Murder Below Montparnasse (29 page)

Goran hung his head. Nodded. “He was so blasé. I worried about him. The danger. But he kept saying.…”

Blasé? “Just a routine job,
non?
” she said. “He’d done this a lot.”

Goran’s shoulders sagged again. “He shouldn’t have been a criminal. Feliks was such a gentle boy when we were children. He changed after Pristina. The massacre in the town square, the roundups in the hills … our family thrown in a pit.”

Pain creased his brow.

“You waited behind the old man’s house by the wall in the rosemary bushes, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “I worried for him.”

“But Feliks didn’t come out the back like you thought, right, Goran?”

He looked up. In his lined face, his eyes brimmed with tears. “I heard sirens.”

“Did you see a white van?”

“A white van?”

“Think back. Which way did you run?”

“I went through the park by the wall. Then toward the Métro … 
non
, I waited in the park.”

Aimée nodded. A queasiness rumbled in her stomach.
Residue of last night’s drug
, she thought, but the horses pawing in their stalls, the manure, the leather tang of the saddles didn’t help. She wanted something to settle her stomach, but she couldn’t stop. This went somewhere. She needed to keep pressing him.

She sat down cross-legged on the earthen floor, took a deep breath. Then shoved aside the hay, brushing away the mouse droppings with her boot. With her finger she drew a square and lines in the dirt. “Goran, think of this as a map. Here’s the park, here’s the wall behind Yuri’s.”

“Yuri?”

“The old man Feliks attempted to rob. But the painting had been stolen.”

“Phfft,” Goran expelled air in disgust. “Painting, jewelry? I don’t ask. All I know is this Tatyana contracted Feliks for a job. Never paid him, you understand. Now she owes me. A job is a job.”

His words echoed what Oleg had told her. She drew a circle. “See, here’s the old townhouse with shutters. Show me where you were.”

Goran stared. Then pointed. “Here, maybe there. I kept walking in the bushes trying to find somewhere to climb over the wall. So dark, and every place was so high.” He blinked, shook his head. “I couldn’t get out.”

“You remember something, don’t you?”

He put his finger in the dirt. Scratched an X.

“In the park I hid below the wall here. Looked for a rock, a tree. I saw a van drive by two, three times. That’s right,” he said, almost to himself. “Like it was circling the block.”

Aimée started to nod, but every time she moved her head queasiness rose from her stomach. She kept still, willed it down.

“You noticed because you were looking out for your brother,” she said. “You watched out for the
flics
.”

“At first I thought it was the police,” he said, his finger hitting the dirt. “But no blue light, no blue letters.”

The pieces fit together. The person who fought the Serb—a member of Luebet’s gang? Now it seemed everyone who knew of the Modigliani had tried to steal it.

“Where did the van go?”

“It pulled over, waited.…”

“How long?”

“The driver got out.… Wait, I remember, I heard metal noises. He was doing something on the back of the van.”

Aimée remembered the white van shooting out in front of them, Saj downshifting and honking the horn.

“I don’t know after that,” Goran said.

What was she missing here? “So you left? Took the Métro?”

“I waited maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Climbed the fence, then I walked. Along here.” He trailed his finger in the dirt along rue de Châtillon.

“What did you see? People, lights?”

He closed his eyes, thinking. “Some lights in windows, a small factory, but no one saw me. I avoided the Métro.”

“Where did you head?”

“Tombe Issoire, a place full of squatters. I was supposed to meet Feliks there, but he never came.”

“But where was Feliks supposed to hand off the painting to Tatyana?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

Aimée believed him.

“Did you see the van again?” she said. “You were nervous,
non?
Had an eye out for white police vans.”

He shook his head. “I kept my head down. Walked fast.”

One last try. “The van. Think again. You said it parked here on rue de Châtillon by the park. Then it drove on. Anything strike you? The lettering on it, the model or make, scratches or dents, old or new?”

“Was that who hurt Feliks?”

He’d registered the bruise marks from the autopsy.

“Someone beat him to the painting,” she said. “Try to remember. Could the van have been a rental?”

He nodded. “Maybe. Maybe like those ones that service Orly.”

Excited, she leaned forward. “A service van for catering, or packages like express post, or baggage handling?”

