One Green Bottle

by Curtis Bausse

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the piano.’

  ‘I thought it was your son.’ He went over and studied it. ‘How did you… You just made this up?’

  ‘No. Charlotte told me. She described him.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  ‘She met him. He came to the house pretending he wanted to buy it. But it doesn’t matter.’ She removed the portrait from his hands and put it in the fire. ‘There. He doesn’t exist.’

  Vincent watched her, shaking his head in wonderment. A bit too much revealed for his liking, a glimpse of something disturbing. ‘Well, I brought what you asked for, anyway,’ he said with a sigh. He took out a folder from his briefcase and put it on the table. ‘Roncet’s emails and a printout of Enzo Perle’s Internet activity.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’ She started clearing the table. ‘Have you read them?’

  ‘Glanced through them. Nothing much there that I can see. But maybe you’ll find plenty.’ He tried to make it a joke but it came across as sarcastic.

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said with a hint of petulance. ‘Balland’s getting me Michel Terral’s as well.’

  ‘Indeed?’ He considered it for a moment. ‘You get on well with him, do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. He’s a bit prickly, I find.’ She couldn’t help adding, ‘But he does listen to me, up to a point.’

  The message wasn’t lost on Vincent, who chuckled a little scornfully. ‘Hedging his bets, I’d say.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He needs a result, hasn’t got one. Says to himself, maybe there’s a one per cent chance you’re right. The least he can do is listen. As long as he hasn’t nailed anyone himself, it makes sense.’

  From which she inferred that as far as Enzo was concerned, the chance she was right was nil. ‘I suppose so. He’s got a theory about theories. How we can’t help clinging to our own.’ She managed a smile. ‘Which is right, of course. You must think I’m incredibly stubborn.’

  He laughed, more joyfully this time. ‘Thorough, shall we say. Definitely a quality.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ she said with mock emphasis. ‘So you won’t mind if I continue looking, then?’

  ‘Not at all. I have to tell you, though...’ His lips were twisted in a show of displeasure.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you do find anything about Perle, it won’t incriminate anyone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The computer was tampered with. I had it put under wraps straightaway but then Alexis – one of my men – thought he’d be clever and see what was in it. Which means that nothing we get from it now is usable in court. But still,’ he added with a weary shrug, ‘I don’t think that’s where the answer lies anyway, as you know. I only brought the data along because you asked.’

  Complicity. That was the bit that was missing. She should be on his side, they should be uncorking champagne. Instead she was pursuing her own perverse line of reasoning. We’ve even got DNA evidence and you still won’t accept it? What more do you want?

  That’s what a wife would do, share in the triumphs and disasters. Did Rebecca do that? Maybe that’s why it took him a whole twelve months to recover.

  But she wasn’t Rebecca, so instead of lightness and bubbles, they went back to bed and had sex, and from the volume of his grunt of release, he definitely found it pleasurable. And that, all things considered, satisfied her too. Somewhat.

  At 5.30 next morning he was up, getting dressed, kissing her goodbye. Softly closing the bedroom door so as not to disturb her sleep. Then he’d be in the car, headlights swallowing the motorway, humming gently to himself before turning off to climb up to Padignac and be in his office by nine.

  She didn’t go back to sleep. She fetched a pen and paper and went back to bed and wrote to him. Five different letters, five explanations of why it couldn’t continue. Each one wrong or badly expressed. Each ending up in the bin.

  Later in the morning, Bernard Marty appeared at her door. Accepting a cup of coffee, he came across for the first time as vaguely sympathetic to her plight. Having been indicted, he explained, Daveney was now being examined in a psychiatric ward. The purpose was twofold: to ascertain his state of mind at the time of the murder and to advise whether he could be released back into the community.

  ‘Released?’ Compared to the phantom killer of her imagination, Paul was positively cuddly, but still the prospect was alarming. ‘Isn’t that risky? If he killed once, what’s to stop him doing it again?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said in answer to the first question. ‘He’s back on his medication now, very subdued, apparently. Besides, it might just be something to do with you.’ He cast a curious glance in her direction. ‘With the specific circumstances of your relationship.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s reassuring.’ She gave a light, incredulous laugh. ‘I’m the only one he wants to kill so you can let him out.’

  If he detected humour, he didn’t acknowledge it. ‘Mental cases are always difficult to deal with. It’s not much help remanding them in custody for months.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he be sectioned, though? If he’s going to go round killing people.’

  Marty eyed her coolly. ‘I thought you thought he was innocent.’

  ‘He’s been indicted. Who am I to argue?’ Magali was shocked to hear herself say it. She’d set out to help Paul, now she was pushing to have him put in a straitjacket.

  Marty let out a puff of annoyance, any sympathy he had on arriving dispelled by her inconstancy. ‘If he’s a danger to himself or to others, appropriate measures will be taken,’ he said in his best bureaucratic voice. ‘I gather he’s very contrite. Deeply upset to be in your bad books, as it were. I’m sure the doctors will take everything into account before reaching a decision. And it will be a while before they do.’ He was silent for a moment, looking up at a point on the ceiling. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Madame Rousseau, are you in the habit of, uh, sleeping with your clients?’

