Playing the Martyr

by Ian G Moore

  ‘You need me, my love. I won’t leave you tonight.’

  He began to run along rue des Ursulines, the gothic architecture and judgemental sobriety of the buildings weighing down on him, the Bibliothèque Musicale de Touraine, the Conservatoire Francis Poulenc, the Chappelle Saint-Michel. Places he normally loved were reaching out bony hands to him, he felt, clutching him, grabbing him. He took a diversion, hoping to lose his tormentor, and past another small chapel where a priest stood at the wooden door looking to the Heavens. Turning left Lombard sheltered against the high wall of the Musée des Beaux Arts.

  ‘Why Singleterry, my love? Why does he bother you?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ He closed his eyes and hung his head down. He could feel the tears mixing with the rain.

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he shouted bitterly, causing the priest to look in his direction. Lombard decided to risk the elements and move on.

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want his wife to have an affair, maybe she’s lying about her friendship with Marquand…’ He was shouting into the wind and rain now, and even the ferocious elements couldn’t hide his sobs. He sheltered once more, the fierce storm forcing him to cower in the doorway of the old Palais des Archevêcques. For centuries sentences of the Diocesan court, usually death or excommunication, had been read out from the narrow balcony above.

  ‘Maybe it was him having an affair…’

  ‘Like you were!’ He screamed suddenly, then bent over double, sobbing. ‘Like you.’ He looked up, the harsh, stony faces of the gargoyles on the cathedral wall opposite making him feel ashamed and angry. ‘You were all I had,’ he spat. ‘Why? Who was “G”? Tell me!’ He broke down again.

  Some students from the lycée, also bordering the small square, ran across to the cathedral where they struggled to light their cigarettes even in the relative shelter of the ornate pillars. One of them, a girl, watched Lombard. She showed concern. One of the others, a tall, confident young man, laughed. Maybe at him, maybe not.

  ‘You should have confronted me.’

  ‘I wish I had!’

  ‘It’s too late now. Just as Madame Singleterry didn’t search for her husband. The dead sometimes bequeath only regrets.’

  Lombard stepped out from the doorway and back into the storm. Regrets? Lombard thought, all she remembered was the look on the bar owner’s face, which was more than she knew of her husband’s feelings.

  He paused suddenly before making a run for it, and though his mind felt beaten up, wounded even, suddenly all he could think of was a jittery Émile Lagasse and his restaurant. A close-knit town, where everyone knows each other and everyone works together, protective of each other, like chain mail. But even chain mail has its weaker links and Émile Lagasse could be that chink in the armour.

  Closing the door of the shop behind him, he slumped down heavily on a divan. The cat jumped on him and curled its way around his lap and arms. He lay down and was asleep within minutes, utterly spent mentally and emotionally.

  A few hours later the phone rang. It was dark now, though there was the start of birdsong outside. Lombard struggled to get to the phone in the back office, knocking over furniture as he did so. The porcelain clock on the desk which said 4 o’clock, but it was an unreliable piece so Lombard was none the wiser. He picked up the phone and the voice on the other end was deep and slow. It was Aubret’s ‘I’ve been woken in the middle of the night’ voice and Lombard knew it well.

  ‘Commissaire!’ shouted Lombard excitedly, before Aubret could say anything else, ‘Émile Lagasse!’

  ‘What?’ The policeman was taken by surprise.

  ‘Émile Lagasse!’ Lombard repeated, as though it was obvious what he meant. The line went quiet for a few seconds.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘How did I know what?’

  ‘About Émile Lagasse, juge. He’s dead.’

  Chapter 15

  Lombard just had time to take a quick shower before Aubret pulled up outside the shop, but he still managed to keep the Commissaire waiting. He looked through the door as he pulled on a mac, noting Aubret impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Lombard locked the shop door behind him and got in the passenger seat just before the car pulled off. There was no greeting between the two, but a shared sense of purpose and, to an extent on Lombard’s part, a sense of guilt too. Had he missed something earlier? If he’d been a bit sharper might he have prevented this new turn, or at least spotted the possibility? Of course, it wasn’t his job to do so, but as Aubret might say, if you’re going to play at being a hands-on cop, you have to take the responsibilities that go with it.

