The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

by Graeme Macrae Burnet

  ‘How’s the case?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re following up a few leads,’ said Gorski. He did not want to admit that he was getting nowhere.

  ‘That bad, eh?’ His tone was sympathetic rather than mocking.

  ‘I could certainly do with a body,’ said Gorski.

  Lambert suggested that they take his car to the mortuary. He asked Gorski a few more questions about the case, but when it became apparent that he had little or nothing to go on, he dropped the subject. Gorski was embarrassed. He wondered if it was his own incompetence that had resulted in the lack of progress. He would have liked to ask Lambert’s advice. He would have dealt with far more cases of this nature than Gorski. But he did not do so and the final minutes of the journey were passed in silence. Lambert parked his BMW in a restricted area outside the mortuary and strode past the reception area. He appeared to know the corridors of the building well. He marched along so quickly Gorski almost had to run to keep up. They were greeted by a technician in a white coat and Lambert explained why they were there. When the technician glanced questioningly in Gorski’s direction, Lambert introduced him as if he had forgotten momentarily that he was there. The technician led them to a bank of stainless steel doors. He told them that the post-mortem would not take place until later that evening, but they were welcome to attend. Gorski hoped that would not be necessary. In his early days as a detective, he had, out of a sense of bravado, volunteered to attend the autopsy of a suicide. Much to the amusement of the pathologist and his assistant, he had thrown up only minutes into the procedure. News of the incident mysteriously filtered back to the station and for weeks afterwards he had had to endure his colleagues pretending to vomit into wastepaper baskets whenever he entered the room. The technician slid the drawer open. Gorski took a deep breath. It was immediately apparent that the body was not that of Adèle Bedeau. The girl was blonde and skinny. Her ribs showed through her skin. The flesh had taken on a greenish-grey hue. Lambert looked at Gorski, who shook his head. He felt nauseous.

  ‘Been dead a good couple of weeks, I’d say,’ said the technician.

  ‘Sorry, pal,’ said Lambert.

  They drove back to the station in silence. Gorski felt that Lambert was embarrassed on his behalf, that he had shown his naivety by jumping in his car so hastily. He could easily have waited in Saint-Louis for a description of the body to be sent to him. Instead, he had got ahead of himself, like a child who couldn’t wait to open his Christmas presents. On the drive to Strasbourg he had practically solved the crime in his head and got himself a transfer to the big city force in the process. Indeed, had he not partly raced here merely for the opportunity to rub shoulders with some big city cops, and so that later he would be able to mention in an offhand way to Céline that he had been up to Strasbourg?

  Gorski and Lambert parted in the street. Lambert wished him luck with the case and told him to get in touch if he needed anything. Gorski thanked him. They shook hands and Lambert disappeared back into the station.

  Gorski took the longer route along the Rhine back to Saint-Louis. He drove slowly. He had no wish to return to the station and admit that his trip to Strasbourg had been a wild goose chase. He could already see the mocking expression on Schmitt’s face. The brown water of the great river to his left moved at funereal pace. The crops in the fields to his right were cut to a stubble. There was a sweet smell of manure in the air. He felt deflated. The investigation was cold and he could see little chance of it taking a turn for the better. If it did, it would be a matter of good fortune rather than through any inspiration on his part. All avenues of investigation had been exhausted. There was only Manfred Baumann, but aside from the fact that he was lying, there was no real evidence to connect him to Adèle Bedeau’s disappearance.

