Jacquot and the Waterman (62 page)

He turned to Isabelle.

'His name is Paul Doisneau. You'll find all you need in Records.'

And with that, Jacquot turned on his heel and walked back to his car, stepping on his shadow as it flickered ahead of him across the cobbles, feeling a strange mixture of anger, guilt. . . and not a little excitement.

They were waiting for him when he got back to his apartment building. Two of them, getting out of a grey Peugeot as he paid off his cab, the big one with a buzz-cut and rough-looking five o'clock shadow, his companion smaller, older, rolling his shoulders as though to loosen a stiffness, tugging his cuffs, the pair of them buttoning their jackets, coming towards him. The car was unmarked, the two men wore no uniform, but Carnot knew who they were.

With twenty metres between them, and closing, Carnot felt a sudden, burning instinct to turn and run. So he did.

Before the cops had registered Carnot's reaction, a handful of coins were spinning on the sidewalk, the cabbie had started swearing and the twenty metres between them had become thirty and rising. Pumping his arms, his lips tight, head back, Carnot sprinted for the corner, looking ahead for a break in the morning traffic. When it came - or as near to a break as you'd get on a Saturday morning in Belsunce - he leapt into the road and wove between the cars, pirouetting like a bullfighter around boots, bumpers and bonnets, oblivious to the hoots of car horns and the squeals of brakes.

He didn't look back so he didn't see the two men split up. It wouldn't have mattered if he had. Carnot knew where he was going, knew that he could shake them off. They might be cops but he knew the streets and alleyways around this city as well as he knew the face he looked at every morning in the mirror.

The day before the cops had caught him napping - no chance of escape. But his alibi was preparing breakfast and he'd sent them packing. Now they were back and that wasn't good news. Not today. Not this weekend. This weekend was booked and there was no way he could afford to spend a few idle hours in an interview room on rue de l'Evêché.

As Carnot ran, his mind raced with his feet. He was certain he knew what they wanted. Vicki again. They were closing in on him, he was sure of it. And all because of that loudmouth Vrech. He'd known straight away that it was the tattooist who'd given the cops their lead. The bones in the Dutchman's fingers would heal in due course, but he'd have to find someplace else to put his name, the two-by- four-inch rectangle of tattooed skin neatly razored from his scalp and bandaged round his broken fingers. All of which would teach the man a useful lesson.

But then, as he ran, Carnot considered another possibility. It might be a long shot, but maybe it had something to do with the woman in the pool. De Cotigny's wife. It had been all over TV the evening before. Maybe de Cotigny suspected that his wife's death was tied in with the blackmail, a little persuasion to keep his mind on the job of passing the development permissions? And maybe he'd said something to the police? Given them a description before he'd gone and shot himself.

Carnot gritted his teeth, sucked in a lungful of air and ran on. De Cotigny dead. Who'd have believed it? Now they'd have to find someone else to put the screws on, someone else to set up. Because Carnot knew that another pair of buttocks in the planning chiefs chair wouldn't deter Raissac when he had his mind set on something.

At Canebière, Carnot dared a glance behind him, saw nothing, then caught a friendly light and sprinted across the road. Thirty metres further on, he took a right into rue des Feuillants, and right again into the Capucins market where, for the first time, he allowed his pace to slacken. Jostling his way through the early-morning market crowds, using his shoulder and elbow to clear a path, he glanced back again but could see no disturbance in the flow of shoppers behind him. He had to be fifty metres clear, maybe more, he estimated. Enough to make his move and lose them.

And Capucins, he knew, was the place to do it. Although the throng of shoppers and market stalls slowed him down, this narrow passageway provided a means of escape he'd used more times than he could remember. Hallway down, he ducked to the left between a fish stall and a display of wrinkled dates and pink pomegranates and into a covered alleyway that doubled back onto rue du Musee. The opening was so narrow that his pursuers would pass right by without seeing it. Another five minutes and he'd be clear.

His only problem now, he realised, turning out of Musée and heading up to the Boulevard Garibaldi, was that with the cops after him, he'd have to stay clear of the apartment. And then he remembered Sylviane. Only four blocks away. He could hole up there. Perfect.

Loping down Garibaldi, Carnot took another look behind him. Nothing. He'd shaken them. He slowed his pace and stopped at a newsagent's kiosk on the corner of Mocquet, checking through the racks of magazines, glancing up and down the street while he caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

He was about to stroll off when he felt the barrel of a gun press against the ledge of bone behind his ear, and heard a gravelly voice whisper in his ear: 'I know these streets too, Monsieur.'

