Belle - Lesley Pearse [200]
‘I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t want anyone knowing I was a partner in that place!’
‘I’d bet he makes good money out of it. Poor people would go there; they tend to take pride in spending money on giving their loved ones a good send off, even if they can’t afford it.’
Noah knew that was true. In his time as an insurance investigator he’d observed how the poor always seemed to spend far more than they could really afford on quite lavish funerals, and he’d wondered at the logic of it. ‘You didn’t find out where Pascal lived, I suppose?’
‘It must be nearby. I asked Garrow casually if he saw much of Pascal, and he said he dropped in on his way home from work sometimes. But I got the impression there’s a lot of bitterness there. Probably doesn’t feel Pascal pulls his weight. Then he went on to say he had a selection of fine coffins to show us, and he can give us a good price.’
The two men had lunch in a small café, and discussed the fact that they didn’t seem to be making any real headway. Noah said he thought he would go to Le Petit Journal, where he had been given an introduction from his own newspaper back in England.
‘I’ll talk to the editor, he already knows a bit about why I’m here. I’ll ask him if he remembers any stories involving Pascal or Garrow. He’ll probably get someone to trawl through some old papers for me. They should be keen to cooperate if they think there’s likely to be something juicy for them later.’
‘Good plan,’ Etienne said. ‘Just don’t mention me! I’ll go back to the Ritz later and wait for Pascal to leave, then I’ll follow him.’
‘He said he was on duty till eight when I asked him about tickets,’ Noah said. ‘Could I meet you there then?’
Etienne shook his head. ‘That’s not advisable. Pascal knows your face. You wait back at the Mirabeau, I’ll follow him.’
‘But what if you need help?’Noah looked alarmed. ‘I won’t know where you are.’
Etienne looked hard at Noah. ‘I’ve spent most of my adult life tracking down thugs and gangsters. I know what to expect from them and I can handle it. But Pascal is an unknown quantity, we don’t know who is in this with him, or how he’ll react if cornered.’
‘All the more reason for me to come with you,’ Noah protested.
‘No, I don’t want to put you at risk. You’re the only one with the right influence to get the child traffickers behind bars. If I don’t come back for you tonight, you go straight to the gendarmes and tell them everything we know.’
‘But …’
Etienne stopped Noah’s protest with a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘I will not be responsible for endangering your life. Now, go to the newspaper and find out what you can. Leave me to do what I do best.’
At seven-thirty that evening Etienne had taken up a position in rue Gambon, close enough to the back door of the Ritz to be able to monitor anyone who left. Earlier he’d gone into the hotel to ask about room rates, and surreptitiously glanced towards the concierge’s desk to look at Pascal so he would recognize him later.
Now, as he waited for the man to appear through the back door, his heart kept telling him just to pull him into a back alley, stick a knife at his throat and demand to know where Belle was. But his head told him that wasn’t a good idea.
For one thing, Pascal might not know, if there were others involved, and as Etienne’s name was known to the gendarmes, he might find himself locked up and Belle would be lost for good.
He’d been busy all day talking to fiacre drivers, old friends who might know something about Pascal, and he’d been over to introduce himself to Philippe Le Brun at the address Philippe had given Noah earlier in the day. He liked Philippe, he sensed he’d come up the hard way too as he hadn’t got a snobbish bone in his body, and he’d willingly agreed to contact Pascal again to get him to make another appointment with