  He pulled into a lay-by a little to the north of Saint-Louis and sat for some minutes, smoking. Then he got out and walked through the woods towards the clearing. As he trudged along the path he told himself that the clearing was as good a place as any to gather his thoughts, but there was more to it than that. As he took his usual seat on the fallen tree trunk, he wondered if a cop like Lambert would have made more progress with the case. His Strasbourg colleague would certainly have taken a more forceful line with Manfred Baumann, perhaps arresting him in the hope of forcing him into a confession. Or perhaps he would have staged some reconstruction of the events leading up to the girl’s disappearance. Gorski’s credo was that police work was a matter of routine, of following procedure, but he feared his scorn for speculation was nothing more than a defence against the suspicion that he was incapable of taking a more intuitive approach to his work. Twenty years ago, he had failed and now he was failing again. Yet he refused to countenance changing his methods. But had he not, in fact, returned to the clearing because of the nagging feeling that there was some connection between the disappearance of Adèle Bedeau and the murder of Juliette Hurel? He had, as a matter of course, considered and rejected the notion. Yet the idea persisted. He carefully stubbed out his cigarette on the tree trunk and lit another.

  Gorski loathed hunches. They were an excuse for ill-disciplined thinking, part of a vocabulary cops liked to use to cloak their work in mystique. Speculation led nowhere. One ‘what if’ led to another and, before long, supposition was piled on pointless supposition. It was like the opening of a game of chess. After every move the permutations increased exponentially. Gorski had no inclination to lose himself in a pointless chain of conjecture, a chain which would in all likelihood turn out to be built on false premises. In any case, such thinking gave Gorski a headache. Yet his plodding adherence to empiricism had got him nowhere. And, had he not from the outset proceeded on the premise that Adèle Bedeau was dead, and more than that – that she had been murdered? It was a very basic assumption, but even now Gorski had no evidence to support it. Indeed, the very lack of evidence pointed to the opposite conclusion: that Adèle Bedeau was alive and had simply disappeared. Was this not why Gorski had become so excited when Schmitt had informed him of the body in the river? The assumption he had made had been vindicated. And in the process Gorski could applaud himself on the correctness of his instincts. He had already been congratulating himself on the drive to Strasbourg.

  The air in the forest was cool and still. A woodpigeon cooed incessantly. Gorski cast his eyes up towards the foliage, but he could not see any birds. He drew on his cigarette. The ground was tinder dry. For a second Gorski saw the forest ablaze, the invisible birds around him suddenly taking to the skies to escape the flames. Then he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He started. He dreaded the idea of someone coming along to whom he might have to explain his presence. He looked over his shoulder. There was nobody there. Perhaps a bird or animal had disturbed the undergrowth. He looked at his watch. It was only quarter past four. He could not go home. Clémence would be back from school and think it odd that he was in the house. These days he spent as little time as possible at home. He got up from the tree trunk and for no particular reason walked in the direction of the sound he had heard. There were some ripe blackberries in the bushes. He paused to pick some, snagging the sleeves of his jacket on the thorns. They were sweet and juicy. The flavour reminded him of the weeks he had spent working on a farm as a teenager. He pushed through the brushwood. After a while he came across an overgrown path.

  Twenty minutes later he arrived at a brick wall, around three metres tall and veined with creepers. The pale yellow bricks were crumbling and much of the mortar had come loose, so that it appeared to be held up only by the ivy that grappled its way to the coving. The wall stretched some distance in either direction and Gorski could not step back far enough to see over it due to the dense bushes from which he had emerged. There was a wooden door. It had once been painted blue, but most of the paint had long since peeled off, leaving the wood exposed and rotting. The undergrowth reached halfway up the door and the hinges were covered with ancient cobwebs. It had clearly not been used for years. Nevertheless, G
orski stepped into the shrubbery and tried the rusty doorknob. It rattled uselessly in his hand. He contemplated scaling the wall. There were plenty of crevices that could serve as footholds, but the idea of arriving on someone’s property in such an undignified manner did not appeal to him. Besides, he could not be sure the wall would not collapse under his weight.

  Instead Gorski headed north, away from Saint-Louis. Gorski was confident that the wall formed the rear boundary of the large villas on the outskirts of the town. After three or four hundred metres it ended, giving way to some vegetable plots, which might have belonged to the nearby houses, or were perhaps rented by townsfolk. Gorski cut through a pathway leading towards the road and doubled back towards where he had first emerged from the woods. The houses on the northern edge of the town were large imposing buildings set back from the road, their privacy protected by stone walls and mature trees. Aside from the occasional burglary, he had not had occasion to visit these properties since the murder of Juliette Hurel.

