Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  “Where, Clémence?”

  “Passage des Deux Pavillons, 10:15.”

  The line went dead.

  She reached for the spring under her desk blotter. With a ping, a slot opened, revealing the hollow space in her desk in which they’d hidden their reserve office funds. A few hundred francs. She took them, stuffing the bills into her pocket. Somehow she’d talk Clémence into it.

  In her head she heard René’s voice, recollecting the many times he’d called her “reckless, impulsive.” He would insist she call the flics. But how could she tell Melac, who already thought her psychotic?

  So far, her calls and messages to all the clients René had worked with in the last two years had resulted in no clue to a suspect. Not that anyone would admit sabotaging Leduc Detective by wiring the money to its account, much less shooting René.

  A new message popped up on her e-mail—the sender, BRIF, Brigade de Researches et d’ Investigations Financières, the financial flics. She hit OPEN. A curt message informed her of an appointment the next morning with a Monsieur Fressard pertaining to her Paribas account.

  Already!

  The old station clock in her office chimed 10 P.M. She had to hurry. Her cell phone rang, startling her.

  Clémence again?

  But Saj’s number was displayed.

  “Aimée,” Saj said. “Checked the business’s account recently?”

  She pulled up their Paribas account on her laptop screen and scanned the balance. “Another deposit of fifty thousand! It adds up to more than a hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

  Where was it coming from?

  “BRIF’s summoned me for a meeting tomorrow.”

  “Did they request any documentation?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “But the meeting’s not at the Préfecture. It looks like it’s at some tax office.”

  “So it’s an exploratory meeting,” Saj said. “Ask to see what they have.”

  There was a silence, then she heard clicks on the other end. Was he delving into their account?

  “Think of it in simple terms,” Saj said. “They’re looking for dirty money.”

  “And if I use a centime of it, then it’s as good as—”

  “Admitting you’re laundering it?” Saj interrupted. “They don’t care about ethics, Aimée; it’s not a court of law.”

  She asked, “But why pick on me?”

  “Rather than Colombian cartels or Chechen arms dealers?” Saj asked. “Who knows?”

  “Exactement. It’s deliberate. Someone fingered us,” she said. “Someone denounced me.”

  “Don’t forget, arms dealers can afford creative accounting and offshore accounts. You can’t.”

  She pounded her fist on the desk. “Saj, did your contact know anything?”

  “The Luxembourg bank that originated the transfer tops the Tracfin blacklist.”

  “Tops the list?”

  “A behind-the-scenes financial investigative unit at BRIF is monitoring for Tracfin,” Saj said. “Tracfin’s priority is investigating money-laundering. Think terrorists, drug cartels, Russian mafia money. That kind of thing, along with politicos and their slush funds after the Elf affair.”

  Aimée knew of the ongoing Elf oil scandal involving the sale of frigates to Taiwan with kickbacks linked to the highest echelons of various ministries. A minister’s mistress, a lobbyist, dispensed bribes with a largesse likened by the press to the court of Louis XIV at Versailles.

  “Small fish, big fish, it’s all the same in their net,” Saj said. “And it’s a brand-new department.”

  Great.

  “Look, I’ll explain tomorrow. You have to tell them the truth. Better yet, find out their computer’s operating system.” Saj sighed. “In the best of all worlds, then I could attach a data sniffer to the input cable.”

  “A data sniffer?”

  “The little black box that hooks on the input cables and feeds back data,” Saj said. “It’s basic and classic, like your little black dress.”

  “And as seductive?”

  “Term it however you like. But it would be illegal. It’s too big a risk,” Saj said. “Last time, it got me in trouble.”

  Though instead of prison, the ministry had made him work for them to pay off his “debt to society.”

  If only she could enlist René.

  “Let me think about this,” Saj said.

  “But if I could find out the operating system for you?”

  “Can you perform small miracles these days?”

  She hooked her toe in the handle of the bottom desk drawer and pulled it open.

  “Let me see what I can do,” she told Saj and hung up.

  She took a box from the drawer, opened it, and rooted around among the relics of her father’s old life. There were spy toys he’d used in surveillance; a fountain-pen prototype pistol, a matchbox micro-recorder. And then she found just the thing.

