The Awkward Squad Page 4
“I’m going to Issy,” Capestan announced. “Are you coming with me?”
“I’m not going anywhere with anyone. No offense,” he answered, his nose buried in the file.
On the shadowy policeman’s desk, Capestan noticed a container of pencils surrounded by aluminum foil. In its center was a flower painted with red nail polish above the words HAPPY FATHER’S DAY. Capestan suppressed a smile, then softened her tone slightly:
“Listen, if you want to do any detective work from 8:00 a.m. to midday, then 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., then you need to come with me, your commissaire.”
Capestan was also keen to avoid a showdown, but she needed a teammate who would work properly, and Torrez was the only one available. Whether he liked it or not, he would have to get used to it.
Torrez sized her up for a second; then a resigned expression swept across his features. Reluctantly he got moving, stooping down to pick up his sheepskin jacket.
“It’s never me who ends up in the hospital,” he warned her gloomily on his way past.
Staring at the lieutenant’s back, she replied in the same tone:
“Well, I’m happy to try my luck and see if I survive the week.”
Key West Island, South Florida
January 18, 1991
Alexandre was swilling a glass packed with ice and rum on the wooden deck of his house, an elaborate white colonial-style construction. The condensation was making the glass slip between his fingers. Next to him, Rosa was sipping a fresh lemonade. She was eight months pregnant. The two of them were enjoying the gentle rhythm of their swing seat, the soft clack of their flyscreen door, and the scent coming off the bougainvillea. But Rosa, who was usually so active, was starting to get bored of her quilted cushion: she wanted to go for a little walk, just around the corner.
A new museum had recently opened and she thought it would be fun to take a look. The “Treasure Gallery” was exhibiting a modest selection of the booty that the famous Mel Fisher had recovered from the wreckages of two Spanish galleons. Alexandre was a diver himself, but the idea of paying to massage the ego of a guy flaunting his four-hundred-million-dollar fortune did not appeal to him in the slightest. But Rosa, the most sparkling treasure of all, insisted.
Alexandre never tired of looking at her. Rosa, the Cuban who had become a daughter of Florida like the thousands of others who had fled Castro. It was not so much her beauty that dazzled him, but rather the almost imperceptible quality of her movements, the flow of her gestures. Alexandre’s stomach tightened at the sight of them, aware that they were the perfect foil to his own movements, his own gestures. There was an intensity to Rosa’s eyes, a mixture of authority and melancholy that sent him into disarray. And she was expecting his child, something that would bind them together for centuries to come. So if she wanted to brave the sweaty, unwashed tourist hordes to get ripped off by Mel Fisher, then fine—he would go with her.
7
“Goddamn piece-of-shit handbag,” Rosière grumbled as she looked for her mobile.
She put her monogrammed Vuitton down on the pavement and started bailing out items angrily, eventually finding her phone and flicking through her contacts until she reached Lebreton’s number.
“Hi, it’s Eva. Yes, I’m going to be in later than usual. My dog’s decided to fuck with me this morning, I’ve been dragging him around the block for half an hour now and he’s refusing to take a piss. No, we’ll be fine without the vet, thanks. I know him, he’s perfectly fine, he’s just doing it to piss me off because he can tell I need to leave. Isn’t that right, Pilou?” she said, addressing the dog. “Sometimes you think Maman’s going to walk you to fucking Mont-Saint-Michel, don’t you?”
Looking up at her with his delighted little face and eager paws, Pilote—Pilou to his friends—did indeed seem to think that Maman had nothing better to do than take him to Normandy and back.
“I’ve looked into our sailor,” Lebreton said down the line.
“Aha.”
Rosière was trying to gee Pilou into action with sharp, jerking motions of the leash, but to no avail: he would just sniff, sniff, then nothing.
“Tell me, Louis-Baptiste, would it be too much of a pain to come and meet me at home instead of at the commissariat? That way I can drag this tyrant around a little longer, and you can tell me all about our sailor boy over a coffee . . .”
“Whereabouts are you?”
“My place is on rue de Seine, number 27.”
“No problem. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“It looks like an apartment building from the outside,” she said, unable to help herself, “but it’s a whole house actually. So just buzz when you’re downstairs.”
The previous evening, Eva Rosière had dropped in on the set of Laura Flames. She could not resist, even though she knew she had no reason to be there and her ego always took a bit of a hammering. Every time, she expected them to step back from their cameras and roll out the red carpet for her. She was ever hopeful that the actors, grateful for all those punch lines, might flash her a smile, or that the director, delighted to be working on such original action sequences, might greet her with a ceremonious handshake. But no, it never happened. After six triumphant seasons, and thanks to an ironclad contract negotiated by a fearsome agent, Rosière was rich. But on set, yesterday, as ever, the producer had met her with a tight-lipped smile, ushering her away as though he were returning a batty old woman to her bedroom. Deference—that was for the actresses. Scriptwriters just had to deliver the goods without making a fuss, sitting by themselves at their keyboard.
