Impure Blood (25 page)

‘Using EGNOS MTO/2 – it’ll be accurate to within about four metres.’

‘I don’t know what that means but it sounds fantastic.’

Granot gave Erica a look.

‘Couldn’t fit one into my wife’s mobile, could you?’

‘Seems only fair, I’ve fitted one in yours for her.’

Laughter all round. Almost. Darac gave her a look.

‘Will you let me know immediately when you’ve done it?’

‘Sure.’

‘That’s great, Erica, thanks.’ Glancing at his notes, he got to his feet. ‘So now on to our primary focus – Florian’s murder itself.’

Writing the words
LANCURONIUM
and
NEOSTIGMINE
on the whiteboard, Darac outlined Deanna’s findings.

‘She shoots, she scores,’ Granot said. ‘As always.’

Darac parked his backside on the edge of a desk.

‘So, Bonbon – want to come in here?’

‘Yes, I’ve just returned from interviewing the woman who rang in the original tip-off call from Rue Verbier, one Marie Lacroix. From a third-floor balcony opposite the Basilique, she saw Florian join the prayer meeting; she saw the old woman, Delage, hit him with her shopping trolley; she saw him bend forward as if in prayer, and not get up again. But, and this is the important thing now we have a handle on the time frame, she also saw Florian arrive on the street before all this happened. Before Lartou’s CCTV footage kicks in, in fact. In retrospect, I think we can piece together what happened. It seems Florian first saw you, Armani, on Jean Médecin. He hid behind a Colonne Morris. Then when you disappeared into a boutique on Rue Verbier, he decided to leg it – especially as there was the cover of a small crowd of people on the pavement between him and you. They’d gathered to watch one of those living-statue street performers.’

‘I was only collecting a pair of shoes, so I went into the place and came out again almost immediately. I did notice that crowd on the pavement opposite.’

‘And then you walked off in the direction of the prayer room?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That, I think, is when Florian really panicked. He thought you were following him.’

‘Instead, I went into a place to look at some shirts. I didn’t see Florian at any point.’ Feeling all eyes on him, Armani stiffened. ‘Look, I was off duty, right? Get off my back, all of you.’

‘No one’s on your back, man,’ Darac said. ‘Go on, Bonbon.’

‘So Florian dived for cover in the prayer meeting. He seems to have had only one good idea in all this – he poured away the incriminating GHB water in his bottle in a way that looked natural for a Muslim about to pray. He needn’t have bothered, of course. But then he didn’t know he had such a short time to live.’ Bonbon took a pink-striped bag out of his pocket. ‘In light of Deanna’s findings, let’s go back to the crowd who were watching the mime. Marie reports that Florian was jogging past, when one of them, a young bearded man carrying a rucksack, peeled away. Florian ran straight into him. It was quite an impact. Both of them were almost knocked off their feet.’

Bonbon let the implication take as he unwrapped a sweet.

Darac was listening with his hand to his chin.

‘Florian collided with the bearded man, Bonbon? Not the other way around?’

‘It takes two to collide though, doesn’t it? All you need is timing and a bit of nerve to walk in front of somebody who’s running to make it look as if the impact is their fault. Ask Granot – half the defenders in his beloved l’OGC Nice get away with it every match.’

Exhausted patience was one of Granot’s signature looks.

‘The paranoid ravings of a typical Barcelona fan. But he is right.’

‘Okay.’ Darac nodded, picturing it. ‘She – Marie – saw nothing more conclusive than that?’

‘She didn’t say so but I didn’t press the point. We didn’t have Deanna’s findings at that stage so I was gearing my questions mainly to what happened at the other end of the street.’ Bonbon looked at his watch. ‘She may still be at home. What say I ring her?’

‘Yeah – do it.’

Bonbon made the call, asking questions à la Agnès in a logically ordered sequence. At the end of it, he had learned nothing conclusive but several points had resonance: Marie agreed that the bearded man could have engineered the collision as Bonbon had outlined; that the impact had been to Florian’s right-hand side; and that he had collided with the bearded man’s rucksack rather than his shirt-sleeved arm. Further, the rucksack had looked substantial and appeared fully packed. She hadn’t seen where the bearded man had gone afterwards.

‘Great work, Bonbon,’ Darac said, running a hand through his hair. ‘Questions? Comments?’

