Authors: Peter Morfoot
Granot shared a look with Vincent Dantier. The issue couldn’t have been more topical.
‘…and fifth – immediate relaxation of laws restricting the wearing of hijab dress in any sphere of French society, including schools.’
Lanvalle set the sheet aside and, taking off his glasses, essayed a weak smile.
‘Quite a list, isn’t it? Let us start with Demand Three. Has anyone here heard of Monsieur Meier Al Zatdin, the detainee at Guantanamo?’
‘Have you heard of said monsieur?’ Dauresse whispered almost comically to Lascaux. The blond boy shook his head. Dauresse turned to his other colleague, Jarret. ‘Have you, David?’
‘No.’
Dauresse turned around his seat and raised his eyebrows enquiringly at Granot.
‘You, Lieutenant?’
‘I have not,’ Granot said, keeping his forearms resolutely folded.
‘Nor have I.’ Dauresse lowered his voice. ‘And nor, I think you will find, has Commandant Lanvalle. We’ve caught this guy’s act before.’
‘No takers?’ Lanvalle asked. ‘That is not surprising because to the best of our knowledge – and our knowledge is, frankly, one hundred per cent accurate – there is no such person. Anywhere. We are, of course, continuing to make enquiries.’
Reacting to this latest
coup de théâtre
, Vincent’s elbow shot out involuntarily, digging Granot in the gut.
‘Now to Demands One and Two. These, by any standards, are unrealistic and unrealisable. On the face of it, Demand Five, the question of the acceptability of Muslim dress, makes more sense. At least it relates to a current issue. As does Demand Four – the question of a first mosque for the city of Nice.’
Vincent leaned into Granot.
‘I bet that’s what this is really about.’
Once again, Vincent’s voice carried on to the stage.
‘You are not alone in that view, Monsieur. But let us not jump the gun. Let us look at other factors. No organisation called the Sons and Daughters of the Just Cause is known to exist. No dedicated or affiliated related code name was used.’ He held up the sheet of paper. ‘And whoever came across a terrorist threat in this form? Letters cut out of a copy of
Nice-Matin
? It looks more like the sort of a ransom note you would find in an episode of
Commissaire Moulin
.’
Tensions starting to ease, a ripple of laughter ran around the auditorium.
‘And, consider this, ladies and gentlemen…’
Where security protocols permitted, Lanvalle went on to detail further reasons for discrediting the ultimatum and then called upon the heads of other divisions to give their assessments. One by one, various theories were advanced but none gave credence to the ultimatum as it stood.
Other items discussed summarily, the session ended with the Tour security director, André Soutine, providing a droning summary for anyone who’d been asleep.
Voices rose as informal debates broke out all around the auditorium. Dauresse seemed particularly anxious to get the Brigade Criminelle’s take on the letter.
‘May I ask what you make of the threat, Messieurs? Do you believe it?’
‘It doesn’t matter what we believe.’ Presenting them with the back of his hand, Granot flicked up a finger. ‘The DCRI’s Commandant Lanvalle doesn’t believe it.’ He flicked up a second. ‘GIPN’s Commissaire Principal Duras doesn’t believe it.’ A third finger. ‘RAID’s Brigadier Zacca doesn’t… ’
‘All these initials and acronyms!’ Vincent threw up his hands in irritation. ‘What’s RAID again?’
Lascaux nodded sympathetically.
‘Even I get confused, Commissaire…’
Dauresse gave a snort of laughter.
‘…RAID stands for Recherche, Assistance, Intervention and Dissuasion. Bunch of nutters, basically.’
Not to be outdone, David Jarret turned to face the old man.
‘RAID has perhaps slipped under your radar, Monsieur, because they weren’t founded until 19…’ He narrowed his eyes, seeking the year. ‘…1985, I think it was. Which was after you retired, I imagine. It’s basically your Police Nationale’s counterpart of our Gendarmerie’s primary anti-terrorism unit.’
‘In other words, it’s the PN’s equivalent of the GN’s GIGN,’ Yves Dauresse said, once again playing the comedian. ‘So let’s all pray UCLAT did their job.’
Vincent’s milky eyes seemed to be staring blindly into space.
‘Recapping, we have RAID, GIPN, GIGN… and yes, we could argue about the wisdom of splitting up our forces into so many sections. But, and this is the important thing, they are all crack units, aren’t they? Highly trained. They hear all and see all, don’t they? They know things we don’t know. So, providing UCLAT have been doing their job in co-ordinating the activities of the others…’
Impressed, perhaps even surprised, at the old man’s perspicacity, Dauresse and Lascaux shared a look.
