Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘They’ve been combing it all morning,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’ve finished, or maybe it’s just a lunch break.’
‘Have you seen Tony?’
‘He’s with some French guy in a suit. I think Patrick Hoyle got him a lawyer.’
‘I thought Hoyle was a lawyer.’
‘He may be. But this guy’s probably a criminal lawyer. I imagine they’re different.’
‘Do you think Tony killed her?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. The French cops seem to think he did, though. Hang on, here comes one of them.’
I looked up. Sauville was marching towards us. My heart sank as I realized his eyes were focused on me. ‘Monsieur Lane. When you have finished your lunch, I would like you to assist us, please.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘We need to search your room. And we would like to take samples from the clothes you were wearing yesterday afternoon. Also we need your fingerprints. And afterwards I invite you to the police station.’
‘The police station?’ I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Why do you want me to go to the police station?’
Sauville glanced at Ingrid and Mel. He coughed. ‘Er … We need some samples.’
‘What kind of samples?’ I said, my suspicions aroused by his hesitation.
Sauville glanced at the girls again. ‘You will find out at the station.’
He left the three of us alone at the table. Mel remained sullen and withdrawn. But Ingrid looked as if she was trying to control a giggle.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I think I know what they’re after,’ said Ingrid.
‘What?’
‘They want your sperm,’ she said.
I grimaced. ‘Oh, God.’
Sauville returned to hurry me along with my meal.
‘Have fun,’ said Ingrid as I left the room with him.
A policeman drove me down the switchbacks to the prosperous little town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. We passed through streets lined with bright awnings, under which parfumeries, boutiques, galeries and salons de beauté enticed wealthy tourists in off the pavements. There were flowering trees everywhere. Above and behind the town stretched a curtain of high grey cliffs. Les Sarrasins and its watchtower were clearly distinguishable up there, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky.
The Gendarmerie Nationale was a scruffy building near the railway station. It was scruffy inside too: linoleum floors, dog-eared posters, functional metal and chipboard furniture. Thankfully, Ingrid was wrong about the precise nature of the samples they wanted, but I was sure she was right about their purpose. A doctor took a swab of saliva from my cheek, a syringe full of blood from my arm and hairs both from my head and, humiliatingly, from my pubic region. Afterwards I hung around in a waiting room until the policeman who had brought me down the hill came by to drive me back.
We were just leaving the building when a police car pulled up outside. Sauville stepped out, followed by another detective
and two other figures, Tony and Patrick Hoyle. Tony looked tired and grim. He caught my eye as he entered the station. The hostility of that brief glare made me flinch.
It looked as if he was going to have some difficult questions to answer.
As soon as I arrived back at Les Sarrasins I headed for my room and opened up
War and Peace
again. This time I couldn’t lose myself in its pages. I just kept thinking about Tony.
Had he murdered his wife? He must have. He had the motive: I had provided that. He had discovered the body in the middle of the night. And I had seen him being led into the police station for questioning. Did he look to me like a murderer? I had no idea what a murderer looked like. He was certainly charming. Just as certainly I would never trust him. But I couldn’t envisage him actually killing Dominique.
Despite my last bruising meeting with Guy, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. I knew how much he admired his father, and now he had to face the possibility that he was a murderer. It would be tough on him.
Tough on Owen too, but I didn’t care about that.
There was a gentle knock on the bedroom door. Ingrid put her head round. ‘How was your trip to the police station?’
‘Horrible.’
‘Look. I’m sorry I teased you about it earlier. That was hardly fair. Mel and I are having a drink. Would you like to join us?’
I dropped my book with a thud on to the floor by my bed. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would.’
I followed Ingrid out on to the terrace, where Mel was sitting alone at a table under the shade of a pine tree. Two glasses half-full of bubbly clear liquid and ice were standing in front of her. I went to fetch a beer for myself. I couldn’t
face a vodka and tonic: vodka reminded me of things I would rather forget.
‘I saw Tony at the police station,’ I said, taking the first sip.
‘Yeah. They said they wanted to ask him some more questions,’ Ingrid said. ‘He didn’t seem anxious to go.’
‘What did Guy say?’
‘Nothing. But he looked worried.’
