by John Brooke
The inspector perused her notes. ‘Tell me more about this singing.’
‘Not singing. Humming…at least I didn’t catch any words. And if I did — ’
‘Could you hum it?
No.
‘Sure you can. Your ears are just as observant as your eyes. Was it fast? Slow? Something from the radio?’
He threw up his arms, fed up. This was ridiculous. ‘How would I know?’
‘Try!’
‘Holy Mother!…Look, I know I’m a bad husband for stopping to see Maryse. I’m a good Catholic, eh? This is my punishment, I deserve it…And I’ll be punished again when I go home, this is certain, my wife has made this very plain, my drive back will be like a man riding to his execution. I have learned my lesson, señora. I have... And I don’t know any more.’ Felipe Alejo pleaded, ‘Why can’t I go home?’
‘Soon, monsieur. Soon.’ They moved on. ‘The car that stopped for her.’
‘Just some small thing, not special…blue, greenish…Just a driver, alone. Honestly, I already told the Arab everything. There’s nothing more, por favor!’
The Arab being Nabi Zidane.
Aliette released Felipe Alejo to his minders. They would put him on a train to Madrid when all concerned were satisfied they had harvested all he could tell them. Knowing DST, that might take a few days yet. In the meantime, they had installed Señor Alejo in a decent two-star hotel off les allées. There was lots to do, eat and see in Beziers. Just no football. Felipe would have to be a rugby man till they saw fit to send him home. To be punished by his wife.
·
The inspector went down the hall.
Maryse — actual name Annamaria Montand — wore the same flower-print cotton dress Aliette had seen her in each time she passed. The thing was quite cheap when you got up close. But it showed a lithe silhouette when she stood in the sun smiling for weary truckers. She was not smiling now. Being a French citizen, she was aggressive concerning what she considered this abuse of her freedom. She kept mentioning that she was losing money.
‘Exactly how much are you losing by performing this public service, madame?’
‘That is private.’
‘And illegal. And not just morally. Taxes too?’
‘Mon dieu!’ Like Felipe Alejo, Maryse had already told everything she knew four different times. ‘Nabi never gives me this much trouble — if he wants to talk, he comes to visit. He says I do a good service looking out for that far corner of his world.’
The way she said Nabi, the inspector was tempted to presume something untoward anchoring their arrangement. True, Nabi Zidane did not seem the type, but men were men. At least Maryse did not refer to Nabi as the Arab. Aliette informed her, ‘Actually madame, depending on which side of the road your clients happen to roll up, it’s my world too. Just so you know.’ Rue de Poussan was the line dividing Nabi’s patch from hers. ‘We should try to get along.’
Maryse repeated: The car had come down 612 from the north, turned left at Rue de Poussan, stopped, let the woman out — a hitcher with a pack — then continued on toward Maraussan.
‘Department number on the plate?’ Differentiating Lot from Loiret from Loire...
‘Didn’t register. It had nothing to do with me.’
‘Colour?’
‘Bluish, I suppose.’
‘Felipe says greenish.’
‘He’s Spanish.’
‘And this woman with the pack.’
‘A hitchhiker. She crossed the road and continued south. I assume to the autoroute.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Nothing, really. A hat for the sun. A pack. Red shirt, Jeans…’
‘Young? Not so young?’
‘I don’t know…Really, when I’m working, the rest of the world doesn’t matter.’
‘Was she singing?’
‘Singing?’
‘Or humming…humming a tune? People sometimes do this when they walk, yes?’
It made Maryse stop and think. She could not honestly say one way or the other.
·
Too much circumstance pointed to Stephanie McLeod as the bogus hitchhiker.
Aliette Nouvelle was trying to prove no. She was fighting a losing battle.
