A Taste for Vengeance Page 10

  J-J looked down the table at one of the detectives. “You were on the drugs beat, Louis. Do we have much of this GHB around here?”

  “Yes, but it’s not common. Those Dutch guys who were dealing around the campsites a couple of years ago, they were selling Liquid E. And it came up in powdered form in a couple of date-rape cases last year, both involving that disco in Bergerac that later closed down.”

  “Check with the drugs squad, see if they can tell us anything more, and then go and talk to some of the known dealers,” said Prunier. “Were any other narcotics found at Lalinde?”

  J-J shook his head, then pointed to another detective and said, “Bank statements.”

  “We have the French bank account, which mainly pays local bills from the money he gets from his grapes” came the reply. “The payments for utilities, insurance and property taxes are all automatic. We’re waiting for the British to send us details of the HSBC accounts, but the Irish police have come through and show his debit card to be linked to an Irish company account in the name of McBride Creative Associates at the Allied Irish bank. The nature of the business is listed as consulting, with varying payments from companies based in Panama, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands that totaled over a hundred and eighty thousand euros last year after being converted from dollars. Each payment was referenced to a different invoice number. The company address was at the office of his Irish accountancy firm. Irish company taxes were paid but those are known tax havens and these accounts were not reported to the French tax authorities. His debit card was used mainly for travel. In the past year he flew business class to the U.S. twice, to Moscow, Istanbul, Hong Kong and Singapore once each. He normally stayed in InterContinental hotels. The British say they are being slow because he has more than one account at HSBC but they promise details by the end of today.”

  J-J turned to another detective. “His vehicle?”

  “Leased from the Jaguar Land Rover dealer here in Périgueux, paid for by his Irish company account. He gets a new Range Rover every three years and the dealer does the servicing. This one is halfway through the second year and he’d done forty-four thousand kilometers, quite a lot of driving. The tires fit the tracks we found in the road leading to his home and on the dirt track up to his woodland, but they’d also fit any other Range Rover. He had a sticker on his windshield that allowed him to drive on Swiss roads. We’re still working on the GPS to track his recent searches. He had maps for the Dordogne and CDs of jazz and audiobooks in English of Charles Dickens novels. He has an almost clean French driving license and paid two fines this year for minor speeding infractions.”

  “Do we know what kind of consulting services he offered?” Prunier asked. “Or anything about the companies that hired him?”

  “We’ve asked Interpol to forward our inquiries to the relevant bank authorities but those offshore places are not known for being helpful.” J-J shrugged. “We can ask the fraud experts in Paris but they’re understaffed and it will take some time. We have some of McBride’s phone records from Orange. They are mostly routine local calls and some were to and from the number of Madame Felder. It certainly wasn’t a phone for business. If he had another, we haven’t found it.”

  “If he used Orange for his telephone he would have used them for his internet connection,” said Prunier.

  “Most people would, since it’s cheaper buying the package,” J-J replied. “But he didn’t. So we’re trying to find which internet service he had, but we’ve drawn a blank on Bouygues, SFR and Free, all the usual ones. We’ll try all the others. And he had a satellite dish, with the TV set tuned to the BBC, so he could have had a satellite phone and then he could have had internet access through almost any international company he chose. We’ve asked Interpol to inquire with the various satellite operators but since we didn’t find a satellite phone and we don’t have a number we’ll have to wait until we can get into all his bank accounts and see which company he was paying.”

  Yves then intervened. “It’s possible that one or another of the companies that were paying him also paid for his satellite subscription, so his bank accounts might not tell us anything. We already know that this is a man who took his privacy very seriously. It’s as if he knew exactly how law enforcement would go about tracking his moves and making sure we couldn’t.”

  Prunier nodded and then sighed. “Are the Irish looking into this fake passport of his?”

  “The passport itself isn’t fake,” J-J said. “It was a genuine Irish document, renewed seven years ago, not long before the Irish computerized their register of births and deaths. It was when they checked that that they realized his identity had been faked when the passport was first issued, nearly thirty years ago. There was no such person with the date and place of birth that McBride listed. And his original application has disappeared from the Irish records. It was in the days before computers, everything on paper.”

  “Very convenient,” said Prunier, looking at Bruno with one eyebrow raised. Bruno shrugged in return.

  “So what are our next lines of investigation?” Prunier went on.

  “The British bank, time lines of McBride’s travels, tracking down the Felder children,” J-J replied. “And we’ve asked the Irish police if they can find McBride’s Irish lawyer, the one who drew up his company statutes, to see if he left a will.”

  “Anything else?” Prunier asked, looking around the room.

  “Monika Felder was a German citizen when she married Felder,” Bruno said. “Is she a dual national? Can we find out if she still had a German passport and, if so, where it might be? And can we take a look at the exact times and dates of her visits to Houston and what kind of visa she had? I don’t know how long U.S. tourist visas last, or maybe there’s a special visa for relatives of people in the hospital. But it would be helpful to track her movements—on both passports—and see if they correlate with any of McBride’s travels. Maybe we can check her travels through her credit card history.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Prunier, rising to end the meeting. “Bruno, my office, please.”