Rosière had to admit that she was crippled with loneliness, a problem that would never be solved by writing. She had not seen the abyss approaching. Back in the glory days when she was starting out as a novelist, she had managed to juggle being a mother and a policewoman, and her social life had still bubbled along. Success had taken hold of her, and with it the grip of money. Her parents were no longer around, and she had never married, but her son, Olivier, was still living with her while he tried to finish his degree in physiotherapy. He had been a typical student—scattering his stuff all over the apartment and leaving the kitchen a mess.
As nine-to-fives went, Rosière’s time at police headquarters had been as cushy as anything: it was a constant source of juicy information, with officers from every department passing through. Colleagues, swivel chairs, gossip, and banter on the one hand; appreciation, coziness, and security on the other. She had lived a truly charmed life. But she had not been able to resist going for broke and pursuing television glory, so she had taken a sabbatical.
All of a sudden she was doing nothing but writing from dawn till dusk. Before long, the monumental demands of creating a series had drained her bank of ideas. There was not a drop of fiction left in her veins.
Without realizing it, in turning her back on the police, she had turned her back on her friends. Now her keyboard was her only colleague; just a screen to chat with. Olivier was the one thread that tied her to the world, her only link. A link that had become considerably more tenuous since his move to Papeete . . .
Papeete, Tahiti. Rosière had consulted the map: you could not get farther away from Paris.
In the last year of her leave of absence, her only human interactions were painfully brief, to negotiate a contract or attend a briefing. There was always a reason for any contact; a function of some sort. No more casual drop-ins or fly-by visits. In the morning, she saw nobody; in the afternoon, nobody; and in the evening, after she had been out to fetch some bread, she knew she would come home to nobody. Every week was made up of seven Sundays. What use was it being successful if you did not have anyone to show off to? Her life looked more and more like a poster warning against isolation.
So she went back to the police. At number 36, there was plenty to fill up her day and her pool of inspiration. Suddenly, everything came to life. She could make a racket without getting herself fired. At least that was what she had thought before they
packed her off to this squad. She was optimistic, though. Apart from anything else, there were four of them, so she was well catered for when it came to company.
Rosière had gone digging for some info, and what she had found out through rumors, speculation, and snippets of overheard conversation had intrigued her. She was not at all upset to be working with Capestan. The star pupil who goes off the rails, a loaded Kalashnikov with an innocent smile. Ideal ammunition for her next script. Usually middle-class types didn’t interest Rosière, but she could not deny that Capestan was pretty sexy. And she was no pushover, either. She had a natural authority to her, a strong force of will, but she was not the sort to trample over others with her size-sevens. Plus, she had taken on Torrez instead of throwing him to the dogs, and that took guts. Rosière was also delighted to have snared the Adonis from IGS, and on top of that, the murdered sailor’s file seemed promising.
She had not stopped thinking about the case and had barely written a line all morning. There were a few upcoming episodes on the back burner, but an author never wants to be faced with a blank screen, so she had eventually managed to eke out a few words. Hence the delay to the mandatory second dog-walk and the subsequent strike action: Pilote was a stickler for timekeeping.
How was one to go about investigating a case that dated back twenty years? The file was flimsy, with no trace of interrogations or potential leads. The officers at the time had screwed up, the lazy bastards.
Rosière, planted in the middle of the pavement, took a cigarette from her pack and lit it with her gold Dupont lighter, which had LAURA FLAMES engraved on it. She blew the smoke out through her nose. The murder of an out-of-work sailor had not caused much of a stir. His widow had kicked up a fuss at the start, but before long she had hit the bottle. Rosière wondered if she was still drinking today, as the world continued to turn a blind eye. She imagined a scene with the woman and her red wino’s nose, then switched it to TV format and tried to come up with a dialogue that was long on emotion without being too tear-jerky. Pilou took this pause as his cue to relieve himself.
Eva Rosière was still gazing at the tip of her cigarette when Lebreton and his broad shoulders appeared in her line of sight. Such a hunk, she thought to herself. What was he doing in this dead-end squad? He did not fit the no-hoper profile. She stubbed her cigarette out on the toe of her Louboutin.
“Anything to report?” Lebreton asked, nodding at the dog.
“Yes, this plane tree finally gave him some inspiration. Right outside my door. We do a full lap of the neighborhood and he ends up pissing on my steps. Come on then, Pilou, are we going to do our trick?”
At these words, the dog immediately hopped through the open door and did a series of pirouettes—around to the left, then the right, and repeat—diligently cleaning his paws on the brush doormat.
“Good boy,” Rosière congratulated him, then turned to Lebreton. “Coffee?”
The two of them were perched on her large, white-leather L-shaped sofa, with Guénan’s file carefully laid out on the smoked-glass table. Lebreton stirred his coffee, placed the teaspoon on the saucer, and opened proceedings with a calm voice:
“So we have Yann Guénan, a quartermaster in the deck department of the merchant navy, who, after a brief spell of unemployment, had taken a job on one of the bateaux-mouches. When he was thirty, he married Maëlle, a maternity nurse four years his junior, and they had a son together: Cédric. He was five at the time of his father’s death. The three of them had recently moved to rue Mazagran in the tenth arrondissement, not far from Maëlle’s sister.”
