Murder in Belleville ali-2 Read online

  “They’ll k-k-kill me,” she said, choking on her sobs.

  “Why?”

  “I took those photos—they made me!”

  Aimée’s mouth felt dry. “Who did?”

  “He’s not a general, but they call him one,” Youssefa said. “He likes people to call him that. He likes to hang around with the military.”

  Had he sat in the cirque, wearing a uniform?

  “What’s his name?”

  “He’s known as the general, that’s all.”

  “Youssefa, why did they make you take the photos?” she said. Part of her didn’t want to know why. It was too horrendous to contemplate.

  “D-d-documentation.” She closed her eyes.

  Aimée remembered the looks on the faces in the photos. The way the numbers were pinned to the shirts or the skin of the bare chested. Pinned to their skin. Like temporary branding.

  She sank down on the stool next to Youssefa.

  As a child, she’d seen cattle in the pasture next to her grandmother’s Auvergne farm. Numbers were clipped on the cows’ ears to distinguish them from herds en route to the abbatoir. She gasped.

  “ST… that stands for ‘slaughter,’doesn’t it?” she said, not waiting for her answer. “And 196 would be the military division of the area, according to Algerian military maps.”

  Youssefa covered her face, her body quivering with spasms.

  That was answer enough for her.

  “They wanted you to record it, didn’t they… or he did, the man they refer to as ‘general?’” she said. “Villagers, dissenters, and anyone they could lump together as fundamentalists, right?”

  Finally Youssefa nodded. “My family owned a photo shop. We sold cameras, developed film. Then one day the military rounded everyone up in the square, called us Islamic zealots,” she muttered. “Herded us into grain trucks and took us out in the bled. Dropped us near big hangars storing wheat. Someone had told them 1 knew photography.” Youssefa rubbed her good eye. “They shoved a Minolta in my hand, put a box of film at my feet, and said, ‘Shoot.'”

  Horrified, Aimée thought of all those faces.

  “It took days,” Youssefa said, her voice growing curiously detached. “At the end my fingers didn’t work, and I couldn’t stand up. They did this.” She pointed to her scars and her eye. “But I lived. I owed the victims. That’s why I hid the negatives. The military didn’t care, all they wanted were prints recorded in black and white.”

  Like Cambodia, Aimée thought, sickened. Wholesale mass killings of innocents by the military. Slaughtered by their own forces, which spoke to the madness of the military mind.

  “How did you get out?”

  “She helped me,” Youssefa said simply.

  “Eugénie?”

  “She’s my AFL contact’s cousin.”

  Of course! Aimée remembered the AFL’s hunger-strike flyer with Youssefa’s name on it, and Sylvie’s membership, starting in the Sorbonne. Now things added up.

  “Sylvie Cardet was known as Eugénie Grandet,” Aimée said.

  Youssefa shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  “But what was she doing with those photos?”

  Youssefa looked down.

  “I showed them to her, told her about the massacres,” she said. “Then Eugénie found out that everything was a sham.”

  “A sham?” she asked worriedly.

  “The humanitarian mission,” she said. “The fund goes to the military—they turn around and buy surplus military ware.”

  Aimée shook her head. She had a hard time believing the second part.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “How can that work?”

  “French military surplus; I saw trucks filled with night-vision goggles,” Youssefa said. “Some idiot boasted there were thirty thousand pairs, at only two francs a pair! So cheap, he said, the General had bought the lot.”

  The humanitarian mission—Philippe was involved in that. No wonder he’d wanted to keep her quiet.

  “What’s it got to do with the AFL hunger strikers in the church?”

  “Eugénie trusted Mustafa Hamid,” Youssefa said. “Several times she told me if I got in trouble to go to Hamid. That’s all.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I gave the rest of the photos to Zdanine,” Youssefa said. “He said he’d give them to Hamid, get me time to speak with him.”

  Zdanine! For a price he must have hid the photos, left them for Dédé in that abandoned house. Dédé’s mecs recovered them, but she and René had surprised them in the park.

  “You didn’t destroy the negatives, did you?”

