by Ian G Moore
‘So you’re hoping that there will be another killing.’ Lombard took this in for a second. ‘Even though you still won’t have an alibi.’
‘Not in your eyes, juge, but I will know then. I will know that I’m innocent, or guilty. And forgive me, that’s more important to me than what you think.’
Lombard stood up and walked to the window, putting his right hand in his pocket as he crossed the room. He felt the cold metal of a heavy zippo lighter which he took out while he had his back to Galopin. He looked for the millionth time at the thing which he had taken from Muriel’s desk earlier, the ‘evidence’ he’d pretended to hurl into the Loire. He looked again at the engraved letter ‘G’, the hate he felt for the smug curves in the engraving, the vanity of a personalised lighter, the arrogance of giving that as a present to a married woman.
‘What makes you think that you could be the killer, Monsieur, have you asked yourself that?’ He didn’t turn round.
There was a long pause. ‘That’s very simple I’m afraid. I have killed before.’ He said it like he was reeling off a list of his qualifications. Just a fact, that’s all. No doubt here.
Lombard sat himself on the edge of the table, putting himself between the gun and Galopin. ‘Go on.’ He voice was calm, though inside he was raging.
‘It was a long time ago. Thirty years I suppose. I was showing off, to no-one else, showing off to me. I was the only one I ever needed to impress. I was in a car. I’d just passed my test and I was driving too fast. I was free, you see? The car was my way out of that town, finally.’ He looked out of the window too, ‘It was just outside Saint-Genèse, not far from here actually, La Bondice. I cut a corner and there was a car coming the other way, it swerved to avoid me and crashed into a tree.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I stopped. I thought about going back, I really did, but I didn’t. I found out later that both people in the car were dead.’
‘And you never came forward?’
‘No. I got away with it. There were no witnesses, no damage at all to my car.’
‘Who else knows this?’
‘I don’t know who else knows. I’ve never knowingly told anyone. But these blackouts mean that I could have told everyone.’
‘I see.’ Lombard was fingering the lighter again. He didn’t know what to make of Galopin now. Maybe the doubt was contagious but he wasn’t sure either if he was guilty or not. Of the murders anyway. He was certain of his guilt with Madeleine, and that was more important right now.
‘Here,’ he said flatly, hiding the screaming emotions within. ‘I think this is yours.’ He pulled the lighter from his pocket and gave it to the still seated Galopin.
The professor took it cautiously and turned it over in his hand, as if checking its authenticity. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘It was in my wife’s handbag.’ Lombard was now struggling to control himself.
‘Your wife?’ Galopin asked, confused.
Christ! Thought Lombard he doesn’t even remember her, probably one of dozens he had in tow. Students, wives, all disposable.
‘Madeleine Lombard. You knew her.’
‘Oh God, yes. Madeleine.’ A softness came over him, as if recalling happy memories. ‘Poor Madeleine.’
‘Yes. Poor Madeleine.’ Lombard said stiffly.
‘We had a secret you know?’ He was staring at the lighter.
‘I know.’
He laughed. ‘I told her you would. She wanted to hide it from you, but I said that it would be difficult to continue without your help. It couldn’t easily be done without you.’
Lombard sat down, quietly stunned.
‘It was to be your birthday present.’ The professor continued, unaware of the effect on Lombard. ‘Your family tree, French and English. It would have been quite an undertaking.’
Lombard felt sick. ‘Family tree?’ He said weakly.
‘Yes. Academia doesn’t pay so well. I dabble in genealogy in my spare time. For a fee.’
‘Arbre Généalogique.’ Lombard said under his breath. ‘Family tree. G.’ And Madeleine, in her usual, sloppy, rushed manner had written G. Not AG. In a flash, like being struck by a meteorite, the waste of emotion, the misery, the self-imposed isolation of those last few weeks with Madeleine… he needed air and rushed for the open door, leaning on the frame and struggling to breathe.
‘Are you OK?’ Galopin asked, staying seated and still distracted by the lighter.
