Walls of a Mind Read online

  He bought the silliest, droopiest sun hat on offer at the notions shop, and a pair of stupidly macho mirrored shades. He made one more call. Then he headed out of town.

  · 12 ·

  SUNDAY INTERRUPTED

  On a pleasant Sunday morning Chief Inspector Nouvelle was in the weekly market on the place at Saint-Brin doing her weekly shopping. Bread and cheese, eggs, tomatoes and green beans… some nice plump radishes. Every week, rain or shine, travelling vendors rolled into town, parked their converted mobile homes in allotted slots along the perimeter, threw open the side-long counter-cum-display cases, and set up shop. Lesser operations set up on tables along the centre allée. There was nowhere near the selection of charcuterie or cheeses you’d find in Alsace, but Aliette had come to enjoy some excellently dry ham, good breads, great goat cheese, wonderful fruit…

  The cherries had been superb through May and June. Now it was lovely, sweet white peaches.

  A roast chicken with ‘extra juice’ was her regular choice for her solitary Sunday feast.

  It’s no simple thing enjoying Sunday when you are alone in a small place where family is the tightest of closed structures. The new cop’s usual strategy was a book and a beer, a nap, a call to her parents in Nantes, then her chicken. This Sunday would be a welcome change in her routine.

  She was already dressed for her lunch date with Sergio Regarri. A mauve paisley summer dress with string shoulder straps and buttons from bra to hem. She’d found it in a Basel boutique five or six years ago. It still hung well enough. She hoped it was not too girlish. Five or six years ago felt like another lifetime. Some of the passing men seemed to be enjoying it.

  Though dressed for a special Sunday lunch, Aliette was brooding about business.

  The closest she had come to an exchange with Roland Bousquet at the funeral reception was a distinctly dirty glare as Monsieur le Président was escorted to his car by Marcelin Guatto (and the same two silent, faceless men noted at the cemetery). But Magui Barthès had called at supper to report one interesting thing from Valras. She and Henri had not witnessed it, but several people confirmed that four men clearly not on holiday had removed two young people from a beachfront condo in the early afternoon. She and Henri had looked through the place and found it not only empty but immaculately clean. ‘Spotless. My mother couldn’t have done better,’ said Magui. The description of the two kids fit with Stephanie McLeod’s age group, if not Joël Guatto’s, but no one could tell them much — most were just arriving to start their vacation, and the various merchants could not distinguish one pasty-faced northerner from the next. More discomfiting, Nabi Zidane’s duty desk said there had been no PJ operations that day at Valras.

  Would Nabi Zidane’s duty desk say the truth to their country cousins?

  Aliette could only hope her judge might be able to shed some light.

  She bought a bag of cashews, then finished her courses at the olive vendor.

  The car was parked in front of the Mairie — not that she had any plan or reason to go up to her desk. There was a woman standing by it, also dressed for Sunday. Sandy hair, highlighted, tied in a loose bow. A few years older, somewhere near fifty, but solid, well-tanned, healthy. She wore a pair of ultra-bourgeois blue and white wingtip half-heels under an equally Faubourg St-Honoré cream-coloured pleated skirt. Maybe she wanted to report some stolen jewellery?

  …a catty whim on the part of a cop who secretly coveted those shoes.

  ‘Bonjour. Chief Inspector Nouvelle?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Margot Tessier.’ Extending her hand.

  She shook it. And waited.

  ‘You don’t know me?’

  ‘Can’t say I do, madame.’

  ‘Ah.’ Someone had made a mistake. She pulled her card from her bag. A warrant card: Margot Tessier, Agente, Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. Margot Tessier was a well-dressed spook.

  ‘I like your dress.’ And the spook was eager to be friends.

  ‘Merci. From Basel.’

  ‘One of these days I’ll get there.’

  ‘It’s actually in honour of a lunch date.’ The inspector smiled, none too subtly, opened her car door and loaded her groceries into the back seat, then climbed in behind the wheel.

  Agent Margot Tessier laid a hand on the door. ‘This rendezvous with Sergio — is it something special, or more in the way of a working lunch?’