  She didn’t understand. Had he seen Vincent slip out before dawn? A mental case with a gendarme fetish. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

  ‘My clients?’ she said warily.

  ‘When they searched the house, the forensic team found a couple of hairs on your pillow.’ His expression was a blend of reprimand and pity. ‘They belong to Paul Daveney.’

  Chapter 25

  As requested. Y.B. The message, with its customary terseness, had a file attached containing Michel Terral’s Internet activity stretching back eight months prior to his death. Now she had all three. Roncet, Terral and Perle. But she didn’t look at any of them.

  What was the point? Vincent was swooping in on his culprit, and Balland was circling ever closer to his. As for Benamrouche, he was already locked away. They were wrong, all of them, of course. The whole world was wrong, but it wasn’t her business, was it? Her business was lies and madness.

  She was neither worried nor depressed. She thought she might set fire to the post office, just for the hell of it, before running through the streets of Sentabour naked. At least she’d be behaving the way they thought she should. After that, they could burn her at the stake and everyone would be happy.

  It was Thierry Krief, of all people, who cooled the simmering hysteria and focused her mind again. Just as she was about to set off for the Spar, he rang her bell, ignored her order to get out of her sight or else, and asked her to look at a photograph. ‘Taken by a couple of boys by the Mataroc. The day Pessini died, they bunked off school to go looking for wild boars. They heard a noise in the trees and went after it. Turned out to be Daveney, or so they say. All you can see is an arm and a part of the side of his body. Pretty blurred too, I’m afraid.’ He moved a little closer. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That’s him. Dark red jacket, light trousers. It’s what he was wearing when I met him.’

  ‘It was taken at 10.41.’

  ‘It fits. It was almost half eleven when I met him.’ She tapped the photo. ‘W
here was he exactly?’

  ‘Towards the bottom, they say.’

  ‘Going up?’

  ‘They think so. But they didn’t hang around to see. They seem to think that coming across Daveney in the woods was scarier than meeting a wild boar.’

  ‘I was gone from the house no more than an hour. A bit less. If Paul was going up the Mataroc at 10.41, there’s no way he could have killed Antoine before I got back.’

  ‘If he was going up. And if this is really him, not someone else.’

  ‘It’s the same clothes, I tell you.’

  ‘I might believe you. And I might believe those boys. But they’re a couple of pot-smoking truants and you…’

  Magali turned away, not even angry. Resigned. Truth belongs to those who shout the loudest, Balland said. But once a liar, always a liar. She could shout herself hoarse for all the difference it would make. ‘Why did they wait till now?’ she said. ‘Why not come forward before?’

  ‘One of them had a rifle. “Borrowed,” he said, from his uncle. He wasn’t too keen on that coming out. And they didn’t think the timing was that important, they just assumed he committed the murder after.’

  She gave back the photo. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wanted to see if you recognised him.’ He tucked the photo into his wallet. ‘But this is no good on its own. It could be anyone. Maybe, if something else turns up, there’ll be a case to put forward.’

  ‘So you’ll keep on looking?’

  ‘Maybe. If I get bored.’ And addressing her a wan little smile, he raised a hand in farewell.

  ***

  All afternoon, as she swiped the items past the till, she thought about Krief’s visit. At one point she was so absorbed that she double-charged a customer, who then accused her of trying to rip him off. He wouldn’t let the matter drop and she had to call Monsieur Retsky to calm him down. He did that very effectively but she could see he wasn’t pleased to have needed to.

  As soon as she was back, she sat down to investigate. She started with Roncet. Vincent may well have given the documents a glance but he hadn’t judged it necessary to highlight the correspondence with Coussikou. It didn’t take her long to find it though. Roncet’s email output was hardly prolific and most of it was with two correspondents who, like him, had a bizarre fascination with Napoleon.

  The exchange was one-sided – a single message from Coussikou compared to Roncet’s six. The first thanked Coussikou for the book he had sent, Thomas Legros’s Napoleon, Master of War, but informed him, in a mild, cautious tone, that several of its pages were covered in coffee stains. Could he please, he asked, have another copy, and would Coussikou like the original to be returned?

  Coussikou’s reply was as short as it was odd: Is that the best you can do?

  Over the next few weeks, Roncet’s emails became ever more furious, rising to a crescendo of apoplectic rage. You BASTARD!! If I ever I find you I’ll give you a HIDING why don’t you answer you fucking LILY-LIVERED POOFTER? Go to hell you useless pathetic deceitful CUNT! You hear me? Go to HELL!!!

  By this time he’d discovered emoticons: a row of clones, fists clenched and features distorted, lined up to hammer home the message. Albert Roncet was angry.

  But Coussikou never answered and Roncet must have decided to let the matter drop. It was either that or collapse from email exertion.

