Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (3 page)

“We’re presenting a peaceful petition—”

The rest of Gaelle’s words were lost in the bone-cracking whack of a truncheon. She crumpled to the ground. For a moment, all was silent, then cries of horror rose around him. Blood spurted from Gaelle’s head, drenching her scarf. And Krzysztof was pushed to one side in the melee as the crowd surged around them.

Monday Night

AIMÉE ANSWERED THE door, her hands shaking. The Chanel dress she wore was now caked with clumps of beige formula.

“About time, René!”

Her partner, René Friant, a dwarf, all of four feet tall in his tailored Burberry raincoat and custom-made shoes, stared at her.

“Interesting fashion statement. Sorry I’m late,” he said, hanging his coat on a chair. “They cordoned off the bridge because of some MondeFocus demonstration.” He sniffed. “Did Miles Davis have an accident?”

“I need your help, René,” she said.

“System up and running, right? Is this about tomorrow’s meeting . . . ?” He paused, his eyes searching hers. “Don’t tell me you missed the deadline.”

“Come here.” She took his hand and led him down the hall.

The baby’s mauve-hued eyelids were closed, the small chest rose and fell. She was at peace, asleep on the duvet.

“A baby? Instead of playing house, we need to monitor Regnault’s security update.”

Miles Davis cocked his head at the baby’s gentle breaths.

“René, it’s not like that.”

He took a step back. “Did I miss something during the past nine months?”

She shook her head. “No cracks about the Immaculate Conception either.”

“Shouldn’t her mother come for her?”

For once she agreed.

He sat, his eyes intent on the screen. “What’s this ‘system down for maintenance?’” he asked. “You
didn’t
get the system back online.”

“I indicated we had maintenance issues because I needed to buy more time. Everything’s up and ready. I checked.”

“We can’t use that delaying tactic again, Aimée. We have to get the system admin done in time, every time. Our clients have to have confidence that we’ll get the job done. Otherwise we’ll lose our big account because you’re babysitting. Have you gone soft in the head?”

Soft in the head . . . never. “I got a mysterious phone call, I went downstairs, and found this baby.”

He turned in the chair, his legs dangling. “What?”

“Sssh
, it took forever to get her to sleep.” She pointed to the second laptop screen displaying the system program. “Tell you later. Once I go back in, we’ve got seven minutes. Ready?”

Her fingers ached by the time they’d checked the last user configuration but they finished with two minutes to spare.

“Close, Aimée. Too close.”

“Just listen, René.”

“It better be good.”

And she told him.

He frowned. “Somehow the woman found your name and your phone number,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “It’s some scam. Now she’ll demand money.”

Aimée doubted it. The desperation in that voice had been real.

“Wait a minute,” she said, running her hands through her spiky hair. “I didn’t have time to check earlier, too much was happening.” She dumped out the diaper bag’s contents, spread them on the parquet floor: diapers, wipes, another tin of powdered Lemiel formula. She turned the bag inside out and noticed stains. Earlier, she hadn’t paid attention to the rust-colored smears on the lining. She leaned down and sniffed.

“Dried blood, René.”

René sat back, open mouthed for the second time.

“The woman said someone was trying to kill her. And they may have threatened . . . the baby.”

She stared at the duvet. The infant’s tiny nose crinkled, and the little mouth yawned, revealing a glistening rose tongue.

Almost two hours had passed since the telephone call that had summoned her to the courtyard. She had to do something.

“You still have that friend in Centre d’Écoute Téléphonique, René?”

“Martin?”

She handed René her cell phone. “Ask Martin to locate the public phone booth from which my land line was called. The number was 01 33 68 42 18.”

“Look, Aimée . . .”

“Talk to him nicely, René. Tell him you’ll owe him big-time.”

Ten long minutes later, René handed her the address scribbled on the back of an envelope.

“Alors
, asking him didn’t hurt, did it?”

“My promise to overhaul his motherboard helped.”

She looked at the address: 5 Boulevard Henri IV, only two blocks away, near the tip of Ile Saint-Louis. “But that’s close by. She could easily have been here by now unless . . .”

René blinked. “Isn’t she coming to get the baby?”

“This bloodstain’s in the baby bag. . . . She may have been hurt. What if she can’t?”

