Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Tuesday Late Afternoon

MARTINE’S RED-SOLED, black-heeled Louboutins clicked across the creaking floor of the Musée des Hôpitaux de Paris. She was wearing an orangey peach wool suit and matching blossomlike hat. Breathless, she still managed to kiss Aimée on both cheeks.

“Nice place to meet! These old operating theaters look like torture chambers.” Martine pointed to an exhibit—a gray, tubular iron lung. “Trying to tell me something, Aimée?”

Martine smoked a pack a day.

“You? Never.”

Martine, her best friend since the lycée, did investigative reporting now after her stint at a defunct fashion magazine. She was tamer than she’d been in her student days. Martine shared a huge high-ceilinged flat with her boyfriend, Gilles, and his assorted children, overlooking the Bois de Boulogne in the sixteenth arrondissement. Haute bourgeois, too staid for Aimée.

“Charming.” Martine stared at the enlarged sepia turn-ofthe century photos of barefoot children in line at a milk bar. She grinned. “Gilles’s kids only stand in line at FNAC for the latest CD.”

“What did you find out?” Aimée asked.

Martine opened her pink alligator bag and thrust a batch of printouts at Aimée. “Not much. Last week, certain allegations surfaced. There was enough there for the Army to put Orla Thiers and Nelie Landrou on their wanted-for-questioning list.”

“What kind of allegations?”

Martine consulted a printout. “Sexy stuff,” she said, with a moue of distaste. “Apparently, they acquired knowledge of truck schedules—arrivals and deliveries.”

A far cry from nuclear secrets.

“That’s all?”

“Looks like it,” Martine said. “It’s a favorite tactic of MondeFocus to set up a roadblock to stop a fleet of semis, tanker trucks carrying hazardous materials.”

“The Army steps in if there’s any activity threatening radioactive materials, Martine,” Aimée said.

Martine shrugged.

Aimée stuck the printouts in her bag to study later. If Krzysztof Linski was implicated as well and on the run, too, it would explain his behavior.

“I’ve got to rush.” Martine took Aimée’s arm and they walked through the hall under the painted ceiling showing eighteenth-century surgeons in panels encircled by trompe l’oeil pillars. “The oil conference . . .”

“Wearing that?”

“First, my niece’s baptism. You know Liliane, my youngest sister.”

“You’re a godmother how many times over?”

“Three, or is this one the fourth? Can’t keep track of all of them.” Martine had three married sisters, all with children. “She’s hired another babysitter. To supplement her other nannies.”

Aimée suddenly perked up. “Liliane’s got a babysitter, too?”

Martine nodded.

“I need one. Think she’d share?”

Martine stared at Aimée. “Don’t tell me! You’re pregnant?”

Aimée’s gaze rested on an exhibit with an explanatory placard: Circa 1870. Often the desperate parent left a bracelet, beads, or some other token with the infant being abandoned, hoping to reclaim the child in the future.

“The color’s drained from your face,” Martine said, steering her to a bench. “You’re paler than usual. Sit down. Morning sickness?”

Aimée was stuck on the phrase “or some other token . . . hoping to reclaim the child.” Had those marks on the baby’s chest been meant as identification?

Aimée shook her head.

“Tell me, Aimée.”

“It’s not that, Martine, it’s worse.” Then she told Martine everything: the phone call, finding the baby, the body in the morgue, the matching blue beads, Morbier’s demand, and finding René wearing an apron, buying a stuffed animal without admitting it.

“René’s nesting,” Martine said.

“What do you mean?”

But she knew.

Martine dug into her bag and uncapped a small brown bottle with red Oriental characters on the label, took a swig, and passed it to Aimée.

“Drink this. Oronamin-C, a Japanese energy drink full of electrolytes. You need it.”

It was dense, viscous, and tangy, with an aftertaste like a children’s liquid vitamin drink. Her cheeks puckered.

“René’s exhibiting the classic signs: cleaning, cooking, feathering the nest for the new baby, Aimée,” Martine said, outlining her lips with a brown pencil. “Instead of you. He’s a gem.”

“My best friend next to you, Martine.”

“A lasting relationship can be built on friendship, but it is rare in life.”

What was Martine getting at?

“Knowing what they look for in adoption court, I’d say you’ve got a good start. René could help—”

“What?” Aimée caught the bottle before she dropped it.

“Don’t tell me adopting this baby hasn’t crossed your mind.”

“What’s crossing my mind is what Nelie may have found in the Alstrom file, how MondeFocus is involved, and where she might be.”

“Phhft,” Martine said. “Everyone hates oil companies. You’ve got an in—hacking or whatever it is you two do on the computer—and . . .”

“Tunnel into Alstrom?” Aimée finished. “Easier said than done.”

They were working for Regnault, Alstrom’s publicity firm. There was a definite conflict of interest, as René had quickly pointed out. She reached in her back pocket for another stop-smoking patch, handed one to Martine, and stuck one above her hip.

“This should get you through the christening.”

Aimée saw a gift certificate inside Martine’s pocket.

“What’s this?” She looked at the name. Jacadi, a baby store carrying top-of-the-line frivolous baby clothes.

Martine shrugged. “I’m always going to a christening these days, have to keep them handy! What’s with your grunge outfit . . . infiltrating the Sorbonne?”

“Close.”

And then it hit her—Martine was going to the oil conference. “Can you e-mail me your notes on Alstrom’s participation in the oil conference?”

