Turning away from the kitchen window, she poured herself more coffee, listening out for movement from above and below. But there was no sound. The women in the basement still not stirring, and her sister still asleep. Just like every morning. The last up. The last to help with breakfast, or cleaning, or prepping.
This was the first time since arriving on the mainland that they’d had a real set-to, but it had been brewing since they’d stepped off the ferry. Marina was just so selfish, always so self-absorbed. She needed to be married, that’s what . . . have children, and a man to keep her in line.
Not that her younger sister lacked resolve, Marita acknowledged. Marina was as eager to settle scores as she was. When they’d plugged those wounds together all those months ago, Marita could feel the anger, the hatred, radiating off her. Marina had taken Taddeus, her favourite brother, and by the time she was finished and the coffin lids had been nailed back in place, her teeth were set and her eyes sharp and hard. She wanted blood. Lots of it. A just accounting. And when the call had come, when the arrangements had been made, she’d been impatient for the off.
But all that had changed when they reached the mainland. The freedom, Marita supposed; the being away from home. The big city. The bright lights. All the shops, and the cars, and the people. And the men, of course. Always on the look-out, was her younger sister. Always drawing attention to herself, never one to keep a low profile. Always the devil between her legs. The barman and fisherman in Marseilles before they even moved up here, that kid in Forcalquier, the pizza house waiter, and God knows who else. Anything in trousers. Even the cop Jacquot. After that first sighting, Marina couldn’t stop talking about him: taller than in the photos, better-looking, neatly dressed, cool, the kind of man . . . On and on she went. Marita knew that tone of voice, recognised that dreamy look, and had a fair idea what was going on in her sister’s tiny little mind.
Of course, Marina still delivered when she had to. She was the one who had put the gun to Sleeping Beauty’s eye and pulled the trigger, she was the one who’d pressed down the cushion over that old girl’s face, and steered the carpenter’s arm towards the spinning blade and held it there. When it mattered, her sister remembered why they were there, who they were doing this for.
But now, thanks to her, they had no car. Or rather, no car that they could safely use, every flic in the country on the look-out for a red Citroën taxi. The original plan had been that they’d return the VW to the house in Melun where they’d picked it up, dumping the two bodies en route, and then catch a train back from there, board a ferry home. But that was no longer an option. Now they’d have to find some other means of transport, some other way to shift the bodies from the house, leaving the Citroën hidden in the barn until arrangements could be made to have it moved when the heat was off, to be dumped in a wood somewhere, wiped down, no prints, nothing for the authorities to work on.
No traces. That’s what they’d been told.
Except now, thanks to Marina, the flics had their VW, and everything in it. Whatever they’d left in it, no time to clear it, strip it, wipe it down.
Above her head, Marita heard floorboards creak, a door open and footsteps pad across the landing and down the stairs. Through the arch between the kitchen and salon, she saw Marina swing round off the banister and head towards her.
Still in pyjamas, an open towelling gown loosely tied, the indolent slap-slap of her slippers on the tile floor.
Sitting at the kitchen table, cradling her mug of coffee, Marita kept a stern expression on her face, unflinching, following Marina with her eyes every step of the way.
‘Bonjour, bonjour, ça va,’ her younger sister sang out, as though nothing had happened the night before. Just another morning, another lazy start.
Marita didn’t waste a moment before starting in.
‘What was in the car? What did we leave?’
Marina helped herself to the freshly brewed coffee and dragged out a chair from the table.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, lips bunching, blowing across the top of the mug. ‘Camping stuff, sleeping bags, a couple of maps, magazines, a few coins . . . that sort of stuff. Nothing we need.’
‘Garage receipts? Péage slips?’
Marina shrugged, made a moue. Maybe. She wasn’t going to say.
‘I told you to clear it out a hundred times.’
‘There’s nothing. It’s fine. A few things, that’s all.’
‘We shouldn’t have left anything.’
‘There wasn’t time. If you hadn’t been in such a hurry . . .’