  Once in his room, Prunier called in his secretary, who carried a large, sealed envelope with Bruno’s name on it and a computer bag holding his new laptop.

  “All the paperwork is in here and your access codes for our computer system,” said Marie-Pierre. “It’s a double encryption system for security; do you know how that works?”

  Bruno shook his head. “No.”

  “Sign here to show you’ve received all this and then go with Marie-Pierre. She’ll show you how it works. And let me know as soon as you hear anything from Crimson,” Prunier said, turning away to lift his phone.

  Marie-Pierre explained that when using his new laptop on official business, Bruno would have to join the VPN, or virtual private network, of the Police Nationale. She gave him a log-in ID, his full name plus 24 for his département, followed by eight digits for his date of birth. Then she gave him a USB stick.

  “Once you’ve logged on, you’ll be asked to enter your password,” she said. “I’ve given you a temporary one but you’ll have to create your own password, known only to you. It should contain at least twelve characters, at least one a capital letter, one numeral and one grammar sign, like an exclamation mark or an ampersand. Once you enter that, you will be asked for the second security code. At that point, put this USB stick into your laptop and it will automatically generate a random code. You don’t have to know what it is and once you’ve done it from your laptop, the laptop will supply it automatically from then on. But if you want to log on to the police VPN from another computer, you will need your code and the USB stick. Try not to do that.”

  She gave him an envelope, asked him to write down the twelve-character password he intended to use, put it in the envelope, seal it, sign the seal and then hand it to her, where it would join the others in Prunier’s safe.

 
“Now you can check on specific case files where you’re listed as a crime team member,” she said. “We no longer have the old murder book, where you write down the progress of the investigation each day. Instead, it goes into the case file on the computer. You can read it all, add information, post queries and suggestions, look up transcripts of interviews, scene of crime photos, autopsy reports and so on. You can also use it as an ordinary laptop and do searches or send private emails without having to join our VPN. But the laptop remains our property, so don’t use it for anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.” Marie-Pierre surprised him by flashing a cheeky grin and a cheerful wink. “Of course, grandmothers like me have seen it all, so keep your private computer for all that, like I do. And now off you go, Bruno, and thank you for the chocolates.”

  He stopped in the waiting room, logged on to the VPN and began searching the vehicle registration database for the owner of the red Renault in which he had seen Paulette the previous day. It was searchable, so he put in the letters and numbers he had scribbled into his notebook. It gave him thirty-seven options, only five of which corresponded to a Renault Clio. Three were for new registrations, but it had been an older car. Of the final two, one was registered to a Madame Véronique Leverrier in Nontron, on the northern edge of the Périgord. The other was for a Gérard Jean-Luc Bollinet at an address in Périgueux, with a date of birth that made him twenty-six years old. His profession was listed as teacher.

  Bruno then went into the website of département employees and learned that Bollinet taught drama and French literature at the lycée that Paulette attended. He went into the lycée’s website and found that Bollinet had directed a student play the previous term, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, in which Paulette had played the role of Ubu’s wife.

  Bollinet’s address was across the river, in the southern suburb of the city, on Bruno’s route back to St. Denis, in a small street of tiny houses off the Route de Pommier. He drove slowly past, seeing a narrow door, a single window to one side. It was on a slope, and he turned and headed back to drive past the rear of the house and saw a washing line festooned with baby clothes drying in the feeble sunlight that came spasmodically through the clouds.

  Merde, thought Bruno. So Bollinet was a father already. He wondered if Paulette knew. The road seemed to be a dead end so he turned and went back the way he had come. As he drove past the front of Bollinet’s home, a woman with a baby carriage that contained a crying toddler was closing the front door behind her. She turned to push the carriage down the street, and Bruno saw that she was heavily pregnant. The toddler tossed a soft toy into the gutter and howled more loudly. The young woman looked hopelessly at the discarded toy, as if wondering how in her condition she could bend down and pick it up.

  Bruno stopped his car, climbed out, saluted and said, “Bonjour, madame. With your permission.”

  He bent down and picked up what he saw was a teddy bear and handed it to the child, who promptly threw it out again. Bruno went back to his car, took a piece of string from his sports bag and then returned to tie it firmly around the bear’s neck. Then he tied it to the strut on the side of the carriage and watched the toddler throw it, and then pull it back and throw it again. By this time the toddler had become fascinated with the new game and had stopped crying.

  “Merci, monsieur,” the young woman said. “At this age he can be quite a handful.”

  She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with good features and a generous mouth though her hair was lank. She wore no makeup, had dark circles under her eyes and straightened up with her hands pressing into the small of her back.

  “When is the baby due?” Bruno asked, smiling.

  “About six weeks,” she said, with a smile that swept away the tiredness and made her look much younger. “I’m hoping for a girl this time.”