  Pulling the door shut, Aliette faced the importunate woman. Of course she would know that. She would know far too much. As to the question, she couldn’t honestly answer.

  Agent Tessier smiled. ‘In any event, I was hoping you’d point me in the right direction.’

  ‘Where do you need to get to?’

  ‘Stephanie McLeod.’

  More bullshit. ‘I don’t appreciate you people snooping through my business.’

  ‘We don’t snoop, Inspector — we monitor. Yesterday we rounded up some…mm, dangerous people, had a look at their phone calls, their email. We saw a name that interests us. Now I need to have a chat with Mademoiselle McLeod. Very standard procedure.’

  Which explained the operation at the beach.

  But standard procedure for DST could leave the ugliest messes. A cop two steps behind could not afford to give an inch. Vexed, and showing it, she demanded, ‘What people?’

  ‘Are you investigating this girl?’ Agent Tessier replied, straight-faced.

  ‘I’m investigating the murder of Joël Guatto. You know that. Stephanie McLeod is very delicate, and maybe crucial. I trust you will respect that, madame…now, if you’ll excuse me?’ She turned the key and revved the engine.

  The agent was impervious to her chagrin. ‘Her boyfriend isn’t the least bit delicate.’

  ‘If he is who you think he is.’

  ‘We’ve no doubt at all.’

  ‘But you are not investigating the murder of Joël Guatto, are you?’ A direct challenge.

  Agent Tessier ignored it. ‘We extracted as much as we could from his cohorts. It’s him — but the way they operate, they don’t even know his name.’

  ‘Charles Stuart?’ Aliette wondered if Margot Tessier would get the joke.

  She didn’t. ‘She told you that?’ Agent Tessier could not resist rolling her eyes, to officially register a matronly note of disdain for a cop who was either sloppy or just plain naïve. ‘His knapsack was still there. We were very close. Within minutes. He’s a security threat, Inspector.’

  ‘And I wish you luck.’ Engaging the clutch, she put it into reverse and made to leave.

  Margot Tessier said, ‘He was carrying a small quantity of DDNP. Others will have other bits and pieces. They’ve left three casualties in the wake of their homemade bombs.’

  Sergio had not mentioned that. Aliette was compelled to release the clutch, turn and meet the woman’s grey-brown eyes. ‘But they have no history of guns. You would know this. You would also know I am looking into a killing carried out with a professional-level rifle. And that this Prince person and his friends have neither the money nor the inclination to engage that kind of help. It’s against everything they stand for. I respect your mandate, Agent Tessier, but — ’

  ‘Margot. Please call me Margot.’

  ‘ — clearly, my case is not your case.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I have to delve a little deeper with Stephanie McLeod, and — ’

  ‘And I can’t stop you.’

  ‘…and I was thinking we could share.’

  Was this DST’s idea of inter-departmental relations? Aliette refused to be conned. ‘Margot, Stephanie McLeod is a rank amateur. Bright, sure, but she made a wrong turn and knows it, and she is backing away as fast as she can. She is not part of a murder. There has been no bomb, not in my brief, so if you don’t mind…’ Foot on the clutch again, easing away.

  ‘And if she’s consortin
g with a wanted person listed as a security threat?’

  ‘That is not my problem. Not here. Not now. Not unless...’ Looking desperately over her shoulder for a break in the slow crawl of Sunday shoppers searching for a parking spot.

  ‘Why are you protecting her?’

  The car stalled, jerked to a halt. Aliette gave up her attempt to escape and faced the hovering woman. ‘I am not. I am handling her in a way that I see fit for the needs of my investigation.’

  DST Agent Margot Tessier was smiling at her again. ‘Like it or not, we dovetail, Inspector.’

  ‘Go and talk to her. You don’t need me for that.’

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘No you don’t.’ There was a gap in the crawling line of cars. She turned the key, jammed her foot down, slammed it into reverse with a horrible grind…pulled out, and pulled away.

  Margot Tessier waved. ‘I’ll be in touch… Have fun! Love to Sergio!’

  Love to Sergio. Aliette Nouvelle didn’t like the sound of that, not at all.