  ‘What do we know?’ he asked, annoyed that he couldn’t mask the slight hint of desperation in his voice.

  ‘Not much at the moment. Hit and run. The scene of crime team are there obviously and they’ll tell us more. You ok? You look a little wired.’

  Lombard dropped the sun visor and looked at himself in the lit mirror. His pupils were dilated and he could tell that his pulse was raging. ‘I guess your call panicked me a little,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to middle of the night emergencies anymore. I’m out of practice.’ He paused before adding quietly, ‘Did you see this coming?’

  For once Aubret did take his eyes off the road, albeit briefly. ‘No. No way we could have. He was shifty for sure, nervous but... no. In my experience most bar owners are shifty anyway. Always looking over their shoulder at something.’

  Lombard breathed deeply, trying to take control back of his body which felt like an engine on the verge of outstripping itself. ‘True. Like you say, I never met a bar owner who felt comfortable having the law as regular visitors, that’s for sure. Even if they’re clean they tend to feel guilty on behalf of their clientele.’ The tension that had existed between them earlier in the day seemed momentarily to have eased, and Lombard was grateful for that.

  ‘Well he was worried about something. Whether it’s to do with this disagreement with Singleterry or not, I don’t know yet.’

  ‘I had the feeling that he was a bit weak. Like the runt of the litter.’

  ‘What litter? The Comité des Fêtes?’

  ‘Perhaps. There were five members of that group, five people who organised the Joan of Arc night, and who run the town’s events.’ Lombard felt he was starting to relax a bit, a sense of purpose controlling the nerves. If indeed it was nerves. ‘The Mayor, Clotilde Battiston. Nicolas Marquand. Galopin, the Notaire, who I’ve yet to meet. And the two dead men. So three are left. Singleterry’s murder got Lagasse all worked up, why?’

  ‘Either he was hiding something, or he was always like that.’

  ‘Or both.’ There was a brief silence. ‘I got what I wanted, I suppose.’ Lombard was staring out of the window; the dark road was eerily quiet as the pink sun began to emerge.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Asked Aubret gruffly.

  ‘Hit and run. Joan of Arc wasn’t involved in many traffic accidents.’ Aubret said nothing as he slowed the car down and approached the roundabout taking him out of Tours and onto the north bank of the Loire. ‘Where was he found?’

  ‘By the bridge. Apparently he’d always take a walk down to the river after shutting up for the night. Texeira’s out checking the cars in town; the mayor’s car, Marquand’s, Madame Singleterry’s, Galopin’s.’

  Aubret slowed his own car down as they approached the bridge at Saint-Genèse. The bridge itself was lit up; each arch of its aqueduct was topped off with a lamp made to look like a burning flame and giving off a bright, yellowish glow. Again, the pretty, postcard scene only this time ruined by the harsh flashing blue lights of the Police Nationale, the local Gendarmerie, the pompiers and the crime scene vehicles. Lombard noticed that further away was a small crowd of onlookers. They were being held behind police tape under the direction of a large man in uniform, probably Monnier the local Police Municipale, who had a mix of resentment and r
elief on his face, both brought on by his lowly role. It was, despite all the activity though, unnaturally quiet.

  ‘Ghouls,’ whispered Aubret under his breath. It was all quite a sight, a big hullabaloo all circled around a white forensics tent in the middle of a crossroads at the foot of the bridge. And inside was Émile Lagasse.

  Leveque greeted them when they arrived, his nervous enthusiasm oddly out of place in the calm but busy environment of a crime scene. ‘Ah Commissaire,’ he began as Aubret marched straight past him, Lombard dragging slightly behind. ‘We’ve been…’

  ‘You’re doing a great job, kid. Where’s Pouget?’ said Aubret without turning round.

  ‘Thank you sir!’ said the young officer, who seemed to grow in stature as a result of the few dismissive crumbs his commanding officer had thrown his way. Aubret cut an impressive figure in these situations; organisation of troops was Aubret’s strength and at a crime scene when four or five different law and order and medical groups could be pushing their cause it needed a strong hand and clear leadership. Not that Commandant Pouget didn’t already have things nicely under control.

