Read Online Affairs of State by Dominique Manotti - Free Book Online

cordoned off, the area around explored. The forensic team arrives, dressed in white overalls, and sets to work. Noria watches them, fascinated. Bonfils turns to her:
    ‘Are you coming? We’re going back to the station.’
    She blurts out angrily, her face inscrutable:
    ‘You go back, I’m staying. To watch the real professionals at work.’
    Her words hang in the air. A silence.
    ‘Right. I’ll tell the superintendent that you were needed here.’
    Noria watches him walk off, puzzled. Could this man be different from the others?
    Photos. Noria picks up a Polaroid of the dead woman’s face. Pathologist. A few simple movements of the body. Initial conclusions. Killed by a bullet through the neck, shot at close range, but not here. The body was dumped here very shortly after the murder, which took place about fifteen hours ago or a little more, hard to say at first glance, given the snow and the drop in temperature. Probably driven here. The lab tests will yield more precise information. No ID on the body. A very big pearl pendant, that might be useful later. No marks, no footprints on the tarmac or in the flower bed, seemingly no witnesses, until the building workers have been questioned. If she’s not reported missing, identification won’t be easy. Noria takes note. An ambulance takes the body away, and the parking lot gradually empties.

    At nine a.m., Nicolas Martenot rings the bell of Bornand’s apartment. The door is opened by a manservant wearing a black open-necked shirt, sleeves rolled up, black trousers (
I’ve always wondered what Bornand gets up to with a good-looking guy like that
), who shows him into the drawing room and takes his coat:
    ‘Monsieur Bornand will be down shortly.’
    Martenot goes over to the French window that opens onto a lawn enclosed by ivy-covered railings. On the other side is the Champ-de-Mars, all very peaceful. A glance at the Eiffel Tower, with its dark tangle of girders. He returns to the drawing room. Eighteenth-century blonde wood panelling, Versailles oak parquet floor. On the wall facing the French windows is a magnificent Canaletto, the
Grand Canal in front of the Doge’s Palace
. The painting has great elegance, the gondoliers’ silhouettes leaning over their oars and the froth on the surface of the green lagoon captured in a few brushstrokes. Beside it, three small scenes of Venetian life by Pietro Longhi, hung asymmetrically, look very flat. And, against the wall, a rare piece of furniture, a seat designed by Gaudí, in carved wood, extremely light and elaborate. Martenot gazes at it with a twinge of envy. On the right, a Louis XV marble fireplace. He goes over to the log fire, which is very pleasant in this damp weather. On the mantelpiece is the marble head of a Greek ephebe. He caresses its cheek with the back of his hand, relishing the smooth, cold feel. Opposite it, a terracotta statuette of a Cretan goddess with bulging eyes and a heavy, ankle-length robe, her arms outstretched and her hands clutching bundles of snakes. Above the fireplace hangs a portrait of Dora Maar by Picasso. In frontof it is a vast sofa, two massive square armchairs upholstered in white and an ornate, inlaid low Chinese table standing on a Persian rug in varying hues of red.
    He feels as if he has always known this impeccably furnished, unchanging, almost lifeless room. A decor designed as a showcase for Bornand’s wealth and culture. Only the snake goddess lent a rare note of incongruity.
    He’d come here for the first time more than twenty years ago with his father, a brilliant defence lawyer who’d made a name for himself after the war defending collaborators. This stocky man with crew-cut hair and a grating voice who resembled a wild boar was Bornand’s close friend. And for Bornand, friendship was sacred. A friend is for life, whatever he does. And Nicolas Martenot inherited this friendship, along with the rest of his legacy. He has attended dozens of gatherings in this drawing