Rough Trade

15

7a.m. Sentier Metro station

A small group of militants, a mix of Turks and French were standing around Soleiman, just as they had a fortnight ago. Coffee and croissants. Tense and tired. No one had slept. Since the general assembly had ended, they’d been covering every part of the Sentier to explain why the legalization office opened by the government had to be boycotted, this Monday, 17 March. But wasn’t it too much to ask those who might have benefited from this measure to let such an opportunity pass them by?

Soleiman was risking everything in this venture. If the boycott went through, he’d establish his leadership in the Sentier once and for all, and keep a chance of satisfying Daquin’s demands. If the boycott didn’t go through, he’d be wiped out and Daquin could continue to play with him as he pleased. But he sensed that the idea had had a response in the Sentier. Ya hip Ya hop. Everyone or no one. By about 2 a.m. everyone who was a regular at the Café Gymnase was already in the know. That was a good sign. If the boycott hadn’t met with an intense response, the order wouldn’t have spread like that.

Ever since Friday night, when he couldn’t go back to Daquin’s any more, Soleiman hadn’t been able to sleep. He lived to the rhythm of the committee, and the cafés in the boulevard, snatched a few moments’ sleep on a table, in a corner, and swallowed the pills that his friends gave him. Everyone in the Sentier used them to keep going during the Fashion Shows when they’re sometimes working at the sewing-machine for more than twenty-four hours at a stretch. They were good because they also stopped you feeling hungry and so reduced anxiety.

8 a.m. Passage du Désir

First ‘interview’ with a politician: a Breton deputy called Caron, from the Catholic right, a member of the club practically from the start. He has a different patter from the businessmen. He’s agreed on an informal interview with the police out of a sense of public duty. But can’t you see it can only be a crude conspiracy, with the end goal of compromising the people’s representatives, and, beyond that, democracy as a whole? You’ve no proof. There’s no trace of any payment by cheque or any means of identifying the member. I believe, then, in my duty, to protect the institution to which I belong. I believe in using parliamentary immunity and what’s more I don’t intend to respond to any notification to attend further interviews.

A small office meeting with Thomas, Santoni and their colleagues from Vice. There was still an ‘interview’ to do that afternoon with Paternaud, a radical deputy from the south-west, but ‘I’m ready to bet that he’s going to come out with exactly the same old patter. It smacks of something learned by heart. It’s time to change tack. One can conjecture that certain clients regularly use Thai children and that the murder’s committed by one of them. Let’s make a photofile of all the members, and go and show it to the Thai girls in Munich and Zurich and see what that produces. With a bit of luck we’ll find five or six regular customers and we can then turn the pressure on them.’

8.30 a.m. Rue de la Procession

Dirty, grey weather, A fine drizzle. A day in mourning at the start of a luminous spring. A bad sign? The group took up their positions on the pavement in front of the Immigration Offices, unrolled a banner, Ya hip Ya hop, and waited, soaked through, ill at ease. The offices opened at nine a.m. At a quarter to nine, some policemen arrived and pushed the little group and their banners back on to the pavement opposite. No resistance. At nine, the office doors opened. Nobody, nobody! It was hardly credible. At ten, a Turk came up rue de la Procession, on the Immigration Offices’ side. When he noticed the banner, he crossed over to Soleiman, who explained to him why they had to boycott. The man approved, apologized for coming: he hadn’t known, he hadn’t been in the Sentier yesterday. He greeted everyone and set off for the Metro. On the pavement, there was an explosion of joy. The French kissed one another, a Turk had tears in his eyes. It didn’t matter that it was raining any more.

During the whole course of the day, only five Turks would come through rue de la Procession. Not a single one would go into the legalization office. The minister had to negotiate, the minister would negotiate. We would return tomorrow.

10 a.m. Passage du Désir

A telephone call to Customs.

‘So, Sobesky and Romania? Have you been able to find anything for me, since last Friday?’