“I don’t like this, Aimée,” he said.

“René, it’s just two blocks away. Do me a favor. Watch the baby a few minutes.”

“Me?”

She handed him a bottle of formula. “All babies do is pee, cry, eat, and sleep.” She remembered this line from a late-night program on the
télé
.

“But what if she wakes up?” Alarm showed in René’s eyes.

“You’ll figure something out, René.”

AIMÉE SLID INTO the warm night. She saw white wavelets hitting the opposite bank of the Seine. Flooding threatened if the thaw kept up.

She’d lived here most of her life, yet the neighbors in her building were only nodding acquaintances. Not one was someone to go to for help. Of course, she was aware, as they all were from the concierge, that a retired doctor of L’École de Médecine lived on the first floor with his dog. An actor and his family resided on the second floor. An old aristocrat owned the top-floor
pied-à-terre,
handed down through the generations. Hers had been inherited from her grandfather. God knows she couldn’t have afforded to buy a place on the Ile Saint-Louis on her earnings from Leduc Detective.

Along the quai, a few lit windows, like eyes peering into the darkness, showed in the
hôtels particuliers,
narrow limestone-facaded town houses with delicate wrought-iron balconies and high arched entrances. Most, like hers, were attributed to Le Vau, the architect of Versailles. She knew other worlds existed behind the massive carved entry doors leading to double-and triple-deep courtyards and gardens that could never be glimpsed from the outside. Life on this island took place in the courtyards, in the hidden back passages that had changed little since medieval times. The Ile Saint-Louis was a feudal island fortress, its fortifications the town houses built for the aristocracy. Five bridges spanned the comma-shaped island, which had once been a cow pasture in the Middle Ages. It was eight blocks long and three blocks across at the widest, yet so self-contained that longtime Ile Saint-Louis inhabitants—Ludoviciens
—
still referred to the rest of Paris as “the Continent.” Stubbornly reclusive, the inhabitants ignored the tourists, aware that they inhabited the most desirable streets in Paris, keeping themselves to themselves. They were proud of having allowed a post office to open only a few years ago, of having neighbors like a minister or two and like the Rothschilds, whom one was unlikely to visit to borrow a cup of sugar. Who was she to criticize? She’d never live anywhere else.

A woman in trouble wouldn’t knock on the Rothschilds’ door in the middle of the night. Was that why she’d been chosen?

She reached Pont de Sully, the bridge connecting Ile Saint-Louis to the Left and Right Banks, just as a lighted, half-empty, Number 87 bus passed her, then made a U-turn to avoid the looming police barricade. An ambulance siren wailed and she saw its red light streaking down the quai across the river. The demonstration must have gotten ugly, she thought.

She located number 5, Boulevard Henri IV. It was the garage next to the fly-fishing shop that had been patronized by Hemingway. A black-lettered sign reading STATION DU SERVICE DE PONT SULLY stood above a blue-and-white metal representation of the Michelin man. A yellow gas pump stood on the pavement, an incongruous object for an island in the middle of the Seine with no Metro stop, no cinema, no police station, and only one
café-tabac
.

The garage lay dark, doors locked, windows semishuttered. Puzzled, she took out her penlight and shone it through a crack in a shutter. Before she could knock, she saw the blinking red light of an alarm system and stopped. With her penlight she examined the garage, seeking a side entrance, without success. The premises were shut tight as a drum, yet the woman had called her from here.

What if the woman had been part of the nearby demonstration? Aimée filed that possibility away. But if the woman was hurt, and being chased, it seemed unlikely she’d run across the bridge to reach this island. Too exposed.

Aimée strode over the zebra-striped Pont de Sully crossing to Place Bayre, the one green space on the island. Miles Davis’s favorite walk. And a good place to hide among the chestnut trees, deserted gravel paths, and slatted benches. In its center, a stone statue of a naked man straddling a lion replaced the original bronze animals melted down by the Germans during the Occupation. Diffused light from green metal street lamps filtered through the branches of the trees, casting sticklike shadows on the gravel. She flicked on her penlight. And then she noticed scattered gravel; it looked as if it had been kicked. Or as if there had been a scuffle. She followed the scattered gravel behind a tree trunk. Her foot stepped on something soft. She stopped.

