Murder in Belleville (8 page)

Y
OUSSEFA PULLED THE BLACK
chador over her head. The long draping wool felt hot and heavy. She found it ironic, having worn one rarely in Oran, she wore it almost every day in Paris. But it made the perfect cover. Too bad it couldn’t disguise her limp.

Youssefa prayed Eugenie would show up this time. She had to. Everything depended on it. Over and over in her mind Youssefa replayed Eugenie’s instructions: Meet Monday in the grotto at Pare des Buttes Chaumont. But Eugenie hadn’t showed. Failing that, the back-up plan had been to meet at the Pare de Belleville summit same time on Tuesday.

If only Eugenie would use a cell phone, she thought. But Eugenie didn’t trust them. She told Youssefa the encrypted channels weren’t secure; France Telecom just liked everyone to think they were.

Youssefa shivered in the doorway, scanning rue Crespin du Gast. France was so cold. Did the sun ever shine? She waited for the old woman walking her well-clipped terrier to pass. Then Youssefa followed the narrow street, clutching her packet tightly.

She kept her head down, passing the chanting protesters in front of the church.

“The AFL protests for your rights,
mon arrde”
a dreadlocked young man said thrusting a flyer into her hand. “Take one. Come to our vigil.”

Youssefa scurried by, afraid to touch it. Where she came from, such protesters would have been mowed down like wheat before the harvester.

Keep to yourself, Eugenie had instructed. Trust no one.

At the Pare de Belleville summit, the Paris skyline, dimmed in fog, was lost on Youssefa. She paced rue Piat, which crowned the park. No Eugenie. Fear mounted inside her.

Three hours later her sense of dread turned to despair. Youssefa had been in Paris only five days. Her contact, Eugenie, was gone. The link severed—she’d be next.

I
NSIDE THE CHURCH
B
ERNARD
paused under mullioned windows catching and refracting the green light. The whites of people’s eyes caught the gleam from dripping wax candles. Murmured conversations echoed off vaulting pillars supporting the nave.

Bernard’s credentials were checked at the damp vestibule door by a woman wearing a yellow Mali cloth headress. A thumbed copy of Frantz Fanon’s book,
The Wretched of die Earth,
was crooked under her arm. Beyond her Bernard saw mattresses lined along the Gothic stone walls.

“Mustafa Hamid represents us,” she said. Her other arm swept over the wooden pews where children played and men lay on mattresses. “We speak as one. As French people, not as
beurs,”
she said, using the word applied to second-generation North Africans, French born. Beur, the masculine form of butter, was used in
verlan,
the language developed in the suburban housing projects.

Doomed already, Bernard thought. The ministry had a plane waiting for these immigrants of Algerian and African descent, without papers.

Under the nave the uneven mosaic tiles were covered with muddy footprints. The glass-framed paintings of saints reflected sputtering votive candles and blue gas burners with huge pots simmering on them. The scent of melted wax and the sweat of many bodies hung over the pews.

Appalled, Bernard realized the church had by necessity become a day-care center and campground for the hunger strikers. If the French press described this scene, the whole cause would backfire on these people. Even as a lapsed Catholic, he knew church sanctity struck a chord with Christians—fallen-away Catholics most of all. And the real issue of the hunger strikers would tumble aside.

He felt an insistent tug on his trouser and looked down. A bug-eyed toddler, no taller than his knees and with a runny nose, was pulling himself up. His diaper hung loose, his small chest labored under a skimpy shirt. It was food stained and not warm enough for this dank church, Bernard thought, feeling the chill radiating from the stone. The toddler let go and took a few lurching steps, then crumpled, landing upright with a surprised smile on his face.

“Akim’s first steps, Monsieur,” said a chador-clad woman. At least he thought those words came from behind the black mask. He turned around to see a dark-eyed young woman, with a scarf tied around her face, addressing him.

“I speak for his mother, who may not address you without her husband,” she said bending down and helping Akim.

Akim grinned and pointed at Bernard.

A salvo of Arabic erupted behind the chador. The young woman nodded. “His mother asks, Monsieur, if you could please help her. Akim was born in Paris but not she or his father. They are political refugees from an oppressive regime.”

More torrents poured forth, and the young woman bent forward to listen.

“If they are forced to go back, they face prison and Akim an orphanage. He has”—she stumbled in French—”how do you say it?—
un coeur fragil,
a weak heart.”

Bernard wished he could back out the way he came in, pretend he never heard this story and find safety behind his Regency office desk overlooking the Elysee Palace. But he couldn’t. He stood rooted to the spot.

