When Bertignac hung up, Capucine buzzed the front desk and told the brigadier to get forensics to come and pick up something for examination.
“Yes, Commissaire. And there’s a guy here in some sort of uniform with a package for you that he says he has to deliver to you in person.”
A red-collared Savoyard from Drouot handed her a thick manila envelope, bowed smartly, and left.
Inside the envelope she found an ordinary self-sealing kitchen bag with Bertignac’s elegantly engraved business card paper-clipped to the top. There was a note in green fountain-pen ink on the front of the card.
Commissaire,
The provenance of this piece is Amid Al-Risha, Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre, Stand BB-34. Cell phone: 06 72 31 29. Hope it’s of some use.
Cordially,
B. de Bertignac
The plastic bag contained a very old, scuffed and scarred black-leather jotting pad that had long lost its original sheen. The corners were trimmed in what looked like solid gold. There was no paper on the front of the pad, but the slot on the back was overly full enough to make it look potbellied. In the exact center of the paunch was a large gold-leaf monogram that had almost worn away. The design was so convoluted, Capucine would never have recognized it as a capital B unless Bertignac had alerted her. A gold crown in the shape of an unadorned band with a string of pearls wrapped around it surmounted the monogram.
Capucine opened the center drawer of her desk, dug through the disorder until she found a Swiss Army knife, rooted some more, and snapped on a pair of latex gloves she drew out of a pop-up box.
She zipped open the plastic bag, dumped out the pad, and gently squeezed the ends with the middle finger and thumb of her left hand. Ten or so pieces of paper of various sizes and colors fell out on the desk. With the large blade of the pocket knife she arranged them in two neat rows. There were five business cards: Bertignac’s, that of an antique dealer who specialized in faïence in the Sixth Arrondissement, and those of three suppliers of kitchen equipment. There was no doubt in Capucine’s mind that this had belonged to Brault.
There were also six scraps of paper, some folded in half, some in four. Capucine dug through the contents of the drawer and found a letter opener. She carefully unfolded the bits of paper with her two tools. Four were ragged-edged, square-ruled pages torn from ring-bound notebooks, and the other two were scraps of what could have been copier or printer paper. All were covered with the author’s personal shorthand, written in an introvert’s left-sloping cursive. The shorthand was easy enough to decipher once one knew food would be the central topic: there were rough ideas for recipes and lists of produce that needed to be ordered. Only one defied comprehension. Vieillard, Bordeaux, BV rafr. V 8—. Capucine guessed it was some wine or other Brault wanted the sommelier to obtain.
Capucine picked up her phone and pressed the speed dial for Momo.
“Momo, I need you to go back to the Puces. Go see someone called Amid Al-Risha, in Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre. He’s at stand BB-thirty-four. He found a jotting pad in some clothes he bought. The pad is probably Brault’s. First prize would be getting those clothes. Second prize would be finding out who sold them to Al-Risha. Oh, and don’t forget to print him.”
There was a polite knock on her office door.
“Entrez,” Capucine said loudly.
A very young, clean-cut man stuck his head around the partially opened door and then slipped in diffidently, carrying a large square aluminum case by its handle, obviously the forensics technician. When he saw the pile on Capucine’s desk, his eyes opened wide in horror. His thought was as clear as if he had yelled it: A crass police officer has been pawing through evidence. A solecism so grave, it was beyond comprehension.
Capucine smiled at him sweetly. “Please bundle all this up and take it down to your lab. Print it very carefully.”
The technician choked back a retort and extracted rubber gloves and two pairs of tweezers, flat ended as platypus bills, from his case. With great care he placed the scraps of paper and the jotting pad in separate plastic bags. With a reproachful look at Capucine, he made for the door.
“Ajudant. I need you to e-mail me photos of the pad and its contents this afternoon.”
“I doubt very much, Commissaire, we’ll be able to get to it ’til tomorrow. Maybe not even ’til Monday.”
“Five today, at the latest,” Capucine barked.