  Gorski recognised the name on the mailbox at the foot of the drive of one of the houses. He put on his jacket to hide the large sweat marks under his arms. His footsteps crunched conspicuously on the gravel as he approached the house. Certainly he had been here before, but he struggled to recall the details of his previous visit. Gorski felt ill at ease approaching the house. He half-expected the owner to come out and berate him for trespassing. Even now as a police inspector, he felt uneasy in the presence of the bourgeoisie who inhabited these grand houses. Since their marriage, Céline had been relentless in her intolerance of Gorski’s lower class mannerisms, endlessly correcting his speech and reprimanding him for wiping his mouth with the back of his hand or holding his cutlery incorrectly. As a result, Gorski was, as Céline put it, just about able to pass in polite society, but in her absence, Gorski often reverted to his old ways, betraying his origins through a certain obsequiousness in the presence of his social superiors.

  He rang the bell. It was a full minute before the door was opened by a uniformed maid. She looked enquiringly at him. Gorski resisted the temptation to apologise for the intrusion and handed her his card. He asked to speak to Monsieur or Madame Paliard. As soon as he stepped into the cool of the entrance hall and inhaled the musty aroma of the old house, his previous visit returned to him. The interview had been conducted in a reception room through the door to his left. It was a grand, high ceilinged room with elaborate cornicing, an old-fashioned brass candelabra and somewhat gaudy furniture. There was a bay window, hung with pale green velvet drapes and a large fireplace with an enormous gilt-framed mirror above it. Gorski recalled catching a glimpse of his younger self in that mirror. The air had been still and cool. It was clear that the room was rarely used. Gorski had asked Monsieur Paliard and his wife a few rudimentary questions about the murder of Juliette Hurel. Paliard, he recalled, was a lawyer. Gorski had remarked that he had not encountered him in the criminal courts and Paliard had told him that he practised family law.

  The maid left Gorski in the hall and returned a few moments later to show him into the reception room. It was exactly as he recalled. The air in the room was dead, as if it had not been disturbed since his last visit. The maid informed him that M. Paliard would join him in a few minutes and offered him a refreshment while he waited. Gorski asked for a glass of water.

  ‘It’s very hot,’ he said, immediately scolding himself for feeling the need to justify such a modest request. The maid disappeared and returned with a jug of iced water and two glasses on a silver tray. When she left, Gorski poured himself a glass and downed it. He was still sweating from his walk through the woods. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. Céline maintained that sweating was a lower class habit. And it was true, in twenty-two years of marriage, Gorski had never seen his wife perspire.

  The old man arrived. He gripped a walking stick in each hand and leant heavily on them. A plastic tube was attached to his nose with medical tape. His skin was a greyish yellow and hung loosely on his face. Nevertheless Gorski recognised him immediately. Despite his frailty, he retained an air of authority. He struggled to a sofa and dropped down into it with difficulty. He motioned with a crooked finger that Gorski should sit, which he did. Paliard’s fragile state of health sharpened Gorski’s feeling that his visit was an intrusion.

  Paliard made no attempt to initiate proceedings. There was no What can I do for you? or How can I help you, Inspector? Only those cowed by the presence of a police officer began in such a manner. Old money, Gorski had long since learned, treated the police with disdain. They were received as, in the past, the gamekeeper or the stableboy might have been.

  ‘You’ve risen in the ranks since our last meeting, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gorski.

  ‘That probably says more about the mediocrity of our police force than any ability on your part.’ A thin smile flickered across Paliard’s lips. The effort of this prompted a wheezing cough from the back of the old man’s throat. He indicated that Gorski should pour a glass of water from the jug on the table. Gorski did so and handed it to Paliard, who waited for the wheezing to subside before taking a sip. Gorski was reminded of the hours he spent sitting silently with his father in the latter days of his life. He waited for Paliard to catch his breath.

