Impure Blood (28 page)

He halted the conclusion with a look. But Frankie had more.

‘And if Agnès
is
in and has put the security chain across?’

‘I’ll just get you to bite through it.’

The door opened cleanly.

‘No post on the mat, look.’

Frankie took a tentative step inside.

‘Agnès? You home?’

There was no sound from inside the apartment as they walked through a short lobby into the hallway.

‘You take the bathroom and the bedrooms.’ Darac indicated three closed doors. ‘And yes, I know which is which.’

‘So do I – it’s alright,’ Frankie said, tiring of the game.

Darac walked through into the lounge, a large L-shaped space flooded with light.

‘The curtains are all open in here,’ he called out.

‘The bathroom’s clear. You know, Agnès is going to go up the wall when she hears about this.’

‘I wasn’t planning on telling her. There’s nothing in the lounge’

Darac craned his neck into the kitchen as he heard Frankie open the first of the bedroom doors.

‘Because you’ve made me paranoid, I’m going to try the closets.’

‘Okay. Kitchen looks normal.’

He stepped back into the lounge and walked through it into the dining room. Sitting on a sideboard was a collection of photos, a record of Agnès and Vincent’s respective rises through the ranks. One, a twin of a shot in Agnès’s office, showed a young Vincent standing in front of his locker at the Caserne, a senior officer presenting him with his certificate of promotion and dress uniform. Thirty-plus years on, a companion shot replicated the moment with Agnès centre stage. But pride of place was given to a shot of the two Dantier commissaires taken together. The look on both their faces was touching; apples of each other’s eyes.

Darac heard a sound behind him. He turned. It was Frankie, her olive complexion an ashen mask.

‘Her bedroom,’ she said, all the silk stripped from her voice.

In the two seconds it took Darac to reach the doorway, a horror show of images flashed across his brain. He’d seen headless bodies, burned bodies, bullet-riddled, stabbed and strangled bodies. But with the exception of his mother, who had died when he was just twelve, Darac had never seen the dead body of anyone he was close to. But there wasn’t time to steel himself. He rushed in.

There was no corpse on the bed, on the floor, anywhere. And then he saw it. A sheet of A4 paper was lying on the pillow. After almost fifteen years in the police, Darac’s instinct was still to pick it up. He stopped himself in time. The message, formed in cut-out newsprint, read:

* * *

The crime scene was a hive of activity, and that was the only thing about it that felt normal. In the bedroom, the senior forensic investigator, Raul Ormans peered at the message and shook his large, patrician head.

‘I should have stayed on leave.’

Bonbon Busquet’s foxy face was all pinch points and pain.

‘It’s tricky, R.O.?’

‘Tricky?’ The word emerged with all the subtlety of a sonic boom. ‘Unless we get very lucky, this message is not going to tell us anything. Anything of significance, anyway.’

‘But you’ve extracted DNA from stamps stuck to envelopes… you’ve lifted clean fingerprints off paper… you’ve traced rare inks, esoteric newspaper fonts – all kinds of strange things.’

‘Strange is easy. It’s mundane that’s difficult.’ He pointed a thick forefinger at the newsprint. ‘I’m pretty sure they cut this from
Nice-Matin
, but even if we prove that, what good would it do us? The paper’s on every stand in the city. And beyond.’ He transferred the page to a bag and sealed it with a conclusive pull on the zip. ‘There’s no envelope here, ergo no stamp. Further, the glue used to gum down the words, I think, is from a stick you could buy anywhere. So unless the people who did this drooled invisibly on the paper, there’ll be no spit to extract DNA from. Prints? I can run more sophisticated tests for them in the lab but I’m not hopeful.’

‘The consensus was that these fucking Sons and Daughters were more or less harmless,’ Bonbon said. ‘Possibly even kids.’

‘I don’t know anything about this group or even if they really exist…’

A voice rang out in the doorway.

‘They’re in there, monsieur.’

Jules Frènes, the public prosecutor, bustled into the room. In his all-in-one crime-scene overalls, he looked like a bad-tempered baby.

