While the Music Lasts

by John Brooke

  Simon and Paul Dafy had been in provisional detention for ten days now. Magui Barthès had been digging hard, bringing more circumstantial evidence to Martine, who saw what Magui saw. But the lawyer hired by Claude Dafy was pressuring Substitute Procureur Danielle Dilobello, and without a substantiated charge laid soon, it could not last much longer. For their part, the Dafy twins, separately and in bizarre tandem — ‘like two distorted mirrors,’ as Maître Dilobello rather poetically put it — maintained steadfast denial of any involvement whatsoever in the attempt on Luc Malarmé. ‘Yes, I hate him.’ Neither fudged on that central issue. Volatile Paul expressed it more strongly than reflective Simon. But no matter the direction of ‘our talks,’ as Martine dryly termed the process, they always came back to same problematic point: Why would I take such an insane chance with my sister and my dear friend hardly a step away? Not to mention any number of neighbours and a crowd of kids?

  Why indeed? The chief inspector felt Magui and Martine were barking up the wrong tree.

  Magui said, ‘Sometimes things are exactly what they seem, boss.’ She reminded them again that Paul admitted beating Luc Malarmé to a bloody pulp.

  Martine Rogge chimed in, ‘We have to work with what we have, Inspector.’

  Outnumbered, Aliette fell back into irritated silence. With Thierry Belanger eliminated, she was stuck for a concrete alternative. And she knew that Magui would not be dissuaded. Inspector Barthès had extracted one confession from Paul Dafy and was determined to get another — with steady, and increasingly urgent, support from Martine Rogge.

  Who pointed to any number of ‘cracks.’

  They reviewed:

  There were missing chunks of time and easy cover: Paul’s home was on the same contiguous neighbouring square of streets as Simon’s. Cross four yards and you were into Simon’s. From either yard, one could easily climb a low partition wall and proceed unnoticed to the far corner of the abandoned orchard and climb the wall to the shooter’s postion. At best, Paul’s accounting of his movements the night of the party were vague. ‘In and out, chats here and there, went home a couple of times to check on the kids.’ His wife and friends confirmed, but were as unspecific as Paul. His three children, aged eight to eleven, expressed only dim awareness of being ‘checked on’ that night — a warm summer evening when everyone was in and out of houses all over town.

  Then there were the guns: Paul had five registered rifles. Simon recalled Paul having six. Paul’s wife was sure there were eight — he was always on eBay, looking. Paul readily admitted to being a less than expert shot. That morning he had fired ‘dozens of rounds’ in pursuit of a boar that had eluded him. ‘Far better at rugby than hunting. More my kind of game.’ But it was a social obligation and he always went. And yes, he’d had lots of wine that night. ‘It was a party!’

  The knees of a pair of camouflage pants Magui found in the laundry hamper in Paul’s home showed scraping from stone and stains from dewy earth or wood. These matched scuff marks on the ancient stone wall, though only in a general way. ‘We were right behind her,’ explained Paul. He meant behind the boar, scrambling through dense forest, and three members of the hunting party enthusiastically agreed on that. But the marks were there.

  A black nylon balaclava, the sort favoured by motorbike assassins and police tactical teams, was sitting underneath the soiled pants in the same hamper, smelling thickly of sweat. Paul Dafy explained that too. ‘It’s hard work.’ Five boar hunters from the morning’s party confirmed Paul always wore one; and he could have worn it again that night. And Paul had a key to Simon’s house, and one for the gun locker in the office. Both wives confirmed Paul was often back and forth from Simon’s. ‘But it’s usually for rugby club matters,’ said Paul.

  ‘An answer for everything,’ said Martine Rogge. She felt the most damning circumstantial leads came from the mouths of the two wives, Aline and Marie, both of whom intimated a creeping despair as to their husbands’ preference for their friends and their games over their families — by which they clearly meant themselves. ‘They both say the rugby team’s the worst of it,’ Martine noted, adding, ‘I’m starting to think this could be a key.’

  Obediently taking the cue, Aliette turned to Junior Inspector Barnay, who had already been through the rugby team, trying to tie the beating in the street to the fire in the vines on the basis of a hairy face as reported by two seven-year-olds. Bénédicte was assigned to talk to them again.

