Murder in Belleville

Late Sunday Night

AIMÉE COULDN’T SLEEP.

From outside her bedroom window came the low hum of a barge, its blue running lights blinking on the Seine. Reflected in her bedroom’s mirrored trench doors, she saw the dark rooftops of the Marais across the river.

Her laptop screen, perched on her legs as she sat propped up in bed, held a jumble of numbers. Sylvie/Eugénie’s Crédit Lyon-nais balance.

She’d been trying to make sense of the withdrawals and deposits, but her eyes blurred.

The courtyard, overlooked by her other window, held the pear tree’s budding leaves and bird’s nests. Miles Davis curled in the bed beside her, growling in his sleep. His white fur chest rose and fell in the midst of an intense dream.

With her other laptop on top of the large medical texts she used as a night table, she’d been online for hours searching for links to the Crédit Lyonnais account. She’d entered the account number, then checked it for links corresponding to other bank accounts, a tedious job. So far she’d tried fifteen banks and found no connections.

The money had to come from somewhere, and she knew Sylvie banked on-line. The Minitel had paved the way for that. She had narrowed her list of banks to those who had client online capabilities. But since all French banks were regulated by the Banque de France, she didn’t see how Sylvie could launder or obtain money without its knowledge.

Dejected, she had only two more numbers to check when a routine thousand-franc deposit responded to her link query. Immediately a series of numbers appeared on her screen.

Of course, this had to be interest paid into the account!

She sat up excitedly, pushing the goose-down duvet to the side. Following the number source to a transit account, she found a thread to the Bank of Commerce Ltd., headquartered in the Channel Islands. A convenient offshore account destination, Aimée thought. Nice and anonymous. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

She dug deeper and accessed the Channel Island account. Three large cash infusions had swelled the Bank of Commerce balance since last September. But like the ebb and flow of the tide, as a significant amount was withdrawn another would replace the void. However, the current balance of nearly five million U.S. dollars—or roughly three million pounds sterling—stood out. Aimée gasped. No wonder Sylvie could afford Biwa pearls and to throw away Prada shoes.

Surprise mingled with a feeling of being in over her head. Something smelled very dirty. She scrolled back, checking the deposit amounts over the past twelve months. Several large deposits had brought the amount, at one time, to twenty million dollars.

The phone rang, startling her. Miles Davis snorted awake.

“Aimée,” René said, his voice tight with excitement. “Hold on to your laptop.”

“Did you find out what I just did?” she asked.

“Sylvie was born in Oran,” he said. “That’s why the identification from the Fichier in Nantes took time.”

Surprised, Aimée hit Save on both her laptops, then stroked Miles Davis.

“Bravo, René,” she said. “Go on.”

“Get this,” he said. “Her real name is Eugénie Sylvie Cardet, her family left Algeria at the exodus. She ended up at the Sor-bonne, in one of Philippe’s classes.”

“I’m impressed, René,” she said. “Did you crack the Fichier code?”

“A few hours ago,” he said. “They’re a storehouse of information. Seems she joined the Socialist Party then the Arab Student League, which according to my Arab friends on the net later became the AFL.”

Aimée grabbed her notebook. She filled the gridblock sheet diagramming Sylvie’s connections to Hamid and Philippe.

“So there’s her connection to Hamid,” she said. “She’s known him since the late sixties. Her address is 78 Place du Guignier, right?”

“Fast work, Aimée,” René said. “But the most interesting item was her father,” René said. “Leon Cardet, a caporal with the OAS.”

Miles Davis nestled in the crook of her arm, his ears perking up at René’s voice. She sat up straighter.

“Attends, René, wasn’t there a Cardet in the coup to oust de Gaulle?”

“One of many attempted coups.” René chuckled. “But you’re right, Cardet got caught. Very nasty mec.”

“So if Sylvie had a father like that and joined Hamid, then became Philippe’s mistress, she could have been rebelling against her father and what he stood for,” she grew excited. “Sylvie could have been helping the underdog!”

“Exactly,” René said. “Seems Cardet and his OAS cronies liked the Canal Saint Martin for body dump-offs in the sixties.”

Aimée shivered. She pictured the narrow tree-lined canal, the metal locks, and eddying scum on the surface.

“There’re some problems with that theory, RenéY’ she said. “Gaston told me that warring Algerian factions dumped bodies there. Those helping the French or not contributing to the FLN got a watery grave.”

A pause on the other end.

“Cardet could have played both sides,” René said slowly. “Or he used the cover to dispose of OAS targets, attributing them to the FLN.”

“Good point,” she said. “You could be right.” She remembered the grainy photos of Cardet at his trial, a sneering arrogance even on sentencing. “But if Sylvie was helping Hamid, why does she have millions in an offshore account?”

René whistled when she told him what she’d found in the Channel Island account. Miles Davis yelped at the sound.

“Wait a minute,” René said. “What if Sylvie received funds in an offshore account in the Channel Islands and passed it to the AFL?”

“Hold on,” Aimée paused. “The AFL connection isn’t clear,” she said, racking her brains to think of what was eluding her. “The AFL seems more of a grassroots, shoestring operation. They address issues of all immigrants, not just those from Algeria.”

She stepped into her black leather pants, “René, let me try something. I’ll call you back.”

“Bien,” René said. “I’ll dig for more links from the Fichier.”

After pulling on her oversize wool sweater, she carried the laptops, individually, to her home office. Her desktop computer held more memory and within thirty minutes, she had all three computers working on projects. Both laptops steadily ran software encryption programs to access the link bank that paid into Sylvie’s offshore account.

Aimée sat at the large computer, delving into the AFL’s financial source. The only account she located was an AFL business account in the Crédit Agricole for less than a quarter of a million.