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

  ‘Clément, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to be late.’ Checking the pink carnations he was carrying had survived the dash, Martin greeted everyone in turn. He left his son until last. ‘Paul, I’m—’

  ‘Let’s go in.’

  A live CCTV camera was set up in the street that skirted the right-hand wall of the cemetery. Had staff at A1 Security been paying attention to the live shot it was relaying, they would have seen the Darac party walking in an informal group toward the graves clustered in the far corner of the site. They would have seen, on a parallel path, a large bouquet of lilies laid at the feet of a stone angel, and leaning against it, a man wearing a black coat, head down, weeping. And then, they would have seen the image turn to grey as the camera tilted suddenly skywards.

  A whole family of Daracs resided in the neighbourhood of his mother’s grave, a plain stone tomb mounted on a stepped plinth. A headstone carved in the form of an open book was its only sculptural flourish. On it was inscribed: OUR BELOVED SANDRINE THÉRÈSE DARAC, 18 AUGUST 1954–27 FEBRUARY 1988. Beneath it, the tomb itself was carpeted in flowers.

  Clément said a prayer; Darac and Martin remained mute. Martin said some words at which Darac, and Martin himself, shed tears. And then all shared in a moment of silence.

  Shots rang out. Bullets whining and ricocheting all around them. Darac was the first to react. ‘Take cover!’ he shouted, shepherding the others.

  Bullets pitted the stonework as they huddled behind the tomb. Flowers exploded in a fragrant shower of petals. Caught in the line of fire, the man in the black coat ran for cover, falling twice in the process. Using the wall as a shield, the shooter was firing from the street that ran around the far side of the cemetery.

  The shooting stopped.

  ‘Anyone hit?’

  No one.

  Darac stood. The stèle had been ravaged, his mother’s forename obliterated. He started to run as hard as he could toward the wall. A chorus of voices went up.

  ‘Stop, Paul!’

  ‘Come back!’

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  He kept running. At any second, the shooter might reappear, firing at him point blank. He kept running. A car door slammed in the street beyond. An engine started and powered away. Darac vaulted the wall. The car, a grey Renault Mégane, was already making the turn into the street that led past the cemetery’s main entrance. He ran on – his own car was parked next to the gates. He could be away and after the Renault in seconds. He ran hard around the corner. His quarry was still in sight. And then, another car burned away from the kerb, a red Citroën with a redheaded woman at the wheel.

  ‘What is she doing?’

  As the shooter went to overtake, the Citröen jagged hard into his path, trying to ram the near-side flank, but the momentum was with the Renault. The Citroën cannoned off into a line of parked cars and stopped dead. The stricken Renault lurched and snaked but, missing everything else, continued along the street. Darac arrived at the Citröen as Julie Issert, thrown on to the passenger seat by the impact, grabbed the steering wheel and pulled herself up.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Darac said, breathing hard as he yanked open her door.

  ‘I heard shots and then he came screaming around the corner.’ Her words flew out in a single rapid burst. ‘I had to do something…’

  Staring intently at her, he reached in and turned off the engine.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Was anyone—?’

  ‘No one was hit, madame, okay? No one.’ He jetted a glance toward the end of the street. The Renault was braking for the turn. ‘Let’s get you out.’ She didn’t show any sign of injury, moving freely. The Renault was nearly out of sight. ‘I have to go now.’

  Leaving her at the kerb, he jumped into his own car and tore away. In the rear-view mirror, he saw Martin jog through the cemetery gates. Arms outstretched, Julie went to meet him. As they were about to embrace, Darac made the turn and they disappeared.

  He put out an APB call, then leaned on the horn and hammered the throttle. No feel for the racing line, he drove on pure adrenaline, missing walls, parked cars and street furniture by centimetres. Darac lost sight of the Renault. Slow down to go faster, he remembered. And think, think, think. Initially, the road layout offered two escape routes for the shooter. The decisive junction was less than four hundred metres away. A roundabout. Which exit would the shooter take? A right would allow the Renault to double back to town; left led on to the open road to Cagnes. Hoping he would have caught the shooter before he needed to make the call, Darac pressed on. And there was another possibility, he realised. The shooter might abandon the car altogether. Perhaps it had already been ditched.

