‘And witnesses?’
‘The woman over there, with her dog. She saw it all.’
Jacquot thanked him and hurried over to the ambulance to find a large man in a plaid shirt and baggy jeans being attended to by a medic. There was a nasty gash across the top of his forehead, just below the hairline and raised up on a sizeable bump.
‘I was slowing down on Boulevard Sebastiani, coming out on to Dupont,’ he told Jacquot, ‘when this woman just stepped in front of me – out of nowhere. For a second I thought she might be a fare, flagging me down. But then I saw the gun. Waving it, she was. If I hadn’t been slowing for Dupont, I’d have hit her sure as shit.’
‘Description?’
‘Tall, kind of stooping, and thin. With a hard face on her. Short blonde hair – ouch!’ The man winced as the medic worked on his cut. ‘Careful, copain, that hurt.’
‘Clothing? How was she dressed?’ prompted Jacquot.
‘Black shirt, black trousers. Looked like a uniform. Security badge with a name tag . . . Simone . . . ? Something like that.’
‘Sylvie?’
The taxi driver shrugged. ‘Could have been. I don’t know. It was all over so quick.’
‘So she got you out of the car . . . ?’
‘With a gun in my face, I moved fast I can tell you. Left the keys in the ignition and was about to make a run for it when she gave me this.’ He pointed to his wound with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘A woman. How do you like that? I’ll never live it down.’
‘So she took the car and then what?’
‘Don’t ask me. I was out good and proper. But I’ll tell you one thing – they won’t get far. I was about to fill the tank at the Total garage on Verdun. Pretty near empty, I was.’
‘How far could you have driven?’
The driver lifted his hands from his lap, spread them, shrugged.
‘Twenty, maybe thirty kilometres if I watched my speed. Pas plus. No more.’
Thanking him for his time, Jacquot crossed over to the woman with the dog. She was in her fifties, wearing carpet slippers and a housecoat, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Jacquot showed her his badge and asked what she had seen while her dog sniffed at his mocassins.
‘I was on the corner of Allée Guende when that car came racing past.’ She pointed to the VW. ‘I heard a bang. Lots of bangs. Two, three, maybe more, and then I saw it swerving around the road like the driver was drunk. There were sparks coming from underneath it. The next thing I know it’s up over the pavement and into the ditch.’
High above, a helicopter roared past, the sound of its rotors batting down on them. George Benson or Virginie Cabrille? Jacquot wondered, watching its flashing lights disappear over the rooftops.
He turned back to the woman in the housecoat.
‘There much traffic about?’ he asked.
‘Not too much then. Not like now,’ she added, nodding at the cars filing past, curious faces bathed in blue and red light staring through the windows.
‘So what happened then?’
‘Alors, for a moment I did nothing. I was just shocked, you know. It happened so quick, so close. But then this figure scrambles up from the ditch and looks around. She’s wearing trousers but it’s a woman. No question. She sees the taxi coming out of Sebastiani and makes a beeline for it. Next thing I know, she’s behind the wheel and driving it back to the car. By this time there’s another figure got out of the VW. It looked like she was hefting something up onto the pavement. Like a sack of something. The first one parks and I don’t get to see much of what happens after that. Next thing I know they’re in the car, doing a U-turn and heading off down to the bridge.’
Jacquot thanked her and walked back to the VW.
‘What next, Boss?’ asked Brunet, coming up behind him.
‘I want this car out of the ditch, put on a flat-bed and taken to headquarters. And get the boys to go over it with a fine tooth-comb.’
‘It’s Saturday night, Boss.’
‘Tell them it’s me. And I’ll owe them.’
‘Anything else?’
Jacquot nodded.
‘Time to pay a call. Le Mas Bleu.’
