by Mark Pryor
“I need to use a phone. And if you can alert every policeman in a car to be looking for a blue Citroën heading for Paris.” Hugo held up a hand. “I know, there will be thousands of them, but it’s all we have right now.”
“Bien, I will radio from my car.” He reached into his pocket and took out his cell phone. He handed it to Hugo. “Here, you can use this.
“Merci.” Hugo flipped it open and dialed Tom, willing him to pick up. After the fourth ring, a sleepy voice came on the line.
“Tom Green. Who is this?”
“Tom, it’s Hugo. Are you awake?”
“I am now, you fucker. Whose phone is this?”
“A local cop. Listen, I need your help. Villier got the jump on us, he shot Garcia and left us to burn in his house.”
“Holy shit,” Tom said. “Tell me Raul’s OK.”
“He’ll be fine. But the bastard got away and we need to find him fast.”
“How the fuck did he get the jump on you?” The word again hung in the air.
“Yeah, I’m not happy about it either, Tom, but if you don’t mind, we’ll save the debrief for later.”
“Fine. What the fuck can I do?”
“First, look up Villier’s mother. He claimed she’s dead, if that’s true, the French will have a record of it somehow. I want to know as much as possible. Garcia probably checked when he did a search for her, but you have more resources.”
“I do. Consider it done. Next?”
“He took our cell phones, so if you can still track mine it might take us straight to him.”
“I’ll assume he has your gun, too.”
“Right. Seems like everyone’s having a turn.”
“I trust you managed to keep your pants on?”
“Funny, Tom. Go track my cell phone and call on this number when you have something useful to say.”
Fifteen minutes later, Garcia sat in the back of an ambulance, arguing with the medics about his treatment. When it looked like Garcia might pull rank and win, Hugo stepped in.
“Look at it this way, Raul,” he said. “If you go with them and get that head seen to, you can skip the airplane ride, just drive or take the train back to Paris later.”
Garcia nodded, then winced. “You are a persuasive man, I like that idea. What are you going to do?”
“Tom’s tracking my phone. If that doesn’t take us to him, I’ll fly back to Paris and try and figure out his next move.”
“The way he was talking, you think it’ll be his last move?”
“Yes,” said Hugo. “What worries me is that it might be someone else’s too.”
“You’re sure he’ll be in Paris?”
“That’s where he’s centered everything. He came down here to get closure on the house, but whatever he’s got planned he’ll do in Paris.”
“Alors, mon ami, go there and figure it out. Find him and stop him.”
They shook hands and Hugo walked away from the ambulance, looking for a ride to the airstrip. The phone in his pocket rang, and he recognized Tom’s number.
“Give me some good news,” Hugo said.
“If she’s dead, the French authorities don’t know about it. Did everything a spook can do, so either she’s alive or her death was never reported.”
“OK, thanks. The cell phone?”
“We’ve got him on the radar,” Tom said. “He’s in the mountains, looks like he’s heading for the border.”
“To Spain?” Hugo shook his head. “No, that’s not right. It can’t be.”
“We’ll know in about ten minutes. The French border patrol will take him down when he gets there.”
“If you’re right, I want him alive.”
“Hugo, they’re border patrol. They get shot at by Basque terrorists and drug smugglers, they’re not going to take any chances with this guy. And he shot a policeman, a frigging captain in the French police, one of their own. If they know that, and you better believe that they will, I don’t like his chances of coming out of those mountains breathing.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Hugo went with his instincts and found a ride to the airstrip. He was handing the phone back to its owner, the crumpled policeman who’d driven him there, when it rang.
“Tom. What happened?”
“It was your phone all right,” Tom said. “They stopped the car at gunpoint and found two very surprised grandparents on a wine-buying trip to Spain. Looks like he tossed the phones through an open window. Fucker.”
“OK. That makes more sense than him making a run for the border.”
“If you say so. Are you heading back now?”
“Yes,” Hugo said. “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
“Good, Claudia’s sick of taking care of me.”
“It’s been a whole day, I don’t blame her. See if she’ll stay and make dinner, will you?”
“What, don’t like my cooking?”
“Never tried it, and I see no reason to start now.” Hugo paused. “And the other thing. How’s that going?”
“As you say, it’s been a whole day. But so far so good.”
Just after four o’clock, Claudia welcomed him at the door with a peck on both cheeks and a glass of something thick and yellow that Hugo didn’t recognize.
“It’s called a mango lassi.” She jerked a thumb at Tom who waved from the couch. “Something about replacing old rituals with new ones.”
“It looks like it should have a little pink umbrella in it. I don’t usually drink things that have pink umbrellas in them.”
“Screw you,” Tom said. “You need to be more supportive. And unless you want a glass of water, there’s nothing else to be had in this apartment.” He squinted at Hugo. “Jesus, you look and smell awful.”
“I wasn’t going to mention that,” Claudia said. “But if you have a shower, I’ll fry up some scallops.”
They ate an early dinner in the living room, making Tom abide by his doctor’s orders to stay put for twenty-four hours, but keeping him company.
