by John Brooke
‘Did you meet him? Monsieur Malarmé.’
He brightened. ‘Oh, yes. Sold him and his friends lots of drugs.’ Then darkened. ‘I mean…’
She knew what he meant. And she guessed Michel Velosa had learned a lesson or two from the man whose chair he taken away. He was still in office, after all. ‘Alors: Messy?’
‘A dismaying lack of subtlety. Some of us felt something had to be done.’
‘And the partying? How did that play into it? For my investigation?’
The mayor’s eyes bounced slightly. ‘But this is where subtlety went off the rails. I mean René and Esmé. And —’
‘Esmé?’
‘René’s wife. Esmerelde. And Jérome Giffard and the thing with his poor wife. And there were a few others I could name.’ And he did.
Instructive finger notwithstanding, the inspector realized she had not been hearing quite what the mayor had been saying. Business was business. It was the parties. Abashed, she mumbled, ‘And so you cleaned up the mess.’
‘We tried.’
But there was a bitter aftertaste from that time. Like the smell of a doused blaze.
• 18 •
THIN WOMEN
‘Come in, come in! Wonderful to see you. This is Esmerelde.’ Former mayor René Clermont puffed on his Gitane and sipped the ruby-red beverage in his glass. ‘And Jimi.’
Aliette was thinking that perhaps she should not have stopped to chat with Michel Velosa. And perhaps, out of civic duty, the mayor might have advised her what to expect? When she finally knocked on the door in the enclave up behind the Cave coopérative, René and Esmerelde Clermont had already finished a couple of bottles of guignolet. A third was waiting beside a bucket of mostly melted ice.
It looked like Jimi, the dirty Pomeranian lolling at the end of the divan, had been partying too.
Clermont was in his seventies, one of those rake-thin men who lived on drinks and cigarettes. He had dressed in a jacket and tie to receive her. He glowed from a shiny shave and reeked of a scent only a wife could love. He was a well-scrubbed but sadly dissipated bourgeois wobbling through the part. A large and apparently unnoticed pink blotch on his silk tie from a spill did not help.
Madame, stretched on the divan clad in a translucent black blouse without a soutien-gorge beneath it, her tiny, sparkly leather skirt hiked far too high on bony thighs, completely destroyed the façade. Esmerelde Clermont was dangerously thin and didn’t care. Sitting indecorously, she offered her hand. ‘Welcome, Chief Inspector. To what do we owe the pleasure?’
‘Old town business, madame. And a recent fire at the residence of Monsieur Luc Malarmé?’
‘We know all about old town business. But I hadn’t heard of any fire.’
Aliette was not surprised. ‘Quite serious. Criminal.’
‘Well, that’s your job, isn’t it?’ She uncapped the third bottle and poured a glass for her guest. ‘Homemade. Cherries from our orchard.’ Adding, ‘You may call me Esmé.’
Aliette bowed a merci. Waited for ice. Esmé was smiling at her.
René stood by, puffing pensively, as if debating with himself whether he ought to remind Esmé to offer ice. He said, ‘If not for Luc Malarmé, I’d still be in the office downstairs from you, Inspector. Your predecessor was my good friend.’
Commissaire Joseph Lopez had finished his service in Perpignon, where he was now retired.
Aliette said, ‘I gather Joseph got the office after Jérome Giffard left town.’
Before her husband could reply to that, Esmerelde said, ‘If not for Luc Malarmé, my true spirit would never have been released.’
Aliette asked René, ‘And did Joseph know about your dealings with Luc Malarmé?’
He sipped his drink. ‘No. Why would he?’
‘Because he was your good friend?’
‘It was private business and it was not against the law.’
‘Then why aren’t you still mayor?’
Esmé Clermont prompted, ‘Tell the truth, chèri.’
He eyed his wife. Told his guest, ‘I miscalculated.’
‘That is true.’ Madame Clermont smiled and dropped a tiny ice cube in her guest’s tall glass. She informed Aliette, ‘René and I do truth exercises.’ Turning to her husband: ‘In fact, you went far past the line you usually went for your good friends. Yes, chèri?’
