The Grave Gourmet (9 page)

B
y Saturday afternoon Capucine was stale, irritable, and moody. She convinced herself a break would improve things. Nothing much had happened after the meeting with the juge d'instruction. She had spent the rest of the day interviewing a series of social acquaintances Delage saw infrequently, all of them dead ends. It seemed like pointless make-work. She decided to take the rest of the day off and keep away from the Quai until Monday.

She was at home by three in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day in an afghan on the sofa reading and then dining with Alexandre at the bistro around the corner. After, they had found their way to bed quite early but had gone to sleep very late.

The next morning Alexandre woke in high spirits, keen on trying out a seafood restaurant that had just opened near the Bastille. “Think red-checked tablecloths; think mountains of oysters:
Speciales
,
Bélons
,
Fines de Claires
; think
oursins, langoustines, moules, bulots
you prize out of their shells with little pins; think the whole lot washed down with gallons of very dry Sancerre. You'll love it! Just what you need to get you out of your funk.”

At the word “oyster” Capucine's face had clouded.

The restaurant proved to be everything Alexandre promised, a caricature of a classic Parisian seafood bistro, but a successful one nonetheless. The oak paneling and white square ceramic floor tiles, at most a few days old, had been skillfully distressed by the decorators and looked almost authentic enough for the diner to feel the place might really have been around while the Bastille was still standing. A green stand outside was staffed by rotund rubicund men in Breton fishing outfits to give the impression that the seafood was actually supplied by independent Breton artisans who journeyed out to Loctudy at the crack of dawn each morning to select the best from their family boats. The waiters, dressed in immemorial black jackets over ankle-length aprons starched and bleached to an unnatural whiteness, bustled with a hospitable arrogance that seemed to have been polished by the centuries.

As always Alexandre had reserved in his own name and the maître d' had clearly been on the lookout for him. He and Capucine were ushered to a quiet table in a corner with the deference normally reserved for rock stars. Over the inevitable flute of complimentary champagne Alexandre was treated to a detailed recitative of the trials and tribulations of the restaurant's opening, which he received with ill-disguised impatience. Cutting the tale short, Alexandre ordered the largest of the
plateaux de fruits de mer
and a bottle of Sancerre that was little known but, in his opinion, particularly excellent. The restaurant was packed with prosperous-looking Parisians happily set on an extended Sunday lunch, creating a din that was somehow pleasing despite the uproar.

Capucine smiled at him. “In my world you have to beat people up to find out anything. In yours the more you scowl the more they chatter away. And they offer you free champagne to boot. Maybe you're right and I am in the wrong business.”

The seafood arrived rapidly. The waiter first set a steel frame about a foot high on the table, then placed several little dishes with butter, brown bread, lemon sections, and sauce Mignonette—made from red wine vinegar and shallots—in the middle of the frame and finally returned with a huge metal plateau heaped with crushed ice and a profligate display of every possible variety of seafood arrayed with an engineer's precision in meticulously concentric circles.

For the first fifteen minutes the concentration required to dismember langoustines and suck oysters from their half shells without wasting any of the precious juice precluded anything more than monosyllabic conversation.

Alexander looked over at his wife affectionately. “Makes you feel better about the world, eh?”

“Absolutely, but I'm still dreading going back to work tomorrow. I have absolutely no idea what to do next.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We had a very curious session with the juge d'instruction on Friday. Actually, I worked with her once before and she was very direct and easy to get along with. But yesterday she was entirely cryptic. Her instructions were riddles, worse than the Delphic oracle.”

“Who was it?”

“A rather imposing woman called Marie-Hélène d'Agremont.”

“Ah,
la brave
Marie-Hélène! I know her quite well. Or at least I used to. We were students together.”

Capucine laughed. “You know everyone! What was she like?”

“Very bright, very zealous, and very political. I wouldn't say she was exactly consumed with ambition, but she definitely knew what she wanted. And she was very…” Alexandre paused. “Well, let's say she was calculating, Machiavellian, really, in her way of getting it. How'd the session go?”

For the space of a heartbeat Capucine was tempted to press Alexandre about his history with Marie-Hélène d'Agremont but decided to stick with the case. Anyway, lunch was never a good time to pry into Alexandre's past.

