Dead Horsemeat (4 page)

‘And Deluc made his career with the socialists.’

‘Can’t for the life of me remember the Chamberlain’s name.’ Renewed silence. ‘I’m exhausted Theo. I’ve run out of curiosity. Only memories give me pleasure.’

At the arrival of Lenglet’s lover, accompanied by two exes, Daquin quits the room and the hospital. He has never been able to stand meeting current partners, exes and exes’ exes, even less around a death bed, around Lenglet’s deathbed. He makes his way slowly back home, on foot. A humid, oppressive evening. No way can I see Rudi tonight. Don’t even feel like eating a proper meal. I’ll make do with what I’ve got at home.

Back to the Villa des Artistes, a haven of peace and cool outside the city centre. The house has a vast ground-floor room and a glass roof fitted with white blinds. Two huge leather armchairs and a sofa, wood panelling and furniture, hi-fi, impressive collection of CDs, and at the back of the room, behind a counter, a well-equipped kitchen tiled in shades of old gold. On the mezzanine, the bedroom is furnished only with an enormous bed and bookshelves along the walls, piled with books several layers deep. Leading off the bedroom, the walk-in wardrobe, mahogany cupboards and drawers filled with clothes, and a white-tiled bathroom with a big bath tub and power shower.

The house is empty. Daquin stretches out on the sofa, his feet up, and lets his mind wander. For quite a while. Seeing Lenglet dying stifles desire, tingeing it with shades of nostalgia.

It was in Harry’s Bar, Venice, Arrigo Cipriani, standing by their table, dressed impeccably and waxing lyrical about pasta with butter in his refined Italian, watching the intrigued Rudi who was listening to him without understanding a word, his head cocked on one side with a sort of anxious tension. It was dark over the lagoon. Suddenly Daquin had been overcome with the intensity of desire, and took his breath away. Possess him there, now… Their eyes met. They finished dinner, without a word, and fucked all night… That was last year.

Pasta with butter. Daquin rummages in the kitchen cupboards.

Boil the water in a large stainless steel pot. Melt the butter in the bowl sitting over the pot. When the butter’s melted, put the pasta in the boiling water. Quality pasta. The same as the pasta made by Cipriani. Neither dried nor fresh, excellent. Boil for two minutes. Drain the pasta thoroughly in a sieve. Pour some of the melted butter into the pot, then half the pasta, then some more butter and grated Parmesan, and lastly the rest of the pasta, butter and cheese. Mix vigorously. Pour into a hot dish and serve immediately. Drink spring water with the pasta and butter. It’s a masterpiece.

For lack of anything better.

Meeting of the Drugs Squad section leaders in the office of the new director. Daquin goes up with Dubanchet, they’ve known each other since training college at Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d’Or and have a number of shared experiences, plus a sense of complicity between them.

‘Well, have you met the new boss yet?’

Pulls a face. ‘Careful… wait and see.’

They enter. The director steps forward to greet them, shakes their hands, smiling. Slim, dark suit, hair plastered back, a distinguished air that makes him look more like a prefect than a cop. He’s definitely one of them, but he’s spent most of his career in ministerial circles.

The five or six superintendents in the office greet each other with silent nods. The director says a few words about how delighted he is to work with them. Daquin senses the unspoken message behind the smile, it’s almost tangible. The man is on his guard. And the meeting begins.

From the start, the discussion centres on cocaine. Consumption is soaring in Europe, heroin-cocaine bartering between the Italian and Colombian mafias, the place is awash with dirty money, there must be no compromise with the agents of death. Following the Paris summit and the setting up of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, we need to see results. The powers that be are counting on us. Our colleagues in the antinarcotics department seized a big haul in August. Fifty-three kilos of cocaine. We have to do better.

‘Fifty-three kilos, but no dealers,’ says Daquin. ‘I’m not sure we want to repeat that kind of operation.’

The director looks miffed and evokes the Drugs Squad’s track record over the last two years. Dubanchet leans over to Daquin:

‘Do you reckon the DEA supplied the stuff?’

‘It’s possible, France is crawling with their agents at the moment. Then something went wrong.’

The director mentions the two spectacular hauls made last year. And, three months ago, the arrest of Buffo, the mafia boss, on the Riviera thanks to close teamwork with other police departments and following a lengthy investigation …

‘A hasty arrest,’ interrupted Dubanchet. ‘I was there. Impossible to prove drug trafficking, he’s inside for cigarette smuggling. A fiasco, actually.’