‘…then it seems to me as a former commissaire of the Brigade Criminelle, that we have nothing to worry about.’
‘Exactly.’ Granot nodded. ‘I’ll say it again – if the commanders of all these forces are sure the ultimatum isn’t genuine, that should be good enough for us.’
Dauresse nodded with exaggerated gravity.
‘Rightly so.’
Granot was tiring of Dauresse. A light touch was one thing; not taking matters seriously was another. He felt an urge to straighten the man out.
‘And you three? You’re the boys on the front line, aren’t you? If it turns out the chiefs are wrong and the “bloody harvest” takes the form of say, a bomb going off in the middle of the peloton…’
Dauresse remained utterly deadpan.
‘We’d be among the first to know.’
Granot gave him a searching look.
‘Well, you hinted you wanted things livening up.’
‘I did.’ He returned the look with interest. ‘Didn’t I?’
As staring contests went, it was a non-event. Almost immediately, Dauresse’s gaze was drawn to the aisle. Smiling pleasantly, he got smartly to his feet. Granot turned to see what the big attraction was.
‘Boss? What are you doing here?’
‘Afternoon, gentlemen.’
Vincent stood, aglow with the surprise of it. Stepping aside to allow the old man through, Granot was quick to move back, balking the inevitable advance of Joel Barbusse.
‘Gentlemen, this is my daughter, Agnès Dantier, the current commissaire of the Brigade Criminelle de Nice.’ They embraced warmly. ‘Agnès – these glorified ton-up kids are Garde Républicaine officers.’
Dauresse led the handshakes.
Once again, Granot was able to read the trio’s characters in the moment: Dauresse, expansive, playful; Roger Lascaux, all sunny smiles and puppy dog charm; David Jarret, sensitive, a model of correctness.
Meanwhile, Barbusse was trying to shift the bulwark that was Granot.
‘Will you please move!’
Granot pretended not to hear.
Vincent turned to his daughter.
‘Why
are
you here, darling?’
‘I was called in by Georges Lanvalle.’ She mimicked him. ‘“A matter that directly affects your Brigade, madame.” Apparently.’
‘Directly affects the Brigade?’ Vincent gave a derisive grunt. ‘Every piece of work a commissaire does directly affects the Brigade.’
‘And I told him I still had several hours of it to get through today. It didn’t take.’
A uniform appeared. He saluted and asked to check Agnès’s ID. She handed it over.
‘As I’m here, Papa, I may as well drop you home afterwards.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. It’s en route to the Caserne, anyway – more or less.’
Granot seemed as disappointed with the idea as Vincent was pleased.
‘I’m more than happy to do it, boss.’
‘That’s kind but no. And don’t make any plans for an early night, Granot. I’ve called a meeting for 9.30 this evening to discuss all this. Whatever it is.’
The uniform handed back Agnès’s ID.
‘Thank you, Commissaire. Will you come with me?’
Agnès said her farewells and followed the uniform towards a flight of steps that gave on to the stage.
Getting a filthy look for his pains, Granot finally allowed Barbusse to pass.
‘Thank God that’s over.’ Vincent got to his feet. ‘I could do with a drink.’
As the audience filed out along the aisles, most continued to debate the issues raised in the briefing. The exception was the wise-cracking Yves Dauresse. He seemed to be enjoying himself hugely.
Following Deanna Bianchi’s call, Darac detailed a uniform to babysit Mansoor Narooq while he undertook a series of checks. Afterwards, he updated Bonbon on the most significant development in the case so far.
‘She got all that from a couple of grains of sugar between Florian’s toes?’
‘Pretty much, Bonbon.’
‘She’s hot stuff, our professor. Anyway, this pushes the case further away still from where we began, doesn’t it? First we have a provocative anti-Muslim murder on our hands. Then the victim turns out not to be a Muslim. Now thanks to Deanna, it’s clear the killing has nothing to do with race or religion at all.’
‘Very much looks that way. How far have you got with the Rue Verbier residents?’
‘Done about half of them. Flaco and Perand should be back with you soon, by the way.’
Darac took a couple of paces and glanced through the open squad-room door.
‘They’re just coming in now. I’ll update them on Florian and take it from there.’
‘Okay. See you later, chief.’
