Box of Bones (A Captain Darac Novel 3) Page 11

  ‘We get the picture,’ Darac said.

  ‘So that’s basically it on the alarms. Delmas could get the gang in through the vault door but he couldn’t get them out the same way.’

  Granot imperiously folded his arms. ‘I could’ve told you that.’

  Darac glanced at his watch. ‘Look, we have a lot to consider and I don’t want to go much further without Agnès and Bonbon. And Perand, come to that. Okay with everyone?’

  Erica got to her feet. ‘Okay with me. I’ve got a date with a couple of errant hard drives.’ She lingered, her head cocked slightly to one side. ‘Have you changed your perfume, Flak?’

  Girl talk was unfamiliar terrain for Flaco. ‘Uh… yes. The captain’s papa sent it over. It’s one of his. One he invented for his company, I mean.’

  The humour that usually played around Darac’s mouth returned.

  ‘Really suits you.’ Erica filled her nostrils. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Oh, uh…’ The merest hint of a blush. ‘Something des Bois.’

  ‘Nymphe?’ Darac said, knowing full well it had to be. ‘Woody yet—’

  ‘Indeed,’ Flaco said. ‘I’ve got paperwork and I need to press on.’

  Perand walked in. ‘No one has seen Delmas and he hasn’t been at the apartment.’

  Darac pursed his lips. ‘Have you been on to the utility companies, his bank and so on?’

  ‘Yes. No meter readings asked for at the apartment and no applications anywhere else. No mobile contract, Internet – nothing. I reckon he’s staying with someone else.’

  ‘We’ll find him.’

  Officer Charvet’s head appeared around the doorframe. The duty officer was wearing the deadest of deadpan expressions. ‘Captain?’ All eyes turned to him. He withdrew, then reappeared carrying a hard, rectangular case bearing a metal plate that read: GIBSON, INC., KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN USA.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  Walking into a buzz of congratulation and high spirits, Charvet handed over the case. ‘I’ve never been so popular.’

  As the group gathered around Darac, Perand took the opportunity to slide in next to Erica. ‘Better check it’s not been pissed on or anything, Captain,’ he said.

  Erica gave him a look. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know – like burglars do in houses. And worse.’

  ‘It’s been cleared for explosives, anyway,’ Charvet said. ‘I had Roulet run it past one of his sniffer dogs.’

  It was such an unlikely image, Darac tried to think of something witty to say but he was too happy in the moment. ‘Thanks, Charvet.’ He set the case down on a desk, paused, and then with both hands, reached for the locks. ‘And now… the moment of truth.’

  He flicked the catches and opened them. There it was. His faithful old Gibson SG in all its cherry-lacquered glory. ‘Pristine.’ He plucked the guitar from its velvet cocoon and turned it over. ‘Cleaner than when I lent it to Freddy.’ He sat and rested the lower bout of the instrument on his left thigh. ‘Pity I don’t have an amplifier here.’

  Granot mugged disappointment. ‘We’ll get over it. In time.’

  Darac played a chord, adjusted the tuning a couple of times and then let fly, swooping, soaring, and finally fluttering to earth in a series of spectacular falls.

  ‘Show-off,’ Erica said.

  ‘Impressive.’ Flaco nodded. ‘Not my thing but very impressive, Captain.’

  ‘You know, I usually play my D’Aquisto at our Thursday gigs but just this once, I think I’ll take this as well. A sort of welcome home present.’

  ‘It’s what I’d do,’ Granot said.

  ‘Where did you find it, Charvet?’

  ‘Somebody wearing a parka left it outside the gate a couple of hours ago. Would’ve brought it in sooner but Roulet was out on a job.’

  Darac put the guitar back into its case and swiped his mobile. ‘A guy in a parka? Probably some old blues man who saw it and just couldn’t resist. SGs aren’t used much for jazz…’ The call connected. ‘Freddy? Paul Darac here.’

  ‘Captain – listen, I’ve been round every shop, I’ve—’

  ‘It’s here. I’ve got it back.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘The amnesty I was telling you about? It worked.’

