Murder in the Sentier by Cara Black Read Free Book Online Page A

to his partner, another flic with a long, sallow face who stood in the foyer.
    Her heart thumped in her chest. Bellan didn’t miss a trick; he had recognized her. But if he had found evidence of a crime he would have searched the premises.
    “Monsieur Figeac and I know each other …” Bellan let his words dangle in the air. “Let’s say, quite well. I really wouldn’t want to charge him with possession of illegal substances.” Bellan smiled. “But I could.”
    Christian Figeac’s jacket sleeve had ripped. Aimée saw needle tracks on his wrists. Purplish brown and old.
    “Call this number,” Christian Figeac said, his manacled fingers fishing a card from his front pants pocket. “Tell him to meet me at the Commissariat. I’ll be out in an hour.”
    The card read, “Etienne Mabry, 28 Boulevard de Sébastopol.” There was also an office in the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange.
    “He’s your attorney?” she said.
    “My financial advisor on stocks.”
    On the stairs, two older women paused, speaking in a Slavic dialect. Mops and buckets were in their hands. “Agence Immobilière sent us. The agent wants the apartment cleaned for a showing.”
    Downstairs, the flics took Figeac to a waiting Peugeot. Aimée didn’t know whether to be relieved that Bellan hadn’t asked her to accompany him, or suspicious.
    Bellan drove away without so much as another glance. As soon as the car turned the corner, she ran back to Christian Figeac’s apartment.

Sunday Morning
    R EADY FOR THE DRIVE into Paris, Stefan eased the old Mercedes onto the périphérique . He adjusted the headphone for his left ear. His only good ear. The one able to hear subtly differing tones and low frequencies.
    The opening strains of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” rippled over him. The notes calmed him, transported him back to the commune. To the crisp autumn day when the Pink Floyd record played continuously like a theme song. Back to the day Ulrike tore the joint from his hand and shoved a Mauser in it.
    “Time for you to join the Revolution,” she’d said, throwing an ammo clip onto the sheets next to a long-haired girl. “Not sleep with it.”
    It was either that or leave the commune. Time to go the distanz . The long-haired girl, his Maoist tutor, not only smelled of vanilla, her kisses tasted of it. And he’d grown comfortable there.
    Ulrike’s eyes, dark and flat, were hidden behind the sun glasses she always wore. To conceal her intellect, he realized. Or the fact that she’d cofounded and edited the radical German paper Dié social . She gave no hint of her astute dissection of current politics. Or her influence on them.
    Mousy and awkward, at times painfully shy when in front of the group, Ulrike, with her distinctive patchouli fragrance, kept her distance from Ingrid and Marcus, the rock star revolutionaries.
    Yet Ulrike needed their in-your-face terrorist pranks and brazen lifestyle to publicize the Revolution. They needed her brains and media prominence for credibility. Molding urban guerrillas to fight the Revolution was the only thing they agreed on.
    The endless ideological conflicts, studying Marx and Mao, bickering over who slept with whom, Marcus’s ranting if he couldn’t get his drugs, Jutta’s sullenness, all drained Ulrike. Stefan sensed that right away.
    He looked up to her. She’d cultivated him after a demonstration in Colmar. “You have potential,” she’d said. “The Revolution needs people like you.” He was eighteen, she twenty-eight, a mother of twins, who’d given up her children and life for the cause. Like Ingrid. But Ingrid was different, stone cold and calculating.
    “Go downstairs, Stefan, help pack the van,” she’d said that day. “We’re going to visit our brothers.”
    “Brothers?” he’d asked as he struggled into his faded, patched jeans. The glamour was fading from his Revolution.
    “Action-Réaction,” she said. “Our French brothers and sisters.”
    Stefan shrugged.