Murder in Pigalle (7 page)

“The maid didn’t work that afternoon. Claude thinks Mélanie returned at nine
P
.
M
. Like usual.”

Usual? “Isn’t that late for a twelve-year-old to come home?”

“She was coming from her violin lesson,” Madame Vasseur said. Aimée thought of Sylvaine’s scattered music, the stickered calendar. “Her teacher’s not a day person. She takes pupils after school and in the evening. We gave Mélanie taxi money like always. At ten thirty
P
.
M
. he found her in the conservatory … her music room.”

More than an hour alone after the attack before her father found her? Horrible. But it fit the pattern.

“Mélanie couldn’t reach the phone? Was she bound or taped?”

“Traumatized, I told you,” she said, downing the wine and pouring herself another glass. “
Mais
tied up and her mouth taped,
oui.
”

Like the other girls.

“After the medical examination, Claude brought her to the clinic. She wouldn’t talk. They told us not to push her or insist.”

“But she described the rapist to the composite artist. He looks like this.” Aimée showed the FotoFit to her. “Seen him? Maybe a gardener or delivery man at a shop, someone in the
quartier
?”

Madame Vasseur shrugged. “No one I recognize. Could be anyone.”

“What did Mélanie tell you?”

“Wouldn’t talk about it.”

“But she talked to Zazie.”

“Red-haired girl, intense?” she asked, with a raise of her eyebrow.

Aimée nodded.

“I know her mother, Virginie. She runs a café, nice. We’ve met at the
lycée
,” said Madame Vasseur, the wine she drank thawing her out. “Claude and I are both lawyers. We work a lot. When Mélanie bonded with Zazie, I was happy. You know, Claude’s more
le snob.
But I let Mélanie come home by herself after school. Mélanie said she was too old for the maid to babysit her. I trust her. She’s always been a responsible, focused girl. Well, mostly. She’s brilliant. A musical prodigy.”

Madame Vasseur gestured to a framed photo. In it a young blonde girl wearing an expensive-looking silk dress and grinning to reveal braces posed with a violin beside an older man and a smiling young couple arm-in-arm. “That’s Mélanie at her last recital, at a student exhibition sponsored by the Lavignes. Monsieur Lavigne, the elder, with his son Renaud and new daughter-in-law. They’re old family friends and supporters of the Conservatoire de Musique. Mélanie is eligible to try out for the Conservatoire this year, and I insisted. No negotiation on that.”

Aimée heard a catch in Madame Vasseur’s voice.

“Insisted? Do you mean Mélanie seemed reluctant to try out for the Conservatoire, Madame?”

“Think back to when you were twelve,” she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. “You rebel against your parents. Everything matters, the way a boy looks at you, or doesn’t look at you. Life’s heightened, magnified. The world turns on what someone says, on being accepted by your peers—or not.”

Mélanie sounded sensitive. But hadn’t Aimée felt the same at that age, too?

A few more sips of wine and Madame Vasseur revealed she’d missed seeing Zazie at the clinic last night. She’d found
Mélanie asleep and, after conferring with the doctor, sent her to Lausanne this afternoon.

“But what about school?”

“She’ll retake the exams in September. And the violin lessons, well … we’ll see.”

At least Aimée had an idea about where to go next. “What’s Mélanie’s violin teacher’s name and address?” she asked.

“Madame de Langlet, a former professor at the Conservatoire. She’s very selective. Her studio’s in Square d’Orléans.”

Aimée made a note. Not far away. “That’s important, Madame. Tonight’s victim was also assaulted after a violin lesson.”

“
N’importe quoi
,” she replied. “As I told you, Madame’s quite selective. She only takes pupils of Mélanie’s caliber.”

“Selective or not, there could be a link, Madame.”

“Then you’d need to speak with her.” Madame Vasseur sighed. She opened her mouth as if to say something but took a sip of wine instead. “But I’ll fight those battles over lessons when I come to them.”

“Battles?”

“Mélanie’s so gifted. I want her to continue with the violin.”

Sounded like Mélanie didn’t.

“Do you think I could talk with Mélanie at the clinic?” Aimée paused. “With your permission, of course.”

Madame Vasseur stared at Aimée, almost as if she was seeing her for the first time. “Mélanie’s withdrawn into a shell, the doctor said. She won’t speak to anyone. Look, on Friday, when I visit, I’ll ask her, as long as there’s a way to avoid more stress.”

