Impure Blood (19 page)

‘Some physique. No. I don’t know him.’

‘Frankie?’

‘No. Sorry.’

Armani flexed his biceps.

‘So let me go have a chat with him.’

Agnès gave him a look.

‘What about your cover?’

‘Have a uniform tell him a guy from Prisoner Welfare has turned up to see him. Spot check to catch the police arseholes out.’

Agnès gave a nod to the desk officer. The set-up was arranged.

Armani turned to Darac.

‘The guy has had his half-hour with a lawyer?’

‘They all have.’

Following a further exchange with the desk officer, a guard took Armani off to the cell. The rest of them gathered around the DO’s monitor. Despite Armani’s convincing performance, the encounter made poor TV and he was back in a couple of minutes.

‘He’s on something, alright, but it’s difficult to say what. There was nothing but the GHB at his place?’

Darac had been waiting for the question.

‘A whole sack of stuff went over to the lab.’

Armani grinned at everyone in turn.

‘I must be hearing things. There was a drugs cache at the place and you didn’t think to call us?’

‘We did think of it. But going through it, we didn’t find anything suspicious.’

‘Oh,
you
didn’t find anything suspicious?’

‘It was mainly just caffeine tablets and things.’

‘Was it? How would you know?’

Agnès sighed in exasperation.

‘Boys?’

‘And you, of course, might have come up with more, Armani. But whatever the other stuff was, the lab will let us know, anyway.’

Looking only partly placated, Armani gave a shrug.

‘The blood result will come first. That will tell us what he’s on. But he might wind up telling us himself before then. He might scream at us to get him some.’

Darac winced. Of all the many and various expressions of human frailty, drug addiction touched him particularly. Some of his jazz heroes would have sold their souls for a fix.

Agnès glanced at her watch.

‘I think he’ll tell us all he knows about Florian well before that point. Anything else strike you about him, Armani?’

‘One thing did, yes. I didn’t recognise him, as I said. But I’m pretty sure he recognised me. I think he knew I was in Narco the moment I walked in.’

It was a good thing the Blue Devil jazz club didn’t rely on passing trade. Occupying the site of an old print works, there were few outward signs of the joint’s existence. By day, a set of garishly graffitied roller shutters hid the place from the street, Avenue des Diables Bleus. By night, there were no neon signs or flashing lights to draw the eye – just a few photos lining a stairway that led down to a pair of scruffy, red-painted doors.

But then you saw it. Captioned
Blown Away by the Brass Section
, the club’s signature poster was based on a photo taken at the Blue Devil in 1963. For Darac, no other image better conveyed the atmosphere of a hot live jazz date. He never entered or left the place without reaching up and touching it for luck.

In the lobby, the American club owner, Eldridge Clay, was sitting at the battered card table that served as the Blue Devil’s cash desk. Absorbed in the day’s
Nice-Matin
, the big man’s eyes stayed on the page as Darac’s shadow fell over it.

‘Garfield.’ Ridge’s pet name for him emerged in a distracted murmur, the pitch of the voice somewhere down with the double basses. He held out a hand. Darac slapped his palm into it. ‘You shoot anybody today?’

‘No, but it’s still early,’ he said, looking down on the man’s head, its nap threadbare as old baize. ‘Are you doorkeeper as well as everything else now?’

‘Pascal went out for a second.’ Ridge folded the paper and tossed it to one side. ‘Miss Dinah Graham.’ He nodded reverently. ‘You see her in the States ever?’

‘Tonight’s a first.’

‘Then go learn.’ He held the look. ‘I’ll join you in a minute.’

There was a good house in for the veteran singer. Her trio began the intro to Ellington’s ballad ‘Solitude’ as Darac circled round the back of the room and made for the bar. He wondered how many times the band had played the tune. Drums, bass and piano sounded like one instrument – that was how many times.

Dinah stood centre stage, listening with a rapt smile on her lined, heavily made-up face. Squat and square in her gold lamé dress, she looked almost like a parody of what she once was. But then she started to sing.