His brow furrowed. “Now that I think back, like those. Just white, square, wedge back … a Renault? Too hard to see through the bushes.”

Like every other Renault van in Paris. But she made one more attempt. “I know it was dark, but try to think. An older model, even a partial license plate?”

“You’re joking.” He paused. Thinking. “
Non
, like new.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

“It had, like, you know, a temporary license until new plates come.”

An itching feeling told Aimée he knew more. “But you haven’t told me everything, have you, Goran?”

The smell of his fear and sweat mingled with the dust.

“I’m giving you a chance, a way to start over. Quit holding out,” she said. “Feliks failed to show that night, so you returned in the morning,
non?
To find out what happened.”

“What difference does it make? Feliks is gone.”

“But that’s how you knew, or thought you knew, that Feliks was hurt and in Hôtel-Dieu.”

“Feliks died. No one told me. By a fluke I found out myself.”

Her anger rose. “Punching a
flic
and being thrown out of the criminal ward—you call that a fluke?”

Goran looked shocked. “I want to go.”

“Not until you tell me who you saw in the morning.”

“What?”

“How early did you go to Villa d’Alésia?”

His mouth hardened. “You got what you wanted. Leave me alone.”

“Had a coffee, maybe, at the corner café? Waited until people left for work to engage them in conversation like you were a neighbor?”

His eyes flashed. But by then she’d registered the tattoos just visible on his wrist where his sleeve was rolled up. Those prison tattoos, like Feliks’s. She controlled her shudder.

“You’re good at that, playing someone else—that’s how you got your job here,
non?
You neglected to reveal your prison time, I bet.” She pointed to his tattoo. “Almost talked your way past the reception at Hôtel-Dieu …” She paused for effect. Raised her Beretta again. “Cough up and quit wasting my time.”

His lip curled.

“Feeling uncooperative? Then so am I.” She shrugged. “The café’s video surveillance shows the street movement. All I need to do is identify you to the
flics
. Let them deal with—”

“Eight
A.M
.,” he said, his voice monotone now.

She’d made up the video camera, but he bought it.

“Give me the morning timeline.” She drew another line, curved like Villa d’Alésia to rue d’Alésia. “Point out who you spoke with and where.”

He’d only spoken to the café owner, it turned out. She thought back to Yuri’s message while she’d been at the morgue, and later when he’d warned her off—around 9:45, according to when she’d checked her Tintin watch.

“I took the Métro around nine thirty, my job starts at ten,”
he said flatly. Glanced upward at the five time cards in metal slots behind the door. “Check my time card.”

She did. Too late for Goran to have been the one to murder Yuri.

“But here at this house—did you see anyone enter? Hear shouting?”

He shook his head.

“Or see the white van again?”

He pointed to the X she’d made. “A little man with a Cossack hat went in there.”

Yuri. Her pulse raced. “Would that have been nine or closer to nine fifteen?”

“Like that.”

Loud voices came from somewhere in the stable. Had Serge’s autopsy sparked the
flics
already? “Was he carrying something, like a package?”

Goran shrugged. “A taxi blocked my view.”

“But you remembered him.”

“I remember Russians in my country with hats like that. Then the woman got out of the taxi.”

“You mean Tatyana, the blonde who hired your brother, don’t you?” Battling her rising nausea, she realized one of the voices she’d just heard outside in the stable was familiar. A Serbian accent. Not the
flics
. Her throat tightened.

“No. Tall, thin.” A snort of laughter. “Tatyana owes me my brother’s funeral money. More.” A smile spread over Goran’s face. “Big connections with a rich man, she told me, nice commission.”

No wonder he suddenly oozed cockiness. He hadn’t called the Serbs off. Dumb to believe him. “You lied to me. Bad move, Goran.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught his hand creeping under the straw to the pitchfork. She pulled a horse blanket from the stall over him. Instead of grabbing the pitchfork, he
tossed the blanket aside, lunging forward to grab her arm. The move slowed him down, put him off balance for the seconds she needed. She kicked dust in his eyes, sidestepped him, then kicked his ankle. Hard. He landed on his back with an
ouff
. She cocked the Beretta’s hammer.

“Want me to shoot your toes first, or your knees?”

