by Mark Pryor
“Merci, ma chérie.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Hugo sat in his favorite armchair, across from Tom who was sprawled on the sofa. He looked tired, but some color had returned to his face. Between them on the coffee table lay the file on the dead girl, Elaine Fournier.
“I’m not waiting on you hand and foot, you know that, right?” Hugo smiled, but was only half-joking. The way he’d been lately, Tom would be demanding martinis and whiskeys like he was at a bar.
“I know what you’re thinking, and on that score you can do me one favor.”
“A little early in the day, isn’t it?”
“Depends on the favor.”
“True enough,” Hugo said. “What is it?”
“I’d like you to remove all the alcohol from this place.”
Hugo cocked his head. “Are you serious?”
“Very. Look, I’ve been sober for two days. It’s been hard, but it’s also been good.”
Hugo sat forward, hardly believing his ears. “Sure, Tom, whatever I can do to help.”
“I’m tasting food. Seeing colors. Thinking about something other than having a drink. It’s fucking amazing.”
“Tom, you’re about to make me cry. Or hug you.”
“Please don’t, you’ll drive me straight back to the bottle.”
Hugo held his hands up in surrender, still smiling. He went to the phone and dialed the concierge. “Dimitrios. Hugo Marston. When’s your birthday?”
“Three weeks ago, monsieur. Pourquoi?”
“I have a present for you, if you like single malt Scotch, wine, and beer. Some of it opened.”
“Bien sûr, merci bien.”
“Don’t thank me, you’re doing us a favor. But you’ll have to come collect it, unwrapped.”
“I’ll be up in a little while, monsieur.”
“Bien.” Hugo hung up. “You just made a Greek very happy.”
“That’s what I live for, to make people happy.”
Hugo dropped back into his chair. “What the hell did they do to you at the hospital?”
“They mentioned something about fixing a heart that was two sizes too small.” Tom adjusted his position, and winced. “They also mentioned that you took possession of . . .” he gave Hugo a sheepish look.
“Your possessions?” finished Hugo. “Yes, I did. Flushed.”
“I figured.”
“Cocaine’s bad, Tom. You’re giving that up, too, right?”
“Honestly, I’d barely even started on the stuff,” his voice was defensive, but softened. “Which is to say yes.”
“Case closed, then.”
“Thanks. Now let’s talk shop. Where are things with the Scarab?”
“I’m working with Garcia. He’s trying to find his mother, maybe she can lead us to him. Or help us figure him out, which may help us identify his next victim before he gets to her.”
“So far they’ve been pretty random,” Tom said. “The two at Père Lachaise, the girl yesterday. Plus the bones, old and new. What’s the general theory, he’s recreating Frankenstein’s monster?”
Hugo smiled. “That’s what Garcia said. And he may be right. My guess is he’s using the bones to make a skeleton, and took that poor girl’s skin because of the tattoo.”
“Which leaves us where?”
“There’s meaning behind his choice of those bones. Jane Avril and La Goulue. Elaine Fournier, though, she wasn’t a dancer.”
“She was chosen because of that tattoo?” Tom asked.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he kill the roommate? He must have known she’d be able to identify him. Why did he leave fingerprints, for that matter?”
“Because it’s almost over.”
“What is?”
“Whatever he’s doing. And I have the distinct impression it’s not going to end well. This guy has operated too long in the shadows, literally. He’s going to go out with a bang.”
“Then you better figure out what kind of bang. And where. And make sure I’m nowhere near.” Tom sat up straight, his hand on his chest. “Do you even have a plan?”
“I do,” Hugo said. “I’m going down there.”
“Where?”
“To Castet. It’s where this all started and it’s the best chance I have of figuring out who this guy really is.”
“Well,” Tom said, stroking his chin, “now that we killed our nonterrorist I’m out of the chain of command. But I bet I can rustle up a plane to fly you down there. Tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. Can it carry two passengers?”
“Thanks, but I’m in no shape to travel.”
Hugo grinned. “I figured that out all by myself. I had someone else in mind.”
Claudia arrived at the apartment just as Dimitrios was making off with his stash of booze. She held the door for him and looked at Hugo with an eyebrow raised.
“Tom’s cut me off,” he said.
“Just from alcohol?” she said, then smiled. “I hope we can still get hookers around here.”
“Damn right,” Tom said, now lying flat out on the couch. “In fact, if we’re not drinking we can get even more of them.”
She went to him, and said, “Now you know how it feels.” The previous year she’d been hit in the shoulder, the bullet intended for Hugo.
“You going to stay and nurse me while handsome is gone?” Tom asked, nodding at Hugo.
“And where is handsome going?” She gave Hugo a quizzical look and the hands-on-the-hips stance told Hugo she wasn’t looking to be left out.
“Boys’ trip,” he said. “I’m borrowing a CIA plane and heading down to Castet, where our Scarab is from.”
“Haven’t the French police poked through the village?” she asked.
“Not yet. I just spoke to Garcia, he’s asking the locals to hold off.”
“I’m coming,” she said.
