Murderous Mistral

by Cay Rademacher

  “Usually to the rear, but sometimes to the forehead or temples.” Fontaine Thezan got up and pushed her sunglasses back down to cover her eyes. “Particularly in a heavy wind the boom swings round.” The captain looked at her blankly so she pointed at one of the moored vessels nearby. “That’s the long beam that sticks out at an angle behind the mast. The mainsail is fastened to it. If the wind is strong, and particularly if you’re not perfectly on course, it often happens that the wind fills the sail and swings the boom round from one side to the opposite right across the boat. If you’re not incredibly careful or don’t get out of the way fast enough, it will hit you on the head, hard—with two potentially fatal outcomes: The blow knocks you out, and at the same time the swinging boom knocks you overboard. You fall into the water unconscious and drown straightaway if you aren’t wearing a life jacket. Unless of course you were lucky enough for someone to see you fall and haul you out straightaway, which is very unlikely if you’re out sailing alone.”

  “Are you trying to tell me Fuligni’s death was an accident?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry if I’m spoiling your fun, mon Capitaine. But that’s what it looks like, from a purely medical point of view. You’ll get my report, of course.” Dr. Thezan packed up her things and strolled off down the pier, ignoring the questions of the two reporters, and climbed into her battered Jeep.

  “Merde,” Blanc swore under his breath.

  “Putain,” Tonon corrected him. He seemed to be in a good mood, waving to the forensics team who were all over the Amzeri. “Strange coincidence, isn’t it.”

  “Damn strange.” He told the lieutenant that he had found out about the relationship between Miette Fuligni and Lucien Le Bruchec. He didn’t mention who had told him.

  Tonon shrugged indifferently. “You hear things now and then. Miette is hardly a woman who’d appreciate being left on her own.”

  Blanc thought of his own marriage. “That’s a lesson I’ve learned.”

  “Do you think Le Bruchec hit Fuligni on the head and then pushed him overboard?” Tonon asked. “On his own boat?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a lover disposed of the troublesome husband.”

  “And before that Le Bruchec had executed and immolated Moréas? After sixty peaceful, respectable years our architect suddenly turns into a serial killer?”

  “Maybe the two cases are unconnected.”

  “Maybe this isn’t a ‘case’ at all, just an accident. Dr. Thezan didn’t exactly give you grounds for hope.”

  Blanc interviewed the fisherman who had found Fuligni’s body, and the harbormaster. Neither told him anything he didn’t already know. Then Marius came up to him and pointed to a little white motorboat battling through the waves to the tiny lighthouse at the end of the last pier, in order to turn into the quieter waters of the harbor. Over the howling of the mistral they could make out the dull groan of a powerful outboard motor. At the stern, on either side of the outboard, were two tall deep-sea fishing rods. At the wheel in the middle of the open-topped boat, dressed in blue and white oilskins, was Marcel Lafont.

  “The mayor’s going to have a heart attack when he learns that his old friend, who’s supposed to be building his beloved médiathèque, is dead.” Tonon said it as if he were indifferent but Blanc could hear a note of tension in his voice.

  Lafont had noticed the police and journalists on the pier, accelerated, and hurtled toward them, leaving a wide wake behind him. “What’s happened,” he called out, even before he had tied up.

  “I suggest you get on to dry land first, Monsieur le maire,” Blanc replied calmly.

  * * *

  Two minutes later Lafont was staring down at the soaked corpse of his friend. He said nothing, but the color had drained from his face, and his lower lip was trembling. The gendarmes discreetly pulled back to give him some space. “What happened?” he managed to ask at last, clearly shocked.

  “We don’t quite know yet,” the captain said cautiously. “Monsieur Fuligni may have been the victim of an accident.” He told him what the pathologist had said. “One way or the other, he wasn’t exactly dressed for going out on a boat during the mistral. You look better kitted out.”

  Lafont absentmindedly ran a hand over his oilskins. “I went out at three in the morning, to go fishing, over by Istres. It’s something I like to do before starting work. I don’t sleep much these days.” He nodded toward the hilly, wooded shore opposite Saint-César. “I was in the little bay behind the hill over there. You can’t see it from here. It’s very quiet and the fish bite. It was still calm when I went out but Météo-France warned the wind was rising. It started to get rough about five A.M. and I put on my oilskins.”

