Murder at the Lanterne Rouge ali-12

by Cara Black

  Terror filled her. Broken glass crackled underfoot and a rat scurried away by the garbage bin. Hands clasped her wrists in an iron grip. Big hands. A man’s hands. Her bruised wrist flashed with pain as her arms were bound together with tape.

  Then her head was pulled back. Smooth sheet plastic was wrapped over her mouth, her eyes, her face. Pulled tight, smothering her. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. Frantic, she elbowed back with all her might. Again, into his chest as hard as she could, struggling to suck air. Nothing but her tongue on plastic. Panicked, she bit down hard. Only felt smooth plastic.

  She kicked back with her heeled boot. Tightness in her chest, her lungs. Voices, laughter, and she didn’t feel the man anymore. Footsteps … fading away. Groggy, she sank down on jagged glass. Her mind fogged.

  She pressed her face on the glass shards, rubbing against a jagged tip, frantic to poke a hole and get air. She felt the sharp point near her nostril. Rubbed harder, the glass cutting her face. A trickle of air. She fought to breathe, her mind slipping away.

  Saturday Evening

  MORBIER WIPED THE perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief in his chief’s overheated office in the commissariat. His back hurt, and the small chair groaned under his weight. After too much wine, he had to force himself to concentrate. To push Aimée to the back of the line.

  Morbier shifted his legs, wishing the meeting had ended thirty minutes ago. Irritation shone in Loisel’s small, ferret-like eyes. The mole on his left cheek reminded Morbier of a chocolate smudge. For the umpteenth time, he battled the urge to use his handkerchief and wipe the man’s cheek.

  “So how do I substantiate allegations of police corruption, Commissaire?” Loisel asked. “Anything old-fashioned, like attending meetings with documentation? Or evidence? Remember those?”

  Morbier had obtained illegal phone taps, and telephoto surveillance of the suspect’s contacts. Incriminating, but nothing Loisel could use. Still, it was leverage for Morbier.

  “My neck’s on the block and I don’t like it,” Loisel said. “You’ve had free reign until now, but the stratosphere’s changed.”

  His predecessor, Langouile, tasked Morbier with investigating rife police department corruption. It touched the top toes, demanding tact. Morbier met resistance and evasion, hit each bend on thin ice. And with nothing he could use legally.

  “What about your indicateur?” Loisel asked, tenting his fingers.

  Morbier’s top informer had been found in the Seine, in the salvage net at Evry. A good man. On the force for ten years and with access to high-level reports. But Morbier had arrived too late. It sickened him. The man left a wife and two young children.

  “They got to him before I did.”

  “So you have nothing besides a dead indicateur?” Loisel’s tone was cold.

  “Don’t forget I spent time downstairs in Le Dépôt. A little hard to work when I was a suspect in jail.” Due to circumstantial evidence, there had been accusations that he’d murdered the woman he loved. All engineered at the hands of the top brass he wanted to topple. But he had no concrete proof of that either.

  “This would go quicker and without the mess,” Morbier said, shooting Loisel a look, “if you ordered a legal wiretap.”

  “I didn’t hear that, Morbier. Alors, deal with your personal issues, satisfy the police psychologist’s mandate, then give me concrete evidence for a court of law.”

  Telling him to deal with his issues? That his informer had died for nothing?

  Anger rippled inside his chest. That man had dedicated his life to the law, but had it protected him? No, only the big men at the top. Like always.

  But Morbier wouldn’t let this go. He had to pierce this cloud of grief, stop drinking every night, move on. His job depended on it. And so did Aimée’s life.

  “Give me two men I can trust, Loisel.”

  “I need results, Commissaire. Or this investigation shuts down due to lack of evidence.”

  Repeating himself, too. Covering his ass. Sweat popped on Morbier’s brow.

  Loisel sighed. Sniffed. “Drinking, too. Your memory holding up these days?”

  Morbier bunched his fist to knock the smug look off Loisel’s face until he noticed Loisel writing on a scrap of paper. Loisel shoved it across his magistrate’s teak-wood desk.

  One name.

