Murder in Passy (29 page)

Waiting. They were waiting. The green door scraped open. “
Merde .
. . forgot to lock it,” the man in overalls muttered.

His back to her, he inserted a round key, locking the door. She saw a bag under his other arm, the neck of a wine bottle peeking out.

Now inside, how would she get out? Sharp narrow green metal prongs stretched above the door, along the wall. But she’d worry about that later.

Then he disappeared in the dark. She heard a long belch, his footsteps stumbling on the cobbles.
“Zut.
…
“

The rest she couldn’t hear. Drinking. Thank god for small mercies; it would dull his reaction time.

She kept to the shadows, guided by his footsteps. Ahead lay a lighted cobbled space fronted by a second green metal double door, cove-shaped, built into the stone wall. Brown leaves rustled in the overhanging tree. An Eau de Paris van was parked on the side.

She turned off
MUTE
on her cell. “I’m in. The gatehouse is behind me. There’s a door in a wall. Talk to me, René.”

“Looks like a control center inside, a matrix of water pipes on the second level,” said René. “Minimal workforce, according to this. Most of the control’s automated, runs itself.”

“Where’s the storage?” That’s where they’d hide the stash, keep the princess.

“I see A1 and A2 maintenance facilities at ground level, tunnel A; that’s the first left.”

She’d start there. “And a back exit?” He told her before she hung up. But first she had to get in. Now one of the coved doors stood ajar. Light slanted over the cobbles as the three figures René had mentioned pulled something over their heads. One checked his watch, murmured into a cell phone, and clicked it shut.

Work helmets? she wondered, kneeling behind the van. Then she recognized the black ski masks. Her hand shook. She caught her bag just before she dropped it.

She stilled her shaking hand in her pocket. On the bright side, if they were hiding their identities, the princess must still be alive: they hadn’t killed her. Yet.

Forty-five minutes to go.

She made out a long row of lights like a seam, punctuating a vaulted stone ceiling trailing down a tunnel.

Two of the men entered it. The other paced outside under the tree branches, checking his phone. Of course, she realized, there would be no phone reception inside. Bad news; she couldn’t keep in contact with René. But neither could Txili call from within. He’d wait nearby, negotiating with the father. He’d use Robbé somehow to offer proof that the princess was alive. That’s where Irati came in.

She tried the van door. Locked. She needed a distraction. She felt around. No loose gravel. Just a hose reel mounted on a bracket in the stone. She crawled, inching forward to reach for the nozzle and turn the spigot handle.

The
mec
stood under the branches, drinking from the bottle every so often. She counted on that delaying his reaction time. She turned the spigot handle as hard as she could, heard a slight rumble but saw not a drip. She’d have to let the pressure build up.

She pulled back behind the van, waited until he took another swig, grabbed the hose nozzle, unscrewed it, and aimed. The force of the cold water blast sent him, stumbling, against the wall. “Oie … what the?” he shouted. She directed the spray against his arms. Then he slipped and the bottle fell.

If she didn’t work fast, the others would hear—if they hadn’t already. With her other hand, she grabbed the bottle and hit him over the head. Then again.

She screwed the nozzle to reduce the water flow to a trickle. Reached for the key ring and cell phone in his pocket. She dried off the phone with her sleeve. Punched in René’s number. Busy.

Merde.

She couldn’t wait. Inside the tunnel, she veered to the left, passing a series of coved vaulted arches. Moist cool drafts of air hit her face. Then she heard screams.

Wednesday Night

“M
Y RANK CARRIES
privileges, eh, Pollard?”

Morbier jerked his thumb at the warden’s desk in the dimly lit room, smaller by half than his office in the Commissariat. A subterranean room, dank and pervaded by the wet-wool smell in the adjoining coatroom. Part of
le Dépôt’s
underground warren leading to the Tribunal. A place he’d avoided at all costs until now.