  She averted her gaze. “In good hands.”

  “Give me a contact sheet.”

  Youssefa turned away.

  “I need to have proof if you want me to stop them.”

  She shook her head. “That’s what Eugénie said.”

  Gently she turned Youssefa’s disfigured face toward her.

  “Trust me,” she said, mustering as much bravado as she could. “Believe it or not, I do this for a living. And they’re after me as well.”

  She saw agreement in Youssefa’s sad eyes.

  Youssefa led her toward the room they’d first entered. The room with the Piaf photos and the black dress. Youssefa opened a wooden armoire. Musty smells laced with lavender wafted out. On the shelves Aimée saw a row of little black shoes, some T-strapped, others open-toed, all from the thirties and forties. She stared. The pairs of shoes couldn’t be bigger than her hand.

  “Piaf’s?”

  Youssefa nodded.

  For such a tiny woman, Aimée thought, Piaf had touched the world.

  Youssefa reached to the upper shelf, where rows of yellowed kid gloves lay.

  In good hands, she’d said.

  Youssefa pulled out an envelope, checked it, then handed it to her. “These show the piles of bodies.” She looked down. “Other than this, the proof lies in the desert, fifty kilometers outside Oran. Bones bleached by the sun.”

  She thought about Gaston’s words. His experience in the same part of Algeria. History repeated itself in sad, twisted ways.

  AIMÉE SLID out of the back kitchen window, climbing down the rusty fire escape to an asphalted yard. Following the yard, she exited onto rue Crespin du Gast and walked the two blocks to Samia’s apartment.

  She knocked on the door. No answer.

  “Samia, it’s Aimée.”

  All she heard was pounding Rai music with a techno-beat.

  She tried the handle. Locked.

  If Samia was scared, why play the music so loud?

  Aimée tramped back down to the courtyard. The rain was coming down hard. She rolled up her collar, passing the boarded-up butcher shop. Peeling posters lined the facade. She headed toward the spot overlooked by Samia’s kitchen window.

  And then she saw the orange-pink phosphorescent watch on the stones. She bent down, picked it up, her heart quickening.

  “Are you here?”

  Water rushing from a rain gutter answered her.

  She edged toward the passage, reeking of urine, that bordered the hammam. And then she saw Samia sprawled against the stone wall.

  “Samia, ça va?”

  But when Aimée got closer she froze.

  A dark red wound blossomed on Samia’s chest, staining her peach twinset, her eyes open to the falling raindrops. Aimée gasped and knelt beside her. “You’re too young,” Aimée whispered, reaching for Samia’s hands. Cold.

  Dead cold.

  Guilt stabbed at her. And was supposed to protect the streetwise, childlike Samia.

  She closed Samia’s eyes, saying a prayer, promising her justice.

  She punched in 17 for SAMU on her cell phone, gave the location, then waited until she heard the siren scream before she slipped into the street.

  Where had Samia been going? Why here? But that was for the flics to chase, she thought grimly. Dédé had been two blocks away looking for her; he’d meant business when h
e’d warned her others would die.

  She dreaded calling Morbier, debating when to tell him. But in the end she stood on the rainswept corner a block away on rue Moret and tried him on her cell phone. She didn’t want him hearing it on the news or over the flic’s radio.

  “I messed up, Morbier,” she said.

  “Any good news, Leduc?”

  She heard the flick of a match, and heard him inhaling.

  “Bad. Samia’s gone.”

  Morbier’s silence seemed to last forever. She knew this news had pierced him.

  “Nom de Dieu,” he sighed. “I’m so stupid.”

  “Désolée, Morbier.” The tears welled in her eyes. “My fault.”

  Why hadn’t she made Samia stay in the car, baby-sat her until she’d made the plastique connection.

  “You took a bullet too, didn’t you, Leduc,” Morbier said finally, his voice sad and tired. “Where are you?”

  She told him.

  “Get out of there, Leduc. Start walking. Now!”

