THAT NIGHT CNN carries a follow-up newsfeed on the international fugitive Gabriel Kaas, whose extradition to France by Canada remains under contention. Police are investigating whether the Montreal-based crime writer who escaped from police custody in the courtroom buildings had inside assistance. Questions continue to be raised by his lawyer about police mishandling of prisoner security, putting his client’s life at risk. In his last statement to the press before his escape, Kaas accused the Canadian authorities of endangering his safety. According to Kaas, the Paris murders had been carried out by a criminal ring in France that targeted vulnerable young women as breeding carriers for wealthy couples willing to pay huge sums of money for healthy babies without a traceable past. Kaas claimed that his life was in danger because of his inside knowledge and that extradition to France would be a gross violation of his rights to security and safety as a Canadian resident.
The Canadian press goes wild, surmising that the explosive revelations in Kaas’s novel are a case of art imitating life.
Olmi contacts me a few days later. It is during work hours. He asks if there is a work landline I can use and I find an empty office.
‘Bonjour Madame de Luc.’
‘Bonjour Monsieur Olmi. Qu’est-ce que vous voulez savoir aujourd’hui?’
‘Ah, your French has improved.’
‘Only a little.’
‘He has put the cat amongst the pigeons, that hosband of yours.’
‘Why, what has happened?’
‘Very interesting things. People running in all directions. My team is finding it hard to keep up. But they are running scared and that is good.’
‘You will not be needing me in France to testify?’
‘Ah non Madame, we wished only to see if we could flush him out.’
‘You were going to use me as bait?’
‘Mais oui. But it is no longer necessary. Your husband is a smart man. He must be careful, but for the moment they are not thinking of him, they are battening down the hatches. He has bought himself time.’
‘You agree with him?’ I cannot keep the astonishment from my voice.
‘Mais oui, naturellement. We have already lost two officers assigned to the witness protection programme. I made sure that information got to him.’
‘Lost?’ My voice is faint.
‘Dead, Madame, murdered, you would say.’ His voice is grim. ‘One in an attack on the way to a safe house, and one after a gunfight in the grounds of the safe house after we changed the location. But they were not as clever as they thought. We found the informant − it was an internal leak − and the witnesses are still safe.’
There is something about Olmi’s evasion on the topic of these witnesses that has bothered me ever since they were first mentioned. He doesn’t explain anything about them.
Olmi and I met a long time ago when he was an investigator on the murder case of Celestine Nothomb, sister of Jasmine Nothomb, the original Lady Limbo of my student days and Simone’s biological mother. By the time I’d gone to find Celestine at Charles de Gaulle to see if she had any information on Daniel’s possible whereabouts, Jasmine was long dead in an apparent accident. Celestine had been guarded but she’d arranged for us to visit her ‘dear friends’, Peter and Gi Langstrom, who had met on an RMI assignation.
Celestine’s murder was all over the international news. Her violent death shocked and depressed me. In spite of my morbid dislike of funerals, I had returned to France for my new friend’s funeral and to visit the man investigating Celestine’s case: Detective Olmi of the Villegny commissariat. I’d read his name in the news report with a shock of recognition – it was the same name mentioned in some of the clippings Daniel had kept about the women who had died in suspicious circumstances in the vicinity of Paris.
Later that day, in Olmi’s office, he’d questioned me about the chain of events that tied me to Celestine (and perhaps to Jasmine). He’d asked me again and again to go over the details of my conversations with Celestine and amiable Peter and gamine Gi, but I’d kept saying I didn’t know much, it was just an impromptu visit to friends. He’d been suspicious, his finely tuned detective’s nose telling him my visit to Celestine was not coincidental. There was some connection to my missing hosband, he was sure of it. He’d endeavoured to gain my trust by sharing information that was not given out to the media.
Determined to elicit my cooperation, he’d laid photos out on the desk of the two sisters, before and after: on one side, sloe-eyed, seductive Jasmine in a white sequin bustier she wore for her limbo dance routine, and below her, radiant Celestine in her sexy ground hostess outfit. On the other side, their bruised and battered head shots. But I hadn’t flinched. I could not betray Daniel. His life depended on my silence, I was even more certain of that as I gazed at Olmi’s photographic evidence of violent crimes.
During our meeting, Olmi had shown a great interest in Peter and Gi Langstrom, returning again and again to the subject of my visit to the Langstrom family.
‘Do I know these witnesses?’ I ask now, acting on the hunch that’s crept up on me. ‘Are they perhaps good friends of Celestine’s who are familiar with the services of RMI?’
There is a short silence.
‘Madame, all I can say is that Monsieur de Luc is very important to us. We want him to remain alive.’
We are talking in code now. He has not refuted my guess. It is a game of high stakes.
‘Why is he so important to you?’
‘You helped me, Madame. I have not forgotten that. Ever since you sent me the tape of your meeting with the RMI operative, I have changed my approach. We are getting closer to making a breakthrough, I can feel it. We have been working with the Belgian authorities to build a case against the people behind RMI, but they don’t have anybody on the inside that will testify. When the time is right, we will bring Gabriel Kaas in for questioning and then we will go after the people behind RMI.’
The unspoken subtext is that Peter Langstrom is no longer an RMI operative, he does not have knowledge of the current organisational setup, whereas my husband still works for Real Man Inc. and does have that knowledge. I know that Olmi has no confirmation of this. RMI is a ruinous castle of carnal whispers in the night; it could vanish in an instant. I should feel grief but I feel numb.
‘Do you have any news of him. Do you know where he is?’
‘Non, but a man must eat. We will find Monsieur de Luc again. And this time we will have him – the Canadians will not argue with the evidence we are putting together. They will not want to go to the Hague for one man, an author who is a French national anyway.’
‘I don’t understand … you still want to charge him?’
‘But of course, Madame. Monsieur de Luc is implicated in the murders, we are sure of this. But it is bigger than him and he can lead us to the others, and that is why I need him outside for now. He must stay alive long enough for us to bring him in when we are ready. And then I am hoping you will help us, because he will be safer inside than outside.’
Olmi is a sly trickster. He is responsible for the mysterious circumstances of Daniel’s escape, I see that now.