He shrugged. “A botched job. Bad intel, that’s what I heard, but back then, as now, the bureaucrats ran the show. Those know-it-all Napoléons with degrees,” Thiely said, disgust in his voice. “The ones who take a course and equate that with ground and field experience. A military classroom’s no match for the reality.” Thiely snorted. “But that’s the water we swim in now.”
Bureaucrats running the show, warring factions in the military hierarchy? Aimée wondered how that fit. If it did.
“Any name associated with the rumors?” Aimée asked.
“My cadet might have heard. But too late to ask him now. If there was something, Aimée, you don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know,” she said. “My father investigated this woman’s murder—”
“Not for long,” Thiely interrupted. “They shut down the investigation.”
Thiely was telling her something.
“Meaning?”
“A homicide on military ground warrants a military investigation,” he said. “But we never heard of one.”
Odd all right. No time now to sift through the implications, but she made a mental note to revisit.
“One more thing,” she said. “At that time, had you noticed Gypsies around here?”
“Here? No way. Not then or now. Except those protesters, some longhairs who want to set up camp for them on the Champ de Mars.”
“So you’re saying a mercenary might have used this as a dumping ground?”
“Old rumors, which I shouldn’t have shared.” Thiely stood. “I have to get going. I’ve got a stable full of ninety-plus skittish colts to check on: their feed, their hooves. And I’m just talking about the cadets.” He smiled.
Something came to her. “Sorry, last thing. According to this, your cadet discovered her body at six A.M. on a morning ride. No guards on the perimeter?”
He shook his head. “The café tabac’s still there, kitty-corner. I do remember that the café owner, questioned at the time, had noticed nothing.”
“Think of the weather conditions.”
“I don’t remember.”
“If it had rained that night, she’d be soaking.” Aimée pointed to the photo. “But the report states her clothes were damp where they’d been in contact with the grass. Don’t those sparkles look like dew on her hair?”
Thiely nodded. “Always dew on that grass. The horses try to lick it.”
“Merci.”
AIMéE DOUBLE KNOTTED her scarf against the wind off the Champ de Mars. She took out her phone, called Maxence at the office. “Can I put you on hold, Aimée?” he asked.
No time. “I’ll call back and leave a message. I want you to check something out.”
That done, she jumped on the Number 28 bus at the école Militaire and rode for two stops on the long, tree-lined block. At les Invalides, La Tour Maubourg, she descended and walked along the fawn-colored brick-topped wall to the small square facing the moat. The weak sun broke through scattered puffs of clouds. The eighteenth-century cannons, verdigrised with age, pointed toward the Seine. She used to climb up on them; every kid did. On her right, along the grass-bottomed moat, she recognized the lichen-covered stone wall—and the corner recess where Djanka’s body had been dumped. Little had changed in twenty years. Aimée took out the photo, imagined her father when he was called to the scene, what he’d have thought, how he’d have looked at the crime scene. Tried to think how he would.
The ringing of her phone cut into her thoughts.
“Aimée, I’ve got something to tell you,” said Martine, her voice breathy, excited.
“So your contact at Le Monde bit?”
“Meet me at fifty rue de Varenne.”
In Martine parlance, that signaled urgent. Aimée scanned the boulevard for a taxi. Saw one and waved to it.
“Tell me Le Monde’s interested in covering Drina’s abduction and you’ll make my day,” she said, opening the taxi door.
“Working on it. Got a call scheduled with a senior editor. And I’m learning Italian.”
“Italian? For a moment I thought you were in love.”
“That too.”
AIMéE HURRIED PAST the ten-meter Ionic columns and over the checkered marble tile of the neoclassical former H?tel de Galliffet, now the Istituto Italiano di Cultura. A gem of an eighteenth-century mansion in the heart of Faubourg Saint-Germain. Its secluded lawned garden, fringed by marigolds and purple hollyhocks, took up most of a block.
Smells of something wonderful drifted from an open window. She was starving. Doctor’s orders required her to eat three meals a day while nursing. How could she have forgotten?
She followed her nose to the cooking school downstairs, a long room with an open window. Shuddering almond-tree branches dropped pale pink blossoms through the windows and onto the old floor tiles. Martine, wearing an apron, grinned from next to a blue AGA stove.
“Hungry?” Martine spooned a heap of something from an earthenware casserole onto a blue faience plate on a long counter. “Try this white asparagus—it’s only in season for three weeks—with a farrotto primavera with prosciutto. I’m experimenting for my class project.”
Aimée perched on a stool, inhaled the tomato, caramelized onion and basil smells.
“This better be good, Martine.”
“Try it.”
“I mean whatever you dragged me out here to tell me.” She grabbed a fork and took a bite of the farrotto; it melted on her tongue. “Amazing. I’m starving.”
Martine’s cheeks bloomed. She was wearing minimal makeup for once, and her streaked blonde hair was pulled back with a clip. “Eat.”
Aimée’s best friend since the lycée, a career-driven journalist, had turned into an Italian mother before her very eyes.
She obeyed. Finished off the whole plate.
“I broke up with Gilles,” Martine said.
About time. His ex-wife lived in the flat below them and would barge in with annoying regularity.
“So who’s putting roses in your cheeks?”
“Gianni,” she said. “He’s delicious. Last month I was covering Italo-French relations. Met Gianni here at the cultural institute.” Martine tore off part of a ciabatta and put it next to Aimée’s plate. “Long story, but after a big fight with Gilles yesterday, a last-straw kind of thing, I packed up lock, stock and armoire.”