Belle - Lesley Pearse [204]
Belle was confused by that question. Had Philippe really wanted to see her again and Pascal was jealous?
‘I don’t remember,’ she whimpered.
‘Yes, you do. He liked fucking you so much he went to find you in your hotel.’
That was even stranger. She hadn’t told Philippe where she lived.
‘I told him you’d gone away with a man. He didn’t like that. Rich, powerful men like him are used to having everything their way. But you’re mine now. No one else will ever have you, and I’m going to mark you to remind you that you are mine.’
He slid the knife up her belly, piercing the skin. Belle looked down and saw the thin red line of blood appearing from her pubic hair to her navel and all at once the room seemed to swirl around and grow dark.
‘There’s little point in rushing back there now,’ Philippe said calmly. ‘If Pascal has gone out you’ll just have a wasted journey, and anyway, wouldn’t he have gone wherever he had to on his way home from work if he was that panicked?’
‘I suppose so,’ Etienne replied and allowed Philippe to pour him a second glass of wine. He glanced up and saw Noah coming into the restaurant, grinning broadly as he made his way through the diners.
Pulling out a chair, Noah sat down and beamed at the two other men. ‘I’ve got some information,’ he said.
As he began to talk excitedly about what he’d found out at Le Petit Journal during the afternoon neither Etienne nor Philippe could understand what he was trying to tell them. He was speaking so fast, using people’s names they didn’t know and making references to a newspaper article without telling them what it was about.
‘We aren’t following this at all. Calm down and tell us what you’ve found,’ Etienne said reprovingly and poured him a glass of wine.
Noah blushed furiously. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been waiting and waiting back at the Mirabeau, dying to tell you what I’d found,’ he said by way of explanation, and drank half the glass of wine in one gulp.
‘You see, I wasn’t getting anywhere much until I mentioned to the editor that Pascal had been an undertaker and I thought he was still Garrow’s partner,’ he said, speaking more slowly. ‘Then suddenly he remembered a story about two undertakers being arrested for brawling in the street. He said everyone thought it funny at the time as no one expects sombre undertakers to fight.’
‘It was them? Pascal and Garrow?’ Etienne asked.
‘Yes, well, he had to look it up to check the names, but it was them. It happened three years ago. They were let off with a warning, but one of the journalists followed it up because he was curious about why they were fighting. It seemed it was over an old woman who had died and left a house to Pascal. It transpired that Garrow was livid because he’d looked after her, going round to her and doing little jobs, and his wife did her laundry. But Pascal had done nothing more than call on her occasionally with the odd bunch of flowers. He accused Pascal of tricking her into changing her will in his favour and he said he should sell the house and share the proceeds with him.’
‘But he wouldn’t?’ Philippe asked.
‘No, he refused point blank, and that appears to be why Pascal left the business and went to work at the Ritz, because of the bad feeling between them.’
‘So where is this house?’ Etienne asked.
‘In Montmartre.’ Noah passed a piece of paper with the address on to Etienne. ‘So now we know where he lives. If my partner and brother-in-law came by a house like that and moved into it, leaving me to run the business alone, I think I’d be pretty damn angry about it too.’
‘But he doesn’t live there.’ Etienne frowned. ‘I followed him home today and he lives in an apartment house in a street off Boulevard Magenta.’
Noah looked puzzled. ‘Really? But I got someone to check up if he still owned it, and he does. Why wouldn’t he live in it?’
Philippe took the piece of paper and looked at the address. ‘I know this street, they are big, fairly new houses. He’s probably rented it out.’
Etienne leapt to his feet. ‘I’m going to go round there