‘Yes, it’s about some raincoats manufactured in Romania. A request for transit for 500,000 articles, to be loaded at Le Havre, to be shipped to New York to the Blue and Stripes Co. manager: John D. Baker. Scheduled for the end of March. Exact date to be confirmed later. And, as an addendum, the importation of 20,000 raincoats by Francimper, a new trademark created for the occasion by Sobesky. You must excuse us, the file had escaped our notice last week. It had been filed with the transit applications … And then we were looking for Bulgaria.’

‘Nothing lost. When will you have the exact date?’

‘We should have it any day now.’

‘You’ll let me know immediately. And have you anything else in this file?’

‘Transport insured by Euroriencar Company, registered in Munich, branch at Gennevilliers.’

10 a.m. Avenue Jean-Jaurès

Romero was lying on his bed. He was leafing through a strip cartoon book without reading it, to pass the time, waiting for a reasonable moment to phone his distant cousin at the Turkish embassy. A glass of whisky to give himself courage and then, time to make a move! The phone was ringing.

‘Hallo.’

He recognized the voice.

‘Bonjour, Yildiz.’ Romero spoke into the phone.

‘Oh, I’m so glad to hear you, Romeo. I thought you’d never call me.’

Her voice was serious, and the accent could pass for charming, but the lady had the nasty habit of calling him ‘Romeo’.

‘Are you alone in your office?’

‘At this moment I am.’ With a laugh. ‘Why? Want to join me here?’

‘Don’t laugh at me, Yildiz. Do you know Turgut Sener?’

‘Yes, very well. He’s the Social Affairs attaché at the embassy. And we work in the same place, in the annex at boulevard Malesherbes. Would you like me to introduce you?’

‘No, not really, I’ve come across him in the course of my work.’ A moment’s silence. ‘It might be embarrassing if he knew I’ve been asking questions about him.’ Romero felt bogged down. ‘Yildiz, would you like it if we had dinner together? It would be much easier to talk about all this in a normal voice.’

‘Yes. I’d be delighted.’

‘What about this evening, at eight-thirty at the Hippopotamus in boulevard des Italiens?’

‘I’ll be there, Romeo.’

Romero hung up, very ill at ease.

11 a.m. Orléans

Attali, who’d only ever known Algiers when he was a little kid, then Marseilles and Paris, didn’t feel at home in the unhurried half silence of the real provinces. Monsieur Lamouroux was a chemist in rue Jeanne d’Arc, Orleans’ main street. He’d perhaps go and see him in a while. But for now he had an appointment with Madame Lamouroux, waiting for him at home in boulevard de Verdun, a short step from the station. A broad tree-lined boulevard, almost deserted at this end of a rainy morning. A large, affluent-looking, turn of the century house, surrounded by a small garden. No buzzer, a real bell instead. A charming woman opened the door and waited for him at the top of the steps. In her fifties, smiling, permed grey hair, little dark brown suit, pink blouse. Attali would have liked to protect her from her wayward daughter. She took him into the salon, obviously anxious behind her smile. She’d had no news for several days, but this wasn’t out of the ordinary, so why the police?

‘As I said on the phone, we’re looking for your daughter as a witness in an important and dangerous case. She’s no longer living at her usual address in Paris and hasn’t shown any sign of life to anyone since Friday. It’s possible that she would have tried to disappear when she understood the kind of business she’s become involved in. It would be better for her if we’re the ones who find her first.’

‘And what sort of case is it?’ A very small voice.

‘Drugs and procuring. Minors are involved.’

‘Virginie! She’s such a serious, gentle girl. Our only daughter. She writes to us every week. And comes to see us once, even twice a month.’

‘When was the last time she came?’

‘On 6 March. She came for dinner and left the following morning.’

‘Did she mention a trip abroad she’d just made?’

‘No. Not at all. She told us about her studies. Everything was going very smoothly. She seemed certain of finishing soon.’

Her room had flowery wallpaper with bunches of roses, pink curtains at the window, a pink flounced bedspread, a single bed, fluffy animals. A small veneered desk and shelves full of books: Storiesand Legends, a collection of Classics on one side; Balzac in the Pléiade edition, Stendhal, Flaubert, on the other. Attali gazed, transfixed. He remembered what Sobesky had said: so it was no pure and simple lie. VL was simultaneously a well-mannered student from the provinces in this pink bedroom and a drug-ridden procuress in the Club Simon. He had a flash of intuition: if she had a secret, it was here he was going to find it, in this young girl’s bedroom, to which she’d come on 6 March, when she returned from New York.

