“Oh, it’s you.” The little man made it sound as if they were regular, if somewhat disappointing, visitors. He had the same peppering of stubble across his cheeks and chin and was wearing what appeared to be the same t-shirt, but today the sandwich he held seemed to be tuna rather than egg. He spoke to them as he swallowed a bite. “I’ve been wondering if you’d come back.”
Rachel found this very hard to believe in light of their previous encounter. She stared at him disbelievingly. “Why?”
He took another bite of his sandwich. “I found something interesting. And the police haven’t been back. The reporters haven’t been back. So I found myself wondering if the two culotté detectives might come back.”
“Why didn’t you take this something interesting to the police or the reporters?”
He imitated her sarcastic stare, only with his tuna salad–filled mouth slightly agape. Then he said, “How successful do you think my trendy nightclub in a louche area would be if I got a reputation for taking things to the police or the press?” He swallowed. “But I like you two. You have balls.”
“Vaginas, actually,” said Rachel, making up for not speaking out in front of Mediouri’s associate. “But thank you.”
She smiled at him to take the sting out. He dipped his head and grinned back.
Magda took advantage of the détente. “We also have something to ask you.”
He pulled the door open. “You better come in.”
They stepped into a foyer backed by an old-fashioned box-office booth and a second door. This opened onto an area that split into two arms, raised seating areas that curved out and around a sunken wooden area that Rachel assumed was the dance floor. They were thickly carpeted in black, with black banquettes running along walls studded at even intervals with paintings of pouting showgirls wearing feathered headdresses and Victorian corsetry. At the dance floor’s edge on the lower level, deep tufted chairs and couches surrounded small tables, all facing the floor. The two arms of the raised area met at the end of the room in a long bar, its top polished zinc and behind it a vast collection of alcohol. Bottles of every hue and design crowded shelves in front of a mirror that reflected them back at themselves—when she squinted, she saw that one ceiling-high section was devoted to vodka alone.
Despite its obvious newness and carefully curated luxury, the club had an air Rachel remembered from the bars she’d worked in when she was new to Paris: the stale beer scent and hollow atmosphere of daytime in a place meant for nights. Just as had been true then, the cash register behind the bar was open, the tongues that held the money in its sections raised. The only difference was that the pile of bills on the bar-top was short, the pile of card receipts towering. In her day it was the other way around.
The man tapped it all into one pile, shoved it into the cash drawer, and locked the register. He put his hands on the bar. “What’ll you have?”
Rachel didn’t know what had caused his change in attitude since their first encounter, but it was another of her firm convictions that one should never turn down free food or drink. As he poured them two Coke Lights, he answered their questions. Certainly someone from Sauveterre had paid a visit to the club before booking it for Guipure’s party. A girl had called and made an appointment with his partner, who had given them a tour. This had been around three months before the party. About a week later the same girl had called to make the booking, and a month before the party, a man and someone who he assumed was the same girl had come to take another tour and hammer out the final arrangements. That time he had done the showing around himself.
“Did you get their names?”
“He introduced himself as Roland Guipure, although I recognized him right away anyway. She didn’t give a name. In fact, she hardly said anything. Just sort of hovered behind him all the time, taking notes on a clipboard.”
Rachel exchanged a quick glance with Magda. Bingo.
“By any chance was Cyrille Thieriot here when they came?”
The man looked upward and squinted. At last he said, “Yeeees. Yes, because I remember that when the two of them came in, he took one look and scampered out like a rabbit. He was restocking the bar, and then half a second later he wasn’t.”
Rachel’s heart pounded against her breastbone like a caged animal. She willed it to calm down.
“Come on,” the man said abruptly. He nodded to his left, and Rachel suddenly became aware of a narrow, recessed staircase that led upstairs. “And don’t bring your drinks. I don’t like it when the equipment’s sticky.”
With this mysterious phrase he led them up the stairs and into a small room directly off the landing. The collection of stuffed notebooks on its shelves and papers all over its desk marked it out as the business office. He leaned over the computer monitor that stood on the desk and turned it to face them, brushing and setting in motion the head of a bobble doll designed to look like a grinning Nicolas Sarkozy wearing a sash that said “Grey Goose.” He pushed a CD into the side of the monitor. “House copy.”
The screen bloomed into life. After a few moments of desktop background, it began to run a film showing a large area filled with people. The dance floor was crowded, and at the far end of the room people packed a long bar. It took Rachel a moment to realize this was the room she had just been sitting in. On the screen, the carpet, the banquettes—in fact, everything she had just seen downstairs—were all white. Instead of the paintings of befeathered dancers, lengths of wide white fabric hung from ceiling to floor; instead of black seats, the bar stools now had white ones.
“You did this for one night?”
“Guipure had people come and do it. It was one of his questions when he came to look at the space: Would we be willing to let him make alterations if he agreed to change it back when he was done? I said sure, for an extra ten thousand euro and if he provided the labor.” His voice said this wasn’t the first time he’d made it worth his own while to oblige a rich man’s whim.
