Murder on the Champ de Mars (24 page)

She recognized Roland Leseur from his photo in
Le Figaro:
mid forties, tall, black hair shot through with silver, long face, prominent nose. He spoke to an AFP reporter while a photographer stood by. Aimée caught a few phrases. “As we outlined in the briefing, those Roma, citizens of Romania, Albania and Bulgaria …” She lost the thread as someone pushed in front of her—a reporter and a technician from RTL, the radio network. “We’re working on agreements with these countries, among others in Eastern Europe, who’ve proved extremely helpful. The Roma situation differs from that of the
manouches
born in France …”

“How can you make that claim, even while native
manouches
are being resettled like
immigrés?
The protesters on the Champ de Mars …”

She didn’t hear the answer. By the time she caught up with the reporters, Leseur had disappeared.

“Where’s the next briefing?”

“Briefing? The minister and his cronies went to play squash.” The RTL reporter laughed. He wore round, owl-like brown glasses and a wool jacket with elbow patches. He ran his gaze over her legs. “New to the pack, eh?”

She nodded. “I need more for my story.”

“Good luck with that. They’re off to the sports center to flex their muscles for one another.”

“Sports center?”

“Talk about green,” he said, happy to lord it over her. “Under the Assemblée Nationale. Off-limits to us. But if you wait outside for a few hours, they’ll deign to recycle what they’ve already spewed out, and you’ll get points from your editor for persistence.”

Like she had the time for that?

But she smiled. “Guess I’ve got to learn the ropes; I appreciate the tip.”

He sidled closer. “Plenty of time for a drink. What do you say? By the way, I’m Allert de Riemer.”

By the time they’d reached the café across the street, she had a plan.

“Un cocktail?”

“This early?”

She nodded. “But come on, there’s not really a sports club under the Assemblée Nationale, right in the Palais Bourbon. You’re joking, right?”

“Don’t believe me then.”

“You mean the ministers just walk across the quai in their gym shorts?”

Allert smirked. “There’s an underground walkway. They don’t even come up for air. Normal people’s air.”

“Some kind of tunnel?”

“Used to be a Nazi bunker, part of the ammunitions storage carved out of the old Palais Bourbon wine cellars.”

She grinned, switching to her full-on flirt. “Be nice, don’t tease a newbie. You were a beginner once, too.”

“I bought you a cocktail, didn’t I? What could get nicer than that?”

He leaned in. His hot garlic breath hit her ear.

“If you’re so nice, where’s the entrance to this Nazi bunker?” asked Aimée.

“
Rez-de-chausée
, make a left at Talleyrand.”

She hit the
VIBRATE
button on her phone. “Oops, my editor. Be right back.”

He pulled her close. She tried not to breathe in. Wished she could plug her nose. “I’ll be waiting, big eyes.”

“You do that.”

Out on the pavement, she stood with the smokers, her phone to her ear, and grinned at him. A moment later she’d edged out of view behind an old couple walking a labrador. She crossed the pavement and reentered the ministry. One minute later she’d found the marble bust of a lush-wigged Talleyrand. The man got around.

She stuck the press pass in her pocket, pulled out her clear-framed glasses and the soft leather Villeroi bag that almost melted under her touch. Folded the file with the
Paris Match
under her arm, put her phone to her ear and joined several people going into a door.

A guard was checking security passes.
Merde!
She mingled, talking intently and in a low voice into her phone, which she’d put on mute. Moved forward with the crowd.

“Pass, Mademoiselle?”

She looked down at her chest. “
Mon Dieu
, must have left it on my desk. Upstairs.
Pardonnez-moi.”
She spoke into the dead phone. “
Un moment
, Monsieur Leseur.” She cupped the phone with her hand as if to muffle the words to the speaker on the other end. “Monsieur Leseur needs his file right now. Can I just bring it to him?”

The guard motioned for her to wait.

“
Oui
, Monsieur, you mean
le ministre
needs it?” she said in a loud voice, back into the phone. “But I forgot my pass, and I’m hoping this nice gentleman will …”

People behind her shuffled their feet. A few coughed. Even the guard was annoyed at the line.

He waved her through.

