‘I’ll be at Johnny’s on Saturday,’ she said, before striding off to attend to the waiting customers. Raymond nodded to himself, solemnly committing Delph’s words to memory. He had no idea where or even what ‘Johnny’s’ was, but he could not prevent himself from looking around to see if anyone had witnessed his triumph. The pockmarked man gave him a wink and jerked his fist towards his cheek in a lewd motion.
Raymond counted out some coins into the pewter salver on the table and left, his satchel clattering against the back of the chair in which Delph had been sitting. She did not look up as he passed. It was not yet six o’clock.
Eleven
Gorski was leaving the police station. It was half past ten. He was meeting Céline that evening and had decided that the least he could do was go to Lemerre’s for a haircut. Later he would return home to shower and change his shirt. Without looking up from his newspaper, Schmitt called him back: ‘Oh, Georges, I almost forgot.’
Gorski turned round. An exhausted-looking woman of about thirty was sitting on one of the plastic chairs that lined the wall to the right of the door. A small boy, around four years old, was scribbling on scraps of paper at her feet. The woman looked from Schmitt to Gorski. Her presence deterred Gorski from taking the desk sergeant to task for addressing him by his first name.
‘You had a call from Strasbourg. An Inspector Larousse, Lamour or something.’
‘Lambert?’ Gorski said curtly.
‘That’s it,’ said Schmitt. ‘Lambert.’
‘When was this?’
Schmitt puffed out his cheeks, cast his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘An hour ago. Maybe two.’
Gorski forgot the presence of the woman for a moment. ‘You’re an asshole, Schmitt.’
The boy looked up from his drawing. Schmitt looked at the woman with an expression of bemused innocence. Gorski shook his head and marched back to his office. He snatched up the receiver and then halted, halfway through dialling the number. He replaced the handset in its trestle. After their previous conversation, perhaps it was no bad thing to leave a little time before returning Lambert’s call. He did not want him to think that he had nothing better to do than sit around like a lovesick schoolgirl waiting for his big-city colleague to call. Maybe he should even wait for him to ring again. That would be churlish, however. Lambert would not have called if it was not important, and a respectable amount of time had elapsed.
When he was put through, Lambert picked up on the first ring.
‘Georges!’ he said, as though they were suddenly great buddies. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ he replied coolly. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I was thinking about this suspect you called me about,’ he began.
‘Suspect?’ Gorski shook his head as he spoke.
‘The fellow involved in the accident.’
‘Ah, Barthelme,’ said Gorski, as if he had forgotten all about it. ‘I’m sure you were right. There’s no reason to think he might have been involved.’
‘All the same, there’s no harm in eliminating him from our enquiries, is there?’
‘I suppose not,’ Gorski agreed.
‘Good,’ said Lambert. ‘Do you think you could save me a trip down there and put a few questions to him?’
‘I’d be happy to,’ said Gorski, ‘except that there’s one small problem: he’s dead. He was killed in the accident.’
‘Ah,’ said Lambert. He clicked his tongue while he absorbed this fact. ‘Maybe this is all to the good. You said something about him having lied about his whereabouts?’
‘He had told his wife he was dining with some business associates.’
‘Hmm.’ Lambert clicked his tongue some more, then asked if the funeral had taken place.
‘The body’s in the mortuary in Mulhouse. It’s due to be released to the family in a couple of days.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Georges,’ said Lambert. ‘You’d be doing me quite a favour if you could get some prints and bring them up here to me.’
Aside from the pressing business of his haircut, there was nothing at all to prevent Gorski doing this. ‘I’m pretty busy down here,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could shift a few things around.’
‘If you could, Georges. It would be much appreciated. I’ll buy you lunch.’
Gorski agreed. If nothing else, Céline would be impressed to hear that he was working a murder case in Strasbourg.
