Dead Horsemeat (14 page)

(Source: Mademoiselle Sainteny’s colleague.)

Every evening at six o’clock, the chauffeur drives Perrot from his office back home to Rue Balzac. There, the chauffeur parks the BMW in the car park, and awaits instructions. Perrot then goes up to the apartment on the
first floor, where he has installed Madame Paulette who runs a call-girl network. There, for an hour or an hour and half, he has sex with one of the girls, the way other people go for a quick workout at the gym. And he always uses a condom. He asks them with whom and in what positions they had sex the night before, and gives them advice for the night to come. The girls, who often come down to chat with the chauffeur in the car park, don’t complain about his ways because they are very well paid: a combination of a fixed wage and a fee for each trick. They often end the night in exclusive night clubs with Perrot’s friends.

At eight o’clock, Perrot informs his chauffeur whether he’s giving him the evening off or whether he wants to be driven into town for dinner. Dinners that are always in the expensive areas of Paris, and sometimes even at the Élysée. The chauffeur’s job is therefore very demanding, but it will very likely enable him to open a bar-cum-tobacconists in his home town of Lyon within the next five years.

(Source: the chauffeur.)

After eight o’clock, if he’s not dining in town, Perrot goes down to his restaurant, Le Chambellan, where a private dining room is reserved for him and his friends, sometimes one or two, often around twenty. He’s a well-liked host, entertaining, elegant, excellent food and fine wines and spirits. He only invites men, and talks a lot of business. The guests shower the staff with tips. Aubert is a regular at these dinners, to which Jubelin is sometimes invited, along with many others whose names do not seem to have appeared in our files before.

(Source: the barman at Le Chambellan.)

Daquin closes the report on Perrot, signed by Romero who is sitting in the armchair facing him, waiting.

‘Is this what’s called a detective story?’

‘I can copy out my notebooks if you prefer.’

‘Don’t get mad.’ Smile. ‘This report is perfectly satisfactory.’ Glance at Romero’s expenses form. ‘I don’t know Le Pactole. I’ll check it out some time. Quite a character, this Perrot.’

Daquin falls silent and starts tinkering around on his computer. Romero gets up, goes and makes two coffees and sits down again. Daquin drinks his coffee, then:

‘There are several points to be followed up.’ Romero produces his notebook and takes notes. ‘If I’ve understood correctly, Perrot’s allowed to build new offices because he has previously converted industrial sites or offices into residential property. Is that right?’

‘Right.’

‘Where do these industrial sites come from? That’s what you have to find out. And for that, it seems to me that it’s essential to talk to either Mademoiselle Sainteny or her colleague. As for the office in Rue de l’Université, what goes on there is probably no more illegal than what goes on among all property developers. It’s not within the remit of the Drugs Squad, and we won’t nail him for that. What does interest us is of course Le Chambellan and its associated brothel, and the chauffeur is definitely a key person. Businessmen are always very talkative in their cars, they probably feel safe there. One of you must get as much gen on this chauffeur as possible. And I’d also like to know what he’s up to with the girls who come down and see him in the car park.’

‘Why? A man and one or several girls, doesn’t that seem quite normal to you?’

‘No.’ Smile. ‘Hopeless, you’re a naïve guy, Romero. I want you to get inside that car park and see what goes one between six thirty and eight o’clock. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Of course not.’

Lavorel sends the new boys to stake out Transitex, with instructions to establish an exact timetable of the company’s operations, to be corroborated by tapped phone conversations, while he pays a visit to his former colleagues in the Fraud Squad to find out a bit more about Transitex.

A quick and easy task. A small family firm which belonged to a certain Jacques Montier until last year. It imported low-quality meats from South America, which were processed into dog food in an old factory. A year ago, the company was sold. Taken over by a property developer, a certain Perrot. Too good to be true.

‘Stop. Why would a property developer want to get involved with a meat business?’

‘Perrot split Transitex into two companies. He kept one of them, Transimmobilière, a real estate company, which took over the factory and
the land it stood on, 10,000 square metres in the middle of Paris’s 20
^th
arrondissement. Then he demolished the factory and is building a housing development on the site. Let’s do a quick calculation… the price Perrot paid for the whole of Transitex is lower than the sale price of 10,000 square metres of building land in the 20
^th
. There are two possibilities: one, there was some restriction on developing the land which was removed after the sale, or the former owner is an idiot. In any case, Perrot’s come off very well. We should talk to the lawyer.’

