Turf Wars by Olivier Norek

Author:Olivier Norek [Norek, Olivier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

32

A little before ten in the morning, Coste entered the lobby of Dr Marquant’s clinic. A two-storey building shaped like a doughnut, with an immense private garden in the centre. Given the price per square metre of property in Paris, and especially in the eighteenth arrondissement, so much green for a small number of well-off clients was nigh on indecent.

A secretary with a fixed smile, wearing a blue blouse with her first name embroidered on it, sat rigid behind a stainless-steel desktop. A metre to her right, her clone. Above their heads, a giant T.V. screen showed on a loop a film advertising the Alcedonia clinic and the services it offered. A few patients were strolling around, others stood chatting in dressing gowns. None of them looked seriously ill. All this, along with the soft background music, made the clinic seem like the latest fashionable spa.

One of the blue fixed-smile clones came to life and spread her hands wide, as if presenting the facilities.

“Welcome, sir. How may I help you?”

He thrust his blue, white and red police I.D. under her nose.

“Capitaine Coste, Police Judiciaire. I’ve come to see Dr Marquant.”

Her look darkened immediately. With an urgent glance in her companion’s direction, she sent her to find their boss. Coste took advantage of the wait to walk round the lobby. He went down the corridor and past the bay window with its view of the soothing interior garden. A dozen metres behind him, the lift doors opened and a man in a white coat came out accompanied by a nurse. They stood to one side to continue their conversation. The young woman responded to everything the doctor said with a giggle that was too innocent to be genuine. Head bowed, with a coy smile on her face, she took out a notebook and scribbled something in it. Tearing off the sheet of paper, she folded it in four and slipped it into the doctor’s pocket. Doctor . . . There are some professions that are a big hit with the ladies. Like guys who play the guitar on the beach. They’re always more successful. In Coste’s line of work, women usually arrived battered, in tears, or dead. Which made things considerably more difficult.

The receptionist left her desk to interrupt the courtship ritual. She reached up to whisper in her boss’s ear, and they both looked towards the police officer. Dr Marquant took a step backwards, a little too quickly, and the enterprising nurse put away her notebook and went on her way, head down. The two men advanced to greet each other.

“Dr Marquant?”

“Capitaine Coste?”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“Not in the least,” the medic hastened to say, clearly ill at ease. “I was expecting you. Léa explained the situation.”

*

Once installed in the doctor’s office, Coste took his time to study his potential father-in-law. Perfectly groomed silver hair, manicured nails, Montblanc fountain pen in his breast pocket. A wall full of diplomas, and on the opaque glass desk the hypocritical family photo, with a blissfully happy Léa, barely eighteen by the looks of it, clinging to his arm.

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