  The boy shrieked something that began with ‘Shit!’ Holding the mobile away from his ear, Darac shared a grin with the others.

  ‘And is it alright, Captain? Not damaged or anything?’

  ‘Just the opposite,’ Darac said. ‘I can’t wait to play it for real.’

  19

  Julie Issert snuggled into Martin Darac’s chest. ‘I haven’t got off to the best of starts with Paul, have I?’

  His hand drifted across her flank and drifted back again. ‘He’ll come around. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘He’s right, though. It was reckless. I do too many things without thinking.’

  ‘I’m glad you do. Or I probably wouldn’t be here with you now.’

  ‘He obviously loved his mother very much.’

  Martin’s hand came to a stop.

  Julie propped herself on one elbow. ‘I don’t have to have Paul’s acceptance. But it would be so much nicer for everyone if he got on with me.’

  ‘He will.’ Martin returned her look. ‘He just needs time.’

  Her auburn hair splashed over his chest as she snuggled back into him.

  ‘You see, it’s not you he’s unsure about in this, Julie. It’s me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been looking for so long… Can you take this?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I adored Sandrine and I suppose I’ve tried again and again to find that same feeling with someone and never have. Until now.’

  ‘What happened? To Sandrine, I mean.’

  His hand drifted away.

  ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’

  ‘She… had a brain tumour.’

  Julie listened intently as Martin continued, his voice no more than a murmur.

  ‘She had no idea. None of us did. It was a Saturday. Except that I was away for the company, it began like any weekend day. The carnival down in Nice was nearly over and we hadn’t managed to get to any of it. Sandrine loved things like that and she’d promised Paul she’d take him to the Parade of Lights. Mother and son out together – great fun. But she started to feel unwell in the afternoon. Not terrible, just headachy, a little queasy. If I’d been around, I would’ve taken Paul myself but I was in London. He made a fuss: “You said we could go,” all that. So she took him. They watched the whole thing and enjoyed it. But by the time they came away, Sandrine felt much worse. She got them both back here. And then… half an hour or so later, she suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. And was gone.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It was a black time. And perhaps especially so for Paul. You see, he…’ Martin exhaled deeply. And got no further.

  ‘He what? Blamed himself?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Even though it was explained to him time and time again that Sandrine would not have survived the day under any circumstances, part of him still feels responsible.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I don’t mean he thinks about it constantly. Even when we talk about her, he doesn’t. Carnival season is not a good time for him, though. That’s one of the reasons I—’

  ‘I know.’

  Nothing was said for some moments.

  ‘I lost someone, too, actually. Someone dear to me. My brother, Sebastien. Died in a motorcycle accident. He was only twenty-five. I still have some of his things. It’s silly but I don’t want to part with them.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn to be sorry. Life can be really…’

  Julie was no longer listening. She was thinking about Sebastien’s things and feeling gladder than ever that she still had them.

  20

  Darac appeared at Frankie’s office door, holding two porcelain cups. He raised the larger one
invitingly. ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘If that’s a mint tea with two sugars, the answer’s yes.’

  He entered, closing the door behind him.

  ‘So I’m in conference, am I?’

  ‘I lied about the minute.’ He handed over the cup and drew up a chair next to her. ‘Be more like twenty.’ He reached into the breast pocket of his denim shirt.

  ‘Not baklava, as well? You can call again.’

  ‘Something more interesting. So-Pro photos. All of them.’

  ‘The Delmas case?’ She slotted the disc he gave her into the drive. ‘It’s a hot ticket, this one.’

  ‘Something’s come up and I need to discuss it with you.’

  She gave him a look. ‘I never really did leave your team, did I?’

  ‘I wish you never had left it – you know that. You’re au fait with everything about this case?’

  Cradling her tea in both hands, she swung her chair around to face him. ‘Probably not everything. Give me a summary.’