The squad room was the heart of any Brigade Criminelle operation. The Caserne’s take on it was an overcrowded, open-plan space furnished with cheap furniture and electrical devices connected by exposed cabling – ‘not so much an office, more an officers’ mess’, as Agnès once remarked.
Darac picked his way over to the youngsters, and resting his elbows on a filing cabinet, wasted little time in getting to the nitty-gritty.
‘From a sugar residue Professor Bianchi found between Emil Florian’s toes, she was able to isolate a substance that was a form of GHB. Droplets of water in Florian’s Evian bottle matched it. He hadn’t taken the stuff himself but it was obviously intended for somebody – the sugar added to mask the salty taste.’
‘GHB?’ Flaco widened her stance as if about to throw a punch. ‘The man was a date rapist?’
‘Or a supplier to one, perhaps.’
Her heart-shaped face set into a deep scowl.
‘So why was he killed?’
‘Any thoughts, Perand?’
‘Maybe it was a revenge—’ He interrupted himself with a yawn. ‘Sorry – double shift.’ He gave the side of his face, almost black with stubble, a reviving slap. ‘Yeah, maybe it was a revenge killing.’
‘Not a bad call. Procedures being as they are, rapists often go unpunished – right? So a victim seeking justice might well take the law into their own hands. In this case, causing death by lethal injection, if that’s what it turns out to be, has the quality of an execution, don’t you think?’
‘The old woman with the trolley.’ Perand scratched his long chin. ‘Maybe she was the mother or grandmother of a victim.’
‘I’ve already got people checking out unsolved rapes, reports of alleged rapes and so on.’
‘This old-woman idea, Captain.’ Drawing in the corners of her mouth, Flaco shook her tightly corn-rowed head. ‘Despite the puncture mark and the timing – she nudges Florian, he dies – it doesn’t seem right.’
‘I’m inclined to agree. And for what it’s worth, so does our Monsieur Mansoor Narooq. But we still need to find her, obviously. Lartou has blown up a still from the CCTV footage of her arriving at the scene. It’s not Cartier-Bresson but it’s pretty good.’
The youngsters shared a clueless look.
‘Seriously?’ Darac gave a little shake of the head. ‘Google the man. A slog squad will be showing copies of the still all around the area. If they get a hit, be prepared to get back out there to do the interview.’
Perand cast a doleful glance at the stack of papers on his desk.
‘Let’s look at another question. Florian poured the bottle of water over his feet as if complying with Muslim ablution practices. Now we know about the GHB; there could have been another reason for doing it, couldn’t there?’
Flaco nodded.
‘To get rid of incriminating evidence.’
‘Exactly.’
Perand released a hint of sourness into the air as he raised his arms into a stretch.
‘Doesn’t that imply that…’ Another yawn. ‘…the people he was hiding from were, well… us?’
‘I’m still awaiting replies from further afield but no one from the region had Florian under surveillance. And there’s not even a parking violation on his record, remember.’ Darac stared off to the side as if his next thought was written on a cue card. ‘I’m thinking about the key we unearthed at the scene. It could have just fallen out of his pocket but maybe he was trying to hide it. We have to find out what that key opens. It’s for a cylinder lock so it might open an apartment door.’
Perand seemed to think he was on a roll.
‘His own apartment, probably.’
‘A solitary key? Unlikely. His apartment key was probably on the bunch found in his jacket. I’ll get over there shortly and find out.’ Darac stared at the floor. ‘What was this guy up to? A teacher at Lycée Mossette… A teacher carrying GHB around in the middle of the day… GHB sweetened with sugar…’
‘Think it was intended for one of his students, Captain?’ Flaco’s pencil-thin brows lowered into a particularly severe scowl. ‘I used to do all kinds of school activities in vacations.’
Perand shook his head.
‘You think he would have trawled his own classes for victims? Sure, he had easier access to them than to kids in general – but it’s riskier.’
‘Sometimes, risk itself is part of what turns these people on. We’ll get a schedule from Principal Volpini – see if anything was planned for today.’ Darac went to a related thought. ‘What did Florian teach? I didn’t pay proper attention to that earlier.’
Perand, who seemed to do a lot of things by halves, gave a sort of half-grin.
‘Figure-drawing classes?’
Ignoring him, Flaco picked up her copy of Granot’s report.
‘It was… literature, Captain.’
‘Thanks. What else have you got there?’
‘Florian lived alone. He was respected though not universally liked according to Principal Volpini. He himself found him pleasant, quiet and hard-working, though.’