Impure Blood (47 page)

* * *

Agnès’s weight was hanging on the chain. Using resources she didn’t know she possessed, she levered herself upright and stared across at her father. They were going to die, she knew that. But first, she needed to know that her whole life hadn’t been based on a lie.

‘The story you told. It wasn’t… true?’

He looked back at her.

‘I… I was just trying to get us out of this. Do you really think I could have…’

A sound from above made them look up. They hadn’t noticed the small circular panel that was set into the roof. It disappeared suddenly. A flexible hose protruded tightly through the resulting hole. The van’s engine started.

‘Oh no…’ Vincent whimpered. ‘No!’

A choking fug of exhaust fumes began to spew into the space. Vincent turned to his daughter for what he knew would be the last time.

‘God… has forgiven me for everything I did. Can you, Agnès. Can
you
? Agnès!’

Agnès tilted her head back and opened her mouth.

* * *

The smell of solvents coming off the blistering wood was overpowering.

‘Afternoon, monsieur.’

Darac showed his badge and then retreated a couple of paces.

‘Georges Dupont.’ The man took off his goggles and rubber gloves. ‘Don’t get any ideas, this isn’t a business – this chest of drawers is mine.’ As he spoke, a lit cigarette stuck resolutely to his bottom lip. ‘Just thought it needed a spruce-up.’

Several similar items of furniture were stacked at the far end of the workshop.

‘Put that out, will you? We’re likely to go up in smoke.’

‘Never happened yet.’ But he complied, saving the stub for later. ‘What do you want?’

‘Do you know the other owners of these lock-ups?’

‘Well, I have this one and the one next door. The one after that’s empty. Then there’s Monsieur Flaubert and the one on the end is Madame Masoude’s. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Husband used to be a gardener. There’s mowers, tools – all sorts in there.’

Darac showed Jarret’s photo to Dupont. He shook his head.

‘No. Never seen him.’

Darac showed him Astrid’s flyer.

‘Monsieur Flaubert,’ he nodded. ‘Nice young man.’

A thrill shot down Darac’s spine. He jetted a glance at the lock-up’s roller door. Water was seeping out from under it. The streets around were crawling with backup and regulations demanded he call for it and wait. He remembered Astrid’s thirty seconds.

He jumped into his car. Power sliding around a wide arc, he put space between himself and the lock-up and then floored the pedal. Feeling a huge surge of energy, he held his arm in front of his eyes as he aimed at the dead centre of the roller door. In an explosion of noise and flying debris, he smashed through it. A section came away in one piece, somersaulting into the air as the Peugeot slewed to a juddering halt beneath it. He saw a hose snaking from the van’s tailpipe. There was no time for preparation. Only to act.

Disconnect the hose. Locate Jarret.

The door section still teetering on its long side, Darac used it as a shield as he dived out of the car and rolled towards the tailpipe. He yanked off the hose. Exhaust fumes poured into his face. The driver’s door flew open. A fan of flame from the cab. The thud and whine of bullets. Darac returned fire. The fizz and crack of fracturing glass. He threw open the back doors of the van, releasing a choking fug. No time to check on the occupants.

Protect victims from crossfire. Get away from tailpipe.

A tool cabinet stood against the side wall. Bullets chased him like a lit fuse as he ran and threw himself behind it. A second volley ploughed a furrow of blood along his left forearm as he raised both arms to fire. He felt no pain as he squeezed off another barrage. More flame. More thud. For the first time, Darac got a sight of the shooter. It was Jarret, alright. Jarret shifted his position in the cab. Where was he? More whines. More thuds. Another squeeze. A red haze. The windscreen turned to spray-painted ice.

Secure the weapon. Attend the victims.

From his new position, Darac couldn’t see the van’s passenger door. It opened as he ran to the cab. Reaching over the bloodied figure of Jarret, he turned off the engine. No pulse. No need to secure the weapon. Darac holstered his own gun and hurried to the rear of the vehicle. Through the dispersing fumes, the muzzle of Jarret’s weapon suddenly appeared. Behind it were the small, shaking hands of Corinne Delage. He jetted a glance into the van. Hanging half-out of the back door, Vincent was unconscious, not apparently breathing. In the far corner, an Agnès-like shape was coughing. Darac’s heart lifted.

