Jacquot and the Waterman (32 page)

Carnot watched her pick herself up, patches of pale sand stuck to her elbows, her belly, the front of her long brown thighs, cream pools against brown skin. He knew exactly what he'd like to do to Alice, down there on the beach, all alone. Warm water, a hose, let the jet trickle across those sandy places, washing the sand away, revealing the warm, tanned skin beneath . . .

In his pocket, he heard his mobile ring. Carnot put down his coffee and paper, took off his sunglasses and flipped open his phone. He checked the name. This was one call he'd answer. It was Raissac. His main man.

As he listened, and spoke, Carnot kept his eyes firmly fixed on Alice.

'Doisneau, yes . . . That's right. . . It's the same one, I'm certain. Just got out of Baumettes. They've got him on work parole . . . Molineux's. In the kitchen . . . Usually nights . . . That's all I got. He's not easy to track, I can tell you . . . Yes, yes. He knows something's up, but he can't get out of Molineux's. That's where you'll find
him ... No
problem, get Coupchoux to call me. Pleasure. Any time . . .'

Carnot slid his phone back in his pocket. Though he'd had his eye on court throughout the conversation, it hadn't registered that the game was over, that the girls had left the net.

Now for the best part.

Leaving his newspaper and empty coffee cup on the seat beside him, Carnot strolled along the bleacher, down the steps and out onto the sand, tan loafers sinking beneath him. Ahead of him, the six girls were showering, all in a line, the water pouring down their bodies, streaming through their hair. He slipped his sunglasses back on. Jesus, what a sight. And Alice, out on the end, twisting her hips this way and that, getting the water to slide and spatter down the back of her thighs, glistening on her skin, washing away the sand. What he wouldn't give . . .

It wouldn't have been the first time Carnot had scored on the beach.

An address. Guilbert Monel had given them an address. On the drive back to Marseilles from the Monel home in Hyeres, Jacquot wondered what they might find there. A lead, a clue, something to follow up, something to point the way ahead?

It was Jacquot who'd asked if Monel knew where his daughter lived.

Dragging the back of his hand across his eyes, Monel had opened a drawer in the table, pulled out an envelope and handed it over. Inside, Jacquot could make out what looked like a greetings card, but printed on the back where the envelope had been sealed was a handwritten address, as though Vicki had wanted her father to know where she was.

Jacquot turned the envelope, but couldn't make out the postmark. 'When did you receive this?' he asked.

'Christmas, a few days before.'

'This year?'

Monel nodded.

'She send you a card every year?' This, from Gastal at the window.

Monel shook his head, sniffed.

Jacquot wondered whether the man was sad that he hadn't made an effort to visit his daughter, to see her, to put a future in place. But it was too late now.

Thanking him, handing back the Christmas card, Jacquot got to his feet and Monel had shown them out.

At the door, Jacquot asked gently about Vicki's body. What arrangements would he like to make?

'Can she be sent here? To be buried?' Monel had asked after a moment. 'It would be nice
to ...
to have her close again.'

'I'll see to it,' said Jacquot and they shook hands.

An hour later, in Marseilles's first
arrondissement,
Jacquot and Gastal drew up outside a nineteenth-century block of apartments on Cours Lieutaud. The building had a new coat of
crépi
on its walls, freshly painted shutters on each of its five floors and new tiles and lead edgings on its roof. The front door had been painted a deep lacquered black and the entryphone panel with its nine buttons was a brightly polished plate of brass. It was a good address, on the border of Noaille and Thiers, with a rent, Jacquot reckoned, of easily twelve thousand francs a month. A lot more than he paid for his place on Les Moulins. He wondered too at the name, V. Monel, so clearly printed in the space beside the topmost bell. The place she'd lived. The place they'd been searching for. Here for all to see.

Without wasting any time, knowing that there'd be no reply from the top floor, Jacquot pressed for the concierge.

A woman's voice came over the intercom and Jacquot explained their business. A minute later, Madame Regine Piganiol swung open the door and ushered them in with a grave, disbelieving look on her face, knitting in one hand and a key in the other.

'Missing, you say? Oh dear me, no. And so young. Oh dear, oh dear. . Followed by much tut-tutting and whatever-nexts as she led them to the stairs. 'We would take the lift if it worked, Messieurs. They were supposed to be here yesterday, but you know how it
is ... ?'

Though she was around the same age, Jacquot guessed, as the Widow Foraque, Madame Piganiol was altogether more presentable, like the building she presided over. Carrying herself with a straight back and an imperious look, she wore her grey hair in a tight, tidy bun, a string of amber beads around her neck and a simple cotton shift that suggested a figure that Madame Foraque had lost years before, even if she'd ever had it. As she climbed the stairs ahead of them, answering their questions as she went, Jacquot also noted that Madame Piganiol wore no stockings, her feet shod in backless Moroccan slippers, her calves slim and gently tanned, with only a slight webbing of tiny blue veins around the ankles. Jacquot suspected she still went swimming, early morning before the crowds, maybe at Plage Catalans which was the nearest beach to the city centre.

