Box of Bones (A Captain Darac Novel 3) Read online

  ‘Uh-huh. The ones in the middle are cutting debris made by the bank people after the robbery had happened and the gang had all gone; the widely spaced ones are welding debris made by the gang before they got started.’

  ‘Exactly. Except – it’s not what happened, is it? If the gang had welded the door shut before they started ripping everything out of the strongroom, tunnelling out, and so on, we wouldn’t be able to see any welding shards at all – they’d be buried under all those discarded boxes, piles of rubble and other stuff. Instead, they’re sitting on top of it, just like the cutting shards that were produced long after the gang had gone.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Frankie took another sip of her tea. ‘But whether the gang sealed off the door early or late into the weekend doesn’t seem all that crucial. Is that it for the shards of destiny?’

  Darac grinned. ‘For the time being, yes. But it was those little bits of metal that got me thinking about the tunnelling, the handling of spoil, and so on.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Let’s have T65 and T9. Split-screen them.’

  They were the shots he had shown to Flaco earlier. T65 showed the tunnel-opening in the rear wall of the vault. Around it was a pile of earth and brick rubble, in front of which was a smaller pile of broken-up concrete.

  ‘The story as accepted is that once Delmas let the gang members into the vault they divided into two teams. While one team started opening the safety deposit boxes and so on, the other began drilling, cutting and bashing a very large hole through the concrete rear wall of the vault. That team then excavated what was effectively a tunnel through the compacted earth and rock that lay behind it until they emerged in the brick-lined culvert beyond.’ He traced the direction with his finger. ‘Above that was the shaft that rose, via a manhole, into the chaos of the giant building site that was Rue Lamora. Based on the simple principle that tunnellers get rid of spoil behind them, shots like T65 seem initially to support Agnès’s theory.’

  ‘Because if the gang had tunnelled into the vault from outside, the spoil is at the wrong end of the tunnel.’

  ‘Exactly. T9 shows some of the tool cuts made on the rock wall lining the culvert end of the tunnel. The direction of the cuts appears to further support the inside-to-outside theory.’

  ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘I think both of these things are red herrings.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ultimately, because I believe the gang did tunnel into the vault.’

  Frankie raised one eyebrow. ‘You begin to interest me, Mr Bond.’ She took a final sip of tea. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Split screen V67 and C25.’

  The shots were of the tunnel-opening in the bank vault wall and the tunnel-opening at the culvert end.

  ‘Ah,’ Frankie said. ‘I see what you are getting at. The tunnel entrance in the vault wall is quite high up; at the culvert end, it’s bang level with the walkway flanking it. If you were tunnelling from inside to outside, it’s not very likely that you would choose to start at an awkward height and then arrive slap on Position A at the other end. But that’s exactly what would happen if you started tunnelling at the culvert end.’

  ‘The vault is lower than the culvert so the hole in the wall would have to be somewhere above the floor. But that’s just too precise, Frankie. As for the direction of the tool cuts on the wall – it would be easy to trick those up.’

  ‘Agreed. But how did all the spoil from the—?’ She interrupted herself. ‘They shovelled it through into the vault after completing the tunnel.’

  ‘I think they did. And you say all the spoil. There wasn’t that much, really. The average height of the tunnel is 1.7 metres but it’s less than a metre wide and only 5.4 metres long. They had wheelbarrows, or something similar – you can see tyre tracks on the tunnel floor. And while we’re on the subject of tracks, bring up T87. They’re not the focus of the shot but if you look, you can make them out.’ He ran his finger along two V-shaped grooves about five centimetres wide that ran the length of the tunnel floor. At the vault end, the grooves began cleanly; at the culvert end, both terminated in a miniature slagheap of earth. ‘See?’

  ‘They’re grooves, alright…’ Frankie shook her head. ‘Help me.’

  ‘C107 will give you the answer.’

  The shot was of one of the two heavyweight rock drills found in the culvert. At the business end, the bit was chevron-shaped and appeared to be about five centimetres wide.

