Into The Fire (40 page)

When she arrived at his hotel, he looked straight through her, as if they’d never met. Their only contact was a note pushed under her door.

‘You have the note?’

‘It’s in my handbag. Which your officer took.’ Garonne rises without comment and goes to fetch it.

Picaut says, ‘What was Iain Holloway working on, that needed your help?’

‘I don’t know exactly. He was … secretive. He would get obsessions, and run them into the ground, and then drop them and pick up a new one. This one … did you know he was corresponding with your father?’

Picaut’s brows rise.

Cautiously, the woman says, ‘Your father. Charles Picaut. The one who was—’

‘Retired.’

‘Yes, of course. Iain wrote to him. He had a theory. Your father seemed to like it. Iain was ridiculously pleased; like a kid given first prize in the spelling test at school. He—’ She swallows, stares hard at her hands. ‘He was not a dangerous man, or unkind. But he hated people who didn’t think clearly. Which meant almost everyone. Except your father.’

‘And you?’

‘I tried my best. I didn’t always succeed.’ She spreads her hands. ‘I truly don’t know what he was doing this time.’

‘You knew enough to go to the priest at Cléry-Saint-André?’

‘Only because that last note told me to.’

‘What about the email?’

‘What email?’

Picaut looks to her right. ‘Patrice, have you got the email from the chip?’

She’s focused now. She can talk to him and not feel as if a flower is blooming behind her eyes.

Her iPad hums to an incoming mail. Opening it, Picaut says, ‘When was the last email you got from Iain Holloway?’

‘He sent something on Sunday night, about an hour before the fire started. I didn’t see it until Monday, but in any case it came through as gibberish.’

‘Like this?’ Picaut spins the iPad round. On the screen is the un-deciphered hex file that Patrice found on the USB chip.

‘That’s it!’ The woman’s eyes widen. ‘How did you get it?’

‘Dr Holloway left us a USB chip with a number of ciphered files on it. We’ve only been able to open one. The key was a list of names from the grave you both worked on in Bosnia.’

Picaut swipes the screen across to a new page. ‘This is the translation.’

Tears sway on the sheer points of Jonita Markos’s lashes.

Picaut says, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’d rather know. He was so … thoughtful. Clever. Careful. Caring. I keep thinking I’ll pick up my phone and there’ll be a text from him and it will all have been some kind of elaborate joke.’ She closes her eyes and opens them, slowly. ‘What did you mean, he left you a chip?’

‘I mean he swallowed a USB chip just before he died. It was our only clue to what he was doing. Everything else had been stolen.’

‘But why?
Why?
He was a
good
man.’

She is fighting hard for composure. Picaut must clasp her own hands together not to reach across the table and embrace her. If Patrice were to die now …

She says, ‘We don’t know. If we can find out what’s on the other two files, we may have a chance to work it out, but in the meantime we have to work with what we’ve got. Does this make any sense?’ Picaut taps the iPad screen and highlights
A is from lii
. ‘What does lii mean?’

‘I really have no idea. Believe me, I’d tell you if I did. He worked in Vietnam once, before I knew him. Could it be Vietnamese? A name, maybe?’

Picaut doesn’t even glance at the camera. She doesn’t need to look at her iPad either; she can hear Patrice’s voice in her mind saying ‘On it’.

She lets it drop and asks instead, ‘He says he sent you a sample. It may have been labelled more clearly. Or there could have been a covering note?’

‘If there is, I haven’t seen it. Nothing had come before I left Cornell in the early hours of Saturday morning, so whatever happened it won’t have got to the lab before Monday.’

‘But he called Cornell on Sunday evening. He was heard to do so by a German resident of the hotel.’

‘I suppose he could have been calling to alert the techs to look out for what he’d sent.’

‘Would someone open it in your absence?’

‘Possibly. But they might not know what to do with it. If you give me my phone, I can text the chief tech and find out.’

‘Please do.’

