Murder in Clichy

Thursday

AIMÉE HEARD THE HUM of the fax machine. Apprehensive, she stood up to read the fax. Was it René’s captors, with a meeting place?

“Meet me downstairs at the Musée Henner. Dinard.”

Dinard, the jade expert!

Twenty minutes later she stood in front of Musée Henner, a weathered, sand-colored stone museum that displayed the blue, white and red French flag. Rain pelted the cobbles. She doubted if Dinard had had time to research the jade. But he wanted it.

She needed to string him along, glean information from him. His present interest must stem from the RG’s visit.

Aimée entered and saw a wooden staircase mounting to the upper floors of the eighteenth-century townhouse left to the state by the owner, a mediocre German painter. A fresh-faced young woman at the reception met her.

“You’re here to see the curator?”

Aimée nodded, not knowing what else to do, and followed the young woman’s directions to the bowels of the museum. Too bad; she would have liked to see the view from the top.

The sign on the door read CURATOR. She knocked and Dinard’s assistant, Tessier, opened it. He motioned her inside to a room with a computer on a desk next to piles of papers. Oversized art books filled the bookshelves; a large oval window overlooked the back courtyard

She stayed by the door, prepared to back out. “Where’s Dinard?”

“Monsieur Dinard asked me to collect the jade pieces,” he informed her, his forehead beaded with perspiration.

She played for time. “Why the fax, and the mystery?”

“He’s had to leave for the hospital for a hypertension screening.”

“No offense, but I’d rather give him the pieces myself,” she said. “My understanding is that he’s investigating their origin and provenance.”

She noted the perspiration on his brow and how he kept smoothing back his brown hair. A nervous habit she remembered from their previous brief meeting at Dinard’s office.

“They’re holding something over you, aren’t they?” Aimée asked.

A flash of anger lit his eyes and she knew. That’s what the RG did. Intimidation, threats of blackmail, wiretaps. Sickening. Regnier was probably overseeing the campaign.

“Look, you’re not my business,” she said. “All I want to know about is the jade.”

“They know about you,” he said, his anger replaced by a cunning look.

“Pleyet and the RG? Tell me something new.”

The phone rang. Was this a signal?

“I have to leave,” he said to her. “I don’t have much time. To do the research properly we need the jade pieces.”

“Like I said, I prefer to give them to Professor Dinard myself. When can I meet him?”

“In Dinard’s position, he can’t be seen dealing with you.”

“So that’s why you wanted to meet here?”

He nodded, turning toward the window. The parquet floor creaked as he shifted his stance.

Aimée said, “I have a question. Since the pieces have such a high value and the art world is so small, Professor Dinard must know the identity of the last owner.”

“We work in a museum.”

“But you deal with collectors, n’est-ce pas? You would know those with jade collections.”

“I thought you wanted help, Mademoiselle.”

But not the help he wanted to give her. “Who’s interested in the jade?” she asked.

“Do you have it with you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re a jade expert. You’re just full of hot air and questions.”

From his expression, she’d struck a nerve. He froze.

There was a pause. She heard a clock ticking, saw the shadows in the courtyard. Felt the chill in the room which had no working heater.

“I assist and help curate exhibitions,” Tessier said, his voice lowered. His eyes darted around the room. “But you’re wrong. The study of jade is my passion.”

Unease filled her. “Did Dinard mention the jade to you the other day after I left?”

Tessier shook his head.

“Or his conversation with the RG?”

“I’m not privy to Professor Dinard’s conversations.”

Shadows lengthened from the trees casting a dim light in the room. Tessier wiped his brow.

“Tessier, you’re wasting my time,” she said, heading for the door.

“Wait.” He took a deep breath. “Dinard’s on the way out,” he said. “Museum politics. They offered me his post, but only if I perform like a seal.” He wiped his brow. “My life’s devoted to art. Why should my education and expertise be wasted?”

“I had the collection, then it was stolen. But I still have this.” She held up the jade disk.

Tessier’s eyes widened. He took a magnifying glass from the desk. “May I examine this, please?”

