Part One
Lucien Sablon woke up on cue to the sound of the bells from the unsteady tower of St Bernadine de Lourdes a few blocks away. For as long as he had lived in Paris, the bells faithfully woke the quarter every day, brought the streets to life and announced to all that the hour for stirring was upon them, no matter what the weather.
In all the years he’d lived there, not once had he needed an alarm clock or even a radio. It was 7 a.m. and as it was Saturday morning, he could take things a little easier. He turned and looked at Louisa sleeping peacefully next to him; her smooth breasts raised then lowered themselves gently. She lay on her back with her head pushed deeply into the feather pillow which supported it. In the years they had been married, she rarely heard the bells, her sub-conscious mind only stirring from slumber when she could smell the fresh coffee from the kitchen stove.
He breathed deeply. There was little breeze from the open window. He detested Paris in the summer and longed for the fresh, cool breezes he woke up to in Brittany. One day, Louisa and he would return there and it would not be very long before the final decision had to be made. At fifty-four years old, he was ready to retire from the bureau and any day now he would be called into the chief inspector’s office and would be asked again if he was ready to accept the early retirement terms. This time, they would be better than those offered a year ago and after requesting a week to think about them, he would accept.
Louisa would be happy.
She had never been comfortable in Paris and longed to live permanently in the house in Savenay rather than just for the month of July. She always had ambitious plans for the garden and her retirement would be spent devoting her daylight hours to working the soil. She had wanted Lucien to accept the early retirement option the previous year but understood his reasons for declining.
He slipped out of bed silently, not wanting to disturb her, slid his feet into the moccasin slippers, pulled the light summer dressing gown around himself and crept out of the room. Instinctively, he lit the kitchen stove then filled the pot with fresh water before attaching the top container filled with the decaffeinated coffee that Louisa prepared before going to bed. He put it on to boil then went to use the bathroom.
He sat there in the peace and quiet of the early morning and smiled as he recounted the events of the previous day. Saturday was not normally a working day and over the years, when it was called for, he’d resented going into the bureau to finish his reports. When he was much younger, just out of gendarme uniform and into plain clothes, he was full of drive, ambition and enthusiasm for the job. These days he was bored. Bored with the fact that he was getting older, and that there were too many younger chief inspectors and detectives with grander ideas, bottomless reserves of energy and infinite enthusiasm. He was bored with all the faces, the petty criminals and their lies, their swindling, their double-dealing, their treachery and their cheating. Bored with that petty bureaucracy the French police are renowned for. Bored with Paris.
But not bored with life.
Today, however, would be different. Already there was a spark which was slowly igniting. A spark in the fading embers which was filling him with enthusiasm. The old passion and adrenaline were there again and he had not felt them for so long.
Men dream of untold wealth, of yachts, of racing cars, of horses, of beating the Bank of Monte Carlo or winning the Lotto. Of beautiful young, firm women, of passion, lust and immortal youth.
Lucien Sablon had a different dream.
Lucien Sablon dreamt of justice, retribution, satisfaction, vengeance and compensation.
Men follow the lives of film stars, the rich and famous, models and sex goddesses. Lucien Sablon followed the life of a thief, embezzler, pimp, swindler, crook, racketeer and murderer. He was getting closer now to seeing his ambition achieved. Before he left the department, Maurice Henri Fabrier would be behind bars for a very, very long time or – preferably – dead.
Sablon had first come into contact with him over fifteen years ago. At that time, he was just a pimp working his girls around the tourist traps of Montmartre and St Germain des Pres. Sablon and his partner Daniel Bastrou busted him a few times but he got away with a few minor fines. But Fabrier was ambitious and he soon became the supplier of many new girls and boys for some of the best establishments in Paris. He was providing the excitement for rich Arabs, barristers and cabinet ministers, and soon earned enough to rent himself a very large apartment on Rue Foch. Corporate entertainment was how he referred to it but that was not enough. He diversified into protection rackets, embezzlement and drugs, an area that Sablon had been long interested in. It was many years now since his sister Yvette had died from the overdose of cocaine that had the bleaching particles added to it to make some Algerian baron even richer. The scene of her lying dead in the squalid bedsit in Bordeaux would never leave him, and anyone who supplied drugs was responsible for her undignified and pitiful death.
The problem was getting the proof.
It was all going on under their noses but there was never the evidence to convict him. Fabrier was mixing in the correct circles and being accused of victimising law abiding citizens would not go down well in the bureau. Bastrou and Sablon headed a personal campaign against the man who caused so much suffering but Fabrier grew stronger and was able to afford the best lawyers and barristers, no doubt customers, and the thousands upon thousands of francs were no object.
