Locked-Room Mystery Box Set

by Kim Ekemar

  I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. An hour or so later, there was as a distant sound as if something heavy had fallen on the floorboards. I got up, crossed the kitchen and opened the door. I could see Michel, quite drunk, taking the stairway to the upper floor. After his bedroom door had slammed shut, I hurried down the hallway and tried the handle of Monsieur Patrice’s bedroom door. It was locked. I peered through the keyhole. The key was in there. I felt a rush of excitement. My plan had worked.

  *

  “Besides being an inspired cook, I’m amazed at your talent for detective work, Aunt Emilie”. Jean-Claude said amazed. “You should join the force, you know.”

  “Thank you, Jean-Claude”, she replied, “but I think I’m a little bit past my prime for that. Now, let’s enjoy our Sunday meal before it, too, gets past its prime. While we enjoy it, I’ll give you another piece of the puzzle that I'm sure neither Justine nor you are familiar with. Please start with the pâtés.”

  With gusto Rimbaud served himself a large piece of each kind.

  “Your mother was merely eighteen when she gave birth to you and died in the process“, Aunt Emilie began. “Three months before that day, your father had been drafted into the army … oh, the armies and the wars: they only spell split-up families, disaster and death. He was only twenty then, thirteen years younger than myself. With your mother dead in childbirth, your maternal grandparents in Aix-en-Provence took care of your upbringing. At that time, I was a teacher at the primary school, and you’re aware that that’s how I came to know Patrice Lafarge’s children. That is, except Gaspard, who was much older than the rest.”

  “No wonder he is the most dim-witted of them all”, Rimbaud tried to joke.

  “You shouldn’t say that. He had a difficult childhood and, besides, with his hands, he’s the most gifted of them all. Gaspard was born out of wedlock in 1885, as a result of a brief liaison that Patrice had with a servant when Patrice’s father was still alive. How the pattern repeats itself! Patrice was only about twenty-five then, and at the time it caused quite a scandal in Bercy. His father died a couple of years later, and Patrice and his brother Roland each inherited half of the estate. In 1896 Patrice married Adèle, a plain woman who at twenty-one was fifteen years his junior. Still, she was considered a good catch; she counted on a small fortune as the only child of her wealthy merchant father. Between 1898 and 1903, she bore their three children, which occurred before her health began to decline. During the last four years of Adèle’s slow death from tuberculosis, Patrice Lafarge took advantage of their defenceless maid and got her pregnant with Justine. Marianne found temporary refuge with the nuns, but after the birth of her child, she couldn’t find work. Who wanted to hire a single mother with a newborn? Two years later, when Patrice’s wife died, she was desperate for work in order to secure the basic needs for her child and herself. This coincided with Patrice’s need for someone to take care of the household chores left to him by his wife's death. It must have been a hard and bitter decision for her, but for the sake of Justine, I believe, she saw no other solution to her situation than to go back to work for the man who had raped her.

  “Then something good finally happened in her life: she fell in love with a man who loved her back. For six years she lived a secret bliss with her lover, constantly afraid that the tyrant who ruled her life would discover their affair. It lasted until the day that the Great War broke out in 1914. Shortly afterwards her lover, still a young man at thirty-six, army-experienced and judged able-bodied by the army recruiters, was drafted. He was sent to the front to defend the glory of France, as the propaganda went. Marianne, of course, was heartbroken, but there was worse to come. Only months before the end of the war was declared, she received news that her lover had been killed in a skirmish. This news is what caused Justine’s mother to lose her mind and become locked up in an asylum.”

  “Who was this lover that she kept secret from everyone, even her daughter?”

  Aunt Emilie didn’t answer immediately; then she gave him a long, sad look.

  “Nicolas Rimbaud”, she told him with a sigh. “Your father. My brother”.

  THE END

  THE MURDERS

  ON THREE BRIDGES

  A locked-room mystery

  by

  Kim Ekemar

  THE MURDERS ON THREE BRIDGES

  Copyright © Kim Ekemar 2019

  All rights reserved.

  Without the express permission in writing from the author, no part of this work may be reproduced in any form by printing, by photocopying, or by any electronic or mechanical means. This includes information storage or retrieval systems.

  Go to www.kimekemar.com for more information

  about permission requests.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE TEXT IN THIS WORK:

  The text in this novel, edited by Mark Swift, has British English spelling and punctuation.

