Murder in Belleville

Monday Noon

AIMéU WALKED FROM PHILIPPE’S office all the way to her own. She kept alert down the narrow streets. No one followed her. The biting wind had risen from the Seine. She pulled her coat closer.

The scent of flowering lily of the valley reached her from a walled garden nearby. For a moment her mother’s blurred face floated before her. All her mother’s clothes had been scented with lily of the valley, the room full of it long after she’d left. And then the image was gone. The gusty wind snatched the scent and her memories away.

Aimée’s cell phone rang in her pocket.

“Allô,” she said, her frozen fingers fumbling with the keypad.

“Everything’s my fault, Aimée,” Anaïs sobbed.

“What do you mean?” Aimée was surprised. “I thought you were in the hospital?”

“Hostage situation … Simone,” Anaïs’s voice faded, then came back, “École maternelle … in the Twentieth Arrondisse-ment. I need you.”

Aimée’s blood ran cold.

“Rue l’Ermitage, up from Place du Guignier.” Anaïs’s voice broke. Aimée heard the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of a semiautomatic, people screaming, and then the shattering of glass.

“Anaïs!” she shouted.

Her phone went dead.

AIMÉE RUSHED to the tree-lined nineteenth-century street, buzzing with La Police and the elite paramilitary group RAID.

To her left the école matemelle, a building with iron-railed balconies bordered the north side. The adjoining ecole elementaire held the entrance for both schools on rue Olivier Metra.

Nervous and scared, she wondered where Anaïs and Simone were. What could she do?

An old man, his winter coat thrown over a bathrobe, clutched a parrot cage and complained loudly at being evacuated from his apartment across the street. Paris in April still hadn’t shaken off winter’s cold cloak, she thought. Frost dusted the cobblestones and wedged in the cracks of the pavement.

“I must speak with the commissaire in charge,” she began.

The businesslike plainclothes flic listened to Aimée’s story, checking her PI credentials. He spoke into a microphone clipped to his collar, then finally directed her past a police barricade. Somewhat relieved, she ran ahead. She knew she had to persuade the officer in charge that she could help.

Inside a Belle-Epoque building housing the temporary com-missariat command post, she waited for the inspector in charge. Glad of her wool sweater and parka, she rubbed her hands together in the mirrored building’s foyer, the hallway echoing with the tramp of boots and radio static.

She felt another presence and looked up. From the spiraling marble staircase expanding like a nautilus shell, Yves stared down at her.

For a moment the world stopped; scurrying police and walkie-talkie static around her ceased. “What’s going on here?” she said.

He edged down the stairs toward her.

“Who wants to know?” said a stocky blue-uniformed policeman beside her.

She turned and showed the flic her PI license, glancing at the badge with his rank. “Sergeant, my friend Anaïs de Froissart called me from inside the école matemelle. Is she in danger?”

“You could say that,” he said. “Attends, I’ll get the inspector.” He walked over to a knot of uniformed men in deep discussion.

Yves’s deep brown eyes met hers.

“Some things never change,” he said, coming down the stairs and standing beside her.

“I thought you were in Marseilles,” she said returning his look, taking in the flak jacket over his bullet-proof vest. “You’re still undercover, aren’t you?”

“And you’re still smack in the middle of things,” he said.

She felt her face grow warm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Certain things are better left unsaid.”

“Like your wife?” she said. Right away, she wished she’d bitten her tongue.

“My ex-wife?” he said, his eyes narrowed. “Did you think—?”

“Policy must have changed,” she interrupted, “if they let you come front-line on hostage situations.”

“I pulled up before the area got cordoned off,” Yves said. “To meet Martine when she dropped Simone at school. We planned to interview Hamid.”

She didn’t believe him for a minute. A brown curl escaped from his jacket collar. She’d almost forgotten the curving nape of his neck.

“Why was Anaïs taken hostage?” Aimée asked.