  “Did you see Monsieur Fuligni when you arrived at the harbor during the night?”

  The mayor shook his head. “I saw his Mercedes. Pascal often drives down here in the evening and spends the night on his boat. He treats it a bit like a holiday home, but it was all dark on his yacht and so I didn’t think about waking him.”

  “So at three A.M., when you got here, the Amzeri was still at the pier?”

  “Yes, as normal. Who on earth would take a boat out at night, the day before the mistral?”

  “Monsieur Fuligni never went sailing during the mistral?”

  Lafont was about to answer, then hesitated and made a vague gesture. “Well, not to go any distance. Whenever he had repaired something or had a new toy—a new large foresail, a sonar, depth finder, whatever—then he would always go out for a few minutes to try it out just beyond the harbor. Even if it was raining cats and dogs. I suppose it’s possible he went out this morning, to test something.”

  “That might explain why he was so unsuitably dressed, and so careless,” said Tonon, not without a hint of irony in his voice.

  Lafont stood up straight. “A stupid, meaningless death, you’re right there. But death is death. Don’t make things too difficult for his family.”

  “A tragic accident, but hardly a scandal,” Blanc reassured him. He assumed that the mayor didn’t want too thorough an investigation, which might only make things worse for his relatives. Or was it possible he had seen more than he was saying, out there in his fishing boat? Or might it be that he just didn’t want Miette and Pascal’s marital problems to be exposed by the searchlight of a gendarmerie investigation?

  “What’s going to happen to your médiathèque now, Monsieur le maire?” he asked incidentally.

  The politician scratched his head, cast a final glance at the body of his friend, and muttered, “It’ll get built. Now more than ever.”

  * * *

  “It’s not a crime,” Nkoulou insisted, when they were standing in his office a little later, presenting their report.

  “That’s not been proved yet,” Blanc protested. “It might even have something to do with the Moréas murder. It’s a bit of a coincidence that—”

  “Do not make the situation unnecessarily complicated. You’re trying to dive headlong into a second murder investigation before you’ve even cleared up the first. Or maybe because you can’t?”

  Blanc stared at his chief. The muscles of his jaw were so tense that he was getting a pain in the temples. Nkoulou was bound to notice. Relax, he told himself. “Should we at least wait until we get the reports from the forensics team and the pathologist?”

  “But of course. That’s normal procedure.” The chief nodded and dismissed them.

  “Do you think Lafont might have been on the phone to him again?” Tonon whispered, when they were back in the sanctuary of their own office.

  Blanc shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe Nkoulou really does consider us such a pair of losers that he won’t trust us with more than one case at a time. I’ll have a chat with Madame le juge.”

  “Over the commandant’s head?”

  “I promised Madame Vialaron-Allègre to keep her up to date on all developments. I intend to do that. If she sees Fuligni’s death in the same way Nkoulou does, then I’m out of luck
. But if she thinks otherwise, then she may choose to have a word with our dear commandant.”

  “Sounds like you’re just desperate to make friends. In any case, Madame le juge is working from home today.”

  “Are you coming with me this time, Marius?”

  “I’m leaving the lady to you.”

  Blanc already had his hand on the door handle when he turned around. “Don’t you find it a bit strange that Monsieur Lafont went out at three in the morning with two fishing rods to an area where the fish are famed for biting, but came back to the harbor with not a single fish?”

  Tonon gave him a sympathetic look. “Just do me a favor and don’t tell the juge d’instruction that you now consider the mayor of her town to be a suspect because the fish weren’t biting.”

  * * *

  Blanc’s phone rang en route. He pulled to the side of the road in the shadow of a pine tree and answered. It was one of the forensics team. The gusts of wind were breaking dry twigs and scattering them along the asphalt, the wind in the trees making so much noise he could hardly understand what his colleague was saying. “Lots of fingerprints on board the Amzeri. Fuligni’s, but also those of lots of other people, maybe just visitors, fellow sailors, the harbormaster, his wife, whoever. It won’t be easy to find out.”

