by Ian G Moore
‘I’ve just bawled that lot out. If that bastard journalist has one of my team on the payroll, I’ll end two careers.’ He was still apoplectic, twitchy. Whereas Lombard had now reached a kind of morose, almost bulletproof misery.
‘Do you know who it is?’ His voice was completely neutral.
‘Chrétien probably. Though I don’t know the new kid well enough yet… I don’t know.’ He slammed a file down on his desk.
‘It may help to track Galopin down.’
‘It may. But it’s not the way we do things. Not the way I do things.’
‘Do you not believe he’s guilty then?’ Lombard had his back to Aubret and was looking out of the window.
‘As it happens. I do. But that’s not the point.’
‘Maybe it is though. The truth, remember, that’s all that matters.’ Lombard had his hands in his pockets, clenching and unclenching his fists, not bothering to hide his stress and playing with the lighter as he did so.
Aubret fell silent and sat down quietly. Lombard could feel his suspicious eyes boring into his back. ‘I suppose so,’ he said slowly. ‘We went to his apartment last night. The truth doesn’t seem much in doubt.’
The juge slowly, almost reluctantly turned round. He wasn’t sure if he could control his emotions; the sheer scorching anguish made him want to howl, but he felt like Aubret was about to condemn the man further. Charles Galopin was guilty of greater crimes than that perpetrated against Lombard, but he felt no guilt in realising that they mattered less to him.
‘What did you find?’ he said quietly, hoping that Aubret hadn’t heard the crack in his voice.
‘What would you want to find?’ he snorted. ‘The place was practically a written confession.’ He tapped his box of Gaviscon on the desk, impatient now and bursting with news.
‘How do you mean?’ Lombard was aware that he sounded weary, and he hoped Aubret wouldn’t think it wasn’t tiredness or emotion, but a sense of defeat that Aubret himself had been right all along. That Joan of Arc had always been the real key.
‘Well, what evidence do you want juge?’ Aubret laughed sarcastically, almost in disbelief. ‘What do you think the case needs? A bouffadou covered in blood? A brown winter coat, also with bloodstains on the sleeve? A set of keys, one of which is for a Renault Laguna? We’re checking the others. How about reference books on smoking food? It’s all there. Oh, and it goes without saying, it’s practically a shrine to Joan of Arc. In fact, there actually is a shrine.’ He threw his little box in the air and caught it.
‘How do you mean a shrine?’
‘Books, pictures, a coin – which is obviously now with forensics – all arranged on a table in the corner of the living room.’
It struck Lombard as odd. The arrogance of leaving evidence lying around could be explained away as simply that, arrogance. Certainly stupidity too. But a shrine didn’t seem to fit the man. Unless it was a shrine to himself. ‘Have you got an inventory of this shrine?’ Aubret handed him a sheet of paper and a photograph. He was right, it was a shrine. A painting, surrounded by candles, dominated the centre of a corner table. It was Stilke’s famous Joan of Arc’s Death at the Stake. Lombard stared hard at the photograph and frowned. He moved to the list. Coins, smaller prints, even a Joan of Arc thimble were listed. It was an obsessive teenage fan’s collection of their favourite pop star; all-encompassing, yet at the same time scattergun and superficial. There were DVDs, dozens of books from the more sombre, religious tomes to an English copy of Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. But interestingly, and he checked the list again, Galopin’s own book wasn’t on there. ‘Are you sure this is everything?’
Aubret looked insulted. ‘Of course it’s everything. Of course I’m sure. What can you possibly need that’s not there?’ He stood up angrily. ‘He’s left it all just lying around for us to find. It’s like he doesn’t care.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’ Lombard said under his breath.
‘What?’
Lombard ignored the question, continuing to stare at the photograph of the shrine. ‘It’s not the work of a rational mind, that’s for sure.’
‘My wife’s aunt had a tumour. She didn’t know where she was half the time. Her diet changed, I mean what she liked, all of a sudden. Like her brain wasn’t her own anymore. It was very sad actually. But it would explain a lot of this.’