There’s a knock at the door and Garonne returns. At Picaut’s nod, he slides the bag across the table and Jonita opens it. She removes her iPhone in its pink cover and a scrap of paper.

‘He pushed this under my door on Saturday night.’

Ma chérie

Don’t come to my room. Don’t look at me. Don’t know me. I am not currently safe to know. We must move to anot her hot el tomorrow. With luck, this will blow over and we can have a drink and laugh at my paranoia. But if I’m right, and somet hing untoward happ ens, go to Father Cinq-Mars at Cléry-Saint-André and tell him I sent you. He may take some persuading, but he knows wh at this is about. Be safe in all things and remember that I love you.

Aye
,

Iain.

PS Stay as Monique Susong. They don’t know that name.

Go to Father Cinq-Mars at Cléry-Saint-André …
‘You went. What did he tell you?’

The woman is writing a text, tongue trapped between her teeth, thumbs flying. She shakes her head, not looking up. ‘Nothing of any use. He’s a tight-faced little shit who has no intention of telling me anything I don’t already know. His best advice was that I leave and never return. Don’t darken our door again. That kind of thing.’

‘He knows more than that, though, the priest?’

‘Iain obviously thought he did.’

‘Obviously.’ Picaut’s eye falls on the postscript. ‘How many people in France know that you and Monique are sisters?’

‘Her husband. Her son. And neither of them knows I’m in France. Monique and I don’t have much in common. She doesn’t know either.’

‘But you have her driving licence?’

‘I don’t, actually. I have the European driving licence that Iain set up for me in Bosnia.’

‘A fake?’

‘Is that a crime?’

‘If we need to hold you it will do. What was it for?’

‘Not everybody wanted us to find the names of the men in the graves. There were death threats … We had protection, but Iain said I might need to disappear in a hurry.’ She smiles. ‘Clearly, it works …’

Garonne, whose responsibility it was to check the documentation, colours an ugly pink.

Picaut says, ‘If Dr Holloway was right, then it may be that for your own safety you should continue to be Monique Susong while you are in Orléans. Will you be able to do that?’

‘As long as nobody looks at my bank cards. They’re all in my real name.’ She opens the bag, slides her hand down into a zipped pocket along the base, draws out an American Express platinum and a Bank of America cash card, both in the name of Jonita Markos.

‘You didn’t think to tell us any of this before?’

‘I didn’t know if I could trust you. Iain didn’t say who was threatening him.’

Picaut opens the door. ‘Thank you for your help. Obviously I can’t compel you to stay in Orléans, but …’

‘I’ll stay. I want to know what happened to Iain as much as you do. I’ll contact you when the results come through from the lab. If we find a genetic link between the samples, what then?’

‘Then we talk to the priest,’ Picaut says.

Later, in her office, the coffee is hot and bitter and perfect. The pizza is thin and well spiced.

Monique Susong has taken a taxi back to her hotel, and Garonne, who followed her, says she is safely in the dining room. He bought the pizza on his way back.

Patrice, Sylvie, Rollo, Ducat and Éric Masson are all here, spilling out through the doors into the deserted office space. She is sitting on her desk, knee to knee with Patrice. He is absorbed in his laptop, she in her pizza. The place where their knees touch is alive, but nobody is looking askance and she realizes they have been this easy in each other’s presence for some time now, she just hasn’t realized.

‘So.’ She picks up her coffee, and hugs the mug to her sternum where it vibrates to the rhythm of her heart. ‘Which of you is going to tell me why it took twice as long as it should have done to get Monique Susong’s handbag into the interview room?’

Patrice breaks away from his screen, blinks once at Ducat who is staring fixedly out through the door, and says, ‘I was cloning her phone.’

‘I thought cloning went out when analogue died?’

‘Copying the data, then.’

‘Because …’

‘Because I thought that one of their previous emails might be the key to one of the documents on the USB chip. Iain Holloway obviously wanted us to work with her. She’s integral to the coding and she had a copy of the email. So it seems possible that their other emails might be the keys we’re looking for that will open the remaining two files.’

