Extraordinary People

Chapter Ten

They drove up Avenue President Wilson to the Place du Trocadéro. Across the river, the Left Bank fell away below them, still dominated by the Eiffel Tower. This close, it was a massive presence, its unmistakable girdered steel structure piercing the evening sky. On the concourse of the Place des Droits de l’Homme, crowds had gathered to watch an anti-China demonstration by the extreme religious group Falun Gong, whose leader claimed to be a visitor from Outer Space. Enzo wondered where he had parked his flying saucer.

The cafés around the Place du Trocadéro were doing brisk business. There were queues standing outside Carette, people desperate for seats on the terrasse. They were in the sixteenth arrondissement, after all, and this was the place to be seen. Worth standing in line for twenty minutes with your Shih Tzu tucked under your arm.

Enzo felt as if all his faculties of perception had deserted him. The items found in the trunk under the shell in Toulouse made not the least sense to him. Not that there had been even five minutes to consider them. He and Raffin and Nicole had spent most of the night being questioned by police. A long, sleepless night. And then, this morning, he had been summoned to Paris and a rendezvous with the French Minister of Justice, otherwise known as the Garde des Sceaux, literally the Keeper of the Seals, one of the most powerful and prestigious posts in government. Political master of both the police and the French justice system. Enzo had assumed that the Minister wanted to congratulate him on the success of his investigation.

Raffin had a more cynical take on it. ‘They’re going to warn you off.’

‘If I was going to be warned off, surely I would have been summoned to her office at the Ministry? Not invited to a private dinner at her apartment.’

Raffin shook his head. ‘If she called you to her office, that would make it official. And you would run from the building screaming “Cover up!” Dinner in her apartment means it’s all off the record. She’ll appeal to your sense of duty, request that you desist, rather than order it.’

‘But why? What has the government got to hide?’

‘Its embarrassment. Ten years ago the top advisor to the Prime Minister disappeared. It was a mystery. No one could explain it. The papers were full of it. For a while. And then it just went away. And it remained a mystery. Everyone could live with that. But you’ve just proved that he was murdered. Not only murdered, but dismembered, and bits of his body strewn about the country. And now people are going to want to know why. It’s already caused an uproar in the press, and when my piece appears in Libération tomorrow on the discovery in Toulouse, the government is going to have a very red face. The leader columns are going to be asking why, with all the resources at their disposal, the government and the police in ten years were unable to solve the mystery of Gaillard’s disappearance, when a biology professor from Toulouse could do it in under a week.’ Raffin grinned. ‘I tell you, Enzo, your name’ll be mud at the Élysée Palace.’

‘Well, at least it’s mud in classy places,’ Enzo said.

Raffin turned his car into the Avenue Georges Mandel. A treelined walkway between the two carriageways was named after the opera singer Maria Callas. Raffin pulled up outside the apartment block at number thirty-three, opposite the late diva’s former apartment. Enzo got out and stood uncomfortably on the pavement, unaccustomed to the formality of a suit and collar and tie. The air was soft and warm after the heat of the day. Kids on roller blades drifted past. A young couple stood embracing and kissing unashamedly in the middle of the street. A man with a young girl perched on the back of his bike cycled by at a leisurely rate. The child turned her head to stare at Enzo with naked curiosity.

Raffin leaned across to the open passenger door. ‘Don’t let her bully you, Enzo. Let me know how you get on.’

Enzo watched Raffin’s car head back towards the Trocadéro, and he turned to look up at the apartments behind him. Five floors clad in pale stone hacked from the catacombes of Paris. An inner courtyard reverberated to the sound of voices from the open windows of a first-floor apartment. Enzo could see figures in dinner jackets and evening dress milling around a large salle with champagne flutes in their hands. But that wasn’t his destination. He pressed a buzzer, and after some moments a woman’s voice responded.

‘Enzo Macleod for Madame Marie Aucoin,’ Enzo said, and an electronic mechanism released the lock on the door. He crossed a mosaic floor, passing between marble pillars to a red-carpeted staircase, and climbed two floors to the apartment of the Minister of Justice.

She opened the door herself. He had seen her on television many times and had always thought her a handsome woman. But she was even more attractive in the flesh. She was just forty-five years old, young to have been appointed to such a powerful position. Long, black hair fell to her shoulders, a loosely parted fringe above a lean, youthful face. Her full lips parted in a wide smile. Dark blue eyes radiated unusual warmth. She was smaller than Enzo had imagined, a sheer black evening dress clinging to a slim figure, the slash of her V-neck revealing the ivory white skin of her neck, and just the hint of a cleavage between small breasts.

‘Monsieur Macleod, I’m so pleased you could come.’

Enzo wondered if he’d had any choice in the matter. ‘It’s my pleasure, Madame Le Ministre.’