Please don’t let it be . . . ! She didn’t want to finish the rest of her thought.

Cautiously, she shone the penlight in an arc, poking the leaves with her high heels, expecting to find a human hand or foot. She ground her teeth.
Non,
only soft mud.

A twig crackled behind her. The baby’s mother? She spun around.

The path lay deserted.

“Allô?”

The only response was the flapping of a seagull’s wings overhead. If the woman was here, surely she’d show herself. Hiding from Aimée made no sense.

She had to calm down. The noise could have been made by squirrels or chipmunks or even a less desirable member of the rodent family.

She walked toward the path and heard the crunch of gravel. She stopped in her tracks. An assignation? In the seventies this spot had been notorious for cruising gays waiting for cavalry soldiers from the nearby Arsenal. Maybe they were still active? But the footsteps padded on, keeping pace with her. Stupidly, she’d left the Beretta in her spoon drawer.

She speeded up, then took cover behind an ivy-draped tree on her right. She inhaled, wishing her heart wasn’t beating so hard.

Something moved. She parted the glossy green ivy leaves and peered around the trunk of the tree. Behind her, bushes rustled and she froze, holding her breath. Silence.

And then she saw . . . a shadow, the silhouette of a raised arm holding a bar with a hooked end. As quietly as she could, she backed away until a branch snapped beneath her feet. Then, behind her, more rustling noises in the bushes.

She slipped off her heels, stuck them in her pockets, and sprinted through the bare trees, her heart thumping. If she could make it to Boulevard Henri IV, people might be standing at the bus shelter. At least there would be passing cars.

Sharp pebbles cut her feet but she kept going, past the stone wall, and made it out to the street. She didn’t look back as she ran across it, despite flashing headlights, a car swerving, brakes squealing, and blaring horns.

She kept close to the buildings, rounding the curve into Quai d’Anjou, passing the red wall tile marking the height of the 1910 flood that had devastated Paris.

Now her apartment was just a few doors away! She leaned against a carved stone portal, her shoulders heaving, trying to catch her breath. Perspiration dampened her dress; her black stockings torn to shreds.

Yellow light from the street lamp filtered through the budding branches of a plane tree onto the deserted pavement. She could see no one.

She counted to ten, then walked on.

The footsteps came again, this time closer. The baby. Was there a threat to the baby? She tried to recall the mother’s words. Whoever was after her, Aimée couldn’t lead them to her doorstep and the baby.

She started to run.

Monday Night

ON THE BOULEVARD, Krzysztof stumbled in front of the advancing boots of the CRS. Candle wax had spilled, scorching his arm. Thick white foam sprayed by the silver-helmeted
pompiers,
the firemen, clung to his pants. A man in a flak jacket with EXPLOSIF
—
bomb squad—printed on his vest was operating a remote-control device. The crowd surged from all sides, shouting angrily.

“Clear the area,” said a voice from the loudspeaker.

Whistles shrilled. Krzysztof watched, astonished, as behind them a metal robot on small grinding tank treads tore apart empty candle boxes and the backpack he’d set down by the nearby planters.

“Get away from those boxes. Move!” one of the CRS barked. From the crushed backpack, broken wine bottles cascaded onto the ground, but no liquid pooled in front of the shards of glass. They had been stuffed with yellowed rags that emitted a pungent kerosene odor.

“Bottle bombs . . . stand clear.”

“We didn’t bring those,” Krzysztof shouted. “We’ve been set up!”

High-pressure blasts of frigid water from a Karcher, a water cannon mounted on a police-truck roof, drenched him and the others. People near him scattered, slipping as they ran away. He saw a red flashing light as an ambulance braked to a halt near where Gaelle had fallen.

He found himself pushed and shoved under a pile of wet bodies, limbs flailing. Panicked, he tried to crawl out from under on his hands and knees, gasping for air. He couldn’t see Gaelle; he couldn’t see anything with water hitting his face.

Visions of his father in Warsaw’s Bialoleka Prison flashed before his eyes: the dingy cell holding political prisoners, the hacking coughs of fifteen men to a cell, the vomit-tinged corners. He vowed that he’d never let himself get caught and end up in prison.

Pulling himself forward on his hands and knees, he clawed dirt and vines with his fingers. The water still pelted him; he was soaked.