  Loisel tore it up. A sweep of his ferret-like eyes to the tall window and a quick flick of his pointed finger told Morbier the office was bugged. Ears listened from the centre d’écoute under Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides.

  Merde.

  “A full report with developments and proof,” Loisel said, “by this time tomorrow night or your investigation goes away.”

  Morbier nodded, trying to get a read on Loisel. But he’d already picked up the phone and gave a dismissive wave.

  The name that Loisel had written down had shocked him. But if this man cooperated … No time to delay.

  On his way down the worn stairs, Morbier tried Aimée’s number. No answer. Typical.

  Saturday Evening

  AIMÉE RUBBED HER face against the glass, gnawing to make the tiny slit in the plastic bigger, sucking for air. Air, she needed more air. With her throat dry and her wrists bound, she sawed harder against a sharp sliver of glass, like a knife to her nose. More and more, until the plastic tore open from her nose to her mouth. Gasping for air, she lay facedown in the walkway. Fetid air reeking of garbage, but never so sweet. Her chest heaved. Twisting around, she leaned against the stone wall in the frigid cold. Three minutes later, she had sawed her wrists free and pulled the torn plastic from her face.

  Sticky with her own blood, she crawled over the uneven cobbles. Somehow her Vuitton was still there. Her suede leggings were shredded, her coat stained with dirt. She struggled to pull herself up and staggered to the street, looking for help. But the loitering taxi’s door slammed and it pulled away, tires hissing on the wet cobbles.

  Merde! All those generous tips. Where was her late-night taxi karma?

  At least the taxi had scared him away. A minute later and she would’ve been a goner. But she had to get out of here.

  Two long blocks away on rue de Turenne, there was still no taxi in sight. She heard the low whoosh of brakes, water splashing from a puddle at the bus stop. But the lighted Number 96 bus took off. She waved and made herself run after it, pounded on the door. By a miracle the driver stopped.

  “I shouldn’t do this,” said the young bus driver, taking a look at her and shaking his head. “Either you’ve escaped from an eighties punk party, or you’re making a getaway.”

  “The latter, merci,” she gasped, holding her sleeve to her bloody nose, and fed her ticket in the machine.

  At a window seat, her shoulders heaving, she scanned the street. No one. Her hands trembled as she fingered the camel-colored thread caught in her fingernail. The thread from the attacker’s coat. The man who ran in front of Martine’s car.

  In her apartment, after a hot, steaming bath, she applied arnica to her wrists and antibiotic cream on the cuts on her face. Prayed she had enough concealer to cover them tomorrow. Then she huddled under the silk duvet, the raw pain dulled with Doliprane.

  For a moment it had seemed so close. Pascal’s obsession with a fourteenth-century document. The connection right before her eyes. But that and a ticket got her a bus ride.

  The killer had attacked her. That meant she was getting close. Too close for comfort.

  Let it simmer, her father always said. Then, step by step, fit the pieces together. But at least she’d found a piece of Pascal’s puzzle.

  Tomorrow she’d scout out Becquerel’s connection, find something.

  She felt the empty space beside her, the depression in the mattress where Melac’s leg should have been twined with hers. His scent remained on the sheets, on the towels in her bathroom. His half-squeezed toothpaste tube of Fluocaril lay by the sink.

  Miles Davis’s wet nose nuzzled her ear. His tail flicke
d the duvet until he settled in the crook of her arm by the laptop. She had her man, four legs and all.

  Did the DST really have info about her mother? She booted up her laptop and hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keys. She chewed her lip. Only one way to find out.

  She typed in the website address from the matchbox. A page popped up on the screen: a typewritten copy of an MI6 surveillance report dated five years before. The heading: Sydney/Sidonie Leduc aka Lampa. Subject sighting location—Merjoides Hotel, Istanbul, lobby. Meeting with known arms dealers ___ ___. The names had been blacked out. No photos. Duration of incident: seven minutes. A seven-minute sighting in a hotel lobby.

  A five-year-old report and it told her … what? Maybe there was nothing else to tell. The DST set up a website, as Martine had said, and fed old reports to hook her.