The technician recoiled, set his face, and marched out of the office.
Capucine sat for a long moment, staring out the window, unseeing. Snapping herself out of her reverie, she dialed her mother’s number.
“Allô, Maman? Do you have a minute?”
“A minute, ma chérie? I have a whole life for you. Is this more about heraldry?”
“Someone turned in one of those leather jotting pads, which I think might have belonged to Jean-Louis Brault. It has a heraldic monogram on the back, but it’s very different from the crest on the chevalière.”
“What does it look like?”
“There’s a very elaborate initial that’s hard to make out. It could be a B, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. And there’s a coronet on top. But this one is not at all like the one on the chevalière. Instead of having pearls stuck on top, there’s a string of pearls that has been wrapped around and around the coronet.”
“It might or might not be Brault’s. I’d have to see it.”
“I can stop by after work and show you a picture, if that’s good for you.”
The next morning Capucine arrived at the brigade an hour later than usual, wearing a long-sleeved silk blouse under her coat. The blouse served to cover a large, multi-hued hematoma on the underside of her left forearm.
The evening before, she had supervised the arrest of a serial rapist who had abused three women he had apparently followed from different stops on the Number 3 metro line as it passed through the Twentieth Arrondissement. The lieutenant in charge of the case was positive the perp, particularly punctilious in his tastes, rode the line each evening between nine thirty and ten thirty in search of tall, small-breasted, svelte, short-haired brunettes in their early twenties. He would follow his victims out of the station and attack as soon as they reached a dimly lit street.
The arrest plan involved over half of the brigade’s roster, with officers posted at all seven of the Line 3 stops in the Twentieth, lieutenants at the République and Gallieni stops at either end of the arrondissement, and Capucine in the exact middle, at the Père Lachaise station. As it happened, that night’s intended victim had emerged from the Père Lachaise station.
The suspect had been arrested smoothly as he closed in on the girl in a badly lit passageway between two buildings. Hands cuffed behind his back, resignedly passive, the man was held by the arms as the officers waited for the van to arrive. Slight framed and stoop shouldered, he looked for all the world like a meek low-level accountant. Capucine, who was enraged by rape far more than any other crime, had stepped up to peer into his face to see if there was any reflection of degeneracy in his eyes. With blinding speed he had aimed a savate kick at her head. Capucine’s parrying forearm had received the full force of the blow.
Her officers had insisted on taking her to an emergency room, where she had been x-rayed, given an envelope of meticulously counted-out high-powered painkillers, and sent home.
The morning drive to the brigade had started her arm throbbing, so she had taken two of the pills before walking in. She was decidedly lightheaded by the time she sat down at her desk.
The evening before, the forensics technician had sent an e-mail with two attachments. The first was a preliminary report on the jotting pad. They had found multiple prints from Jean-Louis Brault, Amid Al-Risha, and Bertrand de Bertignac, but no others. Capucine assumed that Bertignac’s prints were in the police system because they had been taken when he had applied for his commissaire-priseur license. Forensics had also concluded that the handwriting was Brault’s. The second attachm
ent was a series of five extremely detailed pictures of the jotting pad.
That was that. The jotting pad was Brault’s, but it didn’t tell her anything. The only possible lead could come from what Momo had discovered. And that was—
The phone rang. Capucine’s mother was on the line. The receptionist had put her straight through.
“Alors,” said Capucine’s mother, “has my daughter become too busy or too forgetful to remember her promises to her mother?”
“Oh, pardon, Maman. It got so hectic last evening, I completely forgot. Anyway, forensics has identified the jotting pad as definitely having been Brault’s.” As Capucine spoke, she had the delicious sensation of floating out of her body and looking down at herself.
“I could have spared them the effort. I did some research last night and—”
“Maman, if it would interest you, I could send you some pictures.”
Capucine was vaguely aware she had made a tactical error.