Friday … too late.

“Does your husband know more about the attack? Would he know what Mélanie told Zazie?”

Madame Vasseur shook her head. “He blames me. He’s good at that.” She rolled her eyes, which had reddened. “For six months after Mélanie was born, I stayed home, cared for her, put my
whole career on hold and devoted myself to her.” Madame Vasseur took a long sip of wine. “It sliced me in two to go back to work. I cried for days, wondering if I had made the right decision. Financially I didn’t have to, but—you’ll face this too—work fulfills in ways motherhood doesn’t. And you’ll have to choose. No one ever tells you a double standard exists. Women work hard at the job and harder at home.”

She let out a sigh. Globed lights outside the tall windows illuminated the garden hedge with a golden sheen. “You’re always supposed to be a mother first, no matter what. That’s a man’s attitude. You’re up all night with their colic, then it’s bronchitis, the teacher meetings, the clean clothes, the lost homework … that’s your life. Six
A
.
M
. you’re up to do it again.”

Madame Vasseur, chic in her Dior suit, did not appear to have gotten up at six this morning. Aimée doubted she’d ever made the school run. She wondered about the woman’s relationship with her husband.

Fueled by the Burgundy, she grew more maudlin with every sip. “Think I sound like a cold bitch,
n’est-ce pas
? I just wish someone had told me.” She gave a little shake of her head. “Another piece of advice. Peach-pit oil works magic on stretch marks.”

An angry, driven, unhappy woman. A townhouse in an exclusive enclave, an attorney’s power and salary; she was a woman with almost everything. Aimée reflected—could this be her in the future, determined to run Leduc Detective at the cost of her child?

“May I read your police statement, Madame?”

“Claude handled everything at the Commissariat.” She waved her cigarette in a dismissive gesture. “My daughter’s safe now. Away, nothing to do with this or you.”

Au contraire
, she almost said. “Just this afternoon Zazie told me Mélanie had shared disturbing things with her. She attempted to surveil this rapist Mélanie described. Asked for
my help. Now she’s missing, after Sylvaine was raped and murdered. Don’t you see? If there’s anything, anything at all …”

A phone trilled. Madame Vasseur rifled in her matching tan pigskin Hermès bag and pulled two out, glanced at the display of the one that was vibrating. “A client. I need to take this. I’ve helped you enough.”

She called that help? Time was running out.

“
Bonsoir
, Monsieur Haldane,” Madame Vasseur said, “no disturbance at all.
Quoi
? The requisition? It’s on my home computer. One moment.” She stood in her stocking feet. “You know the way out.”

Gracious, too.

But she needed to pee. “May I use your bathroom?”

The woman waved as she walked none too steadily down the hall.

Madame Vasseur’s second cell phone peeped out of the bag. Her personal phone. Aimée slid it out and scrolled down the numbers dialed. The third one showed a Swiss country code. The fourth was labeled “M.” With her kohl eye pencil, she wrote both numbers on her palm, then nicked one of Madame Vasseur’s business cards.

This house gave off an antiseptic aura. Expensive art on the walls, Philippe Starck furniture, period detail—but it felt lifeless. For show. In the state-of-the-art kitchen, she searched for photos and found one attached to the stainless-steel refrigerator by a red magnet: a blonde girl barefoot in the garden wearing pink Levi’s and matching pink sunglasses—the same smiling girl from the photo Madame had showed her. The only other evidence of Mélanie.

A
S SHE CLOSED
the front door, her mind reeled through what she’d discovered, trying to piece together connections—cheese-shop owners and high-ticket lawyers, both with daughters who attended
lycées
in the ninth arrondissement. So
far she’d learned Mélanie’s music teacher’s name and that both girls studied the violin, were blonde and wore pink.

Zazie attended school in the
quartier
, she was a redhead, and she played video games, not the violin. If the rapist had a type, which it seemed he did, Zazie wasn’t it.

But could she be a hostage, taken because she knew too much? Murdered?

Hurrying down rue Ballu, she punched the Swiss number into her phone. After a series of rings, a recorded message came on: “You have reached Clinique Berzeval. Please call back during business hours from nine
A
.
M
. to noon and two
P
.
M
. to six
P
.
M
.”