“Well, for openers she seemed as disconcerted as Commissaire Tallon that Trag might be involved, and—”

“Hold on,” Alexandre interjected, “you never told me that. What's this about Trag?”

“It's not all that much, really. I discovered the phony DGSE agent's cell phone had originally been issued to a subsidiary of this Trag.”

“Well, then they're in it up to their ears. That can't be an accident. Tallon must have had conniptions.”

“How did you know?” Capucine asked.

“Well, I'm sure you know all about that CIA hare that the Minister of the Interior started way back when.”

Capucine nodded. “Tallon told us all about it.”

“Well, it was my paper that originally published the list of spies to be deported. I was just a cub reporter in those days. Did he tell you about what happened?” Capucine nodded. “I was assigned to the story and stayed with it until the end. I'll bet Tallon didn't tell you that he was one of the flics who was involved in harassing Trag's French clients, did he? When the wind shifted he was one of those severely reprimanded. He was lucky he didn't get exiled to the boondocks or worse.”

“No wonder he reacted so strongly when he heard about Trag.”

“Marie-Hélène must have leaped like a gaffed salmon, too,” Alexandre said with a smile.

“Why would it be a problem for her?”

“Simple. She wants you people to complete a beautiful little case, so she can package it up all tied in string and red sealing wax and hand it to the public prosecutor, who will tell her she's brilliant. That's what floats her boat. If it becomes a Trag thing, it'll get lifted out of her hands and given to the DST. In fact, because of the impersonation, the DGSE might be able to grab it. That would mean that you guys and your juge would be kicked out. That would drive Marie-Hélène wild. Coitus interruptus was never her thing,” Alexandre bubbled with an irritatingly secret little chuckle.

“I'm not going to go there,” Capucine said with a pretty moue. “But it was definitely odd. Normally these juges are overly directive. They think they can do better police work than the flics. But she wasn't. She just told us she wouldn't sign an authorization for any kind of investigative work on Trag and told us to get on with it. Tallon just sat there saying, ‘Yes, ma'am, three bags full.'”

“That doesn't surprise me.”

“Well, we're stuck. There are no leads at all except Trag. They're the gateway to the solution. And we can't go near them. Tallon will never let us.”

“What did Tallon say after the meeting?”

“He didn't say anything. He just did his
roman noir
scowl and said he'd see me on Monday.”

“Well, he's weighing the risks of Marie-Hélène's dare.”

“What dare? What are you talking about?” Capucine asked, annoyed.

“Simple. I'm sure she put on a holier-than-thou schoolmarm expression when she told you she wasn't going to sign any papers of any kind on Trag, right?”

“You really do know her. She was infuriating.”

“My guess is that she was goading you to do something on your own. I'll also bet that Tallon understood that.”

“But there's absolutely nothing we can do. Or at least nothing I can think of.” Capucine began making meticulous piles of bivalve shells on her plate, separating them painstakingly by species. “Now's the perfect time for your little speech on how silly I'm being and all I have to do is quit the force and life will be perfect and wonderful and all.”

“On the contrary,” Alexandre answered carelessly, rooting earnestly through the crushed ice in search of a stray clam. “Not only do you seem to be getting the hang of it, but I'm beginning to find this case quite challenging. Definitely far more interesting than those insider trading sagas where you could never understand who was on the inside and who was on the outside.”

Alexandre squinted and pursed his lips in an attempt at representing fathomless Asian wisdom but only managing to look like he had gas. In a stentorian voice he said, “As great Lao Tzu say, ‘When deprived of own tactics, must use those of enemy.'”

B
y ten on Monday morning Capucine knew exactly what she was going to do. She closed the door to her office, took a deep breath, and extracted the cell phone from her bag. She dialed the number on “Agent Etienne's” card. It rang for so long she thought it would kick into voice mail, but at the last instant someone picked up. A male voice answered with a curt, “
Oui?
”

Capucine attempted the trepidation of a timid office worker. “Hello? Is this Agent Etienne?” she asked, hoping her assumed lack of self-assurance was convincing.

“Yes,” replied the voice, still short.

“I'm calling at the request of Lionel Vaillant.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” came the reply, the speaker clearly relaxing.