“Tell me about the jade,” she said. “Then I won’t bother you. Tell them anything you want. I’ll leave you in peace.”

His eyes shone. “The first Emperor of China waged war for some jade beads. We call them disks. They symbolize the sky and the earth, hence the round shape. Jade’s more than a stone, it’s an integral part of an ancient system of worship, essential in the ritual propitiation of the gods and in the performance of homage. There’s a cultural parallel with our discipline of philosophy; it had both a political meaning and a practical function.”

He studied the disk, then shrugged. “But I don’t know if this small disk decorated jade astrological figures or belonged to another, older piece,” Tessier said. “The original disks were small. And sacred. It’s so hard to tell.”

“You’re saying these disks could be older than the zodiac animals they were attached to like halos.”

“I’m speculating,” he said. “The original meaning of the Chinese word for “ritual” was “to serve the gods with jade.”

Tessier pulled a small book from his pocket and translated from Chinese:

Shamans, represented by the earliest Chinese character (wu), used tools to draw circles superimposed at right angles. From this we may deduce that shamans monopolized the technology for making circular bi disks or beads, and thus had the exclusive power to present sacrifices to the gods and ancestral spirits. The round shape of the bi is said to derive from the circular path that the sun follows in the sky. According to accounts from 283 B.C. we know an unblemished bi disk was not only worth the price of several cities but that a king would ceremoniously feast for many days upon receiving the disk.

Aimée gasped. Was this disk such a rare ancient ritual object?

She pulled out the creased page from the auction catalogue and looked closer at the photo illustration. She hadn’t been able to understand why a Vietnamese emperor would have entrusted the jade figures to the Cao Dai for safekeeping. She’d assumed the emperor would only have Buddhist objects. But how clever it would have been to disguise the ancient disks by using them as part of later figurines—using one treasure to mask a much more valuable one.

Footsteps on the creaking wood came from the hallway.

“You still haven’t explained why Dinard’s being so secretive,” she said. “Why did the RG visit him?”

“They’re not CNN, they don’t broadcast continuous updates,” he said. “I don’t know.”

The footsteps stopped. Fear shone in his eyes and he put a finger to his lips. What was he afraid of?

She went to the peephole in the massive door and peered out. All she could see in the dim hall was the spherical body of a dark suited man.

“He’s shadowed me from the museum,” he said.

“Is he from the RG?”

“Who knows?”

If she left now she’d be recognized. It would be better to have Tessier owe her. Or think he did.

She opened the oval window and set a chair under it. “You’ve seen this disk, now find out who the jade belonged to, Tessier, and who would want to steal it,” she said. “Otherwise, your new job’s in jeopardy. Call me from a public phone, later.”

She swung her leg over the windowsill and climbed outside into the chill air.

AIMÉE PUNCHED in Leduc Detective’s number on her cell phone and listened for messages. One. The reception wavered and cut out as she passed the high voltage lines by the railway.

“I thought we might have a late lunch.”

Guy? Had he reconsidered and forgiven her? But his voice sounded different.

“Place des Ternes. I’m in the bistro across from Villa Nouvelle.” She recognized him now. It was de Lussigny, from the Olf meeting. “I know you were going to call me, but I hoped you could fit it in today. Forgive me for not confirming with you beforehand.”

Merde! She should have checked her messages earlier. Olf was a big account. She looked at her Tintin watch, and called the bistro.

“Please tell Monsieur de Lussigny that I’m en route for our lunch appointment,” she said.

Aimée hailed a taxi and jumped in behind the driver. “Count on a nice tip if I make my lunch date.”

He grinned, ground into first gear, and took off.

She tried René’s number. Again no answer. Why hadn’t the kidnappers called back? What was happening to René? If only she knew what to do. But what else could she do but wait?

In the taxi mirror, she slicked down her spiky hair with gel, reapplied mascara, and touched up her traffic-stopping red lipstick. She pinched her cheeks for color, dotted them with lipstick, and rubbed it in. Thank God she wore a black leather skirt and silk top underneath her sweater. She pulled out a gray silk scarf, knotted it several times and looped it around her shoulders, then found a hip-hugging thin silver chain belt in the bottom of her bag and hooked it on.