  Bénédicte was still brooding on her mistake. She insisted sullenly that they needed to revisit Thierry Belanger. ‘He hated Luc Malarmé more than anyone.’

  ‘Not more than Paul Dafy,’ chirped Magui.

  Magui and Bénédicte started debating levels of hatred.

  Aliette had to break it up. ‘Can we not please try to avoid absurdly useless arguments when our judge is present?’ Then she got up from the table. She needed a break herself.

  Like Magistrate Rogge, Chief Inspector Nouvelle worked at being optimistic; but at the heart of it, police officers are born skeptics. When an investigation mushrooms and spreads and loses its definition, doubt turns inward. It reflects in the faces of colleagues. Aliette was not in the right frame of mind to be useful that morning. She left her two inspectors with Martine Rogge, smiling wanly in virtual space, and went down the hall.

  ‘I’ll go, Mathilde.’ Another beautiful Midi summer morning, a quick jaunt to the post office for the office mail. A short break sometimes helps. Aliette Nouvelle knew there was a mistake, but could not define it. She felt it like a pinprick when she looked up from her mulling to meet the baleful eyes of Christine Dafy, who was stopped on the post office steps, inspecting a handful of mail.

  ‘Bonjour.’ The last person she wanted to run in to.

  The librarian nodded a guarded bonjour. The feeling was clearly mutual.

  But in Saint-Brin it was inevitable. And it was the chief inspector’s duty to be civil.

  ‘How is Chloé getting along? Awful fall.’

  A gloomy nod to acknowledge a neighbour’s concern. ‘Broken in three places. Pins and rods till September…but it will heal.’ But it was more than a broken arm, they both knew. ‘As for her heart, I don’t really know, do I?’

  ‘She’s had a shock.

  Christine snorted, riposted, ‘Haven’t we all?’

  It was Aliette’s turn to offer a guarded nod.

  ‘The truth is, I don’t know my daughter. If nothing else, this horrible thing has made that plain, once and for all.’ Christine Dafy smiled sadly. ‘To me, she seems completely crazy.’

  ‘I thought she was making good progress.’

  ‘She’s not your child.’

  ‘The investigating magistrate says she’s communicating well enough on everything they discuss.’

  ‘I don’t trust that woman.’

  ‘She has five girls of her own, madame.’

  Christine Dafy offered no reply to meaningless fluff in the face of a family disaster.

  Aliette took a breath. ‘Has he been to see her?’ Chloé’s lover Luc.

  ‘No, and I won’t allow it.’ Her face hardened. ‘He wrote her a letter.’

  ‘Well, it’s something.’

  ‘A letter saying it was not a good idea for them to be together? She’s not taking it well at all. No one’s fault but her own. Still…’ A mother had to feel badly for her foolish child.

  Aliette commiserated silently. She could not tell Christine Dafy that Chloé’s broken heart was hardly her priority.

  Christine asked, ‘Does it always take this long?’

  ‘We have to wait for the magistrate to —’

  ‘But it’s obvious!’ Christine cut in, on the verge of screaming. Or crying? She squeezed her eyes, regaining control. ‘Isn’t it?’ Obvious there was no real proof against her sons? Apparently a mother thought so. It was a town full of mothers.

&n
bsp; Aliette could not tell Christine Dafy that she agreed but too many circumstances surrounding the botched attempt on Luc Malarmé lined up too damningly against the Dafy twins. Paul especially. She would not mention the confessed beating in the street. A devastated Christine Dafy did not need to know that. Yet. Nor would she explain to Christine Dafy that the longer her sons were held, the more the crude power of assumption weighed. Aliette could not tell Christine anything, because it was a serious police matter. She stood gaping at Christine Dafy’s expectant face.

  ‘Do they have to keep them in those ghastly cells?’

  Aliette shrugged, uncertain. Where else? It was not meant to be a holiday. ‘The magistrate needs to be as sure as she can be before she recommends a charge to the Procureur.’

