Faces in the Rain (12 page)

At eight fifty-five, Danielle arrived. All heads turned. It was not so much her beauty, but her style and presence. She wore another of those big hats, dark brown this time, with a white band. She was nicely colour-co-ordinated in a two-tone brown and white dress, and in a way which accentuated her auburn hair.

I had asked the manager to point me out, and he
waved in my direction as I rose from my seat. She smiled at me before ascending the wooden ladder to the loft. She didn't seem to notice Farrar, who was sitting in a corner down below with a view of the loft.

A few men watched her climb up a steep ladder, which caused her to expose her strong and shapely limbs because she had to twist more than usual to elevate her wonky hip. I kissed her on both cheeks and went another round for good measure. She seemed amused by this.

‘You look better without the beard,' she whispered, ‘it is a very good transformation. Particularly those glasses. They hide your eyes just enough.'

Now three people outside my immediate family – Cassie, Farrar and Danielle – knew about the disguise. This woman was the biggest risk by far. She was associated with Freddie May and I didn't know anything about her. Yet instinct was telling me she wasn't an enemy, and that I had to gain her confidence to get information. With Freddie out of the country, there was no other tangible lead for me to work on, and she wouldn't deal with Farrar.

Danielle apologised for being late and said that she'd had trouble locating the track to the barn.

‘It was a good choice,' she said scanning the restaurant, ‘very secluded, but perhaps a few less people would have been wiser.'

‘It's not a problem if no one knows me.'

Danielle shrugged and pulled out a packet of Winfield. It seemed a strange choice for a European.

‘Do you mind?' she asked.

‘No. As long as you don't mind me having a cigar later.' I took her lighter and lit the cancer stick.

‘No,' she said, ‘smoking doesn't bother me.'

‘Do you smoke much?'

‘Not enough to get lung cancer,' she said, ‘besides I have the discipline to give them up when I want.'

‘You're lucky. Some people have to go cold turkey.'

‘They must be a little weak to smoke so much in the first place.'

I smiled at that. It was French logic. Danielle was tougher than she looked and she didn't look soft.

‘Do you work here?'

‘Of course,' she said, surprised, ‘do you think I am rich or something?'

‘What do you do?'

‘I work in a boutique in the Toorak Village. Fashion de Ville.'

Despite her dress sense, she didn't seem the type. There was a special vacuity needed to work in a Toorak boutique and Danielle didn't have it.

‘What made you come to Australia?'

‘It's a long story.'

‘I've got the time.'

A waiter hovered, took our wine and food orders and left. I watched Farrar. Danielle had her back to him. He was well into a main course and on a second bottle of wine. I wondered about his reflexes, but not about who would be picking up the tab.

‘I came here last year with a film producer,' she said, ‘in the hope of making a French/Australian co-production mini-series on a French courtesan who was here during the gold-rush days. It fell through. I liked the country very much, so I decided to stay.'

‘Do you like working in a shop like that?'

‘It's not very demanding,' she said, waving smoke from the table, and eyeing me closely, ‘but it will do for the moment.'

‘The pay's good?'

‘Not really.'

The waiter poured claret and scurried off.

‘And how did you meet old Freddie?' I asked.

‘Martine introduced us after she and Freddie met in hospital.'

‘When she was treated at the Magenta Institute?'

‘Yes. Dr Morris and Peter Walters saved Martine after her dreadful experiences in Paris where she nearly died. Martine couldn't speak more highly of them, especially Walters whom she thought was wonderful.' Danielle allowed herself a bright smile. ‘He is so very good-looking. I think she fancied him. You know how patients can be with their doctors.'

‘Did she offer him her professional services?'

‘Oh yes,' she laughed, ‘for free of course. But he ignored her overtures. He's so very dedicated to medicine.'

‘He's not ignoring Cassie Morris,' I said.

‘Well, I daresay it helps that she's dedicated to medicine too.'

She sipped the wine.

‘It's so sad,' Danielle said reflectively.

‘What?'

