Sasha could not ask the woman standing outside how she had found her. If
they
were with Mrs. Lermentov, it would only alert them. Should she take the chance and let her in? If she did, and Mrs. Lermentov was alone, the old woman would go shopping for Sasha and she would not have to chance the streets. Sasha started to reach for the door lock.
No. There was no way for the old lady to have tracked Sasha. They had to be with her, right outside, poised to come at her as soon as the door swung open.
“All right, Mrs. Lermentov, give me a half-minute to put something on.” Sasha crossed to the other side of the room, away from the front door, quietly opened the French doors below the arched window, and stepped out onto the small balcony. There was a ten-foot drop to the walk below, which led to steps that would take her in a direction out of the old quarter.
Sasha had been a gymnast when she was a child, her parents hoping she was going to be another wonder-girl in that long line of gymnasts Russia produces. Sasha hadn’t come near championship caliber. It didn’t matter. What she was about to do didn’t require a champion’s ability.
Once she made up her mind, she did not hesitate. Sasha bolted out of the French doors, used her hand on the railing to support her vault, landed on her feet on the walk, rolling to absorb the shock. She came up running, not looking back, taking the steps at full stride, traversing the sidewalk, running like a gazelle.
When the men finally kicked their way into the apartment, they were angry, smashing some of the furniture to vent their frustrations. They would have to start all over again to find her. The men checked the apartment, took everything they thought might help them find her, and then finished up by killing Mrs. Lermentov before they left.
Chapter 38
C
arnival in Nice is a wonderful event. Virtually everything stops in preparation. Huge signs go up, streets are cordoned off, lights are strung, gigantic caricatures of the Carnival creatures and themes are hung in Place Messina, bleachers are erected to house the thousands who will watch the parades, traffic is redirected, and the welcoming air of delightful tension transforms everything into a frenetic crescendo building toward the arrival of King Carnival and the revels that follow.
The previous night, the five-story-tall papier-mâché construction of the king had been danced into Place Messina. The monster gargoyle, ruler of all he surveyed, blocked Jana and Levitin from taking anything except tiny steps forward in their investigation. They made their courtesy calls on the French police inspector they were referred to, were given a slim investigation file on Pavel Rencko’s death, and had been politely shuffled off to a small room by a subordinate who gave them a look that said, “Please go away and don’t bother us any more.”
The file was thin: photographs, a diagram of the scene, a compendium of statements to the effect that Rencko had been seen plummeting from the window of an office building. There was no reason the police could find for Rencko being in the building, except that it was one of the highest in the city and Rencko might have selected it merely for the purpose of killing himself. The conclusion of the investigation was that no one had seen Rencko being given a helping hand over the window ledge; and that since the man had financial problems and faced possible criminal charges and dismissal from the consular staff by his country, they ruled it a suicide.
An attempt had been made to find his companion, a woman he had been living with named Sasha, “true surname unknown,” but the earth had swallowed her. Case closed.
Jana and Levitin were frustrated, Levitin because he could not think of a route to finding his sister, Jana because she was so close to seeing her daughter and granddaughter, and yet so far.
They were eating sweet rolls and drinking strong coffee, both of them morose, when Levitin received a call on his cell phone. Jules Vachon, the inspector they had contacted to obtain the Rencko file, wanted to see them at a murder scene. His aide gave them an address in the old part of the city.
There was no problem finding the place. The police had cordoned off the area. The usual gawkers were gathered for Jana and Levitin to push through when they arrived. They asked a gendarme guarding the tape barrier for Vachon, and were soon inside the apartment where the killing had occurred. Vachon greeted them effusively, suddenly very glad to see them. He pointed to a couch that had been ripped up and pulled away from the wall. Behind the couch was the covered body of a woman.
Vachon pulled the cover off the woman. “Look, look! I would like your professional opinion.” He pulled the couch even farther from the wall to allow them easier access. “The poor old mother was beaten quite badly, no?”