  Brake lights flared ahead of him. Darac’s heart beat a little faster. Was it? Yes, it was the Renault. Darac pressed harder, the car dipping and snaking along the twists in the road. Two hundred metres to the junction. Another glimpse of the brake lights. He was gaining. Who the hell was the shooter? He couldn’t think of anyone with a grudge that strong against him. A hundred metres to the roundabout. The road straightened. Darac could see the Renault clearly now. He could read the number plate. With fifty metres to go, he was almost on top of it. Left or right?

  The Renault attempted both, feinting right before jinking left. Too fast to make the turn, it took off, flipping and somersaulting into the grassed area in the centre of the roundabout. Darac skidded to a stop and got out. Was the shooter still alive? Still holding the gun? Darac ran in a zigzagging crouch to the driver’s door.

  Concerns about stopping a bullet evaporated with one glance.

  6

  Darac called various crews to the crash scene. By the time he left them to it, the investigation into the shooting incident itself was well underway in his absence.

  There were three routes back to the cemetery: scenic, more scenic, stupendous. Today of all days, it had to be the last. With John Coltrane’s ‘All or Nothing at All’ along for the ride, Darac hadn’t gone more than a few metres before his mobile rang. Concerned colleagues had been phoning ever since news of the shooting broke, but this time he saw the caller was Didier Musso, leader of the quintet in which Darac played guitar. There was little point in enlightening him.

  ‘Hey, Didi.’

  ‘Some gig last night, eh? Bergcrantz – what a trumpet tone! He could charm the birds out of the trees with a sound like that.’

  Darac pictured goldfinches. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Listen, I’ve been talking to Marco and he says he’ll be fine for Thursday’s gig. He also says you and that pretty blond girl, you know, the tech queen?’

  ‘Erica.’

  ‘Erica, yes. The two of you saved his life, he says.’

  ‘That’s just Marco being Marco. Simple first aid is all we did.’

  ‘He also mentioned your old Gibbo got nicked. Young Freddy’s beside himself, he says. Poor kid.’

  ‘Everything’s cool and I’ve told him that. Didier, I’m in the middle of something so…’

  ‘Yeah, you get back to it. See you tomorrow night.’

  ‘I won’t be able to make it, but sign me on for the gig anyway?’

  ‘Okay. See you Thursday.’

  As the road shelved around the spur above Les Baumes, Darac slowed and pulled over. The cloud cover was all gone now. Under a sky of deepening azure, he stood for a moment, the vast panorama of the Alpes Maritimes laid out before him. It was a view dominated by the Baous, four up-thrust knuckles of rock that seemed to pull taut the high, thyme-scented ridge that stretched between them. It was a landscape he’d known all his life. A landscape his mother loved above all others.

  Darac hadn’t noticed the mud-splattered 4x4 that had fallen in behind him as he left the crash site. Still turning things over in his mind, he didn’t notice it as it rolled to a stop alongside his Peugeot, screening it from the road. In the vehicle were three tough-looking individuals. Each was heavily armed. A rear window slid silently down. An assault rifle pointed
at Darac’s spine.

  ‘DutDutDutDutDut!’

  Darac flinched.

  ‘Now you really are dead, Captain,’ the officer said.

  Deploying the Armed Protection Unit proved to have been Commissaire Agnès Dantier’s idea. Darac called her.

  ‘How many of these guys are there altogether, Agnès?’

  ‘Six. The other three are dotted around outside the cemetery.’

  ‘I don’t need them now.’

  ‘Our dear Prosecutor Frènes had to dig deep into the budget for them, so be grateful.’

  ‘Dug willingly?’

  ‘His little arms were going like pistons once I suggested he might be the next target.’

  ‘It has to be something like that, something political. But the shooter’s dead, Agnès.’

  ‘And suppose he’s part of a group?’

  ‘If he was the best they had, they’re not much of a group. He was a real amateur, believe me. Crap driver, too.’

