“Tell us everything you know.” Manny walked into my room and leaned against one of the filing cabinets in the back. “We could really do with a break in this case.”
Phillip swivelled his chair to better face me and Manny at the same time. “He worked for me many years ago. Let me think... yes, he started with me when he left university in 1997.”
“More than twenty years ago.” Francine walked in and sat in the chair Colin usually used. She was swiping and tapping on her tablet screen. “Which university did he graduate from?”
“University of the Arts Utrecht.”
“Holland?” Manny asked.
“The Netherlands.” It annoyed me that so many people got this wrong. “The official name of the country is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Holland is not the name of the country. There are two provinces named Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland, but they’re only part of the country. When people say Holland they mean the Netherlands.”
“Holland?” Manny asked Phillip again, ignoring me.
His reaction brought me immediate comfort. This was the kind of rudeness I’d become accustomed to. Not the aggression and hostility from the last two days.
Phillip nodded. “Yes, he graduated—with honours, I might add—from the academy of arts. He specialised in art history and had the perfect character traits for working in this business. I hired him immediately after our first interview. He was such a bright and rising star.”
“What happened?”
“Ooh.” Francine’s eyes were wide as she stared at her tablet. “Fran?ois was a naughty, naughty boy.”
“He’d been with me for three years when things went bad.” The sadness of that memory deepened the lines around Phillip’s mouth. “Fran?ois came from a scandal-ridden family. They had a lot of old money, but his mother’s gambling habits used it all up. They were left with nothing. There were also a lot of rumours about fraud, extortion, child abuse and a range of sexual scandals.
“Fran?ois never talked about his family at all. In the three years I knew him, he never mentioned them once. He just pretended to be superior to everyone else, always with subtle references to places, events, brands and people only the upper class would carry knowledge of. There was always some form of duality to him.”
“What does that mean?” Manny asked.
Phillip thought for a moment. “With others he was calculated, pretentious, even cruel at times. But for some reason, he was real with me. Honest. That had been the reason I’d hired him. His other side only surfaced after a few months with us.
“But he was good at his job. I had chosen well when I’d hired him. In those three years, he absorbed everything I taught him like a sponge. It was inspiring to watch him became better, sharper, more efficient every single day. He was hungry for more information, hungry to be the best insurance investigator in the art industry and hungry for more money.”
“Let me guess.” Manny raised one eyebrow. “He stole art or forged it or helped some criminal traffic it.”
“The latter. And he used his exceptional computer skills to make it happen. Internet transactions were still in their infancy, with many ways to circumvent legal avenues. It was quite easy for him.”
“Well, give me a hammer and call me Thor.” Francine’s mouth was slightly agape. “I think you guys need to see this.” She swiped her tablet screen twice, then looked at the monitor next to the one displaying the photo of Fran?ois talking on his phone. “This is the ID photo of Fran?ois Dumaux.”
“Holy bloody hell!” Manny walked closer and pointed at the monitor. “That’s Pierre.”
He was right. The Dutch identity card Francine had put full screen on the monitor showed the man we’d interviewed in the Robertsau forest.
“Who’s Pierre?” Phillip asked.
“That man”—I nodded towards the monitor—“was at the Robertsau forest where Camille Vastine and Martin Gayot were dumped. We spoke to him. He was wearing gloves, so I never got to see his hand or the birthmark. He was quite helpful when we interviewed him. He’d been the first one to find the bodies. The three tourists walked past him as he was looking at the bodies.”
“He must have been the one to dump them there.” Francine shivered. “Did he also kill them? Torture them?”
Nobody answered her. We were quiet for a few seconds.
“You cleared him, right?” Manny asked.
“I did.” Francine frowned. “I checked all the witnesses. All the info the three woman gave checked out. Because Genevieve thought Pierre was off, I made double sure he checked out. He did. He’s registered at the hotel he said he was staying at as well as the conference he was supposed to attend. Even his rental car is registered in the IT company’s name.”
“Did you check the IT company?” I asked.
Her lips thinned. “No.”
“Dammit.” Manny took his phone from his trouser pocket. “He played us. I was about to call off the team tailing him. Now I’m getting them to bring him in.”
“You had him followed?” Phillip narrowed his eyes. “What made you suspect him?”
I thought back to our conversation with Fran?ois AKA Pierre. “His nonverbal cues were inconsistent. At times his answers and gestures were calculated.”
Phillip’s smile was sad. “Those times, his answer came a millisecond slower than the other times, right?” He sighed when I nodded. “He did that often with his co-workers and with clients. If it hadn’t been for the first interview and the private moments when he was real with me, I wouldn’t have picked up on it.”
“Well, Doc picked up on it.” Manny’s eyes widened slightly, indicating that Daniel had just answered his call. He grunted and left the viewing room, briefing Daniel on our discovery.
“Do you think Fran?ois is capable of killing these young people?” Francine asked Phillip.
“I haven’t seen Fran?ois in fifteen years. After I discovered what he was doing and testified against him, he disappeared from my life.”
Francine looked at her tablet. “He was sentenced to five years in prison. Not a long time for these allegations.”
“He co-operated with the authorities so they could finally arrest the mafia boss who’d hired Fran?ois to obtain the stolen artworks.” His smile wasn’t kind. “I don’t know what he is like now, but the Fran?ois I knew was highly intelligent, cunning and always looking for an easier way to do things and make money—which could have been a great asset if he’d used it in a legal manner.”
“You didn’t answer her question.” I was curious if Phillip considered Fran?ois to be capable of torture and murder.
He looked at me and shook his head. “The Fran?ois I knew was also a coward. He had an insatiable appetite for money and power, but no appetite for violence. The moment the police threatened to put him in a prison with violent convicts, he became an instant encyclopaedia of criminal activity. I was really shocked at how much he knew then.”
I thought about this. It was not often that people changed. Not their core characteristics. And the way Phillip was describing Fran?ois led me to believe that it was very probable that he’d continued his life of crime even after his incarceration. I could think of no other logical reason for him to have given us a false name and nationality when we’d spoken to him.
“Daniel’s team is bringing Fran?ois in.” Manny walked back into my office. “They’re quite close and Daniel reckons they should be here in less than twenty minutes.”
Phillip got up and pulled at the cuffs of his suit jacket. “You can interview him in one of our conference rooms.”
Manny looked at me. For a moment, I had a glimpse at the vulnerability he experienced before his usual scowl pulled his brow down. “What do you think, Doc? Should you and Phillip be the ones to interview Fran?ois? He might give away all his secrets without having to be threatened.”
I considered this. “If he still has the same characteristics as when Phillip knew him, it would be best to have a law enforcement officer in there looking intimidating.”