‘Hurry? Didn’t you hear the sirens?’
Marina fell silent, sipped her coffee.
Marita could see the jaw setting, could see that her younger sister was getting cross. She took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. Now was not the time. There were still things to do. It wasn’t over yet. They needed to stay focused.
Somewhere beyond the border of trees that concealed the property from the road a car drove past. A distant sound, at the end of their unmarked turning, a harsh grating of gears as that tricky bend for Aurons came into play.
‘When are we going to do it?’ asked Marina, keen now to change the subject, as the sound of the car died away.
Marita gave it some thought.
‘Tonight,’ she said.
68
MAÎTRE SIMON PAUL WAS WAITING in Jacquot’s office at police headquarters when he and Brunet arrived back in Cavaillon, the bells of Eglise St-Jean ringing out over the town, calling the faithful to mass. He was a dapper, sleekly suited man in his early forties. He had quick, sharp eyes behind heavily framed round tortoiseshell spectacles, and had arranged a thin spread of fair hair to cover as much pink scalp as possible. His back was straight, his knees pressed together, his hands held clasped in his lap. There was a very expensive-looking briefcase beside his highly polished black lace-ups. When Jacquot came in he didn’t move from his seat or extend a hand in greeting.
‘Maître Paul,’ said Jacquot, who’d been warned by the duty sergeant that the lawyer was waiting for him in his office. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.’
Jacquot supposed the man could conceivably have driven from Paris, or caught a train, but he had the rested, pampered look of someone who’d been taken to Le Bourget, put on a private jet and shuttled down to Marignane, most likely the Cabrille jet.
‘And I had not expected to wait quite so long before seeing my client,’ replied Paul in a reedy little voice that seemed somehow to match the thin hair.
Jacquot went behind his desk, shrugged off his jacket and settled in his chair. He suddenly felt tired and rumpled, unlike his visitor.
‘Please accept my apologies, Monsieur,’ he began. ‘I was busy with a case of kidnap and multiple murder. Had I known you were waiting here, why, I would have dropped everything and come running.’
Maître Paul gave a tight little smile, dimpling his shiny, well-shaven cheeks, and was about to bat the sarcasm back when Jacquot’s phone rang. He held up a finger and took the call, grateful for the interruption. It gave him time to gather himself. His case was not strong and he knew that if he wasn’t careful this shifty little lawyer from Paris would have his client out of custody.
‘Oui, allo?’ he said, settling an accommodating smile on his visitor. Muzon was calling in with an update on his search of the suspect’s property in Roucas Blanc.
‘You should see the house, Danny. Last time we were there, it was a building site. Now it looks like a spread in Elle Decoration.’
‘You find anything?’
‘Nothing of any consequence in the house. Nor the lodge. We’re still waiting on phone and banking records, but should have something later today. No one’s very happy at having to move on a Sunday, but we’re putting on the pressure.’
‘What about the cars?’
‘Nice collection. A Porsche Speedster . . . one of the old ones, you know? A new Jeep, and a rather fine limo. English. Daimler Jaguar. Long wheelbase.
All the extras.’
‘And? Any fibres. Blue . . . like I asked?’
Across the desk, Paul glanced at his watch and harrumphed.
‘No fibres – all the cars have leather trim so not great for picking up fabrics. Fingerprints sure, but there’s only a couple of sets the forensic boys have been able to lift. Oh, and a tin button, brassy colour, squeezed down the back seat of the limo. Stamped with a hunting horn. You know, one of those curling ones?’
Jacquot felt a stir of excitement. The blue mohair jumper they’d retrieved from the VW had brass buttons. But he couldn’t remember if they had a hunting horn motif or if there was a button missing.
‘Anything else?’
‘Got a call from Laganne. He’s been out at the Druot Clinic off Prado going through their dispensary records. It looks like there might be a shortfall on their Dyethelaspurane, just like you said, but they’re still checking. Of course, the clinic’s playing safe, saying that if there is anything missing, then the mistake will be at source with the maker and distributor, and we’ll have to take it up with them – in Switzerland.’