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “No, and no traces of blood either.”

  “Not even on that piece of wood with the sail?”

  “You mean the boom? No. Mind you, on this boat it’s made of aluminum.”

  The captain nodded. It would have been too easy. Fuligni’s injury was a blow, not a blood wound. He thought back to what Lafont had said about his friend. “Was there anything on board that looked new? Anything Fuligni might have been trying out?”

  The forensics man was quiet for a second. Blanc could hear the howling wind coming through the phone. The man was probably still on board. “No, but I’ll have a look around. The front sail is still packed away, complete. The mainsail was flying above the boom, but it’s old. The compass, radio, GPS all look pretty well used. All the indications are that Fuligni had breakfast belowdecks, came up briefly, and, whack, the boom swung round and took him out.”

  “He had breakfast?”

  “There are croissant crumbs on the table belowdecks, and in the galley an old coffeepot with grounds in it. Still moist. Putain!” Suddenly the man’s voice vanished.

  “What happened?” Blanc shouted.

  The voice came back. “There are two coffee cups in the sink.”

  “Two?”

  “I’m an idiot. I should have spotted it straightaway. We’ll check them out.”

  “I’ll look forward to your next call.” Blanc turned off his Nokia. Two cups. Now the business was beginning to get interesting.

  * * *

  Just as he was about to pull back out onto the road, a dark blue Citroën C5 came speeding down the hill. The driver didn’t notice the patrol car parked in the shadow of the trees, but the captain recognized her: Madame le juge. He cursed and put his foot down. But Aveline Vialaron-Allègre knew the winding, narrow route départementale better than he did, and was driving like a lunatic. After just three bends he had lost sight of her. Still at the wheel, he pulled out his cell phone and tapped in a number, the blue Mégane swaying from side to side across the road, the tires screeching.

  “Marius?” he shouted into the Nokia.

  “Corporal Baressi on Lieutenant Tonon’s phone.”

  “Merde. Sorry. Where is Tonon?”

  “Not at his desk.”

  “I thought as much.” Connard. “Are you expecting Madame Vialaron-Allègre?”

  “Madame le juge has been informed of the tragic accident of Monsieur Fuligni.”

  “It wasn’t an accident. Who informed her?”

  “No idea. In any case she wanted to get a full picture of the situation.”

  “Tell her that I’ll be in her office in a few minutes and I’ll fill her in.”

  “Madame le juge is not coming in to the office. She wanted to see the boat. And the body of the unlucky Monsieur Fuligni.”

  Blanc put his foot on the brake quickly enough to still be able to turn onto route départementale 70D, leading to Saint-César. Somebody had told Aveline Vialaron-Allègre. She wanted to see the crime scene and the victim herself. Why? Because she didn’t trust Blanc to do the job properly? Or did she have an altogether different reason?

  A few minutes later he parked the patrol car next to the C5 down by the harbor. On the pier the forensics team were clearing up their last bits of equipment. They had taken off their white protective clothing and were standing around smoking. Stretcher bearers had lifted the body, covered with a sheet, and the juge d’instruction was standing a little to one side, by the edge of the pier, staring into the water. Blanc hurried past the yachts, stopping briefly with the forensics team next to the Amzeri to ask, “Anything new with the coffee cups?”

  “Nothing.” Young Hurault, already nearly bald, the one who had searched Moréas’s house, shook his head. The captain recognized that it had been his voice on the phone. “We’ll send them to the lab, but they look to me as clean as if somebody had scalded them.”

  “On board a sailing boat?”

  The forensics man nodded toward the galley. “There’s a two-hob gas cooker in there, more than enough to bring a few liters of water to boiling point in a few minutes.”

  “Anything to suggest that’s what happened?”

  “Can’t be sure. All I can tell you is that there is a normal, relatively full propane gas canister attached. That makes it at least technically possible.”

  “Do you normally scald your coffee cups in the morning, Monsieur Hurault?”

  The young man looked at him in surprise, then shook his head. “Just a dash of washing-up liquid, a rinse with warm water, and then leave them to dry. That’s what everybody does.”

  “So if we think someone was trying to get rid of any clues,” Blanc muttered to himself, “then you might think just rinsing the cups was hardly enough.”