‘Get me the details of this supposedly idiotic former owner. What about the other company?’

‘It’s kept the Transitex name and is continuing to import meat from South America. It’s been bought by a certain Pierre Aubert.’

Lavorel listens to the new boys’ report. Transitex’s activities are perfectly legitimate and give little cause for concern. Around midnight, a meat lorry arrives from Rungis market. The driver parks the lorry in the hangar and leaves. The secretary arrives at nine o’clock in the morning. The tapped conversations reveal that she telephones customers – butchers’ shops in the Paris area, no supermarkets or institutions apparently – to confirm or change their orders. Around midday, a driver collects the lorry, does the deliveries, then drives directly up to Le Havre where he reloads the next day. There is a rota of three lorries and four drivers. One lorry arrives at the company’s premises each night. The secretary works every morning, six days a week. The company is closed in the afternoons. The vet only seems to pay rare visits. In short, a nice little business that seems perfectly uneventful.

‘Import-export: I’m going to find out how customs clearance works at Rungis. And you, get in touch with a guy called Jacques Montier and ask him why and how he flogged Transitex to Perrot.’

At eight o’clock in the evening it’s chaos in the customs house at Rungis. A constant stream of around fifty HGVs and a perpetual coming and going – drivers, vets in white coats and uniformed customs officers. The air is heavy with the cloying smell of meat. Lavorel eventually finds the man called Mariani with whom he has an appointment. Mariani starts off by looking through his files.

‘Transitex, yes, I know them. Their lorry usually arrives around 11 p.m. Wait there. I’ll come and fetch you as soon as it gets here.’

Lavorel, sitting in a corner, settles down to do a crossword.

An hour later, Mariani’s back. He takes him to a lorry manoeuvring into the customs bay. Transitex. The driver switches off the engine and gets down from the cab. Holding a sheaf of papers, the customs official checks the door seals and watches the opening of the rear ramp. A vet in a white coat stands a little way back from the lorry. The doors open. The lorry is full of beef half-carcases hanging from hooks on a rail. On the floor of the lorry, under the carcases, are some large oblong cases.

The customs official and Lavorel enter the lorry.

‘You see, all the documents seem to be in order: shipper Irexport, Dublin. Approved slaughterhouse in Killary, Ireland. I’ll check a few carcases. Here, no problem, here’s the Killary stamp.’ He opens one of the cases, full of offal. ‘You see, you can barely make out the stamps, but it’s always the same with offal, the ink runs.’

‘Is this what always happens? Nobody else comes near the lorry?’

‘No, you can’t load or unload stuff here. Now let’s go down and see what the vet thinks.’

He is young and fairly disenchanted. He says OK. Mariani stamps a few documents, the driver locks up the lorry and moves off.

Lavorel turns to the vet.

‘Can you tell me what your health check consists of?’

‘You really want to know? I stand near the rear door when it’s opened, but not too close, question of habit, to get a good whiff of the first wave of smells. I can tell whether it’s fresh and clean or if the meat is warm. That’s it. Otherwise, I have a very small budget for having samples analysed, and anyway, by the time you get the results, the meat has long since been eaten. There are two vets here for more than a thousand tonnes of meat. Have I answered your question?’

Lavorel backs away from this outpouring and takes Mariani aside.

‘You can’t rely on a health inspection to detect the presence of drugs, fair enough. But could you get your Irish friends to check the slaughter and shipping side of things in Ireland?’

The two replies arrive on Daquin’s desk more or less at the same time.

Jacques Montier left Paris with his entire family and set up as the
manager of a seed merchant’s in Annecy. Berry immediately buys his train ticket.

And there’s no slaughterhouse in Killary. Irexport is merely the Dublin PO box of a company whose registered address is in Antigua.