‘All that good work done by the doctors to nurse Martine back to health, and then . . .'

‘Her old doctor returns to finish off the rotten work he did in Paris.'

Danielle was disturbed by my conclusion. Her face clouded and she examined the stem of her wine glass.

‘Freddie seemed pretty dependent on you,' I said.

‘I was a friend in need,' she replied, ‘that's all.'

‘You weren't having an affair with him?' I said as casually as possible.

‘No,' she said, ‘he would like this, but he was with
Martine.' She gave me a dubious look.

‘You are very inquisitive,' she observed, but without rancour.

I admired this woman's cool. There was a lot more to her than fashion and movies that don't get made.

‘I think I'm entitled to be,' I said.

‘You are right.'

‘There were two Frenchman at the funeral,' I said, ‘did you know them?'

Danielle frowned.

‘I remember several faces from that day,' she said, ‘some I recalled seeing in the French community here.'

‘Their names are Cochard and Maniguet.' She ruminated on the names and then shook her head.

‘They work for Vital,' I prompted.

‘Ah, the perfume group. I may have met them at one of the Consulate soirées.'

‘Is it possible they know the Consul?' I said.

‘Maybe. He opened the Vital operations here a few months ago.'

My brain did the hurdles on that one. The Consul could have had the thugs kin Martine and frame me. Or he could have murdered her and sent the thugs after me when they couldn't quite pin it on me. Or . . . or . . . it was a possible in a sea of improbables.

Danielle's deep brown eyes had narrowed. It was becoming an inquisition and I had to switch ground to keep her bubbling.

‘You from Paris?' I asked, knowing full well I had a provincial Latin face in front of me.

‘Yes.'

‘Born there?'

‘No. Montpelier.'

Marseilles had been my guess. I wasn't far out.

‘Lovely city,' I said.

‘You know France well?'

‘Fairly. Used to save up and go there every Christmas vacation when I was a student. Now business still takes me there once a year.'

‘How's your French?'

‘Passable. Fair when I've been back a couple of days. Your English is very good,' I was seeking an opening. ‘Have you lived abroad much?'

‘Spent three years as a sales representative for a small company in London. My English improved then.'

‘Never lived in the States?'

‘I was in California for five months.'

‘That's not much exposure to the language,' I said, sounding impressed rather than sceptical. ‘You must have had a good teacher at some stage.'

‘I had an Australian boyfriend in Paris for a year.'

‘Ah!'

Danielle smiled. It was the first hint of something less than serious in her face. Her lips parted to reveal teeth so white and expertly capped that it took several inspections to ascertain that they had been doctored.

‘It wasn't just pillow talk,' she said, ‘my Aussie was an English teacher.'

‘I'm sure he was.'

The first course of goose-liver pâté arrived.

‘Did you like London?' I asked. Danielle presented her first authentic French pout.

‘It was a job,' she said.

We were distracted by a fat man at the next table who was coughing loudly. He became distressed. He began to choke. I moved behind him, got him in a chest lock and jerked hard. The fat man spluttered and spewed out
the piece of vegetable that had lodged in his throat. He slumped to the floor.

His female companion and the other couple at the table crowded him. Danielle pushed them away.

‘Give him air,' she said, feeling for his pulse. She snapped her fingers at the manager who had ascended the staircase; ‘Get some water.'

Farrar had pushed his way up too. I signalled to him and he returned to his seat. He had been more alert than I thought.

‘I'll get an ambulance,' the manager said. The fat man was coming round.

‘That won't be necessary,' Danielle said. She helped the man back to his seat. Apart from the shock and acute embarrassment, the fat man seemed OK.

‘Are you a doctor?' I asked Danielle when we had resumed our seats.

‘You know your first aid,' she said as if I hadn't asked a question, ‘one has to act quickly in these situations. People can choke to death very quickly, especially children.'

I had to have a cheroot before tackling the pâté. Danielle lit a cigarette.

‘My family wanted me to be a doctor,' Danielle said, ‘my father was a doctor. So was my mother, sister and four brothers.'

