While the Music Lasts

by John Brooke

  His statement had sent Chloé storming out, wailing down the hall with Bénédicte in pursuit. Paul Dafy heard her and, defying Magui, had stepped into the hall. Chloé went through a weirdly repeated scene with her identical brother — though Paul was less stoic than Simon and started yelling back at her about ‘that bastard musician!’

  Magui had drawn on Paul again. Bénédicte had talked Chloé down.

  Aliette had traded twins with Magui. It was while battling with Paul Dafy that a chorus of eight women led by Laure Legault came up the stairs holding hands ‘in solidarity,’ demanding to see the chief inspector. Leaving Paul Dafy to cool his heels, Aliette went down the hall. En groupe, they confessed to stoking feelings of ill-will against Luc Malarmé which may have provoked the fire in his vines and perhaps the beating in the street and the killing of his dog. Five admitted to tearing down and/or defacing several of Luc Malarmé’s aborted concert notices. They divulged their Internet code names. No surprise to hear Laure Legault admit to Guerrière. She said they were doing this ‘in the spirit of healing the community. And for Aline.’ Which meant the SAMU ambulance leaving from rue Canal de l’Abbé was now town news. The chief inspector had wanted to scream at Laure Legault and her delegation, but she wanted more to keep the Miri thread as far from the investigation as reality permitted. So she heard them out in respectful silence, then asked the assembled ladies, ‘Can you forgive Monsieur Malarmé?’

  The question brought an uneasy silence, skeptical looks.

  Well… But the notion was now communicated in no uncertain terms. Aliette had thanked them for coming in and told them they were free to go. And gone back to Paul Dafy.

  When the Miri acolytes were safely gone, Mathilde Lahi had guided a distraught Chloé Dafy across the passerelle and into the care of her mother and father. It had not gone well. Aliette was called to reception again. At the foot of the main stairs, SAMU medics were attending to Chloé.

  After stumbling back across the passerelle, desolate and exhausted from a screaming session with her mother, Chloé had lost her footing on the way down the stairs, tumbled headlong and snapped her forearm. Chloé moaned pitiably as they’d carried her out on a stretcher. Aliette had ordered Paul Dafy to observe with her from the office window as his sister was loaded into the ambulance and taken away. She had noted Paul Dafy’s cold reaction to his sibling’s pain.

  Paul was a harder nut than Simon. Aliette finally called the Procureur and requested that the Dafy twins be remanded to garde-à-vue. Magistrate Martine Rogge had called shortly after. She would conduct first interviews that evening. Aliette wished her luck — she had her own problems — Junior Inspector Bénédicte Barnay was getting all teary again. It appeared the killing of Jérome Giffard and the day’s commotion had brought on an emotional crisis. It was disquieting, not to mention embarrassingly unprofessional, the last thing the chief inspector needed at such a fraught moment in the community. As for Magui, she was already completely convinced that Paul Dafy had pulled the trigger and killed Jérome Giffard. And Aliette was not. It was far too early to be convinced of anything.

  An hour later — an hour of Aliette mostly ignoring a surly Paul while she conferred with Magui and Bénédicte — the gendarmes arrived in two cars to collect and escort the Dafy twins to a holding cell in the city. Magui went to sign the papers, Bénédicte went to cry in her office. Mathilde came in with tea. Responding to Aliette’s consternation, she had quietly mentioned that Bénédicte had been screaming back at the screaming Chloé Dafy.

  Summoned and asked to account for her behaviour, Bénédicte had muttered, ‘She’s a stupid fool!’ and stomped out.

  …Thus a dazed cop at the window at tea time, the crowd below all watching.

  God knew what that crowd was thinking went on inside the offices of the Police Judiciaire.

  It was past seven and she was still at her desk when Sergio called to say that she had looked ‘magnificently mythic’ standing at her window with her cup of tea on the evening news, and he was proud of her. She told him it had been a day in hell at the office.

