The Mentor

by Monticelli, Rita Carla Francesca

  Then she went and sat at the little table, taking back up her cup of tea while she watched her boss sleep on her couch.

  He was a good-looking man. Apart from a little paunch and his tendency to neglect himself, he didn’t seem at all like a fifty-year-old. She’d always had a thing for older men, but in reality she knew that he was too old for her. He could have been her father.

  She took another sip, staring at him.

  CHAPTER 4

  He woke up with a terrible headache, accompanied by a firm willingness to kill himself in order to make it stop. The pleasant smell of coffee reached his nostrils, bringing him halfway back to reality. He felt disoriented. He couldn’t figure out where he was; nothing around him seemed familiar. He could hear water running, but he couldn’t tell if it was rain or faucet water.

  A brief flash of people walking around Leicester Square leapt across his mind.

  Where the hell was he?

  He tried to pull himself upright, but the effort made him so dizzy that he gave up immediately.

  “Good morning, boss.”

  Struggling, Eric recognized Adele’s voice. Suddenly he realized he was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night, and that he was stretched out on a couch, half-covered with a blanket.

  He tried to raise himself up again, this time more slowly.

  The sound of running water stopped, and when Eric finally managed to sit upright, he could see that it came from a small corner kitchen at the end of the room. Standing in front of the sink, an enormous smile spread across her face, was Adele. She was wearing a white shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Sunlight flooded in through the window beside her and lit her up like a theater spotlight.

  It was already daytime!

  “Wh-what time is it?” stammered Eric. “Where am I?” he asked, even though he thought he already knew the answer. What he was really wondering was why he was there, how he had gotten there, and, most important of all, what had happened last night. He couldn’t remember a thing. At least he’d woken up on a couch. That made him feel better.

  “Don’t worry, boss,” said Adele, walking over to him and setting a mug of steaming coffee down on the table in front of the couch. “It’s Sunday. You’ve got all the time you need to recover from your night on the town.”

  He wanted to say something witty in return, but he didn’t know what to say and probably didn’t have the strength to say it anyway.

  In the meantime, Adele had disappeared again. He was so out of sorts that he didn’t even see where she’d gone.

  Eric reached out and took the mug. The smell of coffee was exhilarating, but there was no guarantee it would be enough to set him right again.

  Adele reappeared at one of the two doors just as he was taking his first timid sips. She held up a packet of pills in one hand, then set it down on the little table in front of him without saying a word. Then she went back to the corner kitchen and filled a glass with water and brought that back as well. “Migraine, I assume,” she said. Her tone of voice lay halfway between chastising and entertained.

  He didn’t need to answer. No doubt one good look at his face made it clear he had a hammering headache.

  He swallowed a pill without even checking to see what it was. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to read the fine print. He drank the entire glass of water, realizing his mouth was dry and racked by thirst. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  Adele was standing in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “I’m sorry I brought you here. I tried to ask you where you live, but you weren’t answering.” She opened her purse and rummaged around in it.

  “Goodness gracious,” said Eric, rubbing his face with one hand. He was extremely embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t do anything . . . anything that was . . .” Then he stopped, unsure how to proceed.

  “Inopportune?” said Adele, laughing.

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Don’t worry, boss. You were a perfect gentleman.” She appeared to really be enjoying herself. She grabbed a linen jacket and put it on. “But now I’ve got to go. My sister-in-law is waiting for me so that she can give me the keys to her car.” She headed for the door.

  Eric was dumbfounded. He didn’t know what she was expecting from him. Maybe he should get up and head home. Unfortunately, he was not at all sure he’d be able to stand.

  He tried to open his mouth and say something, but she turned around and shushed him with a movement of her hand. “No, no . . . You take it easy. Make yourself at home.” She pointed to one of the doors. “That’s the bathroom. I left you a clean set of towels. The white ones, on the little cabinet.” She took a key out of a drawer and set it by the telephone near the door. “When you leave, use this key to lock up,” she said, pointing to one of the four locks on the door. “You can give it back to me when we see each other at the Yard, okay?”

  After wading through that wave of instructions, which he’d tried to follow as closely as possible, it took him a few moments to realize that Adele was waiting for him to say something in return. “Oh . . . okay,” was all he could muster. He must seem like a total idiot. “Thanks again,” he managed at last.

  “Don’t worry about it, boss. See you soon.” Then she winked at him, turned around, and left.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Eric felt as if the enormous bubble he’d been sitting in burst open with no warning. The sounds of the morning flooding in through the partially open window overwhelmed him. He took another sip of coffee to clear his head and get a grip.

  He had a hazy memory of the conversation they’d had while sitting on the little wall outside the pub. He’d asked her some very personal questions, perhaps too personal. He gave a little groan of disappointment with himself. Good God, how much had he had to drink? He remembered the first couple of beers. The third beer, which Adele had ordered, seemed to have opened a sort of chasm in his mind, one he’d tumbled into headfirst. It must have been spiked with something stronger. Maybe he should have asked what it was as soon as he’d realized it wasn’t just beer, but something had stopped him. He didn’t want to seem like an old man who was afraid of drinking something strong, or, even worse, someone who didn’t know anything about the latest drink trends.