Seven minutes later and thirty francs poorer, she was seated in a dark wood-paneled bistro amidst gleaming mirrors, vases of flowers, and the hum of discreet conversation.

De Lussigny, in a black suit, his hair carelessly brushed back, looked younger than she remembered. Soigné, with an effortless air. The small bistro was understated yet the attentive waiters who hovered made her self-conscious. People like nearby resident Jeanne Moreau and cabinet ministers ate here.

“Smells wonderful,” she said.

“And with a wonderful wine list from Languedoc,” he told her. He ordered for them both and requested a demi-bottle from the reserve cellar.

“First, let me apologize again for not helping you when the minister put you on the spot, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

“Please call me Aimée,” she said.

Better watch out, she told herself, lest she run off at the mouth. A man with his corporate power didn’t need to wine and dine her. What was the real purpose of this lunch?

The wine arrived. He sipped and complimented the sommelier who poured the dark red liquid into Aimée’s glass. A Cabernet, full-bodied, tart and a bit pebbly. Nice.

“I realize, after checking with your other accounts, that this Olf project is routine for you,” he said. “Of course, it didn’t hurt for the board to hear it, too.”

“I understood you were testing our firm.”

She placed the napkin on her lap, took a piece of bread from the basket and tore off the crust. “Forgive my directness, but I get the feeling this meeting concerns something else, Monsieur . . .”

“Julien, please. The consortium has an agenda that you should be aware of.”

“I don’t understand. Which hat are you wearing right now?”

He smiled. His large eyes were reddened with fatique.

“Everyone wants the inside track. I’ve attended so many meetings in the past few days, I can’t keep my head straight.”

What did he mean? “But how does that concern me? Our firm does computer security. What agenda are you referring to?”

“We’d like you to keep your eyes open. And I’d like to have copies of your reports sent to me.”

Industrial espionage? What was that saying about no free lunches?

“But Olf is paying me; I don’t understand.”

“Look, to insure this venture overseas will be an immense risk.”

“But the financial rewards would be astronomical, wouldn’t they?”

She was guessing but from the way he drummed on the table with his knife, it looked like her question had hit home. The charts and graphs she’d seen in the conference room indicated the project involved PetroVietnam.

“So Olf’s negotiating, or vying, for oil rights and you want to know about the competition.”

“Under your sweet and innocent exterior,” he said, sitting back, “you’re sophisticated and complex.”

Sweet and innocent? But she had obviously guessed right.

“We know who our competition is. The British and Chinese. We’d like you to monitor the engineering department’s e-mail.”

“I run a detective agency specializing in computer security, not in industrial espionage. Now you don’t have to buy me lunch. I can just leave, no hard feelings.”

A waiter appeared at her elbow with an appetizer of smoked salmon dotted with caviar.

“And you, Aimée, what’s the expression, ‘pack a punch.’ We’ll pay you accordingly. I’ve mentioned this to Verlet, so you’re not going behind his back. But you’re welcome to confirm my request. Why don’t you call him right now?”

“I take your word for it,” she said. But suspicion nagged at her.

What was it about de Lussigny that made her wary? The smile in his tired eyes, the languid way he commanded attention from the waiter, his aura of power, the way he had brushed her hand with his as he reached for the bread?

A slow throb mounted in her head. Centered in her right temple. Fractals of light fused into a bluish fog.

She rubbed her eyes . . . non . . . but it didn’t go away. Fear clutched her. Where were her pills? She reached in her bag, felt for them, and downed two with wine.

“Our consortium finds it prudent to monitor this activity. It’s just a slight extension of your job.”

A blurred fuzz bordered her vision. The sideboard with assorted tarts and pastries tilted, the walls unfolded. Panic overtook her and she felt sick to her stomach.

“As I suggested, confer with Verlet,” he said, taking a forkful of salmon. “The salmon’s Norwegian, why don’t you taste it?”