She followed the two women ahead of her with their heads bent in conversation. Halogen light strips illuminated the coved stone walls of the surprisingly broad tunnel. A young buck, messenger bag strapped around his chest, wheeled by on his
trottinette
, a silver metal kick scooter, his Converse-clad foot pushing off the ground with a rhythmic
cheut
. A warren, this place, with tunnels branching off right and left, signposted for the cafeteria, the Assemblée Nationale.

She kept her eyes peeled for Leseur, thought up a story. Ahead of her she saw a sign reading:
ASCAN.
ASSOCIATION SPORTIVE ET CULTURELLE DE L’ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE.
OPEN TO
DÉPUTÉS, ASSISTANTS ET FONCTIONNAIRES DE L’ASSEMBLÉE, AUX FONCTIONNAIRES ET AGENTS PUBLICS DE L’ADMINISTRATION
.

And then in small letters it read:
AND OUTSIDERS
.

Well, she qualified as an outsider. So did any member of the public—that’s if anyone could find this place. Didn’t she pay their salaries with her taxes? Time she collected.

“Bonjour.”
She smiled at the young woman at the desk. “
Désolée
to bother you, but it’s urgent. I have a time-sensitive file for Monsieur Leseur. Please notify him—he’s on the squash court.”

“Monsieur Leseur? Non.”

“But I was told—”

“
Escrime
. The fencing court.” She picked up the phone. “A file regarding …?”

A swordsman. If she got his ear, it would only be for a few minutes. “From the press briefing. He’ll understand.”

The woman at the desk nodded. “Go ahead to the old arsenal.”

“Merci.”

In a large windowless room painted white, with fencing-club flags hanging from the walls and white lines painted on the blue floors, helmeted and grille-masked figures parried and thrust, riposte after riposte. A metallic smell hung in the close air. It was like stepping into the eighteenth century, except that each time the sword tip touched an opponent, bright purple bulbs lit up on their vest.

“Mademoiselle?”

Roland Leseur, in a form-fitting grey fencing outfit, helmet hanging from a strap on his arm, stood at the men’s locker-room door, waiting for her. The clashing of swords, the almost balletic steps, the grunting and tang of sweat sent a shiver of unease up her back. “They know not to disturb me here.”

“I’m new, Monsieur,” she said, saying the first thing that jumped into her mind. She held up the file. “May we talk in private, please?” she said.

His brow furrowed in annoyance. “In here.” He checked inside the men’s locker room for people, then closed the door after she entered. “Make this quick, my partner’s waiting.” Leseur stood in the narrow changing-room aisle beside a metal locker, open to reveal his jacket hanging up, a briefcase, keys, wallet, a cell phone. He flipped open his briefcase and took out a pen. “You need something signed? Why didn’t Juliette bring this down herself?”

“
Pardonnez-moi
, Monsieur, but …”

“Please show me what I need to sign.”

“See, not sign,” she said. “This.” She put the
Paris Match
on a bench and pointed to the splash on Pascal’s death.

Annoyance turned to wariness.

“You lied to find me.” His low voice vibrated with anger. “Why are you here? Tell me who you are before I have you thrown out.”

She stuck her Leduc Detective business card into his gloved hand.

“Forgive me. It was the only way I’d get a moment of your time, and it’s a matter of life and death,” she said, speaking fast. “My father investigated the homicide of Djanka Constantin in 1978. They pulled him off the case, but he never forgot it. Later he was killed in a bomb explosion—murdered to keep him quiet about whatever he had learned about Djanka Constantin.”

He shook his head. “Not my concern, Mademoiselle.”

“Your brother Pascal’s body and Djanka’s were discovered only hours apart,” she said. “Information has come to light that strongly suggests that the two deaths are connected.”

“Stop right there.” He stepped back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do, Monsieur,” she said. “A painful event. I’m sorry to insist, but—”

“My brother took his own life,” he said, his voice wooden. “I’m not interested in all these lies and slander appearing years later. Now if you’ll move aside and let me return to the
piste.”

How could she keep him there?

“The memoir and the
Libé
article, you mean?”

“Damn reporters dredging for scandal. They hired you, didn’t they?” Fear crinkled the crow’s-feet edging his eyes. He shook his head. Was that pain or sorrow on his face?

“I’m a detective, Monsieur.”

“And you had my ear. Now you don’t.”

This wasn’t going well. Scrapes of metal and shouts of
en garde
came from behind the door.

