Jacquot reached forward and pulled out a stack of mail, shuffling through it. Nothing personal, the same collection of flyers and catalogues that he'd found on her dining- room table. He pushed them back into the box and Madame Piganiol relocked it.
'Did you ever take her mail up to her?' asked Jacquot.
Madame Piganiol shook her head as she withdrew the key.
'Not now we have these,' she replied. 'I just put the mail in every morning and they come collect it themselves. Much easier.' She looked at Jacquot expectantly, as though she relished the prospect of more questions.
Jacquot obliged. 'Did Mademoiselle Monel have a car, Madame?'
'A car, you say? If she did, I never saw it.'
'There's no residents' parking here? A basement? Or back lot?'
'You live here, you take your chances on the streets, Monsieur. It's safe enough. I should know.'
'And you say Mademoiselle Monel's been here, what? A year or so?'
'Round that, I'd say. Near enough.'
'And before that? Before she moved in?'
Madame Piganiol frowned, gave Jacquot a puzzled look. 'Well, how could I possibly know that, Monsieur?'
Jacquot realised that she'd misunderstood. 'I mean other tenants, Madame. Upstairs. The top-floor apartment. Before Mademoiselle Monel arrived.'
'I see. I see. Of course. Well, there was . . . Let me see . . . Ah! Alina, such a lovely girl. . . and Nathalie . . . and Rose.' Her brow furrowed with the effort of recollection. Clearly there'd been others; she just couldn't remember the names.
'All young women?' prompted Jacquot.
'Always. Always girls. And all the prettiest things,' Madame Piganiol continued proudly. 'Never a dud. And the men; like bees to honey. Well, you're only young once, eh, Messieurs?'
Jacquot nodded, smiled his agreement, then asked if she could provide details of Vicki Monel's lease or rental agreement.
'Not kept here,' said Madame Piganiol, shaking her head and following them to the front door. 'You'll have to get in touch with the owners.'
'And they would be?' asked Jacquot, stepping out into the street and turning back to her.
Madame Piganiol pushed out her lip, squinted into the sun. 'I ought to know,' she replied. 'Seeing as they're the ones employ me.' And then, scratching the side of her head with the tips of her knitting needles as though this would somehow aid the process of recall: 'Valadeau. Of course. Valadeau et Cie. They're the ones. The soap people.'
30
Suzie de Cotigny slipped the straps of her leotard from her shoulders and peeled the costume down to her waist. She was still breathing hard from the circuit and repetitions, the muscles in her shoulders and thighs burning from the exertion, the wall of her belly aching with a gentle cramp. But she felt good. Pleased with herself. She turned and opened her locker, pulled out a towel and stripped away the rest of the leotard, tugging the tights with it into a bundle of damp pink and black lycra.
Wrapping the towel around her waist, she walked through the locker room to the showers, took the first stall she came to and turned on the water. Reaching for the controls she adjusted the temperature and, hanging the towel from a peg, stepped beneath the water. Perfect. It might not be the most chic, most expensive establishment in town, but Allez-Allez Gym had great showers: good wide heads, easy-to-adjust temperature controls and dependable water pressure independent of the dozen or so other cubicles in the shower room. Suzie closed her eyes, lifted her chin, and felt the rain-like stream spatter onto her face, sluice over her neck and shoulders and course down her body. Even more important, the gym was discreet. She was hardly likely to bump into anyone she knew here.
Twice a week Suzie came here, sometimes more often. Sometimes it was difficult to keep away. Such a temptation just to drop in, on the off chance. And always during the busy times, lunch hour or after work, when the secretaries and shop assistants stopped by for their workouts and exercise classes. With no job to go to, Suzie could easily have come when the place wasn't so crowded. But the crowding was what it was all about, the reason she went there. So many young, pretty girls. It had been the same back home in the States. The gyms, the steam baths, the spas and exercise classes.