  Frankie pursed her lips. ‘Hmm. Tools being found in the culvert was one of the reasons Agnès believed the gang had tunnelled inside to outside, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was one of them, yes.’

  ‘But these photos suggest the opposite. The drillers were clearly working away from the culvert end of the tunnel, not toward it. After they had got through into the vault, they must have dragged the drills back along the tunnel floor, the bits gouging out those grooves.’

  ‘And now we can see that the vault door wasn’t welded to the frame before anything else happened in there.’

  ‘Those little shards of metal – I missed them. But I agree: having broken through into the vault, the strongroom team must have started ripping out the safety deposit boxes and so on while the tunnellers still had the spoil to shift, perhaps the tunnel to shore up – whatever. By the time they got around to sealing the vault door, the floor in there was already knee-deep in rubble.’

  ‘It had to be that way.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘Almost done… Can we move on to the haul itself?’

  Frankie’s soft green eyes clouded over. ‘There’s more vis-à-vis Agnès?’

  ‘Afraid so. It’s to do with those safety deposit boxes you mentioned.’

  ‘Some of the haul will have come off the shelf, won’t it? Loose, as it were.’

  ‘Indeed, but it still left quite an amount of cash and other valuables in the boxes. I only mention this because I think it could be important in what we’re doing now. Delmas said in court that he’d opened all the boxes electronically using codes he’d pre-generated himself. Then, he said, in order to “throw the police off the scent”, one of the gang lasered the boxes to make it appear that they’d been opened in the normal way. However, when Agnès and the team got in, they found one box lying there open but completely pristine. It bore no laser marks at all. Bring up… V45, I think it is.’

  ‘V45?’

  ‘Yes, this is it. Box 328. How could it be open if no one opened it? Agnès asked herself. It must have been opened some other way. Added to all the other stuff she was thinking, she reasoned it had been opened by an inside man and all the other boxes doctored to look as if they’d been lasered open.’

  ‘But if Delmas could get into the vault and open the boxes himself, didn’t anyone wonder why he needed a tunnelling gang at all? He could have just got in, helped himself and left, surely?’

  ‘The gang was quite clever here. And it was all part of their strategy to mask what they really did. It’s to do with alarms. A signal is sent the moment the vault door is opened out of hours. If it’s still open thirty seconds later, a second signal is sent and all kinds of things happen automatically. Agnès got part of the way down the line. She correctly worked out that Delmas arranged things so staff got used to ignoring the first signal; the second one he couldn’t do anything about. But then she went off beam because she hadn’t understood how the tunnelling had really gone.’

  ‘Did she really believe that Delmas and the gang could have got themselves and all their equipment into the vault in a window of just thirty seconds?’

  ‘She came to believe it, yes. Delmas said that they had practised the move hundreds of times. Stopwatches, military precision – all that.’

  ‘How did Delmas account for the opened box – the one without laser burns?’

  ‘He said that he’d opened it at the very last moment – just before the gang abandoned the vault. Everything had taken longer than they thought and there was a certain amount of panic. That led to a breakdown in communication and the
laser guy didn’t do his stuff on box 328 as he had on all the rest.’

  ‘Sounds plausible.’

  ‘Does, doesn’t it? It was another red herring, I think. I’ve just had a chat with a Monsieur Mizzi from A1 Security. He believes Delmas could have opened no more than one or two boxes with the “pre-generated codes” he said he’d devised. They were all lasered open, he reckons – apart from 328 and maybe one other.’

  ‘He obviously didn’t say that in court. Why not?’

  ‘Mizzi didn’t work for A1 back then.’

  ‘Any other leads there?’

  ‘We’ve been through a list of all those who were there at the same time as Delmas. No criminal records for any of them before or since. I went to see one Thierry Artaud earlier. It seems he was the closest to Delmas but it’s a relative term. He did work with him on the odd occasion, though.’

  ‘On So-Pro?’