“I’m lead article editor, I write the overview, gluing everything together for L’Express. We’re doing a four-page supplement in this week’s issue.”

Impressive. Martine had risen above straight investigative journalism.

“A young Turk’s covering Alstrom, doing the nitty-gritty.”

Aimée stood and they walked into the next cavernous room. “You’ve got the perfect reason to request his notes. To verify sources, legality, et cetera.”

“It’s better if I introduce you. He’s a dish.”

Martine never stopped trying to set her up.

“Pass.”

Martine pulled out a parchment-paper envelope that contained an engraved invitation and dangled it in front of Aimée.

“The Institut du Monde Arabe reception for the Fourth International Oil Conference?” Aimée said. “How’d you get that?”

“Press corps,” Martine said. “Come with me. You’ll get more out of him that way.”

She had a point.

“It’s formal, Aimée. Bring a bottle of Dom Pérignon, too,” she said, a shrewd twinkle in her eye. “The slush they serve’s undrinkable.”

Martine always had deluxe ideas concerning payback.

“Right now I’d appreciate an entrée into MondeFocus.”

“Not again. I’ve only got my old press pass . . .”

“Brilliant idea, Martine.”

AIMÉE LEANED ON Pont de la Tournelle’s stone wall, scraping Martine’s name off her old press card with her nail file. She used manicure scissors to snip her name from a business card and glued it and her photo from her Metro pass on top of Martine’s. She sealed the result with wide, clear tape. Not bad. A quick flash of credentials and with luck it would work.

She crossed the bridge and reached Ile Saint-Louis. She gazed to the right at Quai de Béthune which Marie Curie and Baudelaire had once called home and where President Pompidou’s widow still lived, and hoped the sky didn’t open up.

At the MondeFocus address on the Quai d’Orléans, she pressed the buzzer. The door clicked open. Inside the dark port cochère entryway, another door opened. A dark-curly-haired woman wearing a blue smock stuck her head out the loge door.

“MondeFocus office, please.”

“Don’t think they’re open.”

Had the MondeFocus, wary after the demonstration, instructed the concierge to vet visitors?

“I’m with the press,” Aimée said. “They must have forgotten to inform you.”

The woman looked over Aimée’s jeans, shapeless trench coat. Shrugged.

“Bon. Third floor left rear.”

The door slammed shut.

ON THE THIRD floor, a woman wearing pink capris and a striped man’s shirt opened the door. She paused in her conversation, a cell phone held to her ear, scanning Aimée up and down. “Oui?”

Aimée smiled and flashed the press card and a folded copy of Bretagne Libre. “I’m working on an article. May I talk with you?”

“Un moment.” She motioned Aimée toward a worn blue-velvet window seat. Silver rivulets of rain ran outside the window, condensation fogging the corners and a draft hit Aimée’s back. Her face looked familiar but Aimée couldn’t place her.

The office was not a hive of activity. No one sat behind the desk or worked at the computer that rested atop a narrow slat over sawhorses. An Andy Warhol silk screen of Yves Saint Laurent hung on the wall; an orange modular couch stood in the interior of the salon. It looked like a makeshift office had been set up in this woman’s apartment. Warm, close air filled the room. Aimée took off her coat and scanned a pile of brochures. The World Wildlife Movement’s story about rhino abduction competed with pamphlets about other causes piled up on the parquet floor.

And then she saw the vinyl record jackets in the corner and recognized the woman. Brigitte Fache, a seventies pop icon who’d had a handful of record hits. She came from an aristo background and was still well connected with the gauche caviar, society liberals. She was older and her eyes were devoid of her signature black eye liner. The gauche caviar had been lampooned in the daily Le Canard enchaîné for lending a sympathetic ear and sending hefty checks to Brigitte’s pet causes until she had founded MondeFocus and gained credibility and grudging acceptance in the ecological movement.

Brigitte resumed arguing into the cell phone. “They had no search warrant . . . what do you mean, who? I call that more than intrusion—it’s breaking and entering,” she said. “Not just harassment, it’s illegal.” She listened, then laughed, a short sardonic laugh. “So who raided our office, Brigadier, if you didn’t, eh? The sandman?”

She held the phone away from her ear, rolling her eyes at Aimée, who heard indecipherable words tumbling over the line. Brigitte exuded an air of entitlement. “We’ve organized a dozen rallies for which we’ve always obtained permits, put in place a first aid corps and a contingent of legal aid, but of course, that’s standard for a demonstration. Now, this candlelight march! We never sanction weapons. You’ve made a mistake.”

She listened to an explanation, then Brigitte’s palm slapped the metal file cabinet. “Proof? You call that proof, Brigadier?”

But her brow knit in worry. Outside the window, needles of rain beat down on the rising Seine.

“Krzysztof Linski’s not in our organization,” she assured the caller.

Her blunt-cut, unmanicured nails drummed the cabinet. The woman was lying, Aimée sensed it. But now she was forewarned; she wouldn’t mention Krzysztof as a contact.

Barefoot, Brigitte padded into the other room. By the time she returned, wearing a wool trouser suit, with a cigarette and without the cell phone, Aimée had her makeshift card ready.

“Aimée Leduc, freelancer, referred by Léon Tailet of Bretagne Libre.” She stood and handed Brigitte the card.

“How is Léon?”

Thank God she’d prepared and actually spoken to him on the phone.

