Murder on the Left Bank Read online

  Books by the author

  Murder in the Marais

  Murder in Belleville

  Murder in the Sentier

  Murder in the Bastille

  Murder in Clichy

  Murder in Montmartre

  Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

  Murder in the Rue de Paradis

  Murder in the Latin Quarter

  Murder in the Palais Royal

  Murder in Passy

  Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

  Murder Below Montparnasse

  Murder in Pigalle

  Murder on the Champ de Mars

  Murder on the Quai

  Murder in Saint-Germain

  Copyright © 2018 by Cara Black

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of f iction. Names, characters, places,

  and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

  or are used f ictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, businesses, companies, events,

  or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Black, Cara

  Title: Murder on the Left Bank / Cara Black.

  An Aimee Leduc investigation ; 18

  ISBN 978-1-61695-927-2

  eISBN 978-1-61695-928-9

  1. Leduc, Aimee (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women private

  investigators—France—Paris—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3552.L297 M875 2018 813’.54—dc23 2017055168

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the ghosts, near and far, and the poet of twilight

  “We must push against a door to know that it is closed to us.”

  —Michel de Montaigne, sixteenth century

  “We see only what we are ready to see . . . taught to see . . .

  and ignore everything that is not a part of our prejudices.”

  —Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, nineteenth century

  Paris • Early September 1999 • Friday

  Pale afternoon light filtered into Éric Besson’s wood-paneled office as Monsieur Solomon untied the twine that bound together a bulging old notebook.

  “We were prisoners together in a POW camp,” Solomon said, wheezing, as the lawyer took hurried notes. “Stalag III-C, east of Berlin. Pierre saved my life.” Another wheeze. “You understand why I did what I did.”

  Besson capped his pen. The effort of talking had cost Monsieur Solomon, who was in his eighties, and he reached for his oxygen mask. After several labored inhales, he grabbed Besson’s arm with a crab-claw grip. “But Pierre’s gone now,” Solomon said. “It’s all written in there: my confession, the amounts, dates. Years of entries.”

  Besson reached across his desk to take the notebook from the old man’s shaking hands. He opened the well-worn volume to see columns of names and numbers, an accountant’s tiny, perfect handwriting. He turned page after page, his eyes catching on names and franc amounts as it gradually dawned on him what he must be looking at.

  Monsieur Solomon’s rheumy brown eyes bored into the lawyer. “I’m dying. Get this to the right person.”

  Besson reached for his briefcase. “Tomorrow, first thing, I promise.”

  “Non, you must do it now.”

  A real pain, the old geezer. He’d waited fifty years to do the right thing, and now he couldn’t wait one more day. “Alors, I’ll keep your notebook in my safe. You don’t have to worry—”

  “Now,” Monsieur Solomon interrupted. “This can’t wait. I won’t leave until you send a note to la Procureure de la République.”

  The old coot had barged into Éric Besson’s office without an appointment—as well as anyone could barge with an oxygen machine. “My secretary’s left already. I literally should be in court right now . . .”

  Monsieur Solomon pointed a knobby arthritic finger toward the adjoining room. “Get that boy there, your helper. You trust him?”

  “He’s family, but—”

  The old man stomped his shriveled leg. “If you can’t trust family, then who? Send him.”

  Another bout of wheezing.

  Worried that the old man would be carried out of his office on a stretcher—or worse, in a box—Besson stepped into the adjoining office, where Marcus was assembling a new chair. Marcus was Éric’s sister’s boy, a gangling, baby-faced eighteen-year-old with curly hair and the beginnings of a beard.

  “Here’s another job for you, Marcus,” Besson said. “I need you to run this to la Proc.”

  “But I’ve got plans with Karine. A date.”

  Besson reached in his pocket for a wad of francs. “Do this, okay?”

  Marcus glanced at his cell phone. “How long will it take?”

  “Back and forth in a taxi, twenty minutes, that’s all.”

  Besson shoved the old man’s twine-bound notebook, its handwritten pages spilling out, into a plastic Monoprix shopping bag, knotted the plastic handles together, and zipped the sack into Marcus’s backpack. “Go right away.”

  “Why can’t it be tomorrow?”

  Besson lowered his voice to a whisper. “Please, it’s important, Marcus.”

  “Who is this old fart?”

  “A friend of my mother’s. Long story.” The door buzzer sounded. Besson’s colleague had arrived to pick him up for court in Meudon. “Marcus, just get this to la Proc. Tell her I sent you. Don’t talk to anyone else. Don’t meet anyone on the way except a taxi driver at the stand on the corner. Comprends?”

  Marcus, perspiring, loosened his collar as he shut his uncle’s door and scanned Boulevard Arago. In the humid afternoon, a woman walked her schnauzer; a car radio blared news into the velvet air. No taxi at the stand.

  Et voilà, Marcus would pocket the taxi fare and catch the bus. His uncle would never know. Marcus turned onto narrow rue Pascal and hurried through the dim tunnel created by the street that passed above it a block later. The tunnel echoed with his footsteps and with the rumbling of the cars passing overhead. The old notebook heavy in his backpack, he headed up the stairs to Boulevard de Port-Royal. Marcus was almost at the bus stop. He savored the thought of the money in his pocket.