  She shut down her laptop, put her jacket back on, and, minutes later, strode under the arches of rue de Rivoli, a street built by Napoleon in what Balzac called his Italian phase. The Louvre’s façade stood opposite; the street was dim, apart from a streetlamp’s sodium yellow light. She turned right. Her heels clicked on the uneven pavers entering the Palais Royal, the quartier encompassing the avenue de l’Opéra, travel agencies, hotels, and theatres, surrounding the Ministerial and former royal government buildings and garden for which the quartier took its name.

  She tied her scarf tighter against the chill. Ahead, the last theatregoers spilled from the doors of the seventeenth-century Comédie Française near Place Colette. A light mist hovered, moistening her cheeks and hurrying the crowd to the Métro. Lights and laughter came from late-evening diners at a café farther down the Palais Royal. Avoiding the arcade, she wove among the black-and-white-striped Buren columns toward the garden. But the gate was locked. She’d forgotten that they closed early in the fall.

  Retracing her steps, hurrying now, she reached rue de Valois, which ran parallel to the garden in the center of the Palais Royal.

  Minutes later, she found Passage des Deux Pavillons, one of the nineteenth-century glass-covered passages radiating from the Palais Royal. There was a lock on its metal gate. Clémence was not there.

  Had she missed her?

  “Clémence?”

  No answer.

  The passage, wide enough for a cart and just long enough for two of them, was typical of the narrow eighteenth-century passages threading to the Palais Royal.

  “Clémence?” she called again.

  Her words echoed off the stone. The passage steps glistened with mist, vines crawled up the peeling walls, and the stone exuded a dampness. Uneasy, she saw the CLOSED sign in the lace-curtained window of a stamp shop. A trash can stood in front of the door.

  She’d heard the background kitchen noises over the phone, someone shouting for their bill, just half an hour ago. A café or bistro had to be nearby. But around the corner on the neighboring street she found only a dry cleaner and a shuttered travel agency. And then, in the dim light, Aimée’s boots landed in gurgling gutter water.

  She cursed herself for not waterproofing her Valentinos.

  But now she could make out the lights of a bistro under the arcades in the Palais Royal. It was within shouting distance of the Passage des Deux Pavillons and still open. She knew the place: mediocre southwest cuisine, but a pleasant place to dine on a warm evening.

  Retracing her steps again, she found the bistro’s rear entrance on rue de Valois. The only diners, an older couple, sat near the window overlooking the Palais Royal garden. The woman’s face was webbed with fine wrinkles; a blue-veined hand twisted the pearls around her neck. The man, who had a white moustache and hollow cheeks, kept raising his shaking hand, gesturing at no one in particular. Aimée looked around. No Clémence. No one from the wait staff was in view, but she heard a loud argument coming from the downstairs kitchen.

  A harried waiter wearing a long white apron and black ve
st appeared. He raced across to the old couple, ignoring Aimée.

  “Monsieur! We appreciate your patience. Please, a brandy, courtesy of the house,” he said.

  After the waiter smoothed the old couple’s feathers, removing their dishes, serving them two snifters of brandy, and bringing the bill, Aimée caught his attention. She stepped in his path, and his only choices were either to run into her or acknowledge her presence.

  “Pardon, Monsieur.”

  “I’m busy.” He glared.

  “Sorry to disturb you, but does Clémence work here?”

  “Not any more. She quit.”

  The waiter took off. To the right, narrow stone steps led to the kitchen. Heat, garlic aromas, and shouts came from below. The chef, in white hat and stained apron, trudged up the stairs, carrying dishes. He muttered into the cell phone crooked between his shoulder and neck. A large man, Aimée noted, clean-shaven, with a ruddy complexion and reddish blond hair curling from under his toque.

  “La salope!” she overheard. “The bitch left me in the lurch. A whole load of dirty dishes. Didn’t even clean up her station.” He snorted in disgust. Then moved toward the pantry.

  Aimée followed him.

  “Took her paycheck and split. And to think I wanted to move in with her.”