“Rheumatism bothering him. As usual. You know, the damp in Brittany. But it didn’t stop him last week from attending the demonstration.”

Brigitte nodded, set the card on the desk, and rummaged through a worn black Day-Timer. Good thing she had a lot more on her mind than delving further into Aimée’s credentials.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me about Krzysztof Linski.”

“No comment.”

“Were you at last night’s march?”

Brigitte shook her head. “I couldn’t be there. I had to march in a protest at La Défense.”

Too bad.

“A young woman’s body was recovered from the Seine. She and Nelie Landrou were in your organization—”

“Who’s this article for?” Brigitte interrupted.

“Whoever will print it; the truth must come out. I’ve got contacts at L’Humanité,” Aimée hastened to add. It was a Communist rag, but that should appeal to Brigitte.

Brigitte’s phone rang. She glanced at her watch. “Merde, the meeting started five minutes ago,” she said, grabbing her bag and keys. “Sorry.“

Aimée couldn’t let her make her escape without getting any information. “A meeting concerning . . . ?”

“Alstrom’s filing a suit against us. They’re asking for an injunction and that’s just for starters.” Brigitte shook her head.

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Strange that an oil company would file suit against Monde-Focus and seek an injunction. Had things changed so much that an oil conglomerate could silence protests against it?

“Those with the most expensive lawyers win. We’re attempting to negotiate to prevent their enjoining our campaign.” Brigitte opened the door to the cold hall.

“How well did you know Orla Thiers?”

Brigitte looked down and when she did meet Aimée’s eyes, a sadness filled them. She started to speak then caught herself and sighed. “I’ll have more to say later.”

“Wasn’t she involved in the roadblock near the nuclear facility at La Hague? I’d like to speak with her friend, Nelie.”

“Nelie . . . the hanger-on? I haven’t seen her for a while.”

Odd. It sounded as if Brigitte didn’t know that Nelie had had the baby.

“How does Krzysztof Linski fit in?”

Brigitte’s eyes blazed back in fighting form. “He’s not part of our organization anymore.”

“But I thought . . .”

“He got us into this mess. He was a right-wing plant. That’s all I have to say.” Brigitte’s keys jangled in her hand. “Look, if you don’t mind . . .”

Aimée pressed on. “Who else can I talk to in your organization, please?”

“Can’t this wait?”

“In news, nothing waits or you won’t have a story.”

Aimée saw videotapes stacked on a cabinet arranged by title and date of demonstration. Surely the demonstration against the oil agreement would have been taped like the others. “Who filmed the march last night? Please, it would help so much to convey the mood of the event. Will you give me the name of the videographer?”

“Sure,” Brigitte said. “I’ll tell you on the way out.”

OUT ON QUAI D’ORLÉANS, Aimée ducked, but not in time to avoid receiving the Peugeot’s diesel exhaust in her face as Brigitte gunned the motor and sped off. Notre Dame lay shrouded in mist on her right, and rain pelted the stone ramp angling into the Seine. She pulled her hood over her head, glad she at least had obtained a lead from Brigitte. Then she stumbled into a rut filled with water and her pants got sopping wet up to her knees. En route to the documentary filmmaker’s studio, she’d make a stop and buy an umbrella.

SOUTH OF GARE D’AUSTERLITZ, once an industrial area, cobblestone-surfaced rue Giffard still held traces of small workshops. Near Les Frigos, the old refrigerator warehouses that had served the train yards, two-story buildings housed artists, musicians and—judging by the graffiti—an anarchist or two. She read CLAUDE NEDEROVIQUE—DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCTION by the digicode at his door.

The grillwork gate stood ajar. Aimée pushed it open and entered a narrow courtyard roofed by grime-encrusted glass resembling a train station. Rain pounded relentlessly overhead.

She shook and folded her umbrella, remembering the radio alert she had overhead: traffic advisory warnings and closures of lanes bordering the Seine due to record rainfall.

She knocked. Her trousers and sodden leather boots were soaked through. No answer. She knocked again. Chills shot up her legs. What she wouldn’t give for a warm fire, dry clothes, and . . .

The door swung open. “Took you long enough!”

All she could see was a man’s head in shadow, haloed by the bright lights of the studio behind him. Guitar licks of the Clash met her ears. “Claude Nederovique?”

“Who’s asking?”

He wore torn denims and motorcycle boots. Wavy brown hair hung over one eye and the collar of his black leather jacket. She tried not to shiver, aware of the surprise on his face as he stepped back into the light. His dark eyes studied her. A bad boy, just her type.

Merde! The one time she forgot to retouch her mascara. Or reapply lipstick.

“Brigitte at MondeFocus gave me your address.”

“Excuse my rudeness,” he said, his voice low. “I’m expecting the AGFA film shipment. They’re late. As usual.”

“Do you have a moment?” She’d seize this opportunity before his delivery arrived. “I’m writing an exposé of violence at the MondeFocus anti–oil agreement vigil. Brigitte said you shot some great videotape.”

Stretching the truth never hurt.

Silence except for the rain. She tried again. “I realize it’s a bad time,” she apologized.

“You’re shaking,” he said, taking her arm. “Why your pants are soaked! Come in.”

The studio was lined with a bank of high-tech equipment: videotape recorders, monitors, camcorders. In contrast, old film-splicing machines and reel-to-reel spools sat atop high cabinets. An inner door led to a small room bathed in red light, emitting the acrid smell of film developer.