“Rank?” Pollard, the police union lawyer, shot him a grim smile and motioned to the wood bench as he took the chair. “Count yourself blessed I noticed my name on your IGS docket hearing tomorrow. No notification came to me, an unusual IGS sabotage tactic.” Middle-aged, with thinning blond hair and a suit jacket straining at the middle, Pollard set his briefcase on the stone floor. “My brother-in-law let me ‘borrow’ his desk. ‘Unofficially,’ like everything you and I say here.”

Tomorrow. He couldn’t stand another night, much less another day, down here.

“Rumor’s circulating that you’re uncooperative, Morbier.” Pollard removed his wire-framed glasses, studied them, then wiped the right lens with a tissue. “Quite a handful. And at your age.”

“Coming from you, I’m surprised,” said Morbier. “You’re supposed to be defending me.” He leaned against the stone wall; the oval grilled window was above him. “Won’t twenty-five years of my union dues cover it?”

“Quit sounding like every corrupt cobble-pounding one-stripe sergeant I’ve had the unhappy opportunity to represent,” Pollard said. “But you’re not on the take—or so I hear. What’s with you?”

“Besides a big bucket of shit?” Anger flushed his face. He rubbed his chin—two days’ worth of stubble. Threw up his arms, the fight gone out of him. “Lucard was talking sentencing terms. What’s the use?”

“We’ll get nowhere with your attitude.” Pollard leaned back in the chair and yawned. “We need a defense. Or had you forgotten this detail in some crusade to topple the Préfecture?”

Morbier snorted. “Not that I envy you, but that’s your job,
n’est-ce pas?
”

Pollard picked an eyelash from his cheek, flicked it away.

“You’re a
flic
, Morbier,” he said. “Time you thought like one. Forget the circumstantial evidence, this crime-of-passion charge, for now. Tell me what’s twisted. What’s wrong here?”

A wave of hopelessness hit Morbier.

“Without the investigation file.… ” He shrugged, left the rest unsaid.

“We’ve known each other
alors
, ten, twelve years?” Pollard said, his tone coaxing. “What does your gut say?”

His gut? Jolted to his senses, he stared at his hands, at the cracked concrete floor, the fissures revealing stone. A dawning realization came over him. He’d submerged everything after losing Xavierre. Shocked, he’d wallowed in grief and self-pity, striking out in anger. Hadn’t he seen these reactions himself in the families of other victims? But
flics
didn’t have that luxury. Not if they were working a case.

For the first time, not sidetracked by emotion, something shifted deep inside him. Like a numbing shot of Novocain at the dentist’s, a curious remoteness filled him. He knew the pain would return, but his mind cleared.

It came back to him now.

“Saturday night after dinner, Xavierre received a phone call,” Morbier said. He remembered her edginess, the way the muscle in her neck had tightened. The nuance he’d picked up, how she’d brushed it off as “the second crisis with the caterer this week.”

Fool.

“On Sunday, she didn’t return my calls,” Morbier said. “I left her messages. That night, instead of keeping the florists’ final appointment she’d insisted we make, she canceled. Just like that.”

“Busy with her daughter’s wedding plans, from what I understand. Not so unusual, eh?” Pollard pursed his lips. “We married ours off in June. You think they leave, but it’s the wedding bills they leave . .
. zut,
they will set me back for years.”

“But that’s not … wasn’t like her,” Morbier said. “She’d teased me, saying if I didn’t approve her mother-of-the-bride gardenia bouquet.… ” His throat caught.

“Weren’t you invited to this wedding rehearsal party?”

“At first, yes. But there were too many deaf old aunts, et cetera. ‘Boring,’ she said. I wouldn’t want to come.”

Morbier focused on a large crack, a pattern of smaller branches seaming the floor.

“Think, Morbier.”

It played back in his mind like a bad film.

“On Monday afternoon, Xavierre sounded like herself. ‘Bring Champagne,’ she said. But then the Lyon fiasco kicked in, though I promised to stop by en route. A half hour later, she’d changed her mind: ‘Not worth your while, don’t come.’ But something was terrifying her. I felt the push/pull of her wanting to talk. Almost a warning.”

