Jacquot and the Waterman (36 page)

At the dressing table Anais adjusted the lapels and sprayed her wrists with scent, raking them across her throat, neck and between her breasts.

A minute or two still to go.

For the first time, she admitted to herself that she was nervous. This was not a man to fool with. While she'd been his mistress she'd seen and heard enough to know that he had a nasty little temper. But so what? She'd done it before and it had worked, and with bigger fish than him. So why, she reasoned, shouldn't it work again?

Except, of course, these were higher stakes.

This time she really was pregnant.

Anais shook her head crossly. Don't be sentimental. Right now she had to be strong.

Just take the money. A reasonable amount - something he could easily manage, but which she would take years to earn. Then run. Disappear. London, perhaps. Maybe Geneva. No, no, she thought. Too cold.

She'd started thinking about going home to Martinique when the door bell sounded.

Her lover.

Paul Basquet.

By the time Jacquot retrieved his car from the underground car park it was a little after six and, as usual, he was thinking of something to do rather than go home to Moulins.

For the last three nights he'd half-expected - maybe half-hoped was more accurate - to open the door of his apartment and find Boni there, hanging her clothes in the wardrobe, putting the curtains back up; contrite, apologetic, wanting to start again. Smiling at him the way she used to. Reaching for the zip on her skirt, or just wriggling it up around her hips. But every night the apartment was just as he'd left it - cool, empty, reproachful. Which was why, save for Madame Foraque's rabbit on his return from Salon-le-Vitry, he'd eaten out. It looked like he'd be doing the same again this evening.

Not that he hadn't had a chance to do something about it. He'd been about to leave the office when Isabelle Cassier knocked at his door with a report on the Internet company she'd been tracking down, the company that had bought and displayed Vicki Monel's photos. According to their records, she told Jacquot, they'd secured the last set of images a month earlier, from an agent in Paris. 'So I chased him up and got him to give me the photographers name. Some guy in Toulon,' said Isabelle, looping a curl of black hair behind her ear. 'And the names of the models she . . . appeared with. Maybe one of them . . . ?'

Jacquot had been impressed, and had told her so.

She'd smiled, and then, right out of the blue, suggested a drink, said in such a way - an eyebrow lifting, a smile on her lips, a soft brushing of the file against her hip - that there could be no mistaking her intent, that this was more than a drink-with-a-colleague-after-work sort of situation.

For a moment Jacquot hadn't quite known how to respond. She was a good kid, Isabelle, hard-working, conscientious, and pretty in a cheeky, gamine sort of way. It was also clear that she had some nerve . . . coming on to him like that. Her boss. And though he couldn't be certain, Jacquot had a feeling this wasn't the first time she'd tried something, made a play; though nothing quite so forward, so . . . unambiguous.

Not wanting to offend her, or reprimand her, Jacquot had taken the easy way out, telling her that he couldn't manage it, had someone to see. But thanks all the same. Maybe another time. As though he'd completely missed her clear intent.

She'd taken it well: 'Sure, no problem,' she'd said, as though she'd been expecting it. But Isabelle Cassier wasn't so easily put off. When she got to his door she'd turned, raised the corner of the file to her lips and given him another mischievous little smile that said, 'I know you'll crack one of these days.' And then she was gone.

Now, ten minutes later, coming up the ramp from the underground car park, Jacquot rather wished he'd taken her up on the invitation. It would have been good to have the company, someone like Isabelle to pass the time with, and as he joined the evening traffic on rue de L'Evêché he had little trouble persuading himself that he'd never have allowed it to go too far. Just a couple of drinks. Maybe supper somewhere. What was wrong with that? Better than going back to an empty apartment. And if it had gotten difficult, why, he'd just show her the ring, the wide silver band on his wedding finger. To deter her, let her down lightly. The ring Boni had given him. Not a real wedding ring, but a token, she'd said. Of her love. She'd slipped it onto his finger just a month after they'd met and he still wore it, hadn't thought to take it off.