He’d caused this disaster. And he couldn’t stop it.

“This way,” a man called, “over here.”

Shaking, Krzysztof followed the voice, burrowing behind some planters. Then he was through and he straightened up behind an idling police truck and wiped his eyes. Peering around, he saw two white-coated medics lifting a stretcher on which Gaelle lay into the ambulance.

More people were crawling behind the planters, shoving the hastily erected barricades down.

He followed a police truck down an adjoining street. He ran, dodging a taxi. His thin-soled, lace-up suede boxing boots made little sound as he pounded the pavement. Sirens echoed as more police trucks approached. He turned right and almost ran into a patrol of blue-uniformed
flics
guarding the street. He ducked into an arched doorway, thankful that they hadn’t seen him.

He caught his breath. Terrified, sick to his stomach, he waited. Five, ten long minutes, dripping and shivering in the humid air.

He had to salvage their campaign. To do something. They’d been sabotaged but he wouldn’t let whoever did this get away with it. They had proof of the oil company’s falsifications, but the evidence they’d compiled wouldn’t be safe at the MondeFocus headquarters. After finding bottle bombs, the
flics
would obtain search warrants and search the office.

Who could have set them up? He pulled out his cell phone, tapped in the MondeFocus number . . . he had to warn Brigitte. There was no answer and the machine didn’t pick up. She must not have returned yet from the protest at La Défense. He couldn’t wait any longer. He peered out again. One of the
flics
ground out a cigarette with his foot.

If only they’d move on. He needed to safeguard the files at the MondeFocus office, and he’d have to enlist help. His mind raced. When Brigitte returned, they’d put their heads together and come up with a new plan. Tomorrow was not too late to submit their alternatives to the oil executives. And after this near riot, they would certainly get press coverage. Something could still be salvaged.

The office was close, just over the short Pont de la Tournelle, on Ile Saint-Louis. Almost where he’d started from on this disastrous evening. His jacket had half dried by the time the
flics
left to patrol the next street. He hugged the walls, crossed Boulevard Saint-Germain with his head down, then paused on the bridge leading to Quai Tournelle at the floodlit, needle-like monument of Sainte Geneviève. The Seine ran dark and viscous below.

Ahead lay a few lit windows in the Polish Foundation and he debated for a moment seeking refuge there. But his uncle would ridicule him after berating him for leaving the reception in the first place. His adrenaline had surged when he’d had to get away, and now his emotion had turned to anger. The CRS had beaten Gaelle, lied about the permit, and dispersed their march. Someone had set them up by planting bottle bombs. The blonde’s face flashed in front of him. He had to be sure not only of who had betrayed them, but of why.

Krzysztof’s lungs heaved as he pressed the numbers on the digicode for the office of MondeFocus. The olive green door clicked open and he ran past a wheeled shopping cart, taking the stairs two at a time as he raced up the winding staircase. The MondeFocus office door stood ajar, a slant of light illuminating the black-and-white diamond-patterned tiles of the landing.

Too late. He was too late.

He leaned against the door, his shoulders sagging. Inside, desk drawers had been dumped on the floor, papers strewn. The floppy-disc box was empty; the copy machine that stood on a makeshift slat of lumber across two sawhorses was open. Had they gotten to the file cabinet? A brief ray of hope flickered inside him. He rooted in the drawers of the cabinet: all their vital evidence, oil platform drilling statistics, petroleum percentages, all gone.

Then he heard voices and footsteps and looked up. Brigitte, the director, burst into the office. Fine lines webbed the corners of her mouth and she looked tired, showing the age she normally managed to hide. She stopped when she saw him, surprise and fear on her face. “We heard on the radio . . . what are you doing?”

A long-haired man in overalls and a stocky woman followed behind her, carrying armfuls of leaflets. Brigitte turned and exchanged looks with the man.

“I just got here,” Krzysztof said.

“Just got here?” Brigitte said. “You’re rummaging in the files. How did you get in?”

He stepped back in alarm. “Someone has ransacked the office—the door was left open.”

The look on Brigitte’s face chilled him.

“I think you did this and now you’re trying to make it look—”

“Brigitte,” the woman said, stepping forward. “Give him a chance to speak.”

