‘Guess,’ said Virgine Cabrille, with an easy, if venomous, smile, now tapping her nails on the tabletop.
There had always been the possibility, of course, that Mademoiselle Cabrille would not say a word. It was a difficult trick, Jacquot knew, to pull off in a police interview room. Every suspect, every villain who sat there, thought that they could do it, but very few succeeded. Anxious, uncomfortable, isolated, the temptation to speak out – to complain, to threaten, to deny – was hard to resist.
But it was clear that Virginie Cabrille appeared to feel no such constraint. She seemed quite content to answer any question she was asked, without any conditions or any lawyer present, as though she had nothing in the world to fear. It was increasingly clear, however, that she resented the interview being carried out by a subordinate like Brunet when she had been relishing the prospect of a set to with the man who had arrested her in front of all her friends.
Jacquot wondered, as he sat there in the gloom of the observation room, whether she knew he was watching.
He was certain she did.
Her performance, he knew, was for him.
He was equally certain that Brunet was beginning to annoy her; the formal, functional questionning; the endless repetition; the laboured note-taking – as though writing was a skill with which Brunet was not yet entirely comfortable. If the Biro had been a pencil, Jacquot was in no doubt that at some stage Brunet would have licked its tip.
The foot swinging faster, the nails tapping harder, the replies more clipped, more bored, Virginie Cabrille was starting to grow impatient.
Another fifteen minutes and Jacquot would take over.
In the meantime there were other things to do.
62
‘IT’S GOOD OF YOU TO come in, Vincent. I appreciate it.’
‘One of our own, Daniel. It goes without saying. And you’ve got pretty much the whole squad working on it. The rest of us are out on Dupont going over the crash site.’
Vincent Pilger was head of Cavaillon’s scene-of-crime unit, a quietly spoken man with a broad beak of a nose, thinning brown hair and sad, sloping blue eyes. Like the rest of his team he wore rubber gloves, plastic bootees and a white Nyrex one-piece suit that swished softly as he moved. He and Jacquot were standing in front of the black VW Beetle that had been dragged from the ditch on avenue Dupont and brought to the basement parking lot. It had been driven onto a sheet of thick white plastic and items taken from its interior were already piling up on a line of trestle tables also standing on the plastic sheet. Both passenger and driver doors were open, bonnet and engine cover too. It looked like the beetle it was nicknamed after, wings spread, ready to take flight. It was dusty, dirty and tipped to one side where the tyre had been blown out. One of the headlights had been smashed and snatches of grass from the ditch were caught in the front bumper and front nearside wheel arch.
‘What have you got so far?’
‘Not an accidental blow, c’est certain,’ said Pilger. ‘Rear offside tyre shredded with bullets. Four shots, given the holes we’ve found in the wheel arch and the shell casings in the back footwell. I’d say someone in the back seat deliberately blew out the tyre.’
Jacquot thought of the guns that Claudine and Midou had brought with them to the concert. Which of them had done it? he wondered. Which of them had blown out that tyre? Which of them had decided on the tyre rather than their kidnappers? If they had a gun, they could have shot through the front seats as easily as the wheel arch. But he knew that neither Claudine nor Midou would have been able to do that. They’d have gone for the softer option.
But how, Jacquot wondered, had the two sisters overlooked their bags, failed to search them? It was a mistake that had cost them dear. And with Vincent Pilger on the case it would continue to do so.
But at least Claudine and Midou were still alive. One of them certainly. Or had been. Say twenty minutes after being taken. And conscious too. But that had been hours ago. What had happened since then? And where were they now? Somewhere within a thirty-kilometre radius according to the cab-driver – unless, of course, the sisters had stopped at a petrol station and filled the tank. If, that is, they had bothered to check the gauge. And if they were heading for the autoroute, which way had they turned? North or south? How many exits? How many possible destinations? Jacquot knew the answer, and drew a deep breath, trying not to lose hope.
