Impure Blood (23 page)

‘Uh… no, he did have a key then. But… I got it back off him in the week. I didn’t want him having it any more. Like I said, it was over between us.’

Darac opened a drawer and took out a small poly bag. Manou peered at it then seemed to freeze in his seat.

‘When you were still maintaining you knew nothing about anything, you said you had no idea about this.’ Darac allowed the key to slide out on to his hand. ‘It was found under a mat. A mat made out of an opened-out pizza carton. Now tell us more.’

‘I can’t. It’s… just a key.’

Darac looked into Manou’s black eyes. They stared back at him with such studied innocence, he was convinced he was lying.

‘Florian was trying to hide it from someone. We’ve already tried it in doors at La Masarella and L’Horizon Bleu…’

‘Trying doors? That’s a waste of time.’ Manou started tapping his knee. ‘There must be a million doors in Nice. You can’t go round them all, can you?’

‘Relax,’ Darac said, smiling.

Manou stopped tapping.

‘I am relaxed. Get me that coffee now. No. Not coffee. Water.’

Granot gave him a knowing look.

‘With or without GHB?’

‘Don’t get funny with me, you mountain of fucking…’

‘Lard?’ Granot said, happy to be back on track with Manou.

It was time to increase the pressure by seeming to ease it. With someone as labile as Manou, Darac realised, it might prove particularly effective.

‘I’ll get you some water.’ Darac got to his feet. ‘That’s if our cleaning lady has remembered to replenish the cup dispenser. Looks as if she has.’ He kept his eyes on Manou as he stood at the cooler. ‘We don’t intend to try
every
door in Nice, obviously.’ He pulled a paper cup from the stack. ‘But it would be remiss of us to leave out your…’ He turned to Granot. ‘Some water?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Sure?’

Tension was starting to knot Manou’s back muscles. Like a horse nodding to release its bridle, he raised and lowered his head suddenly.

‘Yes, it would be remiss to leave out the workplace… what’s it called?’

‘Peerless Taxis, you mean, chief?’

Staring straight ahead, Manou took in a long breath through the nose.

Darac shook his head as if Granot’s suggestion were ridiculous.

‘No, no – not Peerless.’ The tension in Manou’s shoulders eased slightly. ‘Florian’s workplace – the school. He did work there for the last eight years, after all.’

‘The Lycée Mossette?’

‘That’s it. Don’t you think so, Manou?’

‘Well… if you’re going to try doors.’ He wiped his free hand over his chest. ‘That’s the one place it might be worth it. Must be plenty of rooms he could have used. Store cupboards and shit.’

‘Thank you.’ Darac handed him the cup. Compressed by Manou’s grabbing hand, water sloshed over the rim. ‘That’s helpful.’

So helpful, it had decided Darac on his next move.

‘We’ll take my car.’

Granot’s eyes narrowed.

‘No jazz?’

‘Philistines – the lot of you.’

They signed out at the duty officer’s desk.

‘Anything from the boss, yet?’

Alain Charvet, who was manning the desk, shook his greying head.

‘I can call her, if you like.’

Darac remembered how tired she had been the previous evening.

‘She isn’t late for any appointments or anything?’

‘No, no. She wouldn’t have been in at all today if it weren’t for this Tour business.’

‘Alright. We’ll leave it for a while.’

Bzzzzzzzut!

It was crazily hot on the steps.

‘Muscles is spinning quite a story, isn’t he?’ Screwing up his chops, Granot slipped on the one classy element of his entire summer wardrobe – his Ray-Bans. ‘The street scum didn’t degrade the culture vulture – it was the other way around! You don’t buy that, do you?’

‘I don’t trust Manou as far as you could throw him. And yet…’ Darac left the thought hanging.

‘You
do
buy it?’

‘No, not necessarily. But he’s a strange one, isn’t he? Homo-erotic tough one minute; limp-wristed simperer the next – I’ve never met a gay man quite like him.’

‘Let’s hope we never meet another.’

Granot had to make an effort to keep up with Darac as they set off across the compound.

‘You certainly got lucky with that statement bluff.’

‘It did have some basis in fact. And I had a bit of a head start on the part I made up.’

‘Don’t get you.’

‘I didn’t just tell him what I wanted him to think was in the statement. I let him read it. Or at least look at it.’

‘Still don’t get you.’

‘He can’t read but he didn’t know I knew that.’

