Extraordinary People ef-4

by Peter May

  Rose bushes in full bloom lined the gravel path which led them around the perimeter of the lawn, and as they approached the far end, it became apparent that Nicole’s eyes had not deceived her. A huge concrete scallop shell, around two meters across, was set in a circle of lawn, and half filled with brackish green water. A rusting pipe poked up through the slime.

  ‘It’s a fountain!’ Nicole said. ‘A fountain in the shape of a coquille St. Jacques.’ Although it appeared that the fountain had not been in working order for some time.

  Enzo stared at it. A perfect scallop shell, ribbed and cupped to hold water, the function for which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims over the centuries had used it ‘That’s it.’ His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, and he had to clear his throat.

  ‘That’s what?’

  ‘He’s got to be here. Under the shell.’

  Nicole screwed up her nose. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘He must be. Everything has led us to this spot, Nicole. Every one of those clues. Why else are we standing here? The killer must have had access to the renovation plans. They were probably available to the public at the planning office. He’d have known where the scallop shell fountain was to be sited, and he buried the body right underneath it. The place was a building site at the time. The whole area around here had probably already been dug up.’

  She surveyed the shell thoughtfully. ‘Well, how are we going to find out?’

  ‘The police will have to excavate it.’

  * * *

  Traffic thundered along the boulevards on either side of the Canal du Midi, shaded from the heat of the sun by lines of dusty-leafed trees. The Hôtel de Police, headquarters of the Police Nationale, stood on the corner of the Boulevard l’Embouchure and the Rue de Chaussas. Nicole had barely settled herself on the terrasse of the Café Les Zazous around the corner in the Avenue des Minimes, when she saw Enzo storming across the road towards her. His face was red. It would have been difficult to tell if it was from heat or exertion. But, in fact, it was anger. He threw himself into the seat beside her. ‘Bastards!’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They thought I was some kind of nutter. I never even got beyond the duty officer.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Have a drink.’ He waved the waiter over.

  Nicole lowered her voice. ‘Do you not think you’ve had enough alcohol already, Monsieur Macleod. You’ll be dehydrated.’

  The waiter stood over them. ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘Two Perriers citron,’ Nicole said firmly before Enzo could open his mouth.

  Enzo glared at her. ‘What are you, my mother?’

  ‘Don’t take it out on me,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s not my fault they won’t take you seriously.’ She cast a critical eye over him. ‘Although it might help if you didn’t look like a tramp.’

  Enzo stared sullenly at the ancient brickwork of the Église des Minimes opposite. The waiter arrived with their drinks, and left the bill under Enzo’s glass. He glanced at it and grunted. ‘Huh! Alcohol would have been cheaper.’

  Nicole poured sparkling water into both of their glasses. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  He took a drink of his Perrier citron, felt the bubbles tickling his nostrils and had a sudden inspiration. ‘I’m going to call on the old school tie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He took a long draft from his glass and stood up, dropping several coins on the table. ‘Come on, drink up. We’re going back to Cahors.’

  III

  Enzo pushed open the heavy wrought iron gate and walked across the cobbled courtyard. The administrative buildings of the Hotel du Département rose up around him on three sides to steeply pitched, grey slate roofs. He went through an archway and followed the accueil sign to the reception desk.

  ‘I’d like to see the Préfet,’ he told the young woman behind the counter.

  ‘Do you have an appointment, Monsieur?’

  ‘Just tell him that Monsieur Enzo Macleod needs to see him as a matter of urgency.’

  Préfet Verne’s office was on the first floor, a large room with three tall windows overlooking the courtyard. The wall behind his desk was draped with crossed Tricolours. There were photographs of him with the President, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Garde des Sceaux. His desk was enormous, and the Préfet himself seemed almost small behind it. Sunlight slanted golden across a floor of polished parquet, and draped itself over two Louis Quatorze armchairs and a chaise longue set around a low antique table.