  • 32 •

  ONGOING MANOEUVRES IN THE FIELD

  But not everyone had been at the office. Junior Inspector Isabelle Escande had passed the morning enjoying a leisurely coffee at a place in Magalas, studying the interaction between the morning manager and the wholesale baker from Murviel. That day, she was another housewife with nothing to do on a summer morning, who’d come in to enjoy ‘some real coffee’ and look at the Internet. And listen. Magistrate Julien Roberge, instructing the investigation, had authorized the insertion of a powerful microphone in Isabelle’s tablet.

  Inspector Henri Dardé was across the street in the car, taking pictures.

  The café’s morning manager was complaining about price and the baguette baker was telling him it went down if he bought more, and Isabelle was reading an editorial about France’s right to intervene in the pending execution of a French drug trafficker in Indonesia on the Figaro.fr website, when the NEW message alert had appeared. She had logged through to the Miri thread.

  From Leina: Imploring!!! They were ripping her life apart because of this stupid man.

  Isabelle immediately typed: You mean your husband? Or Jérome Giffard?

  She considered it and deleted it. It would be extraneous. Unprofessional. But it was what she thought. The hardest part of Isabelle’s job was keeping her feelings neutral. She quit the thread and went back to the politics affecting the fate of the man in Jakarta. After the baker had left, she quietly negotiated a gram of white powder with her muffin. Half an hour later, Henri flipped on his wipers. Time to go. She met him at the post office, where he bought stamps and she sent a card to her mother. They came out together and headed over to Autignac, where the peripatetic baguette baker was having lunch in a dingy bistro. Henri donned a Béziers rugby cap (on loan from Nabi Zidane) and they traded roles.

  Henri called in to the office later that afternoon. He listened to Mathilde Lahi going non-stop for several minutes, his only comment a soft, incredulous laugh. Finally bidding Mathilde bonsoir, he closed his phone and announced it was time to call it a day. Mathilde had advised that there was no point coming back in; the boss was up to her ears in chaos. ‘The murder. Dafy family’s at war.’

  ‘With their banker?’ wondered Isabelle, very casually.

  ‘Financial advisor. I like her. Knows her stuff.’ He shared the gist of Mathilde’s report.

  Isabelle was intrigued. ‘You say she snapped? Or snapped her arm?’

  ‘Sounds like both, if I heard it right. In three places, falling down the main stairs.’

  ‘Three places!’

  ‘If I heard right.’ Henri was riding the clutch, looking for a break in the home-bound traffic. He could not have noticed Isabelle Escande almost crack a smile. Finally pulling out, he asked, ‘I gather she’s his girlfriend?’

  Isabelle sniffed, dismissive. ‘A banker? How could Luc Malarmé be with a banker? It just doesn’t work.’ And remarked that she was pretty sure it was over between Luc Malarmé and Chloé Dafy.

  ‘Everyone should have a financial advisor,’ Henri mumbled, adjusting the visor against the five o’clock sun. He did not probe further. Henri did not know much about the case and could not care less about Luc Malarmé. He had more important things on his mind. Tomorrow’s target was a bar at Colombiers, a bedroom community feeding both Béziers and Narbonne, a busy port of call for Midi Canal traffic. Junior Inspector Escande would team with another transplanted Parisien serving on the Béziers squad, the two of them as a young couple on a holiday barge cruise looking for an evening of fun. Between Nabi Zidane’s several points of purchase in the city and the roaming baker from Murviel, they were on the verge of a very large takedown indeed. ‘Julien,’ Roberge, the instructing judge, ‘says he’s almost there. Next week, I’m sure.’

  ‘It is exciting,’ murmured Isabell
e, enjoying the golden-green views as they sped along.

  ‘You never sound it.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just me.’

  Henri lived in Murviel with Armelle, a transplanted Bretonne as large as he — although their place was on the other side of town, far from the cocaine-delivering baguette baker. Isabelle had left her far too conspicuous silver SmartCar in his garage. They parted there.

  ‘Good work. We’ll do it again tomorrow.’

  ‘À demain.’ She went directly to Luc’s.

