A Clean Pair of Hands

by Oscar Reynard

  Then they went to the main bedroom and saw silver duct tape still adhering to the chair, and plenty more at the foot of the bed and on the outer bed posts. The woman officer took photographs as they proceeded.

  When they came downstairs, Michel asked the police officers if they intended to have a forensic examination carried out.

  “We’d like to ask you some more questions first, if you don’t mind,” said the woman officer. She summarised, “As we understand it, four men, we’ll call them men for the time being, entered your house by removing a glass pane and turning the key which had been left in the lock. Do you always leave the key in the lock?”

  Charlotte answered, “Not normally, but sometimes we forget.”

  “So this time you forgot. The men make a small noise, perhaps when the glass fell or banging the door open, and when they hear movement upstairs they wait for someone to come down, render him semi-conscious, and grab you at the top of the stairs. They ask for money, but after throwing you in a cupboard and tying your husband to a chair, they leave with a few thousand in cash and two bottles of whisky. They appear to be efficient, professional burglars with identity disguise and protective wear. It doesn’t sound like an opportunist robbery attempt. Have we understood that correctly so far?”

  “Yes, that’s about right,” said Charlotte in a flat voice.

  “That’s it as far as we know,” added Michel.

  “Did they look around the house?” enquired the male officer.

  “They did in the bedroom, but we couldn’t see what they did in the rest of the house.”

  “Well, it looks as though they were very tidy people because there is no sign of what burglars typically do when making a quick search for valuables, especially money, and they left your credit cards, I believe.”

  “Yes,” mumbled Michel, his head hanging forward above the coffee cup.

  “It’s strange,” said the woman officer reflectively, creasing her face in puzzlement and pushing her glasses up her nose, “because there is usually a pattern to these things and there have been no reported incidents of this kind in the area. Can you think of anybody who would do something like this to embarrass or frighten you?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Where were your other two daughters this weekend?”

  “Our middle daughter is studying at an international college in Spain. She comes home only a couple of times a year. And the youngest is on her way to stay with relatives in Ireland until Christmas. Only our eldest daughter, Annick, was staying here,” Charlotte informed them, nodding towards Annick.

  “And Mademoiselle Annick, how did you call the police, we noticed that the phone cable was torn out upstairs?”

  “Yes, and they did the same to the downstairs phone. As I said before, I had to go next door to our neighbours’ to make the call,” replied Annick.

  “Your call was timed at eleven thirty-eight. That’s quite a long time after you discovered your parents, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I had to see to my parents first and they were both suffering from shock, so I dealt with them as a priority. There was nothing more anybody else could do by then.”

  The woman turned to the male officer enquiringly, then back to the Bodins,

  “Well, I don’t think we can do much more here today, but if you remember any other details, however small, please call us on this number.” She handed a card to Michel.

  “Are you going to make any more enquiries?” asked Michel.

  “Yes, we will talk to the neighbours to check if anybody heard or saw anything unusual, such as any strange vehicles parked in the road. And we would like to take a statement from you, Mademoiselle, and from your friends, down at the office on Monday morning, so please let them know. We would also like to interview your sister when she is back from Ireland, so please ask her to come and see us as soon as she returns.” She smiled a cheerful but business-like smile, beaming it at each of the Bodins in turn.

  Then to the parents, “We will also need you to come to the office to sign statements to the effect that we have registered all of your testimony correctly and that you swear to the completeness and truthfulness of your statements. We will let you know when they are ready.”

  That was it. The police shook hands all round and left, easing themselves into their tiny Peugeot car and drove away leaving Michel, Charlotte and Annick with their thoughts.

  In the car, the officers agreed that the couple were lying, or in the case of Annick, possibly concealing something to protect her parents.

  “You saw the tape on the bed, Francis?” said the woman. “It looked to me as though it had been used to attach someone to the bed posts.”

  “Yes, and you could see that they both had tape marks on their faces and their wrists.”

  “Why would they not want to discuss that?” she asked.

  “For the moment they are in denial, but we’ll see how it evolves. I think this was done to frighten or warn them. You can’t ignore the fact that it was so unproductive for the burglars.”

  “Do you think the daughters could be behind it?”

  “It’s unlikely but possible, but we don’t have enough to go on yet.”

  “Why would they do something like that?”

  “I don’t know, Paula. An alternative scenario is that Bodin could have organised it himself. It’s just that in all the similar cases that I know about, the motive was to profit from an insurance claim or have someone killed and make it look as though it was part of a robbery. There was no attempt here to do much more than enter and leave.”

  “They are not claiming sex as a possible reason; Madame Bodin is very attractive.”

  “No, they haven’t said so, but sometimes victims are too ashamed to admit it. But in any case, you don’t normally have four professional burglars entering a house to rape a woman. That is not the modus operandi of a sex maniac.”