“Good scallops,” Hugo said. “I didn’t get lunch, so thanks for doing this.”
“Sure,” Claudia said. “Now, give me something I can put in a story.”
Hugo wiped his plate with a piece of bread. He sat back and told them what had happened. From somewhere, Claudia produced a notebook and scribbled as he talked.
“So Raul’s going to be fine?” she asked, when he’d finished.
“Concussion probably,” Hugo said. “And a few days off of work, but yes. Fine.”
“Where do we go from here?” Tom asked. “If you’re right, that piece of crap is going out with a bang, and plans to take another victim with him.”
“I’d like to know more about how his mother died. He said he killed her, but somehow I don’t think so.” Hugo snapped his fingers. “The Moulin Rouge.”
“Aren’t you a little tired for that?” Claudia asked, with a wink.
“No. I saw a picture in his room, the same picture I saw at the Moulin Rouge. I need to identify the women in it.” He stood. “I think one of them might have been his mother.”
Claudia drove them, her little car finding its way through the Monday-night traffic like a busy ant making its way to the head of the column. Hugo was impressed.
It was six o’clock when they arrived, and Pierre Galvan was waiting, wearing a new pair of suspenders and a different shade of pinstripe, but still nervous—more so, with the threat of the murderous Scarab being linked to his precious troupe. In fact, when Hugo had called, Galvan had claimed to be too busy, that he didn’t know anything, that he couldn’t help. His tone changed as soon as Hugo mentioned the media.
“You wouldn’t want the Scarab linked to the Moulin Rouge, and for people to think you wouldn’t cooperate. Would you?”
So there Galvan stood inside his office, every group photo lined up on his desk and on the red velour sofa, ready for Hugo’s inspection. He spotted it straight away, four women in a line, all high-kicks and s
miles.
“Who are they?” Hugo asked.
Galvan frowned at the picture, slowly shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know them. I’ve only been here fifteen years, I don’t recognize any of them.”
“Who will?” Hugo asked. “There must be someone here—”
“Oh, wait,” Galvan interrupted. He was bending over the picture, squinting. “I take it back, the one on the left.”
“Her name?”
“Louise Braud. That was her stage name. Many of these girls come here to start new, so it may not have been her original name. We’re like the Foreign Legion, but with feather boas instead of guns.” His smile fell away when he saw the look on Hugo’s face.
“When did she leave the repertoire?” Claudia asked.
“She didn’t really leave,” Galvan said. “She was killed.”
The hair stood up on the back of Hugo’s neck. “Where, when, and how?”
“Ten years ago. Fifteen, maybe.” Galvan held up his hands in surrender. “All I know is, she died. If I remember the story right, she went back home for a few days, a week, then never came back. Her husband phoned. He said she’d died in an accident. A fire, I think it was.”
“Impressive memory,” Claudia said.
“Oh, not at all.” Galvan was earnest. “She was a brilliant dancer. Supposed to have been the next Jane Avril, everyone said so. If I remember rightly, she’d done some dancing down south, Toulouse or maybe Pau, then she suddenly appeared on our doorstep, tried out, and blew everyone away.”
“That good?” Claudia said.
“Oh yes. And not just that, but she was the only person I know whose perfect body was improved by stunning tattoos.”
“Tattoos?” Hugo asked. “Do you happen to remember any of them?”
“Mais oui,” Galvan said. “She only had two, but they were large and beautiful. A snake on the front and a cheetah . . . no, a leopard. It was a leopard, on her back. They were works of art, they danced when she danced.” He sighed. “People still talk about what a waste that was, her dying so young.” He looked from Claudia to Hugo. “Anything else you need?”
The café was busy, packed with tourists stoking their courage for a trip to one of the bawdier establishments that called Pigalle home. The locals breezed past on their way home from work, or their way to it, glancing in at the drinkers, nibbling on baguettes or talking on the phone.
Hugo and Claudia had squeezed into a corner table, ordering a carafe of red so the waiter wouldn’t have to keep tiptoeing over to them, risking life and limb stepping past the dropped bags and lit cigarettes being flourished by dramatic Gallic hands.
Claudia’s phone sat on the table on front of them, their eyes demanding it to ring and furnish answers to the questions they’d given Tom as they left the Moulin Rouge.
Claudia was sucking up the last of the free olives when the display lit up. Hugo answered before the first ring, then hit the speakerphone button. They both leaned in to listen.
“What do you have?” Hugo asked.
For once, no jokes from Tom. “Same as before. The new name didn’t tell me anything new—still no record of the lady dying.”
Hugo swore. “How can someone—?”
“Hang on,” Tom said. “You were in too much of a hurry to get out of Castet. I called that old policeman you told me about. Dude, those guys are the best fucking resource on the planet when you want to know about someone. Better than any fancy database belonging to any fancy intelligence service. Except Mossad, they’re pretty fucking good.”
“Tom.”
“Oh, right. Anyway, I took what you got from that shitbag Villier and from the Moulin Rouge guy. Ran it all by the cop, asked about accidents, fires, anything possibly related to Villier himself, or his father. Turns out old man Villier had a barn high on a hill somewhere. It burned down.”
