Confession Page 4

  Madame Bonnefoy smiled. ‘It was the first thing I checked, but no. Nothing to link them. Different schools, different neighbourhoods, different . . . backgrounds.’ She shrugged.

  ‘And the police know this? The possibility? About the Paris angle? They’ve made the connection?’

  ‘Of course. I called Chief Guimpier as soon as I heard, to make sure.’

  ‘And what did he say?’ asked Jacquot. If his old boss, Yves Guimpier, was on the case, then the investigation would be properly handled. Guimpier was the kind of man who always went that extra mile for one of his own. Examining magistrate or not.

  ‘He didn’t say anything,’ replied Madame Bonnefoy. ‘He’s on compassionate leave. His mother is dying.’

  ‘So who’s in charge? Peluze . . . Grenier . . . Muzon?’ asked Jacquot, thinking of the senior men at police headquarters on rue de l’Evêché. In his opinion, old Grenier seemed the most likely bet to stand in for Guimpier.

  ‘If only,’ said Madame Bonnefoy. ‘They brought someone in. From Lyons. An old friend of yours, I believe.’

  ‘Old friend?’

  Madame Bonnefoy gave him a sidelong look. ‘Alain Gastal. Remember him?’

  The name took Jacquot’s breath away. ‘Gastal?’ he managed. ‘You are joking?’

  ‘I’m an examining magistrate, Daniel. I don’t do joking. You should know that.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you right now that there’s no way Alain Gastal is ever going to have me on his team, in this or any other investigation. The last time I saw him, on the steps of the Palais de Justice in Lyons, he made it abundantly clear that he would do all in his power to wreck my career in whatever way he could, and take the greatest pleasure in doing so. Not that he hasn’t already done a pretty good job of it. That was four months ago. I doubt he’s changed his mind.’

  ‘But I’m not asking you to work with him,’ said Madame Bonnefoy quietly. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t have asked you to work with Guimpier either. Or Peluze, or Muzon or any of them. If there’s a chance of finding Elodie alive, I don’t believe a formal police investi gation is necessarily the best way to do it . . . or not in the time we have left,’ she conceded, as Jacquot started to disagree. ‘I want someone outside the force, Daniel, but someone who knows their way round. Someone I trust. Someone who can sniff about – the docks, the city – without arousing suspicion. Through my office I can get you whatever you need . . . papers, information . . . just name it, and I’ll get it. Full support.’

  Jacquot started to shake his head at what she was suggesting, wondering to himself if she had thought it through. Did she have any real idea what she was asking him to do? The enormity of the task for one man? It was a hopeless proposition, she must surely know that. The dockers’ strike might restrict the movements of merchant vessels from the main harbour, but what of the marinas – La Madrague, Pointe Rouge, the Vieux Port, L’Estaque among others – and the thousands of sailing boats and motor yachts moored in them? He could never begin to . . .

  ‘She could be gone already,’ he began, hating to be the one to crush her hope. ‘This girl Viviers was killed . . . what? . . . two days ago. The strike only started today. Even if Elodie had been here, she could be on a ship and half-way to Africa by now.’

  ‘Yesterday. The first action started yesterday. In the morning. The first wharves.’ Madame Bonnefoy’s voice was low, but certain, and her eyes held his. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, Daniel. I know you’ll think I’m mad,’ she continued. ‘But I have to do something. For Elodie. For my sister. For me. I have to start somewhere.’ She reached across the table for his hand, her eyes starting to glisten and brim with tears, swallowing hard to keep her voice level. ‘So, what do you think, Daniel? Will you do it? Will you go out there and find my niece for me? Please, please, say yes . . .’

  Thursday

  12 November

  10

  IT WAS THE SAME DREAM. The same street. The same desperate run. But this time there was something different about it.

  Three times Marie-Ange had woken in a cold sweat, a coiling cramp in her belly, unable to make sense of the images, drifting back to sleep as the cramps eased but each time drawn again into the same dream. The final time it began to make sense, and she realised what was different about it now. The perspective had changed. Instead of the girl running towards her, now she was running away from her. Heading down that shadowy, rain-swept side-street towards Boulevard Cambrai.