‘I have one.’ Frankie broke the seal on a bottle of water and took a sip. ‘I’m not sure I believe this MO. If I were, for the sake of argument, a vengeful parent, I would seek to flatten Florian under the wheels of my car, bludgeon him to death, stab him with a knife. Perhaps all three. What I wouldn’t do is hang around with a rucksack-mounted syringe full of poison on the off chance he passed by me on the street. Passed by at a run, conveniently. It’s too outlandish, isn’t it?’

As if it were essential to the process, Darac shifted his point of balance as he weighed the idea.

‘It is, yes – but there are other outlandish aspects to this thing we know to be true. Take the composition of the drug cocktail used on Florian. I also think his being there wasn’t just chance. Florian frequented Rue Verbier – we know that from the statements of the Muslim worshippers, several of whom had often seen him there. They won’t be the only ones who knew it was part of his stamping ground. Fair?’

Canting her head to one side, Frankie drew down the corners of her full mouth.

‘It’s fair, certainly, but… Armani – give us your take on this.’

‘Thanks to La Professoressa Bianchi,’ he said, transparently seeking to regain lost ground by emphasising his tribal connection to Deanna, ‘we’ve got a meaningful timing for the lethal injection. And I have no problem buying the concealed syringe idea. None at all.’

‘By running,’ Frankie said, ‘Florian made it easier for the bearded man to pull off the collision trick, true? But how did he know Florian was going to do that? He couldn’t have anticipated Florian was going to see someone who would spook him. Or perhaps Beard had beaters of his own secreted around the corner, you think?’

Bringing his thumb and fingertips together, Armani shook his hand. ‘Frankie – the fact that Florian was running was coincidental. Remember Deanna said that the superfine needle used might create no more than a mildly irritating sensation on the skin? Florian mightn’t have noticed he’d been jabbed even if he’d been standing still.’

‘Deanna did say that, yes. Still seems a
little
strange.’

‘We’ve had stranger MOs than covert injections.’ Armani swapped the shaking hand for the double palms-up. ‘Many stranger ones.’

‘Well, that is true. Especially by some of you Italians.’

‘We’re an inventive race. The point is – this bearded man: every effort must be made to find him.’

Darac nodded.

‘Yes, I think he may prove to be Florian’s killer. A couple of things might help us with this. First: the human statue may have got a good look at him. Second, there could be footage from CCTV cameras in Avenue Jean Médecin. We need to look at any new material and review what has already been reviewed.’ He gave Lartou Lartigue a sympathetic look. ‘I’ll arrange a whole squad of film critics to assist you.’

‘Thank you, chief. I’ll need them.’

‘The stuff you’ve already looked at, I don’t suppose you remember seeing…’

‘What – a man with a beard and rucksack when the brief was to find a man in a white suit and an old woman?’

‘Forget I asked. As soon as the meeting is over, I’ll set that up, okay?’ Lartigue gave him the thumbs-up. ‘Bonbon – the human statue. Do we know anything about him or her?’

‘It’s a her. I haven’t had time to make any enquiries yet but finding a marble Medusa complete with all-singing, all-dancing snakes shouldn’t tax us too much.’

Erica clicked her fingers.

‘
That’s
where I’ve seen him. Manou Esquebel, I mean.’ She gave Darac a look. ‘Do you remember I said he looked familiar?’

‘Yes, I do. Go on.’

‘Last Saturday afternoon, I took my nephew to the children’s carousel in Jardin Albert. On the promenade just opposite, Medusa was… performing, if that’s the word, and she’d drawn quite a crowd. Manou was one of them.’

Yvonne Flaco finally felt able to join the debate.

‘Was Manou’s interest just focused on the act, Erica? Did you see him arrive or leave?’

‘I didn’t notice – he was just a face in the crowd. Look, I know I’m a techie and not a detective…’

Several voices supported the assertion.

‘Guys?’ Darac said, raising a hand. ‘Go with it, Erica.’

‘I was just going to say that the crowd was made up mainly of kids. It seems a bit of an odd coincidence that Manou and Florian were both seen around this Medusa character. Perhaps that’s why Florian was heading for Rue Verbier yesterday. Street artists stick to a timetable and he may have known she would have been there at that time and that she acts like a magnet for the sort of … prey he was interested in.’

‘Grazers go for the low-hanging fruit, don’t they,’ Max Perand said, still smiling his lopsided smile. ‘The easy pickings.’

Darac had an expert on sex crime to call on.

‘Frankie?’