Lombard put the list and photograph down carefully, as if they were fragile. ‘Well done Commissaire. It looks like G is our man. Now we need to catch him though.’
‘G?’ Aubret couldn’t hide his surprise.
‘Galopin.’ An annoyed Lombard waved his hand as if to signal its irrelevance.
Aubret looked him in the eyes, and leant in as if about to say something, before deciding against it. He pulled open the office door. ‘Updates!’ He barked.
‘We’ve checked the CCTV at the station here.’ The eager Texeira was the quickest to respond. ‘He definitely got on the train to Paris. The slow train to Austerlitz. But, apart from Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, Blois, Orléans and Paris, there’s no CCTV along the route. He didn’t get off at any of those, so could have got off at any of the smaller places. Saint-Genèse included, though that would be stupid.’ He paused. ‘Unless he’s innocent of course,’ he said dubiously.
‘If he’s innocent, why is he hiding?’ Chrétien rarely involved himself except for snide comments, but he was obviously smarting from the earlier dressing-down.
Lemery got up and handed Pouget a piece of paper to read aloud. The Commandant took a deep breath. ‘OK. Galopin, Charles, 51 years old, Professor of History at François Rabelais.’
Chrétien rolled his eyes. ‘Oh bravo Lemery. Good work.’
‘Shut up, Chrétien!’ said Texeira menacingly.
‘But…’ Chrétien was about to respond.
‘Do as you’re told Chrétien. I mean it.’ Aubret backed Texeira up immediately. ‘Carry on Commandant.’
‘His finances are in good order. He and his brother own a few properties here in Tours but especially around Saint-Genèse. He hasn’t used his credit card, bank card or mobile phone since he rang his brother on Wednesday, yesterday. He didn’t draw out any large amounts of cash either, over the last few weeks, certainly not from any known accounts. Just 50 euros here and there. If he was planning to disappear,’ Pouget said, lifting her head from the paper, ‘it was short notice.’
‘Unless he’s having help.’ Lombard said.
Lemery handed Pouget another piece of paper. ‘Ludovic Galopin hasn’t withdrawn any money either. He has had no calls on his mobile phone that we haven’t been able to trace, and we’ve kept an eye on him. He’s stayed put, only going between his home and his office. He’s only been on one client visit in the last 24 hours. Chrétien checked that out, just an old woman selling her house.’
‘Thanks Lemery.’ Aubret smiled warmly at the officer, ‘That is good work.’
‘Who was the client?’ Asked Lombard.
‘A Madame DuFresnes.’ Pouget was reading over Lemery’s shoulder. ‘She checks out. A widow, trying to sell up and has been for years. Also, sorry sir, there’s more.’ Lemery was waiting impatiently for the printer to spew more paper. And when it arrived she handed it once again to Pouget. ‘Juliette’s been checking social media sir.’
‘Galopin is on social media?’ Aubret couldn’t hide his surprise.
‘No sir. Juliette, Lemery, obtained a list of his students and then searched the usual haunts: Instagram, Facebook and so on, to see if anything showed up, rumours and the like.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it’s fairly oblique sir but there seems to be some suggestion between a couple of the students, on Twitter this is, of impropriety.’
‘Impropriety?’ Chrétien snorted. ‘Banging one of his students you mean?’
Lombard had a sudden, overwhelming desire to throw Chrétien through a window. Did Madeleine know she wasn’t alone? Did it even matter to her?
‘Right Chrétien, you’re the expert,’ shouted Aubret without looking around at his officer. ‘Find these students, Lemery will have their details no doubt. Get to the bottom of it. If he’s a womaniser, find the women. One of them might be hiding him or know something.’
‘Yes sir.’ Chrétien stood up smartly, for once desperate to please.
‘And Chrétien?’
‘Sir?’
‘Take Leveque. If they are students, he’ll be nearer their age.’ There was laughter in the office where Aubret, almost like an orchestra conductor, could lower or raise the mood according to his whims.
Lombard walked around to Lemery’s desk and picked up the various bits of paper that Pouget had been reading from.