‘On a tip-off from the DEA,’ adds another superintendent.

‘We must be thorough and cautious,’ concludes Dubanchet.

Daquin watches the chief who’s chain smoking. Relations are going to be strained.

Now, let’s move on to the case in hand. At the end of the meeting, Daquin speaks:

‘According to two of my informers, there’s heavy cocaine consumption in horseracing circles. I’d like to take a few days to check out these leads.’

‘Fine. Keep me posted.’

At 7 a.m. Daquin is at work in his office, Quai des Orfèvres. An office shut away at the end of the top-floor corridor with a window overlooking an interior courtyard, where he has total peace and quiet. A light, spacious office which acts as a meeting room for his whole team, furnished in a functional, all-purpose style. Daquin takes some files out of the wooden cupboards lining two of the walls, places them on his desk and leafs through them. A solitary task, needs to refresh his memory, spark ideas, decide which avenues to pursue. Try to be thorough and put two and two together. Cocaine and horses. Not much. The odd reference. The godfather of the Ochoa family in Medellín is a leading Colombian horse breeder. Flimsy… Racecourses as a money-laundering outlet. We know that… Doping racehorses with cocaine and amphetamine derivatives… A
jockey… A lot of rumours, but nothing concrete comes to mind. And of course Romero’s dossier on the Paola Jiménez murder. Daquin slips in the Agence France Presse despatch dated 21 August 1989 reporting on the seizure of fifty-three kilos of cocaine by the antinarcotics department. Probably the end of the story.

He removes some documents and files them in his drawer, and puts the rest back in the cupboard. Dossiers are the keystones of power. Sitting with his back to the window, his feet resting on the edge of the desk, he reflects for a while.

Facing him, the whole section of wall next to the door is taken up by a cork board. As an investigation progresses, it fills up with addresses, telephone numbers, messages, appointments, maps, sketches. Daquin gets up, sorts, throws away or files information that is out of date, clears a space for the coming days. Just beneath the cork board, a state-of-the-art
espresso
machine stands on top of a cupboard. Inside are stocks of coffee beans and mineral water, cups, glasses, a few bottles of spirits and a plastic tray for dirty cups. All meticulously tidy. Daquin makes himself a coffee. A few moments’ quiet. Glances around the room. Familiar space, sense of well-being.

Shortly before 11 a.m., there’s a stir in the DIs’ office next door. On the dot of eleven, the men troop in noisily through the connecting door, bomber jackets, jeans and trainers, except for Lavorel, who always wears a blazer and dark trousers, or a suit. Romero, the seductive Latin Romeo, has worked with Daquin for nine years, Lavorel joined the team four years ago after several years with the Fraud Squad and a few sporadic joint operations. Podgy, with thinning fair hair and little metal-rimmed spectacles, he looks like a bureaucrat just on the point of fading away. But he and Romero have been accomplices for years. They were both born and bred on tough urban housing estates, one in Marseille, the other outside Paris, flirted with delinquency in their teens and are proud never to have forgotten it. Romero derives a real physical pleasure from his work as a detective inspector. And Lavorel, whose years at the Fraud Squad left him with a penchant for paperwork, sees it as a form of revenge: redressing, as far as he can, the iniquities of a justice system that spares the powerful and crushes the weak, and making the rich pay. The other two DIs, Amelot and Berry, are no more than kids, and this is their first assignment. With degrees in history and political science, unable to find a job, they took various civil service exams and ended up in the police,
without really grasping the difference between their profession and that of a postman. Daquin calls them the ’new boys’.

Daquin makes coffee for everyone, then they all sit down. Daquin gives a brief report on his night at the station in the 16
^th
arrondissement, and the meeting with the new chief.

‘So we’re going to take a little time check out a certain Senanche, at Meirens’s place. He may be a small-time dealer who goes shopping in Holland. If that’s the case, we’ll soon know. You organise this amongst yourselves. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to various departments to see whether they’re working on any cases that might be of interest to us. We’ll have the first review here, in one week.’