59
WITH TWO KÉPIS TAKEN ALONG for good measure, Jacquot and Jean Brunet arrived at Le Mas Bleu at a little after one o’clock in the morning. If they had expected the place to be bedded down for the night, they were wrong. The drive was lit – an uplighter between each cypress – and every window blazed, the gravelled forecourt ringed with flambeaux. The previous morning they’d been directed by Valbois to the tennis courts, but it was clear from the sound of music and laughter that the action had now moved to the swimming pool. Since the entire hotel had been booked by Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille, they didn’t bother to ask for her at reception, but simply followed the music, led on by a shifting blue light splashed across the side of Le Mas Bleu. The party in progress could only be hers.
There were maybe thirty people at the pool, sitting at tables around a tented bar, dancing under the trees or playing in the blue lapping water. They were young, in their twenties and thirties, a smart set in easy, elegant evening clothes or swimsuits and wraps, relaxed, having fun. A mixed jazz and samba soundtrack played in the background, no louder than the chatter and laughter of the party. It fell away as Jacquot, Brunet and the two képis made their approach, one head after another turning in their direction.
As he walked down the side of the pool, Jacquot searched for Mademoiselle Cabrille but couldn’t see her. Making his way to the bar where a dreadlocked barman was mixing Mojitos, he asked where he could find her.
‘Right here, Chief Inspector,’ came a voice.
He turned.
Virginie Cabrille had appeared from nowhere, arm in arm with her tennis partner. Her hair was still slicked back though two oiled wisps hung like black tails either side of her forehead. She still wore the black basque top she had worn at the concert, but had exchanged the jeans for a pair of voluminous pasha trousers. It was clear she’d been dancing, her throat and the skin between her breasts shiny with sweat. She flicked back one of the black tails from her forehead, and licked her lips as though she’d justed tasted something warm and luscious.
‘Twice in one day,’ she continued. ‘What a treat. So how was the concert, Chief Inspector? Do tell me you enjoyed it?’ She gave him a mirthless but teasing look, her eyes, black as tapenade, piercing into him.
It was the smile that did it.
Jacquot felt a hot, coiling anger, felt his guts twist and harden into a steely knot. He did not waste any time. Staying at the bar, and loud enough to be heard, he said, ‘Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille, I am arresting you on a charge of conspiracy to murder.’
For a few seconds, the only sound save the soft samba backbeat was the gentle slap of water against the sides of the pool. Even the barman stopped working his cocktail shaker.
Virginie Cabrille frowned, but a frown that did little to ease the smile from her lips.
‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’
‘Arrest. Conspiracy. Murder.’ Jacquot gave each word its own weighty importance. ‘Your arrest, Mademoiselle.’
‘And when exactly was this murder?’
‘En effet, murders, Mademoiselle.’
She took a sharp breath.
‘A serial killer, no less. How exciting.’
She cast around her friends, all now watching this exchange with interest. There was a ripple of nervous laughter. Either her friends were in on the set-up, or they weren’t quite sure what to think. Jacquot favoured the latter view.
‘Don’t forget to tell him about that bank job, ’Ginie,’ quipped one of the party, a handsome young man with a glass of champagne in one hand, the other gently stroking his companion’s thigh.
Jacquot nodded to one of the képis. A set of handcuffs was taken from his belt and he moved forward to put them on Virginie Cabrille.
While Jacquot reeled off her rights, short, sharp and brief, she held out her ha
nds, wrists uppermost, for the handcuffs. As the képi snapped them on she never took her eyes off Jacquot. A cool, calculating look, the same amused smile, as though she knew something that he didn’t.
When the cuffs were secured, the képi stepped back. Virginie Cabrille looked down at them, shook the links as though getting the feel of a piece of jewellery, and raised them so her friends could see.
‘Most elegant, Chief Inspector. And, as you may know, an item of restraint with which I am not unfamiliar. Normally I use two pairs, or four. Or rope, or tape . . .’ She turned to her companion and the girl leant in and gave her a light kiss. Virginie whispered something in her ear.
‘We have a car in the drive, Mademoiselle.’
‘Chauffeur service. How splendid. Lead me to it, Chief Inspector. I have a feeling that our evening is just beginning.’ She turned to the rest of the party. ‘Mes amis, bonsoir, enjoy yourselves. I’ll be back in a little while.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on that Mademoiselle,’ advised Jacquot, his voice chill and low.