‘You really are invaluable, Juliette,’ he said quietly, putting most of the papers back down. ‘I’ll leave you all to it. Keep me informed, Commissaire.’ And he left without waiting for a response, and with more energy than with which he’d arrived. He was heading back to his office now and he hoped Muriel would be out of her meeting.
Chapter 31
Lombard parked Muriel’s small Renault Twingo outside the rundown longère and breathed out heavily. He wasn’t a confident driver, indeed most people weren’t even aware that he could drive at all. Muriel was one of the few and although she was happy to lend her car in an emergency, and he’d stressed that this was, she was fearful for the condition it might return in, if it did come back, this is. The relieved breathing wasn’t all because his journey was at an end though. He was gathering himself up, trying to hold it together if he was honest with himself. This was a hunch he was acting on, and if it turned out to be right he still had no idea how he would feel or react.
He spent a moment looking through the windscreen at the ramshackle place. It hadn’t been hard to track down, either generally, thanks to Muriel’s estate agent cousin, or geographically as he’d passed half a dozen handwritten ‘Maison à Vendre’ signs half-heartedly attached to trees and road signs. He could have got the details off Lemery but he didn’t want Aubret to know his interest. He was just thankful that the Commissaire had chosen the lazy Chrétien to follow up on the lead.
It had been about a 200 metre drive down little more than a dirt track to get to the farmhouse. There had been the odd attempt at patching up the road, a pile of gravel here and there but from the main road, and that wasn’t much wider itself, the house couldn’t be seen. The front yard was a scrappy affair, old broken farm machinery, rusty and long since out of use. Broken buckets, an upturned wheelbarrow and a row of cages that would have once served as rabbit hutches but which now acted as dry cupboards for fire kindling. A few hens were nervously milling about pecking for food. It was a classic rural French scene, he thought, the decay and loneliness hidden from view. Most of the house itself was shuttered, rotten shutters too painted a deep, vin de table crimson. There was an old ladder leaning against the house leading up to a gabled, also shuttered, roofspace. The ladder looked rotten too, like it would barely take the weight of one of the hens. An estate agent would be using the word ‘potential’ a lot here, he reckoned, and ‘opportunity.’
An old woman was leaning on the bottom half of an open stable door, watching him with a none-too-welcoming look. He got out of the car uneasily. Lombard, only just above average height, still found it difficult to manoeuvre himself out of the tiny car, his usual elegant movements hampered by the steering wheel. Finally out, he stood tall, put on what he hoped would be a winning smile and approached the suspicious owner.
‘Madame DuFresnes?’
‘Yes,’ she replied coolly.
‘Excellent. Bonjour!’ He waited for a response that wasn’t coming, and he didn’t blame her; smiling bonhomie wasn’t his strong point. ‘We have a three o’clock appointment.’ He offered her his hand.
‘Don’t know anything about any appointment.’ If she saw his hand, and her cataracts were perhaps a hindrance, she ignored it.
‘Oh really? That’s odd. The notaire, Monsieur Galopin, he said he had made the appointment with you. I’m here to view the house.’
She looked at him intently, making her mind up whether to invite him in anyway or tell him to bugger off. ‘This place isn’t cheap you know?’ Finally relenting enough to open the bottom half of the door. ‘You can’t even afford a decent car.’ He barely heard her above the noise of a cheering crowd behind her coming from a television roughly the same size as Muriel’s car.
After opening the door she leant on a battered old walking stick and stiffly, slowly made her way to a simple, wooden, uncomfortable-looking chair at the central table. By the look of it even walking to the door had been something of a physical ordeal, and she winced as she walked. The sleeves on her old knitted dress were rolled up slightly as a sop to summer, but her traditional flower-patterned, grubby over-dress showed that this was her outfit all year round, regardless of temperature. Incongruously she wore enormous white trainers, which made her thin, veiny legs look like they were standing in a snowdrift. Her popsocks stopped inadequately some way below the hem of her dress. She eventually reached the table, pressed mute on the TV remote and sat down with difficulty accompanied by a few low groans. Lombard took in the room. The first thing was the smell. It stank. Even with an open door there wasn’t enough ventilation to rid the place of a cloying mix of overcooked vegetables and damp. The sink, with one old tap held together with tape, was filthy, any porcelain sheen long since gone and replaced by what could be decades of grime. A few dishes were piled incongruously neatly to the side, the result of a frugal lunch no doubt, a lonely one too.