  She stumbled against the street sign, then ran all the way to rue de Belleville and flagged a taxi. They’d be after her now, double strength. An icy determination took over; she could play hardball too. She handed the taxi driver a hundred francs and told him he’d make another if he got to the Ministry of Defense in under thirty minutes.

  TWENTY MINUTES later in the ministry reception area Ai-mee told Philippe’s secretary, in a hushed polite tone, that she needed to see le Ministre immediatement!

  The secretary reluctantly acknowledged that the minister was busy. He had high-level meetings but would get back to her within the day.

  Aimée continued, her tone just above a whisper, that if she couldn’t be accommodated the secretary would have the blood of innocent people staining her silk blouse. No amount of dry cleaning could take care of that.

  The secretary blinked but still refused.

  However, when Aimée threatened to burst into the meeting she rose up in alarm and showed her into an adjoining office.

  “Oui?” Philippe said, coming in a moment later.

  His haggard eyes and stooped shoulders projected an air of defeat. A new experience for Philippe. Pathetic, she thought, and pitied him. But only briefly.

  “Philippe, I’ve got proof that the humanitarian mission’s bogus,” she said. “And someone’s blackmailing you.”

  Alarm shone in Philippe’s eyes. He stepped back. Voices buzzed in the background, papers rustled under a glowing chandelier. He turned and shut the door.

  “There’s a conference going on, officials from my department,” he said, his voice tight. “I can’t talk.”

  He hadn’t denied it. And he looked pale.

  “Don’t talk, Philippe,” she said. “I can help. Just listen.”

  He’d changed after his threats on Canal Saint Martin. He looked almost tame and so beaten. Maybe she had a chance. She pulled a gilt upholstered Louis XV chair close to him.

  “Sit down. Give me three minutes,” she said easing him toward the seat.

  For a moment, she thought he’d refuse, but he sat down. That was a start.

  “You didn’t know the funds went to the Algerian military, did you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course not, you trusted Hamid, Kaseem, and Sylvie. Why not? They’d been your friends since the Sorbonne. When the late sixties revelations about French repression came to light, the legacy left in war-torn Algeria—you joined what became the AFL.”

  She watched Philippe. He blinked and rubbed his thumbs together.

  “What proof do you have?”

  “Hear me out, Philippe,” she said. “Hamid followed Islam his own way. I’m sure you admired his peaceful means and how he embraced a broader humanity. You contributed discreetly to the AFL as you rose in the ministry.”

  She paused: now the ugly part.

  “Kaseem had returned to Algeria. Made money supplying the military, somehow. But you didn’t know that. Six years ago Syl-vie came back into your life.”

  Philippe shook his head. “She wasn’t my mistress.”

  “I know. She talked you into funding this humanitarian mission while sweetening your bank account. The project revitalized the 196 sector, a land ravaged and barren since the Algerian war in the sixties. Provided irrigation, remapping the area, building roads, a power station, and housing. After all, it helped those most affected, you thought. You believed in the mission, wanted it to succeed. This was for the disenfranchised tribes in the bled, not the politicians or the military. You believed Kaseem. So did Sylvie and Hamid. He was your friend. Your old friend.”

  She had Philippe’s attention, she was reaching him.

  “But the reality hit when the photos of ‘ST 196’appeared. No new settlements, roads, or irrigated fields. Just death-squad executions and weapons for the military. Sylvie grew a conscience quickly. You did, too, Philippe. But Dédé, one of the generals’ hired mecs, blew her up when she threatened to expose the truth.”

  His shook his head.

  “You stopped funding the project. That’s why you’re hiding Anaïs,” she said. “They planned to kidnap her, use her as bait to force you to fund the project. But I got in the way.”

  Anger blazed in Philippe’s eyes. “You’re always in the way!”

  The door opened, and the light from the hallway streamed in.

  “Philippe, we’re waiting,” said Guittard, the blond man she recognized from Philippe’s kitchen. He ignored Aimée, tapping his designer loafers, and faced Philippe. “They’ve tabled the resolution. Get up, man! Unless you propose a new initiative, the mission goes down the pissoir.”