Jana crouched by the body. Levitin was satisfied to let her make the close examination. Jana checked the woman’s head, then her neck, surprising Vachon by then checking the woman’s teeth. The woman still wore a short coat. Jana opened it, then pulled up the woman’s dress. She then checked the labels on her torn dress, blouse, and sweater. The woman’s hands were the last thing she looked at. Finally she stood up.
“Well?” Vachon looked at her expectantly. “You have conclusions? She was killed there, of course.” He pointed to a pool of blood on the floor at the center of the room. “Then dragged over here and thrown behind the couch.”
“She was in the way where they killed her, so they dumped her here. They didn’t want to have to keep walking over her.” Jana looked around the rest of the room, checking the area where the actual killing had taken place. “A partial heel print in the blood,” she pointed out.
Vachon nodded. “We have photographed it, taken measurements.” He indicated the dead woman again. “Tell me what you think of her.”
“An older woman. In her middle to late seventies. Her eyes were starting to fail her. She and her husband do not have much money, but they manage. She is good at repairing her clothes. They are not new. She may have been a seamstress at one time.”
Jana walked around the room, looking at the opened refrigerator door, the cabinets ajar, the front door. “Excuse me a moment, Inspector.” She went into the bedroom.
Vachon had a small smile on his face as he watched Jana leave the room. Then he gestured at Levitin. “Don’t you want to check anything?”
“I’m not a homicide detective. It’s better left to her.”
“Is she as good as I think?”
“Who told you?”
“We checked her credentials. And I’ve drawn my own conclusions. Why do you think I summoned you both here?” He paused, giving Levitin a wink. “If I had known you were not a homicide detective, I would only have asked her.”
“We are not trying to interfere in your jurisdiction.” Vachon made a moue, indicating that he’d never had such thoughts. “I called; you came.”
Jana left the bedroom and went into the bathroom. “I am almost done.” Her voice echoed slightly, bouncing off the bathroom tiles. “Not a bad place to live.”
Jana came back into the room. “We can talk now.” She remembered to say, “I would like to see your reports when they are written.”
“You will get them.” He pointed to the woman. “Tell me about her.” Very French, he opened his arms expansively to encompass the entire apartment. “And tell me what happened here.”
Jana walked back to the dead woman for a last look, then to Levitin, pointing to the French doors. “I would think that the ground is a good three meters below.”
Levitin walked to the doors, and through them, looking down, then returned to Jana and the inspector. “Three and a half meters.”
“And dirt or grass below?”
“Both.”
She thought about it for another moment, then began to talk, her eyes half closed as if internally reviewing what she said as she spoke.
“The woman, as I indicated, is in her middle to late seventies. Age-related eye trouble. She can’t see colors well any more, so she applies too much lipstick and face powder. She is still vain enough not to wear glasses, so she was probably a beauty when she was young. She does her hair herself. The color is not applied well, and it’s not well cut or professionally styled. A vain woman who was a beauty when she was younger would go to a professional stylist rather than do it herself. If she had money.”
“Poor, then?” guessed the inspector.
“Not poor-poor. Just above the poverty line, I would think. She still has an engagement ring on. A small diamond, not worth much, but it would have been sold if she were living in abject poverty.” She paused, looking at Levitin. “And she is from Eastern Europe. I think from Russia.”
Levitin caught Jana’s glance. “A woman from Russia? A big Russian population here, Inspector?”
“The Russians have always liked Nice. We have enough Russians that you will see that a number of our stores have Cyrillic advertising on the windows. There are Russians everywhere these days.” The inspector looked from one to the other. “What does another Russian woman have to do with this?”
Jana held up her hand for him to wait. “Let’s finish with this one first.”
“It’s worth the wait. I am getting my Euro worth.” The inspector righted one of the overturned chairs, sitting. “Better than I could have hoped.”
Jana waited to gather her thoughts, then continued. “The woman: from Russia, or one the former SSRs. She has several steel teeth in her mouth. That’s how they capped or replaced teeth in the SSRs in the old days. Her clothes, well, she has kept them for a long time. No labels, but not Western. They have been carefully mended in spots. And she was a friend of the woman who lived here.”
“We are looking for the rental agent, to find out who took the lease on the apartment.”
“A good move.”
