I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Eighteen

It was one of those sticky sultry Paris days that seemed always to announce the imminent arrival of autumn. Low cloud bubbled across the sky and everyone carried an umbrella. If it felt like it was going to rain, then it probably would.

Braque was slick already with perspiration. She wore a T-shirt out over her jeans, black so that the dark patches under her arms would not show. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, and she brushed it back and out of her eyes as she hurried up the stairs to the offices of the brigade criminelle, known more popularly as La Crim’.

Capitaine Georges Faubert was in a foul mood. He was always in a foul mood. Ever since he had been banned from smoking in his own office. He resented the three or four cigarette breaks he allowed himself daily, standing outside in the rear courtyard in all weathers with other ranks. The camaraderie of the smoker had passed him by. It would have reduced him in importance somehow, and so he always stood aloof and alone.

Braque smelled fresh smoke on his breath when she entered his office, so perhaps, she hoped, he might not be too ill-disposed towards her tardy arrival. She was wrong.

He had some kind of psoriasis on his scalp and forehead, and when he scratched it to relieve the itching, which he did often and vigorously, he shed a snowstorm of skin on to his desk. It seemed that he was particularly troubled by it this morning, and so on a scale of one to ten his bad temper ranked around eight.

‘You’re late, Braque!’

‘Yes, boss.’ She really didn’t want to go into explanations, but mere acknowledgment seemed insufficient. ‘My friend who normally takes the girls to school called off at the last minute, and I had to take them myself. The thing is...’

He cut her off. ‘No one’s interested in the details of your domestic dramas, Lieutenant. The only thing that matters here is whether or not you’re up to the job. And there are several voices of concern being raised on that count.’

Braque felt her face redden.

‘If you’d got here when you were supposed to, then you wouldn’t have put yourself under pressure to get out to the airport on time.’ He rubbed his face with the flats of his hands, and more skin flaked off to join the drifts of it on his desk. His eyes were red-rimmed and crusted with conjunctivitis when he turned them back on her.

Braque was at a loss. ‘Where am I going?’

‘A flight to London, with onward connections to Glasgow and then Stornoway. You know where that is?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Well, you’d better get yourself some clarity. Stornoway is the main town on the Isle of Lewis, where the Macfarlane woman comes from. In fact, the only town.’

‘Yes, I knew that, sir. Just not where it is, exactly.’

Faubert shook the skin off a map lying on his desk, unfolding it to turn towards her. He stabbed a nicotine-stained finger at a long archipelago off the north-west coast of the British Isles. ‘Some God-forsaken place on the edge of the bloody world.’

‘And I would be going there why?’

He looked at her with irritation. ‘Why there, or why you?’

‘Well... both.’

‘It’s your case, Braque. And you’ve made bugger-all progress on it. It’s reasonable to expect that Macfarlane will bury her husband’s remains within the next day or two. There will, no doubt, be a very public funeral. Always are on occasions like these. It’s also reasonable to assume that whoever killed the man knew him. So there’s every chance he’ll be at the funeral.’

‘What about Irina?’

‘What about her?’

‘Who’ll be keeping an eye on her funeral?’

‘Lieutenant Cabrel.’

Braque said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it very likely that Georgy Vetrov would turn up at either.’

‘Well, no.’ Faubert stood up. ‘Particularly since you seem to have lost him.’

Braque bristled at the implication that she was somehow responsible for mislaying their prime suspect.

‘If he has made it back to Russia, then the likelihood is that we’ll never see him again.’ He paused. ‘But here’s the thing...’ He picked up a manila folder and held it out to her. ‘Forensic examination of Vetrov’s computer.’ She opened it as he spoke. ‘Deleted emails recovered from the hard drive.’

She ran her eye down the list, then stopped suddenly. Three from the bottom was an email from ‘well wisher’. It was titled ‘Something you should know’. Almost the same email that was sent to Niamh Macfarlane. ‘Irina is having an affair with a Scottish textile supplier called Ruairidh Macfarlane. Why don’t you ask her about it?’

She looked up to find Faubert watching her intently. ‘Someone sent this email, Braque, intent on mischief, or malice, or both. Now perhaps it did provoke Vetrov into planting that car bomb and killing them both. But we have absolutely no proof of that. All we know is that he has vanished. He didn’t send this email to himself. Nor, it would be safe to assume, the one to Madame Macfarlane. So there is someone else out there who can most definitely help us with our enquiries.’ He opened another folder and lifted out an electronic airline ticket, before dropping it on the desk in front of her. ‘Which is why I want you to be at the funeral.’