“Excuse the mess,” he said, shoving cardboard cartons aside with his boot. “But I’m glad to take a break. I’m editing my Rwanda documentary. The Hutus and the Tutsis: genocide, ghost villages, and no one cares.”

Pain and determination layered his voice. For a moment he looked lost and then he turned away.

“I’ll make it brief,” she said. She edged toward a strobe light, feeling awkward. “Here’s my card. Again I apologize.”

He glanced at it. “Pas de problème. I did shoot some video footage that might interest you. Can you give me a minute?”

She nodded, reaching into her backpack for a notebook.

He gave her a crooked smile, a nice smile, then took off his jacket and pulled a cell phone from his faded gray corduroy shirt pocket. Suddenly businesslike, he went to the red-lit darkroom to speak into the phone.

On the studio walls hung black-and-white blowups of barefoot African child soldiers in tattered uniforms, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. None looked more than ten years old. A shantytown—skyscrapers in the distance—a cluster of huts with cardboard and metal siding, dogs, garbage strewn on the dirt street. She looked closer, horrified to see that the dogs were sniffing at bodies. A baby, flies on its open mouth, lay next to a metal gasoline jerrican, ESSO printed on it. Her insides wrenched.

No wonder oil protesters like Krzysztof were passionate. Another photo titled Sorbonne ’68 showed a cloud of tear gas engulfing miniskirted and bell-bottomed students. A 1987 film poster for Guido and the Red Brigade with a shot of the Roman Coliseum was inscribed Claude Nederovique, writer and producer in red letters below. She felt like a voyeur seeing the most brutal side of injustice. Just a shallow urbanite worried more about her lipstick than the suffering of the world.

“Quite a body of work.” She didn’t know how to express her feelings . . . her horror at these views of evil.

He pulled up a stool for her in front of another deck of video machines and monitors. He straddled another, turned down the stereo’s volume.

“Why film, if you don’t mind my asking?” Aimée said.

He sat back, reflective. “Because I don’t have the words like you journalists do to express this. He gestured to the wall. “Suffering, injustice.” He shrugged. “I’m bankrupt in that department. I envy you lot, if you must know. So I film, searching for the essence—the look, the gesture, a glimpse into a window that speaks volumes.”

Some underlying pain drove him. She sensed it. And she felt even guiltier for impersonating a journalist.

She put that aside; she had to keep her goal in mind. A woman had been murdered, and Nelie was in hiding. And there was Stella.

He leaned forward, leaving a sandalwood scent in his wake. The warmth in the studio crept up her legs.

“Et alors, just raw footage, haven’t had time to edit it yet. Bear with me until I find the march.” He inserted a cassette into one of the two videotape recorders, hit Rewind, and switched on the monitor. The whir of winding competed with the spattering of rain against the windows. “Anything or anyone specific you’re looking for?” he asked.

A dead woman. Talk about rewinding a ghost. A glimpse of the mother with her baby. Something.

She pulled out the photo she’d taken from Krzysztof’s flat and set it on the smooth aluminum counter. His knuckles clenched so hard they turned white.

“Do you know them?” she asked. “Friends of yours?”

“What happened makes me sick,” he said. “I’ve documented this movement from its inception.”

“Do you know either of these women?”

He nodded. “Demonstrations, sit-ins. . . . I’m sure I’ve seen them.” He pointed. “Oui, her.”

Nelie.

“I’d like to talk with her.”

“Me, too,” he said. “She borrowed my old Super 8. Promised to give it back a few days ago. But I’m still waiting. Why do you want to interview her?”

“Were they both at the demonstration?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I think so. Bedlam, chaos—that’s what I saw.”

“Wasn’t she involved with the roadblock at La Hague?” Aimée hoped this would draw him out.

Silence, except for the rain beating on the skylight.

Keyed up, she said. “I know she’s in trouble. Hiding.”

He studied her, the scent of sandalwood stronger, his teeth just visible between his half-parted lips.

“Journalists protect their sources, right?”

“Always.” At least that’s what Martine had told her.

“I have connections to the network.”

“Network?”

“The network that helps people who have to lie low. Know what I mean? I can help Nelie.”

She was about to tell him about the baby, but something prevented her. She just nodded.

“But you need to keep this confidential; it’s a clandestine highway,” he said. “If you should make contact with Nelie, let me know.”

First she’d have to find her. “Did you see any bottle bombs at the march?” she said.

“In every struggle, there are power shifts within organizations. Right now,” he said, pointing his finger at the photo, “the MondeFocus people think this mec’s a saboteur.”

Krzysztof. That fit with what Brigitte said.

“He planted the bottle bombs, right?” she said.

She figured he’d shown up at the morgue to see for himself if Orla’s body had been the outcome.

“Who knows?” Claude said with a shrug. “I just document and record the moment.”

The videotape clicked to a stop. He hit Play. A rainbow bar code showed on the monitor, then dots of candlelight, dark figures. Blue light from police cars swept the crowd. Faces were blurred. There were shouts. Then a close-up of bushes, leaves, sprays of water. Action too rapid to make sense of. Feet, a leg. Truncheons raised in the air.

“That’s it,” Claude said. “Water damage, I think. Residue and condensation corrode magnetic tape.”

Disappointed, she slumped back. Rain drummed on the roof harder now, the rhythm of the Clash bassist throbbing in juxtaposition.

“Can you slow the tape down?”

He nodded. Ran it again.

“Any way you could enhance this, magnify it, or go frame by frame?”

