Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday Evening

AIMÉE RUBBED HER face against the glass, gnawing to make the tiny slit in the plastic bigger, sucking for air. Air, she needed more air. With her throat dry and her wrists bound, she sawed harder against a sharp sliver of glass, like a knife to her nose. More and more, until the plastic tore open from her nose to her mouth. Gasping for air, she lay facedown in the walkway. Fetid air reeking of garbage, but never so sweet. Her chest heaved. Twisting around, she leaned against the stone wall in the frigid cold. Three minutes later, she had sawed her wrists free and pulled the torn plastic from her face.

Sticky with her own blood, she crawled over the uneven cobbles. Somehow her Vuitton was still there. Her suede leggings were shredded, her coat stained with dirt. She struggled to pull herself up and staggered to the street, looking for help. But the loitering taxi’s door slammed and it pulled away, tires hissing on the wet cobbles.

Merde! All those generous tips. Where was her late-night taxi karma?

At least the taxi had scared him away. A minute later and she would’ve been a goner. But she had to get out of here.

Two long blocks away on rue de Turenne, there was still no taxi in sight. She heard the low whoosh of brakes, water splashing from a puddle at the bus stop. But the lighted Number 96 bus took off. She waved and made herself run after it, pounded on the door. By a miracle the driver stopped.

“I shouldn’t do this,” said the young bus driver, taking a look at her and shaking his head. “Either you’ve escaped from an eighties punk party, or you’re making a getaway.”

“The latter, merci,” she gasped, holding her sleeve to her bloody nose, and fed her ticket in the machine.

At a window seat, her shoulders heaving, she scanned the street. No one. Her hands trembled as she fingered the camel-colored thread caught in her fingernail. The thread from the attacker’s coat. The man who ran in front of Martine’s car.

In her apartment, after a hot, steaming bath, she applied arnica to her wrists and antibiotic cream on the cuts on her face. Prayed she had enough concealer to cover them tomorrow. Then she huddled under the silk duvet, the raw pain dulled with Doliprane.

For a moment it had seemed so close. Pascal’s obsession with a fourteenth-century document. The connection right before her eyes. But that and a ticket got her a bus ride.

The killer had attacked her. That meant she was getting close. Too close for comfort.

Let it simmer, her father always said. Then, step by step, fit the pieces together. But at least she’d found a piece of Pascal’s puzzle.

Tomorrow she’d scout out Becquerel’s connection, find something.

She felt the empty space beside her, the depression in the mattress where Melac’s leg should have been twined with hers. His scent remained on the sheets, on the towels in her bathroom. His half-squeezed toothpaste tube of Fluocaril lay by the sink.

Miles Davis’s wet nose nuzzled her ear. His tail flicked the duvet until he settled in the crook of her arm by the laptop. She had her man, four legs and all.

Did the DST really have info about her mother? She booted up her laptop and hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keys. She chewed her lip. Only one way to find out.

She typed in the website address from the matchbox. A page popped up on the screen: a typewritten copy of an MI6 surveillance report dated five years before. The heading: Sydney/Sidonie Leduc aka Lampa. Subject sighting location—Merjoides Hotel, Istanbul, lobby. Meeting with known arms dealers ___ ___. The names had been blacked out. No photos. Duration of incident: seven minutes. A seven-minute sighting in a hotel lobby.

A five-year-old report and it told her … what? Maybe there was nothing else to tell. The DST set up a website, as Martine had said, and fed old reports to hook her.

The sharp pang of longing hit her. If her mother had been alive five years ago, why hadn’t she ever contacted her?

Just once.