On the monitor, people looked like marionettes moving to music the security camera didn’t record, while others milled and chatted at the surrounding tables and on the raised platforms above. She recognized Keteb Lellouch, talking to a woman whose total lack of body fat and extreme height marked her out as a model. Over his left shoulder, she spotted Antoinette, gleaming in a white satin pantsuit as she watched the dancers. The rest of the crowd drank or posed or chatted with their eyes focused over each other’s shoulders to check that there was no one better available. She began to see that her early concern over who had attended this party was irrelevant. It didn’t matter that Guipure had had no friends to invite. This was an event designed for seeing and being seen.
The camera angle changed. Now the bar was directly in front of them, thronged with people waiting to order, and only the first few feet of the dance floor appeared. As she watched a man came onto the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Rachel recognized him as Guipure, less because of his face than because he was wearing white from head to foot—she was pretty sure she even made out the tips of white shoes beneath his trouser hems. He held some kind of tall glass with a straw in it in his left hand, and walked through the dance floor, arms snaking out to stop him every few steps for an exchange of cheek kisses or a short conversation. Then he vanished through an archway on the upper left.
“Men’s room,” said their host.
Now a woman appeared, this time from the top left side. It was Gabrielle. Rachel’s heart leaped again. As the camera watched, she approached the bar, stopped, then spotted a gap in the crowd and began to walk toward it. A man suddenly entered the screen from the right, walking so fast he was nearly running. He slammed into her. She grabbed his upper arms to steady herself; he held her shoulders to assist her, but only for a split second before rushing off in the same direction as Guipure. His face was turned away from the camera, but there was no mistaking the long-fingered hand that gripped Gabrielle’s shoulder, the extreme thinness of the man’s body.
“That’s Thieriot,” said the club owner.
For a few seconds nothing happened. Gabrielle took up a place at the bar, leaning her arms on it. A woman wandered across the center of the dance floor, wearing what looked like a crocheted green short suit, cut down to her navel and accessorized with hip-high white patent boots. A man wearing a double-breasted suit followed, one arm stretched out toward her. The suit was lilac, and the lapel of its top side was ultramarine blue, but it was still a suit. Who was it who’d said, “Women’s fashion changes every one hundred days; men’s fashion changes every one hundred years”? Whoever it was, she wasn’t sure they would have appreciated any of these particular changes.
Then Thieriot reappeared, still rushing, but this time from the direction of the men’s room. He crossed in front the bar and disappeared from view. “Out my fucking back door in the middle of his shift,” growled the man behind them.
A few more moments and Guipure also reappeared. His hair was slightly wet, as if he’d run his hands under a tap and pulled them over it, but otherwise he looked exactly as he had before. Once more he walked through the dancers. After a few steps, though, he stumbled, then righted himself by putting his hand on the back of a man near him. The man turned around and Guipure made a gesture of apology. He took another few steps, then stopped. He gave his head a quick shake. Then, walking carefully, he continued across the floor and out of the screen.
“Heading outside,” the man said. “That’s the last time security footage shows him.”
Rachel looked at the bottom of the screen. The time stamp read 02:20.
“They bumped into each other,” Magda said once they were outside again. She didn’t need to say any more. They had both seen numberless films and television shows in which, by a seemingly accidental bump, pockets were picked or secrets were passed.
“But he hid when she came to the club with Guipure.”
“He could have done that to be sure he didn’t give anything away when they saw each other. You yourself said he’s a bad liar. Or perhaps it’s just difficult to be cool when you’re face to face with someone you know you’re going to kill in a month.”
“It did look like Guipure had begun to feel the effects of the heroin when he crossed the floor after coming out of the men’s room.”
“Which was right after his encounter with Thieriot. An encounter Thieriot admitted to.”
“And that happened right after Thieriot and Gabrielle slammed into each other.”
“And held each other,” Magda stressed. “They touched each other.”
“She could’ve slipped him the syringe. She’d need to be quick, but she could have done it. We’d have to check the footage again—”
“But she could have done it, and she did buy heroin. That we know for sure.”
“And she wanted that job, but Guipure didn’t give it to her. She was also in love with him. Two good motives. And now the job is hers.”
“True, Thieriot was her romantic rival in a way. But then Guipure dumped Thieriot. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Especially if that enemy needs money,” Rachel pointed out.
They looked at each other. It worked; it actually worked. All the evidence was there, along with means and opportunity. They had done it.
“We better call Boussicault,” Magda said.
Rachel almost agreed. “Could it wait until after I tell Alan? Just a couple of hours, so he feels in the loop. You know he’s been upset about that before.”
Magda nodded. She remembered Alan’s rage when they’d investigated Edgar Bowen’s death without telling him. “Okay. But only a couple of hours.”
“I promise I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”