Hubert nodded and Tailler stood there looking intelligent.
“Very well.”
“She has a passport.”
“Nice.” Tailler’s heart began to pound.
That was another fucking question we forgot to ask…passport.
***
It was unusual, but just like old times for Andre to be driving Gilles. They were heading for Epinay-sur-Seine, which while downstream of the city, was actually a little east of due north going by the map. The river did a series of S-turns, doubling back on itself several times. It was like a big snake as it wound its way through the hills and down onto the plain.
“Jesus, it’s got to be ten or fifteen kilometres.” Levain wasn’t used to long periods of introspection in this job.
Either you were on, in which case you were really on and had no choice but to focus, or you were off. You could forget it for a while and just relax, be yourself and enjoy the family.
Gilles was lost in thought. He found himself enjoying the ride, and was showing all the signs of cheerfulness.
“A centime for your thoughts.”
Gilles looked over and grinned.
“No way.”
He reconsidered.
“Almost anything is better than sitting there waiting to testify.” He had more coming next week. “It’s like sitting around waiting for a tooth to be drilled.”
Having done it all too often himself, Andre agreed.
They would be killing the better part of an hour each way on this trip, and there would be whatever time spent with whoever. It was a strange feeling, to have the pressure off for a while. Theoretically, if the flics weren’t busy enough, then they really ought to be out chasing bank robbers and drunk drivers. That’s what the taxpayers always said. It was like a kid skipping out on school otherwise.
“We’ll have a quick look at the body and then decide what to do.”
“Ah. I was beginning to wonder.”
“They have him on ice for us at the local hospital.”
Levain turned and found Gilles looking at him.
“I can’t wait to see if it’s our guy.”
Maintenon nodded then looked away. A lot of things didn’t make sense. The nearest bridge to the Parc Montsouris was probably the Pont du Tolbiac. He was mentally kicking himself. He might have foreseen this. They could have sent officers directly there.
He was kidding himself, blaming himself.
There were too many places to look and too short a time. Even so. The killer had to lug that body to the riverbank somewhere. To leave it on dry land, in a busy place like Paris, was for it to be found sooner rather than later. Dropping it from the middle span of a bridge had the advantage of putting it in the middle of the stream where the water was deep and the currents were strongest. It was dark enough at the time. They would have had until dawn.
He was a little surprised that it hadn’t snagged up sooner, a little closer to the point of entry.
Bodies in rivers seemed to follow natural laws of their own. This much was true.
“That’s insane—that has to be…God, I don’t know how many kilometres.”
“What? What’s insane?”
Gilles was thinking that their perpetrator must have used a car—they must have. No one could carry a body, not even two people, that far across the city, not even at night. You sure as hell weren’t going to take it on the bus or the Metro. You could hardly call a taxi. To borrow a car from someone was to eventually hang yourself and possibly them too…
He looked around.
“Where are we?
“Still in the city, Gilles.” They hadn’t even crossed the river yet, and Andre was working his way as patiently as he could through late afternoon traffic.
If those clouds to the north opened up and Andre suspected they would, he could count on everything just getting a whole lot slower.
Holy. It looked like they might be a while yet.
***
“You haven’t started the autopsy?”
“No.” The doctor gave them a wintry grin.
“Thank you, thank you. Wonderful.”
Their escort suppressed a thin smile, but the great Maintenon was practically rubbing his hands in anticipation.
“Doctor Auger is an extremely competent examiner, but if you guys want to take over—” It was all the same to them.
Doctor Auger kept a neat little morgue in the basement of the hospital, La Maison Santé.
Detective Patrick Thibodeau, the officer of record in the matter, had met them at the front door and guided them through the labyrinthine halls. The hospital was badly in need of a good scrape and some paint if not quite ready for demolition. He was a man of average build and looks. He was about thirty-five, the suit looked all right and he wore a wedding band. There had always been something incongruous about a Frenchman with such a straggling, pale growth. The upper lip looked like the guy had been drinking milk, rather than having a serious mustache. One wondered what the man himself thought of it.
As for Gilles, he had resolved to shave his off, rather than tolerate one of the horrible white abominations he was seeing these days. They were all over the faces of his contemporaries. They were always so neatly trimmed, clipped and even powdered he suspected in some cases.
Lord, spare me that.
“Where was he?”
Gilles stepped forward as the Doctor unlatched the meat-locker and opened the hatch.
“Some fishermen found him. They take their wine and their fishing rods and congregate at various spots along the waterfront. This one’s kind of a low-rental even for them old guys. We figured he went in somewhere nearby. Either that, or he came down the right-hand channel. He hung up on some iron. There’s a popular dumping spot just along there. It was just before the end of the island.”
“Oh, so the island got him?”