Akim crawled over to Bernard’s leg and started the laborious process of standing again.

“Monsieur, Amnesty International isn’t allowed to visit prisons in their country,” she said, looking up, her dark pupils reflecting the flickering votive candlelight. “His mother begs you to help them. Akim is their only child to survive infancy.”

Bernard couldn’t avoid Akim, who clung to his trouser legs. Maybe he could help, he thought, find Akim a decent children’s home with a medical facility. And then he saw the line forming behind the mother, stretching from the nave along the full length of the church.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“They all want to tell you their story,” the young woman said. “Akim’s family is…
comment?”
she searched for the words. “How do you say, the tip of the iceberg?”

Bernard wanted to tell her it didn’t matter anyway. Everyone had to leave. He wished he were made of the stone that lay below his feet.

“Mademoiselle, I’m representing the Ministry of the Interior. I don’t make the decrees, but I’m here to speak with Mustafa Hamid,” he said, trying to affect a sincere tone. “We have much to discuss.”

He heard little Akim’s whimper as he was shown the way to Hamid. Suddenly Bernard was transported to his own childhood, trudging knee-deep through the charred timbers of the
souk,
stung by the blowing sand, and smelling seared flesh. His feet so heavy and tired, the waiting boat at the port so far away, the sky stainless steel, and the wind whistling through the barbed wire.

“
Bonjour, Directeur
Berge,” said Walid, a bearded man, interrupting his thoughts. “Come this way. Mustafa Hamid wishes to present demands to the ministry. Reasonable and just.”

“I’m here to open negotiations,” Bernard said.

“Meet our terms,” he said. “I’m sure time, stress, and police power will be saved.”

Tuesday Afternoon

“N
O STIFFS SINCE LAST
Saturday,” the morgue attendant told Aimee, stifling a yawn.

“Are you sure?” Aimee asked. “Would you mind checking again?”

He looked her up and down, lingering on her long legs, then ran his pudgy finger down the entry ledger. “Try the lab. Sometimes they’re slow with the Yvettes if we’ve had an HP.”

“Meaning?” She felt as if he were waiting for her to ask.

“High-profile death.”

Once she’d arrived at the police lab, she found the carved doors padlocked and a small sign indicating that the facility had relocated due to retrofitting. That meant more walking.

She’d gained more than a kilo recently, and her Chanel suit knew the difference. The waistband cut into her and she wished she had worn jeans and hightops. She also wished she had a cigarette. En route she’d checked her machine, but no voicemail from Yves.

After an hour she ended up back in Belleville, the lab’s temporary space on the edge of Bastille, where the
quartiers
joined. She recognized the building as her cousin Sebastien’s former
lycee
from ten or more years before. Turreted and medieval, the surrounding wall crumbled in bald spots, revealing naked stone. She’d often met him here after class when they took fencing lessons together.

There was something appealing, she thought, about the quiet air of neglect. Inside the courtyard hung peeling school posters of tutorials. Behind cobwebbed plate glass were the weekly luncheon menus. Aimee had always preferred to eat at home, as her friends did, so she could be with her grandfather. But since her grandmother died, he’d taken to eating out. Every day. He’d also acquired a younger girlfriend, whom she suspected fed him.

At the vacant meshed window of the concierge’s loge, she saw a hand-lettered sign instructing her to ring. She put her finger on the buzzer. A loud echoing trill reverberated off the stone. Pots of budding red geraniums leaned against the rusted bicycle rack.

No one.

Silence except for the high beep of a truck backing up in the distance. Suddenly the gush of water, from the
bouches d’igouts,
startled her. The
egoutiers,
sewer men, had diverted the flow with their sewer rags.

Then a face in shadow appeared behind the window. She couldn’t decipher the gender.

“Oui?”

“Have the criminology personnel transferred here?” Aimde asked.

“Depends,” the person said, “on which branch.”

“
Tiens
, I’m looking for Serge Leaud, the Luminol expert.”

“Aha,” the person said, warming up. “Name sounds familiar. Let me search.”

The loge light flicked on. Inside stood a blue-uniformed
flic,
“Police Nationale” stitched on her lapel. A lollipop stick poked from the side of her mouth.

“You know half the lab moved to Bercy,” the
flic
said. “Ask me why, and I’ll tell you I don’t know. No one else does either.”

The usual bureaucracy screw-up between the branches, Aimee figured. She heard papers rustle as he turned pages.

“Why move the other half here?” Aimee asked.

