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The Paradise Killer

Chapter One

Friday September 20, Nice, France

It just felt so weird. Here he was, making his usual laboured climb towards full consciousness, in a billionaire’s villa, on the French Riviera. But that wasn’t the weird part. It was the sight of his teenage niece sitting across this huge room, at the breakfast table, a niece who’d been lost to him for ten years.

Pretty soon her father, Barney’s long-estranged brother, along with their rambunctious ex-cop father, would join them. Maybe, he thought, he should just be happy that his broken family had been given a second chance and could now get to know each other again after all those missing years. And deep down he was. But that didn’t explain why he felt like he’d just walked into a parallel universe.

‘Hey, Barney, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Abbey waved a harpooned veggie sausage at him then threw back her head and laughed with the same wild spirit he knew from boyhood years with her father, whose reckless bravado Barney had always found both exciting and unsettling. ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty left for you,’ she shouted.

Barney took her in, as if for the first time; the short fair hair, faint eyebrows on a pale, freckled complexion defined by her mother’s high cheekbones and clear blue eyes now sparkling with mischief in the morning sunlight.

‘Aye well, that makes a change. I’d rather keep you lot for a week than a fortnight.’ He crossed the room, his flip-flops slapping on the marble like flippers as he went. How were people meant to walk in these bloody things?

She looked up as he sat down across from her. ‘I’m really looking forward to our trip, all that lovely Italian nosh. Looks like being another fabulous day, too.’

‘Might be a bit warm, right enough. But you’ll enjoy the market. Something that must be seen to be believed.’

He helped himself to scrambled eggs and toast and filled a cup with black coffee. Then his phone rang.

‘Barney, bonjour. It’s Jean-Luc.’

‘Hi, JL. How goes it at the fun factory, this lovely day?’

‘Ah, for me, not so lovely. And I’m sorry to disturb you on your holiday. I know you have family staying with you at Shona’s place.’

Barney bit his tongue. He sensed bad news and waited for the Frenchman to deliver it.

‘It’s just that we have a body. In Nice. In the centre of Nice, in fact. In the Carré d’Or.’

Barney knew the so-called Golden Square, full of posh shops punting designer gear with outlandish price tags. ‘Not good for business, dead bodies,’ he said. ‘But how can I help?’

‘Well, it’s just that he, the body, he’s one of yours. And I have to tell you Barney, it’s all a bit odd.’

‘He’s a Brit? And how do you mean, odd? But hang on a minute while I…’ Barney stood, grimaced an apology at Abbey and headed towards the terrace, well aware of her eyes on him, her knife and fork poised.

He closed the glass door behind him and strolled to the poolside. ‘Sorry about that, JL. Just came out for a bit of privacy. So tell me more. Who is this guy? Do we know yet how he died?’

‘OK, well, I’ll text you the details but your man’s name is Harry Smith. I’m standing next to his corpse right now. I didn’t want him moved before I spoke to you. In case you wanted…’

‘Yeah, for sure. Thanks. I need to get there asap. Fire over the details and I’ll be right in.’

‘I’ll send a car.’

‘No, not necessary, thanks. I’ve got Maurice standing by. I’ll get him to drop me off.’

Barney ended the call and took in the view through the palms to sparkling Villefranche Bay far below, his thoughts shifting from the prospect of a steamy day in a mobbed Italian market to something a lot more interesting.

He squinted into the sun along the coast towards Italy only half an hour away then turned to go back inside, pondering how to tell his niece that, sadly, Maurice wouldn’t be driving them over the border to the weekly market in Ventimiglia after all.

In fact, when he gave her the news, Abbey surprised him by accepting the disappointment with good grace. If it was OK with him, she’d cadge a lift into town and do some shopping there instead. She could get the train back later, by which time her dad should have reinstalled himself behind his easel down in the village - and grandpa on his lounger by the pool.

‘That sounds like a plan,’ he said, relieved that she’d taken it so well. He tried hard not to look pleased.

***

Rue Paradis was much as he remembered it; a pretty little street, pedestrianised with fancy brick paving, planters, awnings, arty lighting and lined with luxury boutiques. Today, a small group of curious, late-season tourists lingered at the road end while traffic whispered past in the Avenue de Verdun.

Barney watched Abbey sling the leather handles of a straw shopping bag over her right shoulder then stride off towards the high street stores, a self-assured young woman in her matching floppy hat, jeans and loose white top. He’d missed so much.

He eased his way through the onlookers then flashed his courtesy French police pass. One of the uniforms recognised him and waved him through as she raised the boundary tape. ‘Another good Brit in there,’ she said with a straight face, nodding towards the large crime scene tent a short distance into the street.

Barney smiled as he ducked under the cordon. Black humour was par for the course in murder investigations. But not everyone meant such comments as a joke. Many here had just about had enough of incomers, mainly escapees from Brexit Britain, who snapped up prime properties as holiday homes. Some of said homes had actually been known to somehow spontaneously combust.