  The Préfet rose to shake Enzo’s hand. ‘My staff is not used to my receiving visits from such disreputable characters.’ He smiled. ‘What can possibly be so urgent?’ He waved a hand towards one of the Louis Quatorze fauteuil and sat in the other one himself, folding his hands in his lap. Enzo remained standing.

  ‘I know where the rest of Gaillard’s body is buried.’

  Préfet Verne tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?

  ‘But I need your help to prove it.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘I need the police in Toulouse to excavate beneath a fountain at the old Hospital St. Jacques. But I can’t get them to take me seriously.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘But if the Préfet at Toulouse ordered them to, they’d have to, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘And why would he do that?’

  ‘Because you’d asked him to.’

  The Préfet regarded him thoughtfully. ‘And why would he listen to me?’

  ‘Because he’s almost certainly another énarque, and you ENA old boys stick together, don’t you? A favour here reciprocated there. I take it you do know your counterpart in the Garonne?’

  ‘Naturally.’ His hands were still folded in his lap, and he began tapping his thumbs together. ‘I’m just wondering why I would ask him to do that?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you.’

  ‘And that would make me ask him, because?’

  ‘Because we have a bet,’ Enzo said, ‘that I can’t find out what happened to Jacques Gaillard and why. I imagine that’s probably pretty common knowledge by now.’

  Préfet Verne gave a tiny shrug. ‘These things have a habit of getting around.’

  ‘So if you were to refuse to help me, that could be construed by some people, not to mention the press, as…well, not to put too fine a point on it, welching on a bet.’

  The smile faded just a little from the Préfet’s eyes and he pursed his lips in quiet contemplation. ‘There’s Italian blood in your family, Macleod, isn’t there?’

  ‘My mother was Italian.’

  ‘Hmmm. Any relation to the Machiavellis?’

  IV

  Arc lamps flooded the garden with light, and the pink of the ancient hospital building stood bold against the black of the midnight sky. A crowd gathered on the bridge in the warm night air, idly exercising their curiosity. They had no idea why there were police cars filling the tiny car park below, or that the white vans they saw belonged to the police scientifique. And they could not see what was happening behind the canvas barrier erected around the fountain. But they knew that something was going on.

  The caterpillar tracks of the crane had chewed up the once pristine lawn, and it swung high above the Toulouse skyline as its cable strained and pulled, lifting the great concrete coquille St. Jacques clear of the barrier. A municipal plumber had disconnected the pipes and turned off the water.

  Men in white Tyvek suits drifted around the site like ghosts, directing a digger in its painfully slow process of excavation, ready to take over at the first hint of discovery, prepared if necessary to remove the dry, crumbling earth one grain at a time.

  Behind the barrier, Raffin stood next to Enzo, the collar of his jacket turned up as if the evening were cold. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets, and he was watching the proceedings with an odd sense of professional detachment. He had caught the first flight from Paris aft
er Enzo’s phone call. All he had said was, ‘Are you certain?’ And when Enzo replied, ‘Ninety-nine percent,’ he’d said, ‘I’m on my way.’ He had cast a curious eye over Nicole when Enzo introduced them, but refrained from comment.

  Enzo looked up at the concrete shell hanging overhead. It seemed almost surreal, caught in the arc lights, as if it were floating. He was tense with anticipation, and misgivings. What if he was wrong? What if there was nothing there? His disquiet was heightened by the approach of the city’s chief of police, a squat, tough-looking man, uniform stretched tightly across broad shoulders. He had long sideburns and was chewing a match in the corner of his mouth. His peaked hat cast a shadow across his eyes. He pulled Enzo to one side and lowered his voice. He moved close to his ear to be heard above the roar of the engines. ‘If this turns out to be a wild goose chase, Monsieur, I’ll have your fucking hide. Friends in high places or not.’ Evidently he had not taken kindly to receiving his orders from on high.

  Enzo watched him saunter away again towards a group of officers who were standing watching. His mouth was dry, and he wished he had brought a bottle of water.