  Edition 1912-01

  Published by

  Bradley & Brougham Publishing House

  2019

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Prologue * Syria, June 2011: Murder on the First Bridge

  Chapter 1 * The Truth Hidden in the DNA

  Chapter 2 * Stella Australis

  Chapter 3 * The Second Day at Sea

  Chapter 4 * A Shot on the Ship

  Chapter 5 * The Runaway Ship

  Chapter 6 * Abandoned on the Glacier

  Chapter 7 * Blood on the Second Bridge

  Chapter 8 * Narrowing Down the List of Suspects

  Chapter 9 * The Detective Inspector’s First Round of Interviews

  Chapter 10 * The Ship’s Doctor

  Chapter 11 * The Intelligence Officer with a French Passport

  Chapter 12 * The Lebanese Intermediary

  Chapter 13 * The Turkish Escort Empress

  Chapter 14 * The War Photographer

  Chapter 15 * The CIA Agent

  Chapter 16 * The Interpreter Prodigy

  Chapter 17 * The Wanton Hostess

  Chapter 18 * The Bouncer Twin

  Chapter 19 * The Murder Timeline

  Chapter 20 * The Rescue

  Chapter 21 * Ushuaia

  Chapter 22 * The Final Interrogation of the Suspects

  Chapter 23 * A Murderer’s Confession

  Chapter 24 * Dinner with Cousin Gabriela

  Chapter 25 * How the Murder on Stella Australis’s Bridge Was Done

  Epilogue * Brazo Largo: The Murder on the Third Bridge

  INTRODUCTION

  Many events, both true and historic, have been included in this narrative. To mention but a few: the civil war in Syria with its government-approved chemical attacks; the forced adoption programme in Argentina during its “Dirty War”; the Operación Cóndor (for the Spanish-speaking audience, see my non-fictional El Reino del Terror for in-depth information); the Kurdish situation in Turkey; the post-traumatic stress disorder experienced by persons exposed to war; contraband smugglers in the Middle East and elsewhere; and, of course, the star of this story, Stella Australis, which is available for everyone who wants to get to know Tierra del Fuego with its glaciers and natural wonders … the list goes on and on. I leave it to the reader to determine what else I have left out of the background for the principal theme.

  This novel revolves around thirty characters. Personally, I have found the richness of the participants’ background stories to be one of the more fascinating aspects while writing the main story – the same way it is encountering interesting people from all walks of life in real, everyday situations. Although I don’t think the progress of the story is difficult to follow, I decided to tread a cautious path and add a complete list of the actors at the end of the book. They are included – no matter how extensive or brief his or her part is – as long as they are mentioned by their names.

  A few additional observations: The text is written using British spelling, so readers in other English-speaking parts of the world are hereby duly notified. Complete sentences wr
itten in italics are thoughts made by the person in question. (This doesn’t apply to single words marked in italics, which usually indicates a stress on the word or a first-time mention of an expression in a foreign language.) Different countries have different punctuation rules. In dialogues, the comma is placed before the closing quotation mark in the US. In British English, the comma is placed after the dialogue’s ending quotation mark (which, by the way, in my view, is infinitely more logical).

  As for the ideal locked-room mystery, it should give sufficient clues to enable the reader to solve the mystery before the novel’s protagonist does. I’ve done my best to adhere to that concept, and challenge you (before reading chapter 23) to determine who the killer on the bridge of Stella Australis was, the motive for the murder and (before beginning chapter 25) to explain how it was done.

  With that, I leave you to read about the locked-room mystery related to the murders committed on three bridges, in as many countries, over a period of 37 years.

  Kim Ekemar, Mexico, July 2019

  PROLOGUE

  Syria, June 2011: Murder on the First Bridge

  The explosions that started before dawn can be heard closer now, Nayila worriedly thought as she hurried towards the marketplace, clasping the hand of her nine-year-old daughter. Every day was a new worry, as the warring parties interrupted the daily life of the civilian citizens. She was out of vegetables and also needed to stock up on some other provisions that she felt certain she would run out of in case the battle between the rebels and the government soldiers continued to escalate. It’s a precaution – a good precaution, she repeatedly told herself using a mantra that she had adopted with the increase of the war efforts. It also meant that she had to dig deeper into her savings, since the war had made prices go up. She had wondered why everything had suddenly become so expensive. Her father, in whose house she and her daughter had lived since her husband died two years earlier, had told her that there were two obvious, major reasons. The cost for getting the crops and produce from the rural areas where they were farmed had gone up because of the risk involved with transporting them. In addition, there were the profiteers, who took advantage of the situation and constantly inflated prices to see how far they could go milking their profit while taking advantage of the situation.

  Although Nayila was a political ingenue, she resented the government for its handling of the war and blamed it for her husband’s death. Her father had clandestinely joined the rebel movement against al-Assad, but he rarely mentioned either his feelings or political views to her. It was as if he wanted to respect her domestic life without bothering her with the hard reality that – although the extent of that reality was beyond her full understanding – ultimately governed it. He cherished his daughter, and this was his way of protecting her from the daily hardships that kept increasing on a daily basis. Nevertheless, she was perfectly aware that the part of the city where they lived was considered a rebel stronghold.

  Nayila made a stop at a small, open place, where she bought the daily paper that her father had asked her to get for him. The marketplace was located on the other side of the river. She only had to cross the bridge to get there. After stuffing the paper inside her empty grocery basket, she again urged her little girl forward by grabbing her hand. Nayila got up on the bridge’s pedestrian pavement, where hundreds of people jostled to get across from one side or the other. In the lanes next to it, cars and delivery vans incessantly honked in vain to hurry up the lazy flow of traffic.