  “May your wish be granted, madame,” he said, saluted once more and returned to his car to drive off, feeling a new surge of anger at Bollinet for risking his own wife and family as well as threatening to disrupt Paulette’s young life. But what could he do about it? He would have to have another talk with Fabiola and at some point see if Paulette wanted to discuss it with him, and if she knew of Bollinet’s family. But it was not a subject he could broach; it would have to be up to her.

  He was back on the main road that led through a succession of roundabouts to Niversac and the turnoff to Les Eyzies when his mobile vibrated. He pulled off the road into the forecourt of a mason’s yard and saw the caller was Jack Crimson.

  “We need to have a chat,” said Crimson. “Do you want to stop by, have some soup and salad and cheese for lunch?”

  “With pleasure. Shall I get some bread or wine?”

  “No shortage of either. Shall I see you about noon? It has to be early since something important has come up.”

  Bruno agreed and drove on to St. Denis. Once in his office he checked his emails and saw one from Louis in Montignac saying “Routine patrols.” The one from Juliette used the same phrase but added “planning and review meeting with colleagues.” He had acknowledged them when the mayor came in, closed the door and sat down.

  “What’s this I hear about Paulette being pregnant?” he began, keeping his voice low.

  Merde, thought Bruno again. At this rate it would soon be all over town. “What have you heard, exactly?”

  “Overheard, in fact. Roberte and Claire were whispering around the coffeepot when I was about to leave my office and I couldn’t help but overhear. They were speculating who the father might be.”

  Claire’s colleague in the mairie, Roberte, looked after the social security files. As soon as Bruno asked himself how they might have known, the map in his head of the gossip networks in the town revealed the answer. Roberte’s sister-in-law was one of the receptionists at the town’s medical clinic. She had been in the job long enough to know what it meant when a doctor like Fabiola took certain medical products from the storeroom before returning to Paulette, waiting in her office.

  “It’s true. She’s about ten or eleven weeks gone, Fabiola thinks. Officially, I know nothing about it and I don’t think Paulette’s parents know. But I think the father’s a drama teacher called Bollinet at her lycée in Périgueux. He’s in his late twenties, married with a toddler and his wife is seven months pregnant.”

  “How in the world do you know that? Paulette must have told you.”

  Bruno shook his head and recounted the scene he saw between Paulette and her lover, his check of the car’s license plates and his drive-by of Bollinet’s home. He did not mention the incident with the teddy bear.

  “That’s a relief,” the mayor said. “From what I overheard, Roberte seems to think Philippe Delaron is the father since he’s always covering Paulette’s rugby games.”

  “I think Paulette has better taste than that,” said Bruno.

  “Yes, I agree,” said the mayor with a grin, “except that Claire was suggesting it might be significant that the unmarried male Paulette spent most time with was you, as her rugby coach.”

  Bruno rolled his eyes and said, “Thank God nobody takes Claire’s gossip seriously.”

  “Don’t underestimate Claire. Most people like gossip and some of them in this town are prepared to believe absolutely anything,” the mayor said. “But what do we do now? If you’re right about Bollinet, this is very grave. He’s a teacher and I know it won’t be the first time it’s happened, but officially to have an affair with a pupil is cause for dismissal. Don’t we have a duty to inform the school?”

  “Firing is too good for the bastard, if you ask me,” said Bruno. “But unless and until Paulette confirms that he’s the father we have no proof. And we don’t want to do anything that would make things worse for her, least of all when the list of the thirty women selected for the French national team should come out at the end of this week. They’ll be invited to join the adult team in training at Val
d’Isère and Paulette will have to decide whether to have the baby or not.”

  “Val d’Isère is in the Alps. How can they play there?”

  “There are flat areas,” Bruno replied, thinking that by now he knew his mayor well enough to know he wasn’t really interested in Val d’Isère but had simply asked the question to buy some time while he thought about Paulette’s dilemma. “The women do team-building exercises there like the men; mountain biking and rock climbing and hiking up the Grande Motte glacier.”

  “How interesting,” the mayor said and then gave Bruno a sharp glance. “Paulette’s parents are regular churchgoers, loyal Catholics, which means they believe that abortion is a mortal sin.”

  “The question is whether Paulette believes that. She’s over eighteen. It’s her decision, whatever her parents might want.”

  “Have you talked to her about this?”

  Bruno shook his head. “I thought I was the only one who knew, apart from Fabiola. Oh, and Florence, she also knows. But now that Roberte and Claire are chatting it won’t be long before some kind citizen passes the word to Paulette’s parents and everything will then become even more complicated.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I think I have to tell Fabiola and Florence about Bollinet’s family,” Bruno said. “I have no idea whether Paulette knows he’s married and about to have another baby by his wife. The problem is that when I tell Fabiola, she’ll assume I’m bringing pressure to bear to get Paulette to have an abortion so she can play for France. She’ll be furious with me.”