‘I bet he did.’
Despite all that had happened, the sun was shining brightly. Too brightly. Mel was cowering behind dark glasses. I couldn’t blame her. She was drinking determinedly.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked her gently. I knew it was a stupid question, but I wanted to show her I cared about how she felt.
She sniffed and rubbed her nose. She had been crying. ‘Not really. And you?’
‘Not really.’
Mel looked at me awkwardly. ‘Was it your first time?’
I nodded. ‘And you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pretty bad way to start, isn’t it?’ I said.
Mel laughed. ‘Yes. After all those years of saying no, all that saving myself for the right man, and I go and do it with a fifty-year-old pervert.’
‘Quite a good-looking fifty-year-old pervert, isn’t he?’
‘That’s not the point. He’s old enough to be my father. And that’s what really scares me. Maybe I’m going to be one of those sad girls who chase after men twice their age because they’re trying to get their fathers back.’
‘Are your parents divorced?’
Mel nodded. ‘My dad ran off with his secretary two years ago.’
‘Sorry.’
‘And yours?’
‘No. They seem quite happy. But then, Dominique is nothing like my mother.’
‘Or anyone’s mother.’
‘It’s strange,’ I said. ‘She didn’t seem like a real person at the time, and she seems even less like one now that she’s dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Mel. ‘It’s easy to forget that someone has died.’ She shook her head. ‘What if Tony
did
kill her? I was with him just twenty-four hours before.’ Her face filled with disgust, for herself as much as for Tony, I imagined.
‘Don’t beat yourselves up,’ said Ingrid. ‘You were both taken advantage of by two very manipulative people. Tony was trying to prove to himself he can pull girls better than his son. Dominique was having her piece of petty revenge. It wasn’t either of your faults.’
‘Of course it was my fault,’ said Mel. ‘I let him do it. In fact, I was a willing accomplice. It seemed so glamorous, so grown-up. I thought I was in control.’ A tear ran down her cheek. ‘You know the worst thing, David?’
‘What?’
‘I really like Guy. I had just about decided that he was the one that, you know … What’s happened has just made me realize how much I like him. And of course now he won’t talk to me. He won’t ever talk to me again.’ She fought back a sob.
Once again I marvelled at the effect Guy could have on girls. And on this one it was clearly deeper than superficial physical attraction. Did he know? Did he care?
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve lost him as a friend,’ I said. ‘If he ever was my friend. He was furious with all of us when I saw him this morning: you, me, his father.’
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Ingrid. ‘You’ve both had a bad time. But we’re all young. We can learn from it. You
can’t feel guilty about it for ever. Those two, Tony and Dominique, were fucked up. You can’t let them fuck you up too.’
She was right, of course, but Mel and I had plenty of guilt to wallow in.
The police came to see us once more that day. They wanted to check the shoes we had been wearing the previous evening. They had found a footprint, I supposed. Not much good that would do them, we had all been tramping around everywhere from what I remembered. But I gave them mine, again.
There was no sign of Tony. Presumably he was still at the police station, answering questions. Guy managed to avoid us that afternoon and evening and Owen was tucked away in his room playing with his portable computer. But we did see Hoyle. He spent most of the time ensconced with Guy somewhere upstairs, but he dropped in on Ingrid, Mel and me in the living room before he left.
He was wearing a baggy tan suit and a tie, and beads of sweat sparkled on his broad forehead with the exertion of running up and down the stairs. ‘I trust Miguel is taking good care of you?’
‘He certainly is,’ Ingrid answered. She had used her Portuguese to charm the servant and he had responded by looking after us very well.
‘Good, good. Let me know if you have any problems. But I’m sure Tony will be back tonight.’
‘Mr Hoyle?’ Ingrid said as he tried to leave.
‘Yes?’ He frowned. He had things to do.
‘Can you tell us how the investigation is going? We’ve been left in the dark up here.’
‘Of course,’ Hoyle said reluctantly, lowering himself on to the edge of an armchair. ‘As you know, they’re interviewing Tony at the moment. But they haven’t arrested him yet, and
I don’t think they’re going to. He’s innocent, and I’m quite sure we can prove it.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘Does he have an alibi?’