‘Reattach the pipe.’ Delage’s eyes were seething, her blanched face spattered with blood. ‘Now!’

‘There’s no point reattaching it. They’re already dead.’

Still aiming the gun at him, Delage’s eyes slid sideways. Now was the moment, the only chance he might get. He dived headlong towards her, knocking the gun from her grasp as a bullet ripped past his ear. She fell back, her head slamming hard against the concrete floor.

The weapon finally secured, the rescue could begin in earnest. Holding the hem of his shirt over his mouth, Darac jumped into the van and went straight to Agnès’s sodden, rag-covered body. Her shaved head was radish red and she was barely breathing. Her wrists bound, he took the pulse in her neck. Weak and erratic. She had stopped coughing. Good sign or bad? He flipped his mobile and mobilised the medical teams. Now he needed to free her and get her outside into the air.

He realised that he could give her basic mouth-to-mouth if she stopped breathing but if her heart stopped CPR didn’t look possible – her shackles meant she couldn’t be laid on her back.

A voice called across the death and the destruction.

‘And you were worried about my cigarette?’

‘Get in here, Dupont. I need you.’

‘I don’t know about that. What the fuck’s been going on?’

‘The man you know as Flaubert is a murderer and a kidnapper. He’s in the cab. Dead. In his pockets, I hope is a padlock key. Bring it.’

‘You do it – I’d rather watch her.’

‘I’m not leaving her side. Get the key.’

Dupont advanced tentatively into the space.

‘Shit, there’s one on the floor here,’ he said, tripping over Delage.

Beyond the body, a camp bed was set up. The old woman’s overnight things were laid out on it.

‘Hurry. There are lives at stake.’

‘Alright – I’m doing it, I’m doing it.’

Agnès coughed once more and then choked, a convulsing heaving of the chest. The pulse in her neck began to race. Kneeling down, Darac pulled her torso against him. He began applying rhythmic pressure to her back. As he did so, a milky discharge dribbled from her mouth against his chest and then gushed out in a torrent. Slowly, the coughing subsided. Her skin began to lose its livid colour.

A key landed at Darac’s feet.

‘Pay you a lot in your job, do they?’ Dupont shook his head. ‘Jesus.’

Darac put the key in the padlock. It opened.

‘Bit too late for the man. He’s a goner.’

Darac unfastened Agnès’s shackles. Cradling her in his arms, he rocked back on his heels and rose. By the time he’d carried her outside, the first of the ambulances was already pulling into view.

Charlie Mingus’s ‘Goodbye Porkpie Hat’ drifting dreamily in his slipstream, Darac stepped out on to a roof terrace thrumming with all the sounds and scents of the Babazouk night.

The breeze blowing off the Baie des Anges felt a little fresher this evening. After three long days of pressure-cooker heat, it seemed things were at last beginning to cool off. He set down a cold beer on his tile-top table and subsided into a chair. Only half voluntarily, his head fell back. The sky was crystal clear and he spent several moments just staring at the stars. The universe’s reputation for inspiring profound meditation was overrated, he concluded. The holocaust? What help was the universe with that?

His thoughts returned to Agnès. The immediate prognosis was good – doctors were confident she would make a complete physical recovery. But Darac recognised she was going to need all her fortitude to deal with the rest of her trauma.

A Steri-Strip covering his bullet-furrowed left forearm, he reached for his beer and took a long, contemplative draught. It proved only marginally superior to the universe.

Darac turned to thoughts of his own father. Theirs was something of a charged relationship but he could not imagine what it would feel like to discover a monstrous truth about a man who seemed to have nothing in his heart but tenderness.

The reflection gave him an idea, one he usually ignored – it was just so much easier to do nothing, to let things slide. He felt exhausted, anyway. He had cold beer, he had the pan-tiled canopy of the Babazouk, and he had ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ – that would have to do for the time being. But then the tenor solo hit, cutting through the number’s hazy lilt like a searchlight.

‘Yes, John Handy,’ Darac said, aloud. ‘You’re right.’

He set down his beer glass and picked up his phone.

‘Papa? Hi, it’s Paul.’

‘Paul – this is unexpected, how wonderful to hear from you.’

‘Why – has it been so long?’

It had been, he knew.

‘No, no. It’s just the hour, I suppose.’

‘I only got in a few moments ago. So how are you?’