  He shoved the tray onto a counter, flicking his cell phone closed. Cursing, he wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand.

  She thought quickly. “Excusez-moi, I need to find Clémence. I’ve got her keys.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We run a bistro here.”

  “But where is she? I’ve got to give her the keys.”

  “You can give her this for me.” He shot Aimée the finger and pointed to the door. “And leave like she did.”

  Instead of retracing her steps, Aimée hurried through the shadowy arcades of the Palais Royal. She figured Clémence had left the quickest way and was waiting at the passage, and she’d missed her.

  Moisture blurred the air, settling on the gold-spike-tipped fence and misting the double row of lime trees guarding the village-like enclave. Once the residence of Cardinal Richelieu and the duc d’Orleans, in the nineteenth century the Palais Royal had welcomed commerce under the arcades, with the gambling clubs and courtesans. Napoleon had strolled, wooing Josephine in the garden, and the cafés had been meeting places of the Revolutionaries. How many scenes had she read in Balzac, Zola, and de Maupassant set here?

  Hanging glass lantern lights cast a dim glow. Aimée ran in the shadows past the small shops under the arcades displaying vintage Chanel and Dior. A long rectangle of darkness stretched before her.

  “Clémence!”

  But the stillness was broken only by the distant splashing water of the fountain.

  Aimée wished there were other people strolling by, that the uneasy feeling creeping up her spine would go away. Clémence could have set her up. The hurried call, the demand for money; it didn’t smell right. Too bad the flics had her Beretta.

  Faint light emanated from Le Grand Véfour, the Michelin-starred restaurant, where Colette had kept a regular table. But ahead of her in the north corner lay crumbling, soot-stained columns, a forlorn, shabby elegance.

  The uneasiness filled her. Was she walking into a trap?

  She heard a dog barking. As she got closer, the German shepherd’s loud, insistent barks escalated from behind the waist-high construction barrier blocking an old military medal shop. The dusty windows contained striped ribbons and tarnished silver medals looking bereft, an ancien regime display of faded pomp.

  What was the dog barking at? He snarled at her, baring white teeth. She jumped aside, bumping into the metal barricade, and felt a sharp tug as her jacket pocket caught on wire, then a loud rip as she backed away. The dog lunged, missing her leg by centimeters.

  “Gaspard! Arrête!” Aimée heard heels clicking over the cobbles and saw a woman running toward her, leash in hand.

  The panting woman leaned down and caught the German shepherd by the collar. The dog’s yelps were now high-pitched and it pawed at the barricade.

  “Désolée, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s never like this,” the woman said.

  “He scents something.” Aimée took out her penlight and moved the barricade aside. Her light revealed a low black heel in a pile of sand, then a woman’s bare leg sprawled against the pockmarked stone and peeling wood storefront. She recognized the sweater coat, the tangled limp blond hair. Clémence’s head was twisted back, resting against her shoulder. There were red blotch marks on her throat.

  Aimée’s heart skipped a beat. She kneeled on the coarse sand and gravel covering the damp uneven stone.

  “Can you hear me, Clémence?”

  But Clémence’s mouth hung slack, her eyes rolled back in her head. Aimée felt a weak, fluttering pulse in her wrist. Her forehead was warm.

  Panicked, Aimée reached for her cell phone. But she’d left it in the office to charge. If this had just happened, whoever had attacked Clémence could be lurking nearby. She looked around for Clémence’s bag, for the notebook, but saw only a mesh of footprints in the sand.

  “Call for help. Call SAMU now!” she shouted over her shoulder at the woman with the dog.

  But when she looked up, the woman was pulling the dog away. Her red-soled Louboutin heels scraped the stone.

  “I don’t have my cell phone,” the woman replied, tugging the dog’s leash. “I just took Gaspard out for a walk.”

  “Go to the bistro, hurry!”

  The woman’s loud scream interrupted her.

  Frantic, Aimée felt Clémence’s pulse quiver. She heard footsteps approaching. In the distance, she saw a trio of men, silhouetted in the dark. Returning to finish the job? And here she was with a screaming woman.

