Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (22 page)

The name that Loisel had written down had shocked him. But if this man cooperated … No time to delay.

On his way down the worn stairs, Morbier tried Aimée’s number. No answer. Typical.

A
IMÉE RUBBED HER
face against the glass, gnawing to make the tiny slit in the plastic bigger, sucking for air. Air, she needed more air. With her throat dry and her wrists bound, she sawed harder against a sharp sliver of glass, like a knife to her nose. More and more, until the plastic tore open from her nose to her mouth. Gasping for air, she lay facedown in the walkway. Fetid air reeking of garbage, but never so sweet. Her chest heaved. Twisting around, she leaned against the stone wall in the frigid cold. Three minutes later, she had sawed her wrists free and pulled the torn plastic from her face.

Sticky with her own blood, she crawled over the uneven cobbles. Somehow her Vuitton was still there. Her suede leggings were shredded, her coat stained with dirt. She struggled to pull herself up and staggered to the street, looking for help. But the loitering taxi’s door slammed and it pulled away, tires hissing on the wet cobbles.

Merde!
All those generous tips. Where was her late-night taxi karma?

At least the taxi had scared him away. A minute later and she would’ve been a goner. But she had to get out of here.

Two long blocks away on rue de Turenne, there was still no taxi in sight. She heard the low whoosh of brakes, water splashing from a puddle at the bus stop. But the lighted Number 96 bus took off. She waved and made herself run after it, pounded on the door. By a miracle the driver stopped.

“I shouldn’t do this,” said the young bus driver, taking a look at her and shaking his head. “Either you’ve escaped from an eighties punk party, or you’re making a getaway.”

“The latter,
merci
,” she gasped, holding her sleeve to her bloody nose, and fed her ticket in the machine.

At a window seat, her shoulders heaving, she scanned the street. No one. Her hands trembled as she fingered the camel-colored thread caught in her fingernail. The thread from the attacker’s coat. The man who ran in front of Martine’s car.

In her apartment, after a hot, steaming bath, she applied arnica to her wrists and antibiotic cream on the cuts on her face. Prayed she had enough concealer to cover them tomorrow. Then she huddled under the silk duvet, the raw pain dulled with Doliprane.

For a moment it had seemed so close. Pascal’s obsession with a fourteenth-century document. The connection right before her eyes. But that and a ticket got her a bus ride.

The killer had attacked her. That meant she was getting close. Too close for comfort.

Let it simmer, her father always said. Then, step by step, fit the pieces together. But at least she’d found a piece of Pascal’s puzzle.

Tomorrow she’d scout out Becquerel’s connection, find something.

She felt the empty space beside her, the depression in the mattress where Melac’s leg should have been twined with hers. His scent remained on the sheets, on the towels in her bathroom. His half-squeezed toothpaste tube of Fluocaril lay by the sink.

Miles Davis’s wet nose nuzzled her ear. His tail flicked the duvet until he settled in the crook of her arm by the laptop. She had her man, four legs and all.

Did the DST really have info about her mother? She booted
up her laptop and hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keys. She chewed her lip. Only one way to find out.

She typed in the website address from the matchbox. A page popped up on the screen: a typewritten copy of an MI6 surveillance report dated five years before. The heading:
Sydney/Sidonie Leduc aka Lampa. Subject sighting location—Merjoides Hotel, Istanbul, lobby. Meeting with known arms dealers
___ ___. The names had been blacked out. No photos. Duration of incident: seven minutes. A seven-minute sighting in a hotel lobby.

A five-year-old report and it told her … what? Maybe there was nothing else to tell. The DST set up a website, as Martine had said, and fed old reports to hook her.

The sharp pang of longing hit her. If her mother had been alive five years ago, why hadn’t she ever contacted her?

Just once.

A
IMÉE INHALED THE
algae-scented wind, watching wavelets crest on the Seine below. The oyster sky mirrored the gray-tiled rooftops overlooking the quai. No snow, the ice had melted, as the homeless man had forecast. Perfect for a wool coat, scarf, boots and a
chocolat chaud
.

Miles Davis’s leash tugged her toward the damp stone steps leading down from Quai d’Anjou. He did his business under the bare-branched lime tree. Like every morning.

