Murder on the Champ de Mars (26 page)

Great.

“Take them off, please, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

The woman was backlit against the bright windows, and Aimée stepped closer to see her. She was older, plump-cheeked. Not the same nurse.

A setup.

“Of course,” Aimée said, taking them off. Calling her bluff. “Shouldn’t you be wearing your hospital badge on that uniform?”

“Not out in public, on the street,” Ninette said.

“Yet you wear a uniform. Let me see your nursing-staff identification.”

The woman blinked.

“It’s at the
clinique.
”

“So you’re prepared to swear an oath to that in front of a judge? Right now?” she said. She turned to Pons and Grévot. Locked eyes with Pons. “If you want to pursue this further, we do it at the
commissariat.
” She strode toward the door. “If that’s all?”

She didn’t wait for their answer.

A
IMÉE REACHED THE
attorney’s secretary, explaining that an emergency had detained her but she was en route. Snapping
her phone shut, she hurried through the courtyard. Double looped her scarf, her shaking subsiding to a dull tremble.

“Aimée, you all right?”

Hearing the familiar voice, she turned around. Her father’s colleague from the police academy, Thomas Dussollier got off his bike in the courtyard, his face flushed from exertion. He kissed her on both cheeks, gripped her hand and leaned into her ear. “I came from the
commissariat
as fast as I could. I’m sorry I wasn’t in time to warn you before the vultures got you.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“I heard via my network in the seventh you’d been brought here for a
tête-à-tête,
” he said, his voice low. “Lèfevre’s out of commission—his leg’s acting up again—so Morbier asked me to help you. But an old bull like me lags behind the young bucks, not that I like to admit it.”

“You’re Morbier’s connection?” Why hadn’t he confided in her?

“Forgot to tell you, eh?” Dussolier read her look. “Don’t be so hard on him, Aimée.”

She glanced at her watch. Hurry, she had to hurry. “But I have to go.”

“Attends un moment.”
Dussollier took his briefcase from the bike’s basket. “Try to understand, Morbier’s tied up as the star witness in that Corsican case. He’s testifying behind closed doors and keeping your name out of the case.”

Now she remembered the sting he’d talked her into doing last year—handing off a memory stick containing faux court files at that café in Montparnasse. He’d promised her immunity if she helped him set it up, sworn there’d be no court appearance, no giving testimony in the judges’ chambers. She knew if the Corsican mob got her name, either tomorrow or a year from now, she’d answer the door to a bullet.

He was protecting her. And Chloé. And he’d drafted Dussollier, who was on the eve of retirement.

“You’re family, Aimée,” Dussolier was saying. “Once family, always family. We take care of our own.”

We take care of our own—like the Gypsies. Yet the Gypsies had shunned Djanka and Nicu, and the
flics
had drummed her father out, stained him with a corruption charge that took her years to disprove.

“So Morbier asked you to help me out. Have you discovered anything?” she asked, again glancing at the time.

“
En fait
, Morbier said to keep my ears open, poke around,” said Dussollier, chaining his bike to the ring in the wall. “I’m looking into it.”

“Whoever killed Papa and Djanka Constantin abducted Drina.” She tapped her high heel. “I explained all this to Morbier.”

“He told me.” Dussollier straightened up, expelled air. “And you came up with this theory how?”

Theory?

“Drina kept the proof in her notebook, which Nicu was murdered for at the Métro. That was the start of it, anyway.”

All her fault. She put her shaking hand in her jacket pocket.

“Anything else to go on?” he said. “Didn’t Drina give you more at the
clinique
?”

Startled, she stepped back, shaking her head. Her elbow hit the stone wall. “But how do you know …?”

“You can thank Doctor Estienne for the information Drina gave you. According to my sources, he abducted Drina and kept her in his
clinique
for observation—got paid off. Aimée, that’s common knowledge at this point.”

The slime.

“Where’s Doctor Estienne?”

“Long gone, they say. Someone’s gunning for you, Aimée.” Dussollier looked around the courtyard, lowered his voice. “I can’t do much to help you without some names, can I?”

Should she tell him? She needed help. Decided to trust him.

“Tesla and Fifi,” she said. “Ever hear Papa mention them?”

Dussollier shrugged. “Informers?”

