Jacquot and the Waterman (39 page)

'You mean someone did this? Someone killed her?'

Jacquot raised his shoulders, spread his hands. 'The evidence suggests

'Shit. . .' Ralph covered his mouth and nose with his fingers, as though he was about to sneeze. He took another deep breath.

'Tell me, if you please, did she leave any belongings on board?' asked Jacquot.

Ralph didn't seem to understand what Jacquot was saying.

'Is there a suitcase of hers, a bag . . . Could I see where . . . ?'

'Yes. Yes, of course,' he said, getting to his feet, still holding the photo. 'I'm sorry. Follow me.'

Jilly's cabin was in the bow of the boat, hot and airless, a low, curving, triangular space filled with a roughly cut wedge of foam mattress whose edges curled up the cabin's sloping sides. There were no sheets, just an unzipped sleeping bag and slipless pillow.

Ralph leant in through the doorway and opened a cupboard, then stepped aside to let Jacquot pass.

The cupboard was hung with wet-weather gear, a quilted jacket, jeans, and cotton trousers. Beneath these, under a pile of dirty clothes - a tangle of T-shirts, sweats, sarongs - Jacquot uncovered a black holdall, pulled it out and took it through into the main cabin, Ralph backing down the passage ahead of him to make room. Placing the holdall on the chart table, Jacquot tugged open the zip and started going through the contents: a wad of clean clothes - T-shirts, shorts, knickers, bras and long wool socks rolled into balls - nothing ironed but everything dry and neatly folded. Jacquot hauled them out and laid them on the galley table, behind which Ralph lay curled up on a strip of cushioned banquette, Jilly's photo face down in front of him.

Looking back into the holdall, Jacquot tipped it to the light and pushed his arm into the opening. From the bottom of the holdall he retrieved a roll of American dollars secured with a rubber band, a packet of batteries, a sure-shot camera and a pair of sneakers. Placing them beside the clothes, he reached back into the bag and pulled out a pen, some blank postcards and a crumpled bundle of currency-exchange receipts. Jacquot smoothed them out. The latest was dated the end of March, just before the
Anemone
set sail for Europe.

The passport that Jacquot was looking for was in a zip-up side pocket. He flipped it open. A bright, freckled face stared out from the photo, hair tied in plaits, braces - a schoolgirl. Jacquot checked the date of issue. Eight years earlier. Her birth-date was registered as 12 September 1973. Place of birth - Windsor. He flicked through the pages. A good half of the passport was filled with various immigration visas: blurred red and black stamps from Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, Guadeloupe, St Vincent, Jamaica, dating back to the States in September the previous year, ending in early April with a blue hexagonal exit stamp for Antigua. The American visa had been issued in London fourteen months earlier.

At precisely that moment the yacht seemed to dip and sway and footsteps could be heard coming up the gangway. Someone jumped down into the cockpit and a voice called out:

'Rafe? You about?'

A younger, blonder version of Ralph peered through the hatch.

Ralph looked at Jacquot. 'My brother.'

Then, turning to the figure stepping down into the galley: 'Tim, this is someone from the French police. It's Jilly...'

I
t had not been the best of mornings and Paul Basquet was not in the best of humours. First of all he was well behind schedule. And Basquet hated falling behind schedule. Time was a valuable commodity in any language and not to be lightly squandered.

It had started first thing that morning. What should have been a brief on-site meeting with his architect had taken twice as long as planned. The proposed development was two kilometres the other side of Marignane airport, twenty hectares of farmland that Basquet had acquired through a subsidiary and planned on turning into a freeze-storage facility for an in-flight catering operation. Two hundred planes, under the banners of twenty-seven airlines, touched down at Marignane every day, a six per cent increase on the previous year with, according to his planners, probably twice that percentage increment in the twelve months to come. Already he'd heard talk of extensions to the airport's runways and terminal buildings. The purchase of that scrubby field of olives and stony soil between Marignanes runways and the Fos-Martigues road would prove a real money-spinner. And if the catering company and freeze-storage facility didn't work out, why, he could always cover the plot with tarmac, turn it into a car park and still make back his original investment many times over.

It was the first time that Basquet had visited the site in person and he hadn't been prepared for the state of the access road. If he'd known how bad it was going to be, he'd have taken the Cherokee Jeep and left the Porsche at home. Instead, the belly of his beloved Carrera scraped frighteningly over the sun-hardened ruts that made up the approach. By the time he arrived on site his nerves were stretched to snapping, wincing every time a wheel sank into a pothole and his cherished Porsche made grating, jarring contact with the ground. He'd have got out and walked if it hadn't been so damn far.

Then, when he finally arrived on site, the man waiting for him was not the man he'd been expecting. Apparently the architect he'd contracted was down with toothache and the colleague he'd sent in his place was woefully under- briefed. Instead of the thirty minutes that his assistant, Genevieve Chantreau, had allowed for, the meeting had taken closer to an hour, with no significant progress made.