“My journalist friend says the
Libé
article’s been pulled. Nobody will ever read it,” she said. “Please just help me understand how your family in the Berry knew the Constantins. Two minutes.”

She read the surprise in his face. “But what does it matter anymore?”

Time for the truth. “There’s a piece of the puzzle no one will
give me,” she said. “A piece of information I need to solve my father’s murder.”

“I don’t see a connection, Mademoiselle.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m wasting your two minutes,” she said. “But if I don’t look for the piece, I won’t know.” Determined to reach him, she took out a photo of her father. Her favorite, of him leaning over a puzzle. “My father, Jean-Claude Leduc. Think of a crime like a puzzle, he’d say. Gone almost ten years. His death unsolved, murderers never caught. Don’t you wish you could reel time back in and see your brother?”

He studied her card. “It was all in my father’s time. During the war.”

His guard down now, he fiddled with his fencing mask. His father’s time? Something stuck in his memory, she could tell. She had to keep the momentum.

“See, there’s a connection,” she said. “Wasn’t your father a decorated Resistance hero? Did he save the Constantin family, hide them from the Germans in the Berry?”

Leseur shrugged. “For years the
manouches
traveled by our land, on the old routes. My father let them camp at the lake when I was small. They played such music at night; I’ll always remember their horses and painted caravans, the fish we caught.” He stopped himself. “But the old Constantin—we called him the Gypsy King—he relayed Resistance messages to the maquis hiding in the forests.”

“Underground, you mean?”

“They called it the Gypsy mail via forest trails,” he said. “Markers like a broken branch or twisted twig, signs in nature. Who even talks about them now?”

Who even talks about them?
Naftali’s words.

“My father worked with the Gypsy King throughout the war. For years after, they’d come in the summer. My father even attended his Gypsy funeral in the sixties.
Non
, maybe it was in the seventies.”

“So you knew Drina and Djanka as children.”

He paused to think. Something opened up inside him. Memories of a happier time?

“But that’s years ago. My parents sent me away to boarding school.” Leseur leaned against the metal locker.

“Help me understand, then, why the Constantin family shunned Djanka for having your brother’s baby.” Ready with the photo—
Djanka, Nicholás and Pascal
—she brought it out from the old pages of
Paris Match
for him to see.

The phone inside his locker vibrated with a long buzz. Leseur ignored it, his face etched with hurt and longing. His lips moved. No sound came out.

“
Pardonnez-moi
, Monsieur, but what did you …?”

“I said, who understands Gypsies?” He didn’t deny that Pascal was Nicu’s father.

“Nicu was murdered yesterday. In broad daylight, by professionals. A hit.”

Leseur stiffened. “I never knew the boy.” After a moment, he said, “They sent me away.”

“What secret stretching back to Djanka and your brother could still be important enough to need covering up and to have caused my father’s murder?”

His phone beeped: a message alert. He averted his eyes.

“Why are you so afraid, Monsieur Leseur? Is someone threatening you?”

His bony, gloved fingers grabbed her arm. “Get out.” He shoved her aside.

She grabbed at the open locker door to stop herself from tripping.

“Is there a problem?” A red-faced man appeared at the locker-room door, pulled off his face mask.

Leseur moved forward, letting go of her arm. She stuck her hand in her bag, rooting through mascara tubes, her phone and mini-packs of baby wipes until she found what she was looking for.

“Zut,”
the man said, looking at her, “don’t tell me the press got in here?”

“Press? Non, she told me she’s a …” He caught himself before saying detective.
“Ce n’est pas important.”

Aimée took advantage of Leseur’s distraction. Stuck the centime-sized tracker into his wallet fold.

“This woman’s made a mistake,” said Leseur, turning back to Aimée. “She’s leaving.”

She rubbed her arm. Leaned into Leseur’s ear and whispered, “Tell me. Or I’ll make a scene in front of your friend.”

Sweat broke out on his brow. His hand shook. What was he holding back?

But by now her fame had spread throughout the fencing
piste
, and politicians in tight-fitting gear were crowding through the doorway, eager to expel the stranger in their midst. When she looked back at Leseur on her way out, a jacket over his fencing outfit, he was clutching his briefcase and speaking into his cell phone. The next moment, he’d disappeared through the far exit. She clicked the button to activate the tracker.