Faces in the Rain (16 page)

‘She's not here,' Walters said coldly, ‘who is it?'

‘I'm a friend from Australia, Trevor Edwards,' I said disguising my accent.

‘You're out of luck. A couple of Australian police have just given her an awful grilling. Accused her of murdering some French agent in her Melbourne apartment.'

‘Where is she?'

‘With the Australian detectives at the local police station.'

‘Is she OK?'

‘Bit shaken.'

‘The bastards.'

‘They're also after another Australian, a man named Hamilton, who they think is in Paris. Interpol wants to speak with him too. They are going to help set up a Paris dragnet for him.'

I put down the phone.

A
FTER THE MORNING
's fright I again stayed mostly in the hotel and only stepped out at night for a meal.

I dined alone, not a usual French pastime, for the second successive night at a Swedish restaurant called Lakvavit on Rue Dauphine in the Latin Quarter, and enjoyed their herring and sour cream. It was one of the few places I liked in Paris where a person might not be conspicuous alone, and it gave me time to think about my next move, which was to find Freddie May, who, according to Danielle, was staying in Alesia.

I took a taxi there.

It was in one of those not-so-well-known parts of Paris south of the river and Left Bank, which was unfashionable, even dull for that city, but nevertheless typical. It didn't have the pizzazz of St Germain or the style of Avenue Foch, yet nor did it have the sleaze of Place D'ltalia or St Denis or Pigalle. It was bread and
flower shops, small cafes, with a sprinkling of brasseries and bars. It was as bourgeois as Paris life could be, set in ancient, crumbling and monotonous streets in which the shutters were slammed tight.

There wasn't anywhere a glint of glass or ruffle of curtains, and the facades were so colourless they could have been in mourning. If Freddie had wanted to hide out, I thought, as I paid the taxi driver, this was as good as any place in the city.

Number seventy-five Rue Tombe Issoire was a twelve-storey apartment block, which featured balconies flooded with greenery to relieve the boredom of the unimaginative modern brick architecture.

I waited until an elderly man was dragged by a poodle out of the foyer, and then ducked in before the door shut. I wanted to surprise Freddie. I took the lift, which was as small as a coffin and about as forbidding, to his floor.

Freddie answered the door. He went to shut me out but I was a thought ahead of him. My foot went in and I shouldered the door aside. Freddie stumbled back. It was time for a little shock tactics. I pushed him against a wall and pinned him there by the throat.

‘Ask me why I'm here, Freddie,' I said.

‘I know,' he rasped, ‘could I breathe, please . . . my windpipe!' I relaxed my grip, but kept a knee hard against his leg.

‘What do you want?' he gasped.

‘Who killed Martine?!'

‘I really don't know. I swear . . . I thought you had!'

I let him slide to the floor. The apartment was poky, with two bedrooms and a dining room which ran into a kitchen and a study. The place's only compensation was a view over Paris's humpy-backed rooftops, which were
slate and sloping. The rear windows overlooked a courtyard, its ivy-covered walls punctuated by the strict geometry of red shutters up the eight stories of the building opposite.

From this height, white doves looked like mechanical mice with dying batteries as they waddled across the courtyard cobbles. Inside the apartment, empty Fosters beer cans were on a ledge and Freddie's underwear hung near windows to collect some air. A TV flickered in a corner and there was a video with X-rated cassettes scattered on the floor. Freddie was in hiding for the duration with porn films – bubblegum for a sullied mind. I wondered about the kids he had once taught.

‘What do you know about Michel?' I said, wheeling round and standing over him. He was still crumpled against a wall. ‘Claude Michel.'

‘Michel,' he said with a frown as if he was teasing a mighty mind pit. The cunning rodent was a poor actor. I took a step towards him.

‘He's . . . he's that doctor,' he said. Freddie may have thought I had killed Martine, and I didn't have second thoughts about playing on that, especially as Freddie's lies had put the pressure on me from the beginning.

‘Yes, he's “that doctor”,' I said leaning my face down towards him, ‘what do you know about him?'

‘I don't know anything, I swear!'

‘Who told you about him?'

‘Martine.'