The questions began as they climbed the first flight, their footfalls softened by a strip of plush red carpet running down the centre of the stairs, held in place by brightly polished stair rods.

"When did you last see Mademoiselle Monel?' Jacquot began.

'Ooh now. Last week. No, the week before.' Madame

Piganiol started shaking her head. 'Something like that.'

'You see her every day?'

'Now and then, you know. Nothing regular.'

'And did Mademoiselle Monel have a job?' Jacquot continued.

'A job? Not that I know of. Her family had money, she said. One of those. The lucky ones, eh?'

Jacquot nodded, thinking of the tiny terrace house in Hyeres. 'And how long has she lived here?' he asked.

Over her shoulder, Madame Piganiol told them a little over a year, last April, March maybe, she'd check to make sure.

'A good tenant?'

'Good as gold. Never a sound. Paid three months in advance when she moved in and after that always ahead of time. Not too many like her, I can tell you. I'll miss her. Car crash, you said?'

Jacquot smiled. The body might be better than Madame Foraque's, but the brain wasn't half as sharp.

'Murdered, I'm afraid,' he replied.

'So you said,' replied Madame Piganiol. 'So you said.'

'Many friends?' asked Gastal as they climbed on, tapping Jacquot on the sleeve and rolling his eyes.

Madame Piganiol stopped midway up the third flight, not to catch her breath, Jacquot noted, but to give Gastal's question some thought.

'Men friends? Or girlfriends?'

'Both, I guess,' managed Gastal, breathing hard, three steps below her.

She turned and carried on climbing. 'A couple of girlfriends who came regularly - pretty girls. I'd see them now and then. Always brought wine with them. Clinkety-clank, clinkety-clank they'd go, swinging the bags. I always thought it's a wonder the bottles didn't break. You can imagine. The mess on the stairs. And new carpet. Or in the lift. Ooh-la-la!'

'And men?'

Without looking back, Madame Piganiol shook her head. 'Lots of them. She liked a good time, you ask me. But respectable types, you know. Well-dressed. Always very courteous if we met in the hall.'

'Age?' asked Gastal.

'Like I said, respectable types. Professionals. Nice cars, nice suits.'

'Young? Middle-aged? Old?' asked Gastal with more eye-rolling.

'Middle-aged, I'd say. She didn't seem much bothered with the younger ones.'

'Anyone in particular?' asked Jacquot, as they started up the last flight.

'Not as you could say. No one, you know, regular-like.' Madame Piganiol sighed fondly. 'Playing the field, she was, taking her time, like. And no bad thing at that.'

When they reached the top landing the red carpet stopped at the last stair and Madame Piganiol's slippers slapped across the stone floor as she headed for Vicki's door. On each of the landings below there had been two doors, two apartments; here, under the roof, there was only the one.

'So, here we are,' she announced, fitting the key in the lock and opening up.
'Voila.'

The two men made to step past her.

'Should I wait?' she continued, flourishing her knitting, as though she'd be quite happy to sit there in Vicki Monel's

apartment while they carried out their search.

'No need,' said Gastal, taking the key. 'We'll bring this down to you when we've finished. And any questions we might have . . . ?'

'Of course, of course, Monsieur. Just knock at my door on your way out. I'm here till three - when I go for my swim.'

Jacquot and Gastal watched her cross the landing and start down the stairs, then entered Vicla's apartment. Closing the door behind them, they snapped on the rubber gloves they'd brought from the car.

The apartment was large, about the same floor space as two apartments on the landings below. But the ceilings here were much lower and the outside walls set at a steep pitch, which gave the place a cramped, nest-like feel. There were five rooms in all - a sitting room with two windows looking over a narrow balcony onto the Cours Lieutaud, two bedrooms at back and front, with a bathroom and kitchen between. Whenever they'd done the make-over, Jacquot decided, the builders hadn't scrimped with the attic. The walls were roughly plastered in
faux
rustic style, the original floorboards, where they showed, had been carefully reset and sanded down, the slanting roof beams treated to a bright lime wash and the window frames were the insulated kind that kept out the sound of traffic. Not that you'd have the windows closed in the summer. So far as Jacquot could see, despite the finish and attention to detail - the units in the kitchen and bathroom, the built-in bedroom wardrobes, the alcoved shelving and subtle downlighting - there was no air-conditioning. The rooms felt close and stuffy, warmed by the sun beating down on the roof tiles overhead, the still, stagnant air laced with the gently rotten fragrance of an unemptied kitchen bin and decaying flowers. And beneath it, like a distant memory, the scent of a woman. Chanel, Coco - like Boni's, thought Jacquot with a wince.