Doctor Auger had the big steel tray fully rolled out, the bulk of the wall composed of three rows of small steel doors. Above that were the ubiquitous glazed ceramic tiles in an unusually cheerful institutional yellow.
Gently, he lifted the white cloth from the face.
Gilles looked down. The water had been at him for a few days. The cold preserved the body, but the water was absorbed into the cells. There was a thin film of silt or something visible here and there, although the doctor had washed the face for identification purposes.
“And you think he went in right there?”
“There are a couple of bridges upstream. We figured somebody took the wallet, knifed him, and dropped him in along the bank. I’m thinking a stiletto. The entry wound is very small. See? It’s a bit old-fashioned. He’d hang up pretty quick. That’s a nice, professional little cut-job. A real fucking Apache, Inspector. Rather unusual, especially in this neighbourhood. Downtown, or in some of the real slum districts, yeah. At least that’s what we thought at first, until somebody recalled your bulletin.” He looked at Andre, patiently noting their few details so far. “We get a few suicides, but not too many. It’s a nice neighbourhood.”
Bodies turned up where and when they would. There were several known snags. There were eddies, currents, docks and pilings along the shore. Old barges sank at their moorings and there were a few of them down along that stretch according to Auger.
Andre watched in approval as Gilles bent in close and examined the puncture wound. It was in about the right place. Death was practically instantaneous. How much knowledge did that actually require?
The only problem was that face. He stared at it. Like his man, the face was clean-shaven, and yet whiskers continued to grow after death. There was a good stubble, at least a day’s worth. At most, maybe two days. The rate of growth was different for each individual. Only some of that would have occurred after death. His dead man had been clean-shaven, at least by moonlight.
“I would like a full report.”
“Absolutely.”
Andre drew out their small sheaf of photos.
Maintenon too
k one, but that wasn’t the real problem as he compared the face in the picture with that of their deader.
“Hmn. Shit. Eh?”
Detective Levain beckoned a patient Detective Thibodeau over and gave him the remaining photos.
“We need an objective opinion. Just ignore Gilles. What do you think?”
“This is the guy you saw in the park, Inspector?”
Gilles’ face went all stone-like.
“Non, non, young man. What Andre means is that we want you to ignore all of that—excellent idea, incidentally. Andre. This is where we will go wrong time and time again in this case—and I’ll bet our killer…”
Mouth open, Gilles handed his photo to the doctor. He wandered over to the farthest corner and found himself a seat on a hard maple chair.
“No, that can’t be it—” Maintenon was off on a tangent, noted Andre.
Doctor Auger looked at Gilles open-mouthed for a second, and then took a good look at his little snapshot.
“Damn. It really is hard, isn’t it?”
Thibodeau stood over the body, shaking his head gently.
His eyes came up to meet Andre’s.
“Sacré merde, eh?”
Andre took a breath.
“Well. There’s nothing here that says that this can’t be our boy.”
Maintenon looked up.
“Where are his clothes? What was our amiable friend wearing when you pulled him out?”
The doctor handed the photo to Thibodeau who kept shuffling through them, still unable to make up his mind. They were going by description and photographs, and it was a tough call. The body had no unique identifying marks, no tattoos, birthmarks, scars, nothing.
The body on the slab and the man in the photographs would have generated a similar description from any number of witnesses. His height would have varied all over the place, along with his weight. This demonstrated one of the great difficulties of police work. Everyone saw the same thing and somehow saw it differently. Even the camera had some distortion and always would. It was in the nature of the round, bulging lens and the flat, rectangular picture plane.
Witnesses described a common experience using a unique perspective, differing levels of acuity, and using different words. Some, in fact most, weren’t even paying attention. Eyewitness descriptions would be all over the place, and yet here they had a chance to study at their leisure.
Gilles followed Dr. Auger.
The doctor had the clothes up on hangars, on racks, over a drain in the floor in the next room.
Gilles felt the fabric, still damp at the seams of the waistband. He went looking for the cut on the front of the jacket, squinting at it in the dim light of the utility room. The shirt, obviously, was cut as well and heavily bloodstained. He touched the cuts with the sensitive pads of his right fore and middle finger. It felt about right, but then pretty much any rip or tear would feel like that. The shoes were of good quality, the suit and shirt expensive.
“There were no personal effects. He was wearing silk underwear.”
“Hmn.” Gilles fingered the fabric. “Nice.”
They were being asked to make subjective calls when the manual stressed the objective call. It was the basis of all rational investigation. Emotion, wanting it to be true, had no place here. Human senses and recollection were fallible and he, a trained investigator, should only expect so much of himself.
“Andre.”
Levain went in to have a look.
“This suit is brown—” Maintenon’s face swung around. “Silk underwear as well.”