  And Marie-Ange was following her. Chasing her.

  Except it wasn’t Marie-Ange doing the chasing.

  It was someone else.

  The previous evening she had returned home from Boulevard Cambrai with a sense of acute frustration. From the moment she had passed the crash site she had felt certain she would make sense of the dream, understand exactly what had happened there. And at first, as she’d retraced the girl’s route, that had seemed to be the case. With every step she took – down the side-street, into the zigzag traboule between the warehouses, and out on to that track above the lorry park – she had felt the girl’s panic, her desperation, her fear. But in the lorry park, creeping around the parked trucks from Amsterdam and London, from Antwerp, Hamburg and Cracow, her grasp of events had faded. All she’d done was follow a dead-end trail and earn herself a thorough drenching.

  By the time she got home, the rain had seeped into her collar and hood, sleeves and boots, and her tights stuck damply to her legs. Running herself a bath, she’d stripped off her clothes and stepped into the hot, scented water, lowering herself down until the bubbles lapped at her chin. For thirty minutes she lay there, going over what had happened, trying to make sense of it, but still got no further than the lorry park. Whatever had happened, whatever had occasioned Lucienne Viviers’ desperate flight, had taken place in that lorry park. Had the girl been attacked? Raped? Had she somehow escaped from her assailant and made a run for it? As far as Marie-Ange was concerned, she certainly wasn’t dressed for a rainy night. That sodden T-shirt, and barefoot too. And what was a girl from Paris, a sixteen year old from the Lycée Gordonne, doing in a Marseilles lorry park anyway? Had she gone there of her own accord? Or had she been taken there by force?

  As she let out the bath water and prepared for bed, Marie-Ange acknowledged sadly that despite her trip to Boulevard Cambrai there were still more questions than answers, more doubt than certainty.

  Now, six hours later, with rain gusting once more against her bedroom window, she lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling as the last images played themselves out: Lucienne Viviers stumbling down the centre of the road, thirty metres ahead of her, glancing back over her shoulder with a look of terror on her face. And Boulevard Cambrai looming up ahead through the rain, headlights flashing past the end of the street.

  It was now, for the first time, that Marie-Ange registered that the girl was not alone, that someone was chasing her, catching up . . . And as Lucienne Viviers staggered on towards the main road, Marie-Ange sensed the shadow coming up behind her. Heard the scuff of leather soles on cobbles, someone running after her, a man, his panting breaths, muttered curses . . . merde, merde, merde . . .

  And then Lucienne was out on Boulevard Cambrai and seconds later Marie-Ange flinched as Henri Proche’s pale-blue BMW flashed into view and swept her away.

  And it was there, in that final moment, in the shifting fragments of her dream, hidden in the shadows, leaning against a warehouse door, that she saw him – just a shape at first – watching it all. A leather jacket, a woollen hat, a chequered Arab keffiyeh worn as a scarf, its tasselled ends dangling from his neck as he bent forward, hands on knees and caught his breath.

  For a moment, as he straightened up and looked ahead, a beam of light flashed across the man’s face and Marie-Ange could see him clearly. Dark, swarthy, his cheeks and chin heavily stubbled, a large fleshy nose, full lips parted over white teeth as he gulped in breath. But it was the scar that caught Marie-Ange’s attention, long and white against the dark skin, like
a strap securing his woollen hat, slicing a path through the stubble on his jaw from his ear to the point of his chin.

  Killer, thought Marie-Ange as the image faded.

  Whoever you are, you’re a killer.

  If the car hadn’t hit Lucienne Viviers . . . you’d have killed her yourself.

  11

  ‘SHE’S HERE. SHE’S IN MARSEILLES.’

  Arsène Cabrille lowered his newspaper and looked at his daughter. They were in his study at the house in Roucas Blanc, one of the city’s most prestigious arrondissements, Cabrille at his desk, picking at his breakfast tray, Virginie, arms folded, leaning one shoulder against the door to the terrace. Behind her, the view from Maison Cabrille over the Corniche J. F. Kennedy to the distant Frioul Islands was all but lost this morning to low grey skies and a slanting, dancing rain that gusted over the terrace flagstones and spattered against the glass.

