Impure Blood (41 page)

‘You can. Difficult to feel much sympathy for him, though. The biter got himself bitten, that’s all.’ Interpreting a lack of dissenting voices as encouragement, he felt emboldened to continue. ‘And we’re punching the air because little Corinne fell through the cracks in the system and was saved. But look at how she turned out. The woman’s a witch.’ He looked meaningfully at Frankie. ‘And that’s despite being brought up in an obviously – what’s the term? – “supportive family environment”.’

‘But look at what had happened to her before then.’

‘Probably doesn’t remember a thing about it.’

Frankie skewered Perand with a look.

‘So would you be happier if she had died?’

‘No.’ He avoided her eyes. ‘But maybe we wouldn’t be looking for the boss now if… that had happened.’

‘We’ll have to debate nature–nurture some other time.’ Darac didn’t look up from his file. ‘Connections, leads – that’s what we’re looking for.’

‘I don’t believe…’ Flaco threw down her pen. ‘This…’ She stared at the file in front of her as if it was evil. ‘On the morning of the day of their arrests, Elena Djourescu, who was seven months pregnant, gave birth in their apartment. Unsurprisingly, the baby was stillborn. Just a few hours later, after
that
experience and in
that
weakened condition, she was arrested. And with her other child and her husband, she was shipped off…’ Her eyes seething with the injustice of it, she shook her head. ‘Yes, I can see the parents hacking holes in the train carriage to try and save the one child they still had. Hacking holes with their bare hands, if necessary.’

Frankie was over her tears.

‘I would have,’ she said, setting her jaw as she stared at the screen.

Punctuated by phone calls, cross-checks and updates, five further minutes of digging went by. Ten minutes. Fifteen. And then several things happened at once.

Granot’s watch was showing 12.17 as he gathered the stack of papers he’d been working on and set it aside. Spotting that Darac was on what seemed like a significant call, he decided to favour the others with his conclusion.

‘Not good news.’ Granot’s take on
sotto voce
was something all his own. ‘Vincent is the only officer or member of the admin staff working at the Caserne in ’43 who is still alive. There’s no one we can talk to about the rising star who was Adam Djourescu.’

Perand shrugged.

‘From all those years ago? It was always going to be a waste of time.’

Granot shared a look with Armani. The boy was seriously getting on their nerves.

‘Excellent. Ring me back when she gets in, will you, monsieur? Thank you.’ Darac hung up and gave the air a decent right uppercut. ‘There may be no one left who was
here
but there is somebody still around who knew Djourescu. A Madame Albertine Laseige lived in the same apartment block at the time of the family’s arrest. Lives over by Musée Chéret, now. That was the building’s concierge I was talking to.’

Perand had further wisdom to impart.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up just because the old dear’s out somewhere, chief. My grandmother’s almost never in and she thinks De Gaulle’s still president.’

‘Thanks, Perand,’ Darac said, making his way over to Frankie’s desk. ‘I would never have thought of asking the concierge about her fitness to talk to us.’

‘Hey, kid?’ Armani’s smile was as sweet as gelato. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

Darac parked his backside on Frankie’s desk.

‘When I get the call, it would be a great help if you came too.’

‘I’d like to but…’ She indicated the pile of material still in front of her. ‘Who’ll do this?’

‘Me, if you like.’ Perand shrugged, nonchalantly. ‘I’ve nearly finished my lot.’

‘Uh… Okay. Thank you.’

‘Guys? This report’s quite something.’

All eyes turned to Bonbon. His scrawny frame was arrayed with such spectacular awkwardness in his chair, it was as if he had crash-landed on it from above. But that was the way he sat when he was wrapped up in something. Righting himself, he speed-read the last couple of sentences, gave the pages a flick with the back of his hand and tossed them on to the desk.

‘So – thanks to what we’ve learned about Corinne Delage, we’ve all been suspecting that it was Vincent Dantier who arrested Adam Djourescu on that October day. Right? It turns out
not
to be the case. A Gestapo unit arrested him and his family.’

‘See there.’ Granot essayed a sage nod. ‘
Not
Vincent. Christ, we’re so quick to—’

‘Just a minute, just a minute… Yes it was the Gestapo but they were acting on a tip-off. The informant was identified neither by name nor initials – as they often seem to have been – or a Nazi hunter may well have found him or her years ago. Instead, there’s an oblique reference to the number 287.’ Bonbon’s tawny colouring turned a couple of shades redder. ‘Two Eight Seven. Ring any bells?’