  His cell phone vibrated. His uncle. He ignored it.

  Marcus scanned the sidewalk. Karine was standing near the bus stop and waved. Another call from his uncle. He ignored this one, too.

  “You’re late.” A big pout on her red lips. He eyed her lace camisole top and hip-hugging jeans. “My friend’s letting us use her place, remember?”

  Marcus pulled her close. “We’re going to a hotel. No attic room with bedbugs in the mattress today.”

  Karine shook her head. “On your allowance?”

  He glanced at the time. “I’ve got to take care of a quick job first.”

  Karine’s mascaraed eyes gleamed. “Why wait?”

  What was the rush for the old fart—would an hour matter? “You’re right. Meet me at the hotel on Cinq Diamants. Let me stash this first.”

  Karine’s perfume filled the hotel room. Marcus laughed as he came up from under the duvet damp with their sweat. His laugh was cut short as a huge male arm caught him in a choke hold from behind. He gasped for air, tried to grab at the arm around his neck, but his wrists were yanked behind him, then flex-cuffed so tight the plastic cut his flesh. He was
dragged off the bed and dropped facedown on the carpet.

  The contents of his backpack rained down on his naked back. “Where is it?” a voice said.

  Fear paralyzed him. He couldn’t breathe.

  A kick to his ribs. Then another. “Where did you put it? Tell me or I’ll keep it up.”

  “I don’t . . . know . . .”

  “Of course you do. Where’d you hide it?”

  All this over a stupid old notebook? But he couldn’t fail his uncle. Maybe he could talk his way out of this, get this animal to untie him and then . . . what, jump out the window? What about Karine? “Let me up . . . and I’ll . . .”

  He coughed into the beige rug, his mouth furred from inhaling the dust and pilling. The flex-cuffs, slick with his blood, bit into his wrists like wire.

  Karine was screaming . . . or was that him?

  He couldn’t see anything but beige and then the blindfold. His body was jerked up and slapped across the desk, the impact nearly snapping his spinal cord.

  “I’ll ask again. Where is it?”

  “What do you want?” Marcus asked.

  “Cut to the chase, kid. Then your fingernails will stay on . . .”

  Paris • Late September 1999 • Monday Morning

  Humidity hovered in the air, waiting for the drop in barometric pressure to drag Paris into autumn. A few leaves had turned and soon would carpet the cobbles yellow brown, red, and orange. It wouldn’t be long before Aimée Leduc would have to break out her wool scarves. It was her first autumn as a mother, and for some reason, the changing temperature filled her with a sense of foreboding.

  In Leduc Detective’s office, Chloé squealed on the changing table while Aimée replaced her leaking diaper. Aimée had a meeting and wished her nanny would hurry up. She loved having her ten-month-old with her at the office in the mornings, but business was business; Aimée still had to earn their baguette and butter it, too.

  Just then the frosted glass door buzzed open. Babette entered, accompanied by a wave of stale air from the landing. “Désolée, got held up by the Métro strike.”

  Another Métro strike. Tomorrow it would be nurses or bus drivers. September always brought the usual disruptions.

  Behind Babette stood a tall man wearing a suit and dragging a rolling suitcase.

  “This monsieur said he’s here for a consultation,” said Babette.

  Consultation? No way—Aimée was on her way out the door to her emergency client meeting, and she still had an overdue proposal open on her laptop.

  “Afraid not, monsieur,” she said, wrangling Chloé’s squirming, tiny feet through the leg holes of a onesie. “Today is completely booked.”

  “Forgive me for intruding, Aimée,” said the man.

  Aimée looked up. This time, she recognized his receding hairline. “Éric?”

  It was Éric Besson, a thirtysomething intellectual property lawyer, buttoned-up and conscientious, the husband of the second cousin of Aimée’s best friend, Martine. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. Aimée had last seen Éric at one of Martine’s huge family parties . . . a wedding, baptism—she couldn’t remember.

  “I hate dropping in,” he said, his voice higher than she remembered, “wouldn’t if it weren’t important.” Before she could ask if Martine had sent him, he’d wheeled his roller bag to her desk. “Alors, I’m catching a train to Brussels, giant court case. Please, can you give me five minutes?”

  “Late night, eh?” She gestured to a chair. “Have a seat. Let me just finish a couple quick things.”

  Outfit accomplished, she quickly repacked the baby bag and kissed Chloé’s warm pink cheeks. Babette waved Chloé’s chubby hand as they headed out for bébé swim. Then Aimée opened her laptop, scanned her proposal’s last paragraph, and hit send. “You’ve got my full attention.”

  Éric set a police homicide report on her late father’s worn mahogany desk.

  “What’s this?” she asked, surprised. She sat back, felt a pressure in her chest. “Non, don’t answer. You know I don’t do criminal anymore.”

  Not since her father’s death in the Place Vendôme explosion, when she’d inherited the agency and vowed from then on she’d do only computer security. That horrific day played in her mind: her father’s melted glasses, his shoe . . .