‘Madame, would you give me permission to have a bit of a look through your daughter’s room?’

‘Certainly, inspecteur. But don’t make it untidy. I shall leave you. I’m going to prepare lunch. Will you stay and have some with me, inspecteur?’

He began with the desk. Bank statements. Orléans branch. Her income from modelling apparently, between 6,000 and 7,000 francs a month, in several payments. ‘She poses for fashion shots, she pays for all her studies, you know. She never asks us for a sou.’ Nothing else. The expenses of a young girl in Paris. A few fairly old letters. Attali made a note of the correspondents’ names. A small address book: all in Orléans and surrounding districts. Attali took it even so. Leave nothing to chance. School photos, holiday snaps of course, her first date perhaps. Nothing which seemed to have any bearing on her life in Paris.

He returned to the desk drawers, nothing was stuck underneath. The fluffy animals he examined one by one, felt them, found nothing. He lifted the mattress, gently tapped the walls, feeling faintly ridiculous, opened the windows, shook the curtains, opened books, searched the bedside table — it was empty.

Discouraged, he sat on the bed. Lay down, as if taking a nap, did some hard thinking. Imagined VL, sleeping here. Stretching out her arm, switching on the bedside light. It had a deep pink shade, a very beautiful light. He looked at the pedestal of the lamp: a cylinder of translucent glass filled with different coloured marbles. He turned off the light, unscrewed the fitting on which the bulb was mounted, tipped up the glass marbles on to the bed. And there, hidden amongst all the marbles, were cut diamonds. About twenty of them. He couldn’t possibly have got it wrong. With his heart beating, he sat for a moment thinking. Then he left the room, leaned over the banister of the stairs, listened to the sounds of cooking and crockery coming from the ground floor, and called Madame Lamouroux.

She came upstairs quickly, looking anxious. He placed a hand on her shoulder and asked her to come in. She took a diamond in her hand, looked at it, gave it back.

‘Is this my daughter’s?’

‘Yes, and, what’s more, I found them inside the bedside lamp.’ She was completely thrown.

‘Madame Lamouroux, I don’t understand any more than you do what these diamonds are doing here. If I go through the normal legal procedure to have them valued, not only is that going to take time, but everybody’s going to know about them. That would do your daughter no good when she returns.’

‘I really don’t want my husband to know anything about this.’

‘Bring the diamonds, and come with me to Paris. We’re going to question a number of people. As soon as we know what these stones have to say, you can come back here with them, and I’ll continue my investigation. It’s quicker and more discreet. Don’t you agree?’

‘How many days will it take?’

‘I really don’t know. Say two at the most.’

‘Leave me a bit of time to get ready. We’ll go in my car after lunch …’

3 p.m. Villa des Artistes

The instructions were clear. Today, tomorrow or later, a stranger would introduce himself into Commissaire Daquin’s house, stay for ten minutes or so and leave. He would be left to do what he wanted and would then be followed. Absolute discretion was required. It was, in principle, an easy job, at the beginning at least. The estate had only one entrance, through the porch of the building on avenue Jean-Moulin. Daquin’s house was being watched from the stairs of the building by Inspector Conrad, two other inspectors were waiting for his signal in the avenue to start the tail.

The estate was very quiet, seemed deserted. A smallish man, very broad shouldered, black hair cut short, went through the porch, down the pathway between the houses, stopped in front of Daquin’s door. It was obvious he had the keys. Conrad sauntered out into avenue Jean-Moulin, that being the agreed signal which would put Inspectors Allard and Zanetta on alert, a few dozen metres away, and came back into the estate. Hardly was he under the porch when he heard a woman screaming. It seemed to come from Daquin’s house. His initial reaction was to pull out his revolver. But that was absolutely not on. The instructions were clear: whatever happened, the ‘target’ must not suspect he’s being followed by cops. He began to run, heard windows opening behind him in the building which overlooked the estate. The door of the house was half open now. Without slowing down Conrad pushed it. Carried in by his thrust, he knocked against a body, slipped and went head first. And was given a thwack by a perfectly tailored cuff at the base of his skull, without him ever even seeing his aggressor. He crumpled, lights flashing before his eyes.