  The sharp pang of longing hit her. If her mother had been alive five years ago, why hadn’t she ever contacted her?

  Just once.

  Sunday, 8 A.M.

  AIMÉE INHALED THE algae-scented wind, watching wavelets crest on the Seine below. The oyster sky mirrored the gray-tiled rooftops overlooking the quai. No snow, the ice had melted, as the homeless man had forecast. Perfect for a wool coat, scarf, boots and a chocolat chaud.

  Miles Davis’s leash tugged her toward the damp stone steps leading down from Quai d’Anjou. He did his business under the bare-branched lime tree. Like every morning.

  Her phone rang.

  “Got dinner plans, Leduc?” her godfather Morbier asked.

  A bolt of surprise shot through her. But she had a rendezvous with Jean-Luc. Vital for information on Pascal.

  “Matter of fact, I do.”

  “Another bad boy, Leduc?” He coughed. “Given up on Melac? Non, I don’t want to know. Lunch tomorrow, d’accord?”

  “Anything to do with why you haven’t returned my calls, Morbier?”

  She debated telling him about the attack last night. But that necessitated telling him about Pascal’s murder, the DST, her mother.

  His voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “See you at 1 P.M., Chez Louis.”

  A three-star Michelin resto? “It’s not my birthday.”

  Pause. He cleared his throat again. “It’s been a while, we should talk.”

  Talk? Morbier, the original clammed mouth? This sounded serious. Or was that a trace of guilt she sensed? She could use that to her advantage.

  “But you can bring me a present. The Hôtel-Dieu report on Clodo, a homeless mec, thrown on the Métro line last night.” God willing he’d made it through the night. “Can you arrange for me to visit him tomorrow, Morbier?”

  “What’s this Clodo got to do with anything?” Pause. “You’re not inviting him to lunch?”

  “Not in his condition.” Let him wonder.

  “No promises, Leduc.” He clicked off.

  As always, he kept her wondering. He’d engineer repayment. Nothing came free from Morbier.

  She stared at the torpid gray currents. Morbier was the last link to her parents. Her only family now, besides her cousin Sebastien and René. Morbier had been her father’s first partner. The only one left who’d known her American mother. Not that he’d talk about her. He’d avoided Aimée’s questions for years.

  She was bending down to scoop Miles Davis’s morning contribution into a plastic Printemps bag when her eye caught on the trash bin. Another matchbox was visible under the metal lip. Apprehension rippled through her shoulders.

  They watched her, knew her schedule, her movements. If they were so good, why hadn’t they prevented her attack last night? She bit her lip. Before she defeated them at their own plan, she needed to discover it.

  She dropped the plastic Printemps bag in the bin at the same time as she slid the matchbox in her pocket. Comme d’habitude, she left Miles Davis with Madame Cachou, her concierge, and followed her morning routine. Hitching up her leather skirt and black lace tights, she climbed on her Vespa and scootered across arched Pont Marie, the wind hitting her cheekbones. By the time she parked her now debugged scooter on rue Bailleul, she had a plan. Instead of turning to Leduc Detective’s door, she stopped at the red-awninged corner café.

  “Un double, Aimée?” Zazie, the owner’s redheaded daughter, asked.

  “Make it un double chocolat chaud.” Aimée’s smile turned serious. “You’re not at school, Zazie?”

  “It’s Sunday, Aimée.” Zazie made a face as she knocked out the coffee grinds with a loud thump. “We let Papa sleep in. Not everyone works all the time like you do.”

  Everyone else had a life.

  “I’m in the lycée now,” Zazie said, “or did you forget that too?”

  And grew up. It felt like yesterday that Zazie had to stand on a stool to serve from behind the counter.

  “Of course not.” How could she have missed Zazie’s touch of mascara and blush, and her red hair now tamed with clips?

  “Nice blusher,” Zazie said. “New tone?”

  Aimée nodded. At least her makeup covered the cuts.

  At the counter stood several suits and an older couple arguing over last night’s game show, Questions pour un Champion. Two men in windbreakers entered, accompanied by a rush of cold air. They took a table by the window overlooking rue du Louvre, read the menu with studied preoccupation. Too obvious on an early Sunday morning. Even on a bad day her surveillance skills were better than theirs. What did this cost the government?