“These days,” said the
flic,
who’d grown quite chatty, “much of the work’s on contract. Several labs operate here, so it’s easier to move the stiffs from floor to floor rather than across the Seine.”

“Good point,” Aimee said, wishing the
flic
would get to the point.

A gray-spotted cat slinked behind the geraniums.

“According to the new
renseignement,
Leaud operates offices in both buildings.”

Aimee groaned. She’d counted on Serge to show her the report on Sylvie’s explosion. Informally, with no fuss, no paperwork. He owed her big-time from the Marais, where, with her help, he’d leaped up several notches in his criminology career.

“So Leaud’s working today?” she asked.

“You’re in luck, he’s here, and he’s there,” the
flic
chuckled, opening her mouth. Her tongue was blue. “Wouldn’t you know it, he’s also scheduled at the same time for an inquest in quai des Orfevres—the Brigade Criminelle screws up again!”

“I’ll find him later,” she said, exasperated. “Seems you’re backed up, and the Yvette I’m looking for—”

“You have clearance, I presume.” The
flic’s
voice changed, becoming businesslike. She pulled the lollipop from her mouth.

Aimee had to think fast.

“Commissaire Morbier cleared me,” Aimee said. “Check the report on the Yvette, a car-bomb victim on 20
bis
rue Jean Moinon in Belleville.”

“That would be nice,” he said, taking a pencil and scratching her neck with the eraser. “But I don’t have it.”

Of course, she wouldn’t. Procedure would have it at the autopsy table or in the Medical Examiner’s Office.

“Who does?”

“Intake’s slow,” the
flic
said. “The HP took up their time.”

“Look, I’m working on other investigations too.”

“Show me your clearance, and I’ll check.”

“Like I said, the clearance goes with the report,” Aimee said maintaining her cool with difficulty.

“Says here Commissaire Morbier’s on disability.”

“Par for the course, wouldn’t you say?” Aimee grinned. “Like Serge Leaud’s whereabouts.” Trying to play fair with this
flic
hadn’t worked. She reached into her Hermes tote and fished for the alias she reserved for special occasions.

“Marie-Pierre Lamarck,” she said, flashing the ID she’d altered from her father’s old one. “Internal Affairs.”

Marie-Pierre, according to Aimee’s computer investigations had returned from maternity leave to very part-time.

The
flic
studied the ID, looked up the name, then looked at her. “Eh, you could have told me,” she said, punching in numbers on the phone.

And spoil the fun? Aimee almost added.

“No one answers in Leaud’s office.”

After coming so far and going through this charade, she wasn’t going to give up now.

“Fine,” Aimee said. “I’ll leave some things for him in his office. What floor?”

“Third floor,” she said. “Take the stairs, the elevator’s broken.”

Serge’s office door, by the birdcage elevator, had
CRIMINO-LOGUE
taped below the
DEPARTEMENT DE PHILOSOPHIE
stenciled on the glass. Aimee pulled her black leather coat tighter while she waited in the frigid, damp hallway. She wondered why most institutions of learning retained the cold so well.

“Serge could be anywhere,” the harried young woman said, looking up from her microscope inside the room lit by wide skylights. She consulted a schedule from her lab coat. “They’ve got him running from lab to lab.” She threw her hands up. “All this consolidating service!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s important that I talk with him,” Aimee said, nodding in sympathy.

“We’re run off our feet, and Serge has to be in two places at once. Work grinds to a halt when that happens.”

“I’m looking for the report on the car-bomb victim,” Aimee said.

“Oh, yes, parts of an unclaimed Yvette came in,” the busy woman said. “Just bits and pieces, you understand.”

Aimee hoped the woman didn’t notice her wince.

“Try the basement. The formaldehyde smell isn’t hard to miss,” she said, peering back through the microscope. “If you see Serge, tell him he’s got a four o’clock appointment with the
medecin legiste
about the HP autopsy results.”

By the time Aimee took the creaking stairs to the basement, she’d realized she might as well try to find the
medecin legiste
herself.

Down in the chill basement, she heard the gallows-humor argot uttered by the group of medical students in the hall. She followed them and found an autopsy being performed. Inside the gray-tiled room, a bitter pine disinfectant competed with the reek of formaldehyde. The dampness mingled with the smell she remembered from when she’d identified her father’s charred remains.

The balding
medecin legiste
looked up, his gloved hands weighing a tan-yellow organ, huge and glistening. Below, on the enamel trough lay the pasty corpse, its chest cavity open, skin and muscles filleted back.

“Enlarged fatty liver, notice the greasy, doughy appearance,” he said, his voice clear and echoing off the tiled room, to the surrounding white-coated students. “He lived the good life.”