She smiled at his clumsiness in addressing her and presented him with her hand. He took it awkwardly. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

Light spilled into the hall from leaded windows. Exotic, hand-carved wooden figurines stood on a marble-topped dresser. A huge antique armoir reached almost to the corniced ceiling.

‘Lyonnaise,’ Marie Aucoin said. ‘Louis Quatorze.’ She smiled. ‘You know, there is a depository in the thirteenth arrondissement of priceless antique furniture from which government ministers can choose to furnish their offices. Sadly we must furnish our homes at our own expense. Which is a pity, since they don’t really pay us very much.’

She led him through double doors into a classical French dining room with moulded ceilings, marble fireplace, and gilded mirror. But there France ended, and China began. The furniture was oriental. A long, black-lacquered table with eight chairs. Matching mahogany buffets with bamboo panelled doors, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and dressed with carefully arranged Ming and Qing Dynasty vases and ornaments. Ceramic dragons flanked the cheminée. Vividly coloured Chinese rugs were strewn about the parquet floor, and original Chinese scroll paintings hung from cream-painted walls. Bridges and Buddhas and pink-faced children. Even the Venetian blinds were mahogany-slatted in the Chinese style. A red lantern diffused soft light above the table. The strings of a classical Chinese orchestra scraped and wailed gently somewhere in the background.

‘I thought Chinatown was on the Left Bank,’ Enzo said.

She smiled. ‘I went to school in China. My father was ambassador in Singapore and then Peking. I speak Putonghua and Cantonese.’ She led him through to an adjoining sitting room, and two men and a silver-haired lady of around sixty rose from armchairs. The younger of the men stepped forward with his hand outstretched. He was tall, with thinning brown hair, a little younger than Enzo.

‘Christian Aucoin,’ he said.

‘My husband,’ the Minister of Justice added unnecessarily. And she turned to her guests. ‘Juge Jean-Pierre Lelong and his wife Jacqueline.’

Enzo shook hands with each of them. ‘Enchanté.’

A young man in a white jacket was hovering by the door. Marie Aucoin signalled to him. ‘A drink for Monsieur Macleod. What will it be, whisky? That’s what the Scots drink, isn’t it?’

‘That’ll be fine.’

‘Any particular marque?’

‘Glenlivet, if you have it.’ Enzo thought that she almost certainly would not.

But she was unperturbed. ‘Of course.’ She nodded to the waiter and ushered Enzo to a seat. ‘Juge Lelong is one of the foremost juges d’instruction in Paris. You know what a juge d’instruction is, don’t you?’

‘A judge who instructs the police in the investigation of a crime, I believe.’

‘You’re familiar with our legal system, then?’

‘I have lived here for twenty years, Minister.’

‘Of course you have. Left your wife and family in Scotland to set up a concubinage in Cahors with a young lady who died giving birth to your daughter. Sophie, isn’t it?’

The fact that she felt no need for subtlety in conveying that she had done her homework on him left Enzo feeling a little uneasy. ‘Yes.’

‘Tell me.’ She perched on the edge of her seat and leaned confidentially towards him. ‘What makes a man abandon his family and a successful career to come and live in a foreign country and teach biology at a second rate university?’

Enzo looked at the Minister of Justice and decided that he did not like her very much. She was superior and patronising. He said solemnly, ‘It was the sex, Minister.’

He enjoyed the moment of shocked silence which invaded the room like a fifth presence, before Marie Aucoin burst out laughing and clapped her hands in childlike delight. The others took her lead, smiling politely, but were clearly unamused by Enzo’s vulgarity. ‘Bravo, Monsieur Macleod, bravo. I think you and I are going to get on very well together.’

Enzo was pretty sure they weren’t. His drink arrived, and a perfunctory toast was made to good health. They drank and made desultory conversation. Christian Aucoin told him that he was the Director of the Banque Agricoles, which explained how they could afford a Louis Quatorze armoire and an apartment in the Avenue Georges Mandel. Enzo knew from newspaper articles that the Aucoins had no children, and he noticed that they never once made eye contact. Their body language spoke of a relationship fractured beyond repair, but glued together for the sake of appearances. Juge Lelong kept his own counsel, watching Enzo cautiously from beneath furrowed brows while his wife prattled nervously about making preparations for the August evacuation to the summer house in Brittany. The judge dragged his eyes momentarily away from Enzo to his wife and said, ominously, ‘You may very well be on your own this year, Jacqui.’

Finally, they adjourned to the table, where bamboo mats and chopsticks awaited them. Jasmine tea was served in delicate china cups, and a succession of Chinese dishes was brought out from the kitchen by two waiters. The food was excellent, and Enzo didn’t need a second invitation to eat.