  ‘OK, Commandant,’ said Aubret definitely. He was putting on blue crime scene gloves and overshoes and also ‘wrist-bumping’ his Commandant to avoid evidence contamination. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Almost instantaneous death. Probably hit from behind and at great speed. May not even have known what hit him. It’s not a pretty sight.’ Another uniformed figure approached. ‘This is Lieutenant Eric Jollet, sir. Chief of the local pompiers.’ The two men nodded to each other.

  ‘You have declared the victim dead?’ It was more of a statement than a question. Jollet, a small wiry man with round glasses, seemed taken aback by Aubret’s bluntness and a watching Lombard, himself now wearing gloves and overshoes, could see that Monsieur Jollet was used to getting more respect than that. At least to his face.

  ‘I did, Commissaire.’ Jollet said stiffly. ‘Sadly, it wasn’t a difficult task.’ His small eyes looked directly at Aubret when he said this, but if he was hoping for a pat on the back he was disappointed as Aubret marched past him.

  ‘Who found the body, Lieutenant?’ Lombard asked, causing Jollet to spin round and face him.

  ‘And who are you exactly? It’s most irregular for civilians to be here. Inappropriate.’

  ‘This is…’ began Aubret before Lombard himself cut him off.

  ‘I am juge Matthieu Lombard and I am in charge of this investigation.’ Lombard surprised himself at his forcefulness. He wasn’t usually the kind to throw his weight around; it was easier to glide in the slipstream left by his more brusque colleague. But he’d already taken against Jollet for some reason, and he didn’t care if the man knew it. Again, it wasn’t his usual way. ‘So Lieutenant, who found the body?’

  A visibly contrite Jollet lowered his eyes by way of apology to a superior, ‘A Madame Desnoyer, Monsieur le juge.’

  ‘I have the details here.’ Commandant Pouget stepped forward and produced a small, black notebook. ‘Madame Desnoyer, thirty-three. She lives in a small flat above the florist there,’ she pointed up at an apartment which had all of its lights on. ‘She lives with her young son, eight. She heard a loud engine, though I think she meant that it was revving, and then a “horrible thud”, “like a bag of linen being dropped”. There was a “screech” of brakes and then the car sped off.’

  ‘Those are her exact words again, Commandant?’

  ‘Yes they are.’

  ‘“Like a bag of linen”. Sorry, carry on,’ prompted Lombard when he saw that Pouget was waiting for permission.

  ‘She takes in ironing, that may explain the metaphor,’ Pouget added, before going back to her notepad. ‘“I ran to the window and saw a man on the ground at the end of the bridge, the crossroads. I heard the car driving off very quickly into the town centre, but I couldn’t see it.”’

  ‘She couldn’t see it? Why not?’ asked Aubret doubtfully.

  ‘The window she was at faces onto the river, not the town sir. The car wouldn’t have been in view.’

  ‘Pity.’

  Lombard put his head inside the tent, the arc lights inside giving it the feel of another world entirely. A couple of forensic officers were just finishing up. On the floor, his eyes wide open, a stream of dried blood coming from the corner of his mouth and his slick-backed hair still, astonishingly, immaculate, lay Émile Lagasse. Though ‘lay’ would suggest comfort, even sleep. Lombard tried to think of what the poor man’s impossible, crumpled posture reminded him of. A puppet, he thought, a puppet whose strings have been cut so that it’s fallen down on itself. He looked around for anything else and noticed some bagged up personal effects. A watch, a necklace, a hat, a few coins. He picked up the clear plastic bag with the hat in it and toyed with it pensively. He stepped back outside and walked the few metres back to the others where Aubret was still questioning Jollet.

  ‘And Madame Lagasse, where is she?’

  ‘Ah,’ ventured Jollet straightening his shoulders again, self-importantly. ‘She is with one of my ladies…’ Pouget flashed the Lieutenant a sharp look. ‘…Officers I mean, one of my officers. Sabine Michou, she knows Madame Lagasse well. Madame is upset, naturally, but bearing up; Caporal-Chef Michou is taking care of things.’ He looked around the group like a child at school seeking approval from a group of teachers.

  Suddenly a scream erupted, followed by a wailing and violent sobbing. ‘That’ll be Madame Lagasse no doubt,’ said Lombard, looking at Jollet directly, ‘Tearing a hole through your definition of “bearing up”, Lieutenant.’

