backward. Hard.
She landed in the hallway, her shoulder ramming the grillwork. No time to deal with it. Heat and smoke choked her.
She crawled, trying to ignore her burns, through scorching heat. Red-orange flames leaped, dense black smoke poured across the foyer. Her lungs hurt but she took as deep a breath as she could. She had to get out of the building.
Coughing, eyes smarting, blindly she made her way down the stairs, bumping into the concierge, who was crumpled against the banister.
Startled, she grabbed him. Had he been attacked? Quickly, she scanned the stairs but couldn’t see anything through the smoke.
She sat him up, bracing her wrists under his shoulder. Good thing he was thin. Her lungs burned. She had to pause on the cracked marble stairs to breathe even though each inhalation hurt. She heard the sound of glass popping and shattering as yellow-white flames shot from the windows.
Arson, she thought, as her mind grew foggy. Someone had set the apartment on fire … Christian Figeac? No, she reasoned. He’d make more if he sold the place.
Beside her, the concierge stirred. Aimée heard sirens outside. Who’d called the pompiers? The concierge? She heard hatchets chopping, saw the streams of water arcing against night darkness, and felt the spray mist from the window cover her. Then a sharp blow struck her on the head.
And then, darkness.
Monday Evening
EX-POLICE COMMISSAIRE Marius Teynard, a snowy white-haired man in his late sixties, watched the streetlight pool in circles upon his desk blotter. Outside his window on rue de Turbigo, buses thrummed and the reflection of the spotlighted dome of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers glinted on his window.
Sighing, he balled up the offending faxes. “Coding cowboys, throbbing e-mail, Jews for Java” … Zut alors! What kind of language was this?
In disgust, he pushed back his burgundy leather armchair and stood. Cyber crime, encrypted e-mail … they called this detecting? Things traveled through the air like so many radio waves. Through the ether. He didn’t understand the Web.
Didn’t want to.
His nephew insisted he “get up to speed.” Let his nephew handle the new computers, the intricate log-on procedures. When Teynard had been a commissaire, all he’d had to do was type. And two fingers had sufficed for police headquarters at Quai des Orfèvres, as Teynard often pointed out to him. His nephew smiled. But he’d seen him rolling his eyes.
The fax machine spat out more. He groaned. Just what he needed, more cyber gibberish!
But after Marius Teynard tore off the fax, he sat down in surprise. A tingle ran down the outside of his thick arms, all the way to his fingertips. He hadn’t felt the once familiar rush in a long time. Like in the old days when his force could take care of vermin the way they should be dealt with, quickly and permanently.
How long had it been … five or six years since the last report? More? Now he remembered: It was when the Wall had crumbled and the Stasi files on the Haader-Rofmein and Action-Réaction gangs had come to light.
But now he saw that the terrorist Jules Bourdon was still alive. In Africa. Thriving.
Marius Teynard read further as the fax machine spewed out more sheets.
Correction, Marius Teynard realized. Jules Bourdon had left Africa … the embarkation reports from the Dakar airport were tallied once a week.
Teynard wanted to kick th
e fax machine to bits. And stomp on them. What did all this technological efficiency amount to when Jules Bourdon, that vermin, might already have been in Paris a week.
Monday Night
AIMÉE CAME TO IN THE parked ambulance outside Christian Figeac’s apartment.
“Treatment for smoke inhalation, burns on the palms,” a stocky blue-suited man with a crew cut was saying at her side.
She felt something hard over her mouth and looked about her. It took her a minute to realize she was in an ambulance, inhaling oxygen. Aimée watched as the bag filled, then collapsed, as if it were breathing lungfuls of air. She remembered doing this in an ambulance before, after her father’s death in the terrorist explosion.
She tore off the mask, then clutched at her throat, unable to inhale. The pompier slipped the mask back over her mouth and nose and mimed taking several deep breaths.