  ‘I’m investigating the disappearance of Adèle Bedeau,’ Gorski said by way of justifying his reappearance, despite the fact that the current investigation had no bearing on his visit or at least not one that he could easily have explained. In any case, Paliard ignored him.

  ‘I remember your last visit. I was as unimpressed with you as I was with the conclusion of the case you were investigating. What was the name of the girl?’

  ‘Hurel, Juliette Hurel.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paliard. ‘It was a vagrant that got done for it, was it not? Malou, if I recollect?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gorski. He was embarrassed that the old man recalled the details of the case.

  ‘Not a shred of evidence, if I remember correctly. A real stitch-up.’

  ‘There was an eyewitness that placed him in the vicinity,’ said Gorski without conviction.

  Paliard tutted slowly and shook his head.

  ‘I’m quite sure even a man of your limited intelligence would not place too much credence on the evidence of an attention-seeking old woman.’

  ‘Malou was tried and found guilty,’ said Gorski.

  ‘And thus you absolve yourself of responsibility. Splendid!’ said the old man.

  Gorski said nothing. He was beginning to regret calling upon Paliard, especially given the ill-defined grounds for his visit. At the end of the day, the conviction of Malou was not his responsibility. He had been obliged to follow up a lead and likewise he was obliged to divulge the testimony of the widow. It had not been his decision to prosecute Malou, nor had it been he who had found him guilty. There was, however, little to be gained from putting this to Paliard.

  ‘As I said,’ he began again, ‘I’m investigating the disappearance of Adèle Bedeau.’

  Paliard shook his head again. ‘I find it hard to believe that even a man such as yourself could think that I might be able to furnish you with any information in that connection. Rather, I imagine you are here because you believe there is a connection between the two cases. And, as such, it stands to reason that you think that Malou was falsely convicted.’

  Gorski could see no way of progressing the interview without conceding the point.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He was not sure he had ever admitted this to anyone other than Céline. In a way it was a relief to do so.

  Paliard showed no sign of satisfaction at his small victory. ‘So, given that you are, as I gather from the newspapers, getting nowhere in your current investigation, you think that the case you failed to solve twenty years ago might shine a light on the present one.’

  Hearing Paliard articulate his thoughts made it sound every bit as ridiculous as Gorski feared it would.

  ‘Y
ou’re clutching at straws then?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Gorski.

  ‘A man who doesn’t clutch at straws drowns,’ said Paliard. He looked at Gorski. He had narrow pale blue eyes. Gorski wondered if he detected a hint of encouragement in Paliard’s words.

  ‘Inspector Gorski, in a matter of minutes my nurse is going to appear at the door there and tell you that your time with me is up. I suggest that if you’ve got something on your mind, you come to the point.’

  Gorski felt he had nothing to lose. It did not seem likely that Paliard could have a lower opinion of him than he already did.

  ‘Ever since the trial, I’ve gone back to the clearing where the murder took place. It’s ridiculous, of course, but I thought there might be something that had been overlooked. I suppose I was hoping for a moment of inspiration.’ He paused, expecting Paliard to inject some sarcastic remark, but he said nothing.

  ‘After a while, I just went up there out of habit. Often I didn’t think about the case at all, or I just thought about whatever case I was working on at the time. It’s quiet up there. You couldn’t pick a better spot for a murder.’

  Gorski felt that he was beginning to ramble. To his surprise, however, Paliard was listening attentively. ‘Since this girl disappeared I’ve been thinking about the Hurel case again. One thing’s for sure, if Malou was not the culprit then the real killer is still at large. I always believed at the time that the perpetrator must have been local, which was one of the reasons I never believed that Malou was the guilty party. So it stands to reason that he may still be in the area, assuming he’s still alive, of course. So when Adèle Bedeau disappeared I couldn’t help wondering if the same killer was at work.’ He shrugged. ‘As you said, I’m clutching at straws.’

  Paliard said nothing.

  ‘I was in the woods a short while ago. For no particular reason, I left the clearing in a different direction than usual and found myself at the gate in the wall to the back of this property.’