Guy had warned her that stress would affect her optic nerve. She took a deep breath. Tried to relax.

But she couldn’t.

She wanted to leave the resto before her eyesight blurred even further; before she saw two of everything. She had to get away from this man who had just asked her to spy on the Brits and Chinese. But one didn’t say no to a client. At least not to his face. What if he put pressure on her, or Verlet, threatening to withdraw their contract? Would René think it best to cooperate?

“I’d appreciate your help,” he said, his voice pleasant. “Just copy me on your reports.”

Her peripheral vision was fading. She gripped the napkin, felt the crumbs on the table.

“That’s all?” she asked.

He made it sound easy. But she sensed there was more to it. “I don’t foresee a problem but I need to let my partner know; he’s the one who’d coordinate our other jobs while I did this.”

She had to get away and think: the oil rights, PetroVietnam, the Chinese. Did the jade link up to any of this?

“So, it’s a workload issue?” de Lussigny asked. “Of course, I understand.”

The fog began to recede to the edges of her vision. She prayed it would stay there. She pulled on her dark glasses.

“I need to check with him. Now.”

She put her napkin on the table.

“But your food!”

“Please, excuse me.”

She stumbled, gathered her bag and left. Outside, in the chill wind, she had to grab the stair railing to orient herself. If she could just get back to the office. If only she could talk to René and figure out what to do. If only she could be sure René was safe. She had to put an ice pack on her eyes.

Someone familiar approached. She recognized that gait, the roll forward on the balls of his feet, even if she couldn’t see him clearly. It was Guy. His office was a few blocks away. Now she felt guilty for having lunch with de Lussigny. She was about to run and hug Guy, apologize again. Explain about René. Somehow convince him . . . and then she realized he was engrossed in conversation. Non, kissing someone. His arm was around a petite blonde.

A sharp pain pierced her. She stumbled and turned away. Afraid to believe what she thought she saw. She looked again as they walked right past, too busy to notice her, and studied the resto menu.

Aimée took a few steps, trying to blend with passersby and reach the Métro entrance. Could she have mistaken someone else for him?

And then she heard laughter, a woman saying “Stop teasing, Guy.”

Ahead, the green metal around the red Métro plaque glinted. The pills were taking effect. Her vision was clearing. She kept walking: telling herself to concentrate, to make it to the Métro steps, then to the platform. Trying to ignore the recollection of Guy’s invitation to move in together. How quickly he’d forgotten. Only a few stops and then she’d reach Leduc Detective and could collapse. She had to keep going while she could.

The womanizing traitor! A wave of dizziness overcame her and she reached for the side of the magazine kiosk. Missed. Caught herself on the newspaper rack.

“Ça va? You look green,” Julien de Lussigny said, catching her arm.

Startled, she froze. “Please, I feel terrible if you left your meal on my account—”

“Just got a call and have to rush off to a meeting,” he inter- rupted, buttoning his coat. “The investors have questions. As always!”

No aura of power or mystique surrounded him now as he gave her a tired grin. Or maybe it was the concern in his eyes. He looked more human. Light drizzle misted the gray pavement.

He unfurled an umbrella and held it over them.

“Merci, but I’m headed to the Métro,” she said.

“Look, my driver’s here, let me give you a ride.”

Right now it sounded wonderful. Gratefully, she entered the black Citroën idling at the curb. She slumped in the back seat and kept from turning to look out the back window for Guy and the blonde.

“Ça va?” he asked. “Should we stop at a pharmacy?”

“Non, merci,” she said. “My office on rue du Louvre, if you don’t mind.”

He was strangely quiet in the few minutes it took them to get there.

Aimée thanked him and mounted the steps to Leduc Detective, feeling her way up by clutching the cold banister. Crystalline streaks webbed her vision, like the fleur de sel salt crystals she’d seen harvested in the Mediterranean, floating sheetlike to the water’s surface.

She opened the frost-paned office door, now fractaled with light. Inside the office, she dropped her bag, her hands shaking. Would her vision clear?

René was in danger, the RG threatened her and she still hadn’t found the jade. And Guy. . . .