When Suzie told her husband she was thinking of joining a gym, Hubert de Cotigny warmed to the idea straight away, even suggesting that they hire a personal trainer to come over to the house.
But she'd said no. Better to go to a gym, she advised. So much more choice. A personal trainer was just that, always the same one, usually a man and maybe not up for what they had in mind.
Which was when he'd suggested Altius. Since Hubert's planning department had given it the green light two years earlier, Altius had become the city's most exclusive spa, gym and fitness centre, a sought-after membership amongst Marseilles's finest.
But again Suzie had shaken her head. It had to be discreet, somewhere she wasn't likely to bump into Hubert's daughter or any of their friends. Just imagine . . .
And again he'd nodded his head, understood immediately.
There always had to be a cut-off, she explained, between the two of them and their occasional 'companions'. Rather like a spy network. An arrangement that guaranteed that certain paths would never cross - at a dinner party or drinks someplace. Money, she said - that was the cut-off point. Somewhere not too expensive, somewhere anonymous, somewhere she'd just be one of the girls. With a nod, Hubert had acknowledged her reasoning, smiled at the prospect, and left it to her.
Just as she'd said, it had all worked splendidly - for both of them. In a little over a year, she'd gently seduced maybe a dozen different girls she'd met here. Sometimes she'd share them with Hubert, or take them to the small apartment she kept in town that Hubert didn't know about. Or go to their own homes. Their tiny flats and studios. Sometimes that was fun too.
Suzie eased the shower temperature down and felt the water chill in response, icy needles pricking at her warm skin, puckering her nipples. She shivered, gasped for breath, then turned the heat up again until her head spun.
Which was when she knew, just knew, that someone was watching her, there in the shower, head tipped back, playing the water over her face and breasts, hands clinging to the taps. So sure that she played the moment out, closing her eyes and turning her body this way and that, so that everything could be seen.
And she was right. The girl by the mirror, gently towelling her arms, the long arch of her neck, her breasts, not bothering to look away when Suzie stepped from the shower and caught her eye. She even smiled.
A sure thing, thought Suzie. A done deal. And a honey too. Hubert would love this one. Not like the last one she'd picked up here. She'd got it wrong with that one. Suzie had been stunned by her but Hubert had taken against her from the start. Couldn't bear the tattoo, simply couldn't tolerate it, he said. A couple of sessions and that was it.
Not a problem with this one, though, judged Suzie, the girl's skin lightly tanned, lithe and, so far as Suzie could see, neither tattooed nor pierced.
Then again, maybe she'd keep this one to herself. Keep Hubert out of the loop. Maybe tomorrow night, while Hubert was having dinner with his mother. Perfect.
Wrapping the towel around her waist, Suzie returned the girl's smile.
It was as easy as that.
31
With Gastal at the wheel, driving back to police headquarters from Cours Lieutaud, Jacquot flicked his way through the address book that he'd taken from Vicki Monel's apartment. It was an expensive make, leather-bound, with gold edging and thin ruled pages, but too bulky to fit comfortably in a purse or pocket. In the days to come they'd check every name, every telephone number, every address - any one of which might bring them closer to her killer - and try to decipher every scratch and doodle that Vicki Monel had made. Just as they'd done with the address books of the teacher Yvonne Ballarde who had lain undetected in her bath for more than a week, and Joline Grez whose naked body had choked one of the overflow outlets in the cascade at Longch
amp.
By the time they reached Headquarters, Jacquot had found only one name he recognised. Under V. Vrech, the tattooist. Maybe Mademoiselle Monel was considering another tattoo? Or maybe she'd taken a fancy to the throaty-voiced Dutchman? But so far as Jacquot could see, no mention of Jean Carnot, the one name he'd expected to find. Then, as Gastal rolled down the ramp into the underground parking level beneath police HQ, Jacquot found it. On the inside back cover. Outlined in biro, a thick rectangle of single strokes, 'JC' and a mobile phone number.