‘Paris plates, as you can see. And looks like they did some camping too,’ Pilger continued, nodding at the tables. ‘Rolled up ground mats, sleeping bags, a tent, basic cooking equipment in the boot. As for the interior, the usual mess: sandwich wrappers, pizza crusts, crisps, nuts, bits of paper, a few gas and Péage receipts, duct tape, road maps. You know the kind of thing. But there’s no blood we can find.’
‘Mind if I take a look at the tables?’ asked Jacquot, relieved to hear that no blood had been found, either from the gunshots or the subsequent crash.
‘It’s all yours. Like I said. One of our own.’ Pilger gave him a consoling pat on the arm. ‘So it’ll be large ones all round.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Jacquot with a grim, but grateful smile. ‘And thanks again.’
Over at the tables he snapped on a pair of powdered latex gloves and sorted through the larger items – the ground mats, sleeping bags and camping equipment. Rolled up with one of the sleeping bags was a dark blue mohair jumper with shiny brass buttons. He picked it up and held it to his nose. A strange mixed scent of flowers and sweat and the farmyard reached him. He guessed the jumper hadn’t been washed for some time, and guessed, too, that the strands of material he’d found in the linen room at Le Mas Bleu and in the woods behind the millhouse would match it perfectly.
Putting down the jumper, he turned to the next table and the smaller items: a lipstick, a hair clip, sweet wrappings, pens, pencils, coins, a dented can of Diet Coke and an empty bottle of Orangina. The first thing he picked up was a chewing gum wrapper. Silver foil exactly the same as the wrapper he’d found the previous afternoon at the millhouse. And an open packet of mint chewing gum. He could almost smell her breath. There was also a crumpled pizza napkin with a lipstick stain on it, a pair of brand new pliers (for the car, or removing teeth? Jacquot wondered idly), some scissors, a roll of thick silver duct tape that might well match the tape used on Berri and Chabran, and various scraps of paper.
He was opening up the first of these scraps when one of Pilger’s team came to the table with a bag in each hand. Jacquot recognised them immediately – Claudine’s cream silk clutch and Midou’s tote. He picked them up, one by one, sorted through the contents – tissues, lipsticks, perfumes, a set of house keys, a fold of notes pressed into the back of a cigarette packet, and a couple of ready-rolled spliffs in a side pocket of Midou’s tote. But no guns. If Marie-Ange Buhl had still been alive, and working on the case with him, he’d have handed the bags to her. Chances were, she’d have got something from them – like a bloodhound taking a scent. She’d have known where to look, where to go. But she wasn’t with him; he was on his own. All he got from the two bags was a wave of loss and fear and longing.
Jacquot put down the bags, and turned back to the scraps of paper, opening them up one after another: autoroute Péage receipts, parking tickets, chits for petrol, a flyer for an oriental rug sale. Tipping them closer to the light, he looked for the locations. And there they were: Cavaillon, Forcalquier, Manosque, Marseilles and Salon, the last two pointing south, Salon just down the road, no more than thirty kilometres away.
It was on one of these pieces of paper – a car park ticket taken out in Forcalquier just a few weeks before he went there with Brunet – that Jacquot found something else: two sets of hand-written numbers.
Phone numbers.
And two sets of initials. MV and PB.
He held the piece of paper up to Pilger.
‘Mind if I take this?’
‘Help yourself,’ replied Pilger.
63
BACK IN HIS OFFICE JACQUOT
picked up the phone and tried the two numbers from the scrap of paper. The first number, beside ‘MV’, answered after four rings with an automated recorded message. He left his name and number, but not his rank. The second number, beside the letters PB, rang and rang until eventually Jacquot broke the connection. After stopping to collect incoming documents from the fax machine he went downstairs and took over from Brunet in the interview room. As his assistant picked up his things – pen, spectacles case, file – and left the room, Jacquot saw Virginie Cabrille’s eyes follow him. Jacquot had a good idea what she was thinking. Virginie Cabrille and Jean Brunet would not have been a partnership made in heaven.
‘And now the big guns,’ said Virginie, eyes settling on Jacquot as he took Brunet’s seat.
He didn’t waste any time.
‘Where are they?’
‘Where are who, Chief Inspector?’ She worked her neck, as though her time with Brunet had taken its toll, rolled her shoulders, her breasts shifting in the basque.