  ·

  Ten minutes later she was in a frustrated muddle, loading the fridge, vaguely contemplating the salads she’d prepared to go with the chicken. Potato. Carrot and raisin. Pasta and peppers…

  She was suddenly concerned with protecting herself. Her mind was circling frantically between anger and an idea. The Security Services Protective Act covers DST agents from many actions not strictly legal. It means DST will too often trample everything in their path, then disappear, unaccountable to courts, beholden only to deeper, darker spooks. Regular cops have no such shelter. Aliette dreaded the thought of Margot Tessier ‘talking’ to Stephanie McLeod. How would it play with the Procureur? With her boss in Montpellier? Margot Tessier brought too many unknowns to terrain where she was still far from comfortable.

  ‘Quel bordel!’ She slammed the fridge and grabbed her phone. ‘Could you come now?

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Right now. And bring your briefcase — I need a warrant. I need to make an arrest.’

  ‘An arrest…’ Trying to process it. ‘What about lunch?’

  ‘Meet me at Vieussan.’

  ‘Vieussan?’

  ‘Come through Murviel and go straight up — ’

  ‘I know where it is, Inspector. I mean, Aliette. Can you not slow down and tell me — ’

  ‘Do you know Margot Tessier?’ Obviously she knew him.

  ‘Yes, sure. Oh, merde…All right. I’m on my way.’

  · 13 ·

  CONCEPT OF ALLEGIANCE

  Aliette ran to her car, phone in hand. She punched in a saved number as she sped away. Stephanie McLeod’s measured voice answered on the third ring. ‘Les Oliviers, bonjour. Thanks for calling. We are open Wednesday to Sunday…’ A recorded message. She hesitated. This had to be right. ‘Stephanie… it’s Inspector Nouvelle. Listen. If a woman shows up and wants to talk, try to hold her off till I get there. She is not your friend. God, I hope you get this. I’ll try your house.’ A second call got the same result. Ditto a third to Stephanie’s cell. ‘Leave a message.’

  She strongly advised Stephanie McLeod to insist on her rights. And hang on.

  The best way to protect herself was to protect Stephanie. The best way to protect Stephanie was to take her into custody. To do that she needed a mandate. She needed the mandate that had been offered Friday — which she had declined. Friday she’d felt alone in the thing with Stephanie McLeod. Now…this brassy, insinuating Margot. It was just noon. Either Stephanie was on the terrace tending to her first guests, or it had already happened.

  Double-checking her bag for her warrant card, she turned onto D20 and floored it. No slow scenic route today. Twenty minutes later she stopped at Les Oliviers. Six people waited on the steps, uncertain. The front door was wide open — but there was no one there to receive them. From her vantage she saw Avi Roig in chef’s whites, hair flying, face strained in panic, sprinting down the public stairs. Aliette knew she was too late.

  As if on cue, a hulking black German 4X4 with tinted windows came around the bend and glided past, heading back toward the valley.

  Leaving the chef to his own worries, Aliette drove the final kilometre and turned up the hill to the village.

  Madame Fortuno, the nosy neighbour, was at her door. ‘Two men took her away. She didn’t look good — hair all wet, eyes like death. The Jew came running and made a fuss, but they just dragged her off. Put her in one of those ugly Boche trucks. I bet this is all because of him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘B’eh, that horrible Jew. I don’t trust his kind at all.’

  Ugly Boches. Horrible Jews…What deep dark pain this wretched woman must exist in. The inspector made a mental note to one day sit down with Madame Fortuno and explain that the German car was the finest available, that Avi Roig made a duck gizzard salad that was genuinely pleasurable. ‘Merci, madame.’ But it was not the moment to spar with a bigoted old witch.

  The door to the McLeod house was not locked. Inside, it was dim, a cramped-feeling place designed for smaller people of minimal means, probably a century before. Salon, kitchen, a rear room intended as a pantry, which contained a cluttered workbench-cum-writing table on one wall, an over-stuffed bookcase on the other. The books were all in English. If you wanted French, there was a sparse selection in the salon. Tatty mismatched furnishings whichever way you looked. Upstairs, two bedrooms. In the second, an only child’s single bed. She found basic makeup items scattered on the dresser, a fresh shirt waiting on a hanger, a damp towel on the floor. In the bathroom, steam from an undrained bath still lingered. They’d obviously charged in and snatched her.