  Christine Dafy said, ‘What charge? They are good sons. And decent husbands, from what I gather — though one never really knows.’ Now she laughed quietly and ruefully, knowing she was the exemplar of this bitter truth. ‘But they listen to their mother. They always did.’

  Not like their sister. But that was left hanging.

  There was nothing else to say. Except, ‘I’m sorry this had to happen.’

  To which Christine Dafy shook her head, once brusquely — absurd! — and headed back to the silence of her library. Aliette went in for the mail. Then back to her meeting. And her doubts.

  • 39 •

  DOWNWARD TRENDING

  The day after their FaceTime meeting, Magistrate Martine Rogge called. They were to begin the process of interviewing all members listed on the Saint-Brin Boar Hunters’ Association roster. Aliette deduced increased pressure from the Proc’s office. She summoned Magui and Bénédicte.

  Eighty-seven names. The task meant lining up each member’s claims against those of the intransigent Dafys. It meant collecting and testing 209 registered rifles fitting the description supplied by Identité Judiciaire. Regardless of whether the members had been to the season-opening party, they all used ammunition from the supply haphazardly administered by Simon Dafy. It had to be accounted for. As did their movements on the Night of Music. The members were contacted and politely ordered to attend at the offices of the Judicial Police. They were given appointment times and urged to be punctual. They were told to bring and submit their rifles for testing. All their rifles.

  The chief inspector assumed her share of the load. To varying degrees, the boar hunters knew and respected Jérome Giffard, but most thought the past was long gone and had no knowledge of the present romantic entanglement that connected him to Luc Malarmé.

  At the crux of each interview: ‘Why in god’s name would I shoot Jérome?’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t. You were trying for Luc Malarmé, but missed.’

  They all said, more or less, ‘But that’s an easy shot.’

  An evasive response, a political harangue where a simple yes or no would do, a stubborn refusal to comply with the order to come in with their guns — Aliette and her team separated out certain boar hunters and sent them along to Magistrate Martine Rogge. Because the rifling marks in the barrel of one of Alain Grasset’s six surrendered guns were the closest they had come to a match with the killing round, the chief inspector personally sent Alain, one of the community’s leading vignerons, her neighbour, former litigant in the sale of Luc Malarmé’s land and, worst of all, husband of Jocelyne, to explain further at the Palais. Meanwhile, Montpellier sent Alain’s rifle to Paris, to the most specialized lab in the system.

  It was a tedious and stressful process. Mathilde Lahi was soon fielding ‘very rude’ calls from Jocelyne Grasset, demanding to know when Alain’s rifle would be returned. Bénédicte Barnay, operating on sulky auto-pilot, sent a memo recommending that the entire rugby club report to the judge to explain their ‘mystical bond.’ Aliette received a nasty call from Martine Rogge, growing frustrated and not amused with a junior cop’s bitter whimsy. Magui Barthès demanded ‘just one hour alone with that cretin Paul!’ and threw her pastry at the wall. Morale was low.

  But you have to serve the process…

  One night, downward trending, Aliette asked her judge, her personal judge, the one in the bed beside her, ‘Who hates Luc Malarmé? I mean that much.’

  ‘I do,’ said Sergio Regarri.

  ‘You don’t even know him.’

  ‘No, but I know you like him.’

  ‘Oh, please!’ …Men were so stupid! She didn’t know Luc Malarmé any more than he did. So how could she possibly like him?

  ‘I’m wondering that myself.’

  She punched him, rolled over and tried to sleep.

  He laughed, and was soon snoring.

  But the question would not let her sleep. Well, Inspector? How could you like this man you barely know? Because Aliette had purposely stayed away from Luc.

  • 40 •

  ISABELLE’S LIE

  Three days into it, one Léon Jamet, manager of the Cave coopérative at Berlou, sat down in front of the chief inspector. His file indicated he owned ten rifles. He had come in without fuss and surrendered the two rifles capable of firing the killing round. Carefully packed. He hoped to receive them back in the same condition. She promised they would be. Monsieur Jamet had been to Simon Dafy’s on Friday evening to pick up a supply of ammunition. He had gone out with a group from his own village the next morning. He had not attended the party. ‘Wife finds it all a bit much.’ Aliette could understand. ‘There was nothing on at home, at least nothing planned, so we went to the city, saw a beautiful choral performance in that old renovated Roman church. A nice night. We found out when we came in for the market next day. Poor Jérome. Though I can’t say I really knew him.’