‘You know very well who, Mademoiselle. The sisters. Marita Albertacce and Marina Manichella.’
‘Now, I know that name . . .’ she began.
‘Mademoiselle Cabrille . . .’
‘Virginie, please.’
‘Let me make myself absolutely clear, Mademoiselle. Last night my wife and her daughter were abducted by the Manichella sisters . . .’
‘Your wife? Mais ça c’est affreux,’ said Virginie Cabrille. Then she frowned. ‘But . . . but you’re not married, Chief Inspector. I’m right, aren’t I?’
Jacquot kept his voice low.
‘I would advise maximum cooperation if I were you, Mademoiselle. Because this time you will not be leaving police custody quite so smoothly or as swiftly as you have in the past. It’s now just a question of how long you spend with us. And I am talking years, not hours or days.’
Jacquot took a sheaf of faxed papers from an inside pocket, unfolded them one by one and slid them across the table.
‘Copies of search warrants, Mademoiselle. Taken out for your property in Marseilles, for your cars, and for your bank and phone accounts. 43 67 33 58. That’s one of yours, isn’t it?’
‘The lodge, not the house,’ she replied, drawing the documents towards her and casting an eye over them, before pushing them back as though they were of no interest.
Jacquot nodded. Just as he’d guessed. The number with the automated message under MV. Mademoiselle Virginie. Suitably feudal, and a crucial link between the woman sitting opposite him and the sisters. That confirmation gave his confidence a solid lift. Now he wouldn’t need to call Muzon to check the number. Now he knew. He was in control. He was getting there. All that was left was that other number preceded by the letters PB.
Virginie Cabrille raised her chin, indicating the last piece of paper he’d put onto the table.
‘And that?’
‘Another warrant. For the Druot Clinic in Marseilles.’
‘Very efficient, very imaginative, Chief Inspector.’ She drew the warrant towards her. ‘And who, I wonder, issued these warrants?’
‘The Marseilles Judiciaire. Maître Bonnefoy.’
‘Aaahh! My old friend Solange Bonnefoy.’
Jacquot reached forward, and drew back the Druot warrant.
‘And how is the dear lady? Such a horrible thing to happen,’ continued Virginie Cabrille. ‘Poor, poor woman.’
‘So you know about the bomb that killed her friend?’
‘Doesn’t everyone, Chief Inspector? It was on the news,’ she replied, her eyes on his. ‘TV and radio. How could I not know about it? And so close to my own home. Quelle tristesse.’
Jacquot held her gaze, and felt a hot, almost irresistible violence rise up in him. He wanted to reach across the table and throttle her, put his hands around her callous, complacent little neck and squeeze as tightly as he could . . . squeeze the life out of her. Instead, he cleared his throat, and dropped his voice to a low, persuasive note.
‘I will ask you once again, Mademoiselle. Where are the Manichella sisters, and where are they holding my family?’
‘I can’t think what you’re talking about, Chief Inspector,’ she said, putting her hands together, lining up the fingertips then sliding them between the folds of her pasha trousers.
Brave words, thought Jacquot, and wondered if she’d be quite so relaxed if she knew that they had the Manichella sisters’ black VW down in the basement. For now, he would keep that to himself.
Squaring off the warrants and rolling them into a tube, Jacquot got to his feet.
‘Thank you for your time, Mademoiselle. I’ll have someone show you back to your quarters.’
He’d reached the door when he heard her voice behind him.
‘So you’re keeping me here?’
He didn’t bother to turn.
‘Oh, yes, I’m keeping you here,’ he said, and the door closed behind him with a satisfying click.
64
AT CLOSE TO FOUR IN the morning, there wasn’t much that Jacquot could do. It was, he reflected, like standing under the posts back in his rugby days, waiting for a penalty kick or conversion to be taken by the opposition. The kicker placing the ball, lining it up then stepping back, pacing it out, reaching where he wanted to be and then gathering himself. The hush of the crowd. And that long, silent moment when time stands still. Will he slice it, or make it sail between the posts?