  Virginie Cabrille had come up from her lodge in the grounds. She was wearing her usual uniform – black and white combat trousers tucked into a pair of high-heeled ankle boots, with a black leather jacket worn over a tight white T-shirt. She was tall for a woman, with a crop of pricily spiked black hair and broad swimmer’s shoulders. She could only have been her father’s daughter. The same nose, long and pointed; the same mouth, lips thin as a lemon slice; and the same black eyes, still focused on the crumpled newspaper in her father’s lap. The front page was dominated by a picture of Elodie Lafour, an inset picture of her parents, and a three column story detailing her disappearance and police efforts to find her.

  ‘Who? She who?’ asked her father, who had been reading an inside continuation of the front-page story.

  Virginie smiled, nodded at the newspaper. ‘That girl . . . Lafour. The one you’re pretending not to read about, Papa.’

  Her father seemed to give it some thought. ‘You think so? Here in Marseilles?’

  Pushing herself away from the terrace door, Virginie came over to her father’s desk and took one of the two chairs placed in front of it, slinging one leg over the arm and making herself comfortable.

  ‘Either she’s dead,’ began Virginie, ticking off the first of two fingers, ‘picked up by some pervert and presently waiting for a man walking his dog to find her body, or she’s been snatched for transport, bound for a sordid little whorehouse somewhere. Or maybe a private clinic where they’ll remove vital organs one by one and then dump the body. Although the latter’s unlikely. Too pretty for transplants.’

  ‘And what exactly makes you so sure of this?’ asked her father, a thin smile playing across his lips. It was exactly the same conclusion he had come to.

  ‘No ransom, Papa. No ransom.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s eloped? A boy somewhere . . .’

  Virginie shook her head.

  ‘But why Marseilles?’ her father persisted. ‘If she has been picked up for shipping out, why not from some other port?’

  Virginie returned her father’s smile with one of her own, equally thin, equally malicious.

  ‘Where better to start such a journey than Marseilles? La porte du monde. Please don’t tell me you haven’t come to the same conclusion yourself?’

  Her father shrugged, put aside the paper and worked his thumbs, a tight arthritic pain slicing through the joints. Old age, he thought to himself. Who’d have it?

  ‘So,’ he began, glancing at his watch, changing the subject, ‘are we ready?’

  ‘Ready when you are, Papa,’ replied Virginie with a sigh.

  12

  THE GARAGISTE JULES VALENTINE KNEW he was in trouble the moment he rolled up the metal door to his railway-arch workshop in Commanderie and saw the Corsicans standing there. They’d hammered loud and hard enough on the metal roller to fill the workshop with a thunderous din that had Valentine running to open it to stop the noise. And there they were. Two of them. Polished black shoes first, as he bent down to pull up the roller door. Black suits under elegantly tailored black topcoats, black gloves, and a black umbrella apiece. Everything save their crisp white shirts and hard tanned faces as black as the oil on the floor of Valentine’s garage.

  They didn’t ask to come in. When the door had rolled past head-height the taller of the two men snapped his umbrella closed, handed it to his companion then pushed Valentine back inside the workshop.

  The radio was blaring, there was old Gideon’s Renault van up on the skids and Ibin and Alam, dressed in oily bleus, were working on its exhaust. While the first Corsican walked Valentine to his office, sat him down and took up position by the door, his companion approached the two lads in the pit and indicated that they should get up out of it, sharpish. Through the office window, Valentine saw him speak to the kids. Whatever he was saying he certainly had their attention. When Valentine saw him reach inside his topcoat, he was certain the hand would come out holding a gun. It didn’t. Instead, the Corsican opened a wallet and slid out a wedge of notes – green ones, the five hundreds. He made Ibin and Alam hold out their hands, dealt them four each, then slid the wallet back into his overcoat pocket.

  That was when he took out his gun.

  As black as his shoes and his gloves and his overcoat. With a long black silencer attached.