She rooted in her desk drawer for more pills, found two and a bottle of Vichy water. When her hands steadied she downed them, sat, and took deep breaths. Think, she had to think. To calm her mind. She tried to visualize a river, flowing and smooth, with a current like a dark ribbon.

A loud knock on the door startled her. “Who’s there?”

“Linh,” the voice said.

“Come in please,” Aimée replied, and opened her eyes to see a blurred Linh, her hands upheld in a gesture of greeting.

“I’m sorry Linh . . . my vision.”

“Chaos fights your spirit,” Linh interrupted.

“We call it inflammation of the optic nerve,” Aimée said. “Please, do sit down.” She indicated the Louis XV chair, then reached for an ice pack from the first aid kit.

“Non,” Linh said. “Cold chills the channels.” She reached into her bag for an embroidered pouch and pulled out a small packet. “Try the Eastern way. Herbs. Let me take your pulse.”

Long deft fingers pressed Aimée’s wrist in several places.

“Open your mouth.”

“What?”

“Like this.” She stuck out her tongue and Aimée did the same.

“Abnormality of the liver is evidenced by a tense, pounding pulse and red tipped tongue indicating post-traumatic stress,” Linh said. “For this we build the fever, let the heat burn out the infection, unlike doctors in the West.”

Aimée smelled mint. To each his own, Aimée thought. It was worth a try.

“You’re an herbalist, too?” she asked.

Linh shook her head as she applied mint oil to Aimée’s temples and brow. “Everyone in my country treats it this way. From when we’re little babies.”

So they carried herbs instead of aspirin?

“Close your eyes. Take deep breaths,” Linh said, massaging Aimée’s hands. “Let the mint oil take effect.”

Aimée felt a warmth and slight tingling on her brow. The curious warmth traveled to the top of her skull and down her neck.

“René’s been kidnapped,” she told Linh. “The kidnappers want the jade. I found no clues at the auction house. And Gassot’s proving elusive.”

“Mon Dieu!” Linh leaned forward, worrying her beads. “I will pray for him tonight.”

“Linh, an RG agent is seeking the jade, too,” Aimée said. “What do they have to do with it?”

“Who?”

“The RG’s a secret service, affiliated with the Préfecture and National Police.” And under the watchful eyes of the Ministry, she added silently.

Aimée felt a cold ruffle of wind by her knee, the musk of incense, and Linh’s hand on her shoulder.

“I’m being watched,” Linh said. “By whom, I’m not sure. One of the meditators gave me a ride here. She let me off around the block. But I may have been followed.”

Aimée opened her eyes. Linh had gone to the window. Shadows from the trees on rue du Louvre bruised the office walls. Aimée couldn’t read Linh’s expression.

“The pieces were disguised—” Linh began.

“Don’t you mean they were used to disguise twelve much older jade disks?” Aimée interrupted. “To hide them in plain sight, so to speak?”

Silence, except for the buses shuddering in diesel agony and the klaxons heralding a traffic jam below. A cobweb clotted the edge of her vision. Linh made no reply.

“And they’ve been stolen. Tell me, what do they have to do with—”

“Reste tranquille. Let the herbs work,” Linh said, soothingly. She rubbed more mint oil on Aimée’s temples.

“The Vietnamese secret police are watching me. I told you that,” Linh said. Her eyelids batted in the nervous mannerism Aimée remembered. “My mother gave me a jade bracelet when I was five. She called it a fortune teller. Good quality jade changes color after its been worn. If the jade fades, it indicates bad luck. But if it grows more vibrant, a lush green, life energy is flowing well and this predicts good luck, good health, wealth, and many offspring.”

“And your bracelet?”

There was another long pause. Now warmth ringed the crown of Aimée’s head, her palms felt moist and she noticed a tingling sensation coursing down her arms.

That’s personal,” Linh finally said. “

Was that why Linh became a nun? Now, Aimée felt a deep sadness emanating from her.

“You Westerners don’t understand. Jade means much more to us than a trinket in a jewelry store window. The only way to win our people is through our beliefs, our souls.”