‘Yes. But not a reputable one.’ A companion from the Nice bordello Guy had mentioned, I thought. ‘No, we’re, um …’ Hoyle hesitated, ‘working on something else.’
‘So who did kill Dominique?’ Ingrid asked.
‘It must have been a thief. Someone broke in in the middle of the night, stole some jewellery and disturbed her. When she saw him, he suffocated her with the pillow. She had taken heroin, so she was probably disoriented.’
‘So there’s some jewellery missing?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Just her day-to-day stuff. But still worth a few hundred thousand francs.’
‘And the police are certain she was suffocated?’
‘They’ve done the post-mortem. She had some heroin in her bloodstream, but it wasn’t an overdose. She died of asphyxiation. And the pillowcase was missing.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means the murderer got rid of it to avoid leaving any traces for the police to find. After he’d used the pillow to smother her.’
‘Do you have any idea why they wanted to examine our shoes?’
‘Not specifically. But it’s good to hear they’re checking other leads. They probably realize they’ve got the wrong man.’ He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe Dominique has been murdered. It just doesn’t seem real. Tony and I have been in some scrapes together, but nothing like this.’
I nodded in agreement. It all seemed totally unreal to me.
Hoyle checked his watch. ‘I need to get back to Beaulieu. I’ve got Tony a good criminal lawyer, the best in Nice. But I want to make sure they don’t try to keep him in the station overnight.’
With that he heaved himself up out of the armchair and left us.
Sure enough, he returned an hour later with an exhausted-looking Tony. They ignored us and shut themselves in the study. Tony clearly wasn’t off the hook yet.
I went to bed but stayed awake reading my book. Guy came in at about eleven. He ignored my greeting, quickly stripped off his clothes and jumped into bed.
I carried on reading.
After a minute or so, Guy leaned on his elbow and glared at me. ‘Turn the fucking light off, Lane.’
I turned the light off. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.
I was woken by a violent banging. I opened my eyes to see the door flung open. It was Sauville and two uniformed gendarmes. Morning sunlight streamed in behind them.
‘What the …?’ Guy began.
Sauville’s eyes scanned the floor and found a pair of trainers. He picked one up and glanced at the sole.
‘Is this yours?’ he demanded of Guy.
‘Er … Yes.’
‘Put on your clothes and come with me down to the police station. You are under arrest.’
Guy sat up in bed. ‘I’m what?’
‘You heard me.’
‘That’s stupid!’ Guy protested. ‘You’ve got no reason to arrest me. I didn’t kill anybody!’
Sauville picked up some of the clothes at the end of Guy’s bed and flung them at him. ‘Get dressed!’
Guy swung himself out of bed and put them on, glaring at Sauville the whole time.
Sauville muttered something in French to one of the policemen behind him. The man produced a pair of handcuffs,
gesturing for Guy to hold up his arms. Guy stared at the cuffs, as if he was only just realizing what was happening to him, and slowly did as he was told. They closed around his wrists with a snap.
‘Good luck,’ I said.
Guy turned towards me. For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me again. But then he spoke. ‘This is all bullshit. They have nothing on me.’
‘We will see,’ said Sauville, as the policeman grabbed Guy by the elbow and shoved him roughly out of the room.
May 1999, Wapping, London
‘So, how did you do last night?’ Guy asked. The two of us plus Owen were getting down to work in the cramped Wapping flat. It was the Wednesday after the Tuesday before.
‘Not too well. It was a zoo. I couldn’t get a word in.’
‘How many cards did you get?’
‘Only three.’
‘Three! That’s pathetic. You’ve got to hustle, Davo. You can’t get trampled by the herd.’
‘I did come across one VC I knew from my accounting days. I talked to him for a bit.’
‘Did he like the idea?’
‘I didn’t ask him. It didn’t seem appropriate.’
‘Didn’t seem appropriate! Why do you think you were there? Why do you think he was there?’ Guy shook his head. ‘I knew I should have gone myself,’ he muttered.
I felt a flash of anger, but bit my tongue and put my head down. I was angry because I knew Guy was right. I felt guilty and inadequate. I was not good at this. Guy had hired me to help him raise money. He relied on me. I didn’t want to let him down, especially at this early stage.