Up in the squad room on the second floor, the team had gathered for their weekly briefing, just as they had every Wednesday since the second body had been found and confirmed as a homicide. At first there'd been just Jacquot and Rully, with Claude Peluze and Al Grenier working back-up. Now there were three more units roped in from other duties and reporting directly to Jacquot as the senior officer in charge of the investigation. Pierre Chevin and Luc Dutoit, Etienne Laganne and Charles Serre, Bernie Muzon and Isabelle Cassier, the only woman on the squad. And not a single one of them, Jacquot knew, with anything significant to report since the last meeting, just the usual jumble of possible leads and dubious theories that might, just might, add up to something.
Even with the blinds angled against the afternoon sun, and a thin draught of air-conditioning, the squad room was still uncomfortably hot. Were it not for the dust and the jackhammering of drills at work on the Metro extension, Jacquot would have had someone open the windows. Instead he slipped off his jacket and made his way to the far end of the room where a large-scale city map had been pinned to the wall. Three smaller maps - of Salon-le-Vitry and the coastline east and west of Marseilles - were set around its edges. On the city map, within half a dozen blocks of each other, were two red flags indicating where the bodies of Ballarde and Grez had been found. On the Salon-le-Vitry map was a third red flag for Vicki Monel and on the remaining two maps four blue flags - two apiece - sited along the coast where bodies had been washed up but where no evidence of foul play could be confirmed.
Around the border of the larger city map were three groups of photos - head shots of three young women, alive and smiling, taken from parents, friends, apartments or, in Vicki s case, from the Internet - each with a thread of red cotton reaching to the red flag where the body had been found. Beneath each head shot was a collection of glossy pictures taken by the boys on scene-of-crime. Certain images were stronger than others: an arm hanging over the edge of a bath, a skein of hair across a bloated face, a foetal-like bundle of limbs jammed into an overflow vent. Within the next few hours, a fourth set of pictures would be pinned to the board, a fourth victim to play on their consciences and keep them alert.
Jacquot reached for a red flag and pinned it on the city map where a tiny blue square denoted Aqua-Cité. Perching on the edge of a desk he got right to the point.
'As you'll have heard, another body's been found at Aqua-Cité, out on Prado. Victim in her twenties, naked, drowned. We don't yet know for certain when she died, but it's pretty clear the body must have been dumped sometime last night. With the park so well patrolled there's no way our man could have done it during the hours of daylight. Or got the body in from the land side. My bet is that he used a boat, under cover of darkness. Either he heaved her over the netting at the entrance to the pool, or a swell washed the body over. It's the only other way in.'
'How high's the n-n-net at the entrance?' asked Chevin.
'Looks about half a metre above the surface, so no big deal getting the body over.'
'Drugs? Rape?' called out Peluze from the back, rubbing his five o'clock stubble with an audible rasp. He was a big man, an ex-Legionnaire, with a suitably military buzz- cut and a parachute tattooed on his forearm.
'Can't say yet about the presence of any drugs. Or if there was a rape involved. We'll have to wait for that.'
A chair scraped as Gastal tried to make himself comfortable, his legs too short and fat to cross comfortably.
'Restraint marks? Was she tied?' This from Isabelle Cassier, the youngest member of the team. She'd been at Headquarters nearly a year, starting with Vice and moving to Homicide just a few months earlier.
Jacquot shook his head. 'A graze on her leg, down the shin, and a couple of scratches on her chest - looked like fingernails to me. Like someone made a grab for her. But that's all. . .' He paused, looked around at his team. 'But I'd say it's the same guy. No doubt. Number four.'
There were resigned expressions around the room, a few uncomfortable coughs. None of them liked the idea that there was someone loose in the city who was getting the better of them. A new body made it even more dispiriting.
'So here's where we go from here. Bernie, you and Isabelle go back to Aqua-Cité. Nose around, talk to a few people. Nothing formal. No statements. Just show your badge and chat.'