“Does this have to do with PetroVietnam and oil rights?” Aimée asked bluntly.

“The only politics I’m concerned with is obtaining my brother’s release,” Linh said. “Please, you’re the only one I can trust. Find the jade, before someone else does.”

Then Aimée’s vision gave out.

AIMÉE BLINKED several times. Afraid to try to focus. Light reflected and prismed from the decanter on her office desk. Her silk sleeve smelled of mint and her head felt curiously clear. No cobwebs or blurriness. Just a curious tingling at the base of her skull. And clear vision.

The herbs? A combination of pills and herbs? Linh had left a small vial of mint oil on her keyboard.

She reached into her pocket for the jade disk. Felt the cold comforting roundness.

Her pills were finished. She picked up the phone to call Guy.

But he had had a blonde in his arms on the street.

She debated. But a minute later she punched in his number, determined to sound businesslike.

“Guy?”

“I’m in the middle of rounds right now,” he said, curtly.

“Sorry, I just ran out of pills,” she said.

“I’ll call a prescription in.”

Coward. She wished she could tell him she missed him. How it hurt her to see him with another woman. Did he hear the false bravado in her voice?

“Right away,” he said.

She heard someone say ‘Doctor, what about the intravenous line?’ and the pinging of bells in the hospital ward.

“If that’s all . . .” he said.

Silence.

“Can we talk later?”

“What’s there to talk about, Aimée?”

“I guess nothing.” The words caught in her throat and she hung up. She’d blown it again.

She forced herself to stand up, get her bag. Not to call him back and accuse him of being with another woman. What would be the point? He’d made his choice and moved on fast. Seems he’d had someone else waiting in the wings. Better to end it now.

She’d ignore the hollowness she felt. Sooner or later she’d get over it. What if she’d agreed to move to the suburbs? He’d have expected her to have his dinner waiting. She couldn’t even whip up an omelet! Forget Guy. She had to focus on finding René. Somehow the disks were the key; Linh had as good as confirmed it. Why had de Lussigny tried to enlist her to spy?

She pulled out Regnier’s card and called him. She hated to deal with the devil, but perhaps he could help find René, as Morbier insisted.

His phone rang. No answer. Great! Waiting stretched her patience. The little reserve she had, as René often told her. She had to do something.

She locked the office and pushed the button for the elevator, a temperamental, grunting wire-framed affair from the last century. She stepped inside and rode it down to the second level. The glass elevator door slid open. She came face to face with Regnier. His freshly shaven scalp gleamed in the chrome yellow light. He stepped inside the elevator car and stood a few centimeters from her.

Fear was the worst thing to show with someone like him. She was afraid he could smell it on her.

“Any reason you don’t answer your phone, Regnier?”

“Did you call with good news for me?” Regnier’s aftershave bothered her. It smelled cheap and metallic. The accordion pleated gate closed and the elevator juddered upward.

“My partner’s been kidnapped. The captor’s threatening to dismember him. Believe me, if I knew where the jade was—”

“I’d be the first to know, Mademoiselle Leduc?” he said. “I hope that’s what you were about to say.”

Had he kidnapped René? She watched his dull black eyes, saw no quiver of response.

“I’m sure you want to help me now.” He hit the out of service button. The elevator halted with a jerk. Her spine tingled. Up close she saw the threads in his overcoat.

Then he leaned closer, and whispered in her ear, “You’re under surveillance.”

First Tessier and now Regnier, but it didn’t make sense for him to warn her. He’d ransacked her apartment.

“By who?”

“We’re not all what we seem,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Was she a pawn in someone else’s power play?

He lifted her chin with his cold hands, so he could see her face.

Only then did she realize that she’d lowered her head and remembered how he’d stared at her on the quai. And that she had seen the butterscotch-colored button in his ear.

“How long have you been deaf?” Aimée asked.

His mouth twisted in a sad grin. “Long enough. Mine is only a tonal deafness at low range decibels.”

Was this a crack in his tough-guy façade? Aimée heard a buzzing sound and his finger shot up, adjusting the clip behind his ear.

