Impure Blood (31 page)

Lartigue’s brow lowered.

‘Is that the monitor or the camera?’

Drut squinted at the image through his sleep-deprived eyes.

‘Must be the camera. But it doesn’t do that normally. The kit here is pretty good, I will say that for them. The van driver must have doctored it.’

After a couple of minutes, the image blipped and returned to its original sharpness. They waited another ten minutes for Agnès to appear on foot. She didn’t.

Darac turned to Drut.

‘Which camera covers her parking space itself?’

‘Camera Two. This is Camera One we’re looking at.’

‘Go to Two and rewind fifteen minutes.’

Drut did as he was asked. The footage showed the Citroën turn into shot and stop. Darac’s heart grew heavy as he watched Agnès get out of the car, quite unaware of what awaited her. She stretched, took a couple of bags from the rear seat and set off along the side wall towards the footway. As she disappeared around the corner, Darac asked for the sequence to be replayed.

‘Now Camera One again.’

They watched the whole thing again – from Agnès’s arrival in the Citroën to her failure to appear around the corner at the bottom of the footway.

‘Note down the exact times of those blips in the image, Lartou. Because it was in that slot that they grabbed her.’

‘What?’ Drut said. ‘But there’s nobody there.’

Lartou put a hand to his chin.

‘You’re thinking the van driver did what, chief – put some sort of jammer on the camera that made it lose five minutes? No, that doesn’t work, the time tagging displayed is continuous.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘A device that made the camera shoot the same five-minute sequence twice? No – same problem.’

Darac sat forward in his chair.

‘To defeat the time tag, they needed something really sophisticated or really simple. I think they went for the latter.’ He stared at the floor. ‘How’s this? On Thursday evening, van boy draws up and takes a photograph from the exact point of view of Camera One. That’s why he was so quick, why he didn’t appear to touch the CCTV camera, and why he took his gloves off and put them back on again in the way he did.’

‘Ah yes,’ Lartigue nodded. ‘You can’t operate most modern cameras with gloves on. The buttons are far too fiddly.’

‘Right. Then last night, they somehow interposed the photo he took in front of the CCTV camera’s lens. That’s the blip in the image we’re seeing. The autofocus then tried to do its job but the photo must have been a little too close and that’s why it isn’t properly sharp.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘Also, the framing is a little different, look. But it worked well enough for their purposes.’

Drut nodded.

‘So unseen and unrecorded, he or they apprehend Madame while the camera is broadcasting the image of the photo.’

‘And then when they’ve got her safely in the van, someone removed the photo and off they went.’

‘It could have been worked like that, monsieur. Without question.’

‘Stop the footage there, would you?’ Darac unclipped the radio from his belt. ‘Let’s take a closer look at the camera itself. I’ll call R.O. and Erica.’

‘I’ll get a stepladder, monsieur. And… I’m sorry I didn’t see those blips and things but I was patrolling at the top of the building at that time.’

‘Not your fault. Even if you had been sitting here in front of the monitors, it’s probable you wouldn’t have noticed. No one would.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’

Erica and her boss Raul Ormans were already in position by the time they arrived.

‘The abduction – it happened just here?’ Patricia Lebrun said as Darac signed her sheet.

‘Looks that way.’

‘I can’t get over it. To happen to her of all people.’

‘I know, Patricia.’

Armed with a print kit and other tools, the foursquare figure of Ormans climbed the stepladder while Darac steadied it.

‘What are you seeing, R.O.?’

‘Give me a chance… Alright, there are scratches in the metal. Linear. Grooves, really. They’re more or less parallel and they appear on the upper… and lower sides of the camera body.’ He took out a magnifying glass and torch. ‘There’s a slight build-up of paint flecks in the grooves at either end.’ He looked down at Darac. ‘It’s clear that something tight-fitting and metal, let’s call it a frame, has been pushed on to the camera from the front and then dragged back again to remove it. Fits with your theory. It was a frame for holding the photo, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m sure it was.’

‘Gloves or no gloves, I’m looking for prints,’ Ormans said. ‘But if there’s anything to help us further with this camera, I would be surprised.’

Darac glanced up the ramp towards the street. As he’d feared, the crowd of onlookers had grown exponentially. Young Nallet had at least judged that the time had come to disperse them. But he appeared to be having little success.