Pollard nodded. “So you went to see for yourself.”

“I heard loud voices, shouting, from the back window. An argument in Basque.”

“Basque?” Pollard sat up. “But that’s not in your statement.”

In Morbier’s mind, he could see the man now from the back. Tall, dark hair, black coat. Moving around. Restless, he remembered. Coughing.

“Xavierre threw a shopping bag at him. Paper fluttered in the air. But her daughter walked in. She took her by the arm and rushed out. Cars pulled up, the guests … that was it.”

“What else?”

“I got the call to respond.”

“Meaning?”

“High alert, issued in Lyon. I left. Met my driver, then asked Leduc to … don’t get her more involved.” Morbier slammed his fist on the table. “If only I could check.… ”

“This?” Pollard slid a brown unmarked folder over the desk.

Morbier thumbed open the file. Crisp photocopies of the crime-scene report,
procès verbal
statements, witness accounts, preliminary lab reports.

“How the hell did you get this, Pollard?”

“That’s the least of your worries, Morbier.” He stood, glancing at his watch. “Time for my hearing upstairs. You’ve got thirty minutes to read the contents before putting it in here.” Pollard indicated the top drawer. “I need to return it today,
compris?
”

“And then?”

“My brother-in-law’s shift resumes in thirty minutes. But he leaves
en vacances
as of tonight. You’ve only got until midnight to pass on a message.”

Pollard set down a rectangular gold notebook embossed with the legend
Wedding wishes for your new life together,
a slim gold pen attached. “Take notes, find overlooked details, compare it to what’s on the report. Analyze. Do what you always do.”

“In this notebook?”

“We’ve got hundreds left; now my wife uses them for shopping lists.”

Never close, often adversarial in cases, Pollard puzzled him.

“Why do this for me?”

“Let’s just say I prefer not to lose cases to the
police des polices.
”

The door shut behind him.

Morbier scanned the file with anxious fingers. Paper-clipped to the last page he found the message. On a torn-out pink
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
telephone form he saw three handwritten words:

Laguardiere died today.

Wednesday Night

A
MAN WEARING
a black ski mask held a gun to the head of the young woman. She lay panting and spread-eagled in the dark coved crevice. Her legs apart, one ankle duct-taped to a door-frame hinge, the other to a wall post. Only a torn chemise-type dress half-covered her thighs.

“Not clever of you to listen to Joxi,” he said. “But I’ll take care of you like a real man.”

Her whimpers echoed off the stone. Her eyes were black points of terror as she writhed back and forth.

Aimée tiptoed closer. Only one more step, and.…

Her heel caught on a metal rim protruding from the stone floor.

“Silvio? Took your time. My turn first, then—”

Aimée swung the wine bottle with all her might against his head. The loud crack reverberated as he staggered, wobbling as if dancing. He shook his head, then fell to the ground, his gun clattering by his feet. His body twitched, his fingers scrabbling against the stone.

Aimée pocketed his gun and kicked him in the jaw until his moans ceased. She turned to the shaking young woman whose eyes were wide with fear. “Are you all right?”

A loud scream answered her. Echoing and echoing.

Hair rose on the back of Aimée’s neck.

She turned to face a shaking, white-faced Robbé, held by the other ski-masked man. No doubt he had trained a gun on Robbé’s back. Had he seen … ?

“I don’t like you hurting my friend,” the man in the ski mask said, his voice deep and gravel-like.

“I don’t like rape.… ” Aimée countered.

A snort. “So you say.”

He shoved Robbé to the ground. “Now undo the girl.”

“But I’ve got this boy’s insulin. He’s diabetic.”

“Did you hear me?” The man held his snub-nosed pistol to Robbé’s head. “Now!” A beeping came from his wristwatch.
“Merde!”
He checked it, shrugged. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”