“So the RG uses you, like they used my father, Regnier,” she said. Could she play on his sympathy? “I can help you,” she said.

“If you help me find my partner.”

He stared at her. In the small elevator with him and his aftershave, she felt claustrophobic. But she knew she should play along with him.

“You have more resources than I do, Regnier,” she continued.

Then his hands circled her neck. Terrified, she stepped back, tried to loosen his thick fingers. How could she have misread him like that?

“Let go!” His grasp tightened. Nowhere to move. It was like before, when she had been attacked. All she knew were those hands squeezing her neck. Choking her. No air.

She kneed him hard in the groin. Hit the elevator service switch with her elbow, then the button. The elevator shuddered and descended, throwing him off balance. He cried out in pain, let go of her neck and knelt on the floor.

She pried the elevator door open.

“Eh bien! I’ve been waiting a long time,” said a disgruntled man, on the ground floor.

“It’s all yours.” She squeezed past him and ran into the street. She didn’t stop until she stood on the quai de la Mégisserie, several blocks away. No Regnier in sight. She leaned on the stone bridge, her shoulders shaking and her breath fanning into the air in frosted puffs. How were Regnier and Pleyet involved?

She caught her breath. Lars would know, or he could find out. She walked to the Préfecture de Police, glad she’d kept her fake police ID updated, and entered the Statistics Bureau. The wide door stood ajar, pieces of plaster sprinkled everywhere. Her footsteps crunched across the floor. A man with a mask gestured toward a penciled sign.

Due to pipe refitting, Statistics temporarily in Bâtiment B, second floor cellar.

Several stairways later she found it. And her friend Lars Sorensen, who headed the Préfecture’s statistics department. Statistics, a broad term, provided Lars interdepartmental and interministerial access.

The makeshift office, once a vaulted medieval cellar, consisted of rows of metal file cabinets and several vacant desks. The burnt odor of metal soldering pervaded the office. A green beanbag pillow sat forgotten in the corner.

Lars, wearing army fatigues, leaned back on his chair and drank Orangina. She figured he’d come from the special training he did midweek outside Paris. His prominent jaw and punched in nose made him look like a prize fighter. “Do me a favor, Lars, check what these mecs des RG, Regnier and Pleyet, are working on,” Aimée said. “Like you, they could be in reserve special ops.”

“Moi?” Lars grinned. “Let me see. Every month each commissariat turns in a report, some big patron’s idea so we classify and subclassify them. Like we’ve got nothing else to do, eh? Besides get manicures, trim the commissaire’s ear hairs, and play skat!”

Her father had put up with Lars, pointing out not many could ferret the devil out of a hole like him. But she actively liked him. Lars was half Danish. But to hear him talk you’d think he’d been born and bred in Copenhagen, not lived in the working class district of Batignolles since infancy, now with a French wife and three children.

Lars searched in his files. The whine of a sander came from the hallway.

“You didn’t see this, okay? ”

She nodded.

Lars opened a creaking file cabinet, pulled a state-of-the-art Titanium laptop from inside, and powered it up.

“How old is Pleyet?” he asked, typing in his password.

She noted the last four digits Lars entered.

“Fifties, in good shape, with deep-set gray eyes that take everything in, like a hawk.”

“But that describes a lot of them.”

She remembered something. “Keloid scars on his right wrist.”

He scanned the report. “Did he tell you he was RG?” He rolled his eyes. ”More like Surveillance Circle Line.”

“Circle Line?” she asked. “What’s that? Regnier, too?”

“Regnier’s RG,” Lars said. “But, according to this, he’s under suspension.”

Her mouth dropped.

“Suspension? For what and since when?”

“Let’s see. . . .” Lars hit some keys. “Pretty generic, misappropriation of operating funds last June. The chief discovered it in September.” He clicked more keys, “On the ball, eh, your government fonctionnaires!”

So Regnier had gone rogue, but felt bold enough to threaten her. He had sniffed the jade. But how? And that didn’t explain Pleyet.

