“You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”
Gabriel smiled. “Perhaps we should try the wine.”
“Be my guest.”
He drank some of the Sancerre. It was otherworldly.
“Well?” asked Ménard.
“I think we should have lunch together more often.”
“I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I was beginning to think I would never see you again.”
Gabriel had made Jacques Ménard’s acquaintance while researching the authenticity of a painting acquired and sold by Isherwood Fine Arts. The resulting scandal had ruined lives and reputations from Paris to New York. But not Ménard’s. He had been fêted in the French press, and his department had seen a marked increase in its funding. Which explained the warm welcome and the exceptional bottle of Sancerre.
“When was the last time you were in town?” he asked.
“You tell me, Jacques.”
“I think you were here about a month ago.”
“Was I?”
The Frenchman nodded. “A few days before that as well.”
“Sounds to me as though you’re monitoring my movements.”
“Should I be?”
“If you had any sense.”
The waiter reappeared to take their order. Gabriel glanced at the menu and selected the mushroom tarte and the sole meunière. Ménard, after a moment’s deliberation, chose the same. When they were alone again, Gabriel awakened his phone and showed the Frenchman the two photographs.
“Who is he?”
“The professional assassin who killed that art dealer in the Geneva Freeport the other day. I was hoping you might be able to help me find him.”
“Why am I receiving this request from you and not the Police Cantonale de Genève?”
“Because the head of Swiss intelligence has asked me to investigate the matter quietly on his behalf.”
“Why you?”
“We’re old friends. For some reason, he still trusts me.”
Ménard looked down at Gabriel’s phone again. “What can you tell me about him?”
“He called himself Andreas Hoffmann. He and his driver headed for France after leaving the Freeport. The Bardonnex crossing. The Swiss say they cleared the checkpoint at two forty-nine p.m.”
Ménard drew a small leather-bound notebook from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Vehicle?”
“A Peugeot 508. French registration.”
“Number?”
Gabriel recited it and Ménard wrote it down. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”
“I have a feeling he flew from Dublin to Paris on Tuesday, January seventeenth. I also have a hunch he murdered a man named Emanuel Cohen two nights later in Montmartre.”
Ménard laid down his pen. “Why would he have done a thing like that?”
“The Picasso, Jacques.”
“What Picasso?”
“The one he stole from that gallery in the Freeport. It belonged to Emanuel Cohen’s grandfather, a man named Bernard Lévy. You’re going to help me find it and return it to his rightful heirs.”
Ménard took up his pen again. “Subject matter?”
“A portrait of a woman in the surrealist style.”
“Dimensions.”
“Ninety-four by sixty-six.”
“Oil on canvas?”
“Oui.”