  Aliette looked further. An 8x10 image of Stephanie as a grinning lycée graduate adorned the credenza in the salon. Several more photos were lined along the bookcase. Her parents smiled. Father had pale Celtic skin, large front teeth. He’d passed on the gently curling tawny hair to his daughter. Mother was the pretty one: straight black hair, sunny skin, a sensuous mouth, fine bones. If Stephanie had got anything from Mama, it was the wary look in her eyes… Here was one of Stephanie looking more worldly, confident, in front of a Paris bistro. The ENA girl, footloose in the city of light, bound for glory, but not before some fun.

  Now she was in the hands of the DST.

  Communications in the McLeod home were decidedly retro. The black and white télé hooked to rabbit ears bespoke a family either too poor or too uninterested to keep pace. The cream-coloured Minitel made the inspector think of her own mother, who still kept hers in the kitchen and still used it to reserve a seat on the train. Its days were numbered… And the scarlet one-piece Ericsson Ericofon brought on memories of her fourteen-year-old self, blabbing with friends on her own private line in the privacy of her bedroom. This artifact waited on a side-table beside a blinking answering machine that was almost as old.

  Aliette touched the rewind/play button. Her own message was not there. Nor any others.

  Only this: Stephanie! Pick up the phone!... for God’s sake…please!

  Avi Roig had slammed the phone down and run up the hill to warn her. Too late.

  Which meant they had stopped at his door looking for Stephanie McLeod.

  Something was not right: The fact that her own message was deleted…

  It took twenty minutes to drive up from Saint-Brin. A bath and dressing take at least that long. If she had called while Stephanie was in her bath — well, leave a message. If the horrid neighbour was telling it right, they’d come in, ordered her to dress and escorted — no, dragged her off to the car. They had erased her message. And any others that happened to be there. Why?

  Aliette unscrewed the ear piece and immediately saw the inserted device. Yet more old technology — what some would call ancient. It looked like it belonged there. Margot Tessier’s spooks knew how to hide things in plain sight. This was to be expected.

  Somet
hing else was wrong. It took a minute, maybe five, standing there staring at two pieces of an outdated telephone till the right question filtered through: Exactly how long had that old listening post been hiding in that phone?

  Margot had blithely said they ‘dovetailed’ — Aliette’s murder, this man called Prince.

  She puzzled over it. But the extending logic became obscured in a dark, DST-shrouded fog.

  When Aliette Nouvelle stepped back into the sunshine that had somehow found its way into the tiny street, Instructing Judge Sergio Regarri was approaching, uncertain, looking lost. It transformed to a smile when he saw her. They shook hands. ‘I get the feeling I’m not in time.’

  ‘Neither was I… You stopped at the bistro?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Three tables of four, one frantic chef.’

  ‘They took his waitress.’

  ‘So I gathered.’ Suddenly brightening up, he told her, ‘You look ravishing!’

  She accepted that with a nod. Asked, ‘What exactly is your relationship to Margot Tessier?’

  She refrained from demanding, And how did she know about us?

  ‘Margot?’ A big backtracking shrug, ‘…Well…I mean, you don’t really have a relationship with this kind of person. I mean not per se…’ Sergio Regarri danced and dissembled. The DST office was around the corner from the courthouse, their paths crossed fairly regularly, mainly in the hallways of the Parquet — the offices of the Procureur. An Instructing Judge and a DST spook both had necessary things to discuss with the Proc. And like himself, she was almost never called as a witness in a courtroom. Regarri’s role as an investigative referee expressly excluded him from speaking there. Tessier’s security role was perpetually amorphous and prosecutors were leery of putting her forward as a credible arm of the law. Subtext: DST agents broke too many rules. In their shared outsider status Sergio and Margot had become — what? — acquaintances. The occasional lunch together in the Palais canteen did not compromise one’s independence. On the contrary, one tried to cultivate one’s contacts and possibilities. Networking was an art that extended in any direction. One never knew who one might need…