She felt helpless all the way through the echoing corridors and during the elevator ride. The rubber wheels squeaked on what sounded like freshly waxed linoleum. “Rene?”
“Right here,” he said, from somewhere near her elbow.
“You should have told me if the doctor was a geek, Rene,” she said. “What does he look like, eh . . . glasses and overweight? Is he really any good?”
Rene made a sound she’d heard when he’d choked on a chicken bone once. “Look, Aimee . . .”
“Well, you’re right about the glasses,” said Dr. Lambert.
Why couldn’t the earth open up and swallow her?
“Sorry, my big mouth . . .”
“Excuse me, sir,” a deep voice interrupted. “Only hospital staff allowed from here on. You can return to see the patient in a few hours.”
Then she heard the ping of the swinging doors, felt the wheels wobbling. No more Rene.
Fear took over. She sat up, struggling to get off the gurney. They had to tie her down to the CAT scan table.
“A
Aimee fingered the bandages on her neck. She didn’t want anyone seeing her like this. How could she speak with someone she didn’t know and couldn’t see? She wanted to burrow into a hole and die.
“I told Sergeant Bellan you might be up to it,” the nurse said. “He mentioned he was a family friend.”
Loic Bellan . . . a family friend! That lowdown snake who had accused her and her father of graft. Calling them dirty and accusing them of being on the take!
Before she could answer, the nurse’s footsteps clattered away.
“We meet again, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Loic Bellan said, his steps on the linoleum accompanying his words. His voice sounded low and gravelly, as usual. He’d been a protege of her father’s, until her father left the force. Once, Bellan had idolized him.
The last time she’d come across Bellan, he’d been reeling drunk and abusive, in front of the Commissariat. But she’d turned the tables in the Sentier, proving him and the others wrong. She learned his wife had given birth to a baby with Down Syndrome. Last month she’d heard from her godfather that Bellan was falling apart.
“Care for a Gauloise?”
“I quit. Smoking’s not allowed anyway,” she said. “But I’m sure you know that.”
She smelled a stale whiff of Paco Rabanne cologne and tobacco on his clothes. He must have lit up in the hallway.
“There are just a few questions I need to ask you about the attack.”
No mention of the baby, just born when he’d last seen her, nor any word of sympathy for Aimee’s condition. And no apology for the drunken abuse he’d heaped on her the last time they’d met.
She wished she knew where he was standing. Most of all she wished she could see him, fix him with a steely stare. And then she had a semblance of coherent thought.
“Wait a minute, Bellan, you’re stationed in the second
“Good memory,” he said. “I’m racking up overtime. But I appreciate your concern. Now, tell me what happened,” he said, his voice businesslike.
“You must be on special assignment if you’re out of your
“I can’t say anything about it,” he said. “But if you cooperate, I’ll take your statement.”
“Something else going on, Bellan?”
Silence again.
“Or does it have to do with my father? Guilt by association.” He must enjoy seeing her blind and squirming.
“Like I said, take it easy,” Bellan said.
Feet shifted on the linoleum. Good, she made him uncomfortable.
“You don’t believe anything I say. My father crumbled from the pedestal you put him on. But he wasn’t dirty, I proved it. The rest is in your head, Bellan.”
“I’m harsh sometimes,” he said, “That was a bad time for me.”
“You mean when your baby was born,” she said. Tactless again. “Sorry . . .”
“Can it,” he interrupted, his voice rising. “I am on special detail, if you need to know. Feel better?”
“Concerning what?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”
And she did for the most part. Even her stupidity in going down a dim passage. But this was Paris, and it was a passage she’d walked a hundred times. She’d never felt afraid before. Not like now.
“So would you say someone might have followed you from the resto?”
“If so, I didn’t hear him.”
“This client, Vincent Csarda, did he know where you were going?”
“Csarda left before me,” she said.
Though vindictive in business, she doubted Vincent would physically attack her. He’d coerce her and Rene in other ways.
“The person behind me was tall; Vincent’s shorter than I am.”
“Just checking all leads,” he said.
A slow throbbing achiness filled her head. All this thinking and concentrating hurt. At least it took her mind off the stinging bruises ringing her swollen neck.
“Someone strangled me and smashed my head against the wall. But I’m no retard, Bellan.” As soon as she’d said that, hot shame flushed over her. She remembered the baby.
Silence.
“Look, I didn’t mean. . . . That woman was the target, not me,” she said.
“Want to explain that to me?”
“I was meeting a man . . . to give him a woman’s cell phone. She’d left it behind and I answered it. . . . It’s too complicated.”
“Take it easy; you’ve been hit on the head,” he said. “Hard.”
From Bellan’s tone she sensed mockery. But she couldn’t be sure. If only she could see his face.
“Well, we could tell more if we had this phone,” he said. “Check the numbers.”
Of course, her bag . . . she’d forgotten about that. What happened to her laptop and the Populax file?
“Where are my things?”
“The nurse said your papers showed you were admitted with no personal belongings,” said Bellan.
So the attacker had stolen her bag. Everything was gone. Thorough, Bellan was a thorough
She felt something being wedged into her clutched fist. “My number’s on here,” said Bellan. “Have the nurse help you call me if you think of anything else.”
Long after he’d gone, she fought back tears of frustration.
LOIC BELLAN went to the parking lot, his head down.
“I’ll walk,” Bellan said to the driver in the dented police Peugeot awaiting him. He walked down the narrow rue Char-enton hoping his mind would empty. But it didn’t.
Why did Aimee’s words make it all come back? All the past; how her father, Jean-Claude Leduc, left the force