  ‘He said not. I checked the job logs anyway just to be sure. They confirmed it. “I knew him but I didn’t know him,” he said about Delmas. They nearly all say that.’

  ‘You obviously don’t have the feeling that Artaud was a gang member.’

  ‘I really don’t.’ He looked into Frankie’s eyes. ‘But what I’m getting at here is this: if the gang did what you and I think they did – tunnelled from outside to inside – why did they rig clues to be picked up by the police that suggest the opposite? Why did they rig clues that ultimately pointed the finger at Delmas? And – this is the interesting part – with his total complicity?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seems that Agnès did ultimately believe what the gang wanted her to believe. But why did they want her to believe it?’

  Darac nodded. ‘Indeed. At first sight, it looks like a straightforward fall guy ploy that went wrong, doesn’t it? Delmas draws the short straw or even volunteers for the role, serves his time and out he comes to pick up his share of the gang’s ill-gotten gains. Except that we beat them to it and there were no gains to be got.’

  ‘But why the necessity for a fall guy at all? If the gang had put all their energies into just getting away with the robbery, they might well have.’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Darac stared at the floor. ‘Whatever it was, it’s obviously behind what’s happening now and that’s our main focus.’

  ‘I see that. On the other question, I doubt if there’s any need to stress about Agnès, you know. When has the floor around those bare feet of hers ever been littered with eggshells?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Exactly. Just go and talk to her. She’s always reasonable. Super reasonable with you.’

  ‘She’s certainly fought my corner enough times.’

  ‘I think you may have more of a problem with Granot. He’s always been very protective of his work.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Darac’s mobile rang. ‘Lieutenant Malraux here.’

  ‘Lieutenant Malraux,’ Darac said, for Frankie’s benefit. She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hear on the grapevine, Captain, that you’re giving my patch a visit tomorrow morning?’

  ‘By the grapevine, you mean your boss?’

  ‘Well, he calls himself that. I thought I’d go along with you to interview the man who got the So-Pro reward, one Jean Aureuil.’

  ‘Did you?’ Spending time with the former riot squad bully boy was the last thing Darac wanted to do but he felt he owed the man. ‘Alright.’

  The arrangements were made and Darac hung up.

  ‘Malraux gets promoted.’ Frankie’s face was a mask of tragedy. ‘He gets transferred.’ Delight. ‘But only as far as Cannes.’ Her face fell once more.

  ‘I’ll give him your love.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing.’ She smiled, going to a happier thought, suddenly. ‘Completely forgot – you got your guitar back. I’m delighted.’

  ‘Thanks, yes, I am too. Haven’t had time to play it yet. Not properly.’

  ‘Beats me how you find the time to play at all.’

  ‘Bunking off work regularly helps.’ He got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the advice. And everything.’

  She ejected the data disc. ‘Don’t forget this.’

  Her fingers brushed his as she handed it over. Quite suddenly, he felt an impulse not to trill out one of his routine goodbyes. He wanted to say something less flippant. He looked into her eyes and smiled.

  ‘What would I do without you, Frankie?’

  Her reply was a little behind the beat. ‘You’d go into a terminal decline, obviously.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, taking his leave. ‘I would.’

  21

  Turning away from Cannes, Darac picked up the N98 coast road as it followed the tightening arc of the Golfe de la Napoule. With Orchestra Baobab along for the ride, he was bound for La Bocca, a diverse suburb a couple of kilometres to the west of the city.

  It was a spectacularly bright, hazy morning. Away to his left, sea and sky merged in a seamless azure continuum; ahead, the Esterel Massif jutted between them in a blur of burnt orange tones. Blue-orange-blue. A Rothko come to life.

  Malraux was waiting for Darac in the parking area of L’Hippocampe, a six-storey apartment block facing the gulf. ‘I saw you turning in,’ he said, squinting into the light. ‘What did you take the coast road for?’

  ‘Morning, Malraux.’

  ‘Should’ve taken the A8 all the way. Then you could’ve come off at the Stade—’

  ‘Something wrong with your eyes?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You’ve got shades, haven’t you?’