  Neat move. Putting the money in their hands first, thought Valentine, as he watched the silenced gun slide between Ibin’s legs and then Alam’s legs, juggling what was down there. The two of them flinched, eyes wide as oil caps. Then the gun was removed and, without a pause the Corsican swept it up between their heads and blew the radio to pieces, then swung it back down to put out the work-torch hanging from the Renault’s back fender. A swift and elegant display. The shatter of lamp glass made more noise than the shot, just a low phut that Valentine wouldn’t have heard if the radio had still been playing.

  Ibin and Alam got the message. They were pulling on their coats and out of there as fast as they could manage it. They didn’t quite run. As the Corsican brought down the metal door after they’d scarpered, Valentine knew with absolute certainty that they wouldn’t be coming back with the cavalry. And they wouldn’t say a thing. Nothing. Not a word.

  Unlike him.

  Which was why he was sitting where he was, in his undershirt and belted bleus, in the company of the two Corsicans.

  He knew who they were now. The twins. He’d heard about them. Real gorilles. The kind you steered clear of if you had any sense.

  And what had he done . . .?

  He’d talked. That’s what he’d done.

  Because now he knew who they were waiting for.

  And, with a cold tremor that shuddered down through his thighs, he knew what was going to happen.

  Jules Valentine didn’t have long to wait.

  Or long to live.

  13

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING that bothered Arsène Cabrille it was his increasing inability to kill. Arthritis, that cruel companion of the elderly, had taken his old hands knuckle by swollen, painful knuckle, starting with his thumbs, which made holding a gun and squeezing a trigger something of a trial. The last time he’d fired his beloved 9-mm Browning Grande Puissance, he’d missed his target, the large bald head of Lucas ‘Long Legs’ Laratour, a smalltime runner in Toulon who’d thought he could slip a half-kilo wrap of cocaine off a Cabrille consignment without anyone noticing. The first time Laratour had got away with it. The second time too. The third time he tried it, Arsène Cabrille came knocking on his door. While the elder of the two Corsicans, Taddeus, and his daughter, Virginie, held the man down, Cabrille had drawn his GP and waved it menacingly in front of the weeping, pleading man.

  Cabrille always liked to play out these kinds of scenes for as long as possible. A kind of signature performance. And in his low, cajoling voice, he liked to talk – taunting and teasing, sometimes suggesting that in future he’d be less generous, giving his victim to understand that this time, maybe, he’d get away with a swift barrel-whipping rather than a 9-millimetre bullet in the brain. That’s what Cabrille particularly liked: lulling his
victims into a false sense of security, watching the sag of relief in their shoulders. When he finally ran out of things to say, he simply placed the muzzle against their temple and pulled the trigger.

  That’s what he’d done with Laratour. Except he’d missed. Close range, an inch between muzzle and skull, and he’d missed.

  And it wasn’t just a matter of getting a firm grip on the pistol or squeezing the damn’ trigger either. It was the weight of the thing. His favourite Browning GP, with its wooden grip and blued metal, had suddenly become heavy and cumbersome, and his hand weak and clumsy. Seventy-eight years old – with maybe a killing for each of them; he’d have known if he’d kept count – and now it looked like it was over. If it hadn’t been for Virginie, he’d have retired to his Mauritian hideaway, found himself a mistress there as obliging and tolerant as the sinuous Cous-Cous and called it a day. Not many of his colleagues had gone so far or been so fortunate, Cabrille knew, sitting in the back seat of his beloved Daimler Sovereign, and settling his old eyes on Virginie.

  Genes, he mused, as his daughter played the wheel through her hands, speeding them around the Vieux Port and out on to the Littoral flyover. It was all in the genes. And grâce à Dieu for that. Thirty years before, the news that he’d fathered a daughter might have drained the colour from his face, but down the years his little girl had proved herself more than equal to the sons he’d yearned for, the sons who might have followed but never did. His wife, Léonie, had seen to that.

  As far as he knew, his only child had made her first kill at the tender age of eleven: the family dog, César. He was old, about to be put down. On the day they were taking him to the vet, Virginie had walked into the kitchen holding a knife, the front of her T-shirt splashed with blood.

  ‘César was my dog, so it was my decision and my responsibility,’ she had told her father. ‘And . . . I wanted to see what it was like.’