A Death in Sweden(40)

“If they have them. After all, you need my protection.”

He smiled, because she was joking about it, which was a first step.

They checked in—there were no connecting rooms available, so they were placed directly across the corridor from each other—and then Dan made a call to the cell phone of Sabine’s old college friend Sylvie. She was working at home and gave them the address of her apartment in the 17th arrondissement.

They hadn’t really talked about the plan from here on in, but as they rode in the cab to Sylvie’s place, Inger said, “Who else do we see today?”

“After Sylvie, we visit Yousef.”

“You’ve called him?”

“No, I’ll ask Sylvie if I can call from there. Then I have to try to meet with another contact Patrick gave me, but I’ll go alone to that.”

She looked at him, immediately suspicious, and said, “Why alone?”

“You can come if you like, but I think he’s more likely to talk openly with me. He’s DGSE and he’s meeting me off the record.”

She still looked on the verge of objecting, but accepted it grudgingly and said, “And then?”

“I’m hoping we turn up something among those three people, because there’s no one else on the list.” The cab pulled over and he said, “We’re here.”

As they got out and looked at the building, Inger said, “It’s a nice place. A nice neighborhood.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good. Actually, my apartment’s a couple of blocks in that direction.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised, which made him wonder what kind of neighborhood she’d imagined him living in. “Maybe we could . . .” She stopped herself before the thought had even fully formed, probably realizing that it was impossible to visit Dan’s apartment. Even so, he liked that she seemed curious about it.

“Exactly. Brabham wouldn’t expect me to show up there in a million years, but I imagine he’ll still have someone watching it. You’d be disappointed anyway—it’s quite minimalist.”

They were buzzed up, and met at the door by Sylvie, a stylish woman in her mid-thirties, not pretty exactly but striking, with a bone structure that seemed to hint at a childhood spent in a country chateau and a lifelong love of horses.

She smiled and said, “Sebastien called me about you. Nice to meet you. So you know I’m Sylvie, and I presume you must be Inger.” She kissed her on both cheeks. “And Dan.”

“Thanks for seeing us.”

She waved away the thanks and walked on ahead of them into the apartment. They might have been in the same neighborhood, but that was where the resemblance stopped between Dan’s place and Sylvie’s.

The apartment they were in was vast and expensively furnished, a mixture of antique furniture and modern art. There were a couple of children’s toys lying about here and there, and a picture book open on a rug in the large sitting room. He thought Sylvie would pick it up, but she appeared not even to notice it. Dan couldn’t hear children, or any other noise in the apartment.

“Might I get you something to drink?”

Dan was almost tempted to say yes, just to see if she went for it herself or rang a bell, but he said, “No, thank you, and we won’t keep you very long at all.”

“If you’re here to talk about Sabine you can take as much of my time as you wish.” She walked across to a table against the wall at the side of the room and said, “This is one of hers.”

They both walked over and looked at the abstract bronze sitting on the table, abstract but somehow a completely feminine form, curved and fecund. Inger reached out and stroked the belly of it.

“It’s beautiful.”

Sylvie smiled sadly and said, “She was so talented. Women, especially, can never resist touching it. Such a lovely piece.” She gestured across the room then. “Please, let’s sit down.”

She sat on the edge of her chair with a remarkably straight posture, and looked expectant, as if to say she was completely at their disposal.

Dan cut straight to it and said, “Catherine Merel, when I asked her if Sabine’s roommates had noticed anything, she seemed a little confused, as if perhaps she thought you didn’t tell her everything at the time . . .”

He thought she might object but instead, she said, “We told the police. It was never made public, so we saw no need to upset Sabine’s parents.”

Inger sat up herself, as if mimicking Sylvie’s posture, and said, “So something did happen?”

“Yes. She said some guy tried to rape her at a party, about a week before, perhaps ten days. She managed to fight him off, but I think it shook her quite badly. And then he kept pestering her, telling her he was sorry, she’d misunderstood, that it hadn’t been what she thought. She had wanted only to forget it, but in the end she told him if he didn’t leave her alone she would go to the police and report it.”

“She didn’t?”

She looked skeptical as she said, “A woman going to the police two weeks after a party to say someone tried to rape her but failed? Sabine wasn’t stupid, she said it only to get him to leave her alone, but I think he believed it. She said he became quite threatening.”

Inger looked grave as she said, “You said you told the police, but nothing came of it?”