Her phone rang.

“Got dinner plans, Leduc?” her godfather Morbier asked.

A bolt of surprise shot through her. But she had a rendezvous with Jean-Luc. Vital for information on Pascal.

“Matter of fact, I do.”

“Another bad boy, Leduc?” He coughed. “Given up on Melac? Non, I don’t want to know. Lunch tomorrow,
d’accord?
”

“Anything to do with why you haven’t returned my calls, Morbier?”

She debated telling him about the attack last night. But that necessitated telling him about Pascal’s murder, the DST, her mother.

His voice interrupted her thoughts.

“See you at 1
P.M.
, Chez Louis.”

A three-star Michelin
resto
? “It’s not my birthday.”

Pause. He cleared his throat again. “It’s been a while, we should talk.”

Talk? Morbier, the original clammed mouth? This sounded serious. Or was that a trace of guilt she sensed? She could use that to her advantage.

“But you can bring me a present. The Hôtel-Dieu report on Clodo, a homeless mec, thrown on the Métro line last night.” God willing he’d made it through the night. “Can you arrange for me to visit him tomorrow, Morbier?”

“What’s this Clodo got to do with anything?” Pause. “You’re not inviting him to lunch?”

“Not in his condition.” Let him wonder.

“No promises, Leduc.” He clicked off.

As always, he kept her wondering. He’d engineer repayment. Nothing came free from Morbier.

She stared at the torpid gray currents. Morbier was the last link to her parents. Her only family now, besides her cousin Sebastien and René. Morbier had been her father’s first partner. The only one left who’d known her American mother. Not that he’d talk about her. He’d avoided Aimée’s questions for years.

She was bending down to scoop Miles Davis’s morning contribution into a plastic Printemps bag when her eye caught on the trash bin. Another matchbox was visible under the metal lip. Apprehension rippled through her shoulders.

They watched her, knew her schedule, her movements. If they were so good, why hadn’t they prevented her attack last night? She bit her lip. Before she defeated them at their own plan, she needed to discover it.

She dropped the plastic Printemps bag in the bin at the same time as she slid the matchbox in her pocket.
Comme d’habitude
, she left Miles Davis with Madame Cachou, her concierge, and followed her morning routine. Hitching up her leather skirt and black lace tights, she climbed on her Vespa and scootered across arched Pont Marie, the wind hitting her cheekbones. By the time she parked her now debugged scooter
on rue Bailleul, she had a plan. Instead of turning to Leduc Detective’s door, she stopped at the red-awninged corner café.

“
Un double
, Aimée?” Zazie, the owner’s redheaded daughter, asked.

“Make it
un double chocolat chaud
.” Aimée’s smile turned serious. “You’re not at school, Zazie?”

“It’s Sunday, Aimée.” Zazie made a face as she knocked out the coffee grinds with a loud thump. “We let Papa sleep in. Not everyone works all the time like you do.”

Everyone else had a life.

“I’m in the lycée now,” Zazie said, “or did you forget that too?”

And grew up. It felt like yesterday that Zazie had to stand on a stool to serve from behind the counter.

“Of course not.” How could she have missed Zazie’s touch of mascara and blush, and her red hair now tamed with clips?

“Nice blusher,” Zazie said. “New tone?”

Aimée nodded. At least her makeup covered the cuts.

At the counter stood several suits and an older couple arguing over last night’s game show,
Questions pour un Champion
. Two men in windbreakers entered, accompanied by a rush of cold air. They took a table by the window overlooking rue du Louvre, read the menu with studied preoccupation. Too obvious on an early Sunday morning. Even on a bad day her surveillance skills were better than theirs. What did this cost the government?

“
Merci
, Zazie.” She sipped her
chocolat chaud
and left ten francs on the counter. “Your mother working the accounts this morning?”

Zazie nodded. “
Bien sûr
.”

“I’ll just stop by, eh?”

Zazie set the dishtowel down on her school
cahier
and winked. “This way.”

Aimée followed her through the narrow passageway by crates of Orangina. She nodded to Virginie, who was sitting in
the cluttered office with Zazie’s toddler sister on her lap, and headed to the back service door.

“Plan B,
n’est-ce pas
, Aimée?”