Hugo smiled. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this dance, and the last time she got her way. “I’d love for you to come,” he said. “But like I said, it’s a CIA plane and they don’t let foreigners on board.”
She looked at Tom, but he was Hugo’s best friend and more than happy to have the beautiful Claudia nursemaid him in Paris for a day or two. “What he said. They’re just a bunch of bureaucrats with guns.”
“What if I follow you?” she asked.
“What if I handcuff you to the chair?” Hugo replied, then saw the look on Tom’s face. “You’re enjoying this conversation too much.”
“I just started to,” he grinned. “Please continue. Something about Claudia and handcuffs.”
“This is the man you intend to leave me with?” Claudia said, unable to hide her smile.
“I’m rethinking that,” Hugo said. His phone rang and he moved to the kitchen to answer. “Raul, comment ça va?”
“Bien,” said Garcia. “I got your message.”
“Any word on the Scarab’s mother?”
“Nothing specifically on her. But the Villier family home is still sitting there. Never sold and, according to the local police, not occupied. You think he’s living there, under the radar?”
Hugo thought for a moment. “I doubt it. For one thing it’s a small village and any kind of activity would be noticed immediately. Second, he’s operating in Paris, which tells me he almost certainly lives here. But the house will tell us something, I’m sure of that.”
“Us?”
“Right,” said Hugo. “I called you earlier because I want to take a trip down there, and I figured I’d need a policeman with me. Especially after what you’ve just told me.”
“Definitely. When do we leave?”
Chapter Thirty-three
Hugo picked up Garcia just before five in the morning at his home in Belleville, northeast of the city center. The air was cold, as if a front had drifted over Paris while they were sleeping, and Garcia had dressed for it. He wore a bow tie, as ever, but more casual khaki pants and a windbreaker. The capitaine’s wife
stood in the doorway and watched them leave.
“Last time I went on an adventure with you, I came back with a bullet hole,” Garcia said. “She remembers that.”
“You’re safe today,” Hugo smiled. “Although we’ll be turning his house upside down, so I suppose there’s always the danger of a paper cut.”
“Alors, I’ll wear gloves.”
Garcia fell silent as Hugo headed to the airstrip fifteen miles farther east. After a few minutes, Hugo glanced over. “Are you feeling OK? You look pale.”
“I get car sick. I’ll be fine.”
“Car sick?”
“Yes, and it’s not funny. Do you know why they used to put in those little side windows on cars?”
“I imagine to help the driver see out.”
“No, it was so capitaines with delicate stomachs could puke without impeding the progress of an investigation. Too bad modern cars don’t have them.”
“Yes,” Hugo smiled, “a great shame. So how are you on small planes?”
“Worse. But you will just need to worry about yourself.”
“Why is that?”
“Because,” Garcia smiled weakly, “on planes they also don’t have the small windows. Which means you will suffer as much as I will.”
They took off with the rising sun leaking into the cockpit window of the six-seat Piper Meridian. A summer storm that was pounding central France took them a hundred miles east of Paris, toward Châlons. The pilot, more garrulous than most CIA employees, with perhaps the exception of Tom Green, took them low once they’d cleared the city.
“There’s something you should see,” he said through the microphone. “History.”
Hugo noticed that Garcia was already focused on the window, but more for self-hypnosis than for the view.
“There,” the pilot said. “You see that?”
Hugo looked out, his eyes roaming over the squares of green pasture below. “I do.”
The spring rains had kept the area lush, and from that height, the ground looked like someone’s manicured lawn. The smoothness of the land was disturbed by folds in the grass, a squiggly line snaking for half a mile, disappearing, then appearing once more as far as he could see.
“World War I trenches,” the pilot said. “Farther east is Verdun, where some of the heaviest fighting was.”
“I think we just flew over where my grandfather fought,” Hugo said. “Belleau Wood.”
“That so?”
“He lied about his age, but managed to stay alive,” Hugo said.
“That was pretty common, in Europe and back home.” The pilot grinned. “The lying, not the staying alive. I’m an amateur historian; the First World War is my pet subject. You know how many people died on the Western Front?”
“Millions,” Hugo said, surprised that was the best answer he could give.
“They’ve broken it down into categories, including military and civilian deaths. But to give you an idea, the good guys lost almost six million soldiers. That’s us, the Limeys, the French, all the way down to a few thousand Portuguese.”
“And the bad guys?”
“Four million.” The pilot looked over his shoulder. “And we’re going nuts chasing a guy who killed four people. Not saying we shouldn’t, of course, but it puts it into perspective, doesn’t it?”
“You could look at it the other way,” Hugo said. “Maybe the tragedy of losing those four lives puts the true horror of that war into perspective.”
The plane banked right, taking them southward in an arc around the traveling storm, and almost three hours after leaving Paris they were descending toward a private landing strip barely five miles from Castet. Garcia shuddered and closed his eyes as the Pyrénées rose either side of them, funneling the tiny plane along a green valley dotted with stone buildings and clusters of houses.