“Yup,” Rosière said, grabbing one of the black-and-white photographs. “When they fished him out, he’d been glugging down river water for some time and the fish had started taking chunks out of him. His skin’s so see-through he looks like a jellyfish. Shit . . . those guys from the river police did well not to puke when they had to handle this custard tart! They could only narrow down his time of death to the closest week.”
“We should count from when his wife declared him missing,” Lebreton said.
“That gives us July 3, 1993, then. The last time he was seen alive, he was leaving a bistro near quai Branly.”
“Long way from home . . .”
“But it is by the river,” Rosière said, instinctively toying with her necklace.
“Fair point.”
“But hold on, the murder dates back to 1993. Hasn’t it expired?”
“No, because the widow lodged a protest in 2003,” Lebreton said. “She brought fresh information that turned out not to be so fresh. But a juge d’instruction looked into it anyway, so the case was given a new lease on life.”
Lebreton paused for a moment and shifted his weight on the sofa, before saying:
“Three months to go. Then it’s all over.”
He took out a pack of Dunhills and raised his eyebrows to ask for permission. Rosière nodded, taking it as her cue to rip the cellophane off a new pack of Vogues. She lit one and took a long drag, trying her best to look like Marlene Dietrich as she exhaled, then ostentatiously lay her gold lighter on the table. The smoke rose up to the ceiling in ribbons. Pilou was kipping happily at their feet, stretched out on an authentic black and fuchsia Persian rug that had set her back six big ones.
That was what it took to furnish a place on the chic Left Bank. Hers was some way off a full-blown mansion, but it was still a pretty house. Two thousand square feet spread across three levels: more than enough for one adult and her dog. And how about rue de Seine for an address! Rosière had bought it two years earlier, all courtesy of her international royalties. She had sold tons of books in Europe, Japan, and Latin America. After this vanguard from the books, the TV series rolled in without any resistance. Ever since, as a token of respect, she had been learning Spanish. And she had added Our Lady of Luján, the patron saint of Argentina, to the medallions on her charm necklace.
As Rosière refilled her coffee cup, she wondered whether it had been a good idea to serve it in a china teapot. Maybe that was not the done thing. She made a mental note to look it up. The Aubusson tapestry hanging on the wall framed Lebreton’s aristocratic features very nicely.
“The first bullet pierced the right ventricle,” he resumed, “and the second shattered his spine. Both bullets found their target, so we’re definitely dealing with an experienced shooter firing from point-blank range. The coroner figured they were nine-millimeter bullets.”
“The most common caliber. Next the coroner will be telling us that our guy was wearing jeans and sneakers, and we can narrow it down from there . . .”
Lebreton smiled, scratching his cheekbone.
“In any case, we can’t confirm a thing: they didn’t find any cartridges, and the killer removed the bullets with a knife. There’s a nice, clean, cross-shaped incision in line with his heart . . .”
“A real pro,” Rosière said.
“Exactly. A cautious pro, too. He weighed Guénan down with a diver’s weight belt. It’s a standard model, and naturally there weren’t any fingerprints.”
Lebreton ran his hand through his thick hair and stubbed his cigarette out thoroughly. He was thinking.
“The murderer’s a man,” Rosière said. “Yann Guénan was a big guy: you’d need some brawn to tip him overboard, especially with the weight belt on. No witnesses, no noise, professional approach . . . I’d put good money on it being the work of a hit man. A contract. An execution. Not definite, but that would fit.”
“I thought about that. I started looking into it this morning, but our access to the archives is limited. The thing is, it doesn’t appear Guénan belonged to a gang of any sort. If this was a settling of scores, it wasn’t anything to do with organized crime.”
Lebreton slowly removed some papers from his jacket pocket and unfolded them.
“Two months before his death,” he said, “he was on board the Key Line Express.”
“Aha,” Rosière said, having no idea what he was referring to.
Rosière leaned forward and tickled her dog’s fluffy ear. His tail twitched lazily and he let out a contented sigh.
“The officers questioned the shipbuilder, but nothing came of it,” Lebreton said.
“And the widow, what does she think?” Rosière said, sitting up straight.
“She’s still living on rue Mazagran—she’s agreed to see us tomorrow.”
“Great! Shall we drop by the commissariat? I was hoping to take a couple of measurements.”
The two of them stepped into the sun-drenched street. Rosière turned the key in the lock, setting off the alarm that no code could ever neutralize: the yapping of a dog in distress. She turned to Lebreton to seek his approval, but her appeal was met with silence. Inside, Pilou was letting out a mournful whine, sniffing at the gap beneath the door. Rosière caved in.
“Okay, I’m taking him,” she announced.
Lebreton nodded his assent, but he said nothing. He was not one for throwaway comments, not about anything; he was more the sort to maintain a friendly yet uncompromising attitude, happy to leave others to face up to their responsibilities. No chance of getting let off the hook with him. Rosière opened the door and the dog leapt into her arms as if he had been locked up for a decade. Lebreton started heading for the Seine.
“Where are you off to?” Rosière asked.
“To the commissariat.”
“On foot?”