‘Oh, really? Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?’
60
WEDGED BETWEEN THE TWO KÉPIS in the back seat of the squad car Virginie Cabrille remained silent as Brunet drove into town from Le Mas Bleu. In the close confines of the car, Jacquot could smell her. Warm and exotic, rich and close, a musky, leathery scent that filled the car’s interior with an oddly masculine aroma, like the sinuous smoky trail of a good cigar. In the passenger seat, watching the starlit countryside slip by and the lights of the town draw closer, Jacquot shook a cigarette from his pack and lit up, as much for the pleasure of the smoke as a way to cover the smell of her. And as he smoked, he stayed silent. He’d said enough already; and he knew, too, that silence had a way of unnerving even the strongest, most determined suspect.
At police headquarters, Brunet swung down into the basement car park and came to a stop by the lift doors. Even here there was no need to speak, the two képis helping Cabrille from the back seat and escorting her to the lift, just as they’d been briefed to do on the way to Le Mas Bleu. As the doors opened, Virginie Cabrille stepped in between her guards, turned and gave Jacquot another smile. Not even the lift’s panelled neon lights could pale her deep tan, her glamour, the shift of her breasts in the low-cut black basque. On either side of her, the two uniformed képis kept their eyes to floor and ceiling.
‘Chancing it, aren’t you, Boss?’ asked Brunet, as the lift doors slid closed.
‘She’s guilty. We just have to prove it. Simple as that.’
‘Simple as that.’ Brunet nodded.
‘At least while she’s here, the sisters are on their own,’ said Jacquot, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out.
Up in his office he pulled out his chair and slumped down into it. The last time he’d been here, Saturday morning, Claudine and Midou had been safe at the millhouse; then there’d been lunch together at Brasserie Gaillard; shopping in the afternoon; the drinks party in the old town, and then the concert. Claudine in her ao dai, Midou in her sparkling rhinestones. Now they were gone, out of reach, out of touch, and, Jacquot knew, in deadly danger. As he sat there, not quite sure what to do next, he realised that his heart was beating fast, his mouth dry, and his stomach clenched with fear. Not good, he thought, not good at all. Pulling himself together he reached for the phone and made two calls.
By the sound of it, Jacquot decided that Solange Bonnefoy had not been in bed and asleep. She had been drinking, her voice slurred and furry and hoarse. But she was not so drunk that she didn’t snap to when Jacquot told her what had happened and what he wanted.
Bernie Muzon, on the other hand, must have been dead to the world, dragged painfully awake from his dreams.
‘Daniel? What the fuck . . . ? Do you know . . .’ Jacquot could see him reaching for his watch or the alarm clock ‘. . . what the fucking time is?’
Like Solange, however, he came to when Jacquot told him what had happened.
‘Call Solange Bonnefoy. She’s expecting you. Pick up the warrants and get right out to Roucas Blanc. Break down the doors if you have to.’
Jacquot had just put the receiver down when the phone started to ring. He snatched it up again.
‘Chief Inspector Jacquot, this is Maître Simon Paul, in Paris, at the offices of Belmond Frères. I believe you have taken a client of mine into custody. Garde à vue.’
Normally Jacquot loved nothing more than a little light legal jousting, particularly with slick Parisian lawyers who thought they knew it all. He might, for instance, have asked for the name of the client, knowing full well who it was; or how Maître Paul had got his direct line number; or how and when he had heard about the arrest; or requested more detailed information with regard to the professional legitimacy of Belmond Frères before confirming any arrest over the phone. There were any number of responses he could have come up with, most of them based on playing the dull provincial policeman, all of which he knew would exercise any lawyer and give him an edge. But this was not the moment for such games; these were not normal circumstances.
‘If you are calling on behalf of Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille,’ said Jacquot, as Brunet came into his office and took a chair, ‘then you are correct. She is indeed in custody.’
A sigh came down the line, followed by a gentle tut-tutting.
‘A great shame – in terms of your career, Chief Inspector. A great shame.’ The voice was low, amused, in control. ‘However, to limit any further, more grievous, damage might I suggest you release her immediately. And without charge.’