‘Right,’ says Daquin, summing up. ‘Transitex had commercial connections with Latin America. It is sold in vague conditions to a vet who traffics drugs and hangs out with hit men implicated in the murder of a coke dealer. Transitex is a front. We must be getting close to the guys at the top. And we have to be ready to swoop. I’m writing a report, but I’m not handing it over yet. I want to have some room for manoeuvre. And Lavorel, Amelot and Berry are investigating the entire Transitex operation. Now to Perrot. Property developer, mixed up in Transitex, partner in Pama, probably implicated, but we have nothing concrete. I’m slipping his name into the Transitex report, to see, that’s all. And Romero will see if he can dig anything up on Perrot. Now, Le Dem, what have you got for us?’

Le Dem looks happy.

‘I make a very decent groom, according to Thirard.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Not exactly.’

Le Dem launches into on a detailed account of his day-to-day work, including the bay horse’s ‘training’ session. Irritated, Daquin wonders whether Le Dem’s taking the piss or not.

‘We aren’t members of the animal welfare society yet, Le Dem.’

‘Nor am I, Superintendent. You asked me for a report, I’m giving you one. Shall I go on?’

‘Go on then.’

‘Almost every week, Thirard sends a truckload of horses to Italy. He boasts to all and sundry that he sells them for several million. Now of the ones I saw leave, two are first-class racing horses, and the others are old nags, worth no more than the price of dead horsemeat.’

‘What do the other grooms have to say about it?’

‘That their boss is a crafty guy.’

‘Does that sound convincing to you?’

‘No. There’s some sort of scam, but I don’t know what.’

‘First of all, let’s perhaps try and find out where he sends his horses. If I get you a bug, can you fix it underneath Thirard’s lorry before it leaves for Italy?’

‘Of course.’

‘We’ll get to the bottom of this, sooner or later.’

Taxi, roads less congested than expected, Daquin arrives in Saint-Ouen early for his lunch with his friend Chamoux, editor of a major sports daily. He enters the Auberge du Coq on Chamoux’s estate and is given a warm welcome. Downstairs, a medium-sized dining room, bay windows, vast mirror, yellow lighting with an orange glow, the overall effect luminous, white linen, small red hexagonal floor tiles, lots of plants. And countless cockerels, in all kinds of materials and colours. In a corner, a log fire burning in a hearth, slightly unexpected at the beginning of October, but actually rather pleasant from a distance. He’d been dining with Chamoux beside this same fireplace in the middle of winter, it must be about five years ago, when Samuel had come in. Chamoux knew him and introduced them. Samuel sat down at their table. He and Daquin left together. He’s been living in the USA for nearly three years now.

‘It’s always a pleasure to come back here.’

The owner says thank you. There aren’t any customers yet. Daquin chooses a table near the bay window. Chamoux arrives a little later, accompanied by a short, wiry man with a wrinkled face.

‘Jean-Claude Hubert, France’s top racing journalist. A brilliant writer… they call him the David Goodis of horse racing.’

Aperitif while they study the menu. One glass of champagne and two whiskies, accompanied by cubes of home-cured ham and parsley in aspic. Daquin is staunchly traditional, leek in a pie crust and coq au vin. The other two also go for classics, veal blanquette and pig’s trotter. The conversation touches on recent scandals in the sporting world, Ben Johnson… Goodis junior remains silent, slightly vacant.

‘Let’s get to the point. What do you want, Theo?’

‘I happen to find myself stumbling around the horse racing milieu, about which I know nothing…’

Goodis junior emerges from his silence.

‘Are you from the Drugs Squad?’

‘Yes.’

Aggressively: ‘Those jockeys who were arrested two days ago, was that you?’

They seem to have got off on the wrong foot. ‘No, nothing to do with me. That was the Chantilly gendarmerie. No connection with what we’re
doing. We operate on a completely different level. Wholesale trade only. With a few murders thrown in.’

‘That’s more like it. Because I find it unacceptable to lay into the jockeys, who have a very tough job and get stick from all sides, while the Paris rich set snort away to their hearts’ content amid general indifference.’

Chamoux turns to Daquin.

‘Precisely what is it you want to know?’

Start off as neutral as possible. ‘I find it hard to tell the difference between what is usual practice and what isn’t in these circles. For example, how is the price of a race horse determined?’

Goodis junior relaxes a little.