‘How about his warrant-card number?’ Repeating 287 like a mantra, Frankie scanned the data on the screen. In vain. ‘Nix that.’

Darac had several suggestions.

‘Car registration? House number at the time? Marriage certificate…’

‘None of the above.’ Bonbon got to his feet. ‘Just nipping to Agnès’s office. Back in a second.’

No one spoke. After some moments, Perand turned to Granot.

‘So what do you think now? Bonbon must be on to something.’

‘What do I think? What I think, son, is that if you turn out to be one tenth as good an officer as Vincent Dantier…’

Bonbon returned brandishing a framed photograph.

‘This is not a documented image, just a personal snap and therefore untraceable.’ He held it up. ‘I must have seen it a thousand times.’

‘We all have,’ Darac said, studying it. A companion to the photograph he’d found in Agnès’s dining room, it showed a young, shirt-sleeved Vincent shaking hands with a superior who was handing him his newly won sergeant’s uniform. ‘I’m still none the wiser.’

But then he saw it. Behind Vincent, the number on his open locker door was just legible.

‘Two eight seven…’ Granot shook his head in disbelief. ‘Oh no.’

Armani voiced what most of the group was thinking.

‘The bastard
did
sell his mate down the river. The whole fucking family, in fact. How could the father of Agnès D. have done that?’

Darac’s phone rang.

‘Madame has returned?’ He stood, giving Frankie the nod. ‘We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’ He hung up. ‘Ready?’

Frankie picked up her bag.

‘We’ll update you the minute we know anything.’

As they signed out at the desk, Officer Charvet’s eyes told them all they needed to know about the way he was feeling.

‘There’s some progress.’

‘You’ll get there.’ The look he gave them both was sincere. But it conveyed more hope than certainty. ‘I know you will.’

Darac nodded. Hope was catching, it seemed.

‘We need copies of the flyers of Corinne Delage and the bearded man.’

‘I’ve got some under here.’

‘Just one of each. And could you cut off the bottoms? We don’t want the text.’

Frankie glanced at the doctored Delage flyer as they made for the door.

‘She’s bitter and twisted, all right. But there’s no wonder, is there? What does Perand expect?’ She turned to Astrid’s drawing of the bearded man. ‘I haven’t actually seen this yet… Wow. What a talented girl. Assuming it’s a good likeness, of course.’

Bzzzzzzzut!

Despite the heat, Darac put his arm around Frankie’s shoulder as they took the steps down.

‘I’m sorry you had to go through all that, Frankie.’

‘It was tough for us all. And you? How are you coping?’

‘Same as everyone else, I guess. Tired. Pumped up. Desperate.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

She gave him a look of such tender concern, it gave him an odd sensation in his stomach.

‘Ah. Ask me about Angeline after.’

‘After what?’

‘After we’ve saved Agnès.’

Twenty-five kilometres away in Monaco, all was set for day two of the Tour. The hard-nosed hilarity of the promo caravan was already on the road. Back at the start, the team buses had inched their way through the crowds. Bikes, rigid and precise as surgical instruments, had been washed, geared up and fine-tuned. The riders, bellows-chested, skinny-armed, had donned their suits of lurid Lycra and warmed up. Team bosses, the
directeurs sportifs
, had issued their final instructions for the day. The riders had then signed in, formed up, heard but not listened to the dignitaries’ speeches, and were all ready to roll out on the first long stage of the race.

Behind them was a motorised armada of team cars, press, TV, neutral service, doctors and many others – hundreds of vehicles in total. On the start line itself was the car of the race director. Ahead of that, the forty-five-strong squadron of the Garde Républicaine was preparing to head off along the route.

The whole world was watching.

Astride their machines in the centre of the front row were Yves Dauresse, David Jarret and the blue-eyed boy, Roger Lascaux – the three musketeers of the unit. That was how they saw themselves: a band of brothers in shirt-sleeved uniforms and shades. Or rather, that was how two of them saw themselves. The third had a very different perspective on things.

Dauresse gave his throttle a tweak.

‘So today’s the day we were supposed to get blown up, yes?’

Jarret seemed more tense than usual.

‘You did that one yesterday. Twice.’

