Cara Black - Murder in Belleville

She went back to the kitchen table where Philippe still snored, dead to the world. Aimée opened the stainless-steel fridge and helped herself to a fresh Badoit. She sucked the bubbly mineral water, then rifled through Philippe’s pockets. Stuck in his pants pocket was a receipt from Centre Hépitalisation d’urgence en psychiatrie Esquiro for Madame Sitbon. Of course, that had to be Anaïs. Sitbon was Anaïs’s maiden name!

Aimée recognized the hospital, noted for its centre de crise, not far from Pere Lachaise on rue Roquette. She chugged more Badoit. Then she propped her card with a scribbled “Call me” near Philippe’s curled hand and left.

ON THE fourth floor of the clinic, Aimée brushed Anaïs’s cheek with the back of her hand.

Anaïs’s eyes fluttered open.

“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” Anaïs said, smiling weakly at Aimée.

“Sorry to disturb you.”

The private room overlooked the manicured trees on Square de la Roquette. Beside the hospital bed, a monitor beeped, slow and steady.

“How’s my Simone?”

Aimée started guiltily—she hadn’t checked.

“ Bien , but missing you,” she lied. “Look at these.”

She held another photo René had morphed together—of Sylvie with the red wig.

“Sylvie wore wigs,” Anaïs said. “Some men like that. Philippe did.”

Poor Anaïs.

“There’s more to it than that. I’m sorry,” Aimée said, controlling her excitement. “But I found some odd photos.”

Tears ran down Anaïs’s cheeks.

“What’s the matter?” Aimée said. She couldn’t understand why Anaïs wasn’t interested.

“Philippe’s changed. He’s dead inside.”

“He’s trying to forget,” Aimée shook her head. “Tiens, if he were dead inside he wouldn’t be drinking himself into a stupor.”

“Nothing will be over until the killer…,” Anaïs’s chest heaved, then the tears spilled down her pale cheeks, “until you catch them. If Sylvie pretended to be someone else, you’ve got to find out why—what’s the reason. Nothing will be over until then. I hired you to find out who murdered Sylvie.”

Aimée sighed. “Look, Anaïs, I’m doing my best, but you and Philippe haven’t helped me. I’ve been working in the dark. If you knew about the photos, why didn’t you tell me? It’s like you gave me half a deck and want me to play cards!”

“The General,” Anaïs said, rubbing her wet cheeks.

Aimée’s hand tightened on the bed’s railing and she leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“I remembered … someone saying “general,” maybe it was Sylvie … but then the explosion.”

What did that mean? “Did Sylvie say this upstairs in the apartment?”

Anaïs nodded. “Sylvie said terrible things happened in Algeria. Philippe knew about them.”

Did it have to do with those photos? she wondered.

“What did Sylvie give you?”

“Some envelope,” Anaïs rubbed her eyes.

“The envelope with ‘ST196’ written on it?”

“Philippe has it.”

“Did you see the General?”

Anaïs shook her head.

“Did you hear a voice, a sound?”

“The smell,” Anaïs squinted, as if trying to remember could force it to come back.

“What smell?”

“I feel so stupid,” Anaïs said. “My brain’s so mixed up.”

“Which smell, Anaïs?”

“I can’t remember,” she said. “Philippe says I should recover without worrying about Simone,” Anaïs shoulders slumped under her hospital jacket. “Martine’s taking Simone to the école ma’ternelle, but I want to take her to school and be with her. It’s safer for me here, he says, but I want to go home. He’s afraid, Aimée. But I don’t know why.”

“If someone is blackmailing him I’ve got part of the evidence,” she said, trying to get that through Anaïs’s skull. “You’re safe. He’ll come and get you tomorrow.”

“Licorice,” Anaïs said.

Aimée froze. Her mind went back to the military man chewing licorice at the circus.

“You smelled licorice in Sylvie’s apartment?”

But Anaïs’s eyes had closed. Little whistles of sleep escaped her lips.

As Aimée walked into the cold Paris night she wished she felt it was true that Anaïs was safe.

Sunday Night

HAMID STARED AT THE torn green-and-white Algerian flag.

“Where did this come from?”

“Discord within the AFL mounts. If you don’t comply…” Walid left the rest unfinished. He pointed at the broken red crescent moon enfolding a star. Walid, another mullah in his cause, looked defeated. He shook his head.

Hamid’s years of work, the ties he’d established, the movement he’d created—all would be sabotaged if he didn’t comply with his enemy. Such a close enemy. The French had no idea.

Hamid gently fitted the sickle-shaped red moon on the green-and-white cloth, then folded the pieces together. If only he could weave his people together so easily.

He nodded at Walid; he couldn’t ignore the warning. “I must rinse my mouth; please pass me water.”

After he partook from the beaten bronze bowl and washed his face, he prayed, for the first time, that the sans’papiers would forgive him.

Late Sunday Night

AIMÉE COULDN’T SLEEP.

From outside her bedroom window came the low hum of a barge, its blue running lights blinking on the Seine. Reflected in her bedroom’s mirrored trench doors, she saw the dark rooftops of the Marais across the river.

Her laptop screen, perched on her legs as she sat propped up in bed, held a jumble of numbers. Sylvie/Eugénie’s Crédit Lyon-nais balance.

She’d been trying to make sense of the withdrawals and deposits, but her eyes blurred.

The courtyard, overlooked by her other window, held the pear tree’s budding leaves and bird’s nests. Miles Davis curled in the bed beside her, growling in his sleep. His white fur chest rose and fell in the midst of an intense dream.

With her other laptop on top of the large medical texts she used as a night table, she’d been online for hours searching for links to the Crédit Lyonnais account. She’d entered the account number, then checked it for links corresponding to other bank accounts, a tedious job. So far she’d tried fifteen banks and found no connections.

The money had to come from somewhere, and she knew Sylvie banked on-line. The Minitel had paved the way for that. She had narrowed her list of banks to those who had client online capabilities. But since all French banks were regulated by the Banque de France, she didn’t see how Sylvie could launder or obtain money without its knowledge.

Dejected, she had only two more numbers to check when a routine thousand-franc deposit responded to her link query. Immediately a series of numbers appeared on her screen.

Of course, this had to be interest paid into the account!

She sat up excitedly, pushing the goose-down duvet to the side. Following the number source to a transit account, she found a thread to the Bank of Commerce Ltd., headquartered in the Channel Islands. A convenient offshore account destination, Aimée thought. Nice and anonymous. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

She dug deeper and accessed the Channel Island account. Three large cash infusions had swelled the Bank of Commerce balance since last September. But like the ebb and flow of the tide, as a significant amount was withdrawn another would replace the void. However, the current balance of nearly five million U.S. dollars—or roughly three million pounds sterling—stood out. Aimée gasped. No wonder Sylvie could afford Biwa pearls and to throw away Prada shoes.

Surprise mingled with a feeling of being in over her head. Something smelled very dirty. She scrolled back, checking the deposit amounts over the past twelve months. Several large deposits had brought the amount, at one time, to twenty million dollars.