  “Why shouldn’t it, Monsieur?” she said.

  But she spoke to their backs.

  Two women had been murdered but that didn’t seem to grease the wheels of the government. Money did. At least the mission wouldn’t be funded. But someone had to pay, Aimée told herself.

  BERNARD STOOD INSIDE THE gate of the Vincennes detention center, where a busload of men awaited forced repatriation. Other buses had taken those without any papers to chartered planes at Creil, a military air base. Bernard stamped his feet on the frigid packed earth. Cold—he always felt cold. His body never warmed up until July. Then there were one or two fitful months of what they called “heat” until the cold resumed again.

  The barred media waited outside like hungry carrion to fill their newsfeeds. Inside Bernard was numb. These men had come to France years ago, seeking asylum from repression, and stayed on illegally after their applications were rejected. What could he do?

  “Directeur Berge, please sign the transport receipt,” said the hawk-faced detention official.

  Bernard hesitated. He wished he could disappear.

  “Just a formality, Directeur Berge,” the official put the pen in his hand. “But we’ve got regulations.”

  Bernard could have sworn the man guided his hand, forcing his signature.

  Then it was over. Officials marched him through the receiving yard, past the buses disgorging the eighty or so sans’papiers. They formed into lines waiting to be processed. Bernard felt like a war criminal, like a Nazi who’d been released because he’d agreed to talk. Hadn’t he acted, as his mother had pointed out, like the Gestapo?

  And then above him he heard the sound of helicopter blades. Grit and sand shot over the yard, spraying everyone as it landed. A RAID officer jumped out and ran toward them.

  “Directeur Berge,” he shouted, making himself heard over the rotor blades. “Ministre Guittard needs you.”

  Bernard stumbled.

  The officer caught him.

  “But why?” Could things get worse?

  “Hostage situation, Directeur Berge. Orders are to proceed immediately.”

  Bernard began to shake his head but the officer held his arm, propelling him to the waiting helicopter.

  Monday Noon

  AIMéU WALKED FROM PHILIPPE’S office all the way to her own. She kept alert down the narrow streets. No one fol
lowed her. The biting wind had risen from the Seine. She pulled her coat closer.

  The scent of flowering lily of the valley reached her from a walled garden nearby. For a moment her mother’s blurred face floated before her. All her mother’s clothes had been scented with lily of the valley, the room full of it long after she’d left. And then the image was gone. The gusty wind snatched the scent and her memories away.

  Aimée’s cell phone rang in her pocket.

  “Allô,” she said, her frozen fingers fumbling with the keypad.

  “Everything’s my fault, Aimée,” Anaïs sobbed.

  “What do you mean?” Aimée was surprised. “I thought you were in the hospital?”

  “Hostage situation … Simone,” Anaïs’s voice faded, then came back, “École maternelle … in the Twentieth Arrondisse-ment. I need you.”

  Aimée’s blood ran cold.

  “Rue l’Ermitage, up from Place du Guignier.” Anaïs’s voice broke. Aimée heard the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of a semiautomatic, people screaming, and then the shattering of glass.

  “Anaïs!” she shouted.

  Her phone went dead.

  AIMÉE RUSHED to the tree-lined nineteenth-century street, buzzing with La Police and the elite paramilitary group RAID.

  To her left the école matemelle, a building with iron-railed balconies bordered the north side. The adjoining ecole elementaire held the entrance for both schools on rue Olivier Metra.

  Nervous and scared, she wondered where Anaïs and Simone were. What could she do?

  An old man, his winter coat thrown over a bathrobe, clutched a parrot cage and complained loudly at being evacuated from his apartment across the street. Paris in April still hadn’t shaken off winter’s cold cloak, she thought. Frost dusted the cobblestones and wedged in the cracks of the pavement.

  “I must speak with the commissaire in charge,” she began.

  The businesslike plainclothes flic listened to Aimée’s story, checking her PI credentials. He spoke into a microphone clipped to his collar, then finally directed her past a police barricade. Somewhat relieved, she ran ahead. She knew she had to persuade the officer in charge that she could help.