“Video’s not like film, with twenty-four frames a second.”

“Sorry, but does that mean you can’t isolate images?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said. “Unlike film, video’s written on magnetic tape in interlacing lines of resolution, converted into an electronic signal like a wave written in odd and even stripes on the mag tape. Much faster than film, too, at sixty images per second. So it can’t be isolated without capturing part or half of the preceding or following image as well.”

He hit Pause, then Play, adjusting a jog shuttle dial on the keyboard. “Look, notice the blue flickering, the gray line below?”

She nodded.

“That flickering, twitching effect shows the degradation. Really, it’s showing part of the next image. It is impossible to isolate one movement. See what I mean?”

She did. The blurred tape showed her little. Another dead end.

He sat back, glancing at his watch. “Give me a few hours. I’ll work on the color contrast and saturation, using a processor to boost the sound. I’ll see what I can do.”

A pool of water had dripped from her feet onto the hardwood floor beneath them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. Again, apologizing. She reached for a rag by the large porcelain sink and mopped it up.

“Any other proof that this Krzysztof sabotaged MondeFocus’s demonstration?” Aimée asked.

“I like him. It’s not my place to say anything.” He paused, hands in the pockets of his torn denims.

Was this some code of honor not to tell on fellow activists?

“Did anything strike you as odd at the vigil? Did Krzysztof seem out of sync?”

He shrugged.

She figured he’d said as much as he would.

He switched off the video camera. Then paused. “It was odd the CRS knew about the bottle bombs but the demonstrators didn’t.”

More than odd. She filed that away for later and tried another angle.

“Would any of the demonstrators know Nelie’s whereabouts?”

“Ask Brigitte.”

She was wasting his time—and hers—now. Better go.

“I’ll call you later to get a copy of the enhanced tape.”

Again, she saw that lost look. Vulnerable, at sea. A maverick bad-boy type looking for a life raft. Her.

“How about a verre?” He gestured to a bottle of Chinon, half full, and pulled out the cork. “Until your clothes dry.” He jerked his thumb toward the window. Water ran from the gutters nonstop.

Thirty minutes until her next appointment if she hurried. His sandalwood scent and dark eyes were appealing. She stepped closer. Then caught herself. She shouldn’t get involved. Couldn’t.

“Merci,” she said, accepting the ballon of rouge. She sipped it. Flowery, notes of juniper, hint of berry. Nice. Expensive. Out of her price range. Like everything else until the check from Regnault cleared.

She sat on the stool.

“You got me thinking, you know, why I do this. Film.” He sat. “Call me a red-diaper baby, my mother did. So proud of it, too. She was steward of the Lyon railway trade union.”

Aimée nodded. Lyon, capital of unions, the staunch labor movement stronghold. She knew the milieu, figured he’d grown up in a working-class socialist household.

“Madame organizer, they called Maman. I crawled around her legs in soup kitchens for the workers. It’s in my blood, I guess.”

No wonder.

“And you? What compels you to write about causes?”

Startled, she ran her finger around the rim of the glass. Not many men asked her what she thought.

“I don’t like injustice, real or abstract. My mother didn’t either.” She paused. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about her mother with anyone. And never about her mother’s ideals, the causes she’d embraced. “A seventies radical. But I don’t know much. She left when I was eight. To save the world.”

He gave her a sad smile.

“That’s young. Mine left when I was sixteen. Soon after, I stowed away on a freighter bound for Liberia. I came back years later but my father had passed away by then.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Maybe we’re the same in some way, don’t you think?”

Both scarred and searching.

“That and a franc, twenty centimes gets you the paper,” she said, a half smile on her lips. She didn’t want to deal with this.

“You have to face it sometime,” he said, almost reading her thoughts.

As if she could and it would disappear.

She turned away.

He put his hand on her shoulder. Warm. “Voilà, done it again.”

“What’s that?”

“Brought down the burden of the world onto your shoulders . . . no wonder I’m not invited to parties.” He shrugged. “My friends tell me to lighten up.”

“Right now I’ve got a story to write,” she said.

She pulled out her worn Vuitton wallet, removed two hundred francs.

“Of course, I’ll pay you for the tape and your time. You’re busy. You can leave it outside your door, and I’ll pick it up or send for it,” she said. “Will this cover your expense?”

“Forget the money,” he said. “Journalists don’t pay their sources.”

Didn’t they? If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss her next appointment.

“I do. You’re a professional.”

“On one condition,” he said, an amused look in his eye. “This goes toward more of that superb Chinon and you come by later.”

AIMÉE SKIRTED PLACE VALHUBERT. His words, the wine, the warmth. She’d wanted to stay. But mixing business and men never worked.

She heard a baby’s cry and turned around to see a woman emerging from the Metro with a stroller, the plastic cover coated with rain, blue-bootied feet just visible. A shudder of guilt went through her. Stella. And those big blue eyes. She had to hurry to her appointment, then relieve René. An oil company seeking an injunction against an environmental protest group; Krzysztof Linski discredited as a right-wing plant and drummed out of MondeFocus; bottle bombs that the CRS knew about in advance while the demonstrators were ignorant: It didn’t make sense.

Ahead, car headlights illuminated the wet pavement. She passed the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, a belle époque building Jules Verne would feel at home in—musty glass display cases of taxidermied tortoises from the Galápagos, two-headed fetuses curled in glass tubes from the year 1830. A place where she’d spent many a Saturday afternoon with her grandfather, hiding behind him to peek at the more graphic displays.

