Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,81
brow furrowed. “Now that I think back, like those. Just white, square, wedge back … a Renault? Too hard to see through the bushes.”
Like every other Renault van in Paris. But she made one more attempt. “I know it was dark, but try to think. An older model, even a partial license plate?”
“You’re joking.” He paused. Thinking. “Non, like new.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“It had, like, you know, a temporary license until new plates come.”
An itching feeling told Aimée he knew more. “But you haven’t told me everything, have you, Goran?”
The smell of his fear and sweat mingled with the dust.
“I’m giving you a chance, a way to start over. Quit holding out,” she said. “Feliks failed to show that night, so you returned in the morning, non? To find out what happened.”
“What difference does it make? Feliks is gone.”
“But that’s how you knew, or thought you knew, that Feliks was hurt and in Hôtel-Dieu.”
“Feliks died. No one told me. By a fluke I found out myself.”
Her anger rose. “Punching a flic and being thrown out of the criminal ward—you call that a fluke?”
Goran looked shocked. “I want to go.”
“Not until you tell me who you saw in the morning.”
“What?”
“How early did you go to Villa d’Alésia?”
His mouth hardened. “You got what you wanted. Leave me alone.”
“Had a coffee, maybe, at the corner café? Waited until people left for work to engage them in conversation like you were a neighbor?”
His eyes flashed. But by then she’d registered the tattoos just visible on his wrist where his sleeve was rolled up. Those prison tattoos, like Feliks’s. She controlled her shudder.
“You’re good at that, playing someone else—that’s how you got your job here, non? You neglected to reveal your prison time, I bet.” She pointed to his tattoo. “Almost talked your way past the reception at Hôtel-Dieu …” She paused for effect. Raised her Beretta again. “Cough up and quit wasting my time.”
His lip curled.
“Feeling uncooperative? Then so am I.” She shrugged. “The café’s video surveillance shows the street movement. All I need to do is identify you to the flics. Let them deal with—”
“Eight A.M.,” he said, his voice monotone now.
She’d made up the video camera, but he bought it.
“Give me the morning timeline.” She drew another line, curved like Villa d’Alésia to rue d’Alésia. “Point out who you spoke with and where.”
He’d only spoken to the café owner, it turned out. She thought back to Yuri’s message while she’d been at the morgue, and later when he’d warned her off—around 9:45, according to when she’d checked her Tintin watch.
“I took the Métro around nine thirty, my job starts at ten,” he said flatly. Glanced upward at the five time cards in metal slots behind the door. “Check my time card.”
She did. Too late for Goran to have been the one to murder Yuri.
“But here at this house—did you see anyone enter? Hear shouting?”
He shook his head.
“Or see the white van again?”
He pointed to the X she’d made. “A little man with a Cossack hat went in there.”
Yuri. Her pulse raced. “Would that have been nine or closer to nine fifteen?”
“Like that.”
Loud voices came from somewhere in the stable. Had Serge’s autopsy sparked the flics already? “Was he carrying something, like a package?”
Goran shrugged. “A taxi blocked my view.”
“But you remembered him.”
“I remember Russians in my country with hats like that. Then the woman got out of the taxi.”
“You mean Tatyana, the blonde who hired your brother, don’t you?” Battling her rising nausea, she realized one of the voices she’d just heard outside in the stable was familiar. A Serbian accent. Not the flics. Her throat tightened.
“No. Tall, thin.” A snort of laughter. “Tatyana owes me my brother’s funeral money. More.” A smile spread over Goran’s face. “Big connections with a rich man, she told me, nice commission.”
No wonder he suddenly oozed cockiness. He hadn’t called the Serbs off. Dumb to believe him. “You lied to me. Bad move, Goran.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught his hand creeping under the straw to the pitchfork. She pulled a horse blanket from the stall over him. Instead of grabbing the pitchfork, he tossed the blanket aside, lunging forward to grab her arm. The move slowed him down, put him off balance for the seconds she needed. She kicked dust in his eyes, sidestepped him, then kicked his ankle. Hard. He landed on his back with an ouff. She cocked the Beretta’s hammer.
“Want me to shoot your toes first, or your knees?”