‘Did I? Must be getting old. What do you reckon, Lascaux?’

The voice of the squadron commander broke in their earpieces.

‘First positions, gentlemen. Over.’

As clutches were let out, 45,000 ccs of power purred gently forward.

‘What was that, Dauresse?’

‘I said, do you think I’m getting old?’

‘You?’ Lascaux adjusted his shades. ‘You’re never going to get old.’

Madame Albertine Laseige opened the door to the limit of its chain.

‘Bonjour, madame. Captains Darac and Lejeune of the Police Judiciaire.’ Wearing reassuring smiles, they held up their IDs. ‘May we come in?’

Like a tortoise sticking its head out of its shell, Madame Laseige slowly craned her neck into the crack. With damp but alert eyes, she peered at their photos and then at them.

‘I’ve been expecting you.’ The old woman’s voice was surprisingly strong. ‘The concierge mentioned you had called.’ She opened the door and, leaving Darac to close it, walked in a rocking motion back into the apartment. The slightly burnt smell of stove-top coffee wafted in from the kitchen as they followed her into a greenhouse-hot sitting room.

Frankie slipped off her jacket.

‘Don’t be alarmed, madame. We’re not the bearers of bad news.’

‘Bad news for someone, I imagine. Or why would you be here? But there will be time for that later. Please – sit.’ The old lady indicated a deep-cushioned sofa covered in a floral chintz print. ‘You can drape your jackets over the end, if you wish. The temperature in here is fit only for reptiles and old ladies.’ She brought her hands together decorously. ‘But you’ll take coffee and gâteau?’

The offer came across more as a command but Darac remained standing.

‘Under normal circumstances, we would be delighted…’

‘And these are not normal circumstances?’

‘I’m afraid they’re not,’ Frankie said, sitting. ‘But we’d love to take coffee and gâteau with you, madame. Thank you.’

Darac gave her a look before turning to Madame Laseige.

‘Then may I help you in the kitchen?’

‘No, no. I may be ninety years old, Captain Paul Darac of the Brigade Criminelle – you see, I did read yours and Francine’s identity cards – but I am quite capable of providing refreshment in my own apartment. Thank you.’

Having laid down her marker, Madame Laseige tottered into the kitchen.

Frankie smiled.

‘She might have clammed up completely if we’d tried to rush her.’

‘Coffee.’ Darac sighed. ‘And cake.’

‘You run on coffee. And be grateful for the cake, it will probably be our lunch.’

In the kitchen, the mocha pot began to spit and bubble, allowing the pair to speak freely. As they waited, they took in the photographs on Madame Laseige’s sideboard, snapshots of another life: the lithe, cheeky-faced child; the shiny young bride full of hope and promise; the proud mother hen with her chicks.

Frankie indicated a collage of school photos.

‘She was a schoolmistress, look.’

‘She still is.’

‘If I live to be ninety, I hope my mind is as sharp as hers. Behave.’

All went quiet in the kitchen. Darac was on the point of investigating further when Madame waddled in carrying a tray containing two small espressos and two large slices of
gâteau mocha.

‘You were a teacher, madame?’ Darac said, behaving.

‘Yes, I put in over thirty-five years at the chalk face. Happy days. Most of them.’

‘Beautiful wedding photograph, too.’ Frankie rose to help her. ‘Some time in the forties?’

‘Easier if I do it myself. No, it’s 1938. I was nineteen, Albert twenty-one.’ As if she were out of practice, she essayed a smile. ‘Yes, Albert and Albertine, I’m afraid. Peas in a pod.’ She set down the tray and retired to a straight-backed chair facing them. ‘You’ll find cake forks and serviettes in the cupboard beneath.’

‘1938?’ Frankie found them. ‘Actually, it’s an event that occurred just a few years later that has occasioned our visit today. Are you not joining us, madame?’

‘No, no – gâteau is for guests only and I’ve referred to the coffee pot once this morning already – before my constitutional. The early forties? What possible interest could there be in that for the police now?’

Darac downed his coffee in one and fished the flyers out of his jacket pocket.

‘So no one has written or phoned or been to see you recently to talk about that time?’

‘No.’

‘Not this young man, for example?’ He rose and handed her Astrid’s drawing. ‘He’s in his late twenties, we think.’

She looked at the drawing most carefully. And then shook her head.