  He was working in his studio. A piano track. Luc hadn’t been talking much — far less than his usual minimal. After Saturday night, he’d gone inside himself and stayed there. He played with his piano track. His thoughts and feelings were there. Mind and heart a universe away from the chaos at the office, Isabelle sipped cold wine and listened. When he was satisfied, they took the bottle and went out to the pool, took off their clothes and jumped in.

  Made love.

  Lay in the evening sun.

  Isabelle’s day had worked out rather well.

  • 33 •

  BORDEL

  The funeral bell was tolling for Jérome Giffard.

  They had gone as a group and filled a pew at the back. The chief inspector had insisted. ‘It’s about where we fit in this community. Allez!’ She’d marched them over.

  The casket was closed. The exit wound in the side of the deceased’s head was ‘messy,’ according to the forensics report sent along by Légiste Dr. Annelise Duflot — not a pleasant take-away view of Jérome, especially for the children. His rugby club teammates, minus the Dafy twins, filled the front rows reserved for family. They wore their game uniforms. A BatiMat cap lay on the casket lid along with a pair of well-worn spiked boots, tied by the laces.

  Henri and Isabelle had a rendezvous with Nabi Zidane and had slipped out as the first eulogy ended and the woman directing the school choir got the kids in place. They did well for their age. First a meandering, kitschy number about ‘our home’ Aliette thought she recognized, though she had no idea what it was. ‘What’s that one?’ she whispered. ‘School song,’ whispered Mathilde. Then a Jacques Brel standard about old friends. The chief inspector led the rest of her team out while the kids made way for the next speaker. It was a lovely tribute, but the Judicial Police had a lot of work ahead of them.

  Indeed, it was a good hour after they’d snuck away that mourners began returning to vehicles parked along the place. They would reassemble at the cemetery for the interment. Afterward there would be a wake at the school. Saint-Brin was giving its day to Jérome.

  Mathilde had come in with a tray and was pouring tea. Bénédicte was staring into space, her bleak eyes seeming to follow the doleful chime of the solitary bell. Aliette was disagreeing with Magui. The ballistics report said Jérome Giffard was killed by a 30/05 calibre round, likely from a Remington 7400, from about fifty metres. If not that, a Winchester Vulcan. Both were popular mid-scale hunting rifles. If the sights had been properly set, a decent marksman would have no problem hitting a boar or a deer from that distance. A man? In reconstructing the scene based on scattered recall and the position of the victim’s body, forensics was now saying the notion of Jérome Giffard stepping ‘into the way of the shot’ was not accurate; more likely, the shooter had simply missed his target — by some eighteen inches.

  ‘If the sights were right?’ Magui shrugged. ‘Anger can skew the view.’ A crucial detail yet to be resolved.

  Aliette shrugged back. ‘So can wine.’

  They agreed an angry drinker could miss that supposedly easy shot. The best logic fitting the most logical scenario. Magui still insisted it had to be Paul Dafy.

  The Dafy brothers remained in holding cells at the police building in central Béziers, where they had been subjected to interviews by Magistrate Martine Rogge. Forensics said the killing round came from the stock of 800 individual packs containing twenty rounds each, purschased wholesale by Simon Dafy on behalf of his club. Simon claimed they started working through the supply last season. He had got the box out of his gun locker on Friday morning and left it on his desk. ‘Yes, open. It already was…b’eh, since last November.’ Some members, Paul included, had stopped by Simon’s house Friday night to replenish their kits. Yes, they’d had a drink. Saturday morning, he had brought along ‘about fifty or so?’ individual packs in a basket and handed out ‘perhaps three dozen?’ amongst the eight in his personal hunting party.

  Simon’s accounting in this regard turned out to be even more casual than he’d implied during his initial interview with Aliette. He now claimed there was an ‘honour system,’ insisting that all the members eventually paid into the club kitty. Simon admitted he was ‘not sure’ how many packs remained from the orginal purchase. ‘Enough to last the summer,’ was his best guess.