‘Where’s Seve Sevran?’ Darac said to Lartigue. ‘He’d shift that lot in ten seconds flat. And keep everybody else in order. In four different languages.’

Lartigue looked a little sheepish, suddenly.

‘Forgot to mention it with all this. Seems he’s been suspended. Came through while you were interviewing the Medusa girl.’

‘Seve suspended? Why?’

‘With immediate effect. Serious, by the sound of it. I don’t know what for though.’

‘He’s been arrested, not just suspended, I heard,’ Patricia Lebrun broke in. ‘How his wife will cope with it, I don’t know. Poor woman.’

Scowling with exasperation, Darac ran a hand through his hair.

‘Well there’s no time to get into that now.’ He turned to Erica. ‘Frankie is up for the Manou tail, by the way. You can fill her in on the technicalities later.’

‘I will.’ She seemed a little more engaged with him than before. ‘Good work on the camera stuff.’

‘Thank you.’

Ormans descended the ladder.

‘I’ve got prints here. Probably not the van driver’s. I’ll run them anyway, of course.’

Darac’s mobile vibrated in his pocket. A text. He looked at it.

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I won’t be home when you return tonight. In fact, I have decided not to…

That was as far as he got. His hand dropping to his side, he stood like a stunned animal. It was over. Over without discussion. But surely… No, he couldn’t allow himself to think about it. There was no time for anything now but action. Agnès’s life depended upon it.

Erica’s face was a mask of concern. Unconsciously, she put her hand on Darac’s forearm.

‘What’s the matter?’

Ormans looked him in the eye.

‘That was a text? Not about Agnès, surely?’

‘No. It was nothing to do with the case.’ Darac flipped his mobile. ‘It’s fine. Let’s go and check out the footage from the building.’

The held-down organ note in Darac’s head grew louder with every step as they hurried back onto the street. After four years she ends it by text? No. Not good enough. Fuck you, Angeline.

Their radios clicked on.

‘Denfert. Third floor completed. Going to the fourth. Over.’

‘Uh… Lartou?’ Darac’s face was hard as a shield.

‘Yes, chief?’

‘Well done on sorting out the radios for us non-uniforms.’ His words emerged as if on autopilot. ‘They work much better than mobiles at a crime scene like this.’

‘Yes,’ Lartigue said, sharing a concerned look with the others. ‘And uh… secure too, on our own encoded frequency.’

‘Indeed.’

Erica caught Lartigue’s eye.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she mouthed, silently.

They took the shallow steps that led to the building’s revolving front door. As it came around, Erica slipped into Darac’s quadrant.

‘Sorry, Darac, but what’s happened? Has someone… died?’

‘No. No one is dead. It’s okay. Really.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do.’

They swept into the lobby. Darac turned as Ormans and Lartigue emerged after them.

‘Whoever put that note on Agnès’s bed may have got careless. Let’s get to it.’

A team of twenty clerical assistants and other officers were helping Perand and Flaco trace Mercedes van sales and hirings. Between them, they were creating an impressive list.

Perand struck a line through a directory entry and picked up the phone in one continuous action.

‘Like working in a call centre, this.’

‘Can you think of a better… Oh, good afternoon, this is Officer Yvonne Flaco of the Brigade Criminelle in Nice. We’re interested in tracing anyone who has bought…’

Across the other side of the squad room, Frankie and Bonbon were helping Granot trawl through cases in which the Dantiers had played a significant part.

‘Here’s another candidate.’ Frankie added the sheet to her stack. ‘Found guilty of two murders. Stabbed his wife and her lover. He got twenty years but died in prison after twelve. That was 1992. Kidney failure and other complications. Maintaining his innocence to the end, he accused Vincent of fitting him up.’

Granot made a grunting noise as he downed his fourth espresso of the afternoon.

‘I remember that case. He was guilty, alright. His name was… Albert, no, Alain Monceau.’

Frankie took a long draught of Vittel.

‘Alain, yes. His younger brother Cyrille sent Vincent a couple of threatening letters at the time of the death. The old boy was retired then, of course. No note of any further harassment. And no indication that Agnès was ever contacted – although she was in-post both during the case itself and when Monceau died.’