  There was no gainsaying her. At least Darac knew the guys wouldn’t get in the way. You saw the APU only if they wanted it that way.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Christian Malraux peered at what was left of the headstone and grinned. ‘Aw, that’s sad, isn’t it? Mummy died when he was only a kid.’ He straightened. ‘Can turn you into a complete arsehole, that.’

  The crime-scene photographer lowered his camera. ‘Shift,’ he said. ‘And mind where you put your feet.’

  The immediate area was still littered with flower debris.

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t want to spoil them.’ Malraux trod with exaggerated care between the chewed-up blooms. ‘I don’t know, Marcel, I call in as a courtesy and this is all the thanks I get? I’m over in Cannes now, you know. Full lieutenant.’

  ‘We miss you terribly.’

  The camera’s motor drive whirred away.

  ‘Our paths will still cross, my friend.’ Malraux winced, screwing up his eyes. ‘Ah, shit.’ He reached under his overalls and took out two small plastic vials. Tilting his head back, he emptied one of them into his pink, lashless left eye. ‘And he had his guitar nicked didn’t he? Talk about a bad week.’

  The camera went silent once more. ‘You’re still in the way.’

  Blinking like a faulty light bulb, Malraux repeated the procedure with the other eye. ‘Captain Fantastic having his arse nearly shot off… I tell you, if I was still around, it wouldn’t have happened. I’ve saved his life once already.’ His head still tilted back, Malraux shuddered, freezing cold, suddenly. Trying to force his eyes open, ghastly images started crowding into his head. He pictured the entombed body beneath him rising through the stone slab and coming for him. The skeletal hands of a woman reaching out and closing around his throat. Blinking blindly, Malraux staggered backwards, dropping the vials.

  More camera whirrs. ‘Sting, do they?’ Marcel said. ‘The drops?’

  Gulping in air, Malraux put his hands to his neck and felt all around it. His eyes clearing, he kept them on the grave as he retreated another couple of paces. ‘Just cold,’ he said at length. ‘The stuff does that.’

  ‘I never realised you were such a sensitive soul.’

  Malraux’s vision settled. He began to calm down. Not that he would ever admit to anyone that he’d just suffered a panic attack. ‘Because that’s definitely what it was,’ he said aloud, still staring warily at the grave.

  ‘What was definitely what?’

  Slowly, Malraux gathered himself. He looked at his watch. ‘Got to go. Hate hanging around these places anyway. Give me the fucking creeps.’

  The whirring stopped. ‘Oy! Don’t leave your shit behind.’

  ‘You chuck them,’ Malraux said, not looking back.

  * * *

  Darac was standing by the cemetery wall, glowering at a mark on the ground when he heard a car draw up beside him.

  ‘I gather we missed Malraux,’ Bonbon said, getting out of his car. ‘Came to pay his respects, he made out. Flak called me. She reckons he was just snooping.’

  ‘I don’t care either way.’

  Bonbon gave his boss a long, appraising look. ‘So?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  Darac grinned. ‘Alright, I’m still a bit shaken. So the sooner we—’

  ‘…get down to business, the better?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Okay, but have you had a chance to talk with your papa and everyone?’

  ‘Yes, he’s gone off to sort something out. For the family.’

  ‘Right.’ Bonbon stared at the red circle sprayed on the pavement that Darac had been inspecting. In the centre of it was a card marked with the letter A. ‘The shooter fired from there?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Conveying just how weird he found it, Bonbon put himself in the position of the gunman and squinted over the wall. ‘Where exactly—’

  ‘See that baroque monstrosity with the angel? The one sporting the equally baroque bouquet of lilies? Follow that line for about twenty-five metres.’

  Bonbon’s face crumpled. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’ Darac thought back to the old woman at the cemetery gates. ‘She is so happy you’re here,’ she’d said. ‘It’s just a box, you know, Bonbon. A box of bones.’

  Bonbon didn’t speak straight away. ‘And he parked right here, the shooter?’

  ‘Not to start with. According to the one statement we’ve got so far, he parked first under that oh-so-useful CCTV camera further down the street.’

  ‘The one pointing at the sky?’

  ‘It is now. Although the witness didn’t see it because he’d gone by then, the shooter must have tipped up the camera, decamped to here and opened fire.’

  ‘Tipped up? You usually have to undo bolts.’