‘That’s a suggestion then, not a threat?’ Jacquot tried to picture his adversary. Thin, he decided, judging by the voice; maybe bald. A bowtie? Spectacles? Possibly.
‘Please accept it as my best professional advice,’ crooned Paul down the line. ‘Let me put it like that.’
‘And let me put it like this, Maître Paul. Mademoiselle Cabrille is not setting foot out of this building. Not only is she under arrest for conspiracy to murder . . .’
There was an indulgent ‘poufff’ of disbelief at the end of the line.
‘Vraiment, this is a joke, surely . . .’
‘. . . but she will be helping with an ongoing investigation.’
‘Oh I don’t think so, Chief Inspector.’
‘In which case I suggest you get yourself down here, cher Maître, and persuade me otherwise. Until such time, we will continue with our enquiries. I will have you put through to the switchboard, so that your call can be transferred to your client in the holding cells.’
And with that Jacquot broke the connection.
‘You didn’t put him through to the switchboard,’ said Brunet with a smile.
‘Oh, didn’t I?’
61
AT A LITTLE BEFORE THREE in the morning, Virginie Cabrille was taken from her holding cell on the first floor and brought to an interview room on the second. There were no windows in this room, and just a single neon panel in the ceiling. There was a table, chairs, a tape-recording unit, two doors and a long mirror-like observation panel.
Brunet and Jacquot stood behind the glass and watched their suspect settle herself. When the duty sergeant left, by the door leading down to the holding area, Virginie Cabrille arranged herself sideways on to the table, crossed her legs and inspected her fingernails, idly swinging her foot as if to some unheard rhythm in her head. Though her jewellery had now been removed, bagged and tagged during the form-filling and photo session in the receiving hall, she still looked as tanned and as glamorous as she had in the lift, quite content, it seemed, to spend whatever time it took in that room. There was a confidence, an assurance, a certainty about her. That within just a short few hours, even less, she would be released.
Jacquot had other plans.
‘You first, or me?’ asked Brunet, relishing the prospect of taking her on.
‘Après toi,’ said Jacquot with a grim smile. He knew there was nothing his assistant liked more than a challenge
in the interview room, and this looked like it might turn out to be one of Brunet’s more memorable encounters. There was no need to brief him. He knew the way to go.
Virginie Cabrille did not look up when Brunet entered the room and took the chair across the table from her. It seemed that her nails were a more pressing concern. Despite the hour – despite her game of tennis, the concert, the party – she looked not the least bit weary. Other prisoners, sitting at that table, would have pleaded tiredness, talked about human rights, demanded that a lawyer be present. Mademoiselle Cabrille had done none of these things.
Jacquot drew out a chair and settled himself down to watch.
The interview began in the usual manner, and with the usual Brunet flourishes. Jacquot had seen the act a number of times and was still fascinated by it. It was like watching a particularly wily old mongoose circle a cobra. A masterclass. Every detail precisely calculated to unsettle the suspect.
A pen was taken from his breast pocket, ballpoint clicked down with the thumb. A spectacle case was brought out from an inside pocket, opened, glasses unfolded, put on. A file was opened, the contents flicked through. A new tape was taken from his pocket, unwrapped and slid into the recorder. Throat cleared, with a fist to the mouth.
The fonctionnaire in every detail.
But a deadly fonctionnaire.
And, after testing the tape, off he went.
‘Alors, Inspector Jean Brunet with suspect Virginie Cabrille.’
Jacquot saw her smile at the word ‘suspect’.
‘Time 3.09 Sunday, July twenty-fifth 1999.’
He looked up at Mademoiselle Cabrille for the first time.
‘Your address, s’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle?’
‘I have already supplied those details,’ she began, ‘but if you need them repeated . . . Maison Cabrille, Roucas Blanc, Marseilles.’ The voice was low, bored.
The information was laboriously copied down. Without raising his eyes, Brunet asked: ‘Is that “Roucas” with a “c” or a “q”?’
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