She checked her watch again and ran. A raincoated flic directed traffic and by the time she’d made it down the bank, littered with sand and salt to prevent slipping, to the Brigade Fluviale’s headquarters, she had a less than a minute to spare.

Quai Saint-Bernard, home in the summer to evening tango dancing, glimmered wet and forlorn in the lights from Pont d’Austerlitz. The slick gangplank to the Brigade Fluviale’s long, low-lying péniche swayed over the Seine’s current. She clutched the gangway rope tightly, almost losing her balance twice.

On the left loomed L’Institut du Monde Arabe. And not more than a few barge lengths across the Seine from it lay Place Bayre, at the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, like the prow of a ship. White wavelets lapped against the stone steps and brushed the deserted bank. She thought of the tire iron, of fleeing through the park, and shivered with fear as well as cold.

She tapped on the white fiberglass door. A blue-uniformed member of the river police greeted her, a snarling white German shepherd at his side.

“Bonjour. Aimée Leduc to see the capitaine de police.”

He pulled the leashed dog back. “Arrêt, Nemo!” he said as he motioned her inside. The brigade headquarters reminded her of a holiday houseboat except for the computers, the white erasable boards filled with assignments, the scurrying officers, the thrum of fax machines, and the smell of the river.

“This way.”

She followed him and a now friendly Nemo, who smelled her legs and keened to be petted. The officer slid another door open and they crossed a deck to an adjoining péniche.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said Capitaine de Police Michel Sezeur. Shorter than Aimée, he had brown hair combed back en brosse. He wore a Manhurin standard-issue revolver in a holster on the belt of his form-fitting blue twill trousers. “I regret that I can only give you five minutes.” He gestured toward a row of blinking red lights on his telephone.

“I appreciate your making the time for me, Capitaine,” she said and sat down on a swivel chair facing his crowded desk.

The péniche rocked in the backwash of a boat speeding past and her stomach lurched. Waves lapped over the steamed-up portholes and gray mist hovered in the distance.

“Commissaire Morbier confirmed your request,” he said, handing her a stapled report several pages in length

Smart and quick. He’d checked with Morbier after her call.

“You’ll find all the details in this report: our recovery of the victim at 02:47 hours, attempts at resuscitation by one of our paramedic qualified divers, the assessment of the inspector who arrived on the scene and decided upon the next course of action, and the victim’s subsequent removal to the Institut médicolégal. Standard procedure as you will see.”

“About the CRS involvement—” she started to say.

He kept a tight smile. “You know the CRS carry no bullets, their guns are sealed, and they can’t attack the public unless provoked or for due cause.”

“A demonstrator’s in the hospital—”

He cut her off. “Due to illegal assembly, failure to disperse, and discovery of weapons. The CRS only react if demonstrators cross the line. Which, I believe, one of them did.” He sat. “But that’s not my area nor the reason you’re here, correct?”

“How do this victim’s circumstances correspond to or differ from those relating to other bodies you’ve recovered?”

“We find fifty to sixty bodies a year in the Seine. More often than not, they’ve been submerged a long time.”

“But this one wasn’t. Mind telling me the river’s depth and temperature?”

“Usually four to five meters*.” He gestured to a wall chart of the river confluences. The péniche rocked and her stomach lurched again. A door swung open, revealing a line of hanging wet suits. “However, the Seine can rise two to three meters more, as it has now. The current’s strongest now. Temperature-wise, it’s three to four degrees in winter, up to twenty** degrees in the summer.”

“You mentioned that the corpses are usually submerged. How does that affect the body?”

“It’s not rocket science, Mademoiselle. In winter, bodies sink, in spring, they bloat. Sometimes they blow up with body gases like a hot-air balloon. When they’re black and swollen it’s difficult to distinguish between a man or a woman. We’ve recovered bodies as far away as the barrage, the sluice gates south of the Tour Eiffel.” He paused. “That one took three weeks to travel eight kilometers.”

Curious, she leaned forward, though it had little to do with Orla.

“Three weeks?”

“The current, the time of the year, and water temperature all have to be taken into account. Plus the silure, the big-river fishes, and the écrevisses, fresh-water crawfish, had eaten more of the extremities than usual.”

She shuddered, thinking of them feasting on Orla.

“Some fishmongers near Les Halles supplemented their income by selling les écrevisses.” He smiled. “Until we stopped them.”

Aimée glanced at an array of rusted firearms and a collection of rope knots behind glass on the wall. “Artifacts from the river?”

He grinned. “Treasures. I found the Sten gun used by the Résistance on the river bottom. On another dive I brought up this revolver, from the 1930s. It had been a dumping point for gangsters from rue de Lappe. Amazing to find it, considering the murkiness of the water, Mademoiselle. We must use our hands; we can’t see a thing down there. And twenty minutes in a wet suit is all a diver can take.”

Interesting, but it got her no further. She had to ask him for guesses with respect to what she wanted to know. “Two more questions, Capitaine. How long do you think this woman’s body lay in the water? And, in your opinion, how far could it have traveled from the point at which it entered the water?”

“The Seine’s risen several centimeters since last night and will continue to rise due to runoff and rain. We’re near flood levels.” He exhaled. “Given the body’s temperature and the lack of severe bloating or discoloration, I’d hazard three or four hours. The autopsy report should be more definite.”