‘What did she say?'

‘That he was after her . . . that's all.' I turned my back on Freddie. He slid on to the couch.

‘I'm desperate,' I said, facing him again.

‘Dunc . . . Duncan, all I know is that Michel got out of France years ago. He had an ID change.'

‘A what?'

‘You know. He had cosmetic surgery. Changed his face.'

‘Where did he have that done?'

‘Well, it couldn't have been here. He was on the run.'

‘Then where?'

‘Mar . . . Mar . . . Martine was sure it was Australia. In the last six years.'

That was useful, if true.

‘Why did you leave Australia?'

‘Because I was being set-up for her murder.'

‘No one told you to get out?'

‘No!'

‘I'm told the police found an empty bottle of Serophrine at your apartment.'

‘They planted it there!' Freddie said. ‘Or somebody did.'

Assuming Freddie wasn't lying, someone had put the two empty labelled bottles of Serophrine in the Rolls and Freddie's apartment. The police could have done it, but why? Anyway, it sounded too clumsy.

Whoever was responsible had had access to Martine's place. He or she had left the unlabelled bottle of the capsules there, not realising that the dose that Martine had taken, or had been forced to take, had come from it.

The killer, Danielle and the police, in that order, were known to have been in the apartment after Freddie and I had left it by four a.m.

My eyes fell on a couple of Freddie's business cards sitting on a mantelpiece.

‘Tell me about this “Vital” you worked for,' I said.

‘It's a small French company.

‘Making perfume.'

‘And a few cosmetic lines.'

‘What are Cochard and Maniguet doing for them?'

‘I don't know them,' he said, ‘they work in local sales and distribution.'

‘Where do you work?'

‘I handle the company's distribution throughout the Pacific.'

‘And you never met them?'

‘Not really, no.'

‘I thought they might haved advised you to leave Australia.'

Freddie shook his head and examined the carpet. It was a guilty mannerism I recalled from schooldays when he had been caught breaking rules. I rubbed the back of my neck and rolled my head round. There was tension right through my body.

‘Do you know anything about a hospital at Meudon?' I asked, recalling the address in Cochard's notes.

‘Meudon?' Freddie said scratching his head. ‘No, why?'

‘You know Meudon?'

‘I do, yes.'

‘How come, Freddie?'

‘Vital has its offices on the edge of the Meudon Forest.'

‘You've been there?'

‘It's company HQ. Seeing I was here I paid them a visit.'

‘You're going to take me there,' I said, ‘tomorrow.'

Freddie seemed more uncomfortable. ‘Why do you want to go there?' he asked.

‘I love forest,' I said, ‘I like to breathe the open air. You don't get that much in Paris.'

‘I'm a bit busy tomorrow, mate,' he said, invoking the Aussie salutation as if I had just bought him a six-pack
of Fosters. ‘Could we make it Wednesday?'

‘No,' I said getting to my feet, ‘I'll be here at nine a.m.'

I headed for the door. ‘And perhaps you'd better give me your phone number.'

A taxi took me round the block and I had the driver wait a hundred metres away. Within five minutes Freddie came flying out of the apartment building and hailed a taxi. We followed him for about five kilometres to Boulevard du Montparnasse. The traffic limped along so that my driver didn't have to make any fancy moves to keep up with Freddie, even when we failed to get through lights that his driver squeezed through.

Freddie got out at La Coupole, the last of France's great brasseries, which happened to have been a favourite haunt of mine for twenty years. I couldn't think of one visit to Paris where I hadn't taken a coffee or a meal there.

The brightly-lit restaurant had been retained in the old style, but the owners had given in to economic pressures and changing times and had constructed six floors of offices above the 1927 building.

Freddie entered the huge square room which was full of late diners. He sat inside in a section of cubicles set aside for those who wished to just drink, and waited. I wasn't about to go in or be seen pressing my nose against the window, so I stayed on the opposite side of the Boulevard and strolled east towards Gare Montparnasse.