Granot gave a throaty chortle.

‘Well, well… Let’s put Manou’s possible role in the GHB business on the back burner for a minute. Are you absolutely certain he didn’t kill Florian? He has no alibi.’

‘Well, we don’t know whether he has or hasn’t, do we? Not until we know exactly what happened to Florian. And when.’

Granot looked unconvinced.

‘Maybe, but Manou told Bonbon he got up at ten, alone, and then stayed alone in the apartment until the pair of you got there. That’s
hours
unaccounted for.’

‘If I’d killed somebody, I’d have furnished myself with a better alibi than that. Especially if I were a hustler like Manou.’

‘Perhaps.’ Granot was already sweating profusely. ‘Maybe there was no arm he could twist.’

‘Manou – are you kidding?’

‘You know what I mean. Manou could be your murderer.’

‘No, no – I’m with Bonbon on this one. I think he’s guilty of something but I very much doubt it’s Florian’s murder.’

As they reached Darac’s Peugeot, he spotted Adèle Rousade, the officer’s assistant, coming out of the archives office in Building G. Their eyes met. He gave her a smile. She blanked him.

‘What’s wrong with her? She was as happy as a lark earlier,’ Granot said, pulling the passenger seat back before getting in.

‘There’s nothing wrong with Adèle.’

‘So that just leaves you, then, doesn’t it? Don’t tell me. I can guess.’

* * *

With the Gare Thiers rail station at their backs, they walked down stone steps into the dreary Rue de Bruges. Peerless Taxis was halfway along the street, sandwiched between a sex shop and a kebab place. Only a hundred metres or so from the palm-studded elegance of Rue Verbier, they could have been anywhere in backstreet Europe.

‘This hasn’t just started,’ Granot said, folding his copy of
Nice-Matin
’s
Tout Sur Le Tour
into a fan. ‘You and Angeline.’

‘It’s been going on for a few months now.’

The pavement was slick with stepped-on vegetable matter from a nearby stall. As if signifying a broader need to tread carefully, Granot picked up his feet.

‘Relationships. Difficult things. Take a word of advice from someone who knows?’

‘Paint the apartment together?’

‘Forget her. Let’s face it, Angeline has always hated the fact that you’re a
flic
.’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘Have you ever complained about what
she
does for a living? Forget her. Someone just as bright and beautiful will come along in time.’

They had arrived at Peerless Taxis. Mercifully.

‘Work to do, Granot.’

Darac offered Florian’s key to the latched-back front door.

‘Another one it doesn’t open.’

They walked through streamer curtains into a strip-lit bunker-like space with a door and a customer window set into a cinder-block rear wall. It was not even 10.30 am and there was a pool of fresh vomit in one corner. Above the window was a queuing-system counter surmounted by a soiled polystyrene plaque that read:
PEERLESS – WHEN ONLY THE BEST WILL DO
. Next to it, a handwritten sign advised:
WE NEVER HAVE ANY CASH HERE EVER
.

On first impression, the large black woman sitting behind the squawk-box window was poorly cast. The gravity of her mien reminded Darac of the queen of American gospel music, Mahalia Jackson. Granot leaned into the window.

‘Take a ticket.’

‘Point one: we’re the only people in here and—’

‘Take a ticket.’

‘Point two: we’re from the Police Judiciaire, sweetheart.’ Granot showed her his badge. ‘Open the door and let us in or I’ll give you a different kind of ticket.’

Indicating that each move was an intolerable imposition, the woman removed her headset, rapped down her pen, and dragged back her chair before hauling herself up on to her feet.

‘That’s the way.’

‘Ask her if she knows “Amazing Grace”, Granot.’

Exiting stage right, the woman disappeared from the window. In the meantime, Darac tried the key in the door’s lock. No go. After a moment, the door jerked open from the inside. They stepped through into a square, lobby-like space. To their left, a short corridor led back to the squawk box; ahead was a kitchen area and toilet. Staff lockers, eight of them, lined the side wall to their right. They were battered-looking but surprisingly, each seemed to be fitted with a proper cylinder lock.

‘Madame,’ Darac said as the woman closed the door. ‘Which one of these lockers is Imanol Esquebel’s?’

She waved a hand in the direction of all of them and retreated back along the corridor.

‘Thank you.’

Darac tried the key in the first locker. It didn’t fit. Ditto, the second. It was the same for the others.

Granot shook his jowly chops.