  The last message was sent on May 30th 2011, almost six months before the murder. Could there really be a connection? If there was, she was dealing with a killer who was not in any hurry, who planned ahead and was patient. But what made him choose Roncet to be his victim?

  Michel Terral’s history was harder to read. Unlike his wife, he was punctilious with his emailbox, so there weren’t any bold-typed angry emails here, just a long list of addresses, none more distinctive than the others. Unable to concentrate on the screen, she printed it out, then started with Lucie Terral’s birthday and went backwards, using a ruler to work up the page, marking each line as she went: red for no, green for maybe. In between the football and cars she looked for the names of shopping sites. Michel visited two of them, La Rue du Bazaar almost once a week and less regularly, Bonboutik.

  A month before Lucie’s birthday, Michel began to visit both sites more often. Hmm... What can I get her? Then twice in the same day, a Sunday, once in the morning and once late in the evening. Early next day, he went back to La Rue du Bazaar. Yes, the purse, she’ll love that. Click. However did we manage before Internet?

  The URL gave her the description of the item (antique purse, 1920s, French), the category it had been entered under (decorative) and the seller’s region (Normandy). But when she entered the URL itself, she drew a blank – ads on La Rue du Bazaar were withdrawn after sixty days and besides, the item was no longer for sale.

  The Satie score took longer. Enzo was an ardent Internet browser, sometimes spending three or four hours a day. Apart from food, it was also where he seemed to do most of his shopping. Kitchenware, gardening tools, furniture, clothes, books – all were the objects of multiple searches, if not of actual transactions. Vincent had said they’d found nothing unusual in his finances but they hadn’t been looking for any specific purchase. What if he’d bought the Satie score online and paid for it with a cheque which was never cashed? Wouldn’t that count as unusual?

  The search was further complicated by Enzo’s frequent visits to sites about composers, Satie foremost among them. Some days there were a hundred or more of such visits, not all with Satie’s name present in the URL, which meant she had to go online and check them all out herself, just in case one of them might have offered scores for sale.

  After a couple of hours squinting over pages of URLs, Magali had a list of eleven possible sites from which a music score could be bought. She visited all, eliminating those that made use exclusively of PayPal or credit card transactions. That left four: the two that Michel Terral used, plus AVSuper and Ventastica. She went back through the list of addresses. At various times, Enzo had searched all four sites for Satie’s scores. But when she tried the URLs herself, nine times out of ten, she drew a blank. Out of the hundreds of visits, it was impossible to tell which one had given rise to the transaction she was looking for.

  The most frequent visits were to La Rue du Bazaar. On the off-chance, she searched for the name Coussikou. Nothing came up. Hardly surprising. He’d use a different pseudonym each time. When she entered “Philippe Brun,” the name on Roncet’s cheque stub, she got eight answers, all but one of them books, related in some way to one or other of the Philippe Bruns she knew about: lawyer, trumpeter, and connoisseur of lentils.

  She typed “music score” and came up with 3,109 answers. For several minutes, she clicked at random, looking for pseudonyms that might resemble Coussikou. Many people used their own names, or at least real names, but there was also an impressive variety invented: collection88, safti, mirabelle64, 123soleil, mogmu, speleo, le petit chineur, kriska... She leant back, rubbing her eyes. She was going to be at this all night.

  “Eric Satie” narrowed it down to sixteen, of which five were scores as opposed to recordings. She noted the pseudonyms: veron25, ricky, nathalie, chanty and achille. She tried the same with the other sites but they were much smaller and “Eric Satie” provided just one result, a CD collection being offered for twenty euros by Zenouba. But when she went back to “music score”, she got 418 answers on AVSuper alone.

  He had to be in there somewhere, hidden in the whirl of URLs that was now beginning to swim before her eyes. But there were too many possibilities, and even supposing she found the right transaction, the web page itself would have gone and whatever pseudonym he’d used would have gone with it.

  She sighed. For this to work, she needed more than a list of addresses. What Vincent had given her was a maze with dozens of entry points and no exit. But what she needed was a computer forensics team, equipped with the right software. Or had
Vincent already done that and decided there was nothing? Except he didn’t know what he was looking for when he did it.

  Besides, supposing she found the transaction, even the seller’s pseudonym, what then? If he changed his identity each time, had telephone numbers that no longer existed, she’d never be able to find him on her own.

  If she went over Enzo’s accounts, would she come across a cheque that hadn’t been cashed? And what would Enzo have written on the stub? She doubted he was as meticulous as Roncet. In any case, access to his accounts could only come from Vincent, and she wasn’t about to ask him for that.

  She moved to the settee and stared into the embers of the fire. Her mind was a frazzle. She needed a good night’s sleep.

  She woke at three in the morning from a bad dream about someone shouting at her. ‘You’ll see,’ he said, ‘it’ll be all over the Internet. Avoid this seller!’ In the dream she served in a shop where all the food turned out to be made of plastic.