She’d keep her theories to herself, see what he came up with. “No clue.” Shook her head. “Can you use your contacts here in the seventh to find out their identities, Dussollier?”

“I’ll do what I can before I bow out of the force, Aimée,” he said. “Pitiful, eh, but I’m all you’ve got for now. Tell me what else I can do.”

She nodded. “Scratch beneath the surface at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dig for rumors—old and new—on Roland Leseur and his brother, Pascal.”

“
D’accord
, leave the heavy lifting to me. I know people. And people who know people,
compris
?” Dussollier took her face in his hands. “Let this
vieux
do his last bit of police work. I’m old, but I’m not out of touch.”

His warm hands, cupping her face the way her father’s used to. How she missed him.

“I sent you the invitation.” Dussollier kissed her forehead. “You’re coming to my daughter’s engagement party,
non?
My wife insists; she won’t take no for an answer.”

S
HE GOT A
taxi on rue du Bac in a panic over the time. Dussollier had been so intent on talking to her that she hadn’t felt she could get away, but now she was close to forty minutes late for her meeting with the lawyer. She called Maître Benosh’s office and the secretary put her through to the lawyer.

“Where are you, Mademoiselle Leduc?”

“
Je suis vraiment désolée
. I was called to an unexpected security meeting at l’Hôtel Matignon. I’m in a taxi.”

True, sort of.

“I’ll see you in fifteen minutes then.”

T
HIRTY MINUTES LATER—THE
road had been clogged with a large demonstration—she ran into Maître Benosh’s
office. The building lay across from square Louis XVI, home to the Chapelle Expiatoire, the site of an annual royalists mass in honor of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose guillotined bodies were dumped here.

She fought to catch her breath. Her heels sank into the wine-red carpet of the waiting room. She noticed a man near the secretary. Melac. He stood by a black lacquer Chinese cabinet, his gaze locking on hers.

“So you decided to show up.”

“
Moi
? What are you doing here, Melac?”

“A little detecting of my own.”

Merde
. He’d been a homicide detective at the Brigade Criminelle until a year ago. Still had connections.

“Leave it to the professionals, Melac.”

“Nothing wrong with getting a grasp of the playing field.”

“Here? At
my
lawyer’s office, at
my
appointment?” She wanted to spit. “Why the hell do you think—”

“I’m impressed, Aimée,” he interrupted. “Your child’s welfare is on the line and you show up late as usual.”

Tired, irritated and conscious of that uneasy chord still vibrating in her stomach, she refused to argue and waste words. “I was called to l’Hôtel Matignon.”

His grey-blue eyes—so like Chloé’s—narrowed. “Like I believe that?”

“Like I care? Reasons of state security, Melac. I had no choice. Now if you’ll excuse me …” She headed toward the receptionist to check in.

“Maître Benosh is seeing her next client. Your appointment’s been cancelled, Mademoiselle,” said the receptionist.

Panic-stricken, mired in this deep carpet, she felt helpless.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, we need to reschedule.” Maître Benosh appeared in her office door, trim in a navy suit and medium-high heels. Her dark shoulder-length hair was bobbed.

“But Maître Benosh …”

“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Tell my assistant to shuffle things around and fit you in as soon as possible.”

The door closed. Aimée turned around to see Melac pausing at the double doors leading to the black-and-white tiled foyer. “Since you’re so bullheaded, we’ll work this out at the magistrate’s,” he said. “Recognizing my daughter’s a done deal. A formality.”

“Good God, Melac, she’s six months old. Her place is with me, her mother.”

“When it fits your schedule,” he said.

“My life centers around Chloé,” she protested.

But Melac had shut the door.

She rescheduled, begging for something sooner than the day after tomorrow. Impossible, the secretary told her, handing her a manila envelope left for her by the “gentleman.”

D
EJECTED, SHE TOPPED
up her expired Métro card at the station, squeezed through the doors of a Line 9 train just before they closed. Finding a seat as the train took off, she opened the envelope.

An album of photos of Melac’s Breton farmhouse, a sketch of the playground he’d build beside the farmhouse’s organic garden, photos of Donatine’s loom, where she carded and spun wool from their herd of sheep. The wholesome country life.