“Everything’s unclear,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He shook his head. “The sans’papiers were removed from the church, and Ha-mid’s been taken to the hospital. I’m going to meet Martine there.”

The smell of burnt grease hovered near the marble staircase. Someone had forgotten to shut off their stove. Aimée struggled to look away from Yves’s face. A man motioned to Yves from the barricades. “There’s my colleague. I’ve got to go,” he said. “But I know where to find you.”

“Don’t count on it, Yves,” she said turning away, now determined. “If you can’t speak the truth, forget me.”

“The less you know the better,” Yves said. “The other part doesn’t work.”

“What doesn’t work?”

“Trying to forget you.”

Why did everyone have secrets and keep her in the dark?

“I forgot you until you popped up in my flat,” she said, unable to meet his gaze.

“Liar.”

But she’d turned and strode toward a knot of men in the foyer. By the time she looked back, he was gone.

Technicians and RAID teams speaking into headsets hurried past her. The hell with Yves. She had to get back on track, talk to the head honcho to find out how to help Anaïs.

“Who’s the commissaire in charge here?” she asked.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, I understand a hostage has been in contact with you,” the clipped voice of Hubert Sardou, a former commissaire in the Twentieth Arrondissement, came from behind her. His long, sallow face hovered near hers.

“Please elaborate as to whom and when,” he said.

She recalled Sardou, once a colleague of her father’s, from his three-inch platform shoe, which fooled few as to his clubfoot. But now he wore the distinctive badge identifying him as part of DST, the French Internal Security Service. “Hubert feels he must prove he’s the equal to the rest of us,” her father had said. “Every day.”

“Oui, Monsieur Sardou,” she said. “Anaïs called me on my cell phone twenty minutes ago. She wants my help. Why has she been taken hostage?”

“Seems the AFL wants a bigger audience,” he said.

In stunned disbelief she stepped back. “But the AFL policy is peaceful.” Aimée wondered if Hamid’s power had been usurped by factions. Or if the “ST196” photos played into this.

“We believe an AFL member’s holding everyone in the school hostage, but so far,” Sardou shrugged, “there’s been no contact.” Sardou crinkled his face, whether in distaste or indigestion, she found it hard to tell. “We’ll take it from here. Your cell phone, please,” he said, snapping his fingers at her.

“Won’t help much,” she said, keeping her expression neutral with effort and handing it to him. “Dead battery.”

Sardou studied her phone, raised it in the air, and barked, “Alors, anyone have a battery for this phone?”

Aimée could have sworn everyone in the foyer reached in their pocket to check. The French obsession with phone communication produced a matching battery. Sardou inserted it, beckoning to a man with NEGOTIATOR in large black letters on a flak jacket. An officer copied down the number while another hooked a wire from the cell phone into a tape recorder. Several pairs of headphones were connected, and the commissaire donned one quickly.

“Call Anaïs, tell her—and this is very important—to identify which room they’re being held hostage in. An experienced negotiator wants to speak with him.” He hit Call Return and nodded to Aimée as he handed her the phone.

She heard the phone ring several times before it was answered.

“Anaïs?”

No answer, only heavy breathing.

“This is Aimée, Anaïs’s friend. Who is this?”

Sardou nodded, then put his finger to his lips.

A sob erupted, sniffles, then a child’s voice lisped. “I made pee-pee … on my new dress. Maman will be mad at me!”

Surprised looks painted the commissaire and police officers’faces. The negotiator put his hand forward but Aimée shook her head.

“Simone?” Aimée asked. “I’m Aimée, remember me? I’m your maman’s friend.”

Loud crying answered her. Obviously Simone knew her mother was in the building. Had Anaïs come to see Simone after being released from the clinic?

Aimée kept her voice even. “Simone, that’s happened to me before too. I’ll clean your dress. Where are you?”

“Can you?” The sobbing ceased.

“Of course. I’ll do a good job,” Aimée said. “No one will know the difference. Where’s your maman?”