She tried the number from Madame Vasseur’s list that had been labeled M, hoping it was Mélanie’s. The phone rang once. “Message box is full.” If it really was Mélanie’s number, the clinic might have put her in psychiatric lockdown, cutting off her contact with the outside world.

Both numbers led nowhere fast. Questions—that was all she had.

A girl had been raped and murdered; Zazie still hadn’t made contact, and there was no trace of her to be found. Aimée wanted to throw something. If she had known Zazie would immediately break her promise not to go investigating, Aimée would have made her do her homework right there in the office where she could keep an eye on her. Talked some sense into her.

Worry roiled her stomach. Intent on Madame Vasseur’s phone, she’d forgotten to pee.

A
T A CAFÉ
downhill on rue Blanche, she made her way to the WC, past the crowd waiting for the quarterfinals on the
télé.
On France2 a news bulletin flashed:

Reggae star Jimmy Cliff will perform an open-air concert during the Fête de la Musique in honor of the Jamaica versus Argentina match. In Marseilles, a curfew was announced after violent
confrontations between British and Tunisian football fans, provoking an all-country security alert and extra CRS patrols in Paris.

A
LL RESOURCES WERE
focused on rioting football fans. What about the little girls being raped? Welcome to World Cup Paris 1998, she thought, disgusted.

She put a franc down on the counter as a courtesy, since she hadn’t ordered anything. Her wrist was grabbed by an old lady perched on a café stool who was ignoring the blaring
télé.
The old woman’s red-rimmed eyes bored into Aimée. “You know where rue Blanche’s name came from?”

Aimée shook her head. Extricated her hand from the woman’s cold and dry, claw-like fingers. Too much to drink, lonely, crazy or all three?

“The gypsum, as white as my hair,” said the old woman. “The Romans used to cart it down this street from the Montmartre quarries.”

Aimée had learned that in school. Before the old woman could expound more, she snuck out.

Outside, she punched in René’s number.

“René, we’ve got to follow up with a Madame de Langlet, Mélanie’s violin teacher.” She ran down her encounter with Madame Vasseur and gave him the information.

She heard him sucking in his breath. “I’m afraid things are verging on ugly. There’s trouble here in Pigalle.”

“Trouble? But I’m near Pigalle.”

She heard shouting in the background.

“What’s going on, René?” she asked, uneasy. “Has something happened to Zazie?”

“Parents taking things into their own hands.”

“Gone vigilante?” She’d been afraid of this. The
flics
should have put two and two together much earlier.

“Seems you inspired the owner of the NeoCancan to stir something up all right. A witch-hunt.”

“Like I should feel guilty?” she said, walking faster. “Time someone took notice and did something.”

“More than notice … they’re by Place Saint-Georges, chasing this
mec
down.”

She froze in her tracks. “They found the rapist?”

“Forget it, Aimée,” he said. “The area’s not safe.”

“The hell it’s not safe. What about Zazie? If this
mec
’s the one … we’ll find Zazie.”

She glanced at her Tintin watch. Nine thirty
P
.
M
. Ahead, a few slick-haired barkers were enjoining young men to step inside a club. Only a few steps away in a rose-trellised courtyard, she saw children kicking a soccer ball, smelled frying garlic from an open window with lace curtains. The streets buzzed below Pigalle in the hot night.

“I’m en route.” She clicked off. Three and a half blocks downhill the streets changed, steam-cleaned limestone facades rising above chic Place Saint-Georges, the roundabout featuring a statue of Gavarni and ringed by upscale
hôtels particuliers.

Off to the left, down an unrestored cobbled street, she spotted René. As she approached the corner, she heard shouting. People congregated, a jeering crowd spilling onto the street, and she made out smeared blood on a stone wall.

René caught her arm. “Don’t go up there, Aimée,” he said. “Not wise to get close.”

But she had to see.

Several members of the crowd were kicking a man crumpled on the pavement beneath the flashlight glare provided by others. Blood streamed from his shaved head onto the cobbled gutter. His clothing was torn. “Filthy pedophile,” said a woman and spat on him. “Gutter’s too good for you.”

“That’s a lynch mob,” Aimée said, shivering. “We’ve got to stop them.”

“I tried. Long past the point where we can help now.”