He spotted Jean-Luc’s distinguished silver goatee immediately. The barrel chest seemed to be pushing out the shiny buttons a little more than before, even though Barney knew the good captain to be a non-stop, bustling kind of character. The Frenchman was on his phone but he’d seen Barney and waved at him to enter the crime scene tent. The Scotsman was glad of the chance to see the body alone. First impressions were important.

Two white-suited forensics officers stood back as he entered. Barney nodded his thanks, then stopped dead. There, straight in front of him in the centre of the tent, was… another tent.

He looked around for some sort of explanation but the officer standing guard at its entrance, his face that of a weary bloodhound, merely shrugged.

Jean-Luc had said this was an odd one. He wasn’t wrong. Barney nodded towards the little oblong tent as he pulled on a pair of gloves. The man worked himself up to another shrug, which Barney took as permission.

This wasn’t some sort of leisure tent but the kind of canvas structure which seemed to sprout from roads and pavements all over the city any time a hole needed dug and which usually stayed in situ, like part of the street furniture, for days or weeks. Without the slightest sign of any actual work being done.

There was even the obligatory warning sign stuck to the top which said Danger!

He stooped to enter, flirting with the insane idea that he was about to find another tent inside this one.

But the sight before him was even more bizarre. There on a gold-coloured mattress lay the body of a young workman, his orange boiler suit and black work boots pristine, a yellow hardhat on his chest and his head of neatly-combed fair hair resting on a golden pillow.

He looked positively serene with his hands resting on his stomach, as if he’d just said his prayers then lain down to sleep, at peace with his world. And not a mark on him, as far as Barney could see. Nothing to suggest how he’d died. The only other thing in the intimate space, apart from the cloying smell, was a pile of clothing beside the pillow, all neatly folded.

Was this a troubled young man who came here only to stage his own contrived suicide in some sort of defiant farewell to existence; to change into workclothes for reasons best known to himself, take some concoction of drugs then stretch out to close his eyes for the last time? What, in a workman’s tent in the middle of Paradise Street? ‘I don’t think so!’

‘What don’t you think, Barney?’ Jean-Luc had poked his head in. Barney turned then ducked to come out, straightening as he did so, happy to escape a space never meant for someone of his height and build. They shook hands then stood silently side by side, just staring at the tent’s open flaps, as if they held some sort of explanation.

‘The clothes, the location, the whole thing. It’s not right,’ said the Scotsman at last.

‘Not only that,’ said Jean-Luc. ‘The clothes that you saw, so perfectly folded in there, appear to have some very expensive designer labels. One of my men knows about such things. We can confirm this shortly but I wanted you to see everything first, just as we found it.’

‘Appreciated, Jean-Luc. How did you find him, by the way?’

‘The usual; some anonymous early-morning jogger. I think these people go out looking for bodies.’

Barney suppressed a laugh. When it came to black humour, his friend was no slouch.

‘But how did he see inside?’

‘The flaps were untied, just as they are now, so I suppose a breath of wind must have blown them open because he saw the feet. He called us straight away to protest that some no-good lazy workman had had the nerve to camp out in the middle of town. When our guys arrived and realised our man was dead, I got the call.’

‘But then you managed to identify him pretty quickly.’

‘Yes, well, he kindly left his passport on top of his clothes for us to find.’

Barney grinned. ‘Or someone did. As you’re no doubt thinking too.’

‘Yes. We need to get him back and find the cause of death. It could theoretically still end up as a suicide. But then again…’

‘Then again, it’s more likely that someone wanted him to be found and identified. But why? And why here?’

‘Yes Barney. And why such a strange setup? It’s like a stage set, no? There are many questions. City maps tell us there is no manhole under that mattress, so a vehicle must have been used. And while it’s a pedestrian street, delivery vans are allowed in at certain times, so one more wouldn’t have been so unusual.’

‘Even if it was delivering a body?’

‘Ah, but maybe he reversed up to the tent and deposited his parcel unnoticed. Though we have hopes for CCTV, said the Frenchman. ‘Surely we’ll have our man on camera.’

‘And the tent? Do we know how long it’s been here?’

‘Well, I have men going door to door, or boutique to boutique, but we have a manager who says he complained to the council when it appeared. That was two days ago. City officials are checking but they don’t think it’s one of theirs. And they have no record of any utility company receiving a permit.’

Barney peered at Jean-Luc. ‘You’re saying that he not only planted the body in the tent but might actually have put the bloody tent up too?’

The captain gave one of his big gallic shrugs. ‘Like I say, my friend, many questions. But if you have seen enough for now, maybe we should head into the office and pull things together.’

As they walked towards Jean-Luc’s car, the Scotsman tried to visualise how it may have happened. He saw a man drive a van into the street in darkness then matter-of-factly, in full view of security cameras, set about erecting his stage set.

Did the name of the street, the serene posture of the body, have some religious significance; the pile of expensive clothes discarded for those of a working man as some sort of critique on modern values?

One way or another, his death had surely been all about making a statement. The question was whether that statement was being made by the dead man. Or his killer.

Once they knew the answer to that, all they had to do was work out what the hell they were trying to say!

Barney tried not to get ahead of himself but he couldn’t quite shake the thought that there had been two people in Paradise...