Lombard moved outside and leant on the balustrade of the veranda, making no attempt to gather himself, just letting the tears fill his eyes. He was still fighting for air like a drowning man. He almost fell down the steps but took long, ungainly strides, away from the cabin, away from Galopin and into a remorse and misery that was crippling. He leant against a tree and vomited. He stayed there, completely disorientated. His whole, measured life, he had avoided jumping to conclusions. Weighed everything up painstakingly. It was his job, his métier, who he was. Yet this one thing, he had seized on with blind certainty, a subconscious effort to retreat from the cancer, which he could not fight, to another man, which he could. Inside his head there was now a dense swirling fog with traffic rushing at him. His legs were numb, his stomach felt like it was in his throat but the wrong way up to, upside down as though he’d been turned over by one of the onrushing vehicles, crushed and left for dead.
He coughed again, hyperventilating at the same time, and looked back at the cabin, where Galopin stood, emotionless, on the veranda. With difficulty he stood up straight and slowly made his way back towards the professor.
Chapter 34
As he came through the double doors all eyes turned to him. Each pair of eyes said something different, though each represented clearly the personalities behind them. Pouget’s darted between Lombard at the top of the stairs and Aubret’s office, which had the blinds down. They saw trouble that would need controlling. Texeira’s were slightly mocking, looking forward to the same trouble. Chrétien’s were utterly indifferent. Aubret had his back to Lombard. He was grateful for that.
‘I’m sorry Monsieur Marquand,’ Leveque was on the phone, ‘I appreciate your wife is scared, but we have no concrete news as yet.’
Another phone rang and Pouget answered. She listened briefly then shouted. ‘I’m putting a call through to you sir! It’s Andrew Hervé.’ Aubret turned round to pick the phone up and immediately spotted Lombard. Aubret’s eyes showed relief and annoyance.
‘Commissaire Aubret,’ he said wearily, not taking his gaze off Lombard as though if he did so, he might disappear again. Then another look came across his face as he listened to Hervé, it was deep concern. ‘And she’s not answering any calls?’ He was quiet again. ‘And when was the last time you saw her?’ He beckoned for Lombard to come into his office. ‘OK. Stay there and I’ll send a couple of officers over now.’ He paused again. ‘And tell Mademoiselle Allardyce there’s no point in her going out looking, leave it to us please. Oh, and give me the car details again?’ He wrote them down on a pad on his desk and put the phone down. ‘Apparently Lucy Allardyce found her sister’s missing necklace where her car had been parked. It spooked her obviously, and she has been trying to call her all afternoon.’ He looked at Lombard. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Leveque! Go over to Saint-Genèse now, take Chrétien with you. Jane Allardyce is missing, but she may just have left, had enough. Check it out urgently.’ Lombard sat down quietly, letting them get on with it. ‘And Leveque, don’t put up with any of Chrétien’s crap.’
‘OK you two,’ he turned to Pouget and Texeira, ‘come in here.’ He waited until they were opposite his desk. ‘Right. She hasn’t run off, I don’t think so anyway. I saw her this afternoon and she was going to Azay-le-Rideau. Either of you have any contacts there? I’d like to keep this under the radar to start with.’
‘There’s Capitaine Salber,’ Texeira said, ‘he’s always been a help to us.’
‘OK. Give him a call. Here’s the car details. Grey, Audi TT Roadster.
English registration. It’s quite distinctive, so someone may have seen it. If she got that far.’
‘What was she wearing sir? You saw her last…’ Pouget asked.
‘She had a dress on, cream, off-white anyway with a red floral pattern on it. A wide-brimmed straw hat and a blue denim jacket. Small rucksack, again floral pattern and tan court shoes.’
Texeira whistled. ‘I wish all witnesses were as good as you, chief.’
‘Get on with it please,’ Aubret said with a seriousness that surprised even his long-serving officers, ‘and close the door behind you.’ He waited and Lombard saw that he wasn’t as angry as he’d thought, there was relief even.
‘Where have you been?’ He spoke like a disappointed parent.
‘I was following up a hunch.’
