AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

told me his name.”

“Don’t you have any idea?” Aimee said, her patience wearing thin. “Someone else in your class or in your crowd?” And then it clicked. “You suspect that the father’s a member of MondeFocus?”

“Who else?”

She pulled out the photo she’d taken from his room.

“You stole that.” There was outrage in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to find you—and Nelie.”

“What else have you done?”

“Could any of these mecs in the photo be the father?”

“I’m getting out of this taxi. You’re going to turn me in, aren’t you?”

She put her hand on his arm. “I believe that you were set up. And we’re going to see the proof of it in Claude’s video.”

Krzysztof subsided. “You’re right.” He stared at the photo, his shoulders shaking. “We were idealists, naive. That was taken two years ago. It seems like another world. Another time.” He pointed to the men in the photo. “Non. That one’s gay; this one’s studying in Nanterre.”

Another dead end. She thought hard.

“Tell me about the La Hague group.”

“Why?”

She took a guess. “What if the father’s one of them?”

“That protest took place two weeks ago. Nelie said the whole thing was bungled. Amateurs.” He looked down. “Like me.”

Something Krzysztof had said stuck in her mind.

“Hold on . . . you said the father might seek custody if Nelie didn’t shut up. Shut up about what?”

“All I know is that Orla and Nelie were digging into reports that falsified pollution counts. They thought there had been funny business juggling the statistics,” he said.

“Was her uncle helping her?”

Krzysztof shrugged. “Nelie told a MondeFocus activist there was a doctor’s report she had to find that would sew everything up.”

“Did you get any details concerning this doctor’s report?”

He shook his head.

She thought about Stella’s father, whoever he was, infiltrating MondeFocus and sabotaging the demonstrations.

“The video will show that I’m telling the truth,” Krzysztof said, hope in his voice.

She hoped he was right.

THE TAXI LEFT them south of the Gare d’Austerlitz in a warren of small streets. An old metal streetlight illuminated peeling posters on the walls of Les Frigos, the refurbished refrigerator warehouses.

There was no answer to her knocks on Claude’s door. No light in his window. She checked the box for deliveries labeled NEDEROVIQUE PRODUCTIONS. No videotape.

One step forward and three steps back.

She heard the roar of a motorcycle, the scrape of the gates to the deserted warehouse courtyard opening. The headlights of a vintage motorcycle with a sidecar bobbed over the uneven cobblestones. The engine switched off.

Claude took off his helmet, then shook out his hair, looking more bad boy than ever in torn denims and a motorcycle jacket. Bad boys with bad toys. But the expression on his face, raw and vulnerable at the same time, made her think of his warm hands and the way he’d curled up, spoonlike, against her.

He nodded to Krzysztof, then pulled her close by the tail of her tuxedo jacket. Gave her a searching kiss. And for a moment all she knew was his stubbled cheek, his sandalwood scent. “Partying without me, Aimee?”

“Long story, I just got your message,” she said.

“Too late,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“The flics took the video, the copy, and they even ‘requisitioned’ my tapes.”

Outraged, Aimee said, “That’s illegal. That’s a violation of procedure.”

“Try telling them that,” he said. “They said I’d get them back ‘in due course.’ Or if I lodged a complaint, I could spend an evening with them explaining why I hadn’t brought them to the Commissariat in the first place.”

“But if the police watch the tapes, they’ll see the proof that I was set up,” Krzysztof said, his voice rising in excitement. “The video must show the woman slipping the backpack onto my shoulder. You were there, Claude, you saw it.”

Claude told him, “Humidity ruined a lot of the tape.”

“But you said you found something,” Aimee reminded him.

“I found Gaelle being beaten, oui,” he said. “Orla was shouting; I caught that on the video.”

“I heard her, for a moment,” Krzysztof said. “Just before Gaelle stepped into the square.”

Claude glanced at his watch. “Word has come down. The Direction Territoire de l’Interior is closing the net around all of you. It’s just a matter of time until they tighten it.” He opened a compartment in the motorcycle sidecar and pulled out a helmet. “Krzysztof, the network has arranged a safe house in the Bobigny suburbs for you. But I’m not supposed to tell you where it is.”

Aimee saw indecision on Krzysztof’s face.

“I can’t leave. If we don’t do something, the oil agreement will be signed tomorrow,” he said. “And then we’re back to square one. Nowhere.”

“If you want to be safe, you have to go deep undercover, Krzysztof. We have to leave now. You can figure something out once you’re in hiding where they can’t find you. You’ll come up with a plan.”

The indecision faded from Krzysztof’s face.

Aimee had to do something before they left. The warehouse courtyard was quiet, the only sound that of the occasional car passing outside on the street. The gleams of the sodium streetlight pooled on the cobbles. An idea formed in her head. Hadn’t Morbier said, ‘First you have to catch the wolf?’

“Krzysztof, may I see that Halkyut card?”

“Why?”

“I’ll call Gabriel, and you’ll talk to him. Say you want to meet him in thirty minutes or you’ll give his phone number to the flics. Tell him, in return, you’ll show him—non, you’ll give him—Alstrom’s disc.”

“What do you mean?” Krzysztof asked.

“You know more about this than I do. All those oil statistics . . .”

“Of course,” Krzysztof said. “The cover-ups on the Brent Spar oil platform, the falsified percentages with respect to the deep drilling.”

“Right. Tell him that, in exchange, you want Nelie too,” she said. “That will flush him out. Even if he doesn’t buy it, he’ll have to meet you if only to try to corner you.”

“Corner me?”

“He won’t. I’ll make sure of that. If he brings Nelie, you’ll tell him the disc is somewhere else.”

Claude frowned. “A disc means nothing. The originals are in the computer. They know that.”

“If Halkyut’s working for Alstrom,” she said, buttoning the jacket, “then it might work. All their techs would need to do is insert the disc in Alstrom’s system, find the matching file, and erase it. Trash it. Then phfft, it will be all gone. No record will exist any longer on their hard drive either.”

Except that Rene and Saj had a copy at their office. At least, she hoped they did. But there was no need to tell Halkyut about that.

Krzysztof nodded. He handed Aimee the card. “If they’re holding Nelie, it would explain why she hasn’t contacted me.”

If they had a chance of luring Gabriel into their trap, she’d call Morbier and have him waiting.

“Is it that easy to erase the information?” Claude asked.