‘Good man,’ said Lambert. ‘And it might be handy if you could get your hands on a photograph of the suspect.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Gorski. He couldn’t help feeling some satisfaction that Lambert had been forced to ask him for a favour. He drummed his fingers on the desk. He hadn’t fingerprinted a suspect for years. Such mundanities were taken care of by Schmitt or whoever else happened to be working the desk. He fetched the necessary kit and left without telling anyone where he was going. The woman in the waiting area had gone, but her son’s drawings and a number of crayons were still strewn across the floor.
Gorski had trouble finding a parking space in the narrow streets around Rue de la Nuée-Bleue. There was a car park in the basement of the Strasbourg station, but he did not know if he was permitted to use it. In the event, he had to walk four or five blocks. The sky was overcast and by the time he arrived he had worked up a light sweat. Lambert came down to the foyer and greeted Gorski with a vigorous handshake, before steering him along a corridor. Everyone they passed greeted him as ‘Boss’ or ‘Big Phil’.
‘You got the prints?’ he asked.
Gorski nodded. He was surprised that Lambert was treating his visit with such urgency. The investigation must have been properly stalled. Lambert pushed open a door with a frosted glass panel and ushered Gorski inside.
He took the manila envelope Gorski was holding and handed it to a man of about fifty years old with a pallid complexion, uncombed hair and a week’s stubble. Lambert introduced him as Boris. An ashtray spilled butts onto the desk in front of him. Boris was the best fingerprint man in France, Lambert explained. ‘The best one I’ve come across at any rate.’
‘And how many have you come across?’ said Boris. He had put on a pair of reading glasses and was scrutinising Barthelme’s prints a few centimetres from his face.
‘Just you, my dear,’ said Lambert.
Boris gave a weary sigh. Gorski hoped the prints were usable. It had been an awkward business taking prints from a corpse lying in a mortuary drawer. Rigor mortis had subsided, but without a firm surface on which to place the card it had been difficult to get a clean impression. The card Boris was holding represented Gorski’s fourth attempt. The technician noisily cleared some phlegm from his throat and spat it into the wastepaper basket on the floor at his feet. He clicked on the light of the microfiche reader on his desk.
‘I’ll check them,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’
‘Indulge me,’ said Lambert.
The prints on the microfiche were magnified to the size of a man’s hand. Boris scrolled through them at great speed, holding Barthelme’s prints to the left for comparison. The images resembled little more than smudges to Gorski. At one point, Boris paused and scrolled back a little. He drew the card closer to the screen, then cleared his throat again and scrolled on. Then, as abruptly as he had started, he clicked off the machine and proffered the card over his shoulder.
‘Thanks for wasting my time,’ he said.
‘You’re very welcome,’ said Lambert. He did not appear unduly disappointed.
Ten minutes later, Gorski and Lambert were in a tiny corner bar a short distance away on Rue Marbach. It consisted of a narrow passage with a long zinc-topped bar. At the back were three booths almost in darkness. The windows were dressed with stained voile curtains. The sill below was littered with dead flies. A lethargic wasp picked its way through the corpses. A man wearing an oversized cap sat at the bar with his head slumped on his chest. Lambert kicked his stool as they passed and he woke up
with a start. The bartender nodded to the detective and placed two marcs on the counter. Lambert raised his drink in Gorski’s direction and knocked it back, bearing his teeth as the alcohol hit the back of his throat. Gorski followed suit and Lambert indicated that they would take two more. He steered Gorski to one of the booths at the back of the bar.
Lambert leant against the back wall and put his feet on the banquette. He was wearing light brown slip-on shoes and striped socks. Céline would approve. He lit a cigarette. It was around half past two, but in the semi-darkness of the rear of the bar it could have been midnight. Lambert seemed to have forgotten his promise to buy Gorski lunch.
‘So, tell me what you know about this Barthelme character,’ he said.
Gorski looked surprised. It seemed a pointless exercise given that the lawyer had just been eliminated from the investigation.