  Lombard rushed back to the tent, followed quickly by the others. Sandrine Lagasse was kneeling next to her dead husband. She was wearing a peach-coloured dressing gown and holding his hand crying, her long dark hair clinging to the side of a face contorted in agony and confusion. Beside her, crouched on her haunches, Caporal-Chef Michou, about the same age though much taller, was trying to comfort her and pull her away at the same time.

  ‘What is the meaning of this, Michou?’ Jollet spluttered from behind Aubret and Pouget. ‘This is most irregular. You know the rules for situations like these, I have…’

  Lombard, who had taken such a dislike to Jollet that he’d have been prepared to argue black was white just to annoy the jumped-up little man, turned and spoke over Aubret’s shoulder. ‘Lieutenant, I am literally the judge of the rules and regulations for situations like these,’ he was deliberately mimicking the man now and there was a fire in his eyes, ‘and I can see no real harm here. Now why don’t you go and polish your engines for a bit and let the grownups work?’ Jollet was speechless, as were Pouget and Aubret, neither of whom had seen this side of Lombard before.

  Sandrine Lagasse let out another pitiful howl.

  ‘Commandant!’ Aubret barked, ‘Get Chrétien to escort Madame Lagasse and Caporal-Chef Michou back to the café, please. Tell him to stay with them until I say otherwise.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Pouget turned to leave the tent, pushing past a seething Jollet as she did so and straight into Nicolas Marquand.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He said, visibly upset, as he walked into the harsh light of the tent. ‘Monnier let me through, I know I shouldn’t be here but I thought Sandrine might need me.’

  Sandrine, hearing Marquand’s voice, jumped up and into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably as she did so.

  ‘Oh my poor sister…’ Marquand was emotional himself, fighting back the tears as he held her tightly. He led her gently outside, away from what was left of her husband, and towards his own car left hurriedly at an angle by the police barrier. Texeira was there checking the bonnet and bumper which were clearly undamaged.

  ‘Messieurs?’ Now gently weeping, Madame Lagasse turned to face Aubret and Lombard. ‘Can I take his necklace with me? It is the other half to my pendant.’ She grabbed hurriedly at a necklace around her neck to show them. ‘I’d like to take it. Please.’

  Lombard could feel Aubret tense at the quest
ion. If it was left to Lombard he’d have said yes, knowing that a quick inspection of the thing and documenting it would be enough. But evidence handling was close to the bone between them now and he could see Aubret waiting for his reaction.

  ‘That would be most irregular, Monsieur le juge!’ spat an incredulous and still wounded Jollet.

  ‘Lieutenant?’ asked Aubret quietly.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur le commissaire?’

  ‘Shut up, please.’

  ‘Well, I…’ Aubret, anticipating Lombard’s answer, pushed past the Lieutenant and spoke quietly to Pouget. ‘Make a note of the necklace Pouget, any distinguishing marks, take a picture on your phone with date and time stamp.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Pouget gave her commanding officer a conspiratorial wink and moved off back towards the body.

  ‘Madame,’ said Lombard softly, ‘I promise to return the pendant to you as soon as possible, you have my word. But for now we have to follow procedure. I am very sorry.’

  It was a grateful Marquand who answered with ‘Thank you Monsieur, we understand.’ While a brief glance was exchanged between Lombard and Aubret that no-one else at the scene would have understood.

  ‘We will return as much as we can.’ Lombard continued gently, walking towards the two siblings. ‘The pendant, the watch, your husband’s hat…’

  A more collected but still crying Madame Lagasse turned to the juge quizzically. ‘That is very kind, Monsieur, but the pendant is really all I want.’ She began to walk off supported by her brother, then she stopped and turned around. ‘Monsieur?’ she said almost in a whisper, ‘my husband never wore a hat, he hated them.’

  Chapter 16

  Browsing through the midday menu, any visitors to the Lion d’Or on Tuesday lunchtime would have had little idea that Émile Lagasse, who’d always considered himself the beating heart of the place, had been murdered. It was market day, the busiest day of the week by far in Saint-Genèse-sur-Loire, a day when normally quiet businesses flourished as tourists flocked to the market and people from surrounding villages and towns were bussed in for their weekly shop and social.