  The point was he should have eaten something more. But it had been so exciting sitting there with her that he’d wound up spending more time talking than chewing.

  Ridiculous, that’s what it was. A man like him, in his position, losing his head over a young lady who, for all intents and purposes, was thoroughly entertained by the chance to torture him. Oh yes. That was convenient. Lay all the blame for his precocious midlife crisis on Adele. Pathetic. There were so many beautiful fortysomethings wandering around, and he had to go gaga over a twenty-seven-year-old. Sure, she was intelligent, and she seemed genuinely mature—she was just getting over a divorce too, after all. Most of all, she was extremely beautiful. But even all that couldn’t justify his inability to maintain control.

  He slapped his knees in an attempt to rise up out of his disappointment. Finally he managed to stand up.

  He set the mug and the empty glass in the sink. It would be polite to wash and dry them, but he had no idea where things were in that kitchen and wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to start digging around there anyway. Meanwhile, his swollen bladder woke up and started complaining, forcing him to head for the bathroom.

  Unfamiliar with the flat, he opened the first door and found himself looking into the bedroom. The walls were peach colored, and the bed was covered with a similar, slightly darker-colored blanket. White curtains did little to block the sunlight flooding into the room, making it warm and welcoming. He immediately noticed the absence of any bureau or dresser. The room extended beyond the queen-sized bed, and he could see a desk with a portable computer on it. Its fan was blowing, telling him she’d left it turned on.

  Curious, Eric went
over to the computer. A video loop showing a storm-tossed sea ran across the screen over and over. The waves crashed on the beach, and surfers glided back and forth in the background, searching for the perfect wave.

  Eric glanced around as if frightened at the prospect of being caught in the act of snooping on his colleague’s computer; then he reached out to the mouse. The screen-saver video froze, and a little window popped up, requesting the password.

  He wasn’t really going to dig around in Adele’s computer files, was he?

  He was relieved he couldn’t look any further. One less temptation.

  Eric went back to looking around the room. There was something strange here, something he couldn’t quite decipher, but he’d felt it back in the living room as well. A sense of the impersonal. Everything was beautiful, but on the whole it felt more like a hotel room than someone’s personal living space. Maybe she’d only been here for a short time?

  There was a photograph of Adele on almost every wall. They weren’t traditional amateur photographs; they looked professional. There were close-ups, landscapes, and cityscapes. In one portrait of her, he could see the Eiffel Tower in the background.

  Did she used to work as a model? That wouldn’t surprise him.

  Other than the photographs, there was nothing else that told him about the apartment’s occupant. There were no images of her with other people—no friends, nothing of her ex-husband. No pictures of family or relatives. Everything seemed focused entirely, uniquely, on Adele. Beyond her, nothing. In a certain sense it fit with the image of herself she projected to others. Yet last night, for just a short while, Eric had begun to believe he was catching a glimpse of an entirely different woman. Now he was surprised to find he couldn’t locate any trace of that woman here.

  Oh, that’s right. The bathroom. He’d gotten sidetracked, but his bladder brought him abruptly back to the here and now.

  There was another door to the bedroom besides the one he’d come through. He opened it. Darkness. He tried flipping the switch alongside the doorway, and suddenly a dozen little halogen lights running around the ceiling lit the room up bright as day. The bathroom was embellished with tiles in all different shades of pastel green. It had a large bathtub and a shower, both very particular. They smacked of something technological. The entire room felt somehow projected into the future.

  A large wall of mirrors facing him reproduced his own image, and he leaned in for a closer look. My God, he looked horrible. His face was shiny and pasty, dirtied with a five-o’clock shadow from the night before and sporting two deep, dark cavities where his eyes were supposed to be. His hair was mussed up. Who knew what absurd positions he’d tossed and turned into while asleep.

  Eric went to the toilet. He required a few extra moments to focus on his next move, but finally the valves opened and he managed to empty his bladder, and with it the world seemed like a better place.

  A large white towel lay on the cabinet, carefully folded. He picked it up and looked around the shower. It was large enough to fit two people comfortably and looked inviting enough. She’d told him to make himself at home, hadn’t she?

  The pungent odor of chemicals mixed with decomposing flesh invaded Eric’s nose and mouth the moment he walked into the morgue, making him cough.

  “Good morning, Detective,” said Dr. Dawson, who was busy filling out a file. He said this without so much as glancing up from his paperwork. The body of Nicholas Thompson was stretched out on the autopsy table. His clothes had been removed, but the examination hadn’t started yet. Two red plastic batons were sticking out of the body. One was sticking up perpendicular from his groin; the other ran out from the side of his neck.

  “Richard,” said Shaw, returning the doctor’s salutations.

  A flash illuminated the body for a split second, revealing the presence of a third person in the room with them. Eric stiffened a little, recognizing Adele. She, on the other hand, appeared to be entirely focused on her work and uninterested in his arrival.