‘For six hours?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘It wasn’t what I expected.’ He wasn’t being deliberately enigmatic, he was still having trouble processing his afternoon. He decided to change the subject slightly, ‘You were at the Lion d’Or this afternoon?’
‘I was looking for you, juge.’ Aubret filled him in on the discovery of the lockup, before finishing with, ‘And that’s the last anyone has seen of Jane Allardyce. The rest you know.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Three o’clock exactly.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in!’ he barked.
Texeira opened the door with what bordered on trepidation for him.
‘Sir. I’ve spoken to Salber in Azay, nothing reported. He’s going to put some men out asking questions. His brother in law runs the car park at the chateau, he said he’d certainly know if a lady had been driving a sportscar, if you know what I mean. Also trying to get hold of the kid who was on the ticket booth at the chateau this afternoon.’
‘OK. Good work, let me know…’
The phone rang and Pouget shouted from the outer office that it was ‘Salber from Azay.’ Texeira turned quickly and hurried out, followed by Lombard and Aubret.
‘Franck?’ Texiera said hurriedly into the phone, then waited while the Captain spoke on the other end. ‘Nothing at all then?’ Texeira repeated for the benefit of Aubret and Lombard. ‘Nothing at the car park, nothing at the chateau.’ Texeira sighed heavily, ‘OK mate, thanks. Listen, sit tight and I’ll get back to you in a few minutes if we need anything more.’ He put the phone down. ‘Nothing.’
‘We only have her word that that’s where she was heading, she may have changed her mind,’ Aubret said, angrily tapping a pen into the palm of his hand.
‘That would mean our killer knowing where she was going to, though.’ Lombard leant on the desk in front of him, completely exhausted.
‘You think she’s dead?’
‘Like you,’ Lombard looked up, ‘I don’t think she’s run away.’
‘Tracing the car itself might be the best option then. Lemery, get on to Vinci, it is them isn’t it? See if that registration passed through a toll this afternoon. It still might be worth checking the route from Saint-Genèse to Azay-le-Rideau. Texeira, I want you to…’
‘Sir?’ It was Pouget who interrupted
‘Yes, Commandant?’ Irritated by the interruption, he snapped at her.
‘There is another Azay-le-Rideau, and it’s much closer to here.’ She looked from Aubret to Lombard and back again.
‘Go on, Commandant.’ Lombard slumped into a chair.
Within half an hour he was staring out across Tours from the top floor of a multi-story car park at the train station of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. There were a few wispy clouds in the late evening sky but the view was comforting, once you got over the more industrial elements around the station itself. Behind him Aubret and Pouget were expertly handling the setup. Forensics had already arrived and the entire top floor had been cordoned off . The grey Audi TT Roadster sat, aggressive-looking, behind a circular stairwell hiding it from the view of the block of flats overlooking the car park.
Commandant Pouget’s disastrous love-life really was proving invaluable in this investigation, he thought. The way she’d said, ‘there is another Azay-le-Rideau’, almost sheepishly, embarrassed by the memory but also with a fear, a certainty that she was right had meant that they had dropped everything immediately and rushed the short distance to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and to this multi-storey car park. On the way Pouget had given more details.
‘It was a couple of years ago,’ she’d said. ‘I met this guy, he seemed quite nice. I didn’t tell him I was a cop, I rarely do, and we arranged to go on a date. “Let’s go for a picnic”, he said. “Somewhere romantic” – he was quite pushy, talking about romance – but I said “OK”. He said “what about Azay-le-Rideau? The views are great.” Anyway, I didn’t know this at the time, but this car park names each floor after a local tourist spot, usually a chateau. There’s Amboise, Ussé, Chinon and so on. And floor 6b, the top floor, the quietest one, Azay-le-Rideau. He thought it was hilarious.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Texeira, finding it hard to hide his delight in the tale.
‘I put him in an arm lock and threatened to throw him over the top.’ She was embarrassed and avoided eye contact with Aubret. ‘His keys certainly went over.’