“Non, non.”
Sweat broke out on his forehead. He rubbed his watering eyes, which kept darting toward the stall door—looking for his backup.

“Now you’re an accomplice to murder and robbery, and I’ll be sure to implicate your friends.”

“Good luck, bitch.”

“No luck involved.” She reached up to the alarm system box. Pulled it.

Silence. No piercing shrieks.
Merde
.

Only blinking red lights. A silent alarm designed to avoid frightening the horses? She hoped so.

At the half-door she turned. “What made you remember the woman who got out of the taxi?”

“Reminded me of you, bitch.”

This is what she’d expected him to say, but bile rose in her throat nonetheless. But she couldn’t think about that now. She grabbed a riding helmet from the wall and strapped it on. Panic filled her as she crouched down behind hay bales and shooed off buzzing flies.

Goran was shouting something in Serbian. She heard approaching footsteps and banging stall doors. Any moment now, they’d discover her.

On her left, a stable hand led out the last horse by the reins. Straightening up, and shielded by the horse’s body, she kept pace with its front legs as the Serb thugs passed by the stalls.

She couldn’t count on the silent alarm working. Once clear, she hurried through the side stable and found the fire alarm box.
Broke the glass and pulled the switch. Loud whoops blasted in the stable and barn. Horses neighed in the exercise ring.

“Where’s the fire?” the stable hand shouted at her.

“No fire. Terrorists. Lock down the stable.”

“Aren’t you with the Red Cross?”

“Undercover.” His mouth dropped open. “No time for explanations. Tell the team it’s the Serbs. Give this to the vet.” She handed him the autopsy. “Seems Goran ripped you high and dry.”

By the time she made it to the bus stop, fire engines and unmarked cars were whizzing toward the stables. She took the first bus that stopped. Concentrated on breathing deep, the window beside her open to the pollen of the chestnut trees. The rest faded in and out, passing in a blur. Nerves, the residual effects of the drugs, and the revelation of her mother warred in her system.

She changed buses and boarded one in the direction Denfert-Rochereau. Why couldn’t the driver go faster? She had to get back to the office. Somewhere ahead there had to be the Métro station.

From the window, she saw a van pull abreast of the bus, honking at straggling schoolchildren on the zebra-striped crosswalk. A white Renault van with temporary license plates, sporting a chrome muffler held to the bumper with wire.

And then it all came back to her—the dark lane, Saj honking at the white van with its bumper trailing on the cobbles. That’s what she couldn’t remember, what Goran heard but couldn’t see. The driver had stopped to reattach the dragging muffler so he wouldn’t be noticed or given a ticket.

Aimée had to get off the bus. She rushed toward the back doors, which were closing. She wedged herself through and got a mouthful of exhaust as the bus took off.

Worried, she looked around for the van. Traffic surged ahead at the green light. Where had it gone so fast?

The pavement shifted like sand under her feet. Passersby scurried around her. Didn’t they feel this shifting, this rumbling from the Métro trains below? Or were the underground quarry tunnels fissuring, cracking open, the streets opening to sinkholes?

Blood rushed to her head. She put one foot in front of her, yet she stood stuck in the same place, under the globed street lamp glinting in the sun. Why hadn’t anyone noticed? Why was she sinking to the pavement? Slipping into darkness.…

A
IMÉE OPENED HER
eyes. Sunlight streamed through shutter slats, warming her toes. She lay curled on soft pigskin leather—a toffee-colored divan—luscious. She stretched.

Then it hit her—the white van.

“You’re pale, breathing shallow.” A young woman with short red hair
à la gamine
and tortoise-shell glasses felt her pulse. “Eaten today, Mademoiselle?”

“But I have to catch.…” She tried to sit up. Her elbows slipped and her legs didn’t cooperate. The tang of old leather-bound books and paper hovered in the warm air.

Where in the world …? A ticking wooden ormolu clock on the wall read 1:20
P.M
. Twenty or thirty minutes had gone by. The van was long gone by now. Hopeless.

“
Desolée
, but I don’t know where I am.” She shook her head. Felt a wave of dizziness. “Or how I got here.”

“You fainted in front of the Observatoire’s side entrance,” the woman said. “A teacher on a school field trip brought you into my office.”