  ‘They don’t work for me.’

  They rode the lift to the top floor of the building and pressed the bell of apartment three. A cheery, fresh-faced man in his early fifties answered the door. Showing them in, he paused at an old-fashioned sideboard. On it was an e-photo frame displaying a shot of a cheery, fresh-faced woman in her early fifties.

  ‘That’s my wife, Paulette,’ Jean Aureuil said. ‘She’s out walking Domino at the moment. Our dog.’

  Domino was a cheery, fresh-faced Labrador in his early fifties, Darac imagined.

  ‘Either of you fancy a drink? I can do anything from iced tea to hot chocolate. Including beers.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Darac said.

  ‘Pastis?’

  Malraux seemed affronted by the offer. ‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Let’s go and sit out, then.’

  As they followed Aureuil on to the terrace, a series of metallic clinks and squeals rose up to meet them.

  ‘How about that eh, gentlemen?’ Aureuil indicated the view as if it were his alone. ‘We love it here. Can’t beat La Bocca for value.’

  ‘What, you like living on top of railway marshalling yards, do you?’ Malraux said.

  ‘Where do you live, mate? The Carlton?’

  ‘The Golfe de la Napoule…’ Darac smiled, reestablishing the rapport. ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘We think so.’ Aureuil directed them to a trio of chairs set back in the shade. ‘So, what do you want to know?’

  ‘What we want to know—’

  ‘I’ll take it for the moment, Lieutenant.’ As he sat down, Darac noticed that Malraux’s fingernails were chewed practically to the quick and there were eczema patches on his hands; a young man, literally unhappy in his own skin. ‘What we would like to talk to you about is your part in the Société Provençale Bank Robbery of 2003.’

  Aureuil gave an amused little snort. ‘I think you’d better rephrase that, Captain.’

  Darac grinned, sharing the joke. ‘I meant your part in securing all the money and so on that had been stolen.’

  Aureuil sat forward in his seat, the life returning to his face. Darac couldn’t guess how many times the man had recited the tale that had been the defining moment of his life. But however many it was, he clearly hadn’t tired of telling it.

  ‘We were living on Rue Cluvier in Nice then. Do you know it?’

  ‘No view of
the sea there,’ Darac said.

  ‘Or much else. And talk about noise. Traffic thundering overhead all bloody day and night. Not that I was around much to hear it but it practically put Paulette in the loony bin. I had two jobs at the time. I drove a dump truck at the Rue Lamora site by day and then at night, I was on the taxis. On the Monday the robbery was discovered, I got laid off the site for several days – a lot of us were – so I went on to doing full days in the taxi. Same old, same old. Early on the Thursday morning, I picked up this fare at the airport. A middle-aged American couple just flown in from Paris. Lovely people. And but for them, my friend, Paulette and I would still be living under four lanes of traffic back in Nice.’

  ‘Really? How come?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. I took the couple to the Negresco, right? I was getting their bags out of the boot and the wife says: “Do you know where Coaraze is?” I said, “I should do, I used to have a girlfriend up there.” Then she says, “Do you know where the famous sundials are?” I told them if you get up there before lunchtime, you can get a map from the Info place that shows where all of them are and more besides. “Right, stay there,” he says. “We want to hire you for the rest of the day.” Half an hour later, off we go. You’ve never seen so many cameras, lenses. All sorts of stuff, they had. So we get there and park. I walk with them into the village and take them to the Info. They get their map and go off sundial spotting. I go for a bit of a stroll and head back to the taxi. That’s when I see this truck. A newish mid-sized Iveco Eurocargo, sleep-over cab, twelve tonner.’

  ‘The lorry was parked?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On a hardstanding by an old farm cottage – not an abandoned place but not one obviously lived in either, if you know what I mean. It was off the Avenue Théophile Gilli, the road that winds up to the Blue Chapel?’

  Beneath them, a lone goods wagon shuddered as it rolled into the buffers at the end of its track.