The Garde des Sceaux was well-practised in the art of conversation, asking questions, making observations. She elicited from Enzo his passion for music, and disclosed to him her love of potholing. ‘I’m quite often in your part of the world,’ she said. ‘I once rappelled into the gouffre at Padirac.’ The wine flowed freely, and Enzo began to relax a little. Which was when she caught him off guard. ‘I understand your Scottish daughter is working in Paris at the moment.’

He looked up from his plate and felt the colour rising on his cheeks. ‘Yes.’

‘Translation and interpretation. It’s a job with a future in an expanding Europe. An internship, isn’t it?’

‘I believe so.’

The Minister leaned her elbows on the table. ‘I could get her a better position in one of the ministries.’

‘I’m not sure she’d be very happy about that.’

Marie Aucoin seemed taken aback. ‘Whyever not?’

‘She’s not very well disposed towards her father. I suspect she’d reject out of hand an opportunity connected with me in any way.’

The Minister shrugged. ‘Foolish girl, then.’ And she changed the subject abruptly. ‘So what do you think of the new parliament sitting in Edinburgh?’

‘I think anything that brings decision-making closer to the people is a good thing.’

‘Do you really? Some political observers believe that “the people” are not particularly well-qualified, or informed, to make decisions about anything.’

‘Oh, I forgot,’ Enzo said. ‘You French think that the state should be run by an intellectual élite. From what I understand, it wouldn’t be unusual at any given time for the President, the Prime Minister and half the Cabinet to be graduates of ENA. Énarques. Isn’t that what you call yourselves? And, of course, you send out unelected provincial governors to administer the populace. That is what Préfets do, isn’t it?’

She was unfazed. ‘Interesting view, Monsieur Macleod. But by the same calculation, at any given time at least half of those of us in government are not énarques. But, at least all of us are there on merit.’

By now, the meal had run its course, and Enzo had had enough. Emboldened by wine, his patience frayed by fatigue, he crumpled his napkin and dropped it on the table. ‘Minister,’ he said. ‘Why am I here?’

Marie Aucoin’s eye flickered almost imperceptibly in her husband’s direction and he immediately stood up. ‘Jacqueline,’ the banker said. ‘I found those prints I promised you. Why don’t you come through to the study and tell me which of them you’d like? We can join the others for coffee and digestifs in the séjour later.’

‘Of course.’ Madame Lelong rose from the table with a fixed smile.

‘Excuse us,’ Christian Aucoin said.

When they had gone, Enzo found himself facing Marie Aucoin and Juge Lelong across the table, and he suddenly felt very much on his own.

‘We have the DNA results back from the arms you found in Toulouse,’ the Minister said. ‘Confirming that they are, indeed, part of the remains of Jacques Gaillard.’

‘I never doubted it.’

‘We’re still waiting for the pathologist’s report.’

‘Which probably won’t tell you much,’ Enzo said. ‘Except that those chips and grooves on the bones of the forearms were probably made when he raised his arms to protect himself from the blades of his attackers.’

‘Plural?’ said the judge. ‘What makes you think there were more than one?’

‘There was a lot of damage to the radius and the ulna on both arms. Either the attack was very frenzied, or there were more than one attacker.’

Marie Aucoin looked thoughtful. ‘Why do you think the killer — or killers — left clues leading to the next body part?’

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ said the judge, before Enzo could answer. He was clearly intrigued. ‘It’s almost as if finding one body part will lead inexorably to the others.’

‘If you can decode the clues,’ Enzo said. ‘But it’s clear that the pieces we have recovered so far were never meant to be found.’

‘Which somewhat undermines your theory, Jean-Pierre,’ the Minister said. She glanced at the judge and then folded her hands on the table in front of her, fixing Enzo with dark blue eyes. But there was very little warmth in them now. ‘Monsieur Macleod, I want to thank you on behalf of both the government and the police for the work you have done in bringing Jacques Gaillard’s murder to light. You have performed a very valuable service, and I will be making our gratitude public at a press conference tomorrow.’ She paused.

‘But?’

‘Now that the circumstances of his killing have been brought to our attention, I have appointed a special investigation team to look into it. The team will be led by Juge Lelong.’ Enzo glanced at the judge, who was watching him impassively. ‘Which means that your help will no longer be required.’

‘In fact,’ said Juge Lelong, ‘were you to involve yourself in further investigations, it might be regarded as interference in official police business.’

‘Although, of course, given your familiarity with the background of the case, any further insights that you might have would be gratefully received,’ Marie Aucoin added quickly, and she smiled sweetly across the table. A long silence hung in the soft light of the red lantern. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

The judge stressed each individual word. ‘Do you have any further insights?’

‘No.’ Enzo realised that Raffin’s words of warning had, indeed, been prophetic.

‘Good.’ Marie Aucoin sat back smiling, business accomplished. She lifted a little bell from the table and tinkled it. ‘Time for coffee, I think.’