Daquin has a job navigating the suburbs and motorway slip roads to find the entrance to La Courneuve Riding Centre. A vast area occupied by stables, indoor and outdoor schools and a few trees, wedged between a motorway, tower blocks and a landscaped garden. An odd sense of greenery without nature. Daquin parks the unmarked car in front of a low timber building housing six loose boxes. In front of them, a man in blue overalls is busy with a bay horse. Daquin stands still and watches him. His gestures are precise, doubtless repeated hundreds of times. The horse cooperates, waggling his ears, anticipating and enjoying the man’s every gesture. There is a physical bond between the two of them, they are like a couple, quietly trusting each other. Not something you often come across in this line of work. But it’s by no means cut and dried. The man knows he’s being watched, but appears unfazed. He finishes grooming the horse, without rushing, then leads him back into his stall. Daquin gets out of his car.

‘Le Dem? I’m Superintendent Daquin.’

A young man of average height, square face, dark brown hair in a crew cut, light blue eyes, a slow gaze.

They go and sit in the bar, which is empty and sinister at this hour, in front of two cups of brown, lukewarm instant coffee.

Get him to open up so as not to have to grope around in the dark. Tell him what he knows already, and then come back to the question.

‘With your superiors’ consent, I’ve come to ask you if you would agree to transfer to my team, the Drugs Squad, for the duration of an
investigation in racing circles. It probably won’t be for long and you’ll be in line for promotion.’

‘Do I have the option of refusing?’

Daquin decides to smile.

‘Straight off? You don’t even want to know what it’s about?’

‘The thing is, I love my job here. I live with my horse, we patrol the park together. I protect the public, I help people when necessary, and my work is more about prevention than detection. I’m on very good terms with all the local kids, I give them a better image of the police. A public service without violence you know, that’s what suits me. The Drugs Squad is war. And I wouldn’t know how to do that.’

A Martian in the housing projects. Just my luck to get landed with him.

‘Would this transfer cause you problems shall we say of a domestic nature?’

‘No, it’s not that, I’m single.’ Without showing any emotion.

Daquin stares at the cup he’s toying with.

‘I’m not going to tell you that we’re non-violent. And I am aware that your concept of public service is different from ours. But if you agree to come on board, when this investigation’s over, I’ll have you transferred to Brittany, near your home town.’ A glance out of the window. At the door of the loose box, the bay horse, his head reared, ears pointed, listens to the roar of the motorway. ‘And I’ll ensure you can take the horse you’re working with at the moment with you.’

Blink.
Touché
.

‘Could you do that?’

‘Superintendent’s word.’

Grin. ‘Count me in.’

‘Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce our new colleague. He’s a true horseman. He’ll be our expert. He’s from a highway patrol unit in La Courneuve…’ glances at Lavorel and Romero. As expected, they immediately warm to him, ‘…and will be part of the team.’ Then turns to Le Dem. ‘Two things: nobody smokes in my office. And nobody comes in armed with their service revolver. You can leave it in the office next door or in the cupboard and collect it when you leave. Now, a coffee for everyone and let’s get to work.’

Romero heads for the machine.

‘You’d better like your coffee strong, without sugar, if you want to impress the chief.’

Le Dem smiles.

‘I like it weak with lots of sugar. Tough.’

They all sit down and Romero opens with his report on the team’s progress to date. Daquin, at his desk, takes notes.

‘We easily found Meirens, identified Senanche, and found out about his customer network. He sells the stuff to kids who come in the mornings and ride the training horses, Olivier Deluc’s mates most likely. We haven’t seen him again, he’s been keeping a low profile. The procedure: they arrive by car, park in front of the stables and hand the keys to Senanche. While they’re riding, Senanche puts the stuff in the glove compartment and collects the cash. It’s very neat. The cars are registered in the parents’ names. We’ve got Jambet and Wilson, the fathers are
high-flying
executives, one at Parillaud and the other at Électricité de France, and Duran’s father’s a Venezuelan diplomat. We’ve also got the list of owners whose horses are trained by Meirens, it’s in the file.

The second customer network is the local café, where Senanche goes several times a day and from where he makes all his phone calls. We’ve been tapping it for the last three days. I’ve made you a tape of the most interesting conversations, also in the file. You’ll see that Senanche receives and sends a lot of messages which are obviously related to his dealing activities. The customers are men, only one woman’s voice. The quantities being sold seem much bigger than those in the morning. The dealing seems to take place at racecourses. But Senanche hasn’t once left Meirens’ stables. As for his supplier…’