  Suddenly, out of the blue, there was an ominous whistling sound coming from above. An explosion could be heard near the marketplace, and the people on the bridge began to scream. Immediately, there was a wave of people who turned around, away from the explosion, and the panicking crowd made Nayila fall over and lose her anxious grip of her daughter’s hand. Her daughter was swept away with the stampeding crowd, while Nayila desperately tried to stagger back onto her feet, crying out her name. In that moment, another missile hit the centre of the bridge close to where she was trying to get up. This time, the explosion wasn’t as loud as the previous one. It was, however, far more devastating.

  It wasn’t designed to be nuclear, nor was it designed to maim and kill with nails and metal scrap or to cause a high-blast explosion. When it detonated, it spread sarin gas among the people who still remained on the bridge.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Truth Hidden in the DNA

  At 37 years of age, for seventeen of these Ricardo Arriaga had worked with the Buenos Aires police. He had wanted to study to become a software engineer, but reluctantly he had allowed his father to talk him out of this. Instead, his father had persuaded him to become a police officer, with the closing argument that Ricardo “would very soon realise that choosing this career would offer more opportunities than he could imagine”. Ricardo wasn’t at all suited to the physical side of policing, like running after shoplifters, facing armed drug dealers or wrestling down burglars. On the other hand, he enjoyed very much the investigative side, and he was recognised as one of the best on the corps at this. He found clues others had overlooked; he connected far-fetched evidence into convincing proof; and he possessed a mind, simultaneously imaginative and logical, that allowed him to solve cases even while he remained sitting behind his desk.

  For those who didn’t know him well, his intellect was well hidden behind a shy smile and unruly, curly black hair. His casual way of dressing and tendency to become easily distracted, forgetting car keys and the time, belied his inner order. Women found his dreamy brown eyes appealing because they added to his look of vulnerability, and more than one of them felt an instinct to give him protection. However, Ricardo was far from vulnerable, and his eyes got their dreamy appearance only when he was pondering an intellectual challenge.

  Three months earlier, Carolina – his girlfriend for the past six years – had decided she had had enough of their relationship. Her argument was that Ricardo could never let go of whatever he was working on, and that she would always be secondary in his life. Still friends, although living apart, Carolina continued to watch over him, making sure that he had everything he needed.

  Ricardo was usually a cheerful person, but on this day in September 2017, he sat on his desk chair swivelling back and forth without his usual interest in his work. Depressed, he was thinking through the past few years’ upsetting events and the court verdict delivered to him half an hour earlier.

  After several years of litigation, he had just learnt the news that he had lost the case he had brought against his father.

  *

  Ricardo had had a privileged and reasonably happy childhood. He got good marks at school, possessed an easy-going nature that made him many friends, and had parents that both cared for and encouraged him. He was an only child. His mother, who adored him, indulged his every wish, while his father took him to soccer matches and went fishing with him on weekends.

  At twenty, more than anything because of his father’s insistence, he applied to the Buenos Aires police department, where he was accepted. After a few years of service, he got promoted, and at 32 he was made detective inspector. In October a year later, his mother Selena – who had possessed a sweet and loving nature – passed away. This had a profound effect on both him and his father, whose name was Fernando Rivas, and they spent more time together over the next months. During their many talks, there were subtle hints at things in the past that Ricardo first ignored and later couldn’t help start puzzling over. With his inquisitive mind, it wasn’t long before he began to dig into his father’s past career as a military officer. Many archives that contained information about Fernando Rivas during the years of Argentina’s Dirty War, which lasted from 1974 to 1983, were sealed from public scrutiny. However, working in the police department had its advantages, and under the pretext of investigating other cases, Ricardo eventually managed to put together a fairly clear picture of his father’s career during the immediate years before and after his own birth in January 1980.
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  There were mentions of Fernando Rivas in connection with the infamous Operación Cóndor and its death squads, promoted by US interests. Rivas’s contacts had been with regimes in neighbouring countries, and not only for military reasons. The rank he had enjoyed was far more elevated than the one he had publicly disclosed. In addition, Ricardo found many other inconsistencies when compared to what he had been told growing up.

  He started doing the maths. His father had been 40 and his mother 43 when Ricardo had been born at the Hospital Militar Central in Buenos Aires. These details were stated in his birth certificate, with its official stamps and the signature of the hospital official. His mother had been childless before he was born. Unusual, but not impossible, he had thought. Then he looked up the official who had signed his birth certificate, a certain Eduardo Lara. To his consternation, he discovered that Lara hadn’t been employed by the hospital until November 1980, although it was dated ten months earlier. Some bureaucratic error, perhaps? Ricardo felt bewildered, and for the first time he doubted he knew the truth about his origin.

  The next time he visited his father’s house, he went to his mother’s room, which had been left intact since her death. He took several strands of hair from a brush that lay on the vanity table in front of a mirror. He remembered how he, as a young child, had watched her carefully brush it morning and night. She had been considerably vain about her delicate and attractive features, and her abundant hair was no exception. Before returning to the terrace overlooking the garden, where his father waited for him over a glass of red wine, Ricardo then went to his father’s bathroom. He carefully removed the razor blade from its handle and replaced it with a new one. He put the blade in a different envelope than the one with his mother’s hair.