Aimée leaned over Lars’ desk. “What does Circle Line mean, Lars? How’s Pleyet involved, eh?”

For the first time she saw hesitation in his eyes. He shifted in his chair and the springs squeaked.

“Don’t ask me, Aimée, I can’t tell you.”

“Please, Lars.” She ran her hand through her damp hair.

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know,” he said. “Just rumors.”

“Hinting at what?”

Lars didn’t meet her gaze. A plume of sawdust shot up in the hallway.

“Lars, your papa and mine were friends. Why hold back? Pleyet was on the Place Vendôme surveillance. He looked familiar but I never knew his name. Any of their names. They made sure of that. I want to know his background, at least.”

Lars looked away.

“It’s important to me, Lars.”

“Nothing in here concerns the past,” Lars said. “This comes from Special Branch. They don’t data entry old, failed missions. You know that.”

But she’d figured one thing out. “So this Special Branch Circle Line’s new?”

He nodded.

Wiretapping? But the RG had been doing that for years.

“It’s not all governmental, that’s what I heard,” Lars said.

“Meaning industrial espionage?” she asked.

Two men in suits walked in and gave Lars the eye.

“Of course, mademoiselle,” Lars said, his tone businesslike now, as he closed the folder and shut down the laptop, “when I tally the figures we’ll report the amounts to your father’s insurance agent. The Commissariat will have that information on file.”

“Merci, monsieur,” she said, playing along.

The men kept walking and passed them. She heard their footsteps echoing on the metal stairs leading to winding corridors and, eventually, to the holding pens under the Tribunal. She could imagine the sweating stone walls, and the prisoners awaiting sentencing in cells little changed since the Reign of Terror.

“Can’t you do a quick search to see if there’s a report filed on missing Asian jade?”

“You’re looking for missing oriental art?” asked Lars. “You want me to check the list, you mean?”

She nodded.

He sat up, pulled at a drawer that stuck, then slammed it hard and it opened.

“A stolen Rodin sculpture in the 14th from narrow Impasse Nansouty near Parc Montsouris.”

“Try the 17th arrondissement.”

He thumbed through the file. The crinkling paper competed with the low whine of the saw in the background.

“What about missing jade?”

“Hmmm . . . a dope racket and bordello, but that’s as close as it gets in the 17th.”

Frustrated, she pulled out her map, studied it.

“My brother-in-law delivers meat to a boucherie in the 17th,” Lars said. “He always bitches that he can’t unload. One time he had to walk with a whole side of a cow through the narrow passage and an old lady fainted right on her poodle.”

She read the map, half listening to Lars, thinking of the threadlike streets of this village within a village, still beating with a provincial life of its own.

“Sorry, that’s it,” Lars concluded.

She exhaled with disgust, leaning against Lars’s grease-stained metal filing cabinet. If the jade was “hot,” no one would report it stolen.

“Merci, Lars,” she said, and left his office.

SHE TRIED to make sense of what she’d learned. Regnier, under suspension, had gone rogue, which made him more dangerous. Pleyet, still a cipher, worked for the “Circle Line.” All along the quai, as brown leaves rustled past her on the gravel, she thought about Lars’s change of attitude after he had spoken those two words. She pulled off her leather glove and wrote down the last four digits of Lars’s password on her palm. She’d play with the numbers later.

Time was running out for René. She tried Commissaire Ronsard on her cell phone.

“The Commissaire’s in a meeting,” said a bored voice.

She tried Léo.

“Club Radio,” Léo answered.

“It’s Aimée, any luck with René’s phone, Léo?”

“Désolée, so far the antenna’s picked up nothing.”

Aimée’s heart sank to her feet.

“They could have trashed it, or just not turned it on,” Léo said. “Keep your cell phone calls to a minimum, in case they try you.”

“Merci, I’ll check with you later.”

She was stymied. The only person she knew of connected to Thadée was Sophie. Sophie had to know a detail, a name. Even if she didn’t realize she knew it. But she was in London. Aimée had to reach her. Besides the art gallery, watched by the police, the best place to look was in Sophie’s house.