“The clown took her.”

“A clown?”

“He took her away.”

“Took her where?”

Aimée looked to Sardou, who signaled to keep talking. Outside the window, apart from the sun-dappled trees, no sign of life showed behind the school windows. Near Aimée in the foyer, a line of marksmen stood, checking their rifles and telescopic sights.

“Maman gave me her phone. The clown got angry with her and pushed her. She whispered it was part of the game, we were playing hide-and-seek with him, so we should all run away.”

Aimée wondered what had happened to Anaïs.

The commissaire’s face tightened. A worried expression appeared in the negotiator’s eyes.

“Where are you and the other children now?” Aimée asked.

“I’m in the closet under the stairs. Everyone else ran away with my teachers,” she said. “The clown looked funny. Not like a real clown.”

“What do you mean, Simone?”

“He didn’t have balloons,” she said. “Only fat sticks that you can light like candles. He said they’ll go bouml”

Dynamite.

Aimée froze. How would they defuse a terrorist carrying dynamite in a preschool full of hiding children?

Sardou barked an order to the waiting marksmen, who straightened to attention. Blue lights flashed outside in the narrow street as a truck screeched to a halt. That meant only one thing in Paris these days: the bomb squad. Aimée forced herself to keep her voice steady.

“Simone, you’re being such a big girl! Can you remember if your maman said something? Maybe something the clown wanted?”

“He wants Bernard, the bad man. If Bernard comes we get a big glacé.”

She heard sniffling. “You’re so brave, Simone. I’ll get you an ice cream too. Did you see where they went?”

She heard rustling. Aimée figured Simone was shaking or nodding her head. “Can you tell me yes or no, Simone?”

“Up the stairs. I thought he was going to hurt her, but she said it was part of the game. I must remember one thing.”

“One thing?”

“It’s secret.”

Aimée’s knuckles were white from gripping the phone so hard. Her hands trembled. “Of course! But I can keep a secret, I’m your tante Martine’s best friend—you can tell secrets to best friends.”

“How do I know you can keep a secret, Aimée?” lisped Simone.

Aimée felt the air stir as the row of marksmen single-filed past her in their stiff military boots toward the roof. Another RAID team assembled near her. For a moment Aimée wanted to shout, “Do what your maman told you—get out, run like hell!” But she needed little Simone to guide them.

“Martine and I used to make pinkie promises. Can we pretend to do that over the phone?”

The phone tinkled, then scraped. “D’accord, Aimée. Pinkie promise.”

Aimée paused. Sardou nodded to her and motioned to keep talking. “Good, Simone. What was the secret?”

“That’s between you and her.”

“What do you mean, Simone?” Exasperated, Aimée managed to keep her voice level.

“Maman said, ‘Aimée knows how to do this, she’ll get us out.’”

“Do what, Simone?”

No answer.

“Allô? Simone?”

Simone must have set the phone down, because Aimée heard quick little footsteps, as if running, fainter and fainter. With difficulty she unclenched her fingers and handed her phone to Sardou.

Aimée watched Sardou, his head down deep in conversation with a blond-haired man.

“Pardon, Monsieur, may I talk with you?” she said.

Sardou looked up briefly, his eyes small and squinty in annoyance or anger.

“Simone is Ministre de Froissart’s daughter,” she said, “and Anaïs is his wife. Does he know?”

“That’s just been brought to my attention,” he snapped. “The minister’s en route.”

“Please, I have to go inside the école matemellel”

He seemed to ponder briefly, then shook his head. “Trained personnel will be more effective.”

“Anaïs wants me. Simone’s message …”

“Impossible,” he interrupted. “Only the bomb squad and the special mine sweeping unit can enter the target area.”

“I don’t like going over your head, Monsieur Sardou, but who’s your superior?”

“That would be me, Mademoiselle,” the blond man said, straightening up.