  “And why leave two cups in the drainer? If you want to get rid of any evidence, surely you’d put them back in a cupboard.”

  “Maybe our Monsieur X didn’t have the time. After all, boiling the water and pouring it over them will have taken a few minutes. Or perhaps he didn’t want to touch the cups he had just poured the boiling water over for fear of leaving new traces.”

  “Well, that’s your problem,” Hurault replied, and peeled his thin frame out of his overalls. “I’ll send you the report from the lab if we find anything of interest.”

  * * *

  Blanc walked down to the end of the pier. He hesitated before taking the last few steps, preferring to wait until the juge d’instruction noticed his presence and turned around. She’d been crying, he realized with some surprise. “I was on my way to you,” he said, trying not to show he had noticed the state she was in.

  “Monsieur Fuligni was a friend of my late father. He was practically part of the family,” she said, clearly having noticed his surprise at her grief. She stretched and gave him a questioning look: “You’re here because you don’t believe it was an accident?”

  “I have doubts, primarily because of two clean coffee cups,” he said, telling her what he had discovered.

  “And now you think that Monsieur Fuligni wouldn’t have gone out in this weather.” Aveline Vialaron-Allègre followed his line of thought. “He was sitting belowdecks, having breakfast, with a guest.”

  “A guest who afterwards took care to remove the evidence.”

  “After he had hit Pascal on the head, untied the boat, and then pushed him overboard outside the harbor?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “But when the fisherman came across the Amzeri, there was no one on board.”

  “Maybe the culprit jumped into the water and made his way back to land.”

  “But you have no witnesses.”

  “Unfor
tunately not.” Reluctantly, Blanc acknowledged that he was enjoying her putting him to the test.

  “And what motive might this hypothetical murderer have had?”

  Blanc hesitated, wondering if it might be such a good idea to tell the juge d’instruction that her much-valued family friend’s wife was cuckolding him. Merde alors. He briefly summarized the rumors about Miette Fuligni’s affair with the architect Le Bruchec. Aveline Vialaron-Allègre didn’t look too shocked, as if it were the first time she had heard the story.

  “You named Lucien Le Bruchec as a suspect in the Moréas murder case, and now, a few days later, you’re naming him again, this time as the killer of Pascal Fuligni. It’s not hard to tell you’re not from around here. Nobody who knows Lucien would take that seriously, even for a second. It’s absurd that a man like him would shoot a suspected burglar and then just days later kill a rival in a love affair.”

  “I’m not accusing anybody. I have no intention of arresting anybody.” He could feel his heart rate rising. “You asked me for a possible motive. I gave you a possible motive. The oldest in the world: passion.”

  “The oldest motive in the world is greed,” the juge d’instruction replied.

  “I’m not ruling that out either.”

  “If there’s anything in what you’ve just said, it implies that both murders were carried out by the same person. But we have neither a suspect nor a motive.” Blanc was about to interrupt her, but she gestured at him to be silent. “Please explain to me then the difference in the killer’s approach: In the one case a man is mowed down with a Kalashnikov, then set on fire, in the other he’s hit on the head and dumped in the water off his yacht in the Étang de Berre. Coffee cups rinsed in boiling water. That’s the act of someone doing everything possible to conceal the evidence. The exact opposite of what happened at the garbage dump. The first looked like an execution, the second was supposed to look like an accident.”

  “That doesn’t mean there aren’t parallels: cold-bloodedness for a start. Efficiency. A killer adapting the method to the circumstances. On a garbage dump, where it’s noisy and dirty and there are moments when there’s nobody about, a salvo from a machine gun could be considered efficient, fast, and unlikely to be noticed. At the same time the killer doesn’t have to get close to a violent man like Moréas, who could be dangerous at close quarters. He kills him without warning from a distance. In the harbor here at Saint-César a single shot would have everybody sleeping on their boats jumping out of their beds. A blow to the head, possibly belowdecks, wouldn’t be noticed by anyone. Once again the murderer would be taking the least possible risk, attacking from behind. And in both cases the killer eliminates all the evidence: first by fire, then by making it look like an accident.”