Officers Bastrou and Sablon made no secret of their vendetta against Fabrier and were sure that, one day, they would catch him out. Then one evening Sablon received a call, a warning from one of Fabrier’s employees, that he was to stay away if he knew what was good for him and that a little surprise had been arranged for his partner.
The following morning, Bastrou was found hanging from the Pont Neuf. His neck had been broken.
There was no proof that Fabrier was connected and he even made a public announcement about the loss and offered a reward to find the murderer of the man in the police force he greatly admired.
Nobody claimed the reward.
But Sablon knew and swore that one day in his lifetime he would avenge his partner’s death. He also knew that Fabrier was becoming even more powerful and if he could have Bastrou removed then he could do the same for Louisa.
Sablon spent years compiling his files on the man who had no right whatsoever to walk freely on this earth. Many interviews, press cuttings, tapes of interviews and hearsay conversations were held in that file and would soon be used to finish Fabrier once and for all. But it was not enough for Lucien Sablon to see him go to prison for a couple of years. No. Sablon wanted him to go down for a very long time, preferably the way Bastrou had.
And it was nearly time.
The previous day he had received information from one of his most reliable informers about the connection Fabrier had with a new type of drug that was arriving in Paris shortly from South America. Sablon’s department already had a great deal of evidence from informers in Marseilles and the Dutch police about this very special shipment but a link had been broken and the final parts needed to be pieced together. All Sablon needed was the final connection in the jigsaw, which was probably in London. Then all the work he had put into his files could be brought into the open. Fabrier would be tried for the drugs first and then Sablon would request that all the other cases be taken into account. There would still be a great deal of work today if the mule was co-operative but Sablon was relying on the sheer weight of evidence, mostly verbal, to enable a jury to say, without a shadow of doubt, that Fabrier was guilty of something. Sablon was certain than once Fabrier was off the streets his staff would start talking.
Sablon smiled as he imagined the judge throwing the book at Fabrier.
His book.
Louisa was now up and sipping her coffee at the kitchen table when he came out of the bathroom. She was reading a gardening magazine and looked up at him as he kissed the top of her head.
The years had been kind to her. Her
long red hair was still thick and wavy, and from the back she could easily have been mistaken for the twenty-four-year-old Breton beauty that he married so long ago. Her skin was still fresh and peachy, though a few lines around her eyes and mouth gave her age away. Sablon, on the other hand, was victim to a middle-age spread that took hold of him when, at the age of fifty, gravity took over. It seemed that he had been on a diet forever but with little result.
He sat at the table beside her, his coffee already poured with his Breton Kerniles biscuits which he had breakfasted on through over twenty-five years of marriage.
“Good morning, Sablon,” she announced without looking up from her magazine. She always called him by his surname.
He grunted.
“Oh. Look at this,” she said pointing out a photo of a field of lavender in the magazine. “As soon as we get home,” she continued, “we’ll plant row after row of it. It attracts dozens of insects and some rarely seen butterflies.”
Louisa never referred to Paris as home but her village in southern Brittany.
“For you, my dear, I’ll plant a whole meadow of the stuff,” he said.
She looked at him closely.
“Uhm ... can I have that in writing, please?” she asked. “And what are you up to today?”
Sablon sighed.
“I’ll hopefully be making an arrest at the airport. We had a good tip and Bisson has agreed to allow me to make the drop myself. A drug dealer, well, no probably not. Just a courier I should think.”
She looked up from the journal.
“Oh Sablon, not Fabrier again?” she asked.
“Maybe. And maybe not,” he replied.
She put the magazine down on the table and took his hand.
“Darling, this has to stop. I understand your reasons, of course I do. But you must drop this scheme, this passion of yours soon. Most men of your age become infatuated with younger women. That I could possibly understand. But this campaign, this crusade against that man, is taking you nowhere.”
Sablon sipped his coffee.
“You’re right, my love. Yes, you are right. But this is my final shot. I swear. I owe it to Bastrou. Besides, I have all the feminine charm I need in you. I don’t need an affair with a younger woman.”
She smiled.
“How about Valerie, the new assistant in the library? I could probably set up an illicit affair for you with her,” she joked.
He pondered this.
“Yes. Okay then. It’s a good idea. Hold her in reserve and if I get nowhere today, send her over.”
“We’ll take a rain check on that one,” she replied in her apparently flawless New York accent.