The area had become dominated by cost-efficient premises that housed hordes of fast-food restaurants with their yellow, plastic interiors and Franglo-gibberish names: Freetime Longburger Restaurant; Le Cafe Big Mac; Le Chien Hot and others. There were endless
garish cinema complexes that proclaimed mainly American films. Many doorways were occupied by prostitutes, usually in tight black leather skirts, and often chewing vigorously. In my time coming here the artists and intellectuals had been replaced by tourists, bourgeois and roughs. La Dome, La Rotonde and Le Select were still there, but the new had seen off the fashionable and the bohemian nightlife, and with them had gone the area's charm.

I doubled back after a twenty-minute stroll and could see Freddie speaking with somebody. I crossed the road and was close enough to recognise the twitching shoulders of Cochard.

I retreated to Le Select across the boulevard from La Coupole and was uncertain whether to stay hidden or quit. A white-coated waiter stopped arranging beer mats and tearing paid bills in half, and offered me a seat on the terrace. I ordered a
citron pressé
and waited until he had cleared coffee pots and soda siphons from my table before sitting down.

So dear Freddie was connected to Cochard, who was staying at ninety-eight Boulevard du Montparnasse, which adjoined La Coupole. I took the drink and was about to leave before they did, when Freddie greeted a woman who had just entered. I had to dodge traffic halfway across the road to see who it was. Surprise number two. It was Danielle.

I retraced my steps and this time stood in the shadows next to Le Select and watched.

I lit a cheroot.

A lady of the night approached and offered me her services so nicely that I nearly missed the three of them coming out of La Coupole. They disappeared into the
Cochard's apartment block.

I hailed a taxi and returned to my firetrap lodgings in St Michel.

There was too much on my mind. I spent a couple of hours staring at the plain, cross-beamed ceiling, thinking about Danielle.

If she was in with Cochard and Maniguet, wouldn't she have told them I was disguised as Morten-Saunders? Presuming she had, wouldn't Cochard have known who I was on the plane? Was he aware of me all the way? Did he fool me and follow me? But if he had done, surely he would have tried to kill me, especially if he had learned about his companion's demise in Melbourne? He could well have heard that I was a key suspect.

This mess of unanswered questions, fears and puzzles allowed me only semi-sleep until four a.m. when I dozed off and didn't wake until after nine.

T
HE APPEAL OF
Meudon as a business HQ site was clear. It was situated south-west of Paris and just beyond the ring road or Périphérique, but it was just eleven minutes by train from Gare Montparnasse. It had escaped the ravages of the inner city and had a quiet, almost villagey atmosphere, accentuated by its proximity to Meudon Forest a few kilometres from the town centre.

I had taken the train by myself to Meudon in search of Vital. The fact that it might have a hospital there intrigued me. Vital, Farrar and Freddie had said, made perfume.

A short walk from the train station in sleepy hollow found me at at a group of shops. I stopped at a cafe to ask directions to Rue Des Gardes. I walked into a dark room dominated by a stained, marble bar. Above rows of bottles was an old clock that had ticked its last at five thirty-three this morning or a decade ago, and to add to
the time warp, there were old calendars and posters on the wall. The customers included two men looking like French peasants, complete with dirty laced boots and patchy trousers tucked into socks. They were playing cards and sipping Calvados at a marble-topped table. There was also a group of four younger men and women: judging from their casual dress and long hair, they could have been students.

I pressed a buzzer on the counter covered by well-used drip mats advertising aperitifs. An old barmaid in a mini-skirt, and with puckered and wrinkled flesh like blow-torched paintwork, sauntered in and gave me a gutteral
‘Oui?'

I asked directions to Rue Des Gardes and Vital. The two peasant types came to the aid of the perplexed barmaid, who probably had never looked past her bulbous nose, and explained the route. My French seemed to be standing up well, if I allowed for my accent and the bullet replies I would miss every so often.

I trudged to the top of Rue Des Gardes and a group of twenty villas on the edge of the forest. Vital's offices were in a two-storey building beyond them. There was no sign of the hospital mentioned in Cochard's notes.

A small truck passed on the narrow road next to the villas that led to the Vital building. I hailed the driver. He was a skinny, pop-eyed man of about thirty. I asked him if he was delivering to a hospital.