Death at the Clos du Lac (22 page)

Delombre left the Pantin
commissariat
and made his way through the streets to a small fish and vegetable market behind the railway station. He stopped periodically to check his back trail, conscious that with the falling light it wouldn’t be hard for a follower to stay out of sight. He was pretty sure that Drueault, the search team leader, wouldn’t try to check up on him, but distrust was an ingrained habit he found hard to lose. He distrusted cops most of all.

He cruised the area a couple of times on foot to make sure it was clear, sticking to the shadows, then slipped down a side street bordered on both sides by small businesses and lock-ups. The sound of beaten metal echoed from inside one building, and a man in greasy overalls was clearing up the components of a motorcycle spread on the pavement outside. Delombre walked round him and reached the end of the street, and saw a large furniture van parked up on the pavement near the intersection.

He couldn’t see anybody in the cab. He tried the door. Unlocked. He closed it again and went to the back of the van and opened the rear door. It gave a creak of dry hinges, and a gust of foetid air came out, carrying a smell of overripe fruit and human waste from the bare interior. He stepped up and walked to the far end. The glow of a nearby street light showed signs of a large stain on the floor where something had been spilt, and a blackened banana skin lay curled like a dried leaf against the side wall. The clean-up job had been cursory at the very least, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust, wondering where Levignier got these people. Had they no clue at all? It wouldn’t take much for somebody to call the local cops to have the van moved, and for the evidence inside to signal to even the dimmest trainee officer that a person had been kept captive inside here for some time.

A knuckle-rap on the plywood sheets lining the sides of the van received the dull thud of a filled space in return. At least that had been a job well done; whoever had prepared this space had known what they were doing.

He jumped down and closed the door, then walked back down the street and took a left. This time he was in a narrow residential street with washing airing over balconies and the high-pitched squealing of children at play inside. The few cars here were old and battered, in the way only Paris traffic could make them, and the buildings in need of decoration. Elsewhere a tinny radio was playing a rock number by a French band trying to sound American. Overlaying it all was the steady, muted buzz of people living in close proximity.

He stopped at a door halfway along the street. It opened on to a small tiled foyer. He stepped past a battered racing bicycle and down a narrow hallway lit by a feeble yellow bulb, then walked up a flight of stairs. The air smelt of tabbouleh and cooking oil, and musky dampness.

At the top of the stairs was a small landing. The overhead bulb threw a sickly glow over bare floorboards, the wood scarred and warped. A broken hard-backed chair covered in dust stood in one corner. There were two doors, one either side. One was open, the room beyond empty and bare, the other closed. The silence was intense.

He knocked on the closed door and waited. Tried the handle. It was locked.

He knocked again, muttered drunkenly, ‘Hey, Dede,
mon pote
. You there?’

No response.

He put his ear to the wood. There were no vibrations, no surreptitious movements. He thought about coming back later, but decided against it. Later was no good; he had too much to do. This needed finishing before he could move on.

He walked across the landing and through the open door, crossing the room and through another door at the rear. A window opened out onto a backyard with a gate sagging off the hinges. Beyond that, an alleyway disappeared into the gloom. He opened the window and peered down. Not much to see, just a square, box-like structure that had probably once housed coal or wood.

He returned to the locked door and put his shoulder against it. He pushed harder, felt it flex. Cheap wood, dried out and ready to pop. He pushed again and
simultaneously jerked down on the handle. The door sprang open.

He was in a small, scruffy room furnished with two camp beds, army-style, a single leather armchair leaking stuffing, a radio on the floor, a couple of wooden packing crates and a standard lamp. Dirty cups had been left where they lay, rimmed with dried coffee, one stuffed with cigarette ends. Two empty wine bottles stood like bookends on the window sill, and on the floor beneath them two empty bowls showed the remains of a meal. A pair of underpants hung from the back of the armchair, and a single sock with a hole in the heel lay at the foot of one of the beds.

Kidnapper chic, thought Delombre, and tried not to breathe the foul air. They must have been holed up here all day, and finally broke cover and went out in search of more booze.

A door at the back led to another room, empty of furniture. There was an identical window to the one across the landing, but this one was screwed shut, the heads shiny and new.

The criminal elite: so untrusting.

He returned to the front room and took out a gun, a semi-automatic with an untraceable history, and checked the magazine. Then he reached in his jacket and produced a fat metal tube several centimetres long. He fitted it over the end of the barrel, checked to make sure it was secure, then used the tip of the tube to flick the underpants off the armchair.

The tube was a once-only suppressor, or silencer, made by a former military armourer in Moulineaux, in the
south-west of the city. The man had left the French army under a dark cloud for allegedly manufacturing gun parts for collectors on army time. He’d cautioned Delombre that the silencer would take at most four shots before losing its effectiveness. But four was more than he’d need.