‘Busquet. Ormans. Where’s Darac?’

‘Down in the parking garage, monsieur.’

Frènes grunted.

‘The message?’

Ormans laid it out on the bed. Frènes peered at it, shaking his head.

‘A “non-credible” threat – that’s what they said it was. They were certain. Certain!’ He straightened, wagging an accusing finger at the air around him. ‘Commandant Lanvalle will have something to say about this, no doubt. And I will have something to say to him.’

A uniform craned his neck around the doorframe.

‘Monsieur Frènes? The examining magistrate, Monsieur Reboux is here.’

‘Ah.’

* * *

In the reverberant space of the garage, radios were crackling on and off, the synaptic firings of the mind of the investigation. One forensic team had been detailed to comb the area in metre squares while another had carried out a preliminary exam of Agnès’s Citroën. A technician reported the findings to Darac as a low loader carried the car away for further tests. Preceded by a couple of official vehicles, the procession had the feel of a funeral cortège.

‘There’s nothing so far, Captain,’ the technician said. ‘But Commissaire Dantier could have been abducted anywhere.’

‘We had to start somewhere.’ Darac’s face was tight as a fist. ‘Her car was here so it looks as if she got home last night. And the note was on her bed.’

‘Right, but it’s unlikely she’s still on the premises.’

Darac’s face tightened still further.

‘So you want to overlook that possibility, do you?’

The technician shook his head.

‘No sir.’

‘Good. Where’s the dog handler got to?’

‘He’ll be here shortly. I have to go, Captain.’

‘Get back to me if you learn anything.’

Darac glanced at his watch. It was now almost half an hour since he’d dispatched Granot and a six-strong team to Avenue Celestine, a quiet cul-de-sac on the slopes of Mont Boron. If Vincent Dantier was at home, he still wasn’t answering his phone. Nor was he answering his mobile.

Flaco appeared, accompanied by a man whose short, greased-back hair and wide-eyed expressionless face gave him the look of an antique ventriloquist’s dummy.

‘Captain – this is La Marguerite’s security chief, Monsieur Alphonse Potrain.’

‘If anything has happened to the lady, Captain, I can assure you it didn’t happen because my system or one of my team was—’

‘Be quiet and listen.’ Darac pointed to Lartigue. ‘See that officer? The one drawing a sketch map of the garage?’

Potrain complied immediately as if his will was something out of his personal control.

‘This officer…’ He indicated Flaco. ‘…will escort you to him. You will then take him on a tour of your on-site CCTV setup. Immediately afterwards, you will give him unrestricted access to your control room. Understood?’

‘How dare you talk to me in that manner?’ Potrain’s voice was an indignant bleat, his face an unreadable mask. ‘I’m going to write to your superior… uh… I mean I’m going to…’

To stay his temper, Darac stood very still.

‘Flaco?’

As she led the man away, Darac’s mobile rang. His stomach tightened a little.

‘Granot? Go ahead.’

‘The bastards have got Vincent. Left the same note as yours but for “hers” read “his”.’

‘Shit.’

‘I would’ve rung a couple of minutes ago but we were buttonholed by a neighbour, an old boy by the name of Eric Taglier. Interesting stuff. It seems he calls on Vincent most Friday evenings. The pair are in the habit of toddling down to the old port, having a couple of slow cognacs and then taking a taxi back. But when Taglier got to the house last night, there was no answer and, this is the interesting part, there was a long-wheelbase Mercedes panel van parked in Vincent’s drive. White, unmarked. Taglier could think of no reason why it would be there. Especially as it seemed to be all quiet within and no one answered the door.

It was no more than a crumb of encouragement but Darac eyed it hungrily.

‘This could be good, Granot. What time was that? Did he notice?’

‘Precisely 8.56. Taglier – may Mary Mother of Jesus keep him – looked at his watch.’

‘Fantastic. I don’t suppose he also—’

‘He didn’t take in the registration number. But he said he would have noticed if it had been a foreign plate, though.’