  Éric’s anguished voice shook her from her reverie. “Alors, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have asked Marcus to do it. Never. I only wanted to help the old man. Now they’re both dead.”

  Éric opened the folder and set it in front of her. Against her will, Aimée’s gaze was drawn to the pages. A homicide investigation about a young man whose body had been discovered in the thirteenth arrondissement. In God’s name, why was Éric showing her this?

  “Should you even have a file like this?”

  “I have a friend who got me a copy. The flics are writing off Marcus’s murder as a drug deal gone wrong.” Éric’s shoulders heaved, and he covered his face. “He was only eighteen years old.”

  Aimée moved toward his chair and put her arm around him. “Zut, how did you get involved? You’re an intellectual property attorney! This is a murder investigation.”

  “It involves you, too.”

  “Moi?” She doubted Éric had ever stretched the truth in his life. But there could always be a first time.

  He wiped his tear-stained cheeks with the back of his hand. Glanced at his Rolex. “Please, Aimée, let me explain.”

  He seemed so shaken. She had to at least listen.

  “I’m sorry, but it has to be quick. We both have places to be.” As she spoke, she reached under the pile of files on her desk and pressed the button on the digital recorder hidden there. Standard procedure.

  Éric wiped his eyes. Took a breath. “My mother grew up next door to a woman named Marie. They were best friends. Marie became a tapestry weaver, an haute lissier, at Gobelins.”

  Aimée suppressed her impatience.

  “Marie married Léo Solomon, an accountant for the tapestry factory. He had been a POW in a German stalag. Marie and Léo were good friends of my parents. Last year, before my mother died, she told me Léo needed my help. She never explained, but I promised I would help him if he ever came by my office. Two weeks ago, out of the blue, Léo turned up, towing an oxygen tank. He was dying. Léo had a secret and insisted the truth had to come out.”

  Aimée tried not to look at the time. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  Éric’s hands shook. “I’m getting there. Besides his work at Gobelins, Léo also did accounting for his friend Pierre Espinasse, who’d saved his life in the POW camp. Pierre had become a policeman, as had three others they’d known in the camp. Pierre was totally corrupt.” He took a breath. “Early in the fifties Pierre coerced Léo into funneling the officers’ illegal kickbacks into investments. Léo owed Pierre his life. But he always felt guilty about helping them launder the money, and he kept a record of everything, a notebook he filled with every detail of these investments for fifty years. Every person involved, every transaction.”

  “You saw this notebook?”

  Éric’s shoulders twitched. “It’s a handwritten confession, with fifty years of evidence to back it up. It names names—politicians, ministers, business bigwigs, police . . . It’s explosive.”

  Aimée nodded. She believed it. “You recognized these names?”

  “Some. I made a few notes, but . . .” Éric’s thick brows knit. “Aimée, these flics taught at the police academy, knew your father.”

  Aimée felt a sinking in her stomach. On some level, had she been expecting him to say that? The corrupt flics who’d killed her father. “The Hand?”

  Éric nodded. “That’s what Léo Solomon called them.”

  Her hands were clenched so tightly her knuckles were white against the desk. Her father’s desk.

  For almos
t thirty years, the Hand had diverted funds, taken kickbacks, arranged cover-ups for ministers and politicians. Libération had described the group as “endemic, institutional corruption, top to toe” and Le Monde had called it a “deep-rooted protection racket run between police and government ministries.” Aimée was the one who’d exposed them.

  How could there be any remnant still running these schemes?

  Her lips pursed. “I thought I’d taken care of them.”

  “According to Léo’s confession, the Hand’s morphed like a hydra. There are all kinds of business arms.”

  “But you have the notebook, written documentation. You can get it to la Proc and get it all sorted out. I still don’t see what this has to do with me—”

  “Your father’s name was in there, Aimée.”

  Liar! she wanted to scream. Not her papa . . . no way did he ever take payoffs.

  “From the little I read, I think he’s implicated. I thought you should know.”

  “There’s proof?” Her voice shook. Could she believe this? “Alors, I’m glad you told me—”

  “Non, you’re not.” He stood, checked his phone. “The notebook was stolen. When Léo gave me the notebook, he wouldn’t let me keep it in my safe. He insisted I send it directly to la Proc. Marcus, my sister’s boy, was working for me, so I sent him as a courier.”

  He pointed to the homicide file.

  “Marcus never showed up at the prosecutor’s,” he said. “Never answered his phone. Two days later his body was found.”

  Her blood ran cold. An eighteen-year-old boy murdered to cover up dirty police work? “You mean you think the Hand got to him? Didn’t you say it was drug related?”

  “The investigation claims Marcus was a druggie. A lie. Marcus was studying for his baccalaureate. Into girls, not drugs. He was on his way to meet his girlfriend, Karine, when I gave him Léo’s package to take to la Proc. Karine has disappeared, too.”

  Convenient. “Did Marcus tell this girl, Karine, what was in the notebook?”

  “Marcus didn’t know what was in the notebook. He wouldn’t have had time to look—he was to take it directly to la Proc. And no one knew where he was going; I gave him strict instructions. None of this was arranged in advance. But he was murdered on his way to deliver it.”