‘You’re very secluded here,’ Lombard said, trying not to brush up against anything. ‘It must be nice and quiet.’ He hoped, for the sake of this necessary charade that he was managing to hide his disgust.
‘That’s the way I like it,’ she said, without a hint of warmth.
‘Why are you moving then?’
‘I’m not.’ Her reply was indignant, then she added suspiciously, ‘Did Galopin not tell you? This place is for sale en viager. When I move, I’ll be in a box.’
‘Oh I see. No he didn’t mention that.’ The system of viager, where a seller can sell their property for a percentage of its value and stay in the property until death, used to be very popular in rural areas like this. A macabre, almost ghoulish practice to his mind. Old people, typically widowed, some abandoned by their relatives, would in theory get a lump sum and the buyer a bargain. In reality, and Lombard had heard of many instances, scavenging property prospectors would show up, spy a frail old person in their mid 70s, rub their hands and expect to move in within a couple of years. Only in the Loire, old people, even those who obviously resented existence like Madame Dufresnes, could carry on for a couple of decades more. The thought occurred to him that she may be exaggerating her physical frailty hoping for a sale.
‘Well that’s how it is. If you don’t like it, no point wasting my time.’ She gave Lombard a hard stare though for his part he couldn’t possibly imagine what important tasks he could be keeping her from. But her features, as tired a face as he had ever seen with two cold, grey eyes to match her hair, were set firm. If he didn’t like it, he could leave. Perhaps she wanted to get back to the enormous television in the corner which was currently on mute.
‘Well I’d still like to look around.’ It was an awkward conversation which she seemed to be revelling in. It was her mortality and she was happily enjoying his discomfort.
‘You’ll have to do it yourself then. It hurts me these days.’ She was definitely laying it on extra thick.
‘That’s not a problem.’ He tried to hide his relief. ‘I don’t want to put you out. Apart from this building and the yard, are there any other buildings? I know it was a farm.’
‘There’s the stables and barns, plenty of dépendances dotted about. None of them have roofs. There’s not as much land as there used to be. I sold it o
ff piece by piece to that bastard Deschamps. He collects land like a dog collects fleas, doesn’t make him any happier either. He’s got a farm nearby, but I’ve kept what’s close.’
‘I’ll take a look around then,’ said Lombard with a touch of disappointment, wondering if his hunch had been completely wrong.
‘Do what you like. There’s the lake as well, with the cabin.’
‘Lake?’
‘About 5 minutes’ walk through the woods at the back, if there’s still a path. My husband used to have duck shooting parties there. But he’s been dead nearly twenty years, and I’ve not been there. It may have rotted away, I don’t know.’
‘I’ll start outside if that’s OK, then finish in the main house.’
‘Like I said. Do what you like.’
Lombard closed the bottom half of the stable door behind him and an enormous round of applause rang out as the television’s volume was restored. ‘Out the back’ the old lady had said, about five minutes, middle of nowhere. It seemed like the perfect place to hide. He made his way around the corner of the house, along another, narrower dirt track and into the woods.
He had no real idea which way he was heading but the frequent duck quacks gave him a vague direction in which to head. Why were they quacking though? Were they being disturbed by something? Someone?
He made sure his phone was switched to ‘vibrate’, not wanting it to ring just as he was about to approach unannounced, but also wary about it being off entirely. The track got wider as he approached the lake, and had clearly been recently used. The lake itself wasn’t very big and its banks were overgrown, making access to the water difficult but also an ideal place for wildlife, water birds, ragondins perhaps. There was an island in the middle of the lake, also overgrown and a few ducks were sitting peacefully on a small, muddy beach. On the far end of the lake was a large, nicely maintained wooden building. Its windows and door were open and on the covered veranda there was a wooden bench. On the bench was an open book, set face down. Someone had been disturbed.