AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

too, fell away.

“You set the bomb—”

“Screw you.” The blade of his Laguiole knife sliced through the air. She heard footsteps. Men were coming. “Where’d you take the brat?” he asked.

“So it was you in my apartment.” She hooked the hot poker around his ankle. “Why do you want the baby?” He let out a piercing yell as the poker connected with bare skin. She yanked him against the building with all her might. She could smell searing flesh. “Why?”

His screams were the only reply.

And then he was surrounded by scuffling legs and the impact of punches, the sounds of thuds. She heard the wail of a siren, then shots, and still she held on, yanking harder. Now she could only smell coal fumes. Outside, a car squealed off.

“Leduc?”

She dropped the poker.

“Let go. It stinks.” Morbier’s face was above her, at the window. “Pretty messy barbecue, Leduc.”

MORBIER SAT BEHIND his desk, rubbing the gray growth on his chin. His jowls sagged and his eyes were red rimmed. He pointed at her soot-stained Che Guevara T-shirt. “Your new hero, Leduc?”

“Part of my cover,” she said.

She took another sip of espresso. Her legs felt warm; the shivering had stopped. The ice pack she held to her forehead was already partly melted and sagging.

Smoke spiraled from a burning cigarillo in the Ricard ashtray. Aimee took another from Morbier’s yellow Montecristo tin and lit it from the box of kitchen matches on his desk.

“Help yourself, Leduc, why don’t you?” he said. “Didn’t you quit?”

“I’m always quitting.” She glanced around. “New office. You’re coming up in the world, Morbier.” Wood file cabinets, a computer screen with a blinking cursor. “I didn’t think you knew how to use one of those,” she said, pointing to the computer.

“I even type like a pro now,” he said. “I’ve graduated from two-finger hunting and pecking.”

Outside his office there was a large open room with vacant cubicles and computers. Once it had been the incident room. She saw the adjoining office, the number five painted on the glass beneath the transom. Her father’s old office.

“A real nice mec, Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said, consulting some papers in a brown file folder. “Ex-military, low-level ops. I thought I knew him from somewhere.”

She bit back her surprise. “So, he fits Halkyut’s profile.”

“Let’s say he’s a bottom-feeder, not their usual level operative.” Morbier shook his head. “Seems like they didn’t vet him with their usual thoroughness.”

She figured Gabriel was someone Halkyut used for jobs that could go wrong.

“Any good news, Morbier?” After all, it was Gabriel who had set the bomb at the Hotel Lambert. “Did he give you a confession?”

“The evening’s young.” Morbier smiled wryly. “But it seems that he skipped his parole appointment yesterday. So we’ve got all the time in the world.”

Missing a parole appointment meant there would be no need for lawyers or an arraignment. Gabriel had a ticket to La Sante. He’d be arrested and then it would take several weeks or even months to process his case. With luck he’d end up in a maximum-security prison like Clairvaux.

There was a knock on the frame of the open door.

Aimee looked up to see a young policewoman wearing a blue cap cocked at a jaunty angle.

“Commissaire, a package for you,” she said, with a Provencal accent wide enough to push a cart through.

“From whom?”

“France2.”

Nicolas was on the ball.

“Do me a favor, Officer,” Morbier said. “Set up the VCR for viewing a tape, s’il vous plait.”

Aimee blinked. Morbier polite? Not only did he type now, he also said please.

She stubbed out her cigarillo. “You got a fast response from Nicolas, Morbier. Must be your good manners.”

“That, too. And Nicolas owes me at poker. Big-time.

“Nicolas says this Claude Nederovique made a splash ten years ago but hasn’t produced anything in a while,” Morbier told her. “Is he part of MondeFocus now?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to direct suspicion toward Claude even if he’d deserted her, abandoned her to those mecs.

“He’s just helping out. He’s filming, that’s all,” she said.

She hit Play. The images flickered by, disjointed. There was more footage than what she’d viewed on Claude’s video. He and Krzysztof should have gotten to Bobigny a while ago. Yet she’d had no phone call.

Now the video showed a smiling mix of students and Socialist types, milling about on a narrow street. The cameraman talked to an assistant about lighting, angles. Krzysztof and a woman in a red-and-white Palestinian scarf passed out candles. Bottles of wine were being shared in the loose ranks of marchers who were singing “The Internationale.” The camera cut to a blonde with long hair. There was a close-up. From the remarks of the cameraman about her low-cut jeans, it seemed he was a derriere man. Then they heard his sigh as she put the strap of a backpack over Krzysztof ’s shoulder and pecked his cheek. Next they saw an unfocused blue glare. A wobbling handheld shot showed a limping woman shouting. Another woman grabbed her and ran toward the Pont de Sully. More wobbling. The first woman slumped to the ground.

Nelie. It was Nelie.

The next shot showed the woman in the red-and-white Palestinian scarf, which was now soaked with blood. Aimee didn’t recognize her but seeing the scarf turning red with her blood made Aimee queasy. The cameraman’s voice said, “Hurry . . . bomb squad’s arriving.” He zoomed in . . . then came a shot of a backpack out of which bottles and yellow rag fuses were spilling.

Watching the tape she felt relieved. The march had happened just as Krzysztof had described it. But the most important question was still unanswered.

Morbier said, “Great idea, Leduc! You’ve wasted my time. It’s after midnight. I could have been halfway home, and not had to call in a favor.”

“Wrong, Morbier.” She hit the Rewind button.

“Important, eh? All I saw was a bunch of long-haired radicals partying, and the CRS doing its job.”

Her shoulders tensed at Morbier’s dismissive tone. It was all there, in blurred color. Why didn’t he see it?

She hit Play once more, took the remote control, and stood close to the screen. “OK, see, here’s Krzysztof.” She pointed to him as he passed out candles. Then she fast-forwarded. “Here’s the blonde.”

“It’s blurred; it’s hard to see what’s happening.”

“Bear with me. You’re seeing this at sixty images a second, not frame by frame.”

“Quite the expert, eh?”

She was just parroting what she’d learned from Claude.

“Notice something else, Morbier?”

“I concur with the cameraman—nice derriere.”

“The blonde’s putting the backpack on Krzysztof’s shoulder,” she said. “She kisses him. And then she disappears. But see the blond man on the sideline?”

“Gabriel Leclerc,” Morbier said. He scratched a kitchen match on the table’s edge and lit up a cigarillo.

She fast-forwarded and hit Stop. “This woman . . . recognize her?”

Morbier exhaled a puff of blue smoke. “Orla.”