‘Did he notice anything else about the van? Was it new, old, pristine, battered?’

‘It was in good condition and no more than a couple of years old, he thought. One detail: the owner’s manual was sitting on the passenger seat – as if the driver had had to refer to it.’

‘Open or closed?’

‘Open, pages down. Like a tent, he said. Obviously, the driver had been consulting it.’

‘Suggests the vehicle was new to them. That could help us hugely.’

‘Check recent sales, you mean? Not necessarily the case. You might also need the manual the first time you have to replace a light bulb or something. The guy might have owned it for a couple of years.’

‘Yes, point taken. Anyone else up there likely to have seen the van? We need to fly as good a description as we can, as soon as possible.’

‘Avenue Celestine is a cul-de-sac of just fifteen houses, right? I’ve split my guys into pairs and they’re already talking to anyone who’s at home. It won’t take them long.’

‘Good.’ Darac pictured the sparse road layout on the wooded hill that was Mont Boron. ‘What’s the likely access and egress from Avenue Celestine? For a van, I mean.’

‘It had to come off Boulevard Carnot. No one would pay any attention to a white van on a busy road like that but from Carnot to Vincent’s place there are only two… no, three possible routes. Quiet residential roads. We need to widen the search on the ground.’

‘Agreed, and let’s hope someone noted the registration or got a good look at the driver. But we can’t rely on that. I hate to say it, but I think we do need to go down the provenance route, even if the van
is
two years old. And we’d better add on another two for safety.’

‘Check Mercedes long-wheelbase van sales for four whole years? In just over twenty-four hours?’

‘This
is
the age of the phone. But you’re right. It’s clutching at straws.’

‘Straws? It’s a hell of a long shot, chief. Dealers, garages, private sales… And then there’s the van-hire market.’

‘Hire companies tend to plaster ads all over their vans, though.’

‘It could have been re-sprayed. We need to include rentals.’

‘And we should check out garaging, lock-ups and so on.’

‘Ai, ai, ai.’

‘We’ve traced other things with less to go on, you know.’

‘It’s the deadline that worries me. Just over twenty-four hours? It’s nothing.’

‘So let’s make the most of the time we have. I think we should call just local outlets to begin with. If we don’t come up with anything, we’ll gradually cast the net wider.’ He consulted the duty rosta in his head. ‘Flaco’s co-ordinated phone searches before. I’ll brief her in a minute. She and Perand can head-up the teams.’

‘Perand? Are you sure?’

‘She’ll keep him on track, don’t worry. Look, I’ve got a slog squad going door to door here. I’ll update them about the van, circulate the description such as it is and get more people sent over to you. They can doorstep lower down the hill.’

‘Fine.’

‘Then I’ll ring Charvet and ask him to start drafting in people for the phone-athon.’

‘I’ll get back to you the minute I have anything more.’

Darac sent out Granot’s update as an open radio message and then made two calls. As he rang off, the dog handler arrived.

‘Did you copy that message, Roulet?’

‘I did, Captain. Sounds like a good break with the van.

Still want us to go ahead?’

‘Absolutely. Have you done the scent control yet?’

‘Yes, from a pair of Madame’s shoes.’

‘Right. As you can see, some of the car boots are open. They belong to the owners we’ve been able to find. But that leaves quite a few still locked. I can’t unlock the electronic ones. Erica Lamarthe
could
do that and she is on her way. But as speed was of the essence I sent for you as well. It’s a belt and braces approach, and probably a wild goose chase, especially now we know about the van, but I don’t care. Alright?’

‘I know how important it is to find the boss, Captain. Just a word of caution. Félix can detect the scent of a live or dead body through the metal of a closed car boot. And he can detect whether there has been a body in such a place or even an object that belongs to the person we’re looking for. But he can’t if that body or object is or was sealed away in some container. That goes for drugs, explosives – anything.’

Darac ran a hand through his hair.

‘So the search can be conclusive but only one way.’

‘Exactly. If we find something, we find it. If we don’t, you will still have to open the remaining boots.’