Peter Robinson - Not Dark Yet

Charlotte seemed to freeze. Jessica Bowen glanced from her client to Annie and back. ‘DI Cabbot,’ she said. ‘Exactly where are you going with this?’

‘Patience,’ said Annie. ‘Have patience, and all will be revealed.’

‘I’m tired,’ said Charlotte. ‘And you’ve upset me.’ She implored Jessica Bowen. ‘Please, make them stop. It’s my right. I’m entitled to a break. I want to go home.’

‘Legally, we are entitled to detain you for twenty-four hours without charge,’ said Annie. ‘But you’re right. You do have a right to breaks, meals, and so on. Now, we have a destination in mind, and one way or another we’re going to get there. If you’re tired and need a break, we have a very comfortable cell in the basement. You’ll be fed, made comfortable, and we can start again bright and early tomorrow morning.’

‘This is a nightmare. I want to go home.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you have to stay in custody until we’re satisfied with your answers to our questions,’ she said. ‘It’s the law.’

Charlotte glanced at Jessica Bowen again.

‘You’ll be all right,’ the solicitor said. ‘I’ll be nearby. You’ll be well treated. I promise you.’

But Charlotte didn’t look happy in the slightest, least of all when two female officers marched her out of the interview room and down to the custody suite.

‘You know Nelia Melnic?’ Jean-Claude asked, clearly stunned by Banks’s revelation of what he wanted to talk about.

‘Yes. She goes by the name of Zelda now. She’s a friend. Why, do you?’

‘No. No. I’ve never met her. I just know the name. I’m surprised, that’s all. I hear she’s very beautiful.’

‘Yes.’ They were having dinner at a restaurant Jean-Claude knew, lost in the maze of backstreets of the 9th Arrondissement. The specialty was seafood, and both were enjoying the house platter along with a bottle of fine white Burgundy, chosen by Jean-Claude. They had been fortunate to get there early enough for a table out front.

‘Why are you so surprised?’ Banks asked.

Jean-Claude paused, a shrimp midway between his plate and his mouth. ‘Because she is famous here, Alain. Perhaps not with the general population, though many will certainly have heard of her, but with the police for certain. She was a legend in the squad room. Did she not tell you?’

‘I know something happened here,’ Banks said. ‘Something serious involving a pimp called Darius. But that’s about all I do know.’

Jean-Claude gave him a serious look. ‘Most of the story is classified, you understand. I could not possibly tell you all the names and positions of those involved. There was a scandal. Well, a narrowly averted scandal. Very few people know the details.’

‘But you’re one of them?’

Jean-Claude inclined his head slightly. ‘I had some small involvement. To be perfectly honest, though, even I don’t know the names of the major players. They were important people, that is all I know. Government people.’

Banks tussled with an extremely recalcitrant langoustine. ‘She has a French passport.’

‘Mm. You see, I didn’t know that. Why are you interested?’

Banks told him about Zelda and Ray and the trouble with the Tadićs, Keane, and Hawkins, leaving out the murders and abductions.

Jean-Claude swallowed a mouthful of wine and said, ‘So that’s what became of her. Perhaps she is the sort of woman trouble follows around?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Banks. ‘The Tadićs are from way back in her past. They abducted her outside her orphanage as she was leaving. But this Darius business is more recent.’

‘It was just over three years ago,’ said Jean-Claude. ‘The month of March. I remember it well.’

‘Did you work the case?’

‘There was no case. And I told you, even I don’t know the full details.’

‘But you said you had some involvement. What happened?’

‘Darius was a pimp. Or perhaps that does him an injustice. His girls were all beautiful, high-class, très chic, and très expensive. With a Darius girl, it was strictly dinner at Maxim’s, then back to a suite at the George V, if you know what I mean.’

‘No matter what the price,’ said Banks, ‘the business is the same. I’d say he was a pimp.’

‘You would get no real argument from me. We knew of him, of course. He was born in Algeria and came to Paris in his late twenties. A crook from the start. He very quickly made his way up the ladder through a mixture of brutality and business acumen. His rivals seemed to have a habit of disappearing, and he was not averse to hurting the girls when he thought it necessary to keep them in line.’

‘A nasty piece of work then?’

‘Very nasty.’ Jean-Claude paused to finish the remains of his meal, ending with the last oyster, which he washed down with the Burgundy, then went on. ‘What nobody knew for quite some time was that he had a little blackmail business on the side. You know, the usual: photos, sometimes film, famous or highly placed victims.’

It sounded very much like what Neville Roberts had been doing back on Banks’s home patch. ‘But I thought you French were more permissive than us lot about that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Don’t most Frenchmen have a mistress? Visit prostitutes? I seem to have read only recently about a Frenchman who died while having adulterous sex on a job-related trip, and it was classified as a “workplace accident.” ’

Jean-Claude laughed. ‘So the Frenchman’s workplace is his mistress’s boudoir? Oh, Alain. What have you been reading? Or perhaps it is the films of Vadim, Rohmer, or Truffaut that influence you? Yes, we are to a certain extent more liberal than you English as regards domestic arrangements and matters of the boudoir, but remember this was quite recent, and believe it or not, even France has been stricken by a plague of uber-morality in public life since the old days. #BalanceTonPorc — what you call #MeToo — has made its presence known here. Just look at the trouble with Roman Polanski, for example. That would never have happened a few years ago. The tide is turning. But if only that were all.’

‘There’s more?’

‘Isn’t there always? Dessert?’

Banks patted his stomach. ‘I think I’ve just about got room.’

Jean-Claude caught the waiter’s attention and ordered apple tarte tatins and Calvados for both of them. A couple of elegantly dressed French women took the next table. One of them, mid-forties, perhaps, with short, tousled brown hair, a pale oval face and full lips, wearing a cream blazer over a pale blue blouse, was particularly attractive. After they had adjusted their chairs and disposed of their handbags, she turned slightly and gave Banks a quick smile. Then they began speaking in French so fast that Banks couldn’t follow at all.

‘You were saying there’s more?’ he prompted Jean-Claude.

‘Yes. Darius’s clientele, customers, whatever you called them, were very mixed. They included men highly placed in government, ministers, prominent businessmen, even gangsters, Russian oligarchs... People in possession of closely guarded secrets. Men who, under the right circumstances, might find themselves talking out of turn.’

‘I think I know where you’re going,’ said Banks.

‘You are thinking of your Profumo affair, no doubt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember what President de Gaulle said about that?’

‘No.’

‘He said that’s what happens when the English try to behave like the French.’

Banks laughed. ‘But that was back in the Cold War,’ he said. ‘Russian spies and all that.’

‘Well, it is true that the objectives have changed now that the Cold War is over, but the game remains the same. Darius had some highly placed customers, and some of his most beautiful girls were Russian. Trafficked girls, we suspect. Pillow talk is what it is, and money is always a good incentive for loose tongues. Only this time the matter exchanged involved business dealings, stocks and shares and takeovers, rather than weapons and military or political strategy.’