“Good memory, Zazie. A detective always needs a Plan B.”

And plans X, Y, and Z.

“Those two men who just came in are following you?” Zazie said.

Sharp, too. “Let’s hope it’s only two.” Aimée pulled out her LeClerc compact, touched up her lips with Chanel Red. “When you take their order, count to ten and keep them busy. Eyes away from the window, okay?”

Zazie nodded, serious. “This goes on my recommendation,
non?
I’m ready to go undercover, pass messages anytime.”

Aimée blinked.

“For my internship in your office next summer.”

Didn’t she want to be a dancer? Or was that yesterday?

“P
ROFESSOR
B
ECQUEREL
?”

The pale-faced twenty-something shook his head. He ground his cigarette under his heel in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers laboratory courtyard and stuck the butt in the pocket of his smudged, gray lab coat. “He died in the nursing home. No family. Sad, they said.”

Aimée hoped she hadn’t made a trip to the
grande école
in the 13th arrondissement for nothing. And so early on a Sunday morning.

“Didn’t he maintain an office?”

“Here we’re all third-year Gadz’Arts,” he said. “There’s no space for old, retired professors, even legends.”

“Whom could I speak with who knew him?”

“Only the laboratory’s open today. Just students.” The young man shrugged. “The school held a memorial for him a few days ago.”

That gave her an idea. “Where do they keep the remembrance book?”

“
Quoi?
”

She noticed the ink stains on his lapel pocket. A slide rule sticking out of his pants. A textbook geek.

“People who attended the memorial would sign a remembrance book,
non?
”

He shrugged. “Check with the office.” His wristwatch beeped. “
Excusez-moi
.”

But the offices were closed. Five minutes of directions from the concierge and a long corridor later, she found her goal. A high-ceilinged foyer led to a musty nineteenth-century salon dominated by the bronze statue of Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who founded the school before the Revolution. Later, at Napoleon’s request, he focused on a trained military-style corps of engineers. Or so the inscription read.

The busts, portraits, and names on the wall spoke of the expertise of the celebrated Gadz’Arts. And the power and prestige. She stood back to note the graduates, from the designer of First World War fighter planes to the engineers of the Suez Canal, and get a sense of Samour’s connections.

Another wall listed more recent graduates. On supervisory boards, heading engineering firms, or captains of industry with firms like Renault. Impressive and all over the map.

Below she found a photo of a hollow-cheeked, bespectacled man with the handwritten Gothic script:
Alphonse Becquerel, a pioneer who knew no boundaries in the field of optics and technology
.

She opened the slim leather remembrance volume sitting on the podium. Inside were pasted articles from Becquerel’s long engineering and teaching career. Memorials from past students listed by graduating year—all in the stilted Gothic black-ink script. A curious familial feel to the notes, but hadn’t Jean-Luc called it a fraternity, a family?

Yet not Pascal’s name. Odd not to attend the memorial of a man he revered and trusted. She filed that away for later.

Determined to come away with something besides the sneeze building in her nose from the dust, she stuck the remembrance volume in her bag. In the first office she found, she smiled at the cleaning woman. “I’m in a hurry for the professor. Any copier available on this floor?”

The cleaner, a smiling middle-aged woman wearing a head scarf, gestured across the hall. Twenty francs poorer, Aimée left
the remembrance memorial and walked out of the Conservatoire with the copied contents in her bag.

The cold gray outside made her think of the approaching gray monochrome of February. A month of beating rain and the highest rate of suicides. Around the corner she passed
Le Monde diplomatique
, the leftist
intello
monthly lodged in an old dairy. A remnant of the village the quartier was until the seventies demolition and tower blocks.

But the zinc counter at the café hadn’t changed in years. The milk steamer whooshed, the steam radiator hissed. She hung her coat up on the rack.

“
Un express, s’il vous plaît
.”

The girl with thick black eyeliner behind the counter put down her
Marie Claire
magazine and nodded.

From the side alcove the news blared on the
télé
—World Cup fever for the national team, Les Bleus, overtaking the ongoing five-month-old Princess Di investigation. Then, a brief bulletin concerning the street closures that would clog northeast Paris on Monday, and the hospital workers protest in the morning. What else was new?