'Should we check in with anyone first?' asked Bernie, pushing back a fringe of black hair. He was dressed in his usual uniform - blue jeans, black T-shirt and scuffed
trainers. A linen jacket hung from the back of his chair.
'The man in charge is called Tarrou,' Jacquot replied. 'It'd probably be a good idea to introduce yourselves first.'
Bemie nodded, reaching back for his jacket.
'Etienne? Charlie?' Jacquot looked at each man in turn. 'I want you to check the harbours.'
The two men groaned, Etienne Laganne pulling a toothpick from his mouth, his colleague Charlie Serre stubbing out a cigarette.
'I'm sorry, but it's got to be done. Monel ended up in a lake and this one in the sea. So someone must have access to a boat or at least knows how to handle one. Start with the Vieux Port, Malmousque, the docks . . . anything suspicious. Late-night departures or arrivals, that sort of thing.'
'Da-da, da-da,' said Etienne with a sour grin, snapping the toothpick in half and tossing it into a bin. 'We get the picture.'
'Pierre, Luc, keep chasing other bureaux outside Marseilles - any similar water-related deaths, anywhere in the country. If our man's not Marseilles born and bred, and this is the way he likes to do things, he may have left a trail elsewhere. Again, we might find some links. Also . . .' Jacquot pulled Vicla's address book from his pocket, waved it in the air and tossed it to Peluze. 'Get copies of every page and divide them up between you - start doing the rounds. And all of you keep on looking back to Ballarde and Grez. Maybe there's something we missed. Maybe there's some connection with Monel.'
Jacquot glanced across at Gastal, picking at his fingernails. There was something else he had to tell them. 'You should also know that the press have got hold of this. So over the next few days you can expect the usual raft of callers phoning in to confess, finger their neighbours or send us off on some wild-goose chase. All I want to say is: don't let anything slip through the net. Just keep aware. Keep it open.'
Outside, the jackhammers fell silent.
'And one last thing. Our man seems to be upping his hit rate. Two in two months and now two in as many weeks. Maybe he's getting cocky. Maybe this is when he makes a mistake. Let's just be sure we're on to him before he makes it five. Anything else?' he concluded, scanning the faces, knowing that there wouldn't be.
The squad looked at one another, shook their heads, started to get themselves together.
'Okay, let's get busy, please. Four bodies as of today and so far not a single lead. All hell's going to break loose if we don't move on this. And move fast.'
Down in the street, the jackhammers started up again.
It was reminding his colleagues to stay alert that gave Jacquot pause for thought. He knew that he should be doing the same himself. And yet he wasn't. There was something he'd seen that morning but missed, some small connection he'd taken in but failed to process.
Back in his office, a glass and wood-panelled cube at one end of the main squad room, he went to the window and split the blinds. Two floors below, between police headquarters and Cathedrale de la Major, a deep trench had been gouged out of the earth, the latest phase of t
he Metro extension connecting La Joliette and the Vieux Port. As he watched, a sheet of corrugated steel the size of a cinema screen was being lowered into the pit by crane, while a massive yellow piledriver was manoeuvring into position to hammer it home.
There were a hundred things that Jacquot should have been doing, but he sensed he wasn't wasting time, gazing distractedly out of the window. Without really knowing why, it struck him that whatever was niggling away in the back of his mind had something to do with what was going on beneath him, in the dusty wasteland between police headquarters and the cathedral. Workers in hard hats, the spiralling dust from jackhammers caught in the breeze and hoisted aloft, the scarred and dented bodywork of the diggers and tractors lumbering around the site, the rusting stacks of steel rods and hoops of cabling, all of it set within a meshed fence that marked the boundaries of the site.
Construction. Construction.
Whatever it was, whatever was clamouring in his head for attention, it had something to do with construction.
Jacquot and the Waterman Page 14
