Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,79

robbery jobs.”

He stepped back. “Feliks was small-time. Go after the big players in the suburbs with Kalashnikovs.”

Lay the blame on someone else.

“Feliks’s body was covered with prison tattoos. He’s Serb mafia, like your friends at the café.”

A muscle in Goran’s cheek twitched. “Ever walked on the wrong side of the street in Zagreb?” His voice rose. “Or get thrown into a cell with warlords—the mafia? You don’t get out alive unless you join. We escaped, our family didn’t.” His lip trembled. “You wouldn’t know what it’s like to sleep on the street, on the floor of a café if we were lucky. No job. Feliks met up with former soldiers here. I told him to stay away from them.” He sighed. “But he saw me, a qualified doctor teaching veterinary courses at the university, shoveling horse shit.”

“Don’t look for pity from me,” she said. “Trying to attack my friend at the hospital, threatening him and defacing his home. What medical code of ethics do you follow? Injecting horse tranquilizer, taking a hit job for revenge and money?”

“Think I earn enough to bury my little brother?” His shoulders slumped. “I owe the café owner, we slept there.…”

Aimée’s neck went hot. She hoped to God they wouldn’t appear. But they’d smelled money.

“He’s all I had left. But that freak—”

“The injection killed him, Goran.” She thrust the autopsy into his shaking hands.

“Non, non.…” A low wail welled up from him. Then a searing animal-like cry of pain. Horses kicked the stall, whinnied. His cry raked her skin raw.

“What’s going on?” A veterinarian in a lab coat rushed into the stable, followed by the groom. “Goran, what’s wrong? You’re hurt?”

The veterinarian leaned down and noticed the autopsy in the hay. “What’s this?”

Should she let the vet read it? Goran would be fired. Arrested. Then she’d learn nothing from him.

And she could tell—from his sweating brow, the nervous toe movement of his boots—he knew something.

Before the vet could reach for the report, Aimée picked it up. “Bad news, I’m afraid. His brother.…” She let her voice trail off.

Goran crumpled against the wooden stall, destroyed. Despite everything, she pitied him.

“I’m with the Red Cross, doctor,” she said. “May I speak with him alone?”

“Use the tack room. Jacky, get some water,” he said.

Five minutes later, Goran was slumped on a chair by hanging bridles and horse brushes. A dazed look on his face. “I killed him.”

“Take a sip.” She handed him the water. “Now shut up and listen. I didn’t turn you in, but you need to help me, understand?”

“Why?”

She thought of Yuri’s saying about the Serbs—an unlucky man would drown in a teacup.

“Your plan went wrong and you’re devastated. But you’re going to call the café and tell them the hit’s off. Go to Chantilly, where there are plenty of horses, and work there. Start fresh.”

He looked up. “Why would you do that? I killed my brother.”

“Then prison appeals to you?” she said. “Tonight the flics will question every stable in Paris and within a twenty-five kilometer radius.”

His eyes bulged in fear.

“Accessory to murder and theft. Prison, deportation.”

“Deport me back to Serbia?” The reality hit him.

“Or did I get it wrong—you returned the next morning and tortured the old man?”

“Me, why? What’s the old man to me?”

Or had he attacked her in her office? But Goran spoke with a thick Serbian accent, unlike the voice over the speakerphone. She looked at his hands. Slim palms; thin, tapered fingers—not like the meaty paws that had grabbed the roots of her hair. Her scalp tingled.

“So convince me, Goran. Start talking.” She kept her eyes locked on his. “Like I said, you can start over. In return for my not turning you in, you tell me everything—how you met Tatyana, Feliks’s role—each detail.”

“I don’t know. Feliks worked alone. He wanted it that way.”

“Lie to me and I turn you in,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “Tell your café friends you’ll meet them later. Make the call.”

He nodded, punched in a number. Mumbled something in Serbian. Clicked off.

“You were on Villa d’Alésia the night of the robbery, weren’t you?”

A shrug. “Feliks didn’t want me involved,” he said.

Aimée thought back to the police report Serge had shown her in the morgue. The contents of the Serb’s stomach.

“But Feliks ordered a kebob takeout from rue d’Alésia. The receipt was in his pocket.” She took a guess. “You shared it, didn’t you? Lie to me again and the deal’s off.”

Goran hung his head. Nodded. “He was so blasé. I worried about