It was Gus Delahaye, Suzies brother, that Benedict saw first, coming down to specify room numbers for the luggage, a stack of matching Vuitton cases and trunks which, for the last few minutes, had been piling up in the foyer of the Nice-Passedat. A nod of understanding from the concierge and a clipped wad of bills appeared from Delahaye's trouser pocket, the notes peeled off and pressed into the mans hand with fluid ease.

Gus Delahaye did a lot of that, reflected Benedict as he sipped his drink and watched the performance. Never the parents, he'd been told. Always the brother. The Wall Street broker, the son and heir. Usually to buy silence, kill a story; there were men, Benedict knew, who were paid not to write about the Delahayes. Now there was a profession worth having.

Having dealt with the luggage and the concierge, Gus Delahaye came through into the bar, ordered himself a drink and stepped out onto the terrace where Benedict was sitting, shading his eyes from the sun-glare off the sea.

He was short and heavy-shouldered, with trimmed black hair and a pasty complexion. Almost as soon as he'd settled himself at a table, the barman was at his side, dispensing his order: a tumbler of caramel-coloured bourbon laid out on a paper coaster, a silver jug of iced water and a plate of tapenade toasts, the same type of toasts that Benedict had received with his own drink and promptly dispatched.

The two men were no more than thirty feet apart, their rooms even closer. According to his man behind the front desk, Benedict had established that the Delahayes had arrived that morning, only minutes before him, the parents billeted on the second floor at the front, looking out towards the Frioul Islands, their son on the third floor, at the side, next to his room, facing the Corniche J.F. Kennedy.

Benedict wondered if Gus Delahaye would recognise him, here on the terrace, or in the lift, or passing one another in reception or in the corridor outside their rooms. They'd never met but the stories Benedict wrote were always accompanied by a byline photo. It wouldn't have been the first time that someone had recognised Benedict's trade-mark half-tortoiseshells, and shaved, sun- freckled head.

Across the terrace Gus Delahaye caught Benedict's eye and nodded, cordially, one guest to another. Benedict was tempted to say something, but held back. Better by far to observe and record the small diminishings of grief - the stoop of a shoulder, the wipe of an eye, the whole sad, stately procession of it - than risk all access by dropping his cover with an ill-judged remark. And anyway, he'd already decided that this was not a dialogue stoiy. There was nothing the Delahayes would know or could say that he wouldn't be able to find out for himself. Enough for them to be there, silent, unsuspecting players in his stagecraft.

It would be the same with Madame de Cotigny, the grand, grieving matriarch. Benedict's man at the front desk had told him where the old lady lived and he would station himself there, in a bar or a cafe, to observe and record. All the bustling comings and goings, the black tulle, the flowers, the fluttering veils that would feature through the next few days.

But in all of this there was one person that Benedict did want to see, someone he did want to talk to. The man he'd read about in the newspapers. The man in charge of the investigation. Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot.

Jacquot. Number Six shirt. The man who'd scored that winning try against the English. Benedict had done his homework. The man was a legend. And a policeman. The copy near wrote itself.

Benedict finished his drink, licked the tip of his finger to pick up the last crumbs of tapenade toast and called for the check. He signed with a flourish, nodded to Delahaye and headed for his room.

He'd made contact, a first sighting. The game had begun.

aissac watched the TV coverage in his dressing gown.

From his bed, from his breakfast table, and from the ottoman in his sitting room. Flicking on the TV in every room he entered. Missing nothing. National and local. Aerial shots from a helicopter hovering over de Cotigny's tutored lawns, terraces and pool; footage of the ambulance turning out of de Cotigny's gates; reporters speaking to camera with de Cotigny's home visible through the trees behind them.

With a grim expression, Raissac watched it all.

Everywhere dismay and disbelief - stunned responses from friends and neighbours, official statements from the steps of the Prefecture and, every few minutes, the victims' photos flashed onto the screen. Hubert and Suzanne de Cotigny. Suicide and murder. De Cotigny with his brisk, old-fashioned haircut and just-off-centre parting, dressed in tailcoat and sash at the opening of Aqua-Cité; his wife Suzanne, elegantly coiffed, in elbow-length gloves and haute couture at the opera.

What an extraordinary couple, thought Raissac; so utterly unalike. And it wasn't just their different styles - the outfits, the hair - or even the difference in age, he decided. The husband, a chill, humourless figure who looked like his childhood hadn't been much fun, something concealed and repressed about him - tight and coiled, with a smile he must have had to search for. And then the wife, firm and fresh, skin the colour of young cognac, up for anything and looking for trouble, with a smile to launch a fleet of ships. How on earth had they ever got that one together? If he hadn't known better, Raissac would have said Money. Or Position. Some kind of Advantage. One of those things that come with a capital letter. Like Sex. Which was why Raissac did know better, and had the film to prove it.