  ‘Right… First we have Pierre Delmas serving a ten-year term for the So-Pro robbery of 2003. A model prisoner, he gets out a couple of years early. He was the only gang member caught. That’s important, we think. He suffers from a condition called NCL which is fatal in every case. Deanna says that the vast majority of sufferers are dead by Delmas’s age. I’m beginning to think that that may be important also. On the first day of his release, his encounter with a man named Michel Fouste leads directly, though accidentally, to the latter’s death. We’re looking into that again in the light of recent developments. On the second day of his release, Delmas is the target of a shooting by the seemingly innocuous Carl Halevy.’

  In lieu of a free hand, Frankie touched her knee against Darac’s.

  ‘We’re all fine,’ he said and smiled. ‘The question is, what was Halevy up to? What do you think?’

  Frankie took a sip of tea. ‘As unlikely as it might seem, Halevy must have been a member of, or closely allied to, the So-Pro gang. As might Fouste. Fearing a freed Delmas would have a score to settle with the gang, or that he might simply expose them, Halevy seeks to remove the problem at source. That’s the Crime 101 answer, anyway.’

  ‘Sure, but if Delmas was going to shop the gang, why didn’t he do it when he was in prison? Despite repeated threats and, more impressively, inducements that would have made his life inside easier, he kept quiet. And then there’s the fact that the gang earned not one penny from the robbery. Famously, everything of value was recovered.’

  ‘So it’s not as if poor, sick Monsieur Delmas was rotting away in prison while the other members of the gang were living high on the hog somewhere.’

  Darac drained his espresso. ‘Exactly. On the revenge front, there seems to be no compelling reason for him to go looking for the others when he came out. And no reason, therefore, why the gang should be sufficiently worried about him to want to kill him.’

  ‘On the other hand, although the gang earned nothing from the robbery, they did at least retain their liberty. From Delmas’s prison cell, anywhere on the outside might have looked like paradise after a year or two.’

  ‘Could be the case, certainly. But consider the significance of how Delmas was caught. He wasn’t grassed up by the gang. It was Agnès working out some esoteric stuff that led to his arrest. And that, remember, did not lead to the recovery of the money. Delmas gave her no help whatsoever on that. It was the bank’s offer of a two-million-euro reward that was the catalyst. A member of the public saw something, phoned it in, and it was that that directly led to the recovery of the nineteen-million-plus haul.’

  Frankie took another sip of her tea and set down the cup. ‘That member of the public wasn’t Carl Halevy, was it?’

  ‘Nice idea but it wasn’t.’ Darac took out his notebook. ‘It was a Monsieur Jean Aureuil who lives near Cannes, now. I’m going over to see him first thing tomorrow. The name was never released so Delmas couldn’t have gone looking for him, anyway.’

  Frankie brought up the disc menu. ‘Just what did this Aureuil see?’

  ‘You won’t find it there, Frankie. It’s on a different disc. I haven’t had time to look into the recovery side of it yet but basically, three days after the robbery was discovered, Aureuil came across the gang’s base, a farmhouse up by Coaraze. The haul, intact, was inside.’

  ‘So far, the cemetery shooting appears to make little sense. And yet it happened.’

  ‘Delmas’s daughter, Sylvie, is one of the key players. A shop girl living in straitened circumstances, she dies of the NCL she inherited from the father she never knew while he is still in prison. In poor health for many years and probably knowing what was coming, she had paid for her funeral herself – a very basic affair. Yet a bank statement shows 400,000 euros had been paid into her account a few years before. It hadn’t – the statement was a forgery. Strangest of all, some years later, her remains are reburied in a grave costing 25,000 euros, paid for in cash by an anonymous “friend”.’

  ‘You’re going for an exhumation, I imagine?’

  ‘It’s tomorrow. Perand isn’t alone in thinking that some of the gang are buried in Sylvie’s grave along with her.’

  ‘So from prison, Delmas orchestrated a multiple hit?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘And Halevy, a fellow gang member or close associate, found out about it and tried to kill Delmas out of revenge or before he was next?’

  ‘According to that theory – yes.’

  ‘On a less sinister level, could it have been Delmas who paid for the new grave for Sylvie? Out of love or regret or remorse at never having been there for her?’