A knock and the door slid open. Two uniformed officers stood outside. “Ready when you are, Capitaine.”

He grabbed his raincoat from the rack. “Regarding the body . . . well, I can only conjecture.”

“I understand.”

He flipped the pages of the report to the end. “On this diagram, you’ll see, I’ve marked the place where the body was recovered from the sewer grate.”

It was at a point just below Pont de Sully. “But wouldn’t it be unlikely for her body to remain in the same spot at which she was shoved in, considering the river current, the passing Bateaux-Mouches and other barge traffic?”

“I’ve seen it before; it happens,” he said. “A limb catches on a sewer grate, a body twists and sticks in the iron rungs or the underwater steps descending from the bank. Or it becomes entangled in an underwater pylon or with an old fishing line. Sometimes the currents from a Bateau-Mouche will push a body up to the surface.”

“So what do you conclude, Capitaine?”

“Don’t quote me.” He walked to the door. “And I’ll deny saying this, but I doubt she’d been there long at all. It’s just a feeling, a sense, from my twenty years of experience.”

“Can you explain what you mean a little more clearly?”

“I tried to reconstruct the scene. It struck me, well—a possible scenario would be that she reached for help, was struck, and fell back into the water, her lungs filling up then.”

That’s what Serge had intimated, she recalled.

“There’s no way to be certain,” the commander continued. “But it’s almost as if she was trying to grab her attacker.”

Or to grab something from the attacker? Serge had not mentioned any defensive wounds on her hands.

“Who knows? The attacker might have been frightened by the lights of a passing boat. He might have been interrupted and so he ran away not knowing if she survived.”

He put his raincoat on. “And I never said that.”

INTERRUPTED?

Nelie Landrou had made the frantic telephone call to her.

This made sense if she’d seen Orla attacked at the river, been chased in turn, and so feared for her life and the baby’s. She had not even had time to put a diaper on Stella. Shaken, Aimée rounded the curve of Quai d’Anjou.

The rain continued to pelt down. She walked down the worn steps to the spot Capitaine Sezeur had pointed out. White and rust-colored lichen splashed with clumps of lime covered the stone wall; moss feathered the cracks oozing under her wet boots. A Bateau-Mouche glided past, so close she could hear radio static erupting from the deck, and sweeping gray-green water onto the bank and her shoes. Just as quickly, the water receded, trickling back over the weathered stone.

Here. Hunched over, she reached her hand into the icy water. Flailed around until her fingers touched a metal rung, invisible in the murky depths. A whoosh of colder subterranean water, putrid and scummed with foam, gushed forth and was swept away by the current. The capitaine’s conjecture was right. Caught in and buffeted by the sewer stream, Orla couldn’t have been here long or she would have been bruised all over.

Her hand, dripping by her side, tingled. Then the rain stopped and a warm, almost tropical wind whipped her face as she walked the few steps to her building. A weak moon struggled behind wisps of pearl gray clouds hovering over Pont Marie.

Orla had died almost outside Aimée’s window. Capitaine Sezeur had confirmed her suspicions.

But her investigation had fallen short. Brigitte had revealed little about MondeFocus or Nelie. Claude’s video held only blurred, unfocused images and would require painstaking processing to decipher. And then the tape might show only two minutes of dark chaos. There had to be more.

What was clear was that she couldn’t juggle work and take care of Stella.

Yet she needed to sniff under the rocks Brigitte had pointed her at and to find Krzysztof. To focus, or—as the old dinosaurs in the force said—squeeze till the water ran dry.

She tried Brigitte at the MondeFocus office. No answer, so she left a message on the machine.She stopped at the boulangerie around the corner and stood in line behind a bent old man. He tipped his cap with a knowing smile. “Bonsoir.”

She returned his greeting, searching her memory. Did she know him? He struggled to put his loaf of pain au paysan inside a plastic bag printed with the green cross of the pharmacy next door. She noticed boxes of bandages and dressings inside the bag.

The boulangerie doors stood open to the street where the few passersby were folding their umbrellas to save them from the wind. Meter maids in blue peaked caps checked car meters along the quai. She emerged, baguette in hand, and paused, sensing someone watching her. Her skin prickled.

Unsure of what to do, she ducked inside a doorway and scanned the street, but she saw only a meter maid writing a ticket in her little book and the bent old man shuffling to the stone stairs leading down to the riverbank. She had to control her nerves.

On impulse, she followed him. She wanted to ask if he’d seen anything unusual the previous night. The algae-scented breeze rustled the budding plane-tree branches. The old man clutched the stone balustrade as he made his way downward with slow, painful steps. Odd. She wondered why he was descending since the Seine’s gray-green water lapped over the bank and rose above the bottom step. No one else was out walking on the quai now.

Pont Louis Philippe arched ahead of her, decorated with carved stone wreaths of intertwined sculpted leaves. Buses trundled overhead, their green sides flashing above the stone wall.

When she looked down again, the old man had disappeared.

“Monsieur?” she called out. Anxious now, she took the steps two at a time, hesitated, then tiptoed through the swirling eddies of water. Useless. Her shoes were soaked. And she couldn’t see the old man on the bank or in the river. Before she waded ankle deep in water to explore, she had better relieve René. She mounted the stairs. Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Allô?”

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” said a familiar voice. She searched her memory, came up blank. The guitar of an old Georges Brassens song played in the background, punctuated by an engine starting.

“Oui?”

