“We pay you to keep them out.” He gave her a tired smile.
He wanted a finger to plug a hole in the dike but sooner or later it wouldn’t be able to hold back the flood.
“As outlined in our proposal, your system has numerous flaws and we recommend stronger firewall protection.” She paused for effect, consulting the file in her hand, which she’d memorized. “My report shows that twice last month hackers took advantage of your vulnerability. It’s not in your interest or ours to apply Band-Aids to an old system.”
“Correct,” he said. “But my manager’s overwhelmed. I put your proposal on his desk but he was off to Johannesburg. This year our accounts have tripled. And, as with many companies enjoying a growth spurt, our auditing and computer services have been neglected.”
“I suggest you start fresh.”
“In the meantime, Mademoiselle Leduc, we need to operate and keep our systems functioning and secure.”
She turned to the window overlooking the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden, while she thought. A few protesters with banners reading STOP OIL DUMPING stood on the pavement below, fanning themselves in the heat. She wondered why there were protesters in front of Regnault.
“I’m not up to speed on your client accounts yet but . . .”
He noticed her gaze, shrugged. “The environmentalists don’t understand. Our premier oil company account is Alstrom. They have recently acquired some small companies that have ignored regulations. But Alstrom has already taken steps to cure these infractions.”
Typical spin from a PR man. She thought back to the article about the MondeFocus riots in Le Parisien.
“From what I understand about the MondeFocus allegations—”
“All blown out of proportion.” His eyes snapped. “They jump on any bandwagon, smear ‘the big, bad corporations.’ Uncalled for. They’ve targeted us, not knowing our client is already cleaning up toxic waste. They’re misinformed—that’s putting it in polite terms.” He shook his head. “Look, I’m progressive, so’s our firm and those we represent. Bottom line, my firm’s integrity means more to me than a huge contract. I’ve got a family and like every parent I want my child to grow up in a clean world. Believe me, pollution’s a great concern to all of us.”
His intercom buzzed and he glanced at his watch. “Excuse me, I’ve got a meeting.”
She smiled and tried once more. “Our joint package of security and system administration makes economic sense for you.”
Vavin reached in his drawer. “Right now I need you to continue maintaining our systems.” He slid a new addendum extending their contract across the desk. “Our sysadmin’s been hospitalized with acute appendicitis and we’ve lost two of the contract staff to a crisis in Milan. Count on me to recommend your comprehensive package to my manager when he returns.”
One didn’t say no to a client. Especially one with this much potential. Better more work than no work, René would say. She scanned the contract, signed it, and shut down her laptop.
“Last week, when we met,” Vavin said, his voice lowered, “I didn’t realize the ongoing nature of our system issues.” He flipped open a file, studied it. “A few areas . . . well, they concern me.”
Of course, he wanted to look good to his boss, to appear to be on top of his projects. Or was there something else she couldn’t put her finger on?
“Do you foresee more problems, Monsieur Vavin?”
Nadia, his assistant, peered around the door and smiled at Aimée. “Your car’s here, Monsieur Vavin.”
“Merci, Nadia,” he said. Then he turned to Aimée.
“In our line of work, we call them issues, Mademoiselle.”
Aimée nodded. She noticed a stack of environmental reports, pamphlets bearing the MondeFocus logo by his key ring and briefcase.
Before she could ask him if he had studied them, he’d put on his coat, dropping his key ring into a pocket, and shouldered his case. Pausing at the door, he said, “Mademoiselle Leduc, I appreciate your help but there is one more thing. Any problems, you deal only with me.”
She detected something behind his words. “Of course, Monsieur Vavin.”
As a system administrator, their firm would monitor Regnault’s network, deal with glitches in the staff’s computers, but rarely, if ever, would this involve the managerial staff. His request was strange. Unless Vavin was watching his back.
“Only me, comprends?” he repeated.
OUTSIDE, AIMÉE STARED at the khaki-colored Seine lapping against the mossy stone. Two years ago, a clochard—now termed sans domicile fixe (SDF)—the politically correct phrase for “homeless”—who’d slept under a bridge had fallen in, his foot catching in the branches of a tree carried on the swollen water. The current had swept his bloated body past her window. She shivered. More often corpses sank, drifting along with the bottom currents until they were caught in the locks downriver at Sceaux.
She ran her fingers over the stone wall fronting the L’Institut médicolégal’s brick facade, Le Parisien under her arm, her laptop case slung over her shoulder. She had a bad feeling in her bones.
She wondered if the young woman found in the Seine might be the baby’s mother. Her father always said, Think like the criminal, find the motive. If that didn’t work, go with the victim. Retrace her steps. In this case, she imagined a young woman looking over her shoulder, seeing the light in Aimée’s window, trusting Aimée to keep her baby safe. Safe from whom and what, she had no clue. And how had the woman known her name and phone number?
Aimée tried to think the way she must have. Scared, running away from someone, something, she sees light, finds the digicode broken, as it had been for a week, and enters the town house through the front door. Before she can go upstairs, she hears noises; someone’s followed her. Quickly, she takes off her denim jacket—now she looks different. She wraps the baby in it. She runs through the courtyard, sees the garage, which is open late, and uses the pay phone to tell Aimée that the baby’s downstairs. Then she runs to the Place Bayre.
But the attacker has recognized her. Did they have a confrontation on the quai? Was he the father of the baby, demanding his child?
Questions . . . all she had were questions.
To her right, the Ile Saint-Louis glimmered in the weak sun. Her apartment stood past the curve of the quai. She turned to face the rose-brick médicolégal building.
If she didn’t check out her hunch, she’d kick herself later. She hated this place—the odors of body fluids that were hosed down the drains in the back courtyard, the miasma of misery and indifference surrounding the unclaimed corpses. She couldn’t forget identifying her father’s charred remains after the explosion in Place Vendôme as the bored attendant scratched his neck and checked his watch, as her tears had dropped into the aluminum trough by her father’s blackened, twisted fingers.
She took a deep breath and opened the morgue door.
AIMÉE STOOD ALONE in the green-tiled viewing cubicle of the morgue basement. On the other side of the window lay a young waxen-faced corpse, a white sheet folded down to her neck, livid stains appeared on the skin of her cheek and neck, but Aimée could see that her eyes were deep set and her cheekbones were prominent. Unforgiving, stark white light bathed her features; there was a bruise on her temple, a mole on her chin, and she had straw blond hair that hadn’t been completely combed back, falling in greasy strands over her temple. Her partly visible ear showed raw, jagged edges and there was a frothy blood bubble on her neck. Weren’t they supposed to clean up the corpse to protect the family’s feelings?