  ‘Granot’s looked at Delmas’s accounts already. He couldn’t see how he could have been the source of the money. Besides, why should he mask his identity? The daughter who knew nothing of his existence was dead, obviously, so he wasn’t protecting her. No, I think someone else paid. Delmas had no idea which grave was Sylvie’s in the cemetery. I wonder if he even knew Sylvie had died until he was released.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Darac gave a rueful grin. ‘This is the kind of thing we usually disregard but my Aunt Sophie is a very reliable witness. She saw only Delmas’s back as he stood at the grave, but his shoulders were really shaking, she says. He was sobbing. Well, you can weep at any time at a graveside, of course. But this had a rawness to it, she said. That awful initial feeling of devastation. You know?’

  ‘Yes, I do… I take it Perand’s man in Villeneuve-Loubet hasn’t seen Delmas?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t shown at his apartment. In fact, no one has seen him in the area at all. Nevertheless, I’ve had a notice of Sylvie’s exhumation put through his letterbox and newspapers, TV and radio have all referred to it. It might just pull Delmas back to the cemetery. Or other interested parties.’

  ‘Exhumation.’ Frankie gave a little shiver. ‘Let’s hope for a nice clean skeleton.’

  ‘Rotting remains don’t do much for me, either.’

  ‘You’re attending?’

  ‘Yes but I’m leaving it to them. Unless it proves necessary to view the body. Or bodies.’

  Frankie nodded. ‘The reburial certainly is suspicious. And then when you factor in the false bank statements, it seems clear that deception is at the heart of the case.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘But who is deceiving whom and why?’

  ‘I think we may be able to get closer to that by looking at some aspects of the robbery in detail. And there’s something else here, Frankie.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Something I really need your advice on.’

  Frankie picked up her tea cup. ‘I’m intrigued. Flattered. And suckered.’

  ‘Oh, the power I have over le belle donne,’ he said, mimicking Armani.

  Frankie gave him a look but said nothing.

  ‘Alright – So-Pro. The received wisdom is that it was a case of sharp criminals coming up against an even sharper flic in the form of Agnès.
She reasoned the gang had tunnelled out of the vault, not into it. Combined with other evidence, it led to the arrest of the security man, Pierre Delmas, as the inside man on the job. He confessed, confirming that Agnès was right.’

  ‘As usual.’

  ‘I think the criminals were sharper than she was on this one.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’ Her smile faded. ‘You are serious.’

  ‘I know it seems weird but…’

  Frankie took a moment to get used to the idea. ‘Well, she has never claimed to be infallible.’

  ‘No, of course not, but she hardly ever makes mistakes. On the more important cases, I would say never. And it is tempting to say that the So-Pro mistakes don’t matter – everything was recovered at the time, after all, and I still think Delmas was the inside man. But they have a bearing on the current case and so there’ll be no way of avoiding bringing it up in meetings. The last thing I want to do is stick the boot in, but it will have to come out.’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Go through the evidence first.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sitting forward, he scanned the list of file numbers. ‘Open V23.’

  The shot was of the breached vault door taken from inside the disaster area that was the vault itself.

  ‘Breached from the inside, you see?’

  ‘Yes, I’m with you,’ Frankie said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That door is steel-clad concrete. Really tough and heavy.’

  ‘And the large hole in the centre of it was cut by the authorities on the Monday morning following the robbery?’

  ‘So they could gain access to the vault, yes. See those little twisted shards of metal lying directly under the hole? It’s debris from torching through the steel casing of the door, right?’

  ‘Ri-ight?’

  ‘Now look at those differently shaped shards lying well apart from them on either side. Under the line of the doorframe, in fact.’ He pointed to them. ‘That’s torch debris of a different kind. When he finally broke down under questioning, Delmas said he had first let the gang into the vault through that door. Then, before they did anything else, the gang welded the door to the frame. Sealing themselves off from the bank itself gave them a safety margin should they still have been hard at it come Monday morning. Are you with me on shards one and two?’