‘In my solitooooood…’

The voice sounded less smooth than in its silky prime, and after just a few bars it was clear her range had shifted south a little. But the simplicity of her approach to the song’s melody and lyrics conveyed its theme of isolation and longing so palpably, it brought Darac out in goosebumps. As the final notes died away, all he could think of was Angeline.

A hand touched Darac’s shoulder as the room erupted in applause.

‘Hey.’

Darac exchanged greetings kisses with Khara, the club’s Senegalese waitress. Without asking for his order, she opened the chiller cabinet behind her.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Fantastic.’ She opened a Leffe Tripel and turned to pour it. ‘You?’

‘Not bad.’ He gave a little nod at the stand. ‘What do you think?’

‘Sublime. Nice lady, too.’

At the mike, Dinah began to introduce the next number.

‘Sorry, folks, I can only do this in English. Ridge Clay and I are New Yorkers, right? The Bronx. Anybody ever been there?’

A few voices called out.

‘And you made it back. Congratulations.’

Darac shared a smile with Khara as he took his drink.

‘Well, he and I first met in 19…’ She flicked a finger across her lips, blurring the rest. ‘…Okay? Now if you’d told me that the man would move to Nice, France, take on a club and run it for twenty-five unbroken years, I would have said you were ca-ray-zee. So come on – put your hands together for Ridge. The guy’s a hero.’

There were no dissenters. The Blue Devil was just about the last old-style jazz club left in the South of France. Its longevity was all down to him.

‘So this next one’s for Ridge.’

As if on cue, the man came into the room as the band went into ‘All The Things You Are’. Darac turned to Khara.

‘And a cognac for Ridge on me – his favourite.’

Khara’s eyebrows rose.

‘It’s Mapin XO, you know.’

‘Make that his almost favourite. How many of the quintet are in?’

‘Two, three…’ Khara closed one eye. ‘…seven… nine with you.’

A collective of local players anything from three to twelve in number, it was their little joke always to refer to themselves as a quintet. Darac spotted the bandleader, Didier Musso, sitting at a table with their alto sax player, Charlie Pachelberg. Opened-out LP sleeves were draped over the two chairs next to them – the club’s way of denoting the seats were reserved. For a moment, Darac was back with the pizza boxes on Rue Verbier.

‘Put a round together, will you, sweetie? I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘I’ll bring them. The guys are dotted all around the room.’

Darac touched base with Marco the drummer until Ridge’s number ended, then picked his way around to Didier’s table.

‘Finally.’ The two of them embraced. ‘No Angeline?’

‘No Angeline.’

Darac slipped
Our Man in Paris
off his chair and bent to kiss Charlie.

‘My God, she’s missed something special,’ she said, her Berlin-accented French just about intelligible. ‘Such a shame.’

‘Yeah.’

On the stand, Dinah began a lengthy introduction to a number designed to showcase her long-time pianist, Wilfred Jones. In time-honoured fashion, she left its title until last.

‘So people, close your eyes and drift away to the beautiful… “Blue in Green”.’

The announcement itself brought a prolonged ovation. The man began to play, the melody emerging through the fading applause like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

Didier disobeyed Dinah. His eyes were wide open.

‘Wilfred Jones… Talk about touch! He’s barely breathing on the keys.’

‘Wilf’s barely breathing, period,’ Ridge said, joining them. ‘Thanks for the drink, Garfield.’

A few numbers later, the band proved they could still tear a place up as they ripped through ‘Squeeze Me’ at break-neck speed.

Didier’s quiff nodding in time with his clapping hands, he leaned in to Ridge.

‘Got a question for you – something only an American club owner would answer.’

‘You want to know how much I’m paying these geniuses for the gig. Right?’

‘Exactly.’

Ridge took a slow sip of his cognac.

‘More than stoop labour; less than a living wage.’

The faintest lines creased Didier’s boyish brow.

‘They’re playing just for expenses?’

It wasn’t the first time American artists working the summer festival circuit had done this. A favour to Ridge, a gift for everyone else.

Darac stayed until the final encore. Dinah was alone when she returned to the stand. One hand on the piano, she closed her eyes.