He went out and turned off the landing light, then sat down in the armchair to wait.

He’d been waiting an hour before he heard the sound of a car at the end of the street. Engine off, two doors closed, dull thuds in the night. Then, much closer, footsteps.

They’d moved faster than he’d expected, already coming in the front door and up the stairs together, noisy and obviously drunk. The landing light went on. It was gone eleven, and the area had fallen silent. Even before the two men arrived at the top of the stairs, he heard one saying how glad he was to have finally got rid of ‘that bitch’.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. First leaving the kidnap vehicle out on the street, with enough evidence to put them on the guillotine; now prattling aloud about how clever they were.

Delombre picked up his gun and rested it on his thigh, facing the door. He was relaxed, sitting back in the armchair, but ready to move at a moment’s notice.

The first man through the door wore a leather jacket and cowboy boots, and was sucking on a cigarette, backlit
by the overhead bulb. He frowned at the open door, but drink had made him slow and careless.

Delombre flicked on the standard lamp.

‘What the fuck—?’ The man stopped, his boots making a loud rat-tat on the bare boards.

Delombre gestured with the gun for the man to move sideways. With his other hand, he held a finger to his lips.

The man did as he was told, blinking hard and swallowing, trying to work out what was happening. If he’d possessed any degree of courage, the sight of the gun had frozen his instincts solid. The cigarette fell and bounced off the bare boards in a shower of sparks.

The second man blundered past him, laughing at some shared joke, and was halfway across the room before he noticed Delombre sitting there in the half shadow cast by the standard lamp.

‘Hey,
putain
– who’re you?’ he squawked, drunkenly aggressive. ‘Get out of my chair!’

‘Please don’t call me names. We haven’t been introduced.’ Delombre’s voice was soft, but carried a tone of menace that pierced the atmosphere in the room like an arrow. Unfortunately, the man failed to heed it.

‘I said, get the fuck out of my
fuck
—’

Delombre shot him in the chest. The force of the bullet flipped him round sideways, the report no bigger than a loud slap. He landed in a heap on one of the army cots, and subsided with a sigh.

‘Jesus!’ said the man in the leather jacket, ‘you didn’t have to do that!’ He stared at his colleague’s body and swallowed hard, then turned and threw up noisily in the corner with a horrible hacking sound.

Delombre waited until he was done, then said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Danny. It’s Danny.’ The man spat on the floor, trying to clear his throat. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

‘You’ll find out. Sit down on the other bed, Danny, and wipe your face. You’ve got sick all over your chin.’

Danny sat and dabbed at his mouth with his sleeve, merely managing to smear the vomit across his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes, his breathing coming heavy and fast, and stared once more at his friend as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen.

‘So, how did it go, with your important guest?’ Delombre queried casually, huffing on the side of the suppressor and rubbing at it with his sleeve to remove a speck of gunshot residue. He also noticed a stray strand of wool-like substance that the armourer had used to pack the baffles inside, and gently teased it out. It happened to these things, but not usually after a single shot. He’d have to speak to the rogue armourer about that. ‘Did she behave herself?’

‘What? You just shot my mate dead and you want to know whether she—’

‘Yes, I want to know,’ Delombre interrupted him. ‘And if you argue with me one more time, you’ll join your foul-mouthed friend in whatever version of hell you’re both bound for.’

Danny nodded quickly and held up a hand. ‘OK, OK. Sorry. We, uh … we did as we were told. To the letter. We kept on the move, kept her fed and watered, then delivered her as arranged to the farm near Clermont.’

‘Go on.’

‘She was fine. We made sure there was nobody else
about, then took her out of the van and handed her over to the ambulance driver and his mate. She was still asleep … well, unconscious, really. But that was it. Job done.’ He frowned. ‘Are you saying she wasn’t all right after that? Because if so, that’s not down to us. She was good when we handed her over.’

Delombre ignored him. ‘Did she see your face?’

‘No, not once. I made sure of it. Not a glimpse. I kept the hood thing in place all the time.’ He gave a sickly smile. ‘I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done stuff like this before, right?’

‘So how did she eat and drink?’

Danny explained how he had done it, lifting the hood just enough for the woman to take in food and liquid, but no more. ‘There’s no way she saw my face, honest.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ Delombre looked down at the man’s cowboy boots. ‘Nice boots. You wear them all the time?’

‘Yes, sure. Why not – I paid enough for them. I had them imported specially from Fort Worth in Texas.’

‘Great. So they’re – what, unique, then?’

‘I’d say so. I mean, why pay top money to wear the same as every other mug?’

‘How very wise. But – sorry, but I have to be sure – this woman you were holding, she never saw your face, not once? Or that of your deceased partner over there?’