Levitin pulled one of the other chairs up, righting it to sit next to the inspector, both of them taking on the appearance of schoolboys listening to their teacher. “Go on, please,” Levitin prodded her.
“There was one sweater left on the floor of the closet. Expensive. A style for a younger, more seductive woman. Too big for our murder victim.” She walked over to the French doors, examining the latches. “These were opened, from the inside.” She took several steps back toward the dead woman, pointing to the torn dress. “She still had her coat on. My belief is that she was coming in, not going out.”
“The front door was forced.” Jana walked back to look down at the body. “I think the men who broke in brought the old lady here. Her dress was torn, torn under a coat that was still buttoned. A new rip, or it would have already been repaired by the old woman. A rip that was made elsewhere, and she was not given an opportunity to change her dress before they came to this place.”
“Why would they bring the old lady here?” the inspector demanded.
“The occupant of the apartment. My guess is they knew each other. Foreign expatriates cling together. The men probably wanted to use the old woman as a ruse to gain entry. It went wrong, and they kicked in the door.”
“Did they get the woman who lived here?” Levitin’s voice betrayed his worry.
“I don’t think so.” She indicated the French doors. “A way of escape.” She turned to the inspector. “If you check the ground below the window, you should find new scuff marks, torn grass where she landed, maybe even a footprint.”
“I’ll be back.” The inspector went outside to talk to his men about checking the ground.
Levitin used the opportunity to privately quiz Jana. “My sister Sasha? The woman who rented the apartment?”
“You heard the inspector. There are lots of Russians here. It could be another woman; but my instinct, yes, I think, maybe so.” She gestured at the kitchen area. “The refrigerator is virtually empty. So are the food cupboards. The apartment is almost bare of personal effects. Its occupant was living from day to day. She knew she had to leave quickly. If you are going to stay longer, you fix a place up. This woman had no place to go, yet couldn’t stay here very much longer.”
Levitin looked to the window. “Sasha was an athlete. She could have made that jump.”
Jana wanted to encourage Levitin’s hope that his sister had escaped. “The furniture that is broken. No need for them to break it if they were just ransacking the apartment. They were angry. And they were angry because their intended target got away.”
Vachon came into the apartment, excited. “Recent scuff marks below the window. The woman jumped.” He went to the balcony, looking down. “A very courageous woman to jump that far.”
Jana corrected him. “A very desperate woman.”
Chapter 39
B
oyar saw the huge man sitting in front of his door as soon as he got out of the elevator. He stopped in his tracks. His first impulse was to run. After all, a man as short as Boyar was always in danger of being squashed, particularly when he encountered someone as big as the man on the floor. His second impulse, which he followed, was to walk toward the man. What harm can a sitting giant do? As small as he was, Boyar could outrun the big man before he could get his legs under himself.
Boyar stopped a meter away from the giant, pointing to his door. “You are blocking the way into my apartment.” Of course, Mikhail Gruschov could not understand French, but he had accessed an old picture of Boyar to look at before he came, and this person, small as he was, looked enough like him for Mikhail to reply in his friendliest Russian.
“Hello. We didn’t have a telephone number, so I just came. You are Boyar?”
Boyar had forgotten much of his childhood Russian, but he heard his name, and could still speak enough to remember his manners. He switched to his imperfect Russian, waving his apartment key in front of the giant’s face, inviting him inside. The giant proceeded to unfold himself from the floor, allowing Boyar to unlock the door and lead the way inside.
The apartment was one large artist’s studio. A drop cloth spattered with paint drippings covered the floor; there were two easels, both with unfinished pieces on them; and the walls were lined with a hundred sketches and photos. A little kitchenette off to the side of the room was filled with jars and tubes of paint, and dirty dishes and paintbrushes. Scattered around the apartment floor were stacks of oil paintings, water-colors, wood and wire armatures, and bits of art constructions, all leaning against the walls or simply piled haphazardly, taking up almost all the floor space. Boyar picked his way through the apartment, utilizing the narrow paths he had left to walk in. Gingerly, Mikhail followed him, afraid that any misstep of his would destroy a month’s worth of work.