‘I misjudged his intentions.’
‘Because you were wide-eyed, like some teenaged girl.’
‘Like you?’
‘Very much so. But I liberated myself. I discovered a new level of existence thanks to that man. You on the other hand, only embarrassed yourself.’
‘But you forgave me, chèrie.’
‘I did, chèri. And I always will.’
Turning to Aliette, Esmé Clermont stated, ‘I am a follower of open-relationship philosophies of free love, Inspector. Truth and forgiveness are intrinsic to the process. They have to be. Mm?’
Aliette nodded. She was still hoping for more ice.
Esmé sipped her drink. ‘I experienced a revelatory transformation one evening in the company of Luc Malarmé.’ She stroked the snoring dog. ‘Jimi’s father was there that evening. I believe he experienced something profoundly spiritual too. And he passed it on to you, didn’t he, Jimi?’ She gave the beast a loving scratch. ‘Jimi for Jimi Hendrix? He was there that night. In spirit, mm?’
Aliette tried to be polite.
René Clermont stared into his drink. ‘Unfortunately, others would not forgive. They used my miscalculation against me.’ He pushed his glass against Aliette’s. ‘Tchin, Inspector.’
‘Tchin.’ She would have to make do with a single piece of ice and it had almost disappeared. She tasted and nodded a compliment.
Esmé Clermont was thinking back to the days of her revelatory transformation. ‘Several of the growers felt betrayed. Our major families. They were hoping to sit down with Francis Fernandez. René’s goodwill enabled Luc Malarmé to get his parcels before the fact, as it were.’
René clarified. ‘Francis and Luc had been talking for a long time. Luc understood Francis.’
Esmé absolved Francis Fernandez. ‘He had no idea what he was doing was wrong.’
Aliette turned to René. ‘You said it wasn’t wrong.
Esmé clarified. ‘I mean the abuse of community trust.’
‘Luc was an interesting guy,’ offered René, sitting beside his wife. ‘A lot of fun.’
‘A clever, manipulative and dangerously charming boy,’ corrected Esmerelde, stroking her husband’s tanned pate. A cherry orchard is a healthy pastime. ‘It was very obvious — to some of us.’ She smiled, nothing but loving in reply to her husband’s baleful glance. She offered the police a lewdly playful wink. ‘He liked thin women. And he knew how to throw a party. Mm?’
Chief Inspector Nouvelle finished most of her glass. She detected no embedded rancor in René Clermont, no long-harboured and nurtured urge toward revenge almost twenty years on. The former mayor of Saint-Brin came across as far removed where it came to old scores and fires in the vines. If the fallout from his ‘miscalculation’ had spawned negative effects, René Clermont had lived through them with a wife who was willfully oblivious. Luc Malarmé was a political mistake in the distant past. René’s Esmerelde was still exploring the effects, and, it appeared, enjoying them. Esmé brought both punishment and a sort of depraved salvation to René’s post-political life. Aliette would ask Mathilde to flesh out the picture. (As it were.)
She collected more names in the flow of René Clermont’s dubious maundering, and pleaded a busy day tomorrow when Esmé steered her side of the story toward the huge fun available to les échangistes; i.e., those who exchanged sexual partners in a social context. She left with a bottle of homemade guignolet. Sergio would be pleased to sample it — though she was careful not to menti
on his existence to her host.
In mulling the value of her visit with René and Esmerelde Clermont, the chief inspector arrived at the realization that the notion of guilt was nowhere in the mix.
• 19 •
ENTER MARTINE ROGGE
Mathilde Lahi said, ‘She does it to punish him.’
‘She seemed happy enough to me.’
‘It’s pathetic and grotesque.’ Mathilde did not want to gossip about René and Esmerelde. She handed over the memo from the Palais and left. Magistrate Martine Rogge would be instructing the arson investigation. She would see Chief Inspector Nouvelle that afternoon.