They’d seen Jane’s car as soon as they arrived, parked alone, and they knew. They approached it gingerly, wary of what they would find. Initially it looked empty, there was a rumpled picnic blanket on the narrow, sports car excuse for a backseat, but nothing else visible. Then Texeira had used his skills to open the locked boot, and there she was.
Lombard kept his eyes on the centre of Tours, in particular the cathedral which dominated the skyline. It comforted him, not in a religious sense – his faith, such as it was, had dried up completely with the death of Madeleine. No, it was just that it had always been there and at times like this, he clung to things like that.
‘Monsieur?’
He turned round and Jane was standing in front of him, wrapped in a blanket, holding a small cup of vending machine coffee. Her hair was tied messily in a lose ponytail, her eyes red with tears and her mouth framed in a red rash where it had been taped up. She was alive, though, and if he was of a mind for self-congratulation he would take some small credit for that. But if she had been dead, he would have been culpable too and he didn’t know how he would have reacted if that had been the case.
‘Madame Allardyce. I am so very sorry.’ Anything he could say would be inadequate, but he’d had the impression over the previous few days that they weren’t terribly different as people, and that she would understand. He would never be able to say it to her directly of course.
‘Do you know who it was?’ Her voice cracked.
Aubret interrupted them, understanding the English too. ‘Oh yes. And don’t worry, he can’t keep hiding. You were very lucky, Mademoiselle.’ The old-fashioned Aubret was still eschewing the more modern Madame address. ‘My guess is that Professor Galopin is still in Tours.’
‘It’s not Galopin.’ Lombard turned and walked away towards a different wall. Aubret, at first dumbfounded, then angry, followed, leaving Jane where she was.
‘What do you mean it’s not Galopin? Of course it’s fucking Galopin! I’ve seen his apartment and his lock up. I’ve got evidence – remember that, evidence? – that places him at each murder and at Blanchard’s apartment. He’s gone into hiding. What more do you want, juge?’ He spat the question out.
‘He didn’t do this.’ Lombard turned around and pointed at the car in the corner. Aubret moved in menacingly, fury in his eyes.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he has an alibi.’ Lombard didn’t flinch, he just looked coldly into the Commissaire’s eyes. ‘He was with me.’
Aubret closed his eyes and his jaw tightened; steadily he said, ‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at now? You put out a national call to find a murderer, yes I know it was you who leaked to the press. You find the murderer, apparently. You, that is, just you, a
nd now you’ve what, let him go?’ Lombard said nothing. ‘Is throwing evidence into the river not enough for you, is that why you came back? To properly screw with my fucking job? Where is he then?’
‘He’s at my place.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘It may have saved her life. Moving him. It probably did.’
Aubret’s shoulders sagged and he rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you.’ He began quietly, ‘I don’t know this Lombard. I don’t know, can’t have an inkling, what Madeleine’s death did to you.’ He looked up into the juge’s face, and there was genuine concern. ‘But if you’ve got this wrong, Singleterry’s won’t be the only fucking crucifixion this week.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
Lombard shrugged. It was all he had.
Chapter 35
There was a party atmosphere in the Place Plumereau. The medieval heart of the Tours social scene was buzzing, even at late morning, with a pre-weekend fervour. The eleven different cafés, restaurants and bars surrounded the ancient square, all sharing some seating in the lowered centre, were filling up. The sun shone, there was chatter and life and the easy mix of people that Lombard found comforting. Locals, tourists, old, young, rich, not so rich. He’d spent countless hours here just watching.
It was like reading a book, not any old book, but a sweeping saga covering many generations and all continents. There were numerous characters, some deeper, more complex than others and a million different ways where the narrative could go. And you could get as involved as you wanted, or you could be the anonymous observer.
This morning, he was the latter.
Clean shaven, in a smart suit and polo shirt with the top button done up, he sat in the shadows of a bar, nervously tapping his foot on the stirrup of his stool. He looked like he was impatiently waiting for a job interview. And in a way, he thought, that’s exactly what he was doing. There was no way he could see the whole square from where he sat, there would be no way of doing so without being obvious himself. But between them, including Aubret and the rest of the team, they had every angle covered; the square itself and the five streets that fed it.