Clarity dawned suddenly on Braque. ‘That’s why the remains were released so early.’

‘The only reason. We had to rush through bone and tissue matching. Damage was so extreme that DNA comparison wasn’t always possible. If we’d waited, the whole thing would have gone cold. Sometimes, a simple blood test was good enough to tell us which parts were male, which parts female. The rest, the slush, whatever, got washed down the pathologist’s drain, disposed of along with the bits that couldn’t be matched.’

‘Jesus, boss!’ Braque was shocked.

Faubert waved her shock aside with a dismissive hand. ‘This is a very high-profile case, Lieutenant. People upstairs want a high-profile resolution. And fast.’ He drew a deep breath, as if inhaling smoke, and looked at her critically. ‘And why you?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m asking myself the same question. But you are the only detective in the department with the level of English required for an assignment like this. So you get to go to sunny Stornoway.’

He rounded his desk, feeling in his jacket pocket for his cigarette packet. Evidently dealing with Braque had brought on nicotine cravings.

‘We’ve already been in touch with Police Scotland. They’ve been briefed, and a local officer on the island will be allocated to look after you. Find out everything you can about the couple. Friends, relationships. Enemies.’

‘She’ll recognize me.’

‘Well why shouldn’t she? You’re not going there undercover. You’ll need to talk to her, too.’ He brushed a hand across each shoulder and clouds of fine skin filled the air. Then he looked at his watch. ‘You’d better hurry. You’ve got less than three hours to get yourself out to Charles de Gaulle.’

Braque watched her fingers shaking as they punched out Madeleine’s number on her phone. The chatter of keyboards and voices filled the detectives’ office, along with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Braque’s panic shut it all out.

Madeleine’s voice sounded feeble. ‘Oui, allô? The reason she had been unable to pick up the twins that morning was what she claimed to be the onset of la grippe, although Braque was sure it was more likely to be a simple cold than the flu. Madeleine had a habit of dramatizing things.

‘Maddie, I’ve got a bit of an emergency. They’re sending me to Scotland for a few days and I need someone to take the girls.’

‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking.’ Madeleine’s tone suggested that she wasn’t being entirely flippant.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, my poor darling. How are you?’

‘Terrible, now that you ask.’

Even before she pressed the question, Braque knew what the answer would be. ‘I don’t suppose...’

‘Sylvie, it’s out of the question. I can’t even take care of Patsy, never mind the twins. Yves is having to pick her up from school. It’s going to be a few days before I’m up and about again.’

Braque exhausted all other possibilities before resorting, finally, to calling her ex. It simply wasn’t an option going back to Faubert to tell him she couldn’t go to Scotland because she was unable to find a babysitter.

Gilles answered the phone with a sigh, caller ID betraying her identity in advance. ‘What is it now, Sylvie?’

‘Gilles, I need a huge favour.’

‘You always do.’

She ignored his tone. ‘I’m being sent abroad on a case. Just for a few days. But I can’t get anyone to take the girls.’

There was a long silence.

‘Gilles?’

‘You know, we should never have had children. You’re not fit to be a mother.’

‘We, Gilles. That’s the salient word here. We had children. It’s a shared responsibility.’

‘Except that you have custody and I only get to see them when it suits you.’

‘I have to work!’

‘Bloody hell, so do I! The difference is that I’ve got a partner, speaking of shared responsibility. You don’t. And you can’t cope, can you? It’s not even about money. It’s the job, the hours you work. The same things that made you a bad partner making you a bad mother.’

‘I love my girls. And they love me.’

‘They do. But they never get to see you. You’re never there. You’re always letting them down.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Not fair on them, no. Listen, girl, you were the one that fought for custody. You were the one that didn’t want them spending time with Lise. Scared that she was going to steal them away from you. Well, if you can’t live up to your obligations as a mother, then we really are going to have to revisit the whole question of custody.’

Braque contained her emotions with difficulty. ‘Are you going to take them or not?’

‘Of course I’ll bloody take them! But when you get back, Sylvie, we’re going to have to talk. This cannot go on. The girls need a mother, not a babysitter. A home, not a crêche.’