‘The easiest pickings of all are to be found in the family home.’ She gave Perand a look. ‘That’s where the vast majority of paedophilic activity takes place.’

The young man stirred in his seat.

‘Sorry, but there
are
paedos who abduct kids from playgrounds, et cetera. Aren’t there? Or what are we putting a bug in Manou’s phone for?’

‘They exist – certainly. Florian and Manou may be among them. And they may have latched on to Medusa as someone who attracted kids – a sort of Pied Piper on a plinth.’ Expressed in Frankie’s talc-soft contralto, the phenomenon sounded even more sinister. ‘But let’s break it down into age groups. The picture may change but no one in the city or in the wider conurbation has reported that a young child has obviously suffered abuse or gone missing recently. So that leaves us with unaccompanied older kids and teenagers. A big problem there is that teenagers who have been drugged and raped are often too ashamed to tell anyone about it. For a variety of reasons, this holds especially for boys. So even if you know for a fact that someone has been attacked, you often have to gently tease the info out of them. That’s why I devised the questionnaire for the Lycée Mossette in the way I did.’

‘Anything from that yet, by the way?’ Bonbon said.

‘Nothing conclusive so far. To get back to the question – there are hundreds of places where kids congregate. Medusa’s various crowds would just be one more to add to the list.’ She gave Erica the sort of look that had attracted Principal Volpini’s cat to her lap. ‘The connection you’re trying to draw is a little tenuous, I think. And Florian, don’t forget, was often seen on Rue Verbier.’

‘True, but maybe Medusa having a spot there was the reason for that.’

‘But he didn’t pause by the crowd even for a moment. He ran straight past.’

‘He’d seen Armani just seconds before, though.’

Armani shook his head.

‘Sorry, Erica, but I don’t see where this is getting us.’

‘I was just wondering if Medusa was part of the set-up. Perhaps the three of them were in it together. She, Florian and Manou.’

‘If she was,’ Darac said, ‘she’ll have to be a sharp one to conceal it from us when we talk to her. You saw her a week ago today, right?’

‘On the promenade opposite Jardin Albert, as I said.’

‘When?’

‘About one o’clock but she’d been there a while already, I think.’ She looked at her Swatch. ‘She might even be there now.’

‘We’ll get over there in time.’ He scanned the room. ‘Any questions or comments?’

No one responded.

‘Alright, that’s it for the time being.’

Papers riffled. Chairs scraped.

‘In other news,’ Frankie said, getting her things together, ‘we saw Freddy Anselme’s SWAT team leaving for Monaco a little while ago. Judging by the expression on his face, he thinks World War Three has started.’

Granot sidled up.

‘He hasn’t had any special orders, has he?’

Armani shook his head.

‘No – they’re just taking up station in the barracks.’ He adjusted his button-down collar. ‘Hyped up? I tell you, a cat dashes out in front of their vehicle – two seconds later, there’ll be six thousand bullets in it.’

‘Here’s to our men in uniform,’ Darac said, raising his empty espresso cup. ‘Okay, my team – who’s been neglecting their paperwork as much as I have?’

Flaco raised Perand’s hand for him. He couldn’t stop her, Darac noticed. And his own efforts to follow suit failed miserably.

‘Alright – you’re as strong as an ox,’ Perand said. ‘Happy?’

‘Yes.’ But Flaco’s face had fallen slightly as she returned Darac’s look. ‘I’m behind as well, Captain.’

‘Okay, so you’re not free.’ His scanning eye fell on Granot and Bonbon. They shook their heads so synchronously, it looked rehearsed. ‘And neither are you two.’ Options were running out. He felt a hand brush his shoulder.

‘See you later, Frankie.’

After a moment, he picked up his stuff and hastened after her.

‘Hold on.’

‘Well, I suppose a five-second gap does constitute “later”.’

‘Got a minute?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And would you have another one in about half an hour? To come and interview Snake Girl with me?’

She scrunched her forehead.

‘I’ll need to check in with my guys first. Should be alright though, I think.’

‘Call me if you can’t,’ he said, as they headed out of the door.

As stealthily as a pickpocket, Armani slipped in alongside.

‘Ninety. Ninety euros is absolutely my final offer.’

‘Seventy-five was absolutely your final offer.’ Darac flipped his mobile and keyed in Agnès’s mobile number. ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘This is absolutely
final
final.’

Granot took up closer order behind them.