  “So were they perhaps after something else, which they took, and Bodin can’t say because it was something illegal? Or at least something he can’t admit in front of his wife,” suggested the woman.

  “That’s a possibility. When I said I would come with you today, it was because a number of unrelated reports have mentioned this address and I wanted to meet Monsieur Bodin. I’ll ask for some more background on him and have the earlier reports reviewed to find out if he’s treading in something murky. Some businessmen get drawn into crime financing because they have an honest front and clean cash to invest; once they start doing something dirty, however minor, they are in the hands of the criminals. I don’t think this is something we need to investigate as a crime because I believe it was more a disciplinary matter, but it gives us some information to add to what we have.” He slid his hand across to Paula’s knee and they drove back to the office in silence to file their reports.

  After the police interview Michel Bodin climbed slowly back upstairs, feeling increasingly stiff after his ordeal. He planned to take a hot bath and soak for a long time. When he opened a drawer of the chest in the bedroom to take a clean towel, he saw to his amazement a brown envelope he recognised. It had been crudely resealed with thick brown tape. He tore it open. Inside was a wad of twenty five-hundred-franc notes, with their images of Pierre and Marie Curie and smelling of fresh oil from the printing press. He quickly hid the envelope under his dressing gown, then on second thoughts put it on the top shelf of the wardrobe where he knew Charlotte could not reach it. He was sweating profusely and his head was banging. He really needed that bath.

  Chapter Two

  My Money is Me

  1950s – 1970s

  ‘I was very young when it came to my mind that morality consisted of proving to men that after all else, to be happy, there was nothing better to do in this world than to be virtuous. Immediately I started to meditate on this question and I still am meditating on it.’

  Denis Diderot, philosopher and author 1713-1784

  Michel Bodin grew up in Paris in the 1950s and 60s. His mo
ther Huguette was to be the major influencer of his life, during the early years as a mentor, and long into adulthood as a strong competitor. She had left home at seventeen to escape paternal discipline and improve her prospects, and married first, briefly, a young man who shared her taste for excitement; but once the whirl of dance halls and laughter had subsided, Huguette realised that her husband’s modest intellect and vision left him with little prospect of wealth acquisition, so for the foreseeable future she was faced with a daily reality of living in a tiny second floor apartment above a shop in an unfashionable Paris suburb, with a downstairs, shared outside toilet. She could see no way forward, and became increasingly frustrated with her narrow existence. She was not someone who would obediently endure.

  There had to be a way forward or out. Huguette was a talented singer and dancer and as a child had hopes of becoming a star. At the age of seven she had won a scholarship to the Paris Opera Ballet School, but her family’s limited resources meant there was no question of taking up the opportunity, even with a partial scholarship. Now, twenty and married, she was already too old for all that, but the idea lingered that she might try to get into show business. She had good looks, vivacity, and enough determination to succeed as an actress, so she continued to dream of getting into a drama school at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, her husband’s succession of business ventures, financed by his parents, all ended inconsequentially, but at least the experience she gained within their small-scale commerce demonstrated Huguette’s innate business sense and a facility with figures. If it wasn’t for the fact that her husband was less capable than her, slower on the uptake, and unwilling to let her take control, the results may have been better. Their ensuing arguments, mostly about lack of money, were loud and sometimes violent.

  After nearly two years of married life, Huguette felt like a trapped tigress. All her plans were blocked, but she determined to regain control of her life somehow, so at this point she swallowed her pride, went back to her parents and found a job at a local hardware and paint shop. There, she showed the young owner how to expand his business by offering decorating services to local shops and from the success of that basic idea, she developed a wider range of services including refitting local shops, bakeries and bars that had been neglected since the Second World War, engaging teams of artisans to carry out the work under her direction. François Bodin, the young owner of the business, which he had inherited from his father, was impressed by the ideas and by the woman herself, and soon after Huguette got a divorce, the pair married. Huguette’s theatrical dream was replaced by a more accessible new vision – success in business.

  Huguette’s marriage to François Bodin brought her fulfilment on several levels. François appreciated her flair for commerce, combined with toughness and ambition, which when teamed with his energy, enthusiasm, and creative skills as a designer, boosted their business substantially. He was happy to involve her fully as an equal partner, though his male pride demanded that when he told the story he tended to take full credit.

  What Huguette actually did was to make forceful and relentless demands for high standards at every level of the business. She had no training in quality control and had read no books on achieving excellence, but she knew instinctively what was right and would accept nothing less, and she had the courage to make it happen.

  She started with the artisans who carried out the shop-fitting work. Some had learned a trade and had some talent, but in the main they were untrained, sloppy, casual and often turned up for work drunk. Huguette’s attempts to raise standards were initially studiously ignored by the men. What could a young blonde woman know about the work they did, even if she was the boss’s wife? Life just wasn’t like the way she wanted it to be and there were plenty of reasons why not.

