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He debated whether to ask her to tell Pierre, if she heard him come in later that evening, that he was looking for him. But he didn’t want to put her out.
“If I see him, I will tell him you were here,” she said, as if she had seen his inner struggle.
He smiled. “Thank you. Have a good evening.”
Gabriel waited until she’d closed the door, then took out his phone and called Pierre. It went straight through to voicemail. “Pierre, it’s me, Gabe. I’m here in Paris, waiting outside your apartment. Can you give me a call, let me know what time you’ll be back?” For good measure, he sent more or less the same message to Pierre’s WhatsApp.
There was a brasserie on the other side of the road. He crossed over, chose a seat on the terrace and orderedsteak fritesand a glass of red wine. It came so quickly that he stretched out his meal by ordering dessert, and then a coffee. At nine thirty, with no sign of Pierre going into his building, and no message from him, Gabriel resigned himself to spending the night in a hotel. Tomorrow, he would go to Pierre’s workplace and confront him there.
27
Iris snatched up her phone. Gabriel had called last night to tell her that Pierre hadn’t been at the apartment and that he was staying in Paris overnight.
“I’ll go to his office tomorrow morning,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving Paris until I know where he is.”
“He is with Claire,” Laure had declared, when Iris told her.
“You don’t know that. But if you give him the address, Gabriel can go and check, if you like.”
Laure had shaken her head. “It would only make things worse.”
“Did you see him?” she asked Gabriel now. “Pierre?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Hang on a moment and I’ll tell you. So, I went to his workplace this morning, like I said I would, and asked for him at reception. The receptionist buzzed through to his extension and one of his colleagues answered and said that Pierre was away on holiday. I asked if they knew where he’d gone, and of course they were reluctant to tell me until I said that I was an old friend of Pierre’s and that I was worried abouthim because I hadn’t been able to speak to him for weeks. I added that his wife staying with us in England, and that I’d come to Paris to try to see him, so eventually one of his work colleagues Arnaud—Pierre’s boss, I think—came to speak to me.”
“What did he say?” Iris asked impatiently.
“He said he only agreed to talk to me because he’d recognized my name—apparently, Pierre had mentioned us over the years. Basically, he said that it was obvious to everyone in the office that Pierre was going through some kind of crisis, because he’d become very withdrawn. He hadn’t confided in anybody, but one of his colleagues moved in the same circles as Laure’s friend, Victoire, and she had heard on the grapevine that Laure had left Paris several weeks before and was somewhere in England. From that, they deduced that there were problems in the marriage.”
“I don’t suppose you asked Arnaud if he knew anything about Pierre having a daughter?”
“No, because I didn’t want to be indiscreet—and because I’m not even sure if it’s true.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when you think about it, we’ve only heard it from Laure. What if it isn’t true? What if there isn’t a daughter, what if Laure made it up to cover something else?”
Iris felt herself frown. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. But what if she left, not because of something Pierre did, but because of something she did?”
“No.” Iris shook her head. “Laure wouldn’t lie to us.” She paused. “Would she?”
“Maybe.” Uncertainty hung in the air for a while. “Anyway, it seems that Pierre messaged Arnaud and said he was sorry, but that he’d decided to take some leave after all, and would be back in the office on Monday the first of August.”
“When was that?”
She heard Gabriel draw a breath. “Friday afternoon.” He sounded almost triumphant.
It took a moment for Iris to catch up. “So does that mean he never intended being there on Saturday to meet Laure?”
“I think he intended to be there, but then, like you said, he got cold feet. He was at the office on Friday morning but he didn’t return after his lunch break. Arnaud wasn’t too surprised by his message because only that morning, he’d been persuading Pierre to take some time off. He didn’t expect it to be quite so immediate, but he was fine with it.”
“Did he say where Pierre had gone?”