“You think I’d do this?” He choked. “The movement’s my life, you know that.”

“You’re a dilettante who’s been hanging around here for a few weeks,” Brigitte said. “A student fired up with big ideas for a peace vigil that backfired. Did you know that Gaelle’s in the hospital?”

“Gaelle tried to talk to the CRS, I wanted to stop her . . .”

Brigitte shook her head. “Our coalition formed MondeFocus years ago. Since then we’ve done painstaking, backbreaking work, building our reputation for factual opposition to the destroyers of the environment, careful never to become involved in violence, and you’ve shot it all to hell in one night!”

“You have to listen to me,” said Krzysztof. “The files containing the evidence were stolen.”

Brigitte asked, “Why didn’t you obtain the permit for the vigil?”

He nodded. “But I did . . . they revoked it.”

“Then you supplied false information, didn’t you? To make sure they’d revoke the permit,” Brigitte said.

Where was the copy of his application? Where had he put it? He raked his pockets with shaking hands but only came up with a used Metro ticket and a few centimes. He looked at the long-haired man. “Pascal, you showed me how to apply and gave me the form to fill out. You saw the application!”

Brigitte turned to Pascal.

“Eh, get your facts straight,” Pascal said, his voice charged with anger. “Giving you a form isn’t seeing how you filled it out and whether you submitted it.”

Krzysztof reeled at the look of doubt in Brigitte’s eyes. “But I told you, they granted the permit,” he said. He appealed to Pascal again. “You and I were together the day I picked up the permit at the Préfecture, Pascal. We’ve been sabotaged!”

“And pigs have wings. Remember the first thing I said? Get the
Préfet’s
signature. Bet you didn’t follow through, eh?”

He’d tried so hard, fought with his uncle, even missed his physics exam. And now Gaelle was hurt and he was being blamed for everything that had gone wrong. And if they didn’t do something to find the real saboteurs, the agreement would be signed.

A man stumbled into the office, his shirt wet and bloodied. Blood dripped from his swollen nose. He stared at the mess, then his gaze settled on Krzysztof. He pointed his finger, stabbing the air. “You, you’re the one!”

“Hold on, Franck, you’re bleeding,” Brigitte said, grabbing a first-aid kit from the items scattered on the floor.

“It’s him,” Franck said. “The TV crew showed me the video.”

“What do you mean?” Brigitte asked.

“He carried the bottle bombs in his backpack,” he said, pointing a shaking finger. “It’s on film, I saw it.”

Krzysztof was terror stricken. He struggled to breathe. “A blonde asked me to carry her backpack. I didn’t know it held bottle bombs. She was a plant, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see,” Brigitte said. “You came here as a volunteer. We have other causes you could have worked on but you’ve been fixated on the oil conference. Only that interested you.”

Orla. He had to tell them about the information she’d promised.

“Le Pen’s right wing hired you,” Brigitte accused him. “They’ll stop at nothing to discredit our movement. I should have suspected! You have all the hallmarks of the scum
intello
student saboteurs the right wing plants to disparage us.”

Perspiration dampened his sweatshirt. “Le Pen, that fascist . . . you’re calling me a saboteur?”

He banged his fist on the littered desk, sweeping papers onto the floor.

Brigitte’s eyes flashed. “And as soon as you could, you headed here and ransacked the office!” She grabbed his arm.

He had to calm down. If they didn’t believe him, the oil companies, led by Alstrom, the worst one, would get away, implicating him as a spy, a saboteur. “I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath. “But you must believe me: we were all betrayed.”

Four pairs of eyes stared at him.

“We had them dead to rights; the evidence was here, in black and white. So they sent someone to steal the files after setting me up,” he told them. “If we don’t find those files or get hold of Orla—who has more information—the oil companies will be able to push their agreement through. We can’t fight among ourselves; we have to act against them before it’s too late.”

Instead of nodding in agreement, Brigitte reached for the phone. “You stole the files. You’ve worked things perfectly so the agreement can’t be stopped,” she said. She picked up the receiver and dialed 18. “You can tell your story to the
flics
when they arrive.”

His pulse raced. He’d been framed but they wouldn’t believe him. He was cornered. He made his feet move, backed out the door, and ran down the stairs.