AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“Back off or I start screaming and you get this in the face.”

She wished she had her Beretta. But those days were over. No more climbing over rooftops or hanging from rusted pipes. She’d promised.

“Du calme,” he said, and flashed his card.

“I can’t read it,” she said pulling out a flashlight. At least she could smack one of them in the face with it and get the talker with the spray.

“Fabien Regnier, Renseignements Generaux,” she read. “Guess you think that impresses people.”

“Not you, I’m sure,” he said. “But you’ve dealt with us before, on contract. In a ministry surveillance context, remember?”

She bit her lip. The ministry surveillance on which her father had been killed in an explosion. It had been five years ago, but was as vivid to her as if it were yesterday. She’d never known the RG were involved.

“So for old time’s sake, hand over the bag,” he said.

“Just like that, out here on the cobblestones? You’ve got more balls than you were born with, expecting me to . . .”

“We want what’s ours,” he said, lowering his voice.

“You have no authority,” she said. “What do you mean, yours?”

“I think you know.”

Two additional men drifted from the shadows, a stocky red-haired man and a lean one with a stringy ponytail down his back. They enclosed her in a tight ring. The red-haired one spread a much-thumbed France- Soir newspaper over the wet cobbles. Fabien Regnier, if that was his real name, gripped her bag. She winced as he emptied it, shining her flashlight on the contents as he picked through her Nicorette patches, ultra black mascara, a broken turquoise earring, her worn Vuitton wallet, cell phone, Chanel No.5 purse-sized atomizer, well-thumbed cryptography manual, Swiss Army knife, the holy card from her father’s funeral, an Egyptian coin, and a letter containing Guy’s poem.

“C’est de la poesie, ca?” asked one of the men reading the poem with a furrowed brow. “Calling you a wild orchid, your rose complexion’s rough beauty . . .”

“That’s personal,” she interrupted.

“But it’s very well written, Mademoiselle.” Fabien Regnier grinned, passing it around. It infuriated her. They were looking through a window into Guy’s soul and using it for a cheap laugh.

“Where did you put it?” he asked. His eyes were hard. He leaned close to her face. “The jade.”

She had to think fast. “Since you know so much, how come you don’t know it’s gone?” she said, making it up as she went along. “Pfft, stolen from my office while someone barricaded me in the supply room.”

“How convenient!”

“Not really, but it didn’t belong to me. And I don’t think it belongs to you.”

“Stolen property must go back to where it came from.”

Had Baret stolen the jade to sell to Linh?

“What do you mean? How does the jade connect to you at the RG?”

“That’s not your concern.” Fabien Regnier snapped his fingers.

As Aimee looked up she caught the eye of the hawk-nosed man who approached. Lean and in his late fities, his cap brim low over his hooded eyes: she knew him. Recognized him from the unit that had contracted for Leduc’s services for the Place Vendome surveillance. He’d been the one holding her back as she screamed, seeing her father’s charred limbs on the cobblestones.

Tension knotted her shoulders.

“We don’t want to have to mess up your apartment but—”

“Go ahead, it’s a mess already. The contractor makes sure of that.”

“Actually, we already have,” he said. “You need a new contractor.”

“What? Where’s your search warrant?”

Fabien Regnier picked up his cell phone; it must have vibrated on his hip. And then she noticed the butterscotch colored plug in his ear. An audio amplifier?

“Oui,” he said, turning to answer it. A moment later, he clicked off, nodding to the others who fell back. He whispered in her ear, “If, as you say, you don’t have it, we want you to find it. That’s your priority now. Your career here, in Europe, anywhere in the world, depends on it. Your agency, your apartment, even your dog’s yearly rabies shots, depend on it.”

She stiffened.

“Good evening,” he said, giving her his card. “See, mother did teach me some manners.” And got into a waiting car.

SHE FELT so weak she had to force herself to climb the worn marble stairs to her dark apartment. This stank worse than overripe Camembert. The RG’s tentacles extended everywhere: their calling cards were intimidation, blackmail, and wiretaps. She never understood how people could refer to them as the good guys, likening them to the FBI or MI5. Then again, maybe it was apt after all.

Miles Davis, her bichon frisee puppy, greeted her with a wet nose and wagging tail. At least he was fine. She hit the switch of her hall chandelier and fiddled with the radiator. The only response was a dribble of heat and a sputtering, angry knock in the pipes.

She gasped at the mess they’d made, though the RG had a method to their ransacking. Neat piles of papers and her clothing sat in the middle of the rooms. Her computer lay untouched, thank God, but her armoires hung open. Drawers in several old chests were pulled out, too. Did they think she’d stash the jade in her apartment and leave it?

Thinking of Fabien Regnier going through her things made her sick. They’d dirtied everything by their presence.

Who was the black-leather-clad figure on the motorcycle? Was he, too, with the RG? And where did the hawk-nosed man from the Place Vendome, who’d witnessed her father’s death, fit in? What did this imply?

She forked the last of the horsemeat into Miles Davis’s chipped Limoges bowl. These days, a boucherie chevaline with the gold horse head above it, the sign of a horsemeat butcher, was harder to find in the quartier than a child without Nintendo.

She kicked off her boots, hung up her damp coat, reached in the pocket for a cigarette and remembered she’d quit. Merde! Papers crinkled. Her hand held something; the envelope she’d meant to give Baret. She remembered how he’d clutched her coat . . . what had he said . . . Nadege, Sophie? She slit open the envelope Linh had given her. Inside lay a cashier’s check for fifty thousand francs.

Linh had been buying the jade! Stolen jade? If Linh had asked her to make the exchange, because she was under surveillance . . . well, now the RG were watching her.

She shivered and pulled on the ski parka she wore when the heater refused to cooperate. So far, it had happened every night this week. But the chill in her bones wasn’t just from the cold.

She pushed aside the tool box. If only the contractor would sheetrock the rest of the kitchen wall. Two weeks and she’d only seen him once. And then she got to work, putting away her things, cleaning up the mess the RG left. A quick, cursory job. They must have been watching her apartment, known she hadn’t returned. After an hour, her arm throbbed but she’d put away most of the piles.

She looked inside her small box of a refrigerator. Nothing except an expensive eye cream the woman at the Samaritaine cosmetics counter assured her performed wonders. So far, she hadn’t noticed a difference. A runny Reblochon and pain rus-tique waited on the counter. But her appetite had disappeared. She hit the red blinking message-machine button. One message.

“Aimee . . . I thought you’d be home . . .” Guy’s voice said. Unsure and annoyed.

A click, and he’d hung up.

Her heart sank. Regnier and the RG had heard this, too.

“Looks like you and me, Miles, and the brick.”

She turned on the oven and stuck a brick inside to warm. In an hour, she’d put the hot brick in her bed and keep toasty all night: a trick her grandfather had learned in the war when charcoal was scarce.