‘Thanks Bernie, I appreciate it,’ said Jacquot, feeling another shiver of excitement. It was all starting to come together.
‘Anything we can do, copain. We’ll get her yet.’
Jacquot put down the phone. Across the desk, Paul reached for his briefcase.
‘And now, Chief Inspector, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Jacquot, and getting to his feet he ushered the lawyer out of his office. ‘I’ll have my assistant show you to an interview room.’
After Brunet had taken Paul off to see his client, Jacquot pulled on his jacket and took the lift to the basement where the VW stood alone in an echoing garage. He went over to the evidence tables and found the blue mohair jumper.
He turned the buttons to the light.
Eight of them. Each with a curled hunting horn stamped into the metal.
Then he matched the buttons to the buttonholes.
Nine of them.
One button was missing.
69
VIRGINIE CABRILLE LOOKED REMARKABLY FRESH for a woman who’d spent the night in a police cell. According to Mugeon, the duty sergeant, one of her friends from Le Mas Bleu had brought in a change of clothes and various toiletries while Jacquot and Brunet were down in Salon. Now the black basque and pasha pants had been replaced with a more business-like outfit – trousers, court shoes, and a blue check shirt with pockets and epaulettes. She sat straight-backed with her legs crossed and arms folded. There was the woody scent of a man’s cologne, but Jacquot knew it wasn’t the lawyer wearing it.
The two of them were seated side by side, holding a whispered conversation, Maître Paul’s briefcase open on the table. When Jacquot entered they carried on whispering with nothing more than a glance in his direction, as though Room Service had just arrived to deliver an order.
Jacquot pulled out a chair, made himself comfortable. He leant over to the recording machine, slipped in a tape and tested it.
‘If you don’t mind, Maître, I have a few questions for your client . . .’
Across the table, Paul turned towards him. His smile was beatific, the blue wash of neon light flashing off the lenses of his glasses.
‘And if you don’t mind, Chief Inspector, I have a few questions . . .’
‘Another time maybe, but right now I have a murder investigation on my hands . . .’
‘Which my client is in no position to help you with,’ Paul replied, raising his voice to interrupt, the smile fading fast. ‘Mademoiselle Cabrille,’ he continued in a lower, softer tone, ‘has no information on these spurious claims of conspiracy and kidnapping and murder, and I demand her immediate release.’
Jacquot spread his hands, gave Mademoiselle Cabrille a tight little smile.
The smile was not returned. It was perfectly clear that what had started out as a joke, an amusement, was now beginning to wear thin.
Jacquot turned back to her lawyer.
‘And that, I am afraid, is something I cannot possibly allow. There is mounting evidence . . .’
‘Evidence?’ enquired Paul smoothly. ‘Exactly what evidence? “Mounting” or otherwise?’ A grin slid across his lips but his eyes stayed hard and flinty behind his glasses.
‘Enough to see your client in a very great deal of trouble.’
Jacquot made it sound as strong, conclusive and as threatening as he could, but he was also vividly aware that the woman across the table had been cleared of all charges the previous November, with a great deal more ‘evidence’ ranged against her than he currently had. Jacquot knew that his position was weak and that with Maître Paul’s deft legal finessing Virginie Cabrille would likely have the upper hand in any hearing. What was it that Noël Gilbert had said at the wedding . . . how had he described this man all those weeks back? ‘Slippery as a peeled grape,’ that was it. And ‘snappy’, too, according to Claude Peluze.
Across the table Maître Paul started to shake his head. He waved his hand dismissively as though there was nothing he had yet heard that came anywhere near to being ‘evidence’. He then changed tack, pulled a notepad from his case and started flicking through the pages.
‘I believe . . . I believe you have issued certain warrants, Chief Inspector?’
‘For your client’s home and cars, phone and bank records. That’s correct.’