‘Don’t get it. Manou was practically shitting bricks at the thought of us coming here.’

They looked around. There were no other connecting doors in the place and the toilet door had no lock.

The phone rang in the squawk box.

‘Peerless.’

As the woman dealt with the call, Darac slipped his mini-tool roll out of his back pocket.

‘Shield me.’

The big man backed into the space. A pile of sandbags would not have blocked the woman’s view of the lockers any more effectively. Darac picked each lock in turn until he found a locker containing a couple of body-building magazines, a hooded jacket, a toilet roll and a bottle of Pagan Man. Darac grabbed the jacket and quickly went through the pockets. Tissues, condoms, an unpaid bill… Then in an inner coin pocket, he felt a promising shape. He took it out and held on to it while he fished Florian’s key out of his own pocket. Laying them side by side on his palm, he turned to Granot.

‘They match.’

A petite brunette wearing a short orange sundress answered the doorbell.

‘Mademoiselle Marie Lacroix? Lieutenant Alejo Busquet, Police Judiciaire.’ Bonbon showed her his ID. ‘At last.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said, ushering him in. ‘I got your message.’

The place was full of light and furnished in pastel colours. A Dufy painting come to life. Something of an antiques buff, Bonbon’s eye was drawn to a round, marble-top coffee table standing a little way inside the room. On it was arranged a collection of shells, pebbles and what looked like a small bird’s skull.

‘This is lovely.’ He looked at it more closely. ‘Josef Frank?’

‘The table?’ she said, immediately disarmed. ‘I think it’s by somebody called Sven Ten. Or that’s what an old boyfriend of mine said, anyway.’

‘Ah, no. Sven
skt
Tenn.’ Bonbon smiled warmly. ‘It’s the name of the department store Frank made a lot of stuff for. In Stockholm. It’s early fifties, this. Be worth quite a lot of money, I should think.’

Marie cast him a quizzical look.

‘Are you sure you’re from the Police Judiciaire?’

‘We’re allowed one hobby each.’

‘I like the table too much to sell it.’ Marie did a pretty good line in smiles, herself. ‘Unless I have to at some stage. Drink?’

‘Just some water would be fine. Sparkling if you have it.’

‘I have. Why not sit out? It’s what I was doing.’

Shading his eyes against the light, Bonbon walked out on to a balcony that offered an unobstructed view of one of the Côte d’Azur’s most perfect bays, the Rade de Villefranche. Across the water, the humpbacked silhouette of Cap Ferrat looked like a whale breaking the surface.

‘Wonderful apartment. Is it yours?’

‘I own this one and the one I let to holidaymakers in Rue Verbier. Glass or bottle?’

Bonbon heard the muffled rattle of a fridge door opening.

‘Bottle’s fine. Yes, it was in talking to your new people that we found out about you.’

She returned with an opened bottle of San Pellegrino.

‘Thank you, mademoiselle.’

‘Sit, please. And shall I lower the awning? The sun’s hot and you’re very…’

‘Auburn, yes. Where’s the…?’

‘I’ll do it – it’s tricky.’

‘If you’re sure.’

There were two cedar-wood recliners on the balcony. A pair of white-framed sunglasses sat on a half-read
Nice-Matin
on the seat of one of them. Bonbon chose the other, pulled its back upright and sat down. The handle for the awning was set into a niche in the wall. Accompanied by a series of squeaks and rasps, a vaguely sylvan atmosphere descended as a canopy of two-tone green canvas unfolded overhead. It seemed an inappropriate moment to begin the questioning.

‘You know, I think a lot of people in your position would choose to live at the Rue Verbier apartment and rent out this one. Top-floor situation right on the old quayside and with a view to die for, you could charge the earth for it.’

‘I did for a… time,’ Marie said, the effort she was putting in showing in her voice. ‘But I prefer it… this way round. Money’s… not everything, is it?’

‘As with keeping the Frank table.’

‘I suppose so… yes.’

The awning finally lowered, Marie went to sit down. Tossing the paper aside, she put her shades back on and adjusted her seat forward.

‘Now, Lieutenant Busquet, wasn’t it? How may I help you?’

Bonbon indicated the copy of
Nice-Matin
.

‘Pretty vague, isn’t it? The report of the death of a non-Muslim at a prayer service. Could you add anything to it?’

‘Uh, yes. Sorry I didn’t identify myself at the time but I was the one who called you that day.’