  “Good morning,” murmured Eric. Adele nodded to him and flashed a small smile. She always behaved this way; it was nothing new, save for the fact that the previous morning he’d woken up in her apartment, on her couch, instead of in his own home, and that made him embarrassed. “What can you tell me about the victim?” he asked, turning back to the doctor, thinking it best to focus on the case.

  “First of all, as you can see, the guesswork conducted at the crime scene was mostly inaccurate.”

  “What do you mean?” Eric went to the table to look at the body up close.

  “We thought the assassin shot the victim in the neck first, then in the groin in order to leave him to die from blood loss.” The doctor set his file down on a little cart, then finally turned to look the head of the scientific investigations department squarely in the eye. “But the direction of the two bullets tells us a different story.” He pointed to the baton in the victim’s neck. “As you can see, this baton is pointing downward with respect to the rest of the body.”

  “That means the assassin was shorter than the victim and had to raise his arm to shoot. Although . . .” Eric paused for a moment, noting the size of the cadaver. “The victim can’t be more than a little over five tall, if that.”

  “The bullet wound is less than sixty degrees. That tells us the shot was taken from below. Things get more complicated when we look at the groin.”

  Eric’s attention moved to the red baton sticking straight up out of Thompson’s groin. “It’s at a ninety-degree angle!”

  “Exactly. Either our assassin is a dwarf, or a child. Or he was sitting much lower when he shot the victim.” The doctor had the air of someone who loved to puzzle over riddles.

  Another flash from the camera lit up the room.

  “Maybe there was a fight,” Shaw said. “The assassin fell on . . . the couch, and shot from there.” It was an acceptable theory.

  Thompson wasn’t very tall, but he was relatively beefy. He would have had the strength to push away another person, even someone bigger than he was.

  While they thought about this, Eric noticed from the corner of his eye that Adele had set down the camera and picked up a tablet computer. She was moving her left index finger around the screen.

  “I don’t know what your team will find on the scene or in the victim’s clothing,” said Dawson. “But I can tell you this: there are no signs of injuries or struggle on the body. It doesn’t look like he fought with anyone before he died.”

  “Then how do you think it went down?” Eric asked.

  “Hell if I know!” exclaimed the doctor, lifting up both arms. “I’m just your simple, everyday pathologist.” That made Eric smile. He’d heard Dawson say the same thing at least a hundred times. “You criminologists are the wizards of reconstruction. But before we get to that, there’s one other thing I didn’t tell you.” He stooped down to pick up something from one of the lower trays on the cart. A moment later he was holding a clear plastic bag in front of Eric’s face, smiling with satisfaction.

  Eric tried to focus on the tiny piece of colored plastic that sat inside the bag.

  “I’ll save you the trouble of asking,” said Dawson, before Eric could even formulate a question. “It’s a piece of adhesive tape. I found it here.” He pushed the victim’s head to one side and pointed a gloved finger at a spot toward the back of the cheek. “What with all the blood, we didn’t notice it the first time around. It only appeared once I cleaned the body.”

  “He’d been gagged with tape!” This changed things.

  “Exactly.” It was clearly Dawson’s favorite word. “So it’s no longer clear that he was shot in the neck to silence his yell before being shot in the groin. In fact, just the opposite may be true.” The doctor removed his glasses and lifted the head, turning it back so that the eyes looked upward. “Our talented Miss Pennington has an interesting theory about the wa
y the homicide unfolded; it fits perfectly with what we can see on the body.”

  Eric and Dawson both looked at Adele, who seemed to have been waiting for the two men to get around to talking to her.

  “I’ve created a simulation,” she said, holding up the tablet she was using, but with the screen facing away from them. She sounded very sure of herself.

  Eric hesitated for a moment, unsure whether or not to approach her. This is why it wasn’t a good idea to fraternize with colleagues. He felt embarrassed for gestures that under any other circumstances would have felt perfectly normal. Except that there hadn’t been any real fraternization between them. Nothing had happened. It was all in his head. He kept telling himself that and glanced at the doctor.

  “She’s all yours,” said the doctor. What a strange choice of words. Eric almost gasped. “I’ve already seen it,” continued the doctor; then he put his glasses back on and went back to his file.

  A little reluctantly, Shaw walked around the table and stood next to Adele. She moved her head a little, then waved one hand in front of her face as if to chase away a bug. He couldn’t see any bugs there, but the gesture sent a wave of her perfume wafting his way, overpowering the stench of dead flesh, if only for a moment.

  “This is a reconstruction of the crime scene. It’s pretty rudimentary,” said Adele, almost apologizing beforehand.

  The image on the screen was a three-dimensional reconstruction of the room in which they’d found the body. Roughly three feet away from the table, down on the floor, were two large bloodstains, one of which was roughly three times larger than the other. They weren’t round, but irregular, as if someone had prevented the blood from spreading out evenly. It was a very realistic reconstruction. Eric recognized the scene. All that was missing was the body.

  “At first we thought that the victim was here, more or less, when he was shot,” Adele continued. A human figure materialized alongside the larger bloodstain.