‘That’s right. He stayed out of sight, mostly in the cab.’

‘Yet each time you lifted the hood to feed her … she’d have had only a clear view downwards, right?’

‘Uh … I guess. Yes.’ Danny frowned, not making the connection.

‘Downwards at your fancy
imported
and uniquely
identifiable
footwear. Isn’t that correct?’

The question was met by a heavy silence, and Danny stared at Delombre, his mouth open as the implications of what he’d said sank in fully. He went very pale and stared at the gun, any remnants of drunkenness now instantly dissolved.

‘I said, correct?’

‘Hey … no, wait!’

‘No, thanks. You’re dismissed.’

The leather jacket jumped as the first shot hit home, then jumped again with the second. Danny groaned once and fell back on the bed.

As Delombre stood up, he heard the downstairs door creak, and a scuff of footsteps on the stairs. A whisper of voices fed upward as if through a funnel, and he felt the movement of air in the room. Somebody was trying to be quiet, but not because they were frightened of waking the neighbours.

Then came a sound he knew all too well: the rattle of a round being chambered.

Delombre switched off the lamp. It was probably too late, as they’d have already seen the glow from the street. He’d been careless, assuming the car noise earlier to have been these two morons returning from whatever bordello they’d been celebrating in. But it explained why there had been such a short time lapse between the car stopping and the two dead men arriving on the stairs.

They’d been followed. And he had a good idea who was doing the following. Divisional Inspector Drueault and his band of eager beavers had proven better than he’d thought. They’d found the truck rather than standing down as he’d advised, and followed the trail to this address.

He stood up in a fluid movement and grabbed the man in the leather jacket. Dragging the lifeless body behind the armchair, he propped it in place so that only the head, shoulders and arms were showing. Then he moved the
standard lamp so that it would throw up a glow behind the dead man. It wasn’t nearly enough of a distraction, but it would have to do. Hopefully, any cop coming through the door expecting trouble would see Danny’s outline and shit himself.

He moved over to the door. He had perhaps twenty seconds left before the men downstairs came up in a rush, weapons out and ready to shoot. Once they got to the top he’d have no way out. He had to slow them down.

He took a deep breath and stepped out onto the landing.

The one named Detric was in the lead, already halfway up. He had his weapon in his right hand and was hugging the wall, trying not to make a noise. He looked up as Delombre appeared, but his gun was pointing away.

Big mistake.

Delombre shot him before he could bring up his gun, then reached up and swiped the bulb in one smooth movement. It popped and everything went black.

Men were shouting at the bottom of the stairs as their wounded colleague tumbled down among them. Delombre continued across the landing, flicking the broken chair down on top of them to add to the chaos, and through the open door into the empty flat. Two shots rang out behind him, but they were shooting blind, no doubt hoping to scare him into giving up.

He closed the door and hurried across to the open window, swinging one leg over the sill. Lowering himself easily, he hesitated for a second, then dropped. As his feet hit the wooden structure of the coal store, he pushed himself off and jumped to the ground, making no more than a hollow thump. The noise would be lost among the
shouting upstairs and the two more gunshots that rang out as the remaining cops stormed the flat and came face to face with a desperado hiding behind the armchair.

At least Danny had finally done something right.

He looked out of the rear gate. The alley was dark and full of rubbish, but his eyes were already adjusting. The cops had made another mistake: they hadn’t posted a man to cover the rear. Stuffing the gun in his jacket, he walked away in the dark.

Rocco’s telephone jangled with what seemed unusual harshness, springing him from sleep barely minutes after he’d finally managed to nod off. He scrambled for the handset and dragged it onto the pillow. It was still dark outside.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me.’ He sat up as if fired from a gun, throwing back the bedclothes. It was Jacqueline, her voice steady and calm. Just two words, neither of them clear enough to judge whether she was still mad at him or not.

‘Hello, again.’

Her voice was cool, businesslike. ‘The man Delombre? I called a friend of mine who knows everyone in ISD. He confirmed what I thought. Delombre is a contract employee for the department, and works exclusively for Marcel Levignier. He’s a former Legionnaire and does not do office work. I asked for a description, and was told he’s tall and thin, exceptionally fit, with fair hair thinning on top. I hope that answers your question.’

‘Wait.’ He didn’t want her to put down the phone. ‘Please. I owe you an apology. I’m very sorry. But I promise,
I didn’t come to your aunt’s house just to ask questions. Well, not those questions, anyway. But thank you for doing this.’

The silence went on far too long, and he thought she’d hung up until he heard a faint sigh.

‘Are you there?’

‘Remember what I said about Levignier. He will do anything in the pursuit of duty. His man Delombre is a killer.’

There was a click as the phone went down.