And all the time there is nothing you can do but wait and pray.
‘I’ll come get you if anything turns up,’ Brunet had told him, and now Jacquot lay in the dark of the bunk room where officers could catch up on some sleep if there was no time to get home. Streetlights angled up against the ceiling, split by a set of blinds that didn’t quite close, the mattress was thin, the pillow hard and the blankets rough but serviceable. Jacquot had taken off his shoes and jacket, curled up on his side and pulled the blanket to his ears. Somewhere in the old town a drunk shouted, a car droned past, and Église St-Jean chimed the quarter then the half. He closed his eyes and thought of Claudine and Midou.
Where were they?
How were they doing?
He was certain they were still alive, a sure and vivid certainty. Not happy, not comfortable, frightened certainly, but alive.
In his mind he went back to the concert, their row in the bleachers, the three of them standing there, watching the show. And that security guard, Julie, coming to get him. And he hadn’t recognised her, or suspected a thing, not for a moment, nor her sister, Sylvie, waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, in that shadowy, empty, echoing place beneath the bleachers.
Maybe if he’d seen them together, side by side . . .
But in that place, at that time . . .
So convincing. So utterly compelling.
The short blonde hair, the clipboard, the uniform, the two-way radio, the call ahead from Brunet.
And he’d left the Manichella woman there with Claudine and Midou, left them in her care, even requested that she stay with them – to keep an eye on them, for God’s sake. And at first she’d refused, goddammit. How convincing was that? Finally being persuaded by him to contact her supervisor – her sister, of course – for permission to stay.
It didn’t take much thought to work out what had probably happened after that. Starting with the call that Sylvie had made when she left him at the security gates, letting her sister know the coast was clear, Jacquot out of the frame.
And what would Julie have said when she received that message? He could easily imagine it. Claudine and Midou had been asked to join Jacquot, to meet George Benson. Julie could show them where to go. She would accompany them, if they liked?
And they’d have been as taken in by the uniform as he had been until, somewhere behind the bleachers, in those empty echoing shadows, while he had waited in vain for Pierre Gingelle, the two sisters had drugged them, bundled them into the car and headed out of town, using the back streets behind the bleachers to make good their escape.
> Except one of them, Claudine or Midou, not as sedated as the sisters had intended, had found her gun and, not willing to shoot her captives – it took a great deal to pull a trigger when the gun was pointing at someone – had aimed instead at one of those humps of the wheel arch either side of the back seat, blowing out a tyre. Plucky girl, whichever one it was, thought Jacquot. Just what he’d have expected.
Yet despite this unforseen development, the rest of the operation, from start to finish, from the first introduction in the bleachers to the kidnap itself, had been seamlessly executed, nothing less than a scrupulously planned operation. Finding out about the concert, finding out that Jacquot and Claudine and Midou were attending, that Brunet was Jacquot’s assistant, that Rochet would be away at Orange for an evening of opera, and that Jacquot would be head of service in Rochet’s absence.
Then there were the uniforms. The kit. The FAL logos. The identity tags and passes. This was no take-a-chance, put-together job. This was professional. This was more, far more, than two sisters from the hills of Corsica could possibly have hoped to arrange unaided. Which was why he was glad that Mademoiselle Virginie Cabrille was currently behind bars. Because she was the brains behind all this, Jacquot was sure of it, the sisters just the hired hands.
But luck had been on the sisters’ side, too. They might not have had the expertise to put the whole thing together by themselves, but they certainly had the gumption to get themselves out of a tight corner – finding another car and making good their escape, driving off to wherever it was they had holed up. Somewhere between here and Marseilles, within a thirty kilometre range if the taxi driver was right about the petrol in his tank and how far it would get them. Of course, they could always have pulled into a filling station – in which case they’d be caught on the security video of a local garage forecourt. Brunet was on that now – calling gas stations to check their video loops and putting out the stolen Citroën’s registration number. If the sisters planned on driving any distance, they’d be picked up soon enough. If they didn’t, it was because they were off the road, out of the car, back where they wanted – and needed – to be.
Blood Counts Page 25