Lambert shook his head. ‘Quite the contrary, my friend,’ he said. ‘Here’s the thing. There are fingerprints all over the apartment: the victim’s, of course, and we still don’t know how many others. But’—he held up his forefinger to emphasise the point—‘on the table in the living room there were two glasses, both with traces of whisky. One glass was covered in prints—the unfortunate Veronique’s—on the other, nothing. Also, there were no prints on the inner handle of the front door and the armrests of the chair where whoever drank from the second glass sat.’
He paused to allow Gorski to absorb this information, then said: ‘So the killer had the wherewithal—forethought, whatever you want to call it—to wipe his own glass and the other surfaces he touched.’
‘Maybe he wore gloves,’ Gorski suggested.
Lambert dismissed this idea with a shake of his head. ‘They sat and had a drink together. It would have looked a little strange if he was wearing gloves. Also, if he had worn gloves, these other surfaces would still have had prints on them, but they didn’t. They had been wiped down. Thoroughly wiped down. So if your Maître Barthelme’s prints had been found in the apartment, that would have eliminated him as a suspect. Anyone whose prints are still there is in the clear.’
Gorski imagined the short shrift he would get from an examining magistrate if he proposed the idea that the absence of fingerprints constituted evidence against a suspect. And yet there was an undeniable logic to Lambert’s thinking. The bartender approached the booth.
‘Two more?’ he said. The question was redundant, however, as he had already poured the drinks and placed them on the table.
‘Good man,’ said Lambert. He waited for him to retreat to the bar before continuing. ‘So tell me about him.’
Gorski outlined what he knew, purposefully making Barthelme seem as reputable as possible.
‘And this subterfuge with the wife, how long had that been going on?’
‘From what I can gather, as long as they had been married.’
‘And Madame Barthelme?’
‘She’s younger,’ said Gorski. ‘A good deal younger.’
Lambert frowned, as if this did not fit his expectations.
‘Attractive?’
Gorski gave a little shrug. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’
Lambert reached across the narrow table and nudged him on the shoulder.
Gorski ignored him. ‘They seem to have kept separate rooms.’
This delighted Lambert. ‘So the old dog had to empty his balls elsewhere! Now we’re getting somewhere. You need to ply the widow for a bit more info. From what you say, it won’t be too onerous a task.’
Gorski objected, saying that he had no legitimate reason to question her.
Lambert made a dismissive gesture. Such niceties were not his concern. Lambert finished his drink and stood up.
‘Want to take a look at the crime scene? It’s only a block away,’ he said. ‘I could do with a fresh pair of eyes.’
Gorski could not help feeling flattered. Lambert visited the WC. He emerged, still zipping himself up, and they left the bar without paying. It had started to rain lightly. Lambert strode through the streets so quickly that Gorski had to trot by his side to keep up.
Veronique Marchal’s apartment was on Quai Kellermann. There was no concierge. Access to the building was gained via a set of buzzers on a brass panel in the street. The gendarme stationed at the ornately carved door stood aside. The apartment was modishly decorated: the lampshades were orange plastic domes; the walls hung with brown flock wallpaper; the sofas and chairs were white leather. The carpet was so thick that Gorski’s shoes nestled in the pile. It was difficult to picture the ascetic Bertrand Barthelme in such surroundings. Lambert led Gorski into the living room. High windows gave onto a small balcony overlooking a canal. Lambert rattled off his version of events as if he was giving a soccer commentary: ‘Mademoiselle Marchal lets our man in … She offers him a drink … She sits here, he sits there … They chat for long enough for her to finish her drink … They move to the bedroom …’
Gorski gazed at the smoked-glass coffee table, the surface of which was covered in a film of fingerprint powder. Lambert walked him into the bedroom. He pointed out the silk ties that had been used to bind Mlle Marchal’s wrists to the posts of the bed. ‘No sign of struggle, so we can assume that everything is consensual up to this point.’ He came to a halt in the middle of the floor, gazing down at the crumpled sheets. ‘Then he strangles her. No sexual act took place, so my guess is that the murder was premeditated, rather than as a result of their little game getting out of hand. That tallies with the fact that the perpetrator had the nous to wipe down the surfaces he had touched.’
He looked at Gorski. It was hard to argue with his conclusions.