  Huguette at first didn’t argue face to face, but when the men expected to be paid she would rigorously inspect their work before issuing a certificate of completion. Without a certificate of completion they would not be paid, and Huguette held the cheque books and cash. The cost of replacing fittings damaged during movement or installation would be deducted from pay; irregular tiling had to be ripped out and done again, electrical installations had to be tested and shown to work; rubbish, including piles of beer and wine bottles, newspapers, remains of food and cigarette packs had to be collected and disposed of cleanly; piles of unused materials and debris had to be removed and the site left impeccably clean, ready for use.

  Quite quickly, things were done right first time; there were more pre-work consultations to ensure the right things were being done in the right way, a number of workers with uncooperative or unhelpfully independent attitudes were replaced, wastage fell significantly, job times reduced and customers were happy with the results.

  The fruits of their partnership included an only son, Michel, who was born soon after they were married, and the money the business brought in enabled Huguette, her husband and son to enjoy a life of nouveaux riches. Thus, in his teenage years, Michel could enjoy the madness of a ‘blouson doré’, a description applied to the spoilt children of wealthy and indulgent French families.

  Michel’s mother wanted him to miss out on nothing, so, as she was heavily committed to building the business with her husband, she expressed her love for Michel mainly through generous allowances and by turning a blind eye to his increasingly loose morals.

  Michel later described his life at that time as a lust for experience, to a point of wanting to kill himself. During his early teenage years, he was one of a gang of youths who, on warm summer evenings, gathered to drive around quiet suburbs on small-engined but ear-shatteringly noisy mopeds that only the French seem to tolerate, and for which no driving licence was required. Later, he drove his increasingly powerful motorcycles faster and faster, racing friends around Paris until one of them hit a traffic sign and subsequently died. Another jumped a red light as part of their games and was seriously injured in a crash with a lorry. Girls were attracted to the little band of high-spending youths, and sex was a commodity that required no relationship beyond sharing a ride on a motorbike as a prelude.

  Many acres of print have been published about violent political extremist groups that sprouted in the late 1960s across Europe, a time when horrendous crimes were committed by young people who were simply floating aimlessly and seeking excitement. That could have been where Michel headed next. However, just as he was beginning to tire of the easy life and was wondering where to find further stimulation, he was called up for compulsory military service.

  Although army generals wanted infantrymen and were not concerned about the future career prospects of their temporary charges, there was a steady undercurrent of unofficial negotiation in which wealthy parents could obtain favoured postings for their offspring. Clearly Huguette and François Bodin knew somebody with a lot of influence because Michel was posted to the island of La Réunion, to the east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It wasn’t the most useful posting from a career development or character building perspective because he spent most of his time guarding the military airbase by walking the perimeter with a dog, but it was safe and there was an attraction to offset the boredom. He was followed by a besotted girlfriend, Charlotte, and together they spent all of his free time in a thatched cabin or beachcombing for magnificent nautilus shells which formed the central attractions of a collection that Michel brought back to France.

  Once his military service was over, Michel found that his dissolute school years and consequent absence of educational qualifications left him little alternative but to settle into the family business, for in France, academic qualification is the only recognised key to career opportunities in the public and private sectors. One could say that he pursued the only career that nature fitted him for, but it turned out to be an excellent move for him and for the business. He shared his mother’s drive and ambition, and he had the wit and cunning to channel it in ways which added significantly to the company assets once he had learned from practical ex
perience how the business worked, and especially how it depended on good personal relations with the clients, an art that he soon mastered.

  Huguette and François Bodin were in many ways a dream team. They were intelligent fighters who would do what was necessary to achieve success. They were powered by acquisitiveness and their frenzy for visible wealth was amply rewarded. One might have expected a clash of Titans from time to time, but, although François was an archetypal alpha male, he adored Huguette and always gave way to her. Michel noted this, and later commented that his father was a sheep, rather than a wolf. He said this about his father although their relationship was normally respectful. But it was his mother’s outrageous ostentation that Michel admired and copied and he was determined that he would show he was her equal. He also learned from his mother that once you were locked onto making money as your first priority in life, other sentiments could take a back seat. You could always be generous with money as a substitute for affection. The roots of her pugnaciousness extended back to another generation when Huguette’s mother, who lived through the Second World War in occupied Paris, fought for food and subsistence. She would push to the front of queues on some pretext of priority, and amazingly got away with it by pure assertiveness and aggression. “You get what you’re prepared to fight for,” was her motto. By the end of the war, poverty was widespread, but Huguette’s parents survived and managed with meagre resources to bring up their two children, Huguette and her brother. Both children had high ambitions, though as things turned out they exercised them very differently.