Aimée’s shoulders slumped. She almost missed changing at Chaussée d’Antin–Lafayette.

Thinking about Chloé’s prospects filled her with feelings of inadequacy and guilt. All she could offer Chloé was a sweet child-minder, Sundays in the Jardin du Luxembourg and love. Like her father had done. It had been good enough for Aimée … hadn’t it?

On rue du Louvre she checked for a blue van. Nothing. Maurice’s kiosk was closed for his coffee break. She entered the office, set the alarm. It was deserted for once—Maxence was
at the Hackaviste Academy, René dropping off de Brosselet’s contract according to the Post-it on her desktop screen.

She brewed espresso as the radiator hiccuped to life after a good kick. From the half-open window overlooking rue du Louvre came the hissing of bus brakes. Four large screens ran data on René’s desk.

Doubt gnawed at her. What kind of mother was she? Why did she feel guilty when 90 percent of mothers in Paris worked?

But she couldn’t dwell on that right now.

The
chef de sécurité
at l’Hôtel Matignon and his colleague were out for her. She doubted their questioning stemmed from the usual police incompetence. Dussollier knew people—every savvy
flic
did—among the back-scratching old boys’ network behind the corridors of power. And she hoped he’d use them.

She remembered what Nicu had told her about the body he’d been shown in the morgue—a body the
flics
had claimed was Drina’s. They had tried to frame him. Just as Pons had attempted to frame her today, along with the supposed nurse. Were the two things connected?

Setting the steaming espresso on her desk, she called her friend Serge, a pathologist at the Institut médico-légal, to see if he could shed any light on who’d been behind the morgue frame-up. Why hadn’t she done this sooner? No answer. After two tries she reached the pathology department.

“Serge? Attending a medical conference in Prague.”

The same conference Dr. Estienne was supposedly attending?

The sun filtered through the window, warming the back of her neck. Her three further inquiries at different departments of the morgue all suggested she consult the Brigade Criminelle. She got nowhere.

Frustrated, she wanted to kick something. Kick this shadow behind her father’s death. The shadow who’d paid off Drina’s abductor, Dr. Estienne, and had Nicu knifed under the Métro.

The ringing of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. A number she didn’t know.

“Oui?”

“Marie Fourcy?” asked a young woman’s voice. “I’m trying to return a call from someone named Marie Fourcy who works at Hôpital Laennec.”

It could only be Rose Uzes, the one with the hots for Nicu. She’d left her a message after Madame Uzes, under duress, had coughed up her daughter’s number. In case Rose checked with her mother, Aimée had used Marie’s name, so it would match the card from Hôpital Laennec she’d given Madame Uzes.

“Rose, I need to speak with you about Nicu Constantin.”

A quick intake of breath came over the line. “He’s … dead, my mother said. She’s furious with me …” Another intake of breath. Choking sobs.

Aimée waited, guilt rippling inside her.

“Rose, I know this is so hard for you, but you might be able to help—”

“
Non, non
, you don’t understand,” said Rose. Her voice quavered. “I was arrested last night.”

“Arrested? Why?”

“Nicu promised to speak at the rally last night.” Her words came thick and fast: this was clearly a young woman in need of a sympathetic ear. “He never showed up at the squat. Things turned ugly, a bunch of skinheads showed up, racist types. We knew it was a setup to turn a peaceful meeting into a brawl. The
flics
hauled us in. My friends bailed me out. Now Maman’s livid that I’m involved with the demonstration for
les manouches.
”

“Hold on …”

“We’re demonstrating against hate crimes. Like what happened to Nicu,” Rose said, her voice breaking. “There’s a vigil tonight at the spot under the Métro … the spot … you know … where it happened.”

Aimée did know. Visualized Nicu’s arm reaching for her, the blood.

“We drafted a petition at Sciences Po against the violence and hate crimes. We’re getting signatures and taking it to the
mairie.
” Rose took a breath. “But why am I telling you all this? My mother says you work for the hospital. Why did you want to speak to me?”

An activist—rebel hearts did beat in the daughters of the Uzes family.

“Rose, I won’t share anything you tell me with your mother,” she said. “I can’t. I lied to her. I’m a private detective looking into Nicu’s murder and his mother’s abduction. But you might have vital information that could help me uncover the truth.”