42

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, IN HIS office at police headquarters, Jacquot put a call through to Solange Bonnefoy’s chambers on Cours Pierre Puget in Marseilles. He had her home number but felt that, in the circumstances, her office would be the best place to call; less intrusive, it would give her space until she decided to do something about it. As he’d expected Madame Bonnefoy was not at her desk, but would he care to leave his name or a message? he was asked.

‘Just say Daniel called,’ Jacquot told her assistant. That’s all he needed to say. So that she knew he was there if she needed him, if she needed to talk.

He hadn’t expected a prompt reply and he didn’t get one. It was two days before Solange Bonnefoy phoned him back.

‘It was good of you to call, Daniel.’

There was no need for her to say who it was. When he heard her voice, he shooed Brunet from his office, and closed the door to the squad room.

‘I am so very sorry, Solange. You must be . . .’

‘Devastated? Or strong? Which camp are you in, Daniel? So far callers are falling into one or other category.’ He heard her try a chuckle, but she couldn’t quite carry it off.

Jacquot smiled. ‘The devastated camp.’

‘And you’re right. That’s what I am. Completely and utterly. And I really don’t want to hear that “strong” rubbish. I’ll leave being strong for some other time. Right now I’m just plain . . . devastated.’

Jacquot waited a beat before he continued, heard her blow her nose on the other end of the line. ‘I didn’t know you . . .’

The nose was wiped, the tissue wadded into her sleeve. He had seen her do it so many times – most effectively in her prosecutor’s robes in court – that he could see it now, as though she were there in his office, or he in her chambers.

‘We kept it quiet,’ she replied, her voice thickening. ‘And it was early days. And there were his children to consider. Blah, blah . . . You know how it is.’

There was a long, weary pause, broken by fresh sniffs. The nose was blown again. It didn’t take much for Jacquot to add to the tissue and sleeve image her long face drawn and puffy, her grand prow of a nose reddened by the attention, and her grey hair usually so wavy and bouyant now likely lank and lifeless.

The killers had done what they had set out to do, thought Jacquot.

They had taken one life and ruined another.

A true, horrible and bitter revenge.

‘You know what? The thing I regret the most?’ she said at last.

‘Dis-moi,’ replied Jacquot, with a soft, slow kindness.

‘That morning, the last time I saw him, I pretended to be . . . not quite awake. Just mumbled something about dinner. So when he left, all I got was just the sense of his lips against my cheek.’ She sighed. ‘If only I hadn’t pretended sleep . . . if only I’d let him know, he would have kissed me properly, with love. The right kind of kiss for a last kiss, don’t you think?’

Jacquot let her think about that for a moment. There was no need for words from him and he pictured her at the end of the line, remembering that lost moment.

And then she was back, with another grim little chuckle.

‘You know, what I can’t get over is the irony of it,’ she continued. ‘Here am I, a symbol of law and order and justice, and where do I live? Just a few doors down from one of the city’s most notorious parrains. Can you believe that? Some gangland boss with more blood on his hands than wrinkles. Apparently he keeps a mistress there. That’s what the police have told me, and according to them that’s how come my man was blown to bits. Mistaken identity. A gallery curator and a gangland boss. Would you credit it? And I’ve just found out they drive different cars. How could it be mistaken identity? Tell me that.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Jacquot.

There was a silence at the end of the line as Solange Bonnefoy absorbed those tight, short words. And their message.

‘I’m sorry to say it was very much deliberate,’ he continued.

Finally, she spoke. ‘What are you saying, Daniel? What do you know?’ Her words were icily direct, unwavering. It was the way she sometimes spoke in court, or in her chambers when the two of them were reviewing evidence – a warning that she should not be toyed with.

‘Maybe we should meet,’ said Jacquot.

‘Where and when?’