Snickers greeted his remark. “In more ways than one,” one of the students said.

The
medecin legiste
noticed Aimee and nodded.

“
Bonjour
. Marie-Pierre Lamarck,” she said, flashing the ID.

“The paperwork isn’t ready,” he said. “This procedure will take another hour.”

He assumed she was here for this corpse.

“Pas de probleme,
but I’m picking up the report for the Yvette brought in last night.”

“We’re backed up here,” he said. “That report will be submitted shortly.”

“But the—” Aimee said.

“Scalpel,” he interrupted. A medical student handed him the diamond scalpel.

The neck vessels, she noticed, were clearly well preserved for better embalming. Care had been taken to conceal the scalp incision in his sparse hair.

Very careful job, she thought. More appropriate in a private funeral parlor for concerned relatives than in a morgue. Or maybe she was being too hard on the public morgue.

Aimee noted the expression on the corpse’s face. A lopsided grin. She wondered why.

“Some of us dream of going like this,” the
medecin legiste
said, noticing her gaze. “This chamber deputy had a heart attack in the arms of his mistress. During the heat of passion, we’d say. Scandal or not, he doesn’t care anymore.”

Major coitus interruptus, Aimee thought.

“Frightened the lady out of her bustier,” a student added, grinning. “It took a paramedic to untangle them.”

Aimee wasn’t keen to hear the details.

“Do you do such a good job for the Yvettes?” she asked.

The minute she’d spoken she willed the words back into her mouth. Embarrassed, she looked down. Rene often pointed out how her reactions got in the way.

Apparently they hadn’t registered, for the
medecin legiste
ignored her remark. The scraping and clang of stainless steel instruments echoed off the tiled walls. Aimee shifted uncomfortably in her damp heels. The formaldehyde reek, the crowding medical students, and the open dissection of the corpse’s innards made her claustrophobic. She wished he would hurry up.

“About that report?” she asked.

“I’m not finished,” said the
medecin legiste
, waving aside her question.

“He’s got an open-casket state funeral,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And the family wants him, let us say, dignified.” He explored a smooth red-brown organ with the scalpel, then sniffed. “I need a resident student to weigh this spleen.”

A large-boned woman, her ponytail crushed in a hairnet, volunteered.

“Leaud’s checking the unusual results,” he said. “Et
voila,
then the report will be yours.”

“Unusual results, doctor—can you explain?” Aimee asked.

The organ scale’s chain creaked with the spleen’s weight as the student weighed it. Aimee pulled her coat tighter in the frosty room.

“We found traces of Duplo
plastique
,” he said. “Embedded in part of a leg.”

“Duplo
plastique
?”

“Duplo’s an English cousin of the cheaper Czech Semtex,” he said. “You’ll have to wait for the report.”

Puzzled, she stepped out into the hallway.

Out by the dark stairwell, she ran into a figure who rounded the corner at the same time.

“Merde!”
he murmured, flicking away a cigarette.

“You’re a hard criminologist to find,” she said, staring into the bearded face of Serge Leaud.

“And I like to keep it that way, Aimee,” he said with a half smile. “I’m doing two jobs and filling in for someone on leave.”

“Which you thrive on,” she grinned. She looked down. “Smoking in the lab?”

“Ever since I published the Luminol paper about that fifty-year-old blood, I’ve had no peace,” he said. His full face, pinkish and scrubbed shiny, was framed by the beard flowing from his curly hair. “I’ve started smoking again.
Tiens,
my wife won’t let me near the twins when she smells smoke on me.”

“Sometimes the gods punish us by giving us what we want, as Oscar Wilde pointed out,” Aimee said. “In your case, making police bulletins around the world.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re after me?”

“But I am,” she said, tugging his sleeve and pulling him toward a slitlike basement window. “Just as a bad
centime
you throw away keeps coming back. Tell me about Duplo
plastique.”

Serge’s pager beeped.

“I’m late,” he said, glancing down and reading the message. “What’s your interest in it?”

“The victim got blown up in front of me,” she said. “I’ve been hired to find who did it.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Serge said, shaking his head. “You know I can’t say anything.”

“Don’t speak,” she said. “Just let me see the report when you’re finished.”

“I’m due at quai des Orfevres,” he said, rolling his eyes. “There’s another inquest in an hour, and I promised my mother-in-law I’d pick her dog up from the groomers’.”

“I think we can work something out,” Aimee said, taking his arm. “What’s your mother-in-law’s address?”