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.”“What kind of papers?”Use your imagination, she wanted to say.She smiled.“A job came up.”Most parolees needed jobs.And soon, considering the price of accommodations.She figured this mec, himself a parolee by the look of him, worked in lieu of rent.“But Sicard.” He stopped.“Go on,” she said.“Sounds like you know more that I do.” She kept the smile on her face.“What’s your name?”“Joêl,” he said.“Look, I’m busy.”“So Sicard roped you in too, eh, Joêl?” She shook her head.“Offered you a slice, in return for some help.”Joêl watched her, expressionless now.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But now she was sure Joêl was involved.She wondered why Sicard had cut in another person for a share of the money.“I don’t blame you, Joêl,” she said.“Sicard told you about his foolproof plan.But you’re not the only one.He botched the first blackmail attempt; now he needs a patsy.”He sputtered.“I didn’t do anything.”“Not yet, you haven’t.”“Listen, I’m clean.I can’t get in trouble now.”“That’s why you’re going to talk to me about Sicard’s plan.”“But you’re.”“I’m magic,” she said.“I can make this go away.Phhfft, like it never happened.But Joêl, I need your cooperation.”“Plan? Sicard never talked about a plan.”“Shall I chat with your parole officer?”He shook his head.Not a hair of his pompadour moved.A moment passed.“I read things.”She nodded.“Like what?”“I read him things, that’s all.He likes to get ‘current’ after all his time locked up.Newspapers, like that.”“Magazines, too?” She held up the Voici.“That’s right.She put our her hand.“His key, please.”* * *A FEW MINUTES later, she unlocked the door of chambre 17 on the creaking fourth floor.Thick wood beams supported a slanted ceiling over a dark narrow room with peeling walls.She saw the outline of a single bed and a chair.Medieval, almost monastic.She hit the light switch, and a single hanging bulb illuminated the sloping wood floor and the papers on the bed.Finally!But they were only La Santé release forms, indicating that Sicard had been set free the day after Clémence’s murder in the Palais Royal.That didn’t help.Where was the notebook? Dita’s message said Sicard had tried to contact Clémence, he’d unnerved her, and he’d mentioned a “book.” That had to be the notebook, either here or with Sicard.It began to seem like Clémence, desperate for money, had lied.But she didn’t know for sure.If Clémence’s killer had taken it, she was back to square one.She had to search the room before Sicard returned.She got on her hands and knees and checked the floorboards, then the mattress, the sheets and pillow.Nothing.She eyed the cracks in the walls, above the door frame.Her fingers came back covered in dust.She turned back, and her eye fell on the cracked porcelain bidet with a high tank above it.Nothing behind the bidet.She stood on the rim, used her Swiss Army knife to pry up the lid.She felt something.Her hand came back with a wet plastic Monoprix bag.Water dripped down her arms.She dried the bag off, washed her hands.From the hallway came creaking noises.She grabbed her knife, listening.The creaking continued, as footsteps moved down the hall.She had to get the hell out.A laundry cart blocked the stairs on the narrow landing.Merde!A door on the right was labeled EXIT.Good.She’d leave by the back stairs and go through the bag’s contents at her office.But inside the small foyer she found that the door to the rear stairs had been nailed shut.A definite fire code violation.She faced a leaded-glass window overlooking the Seine.The plastic bag ripped open.Onto the worn tiled floor tumbled a child’s first reader, an Asterix comic book, lined paper with a penciled word ‘bonjour’ misspelled with a d instead of b.She crouched down.Underneath the rest of the torn bag’s contents, she discovered the brown leather notebook Nicolas had tried to give her in La Santé.At last! But pages had been ripped out.Sicard must have taken the important ones.Dejected, she scanned the few pages of Nicolas’s clear handwriting that remained.She recognized the page Nicolas had showed her in prison, filled with numbers.Looking closer, she realized it contained a list of payments to a post office bank account.Three thousand francs each month, like clockwork.Until this month.She turned the page to find a passage referring to his sister Maud, a Le Pen supporter, his distaste at Maud’s high-minded rightwing tone, how he’d joined Les Blancs Nationaux to “show Maud” and take Olivier’s dare.And how the video had “cooked his goose.” That was all.She could trace this bank account; she knew it would lead to the de la Pecherays.She’d hoped for more; a link to Olivier, to the old couple, the synagogue; but it wasn’t there.Disappointed, she stood up.Then she felt a thickness under the cover.She wedged out a much-folded paper.A letter from Maud, dated January 1994.Maud wrote that she would find whoever put him inside, find out who was to blame, punish them.It was not her little brother’s fault.Maud demanded that he leave Clémence, saying she couldn’t support him and that putain.Aimée shuddered at the vindictive tone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]