  But they wore suits, ministry types; one carried a briefcase. “Found a mouse, Mesdemoiselles?” the younger one asked, laughing.

  “Get an ambulance now! Her pulse is fading.”

  Aimée pinched Clémence’s nose closed, raised her chin, and started giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  One man reached for his cell phone. The younger one took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “I’m trained. I’ve just been certified in CPR for my son’s swimming class.”

  Before she could stop him, he’d knelt down. The other men crowded near the barricade; one flicked his lighter to give more light.

  Aimée smelled alcohol. Not a good sign. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “A little wine after our meeting? It’s nothing.”

  “Have you done this before?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply. Intent, he crossed his hands, thrusting hard on Clémence’s chest. But he was botching it.

  “Stop! You’re doing it wrong,” Aimée exclaimed.

  “I know what to do.”

  “Just get the SAMU here. Guide them.”

  Aimée pushed him aside, counted, and made quick thrusts to Clémence’s chest. She kept counting, breathing, and thrusting several times until she felt a response and flicker of breath.

  “Breathe, Clémence; you can do it,” she whispered.

  “Who attacked her?” one of the men asked. The one who held her penlight looked familiar. She’d seen his face before.

  It could not be a coincidence that Clémence was attacked before she could meet her. Aimée’s hands shook with fear, but she kept thrusting until she heard the whine of a siren. With the Ministry and Conseil d’Etat nearby, the area must merit priority response.

  “Over here!” called one of the men. The fireman response team appeared with a yellow plastic stretcher and an orange-red canvas bag.

  “We’ll take over, Mademoiselle.” The fireman wore the signature silver helmet and a black anorak with lime stripes and the words SAPEUR POMPIER—firemen—lettered on his back.

  He took over the chest thrusts. His colleague placed an oxygen mask over Clémence’s face, then clipped a blood-pressure cuff around her arm.

  “How
long ago did this happen?”

  “A few minutes? I’m not sure.”

  Aimée hoped they’d reached Clémence in time. But then she saw Clémence’s face, the chalk-white pallor and blue-tinged lips.

  “Shock paddles! Now!” one of the firemen yelled.

  She heard the thrum of the mobile shock unit, the dull thud as it hit Clémence’s chest. And again. And again. The paramedic put three fingers on Clémence’s neck. And shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Horrified, Aimée stepped back.

  “Those marks show she was strangled,” Aimée said.

  “Tell that to the flics, Mademoiselle.”

  Low murmurs echoed off the stone. A few bystanders had gathered under the dark columns: the woman with the dog, an older woman in a raincoat with a clean plastic bag over her hair.

  “But that’s Clémence! Quelle misère,” the woman shouted.

  The crowd parted; the press had arrived. Bright lights reflected on the aluminized Mylar blanket contouring Clémence’s body. A cameraman balanced a heavy video camera on his shoulder. Bursts of light flashes erupted, illuminating the scene: the body covered in silvery Mylar, the shocked bystanders under the darkened stone colonnade.

  At the edge of the crowd, a reporter stuck a microphone in the young man’s face. “Did you try to save her? A hero. . . .”

  “I’m no hero. She didn’t make it.” At least he had the decency to look ashamed. “We’d finished our meeting. The ministry gates were locked. Who knew that on the way to my car, we’d find this poor young woman?”

  “Wait a minute, Monsieur. You work at the Ministry of Culture? Can I get a few more comments?”

  “Strike that. No comment.”

  Several flics herded the bystanders away from Clémence’s body. “Now if you’ll assemble over there and tell us what you saw.”

  Any moment, La Proc, the investigating magistrate, and the crime-scene squad would arrive. Aimée had to avoid the police; she was already a suspect in René’s shooting. Her stomach knotted, chills racked her. Her denim jacket lay on Clémence’s lifeless body. She moved behind a column and bumped into one of the men, who thrust the penlight into her hands.

  Aimée caught a better glimpse of him now. Graying temples, tall, a look of concern in his eyes. He wore a tailored suit and Lobb handmade shoes which she recognized as René wore them too, and held a briefcase embossed with the Ministry of Culture logo.