  Lacking accurate ammunition distribution records, their best hope was to match marks on the recovered round with rifling marks in the barrel of the guilty gun. They had to find it.

  ‘These hunter types have so many guns,’ the chief inspector moaned, exhausted by the very thought. And not all always registered. And there were…‘how many boar hunters?’

  ‘Eighty-seven names on the roster.’ Magui had the list in front of her.

  But Magui was set on Paul for the fatally botched attempt on Luc Malarmé. ‘Circumstances suggest someone who knows how lazy Simon’s accounting is. Paul would know that better than anyone.’ And Paul had admitted to beating Malarmé in the street at Easter. And he had the right profile. Blustery. Emotionally volatile.

  Aliette had to acknowledge Paul’s personality issues. And the circumstances.

  But the notion would not settle. ‘Would he really do that to his brother?’

  ‘What about with his brother?’ Magui countered. ‘Both have lots of hate for the man who has wrecked their friend’s life a second time and embarrassed their family by seducing their sister. Both know Simon can waffle his way through his careless accounting. Embarrassing for Simon, sure — but, well, the honour system and all that, we’re all friends. More to the point, they both know eighty-seven members will own at least twice that many guns, more likely three or four times as many, not all of them in the registry, and the bets are against us finding the right one if it’s hidden.’

  Aliette resisted. ‘Not Simon, Magui. No…’ She believed Simon Dafy was telling the truth. It was the way he had let his distraught sister pummel and smack him without the slightest word or resistance. Guilty people hiding things tended to fight back in their particular way, even coolly, gently, but always deflecting blame.

  ‘Then alone.’ Magui turned it back to Paul. ‘He’s a man who lets his passions rule.’

  He was. ‘…Yes, maybe Paul.’

  Magui jumped on Aliette’s half-hearted acquiescence. ‘Just because he’s a hothead doesn’t mean he isn’t cunning.’ Plus: Paul lived around the corner from his brother, in rue Cours de la Reine. He had keys to his brother’s house, knew where Simon kept the key to the gun locker — meaning Paul could have gone into Simon’s and taken a pack of ammunition at any time before Saturday night. And: Paul had direct access to the large unused garden area behind both his and Simon’s homes. ‘Why not? He can still defend his brother. And,’ Magui added, enjoying a ride on circumstantial, ‘he wears a balaclava when he hunts.’

  As protection against whipping branches in the heat of the chase, claimed Paul.

  Magui pushed her case. ‘And if it’s not a plan, it’s an impulse on a sensed opportunity. Paul’s at the party, drinking, the talk gets around to Luc Malarmé, maybe he’s even talking to Jérome, hearing the speech about the need to protect the children…or maybe Jérome’s well into it and crying about his life, Chloé, his mama, people start mentioning that Luc’s at the corner singing with his sister right now, the ammo box is right there in the gun locker, Paul grabs a pack when no one’s looking, a new p
ack that no one’s touched, and then steps out to hear some music, or to check on his kids. He gets his rifle, crosses the dark orchard, climbs the wall, takes his shot — misses, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get out of there fast, stashes the gun, and, best cover, goes straight back to the party and is there when the news trickles back.’

  Aliette’s only comeback was that any of the members attending the party could have lifted a pack of rounds from the supply in Simon’s gun locker and followed the same scenario.

  And, bottom line: the Dafy brothers were holding fast in Magistrate Rogge’s interrogations and it was looking like they were going to get bogged down in searching all the possibilities.

  Magui Barthès acknowledged this with an impatient huff. ‘OK. But which member?’

  ‘Every single one, Inspector. Until we find a crack.’

  A conspiracy? A compulsive act? Aliette and Magui sipped tea, avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Bénédicte Barnay seemed almost reluctant to add, ‘And Francine Tabler cleaned the house on Friday afternoon.’

  The chief inspector acknowledged with a slow nod. It was another thing she didn’t need, but there it was. ‘Does Francine hunt?’

  ‘No idea. But she’d’ve had the place to herself, because Aline took the kids to her parents in Narbonne.’