‘Uh… fine. Got a bit fed up of the heat wave but it’s better over here this evening.’

‘And work?’

‘Good. Well, maybe not
good
. But you know the perfume industry. When you’re as small as we are, it gets more difficult all the time. You?’

‘Oh, not too bad. Listen, I was just wondering if you and…’

‘Virginie.’

‘Virginie, yes, would be free for dinner soon. Next weekend, maybe. Here. Somewhere fancy. My treat.’

‘Wonderful. She’s dying to meet you and Angeline.’

Gingerly resting his arm on the table, Darac’s index finger began absently exploring the gaps between the tiles.

‘Actually, Papa, that’s one of the reasons I’m calling.’

Darac hadn’t picked up a guitar in five whole days. He hadn’t made love in almost three months and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually landed a punch on someone.

‘If only by default, I’m improving.’

‘I’ve come to the conclusion that despite all her brilliance, Angeline…’ Agnès winced as a nurse adjusted her pillow. ‘…is an idiot.’

A sad smile played on Darac’s lips.

‘She’s no idiot. I think she’s right about most things, actually.’

The nurse took her leave.

‘You won’t change my opinion. But then I’m biased, aren’t I?’

‘I think you might be, yes. Anyway, the quintet is playing tonight so I’ll soon be indulging in one of my wicked ways. Possibly two if Didier trashes Louis Armstrong again. He’s got a terrible blind spot for early stuff.’

Agnès’s eyes slid to the dressing which ran the length of Darac’s left forearm.

‘
Will
you be able to play later?’

‘It’s only a flesh wound.’ He wiggled his fingers freely. ‘Pity I didn’t lose a couple – it might have helped my Django Reinhardt stuff. Two usable fingers on his left hand – that’s all he had to work with.’ He shook his head. ‘Angeline doesn’t believe in heroes. As a concept, I mean.’ He smiled, a little more of the familiar lift in his expression. ‘Plucky try on Django’s part, though, wasn’t it?’

Agnès searched for a word of comfort. All that came into her head were platitudes and claptrap. But there was a truth among them.

‘Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean that time
isn’t
a great healer, you know.’

‘Are you referring to my situation or yours?’

‘To both, I suppose.’

‘There’s no comparison.’

‘Have you spoken to her?’

‘We met for a drink last night. It was a mistake. But at least I know it definitely is over now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well… Angeline was precious to me and losing her is painful. But what
you
went through…’ He slowly shook his head. ‘I can’t believe your resilience, Agnès. You are an amazing person.’

She looked far away, suddenly. She was back there. Back in the nightmare.

‘Apart from everything else he did, my father… sought to have a woman pregnant with his own child taken away and exterminated. And the only reason he didn’t succeed in getting rid of them both – he mistakenly thought – was that the baby had been stillborn that same morning.’ It hurt Agnès terribly that her father had seemed to feel a sense of loss at never knowing the son who had, after all, survived; the son he had sought to have killed. ‘Mengele? Eichmann? My father was as evil as any of them.’

‘Agnès…’ Darac left it there. He just didn’t know what else to say.

‘But should I start feeling bereft at his loss, I can always contact my half-brother, Jean, can’t I? Why not? Have a party. Invite good old Corinne as well. If she recovers.’ Tears came. Darac leaned forward and held Agnès’s shaven head to his chest.

‘A clearing shower,’ she said, drying her eyes. ‘That’s what Mama used to call it.’

Darac imagined there would be many more of them in the months to come. He sat back, without thinking, dragging a hand through his hair. He regretted it immediately.

‘I’ve been told it’s an irritating habit. Must seem especially so at the moment.’

‘No, not at all.’ She stroked her skull. ‘I rather like the feel, actually. I may even keep it like this.’

‘It… suits you.’

‘It does not.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

She managed a smile. Nothing was said for a moment.

‘Could you handle one final point about the case, Agnès?’

‘I think so.’

‘The non-credible threat. I still don’t understand why Jarret put it together that way.’

‘Ye-es… Well, we know he wanted to exact revenge on… my father. That was his first objective. I think a second one was to discredit the Police Judiciaire as a whole – as a punishment for what its forebears did – and didn’t do – back in the war.’

‘To get the Press and everyone saying: “The stupid idiots took no notice of the threat and look what happened – two of their own commissaires wound up being…”’