Jacquot noticed that the lawyer wore a wedding ring. It was loose on his finger but a pink bony knuckle kept it in place. For a brief moment Jacquot wondered what the man’s wife was like. Probably as thin and knuckly as her husband’s finger, he decided.
But Maître Paul was hurrying on.
‘And where were these warrants sourced?’ he asked, his voice low and smooth and level. ‘At such short notice? On a Sunday?’
Jacquot guessed that the lawyer already knew the answer but had asked the question to gain some leverage, in a further attempt to discredit Jacquot’s case against his client.
‘The Marseilles Judiciaire. Maître Bonnefoy,’ Jacquot replied, knowing what Maître Paul would make of that particular name. This was the woman Paul had trodden all over when Virginie Cabrille had been held in Marseilles on suspicion of involvement in the Lafour case. Jacquot wasn’t wrong.
‘Hah, my learned friend Madame Bonnefoy,’ cried Paul with barely suppressed glee. ‘I might have known. She loses in one case against my client and is determined now to stir up fresh trouble. To level the score. A clear case of judicial harrassment, pure and simple, if she signed those warrants on the basis of what you have laughably described as “evidence”.’
‘And those searches are currently being carried out,’ replied Jacquot, coolly, refusing to be drawn.
‘To what possible end?’ sneered Paul.
‘Why, the successful prosecution of your client, cher Maître. What else?’
There was a moment’s pause. Paul idly fingered his wedding ring, then pulled back his cuff to check the time as though he were in a hurry to be out of there. Along with his client.
‘But right now,’ continued Jacquot, ‘there are just a couple of questions I would like to ask.’
‘As I said, Mademoiselle Cabrille has nothing to say. No comment to make.’
‘Then she will certainly be spending a little more time . . .’
‘What do you want to know, Chief Inspector?’ It was Virginie Cabrille, the first time she had spoken.
‘Ah, Mademoiselle, I had almost forgotten you were here.’
Jacquot gave her another smile, a smile he found difficult to hold. Once again, all he really wanted to do was put his gun to her head and demand she tell him where Claudine and Midou had been taken, or face the consequences. For a few satisfying moments he imagined the muzzle of his Beretta pressed against her forehead, the skin sliding beneath it, his finger on the curve of the trigger.
Shaking away the image he asked, in as calm a voice as he could muster,
‘Do you happen to know Marina Manichella and Marita Albertacce?’
‘I have told you. Yes, I do.’
‘You have met them?’
‘No, I have not. But I know who they are. As I have told you.’
‘So you haven’t met them? Not in Marseilles? Not in Corsica? Not here in the Luberon?’
She shook her head.
‘I told you, we have not met.’
‘And you’re sure of that?’
‘Absolutely sure.’
Jacquot nodded.
‘So . . . never?’
‘I think my client has made it eminently clear . . .’
But Jacquot paid no attention to the lawyer, moving on quickly.
‘Tell me about your cars, Mademoiselle. At home in Marseilles. I gather you have a fine collection?’
Cabrille gave him a frosty little look.
‘A Jeep, a Porsche, a Daimler. Hardly a collection, Chief Inspector.’
‘Dites-moi, s’il vous plaît. Is there any possibility that the Manichella sisters might have ridden in your Porsche, as drivers or as passengers?’
‘It’s a Speedster. A classic. No one drives it except me, and there’s not enough room for two passengers. Anyway, if I haven’t met them, how could they . . .’
‘That’s a no then?’
‘It’s a no.’
‘And the Jeep?’
‘No.’
‘And the Daimler?’
She shook her head impatiently.
‘That’s a no as well?’ Jacquot nodded at the tape recorder.
‘You are correct. Quite correct. It’s a no.’
‘Not the faintest possibility . . . ?’
‘Chief Inspector, I really . . .’ began Paul.
But Jacquot wasn’t listening to the lawyer, all his attention focused instead on the woman sitting beside him.
Blood Counts Page 27