  Behind them, Chief Forensic Officer Raul Ormans was stowing equipment in his van. Dark, barrel-chested and imperious, Ormans had the look of a thespian who had played kings in his time. ‘You don’t have to undo bolts,’ he said, in his deep, resonant tones. ‘Not if the thing’s a lightweight piece of crap mounted on a simple swivel. These high-tech devices were all it took.’ He pulled out a couple of lengths of plastic downpipe, push-fitted them together and mimed the action. ‘Voilà.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Notice this drain, gents?’ Ormans nudged a pebble through the grating with his foot. ‘Wait for it.’ Some seconds elapsed before the splash. ‘Not the worst spot to lose a gun, is it? Yet he took it with him.’

  Darac shook his head. ‘It’s deep, alright, but it’s a place we’d more than likely look. I don’t think he even thought about it, though. Have you had a chance to examine the thing yet?’

  ‘The gun went straight to the lab from the crash site. Did you get a good look at it yourself? Other than when you were running straight toward it, I mean.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bonbon said, exhaling deeply and conveying by a shake of the head that Darac’s hot-headedness was, once again, a source of concern to him.

  ‘At the crash site? No. Just the end of the barrel, R.O. What was left of the guy was covering the rest of it.’

  ‘We’ll have something later.’

  A woman’s voice called out from down the street. ‘Captain!’ Patricia Lebrun was the technician responsible for signing personnel in and out of the crime scene. Martin Darac was standing next to her. ‘May he?’

  ‘Suit him up, Patricia. Bullets, R.O.?’

  ‘Recovered six so far. Forty-five calibre. Can’t tell you any more at the moment.’

  Bonbon’s mobile rang. ‘Go for it, Perand.’ He opened his notebook. ‘Spell that?’

  While he waited for Bonbon, Darac looked back over the wall toward his mother’s grave. He could still scarcely credit what had happened. Despite his sympathy for anyone subjected to an attack, he’d often felt frustrated at the paucity of detail that victims, or merely witnesses, were capable of recalling after a traumatic even
t. Now here he was, feeling a huge range of things himself and one of them was simple confusion. How many shots had been fired? He’d asked that at scenes a thousand times. It was less than two hours after the shooting and he had no idea. Ormans had found six bullets so far. Maybe that’s all there would be. Maybe nearer sixteen had been fired, though. Twenty-six, thirty-six; he just didn’t know. He was sure of only one thing. Without the shield of his mother’s grave, he and several other members of his family would soon have been moving in alongside her.

  ‘Okay,’ Bonbon said. ‘The shooter was one Carl Auguste Halevy. Fifty-three years of age. Accounts manager. Cagnessur-Mer address. Married. The wife is already en route to the morgue for the ID.’ His tawny eyebrows lowered. ‘But here’s the interesting part. He had a completely clean record. And as far as Perand has been able to check so far, his close associates have no more than traffic offences or other trifles to own up to.’

  ‘No potential grudge-bearers there. Did Perand check on a gun licence?’

  ‘Yes, and Halevy held one. For a forty-five-calibre Browning. An antique.’

  ‘It fires well enough,’ Darac said, staring off. ‘But why the hell was he firing it at me?’

  ‘Perand has informed the wife we’ll need to talk to her later.’

  ‘Right.’

  Martin Darac joined them. ‘It’s a cliché, I suppose, but I feel like an astronaut wearing these overalls.’ He gave Bonbon a look. ‘Would you give us a moment?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be over with Patricia. Give me a shout when you’re ready.’

  Father and son waited until he was out of earshot.

  ‘The mason says he can do something by next week,’ Martin said. ‘Does that work for you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll have released the site in a day or two.’

  ‘Good. It will have to be a whole new construction, obviously.’ He gave Darac a loaded look. ‘When it’s done, the priest will have to re-consecrate the grave. A lot of piety in Latin, that means.’

  ‘Whatever we may think, all that matters is that Mama would have wanted it.’

  Martin smiled. ‘She would. Although it wasn’t so much that she was a believer, you know; more that she believed in not completely disbelieving. What your Aunt Sophie calls “believing in her own way”.’