Basquet then made the mistake of letting the architect's deputy, who did have a four-wheel drive, leave the site first, so that his return journey along the access road was conducted in a billowing cloud of dust. By the time he nursed the Porsche back onto the main road the windscreen was covered in a fine, chalky gauze and he was well behind schedule, which meant that he'd have to postpone his quarterly meeting with Valadeau s finance director and trustees.

Not that the meeting was in any way important. Basquet just wanted to get it over with as soon as he possibly could. All the usual cautious, corporate guff about unfamiliar investments, possible shortfalls and the threat of being too highly leveraged. He knew their line by heart: Savonnerie Valadeau was overextending itself, they'd warn him; it was time to sell off some of the associated companies that Basquet had set up since the old man's death. (Lake hell he would.) They were soap people, the trustees would argue, not market speculators, property developers, construction engineers or maritime traders. Their business was the manufacture and retailing of soap, and soap's increasingly profitable derivatives - shower and bath gels, shampoos, bath oils - all this from a bunch of tedious family lawyers and accountants whom his father-in-law had put in place as board members to represent his interests. That old bastard had never trusted him an inch, but at least the most recent shake-up Basquet had orchestrated at Valadeau had seen them relegated to non-executive positions.

After they'd said their piece and looked pleased with themselves, and concerned at the same time (bastards, the lot of them), Basquet would then make his usual plea for the need to diversify in an increasingly competitive market.

The point he was always trying to get across to these
cons
was this: if he wasn't worried, why should they be? This was a family business, after all, and he wanted the business to stay that way for his sons. And his sons' sons. Why would he jeopardise their future? It was surely in everyone's long-term interests for Valadeau et Cie to provide the family with a corporate future worth investing in, and the best way to do that was to make Valadeau bigger and stronger. Which meant that relying solely on the manufacture of fancy bubble baths, pretty packaging and miscellaneous bathroom sundries was no longer a realistic option.

At which there'd be the usual dark mutterings and whispered disapproval from the other side of the boardroom table, under the brooding portraits of past Valadeau patriarchs, until the meeting ground to an end with no real agreement reached. It was the same every time. The only thing it achieved was to make the trustees feel that they were remaining faithful to the letter of their trusteeship while still enjoying the increased fruits of their dividends. And waste more time when he, Basquet, had more important matters to attend to.

Like the
calanques
project. His latest baby. According to Raissac at Tuesday's offshore meeting, the whole thing was as good as a done deal, and everything nicely at arm's length. Untraceable. Nothing to tie him in. All Basquet Maritime, registered in Senegal, had had to do was have one of its tankers call in at Maracaibo twice a year, pick up a cargo of kaolin and sail it back to Marseilles, the first consignment due in port any day now. Much to Basquet's relief. Their ship,
Aurore,
had been held up a nerve- racking extra day in Accra, but according to his agents she'd finally put to sea, coming north at a good clip.

As he eased off the rutted farm track and made the smoother surface of the main Fos-Martigues road, Basquet put his foot down and felt the Porsche surge forward. He began to feel a little cheerier. This was what it was all about. Having the power, on tap, and knowing how to use it. All he had to do was press down with his foot, like so, and the engine responded. Without delay or hesitation, and no family trustees poking their fucking noses in.

It was what Basquet so loved about Raissac. The way he waved aside problems, uncertainties. Nothing seemed to faze him.
Now,
Raissac liked to say. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. But
now,
slapping his hands together like a hypnotist bringing you out of a trance. It was the kind of talk Basquet liked to hear - fighting talk.

They really were two of a kind, Basquet decided. They shared the same background, knew what hard graft was all about and had learnt early on that business was as much about luck as legwork. The other thing that Basquet liked about Raissac was the fact that he always delivered - effectively, discreetly. He did what he said he was going to do, and no half measures.

He was also a chancer, no doubt about it. You only had to look at him to know that somewhere along the line he'd probably been up to no good. The scarred, cratered face, those hard, dangerous black eyes, and that startling splash of claret across the side of his cheek and jaw. A
tache de vin,
they called it, like a spill of blood, its livid, ruby fingers reaching to the bridge of Raissac s nose and deep into his collar.

But the man was kosher; he was what he said he was. Basquet had checked. Alexandre Majoub Raissac. Joint Chairman of Raissac et Frères. A private construction company forty years in business, with interests in Switzerland, Sicily, North Africa, West Africa and, most recently, Venezuela. Mining, drilling, mineral-resource development, tourism even. Raissac's interests were almost as varied as Basquet's own. But his net worth, according to the records that Basquet had managed to dig up, was clear and unleveraged, and substantially higher than Valadeau's. The man ran a tight ship and though he'd probably bent a few rules getting there, he was unquestionably a player. A player whom Basquet was delighted to have on his side.