‘A place like this’—he gestured round the apartment—‘doesn’t come cheap. Mademoiselle Marchal had no bank account, but there were thousands of francs stashed in a jar in the fridge, more in the bathroom cabinet. But no little black book of clients or anything like that. Either she never wrote anything down or the killer knew where she kept her diary and took it with him. I don’t suppose anything like that was found in Barthelme’s car?’
Gorski shook his head.
They were back in the living room. Gorski would have liked to add some thoughts of his own, but Lambert’s version of events was quite plausible. If he now stepped back into the bedroom, it was only to give the impression that he was deep in thought. He walked slowly round the bed, imagining the woman he had seen only in a blurred newspaper photograph trussed to the bedposts. He was conscious that Lambert was watching him through the doorway. He willed himself to come up with some original insight, but nothing came.
Back on the landing, Lambert rattled the knocker on the door of the apartment opposite. He asked if Gorski had brought a photograph of ‘the suspect’, as he was now calling him. Gorski took it from the inside pocket of his raincoat. It was a grainy blown-up image of the photograph on Barthelme’s ID card. Lambert looked at it sceptically, then shrugged as if the quality of the image was of no consequence.
Gorski did not hear any footsteps inside the apartment before the door opened.
‘Professor Weismann,’ said Lambert in a jovial tone. ‘I hope you’ll forgive a further intrusion.’
‘It’s a pleasure to see you, Inspector. Please come in.’
Lambert introduced Gorski. Weismann looked at him suspiciously, before offering a limp handshake. He was in his mid-fifties, dressed in baggy corduroy trousers, a grubby collarless shirt and a green cardigan, the middle button of which was dangling from a single strand of wool. He was wearing felt slippers and smelled strongly of cologne. He showed them into a large and exceptionally untidy study. The largest wall was lined with books and beneath that sat an old-fashioned desk with a typewriter at its centre. Most of the floor was covered with cardboard boxes filled with journals and other papers.
Lambert turned to Gorski. ‘Professor Weismann is a renowned historian,’ he said.
‘I’m afraid your colleague flatters me. I am no professor,’ said Weismann modestly.
&nb
sp; ‘Nevertheless, you are something of an expert in your field, are you not?’
‘Well, I daresay,’ he said. ‘Are you interested in the period of the Reformation, Monsieur Gorski?’
Gorski smiled non-committally.
‘My contention is that despite the failure of Lutherism to truly take hold in—’
‘It’s fascinating stuff,’ Lambert interjected. As there was nowhere to sit down, the three men had settled in an awkward triangle in the middle of the room. Lambert asked the historian if he would mind taking a look at a photograph.
‘Another of your suspects, Inspector?’
‘Just someone we’d like to eliminate from our enquiries,’ replied Lambert.
He handed him the photograph. Weismann held it close to his face and squinted at it.
‘You have problems with your eyesight, monsieur?’ Gorski asked.
‘Only for reading,’ he replied curtly.
‘Professor Weismann often passed men in the stairwell or happened to observe them on the landing,’ explained Lambert.
‘Sometimes, if Mademoiselle Marchal had a visitor, I would mistake her buzzer for my own, you see,’ Weismann added.
Gorski smiled thinly at him. He had noted the stool positioned behind the door to the apartment when he came in. ‘And did you see anyone enter Mademoiselle Marchal’s apartment on the evening of her murder?’ he asked.
‘Regrettably, no,’ said Weismann with a slight bow of his head.
Lambert gave him a few moments to study the photograph before asking if he recognised the man. Weismann pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.
‘It’s not a very clear photograph, but I don’t believe so, Inspector.’
‘But if you only saw the men entering Mademoiselle Marchal’s apartment from behind, you couldn’t say for sure that you didn’t see this man, could you?’
Weismann conceded the point.
Lambert addressed Gorski. ‘How tall was Maître Barthelme?’
‘One metre eighty-five.’ Barthelme’s height had been recorded in the post-mortem report.
The Accident on the A35 Page 12
