AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Place Pigalle, deserted by pedestrians, lay behind them. Only the sex-club barkers who rubbed their arms while greeting the taxis pulling up in front of their doorways were still out. Jacques gestured to his parked Citroen.

“I thought we were only going two blocks?” she said.

“That’s right,” he said, “but we’ll get there and back faster in this weather if we drive.”

They passed the corner guitar store, a heavy-metal hangout in the daytime, in a quartier thick with instrument shops.

Turning into rue Andre Antoine, they rode by a small hotel. Fresh snow layered the mansard roofs of the white stone Haussmann–style buildings. A black-coated woman teetering in heels and fishnet stockings stood under a lampadaire in a doorway at the corner, then stepped back into the shadow.

Jacques parked at the curb where the street curved. He pushed a button on a grillwork gate and it buzzed and the gate clicked open. Laure caught up with him as he strode across the small courtyard, her feet crunching on the ice. The building’s upper floors and roof were wrapped in wooden scaffolding.

She stamped the snow from her feet, wishing she’d worn wool socks and different boots. Her gloves . . . she’d forgotten them in the car. Jacques hit the digicode and a door opened to a tattered red-carpeted hall.

“Wait here,” Jacques said.

“In a freezing vestibule?”

He was going to do something stupid. Police procedure required that a pair keep together, not split up.

“We’re a team, aren’t we?”

Team? On the job they were. “We’re off duty, remember?” she said. “How personal is this?”

“More than you know. But you can quit worrying. I know what I’m doing.” He tugged his earlobe, a mannerism some women might find endearing. Grinned. Monsieur Charm was what they’d nicknamed him at the Commissariat.

“Tell me what’s going on, Jacques.”

“I just need some back up.”

Was she reading this wrong? “So you want me to warn you in case some thug shows up?”

He put his fingers to his lips and winked. “Trust you to figure it out.”

Jacques ran up the stairs. She listened as his footsteps stopped on the third landing.

Laure studied the names on the mailboxes uneasily. It didn’t add up. A cold five minutes later she followed the red carpet up the creaking staircase. Three flights up, in a dim hallway filled with piles of wood and an old sink, cold drafts swirled against her face. An open door led into a dark apartment.

“Jacques? Quit playing games,” she called out.

No answer. What had the fool done now?

She stepped into the apartment, into musty darkness, her footsteps echoing on the wood floor. It seemed vacant. From an open window, gusts of snow blew onto the floor. And then she heard a distant sound of breaking glass.

Alarmed, she unzipped her jacket and drew the gun she’d only fired previously on the shooting range. Her heart raced. Drugs! Was he on the take? No way in hell would she risk her badge for his dope habit. She peered out the window. No Jacques.

She climbed out onto the scaffold and navigated the slippery two-plank walkway gripping the stone building, her bare hands frigid.

“Laure . . .” Jacques’s voice, the rest of his words, were lost in the wind.

A howling gust whipped across her face as she pulled herself up from the scaffolding and reached for the gray-blue tile edge of the slippery roof. A punch knocked her to her knees. The second blow cracked her head against the scaffold with a bright flash of light.

Monday Night

AIMEE PEERED AGAIN AT her Tintin watch. Nearly eleven o’clock. “What’s taking Laure so long?”

Morbier shrugged, taking a swig from his wineglass. “Better congratulate Ouvrier now, before he leaves.”

Ouvrier stood near them, holding an open blue velvet box containing a glinting gold watch. “Thirty-five years of service.”

She saw a wistful look on his long face.

“Congratulations, Ouvrier.” Aimee nudged him. “How will you keep out of trouble now?”

“Ma petite, I’ve had enough trouble,” he said, giving her a little smile.

Ouvrier, widowed, and estranged from his children, subject to flare-ups in winter from a knee injury in his rookie days, had been sidelined. A new generation of flics was taking over. She felt for him, aware of his scars, inside and out. For now, he had camaraderie but not much else to show for years of service besides the gold watch.

Where was Laure? Aimee stood and pulled on her coat. There was only one way to find out.

SHE CROSSED Place Pigalle toward the mounting zinc rooftops silhouetted against the moonlike dome of Sacre Coeur. Midway, in a frame shop, the white-coated long-haired owner nodded to her as he pulled the blinds down. But not before she saw the notice of an upcoming organic market below a Warhol-style silk-screen print of Che Guevara . . . black and red all over.

Montmartre embodied the bohemian spirit. In its past it had been the home of anarchist Communards and then of artists and writers for whom absinthe provided inspiration. Now it held a mix of small cafes and theatres that hosted poetry readings or a playwright testing a first act on patrons, and dance studios occupying ateliers that once boasted students like van Gogh.

Young Parisians treasured converted studios here, trading the trudge up the steep streets and flights of stairs for the view of the sweeping panorama below, just as Utrillo, Renoir, and Picasso once made their homes in cheap ateliers. This was where the Impressionists, Cubists, and Surrealists had painted. The tradition of the village, eccentric and stubborn, still remained.

There was no sign of Laure. Aimee turned the corner and saw a new Citroen at the curb under a No Parking–Tow Zone sign. Only a flic would dare. It was a nice chrome green Citroen, too. Jacques’s? A glance through the half-frosted window revealed a crushed pill bottle on the floor by the clutch and blue gloves on the passenger seat. Laure’s gloves.

Something smelled bad, as her father would have said.

A gate stood open. Fresh footsteps in the snow trailed across to a darkened building. She entered and crossed the courtyard, her heels slipping on the ice. Strains of music from the building opposite wafted through the courtyard, and patches of light came from a window. Another party?

Snow clumped in the building’s half-opened door. Aimee walked inside into the dark foyer. A broken stained- glass window and water-stained doors met her gaze. There was a darkened concierge’s loge on the right. Once plush and exclusive, she thought, now the building looked shabby.

“Laure?”

A gust of wind rattled the metal mailboxes. Wet footprints mounted the red-carpeted stairs.

She followed them to the third floor. Piles of lumber and paint cans sat under a skylight attesting to a renovation in progress. The apartment door stood open.

“Allo?”

No answer. She went inside, her footsteps echoing in a hallway. Beyond lay a dark, nearly empty series of rooms swallowed by shadows. What looked like a piano stood, ghostlike, covered by a sheet.

She shivered and backed up. In this bitter cold, half-empty apartment something felt very wrong. Metal clanged from outside where a construction scaffold was visible through the open salon window. Had Jacques and Laure, the idiots, gone out there? Snow blew in through the window, dusting a large armchair and wetting the carpet as it melted.

She stepped over the window ledge to the scaffold, which was barely illuminated by the dim light of the moon. Freezing wind and gusting snow flurries met her. Gloves, she needed gloves and a snowsuit!

At the shadowy scaffold’s end, she could just make out a slanted mansard rooftop and behind it, a small flat