‘It’s worth a follow-up, certainly.’

Sweet wrappers littered Bonbon’s desk like confetti. A couple slid off a file as he brandished it in the air.

‘This is interesting. Greuze, Benoit. Huge grudge against Agnès. Said she tricked him into confessing to murder. Released only last June.’

‘The Greuze case,’ Granot said. ‘Another possible, definitely.’

Arriving back from La Marguerite, Darac was taking a call on his mobile as he craned his neck around the squad-room door.

‘Better continue on my office landline, will you, Lartou – this thing’s about to…’

The mobile’s battery died before he could finish the sentence. He stuffed it into his pocket and turned to Granot.

‘Any progress?’

‘So far, we’ve got…’ He looked down the sheet. ‘…twenty-four names of people who might or who actually did hold a grudge against the Dantiers. Armani’s leading the team talking to the parties concerned. But we need to get out there ourselves, soon – maybe just retain a couple back here to keep the trawl going. If not, we’re in danger of creating a backlog that will take too long to clear.’

‘Agreed. We’ll get on that.’ He looked across at Flaco. ‘Van sales and hirings?’

‘Similar story, Captain. But multiply the number of names by about twenty.’

‘You got national coverage sorted?’

‘There are uniforms and clericals all over the country approaching the buyers we’ve come up with. But as we cross one name off the list, another two possibles come in.’

‘How many companies, agencies and so on have you still to contact?’

‘About… eighty or so. So there’s an end to it. And then Perand and I can get out on the street, as well.’

‘What about the garaging aspect – lock-ups and so on?’

‘We’ve put together a long list. Uniforms are checking them.’

‘Good. I need to go next door but I’ll be right back.’

The desk phone was ringing as Darac walked into his office.

‘Go ahead, Lartou.’

‘I’ve got another of those blip and refocus sequences, chief. It’s from the camera on the boss’s corridor on the fifth floor. For less than a minute, it happens.’

‘But we looked at footage from that camera.’

‘We looked at it for the time around the abduction.

This blip happened at 5.46 pm.’

Darac ran a hand into his hair and kept it there.

‘Whoever stole in and put the note on her bed did it
before
they took her?’

‘Several hours before.’

Darac swivelled in his chair and gazed out of the window. Rows of identical barracks buildings made a useful alternative to the blank canvas of the floor.

‘What about footage from cameras on the other floors around that time? Don’t they show anything?’

‘No. But if you go into the building through the service entrance and take the back stairs up to the fifth floor, you don’t encounter any camera until the one that was doctored.’

Darac dragged his hand out of his hair.

‘State-of-the-art system…’

‘Indeed.’

‘You know, in
some
ways, it makes sense to leave the note first – especially if it turns out SAD is just a couple of people. Or even just one. If you kidnap someone in a parking garage, bundling them perhaps noisily into a van, the last thing you would want to do then is enter the building, go up five floors, pull the stunt with the camera, gain access somehow to the apartment, et cetera, et cetera. You’d want to get away from the scene as quickly as possible, wouldn’t you?’

‘I think you would, yes.’

‘But how did they know somebody wouldn’t go into her room in the meantime? How did they know someone wouldn’t find the note and tip us off? Agnès herself could have found it, conceivably.’

‘They must have been au fait with her movements somehow…’

Darac swivelled back to face the room. His jaw dropped when he saw who was standing before him. It didn’t make sense.

‘We’ll… talk later, Lartou. I have to go.’

The visitor was wearing a grey suit and matching tie.

‘Hello, Captain. I’d like one of your excellent espressos if there’s one going.’ Mansoor Narooq slid his hand inside his jacket. ‘No milk or sugar. How I managed to stomach it last time, I’m not sure.’ He showed an ID, put it back and extended his hand.

Darac ignored it.

‘DCRI. Uh-huh.’

‘It’s quite natural that you feel…’

Darac’s chair fell over backwards as he got to his feet.

‘Don’t tell me what I’m feeling, you fucking bastard! You sat there…’ He jabbed a finger towards the radiator. ‘…watching us struggling to make sense of the case…’

‘I work undercover. It’s my job.’ He smiled as if bewildered by Darac’s reaction. ‘Calm down.’