“You asked about a tire iron. Well, one’s missing from the garage stockroom.”

Momo, the mechanic from the garage near Pont de Sully. Chances were the figure in Place Bayre had stolen the tire iron while Nelie was telephoning Aimée, and had then used it to attack Orla. Not a comforting thought.

“Momo,” she said. “Can you remember anything more about the woman who used the garage phone?”

No, I’m sorry,” he said. “

Too bad.

“But I thought I saw her,” he said as she was about to click off.

She gripped the phone tighter. “You did? Where?”

“The scarf . . .” The sound was muffled as he put his hand over the phone, speaking to someone.

She controlled her frustration. “Her scarf, Momo, you’re sure? Do you remember the color, the design?”

“Chic, you know,” he said. “Never saw one embroidered like that. But I’m not sure. Just an old woman. They’re like crows, you know; they go through the garbage—”

“What color?” she interrupted.

“Chic, with papillons, pink butterflies. I’ve got to go.”

He hung up.

INSIDE HER APARTMENT, all was still except for the strains of a lullaby. From the doorway, she saw René sprawled on the recamier, eyes closed, mouth open. Miles Davis was curled on the floor by René and faint whistles of sleep came from the bundle in the hammock. She checked on Stella. And sat, watching her, lost contemplating the little balled fists and feathery eyelashes until she noticed a note in René’s handwriting. It read, Never wake a sleeping baby. Nesting all right. And in this case, it was a tired René who was catching up on his sleep. The old lullaby on the tape deck played over and over again.

His laptop screen showed a program running a standard virus check. Bon. Again René had it all under control.

Still, she prepared a bottle, in case, then sat down, expectant. But Stella’s little peeps of breath came measured and slow. She glanced at the clock, then tiptoed to her bedroom, riffled through the hangers in her armoire. A white military-style frock coat with a double row of buttons, over-the-knee boots, striped black-and-white trousers with a Left Bank mottled brown leather oversized doctor’s bag? Or a more soignée Right Bank assembly of cropped wool Chanel jacket and rope of pearls worn over dark washed jeans and stilettos with a metallic python-skin handbag?

Neither. Her role was that of a concerned eco journalist. She chose the jeans, stilettos, frock coat, a T-shirt silk-screened with Che Guevara’s chiseled face and her leather backpack, pinched her cheeks for color, and daubed a drop of Chanel No. 5 in the hollow of her throat.

“ SANTÉ . ” AIMÉE CLINKED her wineglass against Claude’s. The bottle of Chinon sat open and breathing on the wooden West African manioc-kneading table. At least her pants were dry and she wouldn’t drip puddles on the floor this time.

“I am so sorry the video didn’t come out more clearly. But take it with you.” Claude brushed his hair back. His long legs were clad in black leather pants and he wore a black V-neck sweater and a small silver hoop in his ear. “Did Brigitte help you reach Nelie?”

She felt stupid. He looked as if he had dressed for a date. She thought she had better leave now.

“Non, but I’ll keep trying. Merci.” She downed the wine in one gulp and picked up her bag.

“Wait a minute—why rush off? I’ve got a joke to tell you.” He threw his arms up in mock supplication. “I’ve practiced it all afternoon.”

Was this part of his “lighten up” campaign?

“Sit down again,” he said, refilling her glass.

“Do I have to laugh?” She took a sip. The wine slid down her throat, smooth and full bodied.

“In Dakar, a steamroller operator’s at work flattening the dirt for the highway. He is injured. His friend goes to visit him in the hospital. ‘What room’s my friend in?’ he asks the nurse. ‘Rooms 15, 16, and 17.’”

Aimée grinned dutifully but she didn’t find his joke very amusing.

“OK, I tried,” he said.

She hoped he wasn’t going to pull out some cowrie-shell game to teach her.

“Now it’s your turn.”

Jokes . . . she didn’t know any clean enough, or politically correct enough, for a documentary filmmaker.

She pointed to the tattoo of a lizard on his arm. “Nice. From Africa?”

“Marseilles, on the dock. Young, dumb, and drunk,” he said. He ran his hand up her arm. “Do you have any tattoos?”

She averted her face, blushing.

“Look at me.” He grinned. “You do!”

She couldn’t lie before that intense dark gaze.

“A Marquesan lizard,” she said, “the symbol of change, with the sacred tortoise inside.”

“Et donc, didn’t I say we were the same? Both branded with lizards. Show me.”

She took another sip of wine, shook her head, and stared at the tribal rug under her feet.

“From Marseilles, too?”

“It’s a secret,” she said, loath to admit that she had once had to hide from a flic in a Sentier tattoo parlor and wound up with one.

When she looked up, his face was almost touching hers, so close his eyelashes feathered her cheek. “We all have secrets,” he breathed in her ear.

His finger traced her mouth. Soft and warm. The only sound in that moment was the patter of rain on the glass roof over the courtyard. She inhaled his sandalwood scent, stronger now, engulfing her.

A tentative look shone in his dark eyes. “What’s in your mind right now?”

Her fingers explored his shoulders. “You really want to know?” The wine was talking, she couldn’t believe she’d said that.

Then his arm was around her waist. His hand dropped to the small of her back.

“I know what’s in mine,” he said.

His hair brushed her chin, his warm lips finding her neck.

“Time to see your lizard.” His arms were tightened around her, pulling her toward him. His mouth was on hers, tasting it.

“Then you’ll have to find it.”