The attacks had occurred within Nabi Zidane’s jurisdiction. He freely shared the bits and pieces his team had managed to gather. An IED was left on a rear wheel, driver’s side, detonated with a radio signal from a laptop computer. Same device at Domaine Clorres — a definite match with the explosive that had completely levelled Cave 2. No notes found, no claims called in. ‘Very bold how they machinated the mass exit at Clorres. No one has any idea who the guy in the car is who came to sound the alert about the truck. They assumed he was from the area, took it at face value, they all race off to see the truck, he walks into the cave and plants another bomb. Only the wife and mother-in-law were in the house with the children when it went off. They felt it — but beyond the shock, they were untouched,’ Zidane reported.
‘Same with the trucker,’ Instructing Magistrate Sergio Regarri noted.
‘They must have been watching the truck,’ surmised Nabi. ‘They knew he’d left it to take a stroll to the corner to see the lady there before they pressed the button.’
Sergio turned to Aliette. ‘They aren’t interested in blowing up people. Just property. Very careful…It’s them. Just Friends.’
‘Maybe. But Stephanie was swimming. Her car was parked on the place when I got there.’
‘Still is. She’s run with them.’
‘The neighbour and her boss both say she was at Vieussan around mid-morning.’
‘Plenty of time to catch a ride and get back down there and do her bit for the cause.’
Plant a bomb on a tanker truck? Would Stephanie McLeod do such a thing direct on the heels of what must have been a traumatic night with DST Agent Tessier? Aliette did not want to believe it. ‘And two of the Friends were caught, yes? Three if you count Stephanie…You’d have to think the others would be running for the Tarn, or wherever it is they hide.’
Nabi raised the psychology of tit-for-tat. ‘This Prince person: big balls or big fool. Either way, they don’t retreat. They strike back immediately.’
‘That is interesting,’ Aliette admitted. ‘But this CRAV outfit? They’ve staged half a dozen attacks in the past couple of years. Similar MO. Not one person has been harmed.’ Could CRAV strike at exactly the moment the Friends were in disarray?
Nabi shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re friends with the Friends.’
Magistrate Regarri smiled his total support for Inspector Nouvelle — and returned to the fact that no one had seen or heard from Stephanie McLeod since she left her house the previous evening. ‘They all say she was on her way down to the main road. Carrying a knapsack.’
And Sergio reiterated the bottomline question. ‘Why did she run?’
Nabi noted the fact that Stephanie McLeod had acknowledged an intimate link to the leader of the anarchist group. ‘By virtue of her work with Bousquet, she’d have been able to help them tap into Clorres’ communications. They knew exactly when and where to hit that truck.’
Sergio had to add, ‘And she has admitted hating Roland.’
‘She’s scared.’ Aliette was feeling cornered. ‘I talked to her. It’s not hard to imagine she’s terrified of what we’d all assume. Especially Margot Tessier. I mean, yes, for sure these attacks appear to be politically motivated. She’s not stupid. She’s…oh!’ Deflating. ‘What a mess.’
When neither man disagreed, she blurted, ‘I don’t trust Margot Tessier!’
Sergio said, ‘You find her first, we’ll talk to her without Margot and go from there.’
Nabi granted her full access to anyone he might reasonably talk to.
Her judge nodded and made a note. They all knew that
meant Roland Bousquet.
· 19 ·
APPROACHING ROLAND
Nabi Zidane went back to his office. Sergio Regarri hovered.
‘I’m sure you’ve got lots to do back at the Palais?’ Aliette did not want to brush him off, but she had to keep moving. She sensed the equivocal thing that was part and parcel of his role, if not his heart. His quiet caution was not useful at the moment. Spying another empty room with a desk and phone, she muttered, ‘We’ll talk later,’ went in and gently closed the door.
The last thing she glimpsed was a calm, if skeptical, professional nod.
How to do this? She could walk across the street. Through the window of the borrowed room, past the steady stream of city buses passing through this central hub, she could see the Sub-Prefecture on the other side of Boulevard Edouard Herriot. But to go barging in demanding an interview could jeopardize her approach to Roland Bousquet. He was an élu, one of the elected. He enjoyed preferential treatment, a fact that gave the lie to loudly trumpeted democratic ideals, a regrettable and frustrating vestige of a deeply embedded instinctual need for kings.