Aliette left for the city, made herself a lunch in Sergio’s kitchen, brushed her teeth and hair and crossed the park. The courthouse, formerly the Bishop’s palace, was a hundred steps from Cathédrale Sainte-Nazaire. Two armed guards greeted her at the courtyard gate. She climbed the marble stairs to the second floor. Magistrate Regarri’s nameplate adorned the door three from her destination. It was closed and she didn’t knock. Madame Verner, Magistrate Rogge’s clerk, greeted her and showed her through to Martine.
The prosecutors and magistrates housed in the Palais de Justice were well accommodated. The windows were sealed but the air felt fresher than the city air beyond the bullet-proofed glass. The blazing afternoon sun had been strategically deflected by carefully adjusted vertical blinds, setting off the rich colours in the Turkish carpet, the subtle tones in the watercolour nude on the wall. It found and gleamed on a patch of parquet flooring. It touched the gold-embossed titles of law texts in the case behind the elegant oak desk. The large space was comfortably muted. One could attend to legal clarity without undue distraction.
But first, Aliette and Martine chatted about the summer while Madame Verner served tea. Yes, first names. The law is immutable but each judge is a different human. This judge was a spindly woman in middle age who appeared to work at being austerely asexual, albeit always elegantly turned out. It was a professional mask. Martine Rogge was an amusing and often ribald woman, mother of five girls and wife to a man well situated in the Béziers business community, though exactly how and where the inspector had no idea. Nor did Sergio, who knew lots about his colleagues but not everything. What mattered was Magistrate Rogge and Chief Inspector Nouvelle liked each other. They had worked together several times, and they connected easily.
Martine put on her glasses as a sign that they should begin. ‘So…’ opening the file, ‘we have a beating for singing in the street. Now this. Quite an escalation.’
‘Indeed.’ So Sub-Proc Dilobello had shared her rejected petition with Magistrate Rogge.
Martine touched her keyboard; the screen beside her was illuminated. ‘Which you thought might be a sort of hate crime inspired by this chat group dedicated to Miriam Monette.’
Chief Inspector Nouvelle liked Magistrate Rogge and they communicated well. But at that moment her safest move was a disinterested shrug. ‘You’ve been following it?’
Pouring herself more tea, the judge peered at her screen, bemused. ‘My two youngest were on a chat group like this after they released him. Poor Miri! My girls say Luc Malarmé should have got the guillotine…’ Martine sipped her tea and studied the messages on the screen. ‘This Guerrière. And SainteThérèse… And TruthTeller! I marvel at their vehemence. So righteous. I can see why you brought this to Danielle.’
Aliette was suddenly on her guard — tone quietly in neutral. ‘She said it’s out of bounds.’
And IssaE’s presence there made that problematic.
‘And it still is. Privacy is sacred till it isn’t. But it is fascinating. They really hate him.’
‘They do. They can’t forgive him. But I can’t believe anyone would go to this extent to keep a man from singing a song.’
‘No…’ Martine Rogge was scrolling down, intent, incredulous, ‘but they’ve put themselves at the heart of it. They’re like children…Here:’ She stopped and read aloud: ‘Leina: Did we make this happen? And this IssaE: Belief makes it happen… Blaming themselves for the fire? Like children blaming themselves for the divorce. Children believe it’s their fault.’
Aliette held steady. ‘They believe in Miri, madame. But when they get off the Internet they’re not warriors and goddesses, much less truth tellers.’
‘Just so. But all this moral outrage: maybe someone wants us to believe they might.’
‘Possible. But the fire has to be related to this bad business that went on. The business angle would seem the more realistic approach here.’
‘And I agree.’ Martine Rogge turned away from her screen. Sipped tea. Contemplated Aliette — the sort of assessing moment that makes a cop fidget. ‘But him. What’s he like?’
‘He’s… hard to describe. Unrealistic?’
‘My daughters say he’s slept with a thousand women. Can you imagine?’
‘I thought that was Johnny Hallyday.’
‘My daughters are not Johnny fans… Either way, they find that very wrong.’
Aliette could only nod. ‘Are you a Luc fan?’
‘Sure. Or I was… Unrealistic?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I look forward to meeting him.’ So saying, Martine Rogge picked up her pen. ‘Bon…This donkey farm that turned into a villa where there was only supposed to be vines. Forensics says whoever set this fire knew how. Vines are worth money, livelihood. The money seems indeed our logical start-point.’