“Back with us?” he said, not unkindly. “Bet you never thought being a plumber would be hazardous, eh?”
She looked down. She still wore the Plomberie Delincourt uniform.
She pulled the mask aside. “I’m fine,” she gasped, still short of breath.
“Voilà, take it easy,” he said. “To dissipate the carbon monoxide, you need hi-flow oxygen.”
She let him slip the mask back on and greedily inhaled.
“That’s the way,” he said. He nodded encouragement until she’d inhaled the oxygen for a full five minutes.
“Ça va?”
She nodded and he took the mask off. Her head ached. The last thing she remembered was a whack on it from behind.
“Where’s the concierge?” she asked. The pompier, who wore a badge that read HERVE PICARD pointed across the van. The concierge, a butterfly bandage over his brow, waved at her. He chewed on a baguette sandwich.
“Hungry?”
Tightness gripped her chest, but she nodded.
“We had extras from the canteen,” the pompier said, handing her one wrapped in white waxy paper. “Just take it slow.”
“Merci,” she said. She was now able to breathe without much pain, and she was grateful for something to eat.
“We’ll watch you two tonight,” he said. “Just a precaution.”
“Not necessary,” she said, raising herself up on her elbow. Her shoulder tingled with pain and she winced. But it wasn’t dislocated. She knew the difference. It was her new tattoo, feeling as if it had been ripped raw. But she had no intention of spending the night in the hospital like the concierge. “What’s that?” she asked, looking at the graphite-colored box on the end of her finger.
“This pulsoximeter tells us your red blood cell levels,” he said, checking a ticker-tape type readout. “Your carboxy hemoglobin level was sixty-five percent. You were close to checking out. Permanently.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Just that apartment was affected,” he said.
“Only that apartment?” She sat up more slowly, rewrapped her sandwich, and stuck it in her jacket pocket.
Her chest tightened again.
But something bothered her more. She’d been hit from behind. A big welt on her head throbbed.
“Go slow,” Herve said. “You can claim workman’s comp and disability from your union. I’ll give you some forms. Patients always forget down the road.”
She didn’t want to disregard his advice; his warm blue eyes and wide smile were sincere. But she wanted to run inside the building and check to see if there was anything left.
“Merci. But I need my bag,” she said. “And I’ve got to get home.”
Hervé wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm, inserted a cold stethoscope against it, and pumped. “Can you tell me who you are, what day it is, where we are, and what happened?”
“Aimée Leduc, it’s Monday night in an ambulance in the Sentier, and I was trying to fix a plumbing problem inside the apartment.”
“A and O looks good,” he said. “Awake and orientée but the captain wanted to talk to you when you came round. See how you feel after that.”
She shrugged.
“Meanwhile, let’s get your address.”
Uh oh. If she admitted she was trying to gain entry to the apartment under false pretenses she’d be in trouble. Big trouble.
From outside, she heard raised voices. One was familiar. She recognized Christian Figeac.
“Of course, but I need to speak with the owner, he’s my friend.”
“Bien sûr, but let’s get the paperwork out of the way,” Hervé said with gentle insistence.
By the time Aimée made it out of the ambulance she’d accepted an ice pack for her head, given an address, signed a release form, and agreed to meet Hervé later for coffee. Too bad she had no intention of honoring that commitment.
Only when she reached the courtyard did she appreciate the irony. She’d have given anything to have found documents regarding her mother in the apartment, but doing so would have cost her life.
Uniformed pompiers rushed past her with more hoses, dampening the smoldering walls. A group with hatchets followed. Christian Figeac stood talking with a man who took notes and wore jeans. Either a reporter or an insurance adjuster.
White-faced, with soot smudges on his cheeks and hands, Christian seemed shell-shocked. He wore the same silver synthetic leather jacket, his hair more stringy than before. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her. The man handed him a card.
“Arson?” Aimée asked, joining them.