Startled, Aimée stared into the face of Guittard, the man who’d ushered Philippe back into the meeting. He wore a navy blue pinstriped suit and was holding a pair of padded overalls stenciled with BOMBE BRIGADE in large letters.

“Minister Guittard of the Ministry of the Interior,” he said. His hard green eyes crinkled in amusement. “I neglected to catch your name, Mademoiselle.”

“Leduc, Aimée Leduc. But we’ve met twice, Monsieur le Mmistre,” she said. “A week ago in Philippe de Froissart’s kitchen.” Already she liked him less than before, and that wasn’t much. It had nothing to do with his perfectly brushed hair or onceover look of appraisal.

“But of course,” he said, perplexed for an instant. “Aren’t you an actress?”

“Does this hostage situation involve the project you were meeting about in de Froissart’s office?”

“Aaah,” he nodded, recognizing her. “That was you. I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s Philippe’s daughter in there. Does it have something to do with—”

“It’s the AFL, Mademoiselle.”

Guittard turned, stepping into overalls.

“Minister, there’s something only I can do.”

“Now what would that be?” He bent to snap on the overalls and cocked his head toward her. As if, she thought, encouraging whispered confidences. She imagined he spent most of his weekends in a country house.

“You heard what Simone said—”

“That you ‘know how to do this’?” he interrupted. “Enlighten me, please, as to what ‘this’is.”

“Believe me, if I could, I would,” she said. “For the life of me, I don’t know.” Her eyes lit up. “If the school has a computer, I can get in the system.”

Sardou shook his head. “The school’s philosophy dictates only wooden materials. No plastic, nothing machine made. An elite preschool, where the pampered ones are allowed to get dirty and elemental. They go home to the Barbies and computers.”

Minister Guittard rolled his French cuffs under the flak jacket. “Beside computers, what else can you do?” His amused expression had returned. An aide approached with a cell phone and handed it to him.

She thought back to the taxi ride with Anaïs, and Sylvie’s Fat’ma. The Fat’ma had turned into a dead end. But Aimée had discovered the “ST196” photos and Youssefa’s statement about the humanitarian mission being a sham. And she remembered Anaïs’s words in the clinic. “You’ve got to find out why … nothing will be over until then,” and her mention of the General.

“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?” Guittard’s eyes bored into hers.

Aimée started guiltily. “Are you sure the school office has no computer?”

He turned to Sardou. “Find out.”

But maybe Anaïs had meant something totally different.

“Stay here. If you get any more ideas, tell the commissaire.” He trundled a headset over his head.

“Where are you going, Minister Guittard?” she said.

“To tempt the fox,” he said.

“How can you do that?”

The whirring of helicopter blades came from outside the foyer. Fine sprays of dust rose; heavy aviation fuel exhaust blew in from the street.

“With the golden goose,” he said.

The flash of photographer’s bulbs caught Guittard near the helicopter, and she figured he’d suited up specifically for the photo op. The man bundled out of the helicopter looked no more goose-like than golden. Wiry, tall, and with dark pouches under his eyes, he appeared more like an advertisement for the perfect Club Med candidate in need of serious vacances. His crumpled suit hung off his body, and the wind from the helicopter blades whipped his gray hair across his face. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“Who’s that?” someone asked.

“Bernard, the bad man, would be my guess,” she said.

Behind her an earnest Sardou spoke into his headset. He motioned her down the hall as the Guittard entourage mounted the stairway. Aimée figured they were going to freeze her out of the action. She had to remedy that.

A RAID worker in a Kevlar suit escorted her to a deserted part of the landing, around the corner, and away from the crowd. She stumbled on purpose and grabbed his vest for balance, pocketing his ID badge.

“Ça va?” he asked, not unkindly.

“Merci, I’m so clumsy,” she said.

He left her there. For the first time she realized that she had no bomb protection, not to mention being the only woman.

Shunted out of the way, Aimée started planning her own route into the school building. Nobody would help her; she’d have to figure one out herself.