‘You… don’t know what love is…’

Immediately, Dinah was speaking to each member of the audience as if only the two of them knew what she was feeling. She was certainly speaking to Darac. Three minutes of shared pain later, she brought the number to a close, her voice fading as if she were taking her final breath. Silence. And then the place erupted. The trio waited a good couple of minutes before following her out on the stand. More rapturous applause. And then Ridge joined them, hugging Dinah until the ovation finally subsided. He turned to the audience.

‘Now go home,’ he said, eliciting laughs. But he had a word for Didier. ‘Didi – round up the guys and stick around, will you?’

A perfect evening just got more perfect. It seemed Dinah and the boys were up for an after-hours jam session with the quintet. Only Darac declined the invitation. Nothing lost. He’d played with legends before. There would be another one along sometime.

* * *

Angeline was in bed by the time he arrived home. Unsure of how deeply she was sleeping, he slipped in next to her as gently as he could. But she stirred anyway, her arm brushing across his chest as she turned towards him. She was sound asleep.

Feeling her breath against his cheek, he lay there looking at her in the half-light: the face he knew better than his own; the body whose rises, falls and hollows were hidden under a nightdress.

You don’t know what love is… But Darac knew, alright. He had known what it was for the past four years.

It was almost midnight before Agnès Dantier arrived back in her home patch of Cimiez. Laid out on a saddle of rising ground in the north of the city, it was an elegant quarter; an enclave of shady avenues, stuccoed mansions, bright new apartment blocks and, most impressively of all, classical ruins.

Agnès passed the Roman arènes feeling she was something of a ruin herself, this evening. What a day. She thought back to her encounter with the young Australians she’d met outside the Caserne. Bright, shiny, their lives in front of them. She wondered if they had found the ‘real city’ they had been searching for. Though somewhat irked by them at the time, she felt a little guilty now at the way she’d directed them to the wall plaque. It had been a brutal way to make a point. Am I turning into a bitch? she wondered. A ruin
and
a bitch – fabulous.

The sky was crystal clear overhead and as she turned at the head of the down ramp into her building’s parking garage, she caught a glimpse of Mont Alban away to the east. Rising from its wooded ridge, a telecom mast rigged with red warning lights pierced the night sky like a giant, blood-beaded syringe.

She parked, stretched out her back and set off up the footway that followed the ramp back on to the avenue. It wasn’t surprising she was feeling overwrought: predictions of race riots on the streets, of carnage at the Tour. And once more, she had had to defend Darac against the Palais. How many times had she pointed out to them that his clearance rate was the best in the region? She hoped to God he would never falter because he would be gone in a minute. Gone with his integrity still intact, though, no doubt. She loved Darac for his honesty; for his refusal to be anything other than he was. The greatest compliment she could pay him was that of all the officers she had known, he came the closest to measuring up to her father.

And who but Darac would have volunteered to massage the hot, unwashed feet of a exhausted fifty-three-year-old? And then to have done it so carefully and without fuss?

Blinking deeply failed to clear her tired eyes as she gained the top of the ramp. Through the blur, she didn’t notice the parked van nor hear the footsteps hurrying behind her.

As the telecom mast came into view once more, a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. It was the last thing Agnès felt before she stepped into a pit of infinite darkness.

Every year, 100,000 fans flooded into Monaco to attend the Formula One Grand Prix. Twice that number was expected to show for the opening stage of the Tour de France. Although for many, the race didn’t begin in earnest until the 182 kilometre second day, the 15 kilometre individual time trial had an excitement all of its own. Above all, it meant the Tour was under way for another year. Three weeks of drama, fun and probably scandal lay ahead.

The time trial, in which competitors set off singly at timed intervals, ran to a different timetable from a normal stage. The first rider was not due to leave until 2 pm, hours after the field was usually rolling out from the start line all together. But for the Tour detail of the Garde Républicaine motorcycle squadron, the later start made no difference – it was business as usual. By 7.30, all forty-five of them had showered and breakfasted.

Whether they were going to cover 15 kilometres or 215, the day for every GR officer began with a maintenance check of his motorcycle. Although a peloton-less 15 kilometre circular course offered little in the way of a challenge, the mood in the locker room was upbeat, fuelled by a crossfire of banter. More exciting days lay ahead.