  Then a shout cut across the revving of the digger. One of the ghosts raised an arm and the articulated claw stopped scooping. It jerked and twisted away from the hole, spilling sandy soil as it went. The other ghosts moved in, climbing carefully into a pit which was now more than two meters deep. Enzo, Raffin and Nicole moved closer as the forensic scientists began scraping away the earth, one trowel at a time, from the corner of a metal object lying at an angle in the ground. Lights were moved in so that they could better see what they were doing. The digger cut its motor, and a strange silence fell across the site. Only the sound of men breathing, and the scraping of trowels, could be heard in the night air.

  It took nearly fifteen minutes to uncover the tin trunk. It was the same military green as the one Enzo and Raffin had seen at the greffe in Paris. Battered and scored, and more rusted than its twin. There was a sense of everyone around the hole holding their breath as one of the police scientifique carefully released the clips and opened the lid. He swung a light to shine inside the trunk to reveal the skeletal remains of two arms lying side by side. But there were other items, too, loose in the bottom of the trunk.

  A forensic photographer was lowered carefully into the hole to make a photographic record of the trunk and its contents, before the head ghost crouched down to examine them more closely with delicate, latexed fingers. ‘Definitely looks like two arms,’ he called up. ‘The radius and the ulna of both forearms seem damaged. Scarred or scored in someway. Each of the arms appears to have been cleanly jointed from the shoulder at the head of the humerous, although there is also damage to the bone here, too.’ He turned his attention, then, to what looked like a rectangular wooden box. ‘It’s a Moët et Chandon presentation box.’ A quality in his voice reflected the bizarre nature of his words. He slid off the front cover to reveal that it was filled with wood wool, finely curled wood shavings packed around a Champagne bottle. ‘Dom Perignon, 1990. It’s never been opened.’ Now his voice carried a hint of disbelief.

  He replaced the lid and lifted up a moulded pewter crucifix, adorned with the figure of Christ. It was about fifteen centimeters long. He turned it over, examining it minutely. ‘There’s something engraved on the back.’ He produced a small eyepiece to magnify it. ‘It’s a date. April 1st.’ He looked up at all the faces looking down at him from around the edge of the pit. ‘Is it a joke?’

  ‘Do you hear us laughing?’ the police chief said grimly.

  The forensics officer laid the crucifix back in the bottom of the trunk and lifted a small disk which looked like a bronze coin. ‘It’s a lapel pin.’ He examined it. ‘Two men on a single horse in relief on the front. An inscription around the perimeter.’ He used his eyeglass again. ‘Sigilum Militum Xpisti,’ he read. Then, ‘Latin, I think. No idea what it means.’ He put it back in the trunk and picked up what seemed to be another coin. But it turned out to be a simple metal disk engraved with the word Utopique. ‘Looks like a name tag for a dog.’

  The officer laid it down and picked up the final item in the trunk. Another bone. ‘Doesn’t belong to the arms,’ he called. ‘Too short to be from a leg. I don’t know what it is.’ He looked up again, his face a mask of confusion. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What’s all this stuff supposed to mean?’

  But Enzo knew what it meant. He stared into the pit, focused on the contents of the trunk. The sickening realisation had already dawned on him that these body parts, and the things found with them, were just more pieces of a much bigger puzzle. And only the beginning of some kind of macabre treasure hunt for the remaining bits of the murdered man.

  Chapter Ten

  They drove up Avenue President Wilson to the Place du Trocadéro. Across the river, the Left Bank fell away below them, still dominated by the Eiffel Tower. This close, it was a massive presence, its unmistakable girdered steel structure piercing the evening sky. On the concourse of the Place des Droits de l’Homme, crowds had gathered to watch an anti-China demonstration by the extreme religious group Falun Gong, whose leader claimed to be a visitor from Outer Space. Enzo wondered where he had parked his flying saucer.

  The cafés around the Place du Trocadéro were doing brisk business. There were queues standing outside Carette, people desperate for seats on the terrasse. They were in the sixteenth arrondissement, after all, and this was the place to be seen. Worth standing in line for twenty minutes with your Shih Tzu tucked under your arm.