  “Merci, Zazie.” She sipped her chocolat chaud and left ten francs on the counter. “Your mother working the accounts this morning?”

  Zazie nodded. “Bien sûr.”

  “I’ll just stop by, eh?”

  Zazie set the dishtowel down on her school cahier and winked. “This way.”

  Aimée followed her through the narrow passageway by crates of Orangina. She nodded to Virginie, who was sitting in the cluttered office with Zazie’s toddler sister on her lap, and headed to the back service door.

  “Plan B, n’est-ce pas, Aimée?”

  “Good memory, Zazie. A detective always needs a Plan B.”

  And plans X, Y, and Z.

  “Those two men who just came in are following you?” Zazie said.

  Sharp, too. “Let’s hope it’s only two.” Aimée pulled out her LeClerc compact, touched up her lips with Chanel Red. “When you take their order, count to ten and keep them busy. Eyes away from the window, okay?”

  Zazie nodded, serious. “This goes on my recommendation, non? I’m ready to go undercover, pass messages anytime.”

  Aimée blinked.

  “For my internship in your office next summer.”

  Didn’t she want to be a dancer? Or was that yesterday?

  Sunday, 9 A.M.

  “PROFESSOR BECQUEREL?”

  The pale-faced twenty-something shook his head. He ground his cigarette under his heel in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers laboratory courtyard and stuck the butt in the pocket of his smudged, gray lab coat. “He died in the nursing home. No family. Sad, they said.”

  Aimée hoped she hadn’t made a trip to the grande école in the 13th arrondissement for nothing. And so early on a Sunday morning.

  “Didn’t he maintain an office?”

  “Here we’re all third-year Gadz’Arts,” he said. “There’s no space for old, retired professors, even legends.”

  “Whom could I speak with who knew him?”

  “Only the laboratory’s open today. Just students.” The young man shrugged. “The school held a memorial for him a few days ago.”

  That gave her an idea. “Where do they keep the remembrance book?”

  “Quoi?”

  She noticed the ink stains on his lapel pocket. A slide rule sticking out of his pants. A textbook geek.

  “People who attended the memorial would sign a remembrance book, non?”

  He shrugged. “Check with the office.” His wristwatch beeped. “Excusez-moi.”

  But the offices were clos
ed. Five minutes of directions from the concierge and a long corridor later, she found her goal. A high-ceilinged foyer led to a musty nineteenth-century salon dominated by the bronze statue of Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who founded the school before the Revolution. Later, at Napoleon’s request, he focused on a trained military-style corps of engineers. Or so the inscription read.

  The busts, portraits, and names on the wall spoke of the expertise of the celebrated Gadz’Arts. And the power and prestige. She stood back to note the graduates, from the designer of First World War fighter planes to the engineers of the Suez Canal, and get a sense of Samour’s connections.

  Another wall listed more recent graduates. On supervisory boards, heading engineering firms, or captains of industry with firms like Renault. Impressive and all over the map.

  Below she found a photo of a hollow-cheeked, bespectacled man with the handwritten Gothic script: Alphonse Becquerel, a pioneer who knew no boundaries in the field of optics and technology.

  She opened the slim leather remembrance volume sitting on the podium. Inside were pasted articles from Becquerel’s long engineering and teaching career. Memorials from past students listed by graduating year—all in the stilted Gothic black-ink script. A curious familial feel to the notes, but hadn’t Jean-Luc called it a fraternity, a family?

  Yet not Pascal’s name. Odd not to attend the memorial of a man he revered and trusted. She filed that away for later.

  Determined to come away with something besides the sneeze building in her nose from the dust, she stuck the remembrance volume in her bag. In the first office she found, she smiled at the cleaning woman. “I’m in a hurry for the professor. Any copier available on this floor?”

  The cleaner, a smiling middle-aged woman wearing a head scarf, gestured across the hall. Twenty francs poorer, Aimée left the remembrance memorial and walked out of the Conservatoire with the copied contents in her bag.