“Send them to me? You know La Poste isn’t as reliable as it used to be. I wouldn’t get them until tomorrow at the earliest, maybe not even until next week. You need to be more diligent in your work. You have a position of responsibility now—”
Capucine felt delightfully pleased with herself. No wonder people became addicted to painkillers. Oblivious to her own wants, she blundered on. “Maman, what if you came down here for lunch? I could show you around the brigade, you could have a look at the pictures, and then we could have a quick bite.” The altruistic words were delectable in Capucine’s mouth. Anyway, she was certain her mother would refuse.
“Parfait. I’ll be there at twelve.”
Momo was halfway through his report; Isabelle made notes in a spiral notebook; David played with his hair; Capucine sat back in her chair with her legs on the table, nodding at Momo’s points. The painkillers had metabolized, her arm was throbbing, and she was developing a ferocious headache.
“Those guys don’t have stands. They just have a folding table and a wire cage behind. They buy junk. Old radios and TVs. Rags that used to be clothes. The gelt comes from the hot stuff, boosted car radios and crap that ‘fell off a truck.’ Our boy Amid tried to get me to believe an old woman whose husband had just died brought in a pile of old clothes, and when he went through the pockets—”
“Brave man,” interjected David.
“He found the notepad. Since a jotting pad with gold corners is not what you usually find in a bunch of rags, I had to, uh, challenge him a little.”
“Was he cooperative?” Capucine asked.
“Commissaire, if you mean did I have to rough him up, the answer is no. But I did tell him that I was very busy, and if he didn’t tell me something useful pretty quick, I was going to stick him in the brigade lockup, and it might take me a day or two to find the time to listen to what he had to say. He got the message. Some homeless guy came up to him with a whole outfit, shoes and all. Says the bum found them in a dumpster out behind the Marché Biron. That sounds reasonable enough to me. He said there was no wallet, just the notepad, a few coins, and two plastic ballpoint pens. He put the clothes on his table, and they were sold five minutes after he opened up. I believe that, too. And, of course, he has no idea who this bum is. I also believe that.”
“What happened to the pens?” Isabelle asked.
Before Momo could answer, the office door opened and a uniformed officer stuck his head in.
“Madame Le Tellier is here to see you, Commissaire. She says she has an appointment.”
Before Capucine could take her legs off the table and sit up, her mother pushed past the officer into the room. The four detectives stood up. For a split second the three brigadiers—who had never met Capucine’s mother—thought that some terrible tragedy must have occurred. They eased toward the door.
Capucine stopped them and introduced her mother ceremoniously. David—with his love of histrionics—played a role that more than made up for Isabelle’s and Momo’s reticence. He executed a perfect baisemain—a hand kiss performed with bent waist, lips stopping an inch before contact with skin was made. Capucine’s mother was charmed.
“I had no idea such elegant people were in the police. Let’s bring them along to lunch. I’d love to get to know your coworkers.”
“Madame,” David said, “I would be enchanted.”
Capucine glared at him. Amazingly, both Isabelle and Momo seemed to like the idea. Isabelle’s face relaxed, and Momo’s frown became less severe.
Capucine, however, was close to panic. Keeping a cordon sanitaire between her private and professional lives was of the utmost importance. Her worst nightmare was having it known in the force that, by virtue of her marriage to Alexandre, she was a countess. If her brigadiers started calling her Madame la Comtesse behind her back, she’d quit the police. And, snob that her mother was, there was a real risk she would spill the beans.
Capucine made another miscalculation. Convinced a proletarian atmosphere would intimidate her mother into silence, she took them to Benoît’s, around the corner.
To Capucine’s chagrin, her mother adored the restaurant. Angélique, resplendent in her corpulence, greeted them warmly at the door, made much of Madame Le Tellier, herded them to a table in the middle of the room, scolded Capucine for not having brought her mother sooner, and itemized a long list of physiognomic similarities between the two women. Only when Capucine’s ears were quite red did Angélique dictate what they would be having for lunch: tripes à la mode de Caen for the men and médaillons de veau for the women. Naturally, they would be drinking the house Tavel.