“Monsieur Vaillant has been reassigned to a new project. I'm on his team. I mean, I…uh…I was. I used to work for him. Before he got reassigned. And…uh…he had prepared a package with the data he thought you would find helpful. And he asked me to call to see how we could get it to you.”

“That was very considerate of him. Would you like me to come and collect it?”

“Gosh, that would be perfect. I was afraid you were going to want me to come to Paris. Would it be too much trouble to come to the headquarters building? That would be so kind of you.”

“No problem at all. How about this afternoon? Around three? Would that be okay?”

“Fine. Just ask for Marie Mercier at the desk. Thanks. I really appreciate your coming all the way out here. See you later.”

Capucine pushed the red
NO
button on her phone. So far, so good. It was truly amazing how gullible some normally quick-witted people could be.

Even Tallon had liked the plan. “I was going to try something else along the same lines, but this might be even more effective,” he had said.

 

Capucine arrived in Billancourt at two thirty with the three brigadiers squeezed into the Clio. She left them outside and went up to the long marble reception desk carrying a bulky manila envelope. There was no one else in the lobby. She held up her identity wallet with her police card on one side and badge on the other. The eight receptionists gathered in a gaggle and stared at it, fascinated, mute. The words “Police Judiciaire” always produced emotion.

“Listen carefully. A dangerous suspect will be coming here in a few minutes. He will ask to see a Marie Mercier. Send him to me. I will be in that corner over there. Is that clear?”

All eight nodded and murmured something that could be understood as “Oui, madame.”

Capucine retreated to her corner and looked out the plate-glass window, searching for the brigadiers. She couldn't see them but knew that they would be keyed up, glued to their two-way radios.

At exactly three o'clock a man walked in, went up to the desk, and asked a question of the middle receptionist. She half stood up and pointed to Capucine in the corner.

The man walked over to her, smiling.

“Mademoiselle Mercier?”

“Monsieur Etienne?”

Etienne nodded.

“Please sit down,” Capucine said, making a show of holding the envelope awkwardly. Her plan was to get the phony agent seated, explain who she was, and arrest him quietly. It was a police truism that people who were already seated were less likely to bolt, and Capucine was keen on avoiding a scandal at Renault, particularly under the circumstances.

Etienne was all charm. “What happened to my friend Lionel?”

“Oh, he was assigned to a new project. Actually, it was a bit of a promotion.”

“Still on Typhon, though?”

“Oh,” Capucine giggled. “I can't talk about that. It's secret.”

Etienne smiled wryly. Capucine was aware she had said something to alert him, but had no clue as to what it might have been. He glanced nervously right and left and then looked at Capucine with contrived flirtatiousness. “I didn't see you at the test track. I certainly would have noticed a girl as pretty as you.”

“Oh, I don't work at Courcelles. I work upstairs here,” Capucine replied with a coquettish smile.

Etienne's smile thinned a little. “I'm sure you're going to make me sign for that envelope and verify my identification. But would you mind if I just went to the washroom for a second first? I've been on the road since lunchtime.”

Without waiting for an answer he got up and walked rapidly toward a glass door at the end of the hall.

Capucine was on her feet in a second, radio in hand, alerting the brigadiers. “Suspect on the move. Heading toward the north side. David and Isabelle, cover that part of the building. Momo, take the car up to the door at the north end. I'm going after him.”

Past the lobby doors, Etienne broke into a jog. Suddenly he turned a sharp right down a hallway. Capucine was no more than fifty feet behind him. When she rounded the corner the hallway was deserted and completely quiet. She stopped, listening intently, all her senses alive, and then moved ahead at a quick walk, as quietly as she could. She was sure he had sprinted, once out of sight, and had run down one of the hallways that branched out in front.

She advanced for a long minute or two, looking right and left down the intersecting hallways, seeing and hearing nothing. Suddenly she heard the distant
click
of the reception area door shutting behind her. She turned and ran, punching the walkie-talkie into life. “God damn it! I lost him. He doubled around and went for the main entrance. Start the car. I'll be right there. If he gets away it'll be over my fucking dead body.” The good news, she told herself, was that she was finally beginning to sound like a flic.