“Mademoiselle, after investigation the arson squad will inform us,” the man said, snapping his notebook shut. “It’s not what we’d call a typical Sentier fire. Contact me tomorrow, Monsieur Figeac.”
And he was gone.
“You see,” Christian said, turning to her, his gaze hollow. “A curse.”
“Curse?”
“Like the ghosts,” he said.
Stark halogen searchlights set by the fire crew illumined the dripping building foyer. Pompiers ran back and forth, shouting directions and releasing hose pressure.
Ghosts didn’t set fires.
She took him by the elbow to a corner of the wet, dark courtyard. Black puddles reflected the crescent fingernail of a moon.
“Tell me one thing and the answer goes no further,” Aimée whispered, pulling him closer. “Did you set that fire?”
Christian Figeac’s expression didn’t change. “You think I need the money?”
She figured that was a rhetorical question and stayed quiet.
“Money … there’s a lot,” he said, as if talking to himself, twisting his hands together. His dry skin made a raspy sound. “Accounts I never knew about.”
It wouldn’t make sense to burn the place down for the insurance if he had money.
“What did he mean by the typical Sentier fire?”
“In the rag trade,” Christian said, “say the merchant can’t sell last season’s overstock, he has a fire and collects insurance, probably makes a profit, too.”
Of course, this was different. But who could have done it?
“Would Idrissa set the fire?”
“Idrissa? She’s afraid of the spirits, I told you.” He shook her off. Anger sparked in his large eyes.
“I met her,” Aimée said. “She admitted she had worked for your father. But she was hiding something.”
Christian Figeac, clad in his thin jacket, the sleeves damp, shivered in the scant moonlight. He must have come home from jail only to find his father’s apartment burning.
She felt sorry for him. After her mother left, Aimée’s father had done his best to make up for it. Her grandparents had, too. But had Romain Figeac done the same for Christian?
“I’ve got an extra couch,” she said. “You’re welcome to it.”
He blinked, shook his head as if coming to. “What kind of an outfit … a plumber?”
“I tried to break into your place and find that panel concealing the tapes,” she said. “Are there any more?”
“In the bank maybe,
” he said.
“First thing tomorrow you need to get them. Listen, this is about your father. We need to talk.”
He followed her out of the courtyard.
They skirted the ambulance, passed the parked fire trucks. On rue Réaumur, she raised her arm to hail a taxi.
“No, we’ll take my car,” he said, pointing to an olive Jaguar XKE, dented, with scratched paint. A battered classic.
Christian Figeac sank into the leather ribbed seat, switched on the engine.
“What do we need to talk about?”
He seemed calmer. She hoped he could handle what she had to say. Late-night strollers crossed in front of them, pale and caught, like frightened deer, in the Jaguar’s headlights.
“Where to?” Christian asked.
“Ile St. Louis, Quai d’Anjou,” she said. “My apartment.”
He gunned the engine and shot toward Boulevard de Sébastopol.
She didn’t know how else to say it. “I’m sorry, but your father was shot with a large-caliber gun, not the one you said he’d used.”
“How do you know?” he asked, surprised.
“From the residue on the wall. It’s not consistent with …” She hesitated. “A .25 has a nice recoil but it’s not a blaster. I took a sample from the wall to the lab yesterday.” Good thing she’d followed her instinct since everything had now gone up in smoke. And it struck her. “You know, that’s what the murderer wanted … all the evidence gone.”
He slowed down. “Murderer … why?” he asked.
“You tell me,” she said. “Did your father have enemies, someone who didn’t …?”
Her phrase was lost in a blare of honking klaxons. Christian floored the pedal. He cornered rue de Palestro. The Jaguar responded, roaring bulletlike down the narrow medieval street.
“But he left a suicide note,” Christian said. “How could he have been murdered?”
“Think back to when you found him. Tell me what you saw.”
Christian’s shoulders heaved. “It was dark, he was slumped over on the desk … like when he’d been drinking.”