She called instead. And then again… Two hours later, after a break for tea, calls to Magui and Henri, a visit to the third floor for an impromptu chat with Commander Pellau, head of the regional gendarmerie, as to his strategy for a net to contain the fugitives, the inspector informed the stubborn guard dog at the other end of the line across the street, ‘Madame, I have left three messages without response. I will now ask the judge to intervene. We will mention your name.’
A haughty sniff. ‘Une minute.’More like ten. Then a male voice abruptly demanding, ‘Exactly what is this concerning?’
No bonjour, Chief Inspector. No self-introduction. Rude. But who does one complain to? Playing it accordingly, Aliette replied, ‘Joël Guatto. Wine producers. Exactly where you fit in.’
A pause — was he recording this call for quality purposes? ‘Joël Guatto was my friend. Well, the son of my old friend. As for our wine producers, I do what I can. Voilà.’
‘I think it is more complex than that.’
‘Of course it is,’ agreed Roland Bousquet ‘We’re talking a million shades of grey.’
‘I really would rather speak in person, monsieur.’
‘You people waste so much time and public funds insisting on this.’
‘When would be a good time?’
‘Madame Chief Inspector, I don’t know if you happened to hear of the terrorist attacks on one of the winery operations in this area yesterday…’ no small amount of sarcasm here; ‘but it is causing considerable turmoil in the community, and as chief servant to the community I am deeply involved in trying to calm the storm. Which is to say, very busy.’
‘And I am investigating the murder of Joël Guatto.’
‘I do trust you are not implying a connection on my part to the killing of poor Joël.’
‘I need to see the big picture, as deeply and clearly as I can.’ Then, adding her own little dollop of sarcasm, though lighter on the acid, ‘I dare say, your old friend expects no less.’
‘My old friend expects the police not to waste the people’s valuable time.’
‘Monsieur le Président, with respect, there is a direct and volatile line from your office to the office of Joël Guatto, and this needs to be fully explored.’
Two beats. A voice two tones cooler. ‘Name it, Madame Inspector, and very precisely.’
‘Stephanie McLeod.’
‘Stephanie…?’
‘McLeod. ENA. An internship semester two years ago.’
‘McLeod…Such an odd name. Not French.’
‘Nor is Spanish wine.’
That got another pause. Longer. Well-considered. Roland Bousquet shifted mode. ‘Yes, of course — Mademoiselle McLeod. With us two years ago for eight months. Smart girl, as smart as you’d expect from ENA. But distracted. I gave her some files to sort out and she was doing well, as I recall, but I also remember a lot of time away from the office because of an ill mother. Which is sad, of course — but caring for a mother is not part of the program. So we had words, I do admit, because everything that goes out of this door is my responsibility and she was acting under my good name. She made it to the end of her allotted stay, then left, though I wouldn’t say on good terms. And I don’t believe I gave her the best recommendation in my report back to the faculty. Then again, Mademoiselle McLeod did not ask for a reference letter, which must be the first time in the history of the Republic a girl in her position has failed to do so. But, strictly speaking, she did fulfill her commitment. Does that help you, Inspector?’
‘We have an advocate for local wine murdered. And now a pro-Euro wine business blown to pieces. As you say, it is your business to be in the middle of these things, one way or the other. I would like to sit down and discuss some things regarding her time with you.’
‘I am booked solid till next week. And I don’t know what else to tell you about her.’
‘It’s not about her. It’s about you. What she told me about you. We need to discuss that.’
‘People are always saying things about me. Comes with the territory. Disgruntled ex-staffers are the worst, which is logical, but I wouldn’t — ’
‘I don’t care about your…your arrangements, monsieur. It’s the effects. My mandate is the murder of Joël Guatto. Everything else is not my problem.’
Bousquet sputtered. ‘But this outrageous! I… for your sake, I hope you don’t think — ’
‘I don’t think anything. I need to understand how that particular side of the equation falls together. Then I will start to think this or that. But I need your full cooperation.’
‘This could really hurt a career which, I hear, is already damaged, madame.’