‘You had no problem with second opinions in your household.'

‘
Oui
,' Danielle smiled, ‘I resisted for a long time.' She had still evaded my question.

‘Were you a nurse or something?' I persisted.

‘Oh, I eventually did medicine,' she said, ‘I practised for a while, then gave it up for other ventures.'

I had to suppress a fear. Benns wanted to charge me
with murdering Martine because I had some medical knowledge. Here was the woman – a qualified medico – who had found her and had been last to see her alive, just.

Danielle – if that was her real name – had approached me at the funeral and called my office. She had told me about Martine's use of the migraine drug. On reflection, Danielle
had
sounded professionally knowledgeable. Was I looking into the eyes of the killer? Was she treacherous, or innocent, or a little bit of both?

I couldn't help peeping over her shoulder at Farrar. He was watching me and I had an urge to get a message to him. My right hand dropped to my trouser belt to which was attached the Heckler inside its holster. I ran my fingers over the gun's outline. Would the killer be so daring as to report Martine's murder as Danielle had done? That could only be done by the most self-possessed assassin, and I wondered if I had mistaken cool for cold-bloodedness.

‘Can't you practise in Australia?' I asked, for something to say as I took more than a sip of the red.

‘I'm not interested in medicine here,' she said.

‘How long since you practised?'

‘Full-time? A few years now.'

I had dried up. The main course, pheasant, arrived and saved me.

‘What can you do now?' she said, sounding concerned, almost solicitous.

‘Hide,' I said, ‘and pray that the real . . . er,' I choked on the ‘m' word and sipped my wine, ‘. . . criminal is caught.'

‘I doubt it,' she said, ‘if it was Claude Michel he will not be easy to find.'

‘At the funeral you seemed to think the Libyans had
something to do with Martine's murder.'

‘I still do,' she said.

We began eating and I switched the subject to my affection for Paris and Benepharm's growing operation there. This relaxed both of us until the end of the main course. I ordered a second bottle of wine. I was uptight. I lit another cheroot.

Danielle had her third cigarette. I asked her why she thought the Libyans could have been involved in Martine's death. She chewed over that for quite a long time before giving a measured response.

‘It was something she said once about her Libyan lover,' Danielle said. ‘How Al Shahati was debauched and erotic, yet a very charismatic man.'

‘You're speaking of the lover she had in London?'

‘
Oui
.' Danielle had no doubt about the Libyan's name this time.

‘Martine said she would do anything – anything at all for him,' Danielle said, blinking, ‘at the time she was very drunk. I remember her words. She said “I'm still doing things for him. At least, I hope he thinks so.” I asked her what she meant, but she just laughed and refused to elaborate.'

Danielle leant back in her chair as if she was examining my cigar smoke, which hung in the air near the roof like an apparition.

‘My impression was,' Danielle said, ‘that this implied she was doing something for the Libyans here.'

‘Fazmi?'

‘Yes.'

‘You think she could have been doing a little intelligence for them by having an affair with the French Consul?'

‘That's one possibility. The other is that she was
acting as a double agent for the French.'

‘And the Libyans found out, and . . .'

‘It's all conjecture, but yes.'

I wanted time to reflect on her words. When she went to the bathroom, I signalled to Farrar. He was on his third bottle and consuming that like a lizard drinking. Some detective/bodyguard! I was paying him five hundred dollars a day to eat and drink himself into oblivion in front of me.

D
ANIELLE LEFT
the restaurant before us and Farrar escorted me to Cassie's apartment, which I barricaded myself into by midnight. I'd had just enough booze to sleep soundly for the first time since the reunion a week earlier.

I sat bolt upright in bed as Cassie's answer machine picked up a phone call. It was from a public phone. Whoever it was waited for more than a minute and left the line open. I could hear the steady whoosh of traffic, which sounded the same as the noise I could hear through the window from cars on the South-eastern Freeway, alongside the Yarra. Then came the dull chime of a nearby church clock as it registered three a.m.