She read through the contracts as quickly and carefully as she could, signed two and circled a clause on the third. “Tell René this needs more clarification.”
While Maxence turned back to his work, she spread a plastic bag on her desk and the newspapers on top of it, and got to work.
The 1978 Libérations chronicled the news of the day: Jacques Brel’s death; the birth of the first test-tube baby; President Giscard d’Estaing’s “close” friendship with the President of the Central African Republic Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who’d proclaimed himself emperor; in Tehran, the shah of Iran fleeing the country after a year of protest; ex-légionnaire Bob Denard and his mercenaries staging a coup in the Comoros islands; some whiffs of scandal relating to an Assemblée Nationale député’s suicide.
“Que c’est ancien,” said Maxence, looking admiringly at the culture section she had open. He wiggled his non-existent hips, shot one arm in the air. “Le Travolta.” Saturday Night Fever had been playing in the cinemas.
The silverfish had damaged the edges, but tucked between the back pages was a plastic folder whose contents were pristine.
Could she be imagining it, or did it smell like her father? His pine cologne? How she missed him.
Her insides twisted. It all came back to her again—the reek of secrets surrounding his death in the bombing, the silence of those she’d thought of as his friends and colleagues. She had tried to put it behind her for so many years, but she had failed. Now she knew the only way to get over it was to find out.
She thumbed through the contents of the plastic folder, the pages covered in his familiar scrawl.
A 1978 procès-verbal, her father’s signature at the bottom. The police report consisted of a witness statement from a military cadet, from an equine detachment, detailing his discovery of a body, female, in the grassy moat surrounding les Invalides early on the morning of April 22, 1978. A homicide.
Why hadn’t this file been with his others?
Attached to it was a grainy photo of the crime scene, the body covered with plastic, only the victim’s black hair visible, twisted and matted in the grass. A diagram showed the position of the body, in the grassy walled ditch at the right corner below the small square Santiago-du-Chili. Above it was a row of cannons, and beyond, the familiar dome of les Invalides, Napoléon’s tomb. Good God, she’d passed by there today, gone past les Invalides hundreds of times; it was a busy thoroughfare. She shivered, imagining such a violent death at this iconic monument.
The victim, listed as sans domicile fixe, had been identified two months later by dental records obtained from the Berry region. A Djanka Constantin. She grabbed the edge of her desk. Nicu’s birth mother had been murdered only a year after he was born.
She had to concentrate, put these pieces together. In the course of the investigation into the homicide of Djanka Constantin, her father would have questioned Drina, a family member, most likely, maybe a sister or cousin.
Further digging in the plastic file revealed a Leduc Detective in-house case memo from 1985, labeled NORLAND, GEORGES: a missing person’s investigation. Reading it, she discovered standard surveillance findings of an operation conducted over a week in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quartier—seemingly unrelated, until she spotted a dated list of sightings of Georges Norland at the market. A note on the list read de la part de Drina de ma liste de tonton. The proof Drina worked for him. He’d put Drina on a tonton liste—an “uncle list,” a way the flics paid their informers and protected them, like “uncles,” from others on the force. But by 1985 he was long out of the force. It was significant that he’d kept Drina on a private payroll as his informer.
Of course, her father had brought Christmas gifts, like a tonton, to show how much he valued her, to keep those ties strong. But informer perks went beyond money. Could informing have won Drina security—for herself or those close to her—maybe even for the mysterious child, Nicu?
And what would Drina Constantin know about who was behind the explosion that killed Jean-Claude Leduc?
Noon. Fifteen hours since Drina’s abduction.
Cold prickles ran up Aimée’s spine.
She turned back to the file and came up with an autopsy report. Djanka Constantin had been twenty-four years old; she had no known belongings. She had died by strangulation.
Next was a photocopy of what looked like a torn drink receipt that had been recovered from the victim’s pocket. She peered at the letters and made out a name: LA BOUTEILLE AUX PUCES.
“Maxence, see what you can find on La Bouteille aux Puces,” she said. “Whether it’s a bar, a resto or a shop.”
Maxence leaned back. “But it’s famous, Aimée. It’s a club in Saint-Ouen. Le temple du jazz manouche. It’s totally iconic.”
“Vraiment?” she said, puzzled. “Thought you liked the Beatles?”
“Les Beatles, le jazz, I love it all. Why do you think I moved here? Quebec has no music scene.” Maxence ruffled his mop top with his fingers, excited. “Django Reinhardt played La Bouteille aux Puces all the time with the Quintette du Hot Club. It’s been around for, like, sixty years.”
Aimée thought back to the area by the flea market. From her childhood she remembered the Gypsy encampments, bidonvilles—it had been a shantytown before the Stade de France was erected last year.
“Can you do some digging? See if the club had any police troubles circa 1978?” she asked.
“On it.”
She could make it there and back before her late lunch meeting with René. Aimée pulled out her plan de Paris, found the Métro stop closest to the flea market at Porte de Clignancourt. “I need to get going,” she said.
“Call and check that La Bouteille’s open first, Aimée.” He dropped his notes on her desk. “Couldn’t find much.”
The voice recording at La Bouteille aux Puces gave their hours as 2 P.M. to 2 A.M.