All his life he had been haunted by high-profile parents; a renowned father and mother and a string of public tragedies. Sad to think of the pain stamped on his psyche.
“You didn’t kill him. Someone else did,” she said. Then she told him how Jutta Hald had appeared in her life.
“That’s why I contacted you. Think again,” she said. “Maybe she came to your door?”
He shook his head.
Again, he combed his stringy hair behind his ears with his fingers. It was as if he’d numbed out, refusing to deal with what she said. Who would want to know his father had been murdered?
She hadn’t.
She got out of the car, slammed the dented door. But she stood on the cobblestones, unable to move her feet. She had to make him understand.
“What if it had been you in the apartment when it caught fire? You must realize you’re in danger. And I am, too. Someone knocked out your concierge and whacked me from behind.”
She turned and let him see the throbbing welt on her head in the quayside light.
Now he looked scared. And lost.
“What can I do?” He shook his head. “Even if you’re right, everything went up in smoke.”
True.
“You said he kept things at the bank or with his publisher,” she said. “Idrissa transcribed your father’s work. I need to talk with her again. Perhaps something can still be found.”
“Go ahead, she won’t talk to me.”
“What’s her number?”
“01 75 98 72 02.”
She pulled out the first thing that came to hand from her bag, a lip-liner pencil, and wrote it down on the back of her hand.
“You asked me to help you, remember?” she said. “If I were you, Christian, I’d be afraid.”
“Did I say I wasn’t?” he asked. “So, girl detective, you think you will find out who killed my father?”
She nodded. And she would find Jutta’s killer, too.
He wrote another check, thrust it through the window at her.
Surprised, she stared at him.
“Not enough?” he shouted, reaching over to add more zeros.
“Throwing money at me?” But Rene would shoot her if she didn’t take it.
She took it. Michel’s loan hadn’t covered it all.
A crow flew past, swooped, then perched on the quayside wall. His black silhouette was outlined against the lighted Seine.
“Let’s look at the things he kept in the bank,” she said. “My mother’s trail led me to your father.”
“Always your mother,” he said. “I hardly knew mine.”
“Neither did I. And mine was American, too.”
Christian looked away. He flipped the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to life. “I’ll stay with Etienne,” he said abruptly. “Meet me tomorrow at two at the Credit Industriel et Commercial in Place des Victoires.” And with that he roared off down the darkened quai.
Surprised by his continual changes of mood, she climbed up the stairs. Miles Davis sniffed her with his wet nose as she entered the apartment. She pulled out the half-eaten baguette sandwich Herve the fireman had given her and set it in his bowl on the kitchen floor. Then she stumbled down the hallway to her bedroom and collapsed on her feather duvet.
Hours later, she woke up, her face wet, still in her sooty plumber’s uniform. Her thirties Bakelite bedside clock showed green fizzy numbers. She rubbed her eyes.
3:04 A.M.
She remembered. Everything had gone up in smoke.
And she realized she’d been crying in her sleep, something she hadn’t done in years. Her pillow was damp with tears.
Fragments of an old dream came back to her … running, trying to hand her mother something. Playing catch-up as always. But her mother was so far ahead … so distant. Aimee could only see her sleeve flapping in the wind. And then she was gone.
Why had her mother left them?
But she knew the answer. Deep down she knew she’d been a burden. She remembered her mother’s irritated glances. How she had stuck her paintbrush in the jam jar of cloudy turpentine, annoyed by the annual teacher conference.
Aimee had felt confused. Did that mean she was boring and slow or that her teacher was? Or both? She only knew she didn’t measure up to what her mother wanted. Just the way Christian felt.
Her strict teacher was fair despite her funny little chignon and severe curvature of the spine. “Scoliosis,” her father had called it, her mother adding, “Never stare at others’ deformities. Focus on the eyes.”
The pain seared her as always. No differently than when she was eight years old. She undid the pants and shirt, kicked them onto the floor, and curled up in one of her father’s old shirts. Soft and worn.
She stared up at the milky chandelier, many of its icicle drops missing, that hung from the plasterwork oval- inlaid ceiling. An occasional glint of light from the passing night barges was reflected in the crystals. Beside her, Miles Davis stirred in his sleep and nuzzled her. A cool breeze scented of the Seine drifted in through her open window.
No way could she fall asleep. Only one remedy for that.
She sat up in bed, pulled her laptop over, and went online. She searched deeper than she had the other night, finding more sites about the Haader-Rofmein gang. They’d existed until 1992, when some of the first-generation members had given themselves up. There was even a punk rock band named after Haader-Rofmein, noted for its song “Grandpa Was a Nazi, Papa Was a Commie, Oh My!”
Since Germany had undergone denazification and the integration of a communist state in less than two generations, the Haader-Rofmein background and identity had complex implications.
She realized the terrorists symbolized another era in which youths rebelled against postwar conformity, abhorring their government, which was filled with former Nazis, and the industrialists and financiers who had been members of the Wehrmacht. They took violent political action. They wanted to overthrow what the Allies had created: a Germany divided between communism and strident capitalism.
She found the old Interpol WANTED posters. So many fugitives had been on the run across Europe.
Haader-Rofmein had kidnapped a wealthy French industrialist, Paul Laborde, near the German border. He’d died from injuries suffered during a shoot-out. After that, the gang members escaped or were imprisoned.
She scrutinized the photos: radicals caught in a bank heist by the security camera, bombed-out houses, BMWs riddled with bullet holes spun out on the Autobahn, figures in dark glasses with their hands up being frisked by police, the blood-smeared cells of Kernheim prison where emaciated RAD leaders lay dead on the concrete, eyes open.
No one resembled her mother. She was flooded with relief.
She found Action-Reaction, which proclaimed itself the French counterpart of the German struggle.
Apart from slogans inciting members to
She searched for its headquarters or an address. Aside from an article on sweatshop worker rights in the Sentier and the listing of an address for an information office at 7, rue Beauregard, there was nothing. She finally fell asleep.