When he was at last able to stand on his feet again, he was alone beside a woman’s body stretched out full-length, face down. A puddle of blood, as deep as a pool, was slowly and steadily spreading around her. A pile of clean laundry had fallen to the ground. A white towelling dressing-gown was slowly soaking up the blood. Conrad ran out. There was no one on the estate, and in the avenue, Allard and Zanetta were still waiting for his signal.

4 p.m. Passage du Désir

On Daquin’s desk was Steiger’s telex: B. officially dropped out in 1975. Before 1970, he was in Islamabad, and from 70 to 75 in Tehran. His name then was Edward Thompson.

*

The photo team came by at about five: there was no one at the sandwich bar any more. The surveillance was stopped. A good job that no one had tried to retrace the network from there …

*

‘Lavorel. Time for coffee. Tell me, are your bosses at Finance still waiting for your first written report? Aren’t they getting impatient?’

‘I’m working relentlessly. I’m accumulating the files. Bring me Anna Berk and you’ll have one of the most colourful trials in the annals of Finance.’

‘I need you.’

‘I don’t doubt it. You only ever offer me a coffee when you need me.’

Daquin smiled.

‘What’s that, Lavorel? You starting a protest movement?’

‘No, no, monsieur le commissaire, just stating a fact.’

‘The Euroriencar business, with its registered offices in Munich, branch in France, at Gennevilliers. What can you find out about it? Fast, obviously.’

‘I’ve made a note of it, patron.’

‘And now, what about Meillant? Have you seen him?’

‘Last Friday, at length. He knows the Sentier like nobody’s business. But he won’t give me any real help, most probably because he’s up to his neck in it, or because he’s protecting others who are.’

‘I know all that … another coffee?’

Lavorel pushed his empty cup over to Daquin, who rose and made two more coffees.

‘And he already knows that he mustn’t delay to be still in the running.’

‘Explain more.’

‘He’s taking a gamble on the success of the fight in progress in favour of giving the Turks permits. That’s going to make quite a big change to the networks and circuits put in place in the 1960s. And now the Chinese are beginning to move in. Meillant doesn’t want a brush with them.’

‘Lavorel, you see what I’m driving at?’

‘Of course. You’re going to lean on Meillant to get Anna Beric back. A lot depends on what you have up your sleeve, but it could work.’

*

Telephone.

‘Théo?’

‘Yes, chief.’

‘You must return to your house, urgently. The concierge of the estate has just been stabbed at your place, in your entrance hall.’

7p.m. Villa des Artistes

The concierge died on arrival at the hospital. Daquin, seated on his sofa, was exasperated and ill at ease. He would have to go and see the family. He didn’t even know if she had one. To be truly honest, he couldn’t even remember exactly what she looked like any more. It was far from satisfactory. Cops and various specialists were milling in all directions, in his home, in his house. Unbearable. A scent of haste and mess. He drank one coffee after another. Gradually the house emptied. Till only the Drugs chief, Conrad and the two inspectors from Crime who were responsible for the case remained. Daquin offered them a drink. Everyone sat down. The chief explained very succinctly to the two inspectors from Crime the reasons why Daquin’s house was under surveillance, and asked them to omit all this aspect in their written reports. Daquin explained: ‘The concierge had my keys. She came to work every morning, she did everything, housework, laundry. She didn’t usually come in the afternoon, she worked somewhere else, and the murderers probably knew that. But today she most probably stopped by to drop off the clean laundry.’ Flashback to Soleiman’s dressing-gown, dripping with blood.