  Enzo felt as if all his faculties of perception had deserted him. The items found in the trunk under the shell in Toulouse made not the least sense to him. Not that there had been even five minutes to consider them. He and Raffin and Nicole had spent most of the night being questioned by police. A long, sleepless night. And then, this morning, he had been summoned to Paris and a rendezvous with the French Minister of Justice, otherwise known as the Garde des Sceaux, literally the Keeper of the Seals, one of the most powerful and prestigious posts in government. Political master of both the police and the French justice system. Enzo had assumed that the Minister wanted to congratulate him on the success of his investigation.

  Raffin had a more cynical take on it. ‘They’re going to warn you off.’

  ‘If I was going to be warned off, surely I would have been summoned to her office at the Ministry? Not invited to a private dinner at her apartment.’

  Raffin shook his head. ‘If she called you to her office, that would make it official. And you would run from the building screaming “Cover up!” Dinner in her apartment means it’s all off the record. She’ll appeal to your sense of duty, request that you desist, rather than order it.’

  ‘But why? What has the government got to hide?’

  ‘Its embarrassment. Ten years ago the top advisor to the Prime Minister disappeared. It was a mystery. No one could explain it. The papers were full of it. For a while. And then it just went away. And it remained a mystery. Everyone could live with that. But you’ve just proved that he was murdered. Not only murdered, but dismembered, and bits of his body strewn about the country. And now people are going to want to know why. It’s already caused an uproar in the press, and when my piece appears in Libération tomorrow on the discovery in Toulouse, the government is going to have a very red face. The leader columns are going to be asking why, with all the resources at their disposal, the government and the police in ten years were unable to solve the mystery of Gaillard’s disappearance, when a biology professor from Toulouse could do it in under a week.’ Raffin grinned. ‘I tell you, Enzo, your name’ll be mud at the Élysée Palace.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s mud in classy places,’ Enzo said.

  Raffin turned his car into the Avenue Georges Mandel. A treelined walkway between the two carriageways was named after the opera singer Maria Callas. Raffin pulled up outside the apartment block at number thirty-three, opposite the late diva’s former apartment. Enzo got out and sto
od uncomfortably on the pavement, unaccustomed to the formality of a suit and collar and tie. The air was soft and warm after the heat of the day. Kids on roller blades drifted past. A young couple stood embracing and kissing unashamedly in the middle of the street. A man with a young girl perched on the back of his bike cycled by at a leisurely rate. The child turned her head to stare at Enzo with naked curiosity.

  Raffin leaned across to the open passenger door. ‘Don’t let her bully you, Enzo. Let me know how you get on.’

  Enzo watched Raffin’s car head back towards the Trocadéro, and he turned to look up at the apartments behind him. Five floors clad in pale stone hacked from the catacombes of Paris. An inner courtyard reverberated to the sound of voices from the open windows of a first-floor apartment. Enzo could see figures in dinner jackets and evening dress milling around a large salle with champagne flutes in their hands. But that wasn’t his destination. He pressed a buzzer, and after some moments a woman’s voice responded.

  ‘Enzo Macleod for Madame Marie Aucoin,’ Enzo said, and an electronic mechanism released the lock on the door. He crossed a mosaic floor, passing between marble pillars to a red-carpeted staircase, and climbed two floors to the apartment of the Minister of Justice.

  She opened the door herself. He had seen her on television many times and had always thought her a handsome woman. But she was even more attractive in the flesh. She was just forty-five years old, young to have been appointed to such a powerful position. Long, black hair fell to her shoulders, a loosely parted fringe above a lean, youthful face. Her full lips parted in a wide smile. Dark blue eyes radiated unusual warmth. She was smaller than Enzo had imagined, a sheer black evening dress clinging to a slim figure, the slash of her V-neck revealing the ivory white skin of her neck, and just the hint of a cleavage between small breasts.

  ‘Monsieur Macleod, I’m so pleased you could come.’

  Enzo wondered if he’d had any choice in the matter. ‘It’s my pleasure, Madame Le Ministre.’