‘Yes.’ Aliette breathed.
‘But this undercurrent of outraged morality is there and cannot be discounted.’
‘No…Very much there.’
After an hour of strategy and parameters, Aliette received her mandate. There was no language even hinting at the Miri thread. But she remained unsure where she stood with Martine Rogge — who advised with a grin that she’d be keeping track of Miri’s het-up fans. Did Martine find it funny? Or was it just her kids’ devotion to movie stars and tragic love, a fallen rock star’s outlandish sexual mythology? Do you ever really know your instructing judge? Aliette Nouvelle had worked with dozens and slept with two. Their sense of things was never completely hers.
That evening the chief inspector recounted her meeting with Martine Rogge as she prepared for bed. Sergio Regarri lay there, vaguely amused. He muttered, ‘At least now it’s official.’
It tripped her up — made her wonder what he’d been seeing since Luc Malarmé had wandered into her office. She had sensed a worry these past two months, a patient disapproval. Aliette had needed Luc to be ‘official’ — Luc’s very presence left ‘personal’ too undefined. It seemed Sergio knew that. Was she really so transparent? Gliding past the comment, she crawled in beside him, kept the focus on Martine Rogge. ‘She’s a fan and she’s hot-to-trot to meet him. She has two teenage daughters who think he should be put to death.’
‘He’ll play her a song.’
‘It’s what I’m afraid of.’
Uncanny, her judge noted, ‘We all hear music differently, Inspector.’
Aliette reached for him and he made no effort to resist. ‘Such a smart man, you.’
Quickly busy with a nipple, he couldn’t disagree.
• 20 •
ASSIGNMENTS
Inspector Dardé would not be needed on the Malarmé arson investigation, at least not to start. His cocaine-distribution investigation was gathering an excellent momentum that could not be compromised. ‘You know where to find me, boss.’ He left the room. Inspector Escande’s time would be more useful in a dedicated role with Henri. Isabelle followed Henri out. Inspectors Barthès and Barney remained at the table. Aliette bit into a sugary cinnamon torsade, washed it down with coffee, briefly contemplated the magnolia, stately in the morning sun.
‘Bon,’ licking her fingers, tapping the Deeds and Records dossier. ‘You’ve looked at this?’
‘O
ui.’ Magui Barthès would trace the money.
Documents in the file listed the particulars of registered offers made to Francis Fernandez for the purchase of his land. A megastar musician’s offer had been far and away the most generous. The next-highest had come from the Grasset brothers, one of whom lived a few hundred steps from Aliette.
She was hoping the fire was about money — dirty, but never too complicated at the root. She dreaded its author being her neighbour. ‘Vines for grapes, point final?’ No donkey farms. No deluxe villas. Those were the rules until Luc Malarmé hit town. ‘Mayor had his nose deep in the middle of it. Bad blood lingers. Voilà.’
Magui agreed, ‘Mathilde says he corrupted the system. Been in place for generations.’
‘But it’s ancient history,’ observed Bénédicte, unafraid to be skeptical. ‘So why now?’
Aliette suggested, ‘Under the cover of the furor over Miri?’
Bénédicte Barnay frowned. She had no file. She had a screen displaying the Miri thread.
Aliette said, ‘Whether they, or one of them, would make the leap from killing his dog and bashing his head to starting a fire is doubtful. But it is possible there is a direct link to someone with a lingering grudge over the bad business, and that is why you will be pursuing this line of thinking.’
‘But we don’t know who the Miri thread people are,’ noted Bénédicte.
Aliette acknowledged this. ‘And legally, we can’t.’
‘Boss?’ Bénédicte was perplexed.
‘The purpose of the Miri thread is fanciful and the names there are not real, but those names guard the privacy of real people. There is a gap between the Miri fantasy and the real violence against Luc Malarmé and the Proc doesn’t like it. I wanted access to the Miri thread when they beat him up. No go. And no case, because of that very issue. So now we have a case, but no snooping. OK, Bénédicte?…we clear?’