“Such fun!” said Capucine’s mother, genuinely delighted. “It takes me back to my student days. I used to eat in a restaurant just like this one, right down to the napkins in cubbyholes.”
Lunch started out with a large dented metal serving dish on which were laid out rolled slices of jambon de Paris, tranches of three kinds of pâté, and a heap of tiny cornichons. An equally dented wire basket, filled to overflowing with slices of baguette, was placed beside it. Capucine was sure her mother would be horrified by the plebian nature of the appetizer, but, no, she loved it all and even took seconds of the cornichons.
“I just adore these. We never have them at home. I’m going to make sure Yvonne starts buying them.” Capucine offered a prayer to her guardian angel that her mother would not find it necessary to explain that Yvonne was the cook and that there was also a majordomo, a full-time maid, and a part-time laundress.
Over-brightly, Capucine said, “Maman, it’s wonderful you could come today. Otherwise you wouldn’t have met Brigadier Martineau. He’s leaving for the Midi on Saturday to start an investigation down there.”
“That is, if my boss, Brigadier-Chef Lemercier, lets me go. She’s a very hard taskmaster,” David said with a charming smile.
Isabelle gave him a black look.
“Oh, you must let him go, Brigadier-Chef. This is the perfect season for the Midi. The tourists have all gone, and it’s still warm enough for the beach in the middle of the day.”
“Madame, he’s not going to be on any beach. I can guarantee you that,” Isabelle said sourly.
“And are you my daughter’s boss, as well, my dear?”
Isabelle was at a complete loss for a reply.
David gently placed his hand on top of Madame Le Tellier’s. Capucine was sure she would leap like a gaffed salmon, but she smiled as warmly at David, as if he were a young nephew.
“We all report to your daughter, madame. She’s our boss,” David said.
“Maybe next time we could bring Capucine’s superior, as well. I’d very much like to meet him.”
“Madame,” Momo said in his growling bass, “I don’t think you get it. Your daughter is a commissaire. She’s the big boss. All fifty-seven of us in the brigade are under her orders. And I’ll tell you another thing.” He leaned over the table to lend weight to his words. Taken aback by Momo’s sheer mass, Capucine’s mother recoiled slightly. “She’s the best
goddamn flic any of us have ever seen. And I’ll tell you one more thing. She’s going to be running the whole goddamn force before she’s done.”
Momo downed his half glass of Tavel in one go and thumped it down on the table to emphasize his point.
Capucine’s mother inflated with pride.
CHAPTER 17
La Cadière-d’Azur turned out to be not too different from the village he had grown up in. Both were in the hills, a few miles from the coast, dotted with Parisians’ fancy summer homes.
The village hotel was exactly what he expected: five rooms over a café, a single shower, and two Turkish toilets at the end of the hall. There were no pillows on the bed, only a hard upholstered roll with the bottom sheet wrapped around it. He hated those things. They gave him a crick in the neck.
The café, Le Marius, was like every other small village café in the Midi: ten or so tables, big glass windows looking out over the town square, long dark-wood bar in front of a thin row of bottles up against a fly-specked gray mirror.
David propped himself up on the bar and replied “Pastis” to the barman’s querying eyebrow. Merde, the first time he opened his mouth, it had to be a big mistake. No one in the Midi called it pastis. That was Paris talk. Down here the closest you ever came was to call it pastaga. Usually you said something like “Fifty-one,” one of the better known brands.
Hoping to recover from his gaffe, David took a small, square-ruled, spiral-bound Clairefontaine notebook out of his pocket, snapped off the rubber band that held it shut, and began to scribble. He was proud of the prop, which he felt sure was exactly the sort of thing a writer would have.
The only other patron was a thickset man, with a sunbaked face and work-stiffened hands, sitting at a table, his arms wrapped defensively around a glass of rosé, chin jutting out in an aggressive angle at the square. David picked up the square water pitcher that had been delivered with his drink and poured a thin stream into the glass. For the millionth time he admired the miracle of the clear golden pastis turning opaque and milky white.
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