Turning out of Le Panier towards the Vieux Port, Jacquot headed back to town, away from the apartment on Moulins. Rue Haxo, he decided. Dinner at La Coupole, followed by a few drinks at Gallante to finish him off. Then, when the focus started going and the tiredness kicked in, he could safely head back home, alone, to bed, and deep, blackout sleep.

Which was when Jacquot saw the sign, screwed onto the inside column of a doorway on rue St-Ferreol, a small glass panel with the words
Allez-Allez Gym
painted in racy italics across its surface. He tried to place the name. Where had he seen it? What was the connection? Why had it caught his attention? It was like the building site earlier that afternoon. The contractors' billboards fixed to the perimeter fence.

Something . .. something .. .

Then he had it.

The very same name on the membership renewal form on the table in Vicki Monel's apartment.

Merde.

Two blocks further on, Jacquot found a parking space in a side street off St-Ferreol and went back to investigate. At first, coming at it the other way, Jacquot couldn't see the doorway or the sign. But then he recognised the cafe-bar on the other side of the road and remembered that it was directly opposite the gym.

And there it was. The glass plate. Allez-Allez Gym. And inside, a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor.

A couple of girls, tote bags over their shoulders, passed him in the doorway. One of them gave him an odd look as he made room for them, as though he shouldn't have been there, loitering. Then he realised why. In small letters beneath the
horaire,
the times when the gym was open, were the words
Femmes Seulement.

By the time Jacquot reached the first floor, the two girls were signing in at a reception desk. It gave him a moment to get his bearings, look around - potted palms in every corner, a square of sofas, low tables set with fashion and fitness magazines, the walls hung with blurred, blown-up photos of women athletes arching their bodies over bars, breasting tapes, slicing goggled and capped through Olympic pools - and, overlaying it all, the warm, sinuous scent of liniment and perfume, steam and bodies.

Jacquot was breathing in this scent when the two girls in front of him stepped away from the desk and disappeared through a side door. The receptionist looked up and smiled at him. She was young, pretty, healthily tanned and wore a tight T-shirt with the club's name branded across the front.

'Can I help you, Monsieur?'

He showed her his identification and told her that he hoped so.

The smile disappeared. She frowned, grew serious. 'Of course, anything I can do.'

'You have a member here . . . the name of Monel?'

The girl turned to her computer and tapped in the letters.

'Monel. . . Monel. . . Yes. Here. Victorine Monel.'

'How long has she been a member?'

The girl consulted the screen. 'Two years. She takes . . . Steps, aerobics and yoga.' She looked back at him, a little concerned now. 'I hope there's nothing wrong . . .'

Jacquot shook his head. No, nothing wrong.

'Can you tell me when she was last here?'

The girl turned to the screen again, scrolled it down.

'The seventeenth. An evening session. Yoga.'

Jacquot nodded. And then, he couldn't say for certain how the idea came to him, he asked: 'And Grez? Joline Grez. G.R.E.Z. Is she also a member? And Ballarde. Yvonne Ballarde? With an "e"?'

The girl's fingers danced over the keyboard again, her eyes scanned the screen.
'Oui,
both ladies. Swimming and circuits. Though they have not been here in some time.'

'Thank you,' said Jacquot.

'Do you need their addresses? I have them here if you want. . .'

'No, no. That's fine.'

Fine for now, thought Jacquot as he went back down the stairs and into the street, heart hammering at his discovery. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he'd have someone in there with photos of Grez, Ballarde and Monel. The latest victim too, from Aqua-Cité. Talking to anyone who might know them. The steps teacher, the aerobics teacher, the yoga teacher, whoever monitored their circuit training and, given the girls' respective ends, thought Jacquot grimly, whoever worked in the pool - swimming instructors, cleaners. All of them. Employees. Members. The works.

A job for Gastal, thought Jacquot as he waited for a gap in the traffic and crossed the road. Something he could get his teeth into.

Which was when a woman, tugging a blue cotton mackintosh over the shoulders of a white pants suit, came out of the cafe-bar opposite the gym and almost collided with him. The two of them wrong-footed each other for a moment, exchanged appropriate smiles and apologies, and Jacquot started off again.

Then, as he turned into rue Haxo, he stopped in his tracks.