‘Are they?’

‘Not yet. I’m testing each email and then combinations of them. I’ll let you know if I strike gold.’ Patrice tilts his head. ‘Do you have your father’s laptop? If we could look at his correspondence with Iain Holloway …’

‘My father reformatted the hard drive just before he died.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Patrice is grinning at her. In public. This is so very dangerous. ‘The data’s all still there and I can get to it. Trust me.’

She does. But … ‘I gave it away.’

‘
Gave
it?’

‘At the funeral. The Bressards called in just about the entire family. There were over a thousand of them, showing solidarity. I talked to …’ She screws up her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. A cousin of a cousin sixteen times removed. He was about fourteen, and not nearly as well off as the rest. I gave him the laptop.’ She holds up a hand, blocks off his incredulity. ‘I’ll text Luc and see if I can get it back.’ Her phone is in her hand. The number comes more fluidly than she wants it to. ‘I’m on it, Patrice. Don’t hassle me.’

The air loses its charge. Ducat recovers from his momentary bout of deafness, and turns back into the room. It’s hard to know at what point he stopped being the enemy and became instead an ally, but it’s definitely happened. If nothing else, this is the first time he has ever been in her office for coffee and pizza.

Picaut fires off the text, then: ‘Maître Ducat, I want to bring in the priest, Father Cinq-Mars. Do we have your permission?’

‘Absolutely. He’s a suspect in the murder of Iain Holloway. The threat of a murder charge should open him up.’

‘He’s dying of throat cancer. But we have to try. Next …’ She finishes the coffee, fixes Garonne with a stare. ‘What have we got on Cheb Yasine?’

Garonne says, ‘He hasn’t left his house. He’s had three visitors, all of Algerian origin, all with form. Two were drug dealers; the third’s from Marseille, and the police there think he’s a hired hit. They’re pretty sure he killed four Slovenians who were moving in on the coast, but they can’t prove it. Sylvie and Rollo are watching now. I’ll take over at midnight.’

‘So we continue the watch on Yasine, and we continue electronic and actual surveillance on Monique Susong; Sylvie, that’s you. We will continue to refer to her by that name for the time being. She may be in danger from whoever killed Iain Holloway; just because she hasn’t been targeted yet, doesn’t mean she won’t be. I want armed officers on her, ready to intervene if there’s any sign of danger. Garonne, Rollo, I don’t want you doing it, but I want you to organize it. Patrice, if I get my father’s laptop back, I’ll courier it to you. Let’s go, people. We have work to do.’

Luc’s press conference on the steps of the Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc has done its work; Picaut is not accosted in the street and not followed back to the flat.

She considers texting Patrice that she’s going home, perhaps to invite him over. Sanity stops her, and common sense, and the fear of having his image next to hers all over tomorrow’s papers. Still, even to consider the possibility leaves the day feeling sharper.

She falls asleep knowing that her world is not empty. Three more days until the polls open. One after that to count the ballots and announce the results. So, four days to freedom and a life that is already immeasurably better. Against all expectation, she is happy.

PICAUT IS HALFWAY
through her second coffee of the morning when the doorbell rings. However much she loathes Bressard efficiency, their fanatical attention to detail allows her to open a panel in the kitchen fascia and check the live feed from two hidden cameras that are focused on the area around the front door, three floors down.

Currently, they show Cheb Yasine dressed in his designer sweatshirt and jeans. She hits the microphone.

‘Do the press know you’re here?’

‘I don’t see any, but they may be developing better camouflage than they’ve had in the past. It would be good not to wait out here too long. May I come in?’

Ducat would go mad. Luc would have fits. Patrice would … laugh, probably. She hits the entry button.

He runs lightly up the three flights of stairs. She stands at the open front door, waiting with her Nokia in her hand. ‘I can have a dozen officers here inside four minutes.’

‘I know.’ He is fit; the stairs have barely winded him. He glances past her into the flat. ‘Bressard money?’