Conrad had seen nothing. Just the man from behind. Thickset. They must systematically question the whole neighbourhood, apartments and houses. Windows had been opened when the concierge screamed. Perhaps someone had seen the man running away? It was their only lead. Fingerprints would show nothing. The man would have been wearing gloves for certain. They would have to wait for the autopsy report. Essentially, it would confirm that the woman had died from being stabbed by a knife which had ripped her open from the base of the abdomen right up to the sternum. But they would possibly also learn things about the nature of the weapon and the assassin’s technique.

*

Daquin and his chief were alone. Daquin, still in a bad mood.

‘You could send Inspector Conrad to work with the group in Marseilles. I don’t want to see him any more. I agree with what the press says. The system for training police officers must be changed completely.’

‘Théo, give me a whisky and when you’ve finished blowing your top, tell me how we’re going to proceed.’

‘I think that we can now dismiss the theory of a set-up by colleagues …’

‘I really hope so.’

Daquin groaned, without specifying what he was thinking at that moment.

‘In any case, after a cock-up like this, the traffickers, if it is them, won’t continue putting the pressure directly on me. That would be a bit too risky for them. And, to encourage them along this route, I’d like to be given constant visible protection, an armed policeman at my door, a surveillance vehicle nearby. I hope that that isn’t going to last long. And they should check my phone isn’t being tapped, at my office and at home.’

*

As soon as his boss had left, Daquin went out to call Soleiman from a phone box. It was ten in the evening. No reply. He went home and to bed, without eating.

8.30 p.m. At the Hippopotamus

Romero drank a whisky standing at the bar, and munched some crisps. Ever since that morning he hadn’t been able to shake off an uneasy feeling every time he thought of Yildiz. A strange mixture of curiosity, anxiety and guilt. At eight-thirty precisely a woman came into the restaurant. Medium height, but the impression of being tall because her shoulders were strong, her hips slim and legs long. Very pale, triangular face, broad forehead, high cheekbones, immense golden eyes. All crowned with a great mass of naturally curly, coppery red hair, which this evening was arranged in a large 1900s-style chignon. Romero was transfixed. For an instant, he looked round to see what lucky man she was smiling at.

‘Are you Romeo?’

The serious voice, the accent …

‘Yes, well, I’d like to …’

‘I’m Yildiz.’

His breath was taken away. Fortunately, the receptionist came looking for them to take them to their table. A house cocktail for Yildiz, another whisky for Romero. Their grills arrived. Yildiz spoke first, about Istanbul, and how difficult life was for Turkish women, about her family. And her shyness, her loneliness during the four months she’d been in France …

Romero thought she laid it on a bit thick there. He would have to stay on his guard. He launched into his job: he was a police inspector, in the Finance Squad, a difficult investigation into the trafficking of black labour … in the course of which the name of Turgut Sener had cropped up.

‘I remembered that you worked at the embassy, and I thought you might be able to save me a lot of time and save me from making a few blunders if you could tell me what sort of man Turgut Sener is, what they say about him at the embassy …’

Yildiz took time to look at him, her chin resting on her hand. ‘Turgut Sener isn’t liked, or valued at the embassy. He belongs to the Turkès party, he’s been put there to watch the ambassador, who’s considered too moderate. He has a reputation for trafficking in everything, and extorting money under every kind of pretext from Turkish workers who need his services.’ She smiled at him. ‘Does that satisfy you?’

‘If you don’t mind me saying … Pardon my indiscretion, but why would an ambassador keep such a corrupt attaché?’

‘You perhaps aren’t all that familiar with the situation in Turkey at this moment. Turgut Sener will stay at the embassy as long as the Turkès party deems it necessary. The ambassador has no choice.’

Romero digested the information. Daquin would know what to do about it.

‘One more thing, Yildiz. If he’s corrupt and if everyone knows it at the embassy, it wouldn’t be all that inconvenient for you if the French police take an interest in him?’

‘You could see it like that.’

‘And you could give me some information on how he spends his time? In exchange, I’ll tell you all the little villainies he gets up to, if I find any.’

‘It could be fun.’

And she held out her hand to seal the deal. Romero took it and raised it to his lips.

This woman’s dangerous, he thought, and I’m in love.