On the ground, color returned to Garcia’s cheeks and they stood beside the grass strip as a police car approached. A uniformed officer climbed out of the driver’s seat and Garcia snatched the keys from him, shooting a satisfied look at Hugo, who just smiled.
Garcia spoke to the policeman. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“Merci, non. They said you were in a hurry. A colleague will pick me up.”
“And did you bring . . .”
“Oui, monsieur, in the trunk.”
“Good.” The capitaine nodded. “We’ll call the station when we’re done, if it’s OK to leave the car here.”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
Hugo went to the passenger door of the white Renault and paused.
“Get in,” Garcia said. “I’ll be right with you.”
Hugo did and looked over his shoulder toward the back of the car, but the trunk was open, blocking his view of Garcia. A minute later, the trunk thumped closed and Garcia climbed into the driver’s seat. He held a .44 Sig Sauer in his hand tucked into a nylon holster.
“You gonna shoot me?” Hugo asked.
“I usually carry a .32,” Garcia said. “But I’m sick of being out-gunned. I had them bring me one of these.”
“You could have brought your own,” Hugo said.
“Nope.” He opened the arm rest between them and placed the gun inside. “I don’t own one and they’d start asking questions if I borrowed one. I don’t like other people asking me questions, that’s my job.”
“And you expect to be shooting that thing?”
“You never know,” Garcia said. “What is the expression? Ah yes, ‘hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.’ Very sensible advice.”
Hugo laughed. “Has anyone ever said that you remind them of Hercule Poirot?”
Garcia flashed a rebuke with his eyes. “He was Belgian, not French.”
“Yes,” said Hugo. “I recall him saying that.”
Garcia shook his head, an exaggerated gesture of frustration. “Alors, you know where we’re going?”
The road from the airstrip wound between pastures that bore just a few of the cows and horses that were supposed to be grazing in the high fields during summer. Hugo wound down his window to let the cool air flow in, and he could hear the faint and hollow tink-tink of the bells that the animals wore around their necks.
They wound their way through Rébénacq and then picked up the clear water of the Gave d’Ossau, whose fishermen sat or stood along the banks and noted the passing of a police car with their eyes, but no expression.
“Left here,” Hugo said, directing Garcia down a narrow street. A bakery appeared beside them but a sense of urgency had taken over. They were too close for casual stops. “Right, then the village is a mile ahead, the road basically dead-ends into it.”
They turned a corner and Hugo recognized the church ahead of them, to their right and high on a hill, with its cemetery that overlooked the Lac de Castet. A cemetery that had been defiled, not even a week ago, by the man they were hunting.
“Where is everyone?” Hugo wondered aloud.
“If it’s like most other small villages,” Garcia said, “most of these houses will be empty.”
“Migration to the cities?”
“Some. But French law does the rest. We are not allowed to leave our homes to one child or the other. By law, all children get an equal share. And when the kids can’t decide who should live there, whether they should sell, if they can rent, then the house goes unused for a week, then a month. Soon a year goes by and the house needs more repairs than any one child wants to pay for.” He shrugged. “You see how it goes.”
“And that explains why no one was in a hurry to do anything with the Villier house.”
“Exactement. An empty house, even for ten years, is nothing strange in a place like this.”
They drove between the stone houses, the road barely wide enough for two small cars to pass. A sign on a pair of double doors advertised honey for sale, another one, three doors down, offered wheels of fresh brebis cheese. Less than a minute later, Garcia steered the car onto a patch of concrete inhabited only by a di
rty blue Citroën and two metal skips, one for trash, one for recycling. They were at the midpoint of the village, which spread only a hundred yards either side of them, and they’d not seen a soul.
They climbed out of the car, crossed the narrow street, and started up the hill toward the church.
“Up on the left,” Hugo said. The house was the center one in a row of three stone houses. Crumbling brick walls separated small and overgrown gardens that fronted each one. It was impossible to say whether any of the houses were occupied just from looking, but Garcia had done his homework.
“An old couple live in the first. The middle one is his, the end house is also empty.”
“So even if he has been here,” Hugo said, “if he came at night and parked where we did, it’s unlikely anyone would have seen him.”
The wooden gate was rotting and its metal hinges squealed in protest as Hugo pushed it open. He made short work of the heavy iron lock, it requiring more force than precision. Garcia stood beside him, his hand in his pocket, a firm grip on the .44.
The wooden door swung open and they wrinkled their noses at the dank, wet air that greeted them. Hugo peered into the room, able to make out shapes that he assumed to be furniture, but it was too dark to see much. He felt by the wall and flicked the light switch and a weak yellow light spilled across the room.
“Electricity,” Garcia said. “It shouldn’t be on.”
“Good point.” But Hugo’s eyes were roaming the walls of the small, rectangular living room.
“Merde,” Garcia said, his gaze flowing Hugo’s. “What the hell has been going on here?”
Silently, the two men moved into the house and closed the door behind them.
Chapter Thirty-four
The train was too slow, and he hadn’t dared rent a car or fly. They knew what he looked like, so he needed to stay off the grid. He wasn’t worried about the fingerprints—sure, they had them, but he’d done some research and guessed it would take several days to identify him.
