Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,70

even going home?”

“Good thing, too, with you getting attacked,” he said. “Someone’s got to mind the office with René gone. Look, I want to keep the business going, forget what I said before.”

Guilt riddled her. Unlike René, loyal Saj stuck with her. And he needed help in return.

“Bien sûr, Saj.”

After punching in 12 for directory assistance, she found Oleg’s address. One bit of luck, thank God. First she’d stop at Saj’s—the least she could do. And it was en route. She donned her helmet again and gunned her scooter to the Left Bank. Not ten minutes from Yuri’s on Villa d’Alésia lay rue des Thermopolyes, a village-like street battling developers. She saw the jagged walls of half-demolished buildings with a faded Dubonnet sign, the abandoned plot an attempt at a community garden with a rusted pinwheel turning in the wind. Farther on, she passed pastel two- and three-story maisonettes, painstakingly restored, and the taffy brick walls of the occasional small workshop. Saj lived in one of these.

A churchbell chimed in the distance. Pastoral and quiet. She keyed in his door code and reached his studio on the second floor. Diffused light from the slanted glass roof bathed the former workshop in a clouded vanilla. On the oblong window facing the courtyard, something was painted in red, like graffiti. Art? But when she got closer, she saw the misspelled words slashed like blood spatter: I’ll get you murderrer.

Her heart jumped into her throat. She gasped. Stepped back, and stumbled on Saj’s pile of encryption manuals. She didn’t need a high IQ to know the handiwork of a Serb bent on vengeance.

A creak behind her startled her and she turned to see a female figure in black Goth garb. “Can’t get away this time.”

Aimée dove under Saj’s kitchen table just in time to avoid the swinging scythe. She scooted on her hands and knees as fast as she could over the tatami mat. “Hold on, I’m Saj’s friend,” she said, meeting the woman’s heavily made-up eyes, black holes in her white face. “Who won’t get away?”

“Like I believe you? I heard those noises this morning.…”

By the time she’d convinced this Goth neighbor—Solange, or Sheila, the Celtic name she preferred to be called by—that she wasn’t out to kill Saj, five precious minutes had passed. But at least she could get some information, if Sheila had seen the Serb. “So you heard him. Did he speak? Have an accent?” she asked.

“I was rushing to work and heard loud noises. That’s all.”

Work, in the morning? Not some vampire party? Aimée blinked.

Sheila noticed her reaction. “Had to open my medieval shop on rue du Couédic early today for the confluence gathering. The tribes request it, you know,” she said, her high-pitched voice at odds with her appearance—black lace, tapestry-festooned apron, and matching black fingernails. She resembled a milkmaid from Hades.

“Then I found the door open, and no Saj. I’m worried.”

“Did you see who did this?”

“He ran away.”

Obviously.

“What did he look like?”

“Everything happened so fast.” She shrugged. “He took off through the courtyard.”

Aimée was stuffing several of Saj’s muslin drawstring pants and matching white shirts, an alpaca vest, and his mail in her bag. He wouldn’t be coming back here. Of that she’d make sure.

“Try to remember something about him. Anything strike you?”

“A hat, a cap? But he ran, I … didn’t see well.”

Great.

“We’re a community here, supporting the garden, keeping developers out.…” She sighed. “Hasn’t Saj told you? We’re the last bastion for artists and musicians, the way it used to be. The only thing that hasn’t changed is people living on the margins.” Another shrug.

This Goth liked to talk. Aimée wished her acute observations extended to this morning.

“The closer you get to the Périphérique, the cheaper,” she continued. “We’ve never had trouble even with the squatters who live by the garden. The single men, the day workers, they even respect the families.”

She painted a pretty picture, but the words dripping in red on Saj’s window belied the harmony.

“We’re a mix—old anarchists, poets, intellos, and film stars who like la vie de bohème without the prices closer to Montparno.”

Montparno, argot from an old Jean Gabin film.

“Violence and sick attacks like this just don’t happen here,” she said. “At least La Coalition is militant and rabid to stop the developers. Those bloodsuckers.”

La Coalition, those demonstrators who’d blocked rue d’Alésia.

“That so?” Aimée was half-listening, checking Saj’s computer—untouched—and finding the malware program. She scanned Saj’s tatami floor, the walls basic, white and untouched apart from the red letters