21

BERNIE MUZON, ONE OF THE squad from rue de l’Evêché, was waiting for Jacquot outside the Delacroix works entrance. Jacquot had called him from Cavaillon. Set it up. As he pulled into the kerb, Muzon recognised Jacquot and levered himself out of his car. He wasn’t as tall as Jacquot, but he was still a big man, well-muscled and broad in the shoulder, with a grin to match, brown hair thick and curled, eyes blue and jaw coated in a rough five-o’clock shadow. As usual he was dressed in blue jeans, black T-shirt and scuffed trainers. He reached back into his car and pulled out a blue linen jacket, slipped it on. He was straightening the sleeves as Jacquot came over.

‘Sorry about the wait,’ said Jacquot, noting the deep tan.

‘It’s nothing. De rien. Better here than a desk at headquarters,’ said Muzon, shaking Jacquot’s hand.

Jacquot smiled. No change there, then. Muzon was a ferret, a real door-knocker, the kind of cop who loved getting behind the wheel of a car, and going after someone. Loved sizing up some new face, and framing the questions right. Getting to the bottom of something. Anything but sit at his desk. Muzon was a man who liked being out on the streets.

‘Hear you guys had quite a time at Minette’s?’

Jacquot admitted that they had.

‘I’m sorry I missed it. She was a grand lady.’

Both men knew why he hadn’t been contacted, told about her death. He’d been on holiday with his wife and kids, two weeks in the French Caribbean that they’d been saving for. If someone had told him about Minette’s murder, Bernie Muzon would have been back there for her funeral in La Bouilladisse and hot on the trail of whoever had killed her, leaving the wife and kids on the beach, the holiday ruined.

‘So what’s the interest here?’ asked Muzon, as they headed for the Delacroix Reception, a few metres along the pavement from the arched and cobbled works entrance.

‘The report said this Antoine Berri was drugged, prior to the . . . amputation. Dyethelaspurane?’

‘That’s what the pathologist said. Trouble is, this Dyethy-stuff . . .’ Muzon always hated having to pronounce difficult drug names ‘. . .  is widely available. Not over the counter, of course, but easy to get hold of if you know how. Either at source – the factory in Switzerland – or from a hospital pharmacy. There’s around twelve thousand of those, by the way, if you were thinking of checking. But why the interest?’

‘We had the same drug crop up in another investigation.’

Muzon frowned as he pushed open the Reception door, held it for Jacquot.

‘That should have been flagged. It should have come up.’

Jacquot sighed, a regretful spread of the hands, a sly smile.

‘Sometimes the big cities don’t work as fast as the provinces.’

After signing in at Reception, Muzon sending out another sly smile of his own at the pretty blonde receptionist, the two men pushed through another door, walked down a corridor lined with portraits and sepia pictures of past Delacroix family members and stepped into the main yard. Stacked eight metres high with islands of tarped timber, it was wide enough for a pair of trucks to turn without touching, cobbled, and set round on all sides with brick warehouses. In the centre of each warehouse wall was a massive loading gate from which came the searing screech of saws and the scent of split timber, the only things Jacquot could remember from his long-ago trip here with his mother.

‘It’s over there,’ said Muzon, steering Jacquot to the nearest door – much smaller than the others, in a corner of the courtyard. Once inside, the screeching of heavy guage saws gave way to the quieter buzzing hum of smaller gauge equipment.

The room was about thirty metres long and roofed in slanting corrugated sheets, its stone floor carpeted with sawdust, strewn with offcuts and furnished with a dozen workbenches and saw tables set along the walls. Half of these tables were in use, carpenters bent over their work, glancing up at Jacquot and Muzon, but the first of the work stations just inside the door had been sealed off with a line of police tape, its yellow and blue chevrons looped around workbench and saw table.

It was five days since the killing but there were bloodstains everywhere. The spinning blade, fed by the rushing pulse of Berri’s sliced artery, had seen to that, spattering blood across the saw-hood and engine housing, over the shiny metallic surface of the saw table itself, and in a spraying arc up the nearest wall, across three dusty window panes and onto the ceiling. As Jacquot bent under the tape, he could also see that the blood had dripped down into the sawdust, a dried scarlet stalactite still hanging from the bottom half of the blade beneath the saw table.

‘Kid was working on his first piece, finishing it off for the judging,’ Muzon explained. ‘The apprentice thing, you know? Working late, like he’d done before, but being Saturday night he was the only person in this part of the works. He was found by one of the security guards. Apparently the saw was making an odd noise – juddering, the guy said, catching – so he came over to take a look.’

‘No chance of an accident?’

Muzon stood aside while Jacquot inspected the work station.

‘Not a chance,’ he replied.

‘The arm and hand were taped down?’

‘That’s right. Industrial duct tape. Common brand. Whoever did it set that saw there in gear, started it up and fed the lad down to the blade. Like a piece of timber.’

‘What’s your bet? Killer or killers?’

‘You ask me, I’d say two perps, possibly more. Berri was a big guy to put down, even with the drug. And as dead weight, big and heavy to haul up onto the table. I’ll tell you one thing for sure . . . whoever it was must have been covered in blood.’ Muzon nodded to the stains on the walls and windows.

‘Maybe they came in overalls, like the workforce,’ said Jacquot. ‘Just stripped them off after the killing and dumped them.’

‘If they did, they didn’t dump ’em around here. Nothing’s been found in a four-block radius.’

‘Many people about, that time of night? On a Saturday?’ Jacquot scuffed the toe of his shoe through the flattened sawdust, stained a dark brown from the spilt blood and sticking to the stone beneath.

‘Security, like I said. Three of them in all. And a couple of the trimmers across the yard doing overtime. That’s it.’

‘Anyone see anything? A man and a woman, say? Or maybe an old VW Beetle, dark colour, parked out front?’

Muzon shook his head.

‘Nothing like that. Everything as normal for time and place.’

‘To get in here they’d have had to come the way we did?’

‘Nope. Reception’s closed on a Saturday, so they’d have come in through the works entrance near where we parked.’

‘So they knew their way around? They didn’t have to ask for directions?’

‘Maybe they scouted the place out. Easy enough to do. Maybe someone visiting the showroom and company museum,’ said Muzon. ‘There’s regular guided tours – school trips, tourists, customers, that kind of thing.’

‘Any motive? Someone didn’t like this Berri guy? He owed money? Dealt drugs? Slept with someone’s wife, daughter?’

‘That would help, but no. Nothing. The kid was popular, told a good story, worked hard. Had talent, too. No girlfriend, but straight.’

‘And someone saws off his arm,’ murmured Jacquot. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

After a final look round, the two men stepped back into the sunshine and started across the yard, passing down a line of tattooed timber, heading for the street where they’d parked.

‘Of course, Police Nationale are all over it,’ said Muzon. ‘And all over us, too, to get it sorted.’

‘Why’s that?’ asked Jacquot. ‘Straight homicide surely?’

‘Antoine Berri had a brother. A twin, Jean.’

‘So?’

‘He’s one of ours. A képi. Works on rue Garibaldi. The PN.’

Jacquot stopped dead in his tracks.

‘His brother’s a flic?’

Muzon nodded.

‘That’s right. Just like you and me.’