Hugo nodded. “And let me guess, he never saw Madam Villier ever again after that.”
“You should be a cop. You want the really exciting news?”
“Sure.”
“I had him look back over emergency service reports. All computerized now, even down there. The fire was noted but not attended.”
“Which means?”
“Which means some good citizen called it in, then some other diligent official wrote a report about it, but no one could be bothered to head up into the mountains to put out a barn fire.”
“How’s that the exciting news?”
“Listen up, dodo. If that fire means anything to our man, tonight is the thirteenth anniversary.”
Chapter Forty
Hugo and Claudia stared at each other over their half-finished drinks. Tom had signed off to check in with the French side of the investigation, to pass on the new information and see if they had come up with anything useful.
“To be sure tonight is the night,” Claudia said slowly, “we have to know that the number thirteen is significant, right?”
Hugo allowed himself a smile. “You learn fast.”
“Thanks, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. The rest is up to you.”
“I don’t see how there’s any doubt,” Hugo said. “The guy has started a process that involves connecting dead tissues with, well, the newly dead.”
“The tattoos and the bones.” Claudia cocked her head. “You know, there are thirteen major joints in the body, if that means anything.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hugo said, “and it might. We know that, traditionally, thirteen is the most significant number there is, for either good or bad.” Hugo’s head snapped up. “It’s the circle that matters, not the number.”
“Circle?”
“Yes. He was thirteen when she left him. He waited thirteen years to do all this, waited for the thirteenth anniversary of her death.”
“Fine, but what exactly, is ‘all this’?”
“The circle of life. He’s recreating her, putting her back together using the bones of Jane Avril and La Goulue.”
“How can that be?”
Hugo thought back, plumbing his memory for a case he’d read about. “This happened in Florida, a century ago, or something a lot like it.”
“What do you mean? Collecting body parts?”
“Carl Tanzler was his name. He was doctor who fell in love with a patient. She died and two years later he dug her up and took her home on a toy wagon. He dressed her up, used silk cloth soaked in wax to replace the decomposed skin, even gave her a wig of human hair.”
“That’s . . . unbelievable.”
“Yeah. He also used wires to connect her bones and bought her dresses and jewelry, kept her in his bed.” Hugo shook his head. “He was recreating the love of his life, just like Villier is recreating the only woman who mattered to him.”
“Crazy, this is just . . . crazy. And what about the tattoos? They figure into his plan?”
“Yes. What Galvan said confirms that Villier’s mother had a tattoo just like the one he took from that poor girl.”
“Merde,” Claudia said. “Small comfort, but she was dead when he did that.”
Hugo said, “It only makes sense, too, when you look at what he’s doing and the fact that he all but said it was ending soon. Why cram those cemetery raids so close together if he didn’t have an impending endgame? And I know I’m right about his mother being at the center of everything. I’d bet good money she protected him from his father as best she could. But then she left, became a dancer. Somehow the old man found her and made her come back to Castet and, I guess, Claude Villier killed her.”
“You think he was angry at being abandoned?”
“Maybe. I still think there’s more to it, it doesn’t fit with me that he’s the one who killed her.”
“Why would he lie about that?”
“I don’t know. But I’m happy to work on the assumption that tonight is the culmination of his little scheme.”
“What will that culmination be?” Claudia asked.
Hugo ran his mind back over his
conversation with Villier but he couldn’t find anything in the man’s words that might give away his final play. He pictured the hard, violent face, the unnaturally large hands holding . . .
“The scarab,” Hugo blurted.
Claudia looked up, surprised at his tone. “What about him?”
“Not him, it. The object.”
“It’s his signature, non? Like all serial killers have.”
“It is, but it’s more than that. I think—”
“Oh, God, Hugo, I am so stupid.” Claudia shook her head, as if disappointed with herself. “The scarab is Egyptian, right?”
“Yes, that’s what I was getting at.”
“Sorry, but I totally missed it. In ancient Egypt the number thirteen represented transformation, resurrection, and rebirth. A new life.”
“There you have it,” Hugo said. “And he plans to use the scarab.” He saw puzzlement in her eyes and continued. “The scarab was also a symbol of new life and resurrection. But it was an amulet they used in burials, it protected the heart.” Claudia picked up her phone, brought up the Internet, and typed in a couple of words.
“Listen to this.” Claudia began reading from her phone. “O my heart which I had from my mother! O my heart of my different ages! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance, for you are my Ka which was in my body, the protector who made my members hale. Go forth to the happy place whereto we speed.”
“The happy place . . . What’s that from?”
“The Book of the Dead. And it would be inscribed on the back of those scarab amulets you just mentioned.”
“The reference to the mother and the place ‘whereto we speed,’ that’s exactly it,” Hugo said. “Thank heavens for the Internet, that confirms what his last move is.”
“Oh, no, Hugo. Surely not.” Claudia took his hand, her eyes reflecting her horror. “You think he’s going to take someone’s heart?”
“I saw the amulet,” Hugo said. “I think that’s exactly what he’s going to do.”