  She thanked him for his cooperation and was showing him out when another question came to mind. ‘Nothing on at Berlou that night?’

  ‘Not that I know of, nothing official. Maybe some kids playing their guitars?’

  No music the Night of Music at Berlou. Aliette calmly picked up the phone and got five confirmations, before allowing it to settle as a fact contradicting what Isabelle Escande had said when she’d answered her call to come and help with the emergency in Saint-Brin that night. A fact belying the music Aliette had faintly heard nearby through the phone as they’d briefly talked. To be sure, Isabelle had responded, arrived without delay and helped out in the moment of crisis. And (to be sure) where Isabelle Escande had been before that moment was not the boss’s business. But why had she lied?

  Aliette thought back to that call. Had she even asked Isabelle where she was just then?

  No. Isabelle had volunteered the information in passing. She was on her bike and she had just got home. To Berlou…where there was no music. Why had she lied?

  It was awful how the question worked its way to the centre of everything.

  Isabelle’s sly smile these past days made it harder still.

  A voyeuristic view was addictive. This need to know was not healthy. The chief inspector stood, obscured in shadow, peering down at Isabelle and Bénédicte on the bench below her window. Aliette was mystified as she observed Junior Inspector Escande eagerly devouring a sandwich and chirping obliviously at her glum colleague — who was not responding, who barely sipped her coffee. Bénédicte was hunched, disconsolate, as if guarding her precious pain. Isabelle was beaming. The summer looked good on the fine-boned Parisienne, adding a soft glow. But it had to be more than the sun. Aliette suspected love. She hoped it was.

  But she did not dare ask. She feared Isabelle’s cool evasion. It hurt that Isabelle remained so taciturn, watchful of every word in the presence of the boss, either unwilling or somehow unable to communicate with the woman directly in charge of her life. Aliette was aware of a festering resentment toward Isabelle Escande, which she knew she had no right to feel. But the young cop’s refusal to be part of the boss’s fantasy of herself one generation forward left Aliette feeling utterly blocked by a forc
e she simply couldn’t understand, much less penetrate.

  It had something to do with trust.

  And now there was this lie, a lie that was not provoked, just casually offered. Why had she lied about her whereabouts that night? Why did it matter?

  Isabelle was patting Bénédicte’s hand. A simple, comforting gesture. It seemed to surprise, even disorient Bénédicte. She shifted, as if touched by cold. Isabelle either failed to notice or chose to ignore. She smiled and munched her jambon-beurre.

  Then Inspector Henri Dardé stepped into the tableau and beckoned. Time to head out.

  Tomorrow was their big day. They had one final meeting that afternoon with the instructing judge, and Nabi Zidane’s city guys, and the team from Montpellier to firm the plan.

  With another kindly squeeze of her colleague’s inert arm, Isabelle got up and left with Henri.

  Leaving Bénédicte with her darkness. Aliette couldn’t do much about that either.

  A confused mère-poule quashed her useless feelings and sat back down at her desk.

  That was when Martine Rogge called to order a second search of the victim’s home.

  • 41 •

  JÉROME’S GUN

  ‘Rugby. They definitely do have this bond. I don’t know if you’d call it mystical, but it’s there and I can’t get through. It’s bizarre. All for one, one for all, and nary an ill word, as if on pain of death. Paul Dafy especially is obsessed,’ declared Martine. ‘Go back to our victim’s place. Look from a different angle.’

  ‘Which angle, madame?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I don’t know these kinds of men. This love, this deep connection, moving around as a unit, a sophisticated machine. That’s Paul Dafy talking…’ But Martine Rogge sensed a vein that ought to be looked into deeper. ‘Let’s call this angle: rugby players in love. With each other. Platonic surely, but from one rhapsody to the next, I get this feeling. Find me something tied to that. Be discreet, but don’t rule anything out. Obviously, it’s sensitive. I mean, all these parents who put our victim on a pedestal. Yes?’