Thibodeau called out from the outer room.
“Yeah—yeah, it might be him. It could be him, what the hell. It probably is him.”
Turning his head away from the door, Andre looked again at the suit.
The lady said black suit, the gentleman is found in a brown suit.
How significant was that? The guy also took off and left without a word. Absolutely none of the information they had so far could be trusted. Not without further facts. Not without corroboration, of some material kind.
Merde.
Chapter Fifteen
Hubert and Tailler were looking terribly smug as Gilles finished his informal briefing on the previous day’s events. Andre gave them a long look before tearing himself away.
“Doctor Auger will be forwarding all reports here.” Gilles had his buttocks perched on the front of his desk, arms crossed as the thunder rumbled and lightning cracked overhead in an unusual September thunderstorm. “He can hang onto the body for a while, and he’s promised to send us the clothing as soon as he’s finished his detailed examination.”
Levain heaved in his chair. The two younger detectives obviously wanted to know what they should be doing next.
“Okay. So—”
“Um, Inspector?”
Gilles had turned to his typewriter, which he had on a second rather narrower desk, set against the wall and in behind his main one.
“Yes?”
Tailler, with an air of superior accomplishment, slid open the top drawer of his desk. He pulled out a big buff envelope and got out of his seat.
He took it over to Andre. Spreading the materials out on the desk, he stepped back. Levain whistled, looking up at the tall detective in astonishment.
“What is it, Tailler?”
“Heh-heh-heh. We have a body too, Inspector.”
“What?”
Andre looked at Hubert, who shrugged as if he wasn’t responsible for all of this mess, and Tailler took the pictures to Maintenon.
He was suitably impressed.
“And who is this?”
“That’s Madame Godeffroy.”
Tailler turned and gave Hubert a significant look.
It was his cue.
“Madame Zoe, Godeffroy.”
Maintenon’s mouth opened and he stared.
“Three…three wives…?”
“It seems terribly far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
Andre leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching their little performance.
“They’re all archetypes, Inspector.” Tailler rubbed his chin. “God knows where Didier found them…”
Levain’s eyebrows were climbing straight up, as if to escape from the sort of forehead that could conceive of all of this, in however limited a fashion. This was not his idea—the boys were all on their own on this one.
Tailler turned and shrugged.
“What are we supposed to think, Andre? That call yesterday—just when you were leaving. That was Inspector Delorme. She was found at the Rive Gauche, the hotel.”
Andre nodded, as Maintenon studied the crime scene photos. There were incident reports, the lady’s preliminary physical exam at the morgue. Dr. Guillaume was a thorough-going bastard when he ran into a corpse he liked.
She was blonde, well-dressed. The right age, size and build.
“She came in from Molsheim. In the wine country—or one of them, right. But here’s the kicker. There’s a letter. No envelope, unfortunately. She probably had it folded up in her purse, and kept it with her. Women are crazy about hanging onto old love letters. They were going to have a second honeymoon. The hotel’s a lot nicer these days by the way, it used to be a real dump known as the Belle Bleu or something.”
“Okay.” Andre’s head jerked a little in recognition.
He knew the place.
“It’s signed, love—Didier.”
Hmn.
Tailler closed his mouth and let them ponder that one.
Picking up one of the better photos of the victim, he took it and sat on the front of his own desk. Maintenon was studying the photographic copy of the letter.
He and Hubert had some ideas, but it was better to let Gilles think on it for a while.
In the meantime, Maintenon had been thoughtful enough to bring in a couple of boxes of assorted beignets, and if Tailler didn’t snag one of the strawberry-filled ones quick, some bastard would beat him to the punch.
&nb
sp; Probably Andre, he decided, as the two of them moved in at once. With Andre in his chair, Tailler had the advantage and he got there first.
“Mmn.” The trouble was the powdered sugar on the cheeks, but oh, well.
“So what do you think, Inspector?”
This was just getting too damned good. Hubert was about ready to shit himself.
Maintenon shrugged.
Thibodeau and something he said came to mind.
“It could be him. It might be him. Hell, it probably is him.” He lifted his feet up onto the desk, putting his hands up behind his head and eyeing the boxes of beignets on Andre’s desk. “The only question now, is how to proceed.”
It was one hell of a good question judging by the blank looks that one drew.
Hubert got up and grabbed one of the boxes, bringing it over so Gilles could have a rummage around in there.
“What is that?”
“Pardon?”
“I swear you were just humming—humming for crying out loud.”
“Oh, that.” Maintenon grunted, half-sad and yet half smiling. “It’s just an old song…”
He took in a short breath.
Poor old Gilles was quite the crooner.
“…speak softly, my love.
Speak low.
Speak softly to me my love
Speak Softly My Love Page 12