‘Monsieur Bousquet, if Judge Regarri has to compel you — ’
‘Sergio Regarri? He would never — ’
‘Please don’t demean yourself like that, monsieur. As you say, it is a very volatile time. Do you really need the media crashing around the situation more than they already are? I can’t see how that would help. Not yourself. Not the people you serve.’
Roland Bousquet heard her. He thought about it. Finally offered, ‘I am going to be speaking at an event at Maraussan on Friday afternoon. It won’t be fun, but it should be interesting. You come. You will see that I know my people. We’ll have a talk directly following.’
She could plainly hear the politician negotiating time to set his ducks in order. But to force the issue could compromise some friends. Sergio and Nabi’s timorous sidelong looks made it plain they felt that in taking on Roland Bousquet she was being reckless, and the backlash could easily spread to them. But how could she walk past an obvious door? ‘Bon. Friday.’
· 20 ·
A NEIGHBOUR’S POINT OF VIEW
A long day in the city, more than a little fraught, had transformed itself into an exquisite summer evening. The six o’clock sun suffused the valley with brilliant clarity as she came down the long hill to Saint-Brin. The huge, simple beauty of it calmed her. The green of the vines, the red of the earth, everything richer at this magical time of day. She took a sharp right at the Total station at the edge of town. Her speck of a village was six minutes east, on a hill beside a river.
Not even a village. A commune of about a hundred, a suburb of the village of Pierrerue.
Aliette’s new home was a four-tiered square, built against the one beside it, the last in a row of six. A flagstone terrace caught the morning sun. A laurel-covered wall defined her strip of garden. That spring she had been delighted to find blue violets growing of their own accord — all she’d done was rake away the dead things from the winter. A small bay tree at the end of the garden created a sense of privacy. The bay leaves hissed in the windy nights below her bedroom window. The elderly widow she’d bought it from had left a lot of her belon
gings behind. Aliette had spent her first months cleaning, discarding old furniture, clearing out the attic — countless trips up and down the narrow winding stairway, and then to the dump. Finally empty of the previous life, the place felt truly hers. Having moved from a third-floor flat, she only partially filled it. Next steps: Explore the flea markets and IKEA to complete the extra bedroom and office she planned for the third floor. Knock away part of the stone wall on the ground floor and replace it with a full-length window to make the most of the morning brightness. Open up half the attic to the sky and lay another, more intimate terrace… Lots of dreams. But only after she’d redone the bathroom.
That evening the inspector found a postcard in the mailbox. An old one — her mother saved antique cards for special purposes such as a note to a daughter in a faraway land. This one, in the stark colour separations of the 1950’s, depicted a crew of women gathering potatoes in a field overlooking the sea at Belle-Île. Their Bretonne peasant bonnets and skirts were billowing and Aliette could feel the Atlantic wind. Mama and Papa had decamped from Nantes to the old house in Locmaria. Every July, the call of Belle-Île was a magnet, and her mother used it shamelessly to draw her daughter home. The sea was warming up, wrote Mama. Papa’s boat was launched and in fine trim. Her sister Anne was coming at the start of August. Did she have any plans? Love…
The brief note left a career cop lonelier than a meandering Sunday phone call ever could.
The best way to counter that feeling was to keep moving. She changed to shorts, took her empty five-litre jug and walked to Jocelyne Grasset’s cave a hundred metres down the road.
Domaine Grasset bore no resemblance to Domaine Guatto. No chateau, just another solid hundred-year-old bourgeois home coated in water-stained, cream-toned roughcast plaster, roofed with red clay tiles, its front door and shutters painted a solid forest green. Alain and his brother Charles owned and worked twenty-two parcels at various spots between here and the next village, some located on the seductive red earth, some on the ancient, dry, whitish schist soil. Among four reds, they produced a flavourful Schistous and Mourvedre blend in the modest cave behind the house. The inspector had grown fond of the tannin-strong, earthy taste. Jocelyne Grasset received customers from nine till noon, and from four till seven. Jocelyne bore no resemblance to the crazy-seeming Noëlli.
